Game of Death (40 page)

‘I appreciate that,’ I say. ‘But you shouldn’t be involved from here on out. The company needs someone to run it.’ I head out toward the front door. I need to get
home. I need to find Yvette, and I need to figure out a plan.

‘I’ve tried to find Josh,’ Tom says, following me out. ‘No one has seen him since Michael François was caught. I think he may have lost it.’

I nod. ‘I definitely think he’s lost it. But I’ll find him. I’ll spend a lifetime tracking him down, if I need to.’

Ma is sitting at the kitchen table when I walk through the door. She stands and comes over to me. ‘Jesus Christ, you had me worried, Nick,’ she says. Something in
her tone reminds me of the time when, as a child, I’d upset her or made her angry, and as she approaches me I assume that she’s going to slap me. I wince as she raises her hand, but
instead of hitting me, she reaches out and gives me a hug. ‘I’m glad you’re home,’ she says.

I’m not sure how to react, so I simply hug her back. ‘Thanks. I’m glad I’m home, too.’ I wonder how much she knows. ‘I’m in a little trouble,’ I
say. Always best to lead with understatement, I think.

She pulls back, looks at me and nods. ‘Yvette was here earlier. She told me. I need to hear it from you, though.’

I sit at the kitchen table and put my head in my hands, overwhelmed at the notion of sharing the details of my situation with my mother. ‘It involves a woman,’ I say.

‘Kendra was her name, I believe?’ Ma encourages me.

‘How much did Yvette tell you?’

‘She told me the girl was a real looker, and that you’ve been . . . obsessed.’

I nod.

‘She said you saw her in some sort of sex video when you were snooping around on that system your company has created, and you couldn’t get her out of your mind. She told me about
the prick who was killing the girls, and that you helped Paul Killkenny catch him. And then, after he was in jail, this girl – Kendra – was killed last night.’

‘I was with her last night,’ I say.

‘Yvette told me that, too.’

‘It was stupid.’

She waves her hand as though it doesn’t matter. ‘It was human. You’re not a boy anymore, Nick. I know how the world works; I’m not looking to make you feel guilty about
that. We need to focus on what to do to get you out of this.’

I’m not sure how to tell her what I need to tell her. ‘Ma, you’re gonna hear some things about what went on in the hotel room. Some things you may find . . . ’ I’m
not even sure what the right word is.

‘Nick,’ she says, ‘if your generation wants to think you invented kinky sex, that’s fine, but it’s giving yourselves too much credit. You may be the first to share
it on computers, but I’ve lived in a dark enough world that I’m not likely to be shocked.’

‘I didn’t kill her,’ I say.

She smiles at me. ‘I know that, Nick. I’ve known people who are killers – spent my life around men who are capable of killing, in fact. I can see when it’s there and when
it’s not. It’s not in you. It’s not a part of your nature.’

‘So what do I do?’

‘You catch the man who really did this.’

‘How?’

‘First, you get someone involved who is capable of killing. I’ve always found that, in situations like this, that’s a good start.’

I’ve always known that Cormack is connected. I’ve never truly understood how connected, though. I suppose, if I’d ever thought hard about it, I would have
guessed. He’s the owner of the largest tugboat companies operating in Boston Harbor and, as a result, has a hand in the delivery of nearly every large container ship that comes through one of
the biggest ports in the country. He runs the union that covers not only the tugboat crews, but also the stevedores who unload the ships. If I’d ever thought hard about it, I’m sure I
would have realized how crooked that makes him, but I’ve never had reason to think about it. Besides, I suppose that if I’d let myself think about that, it would also have implications
about how mobbed-up my father was as well, and I never really wanted to deal with that.

I realize it now that I’m sitting with him, explaining my problems. I start by explaining what the company does, and what my role is. Then I describe the various players in the sick
melodrama that has unfolded in the past weeks. I spend a fair amount of time describing Josh Pinkerton and his background, and give as many details as I can about NetMaster – which, frankly,
are few. Cormack sits there, smoking a cigarette, taking it all in, with few comments. Occasionally he’ll ask a clarifying question, but for the most part he just listens. When I’m
done, he stands up and paces the room for a couple of minutes without speaking. Finally he sits down again, across the table from me.

‘You think Pinkerton’s the doer on this girl you were with?’ he asks.

‘I do,’ I say.

