Change-up (17 page)

That sounded good to Stevie, but the Nationals press box was so high up the players looked tiny. Kelleher had mentioned to him that Stan Kasten, the Nationals’ president, had told him the only reason it wasn’t higher was because it was already at the top of the stadium. Doughty probably had a better view on TV.

The game had been back and forth all night, but as soon as Stevie settled in to watch, Big Papi slammed a three-run homer and blew it open. Stevie noticed more than a few cheers when Ortiz hit the home run. Clearly, a fair number of Red Sox fans had gotten their hands on tickets—even in Washington.

Stevie kept glancing at the TV monitor next to his seat during the ninth, which seemed to go on forever because Jonathan Papelbon, the Red Sox’s closer, insisted on walking two hitters just to make things interesting. Every time Papelbon threw a ball, the cameras shot to Terry Francona, who, almost on cue, would spit sunflower seeds.

“How many of those does he put in his mouth a night?” Stevie said, pointing to Francona on the TV screen.

“What’s the number just below infinity?” Kelleher answered, laughing. “It’s a lot healthier than the old days when they all chewed tobacco.”

“Now,
that
sounds gross,” Stevie said.

“Used to be you weren’t considered a major leaguer until you chewed,” Kelleher said. “Rookies used to get sick trying to learn how to chew the stuff without swallowing. Now, thank God, they’ve banned it. Some guys still sneak
up the runway to chew, but most go with the sunflower seeds or gum.”

Papelbon finally struck out Adam Dunn with two on and two out to end the game and give his team a 7–3 win and a 2–1 lead in the series. The Nationals fans left quietly and quickly; the Red Sox fans lingered. Stevie heard one voice from the nearby upper deck bellowing: “It ends here on Sunday! No trip back to Boston!”

Stevie had been given the night off from writing, but he volunteered to go into the Red Sox clubhouse to shag some quotes for Kelleher, who was writing his column on what it meant for Washington to host a World Series game for the first time in seventy-six years. He wanted a couple of quotes from Red Sox players on the crowd, the stadium, and if they could relate to Washington’s wait after being part of a franchise that had gone eighty-six years between world titles themselves before their breakthrough in 2004.

Stevie had just finished talking to Jason Varitek, who had said all the right things about the ballpark and the fans and seemed to really mean them. He was walking across the clubhouse to see if he might get close enough to David Ortiz to get a line or two from him when he saw Susan Carol. She was crossing in the other direction.

“Hey,” he said awkwardly. “How goes it?”

“Fine,” she said. “How was your day?”

“Interesting,” he said.

“I’ll bet,” she answered, and kept walking.

Stevie started to turn around and follow her, then
thought better of it. He really didn’t know what
he
thought of the day himself, and Kelleher was on deadline. He waited for the Ortiz crowd to thin—which didn’t take as long as usual, since Mike Lowell had hit two home runs himself—and asked Ortiz what he thought of the ballpark and the crowd.

“Very polite,” he said, drawing a laugh. “No, I mean it. Compared to Yankee Stadium, this was like a home game. I mean, we had a lot of our own fans here. You could certainly hear them when I hit the home run. Still, I don’t understand why they build a stadium in downtown Washington and you can’t see any of the monuments.”

Someone pointed out to him that you could see the Capitol building from the upper deck.

“I’m not sitting up there, am I?” Ortiz said.

That, Stevie knew, would be plenty for Kelleher. He snapped his notebook shut and headed into the hallway. He was about to make the right turn to the elevator when he saw a familiar figure standing—alone—a few yards from the Nationals clubhouse. It was Morra Doyle. Her face brightened and she waved.

“Hey, Steve,” she said.

“Hi, Morra,” he said, returning the wave. He half turned to go when he noticed that she was walking rapidly in his direction.

“Have you got a minute?” she asked as she walked up.

“Actually, not really,” Stevie said. “I’ve got to get some quotes upstairs to someone who’s on a tight deadline.”

“I understand,” she said. She reached into her purse,
fished around, and pulled out a piece of paper. “Can I borrow your pen?”

He handed it to her. She wrote a phone number on the piece of paper. “Look, I know you know about David talking to Susan Carol,” she said. “I’d really like to talk to you sometime tomorrow. Will you call me? That’s my cell.”

