Last Shot (22 page)

Stevie was asleep almost as soon as his head hit the pillow. His body had finally run out of both energy and adrenaline. He woke up once in the middle of the night, after dreaming that Steve Jurgensen was chasing them in his big black car and they’d run out of road at the beach near Dean Wojenski’s house in Bay St. Louis. He got up and drank some water, trying to shake the vision of the dream.

He woke up again at seven-thirty and found a note from his dad saying he’d gone for a walk and would be back for breakfast at eight. He had left the newspaper behind and Stevie picked through the sports section until he got to “News and Notes from the Final Four.” The third item down caught his eye: “Chip Graber arrived for his team’s Sunday press conference seven minutes late, explaining that he had gone sightseeing and then got stuck in traffic. NCAA media official David Kiley said MSU would be subject to a fine from the basketball committee because of Graber’s lateness. ‘We make no exceptions,’ Kiley said. ‘Rules are rules.’ ” Stevie could almost hear Kiley, who he assumed was the guy with the bad toupee, repeating that mantra. The next sentence was a surprise, though: “Kiley’s
boss, Bill Hancock, who is responsible for all working media during the NCAA tournament, was more sympathetic: ‘Sometimes we forget these are still kids,’ he said. ‘Considering what Chip Graber has done for college basketball the last four years, and especially the last three weeks, I think we can give him seven minutes of leeway.’ ”

Wow, Stevie thought, an NCAA official with common sense and a heart. “He must be new or something,” he said aloud, laughing as he put down the paper.

The morning passed as slowly as any Stevie could remember in his entire life. Toward the end of breakfast his father finally said to him, “Stevie, why do you keep looking at your watch every single minute?”

Stevie tried to sound as casual as he could. “It’s just a big day. I need to do some pregame research and there’s a lunch that Susan Carol and I have been invited to. The board of the basketball writers meets with the board of the coaches’ association.”

The lunch was real and Stevie and Susan Carol had been invited. And Stevie did want to go. Whether they would get to go depended on what they heard from Stuart Feeley. They were hoping he would call before noon to tell them that Jurgensen had backed down, that Whiting and friends would be called off, and that Chip could play tonight with no worries.

“Who’s going to be there?” his dad asked.

“Supposedly guys like Rick Barnes from Texas and Skip Prosser from Wake Forest and Tommy Amaker from Michigan and Mike Brey from Notre Dame.”

“That sounds like a good group.”

“Yeah, it should be fun.” Without thinking, he looked at his watch again, causing his father to laugh.

“It’s one minute later than it was last time you looked,” he said.

After breakfast, his dad announced that he was going to the recently opened D-Day museum. Stevie had seen signs for it around town. His dad made the mandatory father’s plea that Stevie go with him, knowing it wasn’t going to happen. He’d given up his visions of this as a father-son bonding weekend. “Just be sure to tell your mother I tried to get you to go,” he said.

“I will, Dad.”

Stevie killed time watching TV, waiting for the phone to ring. Vitale was saying that Chip Graber’s performance Saturday was “the single most stupendous, spectacular, sensational performance I’ve seen at a Final Four since Bill Walton went 21-for-22 against Memphis State in 1973.”

He was right, Stevie thought. Chip had been sensational. He hoped he would have the chance to be equally good tonight.

The phone rang—at last. He looked at the clock on the desk. It was 10:40.

“It’s Chip.”

“Hey, Chip,” he said. “We haven’t heard from Feeley yet.”

“I know. I did.”

“
You
did?”

“Yeah, he said you had given him my cell phone number.”

Stevie had forgotten about that. “Yeah, that’s right. In case he wanted to verify our story.”

“Well, he didn’t call to verify anything. He said he talked to Jurgensen.”

“And?”

“And Jurgensen told him to go ahead and call the FBI. He said if we did that, he and Whiting would go straight to the NCAA with my transcript and I would be declared ineligible to play tonight.”

“Oh God. They would do that without investigating further?”

“Oh yeah. The way the NCAA works is if they think a player is ineligible for any reason, they suspend you immediately, and then you have to apply to be reinstated.”

“If you have to do that …”

“It’ll be way too late. There would be nothing to be reinstated for.”

“Well, at least we know for sure now that Jurgensen’s guilty.”

There was silence on the other end of the phone. “Chip, you there?”

“Yeah. I was just thinking that knowing Jurgensen is guilty doesn’t do us a lot of good at the moment.”

He was right—unfortunately. “What do you think we should do now?”

“I’m not sure. I have to go to shootaround right now. We’ll be done at noon. I think we should meet.”

“At your hotel?”

“No, the place is swarming with people. Plus, Whiting’s bound to be watching me like a hawk.”

“Where then?”

“Come to the arena. I’ll meet you outside that media entrance they wanted you to go to. I’ll be able to find it.”

“What about your dad?”

“I can tell him I just need a walk by myself to clear my head. I do that sometimes on game days.”

“Okay. Noon?”

“Like ten after.”

“We’ll be there.”

He hung up. This was not the twist in the story they had been hoping for. Jurgensen had called their bluff. Chip was now back where he started: if he helped his team win the national championship, he would be the subject of a full-blown academic investigation that would land his school on probation, have his team stripped of every win this season, and potentially ruin his dad’s career. Not to mention what it would do to his sneaker contract. He was pretty certain good old Bobby Mo would
not
have Chip’s back if he thought he was tainted in any way. Dean Wojenski might be able to convince some people that Chip’s spring transcript had been changed, but there was still Whiting’s F in the fall. A tough case to win and the publicity would be brutal regardless of the outcome. But if Chip
did
throw the game, he would have to live with what he had done for the rest of his life.

