Authors: Gare Joyce
Freel tapped his fingers on the tabletop impatiently. It seemed he didn't much care for my running commentary, so I stuck with the straight, unadorned answers thereafter. There were some I didn't know but I was sure that the detectives would be able to fill in the holes. Between those I knew and those I just saw, not a one seemed reasonably inclined to want to rid the world of the winningest coach in the history of junior hockey.
Then we went to the after-game, the camera looking out at the exit to the secure parking lot.
“Him, him, and him?” Freeze-frame. Several hundred dollars' worth of sleeve were draped over the shoulders of a tall blond kid and a shorter, thick-bodied kid who didn't own a comb.
“That's William Mays again, in the middle, Junior on his right, and Markov on his left.” The video rolled forward. The old guy let loose the headlocks. He shook Markov's hand and wrapped his left hand around the Russian's wrist as if he were trying to hold him in place.
Markov turned and headed out the door to the parking lot. The Mayses walked toward the main entrance, where fans would have been milling around.
“Okay, that's you,” Maddy said.
Obvious to all of us and faintly striking up a memory that I had suppressed. William Mays did the same double-up on the handshake and then, well, a hug. I was uncomfortable but not surprised. I remembered reading an interview with him in an investment magazine. He was touting a new businessmanagement book with the theme of “instant intimacy.” He claimed that “first impressions are lost opportunities” for you and me, but not for him. He claimed that “knocking down the walls between us” was the key to his success. He also claimed that
“delegating was the anti-empathy” and that the smart executive should get to know the lives of “those whom others would call âthe little people.'”
William Mays was challenged on one news show about this idea, but he backed it up. A dogged newsman walked Mays through his office and down to the street and he aced the ambush test, to the blow-dried baritone's unmistakable disappointment. Mays knew the names as well as the life histories of not only his buxom secretaries, which is to be expected, but also the beaten-down woman who came around to clean his office, the minimum-wage security guards on the ground floor of the business tower, the nose-pierced baristas pouring his coffee at the nearest Starbucks, and the old, internet-obsolete guy flogging newspapers on the sidewalk. And they seemed to like him. To love him, really. I wasn't feeling it. His hands patted my back and mine his. We were like two seals wrestling and I was trying to tap out a submission.
“Awkward,” I said.
“Yeah,” Freel said. He smirked.
I watched myself head out the door and William Mays turn back inside and walk out of the frame. “He said he had to go to the can before he started the drive back.”
Involuntary memory is sometimes almost too vivid.
“Too much information,” Freel said. The video advanced. A couple of minutes later Mays did exit the lot. He was followed by a few other old-timers who all vouched for each other. About half an hour later Hanratty and Doc. Fifteen minutes later, the security guard who found the bodies.
Maddy bade me farewell. Freel nodded. I made my exit.
I H
AD TURNED
my BlackBerry off while in police headquarters. When I powered it up in the visitors' section of the parking lot
I had no new messages. No voicemail from Buckhold or Mays the Elder. No replies to emails out. Once more into the breach.
“Brad, I'm glad you called,” Buckhold said. “I haven't been able to reach the young man, but I promise you when I do, he'll be in touch. He might be involved in an after-school event or perhaps one of the charities he works for in Peterborough. He knows that you're out that way, and I'm sure that he's sorry for any inconvenience he's caused you. I know he respects you as a former player. He told me that he has your hockey card. And I know he really respects Hunts and your organization. He's talked about L.A. as one of the teams he hopes to be drafted by.”
I tapped the steering wheel once for each lie in a cascade of them. As the volume of bullshit built up, so did my sense of Buckhold's desperation. The one bit of truth: He was having no luck in getting a hold of Billy Mays Jr. For Buckhold, the worry was not that I was going to be stiffed. No, the worry was that the kid's failure to return calls might be an omen of the agent's worst nightmare: a star client who defects before signing his first contract. If an agent gets a client a contract or two before he defects, at least the agent has come away with his piece of the action. But if Mays or some other teenager bolts before signing his first deal in the league, the agent has done a lot of chasing and hand-holding for nothing. It would be a wasted investment of time and resources, a lot of bad coffee cake scarfed down, a lot of undeserved flattery extended, and, in some cases, dough advanced that, off the books and on the honour system, would likely never be repaid.
