Nature of the Game (13 page)

“What do you want?” said Jud. Nick knew he saw Dean, too.

“We get what we want,” chimed in Tom.

“Since you ain't answering our questions,” drawled Win, “since you're red-handed caught trespassers, maybe we should radio the sheriff, get a cruiser out here to find out what's what.”

Dean slowly drew his revolver.

Stop it!
Nick wanted to scream.
I'm a reporter! A writer! I'm not in this! They're not killing us! They're doing their job!

“You don't want to do that!” Jud called out loudly.

“Why not?” snapped Tom.

Gun dangling from his right hand, Dean grinned.

“He, ah …,” stuttered Jud. He hung his head, shyly flicked his hand toward Nick. “He's got a wife.”

“So what?” said Tom.

“Ah,” said Win, narrowing his eyes.

“We needed someplace quiet. To meet. Talk.”

Win smiled. “Ain't you heard of the telephone?”

Jud pointed his face to the ground, but his eyes stayed on the two guards; on the man with the gun behind them.

“Please,” whispered Nick. Bolster the scam.

“You sweethearts make me sick,” said Win. “Too cheap for a motel.”

“Creeps!” hissed Tom, getting it at last.

“Seems like there's lots of laws you're bustin',” said Win. “Sheriff will love running you in.”

“This is California. Nobody prosecutes that.”

“They don't have to prosecute a fellow to make him pay.” Win smiled. Spit tobacco juice.

Behind them, Dean let his gun hand float up. He sank into the two-handed-grip, horse-riding combat stance.

“
We're okay!
” Jud yelled.

“Then what the fuck are you doing here?” Win yelled back.

“Ten bucks,” Jud said quickly.

“What?” said Win.

“Ten bucks. We're doing nothing you care about. Ten bucks, your boss never knows you've been bonused.”

“You think that's what we're worth?” said Win. “Or is that what you're worth?”

Tom snickered.

“So we got a deal,” Jud said loudly.

“What are you shouting for?” asked Win.

Dean's face twisted into a slack-jawed grin. His mouth worked as though he were panting or whistling, only no sounds came from his thick lips. He sank lower into his stance.

Thumbed back the revolver's hammer with a loud
snick
.

“You hear something?” said Tom. He started to turn.

“Twenty bucks!” yelled Nick.

Tom locked on him.

“Here!” Hands shaking, Nick pulled a bill from his jeans. “Twenty bucks. Go. Leave us alone.”

His trembling hand held the money toward Tom.

“I want the big guy to give it to me.” Tom smiled.

Jud slowly took the twenty-dollar bill from Nick's hand. He held it high where Dean couldn't miss it. Jud kissed the bill, crumpled it into a ball, and tossed it to the ground by Tom's cowboy boots.

Nick watched Dean's body tremble; watched his face contort. The gun was steady.

“I'll pick up a fool's money any day,” said Tom. He scooped up the bill and stuck it in his shirt pocket.

“Let's go, Tom.” Win edged backward toward the driver's door. Tom kept his eyes on Nick and Jud as he backed to the car, climbed in.

Nick glanced toward the shack. Dean had vanished.

“You boys have a good time,” said Win.

They roared away in a shower of asphalt chips.

When the headlights were half a mile gone, Jud yelled, “
What the hell are you doing!
”

Dean appeared off to their right.

“Could have saved you twenty dollars,” he said.

“Don't bullshit around!” yelled Jud. “I had the play going down! You were out of it! I never sanctioned you for any shit like that! This isn't game time! This is business!”

“Is that what it is?” Dean drifted toward them.

“I am serious as a heart attack!”

“Just practice,” said Dean.

“Not on my time,” said Jud. “Not on my dime.”

Dean smiled. Shrugged. “You're the boss.”

He threw a leg over the motorcycle, zipped his jacket over the gun. The bike growled to life. Dean raced the engine twice, let it settle down to a purr.

“We done?” he asked.

Jud handed a roll of bills to the man on the bike.

“Watch yourself,” ordered Jud.

Dean grinned; his teeth were ivory. “See you around.”

He roared off into the night. Left them alone with the
whump-whump
of the oil pumpers.

“Rough,” said Jud, “but I handled it, we're okay, and—”

“He cocked his gun so they'd turn and he'd have an excuse to shoot them!”

“You gotta understand Dean,” said Jud. “He loves me like a brother. He'd do anything for me. Balls to the wall, he's one of the guys I'd go to. You have to understand—”

“I understand him down to his bones!”

“I know.” Jud's tone deepened, quieted. “But you don't understand just how heavy he is.”

“What?”

Jud waited for Nick to come up with the answer.

“You saying he's with the government?” Nick finally volunteered.

“Not full-time,” said Jud. “You know that story based on a real-life hit you're here to pitch? The Russian strolls up behind the Bulgarian expatriate in London, zaps a poison pellet into him with an umbrella gun? Dean's less subtle.”

“What did he do for you?” whispered Nick.

“Nothing that big,” said Jud. “He had to talk to a guy.”

“He works for you,” said Nick, disgust in his tone.

“Me. Uncle. Guys who need guys like him.”

“What's his ‘hobby'?” Nick's mouth tasted of bile.

“He breaks into houses when nobody's home. Does things.”

“How do you know the cops are on to him?”

“Come on,” said Jud, “let's go.”

He turned to the car; turned back and found Nick staring at the shack, the dimly lit asphalt lot.

“This is the real shit, Nick. That's what you wanted to know. You'll never get this kind of experience anywhere else. Nobody else would give it to you, trust you enough to bring you out, and be heavy enough to cover your play so you can walk away.”

Nick stared a thousand yards off into the night.

“What are you looking at?” Jud asked.

“Someplace new,” said Nick.

