Hitmen Triumph (7 page)

Her small smile became a straight line as she pressed her lips together briefly. Then she put the smile back on her face.

“I deserve that,” she said. “But I'm here because I wanted to talk to you. Not Nate.”

“Sure,” I said. Something was bothering me about this. How had she known this Camry was mine? “Let's talk.”

“Don't be like that,” she said.

“Like what?”

“Like you really don't want to talk.”

“It's been a long day,” I said. It had been. I kept seeing that headline in my mind.
TWINS TO BE SEPARATED
? Except, of course, in my mind the headline didn't end with a question mark.

“I've had a long day too,” she said. “I didn't know if I should come to you with this or not. But in the end, you were the only person I
thought I could trust. And even if it hurts you, I thought you were the kind of guy who would rather know than not know.”

“I'm listening,” I said. Only because doctors had once put an implant into my skull.

She looked around the parking lot. “Maybe we should go for a drive.”

“Um, I'm pretty busy.” This wasn't true. But if we went for a drive, we'd be alone together. I didn't want the part of me that thought she was cute to overwhelm the part of me that didn't trust her. “Can you just tell me about it here?”

“We shouldn't be seen together,” she said. “Trust me.”

That was my problem. I couldn't. I didn't say that though.

“Which one is your car?” I asked. She must have driven here.

She pointed at a black Volkswagen Beetle. It was at least a few years old. It had a cracked windshield and some dings in the front left fender.

“Let's go,” I said, moving toward it.

“What's wrong with your car?” she asked.

I was surprised. What girl would want to drive around in an old wreck like mine? “Are you serious? Look at it.”

“It's clean,” she said. “It runs. Isn't that all that matters?”

“To me,” I said. “But other people...”

“I'm not other people.”

So I unlocked the passenger side door for her. I walked around to unlock my door, but she had already leaned across and unlocked it from the inside.

When I started the car, my music began playing. I turned it down.

“Dire Straits,” she said. “I love that band.” She knew about Dire Straits? A British group from the seventies and eighties. Decades ago.

“It's rock but without a hundred different things happening in the music, so you can hear the melody,” she continued as I backed out and began to drive away from the school. “And I love Mark Knopfler's voice. His lyrics are so cool.”

“True,” I said. “They've got one song
called ‘Private Investigations.' It's like listening to a story.”

“How about ‘Telegraph Road'?” she asked. “It's one of my favorites.”

I realized what was happening. If it kept going, it would be too hard to keep distrusting her. Much as I wanted to like her, I also didn't want to like her.

“You said you had something that you thought I should know even if it hurt me,” I said.

It was a quick subject change. I was trying to send a clear message.

“Right,” she said, sounding a little hurt. She'd gotten the message.

I was out on the streets now, not sure where I should drive.

“Well then,” she said a few seconds later, “it's about your brother.”

As if I didn't know.

“Funny you should have mentioned that song by Dire Straits,” she continued. “‘Private Investigations.'”

I stopped for a red light and glanced over at her. She looked sad.

“You see,” she said quietly. “I'm doing a private investigation of my own. And I think your brother is into something criminal.”

The high school I attended was in the southeast part of the city. Fish Creek Park was nearby, so I drove there and parked. We found a bench to sit on. She set her purse on the table.

“I'll start from the beginning,” she said. “My father owns a couple of movie theaters.”

“But you drive a beat-up Volkswagen.” She smiled. “Now who is judging who by what they drive?”

“No,” I said, “what I meant was that he could probably afford to buy you something better.”

“Sure he could. But then it wouldn't be mine, would it?”

She was right, and I liked her for it. So I told myself not to like her. It didn't work.

A few seagulls squawked nearby. They were fighting over half a burger someone had left behind on the grass. Seagulls. Why were they called seagulls when this was the prairies? Or if they really were seagulls, what were they doing here when the nearest sea was so far away?

These weren't questions I would ask out loud. I had other questions for her.

“Does your father own the theater in Kensington?” I asked.

“No,” she said. She stared past me and thought for a few seconds. “This is hard to explain. I was in a video store yesterday...”

I coughed.

She raised her eyebrows.

“Just clearing my throat,” I said.

She nodded. “This guy sold me an illegal
copy of a DVD. He said it would be cheaper than seeing it in a theater, if I shared the cost with my friends...”

“Theater prices
are
pretty high,” I said. “Not that I'm agreeing with the guy.”

“My dad's business is really suffering. A lot of that is because of piracy.”

“Piracy,” I said.

“Yeah,” Merecedes said. “I'm making a documentary about it.”

“Documentary?”

“I want to go to Mount Royal College when I get out of high school,” she said. “They've got a journalism program. The documentary will help me get into the program. And maybe it will help my father too.”

I nodded. “Makes sense. And I can understand you wanting to help your dad.”

“Piracy is getting bigger and bigger,” she said. “Especially in Canada. And now biker gangs are discovering they can make a lot of money from it.”

Bikers!

I was beginning to get that horrible feeling in my stomach. She wasn't part of what
Nate was doing. She was trying to fight it. And if Nate was part of it, and if it involved bikers...

“Early in the summer, my dad heard a rumor that one of our projectionists was copying movies onto a flash drive. I decided to watch and see what happened.”

Mercedes hesitated.

I decided to help her. “And it led you to Nate.”

Her eyes widened in surprise.

“You know?”

“Only a little,” I said.

“He picked up the flash drive. I didn't know who he was. I just remembered his face. Then I saw his photo in the paper once. So then I knew his name. But it wouldn't do much good to just stop someone like Nate. I wanted to find out who he was working for and how he was getting the illegal copies out of the theaters.”

I told her about seeing the guy go the washroom the same time as Nate. Then I had a question.

