Текст книги "Game"

Автор книги: Barry Lyga

Соавторы: Barry Lyga
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Текущая страница: 22 (всего у книги 25 страниц)

CHAPTER 49

Billy Dent was not alone. He had company in his small room. He looked over and thought about discussing what was on his mind….

But no. There was no point.

Oh, Jasper. Poor Jasper. Seeing only a part of the game. Didn’t he know that there were many different kinds of games, games for all kinds of players?

Sure, there was the game Hat and Dog played. A game with specific rules and a very special prize. But then there was the game above that game. The game Billy played. The game with rules he himself had written. The best part of that game was that none of the pieces knew they were a part of it. It was a game with many sides, but only one player: William Cornelius Dent.

This is the way it was meant to be, of course. In a world filled with so many pieces of plastic, so many things—human beings, they called themselves in a great, self-perpetuating delusion—that thought they mattered, that thought they thought, there could be no more appropriate game than what amounted to solitaire. Billy Dent, playing alone.

Billy used one of his burner phones. When the ringing stopped, he said, “Hey there. Havin’ a good evening? It’s about to get better.”

He didn’t wait for a response, just continued on: “How’d you like to win this whole thing once and for all? Tonight?”

And, yeah, that got a response.

CHAPTER 50

After leaving the lockbox with G. William and making his oh-so-stealthy getaway from the sheriff’s office, Howie drove the Nod aimlessly. His parents had expected him home hours ago, but he had texted to say that he was helping out with Jazz’s grandmother again. In reality, he was just wasting gas money and contributing to global warming as he tried to think of a path around it all, a way through the thickets that did not involve confronting Sam.

The idea that Sam was Ugly J… the idea that she was just as crazy as Billy…

It can’t be. For one thing, she really seems to hate the guy. For another thing, I think she’s hot. And if I think she’s hot and it turns out she’s a psychopath, then what does that say about me? I’m totally not ready for that kind of therapy.

It’s not that he was in love with Jazz’s aunt. Puh-lease. Howie Gersten was horny and desperate and more than slightly clueless, but he wasn’t stupid. He had the hots for her and he figured that the fact that she knew this and hadn’t called him gross or a perv meant that maybe something could happen. Which would be great for Howie because he was a total virgin and sick of it to the tune of jerking off so much that he was worried he was going to cause some kind of penile trauma. Hemophilia extended to his entire body, after all—he’d bruised Li’l Howie plenty of times, which sucked. If sex was gonna hurt, he’d rather have someone else causing the pain.

What were the odds that Sam was involved in Billy’s craziness? That she was Ugly J? Most serial killers were men. So many that it was just the first natural assumption to make in any serial killer case. So, yeah, it just made sense to assume that Ugly J was a guy.

But what if Ugly J wasn’t necessarily a serial killer? What if Ugly J was just, like, an apprentice? An assistant? Howie didn’t think there was a career path planned out for sociopaths like Billy Dent, but Jazz’s dad had broken a lot of the typical “rules” for serial killers. Maybe it wasn’t all that crazy to think that he’d turned his sister into his helper.

Maybe he had even…

Ugh. Gross. Don’t think that, Howie.

Too late.

Great, now every time you want to fantasize about Sam, you’re gonna think about Billy Dent doing his own sister. Jeez.

Incest is best, put your sister to the test…. Some old bit of middle school vulgarity, hopping and skipping back from his memory. Double gross.

He pulled over to the side of the road and killed the engine. Craned his neck to look up at the stars. But the stars weren’t there. The night sky was almost perfectly smooth with clouds, the stars and the moon hidden as though they could not bear to see what came next. Howie couldn’t bear it, either.

It wasn’t that he was a coward. He didn’t like to think of himself as a coward, at least. But a lifetime of overprotective parents who had every reason to be overprotective… well, that had a way of worming into a guy’s consciousness. Most teenagers, Howie knew, thought they were indestructible. Howie desperately and devoutly wished he could believe that, but every damn time he woke up with a new bruise on his arm from rolling over in his sleep and bumping the nightstand… every time he went to the doctor for his latest desmopressin shot…

Every time he relived the night the Impressionist had nearly killed him with a swipe of a knife, a swipe that anyone else could have shaken off…

Every time he thought of these things, he reminded himself: It’s not cowardice, Howie. It’s just common sense.

