Last Shot (10 page)

Stevie and Susan Carol stood up to go.

“Wait—how are you getting there? When will you be back?” Stevie’s dad asked.

Good questions. There was no way to know how long they would need to accomplish—or not accomplish—their mission.

As always, Susan Carol had it covered. “There’s a shuttle service from here to the Hilton. We’ll be fine. And how about we all meet back here around lunchtime. Like noon?”

“Okay,” Reverend Anderson said. “But remember, I have to be at the church at two o’clock.”

“Got it.” She gave her father a kiss. “I’ll call if we’re held up.” They headed for the escalator that would take them to the lobby.

“Church on Saturday?” Stevie asked as they made their way down.

“Yup. He started a Saturday Bible study group about two years ago for people who were addicted to sports, and it’s sort of taken off around the country. He’s visiting the New Orleans group while he’s here.”

He looked at her to see if she was joking. She didn’t appear to be.

They were walking through the lobby with Susan Carol clearly leading the way. “Do you know where we’re going?” he said, deciding a change of subject was safest.

“Yes,” she said. “I asked for directions when we got back last night. The Marriott’s on Canal and Chartres. It’s kind
of a long walk from here, but there really is a shuttle to the Hilton that puts us only about four blocks away.”

That was fine with Stevie. As eager as he was to get the morning started, he was already dreading their arrival at the hotel. How were they going to find Chip Graber? What if they got arrested? That would give Reverend Anderson something to talk about at Bible study.

Once they were on the shuttle bus, Stevie asked if Susan Carol had a plan.

“It’s hard to know until we get there. There probably won’t be any way to get onto the floors where the team is staying—unless you have some kind of proof you’re with the team.”

“Okay, how do we get that?” he asked.

“Beats me,” she said. “That’s why I think we have to check the place out and then come up with a plan.”

Stevie would have much preferred having a plan going in, but he had nothing. It wasn’t like they could use a house phone in the lobby, call up to his room, and say, “Chip, we’re here, what room are you in?” They were too young to be delivery people. Too young to be room service or housekeeping. And darn, he’d left his suction cups at home, so they couldn’t scale the building.… Susan Carol was right. They would have to find out what they were up against, then decide what to do.

They got off the shuttle at the Hilton and started to walk. The streets weren’t as choked with people as they had been the night before, when Stevie and his dad had taken the taxi back to the hotel, but they were crowded. Every
street corner had vendors selling “official NCAA merchandise.” Stevie remembered reading an item in the paper about how part of the NCAA’s deal with the city of New Orleans included a promise from the police to arrest anyone selling nonofficial merchandise. Stevie glanced at the prices as they walked by one official vendor and noticed that the T-shirts were going for twenty-five dollars. No wonder the NCAA wanted to make everyone buy their stuff.

Stevie could feel his heart starting to pound a little bit as they approached the hotel. There were people milling around everywhere and Stevie noticed a couple of large men in sunglasses with little wires coming out of their ears. Security people. “Just keep walking as if we belong inside the hotel,” Susan Carol said quietly as they approached the entrance. Stevie tried not to look too closely at the security men. They weren’t stopping people, though, just kind of standing around looking the crowd over. Stevie and Susan Carol walked in without anyone saying anything. Stevie breathed a sigh of relief. At least they were inside.

The lobby was a madhouse. Almost everyone seemed to be wearing purple and white. Clearly, this wasn’t just the MSU team hotel but also the hotel where all their fans were staying.

“This is why Coach K told me Duke doesn’t stay in the assigned hotel,” Susan Carol said, sweeping a hand around the lobby. “He doesn’t want his players having to walk through all their fans every time they leave their room.”

Stevie could see where that might be a problem. “Bad for
us, I think,” he said. “Means the players are even less likely to show up in the lobby.”

“Maybe. Or we could make it work for us,” she said. “Let’s see what this place looks like.”

Before Stevie could ask her what she meant, she was working her way around the lobby. The front desk was to the right of the door, but there was no point in going there. They could see an elevator bank a few steps beyond the front desk. “Just keep walking until somebody stops us,” Susan Carol said.

