by Gare Joyce
“He c-c-cc-could play but he didn’t get hardly any ice time. Hanratty told me that he thought M-M-MM-Mays played better and harder playing eight minutes a game than eighteen. And then he started to be a healthy scratch. I asked Hanratty about it. He said, ‘The k-k-kk-kid helps us more by not playing at all than playing eight minutes.’”
“I guess that’s not exactly mutually exclusive,” I said.
I tried to puzzle it out, but Hackenbush was holding an important piece.
“If old man Mays couldn’t have played, then why the h-h-hhhell did other teams try to get Hanratty to trade him?” he wondered. “P-PP-Pembleton wanted him too.”
“Are you sure of it?”
“Sure as I’m s-ss-sitting here. Probably has a lot to do with me sitting here.”
“How’s that?”
“I never got along with H-H-HH-the coach. Or at least he never wanted to get along. He’d call me Quackenbush and Hackenschmidt and s-ss-stuff like that to embarrass me in front of his players. He’d r-rr-rip me. He wouldn’t talk to me after games. He’d s-ss-swear a blue streak. Just m-mm-messing with me, making my job impossible. And then I wrote a story about WW-W-William Mays Sr. deciding not to come back to the team after his rookie year. That’s when he went to our p-pp-publisher and said, ‘Look, we save a seat on our b-bb-bus for one of your reporters. If you want a reporter’s ass in one of those s-ss-seats, it’s not gonna be H-Harley H-Hackenbush’s.’ H-Hanratty’s h-h-had that sort of clout. That’s why I h-h-haven’t seen the team play in over twenty years. That’s why I only draw such p-pp-plum assignments as old-timers games. I’m two years from r-retirement and I’m getting treated like s-some s-sort of intern. If I make any n-noise, next thing I’ll be f-fetching coffee and running errands for the n-night n-news desk.”
“So you hadn’t been to the arena twenty years and …”
“I’d been to the arena but for b-bantam and m-midget games and stuff.”
“Okay, the first time you’re back at the arena for a game Hanratty is coaching and he ends up dead in the parking lot.”
“Yeah, sh-sh-shame about Bones though. He was still my G-G-G-GP all these years. Saw him just a c-c-couple of weeks before about my gout.”
So if Hackenbush’s eyes ever got moist when he was talking about the Ol’ Redhead’s premature demise, it just meant that his big toe was throbbing.
MY FIRST TRIP around the Ontario league, I sat beside Duke Avildsen in the scouts’ room in Mississauga and couldn’t help but notice that he was reading a newspaper that was spotted with coffee stains, torn and unevenly folded. The pages had been shuffled into a random order. I wanted to check to see if snow was in the forecast for a drive to Sudbury the next day and I couldn’t find the weather. It had been ripped out.
“What did it say?” I asked.
“Couldn’t tell you, Shadow,” Duke said. “I wasn’t the one who ripped it out. I picked up the paper at a diner. I’ve never paid for a paper my whole life. No self-respecting scout ever has.”
It’s an unusual rite of scouting but not so unexpected I guess. Just as they forage for information, so it is that scouts try to find news in its natural state rather than buy it. Plus, teams don’t let scouts put newspapers on expense accounts. I’m not a joiner but I didn’t see the harm of falling in with this convention. It might mean waiting, and that day it did. I didn’t find a newspaper until I ducked out for dinner after talking to Hackenbush. I sat at the counter of an all-day breakfast joint down the street from the arena. Eggs, bacon, beer.
The lead story on the front section of the Peterborough paper that day:
VIS, CITY IN TALKS FOR ARENA PARTNERSHIP
Peterborough mayor Arthur Smythe and Woodbridge entrepreneur Giuseppe Visicale met yesterday to discuss a private-public partnership for a commercial and residential development with a renovated and upgraded City Arena as its main attraction.
Smythe and Visicale say that they are looking for input from city councillors and the public with regard to the arena improvements.
“We’re proud to say that we are the best hockey town in this country, and Mr. Visicale and I would like to set about making our arena the best in hockey. Our vision is that the arena would be a centrepiece for the downtown core, a magnet for investment attracting high-tech businesses and high-end service operations.”
Yadda, yadda, yadda. It was the usual pie-in-the-sky stuff for Smythe and rare public exposure for Visicale. I looked at the photo of the two just below the newspaper banner: the mayor whose smile revealed teeth gapped like a picket fence and the Hockey Don’s poker-faced mien. There wasn’t much doubt about who was playing and who was getting played. Midway down the story:
As part of the proposed deal, Vis Hockey Enterprises would secure a minority share in the Peterborough junior team with options to purchase incrementally larger shares in the community-owned franchise if the commercial-residential development hits certain city tax-revenue targets. Part of the city’s contribution to the arena development would be realized from a tax on hotel rooms and an increase in metered-parking rates in the downtown core.
Yeah, like Vis Enterprises went into anything to be a silent partner. Those targets would be hit easily. A marksman would have a harder time firing a couple of rounds inside a tractor tire at thirty yards.
