“Broomstick Cody,” Rengo told Mason. “First name was Levi, I think. I forgot all about him, until I saw that picture.”
Rengo had found his way behind Bad Boyd’s wet bar, was digging out a bottle of some no-doubt-expensive scotch with an unpronounceable name. Found a glass for himself and held up another for Mason, questioning. Mason shook his head.
“Broomstick,” Rengo said again. He’d been smiling, proud of his own cleverness, but that smile had faded. “Only played one year in Makah.”
Rengo poured himself a drink. A healthy pour. “Then he threw himself off a cliff,” he said.
Rengo didn’t know exactly how it happened.
“Not really a sports fan,” he told Mason. He tried the scotch, tentative, grimaced as it went down. “But I guess I heard the story once or twice.”
The Cody family had moved to Neah Bay, Rengo remembered, from somewhere over the mountains. Wenatchee or Spokane, the eastern part of the state. His dad had been a white-collar guy, insurance or accountant, something at a desk. His mom had been a schoolteacher and, as far as Rengo knew, might still be.
“They split up, after Broomstick took his leap,” Rengo said. “Dad moved away, mom stuck around. Nobody was ever really sure why.”
Levi Cody was a hockey player, the legend went, and a good one. He’d walked onto the Screaming Eagles tryouts at training camp, made the roster with ease, starting line, defenseman. Meant someone had to clear out to make space, and that someone was Fat Gerald Hemp, who wasn’t much of a hockey player, but who everyone liked.
Rengo picked up a team picture, an older one. Pointed to a chubby kid in the front row, the only person in the photograph with a smile on his face.
“The way the story goes is some guys took it personally,” Rengo told Mason. “Like it was Cody’s fault Gerald Hemp was a sack of shit on two skates. They saw it as their responsibility to make life hard for him.”
Mason was starting to get the picture. “And one of those guys was Brock Boyd.”
Rengo nodded. “Listen, I never went in for team sports,” he said. “I don’t play well with others. Plus it never rubbed me right, the way some guys would force you to do things. Like if you were new to the team and they didn’t know you.”
“Hazing.” Mason hadn’t ever been one for sports either, could never afford the equipment or the dues. But he knew well enough how men form communities, how they deal with outsiders and those they believe to be weak.
“I guess it happens in every sport, with every player,” Rengo said, “and that’s what the coach said when the whole thing came to light. ‘Team building,’ he called it. ‘Boys being boys.’”
Rengo took another sip of scotch. Winced as he swallowed, and then he met Mason’s eye. “You can probably figure out why they called Cody ‘Broomstick,’” he told Mason. “Came from one of those team-building exercises.”
Mason said nothing.
“It was Boyd who took charge of it,” Rengo said. “On a road trip, down somewhere inland. Brought a few other guys and cornered Levi Cody in his hotel room, between games. And Boyd happened to be carrying with him a length of sawed-off broomstick.”
Mason had known men like Brock Boyd, inside. He’d known men like Levi Cody too. In prison, it was the Boyds of the world who ruled. The Codys, in his experience, never lasted long. You could try to protect them, try to help them out, but you couldn’t try too hard, not while the other men were looking. You risked becoming a Cody yourself, and there wasn’t ever any escaping that. Sooner or later, they’d get you.
Prison wasn’t exactly like being a teenaged hockey player. But Mason suspected there were more similarities than anyone would care to admit.
“Word got out,” Rengo said. “Wasn’t long before the whole county knew the whole fucked-up tale. Hockey rink to high school, girls to grown men. I reckon Levi didn’t hear his first name spoke outside his folks’ house the rest of the season. Hell, even his teachers must have known him that way.”
There’d been moments, early in Mason’s sentence, when he’d wondered if he would wind up like that. One of the broken, shrunken men who lingered on the margins, trying desperately not to be seen. The laughingstocks and worse, bruised and bloodied and black eyed, toothless.
He’d heard them cry in their bunks at night. He knew what happened when the guards weren’t around. He’d pretended not to notice, not to care.
He’d pretended not to hear them when they called out for help.
“He didn’t last the summer,” Rengo said. “That nickname followed him after hockey season ended. Makah’s a small county, and Boyd was the big man in it, and from what I heard, everyone was more or less happy to let Boyd have his way. And that meant Broomstick Cody had to suffer.”
They died, the broken men. They hanged themselves in their cells or they tried to fight back and were beaten to death.
“They found him in the water off Cape Flattery,” Rengo said. “Western edge of the county. He’d left a note, explained everything. His folks raised a stink, and some people made noise, but it never really changed anything. Boyd went away and got drafted, made the pros. And they still put his picture on a goddamn billboard at the county line.”
Sometimes families would ask questions. The warden would catch heat. Sometimes changes were made, symbolic and always temporary. Token gestures—more guards, more supervision. A reporting system in place. Weeks would turn into months, and those changes were scaled back. Life returned to normal. The Boyds of the world chose a new Cody, and you hoped and prayed it wasn’t you. You tried to keep your head down and serve your sentence in silence. You watched as another guy suffered.
Rengo drained his glass. Set it down, heavy, and looked across the room at Mason. “So that’s the only Broomstick I can think of,” he said. “And I reckon he’d be a hell of a suspect for killing Bad Boyd. Only problem is, Burke, he’s been dead near fifteen years.”