Nature of the Game

by James Grady

  “If you need to ask, you can’t know.”

  I don’t want to know. Wes feared he’d flown across country only to cruise aimlessly with a burnt-out case. They drove past Forest Lawn cemetery, with its white stone mausoleums.

  “What was he doing back then?” asked Wes.

  “Go right,” ordered Dean, pointing to a park entrance.

  The paved road rose and fell through the park like a roller coaster. They passed picnic grounds and barbecue pits. Wes saw five horseback riders winding their way through the trees. Their leader wore a yellow rain slicker and a cowboy hat.

  Dean snickered. “Here comes the cavalry.”

  A mile later, they reached a chicken-wired field with a two-tiered building at its far end. Hundreds of white balls dotted the ground inside the fence. As they passed the parking lot, four Japanese men in brightly colored pants and jackets and white caps unloaded golf bags from a Toyota.

  “I’m about out of time for this,” said Wes.

  “We’re about there,” answered Dean. “Go that way.”

  Down a residential street. They turned right, the road climbing through the hills of elegant Spanish and Tudor mansions. A Mexican gardener clipping grass watched them fade into the mist.

  “This is the perfect place,” said Dean as they topped the hill. The evergreen trees ended. A massive parking lot waited off to the right. To the left, on the crest of the hill, was a castle.

  Not quite a castle. A gray stone building with brass double doors, cathedral windows, a giant green copper dome rising from a tower in its center, and smaller copper domes on each end.

  “What is this place?” asked Wes.

  “Griffith Observatory.”

  “Jud is here?”

  “It’s perfect,” said Dean. “You’ll see. It’s all here.”

  An orange school bus was the only other vehicle in the parking lot. As Wes parked, the bus door opened, and thirty teenagers ran out into the cold.

  “Day like today,” said Dean, “thought we’d be up here alone.”

  “Where is he?”

  “He’ll be around the back. Watching to be sure it’s me and I’m okay. When he’s sure of that, we’ll see him.”

  “We better,” said Wes. “Where’s his car?”

  “Beats me,” said Dean.

  As they walked across the lawn, Wes noticed Dean limped. And Dean saw Wes’s look.

  “Long time ago,” said Dean, “I wrecked my bike. Storms make it stiff. Something like that, embrace the pain. Do what you do.”

  Two teenage girls ran past them, stopped

  “Okay,” said the chubby girl, “what are we going to do?”

  Her friend was pretty, brown haired.

  “Like,” she said, “you stand there, see, and I stand like this….” She put her back to the hills, cocked her hip, and held her right hand at shoulder level, palm up. “You take the picture, and it’ll look like the sign is in the palm of my hand.”

  Rising from the hills behind her hand were the huge white letters: HOLLYWOOD.

  “Come on,” said Dean, “we go around to the right.”

  Side by side, they followed the red concrete path running along the Observatory’s white stone wall.

  “Where is he?”

  “Just a little further.”

  The path followed the curve of the middle dome. A waist-high, white stone parapet overlooked the city. The Observatory sat on the crest of a sloping hill; the walkway was above the treetops. Dean brushed his hand over a coin-operated brass telescope.

  “Hell of a view, isn’t it?” he said.

  Beyond the edge of the parapet lay an endless urban checker-board under a cold gray fog. Dean stepped in front of Wes, pointed at a distant building whose top vanished in the mist.

  “Used to be they didn’t build vertical like that because of earthquakes,” said Dean.

  Wes glanced toward the skyscraper.

  Dean slammed his fist into the lawyer’s stomach.

  The punch knocked Wes’s breath away. He staggered back as another punch rammed into his chest. His mind burned and he collapsed into the other man’s grasp.

  For an instant, Wes knew nothing. Consciousness returned with his breath. Dean’s hands were under Wes’s sports jacket, sliding along his sides, his back.

  Gun, thought the Marine. He’s looking for a gun.

  Dean had braced his prey against the parapet. Wes pushed off with all his strength, driving his shoulder into his attacker’s chest, knocking him back into the curved stone wall.

  But Dean bounced off the stones, his fists jabbing. Once, twice, three times he landed punches, his simian arms and huge hands keeping him out of the Marine’s range. Dean switched to combinations, double shots to the ribs, back to the head.

