Tales of River City

by Frank Zafiro

  “Like he’s doing now, in this league?”

  “Precisely. Now, Mr. Kopriva, Phillipe told me you were trying to help him with this Stoll situation.”

  I nodded. “That’s right.”

  “What are you intending to do?”

  “Just what he asked me to do. Find the woman and make an offer.”

  “Which Phillipe has no intention of paying.”

  “No,” I said. “But he seems to think that I’ll be able to tell whether she’s lying or not.”

  “Yes, he said you used to be a constable of some kind?”

  I didn’t answer, only nodded.

  Bourdon didn’t push the matter. “Well, if it will put Phillipe’s mind to rest so that he can focus on what is most important right now, then I am all for it. What can I do to help?”

  “He said that Anne Marie Stoll called you recently?”

  “The woman calls me at least once a week.”

  “When was the most recent call?”

  “Yesterday.”

  “What was the call about?”

  “Same as always. When is Phillipe going to sign his big contract? How much will I get for him? And so on.”

  “What did you tell her?”

  “Nothing,” Bourdon said, indignant. “She is not my client.”

  “Did she say where she was staying?”

  Bourdon’s look of indignation faded to amusement. “No.”

  “What’s so funny?”

  “She said she was hiding to avoid trouble from Phillipe.”

  I watched his eyes. They were a stony gray and the amusement in them was genuine. “Why would she hide from him?”

  “I don’t know. But she wasn’t any good at it.”

  “Why?”

  “Because her telephone number appeared on my caller ID.” He brought out his cell phone from his jacket pocket and pushed a few buttons. His smile grew and he turned the phone around toward me. “Can you do anything with that?”

  I scrawled the number down. “Thanks.”

  He replaced the cell phone and rose. “The coffee is finished,” he said.

  That afternoon, I met Adam at the Rocket Bakery. He showed up five minutes late, ordered his latté and sat down across from me.

  “What’s happening, Cochise?” he asked me.

  “I have a job,” I said.

  He took a drink and licked the foam from his lips. “Doing what?”

  “It’s more of a favor,” I said, and explained it to him.

  When I was finished, he shook his head and held up his latté. “I knew I should have let you pay for this.”

  “Why?”

  “Because you’re going to ask me for something.”

  I didn’t answer right away. When I worked Matt Sinderling’s case, Adam gave me some important help. He put his career on the line for me, even though I was an ex-cop that most of the agency held in contempt. I rewarded his help by getting myself arrested. On the plus side, I found Matt’s daughter and I kept my mouth shut about Adam’s help. Our friendship had been a little dicey for a while, but it endured.

  “What if I buy the next one?” I asked.

  “What if you buy the next three?”

  An hour later, he called me at my apartment.

  “You’re only on the hook for one,” he said. “I didn’t even have to work on it. The number was in the printed reverse directory.”

  “Where is it?”

  “The Celtic Spirit, up on Division.”

  I thanked him and hung up.

  I drove to the Celtic Spirit Motel. It was right on Division Street, the main thoroughfare through the city. The motel was really a series of small cabins butted up to one another in a giant, square U-shape. The parking lot was only half full and I found a spot easily. I wandered around for a minute, getting my bearings and then located room twelve.

  Light music came from the other side of the door. I listened for a moment, identified it as Enya or some rip-off of her, then knocked.

  The music stopped. The door opened four inches and a pair of suspicious eyes appraised me.

  “Who are you?” There was no trace of an accent.

  “My name’s Stefan Kopriva.”

  “I don’t know you. What do you want?”

  “Phillipe Richard sent me to discuss something with you.”

  Her eyes widened at Richard’s name, then narrowed as they swept over me again. I waited, trying to look casual and not at all dangerous. My small frame probably helped. I was maybe five-ten. In boots.

  She made her decision and let me in. As the door swung open, I did what every man does. I looked at her breasts. They were nicely shaped and some cleavage was showing. My gaze swept downward to her belly, looking for tell-tale signs of pregnancy. She looked healthy, not too thin, but I saw no real signs of impending motherhood.

  Anne Marie either didn’t notice my own appraisal or she was used to men doing it and ignored it. She closed the door behind me and pointed to one of the chairs at a small kitchen table.

  I sat down. The room was neat, but in the sterile way many motels were. I didn’t get the sense that it was anything she did that kept the place tidy.

  She sat down opposite me. She had auburn hair, probably well past her shoulders, but it was done up in a braided bun. Her nose and lips were thin in a way that suggested elegance, but her eyes were tired and wary.

  “How did you find me?” she demanded.

  “Were you trying not to be found?”

  She scowled.“What does Phillipe want?”

  “To solve this situation,” I said.

  She crossed her arms and examined me some more. “Solve it how?”

  I smiled at her. “The same way most situations get solved. With money.”

  She laughed then, a sharp bark that disintegrated into a rueful chuckle. “You are not from British Columbia, Mister…Kopriva, was it?”

  I nodded.

  “Fine. Well, Mr. Kopriva, in the Western Provinces of Canada, we solve many of our situations with blood.”

  “You don’t want money?”

  She shook her head. “No, money is fine. Money will do. It will solve this situation.”

