Change-up (7 page)

Stevie couldn’t help but laugh. ESPN couldn’t confirm the story, so they had found a way to report it and make it sound shaky all at once.

His phone rang.

“You watching ESPN?” It was Kelleher.

“Yeah.”

“Typical of them. I love it.”

He hung up. Stevie tried to focus on what was being said on the screen but couldn’t. His mind kept flashing back to Faneuil Hall and the sight of David Doyle and Susan Carol talking. There
had
to be an explanation, right? But what in the world could it be? Several times he reached for the phone to call her but stopped himself. He would play it Kelleher’s way and see if she mentioned it without his asking.

The droning voices made him drowsy. He figured he would rest his eyes for five minutes. The next thing he knew, the phone was ringing. He looked at the clock and saw it was 3:30. Uh-oh, he was late.

“Stevie, where are you?” a voice said when he picked up. It was Susan Carol.

For a moment he forgot everything. “Sorry,” he said. “Fell asleep. Give me a couple minutes.”

“Hurry. Bobby and Tamara are here, and they’re ready to go.”

Stevie splashed some water on his face to wake up. Then he grabbed his jacket and his computer bag and raced to the door. He was in the jam-packed lobby five minutes after Susan Carol’s call.

“Catching up on your beauty rest?” Susan Carol said, giving him the Smile when he walked up to them.

“I guess I don’t have the energy some people have,” Stevie said, causing Kelleher to give him a look.

Stevie saw Tim McCarver, the longtime Fox TV analyst, crossing the lobby and heading in their direction. Stevie liked McCarver’s work, and he had a soft spot for him, since he had finished his playing career with the Phillies.

Every time he saw him, Stevie was reminded of a story his dad had told him. Near the end of McCarver’s playing days, his main job had been to catch Steve Carlton, the temperamental Hall of Fame pitcher. Carlton was so adamant about McCarver catching him that McCarver once said, “I think when Steve and I die, we’re going to be buried sixty feet, six inches apart”—that being the distance between the mound and home plate.

McCarver shook hands with Kelleher and Tamara and said, “Don’t think me rude, but I’m actually hoping you’ll introduce me to young Mr. Thomas here.”

Kelleher laughed. “Gee, I wonder why you want to talk to him, Tim. Steve Thomas, this is Tim McCarver.”

McCarver shook hands with Stevie, then introduced himself to Susan Carol, impressing Stevie when he said, “I’m Tim McCarver, nice to meet you.” Stevie had noticed that a lot of celebrities either didn’t even speak to people they didn’t “need” at that moment or blew through any introduction that was made.

McCarver turned to Stevie. “Bobby’s right, of course. I need your help,” he said. “We like to tape our opening when we get to the ballpark. We’ve been trying to get the Nationals to confirm your story about Doyle pitching, but they’re playing it very close to the vest. Can you just give me an idea of how well-sourced you are on this?”

Stevie looked to Kelleher. He didn’t think there was any reason not to tell McCarver why the story was fail-safe, but he wasn’t certain.

“Put it this way, Tim,” Kelleher said. “He didn’t get the story secondhand.”

McCarver smiled. “Excellent. That’s all I need.” He put his hand out to Stevie again. “Congratulations on breaking the story.”

A voice behind them said, “Tim, the car’s downstairs.”

Stevie saw Ken Rosenthal, Fox’s sideline reporter, standing behind McCarver.

When Kelleher saw Rosenthal, he grinned and said, “Hey, Kenny, we never see you anymore now that you’ve gone TV.”

Rosenthal was short and had brown hair and a quick
smile. Stevie always liked watching him on TV because he clearly knew what he was talking about but never pontificated.

“Yeah, I’ve come a long way, Bobby,” Rosenthal said, laughing. “I used to be your caddy, now I’m McCarver’s caddy. But I
do
get better seats now.”

“Too true, Junior,” Kelleher said.

McCarver thanked Stevie again, and he and Rosenthal waved goodbye as they headed for the escalator.

“Please tell me you think they’re good guys,” Susan Carol said. “I really do like their telecasts.”

“They’re good guys,” Kelleher said. “Junior still thinks like a reporter and is
not
in love with himself.”

“Junior?” Stevie and Susan Carol said together.

