Nature of the Game

by James Grady

  Just enough, thought Jud. A polygraph would say he didn’t lie. He signed it Malice, the code designation of a veteran American intelligence agent of the highest sensitivity.

  “What did you just do?” asked Lorri after he mailed the envelope to a suburban Maryland post office box.

  “Don’t worry,” he said, though his heart trembled.

  He’ll take it and use it in his hand, deal it around his table, thought Jud, remembering the face of the general he’d glimpsed months before. It’s too sweet to turn down.

  Three weeks later, in the supermarket tabloid, Gemini’s horoscope said “rainy days”: activate. Contact. Go.

  He was already gone. America couldn’t imagine how far.

  Jud flipped his profit from Wendell back into the market.

  Ounces became pounds. Marie joined Jud’s team. She and Wendell recruited customers who Jud screened into associates.

  Pounds became kilos. Marie and Wendell introduced Jud to their connections. In four months, he was their only outlet; in five months, they were working for him. Jud and Lorri quit their straight jobs, moved into a beach condo. Jud enlisted managers to handle the actual sales. He found Dean: between the two of them, corporate discipline became tight and rip-off artists got the word.

  Kilos became loads. Jud did business with the boys from Illinois, with the guys from Vegas, with the families back East. Jud dealt with the bikers, barrio brothers. Big men in Miami vouched for him. Nobody asked about Art Monterastelli, and Raul sent his regards. Jud forged alliances; where hostilities appeared, federal busts materialized.

  Loads became shipments. Jud organized safe houses, bank-rolled a mescaline anarchist whose imagination and computer skills were light-years beyond law enforcement budgets for electronic intelligence. Jud bought money counters, a secret interest in a Florida bank, two Mercedes sedans, and a Porsche convertible. When his gold Rolex broke, he dropped it in a panhandler’s cup on Sunset Boulevard, got another one. He bought $500 bottles of wine and carryout dinners from French restaurants, complete with gold-inlaid china that went into the trash. Jud met with men who controlled planes flying the Gulf of Mexico, trucks rolling across the Mexican border, cargo from Alaska.

  He and Lorri bought a Spanish mansion on a hill overlooking the ocean. There were cases of Chivas in the pantry and a crystal decanter in Jud’s office. The big-screen TV was always on. Lorri roamed the house, from the bedrooms to the Jacuzzi to the TV. The women she knew were like Marie, or crystal-slick women on the arms of men like Jud. A Mexican maid who feared Immigration and loved a hundred dollars a day took care of the house. Lorri could drive her black Mercedes anywhere she wanted, as long as she followed security procedures. She wore silk blouses, tight jeans, high heels, kept her purse with her, her compact full of white powder in case Jud played a power trip and locked up the house supply. Uzis and magnums and 9-millimeters were stashed in every room; there was an alarm system, a Doberman, and a bodyguard who stayed awake all night. Outside, peacocks roamed the streets.

  Jud became a wild man: restaurant scenes, racing through the streets, buying shopgirls flashy gifts, flirting with them for weeks, demanding their adoration, never seeing them again. He gained weight, fat around a wall of muscle. He was a gorilla striding through discos, alone or with dead-eyed men who laughed only with their mouths. Sometimes Nick was in L.A. and cruised with him; for a while, a famous Hollywood director who loved cocaine rode along, but the movie man’s promises of redemptive deals never came through. Those in the life knew Jud as a legend, believed that somehow he had it all wired, and that somehow that wire would not tighten around their necks.

  “I hold it all together,” he once told Nick. “You don’t know. I’m doing it, I’m making it, I’m covered and it’s cool and it doesn’t bother me—fuck ’em—but you just don’t know.”

  “I don’t think I want to,” replied Nick. He shook his head. “These are the days of madness.”

  In November 1980, on a Saturday, Jud married Lorri in a chapel by the sea, tuxedos and no visible horror-show. Dean flipped his Harley and missed the ceremony. Lorri’s family came from Nebraska skeptical; went home scared. By then, her smile was a sly grin, her skin was pale and she had black holes in the oceans of her eyes. At the service, the Hollywood director was an usher and Nick Kelley was Jud’s best man.

