Page 76 of Thin Ice

The eucalyptus smell was barely detectable in the consultation room. One wall held eight framed photographs in two rows. They were athletes at the moment of triumph: a gymnast sticking a landing and a skier with arms thrown in the air.

I spotted a line written across one corner of the photo in large, looping text. Couldn't have done it without you, Doc! The athletes were all grateful. I wondered how many could still walk.

Reis took one of the two chairs and gestured for Nolan to take the other.

"Show me the hip," Reis said. "I don't mean the flesh. Just sit. I want to see how it holds in a chair."

Nolan let his left side settle, and Reis watched. For a moment, I thought I saw passing tenderness in his gaze.

"It's there," he said. "You've built everything around not showing it, and you've done so well that the media doesn't know. I'm sure the team docs know, but they would defer to you." He leaned back. "You know what most men do with a hip like that? They quit, or they let a team doctor bench them into an early grave. You've done the brave thing. You listened to it, and you decided to play anyway."

"I get up at quarter to five," Nolan said. "It takes forty minutes before I can walk like a normal person."

"Forty minutes." Reis nodded. "That's what it takes to give this city a man who doesn't limp. You have discipline, Nolan. You've learned how to confront and stare down the alarm day after day. It's a talent most don't possess." His voice dropped, warm and confiding. "It's the one thing I've made my career's work. I want athletes to know how to have a conversation with their body and realize half the time the alarms are yield signs, not ones that say stop."

Nolan let a long moment pass. When he spoke, his voice was flat and even.

"His cup was number nine," he said.

Reis blinked. "I'm sorry?"

"Ty Hawkins. The paper cup on your folding table. His had a nine Sharpied on the side. Mine said seventeen." Nolan didn't raise his voice. "He asked me on a plane once whether what you were giving him was the same as what you were giving me. I was half-asleep. I told him I assumed so. I asked him if it was working." A breath. "He said it was working great. Then he looked out the window for the rest of the flight, and about three weeks later he stood in a hotel hallway and told me he wasn't sure he was okay."

Reis was quiet.

"You're thanking me for my silence," Nolan said, "and I don't accept it. I spent thirteen years believing what you just described was maturity. I kept my head down and let the adults do their work. You're right about what I did. You're wrong that it was good." He leaned forward and winced when the ribs announced their presence. "I want to ask you the thing I never asked him. How did he feel when he took your drugs? Did you ever ask him how he felt instead of whether he could play?"

Reis's expression changed. The delight drained out of it.

"Ty Hawkins was a tragedy," he said. "It was a methodological failure. It was early in our development of the protocols, and we didn't understand the cardiac load yet. The boy's tragedy taught us how to make it safer. All the success since has been because of him."

Nolan wasn't finished.

"A man named Ray Halloran was there, too, and he was quiet for thirteen years. The week he decided to talk, his heart stopped in his sleep. Elias told me a technician named Russ Tierney was going to talk, too, and he took too many of his own pills two days after making that decision. Finally, I think you sent a car after me yesterday morning. You've been eliminating the voices." His voice never rose. "Somebody in your place is turning names into bodies to keep your work quiet."

"No." Reis said it to himself more than to us. "No, that's not—Diane wouldn't—" He pressed his lips together. "There are protocols for exposure and legal protocols. She handles the difficult conversations so I don't have to. She's very good at it, but she would never authorize—"

Nolan didn't move. He watched Reis come apart under the pictures of grateful athletes.

Reis abruptly ended the conversation. He was no longer smiling. At the side door, he took Nolan's hand again, and the shake was short, barely there. "Win your game," he said.

I drove us back to the safe house.

"She handles the difficult conversations," he said.

"Yeah."

"That doesn't make him innocent."

"You're right."

Back at the safe house, Nolan sat at the kitchen table and strapped a bag of ice to his ribs. I put Mac and Michael on speaker between us and delivered a clean description of the morning's events.

"Okay. We have her name," Michael said. "The Diane would be Diane Rourke. We pulled the name weeks ago. What we never had was the founder identifying her as his key operative. He can't pull it back. We have two witnesses."

"It doesn't prove anything," I said.

"On its own, it's just a horrified old man talking, but we have the backup. Finally, we have athletes with unexplained premature joint deterioration. Medical experts will testify. The one thing we never found was legal permission to run blind experiments on young athletes."