The fallout from that shocking press conference began almost immediately on the internet and made it onto the late-night news. The team’s social media sites became so flooded with comments, most of them hateful, that Sloane shut them down for the time being.
Pertia had gone to bed early and missed all the controversy. She did not realize what was going on until she heard it on a morning news radio program while preparing breakfast. She left Ken two voicemails an hour apart before sitting by her window to watch people walk their dogs.
She worried for her friend.
Back in New York, Alex had a closed-door, players-only meeting with his teammates. He saw no other choice but to come on strong.
Everything would be figured out, Alex announced, but for now the team had to focus on winning Game 3.
“What about the, you know, the accusation?” Todd asked.
“He denied doing anything wrong and that’s good enough for me,” Alex stated. “We’ll have to see how it goes.”
The players seemed to collectively nod, and no one voiced any objections. Alex thought someone might say something, but no one did. He imagined at least a few of them were skeptical of Ken’s supposed innocence.
Later on, Ken did not show up for the pre-game skate. Instead, Freddy ran the squad. No one expected that Ken would miss the game as well, but as the players lined up behind Matt and Alex in the dressing room to hit the ice that evening, Freddy came in and informed the team that Ken would not be behind the bench.
“Where is he?” Alex asked.
“He’s at the hotel,” Freddy replied. “He thinks being here will be a distraction.”
“Not being here will be a distraction,” Alex countered.
Freddy shrugged and changed the conversation back to the game.
The New York crowd was energized and so were the New York players. Toronto was not. To a person, they looked more listless than they had in a long time. If it weren’t for the heroics of their goaltender Matt “The Cat” and the angry determination of Mike Hill, who managed to score two goals, the game probably would have been a blowout.
New York ended up winning 4–2, but the game didn’t feel as close as the score suggested it was. With the exception of Matt and Mike, every other Toronto player looked like their mind was somewhere else.
63.
Ken had not made a public appearance or comment since denying the accusations. With Toronto now trailing in the series, everything that looked so promising just a few days ago appeared to be going downhill in a hurry.
The street leading to the hotel from Grand Central Station was mostly uphill and Alex made his way up the sidewalk as quickly as he could. When he finally got there a few minutes later, he went right to the front desk and asked the concierge if Ken Hornsby had checked out of his room. She refused to tell him anything.
“Look, he’s our head coach and he wasn’t at the game tonight,” Alex explained. “All I want to know is if he’s checked out of his room. Otherwise, I’m running upstairs and banging on doors.”
The concierge hesitated slightly and looked around to see if anyone else was listening.
“He’s in one of our meeting rooms, arranging for a flight back to Toronto,” she replied. “There have been some reporters around.”
Alex was relieved to hear it was not anything worse, but it looked like his first thought was the correct one: Ken was getting out of dodge. Game 4 would be in New York City tomorrow night, and he must have felt like he couldn’t show his face anywhere. When Alex walked in on Ken in one of the meeting rooms, the coach was seated at a desk with a phone held up against his ear. He was in the process of thanking someone before hanging up.
Ken turned and looked at Alex, who closed the door. They stared at each other silently for a moment.
“I’m only going to ask you this once,” Alex said. “Did you do it? Did you do what that asshole reporter accused you of?”
“No, Alex, I did not.”
“Well, okay then. That’s good enough for me.”
“Thank you.”
“Why did you run?”
“If I showed up tonight –”
“Not tonight,” Alex interrupted. “If you didn’t do anything wrong, why did you run?”
“I didn’t run, Alex.”
“Yes, you did. Who is this guy that accused you? Did I know him?”
“No,” Ken shook his head. “He was a player I coached before I got hired by the university. A few years later he came to the university and tried out. I cut him and he didn’t take it well.”
Alex scratched his head. “Where was I?”
“It was just before you came,” Ken replied. “He really wasn’t very good, and he constantly blamed everyone – claimed we were being unfair to him, that sort of thing.”
“He just sounds like an angry loser.”
“After he was cut, he broke his stick leaving the ice and kicked a door open. So, I went into the changeroom to have a talk with him,” Ken explained.
“And?”
“He knocked a few more things over,” Ken continued. “He grabbed his towel and headed to the showers. I followed him, which was a stupid thing to do, but I never expected him to react the way he did.”
“What do you mean?”
“As soon as he saw me, he yelled out, ‘Don’t touch me!’ But I never touched him. I never went near him.”
“And you quit coaching our team over that?”
“No,” he said. “I was called to a meeting. One of the men, a terrible man named Macdonald, told me about the accusation. My choices were I could quit or they would leak it and humiliate me.”
Alex sat down in a chair beside his coach and tried to make sense of everything.
“So, what about stuff like your pension?” Alex asked. “Didn’t you take a hit on that?”
“That would have happened either way,” Ken responded. “There would have been a huge scandal. I would’ve had to quit, or they would’ve fired me.”
“But you quit over something that was never proven. Why didn’t you fight back?”
“Once something like that gets out there, Alex, it’s impossible to make it go away,” Ken replied. “It ruins lives, especially for people like me.”
