Meeker stared at him for a second. “You’re a liar.”
“We’ll find out soon who the liar is,” Stevie said.
For a moment, he thought Meeker was going to lunge at him. “There’s no way you have a tape,” Meeker said, his voice now shaking. “Shupe and I were the only ones in that room….”
He stopped, realizing what he had said. The cameras were now turned in his direction. Meeker’s voice was getting very high-pitched. “I met with Shupe to discuss my interview today. You all saw it. That’s all it was. The kid is bluffing.”
“Fine,” Stevie said. “If that’s your comment, I’ve got a story to go write.”
“Get him out!” Meeker screamed. “Get him out of my locker room right now!”
“Don’t worry, Little Donny,” Stevie said, feeling very secure now. “I’m leaving. I’ve got all I need.”
Stevie could hear Meeker still screaming—on camera, no doubt—as he turned and walked away.
Susan Carol and Kelleher were already writing when Stevie returned to the main press box. There was plenty of room to work, since a lot of the other writers had opted to write from the downstairs workroom.
“I just thought I should get us started since it’s so late,” Susan Carol said.
Kelleher filled him in on the plan. He had transcribed the key parts of the tape—“never heard anything like it in my life”—and sent it to the paper. He was writing a column calling for the league to force Meeker to sell the team. “They won’t call the game a forfeit, so the win stands,” he said. “But Goodell told Susan Carol that if it was all true, the other owners could vote to compel Meeker to sell the team.”
Tamara returned just after Stevie and they brought her up to date too. “Just beyond amazing,” she said, shaking her head.
Once Stevie and Susan Carol started writing—she sat at the computer, he made suggestions over her shoulder—Stevie understood the term “a story that writes itself.” Kelleher had told them to just write and not worry about length, and they wrote close to 3,000 words. Kelleher, who finished his column just as they were wrapping it up, read it through quickly before they sent it to the Herald.
“Unbelievable,” Kelleher kept saying. “I thought New Orleans was unbelievable. This is beyond that. And the best part is, you’ve got ’em cold. This story almost doesn’t need to be lawyered. It’s all right there on tape.”
He folded his arms and looked at the two of them. “Okay, now tell me just how you got this tape,” he said.
Susan Carol smiled. “We have to protect our source on this, Bobby,” she said.
Kelleher’s eyes narrowed. “Come on. Just tell me enough so I can tell the lawyers I’m completely sure it’s legit.”
“Dude, it’s all good,” Stevie said, smiling. “Our favorite dude came through, okay?”
Bobby looked at them for a minute, then smiled. “If you’re saying what I think you’re saying, don’t tell me any more,” he said. “It will all be too strange for me to understand anyway.”
“Works for us,” Susan Carol said, flashing the smile. Stevie had almost forgotten what it looked like, it had been so long.
They still had to answer some questions from the lawyer and from the editors, but it was all pretty basic. It was hard to argue with a recorded confession.
It was well after one a.m. by the time they packed up their computers and walked out of the press box.
Tamara had called Mark Maske, who was working downstairs, to alert him to the Herald’s story, which she had referred to in her column. “Scooped by children again,” she said, laughing.
They walked back to the hotel with snow falling steadily. The streets were still crowded, mostly with Dreams fans, celebrating their victory.
“The amazing thing is, none of these people care that their team won a tainted Super Bowl,” Tamara said. “None of them care that the team owner is an incredible sleazebag.”
Bobby nodded. “We could write a million stories like the one you guys wrote tonight and most fans will just shrug and say, ‘Yeah, but we won.’”
“So why do we bother?” Stevie said.
“Because the truth matters,” Kelleher said. “The truth will bring the bad guys down. Meeker is going down, and the players will be penalized. And maybe other players won’t think they can get away with cheating in the future. The truth always matters.”
They contemplated that and what lay ahead as they walked. The story would take on a life of its own now, one with far-reaching ramifications. But Stevie and Susan Carol wouldn’t be on the front lines of it anymore—they were going home.
Bobby and Tamara left Stevie and Susan Carol alone to say goodbye in front of the Marriott. Susan Carol was going to take a cab back to the Canterbury—she had a seven a.m. flight.
“You going to be okay on four hours’ sleep?” Stevie asked.
“I’ll be fine. I sleep well on airplanes,” she said.
He was trying to figure out what to say or do next. After spending so much time together, it was strange to think he wouldn’t see her tomorrow.
“Steven Richman Thomas,” she said finally. “Have you not yet learned how to kiss your girlfriend goodbye?”
“Are you really my girlfriend?” he asked. “It’s not like we see each other that often. There must be other guys at home….”
“And plenty of girls in Philadelphia,” she said. “Do you want me to be your girlfriend?”
“Oh yeah,” he said. “Oh yeah.”
He leaned forward, standing on his toes just a little to kiss her, but she had a silly grin on her face.
“What?” he said.
“You know, Jamie Whitsitt did turn out to be a much better guy than you gave him credit for,” she said.
“You want to call him?” he said. “I’m sure you’ve got his cell….”
He had to stop at that point because she was kissing him. He put his arms around her, not really caring about all the people walking in and out of the hotel, and held her for quite a while.
“Wow,” Susan Carol said. “Pretty good for someone so young.”
“Yeah—fourteen isn’t so bad.”
They still had their arms around each other. “I know,” she said. “I think you’ve got great growth potential.”
He laughed. “When will I see you?” he said.
“Duke is playing at Temple in two weeks,” she said. “Maybe I’ll come up for the game.”
“Bad idea,” he said.
“Why?” she said, a surprised look on her face.
“You like Duke. And if we’re both at the game, there’s bound to be trouble of some kind.”
“We are kind of a jinx, aren’t we?”
“Yup. Basketball, tennis, football…What sport shall we ruin next?”
“How do you feel about baseball?” she asked.
“No! I like baseball. And we can’t wreck swimming either.”
“Oh, hey—think of the damage we could do at the Olympics!”
They both laughed for a long time, hanging on to each other a little crazily, the snow swirling around them.
After a while, Susan Carol said, “So, I shouldn’t come to Philly for the game?”
Stevie kissed her again. “Of course you should,” he said. “Trouble is what we do.”
“And we do it well, don’t we?”
“We sure do, Scarlett. We sure do.”
ALSO BY JOHN FEINSTEIN
Last Shot: A Final Four Mystery
Vanishing Act: Mystery at the U.S. Open
THIS IS A BORZOI BOOK PUBLISHED BY ALFRED A. KNOPF
This is a work of fiction. All incidents and dialogue, and all characters with the exception of some well-known public figures, are products of the author’s imagination and are not to be construed as real. Where real-life public figures appear, the situations are fictional and are not intended to depict actual events or to change the fictional nature of the work. In all other respects, any resemblance to persons living or dead is entirel
y coincidental.
Copyright © 2007 by John Feinstein
All rights reserved.
Published in the United States by Alfred A. Knopf, an imprint of Random House Children’s Books, a division of Random House, Inc., New York.
KNOPF, BORZOI BOOKS, and the colophon are registered trademarks of Random House, Inc.
www.randomhouse.com/kids
Educators and librarians, for a variety of teaching tools, visit us at www.randomhouse.com/teachers
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data is available on request.
eISBN: 978-0-375-89071-0
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