Last Shot (7 page)

“Okay, Chip, we’ve got about two minutes to get this straight before the press conference,” the suit said. “You can’t get cold feet now.”

“I never had
warm
feet,” Chip Graber answered in a stage whisper, still plenty loud enough for Stevie and Susan Carol to hear. “What if I won’t do it?”

“Then the team gets stripped of all its wins and your father gets fired. We’ve been through this.…”

There was a long silence. Stevie wondered if perhaps the conversation had ended, but there were no signs of movement below. Susan Carol started to open her mouth to say something, but he put a finger to his lips to indicate she should stay silent.

Just when Stevie thought he was wrong, he heard Graber’s voice again. “This is unbelievable.”

“Hey, Chip, the world’s a cold place sometimes. Cooperate and you’ll be a millionaire in a couple of months. Your dad will get a big contract extension for making the Final Four. Quit whining, do what you need to do, and we’ll all walk away happy.”

“But what if we lose Saturday? There’s no guarantee we’ll
win that game. Why does it have to be Monday?”

“That’s not something you need to worry about. You just play your butt off against St. Joe’s and choke against Duke. We’ll take care of the rest.”

“I’ll get you for this. All of you.”

“Please. You don’t even know who
we
are. And if you try anything with me, the roof will fall in on you and your dad. Now let’s go. You’ve got a press conference.”

This time they could hear footsteps walking away. Stevie and Susan Carol stood stock-still for a moment looking at one another.

“What did we just hear?” she asked finally.

“Well, unless I’m crazy, we just heard the best player in the country being blackmailed to throw the championship game.”

“Yeah, that’s what I heard, too. But he has to win tomorrow. Isn’t that weird? I don’t know very much about gambling, but if someone is trying to make a lot of money by betting against Minnesota State, why wait until Monday?”

“That’s what Graber asked. There’s got to be a reason why it has to be Monday. And he said he had to lose to
Duke
on Monday. How’s he know Duke will win tomorrow?”

For the first time since they had met that morning, Stevie thought Susan Carol looked lost. “What do we do?” she asked.

Stevie shook his head. “I don’t know. Tell someone?”

“But who?” she asked. “Who’d believe us?”

“Good question,” he said. “I barely believe us. Man, I
wanted a story no one else had, but this is insane. Let’s get out of here. It’s spooky.”

She didn’t argue.

As they opened the doors that led back to the hallway and the bright lights hit Stevie’s eyes, he felt like he was leaving a movie. But there was no leaving. Now he and Susan Carol were
part
of the movie.

THEY HADN’T GONE VERY FAR
back down the locker room hallway when they were stopped by a gaggle of security people. Stevie looked intently for the guy in the charcoal gray suit, wanting to get a better look at his face, but he didn’t see him.

Someone with a walkie-talkie faced the assembled media and announced that the locker room would be open in three minutes, “at precisely two-thirty. Student-athletes will be available for thirty minutes after that.”

“Does that count?” Susan Carol asked.

“Huh?”

“In the ‘student-athlete’ count.”

His story! How was he supposed to write a “Gee, isn’t it cool to be here” story when they’d just stumbled onto the scandal of the year?

“I nearly forgot—I still have to write a story,” he told Susan Carol.

“But what about Graber and that man?” she asked.

“Listen, neither one of us is sure what we just heard or what we should do about it,” he said. “How about giving me an hour to write something and then we can decide what to do next?”

She nodded. “Okay. But don’t you need to wait for Graber to come back here from the interview room?”

“I don’t want to take the time. I’ll just write about meeting Vitale and K and the security guard and the ‘student-athletes.’ I think I can fill eight hundred words with that stuff pretty quickly.”

“Can you really do that in an hour?”

Stevie nodded. Once he had a story in his head, the words seemed to gush out of him when he sat down at a computer. If he could keep himself focused on something other than Chip Graber for the next hour, he could easily finish the story.

“I’m going to go back to the workroom and get this done,” he said.

“Okay,” she said. “I’ll go back on the court, find a quiet place to sit, and try to write down as much of what we heard as I can remember.”

Again, Stevie had to admit she was smart. “Yeah, good idea,” he said. “And keep an eye out for the man in the gray suit. But don’t say a word to anyone because—”

She cut him off with a look that said,
Don’t tell me what I already know
.

“Sorry,” he said. “I’m just nervous.”

“I’m not,” she said. “I’m scared.”

Once again, she was a step ahead of him.

Stevie followed the signs back to the media workroom, still amazed by how many people there were in the bowels of the massive building. It took him a minute to re-create in his mind where he and Weiss had walked to when they first came into the room a few hours earlier, but he finally found their computers side by side near a sign that said
NEW YORK DAILY NEWS
. He crawled under the table to plug in his computer, turned it on, and began writing. He was so pumped up with adrenaline that he didn’t even hear Weiss when he came in and sat down next to him.

“Looks like you’re rolling,” Weiss said.

Stevie glanced up, realized Weiss was talking to him, and said cleverly, “Whaa?”

“I said you’re rolling,” Weiss repeated.

“Oh yeah, well, I figured I’d better get going.”

“Good thought. When you finish, I’ll help you file it if you need. Did you write about Graber?”

Stevie almost gagged. “What?! Oh, um, no, it was just a zoo in there. Did he say anything in the press conference?”