Charities, respect for me, the hockey card, the hopes of being drafted by L.A.: All of it was fiction. What was real, though, was Buckhold's desperation. Losing a client like Junior would be embarrassing, but he'd be a laughingstock in the trade if his fresh-faced client showed up on the side of a milk carton.
I tried William Mays Sr. again. By phone, I had no luck, straight through into voicemail. By email, I caught a break, a reply in two minutes.
In meetings all day. Can't discuss. Billy is in Peterborough. He hasn't been home for a couple of days. Messaged me that he won't be back until the weekend. Try Ollie to get in touch. He has the details.
I decided that I'd try to cut out the middlemen. The league keeps a database with information on the top draft-eligible players. League-supervised measurements of height and weight so that we get the straight dope on a player rather than the exaggerated numbers you see in the programs or on game broadcasts. The league gets them to fill out questionnaires. It's cursory stuff really: father's and mother's occupations, their school, any family ties to the game or other pro sports. One section lists contact information. This includes addresses, summer being the family homes and winter being the billeting homes. Phone numbers are given for each.
I strained my eyes to read the details on my BlackBerry's tiny screen. I opened the PDF of Mays's form. Some of the questionnaires can serve as indictments of our school system, rife with spelling mistakes and written in a first-grader's scrawl. Thankfully, Mays's was filled out in clean, uniform penmanship worthy of an architect or cartographer.
The billets' address was listed: 23 Rainy Road, Peterborough. Their names and home phone number were alongside: 705-555-9189, Sarah and James Storms. His cellphone was listed further down the page: 647-555-2729.
I decided to go out to the billets' home. I wasn't about to count on someone picking up with call display. And with an
answered door knock, I could tell if I was getting the straight goods. I figured that, unlike Ollie Buckhold or Madison and Freel or, for that matter, the late Red Hanratty or me, the folks at 23 Rainy didn't have to lie for a living.
T
HE STORMS WERE
retirees and had been ensconced for a half century in their comfortable four-bedroom home overlooking the river. Their children and the town were grown. When the last of the younger Storms blew out of Peterborough for better things in a bigger city, Sarah and Jim started taking in players. They'd later tell me that Billy Mays Jr. was their favourite one ever and that Markov was the quietest. That would be relayed to me down the line, on about my fourth visit in my background checks. On my first trip they couldn't offer me much.
“Billy should be back in the city, I think,” James said. “We haven't seen him for a couple of days.”
“Three,” Sarah said.
“Usually he's good about letting us know what his schedule is, but since his injury he's really back and forth a lot, seeing specialists about his shoulder, in to see his agent and other people.”
Sarah jumped in. “He had to do a television spot the other day down in one of those studios in Toronto.”
“We haven't spoken since then,” James said. “We figured he just stayed on at his father's place.”
“Yes, he wouldn't have been at his mother's. I believe she's in ⦠where is that place, Jim?”
“Turks and Caicos,” he said.
I gave them a very brief outline of my plight. They were sympathetic and tried to be helpful, but said that they really didn't know much more than they'd already told me.
I tried to small talk them for any faint leads.
“How many billeting players have you had this season?”
“We started with two, the Russian boy and Billy, who was with us last year as well,” she said. “It's so quiet now with neither of them around.”
“How did you find out about the Markov boy going back to Russia?”
“We had no idea. Billy and the Russian boy came home late after that game at the arena the night Coach Hanratty and the doctor were killed, but we didn't stay up. He and Billy had breakfast but we weren't here. We left them here because we had some morning errands to run. Billy went to school. The Russian boy would usually have been at home at lunchtime, but he wasn't. His things were gone.”
James jumped in. “He couldn't tell us anything, dear,” he said. “His English was very limited. We got by with just a few words here and there. He spent a lot of time on the computer. Sometimes he got in touch with his agent, a guy in New York, who could do some translation for him. Like when he didn't know the words for ketchup or Aspirin.”
