“But-”
“It’s that or nothing,” Kasten said. “Your call.”
The TV guy slunk away. As he turned to follow, the cameraman said to Stevie, “I’ll find you later.”
“Oh please,” Stevie said, even though a chill went through him. “What’re you going to do, hit me with your camera?”
He turned back to Nieves only to find that the circle had now grown, with others wanting to hear Nieves’s version of what had just happened. Stinson was standing next to him. “Well, I guess that takes care of getting anything more from him tonight,” he said. “You can’t win. You don’t say anything, you lose the flow of the interview completely. You do say something, you lose the interview anyway.” He put out his hand: “We haven’t met. Tom Stinson from Atlanta. Thanks for helping me out there.”
“Steve Thomas,” Stevie answered. “I’m sorry the guy interrupted. That was pretty good stuff.”
“Yeah,” Stinson said. “Worth following up on. Well, gotta run. I’ve got about twelve minutes to write before deadline. See ya later.”
Stevie looked at his watch. It was almost midnight. He had more than twelve minutes, but he needed to get going too.
He ran into Arnold leaving the clubhouse. “How’d you do with Nieves before the scuffle?” Arnold asked.
“Pretty good. I’d like to talk to him again without being interrupted.”
Arnold laughed. “Good luck with that,” he said. “Come on, we need to get moving.”
Stevie followed him to the elevator, wondering about Nieves’s final comment: “Joy doesn’t seem to be his thing.” The Norbert Doyle he’d had breakfast with had certainly seemed cheerful to him-except when the subject of his wife’s death came up. But there was the whole Susan Carol-David secret, whatever that was. There was a story here, Stevie knew that for sure. Unfortunately, he had no idea what the story was.
10: THE MYSTERY DEEPENS
STEVIE WANTED TO SHARE what Wil Nieves had said with Bobby Kelleher, but there was no time. Everyone was fighting deadline when he got back upstairs. Then in the cab back to the hotel, he didn’t want to say anything with Susan Carol sitting there.
He left the personal quotes about Doyle out of his story because they didn’t really fit with what his sidebar was about: Nieves’s view of how Doyle had managed to baffle the Red Sox so completely. He knew that Tom Stinson and the other two writers who had been standing there might well use the quotes, but he was thinking long-term: he wanted to consult with Kelleher when he got the chance and then follow up.
Normally, the person he would have talked to first in this sort of situation was Susan Carol. That, however, was not an option, in part because they were working for different newspapers, but more because they weren’t speaking to each other very much.
The next morning the four of them took the short cab ride back to Logan Airport. The series, and everyone in it or covering it, was on its way to Washington. Stevie spent most of the flight trying to catch up on some reading for his English class and trying briefly to work on some algebra, but the math might as well have been written in Chinese, so he gave up fairly quickly. It was a beautiful day, and the plane flew straight down the Potomac River, past all the monuments as it landed.
“Pretty spectacular,” he said to Tamara, who was sitting next to him.
“On a day like this, landing here is actually fun,” she said. “In bad weather, though, it’s not fun at all because the runways are so short.”
They took another cab to Potomac, Maryland, where Bobby and Tamara lived. They had two extra bedrooms, so Stevie and Susan Carol would be staying there for the weekend. Games three, four, and five would be played at Nationals Park on Friday, Saturday, and Sunday-all night games, of course, so that TV could get the largest audience possible.
They were talking over lunch about whether there was any need to attend the off-day workouts and press conferences. Bobby and Tamara, who were writing every day with their local team in the World Series, had plenty for their columns, and Susan Carol and Stevie had been given the day off.
But Stevie still wanted to go to the ballpark. The clubhouses would be open while the managers and starting pitchers for the next day were in the interview room, and he thought he might be able to get some time alone with Nieves. Or even Doyle, although he suspected Doyle would be the target of a lot of writers on the off day. With no game until the next night, he was still the big story.
“I’d like to go to the park,” he said. “You never know what you’ll stumble into when there aren’t a million people in the clubhouse.”
“Spoken like a real reporter,” Kelleher said. “Tell you what, I’ll drive down there with you. I’d actually like to talk to some of the Red Sox if I can. I can write from down there if necessary.”
That was perfect as far as Stevie was concerned. The tension between him and Susan Carol was almost unbearable, and the car ride would give him a chance to talk to Kelleher alone.
They left the house with Tamara sitting at her computer and Susan Carol reading a history book.
“So I take it things aren’t any better with Susan Carol?” Kelleher said as they drove down the George Washington Parkway. It was a perfect fall day in Washington, and Stevie was struck by how pretty the area was with the leaves in full color.
“Worse,” he said. “She lied to me at first about meeting with David yesterday, then when I told her we’d seen her, she got mad and told me she couldn’t tell me what they were talking about.”
Kelleher was silent for a moment-rare for him-as if deciding what to say next. “She flat out lied?” he asked.
“Pretty much,” Stevie said. “She said she’d gone over to Faneuil Hall and walked around the Freedom Trail but never mentioned spending time with David.”
“A lie of omission,” Kelleher said. “But a lie nonetheless.” He turned and went up the ramp onto the Fourteenth Street Bridge, and Stevie noticed they were back near Washington National Airport again.
“It wasn’t just that,” Stevie said. “She totally clammed up when I tried to ask her what they were talking about. Said it was a secret and then practically ran away from me.”
“Huh,” Kelleher said. “That doesn’t sound like her at all. But I’m sure she’ll open up sooner or later.”
Stevie hoped that was true. “I suppose. Different subject: listen to this.” He took out his notebook and read Kelleher the quotes from Nieves.
“Those weren’t in your story,” Kelleher said.
“They didn’t fit with what I was writing, especially with only eight hundred words,” Stevie said, feeling a bit defensive. “That’s why I want to go down there today. So I can follow up and see if there’s more to it.”
Kelleher nodded. “Okay, good. It seems like there’s something about Doyle that we don’t know-but I haven’t a clue what it is. I mean, right now the guy is a true Cinderella story-all the years bouncing around the minors, single father, two great-looking kids…”
He paused to look over at Stevie. “Sorry,” he said.
“No big deal,” Stevie said. “You’re right. They are great-looking.”
“Anyway,” Kelleher continued. “Something’s missing here. We just need to figure out what it is.”
“Could be nothing to it,” Stevie said. “Or it could be something not even worth a story. Who knows?”
“You might be right,” Kelleher answered. “But you need to ask the questions to find the answers-or the non-answers.”
He eased the car off the highway at the South Capitol Street exit and headed for the new ballpark. The best description of Nationals Park, Stevie had decided, was efficient. Everything was sparkling and new, it had all the new ballpark amenities: huge scoreboard that could do everything but make a plane reservation for you; several fancy clubs; a lot of luxury boxes; all sorts of different foods; interactive video games on the concourses. But it wasn’t nearly as nice (in Stevie’s perhaps biased view) as the ballpark in Philadelphia. For one thing, Stevie’s home park had a spectacular view of the city’s skyline from almost anywhere. Nationals Park had no views at all from the lower deck, and from the press box-which was so high up it was almost scary-you could see the Capitol dome but little else worth seeing.