Full Court Press - Rilegato

Lupica, Mike

Rilegato

ISBN 10: 0399147896 ISBN 13: 9780399147890

Casa editrice: Putnam Pub Group, 2001

Riassunto

When the owner of the worst pro basketball team in the world decides to sign Dee Gerard, the first woman ever to play in the NBA, chaos ensues as Dee tries to play the best game there is while spoiled young millionaires, personal and professional relationships, and the press wreak havoc on her life, in a rollicking and hilarious new novel by the author of Bump and Run. 125,000 first printing.

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Estratto. © Riproduzione autorizzata. Diritti riservati.:

ONE

All Eddie Holtz really knew about Monaco was that Grace Kelly got old and fat there after she married the guy Eddie's mother had always called Prince Reindeer.

It was different with his mother, who could talk about Monte Carlo and Monaco as if she were talking about Long Island City. But then she'd been fixed on the princess for as long as Eddie could remember. "I've always felt a bond," she'd say, "maybe because we're both the daughters of bricklayers." Then she'd sigh and say, "One of us grew up to marry a Grimaldi and one of us married your father, may the sonofabitch rest in peace." Eddie never knew whether that was true or not, the bricklayer part, he always had trouble separating fact from fiction with his mother, who didn't stop keeping scrapbooks on Princess Grace until she died in that car crash on the same road Eddie'd driven down from Cannes-the Grand Corniche-which was scarier than the Cyclone ride at Coney Island. When he finally pulled up in front of his hotel, the Loew's-Monte Carlo, actually finding 12 Avenue Spelugues on his own, he wondered how come more people didn't end up dead on the side of that Corniche. You thought you were going fast enough on the twisty roller-coaster turns, but even when you pushed it up to seventy or eighty there'd be some lunatic right behind you flashing his lights and blowing his horn, waving at you to get the hell out of the way.

Eddie couldn't remember whether it was the crash or a stroke that had killed Princess Grace, but after making the drive himself he saw where it could just have been the road that finally blew all her circuits.

It made the Grand Central Parkway look slower than a funeral procession, Eddie decided. He'd promised his mother he'd go to Monaco Cathedral to visit Princess Grace's tomb-"For someone who had all the advantages, she really had a very difficult life," Catherine Holtz had told him sadly-but now he was just going to say a couple of fast Hail Marys that he and the Renault had made it here in one piece.

The whole eastern part of the Riviera that Eddie'd seen was pretty much what he'd expected from the movies, especially his mother's all-time favorite, the one he'd seen on Turner Classic Movies right before he came over, with the young Grace Kelly giving it up to Cary Grant during the fireworks. Except that even in Monte Carlo, with the drop-dead view of the Mediterranean from his balcony, he noticed they were doing the same dumb-ass thing he'd seen everywhere he'd been the last two weeks, Barcelona, Lisbon, France, even Rome: trying to make it more American than judge shows on TV.

It hadn't taken long for Eddie to figure out that Europeans loved pretty much everything American except Americans.

The whole continent was mean people with accents.

The night before he'd passed up the Italian restaurant at the hotel-Le Pistou, Eddie loved the idea of one of these restaurants finally admitting it was pissed off-and ended up eating the worst Tex-Mex food of his life at a place called Le Texan, which served him right. And tonight, on the way to Stade Louis II for the game, he'd stopped at a bar Larry Bird had told him about from when Bird was with that Olympic Dream Team back in 1992. The Summer Olympics had been in Barcelona that year, but Bird and Jordan and Magic and the rest of them had played a couple of tune-up games in Monte Carlo.

Bird said you had to go into the place on the name alone: Le Freaky Pub.

Eddie thought it looked like about nine thousand joints on Second Avenue, just without cable or beer that was cold enough. Jesus, you only had to get thirsty one time over here to find out this was the anti-ice capital of the world.

He nursed a couple of almost-cold ones anyway, killing an hour or so, eyeballing the tall girl barmaid. The rest of the time he tried to translate some of the conversations at the bar without having to run to the men's room every few minutes and check out Langenscheidt's Universal Phrasebook. He didn't usually drink before he scouted a game, but tonight was a little different; there was as much chance of his being interested in somebody besides Earthwind Morton as there was of old Prince Reindeer, who was supposed to be in the crowd, running out and dunking the ball during the pregame warm-ups.

Out loud in Le Freaky Pub, Eddie Holtz said, "What the hell am I doing here?"

The girl bartender smiled and said, "Pardonez-moi?"

Eddie made a motion with his hands, like he was waving off a shot. "No problemo," he said.

This close to the end of his scouting trip, Eddie figured it was all right to start going with his own universal phrases, screw Langenscheidt's.

