The Hanging Tree

by Bryan Gruley

  “It’s fine,” I said. “I like it here.”

  “You landed on your feet, man. And of course who wouldn’t like it here, huh?” He swept an arm toward the big bay window facing the lake. I looked. Mom’s house was a fuzzy yellow speck in the tree line on the opposite shore.

  “I hear you’ve been staying with your mother,” Haskell said. “That’s a good son, in my book.”

  “The rent’s free. The food’s good.”

  “Oh, my, you must have heard.” He leaned into the table and shaped his face into one reflecting concern. “That girl.”

  Gracie, I assumed.

  “Yes. Not a girl, really.”

  “Did you know her?”

  “A little.”

  “It’s terrible. Her poor mother.”

  “Yeah. She worked at the rink, you know.”

  “Did she?” he said.

  “Drove the Zamboni. Sharpened skates.”

  “Ah.” Haskell gazed out the window again, crossed his legs, ran his fingers along a crease in his corduroy slacks. “Suicide is so … so selfish, don’t you think?”

  “It’s not a suicide,” I said.

  “Really? Is that what the police are saying?”

  “They aren’t saying yet.”

  Haskell shook his head. “I had a client once—did I ever tell you this story?—this client had a son, an only child, four years old, who’d been gravely injured when he was thrown from a minivan. He actually died while we were at trial due to complications related to being a quadriplegic, which should have worked to—well, that’s beside the point.”

  “Right.”

  “The defense put my client, the mother, on the stand. About as brazen a move as I’ve seen in all my years of lawyering. They asked her a lot of questions about how the boy was situated, where she’d bought the car seat, how well she secured him, et cetera. They even asked about her husband supposedly leaving her. All of it patently irrelevant, trying to blame her for their own client’s egregious negligence. They got her crying, of course. I assured her they were out of order and I’d get her testimony thrown out by the judge. But …”

  He let his voice trail off for dramatic effect.

  “And she killed herself?” I said.

  “Unbelievable.”

  “She’d lost her son and her husband. And she must have felt guilty.”

  “No,” he said, leveling his eyes on me as if I were a member of the jury. “She was just afraid to get on with her life.”

  “What happened with the case?”

  “The family had been through enough. We settled.”

  “I guess you missed out on a pretty big payday there, huh?”

  “A payday had nothing to do with it.”

  I felt more comfortable now. I pulled out my notebook, set it on the table, and opened it to the first page. I took out a pen and wrote HASKELL and the date across the top of the page. I made sure to write it big enough that he could see it.

  “Ah, well,” he said. “Time for the business part of the meeting. We should probably discuss some ground rules.”

  “What? You asked me here, Mr. Haskell.”

  “Call me Laird, please. Look, my understanding—”

  “I’m the only one here, Laird.”

  “I’m sorry, I’m not being clear. My attorney had a discussion with a helpful intermediary for your organization, and my understanding was that we were going to visit for a while and we could work out what you might want to write, if anything, in your little paper.”

  “You talked to Kerasopoulos,” I said.

  “I’m not at liberty to say.”

  The e-mail I had read in Philo’s computer had come from Jim Kerasopoulos, my boss, Philo’s boss, Philo’s uncle, the president and chief executive of Media North Corporation, and Haskell’s intermediary. Kerasopoulos was a businessman who saw nothing wrong with sticking his nose into news coverage. I actually didn’t mind his gaining me access to Haskell. But he was not going to set the terms for how I made use of it.

  “Well, Laird, I’m here, and I’m happy to listen to whatever you have to say, so long as it’s on the record. I also have a few questions I’d like to get answered for my little paper.”

  Haskell grinned and slapped his palms on the table. “Because the public has a right to know. Is that it?”

  “Something like that.”

  “Is this your way of getting a little payback?”

  “Payback for what? I’m just doing my job.”

  “It’s my money, son. Don’t forget that. My money’s building that rink.”

