Chapter 19 #3
“As long as it’s not to assist in organizational assassination,” Morrison says, smug recovering nicely, “I might even try.”
“See, I’ve found myself in a funny situation.
” Callie’s voice goes pleasant and unhurried, and I’ve heard this voice before, at a fence, right before she took my head off.
“My editor wanted an article involving certain substances, a quarterback, and an ex-player. I refused, and resigned. The article I did write doesn’t throw dirt on anyone.
It’s about what it costs to be a professional athlete, the stakes, the fear, the machine. It isn’t even really about football.”
“Noble.” He examines his cufflink.
“Yes. I’m a deeply noble person.” I have to look at the ceiling, because I know Callie Carter well enough now to recognize this exact register of sarcasm: it’s the sound the knife makes coming out of the sheath.
“In fact, I’m so noble that I’m going to give you the opportunity to choose who publishes it, since, as of Monday, I’m in the freelance space. ”
“Callie, may I call you Callie? Why on earth would I do that? My fondest professional wish is that you never again write anything within a mile of this organization.”
“You’ll do it because on Friday, the Herald runs a piece about a star quarterback partying with his old teammate over enough product to make the league’s head spin.
” She lets that land. “If my article publishes first, theirs stops being journalism and becomes Page Six garbage chasing a story that’s already been told better.
If mine doesn’t… well. Then the Herald’s version is the story. ”
“I’m not worried about the Herald.” He flicks it away. “If they publish, I have over a month of independent weekly drug tests on Nate Rivers, every one clean. Nice try.”
“That won’t work,” I say, and I smile at him, because I have been saving this for weeks, and it tastes even better than I’d imagined.
“The moment their article runs, I hold a press conference. National. And I say the drugs were mine, that I’ve been using weekly since I was twenty-five.
I’ll hand them a positive test and say the team, specifically its PR department, fabricated the clean results.
I will get high the night before if that’s what the sample requires, David.
And there will be nothing you can do about any of it. ”
I watch him try to price whether I’m bluffing. And here’s the honest ledger, which he can’t see: am I bluffing? No. I would do it, for Danny, without hesitating. Do I want to do it? God, no. Which is exactly what makes it a weapon instead of a tantrum.
“That would kill your career.” He says it evenly. Testing the material.
“Yes. And yours.” I let my voice go just as even.
“I’ve got the money to weather it. Keep my head down three years, maybe I get a commentary desk.
Maybe I coach. But the PR director who fabricated lab results for a franchise quarterback?
You’re not weathering that, David, you’re changing industries.
And before you say it: we both know you fabricated nothing, and the tests are real, and they’re clean.
But who do the good people in front of their TVs believe?
The quarterback they’ve watched every Sunday for ten years, or the man behind the curtain whose job description involves high-level theatrics to cover up scandals? ”
There’s a long pause, during which David Morrison performs the calculation of his life. I can almost hear the abacus.
“What exactly do you want?” he says, finally, to Callie, not to me, which means the math came out correctly.
“A contact. An outlet that will publish what I’ve written.”
“I want to read it first.” Of course he does. The pen, always the pen.
“You can read it.” I turn and stare at her, but she keeps her eyes on him, steady.
“After I have the contact, and after they’ve agreed to publish.
And your notes get implemented only if something is factually wrong, which it won’t be.
There’s nothing in that piece that makes this organization look bad, David.
I’ll do you one better: there’s nothing in it that makes anyone look bad. That was the entire point.”
She’s not lying. I’ve read the draft. It’s not about the Outlaws; it’s barely about football. It’s about what people will do for the thing that makes them themselves, and it happens to be sourced by three men who play football.
Morrison looks at her for one more beat. Then he pulls out his phone.
“John Woodside.” He turns the screen to her: a contact card.
“He owns the Austin Journal, mostly college sports coverage, dabbles upward when a story earns it. He hates my guts, so under no circumstances mention my name; frame it as your own approach. But the man loves publishing real stories the big outlets are too scared or too dumb for, and he will eat this one like hot cakes. If your piece has anything about the college pipeline in it, he won’t think twice. ”
I look at Callie, and Callie is already smiling, because her article has plenty: Grant’s full ride and his broken friend; Danny’s kid-math and the sister he put through school; even a paragraph of mine, about a boy from Odessa and winning it for A&M. She doesn’t have to change a word.
Morrison pockets the phone and straightens a lapel that was already straight.
“For what it’s worth,” he says, to her, dry as the Panhandle — “you were the worst-case scenario in every plan I’ve drawn for three years.
It’s almost a relief to finally lose to you in person.
” And he walks off toward the donor tables, snake into tall grass, already smiling at somebody’s checkbook.
Callie watches him go, and I watch her, the adrenaline still in her shoulders, the flush of a fourth-quarter drive executed to the yard, and I think: there she is. The journalist the hate mail almost buried. Nice to finally meet her.
“So,” I say. “Dance? There’s a DJ and everything. He’s fourteen.”
“Can’t.” She’s already got her phone out, thumb flying, eyes bright in the gym lights.
“I have a call to make and forty-eight hours to negotiate and for an editor to read my draft and edit if needed.” She looks up at me, and the grin on her face is the one from the parking lot, the one that started everything, aimed now at the whole rest of her life.
“Take me home, Rivers. I’m on deadline.”
She calls John Woodside from the passenger seat of my SUV, in a cocktail dress, at nine-forty on a Tuesday night.
The Herald has three days.
They have no idea who they’re racing.