Scavenger Hunt

by Dani Lamia

  The detectives look at him, gritting their teeth, and then look back at me.

  “Look,” says Jay. “We know you went to the Coney Island Aquarium last night. There was an explosion and a lot of jellyfish were killed. We want to know why you were there and what happened.”

  “Are you charging me with a crime?” I ask. I look over at Angelo Marino. He shakes his head slightly. Don’t answer them, he is saying.

  “Not exactly,” says Jay. “We don’t think you had anything to do with the destruction of the property there, which major crimes wants to call a terrorist attack. But you are a witness, and you are certainly guilty of trespassing.”

  “Someone is trying to kill my whole family,” I say. “I was there because I was playing this game, which is what you told me to do. Should I stop playing? Are you willing to put us all under police protection?”

  Rutledge snorts, laughing.

  “We still aren’t sure your brother was murdered,” says Jay. “We have no evidence of that. So you just go ahead and slow down a little bit, okay? Slow down and let the professionals handle the crimes.”

  “And why don’t you tell us real slowly how everything went down at the aquarium?” says Rutledge. “We want to help you. We are on your side. But we need to have something to tell the counterterrorism people, or they are going to want us to freeze your accounts and go public with what is happening. Is the Nylo Corporation declaring war on fish?”

  “Look,” I say, shooting down an anguished look from Angelo Marino. “I was there. I was playing this game. The clue yesterday led us to the aquarium. When we got there and held our phones up to the jellyfish tank, it exploded. I think if one of us had been out of lives, it would have killed us. You need to figure out how the bomb worked. Dust everything for prints. It’s an aquarium! Surely there are fingerprints on glass somewhere.”

  “All the evidence has been sent to the lab,” says Rutledge. “We’ll let you know if we find anything.”

  “And so what the hell am I supposed to do in the meantime?” I ask, slamming down my iced coffee in frustration.

  Rutledge and Jay look at each other.

  “Well, that’s one of the reasons we’re here,” Jay says. “We intend to be with you today when the Game Master calls. We’re going to try and get him to talk.”

  “It could be a her,” I point out, sounding like Olivia.

  “That is statistically quite unlikely,” says Jay. “Anyway, we want you to know that we’re taking this whole situation very seriously. We’re glad to see that you have hired your own security. We suggest you don’t go anywhere without them. The next time you run off to solve one of these clues you should let us know where you’re headed so we can stake the place out and make sure you won’t be in any danger. Can you do that for us?”

  “Certainly,” I say, feeling somewhat mollified. “So, you two are just going to hang out here all morning until the Game Master calls?”

  “We’d like permission to question some of the people who work here, if they would be willing to cooperate,” says Detective Rutledge. “Obviously, they have the right to refuse. But we think it would be helpful if everyone cooperates, as long as we are here.”

  “I think you’ll find everyone at Nylo is very willing to cooperate with your investigation,” says Angelo Marino. “As long as I am allowed to be in the room with you and help protect the employees here from any violations of their civil liberties or from accidentally saying something they don’t mean. You know how cops can twist words when they don’t want to work very hard to crack a case.” He offers his most polite sneer.

  Detectives Jay and Rutledge both smile back.

  “Of course,” says Detective Jay. “You have a business to run here, after all.”

  “Remind me again why the two of you are the ones assigned to this case?” I ask. “Aren’t you Midtown tunnel cops?”

  “Detectives,” says Jay. “Midtown Underground Tunnel Detectives. That’s the precinct where the body is at, I’m afraid. Can’t be helped. Tunnels and elevators, that’s our beat.”

  “Right,” I say. “Tunnels and elevators.”

  I stand up and motion to the door. The two detectives slink out. Angelo Marino hangs back a moment, looking at me pensively.

  “I feel like we should call some different police,” I say. “Can’t we get a second opinion?”

  “I’m afraid it doesn’t work like that,” he says.

  “Isn’t this the sort of thing that you elevate to the FBI? We are public figures. Tunnel and elevator cops aren’t going to solve this thing.”

  “I’ll see what I can do about elevating the profile of this case,” says Angelo Marino. “However, there is also the company to think about. Do we really want to have the federal government and the media involved? They will certainly use this as an opportunity to audit us and check into all of our business dealings. I’m sure the State Department will be interested in Henley’s time in China, and the FTC will be interested in your latest acquisition. Are you sure we shouldn’t just handle this ourselves if we can?”

  I don’t really have an answer for him. He leaves, following the detectives, ready to serve as a silent sentinel as they question employees, reminding the workers by his mere presence that the company comes first, that the most important thing is not to incriminate Nylo in any way, even accidentally.

  I look at the two security guards. They stand stoically, nearly identical in their navy suits, not moving but briefly making eye contact with me before returning their gaze out the window behind me, as if at any moment armed soldiers of fortune might swing in on grappling hooks and start mowing us down with automatic weapons.

  “Have you strapping fellows ever prevented somebody from being killed in a high-stakes augmented reality game with a twenty-billion-dollar family fortune on the line before?”

