The Code (28 page)

“Well, it is part of their life, when you get down to it, same as all the boys,” she said. “When they have road games, trips out of town where they don't stay over, sometimes the boys don't get in until two, three in the morning. We're used to that. Normally we don't get up.”

“I'm usually up watching a late movie or have fallen asleep on the couch,” he said.

“They come in the side door. Their apartment is in the basement, so it's manageable. They try not to be noisy. Most are pretty considerate. Billy especially. Never had a problem.”

“Never? I played—you could never say never about anybody.”

“The only time was the other day, but it was hardly Billy's fault,” she said. “Coach Hanratty picked him up at the hospital. I guess with a boy under eighteen, the hospital wasn't going to release him unless it was to a parent or guardian and, well, we're not that, so Billy called the coach, God rest his soul. They kept Billy a long time in the hospital that night.”

“The coach said that he had a fainting spell,” he said.

“So you talked to Red?”

“We did,” she said. “He came back with Billy and our young Russian boy, who was at the hospital with Billy the whole time, waiting for the coach to get there.”

He jumped back in. “Red told us to keep an eye on him overnight. Which we did, of course. Then the next day I drove him to get his tests. They said they didn't want him driving right away.”

“The fainting,” she said. “He would have been fine, but they just wanted to be extra safe for the next few days.”

“The boy has been right as rain since his father picked up his prescription a few days after the whole thing.”

My first thought: maybe not. I pieced together the timeline. Junior works out and crashes. He goes to the hospital. He ends up there for hours, though that might been because of delays or waiting to get blood work back. Still, the doctors in emergency don't release him except to Hanratty. He could have been right as rain and they wouldn't have let him go on his own because it's their policy with minors. But that doesn't square with the rest, Hanratty wanting them to eyeball the kid, Pa taking Junior for tests, Senior picking up a prescription. That and the fact that Bones II gave pills to take before the prescription was filled. That and what Beef told me he'd overheard at school. That and the fact that Hanratty and Bones had shut down Junior for training across the board. Not just weights but the bike, too.

“It's so strange, people blacking out and all,” Pa said. “Our neighbour has had his issues.”

“Harley Hackenbush?” I asked.

“Yeah, poor Harley. He had to give up covering the team because of his fainting spells. Originally they thought it was low blood sugar. Turned out to be mini-strokes.”

“And one maxi-stroke,” Ma piped up. “That's when he picked up his stutter.”

“Yeah, one full-blown stroke on the team bus. Lucky that Doc McGarry was there. Saved his life and Coach Red did too. Red risked forfeiting a game to take the bus right to the hospital. Harley's really lost use of his right hand for all intents and purposes. He can't even sign his signature to cheques anymore, his hand is so shaky. And we end up shovelling his walk and cutting his grass even though we're so much older. They keep a defibrillator beside his desk at the office. It must be awful for him.”

It was just awful enough to eliminate him as a murder suspect. If he couldn't sign his name, he couldn't have picked up a cinder block.

Hackenbush was off the list, though I'd never liked him for the crimes anyway. I made small talk. They said that they had to go to the Legion for a euchre tournament. I thanked them for their time. They got up to show me to the door. I made a point of leaving my clipboard behind. I was going to come back from that, probably at the point when Pa had both black bowers and the ace of spades.

I
PARKED
down the street. I pretended to be on my cellphone. I looked at the old folks' house in the rearview mirror. It was twenty minutes before they were out the door and into their car. I hoped they were off to the Legion, but it didn't much matter. Even if they were just going to the supermarket, they moved slowly enough that I'd have plenty of time to do a decent search. If someone asked, I was coming back for my clipboard. And I expected someone to ask because this was a Neighbourhood Watch block, even if it wasn't advertised as such. Something out of bounds had a better chance of escaping the notice of the security cameras at the arena than on the street where Ma and Pa Storms lived. Every other house had some cat lady or another species of biddy acting as living-room sentry.

