Enforcer (55 page)

Niklas Laarkonen
- Swedish hockey player

Jake Otto
- assistant manager at Gas-Mart

Dave & Ryan
- night clerks at Gas-Mart

Agent Gauthier
- IDES

Agent Kline
- DEA

Detective Allen - BPD

United Professional Hockey League
- Thompson Cup

Western Conference:

Seattle Earthquake
- UPHL team

Great Falls Barons
- UPHL team

Nevada Miners
- UPHL team (Reno)

Tuscon Rattlers
- UPHL team

New Mexico Phantoms
- UPHL team (Albuquerque)

Tacoma Titans
- UPHL (West)

Texas Tornadoes
- UPHL (Austin)

Cheyenne Cowboys
- UPHL (West)

Lafayette Lions
- UPHL team (East)

Author’s Notes

If you’ve read something I’ve written before, you know what this is. If this is the first book of mine you’ve ever read, and haven’t thrown it down in disgust (hopefully just deleted it in disgust if you are reading this on an e-reader), this is the part where I say a lot of useless stuff then let you get on with your day / night.

Connor’s character was conceived after I’d heard an NHL player named Zach Redmond had been badly injured by a skate blade. Zach’s leg was accidentally stepped on by a teammate, resulting in a cut that severed his femoral artery and left a brutal looking scar. You can read about it here if it’s an interesting story (there isn’t any blood, guts, or gruesome pictures, so it’s safe):

http://bit.ly/1fG2SMx

Zach Redmond was given a 50/50 chance of ever skating again, and he’s currently playing for the St. John’s IceCaps of the American Hockey League (it’s the league right below the NHL, and Redmond has been called up a couple of times this season). Connor, unfortunately, had just a little less luck than Mr. Redmond, and his skating legs never quite recovered enough to make it to the big show.

This injury type, while not common, isn’t surprising to anyone who has ever laced up a pair of skates made to play hockey, do laps on a speed track, or figure skate. The things are extremely dangerous when sharpened correctly. You can be sure the equipment managers of professional hockey teams and even the junior leagues and NCAA guys are experts at giving their team the edge (bad pun, sorry).

Two different players (Clint Malarchuk and Richard Zednik) have had their necks sliced open, one the carotid artery, the other the jugular vein. In both cases some seriously quick thinking and acting persons saved both lives. Just recently one of the best defensemen in the NHL had his Achilles tendon severed 70% of the way through. He’s currently still one of the best defensemen in the entire NHL, and won a silver medal at the Olympics in Sochi.

Definitely dangerous, and I didn’t even talk about the frozen puck being shot at 90mph or more, sticks hacking at hands hard enough to break bones, getting checked by another two hundred pound player at high speed (by the way, the boards/glass actually absorb a large amount of that energy, it’s the open-ice hits that tend to be the worst). And the fighting.

Fighting is damn hard wearing shoes (unless you are kung-fu master, Navy SEAL, boxer, etc.). Try doing it while wearing two thin blades on your feet, and on a sheet of ice at that. I’ve never been in a hockey fight. I actually haven’t been in a fist fight since I was maybe fourteen or fifteen. I wasn’t very good at it then, so it stands to reason I’d be even worse at it on skates. Whenever I talk to hockey players who have been in fights, this is always one of the things that gets talked about a lot. Most of them have also said figure skating helps tremendously, as it increases a skater’s “edge” skills (the edge of the blades, for things like balance, turning, stopping long or short, not being shoved / pulled around).

If you’ve never been to a live hockey game, do yourself a favor and go. Sit as close to the middle of the ice as you can, and to be honest, the 2nd and 3rd levels offer better views of the action (my opinion only, don’t challenge me to a fight). Sitting near the glass or on the ends is sort of only for experienced fans, as they know how to follow the action even with restricted viewing angles. Just try to pay attention to what’s going on with the puck, but you’ll soon find out that lots of stuff happens away from the puck, and it can often make you feel like there’s too much going on at once all over the ice.