They said that they had heard nothing more from him or about him since.
“How did Billy take it?”
“Coach Hanratty's death or the Russian boy leaving?”
The latter, I told him.
“He didn't talk about it.”
“Didn't like to talk about it,” she said.
“I think Billy was bothered,” he said. “He did like him and he wanted him to do well. Billy thought they could go to the finals this year if he stayed healthy and the Russian boy could play up to his ability.”
“Probably true,” I said. It was a reach, but I didn't want to come off mean-spirited.
“Billy told us that he'd be back,” she said.
“You mean Billy said he was coming back from Toronto after the television appearance?”
“No,” she replied. “He said that the Russian boy was going to be back.”
“From Russia?”
“No, Billy said that he hadn't gone to Russia. People just thought that.”
The lunch appointment, whiff. The call to Buckhold, whiff. And then Ma and Pa Storms, a third strike.
As I left the Storms I saw their next-door neighbour staggering up the path to his porch steps. Harley Hackenbush looked out of sorts and unkempt. Three days of razor stubble. Shirt stained by his lunch. Blazer and pants wrinkled. One shoe untied. His property looked even less maintained. Grass kneehigh, weeds higher. Litter blown into a bereft flower bed. He didn't look like a man something bad happened to. He looked like one who'd never been cut an even break and was now in an undignified and indignant death spiral. I saw Ma Storms looking out the living-room window at Hackenbush. The guy who was lowering the block's property values didn't anger her. She pitied him.
I
STILL HAD
Wonder Boy's cellphone number. A last resort. I decided to make the call from a payphone and put it on my credit card long distance. Mays's number was a Toronto exchange. The number connected and the phone picked up after one ring.
The words were unintelligible. They weren't even English. They were angry, though. Clearly not Billy Mays Jr. Clearly the voice of someone older. The guy who picked up the phone sounded like he had a shovelful of iron filings down his throat. He sounded like he was spitting out each word through a filter of gold teeth.
To my ear, it was a Russian guy. My ear was semi-educated on that count. I had played a few weeks of my last season of pro hockey for Omsk, a cultural exchange that saw me stiffed for a paycheque. I didn't much appreciate the billionaire oil-baron owner's attempt to restore my amateur status against my wishes, but I was thankful just to find another gig in Helsinki a few days later.
My first guess was that it was Markov on the line, but I shelved that idea. I'd only heard the kid mumble a few words, but he had a boy's voice. The rasp on the other end belonged to a guy who smoked two packs of unfiltered darts a day and gargled with broken glass.
A Russian had Billy Mays Jr.'s cellphone. A Russian guy who sounded like trouble. There seemed to be a pretty good shot that the Russian guy had Billy Mays Jr. or, to tamp down the drama, at least knew where he was. I had no reason to believe the kid was in Peterborough. I wondered if he might be in Russia. I turned out to be right on the first count and close on the second.
I
HAD
my gym stuff with me. I had planned to lift at 5
P
.
M
. after the drive back to Toronto. It was already 6:30 and I was still in Peterborough, chasing my tail. I'm not as righteous as some guys in the trade about working out. Away from the arena, a few spend every waking hour lifting, running, riding the bike, or whatever. They're probably in better shape in their forties than they were in their early twenties. Others spend their spare time catching up on the vices they had to forgo in order to pull down million-dollar salaries. You wonder if they're going to live to see their pensions kick in. I'm in the middle ground, a little on the side of the health conscious without being fanatical about it. Good genes, too. Sarge never wore more than a thirty-four-inch waist, stretched across six feet two.
I ducked into the gym in Peterborough. In the weight room I found Beef at the squat rack. The Olympic bar was at rest on the rack. He had just finished a set with four plates. His chalky hands were still gripping the bar and his legs were wobbly under it. He looked like Jesus on the crucifix, albeit Jesus with a fifty on the body mass index. His green eyes looked like two basil leaves in a big bowl of tomato soup. I thought he was going to faint dead away, but eventually he staggered up, panting.