Blizzard Ball

by Dennis Kelly

  The woman hesitated. Then with a shrug snatched a piece out his hand like a bird pecking seed. “Thanks,” she said, and moved onto her meeting without returning the introduction.

  Kirchner watched her trail off, bit down on the mint and heard a nerve-jolting crack. “Sonofabitch,” he said, as he tongued the fractured tooth.

  Gastown

  The Russian professor arrived in Vancouver, and Gisele met him at the airport. Although jet-lagged from the fifteen-hour flight from St. Petersburg, he would not be put off. He demanded confirmation and collection on his winning lottery tickets. Roddy, Lotto2Win’s owner, agreed to meet the professor alone, over the objections of Gisele, at the HM Club, a strip joint located in Vancouver’s Gastown district. The area had been transformed from dilapidated red-brick warehouses into trendy offices and retail and entertainment spots. Roddy had a financial interest in the club and considered it the perfect venue to mix business and pleasure.

  Roddy nodded to a black-suited bouncer with a square head and ship-beam shoulders and proceeded to the club’s VIP mezzanine level. From this elevated perch, he took in the mixed crowd of pumped-up studs in too-tight Tshirts, the business set in two-thousand-dollar suits, and the working girls. The cacophony of clacking billiard balls, shouts for drinks at the bar, and the lusty clamor of patrons tethered to the rim of the stage rose in chorus with the cash register’s tone. Ka-ching. Roddy snorted two squiggly lines of coke from the mirror-topped cocktail table through a rolled hundred-dollar bill.

  Professor Sergei Petrov seemed energized by HM’s atmosphere. He rubber-necked the dancers as a host steered him up the half-flight of stairs to meet Roddy.

  “Pleased to meet you, ah . . .” Roddy said haltingly.

  “Let us make it easy. Just call me Professor, everyone does,” the professor said, his attention fixed on the dance stage. “I must admit this is not what I was expecting. But life is full of nice surprises these days, yes?”

  “Surprise is a strange word coming from someone with an expertise in connecting the dots of random events.” Roddy pointed the professor to a chair and signaled a waitress to bring a couple of Stolis.

  “So, you are familiar with hypergeometric distribution?” the professor said with an air of professorial condescension. “Perhaps, you would like me to explain how the flapping of butterfly wings in Brazil will set off tornado in Texas, yes?”

  “Not necessary.” Roddy raised his chin toward an acrobatic stripper on the brass pole. “If I understand the concept, the heat coming off that dancer could burn down the rain forest, eh.”

  “Indeed.” The professor’s Adam’s apple bobbled below his neatly trimmed beard. Caught off guard by Roddy’s foray into his academic territory, he attempted a return service. “I would wager HM stands for something pedestrian like Hit Man, High Maintenance, His Majesty, or Huge Mammary. Am I close?”

  The waitress dropped the drinks on the table.

  “Stick with the math, professor. I’ll give you a clue.” Roddy pointed a swizzle stick toward a framed poster hanging on the wall over the bar. The illustration featured the naked backside of a woman with the words “Tropic of Capricorn by Henry Miller” scripted over her rear. “We would still be laboring under the heavy skirts of the Puritans if Henry had not rolled back the covers.”

  “No skirts here, and very abreast of the times,” the professor said, his knees bouncing and his focus zeroed in upon the stage.

  Roddy could practically hear the carefully crafted framework of the professor’s academic persona implode as two leggy dancers appeared on the stage in stiletto heels and hockey jerseys. The taller of the two girls, a big-busted blonde, wore a blue Vancouver Canuck #33 jersey with the name “Sedin” lettered on the back. She was an immediate crowd favorite. The other girl, a brunette, wore a black Anaheim Ducks #37 featuring Ruutu and was booed. Both girls donned hockey gloves. They pranced around the stage, hip-checked and bumped at each other. Suddenly, tempers flared, the gloves dropped to the cheers of the patrons, and the cat fight was on. In the struggle, the jerseys were pulled overhead, breasts swung freely, and the Canuck took the Duck to the floor. They fought for position, with the Canuck getting at the backside of the Duck, who was on all fours. The home-town favorite pulled back on the Duck’s mane like a bareback rider, slapped her on the ass, and humped her hard. The customers pounded the tables and howled with laughter.

