Nature of the Game by James Grady
Blinked, shook her head; looked around and saw her bags, the shaving kit with money and drugs he’d left on the floor, the keys in her Mercedes.
“Wha … What th’hell …” Her eyes widened.
A black box sat on the car seat between them. Jud pointed back to the mansion with all their expensive frivolities and fineries. He turned a dial on the box, flipped a switch.
Radio bombs exploded in his office; in the kitchen; in the basement; in the living room where the giant-screen TV still played. Each bomb was taped to a full can of gas. Fireballs novaed through the oak-paneled mansion: drapes, electronic spy gear, paintings, computers, guns, ammunition, clothes, drugs, piles of cash abandoned in kitchen drawers—all fed the inferno.
The peacocks in the street panicked; stupidly ran toward the exploding house as lights came on all over the hill.
“You want to be gone,” Jud hissed to Lorri, “go! Go now, go fast, and go hard. Don’t look back. This is all gone. It never was. There’s nothing here for you. Not in this town. Not in this life. Forget my name and don’t ever forget not to fuck up!”
The burning mansion was reflected in the black dimes of her eyes. He saw she’d been waiting for this, expecting this.
From farther down the hill came the sound of fire engines. House doors slammed nearby.
Jud got out of the car. Lorri hesitated, then slid behind the wheel of the Mercedes and drove away.
She didn’t look back; Jud watched.
Nine years later, he was driving a stolen car west on the interstate highway crossing Iowa. Headed to Nebraska.
He knew where she was—a cousin of hers still thought Jud could send him money so he still sucked up. Jud even called her trailer once, heard her say “Hello.” Heard her hang up.
The stolen car turned south, crossed the Missouri River. The afternoon light made shadow patterns in the trees along the road. Jud hadn’t expected Nebraska to have so many trees.
Not that he was going to stay. Not that he had any expectations, any idea of where he was going next. He knew she’d have not much to say and cared not for words he didn’t have anyway. But he had to see her, just one more time. Just to say one thing.
A flash of white, walking in the trees; it was Nora.
When Jud cut south on the state road outside Lincoln, the VC whose throat he’d cut was standing by the curb, crusty black pajamas, empty eyes. Jud half expected him to stick out his thumb: hitchhiker. Jud roared on by.
Can you apologize to all your victims? Jud wondered.
Maybe Lorri would say, Where you been? Where’d you go?
Low, he’d tell her. Maybe she’d laugh.
Maybe he’d tell her everything. Maybe he could and maybe now she could understand, maybe they finally knew the right language. Maybe she’d be proud of him:
They activated me one more time after our fire, he’d tell her. Horoscope horrors. They didn’t know how low I’d fallen. Autumn, 1984, and I got them to brief me through the mail and I told them no.
So? she’d say.
But maybe she’d say, What the hell. And smile.
And then maybe she’d let him go.
Conrad, Nebraska, is a dirty little town. Couple hundred houses, half of Main Street boarded up, grain elevators by rusted railroad tracks where trains don’t stop anymore. More gravel than pavement in the streets. Satellite dishes to bring real life into drab living rooms. Pickup trucks parked outside the two bars that Jud forced himself to drive past. The blue airline bag by his side still had thirty-two dollars in it, plenty enough for a bottle or maybe two. But he could wait. He could make himself wait.
The trailer was east of town, a quarter mile from any other houses. A row of trees cut it off from prying eyes. A mile on the other side of the trailer were the sewer lagoons. They only smelled on really hot days, and by the time Jud got there, the sun was setting. It was spring, anyway.
Two mongrel dogs circling the trailer loped off when Jud drove up. He didn’t like their look. He grabbed the blue airline bag. Got out of the car, road stiff, nothing else to do but walk up to that closed metal door.
Knock.
THE YELLOW DOG
Wes found the trailer outside Conrad, Nebraska, before noon the next day. The sun was warm, the sky blue. He parked his rental car a hundred meters up the empty road from the trailer, used binoculars to scan the curtained windows, the splotchy pastel paint on the metal walls. A rusted pickup with Nebraska plates slumped beside that now-immobile home.
