The third man in, p.15
The Third Man In, page 15
“Ollie, we’re just talking. This doesn’t travel. We’re all in this together.”
If you lie once, you might as well lie thrice.
“You’re a good friend, Brad.”
That was just the way Ollie clears his throat, strictly Your Name Here.
“Ollie, what the hell is this about?”
He couldn’t hold it in. “Just us talking here, Bradley, but with Belov, well, there’s a suit going to be filed,” he said.
“A suit. Against who?”
“Your team, for starters. We’re just talking, right, Brad? I mean, it’s already in the works.”
“He died in Russia,” I said. “He hadn’t signed with us yet. I’m trying to organize a fundraiser for his family with the team’s help, Hunts, everyone. I’m sure our owner will do something above and beyond that…”
“Brad, you’re not a party to this, I’m sure…”
If the team was named in the suit, I was a party to it. This was a Don’t Worry About It that left me feeling helpless and scared shitless.
“…but there’s a question of culpability.”
“You mean, there was something wrong with the kid that we somehow missed or Metallurg did or some sort of screw-up on the hospital’s end or what?”
“Brad, we’re just talking.”
“Ollie, I’ve always been straight with you. And vice versa.”
This much is true. Ollie had never represented me. If he had represented me, I’d have walked from the game with something other than a posse of lawyers, creditors, and trustees in bankruptcy chasing me.
“We’re having an autopsy done. Privately. We’re getting a pathologist. Some red flags have gone up.”
“Who is we?”
“ ‘We’ the agency and the Belov family. Insurance policy stuff. They asked if I could set up something that he’d pay back from future earnings. Not huge stuff. And an autopsy was required. And, well, I’m not sure how wrongful death works in Russia, but…”
If the Belovs had known about a lawsuit when I knocked on their door, they had slow-played me and weren’t as guileless as they seemed.
“Wrongful death, what the hell…have you’ve talked with the Belovs?”
“Associates in Moscow have on the agency’s behalf.”
Ollie was putting a little starch into the small talk now.
“I know it’s rare but people do just off and die, Ollie. Sudden death. Don’t see it a lot in the game, but it happens, probably more with the young kids. Could have happened with that Mays kid in Peterborough. The one with the enlarged heart.”
I watched what I said. Ollie could have been fishing just like me. In his case, he was trying to figure out what I knew about Belov’s medical history. What I knew was limited: I knew Belov had a comprehensive medical in Saint John and a copy of the results was sent to our team doctor in L.A. If he had seen any red flags, he would have brought us into the loop. He gave us an All Clear To Sign. That’s not exactly a lifetime warranty but still, we sure as hell seemed to be on top of things. Something that happened in a split second, an aneurysm maybe. Something that played out over a longer stretch, some sort of internal hemorrhage from a hit in a game or maybe even practice that day or the days before. Whatever. On top of all that, we didn’t even have him signed to an effin’ contract. Metallurg did but I couldn’t see how the team or the league would be actionable either, unless there was some gross negligence that I hadn’t gotten wind of.
“Brad, I shouldn’t be talking to you, with all due respect.”
All due respect was the sound of Ollie’s briefcase closing. He was going to shut off my pump. I had to cut straight to it.
“Ollie, what aren’t you telling me?”
“Brad, let’s just say that we have it on good information that the boy was on a steroid program that led to his death.”
“Even if he was on a program and even if it led to his death—two big leaps of faith there, Ollie—we have nothing to do with that. He was just exercising his choice. Not something I knew about. Not something I’d recommend.”
“Brad, you should have told that to the guy who directed him to use the steroids and supplied them. He worked for you.”
“You mean…”
“Yes, Brad.”
The rest of the conversation was tense and Ollie begged off. “Talk to you again, my friend,” he said.
I set my phone down on the table and stared at it. I tried to imagine how our team could get a fair shake in a Russian court. I failed.
“Bad news?” Marks said.
There wouldn’t have been much colour in my face to start with, but what little was left must have gone out of it.
“If you have a gun, now is a good time to shoot me,” I said. I told Marks to wait at the table for Ivan while I went up to my room to get my laptop and my iPhone charger. Five minutes later when I got back, Marks was on the phone with Ivan. Their conversation was brief.
“He’s on his way, tied up in traffic,” he said and awaited confirmation that I had duly noted the thin limb he had crawled out on, namely that he was again helping out a rival team, the hated enemy. His work circumstances had him looking for a soft place to land.
I opened my laptop. My mind raced. My first thought was to bring Hunts into the loop, but I instantly reconsidered. I figured that might only gum things up. My second thought was to save time and go straight to the team’s general counsel. I decided to go that route, but I was going to have to search for his email in my address book. Back into the labyrinth that is our team’s database. Before I tried, I checked my Yahoo mailbox. It was crammed with emails. The subject line of the most recent one announced that I had been tagged on Facebook. Even though I felt like I had the weight of the world on my shoulders, I went to my Facebook page, something I visit quarterly, something that I had posted on only on grand occasions, like my daughter’s graduation, like her admission to an Ivy League, like her first NCAA start and win. Which is to say, I only go on Facebook for her because I don’t consider any other occasion grand enough.
