Hangman's Game

by Bill Syken

  “So are you ready?” she asks.

  “Yes. Absolutely.”

  “Excellent. We begin with questions. Simple ones. Have you ever been hypnotized before?”

  “No.” I am expecting her to pick up the pad from her desk, to take notes. She doesn’t.

  “Not even for entertainment, like in a comedy club?”

  “No, never,” I say.

  “Would you say you are receptive to instructions?”

  “I’ll do my best,” I say, though her question touches on my greatest concern about coming here. I think of myself as strong-willed, and I expect I will resist by nature. Even if hypnotism works with some, I am skeptical as to whether it will work on me.

  “The more you follow my instructions, the better chance there is that I can help you.” Corina says this encouragingly, without a hint of preemptive scold.

  “I understand. I’ll certainly try.”

  “Excellent. And would you say your childhood was happy or difficult?”

  I hesitate. She waits unblinkingly on my answer, as if she was asking a simple question such as my birth date or social security number, and I only needed to reel off the digits. “Why do you need to know that?”

  “It helps prepare me for complications. Please answer honestly. The more honest you are, the better chance we have of succeeding.”

  “The answer is yes,” I say. “I had a happy childhood.” It is the only response I can give. I was clothed, well-fed, popular, the varsity quarterback. Just about all the boys in my high school would have gladly traded places with me, some desperately so.

  But the moment my “yes” comes out of my mouth, I see myself sitting on the back porch of our house in the middle of the night, shivering. I was fourteen years old, and my dad had locked me out because I had been over at a girl’s house and missed my ten o’clock curfew by fifteen minutes. I was wearing just a T-shirt and jeans, and this was in October in Upstate New York. The temperature had been about sixty in the early evening, but had dropped into the forties by the time I came home. I tried all the doors and windows, but my dad had locked everything down—even the garden shed, I learned when I sought shelter there. I could have gone to a neighbor, but I was too embarrassed. So I stuck it out all night, shivering. At one point I futilely tried to warm myself by stuffing my shirt with fallen leaves, but after a couple minutes the itch became unbearable.

  That night was a quarter moon, now that I think of it. Maybe a little fuller than quarter, more like thirty percent. I certainly had plenty of time to stare at it, sitting back on that lounge chair, never falling asleep, even for a moment. At six o’clock, I heard the lock click on the back door. I opened it and no one was there. I ran upstairs to take a warm shower. When I came downstairs the morning breakfast routine was in full flow. I ate my steel-cut oatmeal and the matter was never spoken of.

  “I did have some rough spots, actually,” I tell Corina.

  “Oh?” she says.

  “But overall my childhood was fine. Better than most.”

  “Good. Now tell me, which from among these is your favorite color?”

  She spreads on her desk three pads of square fluorescent Post-it notes—yellow, orange, and pink.

  “Orange,” I say, just to pick one, though none has any particular appeal.

  “Orange it is,” she says. She pulls a note off the pad and presses it firmly, at sitting-eye level, on the white wall.

  “Adjust your chair, please, so you are looking directly at the Post-it.”

  I shift around so my eyes are on the orange square.

  “Thank you. Now begin counting backward, out loud, from forty. Do it slowly, take a deep breath in between forty and thirty-nine. And a slightly deeper breath between thirty-nine and thirty-eight. And so on.”

  I begin as she instructed, with her gently reminding me to slow my breath between each count. After I clear thirty she says, “Let your eyelids drop,” and we continue. After twenty she says, “Let yourself sleep.”

  I do not feel like I am sleeping per se, in that I am still aware I am in the room and I can hear her voice perfectly well. If a fire breaks out, I am ready to run. I can feel that I am still lined up with the orange Post-it, even though my eyes are closed. Corina says, “Raise your right arm to shoulder height,” and I can feel my arm going up, though I do not exactly feel like I am raising it. Then she asks me to raise my left arm up, and to cross both arms, and I do. I am relaxed, even happy, because I feel like this is working. I feel like I might get what I came for.

