Vanished Fortitude

Definitely not by Robert B. Parker

A ravishingly beautiful woman walked into my office. I took a bite of donut and offered her a seat. She had a smile that could melt a candle but I could tell she meant business.

“Are you Mr. Spenser?” she said.

“The one and only.”

Hawk grunted from the corner where he was leaning like a frightening apparition.

Glancing nervously at Hawk, she said, “My team has lost its mental toughness, or maybe you could call it heart, and they need it back immediately. We’d like to hire you to find it.”

“You work for the Celtics,” I said. It wasn’t a question. I had some coffee.

“I’m impressed,” she said. “I heard you were the best detective in the history of sleuthing but that you’re stubborn and you’re not nearly as funny as you think you are.”

“You got the first part right but otherwise I think you have me confused with Bill Simmons.”

“Hate that guy,” Hawk said.

“Me too,” I said.

The ravishing woman was wearing knee-high white go-go boots, shorts that were higher than a two-bit junkie and a tight green tank top that read “CELTICS” across the chest.

“She one of those dancers for the team,” Hawk said.

“Wow,” I said. “And you’re not even a trained detective.”

“I trying to become just like you,” he said.

“Excellent idea,” I said. “Aim for the top.”

“So will you take the case?” she said.

“Certainly,” I said. It was an easy decision. I was as tired as everyone else in Boston of watching the Celtics lay down seemingly night after night to inferior teams.

On her way out the door, the dancer said that her boss preferred that I take a “Belichickian” approach. Whatever that meant.

I ate another couple donuts and made some calls.

* * *

Hawk and I began by reaching out to Tony Marcus, the head of organized crime in Boston.

“We’ve had our differences, me and you Spenser, but I’m glad you came to me about this,” Marcus said in between bites of his chicken fingers, sitting at the bar of his strip club in the South End. “I mean, Detroit? They didn’t even have no Ben Gordon or Tayshaun Prince last night and they still walked all over the Celtics in the second half. You need to help that team find their heart, and fast, man. What you need from me?”

“A press pass. I need inside access to be able to ask some tough questions to the right people.”

Marcus laughed. “This be your lucky day, Spenser. I just happened to mug a guy last week, tole’ me he was on his daily one mile run or some such ridiculousness. Real funny looking guy, red haired 'fro, no chin. Strangest thing was that people on the street were actually cheering me on as I beat him silly, yo. Anyway, among other things, I relieved him of the press pass he had around his skinny little neck. It’s all yours.”

Marcus pulled out the pass and handed it to me. It read Dan Shaughnessy across the front.

“Hate that guy,” Hawk mumbled.

“Me too. Let’s go.”

***

On the way to the Garden, Hawk and I beat up a dozen or so young hooligans who were harassing innocent nuns on their way to mass. As the young thugs were lying on the ground bleeding profusely, I quoted some Hemingway to them about what it means to be a man.

Hawk left me at the back entrance to the Garden because he had a date with a beautiful doctoral student from Harvard who was doing a thesis on sleeping with sociopathic mob leg-breakers.

I got through the press gate without issue and was guided to the small locker room where the referees waited before the game.

I knocked on the door and opened it. The old man sitting at the table in front of me was reading a book that appeared blank and without words.

After giving it a closer look, I said, “Hey, that book is written in Braille.”

“Yeah, so?” he said, looking angrily five feet to my right.

“I’m over here, Mr. Bavetta,” I said helpfully.

“What do you want?” he snapped.

“The name’s Spenser. I’ve been hired to find the heart that’s gone missing from the Celtics this year.”

“And you’ve come here to blame us, right?” he said, standing up gingerly. “Every time a team loses a game that it shouldn’t, everyone blames the refs. Let me tell you something. I’ll admit that we may be consistently incompetent and vindictive, and I can say that because I know that Commissioner Stern has my back regardless of what we say or do, but the reason the Celtics are losing has nothing to do with us. With KG and Marquis Daniels out, your bench and your team defense stinks more than a bushel of rotten crabs. Plus, your two best healthy players, Paul Pierce and Rajon Rondo, have played weak down the stretch in these losses and Ray Allen hasn’t stepped up to fill in the gap. Hell, even I can see that.”

“You’ve been very helpful”, I said.

“Wasn’t trying to be,” he growled and slammed the door shut in my face.

* * *

After I breezed into the Celtics’ locker room, I explained to a member of the staff that I was doing a story on how the team’s heart appears to be missing and where they might be able to find it.

As I headed over to the corner towards Glen Davis’s locker, the staffer grabbed me by the shoulder and shook his head. “If you’re looking for evidence of the team’s heart,” he said, “you certainly won’t find it over there.”

Pointing to my right, I said, “That’s where James Posey’s locker was, right? I think I saw it there on TV.”

