The Code (15 page)

“Let me call you Friday
A
.
M
. and we'll set something up.”

“Done,” I said. I suspected that I'd have to call him rather than wait for his call, but we'd struck our bargain.

I was three bites into a corned-beef sandwich, the lunch special at the Merry Widow, when my cellphone burst into the opening bars of “Tears of a Clown,” my ring tone of the day. Unknown number. I answered with a grunt. Had to be one of those 1-800 deals.

“Mr. Brad Shade, please?”

The guy on the other end of the line had a bag-of-gravel voice that made it sound like he didn't say “mister” a whole lot.

“Speaking.”

“Mr. Shade, my name is Lou DiNatale. I'm with Viz Enterprises. Our records show that you came out to our charity game in Peterborough a week or two back.”

“Yup.”

I looked to the peeling paint on the bar ceiling.

“Mr. Visicale appreciated you comin' out, Mr. Shade. May I call you Brad?”

He just did.

“Brad, I run one of Viz Enterprises' summer hockey academies …”

I only ever went to hockey school. I guess calling them “academies” kicked in at a certain price point.

“… and I wondered if you'd be interested in appearing as a featured-guest instructor at a few sessions in August.”

I hemmed and hawed.

“We can make it worth your while for a few days.”

“We can discuss it, sure. I'll have to see what summer tournaments I'm working—I know I'm in the Czech Republic the second week of August. Otherwise, though, I should be clear until Labour Day.”

“We'll send over one of our representatives with a contract for you. The camp'll be in Peterborough. At the arena. We put you up at the best hotel there, or you can be Mr. Visicale's personal guest at his vacation property on Stoney Lake.”

So much for discussion.

I still had a couple of bites left in my sandwich when a shiny black Lincoln Town Car pulled up in front of the Merry Widow. Out of the front seat bounded a monster in a dark suit and shades. He walked into the premises with papers in hand and went directly to my stool without asking my name or anything. He laid out a contract for me. I looked out into the street. I saw the opaque rear window of the Town Car power down a couple of inches.

I had to drive to St. Catharines. Game 200 of the season in my log fell on Wednesday. There'd be no candles, no cake. Just a round number when I logged into the team's database. There'd be a couple of dozen more before the junior playoffs were over, and then I'd cross over and look at some minor pro teams. I had targeted 250 games but was probably going to fall short. But when I saw 200 pop up on the screen, it hit home how purely passive my life had become. I was a watcher. I attended. All my life I had been engaged, involved, in action. I never gave a thought to those in the seats when I was playing. I never gave a thought to what it was to be one of them.

Before going out on the drive, I scanned my bookmarks and the league website, just to see if there was any news, injuries, or suspensions I should be up on. I saw an item from Peterborough.

Peterborough has renounced the rights to Valery Markov for nonattendance at practice and breaking curfew at his billets. Markov left the team last month, and neither the player nor his representation has been in contact with Peterborough's interim manager, Harry Bush. It is presumed that Markov will return to Russia immediately and rejoin his club team, Dynamo, next season. Markov's agent did not return calls yesterday.

The suspension was the barn door and Markov was the horse gone. They thought he was returning to Russia immediately? No, they thought he was already back there and just hadn't let him in on the fact. It seemed like Red Hanratty's last practice with the team was Markov's too. Not that it mattered much to Peterborough. The team was going to fall three-and-out to Ottawa. It might have mattered to Markov, a blow to his draft stock, which wasn't very high to start with.

S
T
. C
ATHARINES
WAS an inglorious waste of time. Number 200 bore no significance whatsoever. The players of interest did nothing of interest for sixty uninteresting minutes. Good games, good players, I'd work almost for free. I earned my money that night staying awake in the stands.

I set out for Peterborough at seven Friday morning. A two-hour drive with a stop for coffee. I figured I could get there well ahead of my lunch meeting with Mays and grab breakfast at the Tim Hortons beside the arena. I'd try to catch up on the Late-Breaking Dope, maybe come away with a line or two on my report on Mays.