  “Not entirely. There’s sewer and water and roads and police and fire paid for by tax dollars. You’re also getting a nice little property tax break. And while your rink stands out there with the wind blowing through the steel, the town’s letting the old rink rot.”

  “Fair enough,” Haskell said, raising his hands as if in surrender. “But I have something for you today and, frankly, I think it’s a pretty big story for this town. We can give it to you exclusively, if you can help us out a bit.”

  “Help you out how?”

  “Nothing special, nothing extraordinary. Just a little balance. The next time you’re going to quote a subcontractor bitch—excuse me, complain about allegedly not getting paid, I wish you’d check with me about what the sub’s actually accomplished to warrant being paid.”

  “Are you kidding? I have called you repeatedly and—”

  “Yes, yes, I understand. I have been remiss at responding to your inquiries because I’ve been, well, I’ve had other priorities. I apologize. I realize now that I have let the stories in your paper make it even more difficult for me to complete this project. But I will complete it.”

  “When?”

  “You’ll see. Soon. Very soon.”

  I wrote that down in my notebook.

  “Wait,” Haskell said. “We are not on the record.”

  “Did I ever say we were off? When exactly is ‘very soon’? By next season?”

  Haskell folded his hands on his chest and fixed his gaze on the table.

  “Do you want to hear what I have to tell you?” He lifted his gaze to me. “Or should we just give it to Channel Eight?”

  I thought of Elvis embarrassing me that morning at Audrey’s Diner. I was not about to get one-upped by Channel Eight twice in one day.

  “What do you got?”

  “Off the record?”

  I set my pen on the table. “For now.”

  “Two items,” Haskell said. “Something we’re going to announce shortly. And something else I can’t really tell you about yet. Just a heads-up.”

  Christ, I thought. That’s how it went when you agreed to go off the record.

  “What’s the second thing?”

  “You have a paper tomorrow, is that correct?”

  “That’s right.”

  “And then your next paper is Saturday?”

  “Yep.”

  He gave this a moment’s thought. “If I tell you, then you cannot use it in the paper in any way, shape, or form, is that correct?”

  “If you—”

  “Never mind. Look, let me be candid, all I can say at the moment is that we might be seeking a bit of help from the town.”

  “Financial help?”

  He considered for a moment, his way of letting me know, yes, it was financial help. Then he said, “I’m afraid that’s all I can say.”

  “Come on.”

  “I’m sorry. Things are in a delicate stage. I’m being as helpful as I can.”

  On the contrary, he was giving me just enough information that it could, in theory, handcuff me if I happened to hear something more specific from someone else. That’s why he’d asked about my not being able to use it in any way, shape, or form. Although I hadn’t answered that question, Haskell might remember things differently, if it served his purpose. But what could I do? If I hadn’t gone off the record, I’d have nothing. I knew Haskell was as slippery as a bass on a bad
hook, but I had no choice, or I thought I had no choice, but to deal with him any way that I could. At least he was speaking to me.

  “That’s pretty disappointing, Laird,” I said. “So I better be able to put whatever your announcement is in tomorrow’s paper.”

  Haskell brightened. “You will.” He picked up the phone, punched two numbers, and said into the phone, “Felicia. Yes. Could you send him up? No need for you to—no. No. Yes, I understand. Thank you, dear.” He returned the phone to its cradle, stood up, and walked over to the door, pushing the button on the doorknob that locked it. “I guarantee you will love this.”

  He waited at the door, smiling. I heard footsteps in the corridor outside the door, then the sound of someone trying to open the door.

  “Whoa, one minute,” Haskell said. He undid the lock and held the doorknob. “It is my distinct pleasure,” he said, “to introduce to you the new coach of the Hungry River Rats.”

  He swung the door open and there, filling up most of the doorway in a blue-and-gold River Rats sweat suit, was Jason Esper.

  “How are we doing today, Coach Esper?” Haskell said as he pumped the hand of Darlene’s husband. Jason was looking at me, just as surprised to see me as I was to see him. I decided I’d better stand up.

