I saw a gaggle of scouts from other organizations sitting at the counter in the hotel’s Old West–style restaurant, grabbing burgers, fries, and Cokes before heading out to Luzhniki. They had wisely given a pass on the game I had just seen. Instead they were engrossed with a KHL game in Omsk playing on a bank of television screens. A couple of New York scouts were at a table, and I heard Anderson mention Belov’s name in conversation before his buddy sitting across from him nodded in the direction of me, the bereaved scout. That got a self-satisfied smirk out the ass-wipe.

  I don’t know if you can have any more than two or three real friends in the biz. You get to know and get along with a few more out of your necessity and theirs. You ask a scout for a hand and nine out of ten times the guy turns into Venus de Milo. I looked around for an exception, one of my usual partners in crime, guys I’ve split a drive with, maybe have gone to dinner with. The only one fitting that description was a guy I knew fairly well from the start of my playing career and the end of his too-short life in the game: Kelly Markham had been sent down to Providence for the last half-season on his final contract and I was in my pro rookie season, when everything was new and I didn’t have a clue. Back in Providence I never thought I’d end up in Marks’s place, and Marks didn’t remember ever being in mine.

  Marks had gone to Yale, following in the footsteps of three generations of Markhams, the last being Jack Markham IV, the florid-faced patrician whose bold and usually winning plays regularly landed him on Page One of The Wall Street Journal. The Markhams’ apple tree must sit on a hill because Kelly couldn’t have rolled farther from it. He alone among his brothers didn’t go into the family business. Marks went from an Underachieving C-student Frat Boy to the Family’s Full-Blown Scandal when he dropped out of school in his junior year and signed with Boston, the franchise that his great-grandfather, JM Jr., had owned back in the ’30s. Marks was all charisma and laughs, at least until the third drink and that was just his nightly warm-up. He started off as the Guy Who Drank Too Well and became the Guy Who Didn’t Drink Well Enough. Late nights cut his playing career short. Then there were the incidents, all of them women. He had been photographed at 3 A.M. breast-stroking in a hotel swimming pool with a prominent senator’s wife. He had folded his hand on a paternity suit with an Olympic skier, much to the distress of a woman who was briefly his wife. He had popped an undercover cop in a bar, supposedly because he was upset that his date was getting frisked. And then there were near misses and great escapes that didn’t make it into the pages of the tabloids but were known in hockey circles. Some would judge him harshly, but I thought he was a Stand-Up Guy So Long As He Could Stand Up.

  I pointed at the down-filled ski jacket, fire-engine red, that he had draped over the back of his chair. He hadn’t bothered to cut off the lift tickets from his last ski trip. Between the jacket and windburn, he must have looked like the cherry perched at the summit of a sundae when he stood at the top of a run.

  “Nice jacket. How long does it take you to inflate it? And how the hell do you find the time to go skiing during the season?”

  “You gotta scout Colorado College and Denver,” he said. “And if I can go see the old man at the family chalet, two birds, one stone.”

  “How the hell do you get those…”

  I pointed to the lift tickets. The advisories on them were printed in German.

  “…in Aspen?”

  “I ski Vail, Aspen, whatever. But these, these are from my little brother’s fiftieth. St. Moritz, last week. I only got two days out of it.”

  “They invite the black sheep of the family to those things?”

  “They still bring me along.”

  “More fun for everyone, I guess,” I said. Though many have tried to make a run at it, Marks holds the league record for tail, season and career.

  “Yeah, still,” he said. He swirled around his scotch in a rock glass. It seemed all he needed for fun was other people, and it was tougher without them. “Anyway, Scooter had me and Willy and our cousins and a bunch of friends along, pretty much his whole class from Andover. Scooter and I practically ran over this guy on the one hill and saw all these cameras down below…no lie, Prince Fucking Harry.”

  Someone who just met Marks might think he’s a name-dropper, but to him the famous are just folks. He grew up around them. He didn’t just know the A-list in his day. He stepped on their toes on the dance floor at Studio 54.

