Nature of the Game (50 page)

“I, uh …”

“Who called you?” When no answer came, Wes slammed the smaller man against the wall. “
Who called you?
”

“Noah,” blurted the detective, “last night, after you … After the FBI tweaked him. Damage control, you know?”

“I know a lot,” said Wes. He pushed the man deeper into the house. Berns glanced at a table. An alarm, thought Wes, or a gun. But he knew Berns would try neither. “Down to your office.”

“I told you—”

“I told
you
,” said Wes.

Downstairs, the bathrobed man stood in his law-book lined study, trembling. Wes slowly circled round him.

“Noah called you,” said Wes. “But you've been calling him, haven't you? All along. Everything I hired you to do, you reported to him.”

“What's the big deal, huh?” said Berns, trying to keep his eyes on the crazed Marine who'd probably killed someone the day before. “He's your boss, he's—”

Wes's push almost knocked him over.

“I told you not to!” yelled Wes.

Berns regained his balance. Watched the madman circling him like a shark.

“Look,” said Berns, “a guy's gotta do business.”

“So you played me for Noah.” The idea came slowly, grew as he walked around Berns's wary eyes: “Who else?”

“What?” Berns licked his lips.

“Who else did you sell me to? Sell whatever it was you knew I had, knew I was doing?”

“What do you—”

And Wes hit him, knocked him to the thick carpet.

Berns pushed himself along the floor until his back was against his desk. He wiped blood from his lip.

“You're through!” Berns spat through the blood. “Done! You're—”

Wes kicked him in the chest.

Wheezing, gasping for breath, Berns feebly batted at the arms that pulled him off the floor, bent him back across his desk.

“
Who else!
” bellowed Wes. “There's three people dead so far. You want to be number four?
Who else?
”

“I know 'eople all over,” sputtered Berns. “People inside, people outside, people you can't even imagine. People who can get to you. Count your days, Major. Count your time.”

“Not my job,” said Wes. “But you … your
job:
you got the assignment from Noah to be my legman—and to spy on me for him. But that wasn't enough: you shopped around, found somebody else who cared. Or maybe they heard Agency gossip about us, came to you with a proposition. That doesn't matter. But
who?
”

“Fuck you. Goody flag boy like you won't kill me and you can't hurt me enough.”

For a moment, Berns was wrong and they both felt that. But only for a moment. Wes jerked him off the desk and threw him against a book shelf.

“Denton and Noah are going to love it when I tell them you sold them out, too,” said Wes.

“They're big boys, they knew me. I'm too valuable to lose and too slippery to squeeze. Besides, after your messing around, all they care about is putting the lid on. Loudmouth like me, they won't jerk my chain.”

“What else have you done?” said Wes.

“Count your blessings, Major.” Berns straightened his robe. “You might not die. Whatever this is, you fucked it up all to hell, but if Noah keeps it quiet, you might stay out of jail. Might even get to keep your uniform. If you keep your mouth shut and do what you're told. If I don't decide to fuck with you.”

… whatever this is …

“You don't know,” said Wes. “You don't know what this is all about.”

Berns shrugged. “If you've got some ideas, know something … I'm the kind of guy who knows how to wheel and deal your way out of trouble.”

“No,” said Wes, “all we got left is simple business.”

“We're through.”

“You've been on Nick Kelley,” said Wes. “How close?”

Berns wiped the blood from his mouth with the back of his hand. Shook his head no.

“You're right,” said Wes, closing the distance between them. “I won't kill you. It's my weak heart. But I've got a strong stomach. I've already lost more than just a few qualms about how I'll get where I'm going and what that'll cost a slime like you. I'll buy that you won't tell me everything. But you're a businessman. You'll sell me what you can to buy what you want. What you can buy is a lot less pain.”

When Berns laughed, Wes hit him in the stomach. It took the private eye a full minute to regain his ability to talk:

“Close 'nough, know he's pokin' round. He doesn't have nothing. Couldn't.”

“Then you'll leave him alone?”

Berns looked up. “Not my show, is it?”

“Come on,” said Wes. “You got one more card to play.”

Wes sat Berns at the desk, pushed the phone toward him.

“Your source in the phone company,” said Wes. “I want all of Nick Kelley's long-distance calls since we last checked.”

“Can't. This time 'month, he won't dare pop up the—”

Wes grabbed the private eye's left hand; broke his little finger. Berns threw up. Made the call. After he'd cajoled the source into risking a computer search, Wes took the phone and pushed him away. Wes listened: he was on hold.

A man's voice came back on, dictated a series of calls Wes wrote down: from Nick Kelley's office, calls to Nebraska.

When he was finished whispering the list into the phone, the source said, “Do you know what a risk I took? If—”

“Don't hang up!” said Wes. The man on the other end of the line froze at the sound of a stranger's voice. “I'm a federal law enforcement officer and you're in violation of privacy and telecommunications laws. That's between us, but you talk to Jack Berns again, you give him any of this data, I'll send you to jail.”

“How … Who …”

“Doesn't matter,” said Wes. “You're burned.”

He hung up the phone.

“Do you know what that cost me?” cried Berns.

“One finger,” said Wes. “So far.”

He searched the house, took voice diaphragms out of all the telephones. He called a taxi from the private eye's car phone, then broke that phone and took the engine's distributor cap. When the taxi came, Wes left the private eye tied to his couch with his bathrobe belt, swearing and staring at his swollen hand.

All flights to Nebraska were booked or had left for the day by the time Wes got to National Airport. Under a false name, he caught a flight to Nashville, where in the morning he could make a connection to Lincoln. He checked his gun and cash in his duffel bag, gambled that his wouldn't be one of the bags airport security randomly x-rayed.