Three mongrel dogs paced the dirt yard, sniffing, trotting around the aluminum box. The yellow dog scratched at the trailer door. No one let him in.
Wes ran his hand over his unshaven stubble. He wore a black windbreaker, shirt, black jeans, sneakerlike black shoes.
Not an official image, he thought.
The Sig rode on his right hip. Chambered. Ready. During his Nashville layover, his sleep had been deep and dreamless.
Nothing moved at the trailer. Except the dogs.
Twelve o’clock, said his watch. Straight up.
Slow and steady, he drove down the dirt track to the trailer, his eyes focused on the door, the curtained window; his right hand in his lap, heavy with the Sig.
The dogs barked; trotted out of kicking range, barked some more. Watched the strange man.
He parked ten feet from the door. Shut off the engine.
The curtains didn’t flutter. The door didn’t burst open.
“Hello!” he yelled out the car window.
Flies buzzed. The yellow dog barked.
Wes got out of the car. He held the Sig behind him.
“Anybody home?”
The breeze stirred the dust at his shoes. Wes sniffed: a sweet-sour scent, like ham and cabbage. The man at the gas station had said the trailer was near the sewer lagoons.
Two steps closer. “Hello?”
From inside the trailer came soft tinny laughter: people?
No, he realized, television.
A dog growled, but Wes knew it was a bluff and didn’t look: the trailer door was unlatched.
He stood wide of the door when he knocked.
No reply.
He knocked again.
The yellow dog barked.
Wes raised the Sig, stood clear, and swung the door open.
No one yelled; no one charged out. He stepped inside.
Flies buzzed over dirty aluminum frozen-dinner plates in the kitchen sink. The tiny refrigerator groaned. Clothes, magazines, and beer and wine bottles covered the floors. Ashtrays held pyramids of cigarette butts.
The eyes of the woman slumped on the couch stared at the portable color TV set mounted at the far end of this metal box; a contestant spun a wheel in a game show while the gorgeous hostess clapped. Pale and slack as it was, the face of the woman on the couch showed the ghost of a beauty greater even than in the picture Wes carried of her. Her chestnut hair spilled around her like a shawl. The gashes circled her wrists like gaudy ruby bracelets.
Her hands lay in her lap; a dark splotch spread out from them, over her blue jeans, the couch, down its side to a black smear soaked into the cheap industrial carpet.
Between the couch and the door was a wicker coffee table with a glass top. On the table was a dark-stained wine bottle, two prescription pill vials, a tin of aspirins, a cigarette pack, and an ashtray. A finger of ashes trailed to the edge of the table from a lit cigarette that had been dropped, burned itself out. Not far from the ashes was a crusty razor blade. A makeup brush lay in the center of a dark smear on the table. A pattern of streaked dark lines waited on the smudged glass.
Letters. Words.
Jud I couldn’t stand waiting for you to
come finish
me so ha ha
PS Nick Ke
The Sig dangled in Wes’s limp hand.
When he could open his eyes, when he could look at her again, he whispered, “I don’t even know who you are!”
Too late, he thought, shaking his head. Too late.
The gun was heavy. He was too dizzy and nauseous to trust his hands, so he turned to watch himself holster it. As he glanced at his belt, he saw a blue airline bag on the floor.
Jud, he thought, remembering his first sight of that man in the desert, remembering the description of the Gs who’d lost Jud at the airport in Las Vegas.
The bag lay forgotten on the floor’s clutter.
Wes looked at the woman again. He’d seen enough death to know she’d been dead several days. Dead before Jud got here.
Too late, thought Wes, you got here too late, too.
Inside the bag was a new toothbrush, almost no money.
“When were you here?” said Wes. “Where did you go? How?”
The woman on the couch said nothing.
