“Damn,” said the captain, his eyes twinkling at the sight of the airbrushed design. “That is pretty fucking sweet.”
“Do you have any idea where Remo may be?” Rya asked impatiently, apparently having forgotten our earlier agreement. The captain glanced at her curiously as if suddenly realizing she was present.
“No, but if you see him feel free to tell the prick that he’s off of my team,” he snarled.
“I don’t understand,” I said. “I heard he was quite the hotshot in this league.”
The captain popped out his mouth guard and leaned on his graphite hockey sticks.
“A hotshot who left his team high and dry five days ago. Do you know we had to play an entire period without a goalie? Bastard didn’t even call to let me know we needed a sub.”
Rya shot me a knowing look. Between his old gang staking out his basement suite and bailing on his hockey team, it was looking more and more like Remo Willis was on the run.
“I guess we’ll just keep the helmet at the store then,” said Rya. “Thanks for your time.” The captain nodded and popped in his mouth guard again. Rya turned to leave, but I hesitated.
“Why crabs?” I asked.
“Excuse me?” replied the captain. I pointed at the helmet. “Oh, right,” he said. “Remo likes to call himself ‘the crab.’ You know, like Tretiak.”
“The Russian goalie from the Summit Series?”
“Yeah. Why do you think he carries that goddamn racquetball with him everywhere he goes? He constantly throws it off walls and catches it in order to improve his reflexes, just like Tretiak used to.”
The Zamboni finished its last lap and the players took to the ice. The captain lumbered past me on his blades while a better understanding of the man who killed my friend was slowly taking shape in my mind.
“One last thing,” I said, catching up to the captain just before he stepped on the ice.
“What?” he asked, exasperatingly.
“Was Remo having any money problems that you know of? Did he ever mention anything in the locker room?”
“That’s a pretty weird question for a delivery guy,” said the captain, eyeing me suspiciously.
“Long story.”
“Whatever.”
“Come on, bub. Help me out.”
“Hey, I’d tell you if I knew. I don’t owe Remo shit after the way he screwed us over. But this is a beer league, man. We only talk about hockey, tits, and ass.”
The captain stepped onto the rink, the blades of his skates crunching loudly into the ice as he took a few quick choppy strides. After a moment, he circled back and came to a sharp stop, spraying my shoes with ice shavings.
“He was actually a pretty generous guy. Always bringing beer for the locker room or picking up the tab at the pub upstairs. Not sure if that helps but it’s all I can tell you.”
“Thanks,” I said. “Good luck out there.” The captain nodded and skated off down the ice.
“What was that about?” asked Rya, as I joined her by the locker room door.
“I just learned some valuable information.”
“What?”
“There’s a pub upstairs. Come on, I’m buying.”
TWENTY-NINE
The Thirsty Penguin Grillhouse was a popular post-game watering hole that overlooked the numerous ice rinks on each side of 8 Rinks. We snagged a booth in the corner, away from a rowdy bunch of twenty-something hockey players who were in the midst of celebrating a victory. I topped off Rya’s pint glass before doing the same to mine with a pitcher of beer while she stared out the window and watched the Ice-Holes score a goal against their opponents below.
“Don’t you find it odd,” I said, “that Remo Willis was always so generous with his money and springing for beer with his team and yet he tried to squeeze a measly ten grand out of Johnny?”
“You don’t know that he wasn’t hurting financially,” she replied. “He could have just seen your friend as an easy mark.”
“I just don’t understand why he would hatch a plot to hold a snake for ransom if he wasn’t hard up for cash.”
“People do stupid shit, Jed. I see it all the time.”
“It just bothers me, I guess.”
“I think you’re reaching.”
“My instincts have been serving me pretty well up until now.”
“You’re right, they have. But they can only take you so far. You have a good nose for sniffing things out, I’ll give you that. But you’ve got to start using that big melon you call a brain.”
“Stop, you’re going to make me blush.”
“I just think if you looked before you leapt a little more you might not have a vindictive, lunatic, wrestling promoter out to kill you.”
“Fair enough,” I said, before taking a big sip of beer.
Rya leaned back in her chair and sighed. “Well, at least the mystery of the racquetball has been solved,” she said.
“I’m assuming that Remo Willis’ fingerprints weren’t in the system?”
“No, but we have several clean prints on the ball. If we find him, it’ll be a slam dunk placing him at the scene.” I nodded. We both enjoyed our beer for a while.
“Are you seeing anyone?” I asked out of the blue. Rya’s eyelids fluttered for an instant, but then she recovered.
“What’s it to you?”
“Just curious.” I shrugged. Moments passed. More sips of beer. Finally, she spoke.
“There’s a guy,” she said cautiously, “that’s sort of in the picture.”
“Another cop?”
“God, no. He works for the city.”
“How did you meet?”
“None of your business.”
“It’s like pulling teeth trying to have a personal conversation with you, do you realize that?”
“All right, I’m sorry. It’s a little embarrassing.”
“Is he a Chippendale or something?”