“That’s right,” the staffer said sadly. “That man was an absolute rock under pressure, did whatever it took to help his team. He’d sprint through a wall if we asked him to. Posey found other teams thinking they could win in this building to be personally offensive. God, we miss him. I know he’s not the same player anymore but we miss what he brought to the table two years ago.”

“Eric Williams was like that too,” I said.

The staffer nodded. “You’re absolutely right. Remember back to the playoff run we had in 2002? Williams wasn’t the best player on that team, not by a long shot. But whenever things got rough during games, the stars like Pierce and Walker always looked his way for strength, and he gave it to them. Erick Strickland was tough too. So was Rodney Rogers. They were only role players, I know, but I think it’s important for your role players to be able to bring that sort of toughness onto the court. Smackmouth basketball, I call it. The Celtics teams that won titles, they never did it on finesse. They did it by kicking everyone else’s asses, with or without the basketball. Hell, Dave Cowens could still put the fear of god into half these players today. And remember McHale’s clothesline on Rambis or Robert Parish going after Bill Laimbeer, or Bird fighting Doctor J in a meaningless preseason game. Those old Celtics teams had talent in spades, sure, but they could also out-tough their opponents, physically and mentally.”

“What about Garnett? He’s tough.”

“He certainly is,” the staffer said. “But you can’t be tough from the bench and you can’t lead on the court as effectively either until you have your full game back. Look at KG earlier in the year. He was playing pretty well on offense, and that kept some of the heat off of him, but defensively he wasn’t even close to all the way back and that had an impact on his leadership on the court. You can’t be chewing out other guys for blown rotations when you’re blowing a fair amount of them yourself.”

Hearing enough, I thanked the staffer for his time and saw myself out.

* * *

Back at my apartment on Marlborough Street, I turned the oven down low to let the quiche cook all the way through and added extra dashes of parsley and cayenne pepper to my special recipe for hollandaise potatoes. Susan Silverman handed me a Sam Adams Old Fezziwig Ale left over from the holidays.

“For once, can we just maybe have a hamburger and fries?” she said. “No, seriously.”

I ignored her and glazed my carrots with apricot butter and showered them with finely grated Romano cheese.

“How’s your case going?” she said as we sat down on the couch together, waiting for the quiche and watching the fat snowflakes descend upon the Back Bay. She took the tiniest of sips from her glass of chardonnay. Even at that slow rate, however, Susan would still finish her glass well before Donny Marshall made his next insightful point about the Celtics.

I gazed lustily at her. Setting my beer aside, I drank in Susan’s beauty instead. If Susan was standing next to Angelina Jolie and Megan Fox, men would make barking noises at the two actresses because their inferior brand of beauty would be so muted by Susan’s radiance.

“I gave it up,” I said.

Susan gasped. “I’ve never seen you quit a single thing in your life.”

“I didn’t quit. I’ve decided to do them a favor because I realized that no one outside the team can find their lost heart. They’ll either find it on their own or they won’t. It’s entirely up to them.”

“I’ve heard a lot of doubters around Boston recently,” she said.

“Based on what I’ve seen over the past couple months, I have some doubts myself. The only other hope is that maybe Danny Ainge can bring in the right veteran or two in exchange for some of Boston’s expiring contracts and young players that will never get developed under Doc Rivers anyway. I like the fight in guys like Ronny Turiaf and Raja Bell, who is expected back from his wrist injury towards the end of the season. It’s not like Golden State needs their services this year. I don’t know. Something along those lines.”

“You seem stressed out.”

“I am a little bit. I just can’t stand watching these guys lose to lousy teams like the Clippers, Warriors and Pistons or even those front-running turds down in Atlanta just because of injuries. At some point, I’d expect the guys left standing to rise above the injury excuse and gut out some more wins. They were shorthanded last year but still finished with sixty-two wins and took the Orlando Magic to seven games. I know they can do better than this.”

”Did you say front running turds? How vulgar,” she said.

I nodded. “I keep hearing the phrase on an excellent internet radio show about the Celtics and I’ve recently incorporated it into my regular vernacular. Also, you should know that the refs suck and Stern hates Boston.”

“I see. Well, based on what I’ve heard, the Celtics certainly seem to have enough talent to right the ship, even in the face of these injuries.”

“Isn’t it pretty to think so,” I said dourly.

“Yes.” She raised her eyebrows at me provocatively. “Although I have some other ideas on how to alleviate that stress of yours.”

I looked at her for a long time. “We are more in love than any two people in the history of mankind,” I said.

“Yes.”

“The love between Romeo and Juliet was a sad little joke compared to what we are.”

“Yes.”

“The Celtics need to take greater advantage of Rasheed Wallace mismatches down on the block.”

“Yes.”

“If love were a car, we’d be driving around in a Hummer and everyone else would be stuck behind us in their little Prius.”

“Yes.”

Then we shut the bedroom door and proved how much more we love each other than everyone else and thus left the Celtics to fix their own little problems.

The End