Hitmen Triumph Page 3

  He moved right and then left; then he flicked the puck up and over our goalie’s shoulder into our net.

  Just like that, we were down 4–3. Worse, we’d given up a shorthanded goal.

  Correction. I’d given up a shorthanded goal because of a bad pass.

  I hung my head and skated back toward the players’ box. I didn’t want to be able to read any lips as I took myself off the ice.

  chapter eight

  About twenty-four hours after causing the Hitmen to lose the opening game of the season, I was standing on a street corner near a theater in the Kensington shopping district of Calgary. The weather had stayed nice, and on this evening a lot of people were walking the streets.

  Kensington is an older area of Calgary, across the Bow River from the downtown skyscrapers, with a lot of cool shops and restaurants. It was the kind of area Nate liked. Fancy people in fancy clothes driving fancy cars. Not my kind of place.

  I was wearing jeans and a beat-up leather jacket. Nate, who had already gone into the theater, had on some designer jeans and an expensive leather jacket. I knew this because I’d been following him down the street from a safe distance so he couldn’t see me. In the last few months, he’d spent a lot of money on clothes. Which made me wonder, of course, where the money had come from.

  It surprised me that he was going to see a movie. I’d expected something else when I’d driven to the house where he was billeted during the season.

  Nate had driven straight to Kensington in his late-model Ford pickup. I’d kept some cars between us, and it wasn’t a problem following him in my old Camry.

  My problem was wondering why two guys in a bright red Mustang had delivered a thousand dollars in cash for him. It seemed obvious that Nate was doing something illegal. Especially because he wasn’t talking about it to me.

  We’ll see you tomorrow night. Usual time. Usual place.

  That’s what the guys had said just before handing me the envelope. We’ll see you tomorrow night. Usual time. Usual place.

  Since I didn’t know the time or place, the only way to find out was by watching Nate until he met them. Maybe then I’d learn what all this was about.

  A touch on my elbow broke through my thoughts.

  I turned to see who was holding my arm. I was surprised to see a girl—tall, like me. About my age too. With long, burnished copper hair. Freckles. And a very, very nice smile. Wearing jeans and a sweater and a leather jacket that wasn’t as beat up as mine.

  Yup. Mercedes.

  Surprised as I was to see her, I was even more surprised when she leaned close and gave me a kiss on the cheek.

  “Great to see you,” she said. Her voice was velvet, even filtered through my cochlear implant.

  Wow, I thought, I must have really impressed her at the tournament when I gave away all the gambling money. I’d make sure to tell Nate that. Then he’d finally understand I had done the right thing.

  “Great to see you too,” I said. I felt shy.

  In the street’s light, it was easy to see the frown on her face.

  What had I said wrong?

  “Nolan?” she said slowly.

  I nodded. This suddenly seemed to be going in the wrong direction.

  “I am so sorry,” she said. “I thought you were Nate.”

  Oh. It wasn’t what I’d said that was wrong. It was how I’d said it. As in the way a guy with a hearing difficulty speaks. Instead of the way that a guy in designer jeans and an expensive leather jacket speaks.

  “Don’t worry about it,” I said. I wanted to crawl into a sewer grate. It would have been easy. I felt only a couple of inches tall. “It happens a lot.”

  She shook her head. “No, I should have noticed quicker. Nate’s not as big in the chest as you are.”

  She looked down. Then up. She had a big purse, which she held as if to protect herself from me. “I didn’t mean it to sound that way. Like I’ve studied you or anything.”

  “Don’t worry about it,” I said. I’m sure what she meant is that she’d spent a lot of time studying Nate. He must have called her after the golf tournament. Not that I would have known, since he and I weren’t speaking to each other.

  “It’s just that I was expecting to meet Nate at the theater,” she said. “I didn’t know you would be here. So I assumed it was Nate I saw on the street and that you hadn’t made it to the movie yet.”

  “Nate’s here?” I said, doing my best to sound surprised. I didn’t want Nate to know I’d been following him. “Small town, I guess.”

  “Yeah,” she said. “Small town.”

  “Well,” I said, “let’s make a deal. Don’t tell Nate I was here. Then you won’t have to explain that you kissed the wrong guy.”

  She held out her hand to shake mine.

  “Deal,” she said. She gave a quick embarrassed smile. “See you later.”

  She walked away to the theater.

  I waited a few minutes and then I hurried after her. Now it looked like I’d be following Nate and Mercedes for the night.

  chapter nine

  At least Nate had picked a decent movie for his date with Mercedes. It was the opening night of an action-packed thriller with car chases and buildings getting blown up. It had been advertised for months ahead of time, and there was a showing of it every two hours. The theater was packed, and lots of people were waiting in line.

  That was the other piece of good news. Because there were so many people, it was easy for me to slip into the back row and feel certain that Nate and Mercedes wouldn’t see me there. After all, if I was going to follow Nate until I found out what the usual time and place meant, I’d rather be somewhere where I could enjoy my wait.

  Except it turned out I was wrong about the enjoyment part.

  Ever noticed that the more exciting the trailer for a movie is, the more boring it turns out to be? This was one of those movies.

