The Uninvited Guest (5 page)

In late August of 1991, the Cup was returning to Canada on a transatlantic flight from Moscow. Stan had spent a week in Russia, escorting the trophy to the celebrations of two different players. It had been an uneventful trip as foreign visits go. There was the usual unending supply of vodka to be poured from the bowl, but this time, thankfully, no one had vomited into it. At one party, Stan noticed two very well-dressed men about whom people whispered and pointed from the edges of the room.

There was something in the perfection of these men and in their easy disregard for everyone else, something that smelled of violence. Other people's reactions to these men made Stan nervous for the Cup. But they seemed bored by the trophy; they ignored it and instead wandered the room in slow circles, boldly appraising the local girls with their eyes. The young Russian hockey player pulled Stan aside.

“Two-Second, don't worry,” he said morosely. “They are here for my money, not your cup. They do their business as quietly as possible. Taking your cup would make too much noise. They don't want to be noticed; they just want to be paid.”

Stan relaxed, and found himself experiencing an unexpected and unfamiliar pity for the young athlete. The older Stan got in his job, the less he had in common with the players who won the Cup. Though he'd never much participated in the shit slinging and underwear grabbing that seemed to entertain Cup-winners when he was a young man, at least they had shared a history as adults. With the kids he chaperoned later in his career, there was rarely anything of substance to be said, and he often could not even communicate with them. Their English vocabulary was held within the confines of the rink. Over the years as well, these young men became richer and richer, pushing an even greater divide between them and the older underpaid man who carried their trophy for them. What do you say to a boy in his early twenties who owns his own helicopter? How do you make small talk with the kid who buys prostitutes by the half-dozen?

But the Russians were often different. They liked their fun as much as anyone, but, as in the case of this young man, they had troubles their Canadian teammates could not guess at or imagine. With their giant paycheques came immense notoriety back home, and with the notoriety, trouble. In a country where a meal at the new Pizza Hut could cost a month's wage, the salary of a hockey star was an obscene temptation. These players paid out hundreds of thousands of dollars in protection for the privilege of returning home to an intact family. They themselves were never threatened. The local mobs would never cripple their winning horse. But the weight of generations of relatives hung around their necks. The flights to Moscow with the Cup were never quite as raucous as the flights to Moose Jaw or to Thunder Bay. And at this particular party, celebration of the Cup came second to celebration of the payoff.

Each new Cup-winning player in turn learned Stan's hated nickname and used it endlessly despite objections. He was convinced half the kids didn't even know why he was called “
Two-Second”
Stan, but they all liked the name, and liked even more that he so obviously hated it. With the foreign players, for some reason, it was often easier to remember “Two-Second” than his actual name, a convenience that meant, in other countries, he was introduced as a slim measurement of time.

In 1991, Valeri Berschin was one of the earliest young Russians to enjoy the curse of winning the Cup. On the ice, he was a goal-scoring surgeon, cutting past defenders with a combination of raw speed and brilliant fakery. Stan had been present for his game-winning goal in game five, a subtle backhand chip into the upper corner. The boy had not even been looking at the net, or the puck. In fact, he'd been looking at nothing at all. The slow-motion replays clearly showed a smiling Berschin with his eyes closed, scoring by instinct and feel. As the puck left the tip of his stick blade, he took the inevitable hit in front of the net, spun deftly on the toe of one skate and did not open his eyes until his back hit the end boards, his arms wide to receive an avalanche of teammates.

It was, in terms of raw skill and artistry, the greatest goal Stan had ever witnessed. And now the same young man stood by a table weighed down with food and drinks, sheepish in an uncomfortable-looking brown suit, the servant of two huge men with bad reputations. Stan waited until the evening wore on a bit louder and drunker, then approached Berschin.

“Look at the Cup, my boy,” he said.

The young man blinked and downed the last third of a tumbler of vodka. “Two-Second,” he said, smiling and drunk. “Yes, the Cup. What about it?”

“Do you own the Cup?” Stan asked.

“No, Two-Second, you own the Cup. I know. I can win it, but only you can own it. You've told me this before.”

