Last Shot (6 page)

“What about
your
biases?” Stevie shot back, relieved that she had given him an opening. “You don’t think he can do anything wrong. That’s just as much a bias as mine.”

“You’re right,” she said. “But if he ever did something wrong, I think I’d be disappointed, but I’d admit he was wrong.”

“Has he
ever
done anything wrong?” Stevie asked.

She thought about that one for a minute. “Well,” she finally said, “he
is
a Republican.”

“I thought everyone from the South was a Republican.”

“Oh yes, and we’re all good ole boys and Southern belles, too. I do declare, Steven Thomas, you are just full of misconceptions.” Susan Carol’s voice was dripping drawl.

This girl was really starting to get on his nerves. Mostly because she was right so often.

“Well, how lucky I am to have you to correct me then.”

They had now reached the hallway that led to the locker rooms. There were signs directing people to the four team locker rooms and to just about every other place one might want to go. There was also a security guard very carefully checking credentials as people approached the hallway. The guard glanced at Susan Carol’s pass, nodded at her, and then put up a hand to stop Stevie.

“Whoa, fella, this area’s restricted. Working media only.”

Stevie looked down at the credential dangling around his neck. It was no different from the one Susan Carol was wearing or, for that matter, the ones that Dick Weiss and Bill Brill and all the other writers had been wearing. It had his name on it and “USBWA” and “media.” It was, he thought, pretty clear-cut.

“I
am
working media,” Stevie said, pointing to the word on his credential and attempting to step around the guard so he could get this over with sooner rather than later. Susan Carol, a few steps ahead, had stopped and turned around to see what was going on.

“Look, son, I don’t know where you got that pass or how, but if you don’t turn around and walk back in the other direction right now, I’ll put in a call to security and then whatever little game you’re playing will be over for the day. So get going.”

Stevie felt himself flush with anger. His first thought was to ask why the guard had let Susan Carol pass and not him, but the answer was obvious: He looked thirteen; she could easily pass for eighteen. Before he could say something he
would undoubtedly regret, Susan Carol stepped up next to the guard and said, “Sir, I understand your confusion. But we’re both winners of the USBWA student writing contest.” She opened her notebook and pulled out a piece of paper that Stevie recognized as the letter informing them that they had won the contest.

“Here’s the letter we got from the USBWA,” she said. “You see the two names? I’m Susan Carol Anderson and he’s Steven Thomas. You see what the letter says: that we’ll be fully accredited media at the Final Four.”

The guard looked at the letter—Stevie was relieved when it became apparent that he knew how to read—then looked at the names on their credentials. He looked at Susan Carol again. “So you two are in high school then?” he said.

“Junior high school,” Susan Carol said, smiling. Clearly this wasn’t the first time someone had mistaken her for older than thirteen. “We’re both eighth graders.”

The guard was clearly put out by the whole thing. He handed the letter back to Susan Carol. “Okay, if they want to give passes to eighth graders, that’s their call. You can go on ahead.” He looked Stevie over again. “But don’t get in anyone’s way back there, understand?”

“I think ‘I’m really sorry for accusing you of stealing’ was what you meant to say.”

“Listen, kid, don’t get smart with me. I can throw you out of here, pass or no pass,” the guard said.

Stevie was about to say something about the need for
one
of them to be smart, when Susan Carol grabbed him by the
arm, practically shoving him in front of her and away from the glowering guard. “Thanks for your help,” she said, then gave Stevie an extra push to make sure he didn’t try to get in a final verbal swipe. Stevie stumbled but regained his balance before falling.

“What was that about?” he said as she pulled up even with him, one hand on his back to keep him moving forward.

“That was about avoiding trouble,” she hissed. “Is it a guy thing or a Northern thing to always have to have the last word? He’s letting us by. If he wants to say something to make himself feel better, just let him say it.”

“Easy for you to say—you’re not the one he stopped.”

“No, I’m not. I’m the one who got you past him without a big scene.”

She had him there.

“Why are you carrying that letter around?”

“Because I thought something like that might happen. That someone would look at me and think I’m too young to be a real reporter.”

