Aces and Knaves

by Alan Cook

  The last section of rope fell down the cliff and stopped just below me. I took hold of the rope a few feet from the end and maneuvered it behind my right shoulder. I planned to flip it over the rock that protruded above me with my right hand. Not too strong a flip or I would upset my delicate balance.

  I practiced my throwing motion several times. Then I did it for real. I kept my balance but I didn't throw hard enough. The rope didn't go over the rock. My jaw hurt and I realized I was gritting my teeth. I had to make another throw. Had to hang on a little longer. I pulled the rope back into position.

  Practice throwing motion. Again. Ready for the real throw. Now. Good strong throw. The rope went over the rock, the end came down the other side and swung toward me. I grabbed for it with my left hand and lost my balance.

  My feet came off the ledge just as I gripped the rope with my left hand. With my right hand I grabbed the section of rope coming down from the other side of the rock. I swung in mid-air, holding on to both pieces of rope with grips of desperation.

  For one awful moment I wondered whether the rock was going to break off or whether the rope was going to slide off it. Neither happened. My arms were stronger than my legs right now and I could hold my weight.

  But I had to get my legs back on the ledge. My feet frantically searched for it. They found it at last. With difficulty I stabilized myself. I was breathing very fast and my heart sounded like a kettledrum in my ears.

  I still had to pass the whole length of the rope over the rock until the section between where I was tied to it and the top of the rock was tight. Slowly, I began pulling down on the other end of the rope, uncoiling it from my shoulder at the same time and allowing the uncoiled section to pass over the rock and then snake down the cliff.

  This was the opposite of what I had done before and, in some respects, more difficult because the loop I was uncoiling might be caught in the other coils. My legs were giving out. I stopped and rested on my arms, holding onto the rope on either side of the rock.

  Back to work. Pull the rope down slowly. Uncoil it from my shoulder a coil at a time. The next coil was snagged in the other coils. Don't tug it. Work on it carefully with one hand. It was hard on my fingers. The coil came loose and I started pulling the rope down the other side of the rock again. Slowly. Slowly.

  Three more coils to go. Two. One. The rope was uncoiled and taut from me up to the rock. I could support my weight by holding onto the rope from the other side of the rock. By letting it out I could lower myself down the face of the cliff. Like a pulley system.

  I held the rope with both hands and starting letting it move up a little at a time. The rope passed over the rock and down the other side, lowering me in the process. The system was working. I just had to have a little more patience.

  Don't go too fast. Don't risk losing control of the rope. Keep a tight grip with one hand while the other hand changes position on the rope. My hands hurt as the skin was rubbed off them. Ignore the pain. Hand over hand. Walk down the cliff face backwards.

  I found the courage to look down and saw that the ground was much closer. Almost there. Then I saw the other end of the rope coming up as my end went down. I was going to run out of rope before I reached the ground. The total length of the rope was less than twice the distance from the ground to the rock.

  In a few seconds it happened. I was out of rope and I still had 20 feet more to go to reach the ground. Only 20 feet. It seemed like a mile. But maybe I could climb down. I found a foothold and stood, still holding the rope.

  I looked directly beneath me. The cliff wasn’t as steep here. There were holds, if I could reach them. If I was careful. To climb down I had to let go of the rope. It was my security blanket and I didn't want to lose it. I stood for a full minute, undecided about what to do.

  I had no choice. My legs were beginning to shake again. I released the rope and plastered my body against the cliff. But I had to move. I quickly untied the other end of the rope from around my waist so that I wouldn’t rely on it to hold my weight, without thinking. Cautiously, I lowered one hand and found a hold. Then I moved a leg. I worked it down the rock, supporting myself on my other leg, which was bent double at the knee.

  Just a little farther. My support leg gave out. For a few seconds I held myself with my hands, scrambling with my legs to find holds. My handholds weren't good enough. I started sliding.