“Do those two mobsters own the Cup?” Stan asked.

“Two-Second, no, I told you already. You own the Cup.”

“So, look at the Cup. You will take all that money you're making because you won this Cup, and you'll divide it up and it will all go away into the world. All that money is long gone already, some to your family, some to these two guys, some to you. Do you think this Cup gives a shit about your money?”

“I guess, no, I don't know what you mean.” He was blinking now, trying to see Stan's point through a clear vodka fog.

“Stop thinking about these two guys. That's just life. Everyone's got his shit to deal with. They're your shit, so deal with them, but don't let them ruin this, this moment when this Cup, which you do not own and never will no matter how many fancy goals you score, this Cup is here for you. It's a short time, believe me. Tomorrow, I take this Cup away from you, we're back on a plane and you, my boy, you may never touch this Cup again after that. Stranger things have happened. Have you ever heard of Bill Barilko? Compared to that fact, those two big uglies mean nothing. You get my point? I see you standing around worrying about two men who will steal your money. You want to worry about someone in this room, worry about me, because it's me who will take this Cup away tomorrow.”

“Two-Second, you win. You are the scariest man here.” The young man smiled and slapped Stan between the shoulder blades. “From now on, I worry only about you.”

“Some day, Berschin, trust me, you'll be closing your eyes and chipping rocks through your fence rails out there, rather than chipping pucks past goalies in the finals. When hockey is through with you it will let you know, believe me, and then those gangsters will be through with you as well. There's always another fucking superstar.”

Berschin nodded and refilled his glass from one of the dozen clear, half-empty bottles on the table in front of him. “You are the wise old man of the Cup, yes Two-Second?”

“Damn right,” said Stan, and walked away, trembling from sudden anger. It was a cruel speech in many ways, and a kindness. It made him feel briefly equal to the brilliant young player, an unfamiliar but satisfying feeling. On his way past the bar, Stan made a point of introducing himself to the two gangsters. Not caring if they understood him, he shook hands with them and looked each of them straight in the eyes.

The next evening, on the flight from Moscow, Stan fell asleep immediately after dinner. He'd felt all day as though a cold were coming on, and was glad this would be his last trip overseas for the season. The Cup sat secured in its case and strapped in with a seat belt in the first class seat beside him. He always gave the Cup the window seat, as that kept him between it and the curious who walked by it over and over on every flight.

Sometime between dinner and their initial landing in Montreal, over the Atlantic, Stan Cooper's heart stopped beating. The cold and indigestion he had been feeling was, in fact, a building infarction, and Stan passed on as he'd always hoped to, in his sleep with the Cup beside him. Because he died unnoticed while crossing time zones, no accurate time of death would ever be assigned to Stan.

The death of
“Two-Second”
Stan, of pulmonary infarction at the age of 72, was a problem for the airline flying his body home. The flight did not end until Toronto, but Stan's death was discovered on the descent into Montreal, by a startled cabin attendant trying to wake him. Normally, the body of a passenger who died inflight would be removed from the seating area at the first opportunity. Bodies were then transferred into thick cardboard carrying cases, and stored with the luggage below decks.

While there was enough room in storage for both Stan and the trophy, the airline worried about its legal and financial liability around the Cup. The trophy had boarded the plane as a passenger and was considered the property and responsibility of Stan Cooper, its keeper. This was the standard agreement the League made with airlines in order to ensure Stan kept his eyes on the trophy at all times.

With Stan out of the picture, and no other League representative on the flight, the airline lawyers worried that liability would transfer to them, and they didn't want it, not even for the short forty-five-minute hop from Montreal to Toronto. No one they contacted could put a price on the historic trophy.

Stan and his beloved Cup were both carried from the airplane at Dorval Airport and stored under armed guard, in an empty hospitality suite owned by the airline. In an obituary in the Montreal
Gazette
, one writer suggested this wrinkle was Stan's way of finally delivering to Montreal the Cup that was rightfully theirs, the Cup he'd stolen away with his famous two-second blunder in 1951.

