by Jude Hardin
“Can I at least see your driver’s license?” he said.
I took it out of my wallet and handed it to him. He glanced at the surgical scars on my left hand but didn’t say anything.
“Satisfied?” I said. “I have references too if you need them. All you have to do is ask.”
“That’s okay. It’s just a lot of money, that’s all.”
He took a deep breath, looked over at the television for a second, and then wrote the check. We walked to the front desk together, and the cash went from his hand to mine.
CHAPTER TWO
I told Broadway I would be in touch. We shook hands and he left the hotel.
I went back to my room and did some searches on the computer, but I didn’t find any organization called The Sexy Bastards. Snuff Tag 9 was a different story. I got over a million hits on Google. I clicked on the Wikipedia article and skimmed through it. The premise seemed simple enough: There are a hundred characters, and you get to choose which one you want to be. Once you chose, seven others are randomly assigned as opponents, and at some point during the game a ninth character is dropped into the fray. You, and your opponents, are given two weapons each from the “secret vault.” The secret vault contains ten different weapons: a length of tow chain, a sling shot, a survival knife, a nightstick, a set of brass knuckles, a pair of nun chucks, a stun gun, a can of Mace, a bull whip, and a fifty caliber blowgun with three darts. You chose the weapons blindly, so you don’t know what you’re going to get, and the weapons you select are automatically replaced, so it’s possible for other characters to have one or both of the same weapons you have. Your only objective is to kill the other eight characters. If you kill them all, game over. You win. If one of them kills you, game over. You lose. A master of ceremonies named Freeze orchestrates the battles and keeps everyone in line.
In the Snuff Tag 9 storyline, Freeze is actually a billionaire sadist who has kidnapped the characters and is forcing them to play the game. The characters are being forced to play the game against their will. If you refuse, you die automatically. The playing field is a remote island two miles in diameter, so there’s no chance of running away.
The premise reminded me of a story I read in junior high called, “The Most Dangerous Game” by Richard Connell. The folks who developed Snuff Tag 9 even mentioned that story as one of their inspirations.
But Snuff Tag 9 was way more complex.
According to Wikipedia, there are twenty different levels of difficulty to choose from based on your proficiency at the game, Level Twenty being the highest. As of the date on the article, only four people in the world had ever won the game at Level Nineteen, and nobody had ever won at Level Twenty. Nobody even knew what Level Twenty looked like, except the programmers. Rumor had it your final battle in Level Twenty was against Freeze himself, but nobody knew for sure. The article said Snuff Tag 9 is listed as one of the top ten most violent videogames ever produced, and is rated M for mature players only.
I poured myself another drink and sat there for a while and thought about it. Someone had taken the time and trouble and risk to hand-deliver a letter and map to Nathan Broadway’s mailbox, just to lure him to a remote location to play a videogame. The whole death threat thing was bullshit, I was sure of it, but maybe the note had an underlying sinister purpose written between the lines.
I called Broadway’s cell phone number.
“I forgot to ask earlier, but what kind of work do you do?”
“I’m an accountant,” he said.
“Make good money?”
“I do all right.”
“You have a nice house? Nice car? Nice things?”
“Mr. Colt, I—”
“And you’re single,” I said. “Listen, I want you to stay at home Tuesday night.”
“Why?”
“I’m thinking whoever put that letter in your mailbox is planning to burglarize your house. All that Snuff Tag Nine crap was just to make sure you were away for a few hours after dark. That’s my guess, anyway. There was a similar case down in Tampa a few years ago, only in that one the letter told the recipients they’d won a seven-day cruise. The targets were single people. Educated. Affluent. All they had to do was show up at a certain time and place to collect their prize, but the address they’d been given turned out to be a vacant lot. While they were gone, the crooks waltzed in and bagged their cash and jewelry and laptops, anything of value that could be carted out easily.”
“Were the thieves ever caught?” Broadway said.
“Not to my knowledge. It might even be the same ring.”
