“You know,” he said, “none of this is why I asked you here. I wanted to tell you something else. So shut the fuck up a minute.”
He tried to stand, but the manacles on his ankles made it difficult. “You know?” he said. “The guy was my coach. I did what he said. You did what he said, too, Trap. You worshipped the guy and you could’ve been on that table if it wasn’t me. I worshipped him, too. He made me feel like I was fucking famous around here, you know what I mean? I was the man. You go look in Enright’s sometime and you count who’s got the most pictures on the wall.”
“That’s what you had to tell me?”
“No.” He loosed a long, sorrowful sigh. “Ah, Jesus, Trap.”
“What?”
“You remember the lacrosse shot?”
“In the title game?”
“Yeah. I missed it, man.”
“I know. You hit the crossbar.”
“No, man. I could’ve made that shot a thousand out of a thousand. I made a hundred in a row once behind my garage. But I was pissed at the world. I aimed for that crossbar.”
I heard the puck ringing off the pipe again as my legs involuntarily lifted me out of the chair. I saw the puck flopping on the ice in front of me. I saw Hooper’s dead eye, felt myself freeze, saw the puck trickle into the goal, heard the sickening roar of the crowd.
“You missed it on purpose?”
“Sorry, man.”
“You never told me.”
“I’m telling you now.”
“Thanks,” I said. I stuffed my notebook in my pocket. “I’m damn sorry for everything that happened to you, Soup. Good luck.”
Outside I stared at my steering wheel. I screamed as loud and as long as I could. Just once. Nobody but me could hear it over my idling truck and the hum of the wind.
I parked next to a green Dumpster behind the IGA. I got out and threw the lid open, then reached into my flatbed and unzipped my hockey bag. I removed each piece of stiff, frozen gear-leg pads, chest protector, arm pads, mask, baggy pants, skates-and heaved each of them, one by one, into the stinking void. Last out was Eggo. A scrap of shiny black tape remained stuck to the thumb where Darlene’s mom had stitched it. I put my right hand in the glove and stuck it out in front of me, flexed my fingers inside, turned it back and forth as I would during pregame warm-ups. I opened the truck door and tossed the glove onto the floor. Then I grabbed my empty bag and hurled it into the Dumpster before I slammed the lid shut and pulled away.
twenty-eight
Tillie was standing at my desk when I walked into the Pilot. She wore a dress of faded turquoise that drooped to her knees, a white silk scarf, and rubber boots still slick with melting snow. She was slightly stooped, her shoulders gathered into her chest. I forced myself to look at her. She was no more or less Blackburn’s tool than Soupy or Teddy. She’d kept watch over those films. She’d called Kerasopoulos to stop Joanie’s story. Maybe she had loved Blackburn, too.
“Good morning,” I said.
“Your big-city friends keep calling,” she said. She handed me two pink While You Were Out slips. “This from Chicago, and this Trenton man again. And Jim Kerasopoulos. He said he got cut off before.”
“I see your wrestling story made the front page.”
“I really haven’t looked at the paper yet.”
“Looks like someone in Traverse killed Joanie’s story.”
“Well, maybe somebody with some sense read it and decided it didn’t belong in a family newspaper.”
I went to my desk. After my earlier conversation with Kerasopoulos, I figured I wasn’t long for the Pilot. Maybe I had another day or so to get some truth into the paper. Starvation Lake had to hear it. How Blackburn really died. What happened in the billets. How the new marina, if Boynton really planned to build one, would be anchored in an ugly past. Some would say there was no use in revealing these secrets. I wondered if a few of those people already knew, or at least suspected. I blamed them for not knowing and for not putting a stop to it long ago. I suppose I blamed myself, too. Kerasopoulos had one thing right: I had been there. Why hadn’t I seen it for myself? In a matter of a few days, all these people I’d thought I’d known-Coach, Leo, Tillie, even Soupy-had been transformed. Now I saw strangers walking around in my memory. Maybe they’d been there a long time and I’d refused to see. No more, I told myself.
I had a problem, though. The state cops were ready to pounce if I didn’t reveal my source’s name. I’d never get Blackburn’s story into the Pilot from jail. But I still didn’t know if I could bring myself to give up the source. I was in this mess because I’d broken the rules of my trade. Now I had to break yet another to get out of it? In my head, I kept going over what Soupy had told me. It was all beginning to follow its own perverse and disgusting logic. But did I have it exactly right yet? Was Soupy telling me the whole truth? He’d held out on me for years and might be holding out still. Or maybe he just didn’t know everything.
I had twenty-three minutes to decide what to do. I looked at the Tribune message slip and considered again whether that woman was calling about my Detroit problems. Maybe she could help. I dialed her number. While her phone rang, I gazed idly at what I’d scratched on my blotter earlier: “Richard Ltd.”
“ Tribune. Sheryl Scully.”
“Hello. It’s Gus Carpenter at the Pine County Pilot. ”
Richard, I thought. Or, as any hockey player might see it, REE-shard, the French pronunciation.
“Thanks for returning my call,” Sheryl Scully said. “I called to ask about one of your reporters: M. Joan McCarthy?”
“Joanie,” I said. But I was still thinking REE-shard. Like the great Montreal Canadiens Maurice “The Rocket” Richard and Henri “The Pocket Rocket” Richard.
“Are you her direct supervisor?”
“I’m her only supervisor,” I said, but I was barely listening. I was thinking that Blackburn had named his mutt Pocket for Henri Richard, his favorite NHL player.
“I see,” Sheryl Scully said. “We’ve got a position in one of our suburban bureaus we’re considering her for. What can you tell me about her?”
An image of the dog popped into my head. I saw him sitting on our bench watching us practice, his head swiveling back and forth with the motion of the puck.
“Mr. Carpenter?”
“Oh, I’m sorry. Are you going to hire her?”
“She’s a candidate. Her clips look promising.”
Joanie really was out of there. I should have felt the envy then. But in my head the image of Pocket now was jumping and yelping. REE-shard, I thought. Like Blackburn’s mutt, like his favorite player, like Ree-shard Ltd., the company in Virginia that owned Blackburn’s property.
“Oh my fucking God,” I gasped.
“I’m sorry,” Sheryl Scully said. “We’re really not here to steal your reporters, Mr. Carpenter. Is that-is that an endorsement?”
“Ms., um, I’m sorry?”
“Scully.”
“Ms.Scully, I’ll have to call you back. I’m on deadline.”
I went to Joanie’s desk and riffled through the documents I’d seen earlier on the floor. I found the one listing Richard Ltd., with an address and phone number in Springfield, Virginia. I went back to my desk and dialed the number.
It was disconnected.