The air inside the trailer was close and thick. The TV played commercials. Wes felt sweat trickling down his spine as he stared at the dead woman, forced himself to breathe, to think.
Outside the trailer, the dogs whined.
Then Wes knew what he had to do.
THE BIG CLOCK
Two mornings later, Nick Kelley sat on the couch in his Capitol Hill office, staring at the notes he’d made from the glossaries. He was no closer to getting out of the jungle than he had been the day Jud dropped him in it with a phone call.
Maybe there is no jungle. He looked out the window. Maybe they’re gone. Maybe there is no they.
The phone rang.
“Nick,” said a man’s voice he’d never heard, “it’s Lorri’s friend. I’m calling about our appointment today.”
Nick knew no friends of Lorri’s, had no appointment with anyone. Before Nick could reply, the man said:
“Think about it: don’t you hate phones? You never know who’s there.”
The two men listened to each other breathe.
“Like now,” Nick finally said. He could barely talk.
“Yes. But calling was better than coming to your office.”
“Oh?”
“We need to meet earlier than lunch.”
“What?”
“Twenty minutes. Union Station.” Nick knew the way, but the man told him the exact route to take.
“Don’t look back,” said the stranger.
The phone clicked: dead.
Oh shit.
Think! A killer would be a fool to alert him. This was too complicated for a setup like a drug frame. A ruse to get him out of his office for a black bag job was unnecessary because he was gone all night. If they needed to get him out of the office for any other reason, this was an iffy way of doing it.
He stared at the phone. You never know who’s there.
If his phone was hot, the wiretappers had heard the call. The man hadn’t wanted to come to Nick’s office: did that mean he knew someone was watching Nick?
“Don’t look back.”
The stranger had Lorri’s name. Which meant Jud. Somehow. And maybe some answers, a way out of the jungle.
One thing moves, all things change. Whatever the stranger had started, if Nick hesitated, all the other players had a chance to regroup.
The silence of his world pressed in on Nick. Vertigo swirled through him and he was nauseous. A thousand regrets found voice in his heart: he should have been more careful, should have stayed clear of Jud, should have not—
Stop it! Regrets were worthless now.
The big clock was ticking.
Everybody knew who he was. That he was in his office. With no witnesses. If he didn’t act, he’d surrender to whatever someone else chose.
A nylon backpack from Nick’s college days was buried in the closet. He stuffed the glossaries and his notes in the pack, strapped it on, and felt foolish: a backpack over a sports jacket. But his hands were free.
Sylvia: Nick looked at the phone, ached to hear his wife’s voice. Call home, have Juanita hold the phone for Saul.
Not a secure move. Not enough time.
He locked the office door behind him.
Capitol Hill is a beautiful neighborhood of flowering cherry and crab apple trees, dogwoods rising from brick boulevards. Nick’s office was in a blue town house on Southeast A Street, six blocks from the Capitol, another four blocks to Union Station.
Who’s out here? thought Nick as he stepped onto the concrete stoop of the town house. What do you want with me?
Sunlight glistened off parked cars. A woman walked a yippy dog, a closed umbrella in her hand. Rain wasn’t expected until that night. A man got out of a Toyota: Nick flinched. The man walked the other way. To the west was the back of a Library of Congress building.
No old man with white hair.
No Jack Berns.
Casual, Nick told himself. Quick, ready, but casual.
He locked his eyes forward: a homicide cop once warned him that halfway measures get you killed. Long ago, Nick’s karate sensei had shouted to the class: “If you move, move!”
The idea struck him when he was a block from his office. He checked his watch, quickened his pace. Nick was loping when he reached the kiosk at the end of the street, hands shaking as he dropped a quarter in the pay phone.
The homicide cop’s home answering machine had an anonymous greeting followed by a quick beep.
“This is Nick Kelley.” He rattled off the time, date. “I’m going to Union Station to meet an unknown male call-in source about a CIA story. I think my phones are hot, so I’ll call you. If I don’t … You know. Thanks.”
He checked his watch: he had maybe a minute to spare.