*

I guess I also have to say I’m not Romanian, that I know of. Why did I pick Romanians to be the
bad guys
? I don’t know. I’m a history and a geography nerd (which can make it hard to write fiction sometimes as it pains me to fudge history a little just to have a good story), and I grew up on the tail end of the Cold War. The Eastern Bloc countries were mysteries. They seemed like dour, sour, unhappy people who lived in perpetually gray cities under eternally gray skies, with lots of guys in suits arresting their friends or family in the middle of the night (or daytime). Sometimes a neighbor or even a relative might snitch on them for not being good party members, a pretty vague but serious accusation, which probably helped keep them dour, sour, and unhappy.

My wife and I have met a lot of Eastern Europeans over the last decade or so, and it turns out (hah!) they aren’t sour and gray and ready to rat us out for having an illegal copy of a Western Capitalist VHS movie. The most amazing thing that we’ve heard from just about all of them is when they talk about how it’s kind of weird to come to America and see people smiling. You know, Americans, as sour as we are, we do tend to smile at just about anything, even total strangers who look like they might stuff you in the back of a small black sedan and bring you in for reeducation.

They either had very little to smile about, or if they were older, they lived in a time when smiling was suspicious. You were obviously up to something if you just smiled for no reason (Russians and East Germans didn’t even laugh at jokes, they just clapped and said “funny” in their language, then called their contact at the Politburo to let them know a smiling subversive was telling jokes).

I kid. It’s just one of those things that older generations who lived through the Cold War instinctively “get.” It’s also weird that as I’m finishing this book and getting ready to publish, there’s a serious crisis happening in the Ukraine, and it’s made me shiver a little from the chill of “Cold War Part Deux.”

Anyway, Romania seemed like the kind of organized crime backdrop that would be slightly different than all of the Italian / Russian / Jewish / Yakuza / Triad / Bloods-Crips / Norteños-Sureños types. I do have to confess that the majority of my organized crime knowledge comes from either Puzo’s books, or tons of mob movies and TV shows, and just about every documentary type on the History / Documentary / MSNBC / PBS channels. Well, back before some of those channels become “reality” TV about ducks and trailer-park beauty queen toddlers and pawn shops and such.

Combine that with a lifetime of watching C.O.P.S. (seriously, it’s still on the air, and it’s still the only show I consider to be actual
reality TV
), and having seen Goodfellas / Casino enough times each to almost have eaten a combined chunk of my life equal to 1/3 of the time I’ve spent watching Forrest Gump… Forrest Gump is one of those movies that no matter what channel it is on, no matter if we just watched it the night before, we’ll watch it again. From any point.

*

And, because I’m boring and drone on about nonsense too much, I’d like to apologize to any and all hockey players, law enforcement officers, girlfriends, meth dealers, and Eastern European gangsters for whatever is wrong with this story. I’m not an expert at any of these things, though I can say,
without
pride, that the drug dealing aspect of this story is the one I am probably the closest to being an expert at.

In my 20’s, I was not such a nice, intelligent (hah!) person who had life and career goals, such as the ones I have now. I was never a drug kingpin, but there were times when I wondered if I was going to be killed either by a crazy dope fiend, or an angry dealer above me that I’d ripped off or purposely shorted (usually to supply my own secret habit that didn’t stay secret for long). I would, for the record, like to state that I would have much rather grown up to become an expert at hockey or law enforcement (hell, even at being an Eastern European mobster).

I also apologize if it was a bit of a grim and possibly brutal story when it came to Jera. Unfortunately, this is just another ugly side of that life I once led. I never pimped my better half out for dope, but… let’s just say when people get addicted to drugs like crack cocaine, methamphetamines, and heroin, they’ll offer anything of value (and a shitload of things of zero value) just to get a hit/fix. I’ve met, partied with, bought dope from, and sold dope to men who seemed to have no guilt or remorse about pimping out their wife/girlfriend, as well as to the women who do all of these things without a man forcing them into it.