‘Okay. That means you’ve got to prove it. If you don’t, the cops are gonna keep after you. From the sounds of it, they’ve got a pretty good case against you, and
I’ve never known the cops to give up on a good case – even if it was against the wrong guy. Usually the easiest way to get the information you need would be to go right at Pinkerton.
Grab him up off the street and work him over until he tells you what you want to know – until he admits to doing this thing. The problem is, we do that and then bring what’s left of the
man to the police, they’re gonna know that we’ve beaten the shit out of him, and that’s just gonna make them think you’re even more guilty. If he recants, the cops will buy
his story and discredit anything we’ve brought them in terms of evidence.’

‘Not to mention the fact that Josh has apparently disappeared, so just finding him is gonna be a challenge.’

Cormack nods. ‘If I’d just killed this girl and I was trying to frame you, I’d disappear, too. If no one’s talking to me, no one’s taking the cops’ attention
off you. So that means we need to find another way to come at Pinkerton that’s not as direct.’

‘You have any thoughts?’

He rubs his chin. ‘From what you’ve told me, it sounds like this crazy fuck NetMaster was probably involved in some way, if Pinkerton killed the girl, right?’

‘I’d assume. Josh sent him after me when he realized I was talking to her, and it’s clear he’s not squeamish about using violence. I don’t know everything about
Josh – I wouldn’t have pegged him to be into the whole rough sex scene – but I don’t see him as someone who has a lot of practice with murder. If he did want to go after
Kendra, it wouldn’t surprise me if he used NetMaster to help him.’

Cormack leans back in his chair. ‘That’s our way in then,’ he says. ‘We pick up this whack-job and get him to spill his guts on what happened. Once we know what actually
happened, we’ll be in a better position to figure out how to go about getting the evidence we need to get the cops off your back.’ He leans in and looks at me seriously. ‘Taking
this bastard on isn’t going to be pretty, though,’ he says.

I nod. ‘He’s a pretty big guy. Picking him up off the street isn’t going to be easy.’

Cormack dismisses my concern with the wave of a hand. ‘I’m not talking about the logistics of getting to the man,’ he says. ‘I’m talking about the ugliness of
getting him to talk. It may be that he’s a coward and an easy talker. We can’t assume that, though. We have to go into this believing that he’s gonna be a legitimate hardass. That
means it’s gonna have to get rough and it’s gonna have to get messy. Are you prepared to let me and my boys do what needs to be done to get the information out of him?’

I nod. ‘Yeah.’

Cormack cocks his head at me. ‘You sure? You’ve always been the compassionate type. When you start to see the kind of pain we may need to inflict, you may have a change of heart on
this. I need to know that you’re willing to follow through, before we start.’

‘He didn’t have any compassion for me or Ma when he came to our house. And he and Pinkerton sure as hell didn’t show any compassion for Kendra. I’m ready for whatever
needs to happen.’

Cormack nods. ‘Good. Okay, let’s go over it all again, and this time tell me everything you know about NetMaster. No detail is too small. We need as much information as we can
get.’

I shrug my shoulders. ‘I think I’ve told you everything. I don’t think there’s anything more we can learn, unless you’ve got contacts in Amsterdam, where he
apparently last worked.’

‘That’s the nice thing about working the docks,’ Cormack says with a smile. ‘You deal with influential people from every part of the world. If I have enough to go on, I
can have people do the legwork for me.’

‘Okay,’ I say. I proceed to tell him everything I know about NetMaster again. On the second telling I realize that I’d left out some small details, and I understand why Cormack
asked me to go through it again. ‘You want to take notes?’ I ask at one point.

He smiles at me. ‘This isn’t college, Nick. We don’t take notes; we don’t write anything down; and we don’t tell anyone our business, you get that?’

‘Yeah.’

He shakes his head. ‘You need to say it. This isn’t a game. I’ll help you out of my respect for the memory of your father, and out of affection for your mother, but this is
serious business we’re dealing with now. We fuck this up, and people go to jail or get killed. Do you understand that?’

‘Yes,’ I say. ‘I understand that. I won’t fold.’

‘Good. I have to spend some time on the phone to get the information we need.’ He looks at his watch; it’s approaching three o’clock in the afternoon. ‘It’s
mid-evening over in Amsterdam,’ he says. ‘My contacts at the port in Rotterdam will just be getting in to sort out the day’s illicit activities.’

