11. Elias
Chapter eleven
Elias
"Rise and grind, old man." Maddie Brickner's voice, tinny and delighted, sounded six inches from my head. Nolan reached his arm across my chest, and the phone went dark before she could say it twice.
Neither of us spoke. The rain had stopped, and at some point in the night, Nolan had turned the AC off and cracked the window open. I smelled the wet pavement and the honeyed scent of linden trees.
It was Game Two day, and I knew Nolan's sequence by heart: feet to the floor and slow work on the mat, but I'd never seen it happen in the bedroom. I only heard breathing and the occasional grunt.
"Are you doing it here instead of in the living room?" I asked.
He sat up and swung the legs over the edge. "Yeah, I'm taking my room back," he said.
I didn't offer to help. He had it under control himself.
Nolan turned toward me. "There's a second mat in the closet, if you want." I got up, grabbed the second mat, and rolled it out on the far side of the bed.
I did my own work while he followed his routine. I stretched my hips, hamstrings, and my left shoulder, which was starting to feel its age. We both breathed into the movement, but we didn't talk.
I hadn't decided what to do with Nolan's confession from the night before, that he didn't want to be alone anymore. He'd said it openly, and I let it hang, with nothing in response.
While he took his shower, I padded to the kitchen to make coffee, grinding it fresh. My phone buzzed while the machine ran.
Michael: The two units that changed hands since Jan. #4B is an estate sale, probate docs check out, buyer is a cardiologist with a Wash U appointment. Clean. #7A is a corporate lease. LLC registered in Delaware, which means nothing and never does. Still unwinding it. More when I have it.
Nolan appeared after showering and went straight for the coffeemaker. He was quiet, which I interpreted as focused. The Steamers had an opportunity to move ahead two games to none before the night was over.
At the door, he stopped. He put a hand flat on my chest.
"Tonight," he said, and then walked to the elevator.
After morning skate, I drove the SUV out of the players' lot into a bright morning, the streets still washed clean by the rain. I turned us down Market Street out of habit, and Nolan said, "Not yet. Take a right here."
I looked at him.
"Just drive," he said. "I'll tell you where."
I followed his instructions. Wherever we were going, it wasn't on the schedule.
"There's something I want to show you," he said. "We've got twenty minutes."
City Museum announced itself before I understood what it was. It was a hulking old shoe factory downtown with a school bus cantilevered off the roof, the skeleton of a plane bolted to steel scaffolding, and a Ferris wheel on top of the building.
"Wait till inside," Nolan said.
My jaw dropped. Inside, reclaimed girders, stones, and salvaged terra-cotta had been turned into tunnels, slides, and staircases that went nowhere and everywhere. It was impossible to know where to look.
I recovered and did my job, checking exits, sightlines, and who was watching Nolan and why. I clocked a family, a school group, and two staff members. Nobody watched the way the wrong kind watches. I could give him twenty minutes.
Nolan pulled out a pair of season passes. "Hannah loves this place," he said. "So do I."
After being waved in, he led me to an outdoor pit of plastic balls. "We're going in," he said.
He climbed down carefully. Then he was chest-deep in red and blue and yellow, thirty-four years old, an alternate captain who should have been napping at home in the dark.
"You getting in or scouting it?"
I got in.
A plastic ball hit me in the chest, and I looked up. In his face, I saw pure joy as he bounced a ball off my head.
"In the fall we'll come back and do the fire pit, roast marshmallows. It's nice on a cold evening."
In the fall.
Then he was on the move again. Our twenty minutes were up. He climbed out of the pit and took my hand. A couple of fans spotted him on the way out. I was instantly between Nolan and them, but they only wanted handshakes and personal greetings. I let them have that.
Within minutes, Nolan disappeared back into his routine, and I was left with a smile I couldn't clear off my face.
***
By the eight-minute mark of the first period, I knew Boston had spent their day off working out a new strategy.
They'd stopped chasing. In Game One, they'd hunted the puck in packs of five, and the Steamers bled them on the counter. For Game Two, they sat back in a 1-3-1 arrangement. Passing through the neutral zone was like navigating a toll plaza.
From the tunnel mouth, I had a sightline to the bench and most of the lower bowl. Doyle's people murmured through my earpiece. It was the usual chatter about conflicts in the stands and misread seating assignments.
