The God Game

by Jeffrey Round

  “Isn’t that your office?”

  Dan looked over. Tony Moran stood beside him.

  He shrugged. “It’s okay. I was moving anyway.”

  Thirty

  Official Secrets

  They were in Tony Moran’s borrowed flat. Borrowed from a gambling buddy who was currently out of town. Gamblers, like addicts, know that favours are meant to be returned when you need them most. They store them like canned food in case of emergencies. You never knew when you were going to need an extra tin of something, a free sleep on a sofa. Tony’s friend’s flat was one of those returned favours.

  It was in an old warehouse at King and Parliament. The ambience was hipster: exposed brick walls, original tin ceilings, and heating ducts painted bright pink. Things ripped back to what previous tenants had tried to hide. Frames hung crookedly, enlarged posters of famous black-and-white movie stills providing atmosphere and nostalgia: Humphrey Bogart, Mary Astor, Jimmy Cagney, Myrna Loy, Peter Lorre. Celluloid heroes and villains. It was just glitzy enough to impress a jaded TV designer, but still rundown enough to be considered chic.

  A coffee table held a wealth of self-help books: Help Yourself to Wealth, Help Grow Money in Your Pocket, Help for Winning Poker Strategies. But nothing on how to help your gambling addiction, Dan noted.

  A fire escape led past the kitchen window to a third-floor landing. Rumour had it the flat was once the lair of a notorious mafia don who ran his criminal activities from behind closed doors. But the don had died in a hail of bullets while sitting on the patio of a gelateria in Little Italy, celebrating his daughter’s engagement. Not the best choice of times to make a public showing. Currently, it served as the pied-à-terre of a chronic gambler who kept the property secret from his third ex-wife so she wouldn’t take it from him.

  It hadn’t taken much to get Tony to come with Dan. A mention of the Magus, a reference to gambling heavies who knew his name, and he was putty in Dan’s hands. He suspected there was also a bit of voyeuristic interest on Tony’s part, a boy-meets-daddy sort of appeal that Dan was only too willing to exploit.

  Tony sat cross-legged in the middle of the floor. His hands shook as he spoke in half-finished sentences. His eyes kept darting over to the liquor cupboard. Maybe gambling wasn’t his only addiction.

  Dan got up and grabbed a bottle, poured a tumbler and passed it to Tony, who took it and drank quickly. After that, his speech came more freely, his tongue moving trippingly as he described his recent ordeals.

  Realizing Peter had cut off his credit, he’d spent a few nights on the streets before getting in touch with some old friends who put him up at various places around the city, this location being the last rung on the ladder to a more rarefied place. Wherever he was headed.

  “I’m still trying to figure out what to make of your connection with John Wilkens,” Dan said, looking up as though the answer might miraculously appear overhead.

  “It was the Magus,” Tony replied. “They wanted me to talk to him, to be on his good side.”

  “But why?” Dan pressed. “What possible use could you be to him?”

  Tony opened his mouth to speak then closed it again. “They never really explained it.”

  He was shaking again. Not from drink this time.

  “The money you gambled away that night … you said you stole it from Peter?”

  “Borrowed. I only borrowed it.”

  “The money you borrowed then. The only problem is, Peter can’t figure out where it went missing from.”

  An anxious look came over Tony’s face. “I’ve been very secretive.”

  “When I told him how much you lost, he said you couldn’t possibly have taken that much without his knowing it.”

  “Then he doesn’t know where to look.”

  “How did you manage to keep it from him?”

  Tony cast a fearful eye around the room. “I’d rather not say. I mean, I don’t want to implicate myself any further.”

  Dan stood. Tony’s eyes were glued to his every move.

  “Where are you going?”

  “I’ve got to go out and meet someone. I’ll be back in a couple of hours. You should be fine here till I get back.” Dan glanced at the window and down to the street. “As long as you don’t leave.”

