by Daniel Blake
He’d seen in the library at Yale how the Chariot card applied to him: and now it was the marker of a dead cop. Coincidence? A symbol that worked for law enforcement in general? Something against Patrese personally? Or another reason entirely? Some weird Ivy League intellectual game-playing shit? Lewis had been part of the team investigating Dennis Barbero’s murder at Columbia, and the task force was still interviewing those Ivy League students flagged as potentially violent. No joy on that front yet.
‘He was a good man,’ Dufresne said. ‘I know folks always say that about people when they’re dead, but he was. Not a saint. None of us are. But a good man.’
The leather wallet with Lewis’ police badge and ID card was in another evidence bag. Patrese looked at it through the plastic. The badge was a gold shield with an eagle and Lewis’ number. The ID card had a serious-looking photo of him above his name: HOWARD LEWIS, SERGEANT, 26TH PRECINCT.
Howard Lewis. The name rang a bell. Where had Patrese heard it before? It floated on the edge of his memory like Tantalus’ grapes, right there yet out of reach. He relaxed, imagined himself crouching down and then leaping for the answer …
Got it. ‘He was the one who arrested Regina King at the Iraq demo, wasn’t he?’
Dufresne looked at Patrese in surprise, realization dawning. ‘Yeah. Yeah, he was.’
‘And she brought a case against him …’
‘… which was all bullshit, and which we settled in the end just to be done with it.’
‘Really?’
‘Really what?’
‘Was it really bullshit?’
‘Yes.’
‘Did she have a case?’
‘Depends whether you ask a lawyer or whether you ask someone with horse sense.’
‘Five victims. First, Kwasi’s mom. Now, the guy she sued.’
‘Looks like we got ourselves a prime suspect.’
‘Who? Kwasi?’
‘Who else?’
‘No.’
‘Why not?’
‘He didn’t kill his mom.’
‘Why not?’
‘He was in New York that weekend.’
‘Says who?’
‘Says he.’
‘Anyone else?’
‘No, but … he and his mom were, you know.’ Patrese wrapped his middle and index fingers round each other. ‘Like that.’
‘Franco, have you lost your mind? Those are exactly the kind of relationships where one party does kill the other!’
‘Sometimes. But … I told him his mom was dead. I stayed with him that evening. Kid’s halfway autistic. No way could he be that good an actor, to have played me like that. No way. So he can’t have done it. And, and, it was because I stayed with him, because he liked me, that he came to help us out when things were getting hairy at Columbia that day.’
‘Help us out? Or insert himself into the investigation, the way some killers do?’
‘He’s got no connection with Dennis Barbero.’
Dufresne shrugged. ‘Maybe not. But he’s got a hell of a connection to the other two.’
Patrese looked at his watch. ‘His world title match is due to start in a couple of hours. If you think he’s been preparing by going round killing people … no. Far more likely that someone’s trying to get to him.’
‘Why? Why would they want to do that?’
‘Who knows? To stop him playing. Lot of competing interests in something like this.’
‘Stop him playing? Everybody wants him to play, surely?’
‘Maybe that’s what we’re supposed to think.’
‘Far as I can make out, the only person who’s gonna stop him playing is Kwasi himself. He’s the one making all these conditions, no?’
‘I’ll go and see him.’
‘I’ll come with you.’
‘No.’
‘No?’
‘No.’
‘Why not?’
‘Because he trusts me, that’s why not. Listen, Bobby, I know this is going to sound weird, but he’s not like others. He doesn’t see the world the way we do.’
‘All the more reason to bring him down the station and question his ass.’
‘Two hours before he goes on stage at Madison?’
‘I couldn’t give a damn if it’s two minutes before.’
‘We’ll bring down the shitstorm to end all shitstorms if we do. Imagine the press. Imagine the lawsuits. Kwasi doesn’t show up, that’s his lookout. We stop him from going there, we’re the ones who get blamed.’
‘If we have a case, we have a case. Fuck everything else.’