Stevie laughed. “Apparently that wasn’t a problem, was it?”

She blushed a little, which pleased him. “Yeah, for once being tall worked for me. Turns out it was a good thing I had the letter, though, right?”

“Yeah, right.”

Stevie was glad no one was keeping score on their exchanges, because he had the sense he was in a deep hole.

The hallway was crowded. The first locker room they
came to was marked
SAINT JOE’S
. There were several more guards milling around outside the door, which was open. Stevie was convinced they were all eyeing him suspiciously. He leaned around one of them to look into the locker room and saw it was empty. That made sense, since the Hawks were on the court practicing. Stevie felt slightly guilty that he wasn’t out there watching
his
team, but he had work to do. He glanced at his watch: it was 2:12. That meant he had about thirty minutes to scope the place out before the Chip Graber circus began.

The Duke locker room, which they came to next, was just as empty as Saint Joe’s. The Blue Devils had left the building, their practice and press conferences long over. Most of the action was outside the Connecticut locker room. As a Big East fan, Stevie knew that UConn was covered by more reporters on a regular basis than any team in the country. The UConn media was known as “the Horde.”

As Stevie and Susan Carol walked up, they could see someone being interviewed outside the locker-room door who wasn’t a player. He looked to Stevie like a coach but he knew Jim Calhoun was still in the interview room.

“Who is that?” he asked Susan Carol.

She shook her head, then tapped one of the reporters standing on the outside of the circle and said, “Excuse me, sir, who are you fellas interviewing?”

The reporter looked over his shoulder and said softly, “George Blaney.”

“Who’s that?” Stevie said.

The reporter looked at him as if he was a kid who didn’t
know anything—which, apparently, he was. “He’s the number one assistant,” he hissed, then returned to listening intently to what Blaney was saying.

“Whoo boy,” Stevie said to Susan Carol. “These guys must be pretty desperate, fighting to get a quote from an assistant.”

“At Duke, Johnny Dawkins gets interviewed all the time,” she said.

“Yeah, like I said,” Stevie said. “What do Duke and UConn have in common?”

“Great basketball teams?”

“And they’re both in places that don’t have pro teams, so they’re the only game in town for the media.”

She shook her head the way his mother sometimes did when he was being obtuse. “There are three pro teams in North Carolina,” she said. “Hockey, football, basketball. Plus, the University of North Carolina is bigger than Duke in the media there because most people in the state are Carolina fans. Duke isn’t even
close
to being the only game in town. I’m sure you think that Philadelphia is the world’s greatest sports town, but North Carolina isn’t exactly Nowheresville.”

Stevie sighed. “I stand corrected—again.”

She smiled. “You want to go in here and try to talk to some of the players?”

Stevie wasn’t sure. He was thinking he could write about the Horde and their quest for quotes from George Blaney as part of his story, but he didn’t need a quote for that. He spotted a sign on the wall that said
MINNESOTA STATE LOCKER
ROOM
with an arrow pointing farther down the hallway and
CBS COMPOUND
with an arrow pointing in the same direction. That gave Stevie an idea.

“Let’s walk down here,” he said. “I want to end up in the Minnesota State locker room, but we can explore down this way first.”

Susan Carol shrugged. “What exactly are you looking for?”

“Don’t know,” Stevie said. “Just trying to find something no one else is going to have. I don’t think I’m going to find anything like that around here.”

She nodded in agreement and they started down the hall. There was no one around the Minnesota State locker room except for—of course—the usual gaggle of security people and a man wearing a suit sitting in a golf cart. He was carrying a walkie-talkie.

“Team not here yet?” Stevie asked the guy in the golf cart.

“Any minute,” he answered pleasantly. “We just got word their bus is pulling into the parking lot.”

Stevie noticed the credential dangling around his neck. It had a big “AA” on it, and “All Access” under that in case there was any doubt about what it meant.

“Do you work for the NCAA?” Stevie asked.

The man laughed. “Hardly. My name’s Roger Valdiserri. I used to be the SID at Notre Dame. I’m just helping out with the media this weekend.”

He had a friendly smile and he put out his hand as he introduced himself.