  “Is anything out of your price bracket?”

  “That’s the bracket I was born into, not the one I’m living in. Anyway, my brother picked up the tab for Switzerland. The old man had something to do with it, though.”

  “If your vacation schedule is a good indicator, Wall Street must be doing just fine.”

  “Shadow, my father’s and brothers’ stuff isn’t tied to the economy. In good times, they do well. In bad times, they do well. It’s always other people’s money.”

  “Yeah, I guess you were smart to walk away from a gamble like that and invest your life in something as safe as hockey.”

  I did my best not to envy the perks he enjoyed and advantages he squandered. I failed, of course.

  “Hey, that gamble would have worked out if I lasted more than 184 games,” he said. “Circumstances beyond my control.”

  More like circumstances beyond his self-control. I didn’t need his rehash of history any more than anyone needed a rehash of mine. I changed the subject.

  “How long are you here for?”

  “ ’Til Wednesday. Everything was booked solid ’cept Aeroflot and I wasn’t going to take them,” he said. “You?”

  “Same. Not happy about it. Not the worst thing going on, though.”

  “Yeah, shit, Shadow, I heard about the Belov kid,” Marks said. “That was awful. That looked like it was going to be a hell of a pick for you.”

  “Yeah, we were at his family’s this morning.”

  “Could have left it with your Russian guy, couldn’t you?”

  It wasn’t an intentional dig, but it felt like one. I let it slide.

  We exchanged small talk about a few more pleasant things. Our teams were chasing the top spots in the Western Conference and had a pretty good shot at going head to head deep in the playoffs. We exchanged small talk about less pleasant things, the worst of them being his job situation in Vancouver, where a new GM had taken over in July. Marks was in the last year of his contract, which anyone in the business can tell you is no-man’s land if you’re reporting to a fresh suit out to impress ownership. It didn’t matter one little bit that Marks had done a good job there. Just the thought of his employment prospects had him rattling the ice in his rock glass to get the bartender’s attention.

  I was limping and needed to get a Celebrex. I ordered a burger and told Marks I was going to be back down from my room in five.

  I had the vial out beside the hotel phone on the night table. The red light was flashing. I checked my voicemail and had one new message.

  “Mr. Shade, I am Salnikov. I am at the coffee shop beside your hotel. I saw you walk into the hotel two minutes ago. Please meet me for a business proposition. I am wearing a green jacket and black hat.”

  8

  I walked into the coffee shop and found every table occupied, though none by a man in either a green jacket or a black hat. I was ready to turn around and head back to the Marriott when a beefy man in a too-tight black trench coat put down a newspaper and made eye contact with me. He gave me a knowing nod and made a small hand gesture, inviting me to sit with him.

  “Busy in here,” I noted, just to make sure he hadn’t mistaken me for a local with whom he had an appointment. The chances of that were microscopic.

  My newfound friend went right to business.

  “I am Salnikov,” he said, in case I was simply in the habit of sitting down and striking up conversations with strangers in a language not their own. “The green jacket I spoke of is just…how you say…coverage in case call is intercepted.”

  “And it wasn’t, I guess.”

  “Maybe yes, maybe no. I have been here several hours. The man in the green jacket was here and now gone. Others come and go. If others come now, I will leave. Time is urgent, so this must be brief.”

  “You’re right—it’s urgent. So what’s up?”

  “I can help you, you can help me,” he said.

  There should have been a conjunction in there. I supposed it wasn’t an and. For sure it was an if. Slanikov was doing his best to keep things brief and make his proposal appear more certain than speculative.

  “You want Dmitrov, you will have problems, many,” he said. “I can help you.”

  He was the second guy that afternoon that said he could pull the magic trick.

  “It must be done now, not later,” he said.

  I liked how he thought, even if I had no idea how he worked. I didn’t have to ask him why we’d have to work from an accelerated schedule. He just cut straight to it.

