The third man in, p.28
The Third Man In, page 28
I felt a tug on the sleeve of my jacket. He wanted me to stop at a kiosk and look in. It was a newsstand and a bundle of morning papers had been left on the floor, there to be picked up and displayed for those tens of thousands in the morning. Through the straps on the bundle I could see the front page of Sport Express, the daily that was front to back hyping the Sochi Games. I couldn’t make out anything from the headlines, but I saw all I needed to know in the photo above the fold: Dmitrov was wielding a highball in his left hand and a cigarette in the right. He had been spotted in a Moscow club, the arm draped around his neck was attached to the bare shoulders of a former Wimbledon junior champion.
The Shooter pursed his lips. Yes, I nodded. She was hot.
We walked up the stairs to street level and then a couple of blocks to the street where the shooter had parked his friend’s car. He opened the door and reached onto the floor on the driver’s side where he had left his beat-up wallet. He showed it to me and reached in a rarely opened fold. It held two laminated hockey cards. One was my rookie card from L.A., what I looked like with all my teeth and with a face not yet creased by Dubinin’s blade. That card I had seen before, the other I hadn’t. It was the ultimate limited edition: a weary version of me in a Spartak sweater. I half-remembered posing for the shot one morning after a long night with the twins. The card must have come out after I had bolted Moscow. The Shooter hadn’t been the collector in the family. He put it back for safekeeping, not to remember me, though.
Before heading off he gave me a bear hug, arms that maybe he’d be able to put around his wife again. I would have hired him as my scout on the spot. I had no idea if he knew anything about hockey, but he had proved that he knew everything about honour, something about the human heart, nothing about fear. If I hired him, I wouldn’t have to worry about loyalty. I’d have to share him only with his wife and the kid in the picture on the table, the kid who had been his little brother, and in a small part mine, too.
жизнь продолжается
POSTSCRIPT
“Wolf, CNN can now confirm that Russian billionaire Stanislaus Starshnikov has in fact been granted a passport by the Republic of Ireland. Starshnikov’s holdings include North Sea oil-drilling operations and a worldwide media syndicate that includes two of Fleet Street’s largest newspapers by circulation. A spokesman for Starshnikov said that the Russian government’s investigation into his finances and the threat of seizure of his assets played no role in his decision to leave the country. According to the spokesman, Starshnikov will divide his time between his offices in London and his estate on the west coast of Ireland. He’ll also be spending a fair bit of time in Florida, where his daughter, one of the top-ranked tennis players in the world, resides and trains.”
Lee Siddon, CNN, April 10, 2013
“Please join the rest of our staff in our send-off for two towers of our diplomatic corps, Trevor and Murdoch, on the occasion of their retirements to the Isle of Man and Majorca, respectively. Drinks at the only passingly English bar in Moscow, The Auld Grey Lady.”
An inter-office memo at the British Embassy in Moscow. April 30, 2013.
“Mr. Shade: While I’ve been able to conditionally approve charges for your company phone and reactivate service, I’m unfortunately not going to be able to reimburse you for roaming charges ($3,305.63) on your personal phone without the sign-off of my superiors. My apologies.”
Kristina Lumper, Accounting, Team Operations, May 1, 2013.”
“L.A.: Hired Kelly Markham as pro scout for the Eastern Conference and Ivan Ilyushin as amateur scout for Eastern Europe. Extended contracts for scouting director Brad Shade, western scout Warren Bear, and head of player development Duke Avildsen.”
Los Angeles Times sports section, agate copy, July 2, 2013
“Бело́в Дмитров турнир по хоккею на благотворительность митров 15”
(Translation: Belov Hockey Tournament for Charity, August 27)
Handbill outside Luzhniki Arena, Moscow
“Please for your consideration of short films please find includes here метрополите́н 2” (Metro-2)
Note attached to package couriered to Telluride Film Festival, September 1, 2013
“Wedding Announcement: KATARINA GUSAROVA & EDMIR POLO Katarina, daughter of Valeri and Eva of Moscow, Russia, was married on September 14th to Edmir Polo, son of Petr and Hana of Prague, Czech Republic. The bride is a graduate of Moscow State University and will enroll in the University of Toronto’s engineering program. The groom is a graduate of Ludwig-Maxmillans Universitat Munchen.”