‘No. Listen. He doesn’t need arresting. If anything, he needs protecting.’
‘Protecting?’
‘Sure. His mom’s dead, so’s the dude she sued. Why shouldn’t Kwasi be in line?’
‘Why should he?’
‘If we knew why these killings were taking place, I could give you an answer.’
‘Franco, you’re in charge, it’s your case. You think you’re better off going in there alone, because he trusts you and only you, and you and he have some big mystical connection, then sure. You’re worried about screwing him up before a match – even assuming he wants to play the damn thing, which don’t seem to me the case – I see that too. But you ask me, you’re being an asshole.’
30
Patrese went to Bleecker Street alone. Dufresne went back to his precinct house.
The press pack outside Kwasi’s condo block looked to be almost a hundred strong. As he’d done on previous visits, Patrese ignored them and their catcalls. The doorman, Sherwood, opened the main door, and Patrese went up to Kwasi’s apartment.
‘You gonna play?’ Patrese asked.
‘You come here to ask me that?’
‘Not exactly. But what I’m about to tell you might alter your decision.’
‘I’m going to play if he agrees to my terms.’
A matter of hours before the biggest chess match in almost half a century, and Kwasi and Nursultan were still playing brinkmanship? Patrese didn’t know whether to be impressed or appalled. This wasn’t chess, he thought: it was some gigantic game of poker, each side daring the other one to call his bluff first.
‘And if he doesn’t?’
‘Then I won’t play.’
‘I read that if you don’t turn up for the first game, you forfeit. Is that right?’
‘Sure. He starts my clock, I’m not there after an hour, I forfeit that game.’
‘But not the match?’
‘Only the game.’
‘You’ll lose the first game without playing just to make a point?’
‘He has my conditions. He has a car waiting outside for me. I even heard he’s got the city to keep all the traffic lights from here to Madison Square Garden on green so we can get there fast. All he has to do is say the word.’
Well, Patrese thought, Kwasi was certainly more talkative than when they’d first met.
‘What is it you’ve got to tell me?’ Kwasi added.
‘We found a body this morning. Howard Lewis.’
‘The one who beat up my mom?’
‘The one your mother sued, yes.’
‘The one who beat up my mom. How did he die?’
‘Same way as your mom.’
Kwasi ran a hand through his dreads. ‘Jeez, Franco. What the fuck is happening?’
‘That’s what we’re trying to find out.’
‘I can’t … I don’t … You think they’re connected, right?’
‘They are connected. Kwasi, I’ve got to ask: where were you last night?’
‘Here.’
‘That’s what you said last time, when your mom was killed.’
‘I live alone. I don’t have friends. I don’t have convenient alibis every time you come round asking things. You believe me or you don’t. I was here, asleep, ’cos if Nursultan stops being a jerkoff in the next hour or so, I have to go and play a world championship match, and to do that I need all the rest I
can get.’
‘I want to take you into protective custody.’
‘What?’
‘Your mom was killed. That might have been to unsettle you.’
‘What are you talking about?’
‘I don’t really know. But now Howard Lewis is dead too. It might be a coincidence, but cops don’t believe in coincidences too much.’
‘And Barbero? Showalter? Evans?’
‘You know their names.’
‘I know thousands of chess games, move by move. I knew the address and phone number of the place my mom was supposed to be staying the weekend she got killed. I remember things, Franco. So yes, I know their names. Wouldn’t you, if they’d all been killed by the same person who murdered your mom?’
Patrese held up his hands: fair point. ‘You have any connections to those guys?’
‘None. I never heard of any of them till they turned up dead.’
Kwasi’s cell rang. He picked up. Patrese could hear Nursultan’s tinny, agitated voice at the other end. Kwasi listened impassively. ‘You agree?’ he said at last. ‘No? Then I got nothing more to say.’ He ended the call and turned back to Patrese. ‘Man rings me every half-hour. Wants me to break first. Not gonna happen.’
