Well, who was going to have the last laugh now?
Jimmy Hoch’s dad, a top headhunter in New York, had lined him up for an interview today, and to put it simply, Bob Baime nailed it. Crushed it like an empty soda can. The guy doing the interview had been eating out of Big Bob’s hand. Sure, the call hadn’t come in yet—Bob kept eyeing the phone on the sideline—but it wouldn’t be long now. He was going to land that job, maybe even insist on a better buy-in, and then, well, he’d officially be back. Wait till he told Melanie about the interview. She would finally put out again, maybe throw on that little pink thing he loved so much.
Back on the court, Bob got the ball, drove hard to the hoop, and scored the winning basket.
Oh yeah, Bob was back and better than ever. Man, he wished that he had felt this way the other night when that prig Adam Price was riding him over picking Jimmy Hoch for the lacrosse team. For crying out loud, all three of those kids sucked. They’d all end up being glorified towel boys. Who cared that a tenth of a point assigned by some bored evaluators who only paid attention to the good players separated them? He wasn’t about to blow this big job interview. Not that it should matter. It wasn’t like him and Jimmy Hoch’s dad had any kind of quid pro quo, but hey, life was about mutual back-scratching. Sports were a life lesson, right? Kids might as well learn that now too.
Bob’s team was about to take the floor for a new game when his phone rang.
He grabbed the phone fast, his hand actually shaking as he checked out the incoming number.
GOLDMAN.
So this was it.
“Bob, you ready?”
“Start the game without me, fellas. I have to take this.”
Bob headed out into the corridor for privacy. He cleared his throat and smiled, because if you smiled for real, that confident tone would even travel through the phone.
“Hello?”
“Mr. Baime?”
“Speaking.”
“This is Jerry Katz with Goldman.”
“Yes, hey, Jerry. Nice to hear from you.”
“I’m afraid that it isn’t good news, Mr. Baime.”
Bob felt his heart plummet. Jerry Katz said some more stuff about how competitive the market was and how much he enjoyed talking with him, but the words started to blur into a barely audible haze. Jerry, the scrawny idiot, was still jabbering away. Darkness seeped into Bob’s chest, and as it did, a memory came over him. He thought again about the other night, about Adam openly challenging him on selecting Jimmy Hoch. It had, Bob realized now, surprised him in more ways than one. First, what business was it of his, a guy who wasn’t even going to coach the travel team, which players Bob selected? Adam and Corinne’s kid was on the team. So what difference could Jimmy Hoch make to him?
But more important, especially now that he thought about it: How did Adam recover so quickly from the devastating news that he had received just minutes earlier at the American Legion bar?
Jerry still talked. Bob still smiled. Smiled and smiled. Smiled like an idiot, and when he finally said, “Well, I appreciate you calling me and letting me know,” Bob bet that he sounded like a truly confident idiot.
He hung up.
“Bob, you ready?”
“Come on, man, we need you.”
And they did. Maybe, Bob thought, that was what the other night had been with Adam. In the same way Bob would go back on the court and find an outlet for his rage, maybe Adam had attacked him for picking Jimmy because he, too, needed the outlet.
What, Bob wondered, would be Adam’s reaction if he knew the full truth about his wife? Not the betrayal stuff he thought he knew now. But the full truth.
Well, Bob thought as he jogged back toward the court, he’d find out soon enough, wouldn’t he?
Chapter 22
It was two in the morning when Adam remembered something—or, to be more precise, someone.
Suzanne Hope from Nyack, New York.
She had been the one to steer Corinne to the Fake-A-Pregnancy website. That was where this all started, right? Corinne meets Suzanne. Suzanne fakes a pregnancy. Corinne, for some reason, decides to do the same. Maybe. And then the stranger shows up.
He brought up the search engine on his smartphone and typed in Suzanne Hope Nyack, New York. He figured that this would probably not work, that this woman had probably given a fake name or fake town to go along with her fake pregnancy, but almost immediately he found hits.
The White Pages listed a Suzanne Hope of Nyack, New York, as being between the ages of thirty and thirty-five. There was both a telephone number and a street address given. Adam was about to write them down when he remembered something Ryan had taught him a few weeks back—pressing two buttons on the phone simultaneously so it takes a screenshot. He tried it, checked the image in the photo app, and saw that it was legible.