There's a Shark in My Hockey Pool (18 page)

Slager pulled out and passed a station wagon
whose tailgate was plastered with bumper stickers. They doubled as
cover-the-paint-chip stickers. One read, "Don't Worry, Be
Paranoid." Another one confirmed, "Lawyers Do It In Their Briefs".
Slager stole a glance at the driver as he eased past him at 75
miles per hour.

Billy Slager was a small-time hood from
Mississauga who, while growing up, had cracked more heads than
books. He was better at B & E's than the three "R"s ... so
psychology to him may as well have been a high-tech bicycle shop.
But on a good day, even Billy Slager might take pause for
consideration of a person's mental make-up based on the bumper
stickers that person had stuck on their car. This was one of those
days.

The driver of the paranoia-promoting vehicle
was a man in his forties. That infernal equinox called middle age
had splashed his short, curly brown hair with silver. He hunched
over the wheel, on a mission from some woe-begone, kool-aid-sipping
deity.

Clown, thought Slager. His bumper sticker
character evaluations were often shorter than the bumper sticker
itself. He pulled back into the lane ahead of the station wagon,
not bothering to signal.

"You played in Oshawa, eh?" Slager
kick-started the conversation. "I played some hockey in
Peterborough myself."

"Pussies," said Junkyard, looking
disinterested. It was the first word out of his mouth since they'd
left Blind River, twenty minutes earlier.

"No ... I played for the Peat Moss."

Slager eyed Junkyard warily. Junkyard's
return glance said he'd rather be using Slager's nose to preset the
stations on the radio.

Slager let the moment pass. He remembered
Erskine's orders before Slager had left Toronto. Bring him back
alive. Search and rescue. Do not destroy.

Twenty minutes passed. They were still an
hour from Toronto. Slager ruled out asking Junkyard if he wanted to
play Highway Bingo. Dahlgleish just might stomp on Slager's gas
pedal loafer ... so they could complete the game in the next two
miles.

Stomp or no stomp, Slager decided to make
another stab at conversation. Besides, another hour of this and
he'd be talking to the mileage markers.

There were few things Slager ranked right up
there with sex. One was a good bowel movement. Another was digging
wax out of his left ear with a Q-tip. The third was a heated,
chest-pounding debate.

"So ... where else did you play hockey?"
Slager asked the question gratingly, beginning boldly and finishing
with a hint of a snivel ... not unlike a tangy Pilsener ale. Any
hockey player worth his weight in hockey pucks would respond to
this question without thinking. Asking about a player's background
was akin to calling him out onto Dodge City's main drag at high
noon. A mouth missing teeth was more telling than a gun without
bullets.

Junkyard stared ahead. Hard. Slager had fired
the first shot and winged him. Silence was incrimination.
Dahlgleish's inch-deep ire wouldn't accept such a sentence without
first earning it. He turned to Slager.

As Slager soaked up Junkyard's glare, a
piggyback semi rumbled past, reminding them that "Milk
Refreshes".

"I haven't played in five years," Junkyard
growled. "I nearly killed a guy in Oshawa."

Slager knew this already.

"Oh?" he said, in a half-ass attempt at
humility.

"What happened?"

"Hockey fight."

Slager also knew about this particular scrap.
Dahlgleish had started brawling before the opening face-off.
Actually ... before the pre-game warm-up. He'd stood beside the
open gate, waiting for the other team's goon, Lance Lovejoy, to
step onto the ice. Junkyard cold-cocked him with a hard right
cross. Lovejoy had been looking down, waiting for the toe of his
right skate to dig into the ice. Six weeks later in traction, he
was still waiting. Junkyard served three months of a six-month
sentence for aggravated assault.

"He swiped my parking spot," Dahlgleish
said.

Slager did not know this.

Sawchuk for Sawbucks

... 1 ...

Marcotte slunk his hands deeper into the
pockets of his tweed sports coat, grasping for hope. He found
little faith ... and no charity period. Derek stood outside Olaf
Swanson's pawn shop, looking through the smudged window. The script
lettering of "Swanson's" was in bad need of a touch-up. The large
store front window reflected a somber Marcotte, and beckoned for an
errant rock so the insurance claim could kick in.

