Vanishing Act (8 page)

“So what do you think is up?” Susan Carol asked.

Ross's eyes were darting all over the place now. “I'm not sure. But here's the one thing I'm convinced of, and I'm not the only one who thinks this: if SMG says it's the SVR, they're probably the only people you can be sure
didn't
do it.”

Stevie and Susan Carol looked at each other.

“Okay, then who?”

Ross shook his head. “That I don't know. But if I was trying to figure it out, the first thing I'd do is look at a draw sheet.”

“Why?” they both asked.

“Someone benefits if Symanova is gone. They can only wait two days before they have to default her and move on with the tournament. Most people think she should have been defaulted already. I'd sure like to know which player that helps the most.”

“Joanne Walsh?” Stevie said.

“No,” Ross said firmly. “She wins one match, it's worth a few thousand dollars to her. But she isn't going any further than that. Look a round or two—or more—down the road. Symanova is ready to win. She's been the best player all summer. Someone is afraid of her. If you figure out who it is, I think you figure out who kidnapped her.”

“You mean a player had her kidnapped?” Susan Carol said.

“I doubt it,” Ross said as the umpire's voice told them it was now 2–0 Johansson in the second set. “Oh God, Mr. Nocera's going to blame me because Nick got broken. No, not a player, probably. An agent maybe. A clothing company rep with a big contract at stake if his player wins here. Even a national federation. It could be anyone.”

“Do you represent any women in contention here?” Stevie asked.

Ross actually smiled. “I only rep men,” he said. “I have an alibi.”

“You might be the only one,” Susan Carol said.

“Too true,” he said.

“Game Johansson,” they heard from inside. “He leads 3–0.”

“Oh my God!”
Ross screamed. “I'm fired. Gotta go.”

He bolted back to the court.

Stevie looked at Susan Carol. “Did that help us?” he asked.

She smiled. “Only if being totally confused helps,” she said. “Come on. I left my draw sheet in the media center. Let's go find another one.”

8:
YOU CAN
NOT
BE SERIOUS

STEVIE AND
Susan Carol walked back out into the plaza, which was now half-empty. Someone with a megaphone was urging everyone to exit to the right and reminding them that once they left the grounds they would not be allowed back unless they had tickets for the evening session.

They found a stack of draw sheets next to a stand where someone was trying to sell programs. Stevie couldn't help but notice the price: fifteen dollars. Remarkably, the draw sheets were free. Susan Carol picked one up and said, “Let's go sit at a table in the food court. It's not very busy right now.”

She was right. The afternoon crowd was leaving and the evening crowd hadn't been let in yet since there were still afternoon matches being completed. As soon as they sat down, Stevie was almost overwhelmed by the smell of hamburgers being grilled a few yards away from them. “I'm starving,” he said. “I'm getting a hamburger.”

“You just ate one a couple of hours ago.”

“I know. My mother says it's a thirteen-year-old-boy thing. I get hungry very quickly. You want anything?”

“Bottle of water?” she said.

He walked over to a counter and asked for a hamburger and two bottles of water. All around him were other counters offering food. Stevie noticed a sushi bar, a place selling lobster and shrimp sandwiches, and another counter offering cookies and ice cream. The man he had ordered from nodded at him and said, “That'll be eighteen dollars.”

Stevie was stunned. “Eighteen dollars for a hamburger and two waters?” he asked.

The man shrugged. “Yup,” he said. “That's all it is. Nine dollars for the burger and four-fifty a pop for the waters.”

“Hang on,” Stevie said. “I had a hamburger in the media dining room a while ago and it was only eight-fifty.” He realized as soon as he said it how ridiculous it sounded to say that a hamburger was “only eight-fifty.”

“I guess they give the media a discount,” the guy said. “You want the food or not?”

“I want it,” Stevie said, digging into his pocket for the money. The man gave him a tray to carry everything on for no extra charge. Stevie walked back to Susan Carol, who was intently studying the draw sheet, and handed her her water. “Drink it all,” he said. “It costs about fifty cents a sip.”

“Welcome to New York,” she said with a laugh.

“You find anything?” he asked, sitting down and digging in to the hamburger, which, regardless of price, was delicious.

“Don't know,” she said. “She's supposed to play the winner of a match between two nonranked players in the second round, and then if your new girlfriend Evelyn Rubin wins her next match, she could play Symanova in the third round.”

