Chapter 4
NICO
Walsh's kitchen mugs were in the wrong order.
I noticed it on my third morning. I'd been awake since four, which wasn't unusual.
My brain had stopped cooperating with conventional sleep schedules around the time a reporter from the Star Tribune published my personal phone records on the front page.
Now I ran on fragments. Two hours here, ninety minutes there.
Never enough to dream but always enough to function, if your definition of function included standing barefoot in someone else's kitchen at four in the morning, staring at a shelf of mugs with the intensity of a man defusing a bomb.
The mugs sat in a row on the second shelf.
Eight of them, of varying sizes, arranged with no discernible logic.
A large blue one next to a small white one next to a medium grey one with a chip in the handle.
A Storm promotional mug shoulder-to-shoulder with a delicate ceramic cup that looked like it belonged in a different kitchen entirely. Total disorder.
My hands were on them before I'd made a conscious decision.
I pulled the first one down and set it on the counter. Then the second. The third. Each one placed carefully, no clinking, no noise that might carry down the hall. I lined them up by height, tallest to shortest, left to right.
Stepped back and looked.
Wrong. The gradient was too steep. The tall blue one dwarfed the small espresso cup at the end, creating a visual cliff that made something behind my sternum clench.
I pulled them down and started over. Tall in the center this time, graduating down to each side. A bell curve. Symmetrical. Balanced.
Still wrong. The handles were facing different directions.
I rotated each mug until all eight handles pointed right. I checked the alignment. Adjusted the spacing between each one until the gaps were uniform, roughly the width of two fingers. Moved the chipped grey one to the far left where the imperfection would be less visible. Better. Almost right.
The tightness in my chest eased a fraction.
My therapist had a name for this. She called it an anxiety response, the need to impose order on something external when the internal landscape was beyond my control.
I'd done it in every temporary space I'd inhabited.
Organized hotel bathroom toiletries by size.
Aligned the silverware drawer in my agent's guest house.
Spent forty-five minutes in a Minneapolis extended-stay arranging the hangers in the closet by type: wood, then plastic, then wire.
The hanger sorting was the night Jennings stopped returning my calls.
I called the mug thing what it was, the only thing between me and the floor.
I was standing at the counter with all eight mugs arranged in their bell curve when I heard footsteps behind me.
Walsh.
I froze. My hands hovered over the mugs, caught between completing the arrangement and sweeping everything back into the cabinet before he could see what I'd done to his kitchen at four in the morning.
Too late. He was already there, in the doorway, wearing a faded T-shirt and sweatpants, his hair flattened on one side from sleep. His eyes moved from my face to the mugs to my hovering hands and back. The assessment was quick, that goalie brain, processing input at game speed.
I waited for the question. What are you doing?
Or worse, the careful tone. Is everything okay?
The one that meant should I be reporting this?
A year of scrutiny had taught me to expect judgment from every direction, to brace for the moment someone found my behavior suspicious or strange or worth documenting in a note to management.
Walsh looked at the mugs. Then at me.
"By size works," he said.
He walked past me to the kettle and filled it from the tap, setting it on the burner, and turned the dial.
All of it performed with the unhurried actions of a man who did the same thing every morning and saw no reason to alter the sequence for the fact that someone was rearranging his kitchen in the dark.
He didn't ask why. He didn't suggest I was overstepping. He didn't reach for his phone to make a note. He looked at a man sorting mugs at four in the morning and decided it was not a problem that needed solving.
I stood there with my hands shaking slightly and eight mugs in a row and felt something I hadn't felt in months.
Seen. Not judged.
I finished the arrangement. Tallest in the center, descending outward. Symmetrical. Handles right. My hands steadied by the time the last cup was in place.
Walsh poured two mugs of tea without asking whether I wanted one. He set the second mug on the counter near my elbow, took his own to the living room, and settled onto the couch with his book.
I wrapped my fingers around the mug. The tea was Assam, strong and dark, the kind of thing you drink at four in the morning when the alternative is staring at the wall and losing the argument with your own head.
Sarah called at ten. I was in the guest room with the door closed, sitting on the floor with my back against the bed frame. The position had become automatic, lower than the windows, solid surface behind me, clear sight line to the door.
"The league's investigators want access to your financial records," she said. "Three years' worth. Bank statements, investment accounts, tax returns."
"They already have last year's."
"They want the full picture. Nico, this is actually a good sign, it means they're being thorough, not just going through the motions. A rubber-stamp investigation would have ended months ago."
I pressed the back of my head against the bed frame. The pressure grounded me. "What exactly are they looking for?"
"Patterns. Anything that doesn't match your reported income. Large deposits, unexplained transfers, accounts in other names." She paused. "If there's anything in your history that could be misinterpreted—"
"There's nothing to misinterpret." I said it flat, without heat. I'd said it so many times the words had worn smooth. "I bet on football games. Legally. Through a licensed platform. The amounts were within the legal limits for NHL players wagering on non-hockey events. That's all there is."
"I know. I believe you." Another pause, longer this time.
"But you understand how this works. The truth isn't always enough.
They'll look at your legal bets and see a pattern that rhymes with what Petrov was actually doing.
The same platforms, similar amounts, overlapping timelines.
He used you as cover. He designed it that way. "
Jake Petrov. My former linemate. The man I'd carpooled with for two seasons, who sang off-key to Finnish metal in my passenger seat because he thought it was hilarious that I listened to anything other than hip-hop.
The man who'd brought his daughter to the rink on off-days and let her chase pucks around the empty ice while we stretched, her laughter echoing off the glass like something from a world where nothing bad happened.
He'd talked about her first steps in the car one morning, laughing and proud, pulling up a video on his phone at a red light.
Look at that, Nico. My kid's a natural. Better footwork than half our guys.
I'd watched the video and smiled, not knowing that the man beside me was building a gambling operation designed to collapse on my head if anyone looked too closely.
The scheme was elegant. Sarah had explained it once in the flat, clinical language of someone who dealt with other people's destruction for a living.
Petrov had used my legal betting accounts, the football wagers I'd placed through a licensed platform, well within the league's rules, as camouflage for his own activity.
Same platforms. Similar bet sizes. Overlapping timelines.
When the investigation started, the pattern analysis flagged both of us.
Petrov had banked on that. He'd banked on the noise of my legal activity drowning out the signal of his illegal activity, or at least making it impossible to separate the two quickly enough to matter.
It had worked. Not permanently. Sarah was confident the forensic accountants would eventually untangle the threads. But eleven months of eventually was a long time to live as a headline.
"Give them everything," I said. "All of it. Three years, five years, whatever they want. I have nothing to hide."
"I know you don't." Sarah's voice softened in a way I didn't want to hear. Professional distance was easier. Sympathy implied something to be sorry about. "How's Chicago?"
"It's a city."
"And the team?"
"They hate me." I traced a crack in the plaster near the baseboard with my thumbnail. "Understandable."
"Give it time."
Time. Everyone wanted me to give things time. Time for the investigation. Time for the team. Time for the public to decide whether the smoke meant fire or just meant someone had pointed a fog machine at my career and walked away.
"I'll send the authorization to your office today," I said.
"Thank you. And Nico? Keep your head down."
I ended the call and stayed on the floor until my legs went numb. Then I stood, stretched, and went to practice like nothing was wrong.
Like the floor was just a floor.
Like the mugs in the kitchen, still in their careful order when I passed through, hadn't been the first thing in months that someone had let me keep.