15. Brody #2
“I wish, but no. He—” I hesitate. Should I really share this? Why the fuck not? It happened. “He said to me that everyone knows Rourke’s pushed the league to give me a harder penalty.”
Marchetti’s mouth falls open. “What the fuck?”
“Is it true?” JP asks.
I shrug. “I don’t know. Probably. Guy hasn’t made it a secret what he thinks of bust-ups on the ice.”
“Yeah, bet he did.” Marchetti sits back in the chair. “Explains why he isn’t showing his face.”
Yeah. That it does. The realization hits me harder than I thought. Somehow I’d expected that despite everything, he might still turn up, but he won’t.
“Yeah,” I say.
Sacco looks like he wants to punch something. JP just looks at me.
They call us in at ten past the hour.
Three people from Player Safety sit down one side of a long table, a screen already queued up to the game.
They run the clips. There’s Linus rimming the puck around, the whistle, the kid turning his head to find the play.
The hit arriving late, from behind. The stretcher.
Dorn getting his major and his game misconduct, coasting for the tunnel with his gloves still on.
Then me, coming on with the line change and never going anywhere near the faceoff dot.
They make me watch it three times. Full speed, half speed, then the overhead angle, where you can see the whole thing build — Dorn changing his line early, the route he takes, twenty feet of ice he has no reason to cross.
You can also see me. My change is legal by half a second.
The route I take after it has nothing to do with my position either.
The chairman asks if I dispute the sequence of events. I tell him no. He writes that down.
My lawyer does her job.
“Mr. Callahan has had fifteen years of service and only one prior fine. Other than this incident, he has been an exemplary example of gentlemanly behavior on the ice.”
Behind me, I hear Marchetti snigger. I hide a smile.
Then she quotes at length on Dorn’s record.
When they ask, I keep it short. I’d been asking the officials for help all night before it happened.
I know the rule. I broke it with my eyes open, and I’d have a hard time promising this panel I’d do different with the same thing in front of me.
The lawyer’s pen stops moving on that last part.
One of the three writes something down. Nobody’s face changes.
The woman on the left asks the only question that catches me anywhere soft: whether my club offered any support in preparing this appeal. The lawyer gets there first, something smooth about representation arrangements being private.
Everybody in the room hears the no underneath it.
Then we wait in the hallway for the best part of an hour.
Sacco fills the wait with a story I’ve never heard, about Gordie and an appeal in ninety-one, back when the league office was four rooms over a bank and you could smoke in the hearing.
Maybe half of it is true. The lawyer laughs in the right places without looking up from her phone. My agent paces the length of the hallway and back. I sit with another paper cup of terrible coffee going cold in my hands and watch the door.
The chairman comes out himself. Eight comes down to four, counted from the original date, which with the games I’ve already sat means I’m back inside the week.
He uses the words proportionate and mitigating.
My agent is shaking hands before he finishes the sentence. The lawyer allows herself half a smile.
Four. I can live with four.
“Four,” Sacco says, and nods slowly. “Could’ve been two. Could’ve been eight in this one.” Then he’s already on to Saturday — slotting me back on the top line.
No thanks to Rourke. If Dorn told it straight.
The league gave me a fair shake today despite the man who owns my contract.
Sacco catches the chairman at the elevators. “And Dorn?” No preamble. “When’s his hearing?”
“That matter is being discussed with Mr. Dorn’s representatives,” the chairman says.
Sacco grunts.
Nobody talks in the elevator down. We all know what “discussed” means. It means a fine and there’s another memo coming out.
Marchetti breaks it on the way through the lobby. “Four’s a win,” he says, to the room in general. “Took a union lawyer and a miracle, but it’s a win.” Nobody says anything to that either. The two camera crews outside have become three.
They get their thirty seconds. My agent delivers two sentences about respecting the process and looking forward to rejoining my teammates, and I stand next to him with my hands folded and say nothing at all. Let the radio guys decide what that makes me.
JP walks me to the truck.
“You alright, man?”
I think about lying. “Not really, but I’m good.”
JP nods. “Then I’ll see you tomorrow.”
I sit behind the wheel and check my phone. My sister has wished me luck. The group chat is already forty messages deep.
Nothing else. I knew there wouldn’t be.
I don’t know what I wanted him to say. I put it face down on the passenger seat.
Without thinking about it too consciously, I drive back past the Meridian hotel where we first met the Bureau guy as if Everett Rourke is going to be standing outside.
He’s not. I don’t even know if he is there. I don’t know where he went. I didn’t ask, and he didn’t say.
I tell myself to stop being such a dumbass and drive home to a house that still smells like oranges.