  Primal rage Wes hadn’t felt in a dozen years roared through him. He charged through a barrage of fists.

  The two men grappled, twisting, bouncing off the dome, off the parapet. The city whirled around them. Dean grabbed Wes’s tie; Wes jabbed his elbow into Dean’s face. Dean slammed Wes against a column; Wes swung a brass telescope into his attacker’s head, then kicked him in the leg he’d favored and thrust his knee up, aiming for the groin.

  Missed. Dean grabbed Wes’s raised thigh. Lifted him off the ground, bent him across the foot-wide stone parapet.

  The world reeled upside down, Wes’s head and shoulders hung over the stone. His legs scissored Dean, squeezing, holding on as he tried to grab the hands that were pummeling him. Pushing him.

  Over the edge.

  “You want the man!” screamed Dean. “You wait for him in hell!”

  And Dean smashed his fists in Wes’s stomach, into his thighs. He pulled Wes’s legs apart.

  Threw him off the Griffith Observatory parapet.

  Twenty, thirty feet West fell. He tumbled through a pine tree, fell onto a thick bush. Slammed into the earth.

  Afternoon sunlight drifted through the living room windows of an ordinary house in a Los Angeles neighborhood known for its ordinary houses. The living room walls were bare, chipped yellow paint. A ragged couch took up one wall. Across the room sat a color TV. Newspaper and magazines lay scattered on the wood floor. A red sock lay crumpled in the hall leading back to the bedroom and bathroom. A fly buzzed in the kitchen, was silent.

  “Police!” yelled a voice from the driveway.

  The front door crashed open.

  First man through came fast and low, pistol clenched in the two-handed grip. He jumped clear of the door, threw his back against the wall, zeroed his gun at anything that lived. He had a beard and long hair and wore a nylon jacket emblazoned LAPD.

  Second man through, gun aimed, ran to the door leading to the kitchen, slammed his back around the corner from its opening. Third man through the door did the same at the hall leading back to the bathroom and bedroom.

  Fourth man through the door was L.A. homicide detective Rawlins. The black cop’s 9mm was drawn, his face was grim.

  Two more cops in nylon jackets ran in behind Rawlins. One trained his gun into the kitchen, one aimed into the bedroom.

  The bearded cop who’d been first through the door whispered, “Moving!”

  He jumped into the bedroom. Rawlins kicked open the bathroom door. Another cop searched the kitchen.

  A minute later, the bearded man yelled, “Clear!”

  One cop reported the news into his hand-held radio.

  “Garage is clean,” he told the other men in the room.

  “Let him in,” said Rawlins as he holstered his gun.

  The bearded cop emerged from the bedroom, panting and pale, sweat on his forehead.

  Wes shuffled into the house.

  His handsome face was an ugly rainbow, black and blue and red-scraped, disinfectant orange beneath the emergency room Band-Aids on his forehead, his cheek, his jaw. The old scar on his chin was a dark line on pale flesh. He couldn’t stand straight and favored his left leg. His breathing was shallow. His tie was gone. His clo
thes were streaked with mud and torn.

  After the fall, he lay unconscious for what he figured to be five minutes. His throbbing head woke him. He was facedown on broken brush. He got to his knees, vomited. Looked up.

  The parapet was deserted.

  It took him twenty minutes to crawl and stumble and stagger up the slope of the hill, around the edge of the Observatory.

  His rental car had vanished from the parking lot.

  Inside the Observatory, he begged the woman behind the souvenir counter to call LAPD detective Rawlins instead of an ambulance. She and the old man in a gray suit and thin black tie cleaned the dirt off with towels from the bathroom.

  He told them he fell while looking at the view.

  They whispered to each other about suicide.

  Rawlins drove him to a hospital. Wes convinced him to help, but it was three hours from the time Dean attacked Wes until the bearded cop kicked in the door on that ordinary house.

  “You sure you got the right place?” asked Rawlins as Wes looked around.

  “My car’s ou’ front,” mumbled Wes. “Hot-wired.”

  And thank God I left all my files in D.C., kept the pictures of Jud inside my jacket pocket, thought Wes. Dean knew no more from searching the car than Wes had told him. Even the rental car agreement was safe inside Wes’s sports jacket.