The League sent Antonio Chiello to make the pickup. Tony worked with Stan at the head office in Toronto, and had helped him prepare the Cup for travel for the last two years. Tony rode to Montreal, a passenger in the hearse the League hired to care for Stan's remains. Childless and divorced, Stan had been the last of his line of Coopers for over twenty-five years. Tony Chiello was the closest he'd had to family.

Only once, in August 1989, had Stan run across a situation with the Cup he felt he couldn't handle on his own. The championship trophy had been booked for a party by a young left-winger named Dalton Gunn, in his hometown of Eganville, Ontario, a five-hour drive from Toronto. It was a standard weekend job—drive up on the Friday night and figure out the town, shepherd the Cup all the next day when an impromptu tour of the townsfolk would be begged of him, stand watch during the drunken Saturday night festivities trying not to get too in the bag himself, and sneak the trophy back out of town before sunrise and the mischievous hangovers of Sunday. He'd pulled this job countless times in countless small towns within a clear day's drive of Toronto.

Stan packed the Cup in a League van, and took the northern route. He left Toronto at its top end, on the two-lane Highway 7, avoiding for the most part the bung of weekend cottage traffic that plagued the major highway routes. It was a slow drive all the same and, just before sunset, Stan pulled into a provincial park to eat the sandwiches and cookies he'd packed for himself. He parked the van as close to water as he could get, rolled down all the windows and ate looking out across a short expanse of lake to a massive stone bluff. The park brochure told him the cliff was home to First Nations petroglyphs carved high above the water, but he couldn't see any such things from his seat. The cliff face caught the last light of day, and Stan sat on after his food, enjoying the reflected heat radiating down on him.

Eganville was two more hours to the north, and Stan kept a careful watch at the road edges for deer. Early evening was a restless time for deer, he knew, and more than once on his many summer drives Stan had been forced from the pavement by a wandering doe. Once, in thick fog, he had just missed a large buck that had lost its footing on the slick pavement and crashed to his haunches trying to escape Stan's headlights. The desperate animal bucked and twisted in the middle of Stan's lane and he had to watch carefully while he steered past, to make sure the poor thing didn't bang a hoof or antler against his fender in terror. For the rest of the fog, Stan slowed the van below sixty kilometres an hour, and honked his horn at regular intervals. If he hit a mature buck at high speed, chances were they'd both be killed by the impact, and then who knows what would happen to the Cup, abandoned in favour of death on a deserted northern roadway.

Stan reached Eganville by ten o'clock, and checked into the hotel on the main street. Above a certain latitude, the Canadian towns Stan visited for his job pretty much followed the same plan. A central main street near either a river, lake or rail line, a compact collection of local businesses and services huddled together in a clump around the central intersection, a small school, usually at least one church (sometimes as many as three even for the smallest populations), a hockey arena, some kind of local diner, a gas station, and a hotel with a tavern on the main floor. Eganville followed the plan.

Stan secured the Cup in his room, tested the door lock several times and descended to the tavern by a creaking back staircase that smelled alarmingly of woodsmoke and grease.

“That better be the kitchen,” he mumbled. “I sure as hell don't want to be jumping out a window in the middle of the night with that frickin' Cup on my back.”

For a Friday night, the barroom was surprisingly empty. He hadn't seen another bar of any kind on his quick circle around the town, which could only mean that this place was such a shithole not even those without options bothered with it. Yet this was the room scheduled for the Cup party the next night. Stan acquainted himself with all the exits, including the locked and barred emergency door at the end of the dark hallway to the washrooms. He expected a rough crowd. Dalton Gunn wasn't much of a talent as a hockey player. His skill was hitting opponents in the face with his fists so hard they had to leave the game for stitches. A boy doesn't just get that way on his own. In Stan's experience, enforcers were not born, they were made by their upbringings—made by their towns. Stan checked out the small plywood podium built near one end of the pool table, obviously meant to hold the Cup and maybe a speaker. It was a clear four strides from that makeshift stage to the base of the back staircase, an easy escape from just about any trouble in the main barroom. The hotel owner had followed Stan's written instructions. He relaxed, and wandered back to a bar stool where he intended to spend the rest of his evening.

