Grandmaster

by Klass, David

  I looked back at Moffatt and mentally stripped away all the sports cars and chess tutors and zeroes in his bank account. Tonight he would no doubt go back to a penthouse apartment in some supertrendy neighborhood of Manhattan, while I would drive back through the Lincoln Tunnel to our three-bedroom house with the busted garage door and the leaky toilet, but right now it was just the two of us at the table—two brains locked in mental combat.

  I remembered my dad’s advice: “If you’re up against a strong player, get him off the book and make him think for himself.” I played Alekhine’s Defense, which my father had told me about. “Alexander Alekhine, who defeated the great Capablanca to become world champion, introduced it in 1921,” Dad had explained. “It’s not played much because it looks so ugly for black at the beginning. But if black plays the first few moves correctly, it leads to an open position with good attacking chances.”

  At first Moffatt seemed confident. His white pawns pushed my knight around and took over the center. Soon he was castled safely and had a formidable pawn wall, while my black pieces looked underdeveloped. But my father had counseled me to be patient. “Just play one sound move after another and chip away at white’s center pawns, and his position will start to crumble.”

  Moffatt didn’t panic—his tutors had prepared him well. But as the game went on and I castled my own king and started to undermine his center pawn mass, he looked a little irritated. I was rated nearly nine hundred points lower than him. I could tell that he already thought of himself as a master, and me as a rank beginner, and he was putting all kinds of pressure on himself to crush me.

  One strong move at a time, my dad had said. I flashed back to the previous night, when my father had replayed his favorite games from memory and Fischer and Morphy had come alive and hovered above me, whispering their most basic lessons into my head. “Get your king to safety. Control the center of the board. Develop your pieces to useful squares—knights first, then bishops, and then rooks. Keep your pawns connected and they’ll fight harder for you, like comrades who can cheer one another on.”

  I didn’t try to do anything fancy—I just made sure that every one of my moves had a logical point behind it. Moffatt’s irritation turned to annoyance and then anger. He bit his lip and rubbed the sides of his chin with his palms. “Where the hell are you getting these moves from?” he hissed as we reached the middle game on fairly even turns and I started to switch from defending to attacking. “You’re just a class D player, for God’s sake!”

  I thought to myself, This is a part of who I am that I never knew before, part of my birthright. My father wasn’t a great swimmer or runner or football player, but he had one of the greatest chess brains of his generation. And maybe he’d passed a little bit of it on to me. So maybe I’d never be the best athlete or the most popular kid at the Loon Lake Academy, but I suddenly felt like I could take apart this bossy, boastful billionaire.

  I didn’t say any of that out loud, though. What I did say was: “Please be quiet, or I’ll have to call over a ref,” and then I made my strongest move yet and got up from the table. I had learned that when my opponent starts getting frustrated, it infuriates him or her even more to stare across at an empty chair. I decided to let Moffatt stew alone for a few minutes while I checked on my dad.

  There was already a crowd in the common area, watching the two large monitors. I could see and hear my father, and he didn’t look good. He was breathing in gasps, his face was pale, and tiny beads of sweat threaded together across his forehead. George Liszt had the white pieces and was attacking mercilessly. Every time Dad tried to wiggle out of pressure, Liszt responded immediately, as if he had foreseen my father’s move and had the answer ready.

  My mother spotted me and hurried over, with Kate trailing behind. “Your father’s in trouble,” Mom said, and since she didn’t know anything about chess I figured she was worried about the way he looked. “Daniel, we’ve got to get him out.”

  “It’s his last game and he’s already in the middle of it,” I told her. “He’ll be done soon.”

  “Just look at his face,” she whispered. “He looks like he’s melting.”

  “That monster is going to crush him,” Kate added, for once not sarcastic but actually sounding worried herself.

  On the monitor Liszt did look like a monster—he appeared twice as big as my dad. It was like watching Godzilla playing chess with the next person he was planning to devour. Liszt sat hunched forward in an aggressive and intimidating pose, as if he might slip forward at any moment and crush my dad to smithereens. His thick arms rested on either side of the table like two anacondas, and he aimed his fierce laser stare right between my father’s eyes, as if trying to melt down the front of Dad’s skull. The big man’s jaw, beneath his thick black beard, sawed very slightly back and forth.