“No, asshole, he’s not. He’s a nice guy. A really nice guy. It’s just, well . . . I met him online,” she said, in a hushed tone.
“What’s wrong with that?”
“I don’t know. Isn’t that something I should be embarrassed about?”
“It’s not 2005, Rya. The stigma of online dating is no more.”
“Well, good then.”
“Is it serious?”
“It’s . . . comfortable.”
“Move over Kimye.”
“Shut up,” she snapped. “And it’s not like I see you tearing it up with the ladies. What’s your story, anyway?”
Pleasant memories of Connie flashed in my head, but they were soon replaced with the awkwardness of our recent phone call. “I was with this girl for awhile. She was great, you know? Genuine. But I guess I kind of screwed it up.”
“How?”
“She wanted more.”
“Like marriage?”
I shook my head. “She wanted me to be more. But I never bothered to try.”
“You mean she didn’t see your bouncing career as a building block for domestic bliss?” Rya said dryly.
“I like you better when you dish it out, Detective.”
“I’ll bet. So why did you let her go?”
“I didn’t mean to. I guess she just got fed up waiting for me to get my shit together.”
I felt my phone vibrate in my pocket. I dug it out of my jeans and saw that I had one missed call and a voicemail.
“Go ahead,” Rya said, before excusing herself and going to the restroom. I played the voicemail from a number I didn’t recognize.
“Yo, what up, bro?” chirped a familiar voice. “This here is Pocket, you know, of Pocket and Tubbs? Anyway, I just wanted to drop you a line and make sure you had the 4
11 on Johnny’s funeral. It’s going down at Forest Lawn tomorrow at two o’clock. Maybe me and Ula will see you there. Peace.”
I felt like an ass. The thought of Johnny having a funeral service hadn’t even occurred to me, and if it weren’t for the consideration of a loquacious dwarf I would have missed it altogether. I killed the pitcher of beer and silently chastised myself. I was so caught up in running around town trying to honour my friend’s memory by catching his killer that I forgot there was an even more important way for me to pay my respects.
Rya returned with a fresh pitcher of Sleeman Original Draught and two shots of whisky. “What the hell is this?” I asked.
“Boilermakers,” she said, before downing her whisky shot and chasing it with a sip of beer.
“Are we celebrating something?”
“Yeah, the first ever meeting of the not-having-your-shit-together club.”
I smiled and hoisted my whisky in the air. “I’ll drink to that, darlin,” I said, clinking her glass.
“Glad to hear it. But call me ‘darlin’ again and I’ll shoot you in the kneecaps.”
We drank more beer.
I told Rya about Johnny’s funeral but refused any type of police escort despite the fact Bert Grasby and company were likely to be there. Rya agreed that there was probably a pretty low risk of either Grasby or his boys taking another run at me in such a public venue. We talked about Rya’s work and how even though it wore on her from time to time she still loved the job. Her passion for justice and strong moral compass were clearly evident by the way she spoke, and a couple of times she sounded just like my old man. She told me about the current political bullshit going on within the department as well as a couple of humourous anecdotes that made Inspector Cornish seem like an even bigger dick than I had originally thought.
At some point the Ice-Holes finished their game and the Zamboni performed its laps before two new teams took to the ice. Rya and I continued talking and drinking, and eventually the conversation circled its way around to me again.
“Remember back when you were still wrestling, and coming and going from Vancouver all the time?” she asked.
“You would not believe the amount of Air Miles I have.”
“You and I . . . well, we were pretty good friends back then, weren’t we?”
“Rya, my pop had just taken you under his wing as his protégé. I’d been waiting decades for someone else to come along and shoulder the burden.” Rya smiled, but kept pressing forward. She was driving at something.
“When I heard you had retired from pro wrestling and were moving home . . . I was excited. I figured we’d sort of pick up where we had left off.”
Where we had left off was a point where there was a palpable romantic tension between the two of us. Rya had known I was interested in her, but due to the fact she was my pop’s partner and I was never in town for more than a few days at a time before flying off to my next big time wrestling show, it wasn’t exactly practical, or respectful, for me to make a move.
“It’s not that I didn’t want to,” I replied.
“You could have fooled me. I tried reconnecting with you several times after you moved home. You ignored me.”
“I know.”
“You weren’t the same guy, Jed.”
She was right. And I realized she needed to know why. I don’t know if it was Johnny’s case, the guilt over having distanced myself from Rya, the boilermakers and beers, or the combination of all of the above, but I slowly felt a chink widen in the emotional armour I had fashioned ever since my pro-wrestling career ended so abruptly and in such disgrace.
“It wasn’t you,” I said, by way of apology. “I was in a pretty bad place after I left wrestling.”
“Frank mentioned that you took getting let go pretty hard.”
“I wasn’t fired. I quit. And you have no idea.”
“Enlighten me.”
“Do you remember when my pop and my cousin took that trip to Thailand a couple of years back?”
“Sure,” she replied. “Didn’t you meet up with them over there and all go backpacking or something?”
