The full power of the Jeep, urged on by Larry’s heavy foot, tore into the muddy trail. The helicopter pulled closer. The tall strands of yellow and green grass bobbed and rippled under the wind whipped up by the rotor and propellers. We splashed through the shallow pools sending water and mud flying. Hundreds of birds took to the air and the few tourists who were observing the wildlife from observation posts were no doubt wondering why.
We were getting dangerously close to the river. The Jeep, as powerful as it was, eventually bogged down in the increasingly wide and deep marshes. Larry spun his wheels backwards and forwards, churning up huge quantities of mud. But there was nothing else he could do. We were completely stuck.
The helicopter flew low over our heads. Hand in hand, Larry and Melissa jumped down from the Jeep and started running through the tall grass under the rain, towards majestic Cap Tourmente.
Leaving their cars at the end of the road, the police had started off in full pursuit. I thought it judicious to stay in the vehicle and not to try to do anything more. Rapidly, three officers surrounded the jeep, guns drawn, gesturing for me to get out. Which I did, putting my hands behind my head. They immediately jumped on me, pushing my face into the mud. They handcuffed me, yanking on the cuffs until they were as tight as they could go. I told them they were too tight, but their only response was a string of violent insults.
Larry and his daughter ran on in desperation, until, surrounded by a number of policemen, they fell to the grass. Larry, lying on his back, sank slowly into the wet mud while Melissa clung to him as hard as she could. In a tight embrace, the little girl finally understood what was happening and nestled her face one last time against her father’s ear. She whispered to Larry, who had never been happier: “I love you forever, papa.”
Chapter 6
Larry was right. He made the front pages of all the newspapers. His photo ran under the headline “Child Kidnapper.” The close-up told the story: a guy in sunglasses with a receding hairline and tight little unsmiling lips. The perfect bastard. It was easy to hate him. All the major dailies ran pictures of the chase, taken from the helicopter. The most disturbing one showed him lying on the grass with Melissa, surrounded by cops.
As for me, the picture of me taken a week earlier by the journalist from Le Soleil was featured on page two. If Larry came off as the lowest of the low, I was a hero. The neighbours claimed they saw me running after the Jeep. After some pretty heavy questioning during which I laid out my version of the events, confirmed by Larry who swore he’d acted alone, the police finally released me. But the investigation would continue, they said; they’d be calling me back to answer more questions.
They’d decided to release me earlier, but they were waiting for my father to arrive before letting me go. Sylvie and Mike heard the news about 5:15 p.m. But by the time they’d located Louis in the woods it was past eight when they finally hit the road. They arrived at the Victoria Park police station around two in the morning. I was all alone in the large cell reserved for minors.
A tall policeman with a shaved head came to escort me out. He flashed me a big smile and gave me a pat on the back to cheer me up. Me, I was drained after my long day. The interrogation that evening had been difficult, with guys trying to pin me down on the specifics: Where was I at such and such a time, at such and such a moment, with whom, etc., even suggesting that maybe I was Larry’s accomplice. I probably looked as bad as I felt, discouragement written all over my face. And the duty officer tried to reassure me: my ordeal was almost over, not to worry, everything was going to work out. The TV news, sensational as usual, featured me at the top of the hour as the guy who had bravely jumped into the Jeep in the middle of Boulevard Dorchester to try to reason with the maniac. I fully deserved everybody’s gratitude.
Louis gave me a great big hug. So did Sylvie. Emotions were running high. Of course, the Smith & Wesson .357 Magnum Larry was packing when he was finally apprehended had been mentioned over and over on the news. As they’d driven in the pickup along the near-deserted road to Quebec City, they kept hearing the story on the radio, and each new detail pushed their stress off the dial.
The team sprung for a lawyer I was to meet the next morning. I spoke to him on the phone and he advised me not to say anything. If need be, they would call a press conference. Still, as we came out of the police station at three in the morning, two feature reporters followed me out to Louis’s pickup asking questions. I answered as well as I could.