  “Nick?” Corina says, her voice a notch louder than it had been.

  “Yes?” I ask. I feel foggy, half-asleep, but just barely coherent enough to answer.

  “We’re done.”

  “Done?” I say, my eyes batting open and feeling stung by the light, though it was no brighter than before.

  “Yes, we’re finished.”

  I am confused.

  “Did we get it?” I murmur. “Did we get the license plate?”

  “No, I’m sorry, we did not,” she says. “You told me about the bumper sticker with the quarter moon, but not the plate. We could try again another day if you would like, but I think that would be a waste of your money.”

  I look at the clock. It reads 1:38, which is at least twenty minutes later than I expected. “What happened, exactly?” I ask. My eyelids are heavy and my nose is congested. “The last thing I remember is crossing my arms.”

  “You went all the way under,” she says. “Most people don’t go as far as you did. You are an excellent subject.”

  An excellent subject. When I had expected to be a tough case.

  “I have tissues if you want them,” she says, pointing to a floral box on her desk. I am initially confused by the offer, but then I sniffle and drag fingers across my moist cheek and realize that I have been crying.

  “I’m okay,” I say. “Thank you.” I rise and sniffle again and pull four twenties from my wallet and hand them to her. She steps to her desk and tucks the money into a paisley purse. Then she returns her attention to me, looking at me warmly, head tilted.

  “You sure you’re all right?” she asks.

  “I’m disappointed we didn’t get the license plate,” I say, and then add, “But I know you did your best.”

  “So did you,” she says, and then steps forward and hugs me, the lightness of her limbs accentuating the heaviness of my own. She holds on longer than I would have expected, before letting go and stepping back.

  “Take care of yourself, Nick,” she says.

  “You too, Corina.”

  “Thank you,” she says. “And remember, you have more choices than you think you do.”

  I walk back down the narrow stairs, speeding up as I descend, and wondering exactly what I might have said while I was under to make her tell me that.

  * * *

  After the session, I return to the Jefferson. I have a task awaiting me there, one that is refreshingly simple: I need to clean up the mess in my apartment. The odors from my splattered food have only become more acrid after a night of neglect. But at least there are no insects. I expected that they might feast on the syrup or the almond butter or the yogurt or the pomegranate preserves, but pestilence hasn’t risen up to the seventeenth floor yet. This is one of the benefits of living in a high-rise in which most residents come and go so quickly. While I do my own housecleaning as part of my deal, the building’s other units are thoroughly cleaned when tenants turn over.

  Revving up Eddie Floyd’s album Rare Stamps from the digital files on my computer, I begin by sorting through my soiled clothes, with the initial thought that I will create two piles: one for items that can be salvaged and another that will go straight to the garbage. But I soon decide that the right move is to trash everything. I can pilfer new athletic gear from the facility, and my civilian wardrobe is in need of an update anyway.

  As I stuff the old mess into garbage bags, I notice that there is a pattern to the vandalism. Everything that ha
s been destroyed—the socks and the CDs and the food—has something in common: it is all mine. Anything provided by the Jefferson had been left alone. None of their plates has been shattered, none of their drinking glasses broken, no stuffing has been ripped from the sofa.

  The attack was made exclusively on that which belongs to me.

  CHAPTER 13

  I SPEND THE rest of the evening at my laptop, studying Footballmania’s murder blog. The first stories I read intently, but soon I turn to skimming, and then to clicking the computer’s power button and letting the screen go black. The more I read of these stories, the more they distill to one essential fact: Rizotti is getting nowhere. A killer is getting away with it.

  My sleep is no more restful than it was the night before. I rise at six, and after a shower and a bowl of steel-cut oatmeal, I power up my laptop and log onto Footballmania again, hoping for some new development, perhaps even an arrest. Again I am disappointed.

  A new story, though, catches my eye. Its headline is “Bonus Baby: Woman Carrying Sault’s Child Claims Guaranteed Millions.” The picture shows a young white woman, pregnant and blond, staring directly at the camera. She is rosy-cheeked, but her blue eyes are expressionless.