The boys from the arena were sitting at the table where I had left them a few weeks before.

“How you guys doin'?”

“Good. We had a short day yesterday,” the Zamboni driver said.

“Howz that?”

“The cops brought us in for questioning.”

“No way.”

“Way. But I don't think they had us as suspects or anything.” Which is to say that the police didn't give them undeserved credit for ambition or anything.

The security guard piped up.

“Really, they just wanted to see if we saw anything unusual, anybody who shouldn't have been there, and they wanted us to name guys who showed up on the security videos by the teamonly exits.”

“And by the offices and the dressing room,” the maintenance man said. He was trying to jump in on the intrigue.

“What did you see?”

“Nothin',” the Zamboni driver said.

I thought he'd make a compelling witness for sure. “Nothin'?” I tried to capture his inflection IQ point for IQ point and stopped at eighty-eight.

“Well, we saw all the usual guys who work there, but they were gone long before Red and Doc packed up. And the old-timers all went out as a group. They had a bus back to their hotel.”

“There was nothing going on in the parking lot either,” the security guard said. “For a game like this I have to keep an eye on the VIP parking lot, make sure no one sneaks in there to try and steal a hubcap or get an autograph or something.”

“We sat there for hours watching those goddamn tapes. We hadda ID everybody who went in and out of the offices, the dressing rooms, and whatever,” the Zamboni driver's assistant said. “It was just about the worst night for it 'cause you had the mayor and all the rest in there.”

“'Course the detectives know a lot of 'em already. I mean, they're well-known and all,” the guy on the security detail said. “I couldn't figure out who all the old-timers were. Y'know, they don't look like their hockey cards at all anymore …”

This came as no news to me, but they were blissfully unaware. “… Others, you know, I don't know all their names or anything, but I know who they are, like the Italian guy from Toronto and the thugs who are his wingers.”

“So what came out of it?”

“Only a few went out to the VIP lot before or right around when Red and Doc were out. But most went out two or three or four at a time and, y'know, they had alibis or whatever.”

“Red was smashed,” said the Zamboni driver. “Doc had to be driving him home. He went out to start the car up. It didn't even look like Red was gonna be able to make it to his car on his own.”

I took a professional curiosity in the investigation. But more immediately, I just wanted to get an idea of the wringer I'd be rolled through that afternoon. The account they gave me made it sound like I could be sitting in front of the video screen for hours.

I
EXCUSED
myself from Peterborough's version of the Algonquin Round Table and speed-dialed Ollie Buckhold.

“Brad, my friend, great to hear from you,” Buckhold said. “I've put in a call to the young man and left a message about your request. I'm sure that everything is going to be all right. Would noon be good?”

“Noon's good.”

I had no reason to suspect it wouldn't be.

I
RE-ENTERED
the conversation between the arena workers in mid-sentence and motioned to the waitress to refill my cup with that coffee-like fluid that she used to deter all but the ironstomached customers from overstaying their welcomes.

“… so like I say, there wasn't anyone who we couldn't out and out say shouldn't of been hanging around the exit. No one who shouldn't of been in and out of the dressing rooms or coach's office. And, like, the team is awfully, awfully tight with those VIP passes for parking …”

“… team makes so much of their money from the parking lot …”

Including five bucks of mine that night.

“… Yeah, they issue parking passes on a night-to-night basis for everybody 'cept Red and Doc. Even Spike the trainer never gets one. We get a list each night and the detectives took it from that night.”

The security guard shook his head and took a deep, nervous breath. He seemed shaky.

“The detectives kept asking me if anybody could of got by me. I told them there was no way. I didn't leave my booth all night. I hit the pisser before I opened the gate and never left until I made my rounds and Red's and Doc's bodies were found.

“I figure it had to be someone in that lot, someone who had a pass. Nobody went into that lot from the arena.”

