Nature of the Game

by James Grady

  “I didn’t get in this car to drive away,” said Nick. “I’ll buy that you go in alone, but I’ll be right here. On the road. Waiting.”

  Jud looked at his old friend, saw enough not to argue.

  Nick held out the revolver. “Here,”

  “No,” said Jud. “Not now.”

  “You’re just going to walk up to the front door?”

  “Balls to the wall.” Jud opened the Jeep’s door. “Stay in the car.”

  He laughed. “If shit happens, somebody has to go get the Marines.”

  “Sure,” said Nick.

  “See you later,” said Jud.

  Then he was gone, a hulking form slogging up the driveway through the rain. Nick strained: through the storm and the trees, he thought he heard a doorbell, thought he saw a shaft of light escape into the night as a door opened. Imagined he heard voices, questions asked and answered. Then the light vanished; he was alone in the tunnel with only the sound of the rain.

  YELLOW SNAKE

  Bad weather’s rush hour traffic trapped Wes; it took him an hour to get into D.C., another half hour to get through it and find the Maryland suburb. The Beltway would have looped him around the city, but he preferred the straight line to the curve, even if it wasn’t the easiest way.

  The house looked wonderful, even in the dark: big, rambling, blue. Gables, covered front porch. Oak trees. A yard for kids. Did Beth like this kind of place? He parked, took his attaché case, and hurried up the sidewalk through the rain.

  Like a husband home from a hard day’s work, he thought.

  A dog barked inside the house. A big dog.

  She didn’t answer the first time he rang the bell. Nor the second. When he didn’t leave, he heard her quiet the dog behind the wooden door.

  “What do you want?” came her muffled voice.

  “I’m a friend of Nick’s!” said Wes. “Please open the door: the dog sounds like he can keep me out, and I hate shouting our business for the neighbors.”

  The door swung open. She was pretty: black hair, smile lines on a grim face. She held tight to the rottweiler.

  “Who are you?”

  “Wes Chandler, a friend of your husband’s.”

  “I don’t know you.”

  “I’m new,” said Wes. “Is he here?”

  “He’ll be right back! You can’t wait!”

  Right back? Nick had said he’d go home, wait. “Where did he go? Does this have something to do with Jud?”

  “I don’t know what you’re talking about.” Her face said she lied. “Now please leave.”

  “You’ve got to trust me, Mrs. Kelley.”

  “Why?”

  “I’m a Marine officer. A lawyer and—”

  “I’m a lawyer, too. Big deal.”

  Her hand grabbed the door: he was losing her.

  “You work for a congressman!” blurted Wes. “Nick said!”

  She frowned, stayed her push.

  “Suppose the congressman vouches for me?” said Wes.

  “If you knew him, I’d know you.”

  “Wait.” Wes took his cellular phone from the attaché case. “We can’t use yours.”

  He saw her blink.

  “What’s the congressman’s name?” When she didn’t answer, he said, “I can call and get your listing in a staff directory.”

  She told him.

  Wes called a number he’d been given weeks before. “General Butler, it’s Wes Chandler. A while back, you told me that if I needed help, you would send up some flares.”

  “From what I hear, you’ve been burning up the sky yourself,” said the Marine who was Wes’s mentor.

  “Not enough, sir. There was some confusion the last few days. I was reported AWOL. That report has been corrected.”

  “Shitty business, Major.”

  “Yes sir. And I’m taking fire. Flares, sir.”

  “What?”

  “I need you to call a congressman—now. Vouch for me.”

  “What the hell are you doing, Wes?”

  “Semper fi,” was his reply.

  General Butler sighed. “Which son of a bitch do you want?”

  Sylvia made him wait on the porch. They didn’t try small talk. The dog waited by her side, mouth open, eyes on Wes.

  Seventeen minutes later, the cellular phone buzzed.

  “Who’s this?” growled a man when Wes answered.

  “Congressman?” asked Wes.

  “I know who I am, who the hell are you?”

  “One moment, sir.”

  Sylvia hesitated; took the phone.

  “Yes?” she said. “Yes…. I appreciate it…. No…. I can’t tell you now…. No, it won’t affect you…. Thank you…. Okay.”

