The Code (23 page)

“I don't know. I didn't have to get a prescription filled or buy them over the counter. He gave me samples that he had from a drug company. He put them in brown plastic containers and said he'd look after the refill. I took three a day of the one bunch for a week and felt pretty lousy. Must have been some sort of reaction. Then it was down to one each and I started feeling better. A little tired but better.”

So the pills weren't drugs, by Bones II's account anyway. They were vitamins. But a drug company was handing them out as samples to doctors. And they gave them to Bones II, who gave them to Wonder Boy. They made him feel worse before they made him feel better.

“How did your father take the news when you told him?”

“He'd already met with Doc's son the day before. I go up to his clinic every week, just waiting to get the green light to be ready to go. But Dr. McGarry says that won't happen until after the draft.”

“He didn't want to send you to a specialist in Toronto?”

I wasn't quite sure which type of specialist that would be if we were talking about mono, but I imagined there had to be one. And if there wasn't, if it was basic garden-variety doctoring, why not send the kid to a good GP rather than steal time from Peterborough's only home-based cardiologist?

“My father said that he only wanted the best and he trusted Doc's son. They were roommates when they were on the team.”

“Yeah, I knew that. Tell me, when you've talked to other teams, how much have they asked you about your mono and your visits to the doctor and all that?”

“Almost none at all. Some ask how I've been feeling or about my shoulder. That's about it.”

“Nothing about meds or anything or seeing Doc's son?”

“Nothing.”

“Billy, I hope you don't mind, but I'd like to be able to visit with you and your father off-site. Twenty minutes isn't a heckuva lot of time, especially when we're talking about investing millions and the future of the franchise. There are still things I'd like to talk to you about. Will you be around the city the next few weeks? You're not going out of town, are you?”

He said that he'd be around Monday morning to Thursday afternoon the next couple of weeks. His father decamped with son to a spread in Bala on weekends. In the old man's income bracket, weekends start at lunch on Thursday. Mays said his father was competing in the masters division of the Muskoka triathlon. I suggested meeting at his home. He said that would be fine. I told him I had his father's card and would be in touch.

M
AYS AND I EXITED
the room together. Hunts was standing there. He shook the kid's hand and gave me a dirty look. He understood kicking everyone else out of the room. He didn't like being shut out himself. He was going to simmer on that all day and the next. Then he'd probably simmer on that on his flight back to L.A.

It wouldn't be the last thing I'd do independent of him.

I called our team doctor in L.A. He had served in his role for the last decade and worked with four general managers. He joked that his work was evenly divided between the GMs' ulcer maintenance and the players' STDs. There was a kernel of truth in that.

I told him I had a bunch of questions that would take a few minutes, maybe half an hour. I asked him if there was a good time to talk. He told me to call him back at 6
P
.
M
., West Coast time. He was on the back nine at Torrey Pines and should be home in time for dinner.

I called at the appointed hour. He picked up on the first ring. I filled him in on what I knew of Mays's medical history. The sequence of the mono, the shoulder injury, and relapse. I told him that I didn't have Mays's charts but I'd ask Ollie Buckhold for copies of them, routine stuff with top draftees. He was probably making copies already anyway.

“A relapse from mono isn't the usual thing we see. Lingering effects of it, sure. The likelihood is that he played with it for a
while before he was diagnosed and he came back too early, which exacerbated the effects. Shutting him down for more than a couple of months seems a little extreme, but I guess they might want to err on the side of caution the second time out. And with the shoulder injury, again, I could see them saying that even minimal risks of reinjury in the short term weren't worth it.”

I told him the facts as Mays had laid them out. He gave me the thumbnail read of them.

The vitamins? “No vitamin treatment for mono other than taking the usual multivitamin.”

Samples? “Lots of companies give out samples to specialists, but vitamins to a cardiologist, I can't see it. He'd be given something a lot closer to his practice, if anything at all.”

Three times a day with one pill and then one pill a day for the duration? “Loading of a drug is standard treatment with a lot of meds. It's common enough with antibiotics, though not for a week and indefinitely thereafter. It's the protocol with other drugs, too. I've never heard of it with vitamins, but there's a lot of quackery out there and unfortunately many in the medical profession aren't immune.”

Feeling lousy after loading them but better later on? “Never heard of it with vitamins, but as I said, I don't subscribe to alternative-health holistic journals, such as they are. If he was taking eye of newt or St. John's wort or something, maybe he did have a reaction.”

Treadmill test? “Reasonable measure to take as a precaution if he was reporting shortness of breath.”

Imaging? “Well, that's a little more extreme but again, as a precaution, if the technology is available and you're not worried about incurring cost, sure.”

Seeing a cardiologist in Peterborough rather than a GP in Toronto? “A GP should be able to handle a case of mono. That's
the sort of thing a GP is for. I can't diagnose motives but I would guess that his family might have been unhappy with their GP … maybe he missed the mono symptoms in the first place.”

Our team physician's bedside manner is a beatific calm, something that a golf pro walks with through life off the course. He comes by it honestly. He's a four handicap.

A chill blew over my relationship with Hunts. He didn't call for a few days after the combine. My calls went straight to voicemail. I messaged him about setting up a meeting with the Mayses. No reply. I went into our database and posted my impressions of the interview with Mays but left out the medical stuff we'd discussed. Normally Hunts would be on the phone to me five minutes after he read it. Nothing.

I hadn't read the papers for days. I went to my bookmarks of the columnists and beat writers at the L.A. papers and the silent treatment started to make sense: The drumbeat had started for a new GM in L.A. Everyone in the media was taking it up. Everyone was speculating about candidates and, yeah, Grant Tomlin's name was always in the mix, placed there, no doubt, by Grant Tomlin.

