There's a Shark in My Hockey Pool (17 page)

The Maharishi leaned forward intently as
Derek filled in the few remaining blanks of the silk-robed
psychic's knowledge of their struggle with Herculean. The psychic
filled in a few blanks for Derek as well, including how to turn
negative thoughts into high protein health food for the brain ...
and the names of a few early Manitoban map-makers.

"I'll bet you're hell on wheels at charades,"
said Derek.

"That's what got me into this gooey mess, my
friend."

Half an hour passed. The conversation between
the three men had started amicably enough, but had yet to reach an
agreement in principle, lump sum payment or parking privileges.
Artie and the Maharishi sat at a round table. Derek paced the
floor.

"Five thousand dollars?" asked Artie.

"That is correct, Mr. Hammond. My services do
not come cheaply. Mind you, I haven't raised my price since I
correctly predicted the winners of 12 consecutive Mensa Mania game
shows."

"But we don't have that kind of money," Derek
said.

"Mr. Marcotte. Mine is not a college-degree
profession. It is in my blood. I get bumpy geese when I walk by a
drawer full of silverware. But it is far away from me to say that
our deal can't be done for less than five thousand dollars. You
see, I have everything a man resembling me could want ... from
spiritual freedom to knowing how cows think."

"So you'll work with us then," said
Derek.

"I will," the Maharishi said. "Because there
is something for me where you may combine your heads."

The chauffeur leaned back against the
limousine with diplomatic license plates and flipped to the next
page in his newspaper. The limousine was parked in front of King's
Building. The 12-storey government office building was originally
dedicated in 1948 to Mackenzie King. King had just retired from the
public spotlight and the building was to house the country's
headquarters for customs and immigration. During a tour six months
after the building opened, an 8th-grade student pointed out that
King had been knee deep in corruption charges in the very same
service twenty-two years before. Shortly thereafter, "Mackenzie"
disappeared from the sign.

A small plaque beside the entrance bore the
French translation, "Edifice Roi". A spray-painting vandal had
changed "Roi" to "Rex". The chauffeur turned and threw his
newspaper through the open passenger's window onto the front seat.
He opened the back door, reached in ... and pulled out another
newspaper.

Inside Edifice Rex, the immigration official
handed the Maharishi Fishi a certificate. A triple-layer chocolate
cake sat on a nearby table. It had ten miniature Canadian flags
planted in the surface. Derek waited for the psychic to wipe the
icing off his hands before extending his own for the congratulatory
shake.

"Welcome to Canada. Uh ... any problems with
the paternity suits?"

"Oh, no. I put a check mark in the box beside
'Divorced' and thanked my fortunate stars that there was only one
box asking for this."

"Well, Canada is not exactly a haven for men
with half a dozen wives. The women in this country eat bigamists
for dinner."

"Hmmm. Thank you very much for putting your
input in me."

The Maharishi shook Artie's hand and turned
to the table for more cake.

"Thank you a million times. How do you North
Americans say it? I'm having my cake and putting it in my belly
too."

"Something like that," said Marcotte.

He and Artie watched the psychic devour the
devil's food cake.

"Wow," said Artie. "That was fast."

"Well, he's self-supportive and this country
still has a ways to go to before exhausting its yearly limit of
psychic immigrants."

... 5 ...

Somewhere in the dense bush of northern
Quebec, the cargo helicopter picked out the airstrip from the
forest fire break-lines and touched down. Moments later, Erskine
and Slager disembarked. They'd boarded the flight three hours
earlier in Toronto with two six-packs of beer and a bag of
Off-White Castle hamburgers. A few pockets of turbulence and
detonation of the belly bombs was complete.

"This had better be worth it," Erskine
muttered. He couldn't remember the last time he'd flown anything
less than first class. But this was the best they could do on such
short notice.

A man wearing dark sunglasses hurried out to
meet them. It was Walters, another one of Erskine's many
port-of-call operatives. He stopped in front of Erskine and
hollered something that was lost amidst the loud roar of the
helicopter blades. Slager didn't hear Walters either ... but he
hollered something back so as not to appear out of place. Erskine
looked at both of them and shook his head. Walters pointed to a
small trailer behind him that served as the airstrip's
terminal.