  Her name is Kaylee Wise, the story says. Kaylee is only nineteen years old, and, like Samuel, she has lived in Vickers, Alabama, her entire life. Unfortunately, she is not quoted in the story. She is spoken for by her attorney, Fred Wilde, who is also credited with taking her photo. It seems like Mr. Wilde has a real full-service operation.

  The story leaves me wanting to know more about this young woman hiding behind her lawyer—if she is the girlfriend Tanner mentioned, and what she understood her relationship with him to be. I am also curious to know what Kaylee’s family thought of Samuel, and what his family thought of her. If Vickers is as behind-the-times as Cecil described it, I can imagine that an interracial relationship might not have had universal approval.

  I pick up my phone and dial Freddie.

  “Mmph,” Freddie says, answering on the sixth ring.

  “Wake up, sunshine,” I say.

  “Hangman?” he says, his throat thick. “What the shit? It’s not even eight o’clock.”

  “I wanted to catch you before you go.”

  “Go? Go where?”

  “The funeral? You’re flying to Alabama today, right?”

  After a long silence, Freddie says, “Fuck.”

  I hear sheets rustling, then a thud, and the sound of a glass breaking. Then a weak fart, and a muttering of curse words.

  To think, that before too many hours has passed, this man would be consoling a grieving family.

  “My question for you: can I come?”

  “What?”

  “I’d like to come to the funeral. Is there a seat on the plane for me?”

  “It’s my fucking plane,” Freddie grumbles. “If you want a seat, it’s yours.”

  “Charter terminal at nine thirty, right?”

  “If you say so,” he says, and hangs up.

  I wonder if Freddie can make it on time. The drive from his place to the airport takes more than an hour. If I hadn’t thought to call him, he probably would have missed the trip entirely.

  * * *

  I dress for the funeral in, for lack of other options, the suit jacket and pants from the night of the murder. The pants were pushed to the side of my closet with my collared shirts, and they escaped the attention of the vandal. I have yet to replace the black shoes that became blood-soaked on the night of the shooting, so I wear my brown pair, hoping that no one will be too perturbed at the fashion breach.

  When I arrive at the charter terminal, the other members of the traveling party are already assembled. Tanner is there, as well as our team’s general manager, Clint Udall. Broad-backed and with a thick neck, Udall was a fullback for Dallas in the 1980s. He is bald and has a bushy brown mustache. Both Udall and Tanner, I notice, have laptop bags slung over their shoulders. Publicists O’Dwyer and Cordero are also on hand, a reminder that Samuel’s funeral will draw national media attention. The only person missing: Freddie, of course.

  “Gallow,” Udall says. “I’m surprised to see you here.”

  “Freddie mentioned that the team was sending a delegation,” I say.

  “Glad you’re joining in,” Udall says. “What’s the latest on Cecil?”

  “They’re hoping that he will be going home tomorrow or the day after.” Vicki had reported this morning that Cecil had eaten something close to a meal last night for the first time. It was just a matter of that meal passing through him with flying colors, so to speak.

  “I like Cecil a lot,” Udall says. “Sometimes I call him just to see what he thinks about a player we’re interested in. It’s amazing how many small conferences and arena leagues he keeps up with.”

  Udall begins talking about the talents that you can find these days in arena leagues, and he speculates about how an arena-league champ could probably beat a big-time college team. As he chatters on, I feel like he is doing what so many men do, clinging to sports talk to keep from discussing more difficult subjects.

  Meanwhile I notice Tanner, standing off on his own, wearing a trim black suit and a plain black tie, repeatedly looking at his watch. It is now 9:40, ten minutes past the assigned time, and Freddie is still not here. Tanner fines players for showing up even a minute late for a meeting; this has to be verging on a capital offense. We would likely have left Freddie behind if he wasn’t the owner’s son.