  “No, I wouldn’t do that,” Tony said hastily. He checked himself. “And then what?”

  “And then we’ll see what we see.”

  Lester met him on a downtown street corner. He handed Dan the phone as though it contained nuclear secrets. For all Dan knew, it might have.

  “Everything copied and safely stowed away?”

  “Completely.”

  “Sorry for the secrecy,” Dan said.

  “Yeah, my dad would never have let me come if he knew I was meeting you.”

  “So let’s not tell him, okay?”

  “I’m cool.”

  “I have to go now.”

  “Wait.”

  Dan turned.

  There was a pleading look in Lester’s eyes. “Is there anything I can do for you? Anything that might … I don’t know. Help in some way?”

  “Lester, you are a remarkable young man. But I would never allow you to do anything that might endanger you or Donny or Prabin. Thank you.”

  “It’s okay.” He smiled. “I never knew your work was so cool, Uncle Dan.”

  “It’s not. It just looks that way from the outside.”

  Dan turned and pocketed the cell. His next destination was just a few blocks away.

  From outside it looked like an ordinary office, even though the country’s best-kept secrets were locked behind its iron doors four floors underground. Dan called first to make sure he would be admitted, then showed up half an hour early for his appointment. Right before he arrived, he texted a number retrieved from Simon Bradley’s cellphone. Then he stood and waited. Two minutes later, he saw Steve Ross come sailing through the front door and head up the street.

  Right on time, Dan thought.

  He went in and caught the elevator down. The doors opened onto a nondescript lobby. An attractive young man sat at the desk. He looked up.

  “Can I help you?”

  “I think you can,” Dan said. “My name’s Will Parker. I’m afraid I’m a bit early.”

  “Yes, sir. Mr. Ross is expecting you. He asked me to tell you to wait for him. He had to step out for a moment. Something unexpected came up.”

  Dan was sitting behind his desk when Steve returned from the wild goose chase he’d been sent on. Steve gave a little laugh. He did his best not to appear flustered, but his angry tone gave him away.

  “Where is Will? How did you get in here?”

  “Will’s not coming. Your secretary let me in. Very cute, by the way.”

  “My secretary,” Steve said, his wrath rising, “would have told you to stay in the waiting room.”

  “He forgot that part.”

  “I could have you arrested.”

  “For what? Sitting in your chair?”

  “For jumping the terms of your release.”

  Dan did his best to look perplexed. “Really? How do you figure I did that?”

  “We have a man by the name of James G. Moab on camera in the airport. Buying a ticket to Vancouver with cash. He looks an awful lot like you even with the baseball cap.”

  “Popular destination this time of year. Must have been someone else.”

  “You’re a wanted man.”

  “I know that. I read about it in the paper, so it must be true.”

  “What do you want?”

  “I don’t want anything from you. I have something to give you.”

  “What’s that?”

  “The murderer of John Wilkens and Simon Bradley.”

  Steve eyed him curiously. “Who is that?”

  “I don�
��t actually know yet. You’ll have to show up and see who drops by when I spring the trap.”

  “Is this some kind of joke?”

  “Not at all.”

  Steve fingered a photograph on his desk. “I recently had two resident aliens arrested on charges of conspiring to derail passenger trains at Union Station. Not long ago, we had a group of eighteen — eighteen! — young militant Muslims discussing the best ways to blow up the stock exchange. There would have been massive destruction and untold loss of lives. I don’t have time for this! No one killed John Wilkens. He hanged himself. As for Simon Bradley, it sounds like he was snooping where he shouldn’t have been. We can’t protect everyone.”

  “You think you’ve got problems? My office was just blown up with me about fifteen seconds away from being in it. Nevertheless, you asked me to help you find the so-called Magus. Well, I’ve been doing that. I think the Magus and the murderer are the same person.”

  Steve paused to let this sink in. “And how exactly are you going to catch this supposed murderer?”