“You think your uncle Brendan kidnapped Symanova?” Stevie said.

“Oh sure, very likely. She's probably back at Uncle Brendan's apartment right now. It gets more interesting later in the tournament. She could play Serena Williams in the fourth round. I doubt the Williamses are all that concerned with Symanova since they're already making millions in endorsements and are about as famous as you can get.”

“Yeah,” Stevie said. “Once you've got your own reality show, what's left to accomplish in life?”

She gave him a look but nodded in agreement. “Have you ever seen it?” she asked.

“If a reality show ever appeared on a TV in our house, I think my father would blow up the set,” Stevie said. “He says reality shows are proof that our country is in deep trouble.”

“There's more proof than that,” Susan Carol said. “Back to the draw. She's a long way from it, but she could play Elena Makarova in the quarters.”

Stevie knew the name. “Another Russian,” he said. “Another
young
Russian.”

Susan Carol nodded. “She's two years older than Symanova, but she was a late bloomer. I remember reading that some people think she's a better player but not as pretty, so Nadia gets all the magazine covers. Makarova made the final in Paris this year.”

“Hmmm.” Stevie was looking at the side of the draw sheet where the seedings were listed. Makarova was the number three seed on the women's side. “Makarova's seeded higher than Symanova.”

“And yet receives only a fraction of the attention. And, unlike Symanova, she and her family still live in Russia. Of course, if that's a factor, it could bring the SVR back into play. It makes sense they would want to see Makarova do better than Symanova, even if she wasn't filing for citizenship.”

“How old was Symanova when her family moved to California?”

“I think eleven. Might have been ten. It was young enough that she speaks English with almost no accent.”

“How's Makarova's English?”

“Good question. I'm not sure I've ever heard her talk. I think we need to find out more about her.”

“More about who?” a voice said from behind Stevie.

He turned and saw Evelyn Rubin standing behind him with that spectacular smile on her face. He certainly wasn't unhappy to see her, but he was surprised that she kept turning up.

Susan Carol seemed to read his mind. “Hey, Evelyn, how are you?” she said. “Stevie said he ran into you in the players' lounge and that you and Uncle Brendan were getting ready to head out. Are you stalking my friend?”

Evelyn Rubin laughed. “Well, he
is
awfully cute,” she said. “Do you guys mind if I join you?”

Stevie knew his face had turned bright red. He could tell both girls were getting quite a kick out of his obvious embarrassment.

Evelyn sat down next to Stevie. “Brendan didn't realize I have to play doubles tonight,” she said. “I never left. But if I spent one more minute in that players' lounge, I thought I'd lose my mind. So I decided to go for a walk.”

“What's so bad about the players' lounge?” Susan Carol said.

“Too crowded. Too many people who look bored out of their minds. Too noisy to read a book.” She held up a copy of
Wuthering Heights.
“Summer reading for school. I've been traveling so much, I never got a chance to read this and school starts next week. I thought I'd sit out here and read, until I saw you guys.”

“Why
does
everyone look so bored in there?” Stevie said, remembering all the blank looks he had encountered.

“They
are
bored. They have to show up way before their matches start in case there's a short match or a default or”—she paused and smiled—“a kidnapping.” She made sure that got a laugh before continuing. “Most of them are high school dropouts who don't know about anything but tennis. So if they aren't playing or practicing, there's really not anything for them to do except watch television or play a video game. But the tournament's always on in the lounge and tennis players almost never watch tennis—it makes them nervous—so they just sit around looking bored.”

“Doesn't sound like much of a life, does it?” Susan Carol said.

“It isn't. I remember reading in a book about the tour one time that out of all the players in the French Open one year,
two
had visited the Louvre—
ever.
Can you imagine going to Paris
once
and not going to the Louvre? These guys see three things when they travel: airports, hotels, and a tennis court. Maybe an occasional restaurant. That's it. If I ever play in the French, the first place I'm going is the Louvre.”

Stevie wasn't exactly a museum aficionado, the forced trips to the New York museums aside. But he
did
know what the Louvre was, if only because he knew the
Mona Lisa
was there.

“Don't get me wrong, I love tennis,” Rubin continued.

“But I don't want it to be the only thing I love. Anyway, enough about me—what were you guys talking about before I interrupted?”