  She handed the phone to Wes. “He wants to talk to you.”

  “Major,” snapped the congressman, “Sam Butler played a chit for you. I don’t know your bullshit, but I’ve got your name, rank, and serial number, and you’ve got my word that if Sylvia ends up with so much as a frown on her face, you’ll be bulldozed so deep you’ll forget you ever saw sunshine!”

  The connection died.

  “You can come in,” she told Wes.

  The dog stayed between them as they stood in the hall.

  “Where’s Nick?” said Wes.

  “He left.” She licked her lips. “With somebody.”

  “Jud Stuart? He was here?”

  Sylvia nodded.

  “Why didn’t they wait?”

  “Nick wanted him to—Nick’s doing what he thinks is right! He has no knowledge of or active participation in—”

  “I’m not a judge,” said Wes.

  “Then what are you?”

  “Where did they go?”

  “I don’t know. Nick drove him in our Jeep. Jud went to see somebody, then he’s agreed to meet a friend of Nick’s: you?”

  “Did they say who they were going to see?”

  “They wouldn’t tell me.” She hesitated, bit her lip.

  “Mrs. Kelley, if you know anything …”

  “This is how it starts, isn’t it?” She shook her head. “I spied on them. I snuck up the stairs, listened to … They went to somebody’s house. Jud had been there before. They took Route Fifty. I heard them say something about Exit Four Twenty-four.

  “Now I’m just like all of you, aren’t I?” she whispered.

  “Where off of Four Twenty-four?” said Wes, who’d gone to the Naval Academy not far from that road.

  “I can’t give you an address,” she said.

  “But somebody can.” Wes pushed REDIAL on his phone. After his call, he asked her, “You heard me mention General Varon?”

  She nodded.

  “If something happens—”

  “What?” said Sylvia. “If what happens? What kind of—”

  “You’ll know,” said Wes. “General Byron Varon. If anything happens, call your congressman, tell him Varon is the one. Tell him he’ll need a giant bulldozer.”

  “What are you doing? Nick—When will …”

  “Give us until dawn,” said Wes.

  And then he was gone.

  Sylvia walked through her home, turning lights on. The dog padded beside her. After the Marine left, she’d let the dog outside to pee. Now the house smelled of wet dog. She locked the doors and windows. The nursery was empty; she left Saul’s ragged stuffed monkey where he’d dropped it in the middle of his map-of-the-states rug. The bed in their room was too soft for Nick. She’d meant to get a new one. This is where I dream beside my husband. She hurried downstairs.

  Her limbs were heavy rubber; her flesh tingled and she was nauseous. She didn’t dare turn on the TV or radio—she needed to be aware of the creaks and moans of the house. Three dining room chairs were pushed out from the table. Are they still warm? Could someone tell they’d been used? She quickly shoved them back in place, hid Jud’s dirty dishes in the dishwasher, ran that appliance to wash away his fingerprints.

  The grandfather clock ticked as though t
his were normal time. Visions of her life were everywhere; she backed up until her shoulders hit a corner of the dining room.

  The Peace Corps in Mexico showed her the futility of the past and the future, the unrelenting randomness of fate. She’d learned what law school ignored: that laws are hollow vessels empowered by the blood poured into them. On the Hill, she’d watched unseen forces rewrite the best of plans. Yet still she believed, hoped. She trusted. She asked for only what she earned. And it had all come to this: she was trapped in her house, the night and the storm cradling all she loved most.

  Tears streamed from eyes she forced to stay open. She slid down the corner until she sat on the wooden floor. There were dust balls under the china cabinet. The knife in her back pocket dug into her hip. She laid it on the floor; light glistened on its blade. There was a phone on a side table. She lifted it down to her side: traitorous machine, her compromised lifeline to no one who could help. The black dog curled up beside her, huge and wet.

  She sank into the hardwood floor, her back against the corner. Waiting. Crying.

