by Theresa Weir
“You’re such a con. You’re so full of shit.”
“What do you want? Do you want your identity back? It sucks that I’ve been winning all over the place and I’m using somebody else’s name. But I’m in too deep. I don’t want to do any more time. I won’t. I can’t go back there. You’ve got to have some idea how it would be in prison for a guy like me. And now it’s like I’m somebody else. That prison stuff—it’s like remembering a movie I watched a long time ago, a movie I didn’t like, a movie that made me sick.” His voice dropped. “I can’t go back there. Don’t make me go back there.”
Dylan felt sorry for him, but not that sorry. Davis had left him in the mountains to die. He’d given Dylan a past he didn’t want. “It wasn’t exactly an even exchange,” Dylan said. “Grand master for grand theft.”
“I’m sorry, man. What do you want from me?”
“How good are you?” Dylan asked.
“What?”
“Chess. Are you really good, or are you such a sham, such a con artist that you throw your opponent off? Or is it the name? I remember when it got to the point where my name alone was winning games. People froze. They couldn’t function and they did stupid things. Is that the way it is with you, Davis? Or should I call you Dylan? But then, you prefer Daniel, if I remember right.”
“What do you want?” The guy’s voice was rising in panic. Dylan could almost hear the sweat rolling off him.
“I want to know how good you are.”
“I’m good. I told you, I’m good.”
“As good as I am?”
“Yeah, maybe. I play a lot like you.”
“I’ll bet you do. It wouldn’t do to have someone mention the French Capture or Daniel’s Legacy and not know what they were. You have to have copied my style, otherwise people would be suspicious.”
“I know everything there is to know about you. I know you prefer the romantic school of Adolf Anderssen and Paul Murphy to Karpov.”
He was right. Dylan had admired the romantic style because of its free-spirited takes and quest for beauty. Chess wasn’t supposed to be sterile. It was supposed to be a dance. A sweetly choreographed dance. Poetry. Dylan laughed. “You’re so damn cocky.”
“You asked me if I was good. Yeah, I’m good. As good as you.” There was a thoughtful pause. “Maybe better.”
“Then play me.”
“What?”
“I'm challenging you to a game of chess.”
Chapter 27
Someone was knocking at the door.
Claire wrapped her pillow around her head, shoving it against her ears. Go away.
But the knocking kept on and on.
Finally it stopped. Thank God.
That small moment of silence was followed by the sound of a key being slid into a lock, the sound of the door being swung open.
Claire dropped the pillow and sat up in bed, listening to a booted footfall approaching.
Dylan?
Libby's head appeared around the corner. “My God,” she said as soon as she saw Claire. “You look like shit.”
Claire tried to tuck a lank strand of hair behind her ear. It drooped forward. Even her hair was in mourning. And then she realized it was practically the middle of the night. “What are you doing here?”
“I'm sorry.” Libby put her hands in the air. “You know I don't barge in on people like this, but I saw your boyfriend in town and wondered if everything was okay.”
“He's not my boyfriend.”
“Well whatever he is, I saw him yesterday and said hi, and he didn't even know I was there. Is he on drugs? I hope you aren't dating somebody who's on drugs.”
“We aren't dating.”
“Then I saw him again tonight. He was at The Brewery using the phone. I just happened to be coming out of the rest room. He was calling a cab to take him to the airport.”
“He was catching a plane out of here. What's so unusual about that? Libby, you're letting your paranoia loose again.”
“I'm not done. Just the day before, I was talking to Craig, the private pilot Craig, and he said he'd gotten a call to fly to Boise and pick up somebody.”
“Is this going anywhere?”
“This person asked Craig if he could fly instrument, because he had to land here in the middle of the night, tonight. Craig was going to turn it down, but the guy was paying big bucks and he couldn't refuse.”
“What does this have to do with Dylan?”
“This mystery guy must be the person Dylan is meeting at the airport. Claire, is he in some kind of trouble?”
Trouble? Dylan?
Those two words just naturally went together.
Claire tumbled out of bed and began pulling on clothes. She wasn't sure what desperate business Dylan used to be involved in, but it sounded like he was picking up where he'd left off.
“Claire, what the hell is going on? I mean, Dylan seemed like a nice guy. You two looked good together. Now he looks like hell, and you look like hell, and it sounds like he's running drugs or something.”
“I'm afraid you might be right.”
Claire pulled her hair back from her face. “Oh God.” She had to talk to somebody. She had to tell Libby what was going on.
Claire dropped to the bed. “You aren't going to believe this.”
She told Libby everything, beginning with the kidnapping and going to the handcuffs and the voodoo doll. Libby's jaw just kept dropping.
When Claire was finished, she got to her feet and hurried to the living room to find her boots, Libby hurrying behind her, for once too stunned for words. “Did he say what motel?” Claire asked, shoving her foot into a boot, hopping around, finding the other boot, quickly lacing both up. “When? Where?” Didn't he have any sense? Just a few days away from her sight and he was already getting himself into trouble.
“The Haven.”
“That dive?”
“They were meeting at one A.M. And you know what my mother always said when I wanted to stay out past curfew: Nothing good ever happens after ten o'clock.”