“Elena Makarova,” Susan Carol said. “Do you know her at all?”

Rubin rolled her eyes. “You might say that. I played her in San Diego a few weeks ago. She drilled me, one and one.”

Stevie knew in tennis lingo that meant Makarova had won the match 6–1, 6–1—which
was
a drilling.

“Did you talk to her at all?” Susan Carol asked.

“Not really. She doesn't speak much English. She was nice, though. After the match, she said, ‘You were just on lucky today.' Which I think meant I was
un
lucky. I was
un
lucky—that I had to play her. She's really good. My ground strokes are pretty good, but hers are better. And her serve is almost impossible to break—I think she served a ball one hundred thirty-eight miles per hour this summer. She's strong. Why do you want to know about her?”

“We were just looking over the draw,” Susan Carol said. “You could play her in the quarters.”

Stevie knew from the answer that Susan Carol didn't want to share too much with Rubin, whose eyes went wide when Susan Carol mentioned the quarters.

“I'm a
long
way from the quarters,” she said. “Lisa Raymond next round is no walkover and then, assuming she's okay, I'd play Symanova. And even if something
does
happen with Symanova or if I somehow beat her, there'd be the little matter of Serena Williams.”

If nothing else, she knew what her draw was off the top of her head. Stevie guessed most players would. “You hear anything new about Symanova?” Susan Carol asked.

Rubin shook her head. “No, not really. Just the same SVR rumor. Someone
did
say that the USTA told Joanne Walsh's people they would wait until Thursday if they had to, which I guess made them go crazy again.”

“Thursday?” Stevie said. “Isn't the first round supposed to be over by Wednesday?”

“Yeah. But they could play Thursday morning and then the winner would play a second-round match at night on Friday. That would give her plenty of rest. They want her in this tournament by hook or by crook.”

“And the question is,” Susan Carol said, “who are the crooks trying to give her the hook?”

It was a clever line, Stevie thought. But there wasn't a hint of a smile on her face when she said it.

It was after six o'clock when they got back to the media center. Kelleher was frowning when they walked in. “I was just about to call you guys,” he said. “Where've you been?”

“Lost track of the time,” Susan Carol said. “You guys hear anything?”

“A little,” Kelleher said. “Arlen told me they're not going to default her before Thursday. Tamara heard something about some of the women threatening a boycott or something if they do that.”

“Very sympathetic of them, huh?” said Bud Collins, who had joined the conversation just as Kelleher started talking.

“Yeah, well, we know how selfless tennis players are, don't we?” Kelleher said. “Survival of the fittest out here. Even doubles partners don't get along half the time. Bud, the SVR story seems to be everywhere. Does that surprise you at all?”

“It does,” Collins said. “But Misha was so hyper, maybe he's just telling people.”

“Or maybe that's not the real story,” Susan Carol said.

They both looked at her quizzically. She and Stevie filled Kelleher and Collins in on what Ross had said and what they had gleaned from studying the draw. “That could just be agent talk,” Kelleher said. “But at this point, we probably need to check everything out—which, Susan Carol, means we probably need to check not only on Makarova, but also on your uncle—no offense. Bud, who is Makarova's agent?”

“You know, that's a good question. I have no idea. But I'm sure we can find out.”

He walked down the aisle, yelling something that sounded like Russian. “He's going to ask the Russian media guys,” Kelleher said.

Tamara Mearns walked up. “Bobby, are we still going into town to meet the Mayers for dinner, or are we going to cancel?”

Kelleher shook his head. “I don't know about you, but I still have to write.”

“Oh gosh,” Susan Carol said. “So do I. I completely forgot to check in with the newspaper. I'm not close to done either.”

“I'll tell them another night.” Tamara sighed. “This has already been a long tournament.”

Stevie looked at Kelleher. “Is there anything you want me to write?” he asked.

“You got any good notes?” he said.

“I could write about Evelyn Rubin.”

“Mmm-hmm,” Susan Carol said. “She thinks Stevie's cute.”

He was turning red again. “Scarlett…,” he said.

“Okay, okay,” Susan Carol said. “We can fight later. I have to figure out what to write.”

Collins came back, appearing excited. “I don't know if this is interesting or not interesting,” he said. “Makarova
was
represented by SMG.”

“Was?”
Kelleher said.