  Neither of them responds. They stare at me and I stare at them.

  Eventually, they realize that my question is not rhetorical—that I actually do want to know if they have any experience that might help them prevent me from getting blown up by some mad game master. They exchange a glance and I have their answer before they can utter the words.

  “No, ma’am,” they say in unison.

  24

  My new bodyguards are named Ed White and Mel Fuller. They have both been incarcerated, but not at the same time and not in the same prison. One of them comes from a family of cops. The other comes from a family of Marines.

  As a result of my feverish interrogation, I learn that they both are the youngest children of big respectable families and that they have both had problems with addiction in the past, but say they’ve put that behind them.

  “You have so much in common,” I say, looking first at Ed and then at Mel.

  “I guess that’s true, ma’am,” agrees Ed, not seeming to find my statement terribly interesting.

  I realize that I am slightly delirious from lack of sleep. The timid reactions of these bodyguards to my questions makes me assume I am coming off like some kind of manic idiot. I need to center myself. To recalibrate.

  I wander around the building for a bit, chitchatting with assistants and vice presidents as my bodyguards trail behind me.

  “This is Ed and Mel,” I tell everyone, introducing them and making them shake hands. I have to get in front of how weird everything is if I don’t want to seem like I am retreating into some kind of literal or emotional bunker to deal with the trauma of losing my father and my brother. Ed and Mel are pleasant enough to my staff. People keep offering them food and drinks and they slowly relax, becoming less menacing in general.

  The emotional timbre of the space is hard to gauge, mainly because I can tell people are being extra-sensitive around me. There are reporters camped down in the lobby, and I make the decision not to give any interviews: not to the Times, not to the Post, not to the Journal. I do
n’t know what I would even say. Eventually, the story about this game will leak out somewhere, but I haven’t yet figured out the best way to manage the fallout. The game makes us look crazy. It makes us look terrible.

  But, then again, we are crazy and terrible.

  Honestly, I barely know what to do with myself until noon rolls around. When I return to my office, I am a nervous wreck. Alistair is already waiting there for me. He doesn’t look any better than me. There are dark circles under his eyes and his hands are shaking.

  “Any luck tracing those phones?” I ask him.

  “All I can tell you is that this Game Master is somewhere in the United States and probably somewhere in New York,” he says. “But that doesn’t mean much. They could just be some lackey hired by the real person in charge.”

  “Finding them would be a good start anyway,” I note.

  “I’ll keep narrowing it down,” he says. “I’m running a carnivore program to help triangulate the likely location of the Game Master, since the Game Master must call all four of us at once. Actually, the longer you can keep them talking on the phone, the better chance I’ll have at figuring out who it is. It won’t help us trace the call, but the more data we collect, the better chance we have of unscrambling the voice modulation.”

  “You can really do that?” I ask.

  “If you can rattle them and make them speak in their most natural cadence possible, we should be able to get more fruitful data,” says Alistair. “People have patterns in how they speak that we can abstract. If we have suspects, for instance, we can match them against any voice profile that we generate. We might not be able to figure out exactly what this person sounds like, but we will be able to possibly eliminate false positives and to narrow down our suspects.”

  “Okay,” I say. “I’ll keep them talking.”

  Detectives Jay and Rutledge return around 11:45, trailed by Angelo Marino. I excuse myself and step into my bedroom, where I call Bernard, who does not answer. I try Gabriella, who does.

  “Alistair and I nearly died yesterday,” I tell her, then give her a synopsis of our adventure the night before. “The aquarium blew up when I held up my phone to it.”

  “That’s terrifying!” gasps Gabriella. “I’m so glad you’re both okay! You must be freaking out about today’s call.”

  “A bit,” I admit. “Bernard won’t answer any of my calls. Do you know where he is? We need to coordinate here. We need to all be on the same page.”

  “I’m not sure that he actually believes Henley is dead,” she confides. “He thinks his death is some kind of con or joke or hustle, that it’s part of your strategy to win. He thinks you two cooked it up together.”

  “What?” I say, my features freezing with incredulity. “You can’t be serious.”

  “Yeah, he told me not to believe anything you say,” she continues. “He says the cops are in on it. He says Angelo is working for you, because he needs you to win so he can keep his job and because he knows none of the rest of us will keep him on. He says you are the only one who wants the company to even keep going. He says the rest of us would just sell it, so this is all a conspiracy so that you can stay in charge. He says your plan is to make us all feel ashamed of ourselves for having lost to you, to make us feel like you earned the right to stay on as CEO. That it will feel fair because you have beaten us. Like this is all part of Dad’s natural fascism.”

  “How does he explain Henley, though?” I say. “Henley is dead, Gabriella. Does he think I killed him?”

  “He thinks Henley is faking his own death,” says Gabriella. “He says there are about a thousand reasons that Henley would want to fake his own death. To get away from the Chinese, to get out of his debts, to get away from all the girls he’s dating.”

  “That is insane,” I say.