I knocked on the front door to keep up appearances and then walked in. I didn't bother looking side to side. I knew I had to have been seen. I'd have to do a quick toss of the place, starting in the upstairs bathroom. The medicine cabinet was nothing but a dreary glimpse at what the future holds for us all. Pills bought over the counter for back pain, prescription anti-arthritics, drugs for an aching prostate just like Sarge had to take. One surprise: a jar of male-enhancement pills. Maybe old age had hidden pleasures, or could be just longings.

I took a run at the kitchen next. I thought Ma Storms might be charged with keeping tabs on Junior's prescriptions. Nothing on the counters and shelves. Nothing in the glass bowl on the kitchen table or the ceramic one on top of the refrigerator. It was an orderly kitchen, everything in its place. There was no way that a pillbox would have fallen behind a bag of flour or a can of soup. Not even five minutes had passed. I knew I was now on the clock. There was every chance that one of the neighbours had called local law enforcement to alert them to the fact that a stranger was on Rainy Road. I went down to the basement apartment.

It was as I expected, an incomplete mess. One bed made, one not. Clothes, the less expensive ones, were strewn on one side of the room but not the other. Shiny sweats in garish colours with indecipherable words emblazoned were scattered like phosphorescent throw rugs.

I checked the bedside tables. Markov's had a couple of Russian magazines on top, young celebs from Muscovite high society glaring out from their covers. Markov must have hoped that hockey would someday deliver him to that space or, better, deliver him one of the cover girls. I looked over to the table beside Mays's bed. Copies of
The Hockey News
,
Time
,
Newsweek
, and
Bloomberg Businessweek
.
Hockey News
I could get. Even
Businessweek
I could get. There was probably some mention of Senior's company or an article hyping his motivational courses. But
Time
and
Newsweek
I couldn't figure out. Junior had to be the only self-respecting teenager who reads news weeklies. Maybe he started them in a doctor's office and brought them home to finish.

I checked the drawers of Junior's night table. Bingo. Three little brown plastic pill containers and one larger one, all with white caps. There was a snag, though. None of the containers were labelled. That was too curious to be kosher. Peterborough might be a throwback on every other count but the pharmacy had to be computerized. Even the local druggist would have labelled the scrips. There was a plain white paper bag, no scrip stapled to it. The drugs would have been from a chain store. One by one I opened up the plastic vials and put a pill from each in a Kleenex I pulled from a box on the night table.

I had what I wanted. I beat a retreat. I went back upstairs, grabbed my clipboard, and walked out the front door. I stopped on the sidewalk, leaned against the Rusty Beemer and speed-dialed Hunts. I didn't tell him what I was up to, just that I was in Peterborough doing a little background on Junior. I could have made the call on the road, but I did it on the sidewalk to keep up appearances. I didn't want to be seen making a quick getaway. I looked over my shoulder and saw a set of Venetian blinds snap shut.

I went to the L.A. database and looked up our team's physician. I phoned him. No answer. I messaged him.

Can you ID pills if I send them along? Analysis or something like that …

I didn't get a response for four hours. He must have just set out on the back nine. Finally I got a message back.

Why?

I dialed his cell at that point and he picked up.

“Humour me,” I said. “There are these four pills that this kid is taking and I want to know what they are.”

“Are you thinking they're steroids or amphetamines?”

“I have an open mind about almost anything at this point except that I don't think they're for acne. The kid's complexion is like a bar of Ivory soap.”

“What do they look like?”

“One little pink tablet, one little brown one, a bigger pink one, and a blue gel pill, sort of clearish.”

“You don't have anything else to go on?”

“The kid passed out during a workout and they took him to the hospital.”

“That's not a lot to go on.”

“I did say, ‘Humour me.'”

I heard him shout over his shoulder, “I'll be right there.” I figured it had to be his designated driver.