  Once a week, Jud locked himself in his study and coded a report to the Maryland post office box. At first, he reported only infiltrating. He sometimes requested information, never reported names of his allies or details of his operations: the other end didn’t need to know; didn’t want to know. Jud assumed that when a cop typed his name into the computer, someone visited the cop and erased the entry. Sometimes a coded letter in his post office box that not even Lorri knew about warned about someone or something; identified specific intelligence needs.

  Nine months after his wedding, Jud began meeting down South with the marketplace czars who would soon dominate cocaine production in South America. He began to report substance akin to the hypothesis he’d raised in his brief Operation Alert: arms shipments, warfare and cooperation between the coca industrialists and the entrepreneurs of revolution. He gleaned tidbits from the swirl of black-market secrets and gossip: what foreign minister was owned by whom, what Middle East arms dealer was prospering in Paraguay, who the Cuban attaché in Bogotá was courting, what the Israeli advisers were doing in Panama, which Chinese tankers in Argentina had captains with hungry eyes.

  Each time he looked in the mirror of his mansion’s ornate bathroom, he told himself this life was justified. If it hadn’t been him, it would have been someone else, some independent who gave nothing for what he got, a creep who didn’t care. Outside, a white blizzard swirled through his country. He told himself it didn’t matter, that the cries beginning to echo in the snow-burned streets came from losers who would have fallen to booze or to heroin, if they’d been brave enough for a needle. Cigarettes, hell: he’d quit smoking. He was a businessman providing a product; he wasn’t to blame for its abuse. The intelligence gained justified the means expended, plus he was finally getting paid for years of terrible risks. He’d gotten a sanction. So what if it was a seduction.

  Then he’d have another drink.

  I’m owed, he swore.

  They slipped up. Three coded messages ordered him to provide funds: $20,000 each time. Each time he mailed the cash to the Maryland post office box. The fourth time, he sent the cash—and requested a receipt covering all disbursements.

  No receipt ever came. And no more requests.

  Got you, General, thought Jud. Even you.

  In October 1981, Nick came to L.A. He asked Jud to meet him at the hotel he’d insisted on taking instead of the room at the mansion Jud offered. Jud didn’t like the tremor in Nick’s voice. The night before the meeting, he had the anarchist put a tap/trace on Nick’s hotel phone. Three of his men whom Nick didn’t know staked out the writer and his hotel room.

  Before the meeting, Jud checked with the anarchist.

  “He called some producer’s office where he’s got a two-o’clock; his agent, who wasn’t there; and some chick in D.C. who wants a gold ring, which I don’t think she’ll get.”

  “I know about her,” said Jud. “She’ll be history soon.”

  Nick had dined alone. No one suspicious had a room anywhere around him. He’d met no one, was not surveilled. While Nick was eating, Jud burgled his room, found nothing incriminating.

  They met in the hotel restaurant. It was sunny, between breakfast and lunch. Nick had coffee. Jud had a Bloody Mary.

  “Look,” said Nick, “this isn’t easy.”

  “Don’t worry,” said Jud. “Everything’s fine.”

  Nick shook his head.

  “You leaving me for another girl?” joked Jud.

  And Nick had to laugh.

  “I love you like a brother,” said Jud. “We’ve been through a lot together. I know it hasn’t been easy on you, but—”

  “Yo
u’re my friend,” said Nick. He sighed. “I don’t like what’s happening to you.”

  “What do you mean?” Cool, Jud was very cool. And friendly. This was the only man not in the life whom Jud could trust—which meant he was the only man Jud could trust at all.

  “Used to be once, twice a month, a late-night call—”

  “I’m sorry about that, it’s just the pressure—”

  “Now it’s every night. Usually you’re drunk, crazy. I keep expecting to hear UFO stories! Spirit-world shit!”

  “I live in California.”

  “Wherever you are, it’s gone bad. It’s eating you up.”

  “I got it under control.”

  “Then you’ve lost control of something else. This shit you’re doing: it’s wrong.”