  “Meat,” I said, using his nickname. I extended my hand. “Congrats.”

  He tilted his head slightly and allowed himself a small, amused smile. Haskell nudged him in my direction. Jason took my hand. I felt the calluses on his knuckles, the scars of a hundred minor-league hockey fights. He held tight when I tried to release. “You can call me Coach,” he said. He let my hand go.

  “Midget squad?” I said.

  “Yep.” He turned to Haskell and handed him a manila envelope.

  “Thank you,” Haskell said. “Let’s sit down for a minute, shall we?”

  I’d always thought of Jason as big, but he looked bigger than ever as he eased himself into a chair. He had indeed cleaned himself up since the last time I’d seen him. That afternoon eight or nine months before, he was hunched on a stool at the Kal-Ho Tavern in Kalkaska, a can of Busch Light and a empty shot glass in front of him, his lighter lying atop a pack of Marlboros. I’d stopped for a patty melt on my way back from a meeting at corporate in Traverse City. If Jason noticed me, he gave no indication. He sipped and smoked with his half-open eyes on a soap opera on the television hanging over the back bar. A jagged line of clotted blood crossed the bridge of his nose.

  Now, sitting across the table next to Haskell, Jason looked as lean and strong as I’d seen him since he was the mullet-headed winger, number 28, skating for the Pipefitters all those years ago. Scars from sticks, pucks, and his nightly scraps cut thin slashes beneath his eyes and along his chin. But his blue eyes were bright, his blond curls clung tightly to his head, he wore a neatly trimmed blond goatee touched with gray. A different man, at least in appearance.

  I looked at Haskell and said, “What about Poppy?” Dick Popovich had been the midget coach for five years. He’d never gotten the Rats out of the regionals. With Haskell’s boy, Taylor, in goal, people figured he had a chance.

  “He’s retiring,” Haskell said.

  “Of course. And we’re so desperate for a winner that we hire a guy from our archnemesis to get us there.”

  “I hired him,” Haskell said.

  “I might have Poppy give me a hand with the goalies,” Jason said.

  “Goalies need all the help they can get,” I said.

  Jason gave me a mirthless wink. “You ought to know, eh, Carpie?”

  Jason had been sitting on the opposing team’s bench when I allowed the goal that cost the River Rats the state title eighteen years before. He’d moved to nearby Mancelona with his parents as a teenager. He was quick and agile for a tall kid. And mean as a snake. Our coach begged him to defect from the Pipefitters to the Rats, but his parents had other plans—college hockey and then the NHL. He lived with a teammate’s family near Detroit during the Pipefitters’ season and spent summers up north. Our paths didn’t cross much.

  While I was taking journalism classes at the University of Michigan, Jason skipped college for Canadian juniors. He played one game in the NHL and later wound up skating for two hundred dollars a game in minor-league towns like Raleigh and Baltimore, where people went to hockey games to drink beer and howl for players to spill one another’s blood. I had heard he was briefly a celebrity in Hampton Roads, Virginia. Local youngsters wrapped their knuckles with white tape to emulate their brawling hero.

  He was briefly a celebrity in Starvation, too, after he retired from the minors and moved to town to sell insurance in the early 1990s. By then I had been working in Detroit for years and planned to stay until, as I dreamed, the New York Times or Washington Post hired me away. I never quite understood how Jason managed to woo Darlene. In a matter of weeks, my mother had told me, their romance went from a few weekends in Jason’s cabin in the woods to a wedding in the Pine County Courthouse. After hearing that, I wasn’t able to bring myself to go back to Starvation for months.

  Darlene didn’t like to talk about her years with Jason. Everyone in town knew that he was much better at video golf in bars than he was at selling insurance, which was why he and Darlene could manage only to rent the little apartment over Sally’s that she lived in now. I teased her once that she had married Jason because he had skated for the team that had made me the town goat, that she had wanted to make me jealous. She went silent for two long nights, which made me think that what I had said in jest might actually have been a fact.