Another ring tone. ‘Rings you every half-minute, more like,’ Patrese said.
‘That’s your cell, man. Not mine.’
Patrese reached in his pocket and brought out his phone. ‘So it is.’ He looked at the screen: DUFRESNE.
‘What’s up, Bobby?’
‘Where are you?’
‘With Kwasi.’
‘Go somewhere he can’t hear you.’
‘What?’
‘Go somewhere he can’t hear you. Just do it.’
‘Er … sure.’ Patrese gestured at Kwasi that he was going on to the roof terrace. Kwasi made a mime: sure.
Patrese stepped outside. ‘OK,’ he said. ‘I’m on the terrace. What’s up?’
‘You gotta get out of there.’
‘What?’
‘You gotta get out of there. I just got a call from forensics. They found some DNA on Dennis Barbero’s body: strand of hair or something. Partial match with Regina King.’
‘So? We already know the same guy killed them both. Hairs and fibers get transferred from person to person the whole time.’
‘That’s what I told them. And they said that wasn’t what partial match meant, not in this context. It means they found DNA which partially matches Regina, but which partially doesn’t.’
‘As in a relative?’
‘As in a son.’
A dark shadow moving fast and furious in the corner of Patrese’s vision. With instinct faster than thought, he threw up his free arm, his left, to protect himself; which was why the marble chessboard Kwasi was wielding like a baseball bat only broke Patrese’s wrist rather than fracturing his skull.
Deep pain, such as that caused by a broken bone, often takes a few seconds to kick in. Patrese knew this, and he used it. He dropped his phone and went for his gun. Chessboard clattering on the floor, Kwasi darted back inside the apartment. Patrese followed.
Glimpse of a leg disappearing round a corner, and then a gust of wind. Open window. Fire escape. The first shockwave of pain rippled up Patrese’s arm, sharp enough to make him catch his breath. One second. Two. No more. Grit your teeth. Keep moving.
He ran to the window and looked down. Kwasi was a story below and moving fast, dreadlocks bouncing as he ran across the landing and on to the next level. Patrese climbed out of the window and began to follow. Wrought-iron staircase, beautifully crafted: a goddamn work of art for something so functional. Typical New York. Patrese couldn’t grip the banister with his left hand, needed his right free for the gun. Felt like he was about to fall the whole time. Couldn’t slow down without losing sight of Kwasi.
The fire escape ended up in a courtyard round the back of the condo block. Kwasi jumped the last six feet and headed towards an iron gate. Patrese was a flight above him. Lost his footing halfway down. Part jumped, part fell the same last six feet. Landed heavily, rolled hard to avoid smacking his broken wrist.
Pushed himself upright again, weight through that very wrist for a split second before he realized. A welter of agony. Kwasi through the gate and gone. Follow. Move. Should have listened to Dufresne first time round. Stupid Franco, thinking he knew best. He’d be more sensible next time.
The gate was still swinging where Kwasi had passed through. Patrese followed, looking left and right. A passageway that forked left and right. Big commercial dumpsters one side; the back of a restaurant. A bodyshop the other side, cars with their hoods up. A couple of mechanics looked at Patrese with surprise.
He thought fast. They wouldn’t have been surprised to see him if they’d just seen Kwasi run past, would they? So Kwasi must have gone the other way, past the dumpsters. Patrese headed that way. He felt lopsided, no real way of keeping balance with one arm hanging useless by his side and the other trying to keep a gun aimed halfway straight.
The passageway widened beyond the dumpsters: fifty yards straight, no doors Patrese could see on either side, and no sign of Kwasi, which meant either that a man who spent most of his life sitting down could run like a cheetah when he had to, or that …
… and the thought – he’s behind the dumpsters – hit Patrese at the same time as Kwasi did. A roundhouse in the solar plexus followed by a jab to the face. Patrese sank to his knees as though someone had cut his strings. A kick jarred his fingers, making him drop the gun; and before he could even start reaching for it, Kwasi had picked it up and was aiming it straight between Patrese’s eyes.