  “You never complained before,” said Jud. “You like the product.”

  “Those are my sins,” said Nick. He looked into Jud’s eyes. “I don’t do coke anymore.”

  “Did you find Jesus?”

  “No.” Nick shook his head. “Coke’s … intoxicating. Exciting. I don’t think it would hook me like I’ve seen it hook a couple people.”

  He paused, said, “People we know.”

  Jud’s gaze didn’t falter.

  “But bottom line,” said Nick, “when I get high, I support goons and corrupt politicians and killers, prop up people and things I’ve spent my life fighting or hating.”

  “Like me,” said Jud.

  For a long time, Nick didn’t answer.

  “I don’t know what you’re doing here,” said Nick. “I tell myself it’s more than it seems. You tell me that, too. I can’t afford to know. If you’re my friend, I guess it has to be enough for me to believe. But that doesn’t mean I like it.”

  “So what now?” asked Jud.

  “I don’t know,” said Nick. “But you know where I am. And it can’t be as close to you as it was.”

  They told each other they were still friends; swore to keep in touch. Nick insisted on paying their bill.

  From then until he became a gutter drunk, Jud called Nick only about once a month, and then usually during the day.

  November 1981. The Tuesday before Thanksgiving. Out the mansion’s picture windows, the sun hung low and red above the sea. The TV was on. Jud slumped on the couch, flicking channels. Perched in the steel chair, Lorri used a glowing butt to light a fresh cigarette.

  “You smoke too much,” said Jud.

  “What the hell else do I got to do?” she intoned flatly.

  “You got a problem?” he snapped.

  She laughed.

  “You think that’s funny? You got more than you ever wanted. There’s a million women who’d trade places with you!”

  “You been taking names?”

  “I don’t have to take names, they’re given to me.”

  “Oh, right, I forgot who you were.”

  “You never knew who I was.”

  “Really?” she said. “Who else has heard you cry?”

  “I guess that was my mistake.”

  “So that’s what it was.” She sniffed, scraped the last of the coke off the saucer with a playing card, hit both nostrils.

  “You’re a fucking junkie,” said Jud.

  “We don’t fuck anymore,” she said, staring at him flatly. She watched him watch her lick her numb lips.

  “At least I don’t,” he said.

  “You going to tell that to the bitch you got stashed at the beach? I’m not complaining. She saves me the trouble.”

  The plastic channel wand cracked in his grip. If she heard it, she was past caring.

  “Your men are too afraid to fuck me,” she said. “They might shoot me, but they won’t fuck me.”

  She stood, stared out the window. The sky bled.

  “Why do we live like this?” she said.

  “Would you rather go back to Nebraska? You want to go back to making hair appointments and two-dollar tips?”

  “Rather?” She shook her head. “I can still rather?”

  He heard her crying, but all he could think about was when would she stop.

  “I’d rather …,” she began—then she lost the thought, her mind slipped gears. Wistfully, she said, “I’d rather we’d had the baby. You said it wasn’t the right time, it wasn’t safe. You said I hadn’t been clean enough long enough, the baby would be … You said you were worried.”

  And he couldn’t stop, “I was worried whose kid it was.”

  Awareness slammed back into her face, her features hardened as she turned toward him. Her cheeks were wet, but the razor was back in her voice.

  “You’ve got your secrets,” she said. “I’ve got mine.”

  “I did all this for us!” he yelled. “And for things you can’t understand! Don’t know about!”

  “Honey, that’s a sad lie,” she said. She swirled around as she had in the picture Nick had taken of her. This time, her smile was empty. “Congratulations. You’re brilliant. You won.”

  “What do you want?”

  “Me?” She looked around the empty mansion. “I want to be gone.” She laughed. “I want some more coke.”

  She smiled slow and sweet, leaned toward him, her thick hair cascading, her body still young and lush, said:

  “I’ll pour you a drink.”

  Jud threw her the keys to his office where the drugs were. He heard her climbing the stairs as he walked out.

  The Porsche took him across town. He stopped twice for a drink. The post office he used gave its boxholders twenty-four-hour access. There was a letter in his box.