Including Stan, there were exactly six people in the room. A group of three older men, longtime townsfolk by the looks of them, light plaid jackets and baseball caps sporting farm machinery logos, sat around a small table near the front door, watching the late news on the television above the bar. A woman in her early thirties worked the bar, and what looked to be either her boss or her husband sat at the bar's far end, counting five-dollar bills into piles beside his drink. The old men smoked without a break, lighting new cigarettes from the last heat of their dying ones, and hardly said a word to each other. In fact, everyone was smoking, and Stan joined the party, pulling a pack of Export ‘A' from the breast pocket of his shirt. They had all watched Stan checking out the bar, knew for certain he wasn't from the town and figured out who he was right away. Stan caught the words “from the League” mumbled across the far table once or twice, but whenever he looked over at the old men, their heads were turned to the TV.

“You just want a drink, or you looking for the show?” The woman smiled tiredly at Stan, and placed a napkin in front of him on the bar.

“What's the show?”

The far table broke into a low rumble of laughter. “Get the show,” he heard mumbled from beneath a ball cap.

“You're looking at the show,” the bartender said, glancing in a meaningful way down the length of her body. “It's five bucks for the show. One song on the jukebox. I can go on the pool table or just standing there in front of you.”

“I'll take an Export,” Stan said, “for now.”

The woman smiled again, turned and snatched a beer bottle from the fridge behind her.

“A double Ex man, eh? You'll get the show,” she laughed. “I know people, and you're the kind of guy who gets the show. Two more of those ought to do it.”

“You're probably right,” Stan laughed.

At midnight the man at the end of the bar walked to the front door and locked it. He returned to the bar and everyone in the room kept drinking. An hour later there was banging at the door and the man walked over again, checked through the curtains and slipped the lock, locking it again behind a group of four young men, also all in plaid jackets and baseball caps.

“Shift's over,” Stan heard from the old man's table.

The young men ordered a table full of draft beer, delivered in small glasses by the trayful, in three runs. They called out for the show, and piled five-dollar bills on the edge of the pool table. In between songs the bar girl wandered the room in her G-string, making sure everyone had drinks. Her body showed signs of children, and was impossible to ignore. She stood beside Stan for a few minutes smoking a joint and laughing at the young men who howled from beside the pool table.

“Cooooome ooooon, Shelly. Put on that fucking Johnny Cash and get to it. I gotta get up early and work a whole damn shift before the party.”

“Hold this,” the woman said, handing Stan her half-finished joint. “These dicks will tear the fucking room apart if I don't shake it some more. You all right, honey? You got enough to drink?”

“I'm just fine.”

Stan held the joint until it burned down too close to his skin, then he dropped it on the bar top. The man at the end of the bar walked over and scooped it up into the palm of his hand, ignoring that it was still lit. He popped it into his mouth and sat back down. The young men piled more five-dollar bills on the edge of the pool table. The three old men watched a black and white movie on the TV.

When Tony arrived the next evening, the victory party had been going for almost twelve hours. Pickup trucks lined the main street on both sides, clustered closer together near the hotel. The street was made impassable by partygoers a block in each direction from the front doors of the tavern. The town had been shut down, and the local police looked to have joined the celebration. Tony left his rental car on the nearest side street and pushed his way through the crowd into the hotel. The room was hot and smelled of sweat, beer and smoke. It was hard work pushing against the party, clearing a path for himself through bodies to the bar. He caught sight of Stan while still a good ten feet away. The older man was waving at him from the bar top, standing above the crowd.

“Some asshole.” Stan waved Tony's attention past him to the wall behind the bar.

“Some asshole with a hate on for Gunn.”

Between two framed mirrors, surrounded by glass bar shelves full of liquor bottles, the unmistakable scalloped silver bowl of the trophy protruded from the back wall of the tavern. Tony stared hard, but couldn't quite figure out what he was seeing.

“Where the hell's the rest of it?” he yelled to Stan, still inching his way through the crush.