  “Ask him to stop grinding his teeth,” my father demanded to the tournament ref, who sat off-screen.

  “I’m sorry, but I don’t hear anything,” the ref answered.

  Dad looked directly at Liszt. “Why don’t you cut it out and just play chess?”

  “I am playing, Morris,” Liszt responded in a mocking rumble. “Keep calm. You don’t want to get upset, do you? We know what happens when you get upset.”

  “Silence, both of you,” the tournament ref commanded, and the game resumed.

  I had to go back to my own game, so I gave Mom a reassuring hug. “I’ll be back soon,” I promised her. “Don’t worry about Dad. He’ll get through this okay.”

  I don’t think she heard me. She was staring at the monitor screen, where my father’s right hand had drifted to his left wrist to take his pulse. As I headed back into the tournament hall I heard her whisper, “Morris, please … calm down.”

  31

  Moffatt had already moved when I returned, and my side of the chess clock was running. He was sitting with his arms crossed, staring at the board and glancing at the flashing digital display of the minutes I had left, as if hoping that I would take too long to come back and lose on time. He looked disappointed to see me walk up. I gave him a little smile, as if to say, “Did you really think I would hand you this game?”; slipped back into my chair; and saw right away that he had overreached.

  My dad had counseled me to ignore the higher ratings of opponents and just play the best chess I could. Now I understood that his warning cut both ways. Because of my low rating, Moffatt saw me as a class D player, and he apparently couldn’t get that out of his head. He was being wildly overaggressive and trying for a quick mate.

  I made a sound defensive move, but instead of backing off he pressed his attack. Three or four moves later it was clear that he wasn’t going to be able to checkmate me, and that he had badly compromised his position. Not only had his attack faltered, but he had left himself open to a counterattack. I stopped defending and started firing off aggressive salvos of my own, and the billionaire panicked.

  He took longer to move, and kept glancing across at me, waiting for me to make the beginner’s blunder he was certain was coming. But I was scenting blood, and I wasn’t about to slip up. I sacrificed a pawn for open lines and ripped his king’s position apart. Finally, Moffatt saw that the end was near. Fear gleamed in his eyes, and then grudging acceptance—he was going to lose this game in a few more moves and there was no escape.

  The chess player in him stepped back, and the hard-driving businessman took over. “Listen to me, Pratzer,” Moffatt whispered, leaning forward and speaking in such a low voice that only I could hear it. “If I drop this game, all the time and work and money I’ve sunk into making master go out the window. There is a way for us to reach an … accommodation … where I get what I want … and richly deserve … and you get substantial restitution—” He broke off and raised his eyebrows as if to assure me that if I let him win, the payoff would be well worth my while.

  I looked back at him coldly, seeing him now for the scoundrel that he was. “If you talk to me again, I’ll call over the ref, an
d report what you just offered. Maybe you’ll solve chess one day, but you’re going to lose this game and you don’t deserve to be a master.” I reached down and made a killer move. “Check.”

  Three moves later, Moffatt gave up gracelessly. He stared back at me with narrowed eyes and cobralike fury, as if I had upended all his carefully laid plans and he wanted to sink his fangs into me, and knocked over his king. “What a waste,” he hissed. “What a damn shame.”

  But I had finished with him and was already moving to hand in my score sheet and check on my father. I ran into Eric, who had also just finished. “How’d it go?” he asked.

  “Busted the billionaire!” I reported. “And you?”

  “Mind-crippled the master!” he exulted. “And my dad is winning, too. The German international master must still be jet-lagged. So we have a real chance to win first prize, if your father can pull his game out.”