“Nothing's changed,” said Jud. “We're okay. And you did good. Real good.”

“No, I didn't,” said Nick. “Not
good
.”

He got in the car. They drove away.

On a March morning, thousands of miles away and more than a decade later, Nick stared at his computer screen, remembering.

Why didn't I walk away then?
he asked himself. He didn't have an answer. Wasn't sure one answer would be enough.

He'd seen Dean once more, years later, at a party at Jud's L.A. mansion. Dean had wrecked his motorcycle, mangled his leg. He was a wane ghost on crutches. But he still had cannibal eyes.

“
Balls to the wall, he's one of the guys I'd go to
.”

That was years ago, thought Nick. Even before Jud and Nick finally redrew their line, Jud mentioned Dean less frequently. Now they could be enemies; Dean could be dead. If he wasn't, why would he know if Jud was safe? How to contact him?

The top right-hand drawer of Nick's desk glowed. In there, jumbled with pictures of ex-lovers, the keys to his first car, postcards he liked too much to send, and lockpicks given him by Jud, was that old wallet.

Nausea rose up in Nick. He felt as if he were riding a wave toward a shore he'd been approaching for years. On that wave was not where he wanted to be, but that didn't matter.

Outside his office window, tree limbs waved in the wind.

After he met Jud, Nick had finished his novel about auto workers, left Murphy's column, published four other novels, and created an on-the-road dramatic television show that ran for one season. Reviewers called his books street smart; wondered where he found his material.

The computer screen glowed.

The machine held five chapters of the novel Nick was writing about an unjustly imprisoned man. Another deal was percolating in Hollywood. He was busy. Had no time for suicidal quests. No desire to risk his wife and baby, whom he would slaughter thousands to protect.

He remembered one of the early days of madness, whizzing down the L.A. freeway, Jud driving the Mercedes, Lorri between them, her chestnut mane floating in the wind. The radio blasting pounding drums and throbbing bass guitars. They were high on danger and drugs and destiny, Jud shouting explanations of
the life
.

“You gotta know reality!” Jud yelled. “Or you're just another chump!”

Maybe Sylvia's right, Nick told himself that March 1990 morning in Washington. After all these years, maybe the dangers to me are distant ghosts. Harmless. Maybe I do owe Jud nothing.

Except scars that shaped your vision
.

The first night Nick had ever walked beside the bear who glowed in the dark, Jud had said, “Anybody ever explain to you that you could be too loyal for your own good?”

“Nobody I ever believed,” Nick had replied. Proudly.

The wind rattled Nick's office windows.

“What would you say now, Jud?” Nick asked the computer.

But the computer had no answer.

“When it comes right down to it,” Jud once asked Nick, “what can you know?”

“That you do something,” said Nick, “even if you try nothing.”

“So watch your ass, right?”

Then they'd laughed.

In his office, Nick rode the waves. He feared for his family and he feared for himself. What could happen,
if
. If was endless. The CIA motto said knowing the truth made you free. Nick was certain of little, but he felt all he treasured slipping into the hands of faceless strangers and nameless forces. He couldn't merely wait for whatever knock sounded on his door.

“One thing you never need to worry about,” Jud had told him. “I'll be your friend. Forever.”

They'd shaken hands.

And it all meant what they made it mean, thought Nick.

But he knew that wasn't the bottom line. This wasn't just about Jud. This was about him. And about being sure who he was. About being true to old ideals, no matter how much he'd tarnished them. He knew that even as he opened his desk drawer, pulled the old black wallet out, found the faded number scrawled on the diary page labeled
C
. Numbers change owners. No one would be there. No one he'd ever met. The moon wasn't right.

“Not if I'm lucky,” he whispered as he dialed.

THE ABYSS

W
es spent the weekend after Denton's party grinding out as much of the work on his desk as he could. Monday morning, he couldn't sleep past three-thirty. He left his Capitol Hill apartment to jog. Winter wind burned his face and lungs as he ran past the Capitol, down the Mall. Frozen earth crunched under his feet. He turned back at the Lincoln Memorial. Close by was the black wall etched with the dead from his war. His
Washington Post
was waiting at his top-floor apartment when he finished his seven miles. He turned on the PBS jazz station, did his twenty paratrooper push-ups. Made coffee, ate Grape-Nuts, read the news, and tried not to worry. He dressed in his uniform, put a civilian suit in his car, and drove down Eighth Street to the Naval Investigative Service's Headquarters at the Washington Navy Yard.

Behind brick walls and guard posts and within cannon range of the Capitol building, the Navy Yard houses dozens of red-brick buildings for high-security operations, ranging from the Library of Congress's Federal Research Division, which produces secret studies of foreign governments, to the CIA's six-story National Photographic Interpretation Center to the Navy Anti-Terrorist Alert Center.

Wes went to Building 111. His ID cleared him through the security guards on the lower floor, then again on the second floor. He avoided his coworkers and closed his office door.

And waited.

At 9:31, a Navy chief rapped on Wes's door: “Commander wants you pronto, sir!”

Two cubicles down the carpeted hall, the Navy officer behind the desk passed a set of orders to Wes.

“You know about this?” said Commander Franklin.

Wes glanced at the paperwork confirming Denton's plan.

“I just read the orders now, sir,” Wes deflected, obeying Denton's secrecy mandate.

“Do I smell shit in those papers?”

“No comment, sir.”

“You could at least smile,” said Franklin.

And Wes laughed.

“If I'd known you wanted a cloak-and-dagger, we could have sent you up to the fourth deck,” said Franklin. The fourth floor of the building was NIS's counterintelligence center.

“I didn't go looking for this,” said Wes.

“But you're not saying no.” Franklin shook his head. “It's tricky out there. Play it tough.”