Fade Away (myron Bolitar, #3)

The third novel in the Myron Bolitar series opens with Myron Bolitar, a 32-year-old sports agent whose NBA career ended a decade earlier due to a knee injury, being summoned to New Jersey's Meadowlands Arena. Clip Arnstein, owner of the New Jersey Dragons basketball team, and Calvin Johnson, the team's general manager, reveal that star player Greg Downing has been missing for five days; the media has been told Greg is nursing an ankle injury. Clip wants Myron to join the Dragons roster as a cover so he can investigate from the inside, reasoning that teammates will only confide in a fellow player. Myron and Greg are fierce rivals from childhood through college, where both became first-round draft picks. While Myron's career was destroyed in a collision with Burt Wesson during his first preseason game, Greg became an eight-time All-Star. Clip sweetens the deal with a signing bonus and a guaranteed future client for Myron's agency, MB SportsReps, and Myron accepts, with Clip insisting on secrecy to protect an upcoming ownership vote.

Myron enlists his best friend and business partner, Windsor Horne Lockwood III (Win), a wealthy financial advisor, martial artist, and former covert operative, and informs his girlfriend, writer Jessica Culver. Myron and Win break into Greg's home in Ridgewood, New Jersey, finding piled-up mail, women's clothing suggesting a live-in girlfriend, and a cryptic answering machine message from a woman named Carla asking Greg to meet her at midnight. In the basement, they discover blood on the walls and floor. Win collects samples and traces Greg's finances, finding no activity in five days.

Clip holds a press conference framing Myron's signing as a comeback story. Myron plays in his first game, entering late in a blowout and enduring sarcastic cheers. Audrey Wilson, a sports reporter covering the Dragons, suspects Myron's true purpose but does not publish her theory.

Win traces Greg's last ATM withdrawal to lower Manhattan and identifies a dive bar called the Swiss Chalet as the place where Greg met Carla. The bartender confirms Greg left with an older woman. Afterward, two thugs ambush Myron demanding Greg's location; bystanders intervene before the beating turns fatal.

Myron's associate Esperanza Diaz, a former professional wrestler who helps run MB SportsReps, determines the blood is type AB positive, ruling out Greg and his children. Myron visits Emily Schaeffer Downing, Greg's ex-wife and Myron's college girlfriend, who is locked in a bitter custody battle. Emily reveals that Greg's agent, Martin Felder, claimed to have lost Greg's money, yet Greg recently signed a lucrative endorsement deal worth millions. Myron carries deep guilt over having slept with Emily the night before she married Greg.

Tracing Carla's phone call to a diner pay phone in upper Manhattan, Myron learns a waitress named Sally Guerro matches Carla's description but has vanished. A homeless man named Norman Lowenstein leads Myron to her apartment near Columbia University, where he discovers her decomposing body. NYPD detective Roland Dimonte takes the case. Inside the apartment, investigators find three forged passports and more than $10,000 in sequentially numbered bills. Myron persuades Dimonte to delay a public alert for Greg, and the two agree to share information.

At a party hosted by TC Collins, the Dragons' superstar co-captain, Myron meets Maggie Mason, an investment banker nicknamed Thumper who has a sexual arrangement with players on the team. TC reveals Thumper works at the same firm whose number came up when Myron earlier hit redial on Greg's home phone, contradicting her claim she had not spoken to Greg recently. That night, mob enforcers led by a gambling boss called the B Man attempt to kidnap Myron, but Win, monitoring via an open phone line, crashes into their van and rescues him.

A Treasury source confirms the cash came from a bank robbery in Tucson, Arizona, committed by the Raven Brigade, a radical leftist group that went underground in the 1970s after a botched kidnapping. The victim is identified as Liz Gorman, a founding Brigade member who disguised herself with breast implants and wigs. Win also discovers an e-mail on Greg's computer from someone promising him "the greatest night of ecstasy imaginable," sent the day he vanished.

Win brokers a deal with the B Man, who reveals Greg has a gambling addiction and owes nearly $2 million. Greg was supposed to deliberately underperform in a game to influence betting outcomes but vanished instead. When Dimonte searches Greg's house, the blood has been cleaned up, but a blood-covered baseball bat is found behind the dryer. Someone has both removed and planted evidence. Myron had told both Clip and Audrey about the blood, raising questions about who intervened.

Phone records reveal Liz Gorman called Clip's office days before the murder. Confronted, Clip admits he knew about the blackmailer and Greg's gambling. Calvin confirms the blackmailer contacted them demanding money. Separately, Myron learns Felder's team secretly videotaped Emily in a compromising encounter with Thumper to undermine her custody case.

Myron deduces that Norman Lowenstein is actually Cole Whiteman, the Raven Brigade's fugitive leader disguised as a vagrant. He tracks Cole to a shelter beneath the Cathedral of St. John the Divine. Cole reveals he watched Liz Gorman's building the night of the murder: Clip arrived first, Greg arrived with a satchel and left in under a minute, and Emily arrived last. Cole also saw a woman in a distinctive long overcoat enter and leave the building shortly before Greg.

Dimonte shows Myron surveillance footage of a woman in a long overcoat with a frilly collar leaving the murder scene, carrying what appears to be a baseball bat in a garbage bag. Myron recognizes Emily's walk but lies to the detective. He confronts Emily, who admits she planted the blood and the bat at Greg's house and tipped off police but insists she found Liz Gorman already dead and framed Greg to gain custody advantage.

Myron realizes whoever cleaned up the planted evidence must have known about it. Audrey had reason to keep her relationship with Greg secret, since exposure would destroy her career covering the team. The access code on Greg's answering machine, 317, corresponds to Audrey's birthday, March 17, revealing intimate knowledge of Greg's personal life. Myron devises a trap: Cole Whiteman, posing as an anonymous blackmailer, arranges a meeting. Audrey hides in Myron's car as an ostensible journalist witness. When Dimonte, disguised as the blackmailer, stages an exchange, Audrey grabs Myron's gun, loaded with blanks, and shoots, exposing herself. Confronted, Audrey confesses: She is Greg's secret lover, pregnant with his child, and killed Liz Gorman with the blackmailer's own bat to silence her permanently. She also cleaned the planted blood at Greg's house. Dimonte arrests her.

After the arrest, Myron receives a manila envelope Cole sent to the arena containing a cassette tape and a letter urging him not to listen alone. On the tape, Myron hears Greg paying Burt Wesson to deliberately injure him during that preseason game, motivated by jealousy after discovering Myron had slept with Emily. Consumed by rage, Myron storms TC's house, where Greg has been hiding throughout his disappearance. Myron beats Greg before Win restrains him. Greg admits he hired Wesson but insists the injury was not supposed to be so severe.

Myron confronts Clip a final time. Clip admits he visited Liz Gorman's apartment the night of the murder and heard the tape. He hired Myron not only to find Greg but to give Myron a chance to learn the truth about his injury, hoping the return to basketball would provide closure. In a quiet conversation afterward, Jessica tells Myron she believes he never properly mourned his lost career, instead channeling his grief into clinging to everything else in his life. Myron agrees to move in with Jessica, signaling a new chapter. In the novel's final lines, Win appears at Burt Wesson's door in Tucson with a smile, implying he intends to exact his own justice.