  “Who is this guy?” said the bearded cop. “Junk in the bathroom. Beer in the frig, moldy bread, flies on sardine cans in the kitchen. Dirty sheets and old clothes, tools, cartridges, weird fuck magazines. But hell, shopping-cart people own more shit!”

  He kicked the TV. It blared on, startling them all.

  “Motorcycle’s gone,” said Wes. “What ‘e had, couple bags, always packed. Gone.”

  “Don’t worry,” said the bearded cop. “We’ll APB the shit. Assault on a peace officer. Every badge west of the Mississippi will be scanning for his sorry ass.”

  “No,” said Wes.

  The bearded cop blinked. “What?”

  “No APB,” said Wes. “No wants or warrants, no alert. We missed him here, can’t turn ’verybody loose.”

  “Why the hell not?” said the bearded cop.

  “Thanks for your help, but—”

  “Fuck you, Jack!” yelled the bearded cop. One of his buddies held his arm. “I fuckin’ went through a door for you! Fellow cop messed up by a freak, fuck that shit! Nail him! Fuck all the due process procedure bullshit: kick the fuckin’ door! You think this vest would stop a shotgun? An AK-47? My face ain’t wearing a fuckin’ vest and I went through that door! And now you fuckin’ say forget it? Well, forget fucking you, Jack, you and your federal fucking bullshit!”

  The bearded cop whirled, yelled at Rawlins, “You fuckin’ owe me big, me and my guys!”

  Back to Wes, he snarled, “And you, you federal fuck, you stay the fuck out of my life!”

  The bearded cop led his men out of the house. Wes heard tires squeal as their cars roared away.

  The kicked-in door banged in the wind.

  Rawlins ripped the filter off a cigarette, threw the filter toward the bedroom. He lit up, dropped the match on the floor. The TV broadcast an ad for laxatives. The L.A. homicide cop inhaled deeply, let out the smoke, and said, “I think Jesse pretty well summed up the sentiment around here.”

  “Wasn’t thinking too clearly,” said Wes. “When I asked for cavalry, may have exceeded my authority.”

  “You sure didn’t exceed your bullshit.”

  “I need your help.”

  “All this hoorah you started, I gotta answer for it downtown.”

  “I know that—”

  “You don’t know shit. You got bruised ribs down your right side, a cracked one on the left. Your left shin should be broken. You can barely stand. Your concussion shouldn’t be mild, it should be fatal. Your guts are kicked around, your brain is scrambled bullshit, and you’re spreading it on my turf.”

  “Hasn’t been my best day,” said Wes.

  “It ain’t going to get any better. I don’t need your permission to APB this joker.”

  “Don’t.” Wes swayed. An artfully edited sex scene played out in the TV’s soap opera.

  “Know why I won’t?” Rawlins finally said. “’Cause it’d just roll me deeper in your bullshit and all I want is you gone. There’s a dinner flight to D.C. You’re gonna be on it.”

  “I need your help.”

  “You’ve had it.”

  “Nothing … Nothing like this. Just some research. We can do it at your office. Then you can follow me to the airport.”

  Rawlins took a drag on his cigarette.

  “Else I gotta stay,” said Wes.

  The homicide cop watched the injured man swaying on his feet. Rawlins flicked his cigarette to the floor, crushed it with his black wing tip.

  “Turn off the TV,” he said.

  The flight got Wes to Dulles airport at ten that night. A worried stewardess walked him down the ramp, sat with him in the bus that carried passengers from the plane to the terminal.

  Noah Hall stood beyond the metal detector, cheap tan raincoat over one shoulder, an attaché case in his hand. The CIA Director’s assistant scowled as Wes shuffled through the crowd of arriving passengers and waiting friends.

  “Where’s the Director?” said Wes. “When I phoned, I said I had to see Denton as soon as I got in.”

  “Then find a plane to France,” said Noah. “He’s on an extended classified visit. Come on.”

  The bulldog led Wes to a row of plastic seats at the far end of the high-ceilinged, black-glass-walled terminal.

