The Code (36 page)

“You knew, didn't you?” she said. An accusation dressed up as a question.

I chose to dodge. “I had reason to suspect,” I said, knowing that was true enough not to trip a lie detector or her professionally honed bullshit detector.

“What reason?”

“I want to say gut feeling but that's such a cliché,” I said. “The thing that bugged me from the start was the father talking up what a great coach Hanratty was. I knew he didn't believe that, not for a second, not the way Hanratty shot down his career twenty-five years before …”

I was going to skate around the fact that I chased Mays down in the parking lot, ripped off his mask, beat him to a pulp, and then didn't call the police to have him charged with assaulting
her. I know. Greasy as the home fries on my plate, but in this line of work you gotta be.

“Do you think he was just going to let the boy sign a contract and take the money and then not play? Or do you think he'd actually let his son risk dying to play?”

I punched some chipotle ketchup onto my home fries.

“I know he wasn't going to give the money back, no matter what,” I said. “Still, the money wasn't a motive. The Mayses hardly have use for that much more. I think Senior was going to let Junior play and run the risk of stroking out on the ice, maybe. Maybe just for a while, maybe longer than that. Just think how much the father loved the spotlight—so many of the parents do, but Senior here was the worst. He was practically needy. He was going to live vicariously through his son—even if it might kill the kid.

“You're the psychologist, not me, but I know players and how they think. Every scout is trying to get inside the head of the kid he's looking at—it's a psych game too. So here was a guy who could have been a player—to his mind anyway. Hanratty screwed him out of a career, just killed it, again at least to Senior's thinking. He wanted revenge. The son is the revenge at one level. When Hanratty and Bones found out about the heart deal, it looked to Mays like Hanratty was going to do the same thing to his family again—kill a career.”

Sandy went silent.

“Why do you ask?” I said.

“Let's drop it,” she said. “And you've got ketchup on your face.”

Sandy's car was in the shop, and she wanted me to pick her up from her office Friday and take her out for dinner. It was August, hockey's doldrums, so work didn't provide me any excuses, not that I was looking for one. By all accounts and my self-image I'm no romantic, but Sandy's demands were close to the league minimum, really. A dinner, maybe two a week, a movie here and there, a drive out to the beach, a bit of life like everybody else, as if we weren't a guy who'd heard the cheers and a girl who passes Kleenex to kids telling her their woes.

I texted her from the curb. I wasn't about to pull into the parking lot, especially at three dollars for a half-hour.

1 last patient gimme 15,
she texted back.

I idled outside. The construction crew was on a break. I watched a stiff in a suit carrying a briefcase and trying to hold on to his dignity as he rushed to catch a train out to the suburbs. I watched a gum-chewing secretary who had spent her working day fending off her boss's advances and was going to spend the night leaning against a bar, looking to hook a handsome and,
she hoped, flush guy. I watched a bicycle courier chase down a cabbie who cut him off, a street sweeper checking his watch, a hot-dog vendor sweltering behind the grill. Life's Rich Pageant. It occurred to me that I did a lot of watching. That watching is my living. That maybe I'm watching instead of living. I twisted my Cup ring around my finger and rubbed it with my thumb.

Tick-tock. I reminded myself not to seem impatient when Sandy eventually made it out.

I looked at the door. She walked out. Holding the door for her was her
1 last patient
, Billy Mays Jr.

She couldn't tell me that the Former Wunderkind was going to her because he got to know her a little with the grief counselling in Peterborough. No, she
really
couldn't. It only made sense, though. Now it was grief counselling of a different sort—his hockey career ended before it really started, his father off to jail. It seemed so unfair to Young What-Might-Have-Been but that's the game. Every game, I suppose.

I figured he'd figure it out. He was a smart kid, very smart. His life had been turned inside out and splashed across the papers and all over television. It had been only a few weeks but supposedly there was a movie in the works. Yeah, he'd be torn up, but he could put together the pieces with Sandy's help.

I watched Mays the Younger wave goodbye to Sandy and head off to the subway. He didn't spot me behind the tinted windshield and I didn't blow the horn or anything. I was one of his yesterdays and he had to get on with his tomorrows. He would never know that I put away his father. He would never know that I might have saved his life. I wanted him not to know. I wanted him to have a second shot at innocence.

Sandy didn't notice me watching Mays, or at least didn't let on that she noticed. She opened the door and sat down beside me, tilted her head back haughtily.

“Home, James,” My Dancing Partner said.

I slipped it into gear. I pulled away.

My thoughts went to Junior. My workup on him was more comprehensive than Sandy's or anyone else's. Scouts always look for sons of players. Junior was one. Some of the game is imparted by the men in their lives. Say what you want about the life lessons Senior imparted, he made sure Junior had the best possible hockey education. Genetics, you just had to look at Billy Mays Jr. to see he had all it took, save a bum ticker.

Sandy would be concerned about Billy's future. In Crim 200 we did the short workup on theories about the criminal make-up. One theory, pretty much accepted, is that there's a genetic component. A son of a criminal is far more likely to be a criminal than the average kid, and not just because of shared circumstances. There's something there right down in the genetic coding, a criminal gene. We did a few case studies, some readings, a paper or two. Sandy's work would have been a lot more detailed. I'm sure she would be concerned about Junior's possible predisposition to be a criminal someday.

That wasn't the case, though. No reason for her concern, and no criminal gene in Billy's DNA. Yeah, M.T. Smith lost his father early, struck down by cardiac arrest late in his fourth decade, but M.T. never had a blot on his record stiffer than a speeding ticket. One real beef and he wouldn't have been eligible for his realtor's licence. Yeah, M.T. and DDoris have their names engraved on a trophy at the Toronto Lawn Tennis Club: 1991 mixed doubles. Their photo is still in the trophy case. They couldn't defend the next year as she was with child, a boy who took her husband's name and, naturally, played her boyfriend's game.

A
CKNOWLEDGMENTS

I'd like to thank my editor at Penguin Books Canada, Nick Garrison, whose boundless enthusiasm, energy, and faith made this book possible. I'd like to thank Penguin Canada CEO Mike Bryan for not simply saving a spot on the slush pile for a manuscript from a fiction writer with a career total of one published short story. I'd like to thank Sandra Tooze, Stephen Myers, the rest of the Penguin staff, and copy editor Marcia Gallego.

As always, this wouldn't have happened if not for my agent, Rick Broadhead, who has gone to the wall for me so many times. Others made big contributions by reading my rough drafts: Jessica Johnson, John Brydon-Harris, Mike Sands, Damien Cox, Dr. David Newman, and my partner, Susan Bourette.

Finally, I have to acknowledge the many scouts and hockey men I've met in my work on the beat over the years. None of them is Brad Shade, but I hope if they read
The Code
they'll recognize him. And I hope they don't mistake me for Harley Hackenbush.