All-Star Pride Read online

  chapter nineteen

  Without thinking, I stepped in front of Nadia to protect her. At the same time, the thinking part of my mind struggled for something to say. Matthew Henley?

  Henley smiled and shut the door behind him. “Out of your room after curfew, Burnell? You know that can get you in trouble.”

  He waved his ugly black pistol to prove his point.

  Boris Eyepatch grunted and moved toward me, swishing his knife from side to side.

  “Nadia dear,” Henley said, “please instruct Boris to relax. I don’t like the sight of blood.”

  I hadn’t noticed that Nadia had stepped out from behind me. She spoke quick and low to Boris. Boris frowned but stopped advancing toward me.

  I felt like an idiot. Nadia didn’t need protection. Not when she was working for both of them.

  “This makes for an interesting problem,” Matthew Henley said to me. “Obviously you’ve found the payload I needed you to smuggle back for me.”

  I was starting to put it together. “Chandler Harris works for you,” I said to Henley. “That’s why he was able to switch roommates whenever he wanted.”

  “You are smarter than you look.” He snorted. “Of course, that’s not saying much.”

  I felt my fists curl into giant rocks.

  “Tut, tut,” Henley said. He brought the pistol up until I was staring directly into the hole of the barrel. “Remember, bullets are faster than punches.”

  I took a deep breath and forced myself to relax.

  “That’s better,” Henley told me. “You just settle down easy. Because we have a little difficulty to straighten out here, and it might take a couple of minutes.”

  Nadia remained at my side, silent. Boris stood frozen just ahead of Henley. Boris’s good eye was unblinking and staring at me— he seemed like a Doberman, straining at an invisible leash and hoping for the command to attack.

  “Yes,” Henley said. “Chandler works for me. So does Nadia. And Boris. You’ll have that choice too.”

  Was I hearing right?

  “Don’t get me wrong,” Henley said. His fat face was beginning to drip with sweat in the heat of the basement. “When you hear how long it took for me to set this up, you’ll understand why I won’t hesitate to solve this problem by letting Boris work you over with the knife.”

  At the mention of his name, Boris licked his lips. I felt like a big dumb pork chop.

  “You see, when I visited Moscow to try to set up the first exhibition tour, someone from the Tretyakov Gallery approached me during an embassy dinner party.” Matthew Henley wiped his brow with the back of his left hand. The pistol in his right hand remained steady. “It was Nadia’s boss, actually. This gentleman explained his predicament. He told me about a friend of his who had dozens of Russian paintings but no way to reach American buyers or deliver the paintings to them. He suggested perhaps a junior hockey team could help, if only there was someone to assist, someone who would not mind an ample gift of hundreds of thousands of dollars. Being the gentleman I am, I offered my help.”

  Another wipe of his massive brow. His dark blue suit was almost black in places with growing sweat stains. If the furnace down here didn’t stop blasting heat, Henley was going to melt.

  “It was simple,” Henley said. “He would supply the paintings to sell on this end. I would find the buyers on the other end. So that we weren’t involved directly, he arranged for Nadia to become the team’s translator, and he arranged for Boris to watch and protect the transactions. I arranged for one of my hockey players to carry the money. We both, then, had our assistants, and we both, then, would not have to dirty our hands.”

  Henley frowned at me. “Until tonight. Do you realize how close you came to destroying the perfect pipeline? I’m going to run this tour year after year. After all, the networks make money from the tour, and they don’t suspect a thing. Chandler is the perfect mule to deliver the cash. He and I both thought you were the perfect bodyguard. Until tonight. I’m not even going to ask how you figured this out, because it doesn’t matter. What does matter is your answer to my question.”

  I swallowed. The heat was getting to me too.

  “Yes, a question. You have a choice, Burnell. Join my art pipeline and help, or spend the next ten years of your life in a Russian prison.”

  “Me?” I finally found my voice. “I didn’t do anything!”