Out of the mouths of the unqualified came a conclusion that concurred with the detectives'.

I looked out at the arena from the window. The way the parking lot was set up, the area around the door into the arena was in a blind spot from the booth at the gate where the security guard checked passes. So Hanratty's parking spot would have been hidden from view. He'd arranged it that way to avoid out-of-town fans egging his old Cadillac.

I believed the security guard, even if the detectives were looking for holes. He didn't have many options in life, I figured. Employment opportunities in Peterborough would have been limited for a guy like him. He would have lost possibly the only job he was qualified for if Red Hanratty had been ambushed in the parking lot for nothing more than an autograph. No matter how much he professed to be a man of the people, the Ol' Redhead was a one-strike-and-you're-out guy. Yeah, nobody got by the security guard.

N
OON
. S
TILL NO CALL
or email from Ollie Buckhold. I wasn't going to wait any longer. I speed-dialed him.

“Brad, my friend, I'm glad you called. I've tried Billy and the young man must have turned off his phone while he's in class. You know he's an outstanding student and plans to do his degrees by correspondence while he's playing in the league …”

If I let him go on with the testimonial I'd be late for my appointment with Detectives Madison and Freel.

“Ollie, I'm going to be tied up from two to four. Leave a message for me and ask your client if I can meet him off-site or at his billets or something.”

My patience was fast running out. Buckhold had to sense it.

I had Mays the Elder's card. I called through to his voicemail.

I emailed him. I asked him to give me a shout. Maybe Superboy was back at home unbeknownst to the agent. If he was still in Peterborough, maybe the father would have better luck getting the son to pick up than the agent had.

I drove over to police headquarters and checked in at the front desk.

“C
OFFEE
, B
RAD?
” Detective Madison asked.

“No thanks. I've been sitting all morning in Tim's. My date stood me up and I held out hope.”

Madison, who'd soon be familiar enough to answer to Maddy, and Freel, who preferred Detective Freel and Sir, sat across from me.

“Brad, we could use your help with the IDs on the old-timers going out to the parking lot, but first we have a few questions. When did you leave the arena?”

That was the first of about twenty consecutive questions without comment on my answers. Who saw you? Where did you go? Then what? And then what? All in Joe Friday's monotone. If I wasn't a suspect, they made it seem I was going in. As they'd
tell me later, they decided that for the sake of fairness they'd treat me like everybody else, a cold-blooded killer until my alibi convinced them otherwise. Which it did pretty quickly. Yeah, I went out into the lot before the Ol' Redhead and Bones, which could have given me access, but I hadn't stuck around a minute, didn't even warm up the Rusty Beemer. Nobody saw me leave, but I arrived at the Merry Widow just twenty minutes after the time of deaths. I was certifiably out of the area code when Hanratty and Doc departed this mortal coil.

We spent ninety minutes going over the IDs of the guys lugging their hockey bags and sticks, of others coming and going in the security camera videos. Arena workers had identified most but not all. I tried to fill in the blanks as much as I could. We started with the view outside the coach's office before the game.

“Him?” Maddy said. A lanky guy going into the coach's office before the game and leaving quickly.

“The ref,” I said. “Johns. Don't know his first name.”

“Him?” A pudgy guy waiting outside the coach's office only to be blown off when the Ol' Redhead made a beeline for a television camera.

“Harley Hackenbush. Disgruntled
Times
employee. If purple prose were a crime, he'd be your man.”

Maddy fast-forwarded the video. A blur of a guy going into Hanratty's office, a freeze-frame of him exiting. He was carrying a file folder. He had on the handiwork of an Italian designer.

“Him?”

“William Mays Sr., a not-quite-self-made millionaire whose son will make his first million single-handedly before he buys his first razor.”

“Him?” A guy walked through the frame, though not out the exit.

“Double J. Jackie Jameson. Long-time scout based here, known mutt.”