I didn’t have to struggle to remember my password. Same as everything: Shadow1967. Most guys in the trade use their nickname and number but I go with my birth year because you wind up playing with random numbers when you get shuffled through six teams in the league like I did. When I landed on my Facebook page, there it was: my daughter had posted my old hockey card with Montreal. It was the twentieth anniversary of a hat trick I scored in Montreal, the best night of my career, not to mention the only hat trick I scored in the league.
That’s my dad! Happy 20th. Wish I’d been there.
I was wishing I could be back there or somewhere else. I typed:
I’ll be there when you win the title in April.
I opened a new window. I couldn’t bring myself to jump away from this page to another. I kept it there just in case I needed a reminder why I needed this job. I scrolled down her timeline, the point-form version of the life of the one person I mattered to most.
6
“Ask them why they’re suing the team?” I said.
Ivan looked at me and the Belovs looked only at him. Marks stood behind me, surveying the humble digs.
Ivan did the translation. Olga couldn’t even raise her head. It wasn’t clear she was listening. Vlad took the role of Belov family spokesman. He spoke in a low growl and with pauses pregnant with resentment and distrust.
“He says they are suing because you killed him,” Ivan said. “The team. Los Angeles.”
“What gives him that idea? Why does he think there are steroids involved?”
The same translation routine followed. I was afraid he was going to spook them and then we would have no chance of getting anywhere. Finally, Ivan turned to me.
“He says that the boy told them that he was using steroids. They ask Dubinin when he comes to this place the day after death and he said, ‘Yes, he does.’ ”
“Tell him that it’s all news to me. I don’t know anything about it.”
Ivan hopscotched again between languages. Vlad’s reply was short and not sweet.
“Ok,” Ivan said. “He says Dubinin told him he must take the team to…sud…how you say, with lawyer.”
“To court,” I said.
“Yes.”
The translation dragged this little drama out like a show with too many breaks for commercials. I turned to Kelly.
“What the fuck would Dubinin be thinking?” I said.
More growls from Vlad. He walked toward me with some sort of menace. He didn’t look at Ivan. He only looked at me with his death stare.
“Lawyer calls after Dubinin leaves,” Ivan said, as he stepped back to the sidelines. “Lawyer knows Dubinin. Dubinin tells him. Lawyer says only way that he does this is with Los Angeles help. Metallurg does not give steroids to players.”
Vlad Belov turned away from me and grabbed Ivan by the arm and squeezed tight. Ivan didn’t try to break the grip. The brother growled for a straight minute. And when he was finished his soliloquy, he pushed Ivan across the room. Ivan wanted no part of him or any more translation and let me know that with the tremble in his voice.
“He says that Dubinin only found out the kid does his steroids after he dies. He says he gave steroids to boy because you…team…didn’t tell him what it is. He says he doesn’t know, thinks it is something else. He tells Belovs he can say this in court. Now he’s dead. Maybe you killed him or your team so truth goes away, nobody knows.”
Olga had her Russian-English dictionary handy. She flipped pages, found what she was looking for, stood up, and waved it in my face. The Russian word for justice. I wanted to grab that dictionary and look up a translation of railroad.
“Tell them I had nothing to do with the kid’s death, the team neither. And tell them we had nothing to do with Dubinin’s death even if he lied about us and stabbed me in the back. Tell them I’ll figure out what happened. Tell them I wanted the kid to be a star for us and this wouldn’t have happened if he was playing in Los Angeles.”
The translation followed and Vlad’s expression remained unchanged the whole time. He was collecting saliva and then he fired a loogie at my feet. It was the size of a condor turd and brown from the unfiltered cigarette he was smoking. It landed with a splat on a cracked tile.
I considered how it would play out in the court of public opinion. The KHL would do the ultimate smear job. They’d accuse the cold-blooded foreigners of risking prospects’ lives. They’d deliver the message to top prospects: this is what they’ll do to you.
Then I considered how this would look if it played out in a court of law, such that it is in Moscow.
We had no hope of a fair shake. It looked like we had walked into the middle of a con game. Fact was, our franchise was uniquely exposed if a judge found for the Belovs. Our owner would be the target. Galvin had a Moscow-based wing of Fideligence software and contracts with a dozen major Russian corporations. All the proceeds and assets could be seized. All of them could be frozen before the case went to trial. All would vaporize with the predictable plaintiff-friendly ruling. Not that the Belovs would see a windfall award. They’d get scraps off the power players’ plates.
7
We were on the sidewalk outside the Belovs’ apartment when my phone hummed. I pulled it out of my pocket and a text was waiting for me.
Shadow, have problem, call
He had a problem. I was collecting them.
“Polo, this better be bad.”
“A few things.”
“Few? More on the kid?”
“Maybe, but is not first thing. I check Dubinin’s team email account, yes.”
“You got into it?”
“Default. Never changed it. Team name.”
Sloppy, I thought, though I bet half the staff did the same thing when we switched over to the new software.
“And…”
“I look for contacts, messages, numbers, yes.”
“And…” I said, looking skyward and watching a cloud of my breath frost and disappear like hope.
