Vanishing Act

by John Feinstein

  She gave him a playful shove. “Let’s go find out about dinner. We have a whole week to fight.”

  She was right about that. Verbal sparring with her wasn’t easy. But he had to admit it was fun.

  Dinner turned out to be pizza. Stevie, Susan Carol, and Mr. Gibson—who had ordered Stevie to call him Brendan—walked two blocks to Broadway to an old-fashioned pizza joint. They sat at a table and Brendan, who was the younger brother of Susan Carol’s mom, told Stevie a little bit about himself. It turned out that some of Susan Carol’s love of sports came from her uncle. He grew up in North Carolina but somehow became fascinated by hockey at an early age. “We had to get up at five in the morning because there were only two rinks in Greensboro and that was the only ice-time we could get,” he said. “But I loved it and stuck with it.”

  Hockey and good grades got him into Harvard. He also went to law school at Harvard and worked for a big New York firm until three years earlier. “Then I got bored and decided it was time to try something new,” he said.

  His new thing was, as he called it, “player representation,” which Stevie knew meant he was now an agent. He had used his old hockey contacts to get the business started, and he was now the CEO of a small company called ISM. The company represented basketball players, tennis players, and a handful of golfers.

  “What does ISM stand for?” Stevie asked, picking up a third slice of the pizza, which was better than anything he could remember tasting in Philadelphia. When Gibson said ISM stood for Integrity Sports Management, Stevie must have made a face.

  Susan Carol noticed. “My dad says integrity in sports management is a bigger oxymoron than jumbo shrimp. But Uncle Brendan isn’t like other agents, right, Uncle Brendan?”

  Brendan Gibson laughed. “Our business can be pretty dirty, I’ve learned that,” he said. “But we do try to do things a little bit differently. We rarely recruit big stars—we recruit young athletes who really need some help. And when they sign a contract with us, athletes agree to do a certain amount of charity work every year. How much they do depends on how much money we make for them.”

  Stevie had to admit that sounded like a pretty good idea. He had been around enough sportswriters to know that most agents couldn’t be trusted to give you an honest answer if you asked them the day of the week. Stevie remembered Dick Weiss, his escort at the Final Four, pointing out one big-time agent and saying, “If that guy tells you the sun will rise in the east tomorrow, bet everything you’ve got it’ll come up in the west.”

  Brendan Gibson seemed different from that. And, he figured, if he was Susan Carol’s uncle, he couldn’t be all bad. Plus, he was putting him up for a week.

  “We’ve got a few clients playing in the Open,” he was saying. “We’ll make plans to meet out there and I’ll introduce you to some of them.”

  “Anyone I’ve ever heard of?” Stevie asked.

  “Probably not yet. There’s one girl I have a lot of hope for, though, who you’d like. She’s just a little older than you guys, and she isn’t a star yet only because her parents have kept her in school. She only plays during the summer, unlike most teenage prodigies, who play tennis first and foremost. They won’t even hire a coach to travel with her yet. They want everything low-key for her. She’s jumped sixty spots in the rankings in seven tournaments this summer.”

  “What’s her name?”

  “Evelyn Rubin. She’s fifteen, she’s from Chicago, and she can really play. This is her first major championship, so we’re all eager to see her do well.”

  “And,” Susan Carol added, “she’s very, very pretty.”

  “Very, very pretty, huh?” Stevie said. “Like Nadia Symanova very, very pretty?”

  “Better than that,” Susan Carol said. “Symanova wears all that makeup like Anna Kournikova used to do. She’s too obvious. Evelyn doesn’t have flash and dash, but trust me, you’ll like her.”

  “When have you seen her?” Stevie said.

  “She played an exhibition in Charlotte this summer that Uncle Brendan helped organize. I met her there.”

  “So is she taller than I am?”

  “I don’t think so,” Susan Carol laughed. “I’d say she’s about five five or five six.”

  “I’m taller than that,” Stevie said defensively, although anything over five six might be stretching it.

  “I know you are,” Susan Carol said. “Why, you’re just about as tall as I am, I think.”

  “Susan Carol, it’s me, Stevie,” he said.

  “Okay, okay,” she said. “But you are catching up—seriously.”

  “And how tall are you now?” he asked.

