Murder at the Foul Line
Chapter One
KELLER'S DOUBLE DRIBBLE
Lawrence Block
Keller, his hands in his pockets, watched a dark-skinned black man
with his shirt off drive for the basket. His shaved head gleamed,
and the muscles of his upper back, the traps and lats, bulged as if
steroidally enhanced. Another man, wearing a T-shirt but otherwise
of the same shade and physique, leapt to block the shot, and the two
bodies met in midair. It was a little like ballet, Keller thought,
and a little like combat, and the ball kissed off the backboard and
dropped through the hoop.
There was no net, just a bare hoop. The playground was at the corner
of Sixth Avenue and West Third Street, in Greenwich Village, and
Keller was one of a handful of spectators standing outside the high
chain-link fence, watching idly as ten men, half wearing T-shirts,
half bare-chested, played a fiercely competitive game of half-court
basketball.
If this were a game at the Garden, the last play would have sent
someone to the free-throw line. But there was no ref here to call
fouls, and order was maintained in a simpler fashion: Anyone who
fouled too frequently was thrown out of the game. It ... read full excerpt from Murder at the Foul Line: Original Tales of Hoop Dreams and Deaths from Today's Great Writers ebook
