Change-up (13 page)

“You agree with her?” Kelleher asked.

“Honestly? Yes, I do.”

“Does that mean you don’t think I should go to Lynchburg?” Stevie asked—hopeful.

“No, it doesn’t,” she said. “The story needs to be pursued and it’s clearly your story. I just don’t think any of us should ask Susan Carol about it again.”

They agreed to split up for dinner to give them all some time apart. Tamara would cook for Susan Carol, and Stevie and Bobby would go out. They went to a place called Rio Grande, a Tex-Mex spot one town over in Bethesda. The place was huge and packed, but they only had to wait about five minutes to get a table. Stevie had just ordered steak fajitas when he saw someone approaching the table. Kelleher saw him too, and the look on his face made it apparent he wasn’t thrilled.

“Bobby, how’s it going?” the man said, extending a hand as he walked up. He was, Stevie guessed, in his mid-forties and he was overdressed for a place like Rio Grande in a jacket and tie.

“David, what brings you here?” Kelleher said, shaking hands.

“I live fairly close by and I like the food,” David answered. He turned to Stevie. “I’m guessing you must be Steve Thomas. I’m David Felkoff.”

Stevie accepted the proffered hand and said, “Nice to meet you.”

“David’s an agent,” Kelleher said, which instantly told Stevie why he had looked so unhappy when Felkoff walked up. Kelleher liked agents about as much as most people liked the dentist.

“Player representative, Bobby, you know that,” Felkoff corrected.

“Right, of course,” Kelleher said, sarcasm in his voice.

“Well anyway, just thought I’d say hello,” Felkoff continued, apparently unbothered by Kelleher’s cool reception. “Been on the phone all day talking to book and movie people about my new client. Made me kind of hungry.”

“New client?” Kelleher said.

“Norbert Doyle,” Felkoff said. “If there’s ever a guy who deserves to make a few extra dollars …”

“It’s you,” Kelleher said, which made Stevie laugh.

Felkoff glanced at Stevie for a second and kept going. “Always the funny guy, aren’t you, Bobby?”

“Didn’t Norbert already have an agent?” Stevie asked.

“Not one who could get him meetings with Disney, DreamWorks, Paramount, and Universal,” Felkoff said. “Not to mention Random House; Little, Brown; and Simon and Schuster.”

“Come on, David,” Kelleher said.
“Stevie
could have gotten him those meetings after last night.”

“Bobby, why do you always have to be so negative?” Felkoff said. “I saw you in here and it occurred to me you might be the perfect guy to write the book—which will
be optioned for a screenplay even before you’re finished writing.”

“Well, thanks but no thanks,” Kelleher said. “I don’t write other people’s books, and I certainly don’t get involved in projects with agents like you.”

Felkoff shrugged. “Okay, fine then. I’ll get Mitch Albom. He’s a lot more talented than you anyway.”

“No doubt,” Kelleher said.

Felkoff looked at Stevie again. “Well, it was nice meeting you, young man,” he said. “Don’t believe everything Kelleher tells you about agents.”

“No worries,” Stevie said. “I can form my own opinions.”

Felkoff turned and walked away just as their food arrived.

“Sorry about that,” Kelleher said, “but in a business filled with bad guys, he’s one of the worst. Typical of him to jump on a guy like Doyle—trying to get him a fast movie deal and then act as if he’s the only one who could have gotten it done.”

“There’s just one thing,” Stevie said. “He may not know the movie’s ending.”

Stevie made no attempt to say more than hello to Susan Carol when they got home. He didn’t have to pack, since the plan was for him to come home as soon as he was finished at the courthouse. Kelleher seemed to think he might even make it back in time for the game.

“It’s no more than a ten-minute cab ride from Union Station to the park,” he said. “You catch the four-forty-five train, you can be in the park for first pitch.”

Stevie was in bed by ten-thirty, but as always happened when he knew he had to be up early—especially to do something he didn’t want to do, like cram before a test—he tossed and turned. He wondered if he and Susan Carol would ever be friends again, much less boyfriend and girlfriend, and he wondered if there really was anything he could find out in Lynchburg that would shed light on the story. And what did any of this have to do with baseball? He finally drifted off to sleep and woke up to find Kelleher standing over him.