It was weird, though, having to come halfway across the goddamn world to see Earthwind. When they'd both still been in the NBA ten years ago, before Eddie blew out his knee, all he'd had to do to watch Earthwind play was put on SportsCenter on ESPN. If the Knicks had a game that night, the highlights were always about him, the way they were always about Jordan when he was still playing, at least before Earthwind tried to put the gross national product of Bogotá up his nose. Now Eddie had to come to Monte Carlo to see if Lavernius (Earthwind) Morton, playing for Olympique Antibes in France's First Division Men's League, had enough left for the New York Knights to bring him back for one more shot.

"You still any good?" Eddie had asked over the phone when he'd called from Paris.

"Only thing sweeter than myself over here is le poo-say," Earthwind said. "Myself has done exactly what all those jive counselors told me: replace one jones with another."

"So you replaced dope with what?" Eddie said.

Earthwind whooped and said, "Some of dem mada-mo-selles, baby."

The basketball arena was part of the big soccer stadium that Eddie thought could have been called Meadowlands on the Med. The night before, he could actually hear the cheers from the soccer game as he sat on his balcony with the big boy martini he'd fixed himself from his minibar. He knew there used to be a First Division team in Monte Carlo but didn't remember if it was still there. Eddie did know that Earthwind had missed the last couple of games for Antibes, which bothered the shit out of him, considering the guy's rap sheet with the coke and crack and even heroin, which Eddie'd always thought of as the main event. So this was Eddie's last chance to get a look at him in person before he flew back to New York to give his report to Michael De la Cruz, the Knights' owner.

And if Earthwind was washed up, Eddie was going to have to tell the boss the truth: After having been to Spain and Italy and up and down France, he wasn't even coming home with a decent roll of film.

Oh, there'd been a couple of guys in Spain who might be able to give the Knights ten minutes a game. And there was a Russian kid playing for Bologna named Arvy Daskylmilosevic, who in addition to having the world's longest last name could occasionally shoot threes as if they were layups. But as little as De la Cruz knew about basketball-even though he'd managed to convince himself it was he and Dr. Naismith back at the beginning, cutting the hole in the peach basket-Eddie knew he couldn't bullshit him with those guys.

Eddie couldn't even do that with himself, not when it came to basketball.

"I'd like you to come back with somebody who can win us some games," he'd told Eddie. "But not as much as someone who could sell us some goddamn tickets."

So Earthwind Morton, who was supposed to be clean finally, was pretty much the whole ballgame. He was the one De la Cruz wanted. People love comeback stories, he'd told Eddie. The sportswriters can write the same stories they've already done about the other junkies, and the fans will eat it up.

He'd gone through the same rap on the phone the other night, getting all revved up like he could, like he was still pitching tech stocks. Eddie'd finally said, "I'm not as worried about what the fans are going to eat as I am with my man Earth."

Michael De la Cruz wanted to know what that meant, and Eddie said, "I saw a picture of him in L'Equipe the other day? The French sports paper? The guy looks like he swallowed Notre Dame."

Eddie pronounced it right, "Not-rah Dahm," so his boss, still pretty new to sports, wouldn't confuse the cathedral with the Fighting Irish football team.

The p.r. guy from Olympique Antibes, Jean-Claude something, another guy with an attitude when Eddie'd talked to him on the phone, had forgotten to leave him a ticket. Eddie'd found that out when he'd called over to Stade Louis II in the afternoon, but the concierge at Loew's, Lebortvaillet, had said he'd take care of it, and did.

Eddie overtipped Lebortvaillet when he came downstairs. The guy just took the fistful of those Monegasque coins that were the same as francs, and shrugged. France, Monte Carlo, it didn't matter where you were, it's like they all took some kind of course in not giving a shit. Most of these bastards, even the well-meaning ones, were like the old joke about New York City.

"Could you tell me how to find the Hotel du Paris, or should I just go fuck myself, s'il vous plait?"

The cab to the arena took him through the kind of tunnel where Princess Di had got it, and dropped him on the arena side of the Stade Louis sports complex. The sign outside said it was Antibes vs. Lyon Villeuranne, eight o'clock. Lebortvaillet had said the game was an exhibition to benefit one of Princess Stephanie's charities. Or maybe it was Princess Caroline, he wasn't sure. Eddie remembered that one of them had had her hair fall out one time and the other was in the car when Princess Grace bought it, he just couldn't keep them straight anymore. Lebortvaillet said that out of respect for the royal family, each team had sent at least five of its best players, and that the rest of the rosters would be filled out with some of the better college kids from Monte Carlo and as far up as Cannes and Nice.

Eddie had watched some tape on Earthwind back in New York, but now he needed to see if the guy, even in a charity game, could still do things on a...

Product Description:

Book by Lupica Mike

Su questa edizione

• Editore: Putnam Pub Group
• Data di pubblicazione: 2001
• ISBN 10: 0399147896
• ISBN 13: 9780399147890
• Rilegatura: Copertina rigida
• Numero edizione: 1
• Numero di pagine: 360