The next day, the lawyer let me have it. When the reporters had asked me my opinion of what Larry had done, I said it was wrong. When they’d asked me what I thought of him, I couldn’t help saying he was a good guy and I liked him a lot. Grey areas don’t really exist in newspapers. On the other hand, nothing in life is totally black or totally white. But headlines are always in boldface. And my statement was bound to raise more than a few eyebrows. The next day, in large type next to my bewildered face: “He’s a good guy.”
We spent the day at a hotel. After checking in around five in the morning, I went right to bed and slept soundly. When I awoke, I was alone with Sylvie. Louis had gone to get my things from Nathalie’s and move them to my aunt’s friend’s place in Charlesbourg. And just like that, my life in the Basse-Ville came to an end. I was going to be living in a basement flat on Rue des Sureaux.
Vicky tried to reach me at Nathalie’s a couple of times, but I never called her back. The whole episode with Larry had shaken me. And throughout my ordeal in the jail cell and with the hard-nosed police interrogator, the only person I could think about that brought me any comfort was Chloé. If I could only be in her arms and forget about everything.
I hadn’t seen her since I left. She never made it to Quebec City, for all kinds of reasons. But she sent me a beautiful letter, together with some pictures. She said she’d gone up to my cabin a couple of times. There was a picture of her wearing a scarf on her head and a green fleece jacket, sitting on the steps. She wrote that when she smelled fir resin, she thought of me. Another photo showed her in Mike’s garage. She was perched on my Skiroule holding his new dog: another husky, a male this time. His name was Amarok, which means “wolf” in Inuktitut. His hands dirty, the damn Bruins cap on his head, Michel had just finished making sure the snowmobile was ready for winter. In another shot, taken at arm’s length, Chloé had taken a picture of herself with the sea in the background. The sky was grey. Her eyes were closed. She had a big smile, and her wet hair hung down over her face.
A couple of news photographers started snapping their cameras at me Monday morning when I arrived at the official opening of training camp. It was kind of weird for a rookie to be getting all that attention.
My father and I met with the coach before practice. It was all very informal. We joked around. He told us there was absolutely no reason not to start camp at the same time as everybody else. I should concentrate on my game, he said; he was used to controversy and that the media would forget the story in about twenty-four hours. That was a news story’s life cycle. Hero or zero.
“A strange sort of a bird,” he said of Larry. “He came to see me a couple of times. He wasn’t the easiest guy to follow.”
“He’s a bit too intense,” said Louis, as if he was at confession. “He just lost it.”
My father had always liked Larry and what happened had really upset him. More than anything else, he felt embarrassed, as if he had to apologize for entrusting me to a guy like that. I would have liked to stop him, to convince him that it wasn’t worth it, but I couldn’t. And now, every time I defended Larry the least little bit, people looked at me with raised eyebrows. The way they condemned Larry shocked me more than a little.
I was about to meet my teammates for the first time. All eyes were on me and you could hear a pin drop as I came into the locker room. A guy named Plaisance cracked a joke and there were a few guffaws. I shrugged and said nothing.
In a minute, the hubbub level you find in a veteran locker room was back to nor
mal. The guys had already known each other for a couple of years. They were back for another season with a single clear ambition: to make the grade as professionals. Either in the ECHL, the AHL or, best of all, the NHL. Danny was the first to come up to me and shake my hand.
“Wow, man. I was watching it live. It was amazing!”
I guess it was.
Among the newcomers, besides Danny and me, there was the friendly giant, Michaud. And in a corner, talking loudly with some of the veterans, Tommy. I was surprised to see him. With all the performance enhancers he’d been taking, I expected him to flunk the lab test and find himself on the first bus home. But apparently not. There he was, pulling on his skates with an ear-splitting grin. He even said Hi to me.