“And is thing. I check emails, inbox. Nothing unusual. I check sent. Again, nothing unusual. But I check the deleted folder and there was one item. It was email message forwarded.”
“It was…”
“It looks like phone numbers, hundreds, with initials, maybe nicknames, some with four, five initials, like maybe a company. Hard to tell what this is exactly.”
“A guess?”
“No guess. It’s not important.”
“So why are you calling me? I mean, was it going anywhere?”
“Is forwarded to a numbered account, no name,” Polo said. “I don’t recognize anything.”
“So what’s so special about it?”
“Special because it was deleted but not in trash. Deleted messages go to trash in a week. Can stay there seven days.”
“So what?”
“Thing for this, is deleted this morning. So is this. Dubinin’s account is open. Someone logged in. Other than me. Is anyone at office of team?”
“No,” I said. “Hunts was trying to get the secretarial department but not IT.”
I let it wash over me. I searched for possible explanations. I came up with a couple of reaches. One: the investigators into Dubinin’s murder were on the case and a step ahead of us. Two: Dubinin was being regularly monitored by the FSB or another interested party or both and more. Three: he shared his account openly with confederates, partners in crime against hockey. At this point in the proceedings, Occam’s Razor couldn’t have shaved through soft butter. The takeaway from the loose thread was plain, though: we weren’t alone.
That would have been enough for alarm, but Polo had said it was “a few things.” It was only going to get weirder. Or worse. And fast.
“Thing is, I look. I have information, yes. You give to me for work on scouts’ computers. With the software from your owner…”
Yeah, the stuff that would have been better recalled than supported, I thought, but I didn’t bother going there with the long-distance charges.
“So I look, I think maybe is another scout. Is not. Is computer of Dubinin. Same server, same IP. I look around inside, yes. I see other things. Photos of father and old team pictures of Dynamo. Is his computer.”
Occam’s Razor was now a blunt instrument, something along the lines of a two-by-four. The Widow Dubininova said that Her Not So Dearly Departed always took his computer with him wherever he went. I cast a large net for an explanation: maybe Dubinin had handed it off to someone he considered a confederate or under threat from an enemy just before he flipped the ignition heard around the hockey world.
Polo, though, said “a few,” not “two.” He was saving the best and worst for last.
“Thing is, Shadow, I find this and then my computer goes very slowly, freezes. Not behaving. Like is drunk.”
“Downloading too much porn?”
“No, Shadow, is not this. Is someone knows that I look at server and IP. They go inside my computer. Someone knows I look for Dubinin’s account. Exchange fire is like.”
“Oh shit” was the best I could manage. I drew a breath but I felt a knot in my gut. “Whoever has Dubinin’s computer or intimate knowledge and access to it knows…”
“Someone from Toronto, 416 area code, is spying,” Polo said. “What should I do now?”
I couldn’t think of any more stones that could be turned over without the fear of ending up crushed under them.
“Wipe your fingerprints off it if you can. Keep a low profile. And let Nick know that I’ve named the Merry Widow in my last will and testament. In the event of my death, money has been set aside to clear my tab.”
“Our tab,” Polo said.
“Yeah.”
I thanked Polo and hung up. I tried to convince myself that the shake was just a shiver from the cold. A minute later the phone hummed again. It was Hunts and he sounded like his hand was jammed in a toaster with the elements on high.
“I’ve got to hear about this on Yahoo,” he said. “I was expecting I’d hear about it from the yahoo I sent to Moscow.”
“I’ve been trying to get a hold of you. Look, some bad shit is going down here…”
“Shadow, you’ve been scooped.”
“What do you mean?”
“I’ll send you a link. And call me back. Don’t worry about the long-distance charges. We’re all gonna be out of work anyway.”
“I still don’t know what you’re talking about,” I said but not before he hung up on me.
My iPhone pinged, an email from Hunts. I cracked it open. It was a link to Yahoo.
MOSCOW AUTHORITIES INVESTIGATING THE DEATH OF BELOV
According to officials close to the police investigation into the death of Sergei Belov, the 20-year-old forward had in his possession a supply of steroids and syringes. Detectives uncovered this on a routine search of his hockey bag yesterday in the wake of his sudden death at a game in Moscow….
Metallurg owner Stanislaus Starshnikov has spoken with authorities and assured them that his team does not supply players with performance-enhancing drugs, nor does it require or encourage the use of PEDs.
“Our players are dedicated to their conditioning and in the KHL they must be,” Starshnikov said. “But our players would never consider cutting corners or cheating and I speak for all owners of KHL franchises when I say that I would never tolerate the use of drugs. There can be only one source of the drugs that killed young Belov and that is North American professionals.”
Three things struck me. One: There is no such thing as a routine search of a hockey bag, the rankest domain of God’s universe. The opening of a well-used hockey bag induces vomiting. Two: Yahoo’s Moscow hockey blogger must be an ace reporter if he’s able to pump the local gendarmes for inside dope on an ongoing investigation. Three: I suspected investigators found vials of steroids or HGH in a night kit with the L.A. decal attached to it. They would have left nothing to chance. The same went for Dubinin. Thoroughly framed.