If it was just stress, Hunts would be on the phone to me. It wasn't just stress. No, to his mind it was betrayal. He thought I was out there talking to other teams, trying to line up another job in case he got axed. He might have thought that I already
had a handshake deal in place with another team. That sort of thing is done all the time all around the league. I had thought about looking around, but anyone in my position would. Hunts wasn't thinking that I had considered it. He thought I had already booked my ticket out of Dodge.

Maybe he heard a bad rumour or someone was yanking his chain. Maybe he thought that the private interview with Mays at the combine was so out of the ordinary that it meant something was up. It wasn't something that we were ever going to discuss. We were going to get over it by not talking about it.

A week after the combine there was a knock at the door. I presumed it was Sandy. She was the only one who would know my ritual comings and goings. It wasn't. It was a large Italian gentleman dressed like he was going to a wedding or a funeral.

“Brad, Mr. Visicale has sent me to pick you up for a meeting.”

“I'm supposed to …”

“It's very important to Mr. Visicale that you see him today.” Mr. Visicale was going to get his way. I suppose he always does. I went along peacefully.

C
ASA VISICALE
WAS a spread that was once owned by Jack Kent Cooke. It looked like it had been decorated by a guy from Little Italy who'd worked in construction. That was exactly what Mr. Visicale used to do before he enjoyed his business success and others suffered from it. The major differences between his childhood home and his million-dollar crib were: (a) Those were originals, not copies, on the wall; and (b) The plastic was off the sofa and people were allowed to sit in the living room.

It was the only house on Old Post Road where families used a basement kitchen and ate there on a Formica table. The large gentleman who had knocked on my door took me downstairs, where we found Mr. Visicale sitting at that table with a cold espresso and a copy of
Corriere Canadese
.

“Take a seat, Brad,” Mr. Visicale said, putting his tiny cup back on its saucer.

I had been given no more details on the ride up. The driver volunteered only what he'd told me at my door: His employer wanted to see me.

“Brad, I'm gonna be upfront,” Visicale said. “I'm gonna buy this Peterborough team. Not a matter of if I can. It's gonna get done.”

I wasn't about to express any opposition. I didn't want to say that I didn't give a shit what he did. And I didn't want to ask why he cared to let me in on this. He probably figured these out, though.

“I'll be direct,” he said. “It's my nature. I'm a businessman and I've done well because I get good people and treat them honourably …”

He looked over at the 250 pounds of prosciutto standing to his right and nodded.

“… and I want you to come work for me.”

“As what” came to mind but not to my tongue.

“I had my son here pick you up on the recommendation of Nick Gucciarde.”

Two things again came to mind: (a) His son had put on a lot of weight since he played for Windsor a few years back and was almost unrecognizable behind the sunglasses he wore, even in the basement. (b) Gooch owed me no favours from that season we spent together in Hershey near the end and hadn't done me any by putting in a good word with the continually investigated,
often charged, but never convicted Visicale, who lists his occupation as plumber. Gooch had gone on from a career as Hershey's stone-handed winger to coach in the juniors and minor pro leagues. Only at this point was I putting it together that at every stop along the way Gooch happened to coach one of the Visicale boys. I was getting an idea that this wasn't exactly a coincidence but the by-product of a few guys getting their doors knocked.

“Brad, I'd like to bring you in as coach in Peterborough when I take control of the team. Nick will be general manager and he said that you were someone he could work with. I'm not interested in someone who has coached a team in the O. I think they have a way of doing business and I have mine. There's usually no getting people to change and that's even more true of junior coaches. Nick understands how I like to do things, and he thinks you would be great for a team that I want to be the best junior franchise in Canada. It will be the best.”

Anything less than certainty didn't last any longer than a breath for Don Visicale.

“I'm under contract to L.A., Mr. Visicale.”

True as far as it went. I was under contract to scout for the team until July 1. That's when scouts' deals expire. Some get two-year deals, some even longer. I wasn't lucky on that count. Hunts could give me only a year. It came down from upstairs.

“I'm sure the team will understand,” he said.

“I don't know that they'd stand in my way. And, of course, I might get fired. Happens.”

“Yes, shit does happen, Brad. I heard all about the situation in L.A. And you might be looking for work. I come to you with something that you should take into consideration. I think you could do better with our company than you would in L.A., unless you have aspirations to coach or be a general manager with one of the big clubs. And I wouldn't rule out the possibility that one
day we will buy one of those franchises. In that event you and Nick would, of course, be strongly considered for top roles.”

“Mr. Visicale, I promise you that I will think about it. I'm a loyal type of guy, a team guy, and my boss is not just my boss but an old teammate and maybe my closest friend. I can't walk out on him right now with the draft coming like Christmas.”

“I respect that. I think we could become friends. Good friends.” The son nodded. I took that as a cue that I should nod too. “Anyone going into the Peterborough job has a tough act to follow. What were you planning to do if Coach Hanratty were still around?”

“He's not.”

“He didn't want the team sold. He had a pretty good gig there.”

“He was a fool, to tell you the truth. It's one thing to remember the past and another thing to live in it.”

“How did he feel about the franchise being sold?”

I played dumb. It was easy. I knew he had said the sale would be made over his dead body, a tragically and almost comically prophetic statement.

“He told me that he thought his coaching days were about over,” he said. “He told me he was interested in staying on in some sort of smaller capacity, something suitable for his age. In a word, Brad, I bought him. He was not in my way.”

I wasn't for sale, at least not yet. On the drive home I kept trying to come up with a way to extricate myself from this jam. The son finally piped up.

“I think you'd be good in that old coach's place,” he said.

He was probably talking about the place behind the Peterborough bench. Of course, the place might be the spot in the parking lot if things ever went sideways in any friendship with Don Visicale.