“That he was really proud to play for his dad. He was actually pretty quiet. He’s usually more outgoing. I guess he’s human, feeling the pressure.”

“Yeah, pressure,” Stevie said, thinking, You don’t know the half of it.

“By the way, the final ‘student-athlete’ count was thirty-nine,” Weiss said.

“I’ll make it forty,” Stevie said. “I heard one more outside the Minnesota State locker room.”

Weiss laughed. “Good for you.”

He settled down to work while Stevie finished his story. Stevie wasn’t terribly proud of what he produced. He knew he had rushed and he hadn’t done nearly as much work on the story as he had planned. But all of his plans for the weekend had changed in those few minutes he and Susan Carol spent on the loading dock. Weiss volunteered to read the story for him before he filed it. Stevie really didn’t want to waste any more time, but he couldn’t turn down Weiss’s offer without being rude. Fortunately, Weiss didn’t take too long to read it.

“It’s good,” he said. “I like what you said about Dickie V, ‘a one-man twenty-four-hour sports-talk radio station.’ That’s clever.”

“Thanks,” Stevie said. “I think I’m ready to send.”

Weiss helped him get online and Stevie tapped in the e-mail address for the editor who would edit his story and send it out to the other papers that were using his and Susan Carol’s features. He attached the story, hit the send button, and was relieved when the computer told him his mail had been sent successfully. He called the number he had been given for the editor.

“Tom Vernon,” a voice said after the first ring.

“Mr. Vernon?” Stevie said. “This is Steve Thomas at the Final Four.” He paused for a moment, thinking how cool that sounded. “I just sent you my story.”

“Oh, Steve, that’s great,” Tom Vernon said. “Call me Tom. Let me see if it’s here.” Stevie heard him tapping some computer buttons. “Got it,” he said. “Little long, but we’ll work with it.”

Stevie was surprised that he had written too much, but then he’d been pretty fired up while he was writing, thinking about what he and Susan Carol had to do once he was finished, and not about the word count of his story.

“Sorry,” Stevie said.

“No problem, just some good spadework. Do me a favor and call me back in an hour or so in case I have questions. Okay?”

“Sure, yeah,” Stevie said. “Thanks.”

He hung up the phone and turned to Weiss. “What’s good spadework?” he asked.

Weiss smiled. “It means you did a lot of digging,” he said. “You know, as in digging up a good story.”

Stevie liked that. An inside journalism term. But now, he thought, the real spadework was about to begin.

Susan Carol was in the third row of the press seating area taking notes while the last ten minutes of Minnesota State’s practice were winding down. She looked surprised when Stevie sat down next to her.

“Done already?” she said.

“Yeah,” he said casually. “Mr. Vernon said I wrote a little long but he seemed to think I had done some good spadework.”

She smiled. “Well, we’ve got some
real
spadework to do now, don’t we?”

Stevie was deflated. Of course she knew what spadework was—this girl knew everything.

“I’ve written down as much as I can remember,” she said. “Can you read it and see if I’ve got it right? I’ve been watching Graber during practice. I can’t say he looks like anything’s wrong. When he came out, there was all this squealing from the girls and he smiled and waved to them.”

“Any sign of the guy in the gray suit?”

Susan Carol pointed across the court to one of the benches. “He’s right there,” she said. “Except there are two of him.”

Stevie looked at the end of the bench and almost choked. There were two men sitting side by side in almost identical charcoal gray suits. Both had gray hair, the other feature Stevie had been able to pick up during the brief moment when the suit and Graber hadn’t been in darkness.

She held up what looked like a purple-and-white magazine. It was the Minnesota State media guide, which contained photos of every person connected to the Minnesota State basketball team. “I’ve looked through this thing,” she said. “There are at least six people who could be him. I’ve circled their pictures but I don’t think we’re going to figure out who it is from just looking.”

“We need to hear the guy talk,” Stevie said.

“Exactly—who could forget that voice? But how?” Talking to either gray suit was going to be a problem. They were sitting in the off-limits bench area.

Stevie thought for a minute. He glanced up at the scoreboard and saw the clock had just gone under eight minutes. Minnesota State would be leaving the court and the building in under eight minutes, and they wouldn’t really have a clue as to who Graber’s blackmailer was.

“I’ve got an idea,” he said. “Come with me, quick.”

For once she didn’t challenge him or ask any questions. The two of them walked down to the front row and toward the baseline. The number of writers, photographers, and cameramen had diminished considerably since the start of the Duke practice. Most writers were inside working on their stories, and the cameramen and photogs had the pictures they needed. Stevie and Susan Carol crossed to the bench side of the court.

They stopped a few paces shy of the corner of the court. There was—of course—a security guard posted there to prevent anyone from walking directly behind the bench. “Okay, here’s what you’re doing,” Stevie said.

“What
I’m
doing?” she said.

“Yes, you,” he said. “I want you to walk over to that security guard, give him the wide-eyed-Southern-girl routine, and tell him you really need to talk to your ‘uncle’ over there on the MSU bench.”

“Wide-eyed-Southern-girl routine—what is that supposed to mean?”

“You know.”

“No, I don’t know and—”

“Yell at me later, would you?” he broke in. “We’ve got less than five minutes here. Just … be yourself. Smile.
Drawl. Say, ‘Aah need to see mah uncle, kind suh.’ ”

“Who do you think I am, Scarlett O’Hara?” she said.