  Still, I had popcorn and something to drink. Nate and Mercedes were sitting a few rows ahead of me, and I was able to keep a close watch on them.

  During one of the few good parts of the movie—a car chase with explosions and jumps over destroyed bridges and through machine gun fire—Nate left his seat.

  He stepped into the aisle and started walking toward the exit behind me.

  How could he leave at the best part?

  It made me suspicious. If you have to take a bathroom break at a movie, you wait until the slow music plays and the main female character starts telling the main male character that she’s falling in love with him.

  I ducked my head as Nate passed. It was unlikely that he’d notice me in the dark packed theater, but I wasn’t going to take the chance.

  I counted to ten; then I slipped out of my row too.

  I walked to the exit at the back and slowly stepped into the lobby.

  No sign of Nate.

  Now what?

  There were people in line for popcorn and drinks, so I decided to take the chance that I wouldn’t be too obvious if I quickly walked across to the video game machines set up in the far corner. I sat in front of a race-car game and grabbed the fake steering wheel.

  Then I looked around again.

  Had Nate really decided he needed to go to the washroom?

  I kept my eyes on the door to the men’s washroom. It struck me that maybe the meeting was in there. Right after that it struck me that I’d watched too many spy movies.

  As I watched the door, however, someone did walk quickly to the washroom from the far side of the lobby. A tall man with thinning hair, wearing a theater employees’ uniform.

  Yeah, I told myself. Too many spy movies.

  Especially when Nate walked out about thirty seconds later. He went straight back into the theater.

  So I’d missed the best part of the movie for nothing.

  I got up from the race-car game and headed back to the theater. As I did, the tall man with thinning hair came out of the washroom.

  I’m no expert on how long it should
or shouldn’t take for guys to go to the bathroom. Still, it seemed that the guy had done his business really quickly.

  Unless his business had been with Nate.

  I told myself again that I’d watched too many spy movies. Still, if I’d made an idiot of myself so far, there was no harm in being an idiot a little longer.

  I slowed down and stayed behind the line of people getting popcorn. I didn’t want this guy to see my face, just in case he really had gone in there to meet Nate.

  I joined the last person in line and kept watching the tall guy. He didn’t look from side to side, just hurried back through the lobby the same way he’d hurried to the wash-room.

  At the far side of the lobby, he disappeared through a door.

  Again, I counted to ten. Then I checked it out.

  There was a small sign on the door: EMPLOYEES ONLY. PROJECTOR ROOM.

  That explained why the guy had been in such a hurry. If you’re in charge of making sure the movie is running, you don’t want to be away from it for long.

  At least I’d learned one thing: The time and place for Nate’s meeting wasn’t here. Now I’d have to follow him after the movie.

  As I slipped back into the theater to find my place, I realized something else. IfMercedes stayed with him and met the two guys in the expensive Mustang convertible, that would probably mean she was part of it too.

  Whatever it was.

  chapter ten

  After the movie finished, Nate walked out with Mercedes. I joined the crowd leaving the theater and stayed far enough behind so they wouldn’t notice me.

  Outside it was cooler than at the beginning of the evening. It was still pleasant though, and the sidewalks were crowded with people. That made it easier to stay with Nate and Mercedes without being noticed.

  I was afraid they’d go to a restaurant. That would mean standing around outside for an hour or more with nothing to do.

  I was relieved when they walked to Nate’s truck, about half a block down from my car. I was pleased when he tried to hold her hand, and she pulled away. I told myself I wasn’t jealous.

  When they drove off, I jumped into my Toyota.

  From Kensington, he drove along the north side of the river. After a few minutes, he turned right onto the low level bridge to cross the river to downtown. Above it was another bridge guarded by a big statue of a lion on each side. It seemed like the lions were scowling at me.

  Maybe I deserved it.

  I told myself that I was following my brother to find out what kind of trouble he was in so that I could rescue him. Not because I wanted to prove he was in trouble, but because I had been jealous of him my whole life. He was fast. Slick. In the limelight. It never seemed fair that we were as close to identical from head to toe as two humans can be, but I was the one who had started losing my hearing for no reason that any doctor could find, and he was the one with normal hearing, a normal speaking voice and no implant.

  In my car, I looked up and scowled back at the lions.

  Across the river, Nate turned into Calgary’s Chinatown. In the first week after I got to Calgary, Nate had taken me to a great restaurant in Chinatown. I had loved the food. There was an energy in Chinatown that I loved too—the bright neon signs, people on the sidewalks, busy traffic, horns honking.

  Nate slowed down and signaled that he was going to back into a parking spot.

  Nuts.

  The street was jammed with traffic, and I couldn’t see any open parking spots between my car and his truck. A car behind me honked, because it looked like I was slowing down for no reason.

  I had no choice but to move along and hope that Nate didn’t notice my car as I passed his truck. I hunched down and kept going. There was another parking spot half a block away.

  Should I take it?

  I checked my rearview mirror and saw that Nate had jumped from his truck and gone into a small video store between two restaurants.

  So I pulled into the open spot.

  Now what?

  Was he renting a movie?

  But why in Chinatown? That wasn’t close to where his billets lived. And the movie rental place had Chinese characters on the windows, like it specialized in Chinese language movies.

