That was a relief. Stevie had been afraid a night’s sleep might have made him more cautious about discussing his team’s sudden star.

“Right,” Stevie said. “Nice guy, just shy…”

“Not exactly shy,” Nieves said. “Always friendly. I’m not sure I’ve ever seen him laugh, though, really have fun. Even when we were celebrating winning the pennant last week, we had to practically beg him to get involved.”

Stevie remembered that. He had been standing with Doyle while his teammates kept trying to get him to join them in the celebration. Then again, he hadn’t been on the roster for the playoffs.

“You said something about joy not being part of his life…”

“I can’t say it isn’t part of his life, I’ve just never seen it. I asked him about it once-”

“You did?” Stevie said, realizing instantly he had made a mistake by stopping him in midsentence and perhaps appearing a bit too eager. For the first time since they had started talking, he saw Nieves hesitate.

“Well, yeah, it was no big deal or anything…”

This time Stevie said nothing. Thankfully, Nieves filled the silence.

“It was a few years ago. We were both in Columbus, which was a Yankee team back then. He’d been traded over in midseason and I was the only guy on the club he knew, so we hung out a little on the road. One night at dinner I asked about his kids. I knew his wife had died years earlier in the accident…”

He paused again. “You know about that, right?”

“Yes,” Stevie answered honestly. “He told me about it the other day.”

Nieves nodded. “He started talking about how proud he was of them, what great kids they were, and how much he wished his wife could be around to see them.”

“Uh-huh,” Stevie said, not wanting to interrupt, just encouraging him to go on.

“Perfectly understandable, right?” Nieves said. “But then he said something I didn’t understand.”

Stevie waited, afraid to say anything.

“He said that sometimes when he looked at them, he believed in God because they were so wonderful. But then, when he thought about it, he decided God was pretty cruel, because every time he looked at his kids, he was reminded that he had taken their mother away from them.”

Nieves stopped suddenly. Stevie was scribbling madly in his notebook. “Oh wait, hang on, I shouldn’t have said that. Please don’t write that. I don’t even know what Norbert meant by that.”

“I promise I won’t unless I talk to him about it,” Stevie said.

Nieves sagged a little. “Okay,” he said finally, “that’s fair.”

“But one more question,” Stevie asked. “What do you think he meant? They were hit by a drunk driver. How could that be his fault? Or was he saying, you think, that it was God’s fault?”

“That’s what I asked him.”

“What did he say?”

“Nothing,” Nieves said. “He just asked the waitress for some more iced tea.”

11: NORBERT DOYLE, SUPERSTAR

STEVIE STOOD UP A MOMENT LATER and thanked Nieves. Someone was walking around the room saying it would close to the media in five minutes. When they shook hands, Nieves said, “I probably said too much. I hope you handle that gently with Norbert. I know it has to be upsetting for him to even think about it.”

“We talked about it a little yesterday, and he did get choked up,” Stevie said, telling the truth. “It’s probably nothing. He probably feels guilty because they were in the wrong place at the wrong time that night.”

Nieves nodded. “I guess so. Or he somehow thinks he should have been able to avoid the accident. He never brought it up again and neither did I. I’m so happy for the guy right now. I wouldn’t want to see anything take away from this.”

“Me neither,” Stevie said. “Don’t worry about it.”

Stevie felt a little guilty. Nieves had been remark ably honest, and now he clearly felt as if he had violated the confidence of a teammate. But Stevie knew he had to follow up on what Nieves had told him-even if he wasn’t sure what it was he was following up on. He knew it was personal-extremely personal. So, was it really news?

He walked back across the room looking for Kelleher but didn’t see him. He remembered Kelleher saying he wanted to talk to the Red Sox, so maybe he was in their clubhouse.

“How’d you do with Wil?” Aaron Boone said when he passed him on his way out.

“Great,” Stevie said.

Boone nodded. “If I was a reporter, I’d love this clubhouse,” he said. “Most of our guys haven’t been around long enough to become jaded about all this.”

“You’ve been around a long time,” Stevie said.

“Oh yeah-I’m old,” Boone said, laughing. “But I’m not good enough to be jaded.”

Stevie knew that wasn’t true. Boone was famous for his home run in the eleventh inning of game seven of the ALCS in 2003 that had allowed the Yankees to beat the Red Sox and advance to the World Series. He was still known in Boston as “Aaron Bleepin’ Boone” because of it, and many of the pre-Series stories had been about his return to Boston six Octobers later.

“You’re being modest,” Stevie said.

“Yeah, you’re right,” Boone said, laughing again.

Stevie was tempted to ask Boone what his read of Norbert Doyle was. Clearly, he was a smart guy with a good sense of humor. But time was up in the clubhouse, and this wasn’t the right time anyway. So he waved goodbye and headed down the hallway to see if Kelleher was in the Red Sox clubhouse. He found him among a group of reporters around David Ortiz. When Stevie walked up, Ortiz was talking about the triple play.

“Someone called me this morning to tell me I’d made history,” he said, smiling. “First triple play in the World Series in eighty-nine years. I can tell my grandkids about it someday. It’s what I’ll be known for.”

Everyone laughed. Someone asked Ortiz if he’d ever heard of Bill Wambsganss. “Not until last night,” he said. “Now I even know how to spell his name.”

“I’m glad we came,” Kelleher said, walking away while Ortiz continued to talk. “I picked up some stuff that will help my column a lot. How’d you do with Nieves?”

“So well I’m not even sure what I’ve got,” Stevie said.

Kelleher gave him a look. “I should have known,” he said. “Only you can take a story that appears to be The Rookie on steroids and find something hiding underneath. Let’s go outside and you can tell me about it.”

They walked back into the hallway, and Kelleher leaned against the wall while Stevie read back to him what Nieves had said.

“Whoo boy,” Kelleher said.

“Isn’t it possible he just feels guilty because he lived and she didn’t?” Stevie asked.

“Of course-likely, even,” Kelleher said. “But it feels like more than that, doesn’t it?” He paused. “It may be time for us to ask Susan Carol about her talk with David yesterday in Boston. Before we go running around on what might be a wild-goose chase, let’s find out what she knows about the goose.”

“I don’t think she’ll tell us,” Stevie said.

“Maybe not,” Kelleher said. “But we’ll ask anyway.”

“And if that doesn’t work?”

“One of us may be going on a road trip,” Kelleher said.

“Road trip?” Stevie said. “Where to?”

“To Lynchburg, Virginia,” Kelleher said. “And into Doyle’s past.”

On the car ride home Stevie asked Kelleher what the purpose of going to Lynchburg would be.

“You know Bob Woodward, right? The Bob Woodward, as in Watergate and Richard Nixon?”

Stevie nodded.

“He was my editor when I was starting out on the Metro staff at the Post. He was the best reporter I’ve ever met. He had a saying about stories that don’t seem to add up: ‘Get the documents.’”

“What does that mean?” Stevie asked.

“It means that somewhere, someplace, there is paperwork on almost everything that happens in the world. The story that really got Watergate going came when he and Carl Bernstein ran down some obscure bank records. They found a check that linked the burglary at the Watergate to Nixon’s reelection committee. And, at the end, the final documents were the tapes from the White House that proved Nixon had discussed covering up the break-in right after it happened. Any time we were stalled on a story, Bob would say, ‘There have to be documents, there always are.’”