“You were at the Hitmen golf tournament to meet him, weren't you?”

“Yes,” she said.

“Video camera in your purse?” I asked.

“You know?”

“Don't get mad at me,” I said, “but remember a guy with goofy hair and a lame mustache in the video store? That was me.”

“You!”

I told her everything. About listening to her conversation with the guy behind the counter. About how his tattoos matched the bikers' tattoos. I told her about the bikers who put me on the train track. The only thing I didn't tell her was the part where the guy in the video store made the rude noise.

As she listened, her face became more and more serious.

“So,” I finished, “it turns out you didn't have to worry about telling me something I wouldn't want to hear.”

She shook her head sadly.

“Nolan,” she said, “how do you think I found your car at the high school?”

“I had wondered about that,” I said.

“It's because I saw you park down the street the night that Nate went to the video
store to deliver the flash drive with the pirated movie. Nate saw you too.”

“What?”

She pointed to her purse. “You already know I videotaped him in the video store for my documentary. What you don't know is that the first thing he did was make a call on his cell phone.”

“That doesn't mean anything,” I said.

“Maybe not. But when he came back out, I told him that two bikers had dragged you away from your car.”

“What?” Nate had known but hadn't stepped in to help?

“He told me not to worry,” she said. “He told me that whatever happened was going to help you and not hurt you.” She paused. “That's when I knew he'd been the one to tell those bikers where you were.”

I stood along the boards in my skates and full equipment and practice jersey. I leaned on my knees, panting. Sweat poured down my face and neck.

Coach Jon had worked us hard in the first hour of practice, mainly with skating drills.

Now it was time for scrimmage.

Coach Jon skated toward me. He carried a yellow practice jersey.

He stopped in front of me. He spoke slowly so that I could read his lips. In practice he
wasn't so worried that I would misunderstand him. He saved the whiteboard for games.

“Time to switch teams,” I saw him say.

“Switch teams?” I repeated. Maybe I had read his lips wrong. “Am I being traded from the Hitmen?”

“Not yet,” he said. “Switch scrimmage teams.”

I wore black in practice. We always played against the yellow.

I looked over to see if Nate was wearing a yellow jersey.

Coach Jon caught me looking. He knew why.

“Radar,” he said, “you're not on Nate's line anymore.”

“Sir?” I said.

“I want to keep you both on the Hitmen. Since it's not working for you on the same line, I want to see how you play with others.”

I nodded. I felt sick about this. But what could I do?

“And Radar,” Coach Jon said, “you're playing center in this scrimmage.”

“Center?” Had he just said center? Why was I suddenly playing center? It had been years since I'd played anything but left wing.

“Center.” He smiled a tight smile. “Against Nate.”

I lined up at center ice in my yellow jersey. Except for a few games when the Hitmen had faced the Warriors the previous season, Nate and I had never played against each other. Even during those Hitmen-Warriors games last season, our lines had not been on the ice at the same time.

Strange as it felt to be playing center, it felt even stranger to look up from where I was digging in to take the face-off and see my own face on the player opposite me.

Nate's eyes were intense. Angry.

I'm sure mine were the same.

Coach Jon dropped the puck to start the scrimmage. Nate lunged forward and slammed his shoulder into mine, knocking me off the puck. He kicked it forward with the tip of his skate blade, and his left winger—
his new left winger—swooped in and raced toward the yellow jerseys' blue line.

I spun and followed, with Nate on my heels.

At our blue line, his winger dumped the puck into the boards and chased. After years as a winger, I nearly made the mistake of drifting to the top of the face-off circle on the left side to guard the point. I reminded myself that I was a center.

I headed toward our net.

So did Nate.

In the corner, his new winger fought a yellow-jerseyed defenseman for the puck. I stayed close to Nate, about half a stride back.

I've noticed some centers like tangling with the player they cover in the defensive end. Others pick their times, going in to bodycheck as a pass arrives.

That's what I decided to do. I was angry enough with Nate that if I covered him too closely, we might end up in a fight.

Sure enough, seconds later the puck squirted to Nate. He thought he was clear,
and he began to stickhandle before shooting. He should have fired it right away.

His head was down, and I crashed into him hard, knocking him on his butt. I stood over him, glaring.

He slowly got to his feet. A small drop of blood fell from his nose.

“That was brave,” he said, his lips clearly moving. “Hitting me from behind like that. Want to try it again? Right now? While I'm ready?”

I knew he wanted to fight.

So did I. It had been over a month of frustration, of not trusting him. Then to find out that he was working with a gang of bikers. And that he'd sent the bikers after me to scare me away.

Yeah, I was angry. Real angry. And so, so ready to throw a punch at him. But I wasn't going to give him the satisfaction of knowing how frustrated I was.

“I'm sorry,” I said. I tapped my ear. “I'm your deaf brother. Remember? I can't hear you.”

I skated away without looking back.

“I get why you're angry with Nate,” Mercedes said.

“I doubt it,” I answered.

We were at the Calgary Zoo, off Memorial Drive. The sun was low and deep shadows stretched from the buildings in front of us. In the background was the screeching of monkeys. And the screeching of kids. Hard to tell them apart, I thought.

When I'd called Mercedes an hour after early afternoon practice finished, she had suggested
we meet at the zoo to talk. I'd been fine with it. I'd have been fine with meeting her anywhere, even if it meant crawling across broken glass.

“You're angry,” she said, “because he betrayed you. When he knew you were following, he sent those bikers after you.”

I let a silence hang over us, not sure if I should tell her the truth.

She put her hand on mine. “I'd be mad too.”

Her hand felt good. Still, I moved away from her. She was with me because she wanted to make a documentary. I was with her because of my brother. No sense fooling myself into believing that she liked me.