The door bangs open and Yvette is standing there, looking at us. ‘I heard you got out,’ she says.

Cormack nods at me. ‘You two talk. I have my work to do.’ He gets up and leaves, touching Yvette on the shoulder as he passes her.

Yvette stands there looking at me, her expression inscrutable. There’s so much that I want to say to her; so many things that I want to explain, but I can’t figure out where to
start. Looking back at her, and seeing my failures reflected in her eyes, makes everything seem all the more overwhelming. ‘Yvette—’ I start. It ends there, though, and I’ve
no idea where to go with it. She rescues me.

‘I love you,’ she says. She coughs the words out as though they’d been caught in her throat for some time, choking her. And once the words are out, she looks both relieved and
surprised.

‘What?’

‘I said I love you.’ She says it with more confidence and surety this time. ‘I don’t want you to say anything back to me right now. You’ve got too much going on and
too many things to focus on, and if you told me that you loved me at this moment, I don’t think I’d believe you – even though I believe it’s true. I just wanted to tell you
now, so that you’ll understand. I figure if I can love you right now, with all the shit that’s going on, it’s gotta be real, right?’

I stand up and move over toward her slowly. ‘Yvette, I—’

She cuts me off, putting her hand to my lips. ‘Don’t,’ she says. ‘Save it for later. Right now, we have too much to do.’

We’re sitting at the kitchen table and I’m shaking my head. ‘I don’t want you involved,’ I’m saying. ‘I’ve already put you
through too much, and it’s gonna get dangerous from here on out.’

‘You haven’t put me through anything,’ she says. ‘The crazy assholes who run the company have put us through this. Gunta, with his technology and his dreams of
rehabilitating a twisted fucker like Michael François, put us through this. Josh Pinkerton put us through this. And now it’s time for us to make it alright.’

‘I have Cormack helping. That’s all I need. You can’t help with that.’

‘I can’t help with what he’s doing, but there are other things I can do that he can’t.’

‘Like . . . ?’

‘Like hacking into Josh’s files at the company to see what’s there.’ I blink at her. ‘We need to see what’s on his computers,’ she says. ‘If
there’s anything helpful, we need to know it.’

‘Things like what?’

‘He was together with this girl for close to four years, and he was obsessed with her even after that, right? What are the chances that he doesn’t have a ton of stuff on his computer
about her. He’s gonna have emails and texts with her, from when they were together – and from what he’s admitted, chances are some of them are gonna be pretty raw. You think
that’s not gonna be important in convincing the cops that he’s the guy they want?’

I know she’s right, but I can’t accept it. ‘It’s too dangerous.’

‘What’s dangerous about it?’

‘You and I both know that you’re talking about starting on the system at NextLife and hacking into his personal data from there.’

‘So?’

‘To do that, you have to be at the company – physically at the office, sitting there working on the company servers. And for all we know, he’s having the activity on the system
monitored at this point. If he has visibility into what you’re doing, who knows what he’ll do?’

‘You think I’m an amateur at this?’ she demands, offended. ‘I’m not going to do anything that anyone can track. Besides, I’m gonna be at the office, where
there are a lot of people around, and from what I understand, Josh has disappeared, so it’s not clear that he even has the means to find out what anyone at the company is doing anymore. I
mean, hell – the rumors are already flying at the office and people are getting stressed. I’m not sure Josh is really in control anymore, and from what I’ve heard the IPO may be
in jeopardy. Compared to what you and Cormack are going to be doing, this is a goddamned walk in the park.’

‘I don’t like it.’

‘That’s sweet, but I don’t care. You need my help.’

I take a deep breath. I do need her help, but I’m not sure it’s worth it to put her in any danger. ‘If anything happens to you, I’ll never forgive myself.’

She reaches out and takes my hand. ‘That’ll make two of us.’

The next morning I get a call from Cormack, telling me to meet him down at a warehouse near the edge of the old Charlestown naval yard. I check on Ma, make sure she’s
okay and get her a cup of coffee before I head off. I peer through the kitchen before I walk outside, my head on a swivel as I make my way to the car. The lawyer bought me some time, but I know
it’s only a temporary reprieve. The cops will pick me up and haul my ass back to jail as soon as the forensics come back and show that my DNA is in Kendra Madison’s body. I’m half
expecting that I’ll be taken down at any moment, but I make it to my car without incident, start it up and pull out.