Stevie had a feeling he was being set up—though he wasn’t sure how, or even why—but he nodded. “Sure, I’ll call you,” he said.

“Great,” she said. She looked around as if to make sure no one was watching her. “This isn’t a setup, honest,” she said. She turned and walked back down the hallway.

So, Stevie thought, she can read minds. If nothing else, the Doyle family was always full of surprises.

Stevie filled Kelleher in on his meeting with Morra Doyle in the car on the way home. He and Tamara had come in separate cars because Kelleher had wanted to get to the ballpark very early.

“My guess is that Susan Carol told David about you going to Lynchburg, and Morra wants to find out what you learned,” Kelleher said. “She’s the logical one to pump you.”

“Why?” Stevie asked.

“Come on, Stevie. She’s a pretty fourteen-year-old girl, and you’re a fourteen-year-old boy. How would you have reacted if David had come up to you tonight?”

“Probably would have punched him.”

“I rest my case.”

Stevie asked Kelleher if he had talked to David Felkoff about his henchman, Donald Walsh, turning up in Lynchburg. “Not yet,” Kelleher said. “I’m not ready to tip my hand just yet.”

Stevie sat quietly for a couple of minutes, trying to turn the whole thing over in his mind. He wondered what Morra had meant when she said this wasn’t a setup. He asked Kelleher what he thought.

“Well, you were bound to be suspicious,” he said. “She’s trying to make sure you’re curious enough to call.”

“What if I hadn’t run into her?” he asked.

“I think you would have gotten a phone call.”

He supposed it made sense. But something else was bothering him about the whole thing. They were riding in silence along the George Washington Parkway. Kelleher started to turn on the radio. Stevie grabbed his hand and said, “Hang on a second.”

Kelleher left the radio alone.

“You know what makes no sense at all in all this?” Stevie said. “The whole David meeting with Susan Carol thing. What was that about? It wasn’t as if any of us were looking for this story or asking questions about it. We sat there at breakfast and bought the whole Disney-movie scenario. Why would David tell Susan Carol something off the record when she had absolutely no idea there was anything to tell? Morra’s different because she probably knows that I
do
know something, and she’s trying to do damage control. I get that. But the David part I don’t get at all.”

It was now Kelleher’s turn to be silent for a moment.
“Good point,” he said finally. “The only thing I can think of is that he somehow saw telling Susan Carol the story as an excuse to see her alone.”

“You mean put the moves on her by telling her that his dad killed his mom?”

“I’m not sure I would phrase it quite that way, but yes. Look, we don’t even know for sure what David and Morra know about that night. Maybe David wants sympathy from Susan Carol, or maybe there’s
still
something we don’t know. In fact, I think there’s a very good chance we haven’t got the whole story yet. Stuff like this is rarely black and white, good guys and bad guys. It’s a lot grayer than that. So it’s hard to know what David was doing until we know what he thinks happened that night. And really, just wanting to spend time with Susan Carol isn’t the craziest thing I’ve heard so far.”

Stevie laughed. “I know it sounds awful,” he said, “but if that’s what it is, you have to give the guy props for coming up with a unique way to try to impress a girl.”

They pulled into the driveway. Tamara’s car was already in the garage. She always wrote, Stevie had noticed, a little bit faster than Kelleher. He had no idea what Susan Carol had written about, since they hadn’t really spoken for twenty-four hours. Tamara and Susan Carol were sitting at the kitchen table when they walked in.

“You are really slowing down in your old age,” Tamara said as Kelleher put down his computer bag and Stevie dropped his backpack off his shoulders.

“I try to write in English,” Kelleher answered his wife, walking over to give her a kiss.

Tamara looked at Stevie. “So, young sleuth, you want to tell us about your day?”

Stevie looked at Kelleher. Technically, Tamara and Susan Carol were their competition, since they worked for the
Post
, but that didn’t really matter. This, however, felt different.

“I think we need to talk first,” Kelleher said. He had poured himself a Coke and sat down across from Susan Carol. Stevie was standing at the counter, his mouth feeling dry, but not, he suspected, because he was thirsty.

“What do we need to talk about?” Susan Carol asked, no doubt sensing that she was not going to like it.

“Well, to be honest, Susan Carol, we need to know if we can trust you,” Kelleher said. “I respect that you want to keep the promise you made to David—whether it was made to him as a source or a friend—even though it’s a big pain for us to deal with. What worries me is the idea that you’re telling David what
we
know.”