  “Um, maybe five nine.”

  “And still growing,” Brendan put in, causing his niece to blush.

  “I hope I’m not,” Susan Carol said, the red still in her cheeks.

  “Me too,” said Stevie, and they all laughed while Stevie reached for slice number four.

  Stevie went to bed with a stomachache but slept soundly anyway and was awakened at seven-thirty by Susan Carol peeking in the door to his room to say, “Rise and shine, there’s work to be done.”

  “Why do I think that’s something your mom says to you in the morning?” Stevie said, suppressing a yawn and rubbing his eyes as he sat up.

  “Close,” she said. “My dad. Now come on!”

  She pulled the door closed. They left the apartment about an hour later. Susan Carol had told him that Bobby Kelleher had offered to give them a ride to the National Tennis Center as long as they got to the apartment he was staying in by nine o’clock. “It’s on Forty-eighth Street and Third Avenue,” she said. “Uncle Brendan says it’s too far to walk. He said if we walk over to West End Avenue, we’ll catch a cab.”

  Stevie was amazed at Susan Carol’s whistling ability. She spotted a cab turning the corner onto 78th Street and brought it to a halt with a whistle Stevie figured could be heard in Queens. “Where’d you learn that?” Stevie said as they climbed into the back of the cab.

  “My swim coach,” she said.

  Stevie had a tendency to forget that his friend was a ranked age-group swimmer. Maybe he forgot because she’d had more success athletically than he had. He was hoping to make the freshman basketball team this fall but knew it was probably a long shot.

  The cab ride didn’t take long. The cabbie worked his way over to Central Park and then went right through the park on 66th Street, no doubt saving a lot of time. He kept going east until he reached Lexington Avenue. He turned right there and made every light until he turned left on 48th Street. He pulled up in front of the apartment building about ten minutes after he had picked them up. Stevie was a bit dizzy.

  “Welcome to New York,” Susan Carol said, laughing as she handed the cabbie a $10 bill for an $8 fare.

  Stevie offered to split it, but she just said, “We’ll take turns.”

  Stevie’s dad had given him $250 in cash—telling him to use no more than $50 to buy an Open souvenir and try to get through the week without phoning home for more money. Stevie knew from his experience at the Final Four that he could easily spend the $50 on a hat and a T-shirt. Anything beyond that would undoubtedly break his budget.

  Bobby Kelleher was standing in the lobby of the apartment building talking on a cell phone when they walked in the door. He waved at the doorman to indicate Stevie and Susan Carol were with him, then smiled and held up one finger to say he would just be a minute. In many ways, Kelleher was what Stevie wanted to be. He was, Stevie guessed, about thirty-five. He was fairly tall, probably about six one, and lean—unlike a lot of the sportswriters he had met. Stevie had Googled him after the Final Four and learned that he had been a star high school basketball player who had ended up going to the University of Virginia, where he had hardly played at all. One of the quotes Stevie remembered about Kelleher’s college career went something like, “I was the only player in the history of the Atlantic Coast Conference to go four years without needing a postgame shower.” That would be a
fairly apt description, unfortunately, of Stevie’s junior high school career.

  Kelleher had spent several years covering politics and then, after leaving the Washington Herald briefly, had returned there as a sports columnist not long after breaking a major story involving a recruiting scandal. Stevie remembered some of the grim details: an assistant coach who had been a friend of Kelleher’s had been murdered and Kelleher had helped solve the crime while revealing that Brickley Shoes and the University of Louisiana were trying to buy the services of a star high school player from Lithuania. That had been a couple of years back. Stevie couldn’t remember the player’s name.

  Kelleher snapped his phone shut. “Perfect timing. I just called the garage to bring over the car,” he said. He gave Susan Carol a hug and shook hands with Stevie.

  “So, how are my two favorite media stars?” he asked.

  “Let’s put it this way,” Susan Carol answered. “We’re not expecting the Open to be anything like the Final Four.”

  Kelleher laughed. “We can only hope,” he said. He held up the phone. “Sorry about this. That was my wife. You’ll meet her this afternoon. She’s on her way up from Washington.” Stevie hadn’t been aware that Kelleher was married. In fact, he hadn’t given it any thought one way or the other.

  “Is she coming to watch?” Susan Carol asked.

