A Scourge of Vipers by Bruce DeSilva

empty seats and remembered how, on those rare occasions when I got off the bench for PC, every one of them had been filled.
    Coach Martin and his two assistants were strutting down the line like drill sergeants now, giving each of us the once-over. When they reached me, Martin smirked and said, “I hear they’re calling you grandpa.”
    â€œYeah,” I said. “I kinda like it.”
    â€œYou sure you don’t want to go on home, old-timer? Maybe fix yourself some warm milk and take a nap?”
    The others laughed. I joined in. Then I broke the line, ambled over to the two carts that held the basketballs, picked one up, squared myself to the basket, and swished a thirty-foot jump shot.
    â€œBeginner’s luck,” Sears growled.
    I smiled and kept shooting until I emptied both carts. Sixteen of twenty hit nothing but net.
    â€œGreat form,” Martin said. “Any of you other wannabes think you can match that? No? Okay then. Break off into groups of five for suicides. Six times down and back.”
    A basketball court is ninety-four feet long. Six times down and back meant a sprint of more than eleven hundred feet. I finished next to last in my group, well ahead of Bowditch, who jogged the last two laps. I was winded and drenched in sweat, but not bending over and gasping for breath like some of the others.
    When we were done, the coaches lined us up again, asked Bowditch, Mendoza, and sixteen others to take one step forward, and told them to go home.
    We spent the rest of the morning and early afternoon on standard basketball drills: the four-spot fast break shooting drill, the elbow shooting drill, the post feed/spot up drill, and the wing screen. The guys who’d played college ball mostly did okay. The unschooled playground legends struggled.
    Shortly after one P.M. , they lined us up on the sidelines again, told another twenty-four that they were done, and asked the remaining twenty of us, including Sears, Krueger, Benton, and Jefferson, to come back the following Saturday.
    As the exhausted winners and losers trudged to the locker room, I pulled Martin aside.
    â€œWhy me?” I asked.
    â€œBecause the fix is in. The ownership is desperate for publicity, so you were gonna stick no matter what. Now that I’ve seen what you can do, I might have kept you around anyway. You’re slow, you can’t jump, and you couldn’t guard Danny DeVito if he played in a wheelchair. But your shooting form reminds me of Ray Allen. Think you can teach the rest of these clowns the proper way to stick a jump shot?”

 
    15
    â€œFiona? It’s Mulligan.”
    â€œHuh? What time is it?”
    â€œDid I wake you?”
    â€œYeah.”
    â€œIt’s eleven o’clock Sunday morning. Why aren’t you in church?”
    â€œI attended midnight mass.”
    â€œAre you alert enough to answer a question, or should I call back?”
    â€œGive me a sec.”
    I heard her drop the phone and rustle around for half a minute. Then she was back.
    â€œOkay, shoot.”
    â€œRemember telling me that a couple of committee chairmen knew about the gambling bill before the news leaked?”
    â€œUh-huh.”
    â€œGuys who weren’t on Alfano’s list?”
    â€œYeah.”
    â€œWho are they?”
    â€œPhil Templeton and Joseph Longo.” Templeton, I knew, was the chairman of the House Corporations Committee, and Longo headed the Senate Finance Committee. “They’re my point men on this,” Fiona was saying. “I’m counting on them to line up support, make the necessary horse trades, and count the votes so we can drive the bill through the legislature.”
    â€œI need to talk to them.”
    â€œAbout what?”
    â€œAlfano.”
    â€œWhy?”
    â€œI think he might have tried to bribe them, too.”
    â€œBut you’re not sure?”
    â€œNo.”
    â€œThe legislature is in recess now,” she said,