“WHAT?!”

“Morra wants to meet with Stevie to discuss what David told you.”

“WHAT?!”

“Yeah, that’s right,” Stevie put in. “Maybe she wants to tell me how her dad killed her mom and the cops covered it up for him.”

“Quiet, Stevie,” Kelleher said sharply. He wasn’t sure if
he was shutting him up because he was revealing too much or because he didn’t like the tone of voice he was speaking to Susan Carol in. Probably both, he figured.

“The story’s not that simple, Stevie,” Susan Carol said. “There’s more to it than that.”

Tamara kept looking from Bobby to Stevie to Susan Carol, as if trying to figure out what in the world they were talking about. Now, though, she put her arm around Susan Carol’s shoulders and said softly, “Then you should tell us the rest. Off the record doesn’t mean you can’t talk to other people about what you know as long as you
know
they won’t print it based on what you tell them. If Stevie and Bobby are going in the wrong direction, you need to give them some guidance.”

“I can’t,” Susan Carol said. “It wasn’t just off the record, it was a secret.”

Stevie threw his arms up in disgust. “What is this, first grade? Doesn’t it bother you that this guy basically got away with murder?”

“He did not!” Susan Carol said angrily. “He’s lived with the guilt for twelve years, and he’ll live with it the rest of his life. You just want to hate him because you think I like David.”

“Do you?” Stevie asked.

She didn’t answer, but the red in her cheeks was enough answer for Stevie.

“Okay, hang on,” Kelleher said. “Let’s try to be reasonable here. Susan Carol, if we tell you what Stevie found out today, do you
promise
to keep it a secret from David?”

“That seems fair,” Tamara said.

Susan Carol nodded. “Okay,” she said.

“And if you think we’ve got something wrong, you need to give us some clue so we don’t go in a direction that’s unfair to the Doyles,” Kelleher said. “We aren’t even sure there’s a story here. We need
all
the facts.”

She nodded again.

Kelleher looked at Stevie. “Go ahead,” he said.

Stevie went through the entire day.

When he was finished, Tamara shook her head and said, “Wow.” The three of them waited Susan Carol out, staying quiet.

“All I can tell you,” she finally said, “is that you have most of the facts but not the story—you’re spinning it in a way that isn’t the truth.”

“Or maybe someone spun the story for you in a way that was designed to get your sympathy—is that possible?” Kelleher said gently.

“I really don’t know for sure, do I?” Susan Carol said. “And neither do you guys. The only person who knows for sure is Norbert, so you’ll have to get it from him. But I don’t think you will. It’s his story and he’s got a right to decide whether he wants to go public with it or not.”

“That’s true,” Kelleher said. “Unless the story he and David Felkoff are pitching to Hollywood and New York publishers is the fantasy he pitched to you and Stevie in Boston. He definitely has a right to his privacy, but he doesn’t have a right to lie to the public and try to make a fortune from that lie.”

“You don’t get it, do you?” Susan Carol said, her eyes filling with tears. She got up and ran from the room. Stevie couldn’t help but notice that this was getting to be a nightly occurrence.

Tamara stood up. “I’ll talk to her,” she said.

“Good idea,” Kelleher said. “I’ve never seen her like this.”

“Try to remember she’s fourteen, Bobby,” Tamara said.

“So’s Stevie,” Kelleher said. “He may not like it that she likes David, but he’s not bursting into tears and running from the room every ten minutes.”

For the first time since he had met them, Stevie sensed tension between Tamara and Bobby.

“Cool it, Bobby,” Tamara said. “She’s our friend, not a ballplayer or a coach or an agent.”

She turned on her heel and followed Susan Carol out of the room.

“Well,” Kelleher said. “That went well, didn’t it?”

No, it certainly hadn’t gone well. But Stevie actually felt a little better. Kelleher had answered the question that he had been trying to answer on the train ride back: what was the story they were chasing? Now he knew: the story was about an athlete living a lie—no, more than that, selling a lie.

THE BEST NEWS OF THE LONG DAY
for Stevie was that he was so tired when he went upstairs to bed he had no trouble sleeping. He tossed and turned briefly, wondering if he and Susan Carol would ever be friends again, but fell sound asleep soon after.