Further down a quote from Visicale:
“I’d like to see City Arena be renamed the Red Hanratty Centre and to pay some sort of special tribute to our late legendary coach and Doc McGarry, the team’s long-time doctor, who both lost their lives so tragically just days ago.”
All this had been in the works for a while. I had heard rumbles about it. Then again, every team in the Ontario league had received a cold call from Giuseppe Visicale.
The counterman cleared his throat and interrupted. He had spotted the L.A. logo on my clipboard and jacket.
“You a scout?”
“Yup.” I volunteered nothing more than that off the hop.
“You were at the funeral.”
That was a good guess.
“How’d you know?”
“I was there too. I recognized you just now. My son wanted to go up and ask you for an autograph. He said you were a player but I said that I didn’t think so.”
I didn’t bother correcting him.
“You went to the funeral. Did everyone in town go?” I asked.
“I went because Red used to come in here with Doc and the other team guys. The players would come in after a Saturday-morning skate. And teams in the league come in here too. We have a good rep.”
“What’s gonna happen with this development they’re talking about?”
“Might have to sell the lot here, which would be bad ’cause my father started out this business. Red told us he signed his first contract with the team over in that booth. I can tell you he would have fought this deal tooth and nail. Said so when he first got wind of it.”
“How’s that?”
“Red was his own man and the team was his own team, that’s all. Didn’t want no interference or nothing. Those guys on the board of directors rubber-stamped whatever Red put in front of them. He wasn’t a control freak or anything. He could just do his job better than anyone else could. The directors knew that.
If Red didn’t want the team sold or to be in that deal, it wasn’t gonna be in that deal. Red was coach for life, the biggest draw really, no matter who played for him. He wouldn’t have stayed on if someone in ownership was gonna crowd him. And if the team was sold against his wishes and he quit, there’d be rioting in the streets. No one would go to games in that brand-spankingnew arena if he quit.”
Yeah, I thought, if Red weren’t dead already, a statue of him being unveiled in front of an arena controlled by Vis Hockey Enterprises would be enough to kill him. Nothing had ever stopped Visicale and crew from running a show that they wanted in on, but then again they’d never worked Peterborough before. Hanratty was a boss of a different sort. Everyone saw Hanratty’s demise a
s untimely, or at least everyone except Pippo Visicale.
A bell rang and the counterman turned back to the kitchen to pick up a BLT for the tow-truck driver in the window seat. I looked down at the last two paragraphs of the story.
William Mays Sr., a former Peterborough player and father of current star Billy Mays Jr., expressed an interest in investing in the proposed development. “I’ve always believed in Peterborough, and I’ve longed to come back and give back,” said Mays Sr. “I’ve been incredibly lucky by being future-directed, not lingering on the past or reliving it. It’s all about moving forward and making a better world for future generations. I think this would move Peterborough and the team forward into the new millennium in the right direction.”
It struck me as bogus. I would have bet that he wouldn’t have been so “future-directed” and intent on “not lingering on the past or reliving it” if he hadn’t seen the paperwork. If Vis Enterprises’ numbers and performance didn’t fit his Metrics for Success, he probably would have been vouching for the virtues of the Old School.
22
* * *
April 10, or thereabouts, I found Detective Madison’s card and called his number. My father always advised me that it’s far better to call them than to wait for them to call you, no matter who the them is. I didn’t have anything to hide or anything to fear from hostile questioning, and I thought that it might go more quickly if I was proactive. I also figured that I might be able to squeeze the detective for any juice about the Peterborough team and Mays in particular.
“When can you come in, Brad?”
I was a little disappointed that Pembleton was worth a trip to London but they wouldn’t make the drive to Toronto to interview me. I just tossed it atop the heap of slights and indignities that I suppose are more perceived than real.
“I’m yours. My calendar is pretty open. I was thinking of coming up to Peterborough anyway to look after some business.”
“Does Friday work?”
We set it up for after lunch.
I then called Ollie Buckhold. I asked him if I could sit down with Mays that Friday morning. I figured that the visit to police headquarters might either start later or run longer than I hoped.
“Bradley, anything for you, my friend,” Buckhold said. “You’re going to love Billy. He’s a wonderful young man. Let me call him and set things up. Would lunch work?”
“Lunch would work.”
“I’ll pick up Billy and meet you at—”
“Ollie, if it’s all the same to you, I’d like my session with Billy to be just me and him. There’s plenty of time down the line for us to sit down with you and your client. God knows that we’ll be spending whole workweeks in the same room or on a conference call if we’re trying to do a contract. And really I just wanted to get a sense of what Billy thinks of our organization. I’d like to make a good first impression and that’s easier if the set-up is more personal.”
“I understand completely, Brad.”
I’m pretty sure he did. He understood that I was dissembling. I was emphasizing only the most minor of reasons for the meeting. I wasn’t worried at all about first impressions. That would have been presuming a lot, too much really. If he’s our player, the top name on our scouts’ list when our pick comes up and we’re on the clock, we’re taking him and we’ll worry about making an impression when we pose for a picture on the stage and walk him back to our table on the arena floor. But that was way down the line. I wanted to get a read on the kid. I suspected he’d be okay, more than okay. I suspected I could put three big check marks beside his name in the character ratings. But I have to see it, know it. To trust my instincts would have been presuming way too much.
