Nature of the Game

by James Grady

  The first set of escalators was crowded: businessmen; a laughing married couple, holding hands as they stole a movie out of the workday week. He and Sylvia had done that; there were so many movies he’d never seen, her skin was so soft. They’d never gone on a picnic. A herd of yelling teenagers ran up the escalator rising alongside Nick’s, charged into the parking lot where their bus from Maine waited.

  The second set of escalators was only half as populated, more by people riding up than arrivals riding down. Nick glanced to his left: an acre of parked cars sandwiched between a cement roof and a concrete floor. A sign on the wall read: PUSH RED BUTTON FOR EMERGENCY ASSISTANCE.

  There was nobody he could call for help. No authority could rescue him.

  The third set of escalators was empty when Nick got on at the bottom. No one rode on either side; he heard no one behind him.

  A nun stood at the top of the escalators. A nun in full black-and-white penguin habit, hair and forehead covered, hands hidden in the black folds. She got on the downward stairs.

  Why isn’t she holding on to the rubber rail?

  Closer, they slid closer together. The nun was on his left. His heart side. An old and pasty-white, lined face. Closer. The nun had wary eyes that pointed straight ahead. Nick knew she saw his every move. His mouth was dry; his heart raced. He rode the stairway toward heaven and tried to be loose, ready as they slid closer, closer together. Side by side.

  Past.

  Nothing cut into him.

  The last set of escalators were empty. Through the open walls to Nick’s right were the brightly painted town houses of Capitol Hill, a jumble of rusted railroad tracks snaking from the heart of the city.

  Risk it.

  He locked his gaze on a black town-house roof. The escalator carried him up and forward. His face slowly turned …

  A man in a sports jacket rode the escalator thirty feet behind Nick. The man was checking his watch. Nick could only see the top of his head: a bald spot spreading out from a crown of black hair. The man had tan hands.

  End of the escalator.

  Nick left the escalator platform for the concrete parking lot. In the sunshine, no one stood amidst the parked cars.

  “There are three concrete stairwells,” the stranger on the phone had said. “Ride the escalators up to the top, go to the middle stairwell, walk down.”

  The middle stairwell was a room-sized gray concrete box with a giant ventilator mounted on its top. Nick turned the knob on the metal door: unlocked. The landing inside was lit by bare ceiling bulbs. A steel staircase led down.

  The stairwell was empty.

  Is the escalator man behind me? thought Nick. His guts were like lava. He stepped inside the stairwell, closed the door.

  Took a breath; heard nothing—water dripping.

  One landing down, he found a line of orange rubber cones barring the door to the next level. A DETOUR sign was taped to the metal door and lumber had been wedged across it.

  Dead end. Trapped. The cinder-block walls closed in on Nick: Run.

  Back, three steps at a time up the first set of stairs, turning the corner, nine more to—

  The metal door burst open. The man from the escalator flew inside, staggering, slammed against the wall, turned back toward the door. His face was gashed, bloody, his hand reached under his sports jacket …

  But the man in jeans and a black jacket who’d thrown him through the door was there, grabbing the escalator man’s hand, whipping black metal across Escalator Man’s face. He staggered. The ambusher hit him with the black metal again.

  A gun, recognized Nick. Gun.

  That locked on him as Escalator Man collapsed in a heap.

  “Don’t!” yelled the man with the gun. “Just don’t!”

  Nick kept his hands in sight. There was nowhere to run. He was too far away to charge the gun. The gunman was big.

  The gunman kicked the man crumpled on the floor in the leg; he didn’t move.

  “You’re okay!” the gunman told Nick. “You’re safe!”

  “Fuck you!” yelled Nick before he thought.

  “You’ll have to stand in line.”

  “You going to do me now!” bellowed Nick.

  “Quiet!” The gunman’s shout echoed in the concrete and steel box. “I’m not going to do anything to you!”

  “You got a gun!”

  “For him, not you.”

  His feet turned the unconscious man’s face toward Nick. “Do you know him?”

  “I don’t know you either!”

  “I called you, got you out of there so I could shake anybody off your ass. I’m Wes Chandler.”