But those words had started ringing hollow a long time ago. His best friend was in the biggest, scariest city in the country, hunting a lunatic with more than a dozen murders to his name. And maybe, just maybe, his own father. And Connie? She was on a plane—or maybe she’d landed by now—to that same place, determined to do whatever she could to help.

How can I do any less? How can I not handle this one damn thing? Just figure out if Sam is a bad guy or not. That’s all. Do it, you coward. Do it, you stupid, joking, horny, useless bleeder.

He stared at his cell phone for what felt like an eternity, flicking to Jazz’s number over and over. He desperately wanted to call his best friend, to get his advice on this. But Connie was right—Jazz was in deep enough already. The last thing he needed was Howie calling for advice on how to deal with Sam.

And besides… shouldn’t Howie be able to figure this out for himself? Being a hemophiliac didn’t mean his brain stopped working. Just his clotting factor.

When Howie had been younger and his parents had first explained his disease to him, they had done that typical thing all parents do: They’d tried to put the best possible face on it. “Abraham Lincoln was a hemophiliac,” they’d explained to him, “and look at what he accomplished. And Mother Teresa. And Richard Burton, the actor.”

Years later, when he was old enough and curious enough, Howie had investigated these claims. Turns out the actor dude was the only one confirmed to have hemophilia. Mother Teresa was just a rumor, and an unlikely one—women carried the gene for hemophilia, but rarely had the disease. And Lincoln? No one could prove it one way or the other.

Like with Genghis Khan, another historical figure rumored to be in the Howie Hemo Club. Whenever people tried to find a connection to historical figures, funny how they always managed to skip over guys like Genghis Khan.

During this same bout of research, Howie had discovered one other fact about his particular disease: Hemophiliacs tended to die young.

Which meant, maybe, that he should accomplish as much as possible while he still counted among the breathing.

Just cut the Gordian knot, Howie thought. It was one of his favorite bits of ancient history: Alexander the Great comes across this gigantic, complicated knot of rope and is told that whoever can untie it will rule the world. But no one has ever even come close because the knot is so friggin’ big and complex.

So Alexander just pulls out his sword and cuts the knot in half. Ta-da. No more knot.

Yeah, that works, he thought, and cranked the engine.

CHAPTER 51

It started raining as soon as they headed to the car.

It was a simple matter to find directions to U-STORE-IT-ALL online. They weren’t terribly far, but Morales refused to speed because if they were stopped, she would have to show her ID and then there would be a record of the two of them out to commit some sort of late-night skulduggery. Jazz champed at the bit in the passenger seat, strumming his fingers against the window.

“Calm down,” she told him. “At this time of night, the traffic’s on our side. GPS says we have clear roads all the way there. He’s got to take the subway and wait for a transfer. Plus, in this weather, I guarantee he’ll take a bus instead of walking from the subway, so he’ll have to wait for that, too.”

“We don’t know when he gave the cops the slip. He could be there already.”

“Being pissy with me won’t change that.”

“We need to stop off at a hardware store for a sec.”

“I thought you were in a hurry.”

“Just a little contingency planning.”

She pulled over for him to run into the first such store they saw and then they were back on the road right away. Soon Jazz saw a flickering sign for U-STORE-IT-ALL in the distance. He leaned forward as though he could add to the car’s momentum.

“I can’t flash my badge to get us in,” Morales told him. “You know that, right?”

“Yeah.” Again, there could be no record of what they did here tonight. “Let me get us in.”

She arched an eyebrow. “You gonna break in?” The word again was unnecessary and unsaid.

“Not if I can help it. I’m going to try something else. Cut the lights and park on the street so that the guy in the booth can’t see you.”

The “guy” he referred to was a rent-a-cop sitting in a dimly lit booth framed out in what had to be bulletproof glass. Morales dutifully killed her lights and glided the car to a stop along the curb of the road. Ahead, a short driveway ran perpendicular to the street into a smallish parking lot jammed with rental vans, shielding them from the view of the booth. Beyond lay a chain-link fence ten feet tall with a sliding gate and a keypad. But Jazz only had eyes for the booth and the rent-a-cop.

Never break and enter when you can just plain ol’ enter, Jasper, Billy had said once.

“Do you have some paper? Anything will do.”

“Glove compartment.”

Jazz found a little notebook in there. He tore out a sheet of paper, wrote on it, then folded it and put it in his pocket.

“I think you scare the hell out of me,” Morales said. He shrugged and she called out “Good luck” as he slipped out of the car.