  “Coming to work,” Kelleher said. “She’s a sportswriter too. Writes a column for the Washington Post.”

  That surprised Stevie. He often read the Post online so he could read Tony Kornheiser and Michael Wilbon, his heroes—mostly because they had their own TV show. He didn’t remember seeing anyone named Kelleher among the bylines.

  “Wait a minute,” Susan Carol said. “Are you married to Tamara Mearns?” Stevie knew Susan Carol read the Post too because they frequently discussed things they read there in their IMs. If Kelleher was Stevie’s role model, Tamara Mearns was Susan Carol’s. In fact, he had seen her on Wilbon and Kornheiser’s show on numerous occasions. She was smart and very good-looking.

  “Yes, I am,” Kelleher said. “Tough being the second-best writer in your own family.”

  “She is very good,” Susan Carol said, awestruck, then rushed to add, “not that you aren’t, Bobby.”

  Kelleher laughed. “Nice catch, Susan Carol. Don’t worry, I’m like Stevie—I enjoy hanging around smart women. Oh, look, here’s the car.”

  Stevie looked outside to see a black Jeep Grand Cherokee pulling up. “Is that a rental car?” he asked as they walked out the door.

  “Nope, it’s mine,” Kelleher said. “I have a five-hour rule when it comes to airports: if I can drive someplace in under five hours and avoid an airport, I do it. It’s less than four hours from our house to here, and now I’ve got the car for the whole tournament.”

  “Isn’t it expensive to park in New York?” Susan Carol said.

  “It’s ridiculous to park in New York,” Kelleher said.

  “That’s why God invented expense accounts. Plus, I always stay in this apartment during the Open, which saves the paper a lot of money. It belongs to a buddy of mine, Jeff Roddin, but he’s always out in the Hamptons until the end of the Open.”

  Susan Carol gave Stevie the front seat for the ride out to Queens. Traffic was relatively light leaving the city at the end of morning rush hour. Kelleher took the Midtown Tunnel, whisked through the toll thanks to E-ZPass—“greatest invention since the wheel,” he said—and a few minutes later a security guard was waving them into a lot right across the street from the main stadium of the National Tennis Center. “What did you have to do to get to park here?” Stevie asked. He knew how hard it was to find parking at big sporting events. Once, he and his dad had made the mistake of driving to a Philadelphia Eagles game. For twenty-five dollars they had parked a good fifteen-minute walk—in frigid weather—from the gate where they entered the stadium.

  “Actually, Stevie, it’s that Philadelphia connection I told you about,” Kelleher said as they climbed out of the car. Each of them had computer bags. Susan Carol was supposed to write a story for the Fayetteville paper every day. Stevie had no idea what—if anything—he would be writing, but he had brought his computer to be safe. “Ed Fabricius, the USTA’s public relations boss. When he was at Penn, UVA played them my junior year and I met him. When I became a reporter, he was in tennis, but he remembered me. I think he feels like we’re bonded because we’re both old basketball guys.”

  “Nice bond to have,” Susan Carol said.

  “Yeah, especially these two weeks,” Kelleher said. “Without Fab, I would either have to pay twelve bucks to park on the other side of the boardwalk near Shea Stadium—if there was space—or ride the shuttle bus every day.”

  “Is the shuttle that bad?” Stevie said.

  “It isn’t bad if it shows up and if the Fifty-ninth Street Bridge isn’t packed,” Kelleher said. “But those two things both happen almost as often as leap year.”

  While they were talking, they had walked around the stadium to a small office with a sign that said CREDENTIALS.

  Kelleher pointed them inside a small room that was teeming with people. There were signs over the various desks: MEDIA, OFFICIALS, PLAYERS. They were starting to turn left to the side of the room that had the sign for media when Stevie heard someone on the far side of the room say, “Well, this must be a big event. Bobby Kelleher’s here.”

  In the next instant, Stevie thought he heard a tiny little shriek come out of Susan Carol’s mouth. He looked in the direction of the voice and saw Andy Roddick walking toward them with a big smile on his face. “And don’t ever forget it,” Kelleher said in response to Roddick’s jibe. Roddick was putting a credential around his neck that had his picture on it and a large “A,” which was apparently the designation given to players. He and Kelleher shook hands and Kelleher turned toward Susan Carol and Stevie.

