Game of Death

by David Hosp

  I’m doubled over against the wall, trying to protect my body, making sucking noises. I’m genuinely concerned that he may kill me, and I suspect that’s the impression he intends to give. He grabs me around the neck and pulls me upright. My body fights against straightening, trying to stay curled in on itself, but it’s useless.

  ‘This thing you do – it is no good for anyone. Not good for the company. Not good for Josh Pinkerton. Not good for me.’ He smiles and his teeth look small and sharp in his giant face. ‘Not good for you.’ He hits me again in the stomach. ‘Do not see the girl again. Do not even speak to her,’ NetMaster says. ‘Ever. And if you speak to anyone of what I have said to you – the police, anyone at the company – I will kill you. Then I will kill your friend, the pretty girl with the strange hair, and I will kill your mother, if she is not dead yet.’ He leans in close, so that I can feel his breath on my face. ‘Do you understand?’

  I still cannot speak, so I just stare at him, trying to force air into my body. He pulls his fist back and swings hard again, this time into my chest. He lets go of me, and I collapse on the ground. ‘This is not your business,’ he says. He spits on the ground next to me and walks away.

  I lie there in the vacant lot coughing up blood.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE

  I’m not sure for how long I lie there in the rubble. There are no lights, and I’m tucked away out of sight from any passersby on the street. It’s probably no more than fifteen or twenty minutes before I drag myself to my feet and make my way to my car. I pass a few people on the sidewalk, but they avert their eyes and offer no help. I don’t blame them; I’m not their problem, and getting involved often leads to more headaches than most people are willing to reasonably put up with.

  I drive myself to Massachusetts General Hospital, just across the river in Boston. The wait is shorter than I had expected, and they take X-rays to make sure I’m not bleeding into my lungs. Then they wrap my chest and tell me that I should stay in bed for a few days to let the ribs heal. I know that’s not going to happen, but I don’t tell the doctor that. It would only result in a protracted conversation that will do neither of us any good. When I arrived at the Emergency Room I was asked how I had been hurt, and I said that I tripped and fell onto a stairway railing. The doctor doesn’t look like he buys it, but he has a waiting room full of other patients, so he leaves it alone.

  I arrive back home at around midnight, feeling like shit. The lights in the house are out, and I open the door quietly and slip into the kitchen, switching on the lights. Cormack is sitting in the dark at the kitchen table, sipping whiskey out of a jelly glass. I’m startled, and sucking in a sharp breath sends shooting pains throughout my body. ‘Jesus, Cormack,’ I say, grabbing my chest. ‘You scared the shit out of me!’

  ‘Sorry about that. I was just having a quiet moment.’

  ‘Is Ma home?’

  He nods. ‘We came home early. She had a coughing fit.’ He takes a sip of his drink. ‘She’s not doing well, is she?’ I shake my head. He looks more closely at me. ‘You don’t look so well, either. Who the fuck worked you over?’

  I shake my head again. ‘I’m fine.’ Talking hurts so much it’s hard to believe.

  ‘Bullshit. It’s your business, not mine, but bullshit.’ He drinks again. It’s clear it’s not his first glass. Not his second or his third, either. ‘I was so infatuated with her when I was a lad, you know that? We all were.’

  ‘Ma?’

  ‘Yeah. She was a fuckin’ pistol. Tough, smart and a set o’ tits on her that would cloud a young man’s mind, if you don’t mind me sayin’.’

  ‘No, by all means,’ I say. I pull a glass out of the cabinet, sit at the table and pour myself a drink.

  ‘No disrespect intended,’ he says. ‘Truth is truth. And your father was the one who got her. No one ever thought it would go any other way. What your father wanted, he got. That was the way of it, and God bless him for it. He was a stand-up man to the end.’

  ‘That’s what I understand. My memories of him are thin.’

  ‘He was one of the best. I miss him still.’ He raises his glass, and I meet his with mine. ‘To a great man,’ he says. We both drink. ‘I hope you don’t mind that I’m steppin’ out with your ma,’ he says in a serious tone.

