Heroes Read Online Free PDF Page A

this guy?” Duceeder said, standing in the middle of his office, pointing with his thumb to the radio on top of his filing cabinet. “He just kills me, really.”
    â€œNo, I haven’t. I’m actually not —”
    â€œThat’s right, Samson did say you were from Canada, didn’t he.” Duceeder clicked off the radio and sat down onthe front of his desk. “Well, you will if you hang around these parts long enough. Proud to say that every one of our games is on the same station Mr. Wright is on, WUUS, AM 590, the Voice of America’s Heartland. Have a seat.”
    Duceeder looked like he sounded; maybe more.
    â€œI don’t know how much Mr. Samson told you about the article that I’m writing, Mr. Duceeder, but what I’d like to —”
    â€œJimmy D.”
    â€œExcuse me?”
    â€œJimmy D. My friends call me Jimmy D.”
    â€œOkay. Well, Jimmy D., I thought that I’d just drop by today and introduce myself and say that I hope that over the next week or so we can talk a little bit about you and the job you do with the Warriors. No big deal, just about the team, the league, and how a minor-league outfit like the Warriors operates down here.” Bayle surprised himself, sounding almost as he imagined a journalist should.
    â€œYeah, Samson put something on my desk about your coming, but I don’t see how I can help you very much. I’m just an old hockey guy from way back. Coach Daley says to me he’s short an experienced defenceman and I make a trade for an experienced defenceman. I’m just a wheeler and dealer, I’m just a hockey guy. Not much I can really tell you beyond that.”
    Great, Bayle thought. My first interview and the G.M. pleads the fifth. He brought to mind Jane’s solution for dealing with what she called a journalist’s worst enemy, “the silent ones.” Simple, she had said. Just get them talking about everyone’s favourite subject.
    â€œWere you born in the Midwest, Jimmy D., or —”
    â€œAs a matter of fact, I’m originally a Canuck like yourself. Different neck of the woods though, a fair bit farther west, Medicine Hat, in Alberta. Came down here in seventy-five? Seventy-six? Mid-seventies, anyway. Long enough to call it home even if I do miss the hunting they’ve got up there this time of year. But I guess you could say I’m pretty much Uncle Sam red, white, and blue all the way through now. Met my wife Carol down here.”
    Duceeder picked up the large gold-framed picture that dominated his desk and handed it to Bayle. “That’s the little lady right there with our son, Bill. The starting guard on his high school basketball team and a straight-A student two years running. He’ll be fourteen in a couple weeks.” Bayle smiled at the photograph then smiled some more wondering when it would be technically okay to politely set it back down.
    â€œJimmy D.!” A middle-aged man’s bespectacled and virtually hairless head grinned itself around the door frame of Duceeder’s office.
    â€œHey, you guys get in here for a minute, will you?” Duceeder shouted. He turned to Bayle. “Now here are a couple fellas who could really help you out with your story. Peter Bayle, I’d like you to meet Ted Able and Bob Munson, the radio play-by-play guys for the Warriors’ games. Ted, Bob, this is —”
    Able, the one whose bald head Bayle had first seen, grabbed Bayle’s hand and pumped it vigorously. “No need, Jimmy, we just ran into Samson. How you doing? Ted Able.”
    â€œSo the glossies are suddenly interested in minor-league hockey now, are they? What’s the angle?” Munson, about the same age as Able but without glasses and with hair, stood with his hands on his hips, looking Bayle straight in the eye as he spoke. The sleeves of his suit jacket were pushed up almost to the elbow. Bayle suspected toupee right