  “Maybe, with your lottery winnings, you’ll buy a hockey team, eh?” Roddy soft-elbowed the professor.

  “I was wondering when the elephant in the room would be acknowledged,” the professor said, his attention riveted on the dancers. “Although I must say the cheetahs have been an interesting diversion.”

  “We’re not very practiced in receiving winners. Most transactions are handled long distance, electronically. We, of course, welcome your visit; it is all together understandable, given the magnitude of the prize.”

  “I am associated with very aggressive investment group. I felt it prudent to deal with the prize claim at once.”

  “You’re splitting the money, eh?”

  “More than I would like, given the analytics and progression was all my work. Now, about the prize claim?”

  “We have an agent in the U.S. who will present the winning lottery ticket, take the cash option, pay the taxes, and transfer the funds to Lotto2Win. It will then be wired directly to your

  bank of preference.”

  “Yes, yes. How long to do this?”

  “The claim process is a bit delicate, as you can appreciate. The resale of lottery tickets outside of the U.S. is not looked on favorably, and the winner must hold up to some scrutiny. Given all the attention and press, it will take a little longer than normal. In the meantime, please enjoy Vancouver.”

  Roddy raised his arm. The Rolex on his wrist caught the light and strobed the stage. The hooligan hockey dancers retreated from the fawning patrons fingering twenty-dollar bills into their garters and proceeded to the mezzanine. Roddy pressed a thousand-dollar wad of bills into the professor’s hand and exited, leaving him with the girls in the VIP section. On the way out of the club, Roddy hesitated at the bar and straightened the Tropic of Capricorn poster.

  Report

  Gisele, open . . .” Roddy said, trying to keep his voice from echoing through the apartment hallway.

  Gisele, barefoot, pulled her robe tight, eying Roddy through the chained door. “Christ, it’s 6:00 a.m., what are you doing here?” She ran her fingers through sleep-matted hair. “And keep your voice down; my daughter’s sleeping.”

  “There’s been an accident,” Roddy said as he pushed his way into her apartment. He smelled of stale booze and his shirt was ripped. “One of those crazy bicycle couriers ran into me, but I am talking about the professor.”

  “Omigod, what happened?”

  “I left the professor at the club just after midnight with the hockey dancers.” Roddy paced between the small apartment living room and kitchen. “Next thing I know, I get a frantic call from the Duck. The professor’s dead.”

  “I don’t even want to hear this,” Gisele said, feeling her blood pressure rise and her face flush with heat. She took a step backward and collapsed onto the couch.

  “Your professor was into some twisted shit,” Roddy said.

  “He’s not ‘my professor,’” Gisele snapped.

  Roddy walked into the kitchen, allowing the air of shock and tension to diffuse a bit. He returned with a bottle of cold beer and held it to the side of his face. “As you wish. The ‘professor’ hung himself to get his dick up.”

  “What are you talking about?” Gisele’s face grew pinched and sour with disgust.

  “Here, let me give it to you in black and white,” Roddy said, reaching into his rear pocket. He pulled out a first responder investigative report obtained from the Vancouver Police Department by the HM Club’s lawyers. He dropped it on Gisele’s lap. “It’s all there.”

  Gisele turned on the table lamp and angled the
photocopy of the report into the light. The report, time stamped 4:29 a.m., was from Spt. J. Rothmeyer, VPD, Investigative Services.

  In a statement provided by Ms. Belinda Weir, aka the Duck, a Sergei Petrov, aka Professor (passport identification, Russian national), had propositioned several women at the HM Club. He flashed a significant sum of cash and the Duck accepted the offer. The Professor and the Duck went to her apartment (approximately 1:30 a.m.) and had sex for hire. With the agreement fulfilled, the Duck told the Professor to leave. The Professor, however, insisted upon another sexual encounter. He then rummaged through the Duck’s bedroom closet, found a scarf, tied the ends together to form a loop, and secured it high on the hinge side of a bedroom closet door. He stuck his head in the scarf loop and made a 360-degree turn to cinch the scarf tight around his neck.

