“All I can tell you,” she finally said, “is that you have most of the facts but not the story-you’re spinning it in a way that isn’t the truth.”

“Or maybe someone spun the story for you in a way that was designed to get your sympathy-is that possible?” Kelleher said gently.

“I really don’t know for sure, do I?” Susan Carol said. “And neither do you guys. The only person who knows for sure is Norbert, so you’ll have to get it from him. But I don’t think you will. It’s his story and he’s got a right to decide whether he wants to go public with it or not.”

“That’s true,” Kelleher said. “Unless the story he and David Felkoff are pitching to Hollywood and New York publishers is the fantasy he pitched to you and Stevie in Boston. He definitely has a right to his privacy, but he doesn’t have a right to lie to the public and try to make a fortune from that lie.”

“You don’t get it, do you?” Susan Carol said, her eyes filling with tears. She got up and ran from the room. Stevie couldn’t help but notice that this was getting to be a nightly occurrence.

Tamara stood up. “I’ll talk to her,” she said.

“Good idea,” Kelleher said. “I’ve never seen her like this.”

“Try to remember she’s fourteen, Bobby,” Tamara said.

“So’s Stevie,” Kelleher said. “He may not like it that she likes David, but he’s not bursting into tears and running from the room every ten minutes.”

For the first time since he had met them, Stevie sensed tension between Tamara and Bobby.

“Cool it, Bobby,” Tamara said. “She’s our friend, not a ballplayer or a coach or an agent.”

She turned on her heel and followed Susan Carol out of the room.

“Well,” Kelleher said. “That went well, didn’t it?”

No, it certainly hadn’t gone well. But Stevie actually felt a little better. Kelleher had answered the question that he had been trying to answer on the train ride back: what was the story they were chasing? Now he knew: the story was about an athlete living a lie-no, more than that, selling a lie.

17: MEETING WITH MORRA

THE BEST NEWS OF THE LONG DAY for Stevie was that he was so tired when he went upstairs to bed he had no trouble sleeping. He tossed and turned briefly, wondering if he and Susan Carol would ever be friends again, but fell sound asleep soon after.

He hadn’t set an alarm and no one came to wake him, but he was still up by seven-thirty He went downstairs and, to his surprise, found Susan Carol sitting by herself drinking coffee and reading the newspaper.

“Mind if I have some of your coffee?” he asked.

“Of course not,” she said.

He poured himself some coffee and sat down across from her. She had the Herald’s Sports section in front of her, so he picked up the Post’s.

“What’d Tamara write about?” he asked, hoping to make conversation.

“Stan Kasten,” she answered. “She wrote about what it means to him to get this team into the World Series after starting from scratch the way he did back in Atlanta.”

“Good idea,” he said.

She sipped and read, so he sipped and read. He wasn’t really reading, though. He kept trying to read Mearns’s column but couldn’t seem to get past the paragraph where she described how Kasten, when the Nats were struggling, had handed out cards that said “Stan Kasten-Village Idiot” on them.

“Look, Stevie, I need to tell you something,” Susan Carol finally said, pushing the paper away. “I know Morra told you your meeting isn’t a setup, that she just wants to talk. She’s lying. It is a setup.”

“How? I mean, how do you know?”

She shrugged. “David sent me a text last night.”

“You guys communicating pretty regularly?”

“Yes,” she said, looking him right in the eye.

He decided to steer the conversation in another direction. “What do you mean it’s a setup?”

“They know you were in Lynchburg yesterday.”

“How?!”

“I don’t know, he didn’t say. But the fact that they know and they care makes me wonder if something isn’t rotten in Denmark.”

“ Denmark?”

She gave him the old “You are too stupid to live” look, but there was a hint of a smile on her face. “I forgot you only read Sports sections. It’s a line from Hamlet. It means something is suspicious.”

Of course it was a line from Hamlet.

“Sorry,” he said. And then, perhaps because she had almost smiled, he added, “And I’m sorry I’ve been acting like a jealous dope.”

This time she gave him the real Smile. “Thanks for saying that,” she said. “I haven’t exactly been easy to deal with the last couple of days either. Look, I’m honestly not sure what’s going on here. The story David told me in Boston was pretty convincing-and very sad. But based on what you learned yesterday, and the fact that they must be snooping around themselves, it makes me wonder if it’s the truth.”

“It’s possible that David doesn’t even know the truth,” Stevie said, surprising himself by taking a position favorable to David.

“Yes, that’s true,” she said. “But somewhere along the line the grown-ups-Norbert, Felkoff, someone-has involved David and Morra in all this. It wouldn’t shock me if the twins know about Felkoff sending Walsh down there.”

“Did you tell David how much I know?” he asked.

“No!” she answered, flashing anger again. “I didn’t tell him anything. All he knows is that you were in Lynchburg and that you and Bobby are looking into the accident.”

“Which makes them nervous because their father has been lying about what happened.”

She sighed. “Like I said, I’m not sure if he’s lying or not. Unfortunately, I made a promise, and even though I regret that promise right now, I’m not going to break it. But Morra is probably going to try to get you off the story today, and, well, I want to be sure you don’t let her do it.”

“You think she’s going to dazzle me with her beauty?”

She almost smiled. “Funnily enough, I don’t think you dazzle that easily. She’ll bat her eyes at you a lot and she’ll probably cry too. But more important, she’ll try to get you to agree to hear the whole story off the record. You can’t fall into that trap.”

“Is that what happened to you in Boston?” he asked.

“Sort of,” she said.

Stevie stayed quiet. He wasn’t really sure whether he wanted her to elaborate or not.

She sighed. “Look, he called me after you and I left the hotel. He wanted to know if I was doing anything that afternoon. I wasn’t, so I agreed to meet him at Faneuil Hall. It started very innocently, me just kind of babbling about how amazing his father’s story was becoming, especially with him starting in the World Series.”

“And?”

“He was talking about how proud he was of his dad, how much he’d overcome, more than anyone knew. That’s when he told me the whole story-I mean everything-and swore me to secrecy.”

“Do you think he was trying to make sure you didn’t pursue the story?”

“No,” she said, looking him in the eye. “I think he was trying to make me feel sympathetic toward him.”

“So he was trying to put the moves on you, basically.”

“Basically.”

Stevie’s stomach was twisted in a knot. The next question was obvious, but he wasn’t sure if he really wanted to hear the answer. He took a deep breath and asked anyway.

“Did it work?”

She looked out the window for a second, which scared him, then back at him. “Almost,” she said. “When we went for a walk on the Freedom Trail, he tried to hold my hand and I let him. Then, at the end, he tried to kiss me.”

She stopped, leaving Stevie in a cold sweat. “I’m not going to tell you I wasn’t tempted, Stevie. He’s handsome and he’s smart and I did feel for him after he told me the story. So in that sense his plan worked. But I stopped him and told him I had a boyfriend.”

Stevie felt his heart start to pump again. He felt an adrenaline rush. “Has he tried again?” he asked.