  “All I know is you’re the man with the gun,” said Nick.

  “That’s right,” said Wes.

  He holstered the Sig, heard his rasping breath in this concrete box where with stolen orange cones and lumber he’d set up his ambush. Wes saw Nick sneak his foot up one step; saw Nick calculate the distance, the odds.

  “Don’t,” said Wes. “Even without my gun, you don’t stand a chance.”

  “Sure,” said Nick, biding his time.

  “If I wanted you dead, you would be.”

  Nick blinked. “Who are you?”

  “I’m your way out. Your only way out.”

  The man who said he was Wes Chandler held a Polaroid photograph like an ID for Nick to see.

  Squinting, climbing two slow steps closer, Nick saw a photo of himself, sitting on a red couch. Next to Jud.

  Nick whispered, “Where did you get that?”

  Wes pointed to the unconscious man. “He was following you.”

  “Why? How do you know that?”

  “Because I disappeared and they didn’t have any other choice,” said Chandler. “I didn’t give them one.”

  He bent and searched Escalator Man’s clothes.

  No, Nick told himself when Wes dropped his attention to the man on the floor. Wait.

  “I didn’t know if the CIA had targeted you,” said Wes. He pulled a revolver from under Escalator Man’s jacket.

  “If it would have been official, they’d have had a team on you. A tap and a team dispatched ahead. They didn’t. I tracked you with binoculars. This guy followed you by himself.”

  “He heard the phone call? Was waiting outside?”

  “Doesn’t matter.” Wes took the man’s wallet. “Solo tail, small op. Whoever they are, if it’s official, it’s way off the books.”

  The man on the floor moaned. Still holding the revolver, Wes told Nick, “Let’s go.”

  They left the stairwell. Wes directed Nick to a rental car, walked around to the driver’s door.

  “Get in,” he said.

  “You must think I’m nuts!”

  “I know you’re in trouble. Way over your head. If you didn’t think so before …”

  He pointed the gun back to where the man he’d beaten was regaining consciousness.

  “I’m under the same shit,” said Wes. “We’ve got a chance to get out of it—together. On your own, you’ve got nothing.”

  “At least I know where I’m going and who I am.”

  “Do you?” said Wes.

  The revolver he’d taken from the ambushed man hung in his hand. He slid the gun across the hood of the car toward Nick.

  “Your choice,” said Wes.

  He got in the car. Started the engine. Watched Nick staring at him through the windshield.

  He’s the chance I have, thought Nick. He picked up the gun, got in the car.

  They drove to the National Arboretum, a 444-acre preserve of rolling trees, flowering bushes, and deserted paved roads just off Capitol Hill. They parked not far from a Japanese gazebo where an old woman in a wide-brimmed hat painted at an easel.

  Wes talked like a machine gun: told Nick he was a Marine assigned to the CIA, detailed to investigate Jud after a phone call to the CIA’s panic line. Told him about the pictures he’d stolen in L.A. Explained how phone records had linked Nick to Jud.

&nbs
p; “I need to talk to Jud,” insisted Wes. “He’s the way out of all this. He knows it, he’s got it or he’s it. He can set the ground rules. He knows I don’t want to hurt him. I had a chance, in the desert. There was some trouble.”

  “Where is he now?”

  “My guess is he’s headed here. To you.” Wes swallowed. “Lorri is dead. Suicide. He found her, she’d left … kind of a note. Mentioned your name.”

  “I called her,” whispered Nick. “Last week. She was alive just …”

  “Don’t worry,” said Wes. “I cleaned up.”

  “What?” Nick’s mind reeled. She’s dead. She was alive and then I called her.

  And then she killed herself, he realized. I told her Jud was coming, I was back in her life. Then she killed herself.

  Nausea and guilt swirled through him.

  “We don’t have much time,” said Wes. “There’s a burn notice out on me. The firing squad is forming, and I’m against the wall. Jud’s out of control. They’ll put him against the same bricks.”

  “For what? You bushwhacked that guy, not Jud!”

  “You’re right beside us,” said the Marine. “Jack Berns put you there. My guess is that’s how that guy got on your tail. Anyway, you’re the last one alive at the end of Jud’s rope.”

