"If you'll come by the University, I'll introduce you to our President," Morton said. "He will be more effective in seeing that you get what you need."
The waiter came with the bill, and Morton discreetly signed it.
"Perhaps you could meet me at the President's office tomorrow," Morton said, "and we can talk about details and meet President Cort."
"What excitement," I said.
2
PRESIDENT Adrian Cort was a tall guy with a big Adam's apple and very energetic eyes. He told me I'd have full access to any information or facility I needed at the University, though he hoped I would find no need to be intrusive, and that the students and Coach Dunham both would be treated respectfully. I promised to do my best. He asked if I wanted someone to show me around the campus, and I said I'd rather wander on my own. Then we all said good bye. Morton and Cort called each other Baron and Adrian.
Alone at last, I strolled over toward the campus police station, walking extra softly in case Coach Dunham was in the area. From a cop at the desk I got a map of the campus, and took a one-hour stroll of orientation. Taft University occupies about forty acres west of Boston in a town called Walford. It had grown rapidly since the Second World War and the core campus of ivy-covered brick buildings had been extensively augmented with a variety of architectural styles that blended like pieces from different puzzles. The dominant feel was of brutish slabs and confusion.
I found the Taft Daily Collegian in the Student Union Building on the second floor, looking out over the long narrow quadrangle that led to the angular glass and granite library. It was early afternoon. The thaw had departed and the hard sun was without warmth as it glinted on the snowy campus.
The newspaper office was busy. It looked like a small daily newspaper office, which it was, except that the staff was younger. A young woman wearing pink Reeboks directed me to the sports department in the far corner of the room, where three desks were pushed together to define a sort of horseshoe space underneath sports glossies stuck to the wall with map tacks. Most of the photographs had curled up around the single tack that held them. At one of the desks a young blond kid with a ragged crew cut was working on an Apple word processor. He wore jeans and a white shirt buttoned to the neck and he kept typing when I arrived at his desk. I consulted the list of names that President Cort had given me. Actually Cort hadn't given me the list. He'd spoken to his secretary and she had given it to me.
"Barry Ames?" I said.
The kid didn't look up. He kept typing, his eyes on the screen, but he paused long enough to raise his right hand for a moment and waggle it at me in a gesture that said, wait. He continued typing for maybe another full minute while I waited. Then he paused and looked up.
"Who was it you wanted?" he asked.
"Barry Ames," I said.
"That's me," he said. "Sorry to put you on hold like that, but when you're hot, you like to get it down before you lose it."
"Certainly," I said. "My name is Spenser, and the University has asked me to look into the question of point shaving by your basketball team."
"Are you a cop?"
"Private," I said.
"Holy shit, a private eye?"
"You wrote the column in which the allegation about point shaving was made, Barry?" It was the oldest of cop tricks. Use the guy's first name when you talk to him. He doesn't know yours, puts him slightly on the defensive.
"Why do you want to know?" Barry said.
"Because I want to know where you heard the rumor."
"That's privileged," Barry said.
"Barry, I'm too old to listen to horse shit. You made an allegation of criminal behavior based on hearsay. That in itself is irresponsible, maybe libelous."
"And maybe I want to talk to my lawyer," Barry said. Calling him by his first name had really softened him up.
"Let me put this another way," I said. "You printed a rumor that your team was shaving points. What did you expect would happen next?"
"That someone would investigate, for crissake." Barry was outraged.
"Right," I said.
Barry opened his mouth, and then paused, and then did a smart thing: he closed it.
I nodded encouragingly.
"Well, I still can't tell you my sources," Barry said.
"Is it a reliable source?" I said.
"It was a girl who dated one of the team guys-"
"She should know," I said.
"She didn't say she knew. She just said she'd heard somebody sort of hint at it, you know, joking."
"Who was she dating?"
Barry shook his head. "I won't tell you. I'm not going to get her in trouble."
"Why would she get in trouble?" I said. Barry shook his head some more.
"At the moment no one's talking about prosecuting on this thing, but if they do, and your rumor is correct, then you're going to get asked this question again under the threat of a contempt citation," I said. "Then it's grown up time, kid."
"You think I'm a kid and a kid doesn't know shit, don't you," Barry said.
"Exactly," I said.
A number of Barry's colleagues had gathered silently about during this interplay. None of them seemed to be rooting for me.
"Whyn't you get off his case, Mister," said a young woman with very large pink-rimmed glasses.
"You happen to know the source of his rumor?" I said.
"No, but if I did, I wouldn't tell you."
I looked at the rest of the kids, slowly, one at a time. Nobody said anything.
"What's too bad," I said, "is you've fastened on to the wrong principle. The heart of the business is not protecting your sources. It's spreading the truth."
None of them said anything except one in the back, who said, "Yeaa!" And another kid said, "It's Lou Grant."
Then a girl giggled and three or four others laughed. It is hard to remain dignified when being laughed at by a group of adolescents. I succeeded, however. I left without giving them the finger.
3
THE "Taft Basketball Program" looks like Life magazine. It's in full color. It has biographies of all the players on both sides, pictures of everybody, individual statistics, and a history of the rivalry, which was Georgetown on a program Cort's secretary had given me. I had it rolled up and stuck in my left hip pocket when I drifted into the Taft field house and took a seat in the empty stands above the basketball court, put my feet up on the seats in front of me and spread out to watch the Taft Falcons practice. They were running switch drills in opposite corners of the floor under a couple of assistant coaches, and the head coach, Dixie Dunham, moved back and forth, commenting, correcting, reviling.
"Awright," Dunham was screaming. "Everybody around me down here." The group at the far left of the court came down to the far right end where Dunham was standing.
"Okay," Dunham said, "Dwayne, you got the ball. You pass off to Dennis, come down here, set the pick. Dennis, you go off and pick to the right. Now ... okay, . . . Robert, what do you do?"
"Fight through the pick, Coach."
"And if you do, and Kenny thinks you're going to switch, what happens?"
There was silence for a moment.
"What the fuck happens?" Dunham's voice went up an octave.
"Both guys guarding Dennis," Dwayne said. "I roll to the basket."
"That's right. Come on, boys, is Dwayne the only one of you thinking? So what do you learn from that? What's the lesson we take? What does my system say about that?"
"We got to talk to each other," Robert said.
"Check," Dunham said, "and double check. That, Robert, is the sixty-four-thousand-dollar key. You got to talk. I don't care whether you switch, or you fight through the pick. Both of you got to know what the other guy's doing, otherwise, what? Kenny, what?"
"Two for them, Coach."
"You bet your ass." Dunham clapped his hands. "Okay, Frank, Billy, take them back, let's work on it some more."
Dunham was a legend. Certainly he was one of the two or three best college basketball coaches in the country. He was also a man of legendary temper and intensity and had sat out a five-game suspension a couple of years ago when he had gone into the stands after a heckler. Since he was six feet five and weighed maybe 225, when he went after the heckler it constituted a genuine threat. According to the program he'd been a small forward at Canisius, had averaged eight points, three assists and four rebounds a game, in a college career during which Canisius had won seventy and lost eighteen. He'd coached at Seton Hall, and then at Marquette, before he'd come to Taft, and he'd always won.