  “This is totally insane,” Gisele said, rubbing at her eyes. She wanted nothing more than to be done with Roddy, the lottery business, and the Professor, but she read on.

  The Duck was instructed to have sex with the Professor, who was standing up against the door, when he reached the state of arousal. The Professor pounded on the door in anger when he failed to become stimulated and lowered his weight, putting more pressure on the scarf. The Duck, who was lying in bed watching the “freak show,” as she called it, became alarmed when the Professor’s legs buckled and his eyes bulged. Seeing he was in trouble, she then tried to lift him to take the pressure off his neck, but could not manage the weight. Finally, she secured a serrated steak knife and cut the scarf free. The professor collapsed on the floor. She tried shaking him back to consciousness, but there was no response. In her panic, she called Roddy Pitsan, an acquaintance from the HM Club, who in turn called Emergency Services. (Call registered at 2:29 a.m.) The medical examiner has reported (3:33 a.m.) the cause of death: strangulation by means of autoerotic asphyxiation. The Professor’s blood alcohol was at a level of severe intoxication.

  “I knew your name would show up in this somehow.” Gisele looked up from the report and eyed Roddy suspiciously.

  “Don’t even go there,” Roddy said, twisting the cap off the beer. “All I know is the police are holding the Duck. The Club got her an attorney. Aside from a prostitution charge, she should be off the hook.”

  Gisele grabbed at a sofa accent pillow and clutched it to her chest. “Go away,” she said. “I don’t want anything to do with this.”

  “I need you to go to St. Paul’s Hospital,” Roddy said evenly, aware he was on thin ice, “and identify the professor. Make a personal connection.”

  “Bullshit!” Gisele exploded off the couch. “This is your problem. You directed him to the club. Those are your sluts you set him up with. Now get the hell out of my apartment.”

  “Gisele, settle. You’ll wake your daughter.”

  “Fuck you,” Gisele said, cutting him a hard look. “And don’t ever mention my daughter again,” the fury raising a visible vein on her forehead.

  “Okay, okay, I’m sorry,” Roddy said with a wounded look, in the manner of a chastened little boy. He walked over to the apartment window, as if taking a bad-behavior time-out, and watched the morning rain run wormlike down the glass. “You’re the only known contact the professor had in Vancouver,” Roddy said, turning back to Gisele. “Besides, there’s probably a hotel surveillance video showing you waltzing in with the professor and planting him in the room you booked for him. The police are going to want to talk with you. You’ve got to head this off.”

  “I’m not getting involved,” Gisele said. “No way. No how. This is your mess, leave me out of it.” She could feel the approach of a monster headache.

  “Don’t high-horse me,” Roddy said, the muscles in his jaw tightening as he closed the distance between them. “You stroked the professor for a lot of money and agreed to, perhaps even encouraged, his visit because he was going to cut you in on the lottery winnings.”

  “I was only doing business,” Gisele said, feeling cornered. “I had nothing to do with him being snuffed by a whore or however you’re spinning it.” She threw the police report at Roddy and stormed out of the living room into the bathroom, her face tight with anger. She swung open the medicine cabinet, pinched the cap off a bottle of aspirin, shook out four tablets, put her mouth to the faucet, and washed them down.

  Roddy followed, stealing a look at his sleep-deprived face in the hallway mirror, and stood in the bathroom doorway. “Just tell the police that you met this guy on the Internet, nothing serious. You did a little online flirting but in no way encouraged him to visit. His arrival in town was a complete surprise. You’re shocked and embarrassed that the guy turned out to be a pervert.”

  “You think the police are not going to seize on the fact this guy just won seven hundred and fifty million dollars?” Gisele said, pressing her head against the bathroom mirror and letting a washcloth run under cold water.

  “Technically speaking, without a ticket in hand the professor has not won anything.”

  “Out of my way,” Gisele said as she lowered her shoulder into Roddy’s solar plexus, shoving past him out of the bathroom. His breath left him with a strained auuuuh. Gisele dropped into the living room sofa. Spent by the stress, she laid the washcloth on her forehead. “You have to be crazy to think this guy left Russia and didn’t tell someone he had purchased the wining ticket,” she said, staring at the ceiling.