“I think Dmitrov is going to play fifteen years in this league and make All-Star teams. I really do. I think it’s a tribute to our management team that understood we were going to be in for some tough negotiations, some really sticky stuff, if we were going to be able to secure his release. We knew it would be contested but I was sure we’d prevail over the KHL in arbitration. After that, everything went pretty smoothly though, a credit to Yuri Salnikov, who landed the top prospect in Europe as his first client before joining the Buckhold Group. We also owe a debt of thanks to Stan Starshnikov, the former owner of Magnitogorsk—we were able to come to terms on Dmitrov’s paper more expeditiously than we anticipated. I’d also be remiss if I didn’t pay tribute to the late Vladimir Dubinin, our scout in Moscow for many years who died tragically last winter. Vlad played a huge role in getting Dmitrov to L.A. and I know, wherever he is, God Rest His Soul, he’d take a lot of satisfaction that all his work wasn’t for naught. Thanks, friend.”
Brad Shade interview on FoxSports, September 17, 2013
Read on for more Brad Shade in the short story “Second Act.”
She was on location in Texas, some sort of contemporary cowboy comedy, complete with chase scenes in pick-up tracks, barroom brawls, and heaving breasts. The theme song, pretty sure it was Jerry Reed, would make it to No. 4 on Billboard’s country charts and is still stuck in my head like a career-ending concussion. She would make me watch it twice, and if she had insisted on a third screening it would have moved up our divorce by five years.
It was a three-week shoot for her. I was in L.A. for about half of that, the other half living out of a suitcase and my hockey bag. The team was in a bad way. We were losing ten of fifteen. We were harbouring a coach who was going to get the axe. We were a travelling contingent of thirty guys in a bad mood. It’s funny but when a team’s down even the trainers get in a bad mood. I was happy to get home. I was happy to get home alone. For as long as we were together, long enough, she didn’t get that. She didn’t get me riding on how the team’s doing. She didn’t get the black cloud you walk around in when you’ve lost six in a row. Or the extra inch you grow when all you can do is win. There was a lot she didn’t get and all these years after still doesn’t get.
I was rattling around the house. We had flown in from New York the night before. We had been on the ice for an hour before lunch. A lot of the guys went golfing after practice. Pass. Never my thing. I picked up Sarge’s old three-wood at the pre-season eighteen we played with deep pockets for charity, but that was it. I went home after practice. I still ached from the flight. I wanted to kick back. I went through the VHSes. I passed over Goodfellas. Already watched it five times. I pulled out Scarface. Yeah, say hello to my little friend. Wasn’t going to be able to throw that in when she was home. She liked Pacino, but she didn’t have the stomach for blood, guts, guns, and gore.
I was only into Act Two when I passed out on the couch. Tony Montana rose and fell while I sawed wood. The credits rolled and I was still out like a light. And I don’t know how many hours after, but the phone rang.
It was a bartender at the dump where she had worked before she got callbacks and way before she landed the role of her lifetime in Making the Grade, which had wrapped shooting for its debut season the month before. All the guys on the team had gone there when I started out. I bagged her and other guys did a few shifts with the other talent, but we stopped going. Except Hunts. It was a small enough dump that a backup goalie was a celebrity. He could squeeze a waitress’s ass and get a smile rather than a slap. The slaps were what he got at home. He was usually too liquored to feel it. Usually was nightly.
“You better get down here. Your guy is on the floor. He’s talking crazy shit.”
Dan didn’t rattle. If I guy walked in, ordered a Bud, and then lobbed a live grenade at a booth, Dan would ask him, “Bottle or draft?” If Dan said I had to get down there, I had to get down there.
And when I did, there was Hunts. A pile outside the men’s room. On his ass. Leaning against the wall. Forehead with a huge gash where it had deflected off a urinal. A rock glass laid on its side. The ice had melted and his last triple had started to dry. An oil slick of almost-black vomit was fossilizing beside him. Black beans and bile. It had a deep footprint in it, and I saw one of his cowboy boots now had a damp, sludgy polish. He was talking to people who weren’t there. I broke up the conversation.