“You didn’t hear the alarm,” he whispered. “It’s five-thirty-five. Rise and shine.”

He felt better after a shower and the scrambled eggs and bacon Kelleher made for both of them. But the sun wasn’t even coming up when they got in the car.

“Isn’t this the way to the ballpark?” Stevie said when Kelleher swung the car onto the Fourteenth Street Bridge.

“Good memory,” Kelleher said, pointing at a sign ahead that said Nationals Park, with an arrow pointing to the right. “We’re going to get off two exits before the ballpark exit.”

Kelleher parked in the Union Station garage, and they went down two escalators to get into the station. A few minutes later, after they had gotten Stevie’s tickets and Kelleher had bought him a latte at Starbucks, Kelleher pointed him to his gate.

“I’ll have my cell on all day,” he said. “Anything happens, and most important, if you have any trouble at all at the courthouse, call me right away.”

“Okay,” Stevie said, feeling his stomach twist a little because he was about to go off into the unknown all alone.

Kelleher put his hand on Stevie’s shoulder. “You’re going to be fine,” he said. “You’ll get the records on the accident, and we’ll see where that leads us. Worst-case scenario? You’ll be bored. So relax.”

“Right,” Stevie said, forcing a smile.

He squared his shoulders, pulled out his ticket, and headed for the gate.

The trip passed fairly quickly. Stevie read both the
Post
and the
Herald
as a stall and then finally turned to
The Great Gatsby
. He got through about forty pages before his eyes got heavy and he pushed the seat back to sleep. The train was half empty, so he had lots of room.

He awoke to the sound of the conductor announcing, “Lynchburg, Virginia, in five minutes. Next stop is Lynchburg.”

He looked out the window and saw that they were passing through rolling hills with the leaves still green on the trees. Fall came later in southern Virginia than in Boston, Philadelphia, or even Washington.

He looked at his watch as the train pulled in to the station: it was 10:25—five minutes early. He hoped that was a sign that things would go quickly and he would be back on
the train headed for Washington soon. He might even make the end of batting practice.

The Lynchburg station was very small, especially compared with massive Union Station, and he only had to walk a short way to get outside to a tiny cab stand. There were three taxis sitting there and no one was ahead of Stevie in line.

“You need a taxi, young man?” said a man leaning against the first cab in line.

“Yes, I do,” Stevie said. “Can you take me to the courthouse? The address is—”

The cabbie waved him off. “Son, there’s only one courthouse in Lynchburg. You don’t need to tell me the address. Hop in.”

Stevie took his backpack off and shoved it into the backseat ahead of him. He had brought
The Great Gatsby
, a reporter’s notebook, his phone, and his computer, which he thought he might need to do some writing on
Gatsby
, or perhaps something more interesting, on the way home.

“So why in the world do you need to go to the courthouse?” the cabbie wondered aloud as he pulled away from the station.

“Doing some research on my family,” Stevie said as Kelleher had suggested he say in case anyone asked. “It’s for a paper at school.”

“Interesting,” the cabbie said. “Where are you from?”

“Washington,” Stevie said, just in case the cabbie knew his train had come in from there.

“And you came down here today with the World Series going on up there?”

“Um, it got me out of school for the day,” Stevie said.

The cabbie laughed. “Good point,” he answered.

The trip to the courthouse took under ten minutes. When Stevie paid the fare, the cabbie handed him the receipt with a card. “When you’re ready to go back to the station, give me a call,” he said. “That’s my cell number at the bottom. If I can’t come get you, I’ll send someone for you.”

“Thanks,” Stevie said, noting the cabbie’s name on his card. “Thanks, Miles, I’m Steve. I’ll give you a call later.”

They shook hands, and Stevie got out and found himself at the bottom of the steps leading to the Lynchburg courthouse. It was quite big, Stevie thought, for a small town and looked to be quite old. As he made his way up the steps, he saw that he wasn’t wrong: “Opened Sept. 15th, 1932,” a small plaque read just outside the door.

He pulled open a heavy door and was relieved that the first person he saw was a smiling middle-aged woman behind a desk labeled Information.

He explained to her that he was looking for a police report from an automobile accident that had taken place twelve years earlier. If the request sounded strange to her, she didn’t show it. “Do you know if there were any charges filed?” she asked.