  ‘It seems to be doing her good,’ I say. ‘I’m more worried about you,’ I joke. ‘She’s a tough broad. You better watch yourself.’

  He laughs at that. ‘Too true. But when I look at her, I still see the girl she was thirty years ago.’

  I take out a prescription bottle of Percocet they gave me at the hospital, pour a pill into my hand, put it in my mouth and wash it down with the whiskey.

  ‘Do you want to talk about it?’ he asks me. ‘I’ll only raise it once, but if you want . . . ’

  ‘It’s okay. I can deal with it.’

  ‘Sure. But if you ever need anything – if there’s anyone you ever need to talk to – I have resources that are at your disposal. In honor of your father, and out of respect to your mother. You should know that.’

  ‘Thanks, I’ll keep it in mind.’

  He nods as though we’ve entered into a pact. ‘Good. I’m going, then.’

  ‘You okay to drive?’

  He laughs. ‘Unless they’ve redrawn the streets, I could do it from memory.’ He puts his glass into the sink and looks back at me before he leaves. ‘You keep what I’ve said in mind, hear? And you take care of yourself.’

  ‘I will,’ I respond. ‘And thanks.’

  CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX

  I plan on getting into the office before daylight, but the Scotch and pain pills keep me under for a little longer than I anticipated. Dressing is an agony, and pain shoots through my entire body with every small movement. It takes twice as long as usual, and by the time I’ve thrown a piece of toast in my mouth and headed out to the car, it’s already past seven. With a stop at the local coffee shop for the morning’s caffeine, it’s nearing seven-thirty by the time I arrive at the office.

  Yvette is already there, sitting in my office in the back, going through the results of her computer scan. She looks up at me as I walk in. ‘Holy shit!’ she says. ‘What the hell happened to you?’

  I close the door to make sure no one is listening. ‘Josh Pinkerton happened to me. Or, to be more accurate, Josh’s muscle, NetMaster, happened to me. He used me for a heavy bag, and he’s got a hell of a punch.’

  ‘Back up,’ she says. ‘Tell me what happened.’

  I realize I’m going to have to take some medicine in order to explain this. I sigh guiltily, ‘I met with Kendra Madison last night,’ I begin.

  ‘Kendra Madison’s your mother’s doctor?’

  ‘Funny. I don’t even know why I didn’t tell you.’

  ‘I do.’

  ‘No, it’s not like that. Nothing happened. She needed to talk to me without Killkenny, to give me the whole story.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘Because the whole story involves an explanation of what she does for living.’

  ‘I take it she’s not selling Avon door-to-door?’

  I shake my head. ‘Her services are a bit more personal.’

  I can see Yvette processing this information. The doubt and concern are written on her face. ‘Did you get a price list?’

  ‘I told you, it’s not like that.’ She rolls her eyes at me, unconvinced. I press on. ‘Apparently she hooked Josh on the whole domination scene. He kept at it for four years, and his taste for it grew. He got more and more violent, until Kendra had to get out.’

  ‘Serves her right, seems to me,’ Yvette says acidly.

  ‘Maybe,’ I concede. ‘But that didn’t end it. Pinkerton tried to force her to keep seeing him. He used NetMaster to threaten her, he threatened her friends. Apparently it got even more violent until she used the company to back him off her.’

  ‘How?’

  ‘She dug up some information that would have been damaging to him, or the company, and threatene
d to take it public. She said it was the only way he would back off.’

  ‘How does all this explain what happened to you?’

  ‘I met her at a bar in Charlestown. When I left, NetMaster jumped me. I never saw him coming.’

  ‘Did he say anything?’

  ‘Yeah, he told me never to see or talk to Kendra Madison again. He also said that if I told anyone that he’d attacked me, he’d kill pretty much everyone I know – including you – so you probably want to keep this to yourself.’

  ‘You’re not going to the police?’

  ‘Not yet,’ I say. ‘Not until we have what we need on Josh Pinkerton. Once we can trace the LifeScenes back to him, we can make a move, and at that point NetMaster will have no backing and no real motivation to make good on his threats.’ My optimism is almost enough to make me forget how much my ribs hurt.