  “Andy, I want you to meet a couple of future stars in my business,” he said. “This is Susan Carol Anderson and Stevie Thomas.”

  Stevie looked at Susan Carol. He had never seen her quite so pale. The number four tennis player in the world smiled at both of them. “Aspiring reporters, huh?” He shook both their hands. “Is it too late to convince you guys to go straight and pursue real work when you get older?”

  Stevie liked him right away. This was a big star, a past U.S. Open champion, a Wimbledon finalist, and there were no airs about him—or so it seemed. Susan Carol was on the verge, he thought, of hyperventilating. “Andy, it is so nice to m-meet you again,” she stammered. “I mean, to meet you. I just feel…as if…well, as if I know you. I’ve watched you play so many times and…”

  “I hope not against Federer,” Roddick said, clearly sensing her distress. Roger Federer was the world’s number one player and Roddick’s on-court nemesis.

  “Well, yes, I mean, well, I still remember the Ferrero match like it was yesterday.”

  Stevie couldn’t help but notice that her full Southern accent was working. The “I’s” were all “aah’s” and “Ferrero” had about fourteen R’s in it. Juan Carlos Ferrero was the player Roddick had beaten in the Open final in 2003.

  Roddick laughed. “That was years ago. Back when I was young.” He turned to Kelleher. “So, you giving the kids some kind of tour?”

  “Actually, they’re working,” Kelleher said. “Susan Carol is filing for her paper back in North Carolina, and Stevie is going to help me out with news and notes the first week. You might remember them, Andy, since you’re a hoops fan. They’re the kids who saved Chip Graber at the Final Four.”

  Roddick’s eyes went wide. “That’s why the names rang a bell. Of course. Wow. I should be asking you guys for an autograph. That was great work.”

  Stevie was just about convinced Susan Carol was going to faint. “Oh, Andy, we were so lucky,” she said. “In fact, if not for Bobby, it might have turned out a lot different.”

  “All I remember,” Roddick said, “is that a bunch of sleazoids from Minnesota S
tate were trying to blackmail their best player to throw the title game and you guys stopped it.”

  “With help from a lot of people,” Stevie said, thinking if he heard one more breathless answer from Susan Carol, he would become faint.

  “Well, anyway, it is great to meet a couple of true heroes,” Roddick said. “You guys aren’t exactly your run-of-the-mill Bobby Kellehers, that’s for sure.”

  “You got that right,” Kelleher said. “You play Wednesday night, right?”

  Roddick nodded. “Yeah, long time to wait for round one. But the USTA always has to get the names on at night, right? Forget the daytime fans—this is about what TV wants.”

  “Tell me about it,” Kelleher said.

  “Well,” Roddick said, “I’m going to go hit for a while, get the feel of the place.” He shook hands with them all again, waved, and headed through the door.

  “What you just saw,” Kelleher said, “was an aberration. Most tennis players would sooner cut off their serving arm than talk to reporters. Andy’s different. He hasn’t lost all sense of reality. He’s still a pretty good guy.”

  “Not to mention being gorgeous,” Susan Carol sighed.

  “Oh God,” Stevie said. “Does this mean you’re never going to wash that hand again? I thought you might pass out for a minute there.”

  Her response was to whack him on the shoulder with that hand. “I wasn’t that breathless. Come on.”

  “Oh, Andeeee, aah am so glad to meet you….”

  Kelleher cut him off. “Cool it, Stevie,” he said. “Or we’ll head straight for the players’ lounge and I’ll introduce you to Symanova.”

  Stevie cooled it. He knew when he was overmatched.

  3: CELEBRITIES

  IT DIDN’T take them long to get their credentials. There were only a couple of people in line ahead of them and, even though Stevie and Susan Carol had to have photos taken, that only delayed them a couple of minutes.

  “Ten o’clock,” Kelleher said, looking at his watch as they walked out the door, each of them now wearing a credential with a giant “B” and the small word “Media” below it around their necks. “We’ve got an hour until they actually start playing tennis. If we’d gotten here fifteen minutes later, we would have had to wait awhile.” Stevie could see he was right. Since they had arrived, the line to pick up media credentials had grown to about twenty-five people.