Last Shot (15 page)

No one came near them the entire time she was on the phone, which was a relief because he wasn’t sure what he would have said. After about ten minutes, she hung up. It had felt more like ten hours. She was clearly excited.

“Any luck?” he said, pretty certain she had at least had some.

“Yes, big time, I think,” she said. “She apparently transposed two numbers on Chip’s cell phone and couldn’t reach him. That’s why she left him that message on her phone at work.”

“Nice. Does she have a phone number for Wojenski?”

“Better than that. She told me he’s living in Mississippi in a place called Bay St. Louis.”

“Why have I heard of that place?”

“Because the local radio guy who was the MC at the breakfast yesterday said he lived there.”

“That’s right,” Stevie said. “He said he lived an hour and a lifetime from downtown New Orleans.”

“Ms. Braman said she was sure the dean wouldn’t mind her giving me his number and address.”

“Why did I hear you say something about being adopted?”

“Oh, yeah. I told her that I was Chip’s sister. She said she thought she had read that Chip was an only child. That was the best I could come up with.”

“Quick thinking there.”

She was staring at the number she had written down in her notebook.

“I know we need to call him,” she said. “But we may have caught a lucky break with him living so close. I figured he would be retired to Florida or someplace like that. If he’s this close, I think we should try to see him in person.”

“Journalism 101,” Stevie said, remembering another of Jerardi’s lessons. “Always interview in person whenever you can.”

Susan Carol smiled. “Right. Especially when a lot is at stake.” Her smile disappeared. “You know, you and I may never work on a bigger story than this one.”

Stevie felt a slight chill run through him. He knew there was a lot more at stake than the story. “Now all we have to do,” he said, “is figure out how to get to Bay St. Louis, Mississippi.”

OF COURSE
, before they figured out how to get to Bay St. Louis, they had to call Dean Wojenski and make sure he was willing and able to help. They didn’t really have much yet, but it still felt like a victory. By now the building was starting to fill up with people, and the St. Joe’s fans, who were directly behind the spot on press row where Stevie and Susan Carol were sitting, were exchanging cheers and insults with the Minnesota State fans, who were diagonally across the court from them. The two sections that Stevie guessed were for the Connecticut and Duke fans were still almost empty. Stevie could feel a buzz replacing the quiet that he had enjoyed when they first walked onto the court.

Susan Carol was about to dial Dean Wojenski’s number, when Stevie noticed Tony Kornheiser walking toward him,
along with his TV partner, Michael Wilbon. He knew they both worked for the
Washington Post
when they weren’t doing their show,
Pardon the Interruption
, which was the only ESPN show Stevie watched. Every other show on the network was filled with shouting that, unlike Vitale’s good-natured shouting, had a nasty, angry edge.

“Put down the phone,” he said to Susan Carol. He jumped up and, as Kornheiser got close to him, said, “Did you ever get your suite, Mr. Kornheiser?”

Kornheiser looked at him for a moment as if he were from the moon. Then recognition registered on his face. “You’re the kid who was in the lobby the other night, right? You and your dad.”

“Right,” Stevie said. He put out his hand. “I’m Steve Thomas.” He turned to Susan Carol and said, “This is Susan Carol Anderson. We were the winners of the USBWA writing contest. That’s why we have”—he held up his credential as if Kornheiser couldn’t see it unless he did—“press passes.”

“Well, good for you,” Kornheiser said, shaking hands with him as Susan Carol stood up to shake hands, too. “Hey, Wilbon, here are a couple of real journalists, not talking heads like you and me.”

Wilbon was a lot taller than Stevie had imagined, probably about six foot three. His head was completely shaved, à la Michael Jordan, his self-confessed hero and role model in all things. Stevie remembered something Wilbon had written once when Jordan was still
the
star player in the NBA. Wilbon’s wife had complained during a play-off
game, “You love Michael more than you love me.” To which Wilbon had supposedly replied, “But I love you more than Scottie,” a reference to Jordan’s Chicago Bulls sidekick, Scottie Pippen.