  “Listen,” says Gabriella. “I don’t believe him, but his explanation isn’t any more insane than any other explanation for what’s happening.”

  I don’t know what to say to this. She has a point. They have no reason to trust me, and they certainly have no reason to trust our father. To say that he played favorites is an understatement. Bernard, Henley, and Gabriella were never offered jobs in the company—not even meaningless posts where they couldn’t do any harm. Our father never pretended to be interested in training them to know the family business. There was never one moment when he thought their talents might be useful in helping us stay on top.

  “It doesn’t matter what Bernard says,” I finally say. “We have to stick together. Alistair and I are down to our last life. If Bernard isn’t going to agree not to play, then we have to at least all make sure that we beat Bernard. He has two lives left. He can stand to lose one today.”

  Gabriella is silent for a long time.

  “He told me you would say that,” she says.

  “I’m sure he did, but that doesn’t make it any less true,” I say.

  “No, what you’re saying makes sense,” she agrees, sighing. “Alright, I’m on board. We’ll all work together this time.”

  She hangs up on me. It is 11:55. I return to my office and take out my game phone. Alistair does the same. The police detectives don’t appear to have any special equipment or anything. They’re just sitting in their chairs, looking slightly bored and skeptical.

  Might as well start drinking. I pour myself a bourbon and go around the room, seeing if anyone else is interested. No takers. Just as I am sitting down, the Nylo Corporation theme comes chirping from our game phones.

  “Here we go,” I say.

  When the Game Master appears this time, I nearly drop my drink. Staring up at me is a werewolf face, like the mask worn by the person who was responsible for Olivia’s bike crash.

  “You son of a bitch,” I cry, squeezing the phone as if I might crack it in half. The security guards and cops all stand up, alarmed by my sudden venom. Rage flows through me in a cleansing, overwhelming torrent.

  “Temper, temper,” reprimands the Game Master from behind the wolf mask. “Looks like young Bernard is in the lead going into day three. Are you Nylos ready for the next clue?”

  “How come you tried to kill us at the aquarium?” asks Alistair. “It’s a miracle none of us were injured. We could have smashed in our skulls by slipping on water or gotten stung in the neck by a jellyfish.”

  “I’m sure I don’t know what you are talking about,” says the Game Master. “If I may make a suggestion? I am not particularly keen on the way you have been working together. There can be only one winner after all, no matter how closely you collaborate. Families help each other. But families have a hierarchy.”

  This is a threat. If Alistair had actually lost all his lives at the aquarium, I would have died along with him. Alistair looks at me across my desk, narrowing his eyes, shaking his head.

  “Here comes the next clue,” says the Game Master. “Are you ready?”

  “You hurt my daughter, you son of a bitch,” I blurt out. I want to tell them I am going to murder them. I want to tell them I am going to rip off their arms and beat them to death with their arm bones. I want to tell them I am going to burn their corpse and dump the ashes in a Taco Bell toilet tank, where they will be mixed with liquid shit and flushed out to sea. But there are lots of witnesses, two of whom are cops.

  “You are going to get justice,” I say instead, relatively calmly. “Justice is going to come to you.”

  I look at the cops meaningfully, gesturing to the phone. Are they just going to sit there?

  “Excuse me, uh, Game Master?” says Detective Jay. “This is the NYPD. We need you to stop whatever is happening here and turn yourself in for questioning. Please take off your mask and identify yourself. Whatever Prescott Nylo paid you to do, the contract is hereby terminated.”

  “I’m sorry, I can’t hear you,” says the Game Master. “Are you on speakerphone? Here is the next clue:
‘They painted it together, at the top of the boot.’ Good luck, Nylos! This game is getting so close!”

  “Wait,” I say. “Who are you? Where are you?”

  There is a long period of silence, the werewolf face unwavering. The detectives finally look interested. Ed and Mel are tense, ready for action. Then the line goes dead and the clue floats to the front of the game phones, shimmering over a background of raining cowboy boots.

  I hate myself that the answer to this riddle comes to me almost instantly. I can’t help but puzzle it out. That’s the way these sorts of things work: you either get the answer fast or not at all. I look at Alistair to see if he has figured it out yet. He stares at his hands. I open my mouth to tell him what I know, and then I shut it again.

  He doesn’t have kids like I do. Neither does Gabriella. What the hell am I supposed to do? Help them? Like I just promised?

  25

  My phone rings immediately. It is Gabriella.

  “I am freaking out,” she says. “I don’t know the answer to this one.”

  “That was me yesterday,” I say, looking around the room.

  “You said you would help me,” she says. “You said we would work together.”

  “Let me call you back,” I say, hanging up.

  Alistair finally looks up. He is grinning.

  “You know this one,” he says.

  “Yeah, I know this one,” I say. “How can you tell?”

  “I’ve been playing board games against you my entire life,” he says. “I know when you’re looking at the board struggling to come up with your next move and when you have a good position or an unbeatable strategy.”

  “The top of the boot,” I say. “The boot is Italy. What is at the top of Italy?”

  “Switzerland?” he says.