by Gare Joyce
I tried to speed him along. “Let’s say that there was a follow-up and the kid has been shut down, taken off all exercise,” I said.
“That would be standard protocol even it were just a one-off,” he said. “If you’re asking me to spin the Wheel of Fortune, I’d say that given that this is a young athlete …”
“A teenager,” I said.
“Yes, a teenager, I’d be tempted to investigate hypertrophic cardiomyopathy,” he said. He decided not to wait for me to ask to put it into layman’s terms. “That’s a thickening of the heart that would put him at significant risk of sudden death.”
“Later in life?”
“At a young age actually,” he said. “I’ve diagnosed several athletes here, a couple of basketball players in high school just in the last year, and I had to advise them to discontinue playing. I had to put them on beta blockers, and in the case of the one, an anti-arrhythmic med. And I’ve been approached by a couple of college football players, probably at an agent’s request, to prescribe medication, these same beta blockers and antiarrhythmics, so that they might clear testing. There are millions at stake.”
“Same here, Doc,” I said.
“Well, I really haven’t treated any hockey players, but if those are the stakes, I’m sure that the specialists in your neck of the woods would get the same sort of requests from young athletes. I prescribed the medication to the young men who came to me, but I told them that they should not under any circumstances look at anything above and beyond light recreational exercise, no pushing the envelope. Did they take my advice? I’m not sure. My guess is one or both might not have. Just an athlete’s stubbornness and a young man’s sense of his immortality.”
He was a heart specialist with not even a passing knowledge of hockey, but what he said about a player’s headspace was a top-shelf one-timer.
“Is it correctible? Is there an operation?”
“There’s treatment but there’s no ‘fix’ per se,” he said. “He might be looking at a pacemaker or an implantable cardioverterdefibrillator if he were considered at high risk.”
I had the juice that I was looking for. The specialist offered up his Perfunctory Don’t-Hold-Me-To-Its, saying in so many words that his opinion was based on incomplete information. I half-expected him to say that it would be accurate within 3 percent nineteen times out of twenty.
I offered my thanks and goodbyes. I suspected our team doctor would bill us and he’d be on the hook for lunch at the golf club.
I DIDN’T TELL the pharmacist, the team doctor, and the specialist that the meds I pulled out of Junior’s basement apartment were in unmarked containers. I made sense of that off the hop. Junior didn’t take his prescription to the pharmacy in Peterborough. His father did. And Senior brought it back. He could have bought or been given the containers there. He could have told them at the counter that his son was commuting back and forth between Peterborough and Toronto and wanted a stash at each stop.
It even occurred to me that Senior could have taken in the prescription and said it was his own. Same name, no one would have been the wiser. That would have headed off any small-town chatter. Peterborough is small enough that a pharmacist might have recognized Junior and wagged a tongue about his prescription. Or maybe it would have been someone standing in line behind him, eavesdropping when the pharmacist walked the kid through the particulars of his prescriptions.
If it had been anyone else, I could have put everything down to a father guarding his son’s privacy. But that would have been the only time that Senior had taken the high road. He didn’t strike me as the noble type. To protect Junior, he just had to pick up the drugs. To put them in unwrapped plastic wrappers wasn’t protection but concealment. Senior didn’t want his son to know anything more than he wanted him to. And if he didn’t want his son to know, he sure as hell didn’t want teams in the league to know. I suspected that if the son had known exactly what he was taking and why he was taking it, he wouldn’t have kept it a secret, not from friends, not from teams in the league. I suspected that the father suspected the same thing. As much as I knew of the son, he made a point of taking the high road. He was too noble for what Senior saw as their own good.
48
* * *
The draft was a couple of weeks off. I made an appointment to meet up with Ollie Buckhold over coffee around his offices near the airport.
“I always thought life would be a helluva lot easier if my offices were in the airport and I just stayed at one of the hotels out here,” he said. “I feel like I live nine months of the year out of my suitcase.”
Ollie drank a double espresso. He had been up all night thinking about a defenceman for one of the Sunbelt teams. Ollie didn’t say the name. He was mostly a model of discretion, especially when fear of a tampering charge might be involved. It didn’t matter. I could read between the lines. He told me that he’d been up going over the notes for an arbitration case that was more than a month off. “It’s coming like Christmas,” he said. “We’re at total impasse. I just don’t see any way we can avoid it. It could be a landmark case.”
Agents will never settle for fact when hype will do, but in this case Ollie wasn’t blowing it up. An all-star defenceman with unrestricted free agency a season away and a one-year arbitration contract for what would likely be a league record number if his boy won. If the kid lost in arb, though, he’d make himself Ollie’s ex-client. There’d be rival agents in the kid’s ear the same day. Ollie wished a long-term deal would make it all go away.
“Cheer up, Ollie,” I said. “You’ve got Mays coming in. The lord giveth what an arbitrator might take away.”
Ollie’s mood cheered. “Billy’s a wonderful young man,” he said.
“His father was a piece of work,” I said. I wasn’t going to dive deep on that, but I figured it would be disingenuous not to wade in up to my ankles.
