The God Game

by Jeffrey Round

  Steve shook his head. “Will Parker is dead, thanks to you.”

  “Lucky for you. He can’t testify against you. I’m sure that was convenient. Whose bacon were you really saving? What official secrets are you protecting? There’s an election coming up. We all know how parties crumble at the first sign of a scandal. Did somebody from above order the kibosh?”

  “Like I would discuss those things with you.”

  Dan shook his head. “All this crap about protecting the public good and here you are still abetting murders. How about that?”

  “Where do you get the gall to ask these questions?”

  “I have the gall because two men were murdered and you seem to want to overlook it because it’s inconvenient to a member of the provincial legislature.”

  Steve waved a hand dismissively. “These things happen. That’s life.”

  “Speaking of life, that was a cute little family photo on your desk at work. Did you miss it? I took it during our visit. Of course they’re not really your family, are they?”

  “No, they’re not. But so what?”

  “I showed it to Anne Wilkens. She identified you as the man who she was having an affair with. If you can call it an affair.”

  “Affairs are pretty commonplace these days. What does it prove?”

  Dan saw him glance at the drawer next to the stove. “It’s still there. But I took out the bullets, so unless you want to throw it at me it won’t do much good.”

  “Are you wired?”

  Dan shook his head. “I don’t need to be wired.”

  “Then why did you come?”

  “Just for a chat. John Wilkens came to you for a chat. Your name is in his calendar a week before his death. His wife showed it to me last week.”

  “That’s feeble.”

  “John Wilkens —”

  “Was a threat to national security.”

  “You set Wilkens up. We both know it. He discovered some emails linking Alec Henderson to the power plant cancellations. But he also found that someone had been tampering with the accounts, diverting money to the husband of a ministerial assistant, making it look as though he was stealing to pay for information. He tried to tell you what he knew and you had him killed.”

  “Did I? I don’t remember. But you signed a non-disclosure agreement under the Security of Information Act.”

  “Yes, I did. Because you gave me no choice.” Dan held out Simon Bradley’s cellphone. “Unfortunately for you, this phone didn’t sign anything. This is what you were looking for in my office, wasn’t it? Why you decided to blow it up? Amazing the things you can find on YouTube. Did you know there’s a whole section devoted to phone tapping? Simon Bradley was very, very good at it. You really need to brush up on it a little yourself.”

  “Pathetic. Don’t think you can get away with it.”

  “No, Steve, you can’t get away with it. And you won’t. It’s all here. All your private conversations with Will Parker. Bad luck when the spies are spied on.”

  “No matter what’s on that phone, those are official conversations. Not admissible as evidence in any court. They’ll be classified for decades.”

  “Right, classified information.” Dan nodded. “I’ve also got a rapper who remembers you as the guy who offered him a gun to kill John Wilkens. Or how about the Magna Carta? No one is above the law. Next year marks its eight hundredth birthday. Happy birthday, Steve.”

  There was one final matter to be dealt with, this one of a personal bent. He’d been having chest pains off and on for the past few weeks, ever since Ked’s graduation. At first, he put it down to stress. There’d certainly been enough of that lately. He ignored it for a few days until it returned forcefully late one night. Indigestion, he told himself, but resolved to call his doctor in the morning.

  Whatever it was, it was telling him to be careful. He knew he couldn’t go around swinging tire irons at cars forever. He envisioned himself chasing an assailant half his age and being felled right there on the sidewalk by his own internal attacker.

  The next afternoon he was sitting in the doctor’s office. His phone buzzed just as the receptionist called his name, beckoning him into a cubicle. He ignored the call, lying on the examining table and letting himself be poked and prodded while he answered the doctor’s questions. Any shortness of breath? Sometimes, especially going up and down the stairs at the warehouse. Any chest pains? Yes. How frequent? Often. What’s often? Daily. Any panic attacks? All the time, doctor. All the time. The doctor attached little cold disks to his bare chest, the wires trailing to a machine that looked like an over-blown coffee maker. Afterward he squeezed a ball and jogged on the spot while the doctor listened to his heart before telling him to go off and get dressed.

  It was an hour before he checked the message. It was Nick, asking to meet at a local bar. But this time Dan’s heart didn’t leap at the sound of his voice. It was an exit meeting Nick wanted. Or maybe just an execution. In his current state of mind, one was no better than the other.

  Dan showed up at the appointed hour and walked into a room full of jazz. A man who looked like Sam Smith leaned hard on the keys of a white baby grand. He was trying hard to sound like him, too.

  Nick was seated at a table with his back to the room. Dan saw the scowl as he approached, the fingers tapping a nervous beat on the tabletop. A glass of something decorated with a lemon wedge sat in front of him.

  He thought of his conversation with Donny earlier that afternoon. They had been talking about Dan’s father, a man who was dead on his feet for most of his adult life. Grief had struck him down prematurely; he never got back up. As a result, he became a man who destroyed the things he couldn’t live with, trying to find ways to leave them behind. Dan recalled the long silence of those black moods when his father stared off into the distance till the bottle was empty, or till he fell asleep, whichever came first.