  “That’s a big if,” I told him as we hurried out the door of the tournament hall. More than two hundred people had gathered in front of the two monitors to watch my dad and Liszt duke it out. A master stood on a podium, commentating. As we walked up I heard him say: “Black is not lost yet, but he’s sure not looking good.” Liu spotted me and hurried over. “Your father’s coming apart at the seams,” she told me. “He’s taken two bathroom breaks in the last fifteen minutes to try to pull himself together. He’s also losing badly on time. Your mom can’t even watch. Whatever Liszt is doing is making your dad crazy.”

  On the monitor, my father looked like he might have a nervous breakdown at any moment. He was trembling and drenched in sweat, as if he had just stepped out of a sauna. His arms were not folded in front of him in his usual position, but rather they were clutching the sides of the table as if he were dizzy and bracing himself. When he squinted down at the board he looked like his head was spinning, and when he glanced up at Liszt he looked like a torture victim staring into the eyes of his tormentor.

  Mom and Kate were sitting on chairs near a window, by themselves. Every few seconds my mother would turn to the screen and glance at her husband and then quickly look away. I walked over to her, and Liu and Eric followed. “Hey, Mom…”

  I was going to tell her that I had won my game, but when she turned her head to look at me I could see at once that she didn’t care about chess results. Deep lines of worry crosshatched her face. She grabbed my wrist and I could feel her desperation. “Daniel,” she said. Just my name. But I understood it was an urgent plea.

  “It’s almost over,” I told her. “They’re moving into the endgame.”

  She shook her head. “Now,” she said.

  “I don’t know where they are, Mom,” I told her.

  Suddenly the crowd reacted. I glanced at the monitor and saw that my father had made a move.

  “That’s a fascinating move for black,” the master said. “On its face it doesn’t look sound, but it’s certainly interesting. I admit I didn’t see it coming. I’ll have to take a few seconds and study it.”

  Liszt clearly didn’t think it was sound. The big grandmaster caught my father’s eye, smiled, made a quick move of his own in reply, and then slid his thumb and index finger over his throat and around the front of his neck.

  “He’s telling your father that he’s choking,” Eric surmised.

  “No,” I said, “he’s reminding my dad of something a lot worse.”

  “What’s worse than choking away the final game?” Eric asked.

  “Stanwick,” I whispered.

  “Who’s Stanwick?” my mom demanded.

  Just then Dr. Chisolm hurried over to join us.

  “Hey, Dad, did you win?” Eric asked.

  Dr. Chisolm nodded, but he was staring at my father on the monitor. “I’m not sure I like the way he’s rubbing his jaw,” he muttered.

  “His jaw?” Kate asked. “Dad has lousy teeth so…”

  “And his left shoulder,” Dr. Chisolm noted.

  I could see on the monitor that Dad’s hand had slid down from rubbing his jaw to massaging his left shoulder.

  Dr. Chisolm dug out his cell phone. “It could be nothing,” he said, “but…”

  I realized that the heart is on the left side of the body, and guessed that tightness in the jaw and pain in the left shoulder are warning signs of serious heart trouble. “Who are you calling?” I asked.

  “I got the cell phone number of one of the high tournament officials,” Dr. Chisolm said. “Just in case.”

  On the monitor, Liszt did something really strange. He had taken off his belt, and now he brought the leather strap up to his neck and let the ends hang down from his shoulders.

  “What the heck is that guy doing?” Eric asked.

  Dr. Chisolm punched buttons on his cell phone. “No answer. I’ll try again.”

  “Please put that belt back on and stop misbehaving,” the tournament ref rebuked Liszt.

  But it was too late. The sight of the belt, and no doubt the reminder it was, unhinged my father. For a moment I thought he was going to go over the table at Liszt. Then he muttered a curse, got up from the table, and bolted.

  A second later, Dr. Chisolm got through. He spoke a few quick words and then turned to us, the cell phone still pressed to the side of his face. “Your father left the playing room, and before they could stop him he ran out of the penthouse suite,” he told me.

  “Where is he?” my mother asked.

  “No one knows,” Dr. Chisolm told her. “He’s gone.”