  Wes dropped into the last chair. Noah sat beside him. He put the attaché case on the tile floor between their legs. Canned music drifted through the airport. In the far corner, a janitor mopped the gray floor with lemony suds. The loudspeaker announced the arrival of a flight from Hawaii.

  “I spent all damn day putting out fires you started in L.A.,” snapped Noah. “Next time, I’ll throw you in the flames.”

  “I need to talk to Director Denton,” mumbled Wes.

  “You need to do your job—which ain’t to make trouble for us.”

  “I didn’t make the trouble, I found it,” said Wes.

  “What did you find out about this Jud Stuart guy?”

  “That he’s somebody. That there is shit out there that somebody besides us cares about.”

  “That’s all?”

  “I need help,” said Wes. “You figure out how to keep the lid on, but I need more official clout, some men, some—”

  “I gave you Jack Berns. Set up what you need with him.”

  “Fuck Berns! You didn’t give him to me, you gave me to him!”

  “I gave you what you’re gonna get. The point of your breathing is to keep all the pencil pushers and form fillers and report writers out of the boss’s business.”

  “What’s the matter, Wes? Life get too tough for you? Gotta crawl back to D.C. for Mommy and Noah to dry your tears?”

  Wes wanted to hit him, and Noah knew it.

  “We thought we were getting a can-do guy,” continued Noah. “With guts and brains and enough beef to back up his act.”

  “So far,” hissed Wes, “I’ve found Pentagon shuffles, a wispy link to the White House, L.A. police intelligence files on a psycho who’s tight with Jud and who might be a gun for drug dealers and mob—”

  “Shut up!” hissed Noah. “Don’t tell us about every piece of crap you stick your shoes in! Find out how Jud Stuart is tied to our program, fix it, and report only when you’re done. We want to know more, we’ll ask.”

  Three Japanese stewardesses rolled their luggage carts past the gaijin men. The stewardesses giggled softly. One looked at Wes; blinked. Hurried on.

  “I figured you for a right guy,” said Noah. “Smart and ambitious. Bored with being a paper pusher. The boss figured you signed on ’cause it’s the right thing to do, the thing that needs to be done. Stars and Stripes forever, all that crap. So when the going gets to
ugh, what does our Marine do?”

  The loudspeaker announced a flight to San Francisco.

  “I need support,” said Wes. “Some kind, somehow.”

  “There’s a hundred thousand more in the attaché case,” answered Noah.

  Wes looked at the briefcase between their shoes.

  “Money,” said Noah: “it’s the big fix.

  “The lock is set with your name,” he added, “Wes. That’s enough to get you what you need, and it’s all you’re going to get.”

  Two more departing flights were called.

  “This might get stickier,” Wes said.

  “Just be sure nothing sticks where it don’t belong.”

  “Give me a voucher for the money,” said Wes.

  The bulldog stood, buttoned his cheap tan raincoat. The piped-in instrumental music played a Beatles song. Noah smiled at the battered man in the Dulles airport plastic chair.

  “Fuck you, Major,” said Noah.

  And he walked away. Left the briefcase beside Wes.

  One look at Wes’s condition and no one would rent him a car. He made a call, took a cab to a town-house development twenty minutes from the airport. Wobbled up the sidewalk, money-heavy briefcase in hand.

  The dark woman in a bathrobe who answered the doorbell caught her breath when she saw him. “Oh, Wes!”

  Over her shoulder stood her husband, NIS counterspy Frank Greco, dressed in khakis and a gray sweatshirt. They took him to a wood-paneled office crammed with books and photos, shooting trophies and service awards. Wes sank into a stuffed chair; Greco sat behind the wooden desk.

  “You want some coffee?” asked the wife, Latin America in her words. Her father was a Cuban doctor who’d fled Castro’s revolution. “Some aspirin?”

  “The hurt is what keeps me going,” mumbled Wes.

  She didn’t smile. But she left the two men alone.

  “Did you lose an ear?” asked Greco when she was gone.

  “Worse. I lost my man.”

  “This isn’t your work. You can take a squad into the boonies, find Charlie, and zap his ass, but that war is over and this is the world.”

  “And I need help in it.”

  “We don’t work for the same people.”

  “Sure we do,” said Wes.

  “Remember what I told you about your friends across the river leaving you in deep water.”