Good for him, I said to myself. Maybe what he was taking was perfectly legal. Protein injections? What did I know? With all the new discoveries in sports medicine, anything was possible. What bothered me though, was the way he kept running Larry down. He’d tell anyone who’d listen that he knew Larry pretty well, and he’d always thought there was something strange about him. That was why he’d refused to train with him this summer. And also why he’d wanted to get away from him by moving out of the apartment on Rue du Roi. He seemed to be inferring that Larry had been propositioning him. What nerve!
It was a story made to measure for a pathological liar like Tommy. He could use it to conceal his cheating and to soothe his conscience. Because that’s what’s hardest for a cheater, his conscience. It’s always there, reminding him of his dishonesty. He grabs at any opportunity to justify himself, to make himself feel more righteous. That was why he wasn’t missing a chance to describe Larry as a dangerous sicko.
We jumped onto the ice to warm up. Half an hour of continuous skating helps you get focused. At one point, while we were circling the ice as if on a giant carousel, I caught up to Tommy, who was skating faster than everybody else, like a madman.
“They decided to keep you after all?” I tossed out.
“Were you afraid they wouldn’t?” he shot back.
And took off with a vengeance, as if he had a rocket in his bum.
He had promised I’d go home in a coffin if he tested positive. It would take an inquest to demonstrate the extent of the authorities’ negligence. The fact that they’d taken a sample of his urine indicated that some kind of a proceeding had been initiated. There was every reason to believe that it was actually Larry who had gotten the ball rolling. Doping controls are very sporadic in hockey and virtually non-existent during the off-season. But after Larry was guilty of kidnapping his own daughter, the case was apparently shelved, or at least was never submitted to the Canadian Centre for Ethics in Sport, which handles such offenses. How could you take the ravings of a lunatic seriously? The sample never showed up anywhere. Or at least, someone, somewhere, had decided to look the other way.
Tommy had extraordinary physical abilities. Well above the average of the other guys on the team. While everybody else was paying attention to his own game, I kept my eye on him. I could tell he was in pain the previous week, after a training session. His face told the whole story. He was leaning on his stick, shifting his weight from one leg to the other. He was red and sweaty as usual, but I could see him clenching his teeth to hold back the pain that seemed to rise from his stomach and cause him to lean forward slightly every time his face twitched.
Here the level of play was very high. And for the first time since I arrived in Quebec City, I began to have doubts about my own abilities. I gave it everything I had, but the passes were coming hard on my stick and I made quite a few miscues. More than once, Carl had to tell me to settle down. But I couldn’t help but feel intimidated by guys like Steven Caron and Ruslan Abishkin.
Steven Caron was one tough customer. He came from Maniwaki. He was the same height as me, but twice as strong. Of course, he was nineteen. He seemed laid back, kind of floating around, maybe a little oversized. But when he exploded, you’d better get out of the way. He could play the body and wasn’t afraid of anyone: a real machine. Abishkin was cut from the same cloth. He wasn’t as physical as Caron, but every bit as explosive. His skating was amazing. For anyone who’s never tried to defend against someone like him, it’d be hard to imagine how the guy could change gears. First, second, third, fourth: he seemed to be accelerating: you would calculate your angle to intercept him and bang! He’d turn it up a notch and leave you in his wake. I got trapped a couple of times. He made me look like a pee-wee each and every time. I knew my father was cringing up in the stands.
I wasn’t playing that well and feeling kind of down in the dumps about it but my accurate shooting saved the day. I figured that I was playing so poorly— coming in at the bottom in every area of play —that I might as well just relax. My shots were right on the net— even the team’s starting goalie Loïc Martin couldn’t believe it. Louis and Sylvie were standing on their seats, clapping and cheering to beat the band, as if they thought it might influence the coaches.
Carl slid me the puck; I was on top of it with one thrust of my skate and I placed it exactly where I wanted to.
“Hey, man? Where’d you learn to shoot like that?” asked one guy.
“Against the garage, back home.”
In fact, from the time I could hold a hockey stick, I’d spent many a long day slapping pucks and tennis balls.
It had been a hard day for me, a reality check. I was far from out of the woods.