“So you think I should stay home Tuesday night? What if they come anyway? Should I buy a gun?”
“When they see your car in the driveway and lights on in the house, they’ll go somewhere else. I guarantee it. They probably cased a dozen houses and delivered a dozen of those letters, maybe more. The people that fall for it are the ones they’ll hit. Do you have a dog?”
“No.”
“An alarm system?”
“No.”
“Professional burglars look for those things and target residences that don’t have them. Just stay home Tuesday night and you’ll be fine.”
“You sure?” he said.
“Yeah, but you might want to think about having an alarm system installed sometime soon.”
“I will. I sure will. Are you still going to drive to the spot on the map?”
I hesitated. “I’ll go out there, just to check it out. But I would lay odds there’s nothing there. Shouldn’t take more than four hours tops, so I’ll be giving you back quite a bit of the retainer.”
“Wow, that’s great. I appreciate it, man.”
“No problem. I’ll give you a call Tuesday night.”
We disconnected. It was going on three o’clock, and I still hadn’t eaten lunch. Come to think of it, I hadn’t eaten breakfast either. I had a three-bourbon buzz and didn’t think it would be wise to drive, so I locked the room and walked out to the beach and headed toward the pier.
A mile or so south and two blocks west there was a little bar and grill. I’d been there before, and the fish sandwich was consistently good and reasonably priced and the draft beer was ice cold. I took my Topsiders off and trudged through the loose sand until I got to the firmer part by the shore. From there I put the shoes back on and treaded easily. There were people throwing Frisbees and playing volleyball and surfing and jogging and walking their dogs. It was low tide, sunny and eighty degrees. People up north get the leaves changing and frost on the pumpkin and all that, but to me this was the perfect autumn day.
Perfect, that is, if I’d had someone to share it with.
Eighteen months after an overwhelmingly traumatic time in Tennessee and California, where I was brainwashed by a militia group called the Harvest Angels and used for some shockingly abominable activities, my wife Juliet still hadn’t found it in her heart to forgive me for one night with a record company receptionist named Alana. I explained to her a million times that I wasn’t myself at the time, that it was meaningless, but there was something about the way she’d been brought up that made it very difficult to work through marital infidelity, even in extreme circumstances like mine. I kept telling myself she just needed more time, and I sincerely hoped that was the case.
I made it to restaurant and a hostess carrying a stack of laminated menus ushered me to a table upstairs. I sat there and pretended to look at the lists of appetizers, soups, salads, and entrees, and when the waitress came I ordered a fried fish on rye and a Heineken draft.
She brought the beer, and while I was waiting for the sandwich my cell phone pulsed and the caller ID said Brittney. I answered.
“Hi, Sweetheart.”
“Hey, Daddy. You’ll never guess what just happened.”
From the sound of her voice I knew it wasn’t bad news.
“What?” I said.
“I won tickets to the Florida-Georgia game in a raffle. Isn’t that great? I’m going to the game
!”
“Wow, that is great. When is it?”
“October twenty-ninth at three-thirty. It’s in Jacksonville, at Everbank Stadium, where the Jags play. You want to go?”
“I would love to go,” I said. “I can’t believe you’re asking me instead of one of your friends.”
“Actually, I have four tickets, so I can invite a couple of friends too. Oh, we’re going to have such a great time. I can’t wait! So where are you?”
“Just hanging out at the beach.”
“Where at?”
“St. Augustine. Want to drive over and have some dinner with me later?”
“That sounds so good. But I have a calculus test tomorrow, so I better stay here and study. Are you working in St. Augustine, or taking a vacation?”
“A little bit of both. I’m going fishing in the morning and I’ll probably stay here tomorrow night, but I have a job up near the Georgia border Tuesday.”
“It’s nothing dangerous, is it?”
“No. Nothing dangerous.”
“You should totally get back into music and let someone else spy on cheating husbands and stuff.”