“What the fuck…”
It registered.
“Shadow,” he said, but he ran out of gas after two syllables. He said it like I had been conjured up at a seance and tried to find me in the haze. He was looking in the wrong direction.
Five f-bombs later, I fireman-carried Hunts out of the joint to bemused looks from lowlifes and a grateful wave from Dan. Grateful mostly because I covered Hunts’s tab.
I poured him in the back seat. He thought it was a cruiser until he heard my voice. I told him that I was taking him back to his place.
“She found the number. She threw me out. She said she’d call the cops.”
I didn’t ask. I could make an approximate guess at what the number was. He got more ass than starts. And she was just the type to throw him out and make it stick. He met her when he was in the minors up in New Hampshire. She was a town girl. She worked from a picture that she had back when, a picture of Hunts being a star, making millions, taking her back to New Hampshire and giving all her old girlfriends princess envy. That wasn’t how the picture turned out. He was a backup goalie. Third year in a row. Hit his ceiling. Making league minimum. Probably not taking home what Gretz paid his nanny. Blowing it all in bars and clubs, the less-than-swell places. A rookie life after three years in the league. Crawl home at dawn. Not a pretty picture and she was erasing herself from it.
I told him I’d take him back to my place. It was 4 A.M. We had to be at the rink in less than five hours for practice and we had a game that night. He was so drunk I woke up with a hangover.
* * *
Hunts didn’t make it to practice. When I got back from an hour-and-a-half skate and an hour in the gym, I figured to find him wearing a cold compress, tossing back a coffee with a shaking hand, thinking how he could patch up things with his wife. I figured life would go like it did before. At least that’s what I thought until I shut the door.
Hunts still reeked. He stank up the place. He had pissed and missed the sink. Worse than I thought.
“I covered for you,” I said. I was angry enough to wish that I hadn’t.
He never did ask me how. I would have told him how I had convinced a waitress at my morning pit stop to place a call to the office posing as his soon-to-be ex-wife. At practice I floated word that, yeah, his wife told me she thought Hunts had pneumonia. Van Stone didn’t know different. He was too green. Same with half of them. We had a pretty young team. A couple of vets guessed otherwise. They went along. They had been there.
That bought him a day. It could have bought me a hard time that I didn’t need if the truth ever leaked out.
It was about half a minute before I realized it wasn’t truth leaking out but my forty-ouncer of Jack Daniels. It had been at the back of a high shelf in a kitchen cabinet. He was drunk but not so wrecked that he couldn’t sniff out the JD. He didn’t know where he was and down at the last inch of the bottle he didn’t care.
“For fuck sake,” I said.
I slapped him. Hard enough to give him a whiplash. His head snapped ninety degrees and then some. And then it came to rest on the top of the couch. His eyes were wide open. He was staring up at the ceiling but couldn’t make it out.
The phone was ringing. It was her calling from location. I prayed that Hunts wasn’t going to gurgle loud enough for her to hear. We talked for ten minutes. Mostly she talked. She talked about the excitement of being on the set with Burt Reynolds. She said he was “a super-nice guy.” And she said Loni Anderson was “real nice and tall.” It was all riveting stuff, but I was distracted by the guy who fell off the couch and did an eighteen-inch face plant. I didn’t bore her with any details about our road trip. She talked to me for ten minutes but she would have rather been talking to Mary Hart and Entertainment Tonight. She said it was a twelve-hour day on the set but “everyone is so professional.” She said she was going to call me again tomorrow.
Five seconds after I hung up, Hunts made it all the way to his knees. He was looking for his smokes. He had sweated out so much booze he’d flambé himself if he found his lighter.
“She kicked me out,” he said.
“Yeah, we covered that last night.”
“That’s it. I’m fucked. I can’t go on.”
“Two out of three. That’s it is one and you’re fucked is two. Three is a hassle. You gotta go on.”
“It’s over.”
“Your marriage, yeah, but Jesus that’s all that’s over.”
“Hockey’s done.”
