Page 11 of Thin Ice

"You don't have to do that," I said.

"I go where you go. That's the job. What time?"

"Ten."

"I'll have the car around back." He looked at my leg and then left me to it, silently padding back down the hall in bare feet.

***

The city had turned blue while we were away in Vegas.

It wasn't everywhere, but it felt that way. A bar had strung blue Christmas lights along its awning. A third-floor window in a brick four-flat flew a flag with the Steamers' wheel on it. Half a block down, a woman walked a dog in a Steamers sweater, completely inappropriate for the late May heat.

Elias drove. It wasn't the black SUV he'd arrived in. It was a plain silver sedan out of nowhere, the kind of car nobody looks at twice. He drove the way he did everything: no wasted motion.

I sat canted to the right, left leg stretched into the footwell as far as it reached. Getting in was a chore. Low seats were an enemy. I dropped the last four inches, wrenching the hip.

"Cut through the park," I said.

Forest Park opened green and enormous ahead of us, a light haze rising off the grass. Some mornings, when the weather was reasonable, I walked the far wooded side before the joggers were out.

Elias had shoved his sleeves up against the heat, and his right forearm rested on his thigh—long ropes of muscle, with a vein standing off the back of it. I'd seen his full body on TV when I was seventeen, and I Googled it in Vegas the night before the clinch game. I sat in my adjoining room with my laptop while he was in the shower.

"Tell me about him," Elias said. "Danaher."

"He scored the goal." I glanced at a jogger in the park. "Overtime, Game Seven, the only Cup this city's ever won. Anybody over sixty in this town remembers where they were standing when it hit the net. He was the captain. Left wing. I dress in his stall."

"And you visited him since."

"Every week when I was home and had days off. He was sick for a couple of years." I reported it all in a flat voice. Vern would've wanted it plain and direct.

I'd said more than I intended. I watched as we left the park and headed south. "Who taught you that?" Elias asked.

"Taught me what?"

"To be the one who shows up for the old men. That's a little unusual." He glanced in the rearview mirror and then at me. "Usually it's the older guys looking out for the younger ones . Did you have your own Danaher coming up?"

"Not like that." We pulled up to a stoplight. "I was twenty when I got traded to Carolina mid-season. It was a bad team trying to build something. They wanted the young guys to have somebody a couple of years ahead of them to watch. That was me." The light changed. "It was all instinct. My Vern was my grandfather."

I shifted the leg. "Turn's coming. Tamm, then left. He never left Dogtown. He won a Cup, had the ring, and he could've bought anything, but he stayed on the block where he grew up."

Elias slowed into the turn, and the street narrowed to two-story brick two-families, shoulder-to-shoulder, with narrow gangways between them. The cars had already doubled up near the house along both curbs, more than a modest street was built to hold.

"That's it," I said. "The one with the people standing out front."

We parked a block down and walked back. I took it slow.

The house was overflowing with people. There was coffee, like Eileen promised. A dozen hushed conversations ran back and forth. I knew maybe a third of the faces, old men, mostly, thick through the neck and careful on their feet. A couple of them leaned on canes.

They were survivors, members of the '86 team, turning out to honor their captain forty years on. A woman in a gray dress touched my arm. She was front office, sent to be seen doing the decent thing.

"Nolan. I'm glad you're here." Her voice was low. "Terrible timing for the family. Well, there's no good timing. The team's going to do something at Game One. It will be a moment of silence, maybe his number on sleeves. We're still working out the shape of it." A small pause. "It'd mean a great deal if you'd be part of that. Whatever you're comfortable with."

"This week's for Eileen," I said. "Ask me after the funeral."

"Of course." She pressed my arm and turned toward another knot of mourners.

I stepped past her toward Eileen. She was busy with others and waved briefly.