Window dressing included a toaster that had
caused $50,000 damage in a kitchen fire, a cassette deck that had
eaten 48 tapes, a clock radio whose ticking was akin to chinese
water torture, an aquarium with 4 invisible leaks, a blender that
spun slower than the RCA Viceroy phonograph beside it, an aluminum
baseball bat that had hit more "home boys" than home runs (14 gang
fights and two homicides), and assorted not-so-rare antiques. Derek
took a deep breath and pushed open the door.

The elderly, spectacled, bookie cap-wearing
Olaf Swanson closely inspected a pocket watch. Too closely. The
sweep second hand of the Weissenhauffer model almost grazed his
grizzled stubble. Two hours earlier, a young thug with less snort
than the Bulls logo on his jacket, had pawned it. The kid had
yelped a bit when Swanson offered him 50 bucks, but quickly
pocketed the two twenties and a ten when they appeared on the
counter top. The pawn dealer knew that even if the Weissenhauffer
was five minutes slow ... it could still fetch $200 in a hurry.

Swanson assumed it was stolen and he'd make
his obligatory call to the police. They in turn would check their
records and more often than not, discover it was hot. A detective
would appear the next day. He'd reimburse Swanson the money he'd
paid out for it ... plus a 15% "finder's fee" -- money that was
taken out of the FINK's (Folks Incarcerating Naughty Kids)
"Book-A-Crook" funds.

Swanson played ball with the authorities
right up to when it came to giving a description of his
sticky-fingered "stock clerks". He had a business to run. If he was
snitching on every hood he opened his cash register for ... the
next time he might be emptying it at the request of a very
identifiable .38 Smith & Westwon.

Olaf Swanson's grandparents had stepped off
the Coral Queen in Halifax two days before the harbour blew up in
1917. They had the meaty grit and solid bonding also found in their
swedish meatball recipe that took top honors at the 1915
competition in Jonkoping. Two generations later, Olaf did his
damnedest, compartmentalizing his life like a TV dinner ... as he
minded other people's junk.

If someone began confusing Swanson's shop
however, for an express check-in lane of 13 items or less, Olaf
provided the authorities with a more meaningful mug shot
description. He was afraid he otherwise might be linked to the bad
guys ... or "bad boys" as the current culture coddled them.

Crime did pay for Swanson's pawn shop ... and
it was paying well. He closed the brass cover of the watch and
turned his attention to the first customer he'd had in half an
hour.

Derek slowly pulled the small, 3" x 5", 3/4"
thick, clear plastic case out of his inner breast pocket. He
stepped forward and placed it gently on the counter between him and
Swanson. The Terry Sawchuk hockey card in the case grinned up at
the dealer.

"Hmm. What have we here?" Swanson picked up
the card and looked it over. A few small beads of saliva escaped
the corners of his mouth. His heart fluttered. For Olaf, the
inspection process was akin to mentally undressing women. The brash
young face of Sawchuk positively beamed. The years melted away. The
few watches in Swanson's showcase that did work, suddenly joined
those that didn't ... and time stood still.

Derek slanted a look down at the ground, not
wanting to look at the card. He felt duly embarrassed and deeply
depressed. It was like scoring on your own goalie by accident.
People wanting to console you would just as soon kick you in the
butt.

"Sawchuk's rookie card ... 1951-52
Parkhearse."

The words escaped Derek's mouth in the
forlorn tone of a eulogy. They had lost the zip and salesmanship
with which he'd hoped to impress the dealer. His father had given
him the card as a Christmas present when Derek was ten. He'd looked
into his Dad's eyes like he'd just been handed the sword from the
stone. It was one of those special moments when he'd seen in his
father's eyes the wisdom ... the guile ... and -- just after the
wink -- the warmth.

His father told him about Terry Sawchuk ...
how the goalie had played for Toronto after breaking in with
Detroit in 1949-50. How Sawchuk played on three Stanley Cup winners
in a 21-year career that spanned four decades. How he'd
accomplished a record that would never be broken ... 103 shut-outs.
Then came his untimely death ...

April 29, 1970 ... Sawchuk and teammate Ron
Stewart exit the E & J Pub in Long Beach on Long Island after a
few wobbly pops. On their way home, they get into a heated
argument. They scuffle in the yard of the home they share in nearby
East Atlantic Beach. Terry lands awkwardly and suffers internal
injuries. He dies soon after in the hospital. A career that spanned
1077 games and thousands more sprawls to the ice, ended abruptly
with one in his own front yard.