Jazz hmphed. Luck. Who needed it?

It was still raining, though it had tapered off a bit as he approached the gate and stood there, hesitant, for just a beat too long, just long enough to appear awkward, confused, out of place. Without checking, he knew that the security guard had noticed him. Peering from the gate to the keypad, he feigned exasperation with little bits of body language—a shrug, a tossed-out hand.

Then he turned as though to go… and pretended to catch sight of the guard for the first time. Even though he was sure the guard couldn’t see the finer details of his expression from this far away, he went ahead and widened his eyes, anyway.

Always keep the performance honest, even when no one’s watching, Billy used to say.

Jazz headed to the guard. By now he could see the man leaning forward already, in anticipation. Good. That movement told him something in advance.

The bulletproof shell in which the guard lived had a speaker grille set into it, as well as a small slot through which one could probably slip keys or a receipt or a credit card, but angled such that a gun would fire its payload down into the desk. Jazz stood as though he thought he had to speak directly into the grille.

“Hello? Sir? I need—”

“I can’t let you in unless you have a passcode or an account number,” the guard said gruffly.

Interrupting. Good. The man’s posture was vaguely aggressive. He was fat and resented getting up from his chair to speak. He wanted Jazz gone, and quickly.

People like that were actually easier to manipulate. They were focused on the end result of the conversation, not on the conversation itself. This guy was already imagining himself settled back in his chair, watching what appeared to be a reality-TV show in which scantily clad women lay out next to a pool for some reason.

He was also probably already anticipating Jazz’s next statement, figuring on something like “But please!” or “I lost my passcode” and readying his rote “I can’t let you in.”

So Jazz did the one thing the guard would not have prepared himself for:

Nothing.

He simply stood there, still and quiet, staring straight ahead at the grille that shielded his face from the guard. The guard began to back away from the glass, then realized that Jazz wasn’t going anywhere. He paused midway to his chair. The TV chattered. Someone said, “I was like, she is, like, so bitchy and, like, without any reason, you know?”

From behind the grille, the guard said, “I said I can’t help you.”

Jazz still didn’t move.

The guard inched back toward the chair, then stopped again. “Hey. Kid. I said—”

Not yet.

“—that I can’t help you. Scram.”

Jazz waited.

The guard finally came back to the glass. He couldn’t see Jazz, though, because the grille was blocking his face, so he craned his neck to peer around the grille, finally meeting Jazz’s gaze with eyes sunken into the dough of his face.

“Kid! Seriously. Move it or I’ll call the cops.”

Jazz noted that the end of the man’s tie had, due to his positioning, flopped into the slot in the glass. Easiest thing in the world to reach out, grab that end of the tie, and pull. Strangle the guy into unconsciousness, then scale the fence. Billy roared at him to do it from the depths of his subconscious.

No. That’s the backup plan. I don’t want to hurt him if I don’t have to.

But Jazz did want to hurt him, if he was being honest with himself. The man was rude. Dismissive. Fat, lazy, and disinterested. Being strangled on the job by his own tie would probably be the best thing to ever happen to him.

“It’s my uncle,” Jazz said in a hoarse whisper, and then leaned his forehead against the glass, as if he needed the support.

Uncle. Not mother or father or brother or sister. Immediate family was expected. Con men knew that people had an emotional response to immediate family, so they cornerstoned their lies on the nuclear family. A good security guard would be wary of such a ploy. Jazz didn’t know if this guard was any good—he suspected not—but as Billy said, Assume every damn cop in the world is Sherlock Holmes and you’ll never do anything stupid.

“Look, I know you can’t help me,” Jazz said with quiet fierceness. “I know that. But will you at least listen to me? And then maybe you can tell me what to do next?” Now making his voice tremulous, bordering on querulous.

“I can’t do anything for you,” the guard said. “You need a passcode or a receipt to get in.” But his voice had changed, just slightly. There was the smallest bit of curiosity in it now. A tiny rip in the fabric.

“My uncle,” Jazz said. “Look, he’s dead, which doesn’t matter because he was sort of a jerk, okay?” Another switch-up. The guard was expecting a sob story. Oh, my beloved uncle is dead and he always wanted me to have his collection of rare Portuguese pencil erasers! Please, sir, let me in! “No one liked him. He was a tool. But the problem is that he had this rare comic book collection, see? And my mom is on her way here right now to get it.” Now he’d brought the mom in—the guard would be tracking back to caution, so Jazz had to move quickly, establish the lie, the narrative.