“I can’t play anymore,” I said. “You know that.”
“But you can still sing.”
I didn’t feel like talking about it.
“Have you ever played a videogame called Snuff Tag Nine?” I said.
“I haven’t, but I know some guys who play it. I’ve watched them. It’s like really graphic ultra-violent stalking kind of stuff. Lots of killing, lots of gore. Why, you getting into videogames now, Dad? Thinking about joining the twenty-first century?”
“No, just curious. If you change your mind about dinner, just give me a call.”
“Okay. I will. Daddy, I’m so excited about going to the game.”
“I can tell. Me too. Talk to you soon, sweetheart.”
“Bye, Daddy. Love you.”
“I love you too,” I said.
My grouper sandwich came and I ate it and ordered another beer and then I walked back to the hotel.
CHAPTER THREE
Early Monday morning, before the sun came up, I met Joe Crawford at the marina and we boarded a fifty-foot charter boat. The boat was licensed to carry thirty-four passengers, but I only counted a dozen people in line ahead of us and four behind us. Slow day. We left the marina and headed for the open sea at 6:30, as scheduled.
I’d known Joe Crawford since we were twelve, since sixth grade. In a life where friends and acquaintances came and went, Joe was a constant. He was my best friend and I loved him like a brother. Like the brother I never had. He ran the fish camp on Lake Barkley where my Airstream was parked, so he was also my landlord. He gave me a discount for helping with security around the place, and he let me use one of his rental boats whenever I wanted. Joe owned the fish camp, and he also dabbled in international real estate. He was rich, and he’d offered me fulltime employment more than once, but fulltime employment wasn’t my thing. It wasn’t my thing, and I didn’t want the possibility of a working relationship putting a strain on our personal relationship.
“Beautiful morning,” Joe said.
We were leaning against the steel railing atop the starboard bulkhead. Cruising at around fifteen knots into a pink and turquoise and gold sunrise over the Atlantic.
“It is,” I said. “We picked a good day to go out. Perfect. We got lucky.”
“I’ve been looking at buying a boat myself, maybe even living on it part of the time. It’s something I’ve always wanted to do. Nothing as big as this, of course, but maybe a thirty-five foot Jersey or something.”
“Sure. You could call it the S.S. Minnow, and I could be your bumbling first mate.”
He laughed. “Seriously. I could see myself cruising up and down the coast, docking in Puerto Rico for a week or two. Or the Bahamas. I could see myself living like that.”
“If it’s something you’ve always wanted to do, then do it. It’s not like we’re getting any younger. I was thinking about doing the same thing, back when I had lots of money like you.”
“Come to work for me,” he said. “I can show you how to make lots of money again.”
“It’s not me, Joe. You know that. I’ll probably be doing this private eye thing till I drop. I’ll never get rich, but at least I’m living life on my own terms.”
“I know you’re not married to it, though. You were back to playing music fulltime before all that crap in Tennessee.”
I fingered the scars on my left hand. “Yeah.”
“Just think about, okay?”
“Okay. I’ll think about it. But really, business has been pretty good lately.”
“Anything interesting?”
“The usual, mostly. Bogus insurance claims, cheating spouses, a skip-trace here and there. Yesterday a guy hired me because of a letter he got telling him he had to show up at a certain place. The letter said he had to show up and play a videogame called Snuff Tag Nine, and if he didn’t The Sexy Bastards were going to kill him.”
Joe looked at me and we both started laughing.
“Snuff Tag Nine?” Joe said. “The Sexy Bastards?”
“Yeah. What a crock. I’m thinking it’s a burglary ring, sending these letters out to get people away from their houses. I’m going to check it out and then probably hand it over to the sheriff’s department.”
“Why don’t you just hand it over to the sheriff’s department now?”
“Guy wants to pay me a hundred an hour to check it out, I’ll check it out. I’ll check it out all day every day for a hundred an hour.”
“Can’t blame you there,” Joe said. He looked at his watch. “I’m going below to get some coffee. You want some?”