  Henley shook his head. “Maybe you aren’t as smart as you look. Didn’t Boris and I just catch you red-handed with these valuable paintings? Hidden in your hockey equipment?”

  Henley chuckled, causing his chin to wobble drops of sweat onto the floor. “Or did I forget to tell you that Boris was very senior in the KGB? He still has considerable pull in the police system here. He won’t mind looking like a hero as he arrests you. And if you should resist arrest? Who could blame Boris for fighting back with that very sharp knife of his?”

  Henley studied my face. “I really would prefer you choose to join my team. I could use someone like you on the all-star tours next summer and the summer after. When Chandler’s gone, you can throw the games if we need to keep the series interesting.”

  “What!”

  “Don’t be a tedious fool. This tour is entertainment. Blow the Russians out of the water and our ratings drop. Let them win to keep it interesting, we get higher ratings. Higher ratings mean higher advertising revenue. Chandler’s been great, giving them goals or missing goals for us to make sure this series goes seven games.”

  Henley reached into his inside suit pocket with his left hand. I expected him to pull out a handkerchief. Instead he withdrew a thick roll of bills.

  “Five thousand dollars,” he said. “Consider it a signing bonus. You’ll get another twenty once you clear customs back in the States. And that won’t be any trouble for you.”

  “No,” I said.

  “No?” His voice became earnest. “In the last two years, not a single player has been searched at customs. That’s the beauty of this tour. Who would think of it as a smuggling operation?”

  “I mean no to your offer,” I said. The strength of my reply surprised me. But I’d learned that no matter how much I needed the money, it wasn’t always worth the price I paid for it. Chandler’s money had left me with nagging shame. How much more would I hate myself if I took this money from Henley? And if I took it, till I was an old man ready to die, I’d always have to think of myself as a thief who would sell his soul for mere money.

  So I repeated myself.

  “No.” I remembered Nathan’s reminder the night before, and I felt relief making the right choice between right and wrong.

  I looked at Nadia as I continued to speak. “You can’t buy me. I may look ugly and stupid, but that’s better than pretty on the outside and stinking on the inside.”

  She bit her lip and looked away.

  “Nadia,” Henley said, “instruct Boris here to do as he wishes with his knife.”

  Long moments passed. Long moments that surprised me. Nadia had probably been playing me for a fool from the beginning. It wouldn’t have surprised me to find out she had intended to keep the paintings herself.

  “Nadia!” Henley raised his voice. “Don’t be stupid. You’re in this too far to consider sainthood now. Instruct Boris here to cut up this stubborn young hockey player.”

  I felt my fists become giant rocks again. I felt rage growing inside me. If they wanted a fight, they’d get one. It was going to take more than one or two tiny bullets to stop me.

  I tensed and waited for the Russian instructions from Nadia to unleash Boris.

  The instructions never left her mouth.

  The door suddenly banged open.

  “This here party has officially ended, folks.” The Texan twang belonged to Clint Bowes. So did the shotgun in his hands. “Drop the pistol, Henley, before I drop you.”

  chapter twenty

  Matthew Henley lowered his bulk by squatting and wisely set the pistol on the floor. With a grunt, he st
raightened.

  Boris dropped his knife.

  “Much better,” Bowes said. His greasy smile widened. “Sure does smell in here, don’t it? Hard to say if it’s the hockey equipment or you folks.”

  He raised his voice. “Ivan, why don’t you come in and join this little get-together? These boys are harmless as babies now.”

  Ivan stepped inside. Same dull brown suit. Same dull face. The only thing not dull and boring was the pistol in his hand.

  That made six of us. Nadia and I were a couple of steps from Henley and Boris. Henley and Boris were a couple of steps from Bowes and Ivan. Bowes and Ivan were in the doorway.

  “I suppose, as an official U.S. Customs officer, I should do something official about this,” Clint Bowes said. His tall lean body seemed relaxed, and he held the shotgun loosely, but I couldn’t help thinking of him as a rattlesnake ready to strike. “Course, if I did something official, there’d be a mess of paperwork, and I hate paperwork.”

