“You really think we have a chance in this tournament?” I asked.

“We got a good chance,” he answered. “You want to come with me when I go to see O’Donnel tomorrow?”

“Yeah.”

“I guess you got a jacket and tie?”

“Sure I do,” I said. “What do I look like?”

“Just checking,” he said. “After we see O’Donnel, we can come down here and let that waitress check you out in your jacket.”

“She may not be able to take the whole thing at one time,” I said.

“You know …” He started talking but stopped when the waitress brought our order. I looked her in the eye, and she smiled at me. I figured maybe I would drop by in my jacket. When she left the table, Cal started talking again. “They had about three hearings when I was brought up on charges for shaving points. The first meeting was with the commissioner’s office. Then I had another meeting with the district attorney, and then another with the commissioner. What it all came down to was that the commissioner worked out a deal where I didn’t have to do no time and the gamblers I was dealing with didn’t have to do no time. I got a four-month suspended sentence, and the gambler he got a six-month suspended sentence. Well, it didn’t mean nothing to him because he didn’t have no reputation to protect or nothing.

“Me, I was out the NBA, I didn’t have a job, and I didn’t have nothing to turn to. Aggie had stopped singing, more or less, and was home with the baby. He was about three. She had thought she might try again when Jeff got older, but right then she was okay just being home. She read the stories in the papers about me being involved in an investigation, and she asked me what was going on. Well, at the start of the whole thing the team put it out that I had pulled a groin muscle, and I’d be out for at least a week. That’s how they covered it. So I told her that was what the thing was, this injury. It worked out pretty good, too. I told her I couldn’t do nothing at night because it hurt. I was so worried about what was going to happen.

“Then they dropped it on me. I got a ten-thousand-dollar fine and a promise of a suspended sentence if I didn’t make any waves. Other than that, they said I’d have to go to jail.

“We were playing, at least the team was playing, in St. Louis when I came home and told Aggie what happened. She just didn’t believe it. She looked at me like she didn’t even know me. Then, when I had finished running all the details down to her, she looked at me and said, ‘What are we going to do now?’

“The ten thousand dollars was more than we had saved. We had to borrow some money. Couldn’t even borrow it at first. Then I went to the same guy that messed me up—that had let me mess myself up. I told him that I didn’t have the money to pay the fine. I needed three thousand dollars more. He lent it to me, at twenty percent interest.”