“Mr. Mays is a genius in the business that he’s in and he believes that his expertise can translate into the business of the league.”
“Yeah, which makes your life so much easier.”
Ollie smiled and let it drop.
“Look, I’m not telling you anything that you don’t know when I say that we’re very interested in Mays if he’s there when our pick is up,” I said.
“He might well be there.”
“He might well be, but if things fall the way that we think he will be.”
Ollie anticipated a question. It was a question that I had to ask, though not the most important one I was going to put to him.
“Brad, Billy would be delighted if he went number four to Los Angeles or higher if you’re able to trade up,” he said.
“My only concern, I mean, our only concern is his health.”
“We’ll send you his files. You have looked at the combine physical. He’s on the road to complete recovery. It was a shame about the combine. He wished he could have done the testing.
He would have shown you that he’s an absolute specimen, a very physically gifted young man.”
“I’ve seen the results from the combine physical, but I’d like to bring Billy out to see our team doctor and to sit down with Hunts so we can get an idea of his comfort level with our franchise.”
“Well, Brad, that’s a bit of a problem. Billy’s not visiting any teams. It’s the family’s request …”
Which, of course, meant that it was Senior’s demand. I can’t imagine that a teenager would blow up an all-expenses-paid trip to L.A. for wining, dining, and the hope of chasing down a starlet. It would be like a ten-year-old turning down a day pass to Disneyland.
“… It’s a blanket policy of theirs, Brad. No offence to L.A., but Mr. Mays wants Billy to focus on his studies. The family is willing to talk with GMs in meetings in Toronto if that would suit you. If you’d rather do it than have your boss come in, well, I’m sure that can be arranged.”
Ollie wouldn’t have been so sure if he’d been aware that I knew Senior had at least attempted to
murder Sandy and probably succeeded with the Ol’ Redhead and Bones. Ollie wouldn’t have been so sure if he’d been aware that Senior was working on the presumption that he was buying my silence for a hundred grand.
“Yeah, I don’t really see that happening,” I said. “I mean, I liked Billy in our interview …”
“The young man said that he really enjoyed that meeting.”
“… but the stakes are big.”
“I recognize that.” What Ollie recognized was the fact that Hunts and everyone in our crew might be only a couple of paycheques and a filing of expenses away from job hunting. Ollie also recognized that there was no way that Hunts and anyone in our organization could force the issue. The no-visit policy might have been a ruse. The Mayses might have wanted to go to New York or had an understanding or even a handshake deal with Anderson and Co. Not visiting L.A. or other teams might have been a passive-aggressive hint to shop elsewhere.
Ollie said that he would forward a copy of Junior’s personal medical file to our team doctor. All things equal, Ollie would have signed off on the kid making a trip to L.A., but Senior was a genius in the business he was in, and in this case his expertise did translate perfectly to the business of the league. Senior recognized that our club and others were in the position to ask politely for small considerations and that he was in the position to give us nothing at all.
I told Ollie I’d take him up on the offer of a look at Junior’s medical file. I told him to forward it to me and I’d take it to a physician.
49
* * *
Ralphie was the only one of the Irregulars who walked into the Merry Widow in hospital blues. For a long time no one spoke to him. The Irregulars can be a judgmental lot—those who would be judged harshly are often the harshest judges of others. They presumed that Ralphie was a doctor and they had spent their lives avoiding doctors or anyone else who might tell them to cut down on their drinking or smoking or various other vices. They also maintained a twisted altruism, caring about the well-being of others despite their self-abuse. They thought it was inappropriate for a doctor to see patients when he was sweating out ten pints from the night before. Those patients might have been their loved ones.
Ralphie was not a doctor, though. He was a nurse. That explained why he’d been a week-on-week-off customer. When the Irregulars found this out they avoided him again, believing he was going to hit on them. Of course, the Merry Widow was officially the last place a gay man would look to cruise, but I guess the Irregulars believed that their good looks and winning personalities would prove irresistible to those of either gender. They thought they still had it. At least they did until Ralph showed them a picture of his grandchild, with his beautiful daughter and his knockout wife whose endowments rivalled DDoris’s, all the more impressive given that they couldn’t be store-bought on a nurse’s wages. She had been a nurse too.
I showed the copy of Junior’s file to Ralphie. I wasn’t looking for a critical reading, just an objective one. I couldn’t make out the handwriting.
“I see a lot worse every day,” Ralphie said.
Ralphie pored over it, the last five years, and it was mostly mundane stuff.
“I was just interested in the last pages, really,” I told him. I was afraid he was going to try to squeeze more than a pint out of the favour.
I suspected that there wouldn’t be any entries indicating a cardiac episode in the weeks before the Ol’ Redhead and Bones were snuffed. There weren’t. There was no mention of amiodarone, beta blockers, and blood thinners. It wasn’t just the omissions that set off alarms. The last page was a red-flag entry. A list of symptoms and complaints that would have prompted a right-minded doctor to shut down Junior. Patient complaining of extreme fatigue, continued weight loss. Glands enlarged. Spleen enlarged. Recommending rest for a period of three months before re-evaluation. That wasn’t the red flag, though. The red flag was the name of the physician who had made the diagnosis. Bones II.