  “By using Tony Moran as bait. He’s been in the thick of this since the beginning. Someone paid him to stay away from his husband, only he blew the money gambling. I want to see who wants Tony badly enough to try and take him from me.”

  Steve regarded Dan coldly. “This is a very dangerous kind of game you’re playing.”

  “Well, let’s hope I win. I’m betting a lot on the hand I hold right now.”

  “When and where does this all take place?”

  Dan stood. “Tonight. I’ll text you the details once I leave here.”

  Steve reached a hand to his desktop telephone. “I could have you arrested and held without notice.”

  “If you stop me now, we’ll never know who it is.”

  Steve picked up the phone and held it to his ear. He looked out the glass partition to where his secretary was seated at his desk. The young man answered.

  “Matthew, please see Mr. Parker out.”

  Dan left the office, wondering if he’d be arrested before he got to the street. He let out a sigh of relief as he went through the front door. Out on the sidewalk, he stopped and checked the photo he’d lifted from Steve Ross’s desk of Steve with a friendly-looking woman, a boy, and a massive Doberman that looked as if it would swallow Ralph whole. Not a family pet. And not a wife and son either, Dan knew from past encounters. Possibly a sister and nephew, or maybe just a woman paid to pose as a cover.

  He scrolled through Simon Bradley’s phone until he found the number he wanted. He typed: If you’re interested, I’ll be at 498A King Street East this evening. Come around 9. I’ve got something you want. For good measure, he took a shot of Tony’s photo that Peter Hansen had given him. Hesitating for just a second, he pressed SEND.

  Next he sent the details to Steve Ross. Finally, he texted Nick’s cellphone: You told me not to try this stuff on my own, so I’m letting you know about it now. He capped it with a few particulars, hoping Nick would at least respond, even just to tell him he was crazy and never to bother him again.

  Thirty-One

  The Devil You Know

  Tony eyed Dan warily when he returned. During his absence Tony had closed all the curtains and moved a wing chair as far as possible from the windows. The bottle sat on his lap. It was down considerably. Dan was right: he had more than one addiction problem. All the better to make him pliable and keep him in hand until this ordeal was over.

  “Is everything okay now?” Tony’s voice sounded high and nervous.

  “Everything’s fine.”

  The room was drowned in soft shadows, the furniture partially submerged in darkness, a corner of a couch and the peak of an armchair jutting up midstream. Dan snapped on an overhead light, illuminating Tony like a performer spot-lit on a stage.

  Tony put a hand up to his face. “What’s going to happen?” He sounded sheepish, like a child whose hiding spot has been uncovered.

  “We’ve got a meeting tonight. Here.”

  “With who?”

  “I don’t know.” Dan shrugged. “That’s what I still can’t figure out. I thought you might know. So I texted the Magus a while ago. I gave him this address.”

  Panic lit up Tony’s face. “Why did you do that? What were you thinking?”

  “Just baiting the trap. And it seems to me you’re the best bait I’ve got.”

  Tony’s gaze flitted anxiously around the room, as though seeing imaginary forms in the gloom. “That was totally irresponsible. You can’t do this to me.”

  “Too late. I’ve done it. Who is it we should be expecting?”

  “I told you, I never met them.” His voice was a whine. “I have no idea.”

  “Okay, I’ll believe you, then. Care to tell me where you got all the money you gambled away that night in Little Vietnam?”

  Tony began to hyperventilate. “They gave it to me, okay?”

  “Who?”

  “The Magus. It … the money was directed into my account.”

  “So you could gamble it away?”

  “What? No.” He shook his head. “It was so I could live away from Peter.”

  “But you lost it instead.”

  “I — I couldn’t help it. It was so much money at once.”

  “But where did it come from before it ended up in your account?”

  His eyes were evasive again. “I don’t know. They just diverted it from one account into another and gave me access to it. I wasn’t supposed to spend it all so fast.”

  “Am I right in thinking the money showed up around Christmas last year?”