Boston had made a second adjustment. They finished every check on Nolan. It wasn't dirty; officials wouldn't look twice. It was complete.
For every puck he touched along the wall, a body closed in on him. It was a common tactic: target a veteran player and make him work twice as hard. By the third period, his body would register the extra attention.
"Ward. Camera well, south, guy's got a bag that didn't come through my mag."
I missed it. Nolan had gone down against the boards and gotten up in two stages. For half a second, the earpiece was just noise. "Say again," I said, and Doyle's man said it again.
It turned out to be nothing. The bag held a credentialed photographer's spare camera body.
Boston drew first blood. Their fourth line won a battle in front of the crease, and the puck was in the net before Misha could react.
The second came on a power play. The Steamers got one back in the third with a beautiful show from Jamie, but then Boston hit the empty net with ninety seconds left, and that was the game. Three–one.
Postgame, Nolan was the last veteran out of the room. He gave Boston full credit. A national guy asked whether, at thirty-four, he felt the window closing on nights like this, and Nolan said the window's open until it isn't.
We drove home through a subdued city, with blue lights in windows looking less like a celebration than a vigil. My phone buzzed at a red light on Lindell.
Frey: Watched the game. Your guy ate a lot of wall tonight—they finished everything. Tell me somebody iced him down.
It was a thoughtful contact. He'd watched the game.
I typed back before the light changed.
Elias: They're on it.
Frey: Good. Get some sleep.
I put the phone away and watched the city's lights go by as I drove. When we stepped inside the service elevator, I realized I hadn't told Frey which player was my guy.
Then I remembered—half the city knew whose shoulder I stood beside. I'd been in at least a dozen public photographs. It was nothing.
***
On the charter flight to Boston for Game Three, everyone worked. More than half the players ran tape on tablets. Nobody spoke. Nolan had his earbuds in, and every few seconds he swayed with a movement onscreen.
Frey had called as the team started to board. I stepped to the side and took it on the tarmac. The players filed past me up into the plane.
"You're traveling," he said. "I'll be quick. I did something last night I probably shouldn't have, and it's been sitting on me since, so I'm just going to say it."
"Okay."
"Our conversation kept bothering me. I gave you the company line about the current system. That didn't feel like the whole story." A breath. "So I went into the contracts index. It's not sealed stuff. I don't have access to that."
"And?"
"The Carolina project is right there, 2012 through 2014. It's called 'Integrated player-recovery protocol, embedded delivery model.'" His voice dropped. "Elias, I've worked here six years, and I'd never seen any of that in writing. It's the history they tell you not to worry about."
I kept my voice level. "Why are you telling me?"
"Honestly? Because I don't have anyone else to tell.
Everyone I work with looks away and avoids the questions.
You're the one person I've talked to in years who asks questions for a living without a dog in the fight.
" He laughed, a short sound. "And when I looked, it felt like crossing a line.
Telling you is the only way I can say it's not snooping.
I'm just answering questions. Does that make any sense? "
It did. Frey made a lot of sense.
"For what it's worth, I'm going to be in your neck of the woods, sort of. Boston, tomorrow through the weekend. Half of our East Coast clients have Cup tickets. If you have a morning, I'll buy breakfast. I want to hear what you make of all this because I've stopped trusting what I make of it."
"I'll text you," I said.
"Do that. Safe flight."
He was almost off the line when he spoke again, "How's your guy holding up, by the way? That was a lot of contact for a veteran body. The travel's tough. Is he sleeping?"
"He manages it well," I said.
Somewhere over Ohio, Nolan got up. He dropped into the empty seat beside me and held out one earbud.
"Watch this," he said, and ran a clip. It was Boston's third pair on a line change, leaving a two-second opening before closing it on the far side. "There. That's the whole series if we're fast enough to use it."
I ran the clip three times with his earbud in my ear and his shoulder against mine. He was showing me the plan for the game in motion.
Michael called as soon as we touched down on the tarmac in Boston.
"Two things. One, your contract's real. I verified it independently through state corporate filings, cross-referenced with the franchise's vendor disclosures from the collective bargaining side.
Carolina engaged Tarn, 2012 to 2014, embedded model, exactly like your man said.
" A beat of typing. "That's the best-sourced thread you've uncovered. "
"The second thing?"