“Nice to meet you guys,” he said, shaking hands. He looked at both of them, pointed at Susan Carol, and said, “Let me guess: high school senior,” then, turning to Stevie, “high school sophomore.”

Stevie immediately liked him for thinking he was a sophomore. “I’ll bet you they’re both younger than that,” Kornheiser said. “First, you’re just sucking up to Stevie the way you always suck up to people when you meet them, because he’s no more than a freshman, probably an eighth grader.” He pointed at Susan Carol. “She’s tougher because she’s tall and because girls always look older. You know what? I say they’re both eighth graders.”

Wilbon laughed. “You’re crazy. She’s an eighth grader? No way.”

“I’m an eighth grader,” Susan Carol said.

“No you’re not,” Wilbon answered.

Kornheiser threw his hands into the air. “What are you, her father? You know how old she is, and she doesn’t know how old she is?”

“Right,” Wilbon said.

Stevie and Susan Carol were both laughing now. They were getting a real-life version of
PTI
, live and undoctored by tape or a producer.

Kornheiser and Wilbon were also laughing. Susan Carol said, “Listen, if I can prove to you that I’m really
thirteen, can I use your phone for five minutes?”

“You can use our phone for as long as you want, no matter how old you are,” Wilbon said. “But you’re seventeen, trust me.” He put his computer down and walked by them to say hello to some other people farther down the row.

“Right. And you and I are thirty-nine,” Kornheiser said to Wilbon’s back as he left. He plunked his computer down on the table and looked at Stevie. “Can you believe I have to write live tonight? That’s not what I do. I’m not a writer anymore, I’m a yodeler.”

“They must not know who you are.”

Kornheiser patted him on the back. “Kid, you’ve got a future.” He pointed at Susan Carol. “If you’re smart, you stick with her. Because she
definitely
has a future. We need more women in sports.”

“She really is thirteen.”

“I know. Here’s the difference between Wilbon and me. I have a twenty-year-old daughter. I remember what she looked like at thirteen. He has no daughters and no clue.”

The fans were screaming Kornheiser’s name. He sighed. “This is why I hate being out in public,” he said. “Do you hear that? What am I supposed to do? Ignore them? I can’t do that. I have to go sign.”

“You have a very hard life, don’t you?” Stevie said.

“Son, you don’t know the half of it,” he said, and went off to pay the price for his fame by signing autographs.

As soon as they were gone, Susan Carol sat back down at the
Post
phone. It was getting louder in the building with each passing minute. To their right, the St. Joe’s band was
filing into their seats in the end zone. “Better call right now,” he said. “It’s going to be impossible to hear soon.”

She was already dialing. “Dean Wojenski?” he heard her say a moment later. “I think you heard from Ms. Braman at Davidson about Chip Graber trying to track you down?”

Stevie didn’t try to eavesdrop on the rest of the conversation. The band was starting to warm up and Susan Carol had to put a hand over her open ear as she talked. The last thing Stevie heard her do was give the doctor what sounded like an e-mail address: “It’s [email protected],” he heard her say.

She hung up. The band was now playing the St. Joe’s fight song full force. “Let’s go in back,” she shouted.

“Is he going to help?” he shouted back.

She nodded and pointed toward the tunnel. They stopped in the hallway, which was filled with people walking to and from the floor.

“He wants us to come out and see him tomorrow,” she said quietly when they found a spot where they could lean against the wall out of the way of all the traffic. “He said if Chip’s in trouble, he wants to help.”

“How in the world are we going to get there?” he said.

“I told him that might be a problem,” she said. “He said he didn’t want to come into New Orleans unless he absolutely had to. I said we would figure something out.”

“What did you tell him?”