“She’s a drunk,” Jazz said. He was thinking “junkie” originally, but for some reason drunk seemed to work better. It was less dramatic and so more believable. “And if she gets here and gets those comics, she’s just gonna sell ’em for a bunch of money and buy more booze.”

“So I let you in and you’re gonna save your mother from herself, is that it?” Sarcastic. Incredulous.

“I just want to change the lock,” Jazz said. He held up a key and a small padlock, bought not long ago at the hardware store. “There’s like two thousand comic books in there. There’s no way I could haul them out. And hell, the rain would ruin ’em. I just want to change the lock so that she can’t get in. And then maybe my sister and I can get her back to the treatment place next week and we can deal with all of this later. I’m just trying to buy some time, you know?”

The guard snorted. “And maybe cherry-pick the most valuable comics while you’re in there?”

“I wouldn’t know which ones to take,” Jazz said, with complete earnestness. “You can come with me if you want. Come watch. I’m just gonna swap one lock”—he held up the key—“for another.” He held up the padlock. “It’ll take five minutes.”

The guard hesitated. “I can’t leave my desk.” Relief. He doesn’t have to make a personal choice—he can just fall back on the rules.

They follow their rules. They worship their rules, Billy said. And that’s their downfall, Jasper. Because we don’t give two tugs of a dead dog’s tail about the rules.

“Then screw you!” Jazz yelled, suddenly boiling over with anger and exasperation. He leaned down to let the guard see his face for the first time, a face screwed up with pain and rage, a few hot tears wicking from the corners of his eyes. “Screw you like everyone else!”

Set them up. Let them think they know the rules of the conversation. They’re in power. You’re the supplicant. Let them think all they have to do is brush you off.

Then change it up. Suddenly. Starkly. Get them off their asses and out of their comfort zones.

He thumped the heel of his palm against the glass and then spun away from the booth, stalking off, then whirling around to scream, “It’s on you! When she’s passed out in some alley in Brighton Beach, it’s all your fault!” before walking farther into the darkness. Jazz didn’t know where or what Brighton Beach was, but he’d heard someone on the task force mention it.

“Hey! Kid!” the guard shouted, his voice different now. Bewildered. Maybe a bit hurt. No one likes to be yelled at. Especially by someone who mere moments ago had been so pliable and pitiable.

Jazz spun around again and shot the double-bird at the guard. It was a calculated risk. But usually someone who’s trying to con you won’t flip you off. Not on a conscious level, but somewhere beneath that, the guard would now actually be a little more inclined to believe Jazz.

“Kid!” the guard shouted again, now just a tiny bit desperate. Jazz took two more steps into the darkness, then stopped. He waited a moment, then turned around, assessing the distance to the guard as though it were laced with acid pits and vipers.

“What?” he shouted back, aggressive. Accusatory.

Even from here, he could detect the slump of the guard’s shoulders, the sense of defeat.

“Don’t steal anything!”

And the gate rumbled as it slid open.

Jazz resisted the urge to fist-pump, and instead acted like a kid who’d just been given a way to help his drunk mom. He tossed a “thank you!” over his shoulder as he ran through the widening gap in the fence.

A moment later, the gate clanked and cranked shut behind him. Jazz stood for a moment, catching his breath. He was aware of a box to his left and a camera up high watching the gate, and him. A map of the facility was mounted on a nearby wall, and he pretended to study it, as though unsure of where to go next. As long as the guard could watch him on the camera, he couldn’t do anything too overt, but while arguing with the guard, Jazz had surreptitiously examined the monitor setup. As best he could tell, there were four screens available at any one moment in time, cycling through a variety of cameras. As long as he was careful to keep out of the camera’s range as much as possible, he should be okay.

He stepped under the camera and quickly called Morales, telling her what to do. A few moments later, she pulled up to the gate, her engine loud, distracting the guard, who would be watching as she stretched through her window for the keypad. Couldn’t make it. She’d pulled in too far away.

With exaggerated exasperation, she climbed out of the car and walked to the keypad. She had already removed her jacket and guns. Her shirt—now wet—clung to her, all but guaranteeing that the guard would watch her, not his monitors.

Jazz darted into the camera’s view for a moment, triggering the motion sensor that opened the gate from this side. As the gate cranked open, he kept running, into the shadows where he couldn’t be seen.

Morales pulled in and the gate closed behind her.

They were in.