  “Good.”

  She cocked her head at me. “That’s why you are here? To dicker with me? Are you Phillipe’s negotiator?”

  “Something like that.”

  She laughed again, a mirthless bark. “Oh, Phillipe is such a coward. Big, strong hockey player, eh? But he can’t even come settle with me himself. He has to send some messenger.”

  “Miss Stoll, I—”

  “It’s Mrs. Stoll,” she snapped. “Or didn’t Phillipe tell you that?”

  “He did. I’m sorry.”

  She stood suddenly. “I don’t think we have anything else to talk about. You tell Phillipe that he was with me when this situation started. He can be with me to finish it, no? And it will be finished when I know the terms of his NHL contract. Not before.”

  I frowned. “Mrs. Stoll—”

  “I realize that it doesn’t look it, but this motel does have security. Do I need to call them?”

  I shook my head and left. She slammed the door behind me.

  Richard started the game that night against the Creston Otters and when the opening puck dropped, he and an Otter player dropped the gloves and removed their helmets and waded into each other.

  “Why do they do that?” I wondered aloud.

  “Do what?” a voice behind me asked.

  The fight ended with Richard sending a brutal uppercut to the Otter player’s chin. The crowd went wild.

  I glanced over my shoulder at the old man behind me. He wore a battered Flyers ball cap. “Take off their helmets before a fight,” I said.

  “It’s the Code,” he told me. “The code of honor.”

  I gave him a quizzical look.

  He smiled back at me. “Just the rules between enforcers,” he said. “Let’s see. It’s goes something like this.” He began ticking off fingers. “
Don’t challenge a guy near the end of his shift. Or when he has an injury that prevents him from fighting. Take all comers. No punching on the ice or once the linesmen step in…”

  “And take off your helmet?”

  He pointed his finger at me. “Right. But only when it’s a planned thing, like that last one. If it just starts up, well…” he shrugged. “That’s different.”

  I thought about what he said. “Code of honor, huh?”

  “Yes,” he said, “just like the knights of old.”

  I met Patrick Bourdon the next morning and told him where I’d located Anne Marie Stoll.

  “And you spoke with Madame Stoll?” he asked.

  “Yes.”

  “What did she say?”

  “She wasn’t interested in settling just yet,” I said. “She wants to wait until he signs his NHL contract.”

  Bourdon pressed his lips together and sighed. “Shrewd.”

  “She didn’t look pregnant, either.”

  Bourdon gave me a surprised look. “No?”

  I nodded. “She wasn’t showing at all.”

  Bourdon swallowed and took a sip of coffee. “Of course not. She is probably only three months along.”

  “So the affair occurred over the off-season?”

  “It ended over the off-season,” Bourdon said. “I’m not certain when it began. Anyway, the important part is that we now know where we stand.”

  He removed his check book and wrote out a check. When held it out to me, I shook my head.

  “Richard already paid me.”

  “That was a retainer, no doubt,” Bourdon said. “This should complete the transaction.”

  I took the check. It was written for another two hundred dollars and drawn on Bourdon’s own account.

  “Thank you for your help, Monsieur Kopriva. If you ever need tickets to a game, you have my cell number…as long as Phillipe is on the team, of course.”

  I had my own connection for tickets, but I didn’t bother telling him. Instead, I slipped his check into my pocket and left his hotel room.

  “Something’s not right,” I told Clell.

  We sat in the lobby of one of the buildings he guarded at night. He was a conscientious security guard and made his rounds regularly, but that still left plenty of down time. I brought him coffee and company a couple of nights a week.

  He scratched his chin and drank from the thermos cup. The coffee was Maxwell House, nothing fancy. I think Clell would spit out anything Patrick Bourdon brewed.

  “They paid you four hundred dollars?”

  I nodded.

  “To do what?”

  “I told you already.”

  “I know. Tell me again.”

  I sighed. “To find the woman and feel her out about a settlement. To offer my professional opinion on her honesty.”

  “And how hard was that?”

  “Not too hard.” I told him about the number on Bourdon’s cell phone and Adam’s help.

  “Those reverse directory thingies,” Clell said. “Are those restricted to law enforcement only?”

  I shook my head. “No. They’re public documents. But they’re expensive.”

  “A lot less than four hundred dollars, though. Access to ‘em, anyways.”

  I saw his point. “Any top-flight private detective firm would probably have the reverses. Bourdon could have used that phone number on his caller ID to find out where she was staying for less than fifty bucks.”

  “That’s if he wanted to see her in person,” Clell said. “It sounds like she was making herself pretty available on the phone.”

  “Yet she didn’t want Richard to know where she was.”

  Clell grunted. “Afraid of him, but wants his money.”

  “Maybe.”

  “Fear and greed, two pretty powerful competing emotions.”

  “She didn’t look too scared when I talked to her. She looked pretty confident.”

  “Putting on a strong front, maybe.”

  I shrugged. “Could be. She didn’t want any part of a deal, that was for sure.”

  “That was one part of what they were paying you for, right? Just to see what her reaction was?”

  “Yeah. Richard said he wanted my opinion about whether she was lying or not about the kid being his.”