“I told him that Chip had a serious problem and it was related to his transcript from last spring,” she said. “He said that Chip had always been a borderline student, but as far
as he knew he was on probation but okay to play at the end of last year. I told him someone had doctored Chip’s transcript after he retired. That’s when he said we should come to the house. He said he still had lots of MSU stuff in files and that he’d look to see if he had his student records from last year. He suggested that if there was any way for Chip to come, he should be there, too.”

“Well, if they lose this game, Chip will have plenty of time tomorrow. And
he
can drive a car.”

“I think he’ll make the time one way or the other. This could be solid proof. Wojenski said he would e-mail me directions. He said it’s just about sixty miles from here to his house.”

That was what the e-mail address was about. “SCDevil?” he asked.

She didn’t even blush a little. “Don’t start,” she said.

Stevie had one more thought. “Did you tell him you were Chip’s sister?”

“Uh-huh.”

“Wouldn’t he know Chip’s an only child?”

“You know, that’s a good point,” she said. “It never came up.”

The rest of the evening passed Stevie like a train flashing by on a high-speed railroad track. Once the games began, it was all a blur. He and Susan Carol had much better seats than he had dared hope. They were in the second row of what was called overflow media, which meant they were sitting in the second row in the stands, just behind the
three rows of press seating. Most of the other overflow media were reporters and producers from the local TV stations in each of the four towns where the teams were from. But there were some media celebrities, too, including Chris Wallace from Fox News, who was sitting right next to Susan Carol.

Susan Carol asked what he was doing at the Final Four. “We’re doing the show from here tomorrow,” he said. “We have a panel that’s going to discuss what’s wrong with college athletics.”

“I hope your show is at least four hours long,” Stevie said, realizing he had become a true cynic in just a couple of days.

“You aren’t the first person to say something like that,” Wallace said.

“Who’s on the panel?” Susan Carol asked.

“It’s an interesting group,” Wallace said. “We have Tom Izzo, the coach at Michigan State, and Roy Williams, the coach at North Carolina, to talk from the coaches’ point of view. Then, to talk about it from the academic side, we have the outgoing president of Duke—”

“Dr. Sanford?” Susan Carol said.

“Yes, good man, I think,” Wallace said. “I like the fact that he said he wants to retire and go back to teaching because he’s tired of being a glorified fund-raiser. And our fourth panelist is the faculty representative at Minnesota State, who is some kind of ethics expert.”

They both went wide-eyed. “Whiting?” Susan Carol said. “Thomas Whiting?”

“Yes. Why? You know him?”

“No, not really. I just know he’s close to Chip Graber.”

“Oh, I didn’t know that. We actually tried to get Koheen, the MSU president, too, but they said he had to go to a fund-raising brunch.”

“Guess Dr. Sanford is right,” Stevie said.

“Oh, he’s right,” Wallace said. “There’s no doubt he’s right.”

They sat back in their seats to watch the game. Stevie couldn’t believe how the place had filled up. He looked up at the seats in the upper deck and saw they were completely full. Somewhere up there was his dad. “The players must look like ants from up in the top deck,” he commented to Susan Carol, thinking how lucky they were.

Everything about the Final Four was big. The PA was
loud
, and the announcer seemed to take several days introducing the players. The TV time-outs seemed to last forever, no doubt because he couldn’t click to something else during the three minutes of commercials he knew CBS was showing.

The game itself was intense, right from the start. Each team had a great guard whom the coaches built their offense around: Graber for MSU, Tommy Watson for the Hawks. Early on, St. Joe’s got several long threes from senior Pat Carroll, a skinny guy. Stevie thought he could be just like if not for the fact that Carroll was six foot five. But MSU was dominating under the net—sucking up every rebound. At halftime it was 33–30, St. Joe’s, and Stevie realized that he was pulling for Minnesota State, which would have been
unthinkable twenty-four hours earlier. Graber had 15 of his team’s 30 points. Whiting couldn’t accuse him of not trying.