“You can send them, but the little pink pill, wet your index finger and press on it a little and then press it against your tongue.”

I did as instructed. It tasted like canary shit. I told him that and said I didn't think it was the right time to be playing practical jokes.

“No, no joke there, Bradley. It's strychnine.”

“You're trying to poison me.”

“No, it's a blood thinner. The player is taking a blood thinner.” I uttered a profanity and repeated it. I can't remember which one.

“The player has some sort of cardiac issue. Send me the pills if you want and I can probably piece it together for you.”

“I might do that. I'm gonna see if my father knows someone from the force who does this sort of stuff. If I can't come up with anything, I'll let you know.”

“You don't know how delighted I am to be your second choice,” he said and then shouted, “Okay, okay, okay!” to his impatient ride. He hung up without a goodbye.

I didn't want to ask Sarge. I didn't want to compromise him in any way. I wanted to keep him out of it, but I needed him. I talked around it with him when we went out for a beer at the Merry Widow on a Monday afternoon. The junior season was over, but I had been making the rounds, catching our farm club in the playoffs go all the way to the finals and seeing if there were any minor-league journeymen who might be decent adds for next season. It was largely a time-wasting exercise. I didn't have a game to work that night and my reports for the draft were 99 percent complete. The one remaining percent was what I was working on at that moment. I tried to make it seem like I wasn't working. I offered up hypotheticals.

“If a guy was looking to figure out what a pill or two was, where could he go to get them analyzed?”

“University lab, I guess,” he said, biting down on a chicken wing with suicide sauce.

He munched away. I looked at playoff highlights on a flat screen. I thought for a second I must be getting a load on, but
then realized that another of Nick's TVs was in need of repair. I waited too long for a follow-up.

“Are you gonna ask me or not?” Sarge said.

“Ask what?”

“I don't know what it is, but you haven't invited me out for a beer on a Monday afternoon in your life and then you ask me about pills out of the thin blue sky. I don't know about the quality of the people you work with and work for, but, Jesus, you mustn't have to worry about being too obvious.”

My distance from him, my line of work, and my intelligence. Sarge got off a three-punch combination. I didn't flinch.

“I'll explain it to you later.”

“You can explain it to me now and pick up the tab.”

I did both. I gave him the story with as many details as I had at the time. I told him I had concerns about Junior. I told him that there had been an incident. I told him that my job and Hunts's were riding on us not screwing up a first-round draft pick, a fourth overall pick to boot. I left out the bit about my inviting myself into Ma and Pa Storms's chateau and putting the wood to DDoris. That would have invited another heaping helping of shame.

“I'll just take it to my pharmacist.”

“That's it?” I said.

“That's it. He'll do a favour for me. If you're straight with people they'll do you a favour. One. Just one. I don't suspect that I'll ever have to ask for another one from him. You don't have a pharmacist who'd do you a favour?”

“Sadly, no.”

“You should be a little more sociable.”

Sarge wasn't much on lectures but was willing to make an exception here. I drained my pint of Guinness and didn't savour it.

I
WENT WITH
Sarge to the small neighbourhood family pharmacy where he's done his business since he enrolled in the academy. The short-back-and-sides old guy in the white jacket and nicely knotted tie greeted Sarge. It was a good thing that the old guy was on and not one of his kids or younger assistants. It would have been much tougher to finesse a favour out of a less familiar figure. The limits of Sarge's sociability weren't going to be tested here.

“It's a little unofficial investigation,” Sarge said. “We're wondering if you could ID these pills.”

The pharmacist peered at them through his thick bifocals. “What do you know about the fellah who's taking them or who prescribed them?”

“Blank page,” Sarge said.

“We think that one's a blood thinner.”

The pharmacist did the same taste test. Same bird flew into his mouth and defecated. “Coumadin, blood thinner,” he said. “So much for my coffee.”

He walked into the back washroom, poured his takeout cup down the sink, and then rinsed his mouth out.