Kelleher and Mearns both laughed. “Believe it or not,” Mearns said, “when Kenny was a young reporter with the
Baltimore Sun
, Jose Canseco thought he looked like Cal Ripken, so he started calling him by Cal’s nickname.”

“There are probably only about five of us who still remember that,” Kelleher added. “Come on, let’s go.”

They took a cab to the ballpark, and since they already had their credentials, they were inside and on the field just as the Red Sox started batting practice. Since the managers’ pregame press conferences didn’t begin until 5:30, everyone stood around in groups chatting while David Ortiz, Jason Bay, and J.D. Drew crushed long home runs into the seats and over the Green Monster. Stevie had half expected people to come up and ask him about the story, but no one did.

“The lineup is posted in the dugout,” Mearns reported. “Doyle’s the starting pitcher. I guess ESPN can confirm the story now.”

“I wonder if they can call the lineup card a source?” Stevie asked.

Mearns went off to do an interview with one of the local Boston TV stations. Kelleher was called away by a couple of writers Stevie didn’t recognize. That left him standing alone with Susan Carol a few feet from the Nationals dugout.

“So what’d you do this afternoon?” Stevie asked, trying to sound casual. “Bobby and I tried to call you for lunch, but you didn’t answer.”

“Oh, I just went for a walk,” she said. “I didn’t swim this morning, so I wanted to get some exercise.”

“What happened to your cell?”

She forced a smile. “Left it in the room. I decided I could live without it for an hour. Where did you guys go to eat?”

Stevie paused for a second. He really hadn’t thought out what to say if Susan Carol didn’t volunteer the fact that she had been with David Doyle.

He decided to tread softly and see where that led. “Faneuil Hall,” he said. “A place called Regina’s. Really good pizza.”

She looked at him as if trying to learn something from the look on his face. At least, that’s what Stevie thought she was doing. “Nice,” she said.

Stevie waited for her to say something else, but she didn’t. It was as if they were playing a game of chess, each trying to anticipate what the other’s next move might be.

“So where did you walk?” he said after another long silence.

“Oh, all over,” she said. “I walked through Faneuil Hall, actually. Isn’t it cool? Then I went over to City Hall, which is right across the street, and walked through the North End for a while to see some of the sights.”

“Sights?”

“Come on, Stevie, this is Boston. Our hotel is really close to Paul Revere’s house and the Old North Church, just for starters. Then there’s the Freedom Trail, which you can follow and see all these historic places.”

Stevie liked the fact that she was talking to him in her “Stevie, you’re an idiot” tone. That felt normal at least.

“‘One if by land, and two if by sea’? ‘The British are coming’? That Paul Revere?”

“No, the other one,” she said, and laughed, making Stevie forget for a moment that she wasn’t telling him the whole truth about her afternoon. She might very well have spent the afternoon exploring the Freedom Trail. But she was leaving out a crucial part of the story.

He decided to quit the chess game and just be honest. He took a deep breath and said, “So, did David Doyle join you on the Freedom Trail?”

As soon as the words came out of his mouth, Stevie
wished he could reach into the air and grab them back. Susan Carol looked stunned—and angry.

“Excuse me?” she said, her tone having gone from teasing to biting in an instant.

“Nothing,” he said.

“No, it’s not nothing,” she said.

She was staring at him, waiting for an answer. Stevie felt stuck. If he told her what he had seen, she might blow up at him completely—which hardly seemed fair, since he wasn’t the one who had been withholding information. But she was already angry anyway, and if he didn’t plow ahead, he certainly wasn’t going to get any answers.

“I’m sorry if you’re upset,” he said, trying to choose his words carefully. “But I saw you … with him … in Faneuil Hall, and—”

“Were you spying on me?” she said, raising her voice, so that several people standing near them turned their heads.

“No!”
he said, whispering and shouting at once, wanting to be emphatic without drawing any more attention to the argument. “I told you, Bobby and I went over there for lunch. We were looking for a place to sit—”

“And you saw me talking to David,” she said. “So now you’ve gone and drawn about twenty different conclusions—all of them wrong.”

“You’re probably right,” he said, hoping against hope that she was about to give him a logical explanation that
had never crossed his mind. “I’ll admit I was baffled when I saw you—”

“So why didn’t you just come over?” she said, cutting him off.

She had a point. That might have resolved things quickly. But the shock of seeing them there, along with the intense way they were talking, had thrown him.