“It is if you don’t straighten out. What you do with your career is your business, I guess, and if you want to pack it in that’s fine. But I went to bat for you and you’re fuckin’ up again and that has a chance of fuckin’ me up now that I covered for you.”
That didn’t even make a dent.
“So quit. She wins.”
That did.
* * *
I called up Stu Morris. He was good guy. He’s been gone a dozen years now. Cancer, stem to stern. Painful death. Stu had given up the bottle about five years after he drank himself out of the league. He was liked back in the day, though. Even respected. A warrior. He just went hard. Every last shift and five minutes to last call. And when he straightened out his act, he managed to land a coaching job in Niagara Falls, paid his dues, rode the buses for fifteen years before L.A. hired him as an assistant coach. He never did get a shot at being head coach. Too bad. He was a real good guy.
“I need you to come out here,” I told him “Don’t ask me why.”
He didn’t ask. He knew, though. He put it together with Hunts taking a sick day. Stu had taken a bunch of those back then.
An hour later Stu knocked and I let him in. He looked across the living room at Hunts, who was incoherent. Muttering. Hallucinating. Head rolling. And then a minute later he passed out like a punctured tire flattening.
Stu said he’d talk to Hunts when he came to. We were going to have to wait it out. It ended up taking hours.
I asked Stu if he wanted to watch Scarface. He said he never saw it. He asked me what it was about.
“Cuban guy gets off the boat with fuck-all and becomes a big drug kingpin. Then he gets taken out.”
“True story?”
“Happens every day.”
So Stu and I watched Scarface and kept an eye on Hunts. Stu was afraid he might choke puking up. I made coffee. Stu watched the whole movie, right up to Pacino getting taken out and taking a tumble right at the statue that says “The World Is Yours.”
I took the movie out of the tape player.
“I guess we got to do this,” he said.
“Yeah, Stu, but listen. Are you going to take this back to the team? ’Cause if you do, Hunts won’t get straight. It’ll be the last straw. If he’s gonna get over this then he’s gotta be able to stick with the team.”
“Hard to go sober and be part of the team.”
“Stu, he’s a backup. He plays every two weeks. He has to practice, that’s about it, right?”
“Yeah, that’s a point. There’s one snag, though, junior…”
Junior was what he called everybody who was younger than him and that was practically everybody in the organization.
“…problem is the team doctor has got to see him and you floated that whole pneumonia thing.”
“Oh shit.”
“Oh shit is right,” he said. “One thing at a time.”
First thing was getting him sober. Second was talking him through the drill. Third was getting him to a doctor not with the team. Fourth was getting him to AA with Stu as his sponsor. Fifth one was keeping it quiet. Not just patient-client privilege. Not just the Anonymous etiquette. No, it had to be total radio silence.
* * *
“ ‘You’ll never change,’ ” Hunts said. “That’s what she said. And then she said that she’d call the cops and say that I slapped her around or something.”
“The bitch,” I said.
I thought for a second that he might have and blacked out. I couldn’t get that out of the back of my mind, even though he wasn’t wired that way.
“Yeah, she’s out to get me. She found the number and called it. Now she’s out to get me. She’ll get half of everything and more.”
He didn’t have a whole lot to split in half, not on league minimum. I didn’t point it out. It would have been counterproductive. I was trying to give him a reason not to drink.
Everybody thinks players in the league all have hot women. It’s mostly true. Why? Because we can. Or at least we can for a while. But in the dressing room of every team I ever played for, there were at least a couple of guys whose lives were getting turned inside out. Pick your poison, I saw it all. Your average disintegrating marriage, a bunch of them. A stew who ratted out our deeply respected captain when he wouldn’t leave his wife as promised. A well-scrubbed high-society girl who bailed on a goon for a Filipino pool boy. Wives who left their husbands for other players, lots of them, like sharing water bottles. I think the best was Quincey in Montreal. He was the king of kink in the league. He had a Swiss Army knife customized so that one of the fold-out attachments was a cock ring. Quincey’s wife was a bisexual into leather and whips and they had an open marriage or at least until she closed it on him and took up with a pair of dykes, one of them 250 pounds with a five o’clock shadow and the other blind.
