16. Nolan
Chapter sixteen
Nolan
The fog was gone by the time I walked back from the park, and the heat had come up behind it. I let myself in through the service entrance and rode up alone. The new brass key stuck a little in the new lock, the way new keys do until you've worn them in.
Elias was standing at the island when I returned. He'd already packed his bag and set it by the door. Mine was packed, too, but I hadn't taken it out of the bedroom before I took my walk.
"There's something you need to hear before we fly," he said.
"Okay."
"The witness. The technician from Carolina I told you about.
His name was Russ Tierney." I heard tension in his voice.
"He's dead. A cousin found him yesterday afternoon in his chair with the TV on.
The county's calling it an accidental overdose.
He'd been on pain pills for a decade from three different doctors across two states.
Nobody's going to do a quick autopsy. Nobody's going to investigate.
From the outside, it looks like there are no questions to ask.
"Yesterday afternoon?" I asked.
"Yes."
I did the math. I might have been taking a nap while it happened, or it was later, and we were warming up on the ice.
Regardless of the specific time, the man was already dead when I took cross-checks in front of the crease.
He was dead the whole time I stood in the lamplight holding a page listing me as a subject, thinking that was the worst thing that could happen.
"He was going to talk to you," I said.
"After the Final. He insisted we wait." Elias's hands hung loosely at his sides. "He asked me one personal question in two calls. He wanted to know whether Ray Halloran suffered."
I reached for the back of the recliner.
Hawkins. Halloran. Tierney. The body count was three, and I couldn't process it. Repeating the names to myself was like reading out-of-town scores. Whatever was going on, it wasn't something that happened a long time ago anymore. Tierney died yesterday.
"Does the league know?"
"Mac's briefing them from Seattle this morning."
"And there's nothing—" I stopped. I wasn't sure what I wanted to say. A man died of the pills he'd been taking for ten years, and the world was going to nod and move on.
"I'm telling you everything now," Elias said. "You'll hear it as I get it. That's the new arrangement."
"Yes," I said.
I left Elias standing in the living room and went to the bedroom to get my bag. Game Six was in Boston and Game Seven would be back in St. Louis if it were necessary.
My bag was by the closet. I shouldered it and glanced around to make sure I wasn't forgetting anything.
The car was around back. We didn't speak on the way down in the elevator, and it felt like three ghosts were riding with us.
On the plane for Boston, nearly everyone was quiet. Nobody had to say what the game meant. A loss would end the season eleven hundred miles from home.
The coaches sat up front with their laptops, looking for an elusive gap they'd missed all along. Down the cabin, twenty guys either ran tape or stared blankly at seat backs.
I had Boston's penalty kill on my tablet and I watched the same twenty-five seconds four times before I realized I still hadn't seen it.
That didn't happen to me. For the past fourteen years, nothing distracted me. It didn't matter: money, contracts, or my father dying. I tucked it all away on game days, locking the box and depositing the key in my pocket.
Now I sat with a clip frozen on my tablet screen, and all I could see was a chair in a house holding a dead man while the TV ran.
The box was cracking.
Across the aisle from me, Jamie pulled an earbud out.
"Hey. Can I ask you something?"
"Yeah."
"Tomorrow night when it's win or go home." He reached forward for his water bottle. "Does it feel different? In your body, I mean. Guys keep telling me to treat it like any game, and I keep nodding, but I figured you'd tell me the truth."
I put my tablet down.
"It feels different," I said. "Anybody who says it doesn't is lying to distract you.
Your legs will be heavier in warmups and, your first shift will feel like it's happening without you, while you watch it from ten feet away.
That's all normal. It will pass. By the second shift you'll just be playing hockey.
" I looked at him. "Don't spend tonight fighting what you feel. It's supposed to be like that."
Jamie nodded slowly. I'd seen him use the same nod after listening to the coaches.
"Thanks," he said, and put the earbud back.
***
Brick opened the door to his room in a t-shirt and track pants with his phone wedged between his ear and his shoulder. That meant Jen had him helping her on the crossword again. He said, "I'll call you back, the captain of industry's here," and hung up without saying goodbye.
"Uh oh," he said, and stood aside.
Elias and I had said goodnight to each other without a hug or any kind of touch. He wouldn't care that I was wandering down the hall.