The stopping point was at the elevator bank. There were two more security guards there and a large sign that said
HOTEL
GUESTS
ONLY
.
PLEASE
HAVE
KEY
READY
FOR
INSPECTION
.

Susan Carol didn’t hesitate as they approached the checkpoint. “Morning,” she said, sounding cool as could be, waving a hand at the guards as if she’d walked past them a dozen times already.

“Miss, I need to see your key,” one of the guards said, taking a quick step to get between Susan Carol and the elevators.

Susan Carol put a hand up to her mouth as if she had done something awful. “Oh my goodness,” she said, her voice suddenly Southern. Stevie thought he counted about six syllables in the word “goodness.”

“Steve, did you remember to bring a key? I just plain forgot maahn.”

Stevie stumbled for a second before picking up his cue. “I thought
you
had it,” he said.

Susan Carol looked imploringly at the guard, eyes opening wide. “Sir, I am
so
sorry. My brother and I
both
forgot our
keys. I can’t believe we were so stupid. I promise it will never happen again.”

For a minute Stevie thought the wide-eyed-Southern-girl charm was going to work. But the guard said, “I really am sorry, but we just can’t let anyone up without their key. If you just go to the front desk, tell the people there what room you’re in, and show them some ID …”

“I don’t have any ID!” Susan Carol practically shrieked. Stevie thought she was going to cry.

“Well, you can call up to your room and have someone come down.…”

“Our dad’s not in the room. He went out for a run, a long run. We don’t know when he’ll be back.”

“Well then, if you ask for the manager and tell him the problem, maybe he can help.” He smiled again. “Because even if I let you by, miss, if there’s no one in the room, and you haven’t got a key, how are you going to get in?”

Great, Stevie thought. They had found the one security man on earth with common sense. Susan Carol actually had tears in her eyes.

“I really
am
sorry,” the security man said. “I’m sure the manager can help you, or you can wait here in the lobby until your dad comes back.”

Susan Carol looked at Stevie as if he might have an idea. He had nothing. “Okay,” Susan Carol sighed. “Thank you.”

“You’re very welcome. Good luck.”

They walked away. “Good try,” Stevie said.

“Thought I had him there for a minute,” she said, any sign of near hysteria long gone.

“Well, don’t feel too bad,” he said. “If we had gotten through, that still wouldn’t have put us on the right floor.”

“I’d guess they’re on the top floor or close to it,” she said.

That made sense. He wished he had thought of it.

“Come on, let’s see what else we can find down here,” she said. “I never thought it would be that easy anyway.”

They began a tour of the lobby. There was a large bar opposite the front desk, with people sitting everywhere, looking up at various TV sets that were tuned to ESPN. Vitale, Fowler, and Phelps were now on some sort of set and, not surprisingly, Vitale was talking. Stevie couldn’t hear what he was saying, but he was waving his arms while Phelps and Fowler watched with bemused looks on their faces. Next to the lobby bar was another official NCAA merchandise stand. This time Stevie noticed the price of the caps—twenty-two bucks.

They kept walking. On the left side of the lobby in the back was another entrance from a side street. Stevie could see cars pulling up to the door when the glass doors opened as they walked by. There was also a restaurant back there and a line of people waiting to get in for breakfast.

“Any ideas?” he said.

“Not so far,” she said. Then she pointed across the lobby.

“There’s an escalator over there. Let’s see if we can get up one floor. Maybe there are meeting rooms up there or something. We might get lucky.”

Given the luck they were having so far, Stevie didn’t see any reason not to try the escalator. They picked their way through still more people, past a Starbucks coffee stand
where there was also a line, and up the escalator. It was relatively quiet on the mezzanine level. Susan Carol had been right: there were meeting rooms, but they all appeared empty. They checked some of the signs to see if, by some chance, one said “Minnesota State Purple Tide.” Nothing.

“We’re getting nowhere fast,” he said.

“Don’t give up yet,” she said.

They walked past another elevator bank, which, of course, had security people and the same sign about needing a key. “We could try those guys,” he said. “Your act might work on them.”

She shook her head. “Last resort. We don’t want word getting out around the hotel that two kids are trying to crash. Then we have no chance.”