  Roddy was hopeful that the lottery investors referenced by the professor might stop to consider the professor’s curious death, now under police investigation, before they too chased an illegally gotten lottery ticket across the globe.

  “I’ve already instructed Claude to alter the transaction file, swapping out the professor’s winning numbers for losers,” Roddy said from a safe distance, wary of another attack. “If someone comes snooping, even the police, they’ll only find more proof that the nutty professor was not operating with a full deck.”

  Gisele kneaded at her temples. “Somebody let me out of this nightmare,” she said, emotionally drained.

  The pad of small feet on the linoleum floor interrupted the exchange. “Mommy, who’s that man?”

  “He’s just leaving,” Gisele said, gathering her daughter close.

  Roddy bent down on one knee to the height of the little girl. “Hi, I’m Roddy, a friend from Mommy’s work.”

  Gisele opened the apartment door to facilitate his exit. Roddy stood up to his full size and smiled at the little girl. “Gisele, make this thing go away, and I will throw in a five-thousand-dollar kicker and a trip to Disney World for you and your princess.”

  “Mommy, yippee. I want to go to Disney World!” The little girl tugged at Gisele’s sleeve.

  Roddy waved goodbye to the child and walked past Gisele out into the apartment hallway to the reverberation of a slammed door.

  Morgue

  The white lights of St. Paul’s Hospital bounced off the brightly polished floor and bleached Gisele’s sleepless brain. She approached a heavyset nurse in starched whites and pink tennis shoes, who ushered her down a long corridor into a small windowless office. An elderly administrator looked down her half-rim glasses at Gisele before setting her dark liver-splotched hands to the keyboard in search of information on the professor. As Gisele was not an immediate family member, little in the way of the medical report could be divulged. Gisele attempted to make a point of saying she was only a casual acquaintance of the deceased, but was met with indifference. The administrator said something about a yet–to-be-performed autopsy and efficiently moved her along, as though on a conveyor belt, and dropped her into the hospital’s morgue. When the refrigerated drawer opened, Gisele buckled into the arms of the medical examiner, who was as practiced as a trapeze artist in catching falling bodies. He planted her in a chair outside the morgue, where she was set upon by two grouchy male detectives. She recited to the investigators the fabricated account about her very brief long-distance Internet relationship with the professor, only to be challenged with sarcasm and hum
iliation. After the third tortured recitation, she told the sadistic pair to fuck off. She was dismissed with the stipulation that she make herself readily available, should homicide want to question her further.

  Gisele bolted through the tiled bowels of the hospital, spotted an exit, and pushed through the revolving door into the rain. On the sidewalk, her stride lengthened into a run in an attempt to dispel the morning’s events.

  “Stop!” a familiar voice said. “Please wait,” Claude gasped, catching Gisele four blocks from the hospital. ”You blew right by me at the hospital entrance,” he said, sucking air, bent over at the waist. “You trying to kill me or what?”

  Gisele lifted her face to the drizzling sky, trying to flush the smell of the morgue out of her sinuses. Watery beads caught at the corners of her eyes and tracked lines of mascara down her cheeks. She shook uncontrollably.

  “Come on. Let’s get out of the weather.” Claude pulled Gisele into a nearby tavern and planted her in a booth. The air was dead and musty. He ordered a couple of coffees and two snifters of brandy. The place was crowded with press operators, typesetters, and warehousemen from the just-completed graveyard shift at the Vancouver Sun Press. The patrons leaned on the bar with feet on the brass rail and bellyached about this and that while watching the muted TV mounted overhead. A moose and waterfall were etched into the large mirror behind the bar. Gisele’s wavy reflection in this silvery scene only added to her confused state.

  A flannel-shirted printer with a full beard stumbled over and dropped a fat ink-stained hand on the table. He glared at Claude, then looked at Gisele. “How ‘bout a dance, sweetheart?” he muttered, his boozy breath landing hard.

  “How ’bout you take a hike, Raccoon Face?” Gisele said, loud enough for the men at the bar to hear. The printer retreated to the laughs of his coworkers. “Oversized delinquents,” Gisele said.