  Tony shivered. “Simon was right — you do know everything.”

  “You figured out that it came from a portfolio John Wilkens was managing. That’s why you were trying to get rid of it when you gambled it away.”

  “Oh, god!” Tony said softly.

  “You told John you would share information with him about the power plant cover-up. Then you reported what John said back to the Magus. That’s why they’re after you now.”

  Tony’s eyes flitted around the flat. “I didn’t know they would kill him.”

  “Who?”

  “I don’t know!” He glared at Dan. “I really don’t.”

  “Then I guess we’ll just sit tight and find out.” He paused with the light still on Tony’s face. “On the other hand, you could just get up and leave. I don’t want anyone saying I kept you here against your will. But I suspect you’re safer in here with me than out on the streets.” He gestured to the window. “You never know who’s out there.”

  “You set me up, you bastard.”

  “And someone set John Wilkens up. I’m just trying to even the score.”

  Dan pulled a chair to the centre of the room, stood on it and twisted the bulb till it went out. Then he went over to the wall switch and turned it to the off position.

  Tony watched him without speaking. Dan sat in a leather recliner next to a low table with a lamp pointed down toward the floor. He tossed a magazine to Tony.

  “You might want to keep yourself occupied. We could be here a while.”

  He checked his cell. There was still nothing from Nick. Dan would discount him, then.

  Tony picked up the magazine, then let it fall with a splat. He turned to the bottle and twisted off the top. His hands shook as he poured.

  Dan watched him. “My father was a drinker,” he said.

  Tony looked up with baleful eyes. “Mine, too.”

  “It hurts, doesn’t it?”

  “What does?”

  “When you love them and they betray you. Fathers.”

  Tony nodded, sipping from his glass. “I guess.”

  “When you’re a kid you can’t rationalize things like hurt and pain. You can’t just shrug it off and say, ‘Yeah, my dad’s an asshole. He’s an
alcoholic. That’s why he does the things he does.’ Instead, you start to think it’s something that you did or didn’t do that makes him that way. At that age you can’t even say, ‘Why doesn’t he love me?’ Though maybe you can articulate, ‘Why does he hate me?’ Because that’s all you really know.”

  Tony kept nodding.

  “Did he hit you?” Dan asked.

  “Oh, yeah. Lots.”

  “The truth is, it’s easier for them to raise a hand and strike out at whoever is nearest, even if deep down they love you. If you love them back, it hurts even more to think what a monster you must be to make them do that to you.”

  Tony wiped away a tear. “He said it was my fault. He found out I was gay.”

  “It’s never your fault,” Dan said. “It took me years to know that, but I won’t forget it now.”

  The time crept past. Dan looked at his watch: nine eighteen. He was beginning to think he was mistaken. Maybe the text hadn’t reached its destination. Maybe the Magus really was a myth made up to scare the fearful and gullible.

  Nine thirty-five.

  Nine forty-eight.

  It was getting a bit late for a showdown. Nothing to do but keep waiting.

  By eleven Tony had finished the bottle and lay passed out on the floor. He was gently snoring. Dan went to the window and looked out at the street. It was raining, a slight drizzle keeping everything wet. Everything felt like a disappointment. Dan eyed the slick pavement and wondered if CSIS was out there somewhere. If so, they were being as patient as he was.

  It was nearly midnight when he heard the click. Someone had opened the downstairs door, which he’d purposely left unlocked. Dan looked over at Tony. Still sleeping. Dreaming of the father who never loved him. Furtive steps climbed the stairs, slow and secretive.

  Dan clicked off the desk lamp and waited. The room was entirely dark.

  He felt a buzzing in his pocket and looked at his cell. Donny’s name showed onscreen. He couldn’t have picked a more inconvenient moment. Clamping down on it, Dan stuffed the phone into his pocket. The buzzing stopped, then started up again almost immediately. Not now, for fuck’s sake! Dan thought. And the buzzing died.