My father and aunt met me at the exit with all the usual encouragements. To hear them tell it, I had played well.
“Bravo! Really something to see how you hold your own with those guys.”
But I wasn’t fooled. I knew down deep that my day had been anything but outstanding. Still, I was confident that I’d be able to improve tomorrow.
“We invited Tommy to eat with us,” said Louis.
“Oh?” I said.
That really surprised me. Above all that he agreed. Later, we were all sitting around the table at the Saint-Hubert BBQ on Boulevard Hamel. Nobody had much to say. There was tension in the air.
Tommy hadn’t had a very good day, either. In fact, it had been a lot worse than mine. I’d at least pulled my chestnuts out of the fire with a few good shots whereas Tommy spent the day getting pummelled black and blue. Tommy never had chosen to hone his hockey skills, to go head to head with the best. He would compete with the tough guys. Not young talented prospects drafted out of the midgets and carefully groomed for success. Like me. The guys he was tangling with had no illusions: the only chance they had to make it in the pros was to be extremely intimidating and never give an opponent an inch. The difference between success and failure was tiny. And the blows could be vicious. A guy of sixteen was easy pickings. The goons and bullies had thrown themselves on Tom like lions on a piece of fresh meat.
But he gave as good as he got. He’d battled impressively, even heroically, along the boards, getting cross-checked from behind, each time getting back up with fierce determination. But he was dead tired, and it showed. He didn’t want to be with us and had accepted my father’s invitation simply to be polite.
His forehead was twitching like before, his veins bulging. Several times I saw him clutching his stomach in pain. He only ate half his chicken leg. He didn’t seem hungry. How could you not be hungry after a day like we’d had?
His phone rang twice. Each time, I recognized the voice of Vincent, the big bodybuilder. Tommy spoke to him, turning away, not wanting us to overhear. But we could hear everything well enough. The first time the discussion was pretty calm.
“Yes, yes, yes,” he repeated endlessly as if responding to a long list of recommendations.
“It won’t be long. I’m eating with some friends. People from back home, don’t worry.”
He hung up and sighed, then continued toying with his coleslaw. The second call was shorter. Vincent had raised his voice, and I thought I could hear him cursing.
“Listen Vince, I’m coming, it won’t be long.
You’re not going to lose a customer.”
My father asked if he was in trouble. Tommy said no.
It was pouring rain. Sylvie and Louis ran out to the parking lot and quickly climbed into the pickup. Tommy and I lingered for a moment under the awning next to the take-out window. He wanted to talk to me. Two delivery-men came out with boxes of chicken stacked on top of one another.
“I need your help,” he said.
“My help? For sure. What’s going on?”
“I owe Vincent some money. I work for him. But, you know, I’ve got to quit. I can’t handle it any more. It’s not working out.”
It was great news and a huge relief! I promised to support him and do whatever I could to help him get out of his tight spot and stop doping. I’d help him out for the rest of the camp. We’d work together, so that he could get it together before the season started.
“I need to move my things.”
“Where are you going to stay?”
“I found an apartment.”
“We can ask my father to come with the pickup.”
“No. No family. Just you and me.”
“Did you talk with your mother?”
“Yeah, I did. She’s the one who found me the apartment. But don’t tell anyone. You’re the only one I can trust. Vincent scares me. My cousin in Baie-Comeau has started harassing my mother. It’s big, Alex. You’ve got to keep it quiet. These guys aren’t fooling around.”
“Don’t worry, bud. I’ll help you.”
We shook hands. Then we hugged. I wanted to leave, but he kept on holding me tight. When I managed to tear myself away, I saw him grimacing in pain. I felt sorry for him. I hoped his decision would change things for the better, and the whole nightmare would soon be over.
We took him home to a small street in Limoilou, near 2nd and 4th; the place looked a little scary. He lived on the ground floor of a real dump. The porch was falling apart and weeds had completely invaded the small piece of ground on either side.
Power Forward Page 12