The three men entered the trailer. The ticket
counter beside the door was unmanned. Most flights in and out of
this field were for firefighters ... and fishermen who didn't share
lakes. A row of chairs lined the far wall of the trailer. Beside
the last chair was a pile of concrete cinder blocks. The pile was
well-stabilized ... two blocks high with five blocks per tier.
Another Herculean henchman, Fairchild, jumped out of one of the
chairs. The trailer's other occupant, an extremely rotund,
middle-aged man remained seated on the cinder blocks. Erskine
stopped in front of the fat man.

"There he is," said Walters, nodding to the
cinder block sitter. "Pa DeChance. The townsfolk call him
Papa."

Erskine's brow furrowed, cultivating his
forehead.

"You look thinner than I expected."

DeChance looked up at him. He spoke with a
thick French accent.

"I've been sick. I 'ave a touch o' de
flu."

"Stand up," Erskine said.

DeChance slowly rose from his concrete chair.
Slager blinked at the blocks, swearing they had expanded.

"And you're taller too," Erskine said.

"Ay," DeChance said with a snarl. "Dis isn't
de Kentucky Derby. I'm not riding a horse. Legends are 'ard to live
up to dese days. My grandfodder was de greatest. 'E was six feet
wide, comme ca." DeChance held his beefy arms out at his beefier
sides.

"Nobody score on 'im in fifteen year one
time. An' de udder team would try anyt'ing to get 'im outta de net.
Nutting work. Not even a Joe Phooey and Peppy."

"Excuse me?" said Erskine.

Fairchild leaned toward his boss. "Uh, that
would be a chocolate cupcake and cola drink combination popular
with the natives here. Quite tasty, I might add."

"Dis land was named after my fodder,"
continued DeChance.

"The Ungava Peninsula?" asked Fairchild.

"Mais oui," said DeChance. "'Gava' is
Francais-Algonquin-'airskin and it mean ... a man with no goals.
When you shut out de udder team ... c'est un gava."

DeChance crouched like a boxer and punched
the air with a short, sharp kidney shot for emphasis.

"But you ..." Erskine interrupted him. Time
was money. In Toronto, legends lingered slightly longer than cigar
smoke. DeChance's chest swelled. The trailer became cozier.

"I'm de best goalie now."

He was the only goalie now, thought Walters,
taking a sideways glance through the window at the desolate
surroundings.

"I stop de puck all de time. De last time dey
score on me ... I was five year old. A polar bear came on de ice
when we play. She t'ought I was 'er cub." DeChance shrugged
helplessly.

"I 'ad to run. Dey score de goal."

"Alright ... alright," Erskine said. "Take a
seat, Papa. Excuse us for a moment."

Fairchild and Walters headed out the door.
Slager waited for DeChance to sit back down on the cinder blocks.
He was sure the concrete would crack. Erskine cleared his throat to
get the studious goon's attention. Once outside the terminal,
Erskine held court.

"I have only one concern," the Herculean boss
said.

"That he can play?" asked Fairchild.

"No," said Erskine. "That he can eat. Slager,
put him on the SAP diet ASAP."

Erskine turned back for the terminal. Walters
nudged Fairchild.

"A maple syrup diet?" Walters asked.

"Not sap, you sap," Fairchild said. "It's
Suicidal Artery Putty ... nothing but salt and gristle."

... 6 ...

Derek looked over Artie's shoulder. Artie
plunked away at his computer keyboard at May-Ja-Look. He was
tapping into their hockey player database ... which included every
player tall enough to see over the dasher boards ... to players too
old to jump over them anymore. It was a dazzling array of
statistics.

"My dad once told me," said Derek, "there are
only two things that separate winners from losers. Goals and
assholes."

"And those metal poles they call posts," said
Artie.

"How many times do I have to tell you not to
contradict me when I'm quoting someone?

Artie mimicked a mouse, cheeks twitching.

"But seriously, Artie. We've got to protect
our investments."

"Any particular goon you had in mind?"

"Here's what I want you to do. Run down the
leaders in penalty minutes for each of the three junior leagues.
Then cross reference that list with the one for the guys with the
most fights."

"Hmm ..." Artie said. "You want the player
whose penalty minute total is most efficiently maximized by penalty
minutes derived from fighting majors?"

"Precisely."