  “There are people who do not want Dmitrov to leave Russia, people who want him to stay for Olympics,” he said.

  Easy to see that: unlike the green kids at the junior game at Luzhniki, Dmitrov had a real shot at making the Russian Olympic team. That was true if he stayed, but it was just as true even if he sat next to me on a plane back to Toronto and if I had in my possession a valid, signed contract and a release from his club team registered with the International Ice Hockey Federation, the game’s world court.

  So far, Salnikov hadn’t told me anything new. Nothing he said led me to believe he was an insider. This was going to change in the next breath.

  “Dubinin will not help you.”

  True, he hadn’t helped me even once, hadn’t even passed me the salt at staff dinners, but then again I had only worked in the organization for four years. I decided to argue the point theoretically if not wholeheartedly. “He can,” I said. “He works for us.”

  “He works for many,” he said.

  I didn’t know this for a fact but I had long suspected it. This had turned out to be the case with a lot of scouts in Russia lately. A slew of them had been cut loose by their teams in the league when it was found that they were getting kickbacks from anyone who had anything to kick back. I knew that Montreal’s guy had been whacked for that last summer, Calgary’s a few weeks into the season. For every one that gets caught, I imagine another doesn’t trip the alarm. Maybe two.

  “He’s paid by us,” I said.

  “My friend, he’s paid by many,” he countered. I wasn’t sure whether he was saying that I was his friend or that Dubinin was. He was throwing Dubinin under the bus but in Russia they do things like that to friends. They do it everywhere in our business too, I guess, just not so casually.

  I liked the smell of what this guy was cooking. I excused myself and went to the counter to get a double espresso to boost my flattened battery. I wanted him to think I wasn’t anxious to get any dope he had, so for his benefit I unfurled a big stretch and didn’t stifle a yawn.

  “How do you know who pays Dubinin?”

  “Mr. Shade, if you work in the game in Russia and you are paid by one person, you are failure; if you are paid by only two, you are not ambitious. Dubinin is ambitious. Very.”

  “I can tell you how much we pay him, but…”

  I was inclined to use the past tense but that would wait until I could firm this up and make an airtight case to Grant Tomlin.

  “…who else pays him is something that you can tell me.”

  Salnikov made it clear that he hadn’t meant Dubinin when he said “my friend.”

  “He is paid by agent…”

  Agents need their own species of scouts, a mixed breed, one-half finders and solicitors of talent, one-half fixers and guides on the ground. No one could be better at the front half than those whose hockey knowledge has landed them jobs with North American franchises. Dubinin would have been a good fit.

  “…he is paid by team…”

  “KHL team?”

  “Yes, Kontinent,” he said.

  Again, the interests overlap. A team in the K needs to find and sign players just like we do.

  “…he is paid by player…”

  For the meat in the hockey sandwich, the guys who tied on the skates, this would be like tipping the dealer.

  “…and he is paid by others.”

  Others. Thanks for that.

  “Who are the others?”

  “It is enough to know that he is being paid by more than you, is it?”

  He had me there. Everything he said had the ring of truth but it would have been nice to have someone else’s word to back this up. Right now, all I had was a fink who cold-called me for reasons he was keeping to himself. To his credit, though, he knew who I was, where I was, and what my business was. Maybe Salnikov could tell me who the others were but his bona fides were going to have to be in order.

  “You work for an agency here?”

  “I am working for myself.”

  “No partner.”

  “No.”

  “Who are your clients? Who would I know?”

  “I have Dmitrov. Only he.”

  Convenient. He has one player, the one who happens to be the most pursued talent in Europe. Your business is off to a flying start, I wanted to say, but exercised my rarely used discretion.

  “I have to go,” I said. “Let me have your business card. We’ll stay in touch. I’m here for about a week.”

  “I do not have business cards,” he said.

  One client, no business cards, and I had never heard of him. When I would Google him later it would come up blank.