  A yellow snake of headlights crawled in Wes’s rearview mirror. Traffic thinned by the time he reached the Beltway. Most people were home, having dinner or watching the evening news, scolding the children or worrying about the rain as they got ready to go out for social events, to a movie. He couldn’t remember the last movie he’d seen, wondered if Beth …

  Don’t think about her!

  When he left the Beltway for Route 50, few of his fellow travelers came with him. Traffic on that highway was light.

  When did I start on this journey? he thought. Was it twenty days ago, when Denton summoned me? Or was it twenty years ago?

  How much time do I have left?

  Twenty minutes later, he found the 424 exit. As he drove east on that two-lane road, his mirror showed two pairs of headlights take that exit, fall in behind him about a mile back.

  Couldn’t be a tail.

  When he’d left the CIA, he’d cut and woven his way through rush hour traffic. No surveillance team could have seen through the Metro buses as he turned sharp corners or caught up to him with blind luck when he’d blown through red lights.

  Probably young professionals, he thought. High-powered D.C. jobs, a daily hour drive to a home by the Bay.

  This was his college turf: he remembered day trips off campus and away from pressures of academics and rank. General Butler had given him the address, but Wes wanted to check the map in the glove compartment. He couldn’t read it while driving.

  Up ahead, left side of the highway: a neon red sign. A roadhouse. Rain pounded four vehicles pulled close to its door. Wes pulled off the highway, parked alongside a black Porsche, two Toyotas, and a battered pickup. His trunk pointed toward the tavern door, his windshield toward the dark road. He turned off his headlights, unfolded the map on the steering wheel.

  But he watched the highway.

  They’ll pass by in a minute. Two cars, commuters headed home. They’re only a mile or so back, and there were no turnoffs between here and there. They’ll pass by in a minute.

  Two minutes. Four. Six.

  He couldn’t believe in flat tires, Good Samaritans. They were out there, stopped along the road. Waiting.

  The Sig was on his hip, spare clips in his black jacket. He took the attaché case in his left hand; his gun hand was empty as he opened the car door and stepped into the wet night.

  Eight minutes. No headlights passed. The neon sign on the tavern’s roof cast a red glow over him as he stood beside his car in the rain. Nine minutes.

  He opened the trunk of his car. Nothing.

  A car drove past—from the wrong direction.

  He crawled on his hands and knees in the wet gravel and mud, ran his hand along the car’s undercarriage. Found it stuck out of sight beneath the back bumper: two red lights glowing on a magnetic box the size of a paperback book. A small antenna.

  Electronic tracker. They didn’t need to see him with their eyes to follow where he went.

  He grabbed the box—froze.

  There’s more than one. They’d plant one for me to find—if I were that smart. They had this car the whole time I was upstairs with Billy. The other transmitters would be impossible to find in a field search. If I pull this one, they’ll know I know.

  Betrayal flooded over Wes as he knelt in the mud. He scrambled to his feet, hurled gravel at the empty highway.

  Rain beat down on him.

  The light inside the tavern was yellow and shadowed. The bar-tender watched Wes walk in, then turned back to the TV’s basketball game. The tables were empty. A couple huddled in a booth. Their eyes were wide and nervous as Wes entered, softened when they saw only his drenched form. They went back to holding hands. Wes guessed their wedding rings weren’t a matched set.

  A man talked on the pay phone by the rest room. He wore a flashy sports jacket, a tie. His haircut cost fifty dollars.

  “… so it ain’t enough I got to eat shit from the D.C. Realty Board,” he said. “Their bullshit rules. I drive out here to nowhere in the fucking rain to show a house, and my shithole client decides he don’t want to come get wet!”

  Outside the tavern’s windows, the road stayed empty.

  What am I going to do? thought Wes.

  “Don’t talk to me about money!” whined the salesman. “More guys got paper on me than I got bills in my wallet! The bottom falls out of the housing market and lands right on my head!”

  In the TV set, the ball game’s time-out buzzer rang.

  “One day at a time?” said the salesman. “I’m working on last year! Pick up the phone today and it’s the car dealer. Loved me when I came in and made his commission, now he’s digging me because I’m a few weeks late! Hell, the insurance premiums on the Porsche are killing me and he wants his damn monthly vig!”