“People like you?”
“Alex…I’m gay.”
“So what?” Alex replied immediately.
“Well, there’s still a lot of people who think gay men are perverts, child molesters,” Ken said with bitterness in his voice that Alex was not used to hearing. “As bad as it still is, it was even worse fifteen, twenty years ago. A man coaching boys…I would’ve been seen as a sexual deviant – a predator.”
Alex felt his body heating up from anger, but he kept listening.
“It was a no-win situation, and it would have put a cloud on everything you guys accomplished, the championships…just everything.”
“I should have pushed you to tell me what was happening,” Alex said regretfully. “I knew something was going on. I would’ve stood by you. A lot of us would have.”
“I cared about all of you,” Ken said. “I had to protect myself, but more importantly I had to protect all of you.”
Alex looked at his coach, who in many ways had filled a void in his life. He got up, walked over to Ken, who was still seated, and gave him a hug.
“Thank you, Alex,” Ken said. “Ever the loyal soldier.”
“Cancel your flight to Toronto,” Alex instructed. “We’ve got to figure out how we’re going to deal with this.”
64.
The hotel had a lovely bar and restaurant downstairs. Sloane asked for as much privacy as possible and was offered a corner table. An emergency meeting was going to begin soon.
He was the first to arrive, and desperately wanted to try one of the hotel’s steaks after a waiter walked by him to deliver one to someone sitting at the bar. Sloane had not eaten properly since before the press conference and was starving.
Helen joined him within minutes, fo
llowed by Freddy and Corey in quick succession. The purpose of the meeting was to try and figure out how to deal with this crisis.
Corey suggested they order drinks. He asked the waiter to put him down for a scotch; Helen asked for a glass of the house red wine; Sloane went for a beer and then gave Freddy a look when “The Flash” asked for a double shot of rye, neat. Now in addition to drinking on an empty stomach, Sloane would also have to watch Freddy possibly unravel all over again. At the same time, he didn’t want to overreact. Every single one of them could use a drink.
After the waiter took their orders and walked away, Corey got down to business. Based on how awkwardly they acted around each other, Sloane suspected it was the first time Corey had sat together with Helen in awhile, but he seemed unfazed at the moment, and so did she.
“We need damage control,” Corey said to the group.
“Yeah, no shit,” Freddy replied.
“You’re not an exactly an expert in that department, are you?” Corey snapped. “Maybe leave this to the grown-ups.”
“I saw a toilet plunger in the bathroom over there. Maybe you could use it to go fuck yourself,” Freddy shot back.
“You going to beat me up if one of my kids asks you for an autograph?” Corey asked.
“I wouldn’t have to,” Freddy said. “A stiff breeze could probably blow you over, you arrogant piece of shit.”
“Alright, that’s enough!” Sloane interjected, raising his voice in the process. The person at the bar eating the steak that Sloane wanted looked over at them.
“Will you two shut up?” Sloane growled. “We have a serious problem, and we have to figure out what to do.”
“We have to fire Hornsby,” Corey stated. “We have no choice.”
“What if he didn’t do anything?” Freddy asked. “You just going to string a guy up like that?”
“That doesn’t matter,” Corey replied. “The point is, this is going to kill us if we don’t fire him.”
The waiter arrived with the tray of drinks. He looked like he was afraid to approach the table. Freddy reached up and grabbed his rye.
“You have a better idea?” Corey asked.
“Let me tell you something,” Freddy said. “This guy, Hornsby, is good enough to coach anywhere. Without him, these guys would never have made it this far. Do you get that?”
“Do you have a better idea?” Corey repeated impatiently.
The guy eating the steak at the bar washed his food down with wine and was still looking over at their table.
“I do,” Alex said.
Corey, Helen, Freddy and Sloane all turned to see Alex standing by their table. He looked tired, but also calm and focused. Corey caught a quick glimpse of Helen looking at Alex and felt a twinge of anger shoot up his spine.
“And what would that be?” Sloane asked.
“Well, it’s not that different from hockey, really,” Alex replied.
“What do you mean?” Helen asked.
“If someone hits you, then you hit them back twice as hard,” Alex explained.
Alex looked at Sloane. “I need you to organize another press conference.”
He then turned to Corey. “You a good lawyer?”
65.
When he was called to attend a meeting at the university, Ken Hornsby didn’t give it a second thought. They were just coming off another championship, the fourth in a row and fifth in six years. It had not been their most dominant victory, mostly due to the suddenly average goaltending from Matt Richards, but it was another hard-fought and well-earned banner for the school. Perhaps they were calling Ken in to congratulate him on the latest win and thank him for further boosting the university’s reputation in athletics.
This championship was bittersweet for Ken, as he was set to lose the dynamic core of his team, the Deep Six. As always, he had done his best to balance the roster with younger players, but nearly all the Deep Six, who rode with him for the past five years, were leaving. At least one of them, Mike Hill, had a legitimate shot at going pro.