  The car was close, small. Nick put his hand on the door.

  Wes opened the wallet of the man he’d ambushed.

  “Virginia driver’s license.” He read, “‘Norman Blanton’—mean anything?”

  “No,” said Nick. Where was Sylvia? Was she okay?

  “Credit cards, traveler’s checks—why the hell does he have traveler’s checks? No government ID, no …” He pulled a crinkled business card out of the wallet. “‘Norman J. Blanton, Executive Vice President, PRS—Phoenix Resources and Services.’”

  “Wait a minute,” said Nick.

  He pulled the names glossary from his backpack.

  “No Blanton,” he said, explaining the names glossary.

  But Phoenix Resources and Services (PRS) was listed on page 9 of the Archives’ Iran-Contra Organizations Glossary:

  A Virginia-based company founded in January 1985 by BYRON VARON, a retired general. PRS served as a minor subcontractor in both official and extraofficial efforts to aid the contras, including providing a conduit for funds, middleman functions for small-arms sales, and air logistics.

  “Where does an arms company fit in?” asked Wes.

  “Not where,” said Nick, pulling the set of photocopied pages from his backpack. “Who.”

  Nick paged back through the names glossary:

  VARON, BYRON R., Retired Lt. Gen., USA, service in Vietnam, Laos, later served as deputy adviser for military assistance programs in Iran and headed up low-intensity-warfare group for Joint Chiefs. Varon was honorary chairman of the AMERICAN LIBERTY MOVEMENT and raised funds for the contras as well as arranging purchase of arms and participating in planning of off-the-shelf operations for the secret White House team.

  “You’re the white knight,” Nick told Wes. “Now what?”

  MONKEY MAN

  Ten minutes before noon that day, the chairman of Sylvia’s congressional committee visited her jumbled office on his way to the Cloakroom and told her to take the rest of the day off.

  Actually, what he said was, “Get your ass out of here. When we start conference committee next week, I don’t want to look behind me at midnight, see you sitting against the wall, my poor family written all over your face.”

  “As soon as I draft our response to the Senate staff proposals—”

  “Fuck the Senate staff,” said the chairman of a powerful House committee. “If you feed dogs when they bark, they start thinking they’re in charge.”

  He walked to the door, winked at her. “You owe me one.”

  Sylvia laughed and picked up the phone.

  Got Nick’s machine. He must have gone to lunch early. After the beep, she told him she was going home; told him to call. “Want to see a movie?” she asked her husband’s office machine.

  Raindrops tapped her car’s windshield as she drove to the suburbs, sacrificial scouts for clouds beyond the horizon.

  When she got home, Saul was down for his nap.

  “A good boy,” said Juanita. “All time, he wants only to walk. No more crawling.”

  Again Sylvia called Nick. No answer. They could still make a late-afternoon movie. She remembered the chairman’s wink.

  “Juanita …”

  It was a simple deal between equally agreeable parties. For the rest of the day off, Juanita would baby-sit Friday night.

  “For a date,” she said. “For you and Nick, a real date.”

  “Yes,” Sylvia smiled, dreaming ahead.

  When she walked Juanita to the door, she noticed the wind had turned cool. The clouds looked thicker, grayer.

  Alone, thought Sylvia. With Saul asleep for probably another hour, she was as good as blissfully alone in a quiet house. Except for the dog, the big black rottweiler who padded from room to room with her. She could even take the phone off the hook.

  No, Nick might call. She half hoped he wouldn’t.

  Upstairs, she checked on Saul: curled on his side in the crib, ribs gently rising and falling, precious hands up by his face. She pulled his bedroom door shut to preserve his quiet rest.

  As her baby’s door closed, she remembered the smile her boss had given a freshman congressman from Ohio, the smile and an agreement not to oppose a floor amendment from the freshman that would give a $6-million tax break for his district. In turn, the freshman gave her boss his marker for final passage of the bill. What the freshman hadn’t known is that her boss already had a deal with the Rules Committee to send the bill to the Floor with a no-amendments rule. Her boss kept his promises, but he’d snookered the freshman. “Procedure beats substance,” her boss said. Now if they could get labor to squeeze the senator from—

  Stop it! she ordered herself. It’s your day off.

