The Code (11 page)

“Any chance that the mono thing is a cover for something wrong with the shoulder, some type of chronic thing?”

McMullin looked offended. “All I can tell you is Red looked ashen when he got word that Mays wasn't gonna be available for the playoffs,” he said. “I wanted Red to do an interview that we were gonna put on the sportscast, but he said he wanted to hold off until he knew more and until he had a chance to talk about it with the kid and his father.”

“He didn't want to talk to the agent?”

“Red never met an agent that he ever wanted to talk to.”

That sounded about right.

I really didn't have too many thoughts about the funeral itself, much beyond the fact that the Ol' Redhead's pallbearers would have made a helluva power play. I thought it was a nice touch that the hearse and the cars in line behind it made a detour en route to the cemetery and drove past the arena. I imagined that, inside the arena, the eyes of the Queen were watering and the enduring aroma of Cubans in the coach's office would serve as a reminder of Him Who'll Never Be Truly Replaced.

The team came to the arena the day after the funeral and would do that for the next ten days, until they picked up their schedule again. The league put its entire sked on hold for the Friday night, so that all the coaches and general managers could make it out to the service. Peterborough's upcoming three games were postponed and rescheduled out of respect to the Hanrattys, the Boneses, the organization, the blindsided kids, and the townspeople, dressed in black.

Still, the kids reported to the rink around two in the afternoon on weekdays after school, and about ten on weekends.
The earlier start and daylong sessions on the weekend were a bit much I thought, but those in the organization figured it was an effective deterrent against any of the players partying away their grief. They all came except Markov, but this went generally unnoted in the media. Maybe the team put up lost-dog signs on bulletin boards in supermarkets. No one seemed that concerned about his whereabouts. I thought his absence was curious.

A bunch of parents of players stuck around town for as long as they could get off from their day jobs. For some, the working stiffs, this was hard. They had to use sick days. For the white collars it was a little more manageable. It would have been heartwarming if they were still on the scene out of concern for their sons' emotional well-being, but I've been around enough hockey parents to know that a good number of them were worried about their considerable investments, i.e., the kids whose minor-hockey careers they had underwritten to the tune of ten thousand a year or more in some cases. They had signed their sons on with Peterborough to play for the Ol' Redhead and to have him develop them into pros. Yeah, a lot of them were bitching and moaning all the time about The Leader of Young Men being unfair to their sons, none of them getting the ice time they deserved. Soon as he was gone, though, they were all wet-eyed and worried. I thought it was bogus.

And it seemed like all through this stretch the Ontario league was issuing statements. Every day they had a news release out. One day, the league announced that its most valuable player award was going to be renamed the Red Hanratty Trophy. The next: One of the main league sponsors, a chain of pizza joints, had set up a scholarship program in his name, the best student on each team getting five grand toward his education, which was laughable given that the man himself had a healthy distrust of all manner of higher learning. I was half-expecting that they'd
be putting him up for sainthood. Throughout, the league gave assurances that it was doing all in its power to address the emotional needs of these kids, who would forever after be like a Pavlovian kennel, bursting into tears every time they smelled a cigar. I found it all hard to take.

Sandy was on the scene, and I tried to throw anyone from the team off the scent by telling them I was sticking around only to support her with the grief counselling she'd offered the club. This was true, or at least partly true as far as it goes. I dropped her at the arena each day. If she had a question about the hockey end of all this, I did my level best to fill her in. As a professional taking into account patient privilege, she couldn't discuss a whole bunch of things with me.

Like the fact that Mays was the player in the dressing room who took charge when the team met behind closed doors with all adults locked out. Like the kids were shutting out almost all adult help, or at least adult professional help. Like grief-stricken wasn't a way that you'd describe some of the players. Like a few of them were shrugging off the Ol' Redhead's death and just wanted back on the ice. Like Mays had sought out Sandy independent of his teammates and was pouring it out about the pressures he faced from the town, the team, and his father, that being in exponentially ascending order. Like Mays was concerned about his injury and feared that maybe, maybe, his career was in jeopardy.

It would have been helpful in my workup on Mays to know about his leadership in the room, even with older players around. And it would have been useful in my workup to know that he was genuinely wounded by the deaths of the coach and the team doctor—he'd had more to do with Bones than most of his teammates. Yeah, there would have been a whole bunch of things she could have told me that might have been helpful, and
even though a glass of wine or two might loosen her tongue a bit, the whole patient privilege thing had to be taken into account. If she violated that, she'd be slapped down by the folks in the province who oversee her profession. So even if she did tell me something that would have been helpful, like those things I mentioned, I couldn't tell you what it was.

“There are just some things that I can't tell you,” she said.

There are just Some Things I Came to Know. Let's leave it at that.

I picked up the morning paper to check out the coverage of the memorial service. The news story grabbed a few quotes from former Peterborough players and several of the league's general managers who, unlike my own, were able to make it to the event. I hoped to see a story of Peterborough police busting the professional autograph collectors who'd planted themselves on the sidewalk outside the funeral home and beside the most expensive cars in the hotel parking lot. Alas, the ghouls fled the scenes.

One item did pique my interest: a column by Gus Stern, the guy who had bumped Harley Hackenbush. THE MAYSES KEEP RED'S MEMORY ALIVE: that was the headline.

We'll never see the likes of Red Hanratty again, and that's a shame. That Red didn't live to see the best days of the greatest player Peterborough has ever had is a lesser tragedy, but a tragedy nonetheless. Barring an unforeseen contract snag with the club that is lucky enough to draft him, Billy Mays Jr. has played his last game for Peterborough. He gave Red two great years. Red returned the favour.