  He knew something was wrong the moment he opened it. The envelope contained two sheets of paper, one small folded square, one carbon-copy sheet of a typed, encoded message.

  A carbon copy. There should never have been any copies of anything; that he’d been sent a carbon was a message in itself: the team had lost autonomy. Jud stood at the postal table in the deserted government building, decoded the message:

  Sanction withdrawn effective 12/20/81 …

  A month. They were giving him a month. They claimed.

  Exit clean. Prepare full final report. Identify Assets, Targets, Personnel. Turn over material, operational funds. Debriefing to be scheduled. Inform fully.

  Something’s happened, thought Jud. He unfolded the second piece of paper. That message was hand printed in plainspeak, a private communication:

  REMEMBER MONTERASTELLI

  Blown, thought Jud, then he corrected himself: Discarded.

  He’d become a liability—the general’s or the general’s general. The rules had changed. Carbon copies: suddenly they wanted a record to cover their asses. Identify Assets, Targets, Personnel. Finger your people. They’d roll up Wendell, Marie, others. Put the screws to them. The big boys would have another line entered in their file folders—the big boys had lawyers and connections and could keep the cops away no matter what a roll up of Jud’s network yielded. Turn over … everything. Be Joe Shit The Ragpicker. And just to be sure, we’ll polygraph you and dope you and microscope you until you are.

  Sanction withdrawn. If he ignored them, every cop who’d been warned away and every tax man who’d been told to mind his own business would be loosed on Jud. His picture would join the mug shots on the wall of this post office.

  And if the law didn’t get him … Remember Monterastelli.

  Don’t talk. Don’t piss us off. Or you’ll die.

  Something more, he realized. He looked at the two messages. Sending Jud a carbon, sending him the personal note, the general had to realize Jud would figure out …

  That was it: the general and the team didn’t want Jud to come in any more than he did. But somewhere someone had gotten scared or changed his mind, and as long as Jud existed, the renegade dope spy, he had to be pulled back into line.

  As long as he existed, they’d have to try.

  Joe Shit The Ragpicker.

  For nothing, he thought. I did it all again for nothing.

 
; What he kept would be the measure of their revenge.

  The scream roared out of him, echoed off the empty post office’s green walls and brass boxes.

  Two hours and five drinks later, he was back at the mansion. The bodyguard was awake. He was a Korean with dubious papers. The Doberman liked him. Jud ordered him to pack.

  Lorri was passed out across their king-size bed, a bottle of Valium by her side. She used them to bring her down so she could sleep enough to get high again. While she lay there, Jud packed two suitcases with her less flashy clothes. He packed two bags for himself, went into his study hung with the fourteenth-century Japanese-samurai woodblock-print collection he loved.

  His green beret, a 9mm Smith, and $50,000 in cash went into his briefcase. His practiced eye told him there was about $70,000 left in the safe. He put $10,000 in one envelope, the rest in a shaving kit. The safe held about a kilo of cocaine. He put two cupfuls in a plastic bag, dropped it in the shaving kit.

  It took him an hour to make the rest of his preparations.

  “Come on,” he said then, shaking Lorri into a semiconscious stupor. She was sluggish, but he got her downstairs, into the garage, into her black Mercedes. The Korean loaded her bags in that car, loaded Jud’s in the Porsche along with a case of Scotch, drove it up the block, and walked back.

  “Take this,” Jud said, handing him the envelope with $10,000. “Go to your cousin’s in San Francisco, use what you need. If I haven’t contacted you in two months, it’s all yours.”

  Jud tossed him the key to the second Mercedes.

  “Take the dog.”

  A slow bow, and the Korean obeyed.

  “Never liked that dog,” said Jud as the Korean drove away.

  Lorri was in a stupor. Jud drove the black Mercedes down the hill three blocks to the parked Porsche; later he’d ditch it for the low-key Dodge he’d kept stored at a safe house. They could see the glowing mansion. Neighbors they didn’t know slept in palaces around them on this pinnacle of American success.

  “Wake up!” he said. He used his knife to give her two hits of coke from the shaving kit. She snorted them automatically.