The Downhill
Professional ski racing is full of heroes... and villains. A mystery novel.
Fiction by DAVID STEERS


                                  Chapter 2

His run appeared flawless. If anything Heinz looked slightly faster than the American simply because he punched the lower turns a little harder and he stayed in his tuck through difficult sections where even Eric had had to stand up.

Heinz got no third interval time, and no time at the bottom either because the timing gear had crashed. The sophisticated, expensive electronic timing had stopped working. The network cut to commercials and the bar erupted with flustered chatter. The crowd at Figure Eleven wanted to know what had happened and what would happen and they seemed to be receiving a variety of expert replies, all different. I'd never seen anything like this occur during a World Cup race.

"Think they've got enough time to sort this out?" asked John.

"Depends how screwed up the timing is," I replied, but I knew what he meant. The major sponsors of World Cup skiing are European companies because that's where the biggest audiences are. Consequently these sponsors put enormous pressure on the race organizers to run the races on time. That's in part because the satellite uplinks that beam the race to Europe are available for only so long. As far as the sponsor is concerned, if the race isn't seen on television in Europe it might as well not have happened. If the race was going to be delayed past the reserved uplink time, it would probably be canceled.

I figured there was little chance of a cancellation. I was sure that the timing gear had suffered a temporary glitch and that Heinz would have to go back up the hill and take his run again. I was pretty sure he wouldn't be a happy skier. I was almost immediately proved wrong.

The announcers came back on the screen looking puzzled. They explained that the timing was down and technicians were having no luck getting it working. The race was on hold. Promising we would be updated if the race continued, the network cut to a curling competition. There was a chorus of boos from disgusted patrons, many of whom I suspected had money riding on the outcome of the race.

John and I passed time in desultory conversation. We were both tired; I knew he'd been working as hard as I had and I was the one going on holidays. I bought him a scotch to try to assuage some of my guilt. It helped.


I worked for my father, Franklin Fitzgerald. My dad had been born in Toronto in 1923. He knew people all over town. They all called him Franco in spite of his rather obvious patrimony. He loved Toronto.

He had opened an investigation business after the war with a couple of old army buddies. My dad had been pretty quiet about his hitch in the service. I knew he had spent some time training at a very low profile base near Oshawa. I knew he had been overseas. That was about all I knew.

His army buddies had dropped out of the partnership in the early fifties, finding greener pastures during Hogtown's boom, but as more people flowed into Toronto Dad's business began to grow slowly but steadily. In the sixties it exploded. As more people and more money flooded into the city his reputation as a discreet and very competent investigator drew business the way money draws crime.

I hadn't liked Toronto all that much when I was younger and after a so-so English degree I headed to the mountains looking for adventure. I arrived in British Columbia in the mid-seventies, just in time to witness the demise of the ski bum lifestyle. As that decade drew to a close, skiing started to become much more of a business. When mountain management began sending contingents to Disneyland to learn how to really process people we knew it was pretty much over.

The Whistler I was returning to bore no resemblance to the very tight-knit community I'd known in the seventies. Back then there wasn't much besides the skiing, two gas stations that also sold a small selection of food, and of course a few bars and restaurants to service and entertain us. We used to have to hitchhike to Squamish to buy groceries and do our laundry. The need for clean clothes would have to be critical to force the expedition. It used to take almost two hours to get to Squamish, if the rides cooperated. Since then the highway department had thrown potfuls of money at Highway 99 and the trip now took about half the time. Whistler was no longer a small village. Today it's a large town with most creature comforts readily available. It supports three big grocery stores and there are even several "fluff and fold" laundry services that pick up laundry and deliver it folded later the same day.

There's nothing like nostalgia. The good old days just kept on getting brighter in my rear view mirror.

After kicking around Whistler for a few years and working for the mountain I managed to escape the general inertia and get on with my life. I got a job as a ski factory rep, essentially a wholesale salesman. Ski reps enjoy a patina of glamour. The rep is perceived as the factory spokesman and is often the guy who authorizes sponsorships to deserving racers and associates. I didn't get to ski as much as before but I had lots of friends.

I just wasn't a great salesman though, and after a number of years I grew tired of the traveling. British Columbia is a big province and ski centers are spread far and wide. My territory included shops in Vancouver, shops in Prince George, and shops in Fort Nelson. That meant sales calls often involved spending a solid week in my car. I decided it was time to pack it in after I drove to Fort Nelson through a blizzard to meet with an angry shop owner who couldn't believe we wanted to be paid for last year's order before we'd ship him this year's. When I got to his shop and discovered he'd decided to go moose hunting for the week and my 32-hour drive had been a waste of time, I realized this wasn't the job for me.

Dad had been bugging me to join the family business for years and all my reasons for not doing so seemed to have evaporated. My biggest reservation was that moving back to Toronto was going to be tough after living in the Coast Mountains of British Columbia, but I hoped the paycheck would compensate me for the change in lifestyle. I was getting to the point in life where another decade was both inevitable and inexorable and the rate at which the years were passing seemed somewhat accelerated. "What then?" I'd begun to wonder. As a ski rep there weren't a lot of career moves, and there was a lot of competition for the few better jobs available.