  ‘You’re that sure it’s Pinkerton?’

  ‘Why else would he have sent NetMaster after me? Besides, Kendra spent enough time with Josh to be a pretty good gauge of what he might be capable of. She thinks he was over the edge by the time she got rid of him. He had such a taste for sadism that he could easily have taken it to the next level. That’s why she was so scared, and why she wanted to see me. All we need to do now is show that the LifeScenes came from Josh’s computer.’

  Yvette shakes her head. ‘Then we’ve got a problem, because they didn’t come from Josh’s computer.’

  It feels like she’s kicked me in my battered ribs. ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘I mean these LifeScenes weren’t created on Josh Pinkerton’s computer.’

  A slight panic creeps into my chest. ‘I thought you said you’d found enough fragments of the LifeScenes, and that it looked like they were created on a computer that was locked into the system?’

  ‘I did, and they were,’ she agrees. ‘It’s just that they didn’t come from any computer associated with Josh Pinkerton.’

  I stare blankly at her. ‘How can you be sure?’

  ‘The system tracks all activity on all associated computers – whether you’re talking about a workstation in the office or a laptop that’s leased for the employees. Whenever you log into the system on one of those computers, the system automatically makes a backup of everything you’ve done. This way, if someone is doing development work, the company can keep track, even if people are forgetting to actually upload their work to the centralized system. Every bit that’s transferred is tagged with an IP address that identifies the originating computer, so even if you access it through the system, you can tell where it came from.’

  ‘And the fragments of De Sade’s LifeScenes didn’t come from any computer associated with Josh?’

  She shakes her head again. ‘I’m sorry, but no.’

  ‘Are they associated with anyone’s computer?’

  She nods. ‘They almost all come from Dr Santar Gunta’s laptop computer.’

  I let out a low whistle. ‘You’re kidding me.’

  ‘Nope. Apparently the good doctor has quite a hobby.’

  I rub my forehead. ‘And there’s no chance that Pinkerton redirected the signal somehow to fool the computers into thinking the material was coming from someplace else? Spoof the system, maybe?’

  ‘I don’t think it’s possible.’ We sit there for a moment without talking. In the light of my pummeling the night before, this complicates matters for me, and we both know it. ‘What should we do?’ Yvette asks carefully.

  ‘Well,’ I say, ‘our first priority is to catch the man who killed these women. Like I said yesterday, we need to follow this wherever it goes.’

  ‘That doesn’t help you with dealing with Pinkerton and NetMaster.’

  ‘No, it doesn’t,’ I concede. ‘I’ll just have to find a different way of dealing with that.’

  ‘So what’s our next step?’

  I sigh hard enough to make me wince in pain. ‘Our next step is to talk to Killkenny and make sure Gunta is arrested.’

  Yvette and I drive over to the police station in the Back Bay where Killkenny has his office. We could have called and asked him to come over, but it seems a conversation better had out of earshot of anyone at the company. He’s not in when we arrive, so we sit in the lobby on a hard wooden bench. At least it provides enough support to ease the pain in my chest. Some of Thursday evening’s catch are being released. There are a couple of young men who look hungover, one of them being picked up by a mother who is cussing him as they walk out the front door, talking about how much bail cost and how the next time she’ll leave his ass in jail. There are also a couple of streetwalkers, looking tired but still with their sense of humor, joking with the desk sergeants as they leave. The cops call them by their names and smile to them, wishing them a nice day. I’m always amazed at the way in which the police live in a certain symbiotic balance with so many of the criminals they deal with. It was certainly the case in Charlestown, growing up. The cops would chase the kids and hookers for show, but at the upper levels there were relationships that went beyond the clearly adversarial. In some ways, that’s what kept the peace, and kept things running smoothly.

  Yvette is watching one of the hookers flirt with a uniformed officer as she leaves. ‘You weren’t with her?’ she asks.

  I look up at the hooker as she walks out, and for a moment I think Yvette is talking about her. Then I grasp that she’s asking about Kendra. ‘No,’ I say. ‘I told you, I left the bar alone.’

  ‘You also told me you were meeting your mother’s doctor.’

