[ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]
.It dribbled out in indignities and violations big and small.But none was so damaging to our relationship as the time Trimear tried to take the Hugo Hunter beat away from me, soon after we returned from Barcelona and everything started to change.I would like to think he didn’t do it out of spite, but Trimear has been enough of a brazen bastard over the years that I’m not willing to foreclose any possibility.A week or so after the Olympics, I sat down with him and mapped out what I thought the upcoming year looked like in coverage terms while we waited for Hugo to finish school.I figured there would be the occasional straight news story—an endorsement deal, or something on Hugo’s coaching little kids or whatever—and that we could supplement it with a longer feature story every six weeks or so where we caught readers up on Hugo’s life, real behind-the-scenes stuff that they weren’t going to get anywhere else.Frank, who was eager to keep Hugo in the news while waiting out the months before he could fight again, had already promised me access to him.I even had what I thought was a great title for the series: The Fallow Season of Hugo Hunter.“I like the idea,” Trimear had said then, “but I think we need to be more expansive in our thinking.”“Expansive?”“This is the biggest sports story we’ve ever had,” he said, a truth that needed no enunciation.“A lot of these guys would like a part of it.Hell, I’d like to write some of it—”“You never write,” I said.“Almost never,” he said.Oh, right, I forgot.He wrote memos.“But I’d like to write about this.So would some of the others.”“Well, Gene, I sort of had this plan that—”He reached out and patted my notebook, the one I’d shown him, the one full of my scribblings about how we could do these stories.“It’s a great plan.A great plan.I’m just saying that we ought to spread it around a little.”“How?”“Same as anything.Do you cover every Billings Senior game? Hell, no.Does Landry cover every story out of Rocky Mountain College?”“Most of them,” I said.“Most, but not all.Nobody has the market cornered on anything around here.We go with the best guy available.”I got my back up.“I am the best guy available.”His neck started bobbing.“Everybody in this department is qualified to cover this story,” he said.“You said the best guy.”“I know what I said.” The bobbing sped up.“Look, I’m not going to discuss it further.Thanks for the good work on this.We’ll see how well we can divvy it up.”It might have ended there if not for Frank and Hugo.Trimear’s boss at the time, and mine as well, a wide inhabitation of flesh named Rick Westphal, was all aboard the spread-it-around plan, even thanking me for my broad-mindedness when we ran into each other in the men’s room.But Hugo’s camp would have none of it.Landry came back one day from trying to talk to Frank about Hugo’s training regimen, and he told Trimear, “Son of a bitch wouldn’t talk to me.”“Why?”“Said he was too busy.”Trimear looked over at me.I bore down on my advance story for some high school football game.“You know anything about this?” he asked.“Feeney can be pretty testy,” I said.A few days later, Landry tried catching up to Hugo after school.Same deal.He came back and told Trimear there’d be no story.“What did the little jerk say?”“Said he couldn’t talk unless Frank said it was OK,” Landry told him.“What did you say?”“Said I couldn’t get hold of Frank.”Trimear handed his phone across the partition to me.“Call Feeney.”“Is this my story now?” I asked.“Just call him.”I dialed the South Side gym.Squeaky answered.I asked for Frank, who picked up in short order.He must have been sitting right there.“Hi, Frank.” I cupped the receiver and mouthed, “What do I say?” to Trimear, who whispered back, “Ask him why he’s been holding out on us
[ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]