I moved back to Toronto in 1985. I had been learning Dad's business ever since.

His regular clients were almost exclusively large insurance companies, and his office off Bay Street was designed to service those corporate clients. He also maintained offices in three different parts of Toronto for the public side of the business.

The insurance cases were obviously all about suspected fraud of one sort or another; the public offices mostly brought in matrimonial work. I was working my way up the insurance side, which was never dull because I would investigate a suspicious fire one day and the disappearance of a heavily insured cameo brooch the next. I found the job became more and more fascinating. I could see why the old man enjoyed it so much. I found I was always studying people, trying to learn how to read them. My father maintained that was the true secret of his success.

Insurance fraud is motivated by one thing: a need for money. Consequently I spent a lot of time researching credit records, bank accounts, and other stimulating documents. Find a need for money and then put everything through the microscope. I didn't find it all that difficult.

Dad was surprised by my success and at first ascribed it to beginner's luck, but as my success rate continued he decided that the synapses on the intuitive side of my brain had springboards on them. That's how he put it. I found I did seem able to leap to the correct conclusions before a lot of others in the office would dare venture a theory. This skill, if that's what it was, would obviously be a benefit to me in this line of work so I tried to cultivate it. It hadn't yet steered me horribly wrong but in this business knowing and proving remain two very different thing, so after more than 10 years I was still very much learning. That was what kept the job interesting.

The firm (read: my father) had taken on a little more than it should have recently, mostly trying to honor old relationships, which had resulted in 84-hour work weeks for many of the 29 people in the office for the past few months. I was close to burn out.

I was just glad it was me that was going on vacation and not John. To add insult to injury, after the announcement was made that the race was officially canceled, I got John to drive me to my car and give me a boost. Then I drove slowly to my tiny house in High Park, parked the car in the garage, and set the alarm since I'd take a taxi to the airport and I was planning to do nothing Sunday. I moved quickly from the garage to the house through the frigid night air, and let myself into the house to be greeted by the hysterical affection of my border collie.

He was a hyperactive dog and required long romps in the nearby park. I called him Currie, after my favourite mountain at Whistler. Currie eats huge quantities of food, and sheds pretty much constantly. I'd given up owning anything made of wool. Nevertheless, I made sure he got enough exercise (several dogless children lived nearby) and found he returned simple care with unbounded love. I needed that, and besides it always amazed me how pretty women were approachable and interested when Currie was with me. I owed him for initiating more than a few brief relationships, but so far he hadn't found me the woman I wanted to spend my life with. I was pretty sure he was still looking. I knew I was.

As I packed I watched the late-night news and then the sports. The news was full of the latest Middle East crisis and African famine-relief efforts. Basically the same leads they'd been using since I'd been born. The sports news confirmed that the race had been canceled but provided me with no new information. All they seemed to know was that the race had stopped because the timing gear had failed.

Another example of their in-depth coverage, I thought a little sourly. Alpine skiing still took a back seat to hockey, curling, and figure skating in this country.

I could still remember phoning Canada's national news service in 1982 to find out the results of the Hahnenkamm (I was winning a big downhill pool that year) only to be told, "The network only carries the big races." The Hahnenkamm is to skiing what the Superbowl is to football, the Masters is to golf.

I was in bed when the phone rang. It was Mac. He told me he was going to have time to drive to Vancouver instead of flying so he would pick me up at the airport on Monday because the race committee had decided the unfavorable weather reports for Sunday made holding the race at Aspen too much of a long shot. The organizers would prefer to regroup in Whistler next weekend and try to run two races there to end the season. I was delighted.

"I get in at around three o'clock your time," I said. "Make sure your skis are in shape. We won't ski Monday so I guess we'll have to see who's slower on Tuesday. Oh and get a pass to the local race center," I added with false bravado, "and I'll show you what my back looks like."

"If I thought that was going to happen I'd quit my job right now and become a TV preacher," countered Mac. Our relationship was still built on healthy rivalry. We thought it was healthy anyway. I mean, we still liked one another. Our mother thought it was a little weird.

Just as I was about to say goodbye, Mac told me one more thing. He always loved to go out with a bang.

"The Aspen race was canceled because the timing gear was sabotaged, Ian," he said. "The technicians followed the timing-wire lines from the top of the course to the bottom, and they discovered a length of melted snow above the wire trench hidden in the woods between two runs."

I couldn't believe it. Mac continued.

"By the time the technicians dug up the area the racers were all off the mountain. But get this: the wires for the timing gear had been melted, fused together for a length of eight feet by blasting cord apparently activated by some kind of remote control device."

Although no statement had been made to the media yet, Mac said Aspen was buzzing and it was only a matter of time before the news got out. Meanwhile, the "White Circus" was headed to Whistler.

Scandal or not, I was scheduled to meet it there head-on on Monday.

                     Next: Suspicious behavior on the pro circuit...


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