Derek had sworn he would pass the card on to
his own son. His father had patted him on the head and told him to,
"just have fun with it."

The dealer let out a low whistle. He marveled
at it for a few seconds more and placed it back on the counter.
Swanson inspected the card more for show than anything else. He
knew he could turn this card into fifteen hundred dollars quicker
than a twenty-dollar trifecta trottin' down the home stretch.

"I'll give you nine hundred for it."

Derek kept his head down and shuffled his
feet. They felt like they were encased in concrete buckets. Two
non-descript concrete buckets sat on the edge of a pier with nary a
soul around. No one but the pusher and the pushee. Swanson,
sporting the zoot suit pinstripes and slick moustache wax of a
1930s mobster, nudged a machine gun into Derek's sweat-drenched
back. Marcotte was inches away from walking the short plank of Pier
44's most prolific pirate.

Marcotte peered down into the deep, murky
waters. The short, choppy waves licked at the warm mist. Through
the haze he could barely make out an image on the surface of the
water. The image came into focus, then out again, as the water rose
and fell. It was the pained expression of Terry Sawchuk ... wincing
... disappearing ... and wincing anew.

"Any last words before I complete the circle
of life?" asked Swanson, his Swedish brimming ridiculously with
Brooklynese.

"You couldn't complete a circle at a
three-ring circus."

"Oh, yeah?" Swanson said with a huff. "You
sold your pal down the river ... and now you're gonna go an' meet
him so's to speak. Heh ... heh ..."

The watery Sawchuk expression suddenly froze
in shock -- as if locked to the face of an opponent on a
break-away. Both players waiting, wondering, who was going to make
the first move.

"I'll pretend I didn't hear that," Derek
said. "I can't let it go for under fourteen."

Swanson scratched his chin, massaged it ...
and scratched again. It was the classic pawn shop poker face.
Behind the veneer of plastic plausibility, Olaf's inner
machinations processed this new information. The strapping lad in
front of him had shown him his card ... but Olaf wasn't about to
play his ... yet.

The 63-year-old Swede was in the barter
business, but he didn't like to dicker. Move a man off his price
once, you could move him again. But even the cheesiest used car
salesman with a lot full of Latvian lemons ... knew he had to move
once.

"Nine fifty is my final offer, sonny."

Marcotte leaned forward, planting both palms
firmly on the glass top counter. Between his hands, the "Please
Don't Lean on the Glass" sign beckoned up to him. Swanson's eyes
widened as they moved from the glass to Derek's crazed look.

"HE HAD A HUNDRED AN' THREE SHUTOUTS FOR
CHRISSAKES!!"

Derek may as well have been telling Swanson
his own mother's name. 103 career shut-outs was one of those
records in sports ... like baseball's 511 career victories by Cy
Young ... or Georgia Tech's 220-0 thumping of Cumberland State in
college football ... that would never be broken. These Ruthian
records were debated daily in corner bars across the continent.
Aaron had caught The Babe and Gretzky had passed Howe. But Sawchuk
had his own stratosphere.

Bill Mosienko's three goals in 21 seconds
seemed incredible, but it didn't have the longevity factor
attached. Mosienko's record was the sort that if the fan went to
the fridge for a cold one at the wrong time, the entire
record-setting performance would be missed.

"You're breaking my heart," said Swanson.
"Alright, already. A grand."

Swanson's profit margin had taken another
blow. The hockey fan in him -- the dreaded sentimentality factor --
had just entered the bidding process.

"Look at the card again," said Derek. "Grab
some nostalgia, man. The last goalie to lead the Leafs to the Cup.
Closin' in on thirty years. Go ahead, look."

Swanson looked at Derek and picked up the
card. He spun it in his hands, checking out the statistics on the
back of the card. Not much info to report ... yet. That was the
beauty of the rookie card. The first card with the player's face
... a snap shot introduction to hockey that would wind up framed in
the Hall of Fame.

"Mint condition. You can count his zits."
Derek paused, knowing it was his turn to drop his drawers.
"Thirteen hundred."