Free Last Shot by John Feinstein

was sounding lame, even to him.
    “Look, kids,” Brill said, “I don’t know what you heard, but my guess is you misunderstood. Hoops is right. There’s a lot wrong with college basketball, but game fixing may be the one thing I really
don’t
worry about. Any player who actually
could
fix a game at this level would be risking millions to do it.”
    Brill saw how serious the kids looked and backtracked a little. “If you can tell us more, we can try and check it out, though.”
    Stevie made a snap decision. “No, you’re probably right,” he said. “We only heard half the conversation.”
    “Yeah,” Susan Carol said. “We’ll see if we can find out any more and let you know if we do.”
    “Good idea,” Hoops said. “Never hurts to keep your eyes and ears open.
    “You know, if you want to hear about a real scandal, you should ask Bobby Kelleher about Brickley Shoes. Remember, Bill? Bobby caught that sneaker-company rep working behind the scenes for … Louisiana, wasn’t it?”
    “Yeah, that’s right,” said Brill. “There’s plenty of dirt to be found in basketball. But no need to hear every rotten story in one weekend. There are plenty of good stories, too.”
    “Mmm. Speaking of which, I should finish this story,” said Weiss.
    “And I have to go do a radio show,” Brill said. “Do you kids want to wait?”
    Susan Carol shook her head. “We can get back to the hotel. It’s just a short walk.”
    “You need anything, you’ll call me, right, Steve?” Weiss asked.
    Stevie nodded. Which reminded him: he hadn’t called Mr. Vernon to check on his story.
    “Are you sure you’re thirteen?” the editor asked when Stevie reached him. “This is very well done.” Stevie would have glowed with pride at the compliment if his mind hadn’t been filled with a thousand other things.
    He and Susan Carol packed up their stuff and headed out of the press room.
    “What now?” she said, once they were back in the hallway. “You don’t really think we misheard Graber and Whiting, do you?”
    “No. And we
didn’t
come in during the conversation, we heard the whole thing. I just said that because I knew they weren’t going to believe us anyway. But I have to admit, it
doesn’t
make any sense.”
    “The only thing I know is that the whole thing is sickening. They can’t get away with it.”
    “Which is why, somehow, someway, we have to stop it,”he said. “And,” he added, “it looks like we’re going to have to do it ourselves.”

    As they walked back across the bridge to the hotel, Stevie glanced at his watch. It was almost five o’clock. He had told his dad he would be back in the room by six, so he had some extra time.
    “So, what’s our next move?” Susan Carol asked as they walked into a surprisingly empty lobby.
    Stevie tried to think. “You still have those notes you made while I was writing?” he said.
    “Uh-huh, in my notebook.”
    “Okay. Let’s sit down for a minute and go over what we know for sure. Then we can work on what we need to know and how to find out.”
    She smiled. “Mr. Vernon’s right: you
are
good for thirteen.”
    He wasn’t sure if she was teasing him for telling her what the editor had said or being serious. Either way, he pointed her to two chairs in the lobby, and she pulled out her notebook.
    “All right,” she said. “Begin at the beginning. The MSU faculty rep is blackmailing MSU’s star player. We’re pretty certain he isn’t working alone.”
    “And we know he doesn’t want tomorrow’s game thrown,” Stevie said. “It has to be Monday.”
    “Preferably against Duke,” she added.
    “Could Whiting be working for Duke?” he said.
    She looked pained at the thought. “Worth writing down as a possibility,” she said.
    “Okay. What we
don’t
know is what they’ve got on Graber. What could he have done that would mean his team would forfeit games and his dad would get fired?”
    “Cheat somehow?” speculated Susan