  Whatever their agenda is, concluded Wes, they don’t care about me. Or Jud. Or Nick. All they care about is keeping their marble walls clean.

  “I got a half a mind to call our friend in Baltimore,” said the real estate agent. “Tell him where to find the Porsche, let the insurance company feed the dealer his nut, and cut me the change.”

  Billy told the truth, thought Wes. As far as he went. But he didn’t trust me. He set me up, put his people on my tail.

  “Gotta sell, right?” said the man on the phone. “Gotta move, gotta sell. But ain’t nobody here buying shit!”

  The broker lifted his Scotch rocks off the nearby table, knocked it back, said, “What the hell’s a guy supposed to do?”

  Ice rattled in his glass. He groped behind himself to put the glass on the table. Something thunked close to his hand.

  A wad of money lay tossed next to his glass. The salesman raised his eyes. Saw a big guy in a black windbreaker, water dripping from a cheap short haircut. The cop stare. He was closing an attaché case, smiling at the wad—shit! Five, six hundred dollars showing! More under that!

  “Ah, Lewis,” said the salesman, “let me call you back.”

  Nick sat behind the wheel of his family Jeep, engine off, staring through the rain toward the house behind the swaying trees. He kept the Jeep windows rolled down so the glass wouldn’t steam up; so he could hear. The revolver filled his hand.

  Jud had been gone seven minutes.

  Behind me! Noise inside the rain: an engine whine, coming closer. Gravel crunching. Coming closer …

  No headlights in the Jeep mirror. Nick stuck his head out the window: rain batting his eyes, the night, trees swaying….

  Behind him: a dark shape. Coming closer.

  Jud had said stay in the car.

  Sitting duck.

  Nick bailed out of the Jeep—forgot about the interior light’s flashing when the door opened! He scrambled across the slippery gravel road to the barrow pit as the dark shape whined closer. Nick ran, tripped, staggered, and fell, rolled prone in the ditch across the road and twenty feet behind his vehicle.

  A dark coupe, headlights out,
stopped a car length behind the Jeep. The coupe’s engine chugged, died.

  Water and sweat streamed down Nick’s face as he aimed the trembling revolver at the coupe, at the shadowed human being silhouetted in the driver’s window. Nick’s guts were on fire, his trigger finger ached. He clicked back the gun’s hammer and tried to breathe air thick with wet trees and rain, gravel and fear.

  A thousand heartbeats, a handful of time.

  The voice of the coupe’s driver cut through the rain. “Nick: I saw you when you got out. It’s Wes. I know you’re out there. I’m alone.”

  The right voice. Nick licked his lips, swallowed. Kept the gun zeroed on the Porsche.

  “I’m opening the car door.”

  The Porsche’s interior light winked on: the Marine, unzipped black jacket, hands empty as he stepped into the rain.

  “It’s okay, Nick.” His words were hushed, but firm.

  Gun aimed at the coupe, Nick stood. Wes didn’t move as Nick came close, peered into the Porsche.

  Empty. Nick lowered his pistol.

  The rain fell on the two of them.

  “Jud’s in there,” said Wes, nodding toward the house.

  “About ten minutes,” confirmed Nick.

  Wes wiped his face. “We don’t have much time. I ditched the CIA, but they’ll figure it out soon, put where they lost me together with where I could have gone, and come up with here. What about Varon’s men?”

  “I don’t know who’s in there,” said Nick.

  “We’re exposed here,” said the Marine. “There’s a basketball court at the turnoff from the main road. Parking lot beside it, in the trees, out of the light. Follow me there and stash the Jeep. Can you drive a Porsche?”

  “Had one once. But—”

  “You’ll bring me back here,” said Wes. “Drive back there, wait.”

  “That’s four miles away,” said Nick. “I won’t do any good there.”

  “That’s the only place you can do any good.” Wes nodded toward the gun in Nick’s hand. “This isn’t your job.”

  “This isn’t about work.”

  “It’s about duty. Yours is back there. Jud and I will walk out, rendezvous with you. If you don’t make it by dawn, if shit flies … Somebody has to be left to put it straight.”

  “That’s not my job.”