“I don’t know,” he said. “It just looked, you know, from a distance, like you were talking about something really serious. I guess I thought you didn’t want to be interrupted.”

She didn’t say anything for a moment, so Stevie pressed back. “Why didn’t you mention that you’d seen him?”

She shook her head. “It’s complicated.”

“So, explain,” he said. “I’ve got time.”

“I can’t,” she said.

“What do you mean you can’t?” he said, getting angry again. “You say I’m reaching the wrong conclusions, but you can’t explain the right ones?”

“That’s right,” she said. “I can’t. I promised.”

“Promised?”
He was screaming now, drawing more looks. He dropped his voice. “Promised? You made a promise to someone you just met to keep some kind of secret from
me
? What is that about?”

She shook her head. “I’m sorry, Stevie,” she said. “I just can’t tell you. I’ll tell you this much: there will come a time when you’ll understand. But please, don’t ask me about it again.”

She turned and walked away. Stevie watched her walk
behind the batting cage in the direction of the Red Sox dugout. At that moment all he wanted to do was go home. He didn’t even care what Susan Carol’s secret was.

All he knew was that she and David Doyle had a secret and that he felt sick to his stomach. And it had nothing to do with the four slices of Regina’s pizza he had eaten that afternoon.

STEVIE WASN’T SURE HOW LONG
he spent staring at the players in the batting cage without actually seeing them before someone put a hand on his shoulder. He turned to see Peter Gammons standing there.

“Steve, I’m Peter Gammons, have you got a minute?” he said.

“Sure,” Stevie said, wondering why in the world Gammons would want to talk to him. No one needed to confirm the Doyle story anymore, so what could he possibly want?

“I was just talking to Bobby,” he said. “He was teasing me about the crawl this afternoon, saying I couldn’t confirm your story. I just wanted you to know I feel badly about the way it was worded and the fact that my network didn’t even give the
Herald
credit for the story.”

Stevie was surprised. He had always been a fan of Gammons’s, but Kelleher had convinced him that just about everyone in TV was evil. Gammons was a print guy who had become a TV guy. Maybe that was different?

“Don’t worry, Mr. Gammons—”

“Peter,” Gammons interrupted.

“Peter,” Stevie continued. “I never thought you wrote the crawl.”

“I didn’t, but I still feel badly.” He put out his hand. “No hard feelings, I hope.”

“Of course not,” Stevie said. “I know how these things work.”

Gammons clapped him on the back. “You know a lot of things, apparently,” he said. He walked in the direction of the batting cage, where Terry Francona, the Red Sox manager, was standing, calling his name. Being Peter Gammons, Stevie decided, was a pretty cool thing.

Alone again, he tried to act as if he was intently watching Dustin Pedroia, who had stepped into the cage. But his mind was still on his conversation with Susan Carol. What secret could David Doyle have told her that she couldn’t share with him? Why had David told
her
? Actually, that wasn’t too hard to guess. If Stevie were a fourteen-year-old boy with a secret to share, he’d certainly want to share it with Susan Carol. Well, he
was
a fourteen-year-old boy. He just didn’t have a secret.

Mearns walked back over to him, her TV interview concluded. “You look like you just got terrible news,” she said. “Are you okay?”

“Fine,” he said. “No bad news. I’m just a little bit tired.” The truth was he had
no
news at all. And in this case, no news felt like bad news.

The night was about as perfect as one could hope for in late October in Boston. Even though the game didn’t start until 8:35, it was still sixty-two degrees when Daisuke Matsuzaka threw the first pitch. As he had done during game one, Stevie sat in the auxiliary press box, which was located way out in right field, with Susan Carol on his left and George Solomon, the Sunday columnist emeritus for the
Washington Post
, on his right.

Solomon was short and had thick glasses. Tamara had explained to Stevie that he had been the
Post’s
sports editor for twenty-eight years and had retired to write a Sunday column. Now he had been brought back from complete retirement for the World Series. He had been friendly on the first night but kept making football references throughout the game.

“Fourth and ten for the Nats,” he had said when the Red Sox opened up their early lead. He had suggested late in the game that the Nats “drop back ten and punt” and, when the Nats put a couple of men on base in the eighth inning, had commented that they were “trying to score a consolation touchdown.”