I shook my head to reload. You usually have to swat away flies from fruit this ripe.

“I had a chance to go another direction and take a scholarship to a school in the States, but the coach was the reason I came here,” Billy Mays Jr. said after the memorial service yesterday. “I owe the coach everything for the opportunity he gave me and all he taught me as a player and us as a team. I'm going to dedicate the rest of my career to his memory. I mean that with all my heart.”

Impressive. It made me wonder if Ollie Buckhold had put this through a focus group or something.

Mays is, of course, the second in his family to lug a hockey bag from Toronto up to these parts. The father of the wunderkind, William Mays Sr., played one full season season in Peterborough before enrolling at York University and focusing on his studies. After graduating from business school with honours he quickly established himself as a titan of industry.

“Red was a great man and he did right by my boy,” Mays Sr. said. “Doc had a part in my son's success too.”

Mays Sr. said that he's planning to set up a scholarship fund in Hanratty's name that will be directed toward the best students in Peterborough's bantam and midget leagues. He said he'll do the same thing in the Markham league where he coached his son.

Doc McGarry isn't going to be overlooked. Mays Sr. also said that he's looking into creating the Doc McGarry Memorial Scholarship, which will be available to junior players who plan to study science or medicine in university. Doc's son, Dr. Theodore
McGarry, Mays Sr.'s former teammate and roommate, would administer the scholarship.

“I've always considered philanthropy to be not an option but a duty,” Mays Sr. said. “And I've always been a major contributor to my alma mater, but, unfortunately, I never took an active role in a charity associated with junior hockey. It's only young Billy's accomplishments that drew me back into the fold and back up to Peterborough.”

I sniffed. I could smell either the coffee brewing or a major tax deduction coming to a boil.

Of course, if such scholarships were already in place, Billy Mays Jr. would have been a lock as a candidate. Given that he'll have a seven-figure bank account in a few months, there will be no crying need for that help when he decides to start working toward a degree. And Mays Jr. said that day will come sooner rather than later.

“The plan has always been that I'd pick up courses by correspondence when I turned pro and take classes over the summer,” said Mays Jr., who has been accepted by the University of Toronto.

Adds the father: “I'm proud of Billy. I went to school because I didn't have an option of going to the pros. Billy's is a very conscious decision and it shows his maturity and our family values.”

Red Hanratty didn't live to see these scholarships take care of his best and brightest players.

That a young man will continue his schooling with Red's memory always fresh in his mind is the one bright spot in this tragedy.

Never let it be said that William Mays Sr. didn't do anything, though you could make a case that he didn't do anything quietly. Still, I gave the old man points. He seemed to accept his lot in the game as a young man, made a choice to go back to school and made the most of it. I'm as cynical as the next guy—at the very least—but it was hard to find much fault with that.

I took Sandy back to Toronto a couple of days later. She had postponed a bunch of scheduled appointments so that she could help out with the kids in Peterborough. Sandy had established herself with the players and would make the trip to see them weekly, but she felt obliged to be available for the sad and damaged men, women, and children who went to her for support.

I dropped her off at her office downtown and made it only a few blocks before my BlackBerry rang. Caller ID: Sandy.

“You have to get back here. The office has been broken into and trashed.”

“Call the police,” I told her.

“I'm in the lobby and I'm not going back up there or doing anything until you get here,” she said.

I turned the Rusty Beemer around, sped back to the building, and made three loops of the adjacent underground parking lot before I could find a spot. I finally made my way up to the lobby, where she was staring at the smokers out on the sidewalk,
perhaps reconsidering her decision to give up nicotine a few years back. The occasion called for it.

Sandy's mood was as black as a puck.

“What, did you stop for something to eat on the way back?”

“I couldn't find a parking spot,” I said.

She threw herself into my arms. I couldn't remember her ever doing that. She was proudly a woman who didn't need hugs in tough times. She was always the supporter, not the supported, the strong one, not the vulnerable.

I walked her back up to her office. It was just her room and a waiting room lined with chairs. She didn't have a receptionist. She thought that the presence of anyone else made it a less private experience for her patients. Maybe she didn't need someone to pick up the phone, but she could have used a guard dog to scare off whoever trashed her office. Her file cabinets had been jimmied open and papers dumped on the floor. Broken lives that had been alphabetically ordered were now strewn in a chaos that was a lot closer to real life.

She was shaking.

“I'm calling Fifty-Two Division,” I said.

“No, don't.”

She grabbed my arm.

“We have to report this.”

“We can't. I can't.”

She dug her nails into my arm. I didn't want to wait too long for her to explain. I thought she was going to draw blood and ruin my shirt.

“Whoever did this is a troubled person, someone who needs my help, not prosecution. Maybe he or she will come back and I'll be able to help …”

It had to be a he and not a she. Your average
he
would have had to use all his strength and then some to break open the cabinets.

“… and if the police started to question my patients, well, they just couldn't do that. I can't give the police my patients' names. If they were questioned, they might be scared off ever seeing me again.”

The place was trashed but not vandalized in the usual fashion. The only things broken or damaged were the locks on the file cabinets and drawers. The perp could have taken her computer. Instead, he had tried to log in. Unsuccessfully.

“What's gone? Was anything taken?”

“No, it doesn't look like it.”

It wasn't a robbery. It was a search. Not a pro. A pro could have tossed the place and left it like only the cleaners had passed through.

Might have been a guy who wanted to intimidate her. It wouldn't have been someone who broke in looking to do her physical harm. He would have come during business hours or stalked her when she left the office. No, the perp made a point of doing this when she was out of the office. When she checked her calls, she saw a bunch of hang-ups from a payphone. That would have been him doing his advance scouting.