  It’s a fair point. Trust, once lost, is hard to reclaim. ‘I wasn’t with her.’

  ‘She’s beautiful, though.’

  ‘Yeah,’ I agree unenthusiastically. Denying that she’s attractive would only destroy what’s left of my credibility. I’ve had women set that trap for me before.

  ‘No one would blame you if you were with her.’ There is no right response to that, so I keep my mouth shut. ‘You remember Tim Murphy?’ It feels like she’s digging deep to protect herself now.

  ‘Yeah,’ I say. ‘Your first.’

  ‘My first,’ she agrees. She watches as two cops bring a struggling suspect in through the doors. ‘I knew how you still felt about me back then. Even after we weren’t together anymore and we were just trying to be friends.’

  I nod. ‘I was never subtle.’

  ‘Yeah, well, I just wanted you to know that I didn’t do that to hurt you. That wasn’t the purpose.’

  ‘I never thought it was.’

  ‘Yeah,’ she says hesitantly. ‘Here’s the thing, though: I wasn’t trying to hurt you, but I knew I was. I knew how you’d feel when you found out, and I knew you’d find out because you were still a friend, so I knew I was going to tell you.’

  ‘Yup.’ I remember that conversation as if it were yesterday. It’s not easy to keep the supportive smile on your face when your heart is being ripped apart, but I did it. I sat there and relived her first time with her, even as every word from her lips was like a knife to my gut.

  ‘And even with all that, I did it anyway. There was something about him, and about me at that moment, that made it something I had to do, and you understood that.’

  ‘That might be an overstatement.’ I smile at her, and she smiles back.

  ‘Fair enough. But you dealt with it, and you were there for me when I needed you.’ We both look up and see Killkenny coming through the door. She stands. ‘Anyway, I just wanted you to know that I get it. I get why you’ve never come for me again. It makes sense.’

  Before I can respond, Killkenny is walking toward us. ‘What are you two here for?’

  ‘We need to talk.’

  ‘About what?’

  ‘There have been developments.’

  ‘Since yesterday?’

  ‘Is there a place where we can talk?’

  ‘We know who it is.’

  Yvette spits it out even before anyone has taken a seat in the interview room in the back of the station house.

/>   Killkenny takes a deep breath and sits in one of the chairs. ‘You do,’ he says. The skepticism in his voice is hard to miss. ‘Just like that, you’ve figured it out.’

  ‘I know it’s hard to believe, but it’s true,’ I say. ‘We have the proof.’

  ‘Proof, too? This I can’t wait for.’

  ‘I traced the programming for the LifeScenes back to the computer they were made on,’ Yvette says. ‘We know whose computer it is.’

  That gets Killkenny’s attention as he realizes that we are not merely speculating. He sits forward in his chair. ‘You told me there was no way to track the LifeScene back to the user,’ he says. ‘I asked you whether it was possible to do that, and you were clear – you said it couldn’t be done.’

  ‘And that’s generally true,’ Yvette says. ‘Because the data for a specific LifeScene resides on the user’s computer, our system can’t access it. But there’s one exception.’

  ‘Which is?’

  ‘If the LifeScene was created on a computer that is tied into the system in the first place – if it is a NextLife computer – then we can access it.’

  ‘I don’t understand,’ Killkenny says. ‘How would it be created on the company’s computer.’

  ‘There’s only one way,’ I say. ‘It can only happen if it’s created by someone at the company.’

  ‘And you’ve already run these searches,’ Killkenny asks.

  ‘We have.’

  ‘Why didn’t you tell me about this?’

  The question catches me off-guard. ‘We didn’t know whether it would work.’

  He shakes his head. ‘That’s not it,’ he says. ‘You wanted to keep control over the process. You didn’t want me running the whole thing, right?’

  ‘No,’ I say. ‘That’s not right. What does it matter, anyway?’

  ‘It matters only because it will make it more difficult to make the evidence stick, because there was no police oversight. There’s a chain-of-custody issue.’

  ‘Are you serious? We tell you we can prove who this guy is, and you want to second-guess our methods?’