  I turned my body and ran down the cliff, out of control. I launched off a small ledge and was airborne for the last eight or nine feet. My stomach muscles contracted in a spasm of fear as I tried to land in a spot relatively free of rocks. My feet hit and then my knees hit hard. A shockwave went through my body and I couldn't breathe.

  I rolled onto my back and struggled to get some air into my lungs. Was I dying? I put my hands on my chest and tried to pump it in some sort of artificial respiration but I couldn't get any leverage.

  I can't account for the next few minutes, but I must have started breathing again because gradually I became aware of my surroundings. I lay on my back in a sea of pain.

  I tried to move and the pain became excruciating. I lay still for a while, hoping that everything would be all right. Finally, I realized that I had to help myself. I made small movements to find out where the pain was coming from and discovered that it was in my back. Since my back hadn't hit anything I wasn't sure why, but my knees had hit hard enough to knock the wind out of me so the shock must have hurt something in my back.

  My knees were skinned but they seemed to work. Gradually, I rolled over and got to a kneeling position, gritting my teeth against the pain. I made it to my feet, but with every step pain washed through me. I knew approximately where the park headquarters was but I couldn't walk there, at least not in a reasonable length of time.

  I remembered Stan saying that he would come back and find my body. If he found me alive he would put me out of my misery. I had to hide. The jumble of rocks meant that there were plenty of hiding places. The trick was to find one that was comfortable enough so that I could stand it.

  I picked up my daypack, which had some water and granola bars in it, and hobbled a few yards away from the cliff to a cluster of boulders. I had to climb about ten feet, but I managed to work my way into the middle of them.

  A crack between two of the rocks faced toward the cliff, where both ends of the rope still hung from the outthrust rock, above. In my current state of pain I couldn't picture myself climbing up that cliff and I wondered how I had ever done it.

  I found a sitting position that was bearable. I leaned my back against a smooth rock. I drank some water and chewed on a granola bar and hoped that someone else would show up before Stan did.

  It became very quiet when I stopped moving, the kind of quiet unknown to a city, the kind that is scary to somebody used to constant noise. But it lulled me and I started to daydream, helped by the warmth of the afternoon sun. I must have fallen asleep.

  A noise startled me and I opened my eyes. Through the crack between the rocks I could see somebody moving, a little below me, near the face of the cliff. I blinked my eyes to focus them. It was Stan. He was looking up at the rope. Both ends were well above his reach. He couldn’t get to it unless he climbed partway up the rock. The rope might be used as evidence against him.

  He also had another problem. There was no body. That meant I was still alive and he had to find me before someone else did. The sun's rays slanted almost horizontally from the west. It would be dark soon. He needed to find me before dark. And I needed to get out of this mess before dark.

  Stan looked around. I didn't move. He shouldn't be able to see me because I was in shadow and the crack between the rocks in front of me wasn't very big. He walked a few steps to the side and disappeared from my view. I moved closer to the crack to increase my field of vision and spotted him, still looking around. I felt a lot better when I could see him. I had to keep him in sight.

  Without showing myself I called out, "Stan, here is the puzzle for today." />
  I paused and he looked in my general direction. If I remained hidden he wouldn't know I was hurt and he would hesitate to approach me, especially since he had to climb uphill, out in the open, to do it.

  I continued, "If party A pays party B to kill party C, does that make party A a coward?"

  "I know where you are," Stan said, but he didn't move in my direction.

  He took off his backpack and pulled out a gun. I had been afraid of that.

  "You can't use a gun here," I said, partly to let him know I could see him.

  Stan continued to search with his eyes, but he didn't spot me. He walked slowly toward the base of my rocks. I couldn't let him get too close. I picked up a loose stone. I stood up quickly and lobbed it at him, almost screaming at the pain in my back.

  The stone bounced harmlessly a few feet from him, but he fired twice at where I had been. The shots reverberated off the cliff walls. Stan retreated several steps while I kept silent. Somebody would hear the shots and show up soon. I just had to wait him out.