They rounded a corner and saw a large banner on the wall that said
KFPT—ANCHOR STATION FOR THE MINNESOTA STATE PURPLE TIDE RADIO NETWORK
. There was a table set up in front of the banner with microphones and some radio equipment. There was a man seated behind the table fiddling with the equipment. With no place else to go at the moment, Susan Carol and Stevie walked over to the radio setup.

Stevie had no idea what they were going to say to the man or even why they would say anything to him, except that he appeared to have at least a distant connection to MSU. Susan Carol, naturally, knew just what to say.

“Are you one of the Minnesota State broadcasters?” she said, sounding slightly breathless again.

The man looked up at her and smiled. “No, honey,” he said. “I’m just the engineer for the network.”

Susan Carol didn’t miss a beat. “Wow,” she said. “An engineer. That must be cool. Are you guys broadcasting from here today?”

The man looked at his watch. “In just about an hour,” he said. “If I can get this equipment to work.”

“Do you ever get to meet the players?” Susan Carol asked.

Again, the man smiled benevolently at the pretty girl asking questions. “I know all of them,” he said. “We travel with the team and interview the players and coaches before and after games.”

Susan Carol now looked as if she had just met either the president or the Pope. “Goodness. Will any of them be on this morning?”

He laughed. “No, not this morning. Kind of a big game tonight, you know. We’ll have one of the assistants on at some point, we don’t know when. And we have a couple of reporters coming over. But no players today.” He looked at Susan Carol, who now looked very, very sad. “Bet you’d like to meet Chip Graber, huh?”

“It would be the happiest moment of my life,” Susan Carol said. Stevie noticed that she had abandoned the thick Southern accent. “I am a
huge
Purple Tide fan. My name is Susan Carol. Susan Carol Anderson.” She put out her hand.

He took it and said, “Susan Carol, nice to meet you. I’m Jerry Ventura—no, no relation to the former governor.”

Ventura then shook hands with Stevie. “And you are?”

“Stevie.” There, that was his brilliant entry into the conversation.

“So, where are you kids from?” Ventura asked.

“We live in Duluth now,” Susan Carol said. “But we’ve only lived there a couple years. We lived in North Carolina until then.”

“I thought I heard a little bit of an accent in your voice,” Ventura said.

“Stevie here is still kind of a Duke fan, but I’m for MSU all the way.”

“I am
not
,” Stevie protested.

Susan Carol just smiled. “So, Mr. Ventura, what do you think—will it be Duke and MSU in the final?”

“Yeah, that’s where my money’d be.”

They chatted about the team’s chances while Stevie marveled at Susan Carol’s gift of gab. She had, for lack of a better word, an
adultness
about her that he knew he couldn’t touch. As if to prove his point, Jerry Ventura drew him into the conversation by saying, “So, Stevie, how much younger are you than your sister?”

Stevie knew this was his moment to play along. “Three years,” he said without hesitating. “I’m in the eighth grade.”

If the idea that Susan Carol was an eleventh grader threw Jerry at all, he didn’t show it.

“So, Mr. Ventura, what hotel do all you radio people stay in?” she said, without giving him a chance to respond to Stevie’s claim of a three-year age difference.

“Oh, we’re here,” he said. “And call me Jerry. I’m not that old, you know.”

Stevie began to get an idea of where Susan Carol was going with this. Her smile was now so bright he thought he
might need sunglasses. “You
really
get to stay here with all the players?” she said. “That must be so cool! You’re right on the same floor with them and everything?”

“No, not the same floor,” he said. “They’ve got all the players and coaches way up on the top floors—forty and forty-one. But we’re on the concierge floor, the sixteenth. The rooms are really nice.”

“Oh, I’ve heard about that,” Susan Carol said. “Don’t they have a really nice lounge where you can get drinks and things?”

“Oh yeah,” Jerry said importantly. “The breakfasts are great.”

“Speaking of which, I’m thirsty. Stevie, maybe we should go back down to the restaurant and try again. There was the longest line before—you wouldn’t believe …”

Jerry smiled at Susan Carol. “Look, if you kids just want a drink, you can go on up to the concierge lounge and get something there.”