Claire checked the wall clock. It was almost one now.
~0~
Dylan sat facing Davis, a card table between them, the chess pieces lined up on the board, the clock to his left.
“I remember when you came out of nowhere and played that Russian in Leningrad before it became Saint Petersburg,” Davis said. “They called you the Dark Horse. How old were you then? Seventeen? Eighteen?”
“Eighteen.” That seemed so long ago. It was a time when all Dylan was concerned with was the game. That's all that mattered to him. So innocent. So naive. He didn't know that winning the game had a price, and that price was loss of personal freedom. It was funny, the way Davis didn't want to go back to prison, and yet he was heading straight for another kind of confinement. But some people were showmen. They didn't mind that their lives were played out on a public field. Dylan had the feeling Davis would thrive on such an existence.
Dylan dug a quarter out of the front pocket of his jeans. “We'll flip for color.”
The motel was dim and stale, smelling of damp carpet and mildew and the lingering odor of a thousand people who'd passed through the seedy room. In one corner was a hanging lamp attached to a gold chain, on the bed a spread of avocado-green chenille.
Davis looked about like Dylan remembered him. The glasses. The thin face, thin arms poking out below short white sleeves. On the airplane, before the crash, they’d joked that Davis looked the part of the chess player, Dylan the part of an ex-con.
Davis called it. Dylan flipped the coin, caught it, and slapped it down on his forearm. “Looks like you get white.”
Davis straightened his pieces. “I can't believe I'm playing you. I used to dream about playing you.”
Dylan wouldn't admit it to Davis, but for the first time in years, he was looking forward to playing, he was actually feeling a tense excitement. And also anxiety. Could he beat him? Playing chess wasn't like riding a bike. It wasn't somethi
ng you could just walk away from, then take up again without practice, without conditioning yourself like any athlete.
A game of the mind, yes, but there were so many more things involved, so many more elements, so many layers.
Dylan was stale. Dylan was out of shape. Christ, he hadn't played in years.
Could he win?
Probably not. But he was getting off on the challenge.
Davis opened by moving his pawn to occupy the center, opening lines for the queen and bishop to move out of the back rank. The Ruy Lopez Opening?
Dylan mimicked Davis's move.
Davis brought his knight into play, threatening Dylan's central pawn.
Dylan had read that Davis was a master of the end game. A lot of people thought the end game was the only really important part of chess. They didn’t try to memorize beginnings, or middles, but instead focused all of their attention on mastering the end game.
Over the years, Dylan had come to realize that if you wanted to play with the big boys, you had to be strong at the beginning, the middle, and the end. He’d also taught himself to diversify his openings, his objective always being one of surprise and originality.
In a few moves, it became apparent that Davis was like so many people Dylan had played over the years. He'd memorized the plays, and, like so many dedicated players, he didn't play from his heart, his soul, his gut. Davis saw the board as a puzzle to solve, not a battle to be won. He didn’t see it as a dance. He didn't see the poetry. The beauty.
Davis was good.
He was damn good.
But he wasn't great. He wasn't grand-master material. Which wasn't saying that he couldn't be someday. With the proper coaching. It would take a lot of unlearning, a lot of deprogramming, but it could be done.
“You just fell for a poison pawn,” Dylan said.
“I saw it.”
But Dylan knew he hadn't.
There were even a couple of moments when Davis surprised him. And there was a brief move that even hinted at a promise of brilliance. But Davis wasn't the challenge Dylan had hoped for. That sad fact quickly became apparent to Davis himself.
When the game was over, Davis sat staring at the board. He finally reached across the table and shook Dylan's hand. “Thanks. You've taught me a valuable lesson.”
Dylan actually felt sorry for him. He'd had such big hopes, big dreams, only to come to a dingy motel in Fallon, Idaho, to find out he just didn't have what it took.
“You're good,” Dylan told him, hoping their game together wouldn't turn him away from chess completely.
Davis shook his head. “Not nearly as good as I thought I was.”
“You were nervous. Maybe feeling a little intimidated.”
Again Davis shook his head and let out a harsh laugh. “I thought I could beat you.”
“You play too much from here.” Dylan pointed to his forehead.
“That's been my strength. My ability to memorize plays.”
“So I noticed. But if that's all you ever do, then you're never playing your own game. You have to play your own game. Give yourself a chance.”
“Think you'll ever go back?”
Dylan picked up the black knight and turned it around in his hand. He loved the way a good chess piece felt, the weight of it, the balance. “I think about it sometimes. But there doesn’t seem to be any way to separate the game from all the garbage that goes with it. All I ever cared about was the game.”
His own words took him by surprise, because there had been a time when Dylan didn't even care about the game anymore. When he'd felt like the hired assassin he told Claire he was, when winning had become no more than a calculated kill. Why was it that when one part of your life seemed to get better, the other part collapsed? Was that some kind of rule?
“Have you ever been in love?” Dylan asked. “Really in love?” Dylan didn't know where that had come from. Maybe it was the lateness of the night that had brought about such a personal question.
Dylan could see that it took Davis by surprise. Davis motioned to himself. “I look like this, and I play chess. What do you think?”