  “I resented him so much I couldn’t even say ‘I love you’ to make him feel better when he lay dying.”

  Donny had him on that one. “Did you love him?”

  “No.”

  “Then at least you didn’t lie to a dying man.”

  “I could have said it to make it easier for him.”

  Donny had him there, too. “How many times in your life did your father tell you he loved you?”

  Dan thought back. It was like looking over a long, unbroken panorama of grey. “Not once.”

  “So then? I don’t think you owed him anything.”

  “I remember his dying words. He turned to me and asked, ‘Did you ever feel like maybe you were an idiot your whole life?’ At first I wondered: was he talking about himself or was he making a comment about me?”

  “How did you answer?”

  “I said, ‘All the time, Dad. All the time.’”

  Donny had put a hand on his friend’s shoulder. “And in the short time you and Nick were together, how many times did you tell Nick you loved him?”

  “Every day.”

  “And did you mean it?”

  “Every time I said it.”

  Donny nodded, the sage concluding his talk. “You need time to think about what you’re going to say to him tonight. But don’t take too long. You have something good in your life. Don’t fuck it up this time.”

  Dan shrugged. “He doesn’t want me back. His message said he just wanted to finalize things between us.”

  “Whatever. Just don’t be that stupid, emotionally distant schmuck you normally are. If you get a chance, take it.”

  Dan sat across from Nick now. The gash on Nick’s forehead had healed. Thankfully there would be no scar for him to remember Dan by in years to come. Dan, on the other hand, still bore the welt where Will’s gun had struck the side of his face.

  “How are you?” Nick asked.

  “Okay.” Dan shrugged. “A bit sore.
You warned me.”

  “I did. But you never listen to other people.” Nick shook his head. “Sorry, that’s not what I asked you here for. What I really want is to say that even though I’m a cop, I’m not ashamed to be gay. I just find it difficult to live with other people’s attitudes at times. Maybe that’s something I need to adjust to, as much as I would prefer that they adjust their attitudes instead. But I am a police officer, so I don’t always get to act on my true feelings.”

  Dan nodded. In the background, Sam Smith’s double tinkled “’Round Midnight,” the theme song for lonely alcoholics.

  “Okay, I’ll keep talking, since you’re doing the silent thing,” Nick continued, fingering his glass. “I know you think life is perfectible, but to me it’s hellishly disappointing more often than not. Still, it takes guts to accept and live with that. And in case you’re wondering, this is soda I’m drinking. I haven’t had another drink since the day I left. It was hard, but I held on. Mostly so I could tell you that and not lie.”

  A waiter came by. Dan nodded to Nick’s glass. “I’ll have the same, please.” The man went away looking disappointed.

  “Okay, that’s good. Anything else you want to say?”

  “Well, I could chew you out for those daredevil stunts you pulled recently, though I doubt it would stop you from doing it next time. But there’s something that’s bothering me, and it’s hard for me to acknowledge, even though it’s true. I think my real problem with most people is that no one takes the time to be noble anymore. They’re all too afraid or self-absorbed or just plain stupid. There are no more heroes in real life. Except you.”

  “Except me?”

  “Yeah, you. That’s my problem. I still think of you that way. I wish I didn’t. Your son thinks so, too. I talked to him yesterday. And we both agreed on that. So, yes, except you. But you’re so damn worried you might turn into your father, you forget that.”

  Dan looked off for a moment. He sighed and said, “I’m not a hero. I threw you against a goddamn wall because you tried to walk away from me.”

  “Yeah, you did. Just like your father did to you. But you’re not him. He’s not you.” He put his hands on the table, clasping them together. “What I want to say is, I forgive you.”

  “How can you?”

  Nick sighed. “There you go again. Everything is impossible odds with you. How much do you want us both to suffer? You are just like your father in that way.”

  The memory came back, how he’d come home late from school after spending the afternoon with a friend. It had occurred to him to telephone and let his father know, but his father usually headed straight to the bar after work. Only this day his father had come home and seen Dan wasn’t there.

  By the time Dan returned, his father had worked himself into a rage. With one hand, Stuart Sharp backslapped his son, sending him sprawling against a doorframe. Dan fell to the floor and lay in stunned silence while his father left the room. Once his father’s footsteps faded, he went upstairs to his Aunt Marge, who consoled him and bandaged his bleeding forehead.

  When she finished, she told him to apologize. “Go in and tell your father you’re sorry for what you done.”

  “What did I do?” Dan demanded.

  Her look was stern. “You worried him, Danny. Tell him you’re sorry and you won’t do it again or there’ll be no peace till you do.”

  Dan had gone hesitantly downstairs and stood in the doorway to the room where his father sat watching television.

  “I’m sorry, Dad. I won’t do it again,” he said at last.

  Without turning his head to look, his father said, “Do you know what I go through worrying, after what happened to your mother? Don’t ever do anything so stupid again.”

  In that moment, whatever good Dan had felt for his father had died forever.

  The waiter returned with Dan’s drink and set it on the table. Nick was talking. Dan hadn’t heard a word. “What?”