Teams reading this might not have put it together that Bones II, and not the late father, had made the entry. Even if they had been in the know they might not have been suspicious about eastern Ontario’s foremost electrocardiologist taking a professional look at Billy Mays Jr. They would have presumed that Bones II was doing a favour for Senior, his former teammate.
But those who thought they were in the know were flying in the dark about the heart meds. The mono had to be cover for something a lot more serious. Hypertrophic cardiomyopathy would fall into that category.
“That’s the last entry?”
“Yeah. Nothing before it with beta blockers or anything?” Ralphie fanned back the pages. “Nothing,” he said.
I thanked Ralphie.
He gave me a bit of unsolicited advice. “You know if you’re taking Celebrex for Arthur there you shouldn’t be drinking,” he said. “Stomach bleeding.”
50
* * *
I called Duke Avildsen. He was glad to get the call. He had been sitting on his mower for a couple of hours. He and his missus lived just beyond the tentacles of suburban sprawl, and their spread was the same one that he had bought with the proceeds of his first summer hockey camp for kids. He had spent the morning grooming the front yard, an expanse that was suitable for a game of Aussie rules football or two. My call spared him another hour or two in the hot sun.
I pulled up Duke’s last reports on a bunch of Ontario league draft-eligibles, the second-tier prospects, the ones who were going to be around in the fourth or fifth or nether rounds. Duke didn’t bother powering up his computer or looking at any notes. He knew the kids like they had been going to his hockey camp for three consecutive summers.
“Shadow, I might be wrong,” he had said too many times to count. “It’s just my opinion but at least it’s an informed opinion.”
That was all you could ask of a scout. Duke knew the limitations. No one could hope to always be right, though a lot who went around thinking that had a lower batting average than Duke did. He put the work in. He didn’t just agree with what a scouting director like me would throw out there. He didn’t listen to the opinions of other scouts in our department and take shelter under the roof of consensus.
“In that range I guess there are only five kids who turn my crank,” he said. He rhymed them off. The first name he threw out there was a tall goaltender who was the backup in Ottawa. In Kingston it was a big defenceman from upstate New York who played like you’d suspect the son of a prison guard would. In St. Catharines it was a pie-faced left winger with marginal size but good hockey sense that had been acquired over three summers at Duke’s hockey camp. In Sudbury it was a sometimes sleepy centre who could be good and bad not just game to game, not just shift to shift, but even over the span of a forty-second shift. And in Windsor it was a hard-rock winger who was no better than the fourth most talented forward in the lineup but had a history of making big plays in the biggest games.
“That’s all I got, Shadow,” Duke said. That has always been Duke’s way. Other guys beat it to death and feel obliged to go through dozens of names and catalogue every aspect of their games. Information overload. Not Duke. It’s just brass tacks. A hundred and fifty games and he had five names that we could look at when the first hundred or so names had been called out at the podium on the draft floor and posted on the big board.
I trusted Duke more than any other full-timer or part-timer on the staff and almost enough to take him into confidence on Billy Mays Jr., but I held back. I didn’t want to involve him. I had to own this. Duke didn’t piggyback on anything anyway. Still, I called Duke because I wanted to sound him out about the etiquette and scruples of his former minor-league teammate and long-time friend.
“The Carrot-top Bastard was a good man,” Duke said. “Full of shit but honest.”
“If Hanratty knew some kid was hurt or a problem, would he hush it up?” I asked.
“Why would he?”
“I don’t know why he would. Maybe if he liked the kid an
d wanted him to get a shot, maybe …”
“Naw, Shadow, that’s a non-starter. If you asked him a question, he’d give you an answer. He wouldn’t carry any kid’s water. Or any agent’s or anyone else’s. Wouldn’t protect anyone either.”
“Would he tell some teams one thing and hold stuff back from another?”
Duke was trying to piece together a line of questioning that had come out of the blue. He could count to four and he knew that Junior was in play with our first pick.
“Red’s first loyalty was too close to call,” Duke said. “It was either to the game or to his job. He had too many friends and his business was too complicated to get in the position of someone known to play favourites. If he played favourites he knew he could get in a jam. He’d piss off guys and teams in the league that he might need a favour from or have to work with. It would be a mug’s game, bound to piss somebody off every time.”
“Could someone buy his silence about something?”
This might have thrown Duke for a loop. It was a loaded question. It cast aspersions on the character of another hockey man, one of Duke’s contemporaries, one who had just passed over. I had to be direct.
“I’ll tell you somethin’, Shadow, there is, uh, was nothing that you could have bought Red’s silence with. It’s not that he didn’t value money, just that he had all that he needed. If money mattered to him, he could have gone to the pros and made big bucks. He had his chances but he liked the life he had in Peterborough. I thought maybe he’d go when his wife died. For sure she was dead against leaving the small town. But by then he figured that he was too old to be a rookie coach with the big boys, and he was right.”