“I don’t honestly know,” Stevie said. That was a question
he certainly wouldn’t have felt comfortable asking Doyle at breakfast.

“Start with Automobile Records, on the second floor,” she said, pointing up a long staircase behind her. “If they haven’t got it, that means it will be in the Criminal Records section.”

Stevie thanked her and made his way up the steps. The third door he came to said Automobile Records on it. He walked in and found an older man and a young woman ahead of him on line. There was only one clerk working. He quickly learned that automobile records didn’t just mean records of accidents. This was also the place where people came to get license plates and vehicle registration. That’s what the two people in front of him were doing.

Stevie waited while the clerk walked them through what forms they needed to fill out and answered their various questions. He decided this would be a good time to let Kelleher know he’d made it to Lynchburg and to the courthouse. He had punched two numbers when he heard the clerk’s voice. “Excuse me, sir?” she said, and pointed to a sign next to the desk that said No Cell Phone Usage in the Courthouse.

“Sorry,” Stevie said, snapping the phone shut, hoping his phone faux pas wouldn’t turn the clerk against him.

It took about fifteen minutes for the people in front of him to clear up their various problems, but it felt like an hour to Stevie. When he got to the desk, the clerk was
giving him a funny look. Stevie figured she spent most of her time dealing with people who had issues with their cars, and Stevie clearly didn’t look like he had a driver’s license. He wished Susan Carol were with him, because she was so good at finessing situations like this.

“What can I help you with?” the clerk asked.

“Oh yes, thanks,” Stevie said, suddenly tongue-tied after rehearsing what he was going to say about a hundred times. “I’m looking for a police report on an accident….”

“Were
you
involved in an accident?” the clerk asked.

“No, no, not me,” Stevie said. “It’s an accident that happened in August of 1997, but I don’t know the exact date.”

“Can you give me any more information?” the clerk said.

Remembering what Kelleher had told him to ask for, Stevie nodded. “Yes. It was a fatal accident, two cars. The victim’s name was Analise Doyle.”

The clerk nodded. “Well, that shouldn’t be too hard to find. Fortunately, we don’t have that many fatals around here. Why don’t you have a seat? I’ll have to go back into the archives, so it will take me a few minutes,” she said.

“Thanks,” Stevie said.

Five minutes went by, then ten, then fifteen. A man came in and looked at Stevie inquisitively. “Where’s Mabel?” he asked. Stevie guessed Mabel was the clerk. “Um, she’s in the back looking for something,” Stevie said, wondering if Mabel’s search was going to be interrupted.

“Okay, I’ll come back in a while,” he said, and left, much to Stevie’s relief.

Mabel finally returned a few minutes later, carrying a file. “Sorry,” she said as Stevie stood up and walked back to the counter. “Took me a while for a couple reasons. To begin with, this wasn’t a two-car accident, it was a one-car. Second, someone had the file out already this morning, and it wasn’t put back in the right place.”

Stevie stared at her for a second, trying to digest the information she had just casually passed on to him. One-car accident? That made no sense. And who’d had the file out already today? Was another reporter onto the story?

“Do you still want the file?” Mabel said after Stevie said nothing in response to her explanation.

“Oh yes, sorry,” Stevie said.

She pushed it across the desk in his direction. “You need to sign the sheet on the inside of the folder,” she said. “You can look at it in the room right next door for as long as you want. When you’re done, just bring it back to me.”

“Can I make a copy of it?”

She shook her head. “No. It’s a legal document. Unless you have a court order or can show that you represent someone involved in the case, you can’t copy it.”

“Even though it was twelve years ago?”

“Even if it was a hundred years ago. There’s not much to it, as you’ll see. You can take notes on any information you need.”

She opened the file to the sheet she had been talking
about. “Sign your name there, and I’ll keep the sheet until you return the file. And I’ll need to see some ID. I don’t imagine you have a driver’s license, do you?”

“No, I don’t,” Stevie said. “But I’ve got my high school ID and a passport.”

“Either one will do.”

He reached into his wallet and handed her his ID. She took it and printed his name, the date, and the time on the sheet right below the only other name on the sheet—the person who had been there just this morning! She turned the sheet over to Stevie. “Just sign next to where I printed your name and it’s all yours,” she said.