  He must have realized that his time to shut me up was limited because he started toward my position again and reached the bottom of my rock pile. If he killed me he might be able to declare self-defense or even get away. I showed myself briefly and lobbed another rock at him, audibly grunting. It missed again. He fired at the air.

  Stan started to climb toward me, keeping his gun pointed in my direction. He was too close and too alert for me to show myself again. I had moved so I could only see his legs through the crack. If I couldn't see his eyes he couldn't see me. I hoped.

  But I had to do something fast. I stuck my hand out through the crack, waved it quickly and pulled it back in. He didn't fire but I could tell he had seen it by listening to the noises his feet made. What he couldn't see was the actual entrance I had used to get into my sanctuary because it was around to the side.

  I picked up a good-sized rock and crawled painfully toward that opening. I could tell by Stan's noises that he was almost to the crack. It was now or never. I stood up, suppressing my desire to cry out at the pain.

  Stan's side was toward me now and his head was partially hidden. He stuck his gun into the crack in the rocks. I drew a deep but silent breath to help me stand the pain and then took two giant steps toward Stan. I raised the rock over my head with both hands.

  My war cry was more of a scream as I launched the rock at his head. He moved slightly and it caught him mostly in the shoulder. I covered the rest of the distance between us in one painful bound.

  I managed to knock his head into the rock face, but the effort hurt so much that I lost my breath again. I sat down heavily. Stan appeared to be stunned. His eyes looked toward me, but I'm not sure he saw me.

  We sat there a few feet apart, two injured combatants, too hurt to fight. Stan slowly pulled his arm out of the crack in the rocks, not appearing to notice that he was doing it. I kept my eyes glued to it, waiting for the gun to appear. There was nothing more I could do to stop him.

  After an eternity his hand came into sight. The gun wasn't in it. He must have dropped it when I hit him. I would have breathed a sigh of relief but it hurt to breathe. The only way to retrieve the gun was to go in the entrance to my former hideaway, and neither of us could get that far. We sat for another five minutes, not speaking, hardly moving.

  A voice from below called, "Are you two all right?"

  It sounded like Jed. I said, as loudly as I could, "We're hurt. We need help."

  I turned my head and watched Jed climb up the rocks toward us. When he got to us I said, "Stan killed Ned Mackay and he tried to kill me."

  Chapter 35 JAMES

  As I lay on a gurney in the emergency room I tried to remember whether I was already covered by the Tartan medical plan or whether there was a waiting period for new employees. That's one of the things you don't usually worry about when you're young and healthy and starting a new job and I hadn't, until now. Jed had told the admissions people I was covered in order to get me admitted, but still I wondered.

  My brain had short-circuited and was running in circles, partly as a result of the painkiller the nurse had given me after it had been determined from X-rays that the only thing wrong with me was a cracked vertebra. When I wasn't trying to sort out the insurance problem I was replaying the last few minutes I had spent with Stan and wondering how I had survived.

  I should feel fortunate that I had. All I needed to do was to wear a body caste for a few weeks. It would be applied as soon as the doctor was freed up from taking care of a heart-attack victim who apparently had priority over me. Certainly, he was in worse shape than I was. With luck, I would be out of here in an hour.

  Jed had driven me all the way back to San Francisco because I had made light of my injury and said I could stand it. During the trip, when we had bounced over bumps I had rued not asking to be taken to the nearest hospital, but now I was glad I wasn't stuck in Salinas.

  The others had placed Stan under a form of house arrest and brought him back, also, after tying him up with one of the climbing ropes. It was felt that his crimes could more adequately be dealt with here in the city than out in the sticks.

  Somebody came into my room. Hoping it was the doctor, I turned my head to look. The flashy sport shirt immediately told me it wasn't and the limp looked familiar. I blinked to clear the haze from in front of my eyes and verified that it was indeed James.

  "What are you doing here?" I asked. It must be around midnight.