The sky slipped past the window of his plane.

STOLEN CAR

J
ud took the wrong road in the dark. He cruised past Gary, Indiana's hulking steel mills and the dark sheen of petrochemical lakes before he realized his error. He exited the interstate, parked on the crumbling asphalt of an abandoned gas station. Under the front seat of the car he'd stolen was a screwdriver and a torn map.

Outside the car, he urinated in the predawn shadows. He found a rusted gas can in the weeds, used the screwdriver to chop the hose from the dead gas pump. Most of the nearby homes were still dark. He switched license plates with a parked car and used the chopped hose and rusty can to siphon fuel.

Back on the road, he found U.S. 80 West. Gas fumes and bile filled his mouth. Chicago's whiskey cut the taste. He had to stay sober enough to drive, drunk enough to keep going.

The cities of Illinois rolled past his car. Joliet, with its gray prison walls. La Salle. Annawan. Truckstops with cherry pie, coffee. Towns where no one would answer his knock at a lonely house. The door would be unlocked, there'd be fifty-one dollars in a desk drawer, a toothbrush still in its plastic case. A Dodge without a locked gas cap. Whiskey in a cupboard, beer and leftover roast beef in the refrigerator.

Keep going
, he told himself.
You can do it. You can do anything. You can face anyone. You can make it
.

Laos and SOG, Iran, Watergate, Chile, Miami: they were nothing compared to this interstate humming beneath the tires of his stolen car. Only twice before had Jud so desperately needed to believe in his own righteous invulnerability:

Once was the last time he saw his father.

The second time was when he seduced America.

Phantom operas flowed around him like fog as he tried to keep the car on the road.

You've done this before
, Nora had said.
Worked in restaurants, I mean
.

In 1964, when he was sixteen in Chula Mesa, perpetually one step ahead of the sheriff's cruisers and truant officers, Jud worked as a busboy at a seedy Italian restaurant, supplementing his cash from anger burglaries with money he could account for.

It was October, a cool night for southern California, a Tuesday. Jud remembered every day that mattered. It was on a Wednesday that his kindergarten teacher made him stand in the corner so long that he wet his jeans. It was on a Thursday that he killed his first man, a VC sentry, slit his throat, black blood in the moonless night. The last time he'd seen his father was an October Tuesday, 1964.

A slow night for Enzio's Italian Palace. Jud practiced being invisible as he cleared tables and loaded dirty dishes into a gray rubber tub.

“Hey, you!” said a woman's nasal voice behind him.

She was more than twice his age, red lipstick, dyed hair sprayed into a brass swirl, a fake silk dress that was tight across her chest and tighter still across her hips. She wore high heels and waved a lit cigarette as she spoke.

“Yeah,” she said as Jud turned around, “I
know
you.”

“I don't think so, ma'am.” Part of Jud feared she'd seen him in some illegal escapade and the police were just a dime drop away; part of him feared/hoped she wanted him for the big mystery.

“What's your name, kid,” she said.

“Jud.”

She rolled her eyes to the plastic chandelier.

“Jud Stuart.”

She blinked; grinned. “No shit. Come on, there's someone I want you to meet.”

“I'm Myra.” She winked, led Jud to the raised platform against the back wall. Jud watched her girdled hips as she said, “There was something about your hair, the way you walked.”

Up the three steps to the balcony where
someone
sat at the table beyond her and she turned, said, “Jud, meet Andy.”

There
he
was: eyes wide, mouth open, hands trembling around a tumbler of iced vodka.

“Stuart and Stuart,” said Myra. “Father and son.”

Jud's stomach fell away. A freight train roared through his head. He was clammy all over, cold and flushed.

“Aren't you two going to say anything?” chimed Myra.

“So, ah,” he said, and it was
that voice
, “you're Jud.”

“No, dummy,” joked Myra, “he's your other kid.”

Andrew Stuart gulped his vodka. His hands trembled. He glared at Myra as she circled around the teenager in a busboy's white fatigues. She sat behind the drink she'd left.

“I always find pennies,” she said, lighting another cigarette. “No matter where they roll. Thought you should remember that, Andy. Thought it'd be nice for the two of you to say hi.”

Smoke rose from the table. She filled her lungs four times in the silence.

“So … ah … you work here?” said Jud's father.

Barely, Jud whispered, “Yes.”

“Good, good.” The man had waves in his brown hair.
Like me
, thought Jud. His father said, “Good job?”

“You're a barber,” said Jud.

“'Do a lot of things, kid.”

“He sells cars now,” said Myra. “Don't you, honey?”

“You left when I was three,” said Jud. “Got in the red car, drove away and it was a long time and you never came back and I waited, you said we'd play ball. It was a Friday.”

“Tuesday today,” said Myra.

“Look,” said the man who was still handsome. Broken veins on his nose. Jud's knees were water. “Nothing personal, right? A man's gotta do what a man's gotta do, so …”

“Do you have another son?” whispered Jud.

“Wouldn't make that mistake twice,” mumbled Andy.

“I don't like kids,” said Myra.

“Hey, but look at you,” said Andy. “Handsome, healthy. Got a good job. I couldn't have done that good for you.”

“I'm in high school,” said Jud. “A sophomore.”

“Education is very important,” said Andy.

“He always says that,” added Myra.

“So, ah …” The father glanced at Myra. A slow smile came to his lips. He watched her as he asked, “How's your mother?”

“She pushes paper for the state,” said Jud. He could breathe now. In, out: he could do it, he could breathe. “Sits on the couch with a six-pack. Watches TV.”