“Everything’s going to be fine, Phyllis,” Kelleher said.
“I hope so,” Phyllis said. “If you need me…”
“Thanks, Phyllis, we know,” Kelleher said.
She followed Selig and Levin to the door.
“You like Selig?” Susan Carol asked.
“I like him a lot,” Kelleher said. “I don’t always agree with him-in fact, I disagree with him often. But I definitely like him.”
They decided to walk back to the hotel. It was a brisk night, but it wasn’t windy and it wasn’t that far. They were about halfway back when Susan Carol’s phone began playing the Duke fight song. She pulled it out of her pocket, looked at the number, and said, “It’s him.”
They all knew who “him” was without asking.
“David, I didn’t think you were ever going to call me,” she said, picking up, not in a Scarlett voice but in a pleasant one. After Doyle had talked for a few seconds, she responded.
“I think you probably have a good idea what’s in the story,” she said. “But you should see it so you understand exactly what’s at stake.”
She listened for another moment. “As long as we give your dad the chance to answer our questions, we’ve done our job. Bobby Kelleher tried to contact him today, and he said he wouldn’t talk to us. If he won’t meet with us alone, then we’ll try to talk in the clubhouse tomorrow night. And if he ducks that, we’ll try one more time. But if all we get is ‘No comment,’ we’ve still done all we need to do.”
She pulled the phone away from her ear suddenly and Stevie could hear shouting coming from the other end.
“How about one o’clock tomorrow in Faneuil Hall?” she said. “We’ll get pizza and meet you in the dining area.”
“Crowded is what we want, David,” she said in response to his next comment.
She listened one more time. “Of course I’m bringing Stevie. You should bring Morra. Maybe she can apologize for those lies your dad was telling about Stevie last night.”
She looked at the phone and smiled. “He hung up.”
“You think they’ll show?” Stevie said.
“They’ll show,” Susan Carol said. “The question is, will they take our bait?”
“Well, as of this moment we have no bait,” Kelleher said. “You guys need to get to bed so you can get an early start on writing this ‘story.’”
Stevie and Susan Carol agreed to meet for breakfast at eight o’clock so they would have plenty of time to work on the story before the one o’clock meeting. Stevie picked at his French toast while staring out at the harbor. It was a crisp, gorgeous New England fall day.
“I think I could live here,” he said to Susan Carol.
“Come back in January and tell me if you still feel that way,” she said.
He knew she was right, although Philadelphia wasn’t exactly Fort Lauderdale that time of year either.
They went to her room after breakfast and by eleven o’clock had a story they were ready to show Kelleher and Mearns. It was long-way long, close to three thousand words-but it seemed impossible to Stevie to explain everything without writing that long. Since they didn’t have a printer available, Kelleher sat with their laptop, with Tamara reading over his shoulder.
“Well?” Susan Carol said when they were done.
“To be honest, you haven’t got it,” Tamara said. “This would never get in the paper because it’s completely unclear if Doyle is anything more than someone who made a horrible mistake and paid a huge price for it. It’s also not clear if Molloy is the bad guy or if no one is the bad guy. You can’t say for sure whether or not the accident happened because he was drinking. It seems clear there was some kind of police cover-up, but not what they were covering up or why.”
“All of which doesn’t matter right now,” Kelleher said. “Tamara’s right, of course, but we aren’t selling this to editors or lawyers, we’re selling it to Morra and David. If they believe we’re prepared to print this, they might convince their dad to talk to you before it goes in the paper.”
“In fact,” Mearns said, “you should add a sentence saying he refused to comment, to show them that’s how it will look if he doesn’t talk.”
Kelleher and Mearns made a few more changes: they wanted to pump up the notion that Doyle had lied on some level when he told Stevie the week before that his wife had been killed by a drunk driver.
Then Kelleher also added:
If there is one thing clear in the police report, it is that only one driver was involved in the accident that killed Analise Doyle. If, as Doyle said a week ago, she was killed by a drunk driver, was he saying that he was the drunk driver responsible for his wife’s death?
And while Doyle has said he missed the rest of that season due to injuries suffered in the accident, two police officers said this week that he went directly to an alcohol rehabilitation clinic after the accident.
Doyle refused comment when asked for further details this week.
Mearns shook her head reading that. “You know that wouldn’t make it past a lawyer in a million years,” she said.
“Yes,” Kelleher said. “I know. But I doubt that the Doyle kids do. Felkoff might advise Doyle that it’s libel, but we’ve got both Hatley and Molloy on the record, so it’s not so cut-and-dried.”
Stevie and Susan Carol went downstairs to the hotel’s business center to print out some copies of the story. They gave copies to Kelleher and Mearns and left the hotel at about twelve-thirty, wanting time to eat and be ready before the Doyles arrived. Stevie was both nervous and hungry. He was also wishing they were just taking a walk on this beautiful fall day.
“It’s such a nice day, I’d even go for a walk on the Freedom Trail with you.”
“You know, you might actually enjoy it,” Susan Carol said. “Wouldn’t you at least like to see the church where Paul Revere told them, ‘One if by land, and two if by sea’?”
“I think I’d rather go see Harvard Stadium,” he said. “Oldest in the country, you know.”
She groaned. They ordered their pizza and walked to the dining area. Stevie was considering going back for a third slice when he saw David and Morra approach. Neither was carrying any kind of food. Clearly, they were here strictly for business.
“Make this fast,” David said by way of a greeting.
“Nice to see you too,” Stevie said, going very quickly from nervous to annoyed.
“Have you got the story?” Morra asked.
Susan Carol reached into her purse and pulled out two copies of the story.
David’s and Morra’s eyes narrowed as they read. At one point David said, “How can you say my dad had no comment when you haven’t asked him about any of this?”
“Bobby Kelleher left him a message yesterday and called John Dever, who said he wouldn’t talk to us,” Susan Carol said. “Obviously, if he talks to us, we’ll change that. We can change anything. Right now these are the facts as we know them.”
“This is so unfair!” Morra screamed.
“Then tell your dad to talk to us so we can make it fair,” Stevie said. “He started all of this by saying a drunk driver killed your mom.”
“You’re nothing but a self-righteous asshole, Thomas!” David Doyle said, leaning close to Stevie so he wasn’t heard by everyone around them. He appeared to be about eleven feet tall at that moment, but Stevie wasn’t going to back down.
Stevie said, “You’re just pissed because you’ve tried every dirty trick to keep us from getting this story, and we got it anyway.”
“No you didn’t. You’ve got nothing!” David said, shoving Stevie so hard that he tumbled backward and fell into someone at the next table.
“Hey!” Stevie heard the person shout. Jumping up, Stevie ran straight at David, and the two of them went flying, landing on the ground with Stevie on top. Doyle was stronger than he was, and he could feel him rolling over to get on top of him. That would not be good. He pulled a hand free and swung a fist at David, catching him on the side of the head. He felt a stinging sensation in his hand and then heard loud voices saying, “Break this up, break this up!”