  He turned his greasy smile to Nadia. “I think what I’ll do is confiscate those paintings you’re holding in your lovely hands. It’d be doing you all a favor, actually. See, it saves me paperwork, and it saves you all a spell in prison. Can’t beat a deal like that, can you?”

  “Let’s talk about this,” Henley said.

  Bowes shifted his attention to the fat man in the dark blue suit.

  “Talk?”

  “Talk.” Sweat was dropping from Henley’s eyebrows. He had to raise his voice to be heard above the noise of the hot air coming from the furnace. “You might want to think of us as the goose that lays the golden eggs.”

  Nadia moved so slowly I wondered if it was my imagination. I didn’t dare turn my head to see if she was actually inching her way behind my body. As if I could protect her from a shotgun at close range.

  Bowes grinned. “I believe I know that story.”

  “There are plenty more paintings where these came from,” Henley said. “Don’t kill the goose now when there are more golden eggs than both of us could spend.”

  “Interesting prospect,” Bowes said. “Except I just don’t see a way you can guarantee the golden eggs down the road.”

  “Mutual blackmail,” Henley said. “That’s the way I’ve got it set up with the others. Turning me in means turning themselves in. And nobody is anxious to do that, not when the money flows like water.”

  I felt Nadia brush against the back of my legs. What was she doing?

  “Sounds good in theory, my friend. But no thanks. These paintings are enough for a healthy retirement. I don’t need to get greedy.” Clint Bowes shrugged. “And I figure the best way to keep you guys quiet is to dump your bodies in the Moskva River. Dead men don’t tell tales and all that.”

  Was I hearing him right?

  Nadia dropped the canvases she’d been holding all this time.

  “Hey!” Bowes said. “Easy on them paintings!”

  I looked back and down. Nadia was already on her knees, scooping the paintings toward herself. Or so I thought.

  I’d forgotten about my blowtorch. The noise of the furnace had drowned out the slight hissing of the tiny flame of the torch. On the ground behind my legs, at the side of the support pillar, it had been hidden from everyone else.

  Nadia kept her back to Henley and Bowes. She used my body as an added screen, and with a quick twist of her wrist she turned the blowtorch flame on full.

  None of us understood what was happening until it was too late. She grabbed the blowtorch and tipped it, directing the flare of white-hot flame at the canvas scrolls.

  Dry canvas and oil-based paint. Gasoline would not have swooshed quicker. In a racing burst of flames, the canvas scorched to blackness, then fell apart.

  Nadia stood. She ha nded me the blowtorch.

  I turned the flame down, then off. Both Henley and Bowes were too stunned to say anything.

  Nadia faced Clint Bowes and spoke with a small smile. “Now there is no reason to kill anyone.”

  Bowes stared at her open-mouthed. Then he spit. “Not yet,” he said, glaring. “With these gone, all we can do is call each other names.”

  He spit again. “But you will be watched. Trust me. You will be watched. We get our share or the pipeline shuts down.”

  Bowes turned to his partner. “Come on. There’s nothing left here worth killing over.”

  I followed them out.

  chapter twenty-one

  I held the surprise for my folks until the September night our East Versus West Shootout appeared on television. It was slotted to air at 6:00 PM. I had the delivery people arrive with the surprise a few hours earlier.

  The truck rumbled up our gravel driveway late in the afternoon. White, undented and clean except for dust from the country roads, it did not appear to be a vehicle that would ever have business at our farmhouse.

  Dad looked up from his coffee at the kitchen table. It was his favorite place in the house because he could see wheat fields and the faraway rolling hills through the window. He’d never said so, but I thought it gave him a feeling of freedom, because there were times his face would soften as he stared into the distance. I guessed he dreamed of when he was working the land himself instead of having to hire others and lose most of the profit to paying their wages and the mortgage on the land. It was during those times he seemed more like the man I remembered before the tractor rolled off the side of a muddy hill and broke his back. He had been fun, warm and affectionate. I still loved him, but I loved those memories of him as he was even more.