“Let me call you Friday A.M. and we’ll set something up.”
“Done,” I said. I suspected that I’d have to call him rather than wait for his call, but we’d struck our bargain.
23
* * *
I was three bites into a corned-beef sandwich, the lunch special at the Merry Widow, when my cellphone burst into the opening bars of “Tears of a Clown,” my ring tone of the day. Unknown number. I answered with a grunt. Had to be one of those 1-800 deals.
“Mr. Brad Shade, please?”
The guy on the other end of the line had a bag-of-gravel voice that made it sound like he didn’t say “mister” a whole lot.
“Speaking.”
“Mr. Shade, my name is Lou DiNatale. I’m with Viz Enterprises. Our records show that you came out to our charity game in Peterborough a week or two back.”
“Yup.”
I looked to the peeling paint on the bar ceiling.
“Mr. Visicale appreciated you comin’ out, Mr. Shade. May I call you Brad?”
He just did.
“Brad, I run one of Viz Enterprises’ summer hockey academies …”
I only ever went to hockey school. I guess calling them “academies” kicked in at a certain price point.
“… and I wondered if you’d be interested in appearing as a featured-guest instructor at a few sessions in August.”
I hemmed and hawed.
“We can make it worth your while for a few days.”
“We can discuss it, sure. I’ll have to see what summer tournaments I’m working—I know I’m in the Czech Republic the second week of August. Otherwise, though, I should be clear until Labour Day.”
“We’ll send over one of our representatives with a contract for you. The camp’ll be in Peterborough. At the arena. We put you up at the best hotel there, or you can be Mr. Visicale’s personal guest at his vacation property on Stoney Lake.”
So much for discussion.
I still had a couple of bites left in my sandwich when a shiny black Lincoln Town Car pulled up in front of the Merry Widow. Out of the front seat bounded a monster in a dark suit and shades. He walked into the premises with papers in hand and went directly to my stool without asking my name or anything. He laid out a contract for me. I looked out into the street. I saw the opaque rear window of the Town Car power down a couple of inches.
24
* * *
I had to drive to St. Catharines. Game 200 of the season in my log fell on Wednesday. There’d be no candles, no cake. Just a round number when I logged into the team’s database. There’d be a couple of dozen more before the junior playoffs were over, and then I’d cross over and look at some minor pro teams. I had targeted 250 games but was probably going to fall short. But when I saw 200 pop up on the screen, it hit home how purely passive my life had become. I was a watcher. I attended. All my life I had been engaged, involved, in action. I never gave a thought to those in the seats when I was playing. I never gave a thought to what it was to be one of them.
Before going out on the drive, I scanned my bookmarks and the league website, just to see if there was any news, injuries, or suspensions I should be up on. I saw an item from Peterborough.
Peterborough has renounced the rights to Valery Markov for nonattendance at practice and breaking curfew at his billets. Markov left the team last month, and neither the player nor his representation has been in contact with Peterborough’s interim manager, Harry Bush. It is presumed that Markov will return to Russia immediately and rejoin his club team, Dynamo, next season. Markov’s agent did not return calls yesterday.
The suspension was the barn door and Markov was the horse gone. They thought he was returning to Russia immediately? No, they thought he was already back there and just hadn’t let him in on the fact. It seemed like Red Hanratty’s last practice with the team was Markov’s too. Not that it mattered much to Peterborough. The team was going to fall three-and-out to Ottawa. It might have mattered to Markov, a blow to his draft stock, which wasn’t very high to start with.
ST. CATHARINES WAS an inglorious waste of time. Number 200 bore no significance whatsoever. The players of interest did nothing of interest for sixty uninteresting minutes. Good games, good players, I’d work almost for free. I earned my money that night
staying awake in the stands.
25
* * *
I set out for Peterborough at seven Friday morning. A two-hour drive with a stop for coffee. I figured I could get there well ahead of my lunch meeting with Mays and grab breakfast at the Tim Hortons beside the arena. I’d try to catch up on the Late-Breaking Dope, maybe come away with a line or two on my report on Mays.
The boys from the arena were sitting at the table where I had left them a few weeks before.
“How you guys doin’?”
“Good. We had a short day yesterday,” the Zamboni driver said.
“Howz that?”
“The cops brought us in for questioning.”
“No way.”
“Way. But I don’t think they had us as suspects or anything.” Which is to say that the police didn’t give them undeserved credit for ambition or anything.
The security guard piped up.
“Really, they just wanted to see if we saw anything unusual, anybody who shouldn’t have been there, and they wanted us to name guys who showed up on the security videos by the teamonly exits.”
“And by the offices and the dressing room,” the maintenance man said. He was trying to jump in on the intrigue.
“What did you see?”
“Nothin’,” the Zamboni driver said.
I thought he’d make a compelling witness for sure. “Nothin’?” I tried to capture his inflection IQ point for IQ point and stopped at eighty-eight.
“Well, we saw all the usual guys who work there, but they were gone long before Red and Doc packed up. And the old-timers all went out as a group. They had a bus back to their hotel.”