Nick called columnist Peter Murphy’s office, wouldn’t let the receptionist take the time to switch him to anyone else, dictated a version of the same message he’d left for the cop.
Hung up and hurried on. Didn’t look back.
But thought, Now it’s my game, too.
Gray clouds drifted across the sky. The air was cool. The trees had budded out green. Two Library of Congress workers in brown uniform shirts and pants laughed as they walked past him.
Nick followed the route given him by the stranger: one block north on Third Street to East Capitol, left to face the glistening-white-icing congressional dome. A red cardinal flew down the street, chased by a diesel-belching Metro bus.
Sit back in your eyes. Open your ears. Keep walking.
Don’t look back.
A fire engine siren wailed behind him and to the right; Klaxon honking as it raced the other way. Don’t look! He always checked out siren-screaming police cars; so did his baby son—God, he loved his son!
Coming toward him, a loud-voiced middle-aged woman at the head of a two-by-two column of children. The kids held hands. A black man was the caboose, guarding the children’s rear, making sure they were safe and that they all got where they were going.
One of the boys waved at Nick; a little girl giggled.
At First Street, he turned right, walked between the wide lawn of the Capitol and the white marble steps leading up to the Supreme Court’s columns and ivory facade etched with the motto Equal Justice Under Law. Tourists took pictures with drugstore cameras, automatic flashes wasted in the daylight and at any time worthless at that range.
On he walked.
Cabs and open car, blue-and-white tourbus trains rolled by. On the sidewalk, he passed men and women in serious suits who glanced at him, saw a harried man with silver-streaked hair and a backpack strapped on over a sports jacket. Skinny, tense, rushing along to a rhythm they didn’t hear. Their eyes judged that he was a blink away from being one of the screamers shouting about Martians and justice on the Capitol steps. Nick wanted to yell that he was sane; that he was walking in the real world that they with their heavy briefcases didn’t see.
Don’t look back.
The traffic light at Constitution Avenue was red.
Green, and he walked between the Dirksen and Russell Senate office buildings. The sidewalk sloped downhill. Less than half a mile away, he saw Union Station, massive gray and concrete, big as a baseball stadium, draped in red and white bunt
With binoculars, he could have discerned the lines and angles of the ant people leaning against the fountain wall.
He reached the station seventeen minutes after the stranger called. Stepped on the main entrance’s rubber mat. Electronic wooden double doors swung open before him.
He stared at the shadowed opening.
Went inside.
Union Station is like a cathedral, with high domed ceilings, soft light, mahogany railings and information desks, chessboard marble tile, white tablecloths and wine cafés, multicolored computer screens and loudspeakers announcing trains. Corridors lead to colorful jewelry and clothing stores, a bookstore. Escalators cycle down to thirty food stands, nine movie theaters. Nick could smell coffee and spices and pine-scented suds from the janitor who was mopping the tiles by the rest rooms. Hundreds of people streamed around Nick. They carried suitcases, cameras, anxious looks, or eagerness for commercial excitement.
“Take the escalators up to the top parking level.”
As Nick walked through the crowd, no one called his name.
Bump, a woman brushed his side: whirling, left hand circling up to block, right fist cocking to strike. But she was two steps away, gray-flecked hair, jabbering about St. Paul to a granddaughter who would graduate from high school in a few weeks.
Nobody, she was nobody. Innocent.
Keep walking.
Don’t look back.
The cacophony of the train station rang hollow in his ears; he heard everything and nothing, as if he were sinking deeper underwater, pressure building. The people around him moved in slow motion. Their features were razor precise. It was cool beneath this beautiful arched ceiling; his shirt stuck to his sides, the backpack rode on him like a cancerous hump. His feet and hands and head were boulders, yet inside he felt weightless, floating.
Union Station has four levels of parking stacked like giant concrete pancakes at the rear of the building. Escalators lead to the parking levels from the safety of the shops and trains. Each level has two escalators up, two escalators down.