“Analise told me in April, right at the start of the season, that she was giving me until her birthday-August twelfth-to get sober, even if it meant going to rehab and missing part of the season,” he said. “That night at dinner she told me she was done, she was going to leave me. You’d think that’d be enough for me to set my glass down, but no. Instead I got drunker. It was a terrible night. Analise was drinking too-which was unusual for her.”

He stopped, and Stevie wondered if he was going to keep telling the story, but after a bit he continued.

“When we were leaving, the manager tried to take the keys from me, but I wouldn’t let him. He said he’d call someone to take us home…”

Tears suddenly appeared in Doyle’s eyes. He put his hand up to wipe them away, then buried his head in his shoulder.

“Come on, Norbert, let’s go,” Felkoff said, putting a hand on his shoulder. “Enough is enough.”

“No!” Doyle said fiercely, pushing Felkoff’s hand away. “I’ve had enough of slippery half-truths…”

They gave him a while to compose himself, before Stevie prompted, “So, the restaurant manager said he’d call someone to drive you home…”

“Yeah. Jim Hatley’s always felt that if he’d gotten there sooner, he could have prevented the accident, but I don’t know. I wouldn’t give up my keys to the manager, and I might not have given them to Jim either.”

“But it wasn’t Jim the manager called,” said Susan Carol. “It was Joe Molloy.”

“Who told you that?” Doyle seemed genuinely surprised.

“He did. And Jim Hatley confirmed it. But Jim said that Joe called him instead of going to the restaurant himself.”

Doyle was silent for a moment. “Huh,” he said. “Well, there are parts to the story even I didn’t know, I guess. But that would explain why Joe was there later.”

“At the accident scene, you mean?” asked Stevie.

“No, before then.”

Now Stevie was completely confused. But Doyle pressed on with his story.

“I insisted I was okay to drive home, which, believe it or not, I probably was. I knew how to drive slow and careful when I was drunk. I’d had a lot of experience.”

“Only this time you weren’t okay,” Susan Carol said.

“I don’t know,” Doyle said. “I never got to find out.”

“What do you mean?” Stevie said, struggling to keep up.

“We got about a mile down the road,” he said. “I was driving carefully, but all of a sudden a police car came up behind me and pulled me over. I couldn’t figure it out. I really thought I was driving fine.”

“And?” Stevie said, hoping he didn’t sound as impatient as he was.

“It was Joe Molloy,” Doyle said. “He asked how much I’d had to drink. I told him not that much, and he asked if I’d take a sobriety test. I really didn’t want to do that, but I bluffed and said, ‘Sure, fine.’ Then Molloy said, ’Tell you what, since we’re old teammates, I’ll cut you a break. Let Analise drive home, and I won’t test you.”

“Oh my God,” Susan Carol said, the truth hitting her at the same instant it hit Stevie.

“I agreed,” Doyle said, starting to sob. “Analise might not have been as drunk as me, but she’d probably never driven drunk in her life. We’d gone a couple miles when we came around that curve too fast and…”

His voice broke up and he buried his head in his hands.

“Feel pretty good about yourselves?” Felkoff said low in Stevie’s ear.

“Shut up, Felkoff,” Stevie said. “You’re not helping.”

Susan Carol had her arm on Doyle’s back.

“So, Analise was driving when the accident happened?” she asked softly.

He looked up at her, tears rolling down his face. “Do you understand?” he said. “If I’d been driving, we probably would have gotten home okay. But I didn’t want to take that sobriety test. A DUI would have got me suspended, heck, maybe released. It wasn’t like I was pitching all that well. So she drove. And she lost control of the car.”

“But the police report?”

“I asked Jim not to tell anyone Analise was driving. It was my fault, and I didn’t want the blame to fall on anyone but me. I never even told Jim that Molloy pulled us over… I don’t know if he knows…”

“Do the kids know? Any of this?” Stevie asked.

Doyle shook his head. “No. When they were little, I told them there was another car involved-it just seemed easier than the complicated truth. When they were older and figured out that I went to rehab right after the accident, well, I’m sure they put it together. I’ve told them some of my memories about the accident scene because they seemed to need to know, but I’ve never told them all that led up to it. And I certainly never told them Analise was driving. Now I guess they’ll know everything.”

“Not if they can’t prove you said all this,” Felkoff said. He reached down suddenly and swiped both tape recorders off the bench and began running. Stevie jumped off the bench and chased him. It wasn’t hard to catch him-Felkoff was overweight and over forty. Stevie tackled him halfway across the minipark, and they rolled in the grass.

Stevie saw one tape recorder fly out of his hand. He twisted Felkoff’s wrist and heard him scream in pain. Then Felkoff kicked him in the stomach, and it was Stevie’s turn to yell in pain.

Then, all of a sudden, someone was pulling Felkoff off of him. Had Susan Carol been able to call Kelleher that quickly?

No. Stevie looked up and saw Felkoff struggling in Norbert Doyle’s arms. “Stop it, David,” Doyle said. “Look at yourself. It’s not worth it. It’s over.”

He looked at Stevie, who was sitting up with a bad stomachache.

“Write the story,” he said. “Twelve years of lying is enough.”

Susan Carol was standing right behind him-with the tape recorder in her hand-and Stevie could see Kelleher and Mearns sprinting toward them.

Doyle pushed Felkoff out of his grasp, turned, and walked away.

24: GAME SEVEN

DAVID FELKOFF DUSTED OFF HIS SUIT, glared at everyone, then took off after Doyle without saying another word.

“What the hell happened?” Kelleher asked.

“Let’s go back to your room and we’ll tell you,” Susan Carol said.

As they walked back, Kelleher couldn’t help but tease Stevie about his inability to conduct an interview without getting into some sort of fight. “Let’s see, you’ve been chased down by a dog, been slapped by a girl, wrestled with someone in Faneuil Hall, and tackled an agent,” he said as they headed up the escalator to the lobby. “In all, a pretty good week.”

“Can’t wait to hear your parents’ reaction when you tell them about it,” Susan Carol put in.

“Oh sure, I’m going to tell them,” Stevie said. “That way the next time I cover a sports event, I’ll be thirty.”

She put an arm around him for a moment and said, “Would it help if you tell them I’m proud of you?”

“Doubt it,” he said, but he wrapped an arm around her too, and that did help.

They walked Tamara and Bobby through the entire meeting and played them the tape, in part to make sure it hadn’t been damaged during Stevie’s tussle with Felkoff. When they were finished, Kelleher looked at Mearns and said, “What do you think?”

“I think it’s a pretty tragic story. And a tough call,” Mearns said.

“You mean whether to write the story at all, don’t you?” Susan Carol asked.

Kelleher stood up and walked to the window, gazing out at the harbor for a moment. Then he turned and faced them. “Look, you guys have done an amazing reporting job on this,” he said. “Stevie, you’ve done everything but go to the hospital to ferret out the truth.”

“Give me a little more time and I can probably oblige,” Stevie said, forcing a smile. He wasn’t sure where Kelleher was going, but he was pretty sure it wasn’t going to make him happy.

“There are two questions you have to ask when you publish a story, especially a story like this one,” Kelleher continued. “First: is it true? The answer there is easy. You’ve got the truth, you’ve got it from the main source, and you’ve got it on the record. The story won’t even need to be lawyered. You’ve got Doyle on tape telling you what happened that night.”