“Sounds great.”
“Be right back.”
There were two guys standing a few feet aft of us, leaning on the same steel rail on the same starboard bulkhead. One of them followed Joe to the lower deck, and one of them stayed put. The guy who stayed put didn’t say anything to me, and I didn’t say anything to him. I’m not much for striking up conversations with strangers, and apparently he wasn’t either. Joe came back with the coffee a few minutes later. He and the guy who’d followed him down were saying something to each other. Joe’s different from me in that way. He can strike up a conversation with anyone, at any time. The guy handed his friend a cup of coffee, and Joe handed me one. The two guys walked further aft and then out of sight.
“See,” Joe said. “You never know when the opportunity might arise to make some money. I was in line to get the coffee and a guy started talking fishing with me. Eventually he asked me what I did for a living. I told him, and he asked for a business card, and I gave him one. Turns out he’s an investor, looking to buy some property in Canada.”
“You’re good at stuff like that,” I said. “Wheeling and dealing off the cuff with someone you just met. Me, not so much.”
“You’ve hustled guys on the pool table before, haven’t you?”
“Not as good as you have.”
“See, looking me in the eyes and saying that is a hustle in itself. It’s the same thing in business. You say things that make the other guy feel good about himself. Once you do that, he’s on your side.”
“But there’s an art to it,” I said. “If you’re obvious, the guy’s going to know you’re a phony and walk away. Some people have a knack for that sort of thing. It’s a talent, like playing guitar. I made a fortune playing guitar, and you made one being full of shit.”
Joe sipped his coffee. “All right, my friend. Whatever you say. I still think you could be a great salesman if you wanted to.”
I tried to imagine myself in a suit and tie and shiny black shoes that hurt my feet. I was still trying to imagine all that when the engine slowed and the crew came around with tackle and coolers full of bait. Time to stop thinking and do some fishing.
CHAPTER FOUR
Tuesday evening I drove to the destination on the Snuff Tag 9 map, a spot deep inside th
e Okefenokee swamp on the Florida side. My 1996 GMC Jimmy had four-wheel drive, but it turned out I didn’t need it. The washboarded dirt road that led to the site happened to be dry on October 11, and anyone with a Honda Civic and a kidney belt could have made it in with no problem.
I switched off the ignition, opened the windows and listened. A crow cawed and a hornet buzzed by, and a raccoon or squirrel or fox or something rustled some leaves in the nearby woods, but mostly I heard what you would expect to hear out in the middle of nowhere: nothing.
Nothing bothers me. It bothers my tinnitus, a condition that causes ringing of the ears. I attribute this condition to years of playing the guitar on some of the world’s biggest stages, fifty thousand watts of power blasting through walls of speaker cabinets taller than some houses.
In the mid to late eighties my southern rock and blues band Colt .45 consistently sold out sports arenas all over the country. Gold records, mansions on both coasts, garages full of high-end automobiles. All of that came to a screeching halt the day I crawled away from the fiery wreckage of a chartered jet. The crash took the lives of my wife Susan and my baby daughter Harmony and all the members of my band. I was the sole survivor. Twenty years later, I found out the crash wasn’t an accident. I found out Susan and Harmony died because of their skin color. The people responsible for the incident called everyone else aboard collateral damage. I was supposed to have died, but I didn’t. I walked away without a scratch. The sound of silence always makes my ears ring and it always makes me think about the people I loved whose lives were wasted.
I looked at my watch. 7:08. I had gotten to the Okefenokee early so I could take some photographs of the site before dark and send them to Nathan Broadway as promised. I planned to stick around till eight, just to make sure the Snuff Tag 9 letter was indeed a bogus subterfuge. In the highly unlikely event that it was not, I had my favorite carry revolver holstered under the tails of my Hawaiian shirt and a sawed-off twelve-gauge pump strapped to the back of the Jimmy’s front passenger seat.