Stevie called Susan Carol. She was as stunned as he had
been by the news that Jurgensen hadn’t caved. “Now what do we do?” she said.

He told her that Chip wanted to meet them after his shootaround, and they agreed to meet in the lobby at eleven-thirty to walk over to the Dome.

The weather had finally turned gorgeous—the sun was out and the temperature was in the mid-seventies. If anything, the streets were more packed than they had been earlier in the week. The only difference, Stevie noticed, was that all the fans were in purple and white or blue and white. The UConn and St. Joe’s contingents had, with a few exceptions, gone home.

As they made their way through the throngs, Susan Carol said quietly, “Stevie, I think we’re all in over our heads here.”

Stevie nodded. Things had gone so well since they started investigating that his thought until Chip’s call had been “We can do this.” Now that seemed almost silly.

“If we are in over our heads, what can we do now?” he said. “Who can we go to?”

She thought about that for a minute. “I guess it’s up to Chip. This is his life we’re talking about. But I think we need to convince him to go to the FBI or at least Bobby Kelleher.”

It was 12:05 when they walked across the bridge and around the now-familiar concourse to the media entrance. There was almost no one around, so they stood and looked down to the street level, which was teeming with people. They could see several police cars and motorcycles leading
the Minnesota State bus out of the parking lot and into traffic. That bus would be back in about six hours and, Steve figured, in about ten hours a national champion would be crowned. Ten hours and it would be over one way or the other.…

“You guys been waiting long?”

They turned and saw Chip dressed in disguise—gray sweatshirt and pants, untied sneakers, and a black cap that said
US OPEN—BETHPAGE BLACK 2002
.

“Chip, I’m so sorry it’s turning out this way,” Susan Carol said, giving him a hug.

He smiled. “Never over till it’s over, right? I almost told my dad about the whole thing after I talked to Feeley this morning,” he said. “But then I thought, this is supposed to be the greatest day of his career. I just couldn’t put something like this on him right now.”

“So instead you carry it all by yourself,” Susan Carol said.

“Not exactly,” Chip said. “You guys have been helping me carry it the last few days.”

“Yeah, big help we’ve been,” Stevie said. He was feeling terribly sad and helpless at that moment.

“Well, here’s what I’ve decided to do,” Chip said. “I called Feeley back and asked him for Jurgensen’s cell phone number because there’s no answer in the SOB’s room at the hotel. I left a message but he won’t call back. Feeley said he didn’t have the cell number but he thought he could track him down over there. I told him I wanted to meet with him myself.”

“Now?” Stevie said. “Today?”

“Sooner the better.”

“But what are you going to say to him?”

Chip smiled. “I’m gonna tell him he can go ahead and release the damn transcript to the whole world as far as I’m concerned, and that I’m going to play the game of my life tonight. I’m gonna call
his
bluff. Because if he
does
release the transcript and I’m suspended, the game goes off the board and no one can make a bet on it.”

“What if that’s not his motive?” Susan Carol said. “What if he just wants Duke to win?”

Chip shook his head. “Hell, I could score forty tonight and Duke might still win. In case you hadn’t noticed, they’re pretty good. Money’s involved here, I’m sure of it.”

Stevie suddenly felt better. Yeah, he thought, that’s the way to do it. Tell the guy to go to hell.

Susan Carol brought him back to earth. “And what if he says, ‘Fine, go ahead and play, but the transcript will be in the hands of the media and the NCAA before the trophy is presented,’ ” she said.

Chip took a deep breath. “I don’t know,” he said.

Stevie felt the sad and helpless feeling coming back. “So what do we do now?” he said.

“We wait,” Chip said. “We wait and hope.”

They decided to keep their vigil in Chip’s hotel room, but it took them almost forty-five minutes to get there because there was so much traffic. Chip kept glancing down at his cell phone as if looking at it would make it ring. They had the cab driver drop them behind the Marriott and went to
the back door they had come out of on Sunday morning. It was propped open a couple of inches with a Minnesota State media guide. “Amazing no one ever closes the thing,” Chip said, picking up the guide as they walked in. They climbed the stairs to the third floor to avoid running into anyone and took the elevator from there.

They were in the elevator when the cell phone rang. Chip looked at the number and said, “This is it,” before he picked it up. He listened for a moment as the elevator reached the forty-first floor.

“That’s late,” they heard him say, then, “Wait. Let me write down the address.” He waved a hand at Stevie and Susan Carol, indicating he needed something to write on. Susan Carol pulled her notebook out and handed it to him with a pen. “And the room number?” he said as he wrote. “Okay. Tell him to be on time. I’ve got a ball game to play tonight.” He paused again. “Of course I’m bringing them. If Jurgensen doesn’t like it, tough.”

He snapped the phone shut and started walking down the hall toward his room. Stevie started to ask him what had happened, but he shook his head. Looking around, Stevie saw that there were no fewer than four security guards working the hallway, including Mike the Giant. None of them made any move to stop Stevie or Susan Carol as they walked with Chip. Only Mike the Giant said something. “I’m going to let your dad know you’re back, Chip,” he said.