“I’m Stevie Thomas,” Stevie said, forgetting that he was supposed to be Steve in the adult world. “This is Susan Carol Anderson.”

“Oh yes,” Roger Valdiserri said. “You’re the contest winners. I read about you guys. Congratulations. You having fun?”

They both nodded. “What’s the golf cart for?” Stevie asked.

“As soon as Coach Graber gets here, I pop him and his two players on here”—he reached out to pat the two seats in the back that faced away from the driver—“and get them down to the interview room. You guys might have noticed it’s a pretty good walk from here.”

“So Chip Graber will be riding on your golf cart in a few minutes?” Susan Carol asked.

“I would assume he’ll be one of the two players going to the interview room,” Valdiserri said. “You want me to try to get you an autograph?”

Susan Carol stood up very straight as if she had just been insulted. “Of course not,” she said. “We’re here as reporters.”

Valdiserri smiled. “Good for you, honey.”

“Do you think we can walk down to the CBS compound?” Stevie asked.

“I don’t see why not,” Valdiserri said. “They let the TV writers down there and you guys have media passes. If you have any trouble, let me know and I’ll see what I can do.”

They thanked him, shook hands again, and continued down the hall. There were two large double doors at the end
of it and, much to Stevie’s surprise, no security people to stop them. They walked up to the doors, pushed them open, and peered around. It was relatively dark on the other side of the doors. It looked to Stevie as if they were on some kind of a loading dock. To their left, he could see what he guessed would normally be space that was part of the football field. There were several giant trucks with the CBS logo on the side and a small city of trailers. Everywhere Stevie looked, there were people scurrying in different directions, in and out of the trailers and the trucks. There were steps at the end of the loading dock that led down to the CBS compound, and, as Stevie and Susan Carol stood taking it all in, two young men came bounding up the steps carrying walkie-talkies.

“The bus just pulled up,” Stevie heard one of them say. “Is there a crew there? We’ll get people to the entrance hallway in about thirty seconds.”

“Sounds like the Purple Tide has arrived,” Stevie said to Susan Carol as the two CBS types swept past them and through the double doors without so much as a glance in their direction. Roger Valdiserri had been right. Apparently the CBS people didn’t care if anyone from the media walked into their compound. And anyone who made it into their compound another way was obviously cleared to go through the double doors to the locker room hallway. Thus the surprising absence of security people. Stevie had been beginning to think even the bathrooms would have security guards.

“You want to walk down there and see if there’s anyone
interesting from CBS to talk to?” Susan Carol asked.

“Maybe,” Stevie said. He was looking to his right, where there was a shard of light coming from the other end of the loading dock. “I wonder what’s over there.”

“Nothing probably,” Susan Carol said.

“Let’s take a quick look.”

He led her toward the spot where the light was coming from. There was a lot of stuff stored here, piled up on the back end of the dock. The light came from a back entrance to the Dome that was about twenty yards from the loading dock.

“Nothing here,” Susan Carol said. “I guess we—” She stopped in mid-sentence. “Hey, look who’s here.”

She pointed across the dark, open area to the outside door. Stevie could see a group of young men in purple-and-white sweats coming through the doorway. “Straight down this hall to the end and turn right, gentlemen,” someone they couldn’t see was saying. “Your locker room is the first one you come to on your right.”

“As if they can’t read the signs,” Stevie said.

“He must have forgotten that they’re student-athletes,” Susan Carol said.

Stevie laughed. He hated to admit it, but she
was
kind of funny.

“Well,” she said. “Should we head—”

She stopped in mid-sentence again. Stevie turned and saw one final purple-and-white-suited player walk through the doorway, peering around as if to make sure no one was there. Stevie recognized the floppy blond hair right away. It
was Chip Graber. Right behind him was a man in a charcoal gray suit who was also looking around in a suspicious way. Instinctively, Stevie took Susan Carol’s arm and stepped back so they were hidden behind some rolled-up Astroturf.

Graber and the charcoal suit finally seemed satisfied they were alone, then walked toward the loading dock until they were almost directly below Stevie and Susan Carol—who were both frozen with surprise and curiosity.