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"Brandt's not happy," Webb adds, lower.

"I know."

"He's saying things."

"What things?"

Webb glances at the door. "That the kid's not on the top line because he earned it. That he's on it because the captain's got a soft spot. That's the nice version."

"What's the not-nice version?"

Webb looks at me.

"Never mind," I say.

Brandt's in the video room that afternoon, alone, watching tape of his own shifts on the third line. I stop in the doorway.

He doesn't look up. "Cap."

"You got a minute?"

"I've got nothing but minutes. Third line doesn't need much prep." He pauses the video. "Must be nice. Top line. Your little buddy feeding you tap-ins."

I come in and close the door behind me.

He looks at the door. Then at me. His smile fades a little.

"Gus pulled the door log," I say. "From opening night. The night somebody hung a tutu in Castel's stall."

Brandt's face doesn't change. Brandt's face never changes. But his hand on the remote goes still.

"You and Kowal," I say. "Just before midnight. Both your badges."

"That's a hell of an accusation."

"It's not an accusation. It's a printout. Moretti has it in his desk drawer."

He sets the remote down on the table, carefully.

"So why am I hearing about it from you, a month later?" he says. "Why not Moretti?"

"Because I told Moretti I'd handle it."

"This is you handling it."

"This is me telling you it's done. The tutu, the circus jokes, the braid-your-hair stuff at dinner. All of it." I keep my voice level. I've been captain for six years. I know how to do this. I've done it to guys who came to practice drunk and a guy who got caught with a teammate's wife. "If anything like it happens again, anything, I don't come to you. I go to Pruitt, and Pruitt goes to the league, and the printout goes wherever it goes. You're thirty-three, Brandt. You've got two years left on your deal. You want to spend them explaining a tutu to a reporter?"

The room's quiet. On the screen behind him, he's frozen mid-stride on a third-line shift, bent over, chasing a puck he didn't get.

"Wow," he says finally. "Okay."

"Okay what?"

"Okay, I hear you, Captain." He picks the remote back up. He turns it over in his hand. "Can I ask you something, though? Man to man?"

"What."

"Why do you care so much?"