  Which meant I never had to bring it up again. It was all in the past anyway, I told myself. But here Jason was, sitting across from me, my girlfriend’s husband. I wondered what Haskell knew about it, whether Jason had told him or he had heard it around town. Hell, I wondered what Jason knew.

  “So, first practice is what?” I said. “Boxing lessons? How to get the other guy’s jersey over his head?”

  Jason folded his arms on the table and leaned forward.

  “This is a whole new package, my friend,” he said. “I’m here to prepare young men to be winners in life, on the ice and off.”

  “Precisely,” Haskell said, placing a hand on Jason’s arm. “Past is past, now is now, and the future for the Hungry River Rats is brighter than ever, with a new rink, a new coach, and some fine new players.”

  “That’s right,” Jason said. He glanced at Haskell, who removed his hand from Jason’s arm. Then Jason turned back to me. “I’ll tell you the same thing I’ve been telling his son: Winners win. Players play.”

  “And goons goon. Isn’t that what they say in the East Coast League?”

  “I don’t expect you to understand.”

  He seemed pretty cocky for a guy who’d lost his wife to me. I turned to Haskell. “How much are you paying him?”

  Coaches normally received their annual pittance from the local hockey organization funded by parents and fans and silent auctions and sponsors like Enright’s and Fortune Drug. But I assumed that, if Haskell was handling the announcement, he would be writing Jason’s checks.

  Haskell slid the manila envelope to me.

  “Everything’s in there,” he said, and I knew my question wouldn’t be answered. “Press release, bio, photo, and other materials you may find helpful. It’s all yours. Nobody else has seen it.”

  “How much is he getting to be coach? I don’t think Poppy makes more than like fifteen hundred.”

  Jason started to answer but Haskell quieted him with a gently raised hand. “Candidly,” he said, “I don’t see how it’s relevant.”

  “Look, if you’re paying him out of your pocket, or your unbuilt new rink’s pocket, then I guess it’s none of my business. But you said you might be seeking a ‘bit of help’ from the town, so I think—”

  “Whoa,” Haskell said. “Hold on there, mister. That was off the record.”

  “I understand, but I still heard what I heard, and my question—”
/>   “No.” He wagged a finger back and forth in front of his face. “You don’t even know that, sir. I never said it. That’s what off the record means.”

  Jason sat back and knitted his hands atop his head, enjoying the show.

  “I know what off the record means,” I said.

  Haskell looked at his watch. “My gosh,” he said. He picked up the phone again, punched two numbers. “Fel,” he said, “are you taking Taylor?” He turned away and lowered his voice, but I could still hear him. “Not—no. No. He needs to do his balance class. He has not been—dear? Dear? He hasn’t been getting from post to post like he—I’m sorry, but—please, Felicia, that’s simply not fair. He is not going to be playing in the New York Philharmonic so let’s just put that whole fantasy to rest.” He listened for a few seconds. I glanced at Jason, who’d let a barely disguised smile creep onto his face. “I understand that’s how you feel,” Haskell said.

  He hung up the phone and pushed his chair back. “I’m afraid that’s all the time we have. Thank you for your time, Gus.”

  “I had a few more questions.”

  “I’m sorry,” Haskell said. “I didn’t realize how much time we’d already spent. But feel free to call me if you have follow-ups.”

  “This afternoon?”

  Haskell gave me one of his jury frowns. “Today is really not going to be good. Try me tomorrow.”

  “I have a paper to put out.”

  “Great,” he said. He pointed at the envelope. “You have a great front page story right there. Which reminds me. I have a question for you.”

  “I thought you were out of time.”

  Jason was smiling more broadly now.

  “Have you been made aware,” Haskell said, “of our plans for advertising in your paper when the rink opens?”

  “I don’t have a thing to do with advertising, Mr. Haskell.”