  I was in a generous mood as far as social niceties go. I wished him luck, told him to give me a call, but opted not to shake his hand. Then I did a 180, took it to a brisk walk, and pulled my hat over my ears. Salnikov was about to say something, but I didn’t give him a chance to wrap a thought in words. I wasn’t in the mood to humour cranks. I never am.

  9

  Kelly Markham was in deep conversation with Lyle Davies, one of the oldest scouts on the circuit, a guy who annually threatened retirement but had outworked and outlived all his contemporaries except our ranking old hand, Duke Avildsen.

  “Sorry I kept you waiting,” I said to Marks. I was sorry but mostly for ruining what, going in, I had expected to be an indifferent dining experience. After one small bite I spat a mouthful of burger into my napkin. It had gone cold while Salnikov gave me the run-around. And I was sorry to see the counterman throw my hamburger in the trash when somewhere in Moscow a feral dog went hungry.

  Marks had his eyes glued to the TV screen when I turned and tapped him on shoulder. I wordlessly asked him if we could step off to the side out of earshot of others. Background music, Russian-language covers of country and western songs, would give us effective if ridiculous cover from eavesdroppers.

  We sat down by the window on the far side of the room and I asked the waiter to bring me a coffee.

  “I need a favour,” I said. “I’ll owe you one.”

  It might not sound like much, but a guy from one team doesn’t ask a competitor for a favour. I can only think of a couple of other guys I’d ask. Like Kelly, they were both guys I played with. Like Kelly, we landed in and got out of a couple of jams together.

  “Shadow, I don’t know that I’d feel good about collecting,” Marks said. “Try me. I’ll let you know if it’s out of bounds.”

  Anything relevant to the business of hockey should be outside the white stakes. After all, if you were a scout, old-school, new-school, or unschooled, you’d look at guys working for other teams the same way ninety-nine percent of the time: they are the competition and they’d sleep with your wife, starve your kids, and steal your dog, given a chance. Yeah, you could have a beer with one guy or another, but you’d never share sensitive information or your honest opinion about a player with him. Some of the old-school guys take it further and look at everyone outside their organization as the enemy. They don’t even trust other scouts on their own staffs. They drink alone and harder.

  “Do you know anything about Dubinin working for anyone else?” I asked him, and I watched Marks sigh with relief. I wasn’t looking for any classified dope.

  Marks doesn’t drink alone. He quoted me his price for what would have been common knowledge among the Russian guys working for teams in our league: “Beers at the Boar’s Head tonight.”

  This was a stiffer price than it would have been if quoted by others in the trade. No one went at it as hard as Kelly Markham, and a few who had tried to keep up with him had been left for dead. I knew that “beers” were only the start of it. I did my best to rationalize the price in the name of a good cause. Besides, it wouldn’t be so hard to hide on expenses: cash withdrawal and receipt in Russian.

  “Okay, deal.”

  He wanted me to lay the groundwork. “What do you know?” he asked.

  “What I think is one thing; what I know is another,” I said. “I think he’s working for an agent on the side.”

  “Nothing surprises me anymore. I don’t know who it is. You have any ideas?”

  “Beck, Buckhold, another guy, all of them, I dunno,” I said. “Can you ask your guy, that Ivan what-ever-the-hell-it-is?”

  Marks waved over his Russian scout. Ivan Pozdnyakov was a legit 6’3”, not five pounds over his playing weight. He had no medals, no Cup rings, no Master of Sports honours from the old USSR. His only souvenir he wore every day, one hundred rough-hewn stitches of facial quilt-work. I had never talked to him but I had seen him in the hotel gyms on the circuit and he looked like he could still play. He knew precisely who I was and what my allegiances were. That stuff is in your job description: Know who works for whom, who’s in attendance at the games you’re scouting, who might know what you know. Report not just on the players you see but the scouts who are seeing the player you’re targeting. Know who’s tracking a player you’re interested in. Make a note, put it right into your report, if you see another scout buttonholing a player, a coach, even a trainer. Look for the other guys to tip their hands.

 

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