“That's it—that's the whole damn thing. Some asshole with a hate on for Gunn took the thing and shoved it into the vent. The fucking Cup is stuck all the way into the wall for Christ's sake. I tried every goddamn thing I could think of before I called the office. I've been standing here just watching over it the entire time you been coming here.”

Tony reached the bar, and Stan reached a hand down to help him up onto the countertop. The two men surveyed the situation, Tony leaning right across the gap and bracing himself against the back wall. Two waitresses criss-crossed beneath him, grabbing beer bottles and flinging their caps off without worrying where they might land. With one hand, he grabbed the edge of the bowl and applied pressure, pulling it toward him. There was no give. The trophy had been wedged into a space not quite big enough to hold it. Tony pushed off from the wall and swung back to stand beside Stan.

“This?” he yelled, motioning at the ridiculous scene. “This is why you told me to bring my tools?”

“We've got no choice,” Stan said. His face looked crumpled with worry. “These people don't give a shit. Look at them. A couple of them tried to help me at first, but I had to stop them 'cause they're all fucking drunk and I thought they were going to crack the thing apart trying to wrench it out of there.”

“Okay,” Tony said. “So, what am I supposed to do if a bunch of guys bigger than me couldn't get it out of there?”

“We're opening the wall—no way around it. The League's just going to have to cover the damage.”

“The League? What about the dick who rammed it in there?”

Stan waved his hand at the room.

“Right. Go get his name. He was wearing a plaid jacket and a baseball cap with some farm logo on it.”

Tony looked out over the crowd, a sweaty, smoking mob of plaid coats and green caps. A young guy stood near the bar smiling up at him, like he was watching his favourite show. He winked when Tony's eyes crossed his.

“Fine. We're opening the wall. When?”

“Right now. Let's get the fucking thing out, and get out of this town.”

“You want me to tear a wall apart in the middle of a party.”

“Like they'd notice. Just get your goddamn tools. I'll help where I can, but I'm too fucking old to swing a sledge.”

It took the two men less than an hour to open a two-foot square hole beside the vent, digging back into the wood frame construction of the old building. The waitresses and bartender worked around them the entire time, after removing all the glass and bottles from the wall. Every swing of the hammer Tony took was followed by loud cheers from the crowd, and the jukebox played nonstop.

Balanced on a ladder that Stan held, Tony crawled into the hole to his waist and cut away the side of the vent with a pair of heavy snips, taking care not to nick the side of the trophy. He chewed on a small steel flashlight and breathed dust. When he pulled back the vent it sliced into his finger, but he just kept working, not wanting to pull out and then have to crawl right back into that godawful spot. When the light hit the trophy, Tony read the name Maurice Richard. He slid his hand down the silver and felt past the pedestal bottom. Getting leverage, he gave a gentle pull, and the whole trophy moved to his pressure.

“It's loose,” he shouted, and felt Stan's hands on his belt, pulling him back and supporting him while he gained his balance on the top of the ladder. Slowly, with Stan and the bartender below him bracing the trophy sides so it wouldn't scrape against the sharp edges of the dismantled vent, Tony pulled at the bowl of the Cup from a position on the bar. They worked the trophy through the smoky air and placed it gently on the bar. The tavern exploded in cheering and the spraying of beer. One of the waitresses tossed Tony a bottle of beer and he drank long, washing down dust. He smiled down at Stan and made like he meant to pour some beer into the Cup in celebration.

It was only then that he noticed a long dark red streak of blood, his own blood, running the length of the trophy, from the edge of the scalloped bowl to the pedestal. He looked down at his hand, from which more blood dripped steadily onto his shoe. He felt suddenly weak, and crouched onto a knee. Stan helped him off the bar, and wrapped his hand in a bar towel soaked in old beer.

When Tony had his strength back, he and Stan each took a side of the trophy and worked their way through the front door and the crush of people in the street to the back lot of the tavern where Stan's van was stashed. Tony watched over the Cup while Stan got the tool box, trophy case and his overnight stuff. They secured the trophy in its case and Stan climbed into the driver's seat.