  In her bedroom, she kicked off her shoes and found a hanger for her suit, slipped off the jacket. Unzipped the skirt, clipped it to the hanger. There was a coffee stain on her blouse. She shook her head as she tossed it in the dry-cleaning hamper: another $1.50 accident. She peeled off her panty hose, tossed them toward the bureau. They floated to the floor. She laughed and accidentally looked in the full-length mirror on the bathroom door.

  Saw her reflection. For the first time in months, she stopped and really looked.

  Lines of gray streaked her black hair. Her bra was faded white with torn lace. The elastic in her cotton panties was shot; she could see flesh through the thin material over one cheek.

  The extra weight from the baby had melted off six months after his birth, but her muscle tone had never come back. The waist was there, no roll, but her belly bulged. Her breasts filled the C cups, but when the bra came off, the flesh sagged.

  “What do you think?” she asked the dog. He didn’t answer. She hoped Nick was blinder than her mirror. Often as not, women were beautiful in the novels he wrote.

  She saw stretch marks. Forty merciless years.

  “But I’m here Monday mornings,” she told the mirror.

  And she thought about the coming Friday night; smiled.

  Her old blue jeans felt good, the long-sleeved pink top was comfy. She liked her feet bare.

  It was her afternoon off, and she was blissfully alone.

  One of the few points of contention in her marriage was that she loved to read in bed and Nick didn’t. But Nick wasn’t there. As the dog curled up on the bedroom carpet, she piled the pillows against the headboard, snapped on the bedside lamp. She snuggled into the pillows, picked up the biography of Martin Luther King she’d been savoring in snippets carved out of busy days, and lost herself in the panorama of real politics and true heroes.

  The dog growled as Sylvia read about the sixteen-year-old girl defying conventional wisdom in 1951 and rallying her high school classmates to break the chains of s
egregated schools.

  “Quiet!” ordered Sylvia.

  The rottweiler flowed to his feet, a hill becoming a muscular river of black fur, flashing eyes, and white teeth.

  “There’s nobody here,” she muttered, her eyes clinging to the words inked on the book pages. “Saul’s sleeping.”

  The dog barked, a guttural bass explosion.

  “No! You’ll wake—”

  The doorbell rang.

  A mailman, she thought, swinging off the bed. Special package, probably from a grandparent or her sister in Milwaukee.

  God, don’t let it be a salvation squad: old ladies wearing hats and bearing The Watchtower, Bible-toting young men in white shirts and black ties.

  She hoped the dog wouldn’t scare them—too much.

  “Coming!” she yelled as she hurried downstairs. She grabbed the choke-chain collar, pulled the dog back from he front door: 120 pounds and the vet said there was more to come. “Sit!”

  Why the hell couldn’t Nick have wanted a cocker spaniel?

  Their dog had a diploma from obedience school.

  “But no summa cum laude,” she’d complained to Nick.

  “Sit!” She jerked his collar. He calmed down enough to back away from the door. He strained against the choke collar, the metal cutting into her hand as she opened the door.

  Found him standing there.

  Big and crazy, matted hair, stubbled face. His shirt was stained with road filth. Greasy jeans. Battered sneakers. The chilly wind carried his stench of sweat, bad breath, and sour whiskey, and he wobbled as he stood before her.

  “I’m sorry,” he said.

  That voice: five, six times she’d answered the phone for latenight calls that all her pleas to Nick never seemed to end.

  “I’m sorry,” he said again. “You’re Sylvia. I’m Jud.”

  “H … Hi.”

  Her smiling response was automatic. But her heart and head reeled. This man was important to Nick, his friend—a man whose problems Nick had taken on. And here he stood on her porch, clearly needy. But no one in their lives troubled her more. His specter had haunted them. As a ghost, he was an abstract worry; on her porch, he embodied dangers she never let herself name. The choke collar cutting into her hand felt welcome.

  “What are you doing here?” she asked, though she knew.