  32

  “They’ve checked the penthouse floor and they can’t find him,” Dr. Chisolm reported to my mom. “Hotel security thinks he’s still inside the hotel. There are doormen at all exits, and none of them recall seeing him walking out. Do you think he might have gone to your room to look for you?”

  Mom nodded hopefully and hurried off toward the elevators with Kate trailing a step behind. Dr. Chisolm ran to join them, and Eric followed.

  “Don’t you want to go?” Liu asked me.

  “If he’s in our suite, they’ll find him,” I told her. “But I don’t think he is.”

  She heard a note of fear in my voice. “Where do you think he is, Daniel?”

  I recalled what Grandmaster Liszt had told me about what my dad had done long ago when he cracked under extreme pressure. “I think he might be up on the roof.”

  Liu looked back at me. “Why the roof?”

  “Once, at a tournament in San Francisco, the police had to wrestle him off a hotel roof,” I told her in a low voice. “And it happened at a couple of other tournaments, too, when he came unglued. And he was playing Liszt up in the penthouse, so the roof is very close.”

  “Let’s go,” she said.

  We ran to the elevators and were soon rocketing up to the thirty-fifth floor. “There’s no button for the penthouse floor,” I pointed out, “let alone for the roof. They’re probably both locked off.”

  “It’s a hotel, not a prison,” Liu said. “We’ll find a way.”

  We reached the thirty-fifth floor, bolted down the hallway, and found a flight of stairs heading up. I took them three at a time, with Liu right behind me. The next stairwell had a P instead of a floor number. A closed door said: PENTHOUSE FLOOR. PRIVATE.

  “Want to take a quick look?” Liu asked.

  “Let’s keep going,” I told her.

  We climbed a narrow metal staircase that corkscrewed upward into semidarkness. I imagined Dad circling up these stairs alone, trembling, needing light and air, and craving escape from the pressure he felt closing in on all sides of him.

  At the top of the metal stairs was a heavy steel door. In the dim lighting, I could just read the red sign on it: WARNING: EMERGENCY DOOR. KEEP CLOSED BY NEW YORK STATE LAW. ALARMS WILL SOUND.

  “Does this qualify as an emergency?” I asked Liu.

  “Definitely,” she said, and pushed the handle of the door. It stayed shut.

  I raised my foot and kicked the handle hard, and the door burst open. No alarms sounde
d. Either the sign was a bluff or the system wasn’t working. I stepped through the doorway and Liu followed me out into blinding sunlight.

  New York is a jungle of skyscrapers and we stepped out onto the roof—the sun-splashed uppermost tier. The tops of other skyscrapers were all around us, with spires and cell phone towers. Far below, Broadway looked as narrow as a bowling alley, the cars and buses were nickels and dimes, and the people crawled like beetles.

  There was nothing up there—no furniture, no ladders or construction material, not even a bench. I guess they were afraid a strong wind might blow debris off the flat surface and onto the heads of pedestrians far below. I looked in every direction and didn’t spot my father. “There,” Liu suddenly said. “Oh my God.”

  Dad was standing at the very edge of a corner of the roof, his back to us, looking down at the street below. We ran toward him, and with each step I dreaded that he would slip off and suddenly disappear right before our eyes. When we got close, Liu hung back. “You talk to him alone, Daniel.”

  I stepped toward him, but didn’t have a clue what to say. “Hey, Dad, I thought I might find you up here,” I said, knowing how ridiculous it sounded.

  He was facing south, looking down at lower Manhattan all the way to the Statue of Liberty raising her torch above New York Harbor. He didn’t turn his head at the sound of my voice. I wasn’t sure he even heard me.

  “How are you doing?” I asked.

  Long seconds dragged by. “Not too well,” he finally answered. And then, softly, “I’m sorry, Daniel.” I thought he might be turning to face me, but instead he pitched forward into nothingness.

  33

  I didn’t have time to think or feel afraid—I just stepped forward and caught him by the arm, and held on to him. We stood clinging together, at the edge of the roof above the great city that swept beneath and away in all directions. Dad was trembling so badly that I was afraid he might shake us both over the lip at any second.