No one around. Dumbass mechanics must have gone back to their repairs. This was New York. People come running past looking wild-eyed the whole time. Nothing doing. Nothing to see. Move along now.
Patrese was aware that he was kneeling in front of Kwasi. He tried to stand up. Kwasi put a foot on his chest and pushed him back down on to his backside. Better for Patrese’s pride at least, if not for his immediate prospects of survival. The barrel never wavered. Shot by his own gun. Not exactly a heroic end. Not one for the Bureau’s wall of honor.
He wouldn’t beg. It wouldn’t do him any good anyway. He’d been wrong about everything. He’d fallen for Kwasi’s little-boy-lost act. He’d seen exactly what he’d wanted to see. He’d never thought, not for a minute, that someone who destroyed his opponents on a little board of sixty-four wooden squares would be every bit as merciless in real life. Killer instinct, that’s what they said about Kwasi: he had the killer instinct, the unerring ability to go for his opponent’s jugular given half a chance. Killer instinct.
At another time and in another place, Patrese might have laughed.
‘Who’s white?’ he said.
Kwasi looked at him with eyes of serene emptiness.
‘Who’s white?’ Patrese said again. ‘Who’s Ivory? Who’s in Boston? Who are you playing against?’
The pistol whip came so fast that Patrese hardly even saw it. Unlike his wrist, this one did hurt instantly. He toppled over. The ground was cold against his cheek. He pressed his good hand to the wound.
Kwasi squatted down beside him. Two cards in his hand, their backs facing Patrese.
‘This is what I am,’ Kwasi said, turning the first one round. ‘I’m the Magician. Watch me vanish.’
Another pistol whip, this time a backhand, the other way across Patrese’s face. As Patrese rolled on the concrete, trying to shake the pain out of himself, he heard the fading sound of running feet. By the time he was sitting up again, Kwasi had gone.
Kwasi had left the other tarot card face down on the ground. Patrese knew what it would be even before he turned it over.
Card zero. The Fool.
PART TWO
Middlegame
‘Play the middlegame like a magician.’
Rudolf Spielmann
31
It’s not hard to carve a human bone.
In this c
ase, the humerus, the bone of the upper arm. The rest of the arm you can get rid of, though you’ve gotta be careful where you do this. Body parts got a nasty habit of turnin’ up and gettin’ in the hands of the cops if you don’t make damn sure of your disposal methods.
You cut away the skin, muscle and tissue till you got yourself just the bone. There’s still goin’ to be lots of blood and goo on it, of course, so you put it in a large cookin’ pot – same one you use to shrink the heads, if you like – and cover it in hot water. Very hot, very hot indeed, but not, repeat not, boilin’. Anyone say you gotta boil the bone, they’re a fool, ’cos that’s horseshit. Boilin’ bones makes ’em hard and brittle, and when they’re hard and brittle, that’s when they break. Never boil.
The hot water’ll help you get the blood and goo off. You also gotta scrape out all the marrow that’s inside the bone. Then you tip away the water and fill it back up again, this time with detergent and Nappy-San: three times the amount of each you’d use normally. Leave the bone in there for a coupla days, soakin’. Take it out after that, it’ll be clean as a whistle.
Now the cuttin’. Most of the humerus is pretty much a cylinder, straight up and down, but there are bits at the top and bottom, all with fancy medical names: greater tuberosity, lesser tuberosity, lateral epicondyle, medial epicondyle, trochlea, capitulum. Don’t matter what they’re called, you gotta get rid of them. All you want is the straight bit.
So you take a fretsaw, blade probably 18 tpi – that’s teeth per inch, you get to know these things after a while – and you saw right through the damn thing. You might want to wear a mask and goggles while doin’ this: it kicks up some bone dust, and that shit ain’t so good to breathe. When you’ve cut off both ends of the humerus, all the fancy-named knobbly bits, you should be left with something around a foot long.