  “I was saying that, with our work, either of us could die at any moment. I think of that every single day, but you don’t. You don’t let yourself.”

  Dan shook his head. “I don’t choose to. What’s the point?”

  “That’s what I mean. That’s the difference between us. You’re closed. You don’t let things in. Life isn’t straight lines, Dan. There are twists and curves all along the way. I try to be as open as I can. I’m easy that way. That’s why you always know what I want and how to give it to me. With you, I’m always left guessing. There’s this aloneness, this distance about you. I can’t get through to you. It’s like a power you have over me. It’s not fair.”

  “I didn’t ask for it.”

  Nick’s fist hit the table, making the glasses jump. “No, you didn’t, damn it. But it’s still not fair. You get to call all the shots. Fuck you!”

  Several patrons looked over at the two men arguing, and decided it was not worth their while to say anything.

  Dan’s thoughts crept back to the doctor’s office, the electrodes attached to his skin monitoring his heart rate in spikes and dips on the screen beside him, searching for irregularities, the un-syncopated rhythm that would mark the impending end of his life.

  After a few minutes, the doctor had unhooked him. Dan felt the disks pull at his chest hair, the pain pulling him back to the present.

  “Get dressed and meet me in my office.”

  Dan had returned to the office and waited while the doctor looked over the results, his expression blank as unmarked paper.

  “I want to remind you that at your age you shouldn’t be running up and down stairs. You’re not immortal, Dan.”

  Dan managed a smiled. “I thought I was.”

  “So do we all, at some point. But if you want to play god, eventually you’re going to come face to face with the devil.” He nodded. “Anyway, whatever it is, it isn’t physical.”

  “But the pain —”

  “Oh, I don’t doubt what you’re telling me, and from the sounds of it you’ve been under a lot of stress. But I think there’s more to it than that.”

  For a second Dan thought he was about to be told he had something far worse than heart palpitations.

  “But as I said, it’s not physical,” his doctor repeated. “How’s your personal life?”

  “I have trust issues,” Dan said now to Nick.

  Nick rolled his eyes. “So do I, Dan. I’m a cop. I don’t really trust anybody. Kind of hard to work those issues out alone.” He waited. “What do you do when you get thrown by a horse?”

  “You get back on.”

  “Exactly. You get right back on. Otherwise, the fear gets to you and you never will. We all have trust issues. Forget your father. Isn’t it enough that you and I both try to be good people?”

  He waited, both of them sitting there not speaking. Somewhere in the background, Sam Smith’s look-alike struck up a mellow tune. Customers drank and paid bills. Waiters drifted about with drink trays.

  “I am what I am,” Dan said. “And what I am is difficult and cantankerous and probably not worth the time you’re taking to have this conversation.”

  “Fucking hell, Dan — you said it. You’re all that and more. Don’t you think I’ve learned that over the past year living with you?”

  “Then what do you want?”

  “You idiot. I want to come home.” Nick extended a hand across the table top. “It’s lonely without you and I’m tired of talking to you in my head. Please … I want to come home.”

  Dan looked away for a moment. He felt his shoulders quake as he looked down at Nick’s hand and, for what felt like the first time in life, he grasped back.

  ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

  My gratitude goes out to Don Oravec and Jim Harper, David Tronetti, Christian Baines, Liz Bugg, and Geordie Johnson for their support, as well as my solid-gold editor, Jess Shulman, who wasn’t afraid t
o ask the hard questions that helped make this a better book. I’d also like to thank my parents, who raised me good and proper, and were nothing like Dan Sharp’s parents. Further thanks are due to the Ontario Arts Council for a well-timed grant allowing me to complete the work. And, although his themes were different from mine, I acknowledge my debt to author John Fowles for the title of this book, similar to one he discarded years ago. As always, I was inspired by a variety of musical palettes along the way. The buzz on this one goes out to those English minstrels, William Byrd, Thomas Tallis, Orlando Gibbons, and Ralph Vaughan Williams. Cheers, lads!

  Copyright © Jeffrey Round, 2018

  All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise (except for brief passages for purpose of review) without the prior permission of Dundurn Press. Permission to photocopy should be requested from Access Copyright.

  All characters in this work are fictitious. Any resemblance to real persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental.

  Cover image: ©shutterstock.com/BsWei

  Library and Archives Canada Cataloguing in Publication

  Round, Jeffrey, author

  The God game / Jeffrey Round.

  (A Dan Sharp mystery)

  Issued in print and electronic formats.

  ISBN 978-1-4597-4010-5 (softcover).--ISBN 978-1-4597-4011-2

  (PDF).--ISBN 978-1-4597-4012-9 (EPUB)

  I. Title. II. Series: Round, Jeffrey . Dan Sharp mystery.

  PS8585.O84929G63 2018 C813’.54 C2017-903400-6

  C2017-903401-4

  We acknowledge the support of the Canada Council for the Arts, which last year invested $153 million to bring the arts to Canadians throughout the country, and the Ontario Arts Council for our publishing program. We also acknowledge the financial support of the Government of Canada through the Ontario Book Publishing Tax Credit and the Ontario Media Development Corporation, and the Government of Canada.