Brick's room was like every hotel room I'd seen him inhabit.
His open gear bag spilled equipment onto the floor in the corner.
The closet was open with a pristine suit hanging there.
A family photo sat propped against a lamp on the nightstand because Jen made him promise. He would have done it anyway.
He sprawled in a chair by a desk, and I sat at the foot of the bed. "So," he said.
"There's a thing. I can't give you all of it."
"Okay."
"It's not really mine to share, and the less you know the better. I need you to be okay with that."
"Nolan. I've known forever. You never give all the details—at least not at first. Go."
I told him what I could.
"It goes back to my years in Carolina," I said. "I was a rookie down there. What happened was bad, and it's not over. It's connected to people that have been dying—"
Brick threw up his hands and interrupted me. "Whoa, bud, if you're going to tell me you're a serial killer—"
"Calm down." I shook my head. "This is serious, but it's not about me doing anything. I didn't tell you, but somebody was in my place during Game One. I can't share all the details, but I need to know at least one guy on the team understands if I'm not all there in my head."
Brick didn't say anything for a few moments. He stared at the carpet. Then, he gripped the arms of the chair and looked at me.
"The tall guy," he said. "He's in on this."
"Yes, he is."
"Good. Can he handle it?"
"I think so, but at first, he wasn't straight with me about why he's here. I found that out a few nights ago, the hard way. And he matters, Brick. That's the other thing I have to say out loud. He matters, but he lied, too, and I'm not quite sure how to hold both things in one hand."
It was out there now, sitting on the ugly hotel carpet between us.
Brick leaned back. "How serious is it?"
I didn't ask whether he meant Elias and me or he meant the three bodies because I know he meant all of it.
"Serious enough," I said.
He glanced at the family photo leaning against the lamp and then looked back at me.
"There's one thing I know about you," he said.
"You never let anybody else carry anything.
For twenty years, I've watched you haul every bag through the airport.
So, I'm not going to tell you the lying is nothing, because it isn't. But I've seen all the rest, too.
You can't fake the way you look at each other.
So, that's not nothing either." He shrugged.
"Anyway, you don't have to pick tonight.
Both things can be true a while longer. Tomorrow, you have to play Game Six. "
"That's all I get? That's the wisdom?"
"That's what you get. Jen has to wear a ring to get the good stuff."
He got up and walked to the window, pulling the curtain back a few inches. Streetlights glowed along the streets in the distance.
"You remember Winnipeg?" he asked. "The eleven-game skid?"
"You brought that up in the parking lot four days ago. Are you gonna wear it out?"
"Would I do that? You don't trust me because I couldn't stop talking about that goal that bounced off Wes's ass for a whole month.
Anyway, I'm talking about the night the skid ended.
" He let the curtain fall back. "We won four-one in Calgary and nobody remembers it, because the only worse team than us that month was Calgary. Do you remember what you did after?"
"No."
"You bought the whole plane pizza. You had it delivered on the tarmac and fed twenty-six guys—players, coaches, and crew." He sat back down in the chair. "For ten years I've been waiting to ask you. We'd won one lousy hockey game. Why the pizza?"
I thought about it. The honest answer surfaced, and I hadn't thought about it for years. "Everybody'd stopped eating together," I said. "Somewhere in the skid, guys started taking food to their rooms and eating alone. I couldn't fix the hockey, but I could fix that."
Brick pointed at me.
"That," he said. "That right there is why I'm not worried about you and the tall guy.
A man who watches a room that close and feeds it to get it back on track—he's going to figure out what to do about a guy who told a lie but still matters.
Maybe you won't have the answer tonight, but you'll figure it out. "
"You've been saving that story for years, haven't you?"
"I save everything. Ask Jen." He leaned and put his hands on his knees. "Maddie's cake is at six candles, by the way. She wants it known she's planning for seven. We can't disappoint her."
"Seven's a good number."
"It is, but now you have to get out. Jen and I are on fourteen down, and she thinks I quit on her."
***
I got to the Boston arena early and did my stretching at a stall that wasn't Vern's. Around me the room filled up one man at a time.
Wes embraced the Captain part and moved stall to stall saying one thing to every man. They weren't speeches, just a quick boost. Jamie bounced his knee until Brick reached over and put a hand on it. The bouncing stopped, and neither of them said a word.