“Oh, I was there, all right. But it wasn’t a vacation.” I signaled the waitress and pointed at the empty shot glasses. If I was going to tell this story, I was going to need some more whisky.
“So what was it then?” she asked.
“An intervention. My pop and Declan put an end to my tropical alcohol and drug-fuelled pursuit of a perpetual high, and probably saved my life in the process,” I replied.
“I don’t understand. Why the bender?” The waitress arrived with the shots and I downed one before she could lift it off her tray. She gave me a funny look before returning to the safety of the bar.
“Because I couldn’t live with the guilt of what I had done.” Rya looked at me curiously and waited for me to continue. “Two and a half years ago, a couple months before I was regularly getting obliterated in Thailand, I was in the midst of the biggest push of my wrestling career.”
“Push?”
“It’s when a wrestler gains popularity with wins and positive exposure. The higher-ups had me pegged as having superstar potential and wanted to try and turn me into the next Stone Cold Steve Austin. At the time I had just broken up with my tag-team partner and our resulting feud was supposed to be our springboard into solo careers. My partner, Mad Max Conkin, was also tasked with helping to put me over as a main event talent before beginning his own campaign for the Intercontinental Championship. Max and I had been working on some edgy routines, as the pay-per-view event that would finally pay off our feud was a month away. We knew the more we could dazzle at the pay-per-view the better our chances would be of becoming top draws within the company. It was a lot of pressure, but also the opportunity we had both been waiting for.”
I took a long sip of beer before continuing.
“It was my idea to use our pay-per-view match to introduce a brand new finishing move. Max loved the idea. After weeks of racking my brain, I finally came up with a spectacular move — a modified jackhammer slam. Basically, I’d grab my opponent by his trunks with one hand and wrap my arm around the back of his neck with the other. The other wrestler had to play along, of course, and jump into the move as I lifted him up above my head. He then helped balance himself as I kept him hoisted vertically for a second or two, before rolling my shoulder and using our collective bodyweight to forcefully slam him to the mat. All in all, it was a pretty sweet move, and aside from pro-wrestling legend Bill Goldberg, nobody else had ever really used a version of this move as a finisher because it requires excellent balance and upper body strength.
“Anyway, about three weeks before our big match we were at this little Podunk arena in Binghamton, in upstate New York. It was just another non-televised house show, so while the lighting and pyrotechnics guys were setting up, Max and I were in the ring working on the jackhammer slam.”
I downed another shot but this time I didn’t chase it with beer. I wanted to feel the whisky burn as it slowly trickled down my throat.
“To this day, I still don’t know what went wrong. I performed that move hundreds of times before I began to slowly increase the velocity with which Max would hit the canvas. But on that day, for whatever reason, Max’s head wasn’t tucked when I slammed him to the mat. The doctors think his cervical vertebrae snapped the moment I came down on him with the full force of my bodyweight. If I had eased off a bit, or lessened the momentum just a little, Max might not have been paralyzed. Instead, because of me, a married father of three is now a quadriplegic who spends his days hooked up to a breathing machine, crapping into diapers, and desperately trying to wiggle his right index finger.”
I killed the rest of my beer. My confession hung in the air for what felt like ages. I couldn’t bring myself to look at Rya until she reached across the table
and gently held my hand. Her deep green eyes sparkled with sympathy. She opened her mouth to speak, but no words came out. There was nothing left to say.
THIRTY
The rich aroma of roasted coffee beans gently lured me from my slumber. I found myself naked and enveloped in satin sheets on a queen-size bed, my head resting on the fluffiest, most comfortable pillow it had ever known. I snorted and scratched as per my usual morning routine, but for the life of me I couldn’t recollect where I was or how I had gotten there. Fortunately for me, and more unfortunately for my liver, I had a significant amount of experience in such situations.
“Morning,” Rya said, before padding into the bedroom barefoot. She was wrapped in a slim velvet robe that accentuated her curves, carrying two steaming mugs.
“You take your coffee black, right?” she asked.
“Uh, right,” I said, taking the mug she offered me.
Rya perched herself on the edge of the bed and sipped her coffee. My pulse was already racing, even without the caffeine kick. “Listen, Jed,” she said. “I want you to know that last night, well, it meant a lot.”
I desperately sifted through the fogginess in my head, but it was no use. My memory went blank after us drinking our faces off at the pub. “Which part of last night, exactly?” I asked.
Rya smiled radiantly. Seeing her like that — no pant suit, her tousled raven hair down, and without her usual crusty cop demeanor — it revealed what a knockout she really was, and how hard she worked to mask that beauty with an air of professionalism. She placed her mug of coffee on the nightstand before leaning in to give me the softest, most tender kiss. Her lips tasted like strawberries and her hair smelled of vanilla, which combined with Mother Nature and the morning, contributed to an unintended activation of a launch sequence in my loins. I withdrew from the kiss and subtly moved a pillow onto my lap before a tent could appear in the sheets, but I’m pretty sure Rya knew what I was trying to hide. She slid off the bed, grabbed her coffee and padded back toward the door.
“Rya, wait.”
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