Page 86 of Hard Hitter
O’Doul left his massage whistling. He had a shower and got dressed. But those were the last easy minutes of the day.
Hugh Major appeared as suddenly as a storm cloud, his phone in his hand, his expression full of doom. “O’Doul,” he growled. “Step into my office. We have a situation.”
O’Doul had always wondered what the end of his NHL career would look like. He’d hoped it would end with his jersey hoisted into the stadium rafters, and a plaque on his wall. But as the manager led the way down the long corridor from the treatment rooms into the corporate suite, he knew all too well it could end exactly like this. A long walk to the boss’s office. A door closing with a quiet click. The G.M. crossing his arms, looking both angry and disappointed.
“What’s the problem?” he asked when they finally reached Hugh’s office. As if he didn’t already know.
“There’s a journalist from thePost.” His lips made a flat line. “She says she can prove you bought drugs in a nightclub. Apparently that’s not enough of a story for her, either. Sounds like she’s going to try to spin this thing into some kind of big doping scandal.”
The same quiet, focused calm descended on him that he felt during a fight. He played back the manager’s words in his head, and they weren’t what he’d expected. O’Doul had predicted that Vince might try to leverage his dirty secret via law enforcement. But reporters? That might actually be worse. “Hugh, the team doesn’t have a doping problem,” he said. “That’s ridiculous.”
“Yeah,” Hugh said, folding his arms and looking up at the ceiling. “It is. But that still leaves us with a problem.”
Here it comes.
“She says there’s a picture. You in some nightclub’s back room, making a buy.”
Pictures, fuck. This was bad. “What is it that I supposedly bought?” he asked as calmly as possible.
Hugh huffed out a sigh. “Don’t play it that way, Doulie. Just tell me what the hell happened at that club. I can’t help you if I don’t know what I’m really dealing with.”
O’Doul hesitated. Hugh had been good to him for more than ten years, but the man’s responsibility was to the team as a whole and to Nate, his boss. It didn’t matter if Hugh was a good man, and he was fair. He had a job to do, and that job was not to save O’Doul’s ass. “I have to speak to my agent,” he said.
“Seriously? After all this time?” Hugh shook his head. “Justtalkto me. You think I’m going to just toss you to the wolves?”
Yeah, if you need to. “I’m calling Tommy. We’ll speak later.” He walked out of the office suite then, just leaving Hugh behind to stew. He crossed the lobby, where a video of him scoring in overtime played in a continuous loop.
Outside, the air blowing off the river was cool and damp. He turned his face into the wind and took a deep breath. He’d been a hockey player long enough to understand that everything could change in an instant. One minute you might be flying down the ice, the puck under your control. The next second you might be smashed into the boards like a bug on a windshield.
Bad news worked in just the same way. It didn’t give any warning.
Quick strides ate up the two blocks between team headquarters and his apartment. The concierge swept the door open for him and he strode into the ridiculously fancy lobby of his building.
If this was it—if it was all really over—he’d probably leave Brooklyn. There’d be no point in staying two blocks from the team that had ended his career.
Where would he even go?
He pushed that worry away and unlocked his apartment. He tossed his jacket on the couch and took out his Katt Phone. His finger already hovered over his agent’s name when he realized his mistake.
Shit.
O’Doul shut down his Katt Phone. Then he carried it into the bathroom, placing it on the counter top. For good measure, he turned the bathroom sink on to run water noisily down the basin. He left the bathroom, closing the door behind him. He went to the landline phone—so underused there was dust on it—and dialed Tommy’s number from memory.
“Doulie?” Tom answered immediately. “Hey, man. Everything okay?”
“Not really.”
“Sorry to hear that,” Tom said. “What’s up?”
O’Doul carefully relayed everything Hugh had just told him.
“When were you at this club?” Tom asked. The man was smart enough not to bother asking if it was true.
“January.”
“What did you buy?”
O’Doul said “uppers,” without hesitation. But that didn’t mean he wasn’t burning with shame just hearing the word come out of his mouth. Dumbest thing he’d ever done.