  “Stupid city fools,” Dad said. He raised his voice. “Son, you run out there and give them directions.”

  Dad hated having anyone see him in the wheelchair, even friends. That’s why he never left the house. It was unthinkable he would wheel himself to the back porch and actually talk to strangers.

  “I’m pretty sure they made it to the right place,” I told him.

  “Sure,” he snorted. “Next we’ll need umbrellas on sunny days because cows have learned to fly.”

  I smiled. This surprise was going to be worth every penny I’d paid.

  As the credits rolled at the end of the East Versus West Shootout, Dad shook his head.

  “Son,” he said, “I still can’t believe this.”

  “Which part?” I asked. “That I was able to come home for the weekend to watch this with you? Or that I scored the game-winning goal to take the series?”

  He grinned—a rare sight. “No, you turkey. I’ve always known you’re better than you give yourself credit for. I can’t believe the television! I thought you were saving all the money you made to start a business some day.”

  The television. The new, big-screen television with a new DVD player sitting pretty on top. It was so big it seemed to fill half of the tiny living room.

  “Oh, the television,” I said. I shrugged like it was no big deal. But it was. Dad loved to watch hockey. It was about the only thing that made him happy, sitting in his wheelchair and yelling at players who couldn’t hear him. Now, at least, he wouldn’t have to roll up close and squint at a small black-and-white screen.

  “Not only the television, but the dishwasher and microwave too,” Mom said.

  She sat beside me on the couch. I could see the gray in her hair and the roughness of her hands from doing too much work.

  I shrugged again. “Mom, you deserve a break.”

  What I didn’t tell her was that my next goal was to get them out of this tiny old house. If I played hard this season, maybe I’d get drafted high enough into the NHL to sign a good contract. Then I’d have enough money to bulldoze this house and build them a new one. If I’d learned anything in Russia, it was that a lot of things mattered more than money.

  My brother wandered into the living room, a glass of milk in one hand, cookies in the other. He was almost as big as I was but without a squashed nose, a crew cut and the red line of a thirty-stitch scar across his right cheekbone.

  “Want to know my favorite part of th
e show?” he asked.

  “Not the part where I threw up in the guy’s glove,” I said.

  “Nope. Where the camera crew filmed that dude at customs.”

  “Chandler Harris?” I asked. “You liked that part?”

  My brother chomped on two cookies. “Won’t everyone? I was reading in today’s paper this was expected to get higher ratings than Olympic hockey.”

  I grinned, although Chandler Harris and Matthew Martin Henley probably wouldn’t find it amusing. They’d worked hard to make this more entertainment than hockey, and they’d succeeded. But not the way they’d planned.

  With the cameras rolling to get some extra footage for the final segment of the television special, our team had marched through the airport in Russia. Rumors about the artwork must have leaked to the authorities because half a dozen customs agents had swarmed us. When they searched Chandler’s equipment, they found three paintings rolled up and hidden in the aluminum shaft of his stick. Apparently the art hadn’t all fit in my stick. After Nadia had burned the pieces we’d found, Chandler had decided to keep these last three his little secret.

  As Chandler was arrested, he began yelling that it was all Henley’s fault and he should be arrested too. Henley forgot all about the cameras and exploded in a nuclear reaction of rage, calling Chandler a double-crosser and about five minutes’ worth of other names they had to delete from the television special.

  Chandler had yelled back about Henley’s payments for dumping games, and that’s when the hockey world discovered what I’d known but couldn’t prove. As a key player, Chandler had missed all those easy goals to make sure the series was close enough to keep the television special interesting.

  The result? Major ratings interest in the East Versus West Shootout. How often did a person have the chance to watch a scandal as it developed? The commentators had a great time, speculating on-air which goals Chandler had missed on purpose and which ones he’d really tried for.

  And I didn’t have to worry about what to do with what I’d learned about Henley and Harris. They’d brought themselves to justice.