  Why rent there?

  I decided to wait in my car and keep watching in my rearview mirror. If he was just renting a movie, I needed to be in a good position if I was going to keep following him. If he wasn’t renting a movie, maybe I’d see the two guys from the Mustang go in or out of the shop.

  I sat in my Camry, just a few parking spots ahead of Nate’s truck. The streetlights showed clearly that Mercedes was still sitting in his truck. It was more fun to watch her than the sidewalk.

  I frowned.

  She had pulled a video camera from her lap. Had it been in her purse?

  She swung the camera toward the video store and pointed it at the store window for a few seconds. Her lips were moving.

  She was talking as she recorded?

  I stared as hard as I could. It wasn’t daylight, and even with the streetlights I couldn’t be sure that I was seeing every lip movement. Still, I was pretty sure I could make sense of it.

  “Nate Andrews has run into this movie rental place,” she said. “He didn’t want to discuss why. It will be interesting to see if he comes out with a movie. The two men speaking to him are not Asian. I doubt they work in the video store.”

  Then she pulled the camera down. It disappeared below the dash of the truck as if she were putting it back into her purse.

  Now this was getting truly weird.

  Before I could give it any thought, a big biker guy showed up at my driver’s side window. The big blond guy with tattoos who had given me money to give to Nate.

  He bent down and looked at me. Then he tapped on the window. With a tire iron.

  “Step outside,” he said. “If you don’t, I’ll break the window.”

  I’ve read that the best time to resist during a mugging is in the first few seconds. I was going to slide across to the passenger side and try to make a run for it down the sidewalk. The guy with the tire iron was huge. But probably not fast. If I couldn’t outrun him, I didn’t belong in the WHL.

  But someone else was waiting on the other side of my car. The other guy from the Mustang. Just as big. Just as mean-looking. With a bent nose.

  I didn’t have much choice.

  I got out of the car.

  chapter eleven

  “Kid,” Tattoo Biker said to me, “this is the end of the line for you.”

  If he meant it as a joke, he wasn’t smiling.

  Neither was I. We were standing near the LRT tracks by the river, not far from downtown. LRT stands for Light Rail Transit. Calgary’s C-train. It’s part of the transit system, but it uses trains instead of buses. The trains came and went about every ten minutes.

  I hoped he didn’t mean what I thought he meant about the end of the line. I was having a hard time keeping my balance, and there was no way I could make a run for it.

  After taking me from my car, they had put me in a white van. Once I was inside, they had used duct tape to wrap my wrists and my ankles. Then Tattoo Biker had started driving, with me in the back.

  No matter how many questions I’d asked, they’d said nothing. They’d gone through some alleys and ended up near the river. The tracks were fenced off, but they’d used wire cutters to get through. Then they had carried me like a sack of rocks to a place near the track. Finally they had put me on my feet again.

  Tattoo Biker was holding what looked like a long unlit flashlight with two points sticking out of the front of it. The tracks were well lit. I wondered why he needed the flashlight. He saw me looking at it and gave his first smile.

  “It’s a flashlight stun gun,” he said. “Know how it works?”

  “Better be simple,” I said, “or an idiot like you doesn’t have a chance.”

  Not the smartest thing to say, but I hate bullies.

  Tattoo Biker proved
it wasn’t the smartest thing to say.

  He shoved the stun gun into me.

  Once, when I was too little to know better, I had pushed the end of a screwdriver into an electrical outlet. That’s what it felt like. Except a hundred times worse.

  I screamed and barely managed to keep my balance.

  “That’s only a half-second jolt,” Tattoo Biker said. “It gets worse.”

  Bent Nose Biker stepped forward and wrapped something around my head. A blindfold.

  “Doing this for your own good,” Bent Nose Biker said with a laugh. “That way you won’t see it coming.”

  I didn’t have to ask what I wouldn’t see. I felt them lift me and put me on the tracks.

  He meant the train.

  “Any chance you guys will change your mind about this?” I asked.

  “None,” Tattoo Biker said.

  “Probably a good thing,” I said. “You’d need a diaper to do it.”

  “Huh?” he said.

  “If you’re going to change your mind, you’ll need a diaper,” I said. “Let me explain. It’s a joke. It means that your brain is full of—”

  He jabbed me longer and harder with the stun gun. Now it was a thousand times worse. I fell to my knees on the track. I had no control over my muscles. My magnetic spider had been knocked off my head. My world went silent.

  They shifted my body so that I was all the way across the tracks. I still couldn’t move.

  In my world of silence, I wondered if getting hit by the train would hurt. Maybe what the preacher had told me in grade five about the cement truck hitting my parents’ car had been true. Maybe I really wouldn’t feel a thing. I began to pray that the preacher was right. About not feeling the pain. And about going to a better place. I concentrated on

  praying. I was afraid of discovering how terrified I was.

  I didn’t have long to pray. Rumbling told me that a train was approaching.

  The rumble didn’t come as noise. It came as a vibration that hummed in my chest. Even though I was blindfolded, I turned my head toward the train, as if I needed my eyes to tell me what I already knew.