Ken knocked on the conference room door and when he stepped inside, three governors – who were the oldest, whitest males Ken had ever seen – sat side by side behind a long table. The unpleasant man known as Macdonald pointed at a single chair in front of them and abruptly instructed Ken to sit down. Ken immediately felt tension in the room, but he had no idea why. He sat in the chair and waited for one of them to speak. It did not take long before MacDonald began to snarl at him.
“So?” MacDonald asked. “Want to guess why we called you here?”
It became plainly obvious that something was wrong. However, it was in Ken’s nature to remain calm.
“I really have no idea,” he replied honestly.
MacDonald turned to the other two men and chuckled. “He has no idea. Isn’t that something?”
There was a fine line between being polite and being a pushover. Ken was reaching his limit.
“Would one of you gentlemen please tell me what’s going on?” Ken asked. “I think I’m entitled to an answer.”
“Oh, really?” MacDonald responded. “And what about your victim? What’s he entitled to?”
Ken felt like he had just been hit in the gut. He knew that he hadn’t done anything wrong, but as his mother used to say, “Sometimes, the devil gets lost in the details.”
“What are you talking about?” he asked.
One of the other governors slid a small piece of paper across the table.
“Name ring a bell?” Macdonald asked as he continued his offensive. “You remember dropping a player from the team a few years ago? Following him into a shower?”
The other two governors shifted uncomfortably. Ken cleared his throat before responding.
“I never touched him,” Ken said, realizing how awkward it sounded to even say such a thing. “I was just trying to talk to him. A lot of people were around. Nothing happened.”
“Maybe not then,” Macdonald fumed.
“Not ever,” Ken said firmly.
“Well, we have contrary information,” Macdonald spat.
“That’s not possible,” Ken said.
“I guess the guy you molested didn’t get the memo.”
“I didn’t…Jesus…” Ken caught himself in mid-sentence and suddenly felt short of breath.
“Recognizing the years of service you’ve given the school and because we’re good Christian men, we’re going to give you a way out,” Macdonald declared. “You can leave on your own or we can make sure this goes public.”
“You want me to resign?”
“I want you out of my sight as soon as possible.”
“I haven’t done anything wrong,” Ken protested. “I’ll fight it.”
“You do that,” Macdonald replied. “Fairies have rights too, but how do you see that playing out? Think about it.”
Ken sat back in his chair, overwhelmed. One of the most high profile, influential people at the university just called him a “fairy.”
What in the world was happening?
Macdonald and the other two men had done the math and figured out there was no way Ken could come out of this unscathed. Once the allegation was out, they would immediately fire him to show all the families paying tuition that the school took such matters very seriously. Furthermore, they would welcome any police investigation and cooperate to the fullest. In the meantime, Ken would be twisting in the wind trying to prove he was not a perverted monster who coached hockey to fondle young men.
“I expect your resignation on my desk in the morning and your office cleaned out by the afternoon,” MacDonald instructed. “This meeting is over.”
Without saying another word, Ken got up and left the room in a daze. He knew the young man in question was volatile, but to have accused him of something like this? And then for the university to take it at face value with no questions asked? Even though the accusation was baseless, Ken knew the public perception would be awful. As his mother also used to say, “Perception is
reality.”
Some of his key guys, like Alex, Mike and Eddie, would want to know what was going on, but he wouldn’t tell them. They were graduating and were on their way out.
As vile and unfounded as it all was, Ken could not allow it to become known. It would put a cloud over everything his teams had accomplished and would tarnish their legacy. He just could not have that. He promised himself that he would never reveal anything.
That night, Ken sat in front of his computer. It took him two hours to type a one-paragraph resignation letter.
66.
It was game day and Isaac and Alex were both preoccupied.
Freddy had run their morning skate once again with no sign of their head coach. In the dressing room prior to taking the ice, Freddy acknowledged he was probably not the best person to give advice on how to handle the media, but the message to all Toronto players was to say two simple words if approached by reporters: “No comment.”
Throughout the practice, Freddy seemed less sharp than usual when running drills. Alex noted he looked bleary-eyed, as though he was thoroughly exhausted. Probably didn’t sleep due to the stress, Alex thought.
You certainly wouldn’t look like that because of one whisky.
During the players-only team meeting that followed practice, Alex spoke up and was relieved to see his teammates absorbing what he was saying. He left the room thinking they were all on board with the strategy that he explained to them.
Back in his hotel room with Isaac, Alex sat at a table by the window with a pen in hand, writing on the hotel’s stationery. Isaac was talking loudly on the telephone.
“Yeah, man, you’re cutting out,” Isaac bellowed into the phone. “You hear me? Okay, cool. Listen, I’ll have it for you when we get back to the city…What? I said when we get back to the city…the CITY…”
Alex put his pen down for a second and shot Isaac a look. Isaac put the phone to his chest.
“Bad connection, baby. Sorry.”
“Yeah…I’m being serious, dickhead,” Isaac said back into the phone. “I said I’m being serious, dickhead! You’re still cutting out…DICKHEAD!”
The Tournament Page 41