  “That makes you a consultant,” Clell joked.

  I smiled. “I should get little business cards printed up.”

  He waved his hand around the lobby. “You could get an office here, huh?”

  We chuckled together and drank some more coffee.

  After the laughs faded, we sat and thought for a bit. Finally, I said, “Here’s the thing. Bourdon didn’t ask me for my opinion. He just paid me and that was it.”

  “Easy money,” Clell said, a hint of disapproval in his tone.

  “Easy money is never easy,” I said. “Something’s not right.”

  “You know who you should call?” Clell asked me.

  I nodded. “Mr. Stoll.”

  I didn’t have long distance service on my telephone in my apartment, so I had to get a roll of quarters from the MI-T-Mart and use a payphone. The first few quarters got me through to a woman with a lovely voice, but she spoke only French. When I asked for an English speaking operator, she put me on hold. That cost another seventy-five cents. Then a gruff-voiced male came on the line and took my request. Only twenty-five cents later, he came back with the number. He offered to connect me for a dollar more, but I was afraid I’d run out of change while talking to Mr. Stoll, so I direct-dialed.

  There were six rings, then a man’s voice came on the line, rimmed with sleep.”Yes?”

  “I’m sorry for calling so late, sir, but I need to speak with Mr. Stoll. My name is—”

  “Is this some kind of a cruel joke?” he snapped.

  “No,” I said. “I realize it’s late, but—”

  “Mr. Stoll was a good man,” he said. “Why can’t you jackals let him rest in peace?”

  Surprised, I said nothing. A moment later, he spat a curse, and broke the connection.

  When I returned to Clell’s building, he was making his sweep, so I headed home instead. My mind was whirring. Mr. Stoll, Anne Marie’s husband, was dead. Maybe that was what was wrong with this situation and was why my gut was reacting.

  Why hadn’t Richard told me? Or Anne Marie? Or Bourdon, for that matter?

  I wasn’t sure, but I knew one thing for certain. I wasn’t going to ask them now.

  The next morning, I drove north for about four hours. I was grateful that my single criminal conviction was only a misdemeanor, so leaving the country was not a problem. I made good time to the Canadian border and passed through with only a slight delay.

  Trail was a small town. I knew small towns, having grown up in one. From my vantage point, the positive thing was that everyone probably knew everyone else’s business. The negative thing was that they weren’t likely to share the information with a stranger, particularly an American.

  I tried a local bar first, but most of the faces were unfriendly that time of day. I wandered into a couple of feed shops, but no one wanted to talk about much beyond chickens and hogs. I paid to have a lube, oil and filter done at a local garage and found out a little bit more there.

  Stoll was dead, I learned, and it had been a suicide. He’d taken a handful of sleeping pills. A farmer named Martin, who was waiting on a brake job, refused to talk about it any further. “Wouldn’t be right to speak of the dead,” he told me, “so soon after he’s been put to rest.”

  Eventually, I wandered into the small newspaper office. The secretary’s desk had an ‘out to lunch’ sign, but a single reporter sat at a computer two desks away. I caught a glimpse of his solitaire game before he minimized the window.

  “Can I help you?”

  “Are you a reporter here?”

  He smiled. “I am the reporter here. It’s a small town.”

  “Did you cover the Stoll death?”

  His smile f
aded and suspicion crept into his features. “I did.”

  “I was wondering if you could tell me a few things about that situation.”

  “Why would you want to discuss a tragedy like that?” he asked me. “Who are you, anyway?”

  “I’m American,” I said. “And I’m investigating a possibly related matter.”

  “How could a suicide be possibly related to anything?”

  “It’s complicated,” I said, holding out my hand. “But maybe you can help me. My name’s Stefan Kopriva.”

  He eyed me for a few moments longer, then took my hand and shook it. “Fred Warren.” He motioned to the chair next to him. I smiled disarmingly and took it.

  “What is it you want to know?”

  “Well,” I said, “being a newspaper reporter, how did you see the story?”

  “What do you mean?”

  “Every reporter has an angle. How did you look at it?”

  He frowned. “It was a tragedy, plain and simple. All the more so due to all the ugly rumors.”

  “Rumors?”

  He nodded. “Yes. Before…and after.”

  “I don’t understand.”

  “Mr. Stoll was a wealthy man,” Fred said. “Or so it appeared to all of us. Everything seemed to be fine on the surface, except of course for what Mrs. Stoll was doing.”

  “You mean with the hockey player?”

  “You know about that?”

  “I heard it at the garage.”

  He nodded sagely. “Yes, well, pretty much everyone suspected it. Some probably knew it for certain. The two of them weren’t very subtle about it, particularly when Mr. Stoll was traveling.”

  “Did he travel a lot?”

  Fred shrugged. “A fair amount. More lately, it seemed. I suppose, looking back, it makes sense.”

  “What do you mean?”

  Fred shook his head. “I’m getting ahead of myself, aren’t I? We were discussing the wife and her indiscretions.”

  I made a mental note to return to this point and asked, “How did he find out?”

  Fred shrugged again. “I think he suspected for some time. I’m sure that once he had the nerve to ask one of his friends, he got an honest enough answer.”