"I can't believe I'm doing this," Hammond
said, hammering away at the keyboard. "Why don't we just put up a
metal detector outside the locker room and the player with the most
weapons wins."

"Now, now," said Derek. "We're looking for a
tough guy ... not a terrorist."

Derek stepped toward his office and
stopped.

"Oh, yeah. If there's a lefty in the top
five, grab'im. They're always an interesting surprise for a
scrapper who leads with his right."

"Should I check the family history for any
serial killers?"

Derek lunged toward Artie, faking with his
right and playfully bopping Artie on the cheek with a soft left
hook. Artie feigned being knocked out, collapsing back in his
chair. While this tomfoolery went on, the computer crunched every
Tom, Dick and Harry who had ever been sentenced to the sin bin.
Soon, a picture of a player -- with a badly bruised face -- popped
up on the screen. Statistics appeared in a side bar. Derek leaned
closer to the screen, skeptical of the black under the player's
eyes being shoe polish. Nope. The shiners were as genuine as a
Holyfield haymaker. And the rivet-pounding glare that shone through
them looked to be saying, "Go ahead, break my nose."

"Woah. What have we here?" Derek asked.

Artie propped himself back up and peered at
the computer screen.

"That's our man. Simon "Bronco" Saddler. A
lefty, no less."

In jail cell 24-A of the medium-security
provincial penitentiary in Blind River, Gerald "Junkyard"
Dahlgleish, stared into the mirror above the rusting wash basin. He
was a behemoth of a brute, tipping the scales at an extra-chunky
six-one, two-eighty. He slowly arched his head back and rolled it
around with a grimace. Hands on hips, he turned sideways, listening
for the crack. Flexing his deltoids and biceps brought forth a
rippling of more snaps, crackles and pops ... the cell-block
breakfast for losers.

Dahlgleish had been caught four days earlier
driving 80 miles per hour through an industrial park in Hamilton.
An inspection of his trunk found a box of over 100 computer chips
worth thousands of dollars. There were also several boxes of
American cigarettes. The police confiscated the computer memory,
knowing they'd most likely be giving it back to Junkyard when they
couldn't trace it to the owner. When they took the cigarettes out
of the trunk however, Junkyard went berserk. Back-ups had to be
called in to take down Dahlgleish. The police quickly traced the
stolen cigarettes to a truck stop in Kars, Ontario.

A prison guard approached Junkyard's cell
with Slager. They stopped and Slager poked his nose through the
bars.

"Gerald Dahlgleish?"

"Ayup, said the guard. "He decided he'd do
his own cigarette commercial when we nabbed him with a
trunkful."

"Oh? How's that?"

"Well ... he'd rather fight than switch, if
ya git my drift. An' I can't believe you're throwin' away good
money to bail this guy out."

Slager opened his mouth to say something.

"I know, I know ... don't tell me," said the
guard, cutting him off. "He's just a poor, misguided soul who's
hadda coupla bad breaks, and slipped through the cracks of the
system. Now it's our responsibility to rehabilitate him and make
him a productive member of society again ... so he can regain his
pride." The guard's face turned to cheese. "He's just misunderstood
is all."

Dahlgleish head butted the mirror, smashing
it.

"Whacko," said the guard. "Did I say whacko
as well?"

The guard opened the cell door.

"Okay, Junkyard. You won't have to look in
that mirror any more. And this guy here is springing you loose, so
I don't have to see your sorry butt no more. Let's go,
Dahlgleish."

Junkyard turned and looked their way. An open
door. The only thing he'd learned in four days was that the fresh
air of freedom tasted a lot better than the prison buffet's
macaroni nightmare. He blinked his eyes to clear his head and
walked toward his visitors.

The guard's unwavering hand stayed inches
from his revolver. Slager felt a little fidgety, so he hid his
hands behind his back. Dahlgleish noticed neither as he exited the
room quietly between them.

Slager's sedan barreled down the #401, aiming
for Toronto.

"You're gonna like working ... I mean,
playing ... for us. Mr. Erskine has everything taken care of.
You're gonna be set up at the Sherbet Inn. Ya get 200 bucks a day
-- cold cash -- to blow on dames, booze ... whatever. And for doin'
what? ... playin' a little hockey ... and bashin' a lotta
heads."