It’s ugly. It’s awful. It’s shameful. But it’s something that only another addict can understand. I cringe when I hear ignorant persons telling others “just kick the habit” or “just go to rehab,” as if there could possibly be such an easy answer. Meth, heroin (and all opiates including prescription pills), and cocaine aren’t like marijuana, or even alcohol (though if you abuse alcohol long enough, it could pass for a heroin addiction quite easily). These drugs… once they get their hooks into you, it becomes a life-long struggle to never succumb to their demands, their sirens’ voices again.

My wife loves the show “Intervention” on A&E. I do too, to be honest, but some parts of the show I do not love. I can’t watch anyone smoke meth or crack without feeling my brain begin to light up like a Christmas tree in Times Square. Just watching someone on TV take a hit off a glass pipe brings back too many terrible memories, including the phantom smells of burning cocaine (and whatever it was cut with). Thankfully, I never delved into meth / crystal / heroin / prescription pills. I think being a coke/crack addict was more than enough of a lesson.

*

One final, darkly humorous note about this drug addiction thing, and then I’ll let you go. As you can probably tell, I’ve left all of that behind. It hasn’t been easy, but I haven’t had a relapse in fifteen years. I’ve spent the last fifteen years getting my shit together, then working on this writing thing. I’ve been sidetracked a few times, but thankfully not by drug addiction (or alcohol, I haven’t had but maybe three or four drinks in twenty years or more, it was never my thing once I pass the age of eighteen).

I received a message on Facebook a couple of months ago from a woman that I didn’t really know, but yet, I did. Her mother was one half of a married couple who owned the crackhouse I frequented for a few years. When I say “crackhouse,” I truly mean an honest-to-God, bonafide crackhouse. The kind you see on TV or in the news and shiver because of how scary it (and the people frequenting it) looks. The woman wrote to tell me that she’d read a non-fiction piece I wrote about some of those “adventures” from the old days, and asked if I had any more stories about her mom and stepfather.

I was happy to find out she’d done the same as me, getting away from that scene, but was sad to find out her mother had passed on. It’s probably weird to reminisce about people who were my best friends during the absolute lowest moments of my life, but Mom was a good person, even with all of her faults and defects and such. I think the saddest thing is that I can see the side of these types of persons on the skid row side of life that others cannot, or refuse to because of the addiction that is more cancer than anything. If you’ve ever loved someone whom you’ve had to watch crawl through the mud and the shit that an addiction floods their life with, you probably understand what I’m trying to say.

I’m not sure why I included this extra little tidbit, other than now that I’ve written it, I think I’ll finish this up and take some time to write this woman another email. I guess I’m glad I don’t have to
save
her. She was never Jera (in fact, Jera has no real-life personality that I’ve drawn from… she’s a mix of all the worst types of addicts I’ve ever met, as is Larry). But I’m happy that I’m not the only one who escaped that prison. If I hadn’t ran across the country to get away from it at the turn of the century, you wouldn’t be reading this, because I would be dead. Dramatic, I know, but if you ever talk to someone who knew me during that period, they’ll probably be shocked and amazed that I’m still alive.

*

Welp, that’s it. If you ever see me at a hockey rink, feel free to slug me when you skate by and tell me what a terrible book this was. Or you can let me score the winning goal (I’ll take any goal, to be honest, I’m still pretty awful at ice hockey) and then tell me it was because the book was good enough to read and not immediately come looking for me to slug me in the guts and tell me what a terrible book it was.

*

I don’t really write about sports much, but I’m kind of thinking of taking the idea of the UPHL and maybe writing some
modern pulp
type stuff, maybe even weird stuff (I do write a lot of science fiction and horror). Maybe a pulpy mash-up of the UPHL and other genres (romance… I’m not sure I’m good at it, but what the hell, I’ll give it a try). I could see the Tuscon Rattlers having to play an exhibition game in a place in the middle of nowhere, and then finding out it was against a bunch of zombies, or werewolves, or vampires.