Think Twice

Greg looks up at Myron. This time there is no falling back to their youthful days on the court. It is just two men, grown men, men physically past their prime, who fate has forced into too many collisions.

“Have you ever been in love like that, Myron?”

“I like to think I am now.”

“No, no. You’re in love and you’re married and that’s all great. But you two aren’t together all the time. You have separate lives. That’s probably smart. Healthy. It’s how I always felt before Grace. But — and yeah, I know how corny this will sound — I remember lying in bed with her one night. I was holding her from behind. My arm was wrapped around her waist. I could feel her heart beating and suddenly my heart started beating the same as her. Involuntarily. They matched up, and I swear that never stopped. It was like our two hearts had become one.”

“Wow,” Myron says.

“I mean every word.”

“And yet you killed her.”

“I had no choice.”

“Because she was going to kill Jeremy.”

“Yes.” He shakes his head. “I sacrificed the woman I loved for our son.”

“Oh, our son,” Myron repeats. “You’re not going to play that card with me now, are you?”

“I’m going to play every card I have,” Greg says. “But oddly, I think my best play is to let you see the truth.”

“It all went wrong with the Callisters, didn’t it?”

Greg shakes his head. “It all went wrong way before that, when Grace came to that Bucks — Suns game in Phoenix,” he says. “That’s how the world works, isn’t it? Everything is a chemical reaction. What are the odds you and I would meet, compete, fall for the same girl, end up ripping each other’s lives to shreds? We were like two ordinary compounds that became toxic when combined. It’s the same thing here with Grace, except much more explosive. There are a lot of what-ifs in life. What if I hadn’t hired Spark as an assistant coach, for example? I almost didn’t. I would have never met Grace, and if you think you and I were combustible when we collided...”

“What happened, Greg?”

He shrugs. “I fell in love. That’s all it was at first. The same as I said to you — I was burned out. I wanted to leave the game, run away with Grace, see the world with her. But first, her son needed help.”

“Bo.”

“You know the whole sordid story. Jordan Kravat got him strung out on drugs, pimped him out. I mean, that guy was killing Bo a day at a time. Grace and I talked it out. We couldn’t find a way to extract Bo from the situation. And then suddenly Grace suggested the obvious and yet forbidden.”

“Killing Jordan Kravat.”

Greg nods. “And once the idea was spoken out loud, once we used the word ‘murder’... it’s like we crossed a line and there was no going back. I started planning like, well, for a big playoff game. Scouting. Sizing up the opposition. Trying to guess what they might or might not do. That’s when I came up with the idea of framing Jordan’s mob boss.”

“Joey the Toe.”

“Right. We would eliminate our biggest threat and it would divert attention. Kravat, Turant. These were bad people, Myron. This felt like our only way.”

“So that was your first team kill?”

“Yes.”

“And what, you liked it?”

He chuckles. “More than that. Much more. How do I explain this?”

“Let me help you. You’re both psychopaths. One psychopath walking down the road of life alone, well, that’s bad. But when the two of you — what’s the term you used? — collided...”

“That’s not far off,” Greg says. “It was, well, it was a high, sure. A rush like no other. But it was more than that. It was like we both went through a complete transformation. We were heightened in every way. Food tasted better. Sex was more intense. We experienced something mere mortals could never comprehend.”

“So cutting to the chase,” Myron says, “you went on killing.”

“Yes.”

“And framing people.”

“Yes.”

“As a team. The two of you working together.”

He nods. “Grace was the more violent of us. She loved to watch the life force leave the person’s face. Ending another human being’s life — she described it as the closest thing to being a god. I got that, but I was more the plotter. I loved working on the frame-up, the slow burn of sending someone to prison for a crime they didn’t commit. But we both did both. I killed some, she killed some. I did most of the planning, but she contributed a lot. We were a team in every sense of the word. My point is, many of us have the potential to be killers, but once Grace and I tried it—”

“Yeah, Greg, I think I get it. You just went on killing.”

“Yes.”

“How many, Greg?”

“More than they know. That’s all I’ll say for now.”

Myron can see that it won’t pay to pursue that line of questioning right now. “You planned carefully.”

“Yes.”

“You always made sure someone else took the fall. You took your time. There was pretty much zero chance you’d get caught, until you messed up with the Callisters. I don’t get it. Why go after someone you knew, even tangentially?”