“I'm talking love of the unrequited kind.”
Davis smiled. “That, my friend, I know. That I understand.”
Ah. So they had more in common than chess and switched identities.
“How about some coffeehouse chess?”
“That sloppy shit?”
“That's your problem, Davis. Chess is supposed to be fun, not work.” And in so saying, Dylan realized that that was exactly what he himself had lost sight of.
~0~
It didn't take Claire long to decide that if Dylan was up to something illegal, then somebody needed to stop him before he got into any more trouble.
Claire took the gun, unloaded of course, and tucked it into the front of her jeans the way Dylan had carried it. At the last minute, she tossed the Pillsbury Doughboy into her purse. You never knew when some voodoo might come in handy.
In summer, The Haven was always booked solid, dive though it was. In winter, it was almost deserted. If someone needed a hotel, they could be choosy. The only people who used The Haven in winter were a few hookers, people involved in affairs, and criminals. None of the categories were particularly impressive.
“Looks like we found the town’s hot spot,” Libby said in a low voice as Claire pulled off the road and parked near the office.
The motel was long and narrow, with a dozen orange doors that opened onto the parking lot.
“Now what?” Claire asked, realizing that they had no plan.
“We need to figure out which room is his and get the key. If nobody’s there, we’ll go in and look around.”
“You’re enjoying this, aren’t you?” Claire asked, reaching for the door handle.
Libby just grinned. She was in her element.
Libby waited in the Jeep, while Claire took on the task of obtaining the room key. In the office, she came upon two teenagers making out in front of the television.
She made a throat-clearing sound.
Nothing happened.
She tried again, thinking that she might have to get a hose. The pair reluctantly separated, the male of the duo getting to his feet and making his way to the cracked countertop.
“I need another key to my room,” Claire said, eyeing the row of keys dangling from little gold hooks on a pegboard wall.
“What’s your number?” the kid asked, rubbing his belly. He was groggy-looking, his clothes twisted, his hair sticking straight up.
“Uh ...”
The kid stood there, bored, anxious to get back to more important business.
She checked out the row of keys. “I can’t remember. Could you look in your book?”
The guest register was lying on the counter. With an irritated sigh, the kid flipped open the book.
Claire’s gaze quickly fell to the page with its list of names. Nobody named Dylan. Of course she wouldn’t have expected him to go by his real name. If that was his real name. “We’ve been here a few days ...” she said vaguely.
“Mr. Black.”
Mr. Black? That was a little like Mr. Green. Or Professor Plum. Yes, it was done in the motel room, with the revolver, by Mr. Black.
“Room six.” He grabbed a key and slid it across the counter, then returned to his make-out session.
Claire snatched up the gold-colored key with its diamond-shaped plastic tag and hurried from the lobby before someone with authority showed up. Thank God for rude, lazy teenagers. And thank God for motels that didn’t believe in updating their lock system for the safety of their patrons.
As soon as she stepped out the door, Libby jumped from the Jeep and ran over to her. “Get it?” she asked in a loud whisper.
Claire nodded and looked down the row of rooms. Number six was the only room with a light.
They approached the door, stopping outside. Claire stood there. This was stupid. What was she doing? What if Libby was wrong?
Clai
re grabbed Libby’s arm and pulled her back several steps from the room. “What if he’s in there with some woman? What if they’re in bed?”
“So?”
“So? My God, Libby.”
“Come on.” Libby dragged Claire back to the room, then put her ear to the door.
Claire watched her friend's face, the questioning eyebrows, the distant stare, and put her own ear to the door. The first voice she heard was one she didn’t recognize. “You can’t quit when you’re one of the best. I remember how, after you pulled that job in Russia, people started calling you the Hit Man.”
“I don’t want to talk about me.” Dylan’s voice.
“Okay, but I didn’t come here to prove I could replace you. I came here to talk you into coming back.”
“I’m not going back.”
Claire silently handed the key to Libby.
“Then I can’t be here,” the stranger said. “I can’t do this.”
“No!” came Dylan’s voice through the door. “Don’t!”
Libby unlocked the door, Claire pulled out her gun—and fell inside the room.
Chapter 28
The motel room door flew open.
Dylan looked up from the chessboard to see Claire stumble in, gun in hand.
Her eyes went from him, to Davis, then back to him.
Busted.
Davis jumped to his feet, hands high, chess pieces scattering.
Staring at the woman he loved, a woman who had rejected that love, Dylan asked, "Is this a raid?"
"You’re playing chess?”
The incredulous expression on Claire’s face was something he didn’t think he’d ever forget.
He was so damn glad to see her, even if she was pointing a gun at him. "It may seem like a harmless pastime,” he said, "but you know what they say. First it’s chess, then it’s the hard stuff.”
Standing near the open door, Libby let out an unladylike snort.
“But I heard you shout.”
“He was going to put away the pieces before the game was over.”
Claire tossed the gun on the bed, the weapon bouncing. She dropped to her knees and began crawling around, picking up chess pieces. She had to hide. She had to distract herself. “I didn’t know you were playing chess. I thought there was some kind of drug deal going down. Or some kind of hit being planned.”