  At 9:46, Freddie strolls into the waiting area. The rest of us are in our funeral clothes, but he is wearing tan cargo shorts and a black T-shirt with orange lettering that reads I HATE HIPSTERS. Purple-tinted Oakley sunglasses complete the ensemble. He has a garment bag slung over one shoulder.

  “Let’s get this bullshit on the road,” he declares energetically, as if we have been waiting not for his arrival, but his leadership. As he passes me he looks down at my feet and snickers. “Nice shoes.”

  We march across the tarmac to the Gladstone family jet. Inside the cabin I settle into a cream-colored leather seat that draws me down and envelops me. Freddie takes the seat next to mine, and immediately pops an Ambien. Tanner and Udall settle into the row in front of me.

  After we take off, Tanner pulls out his laptop and begins reviewing video of defensive ends. Across the aisle I can see Udall looking at footage on his laptop, too.

  Udall is scouting linebackers. The team is preparing to replace Jai.

  Turning my eyes from this aloof piece of personnel management, I look out the window as we fly—it’s funny how from high altitude, athletic fields are the most identifiable manmade elements of the landscape—and I think about all the people I might meet today. Not just Kaylee Wise, but also Samuel’s parents, his friends and neighbors, coaches and teammates. I wonder what the chances are that the killer will be there, in my sights, maybe even looking me in the eye and shaking my hand.

  At my dad’s funeral, I learned a defining detail about his death, but that happened simply because I had my eyes open, and I knew the attendees so well. The man who gave my father his fatal nudge, it turned out, had been coming to our house my whole life.

  My dad died in a crash on Marker’s Hollow Road, not too far from our house. The road winds through an unpopulated valley, and has a posted speed limit of twenty-five miles per hour, reduced to fifteen along its most treacherous curves. Sometimes when we were kids and we had been out to a family dinner, my dad would drive down Marker’s Hollow before heading home. He would usually do this in the fall or winter, when the trees were bare. If the moon was full, he might turn off the car’s headlights to increase the spook factor. Swooping up and to the left, down and to the right, the drive felt like a roller-coaster ride. Doug and I would accentuate every hard turn with a cry that was a mix of fright and exhilaration. Sometimes my dad would hit the gas as we came over a crest and the car would take a little air, and then we’d really whoop. My mother was the only one who didn’t
get in on the fun. “Enough!” she would screech. Her yelling would sometimes continue long after we had pulled into the driveway, safe at home.

  Looking back now, I could see that my mom’s fretful shrieks were as much the point for my dad as our gleeful screams. There was plenty that my mom was afraid of and my dad wasn’t, and he liked to get that on the record.

  Even now, knowing how he met his end, those drives did not seem reckless. My dad lived in the area his whole life and knew every curve on Marker’s Hollow. None of its bends could take him by surprise. Driving that road was like reciting the ABCs.

  On the night he died, he had been drinking at Liston’s, a tavern that he had frequented often enough that they kept a mug with his initials on it behind the bar. Posthumous blood alcohol tests indicated he was within the legal limits, corroborating what friends said, which is that he’d had only a couple of light beers. But the other impairment, the one that wouldn’t show up in any blood alcohol tests, was the one I learned about at his funeral: my dad had been in a fight at Liston’s before storming out. And when my dad became angry, he did not settle down easily. Calming him down was like trying to get lava back in the volcano.

  The funeral was on a punishingly cold day, with the temperature in single digits. I remember the browned grass at the cemetery crunching beneath my shoes. Still, the skies were clear and hundreds of people crowded the graveside service. My uncle Rory, my dad’s brother, showed up drunk, and in a tie that only went halfway down his belly. Among the mourners were my dad’s current crop of high school players. The team arrived together on a school bus, wearing their green-and-white football uniforms over their long underwear. One-by-one they marched to where my mother and Doug and I sat and they all shook our hands. I had met many of these kids before, as my dad liked to bring me around to practice and show me off as an example of what they could achieve, if they only listened to him. At these practices it was plain to see that many of those kids loathed my dad. My dad knew this, too, but he didn’t care. His argument was that the players would appreciate his hard ways when they were older and had children of their own.