  "I came to make sure you weren't going to kill yourself to get out of working for me," James said, patting my shoulder. "You know, most young men would give their eye teeth to work for Tartan, but you've played hard to get. That's one reason I like you."

  "I broke my back for you."

  James looked concerned, the first time I had ever seen that look on his face since we had tried to find Ned. "They told me that you'll be fine in a few weeks."

  "I'll be fine." But not Stan. How much had the guys told him about Stan?

  "I'm sick about Stan," James said, reading my mind. "I'm beginning to understand why you thought I was involved in Ned's murder. If Stan commissioned it, I must be behind it. But Ned was my best friend, even though we had our differences. I've done some things I'm not proud of, but I'm not a murderer. But Stan...."

  James shook his head, at a loss for words. I'm sure he couldn't understand how a brain like Stan's worked. I couldn't, either. I felt I should say something to console him. He and Stan had been.... Whatever it was, it had gone beyond the usual employer-employee relationship. Otherwise, why would Stan go off the cliff, so to speak?

  There was an awkward silence, during which I tried to think of words that wouldn't come. James broke it, saying, "To show you I'm not such a bad guy, I'm going to let you off the hook. You don't have to work for me and I'm going to cancel your obligation on the baseball card. I've caused you enough trouble by not being alert to what Stan was up to."

  My first inclination was to say, "You don't have to do that," but I was afraid if I did he might take it back. I should learn a lesson from him. When somebody owes you, collect. And James obviously felt he owed me.

  "I'll tell you what," I said, talking slowly to buy time as the idea formulated itself in my head. "I'll keep the job and I'll pay you for the card if you stop trying to take over Dionysus. Don't solicit proxies, and divest Tartan of the Dionysus stock it holds, in an orderly manner so as not to upset the market."

  James smiled as if I had said something funny. "You're a smart young man," he said, "and I'm sure you already know what I'm about to tell you, but I'm going to do it anyway, to give you a chance to change your mind. Number one, if I can't get Elma's proxy, the chances of Tartan taking over Dionysus are slim, and at the moment she doesn't appear to be in my corner. And I have a feeling that when she hears a Tartan employee murdered her husband the news will not endear her to us.

  “Number two, being a part of Tartan might actually be good for Dionysus, for several reasons. It
would certainly put your father on easy street, financially, and I have a feeling some of that would dribble down to you.”

  "My father can take care of his own financial interests," I said. Why did I feel I had to defend him? "I've seen you in action enough to know that you usually get what you aim for so I'm not sure Elma is enough to stop you. But in addition...my father wants...that is, he wants to continue running Dionysus. He doesn't want to give it up yet. It's his life."

  James looked surprised. "You're doing this for him, aren't you?"

  "Don't tell him we had this conversation," I said, quickly.

  "I have two daughters. I can't remember that they've ever done anything for me. Oh, they send me Father's Day cards and they come for obligatory visits. But mostly it seems that they want things from me. I think big weddings are next on the agenda."

  The conversation was headed in the wrong direction. "I don't mind working for you," I said. “I might even learn something."

  "The good news is that Tartan will make money on the Dionysus stock it holds." James grinned. "As some famous investor said, 'Nobody ever went broke taking a profit.' I have just one question: Where are you going to get the money to pay me for the baseball card?"

  "From my Tartan stock options."

  James laughed, long and loud

  Chapter 36 ARROW

  It was difficult to get dressed while wearing a caste around my body, a caste that covered my chest and most of my back. It was difficult to do a number of things: sleep, wash, drive and even use a computer. I wore a loose sweater to cover the caste. My image in the mirror was much too bulky to be me.

  I was beginning to get the hang of driving while keeping my back straight as I parked beside Arrow's condominium complex. She should be home from work. I knew this because I had called John, my father's administrative assistant, earlier, and asked him to let me know when she left the office.

  John had wanted to talk. He had heard stories about my adventures in Northern California and they excited him, but I cut him off by telling him that I would give him the whole scoop some day. In about a million years.