“Dates, though, I’m not too good with. I could only guess.”
“Hey, nobody’s perfect.”
Vaz remembered seeing Blyleven at the club. He had never played him, though. Chess players tend to compete with opponents of similar levels—certainly in tournaments, and generally in pickup games at clubs. Vaz playing Blyleven would have been like Nolan Ryan throwing heaters to a Little Leaguer. Not much fun for either of them. In fact, the only reason he ever played me was because I was the only other person in our building who knew the game. And, of course, we were friends.
“Did you ever talk to him?”
“I might have said hello,” Vaz said.
“Do you remember anything about him?”
“I’m sorry, Jacob, no. Just his face. I know I’ve seen him at the club before. But not where we’re going. They used to meet at a community center on East Thirteenth Avenue. That’s where I saw him. But maybe someone tonight can help you.”
“That’s what I’m counting on.”
“You shouldn’t expect too much, though, Jacob. People come and go.”
The club met in a run-down VFW building in northwest Denver. The large room in back had uneven lighting, a scuffed tile floor, and enough battered tables and chairs to seat a hundred. We were early, so there were only half a dozen other people.
They all knew Vaz, of course.
He introduced me to Ed Koepke, the club president, a sad-faced guy in his forties with a high forehead, a soft-looking paunch, and a pallid complexion. He remembered Blyleven, too, but like Vaz, only the name and face.
“When some of the lower rated players show up,” Koepke told me, “you can ask them.”
An hour later the room was half filled. Except for one woman—a homely young lady wearing blue jeans and a Bronco’s jersey (number 7, what else?)—all the chess players were men. They ranged in age from teens to sixties.
Most of them looked like what you would call “regular guys.” That is, they probably had wives or girlfriends or boyfriends, and they liked to spend at least a little time outdoors—playing ball or walking the dog or sitting in the yard drinking a beer, maybe reading King or Chrichton or what’s his name, Grisham. In other words, they had lives outside of chess.
The others, though, were different. They reminded me of those shy, furtive, pale-faced characters you see on the nightly news being led in chains by sheriff’s deputies after they’ve shot up their last place of employment with an Uzi. He seemed like such a nice young man, his neighbors would say. Kind of quiet, though. Kept to himself.
It was one of these guys who finally remembered Martin Blyleven.
I sat across a chessboard from him in the corner of the room. The black and white plastic pieces were in disarray, the aftermath of a mighty battle in which Dorsey had been beaten by the woman in orange. That was his name. Dorsey.
“Yeah, I remember Martin Blyleven,” he said. He sat on one hand, while the other hopped and twitched around the board like a long-legged, pale spider, snatching up chessmen and setting them firmly on their home squares. “I haven’t seen him for a long time, though.”
“He died,” I said.
“Oh.”
Everyone else in the room was either playing chess or kibitzing a game. Some of the games looked quite serious, with both players hunched forward, taking their time, moving carefully, then noting the move on a score sheet and punching the chess clock, which stopped their own time and started their opponent’s. At a few boards there were speed matches, where the players banged their pieces to the board, then quickly slapped the clock. One of these games was going on at the next table. Vaz sat beside me and watched it.
Bang, slap. Bang, slap.
“Did you ever see Blyleven outside of the chess club?” I asked Dorsey.
“No. Only here. Or maybe it was at the community center where we used to play. I was in a couple of tournaments with him, that’s why I remember his face. And his name, when you said it. Blyleven.”
“Did he have any close friends?”
Bang, slap. Bang, slap.
“I couldn’t say,” Dorsey said.
Terrific. Although I don’t really know what I’d expected to find here. “Was there anyone who he seemed to hang out with more than others, studying games, or whatever?”
“I don’t remember.”
I started to get up. “Well, thanks for—”
“You know, there was one guy.”
Bang, slap.
“Oh?”
“I don’t remember his name. But he had this skin thing on his face, kind of weird looking. I played him once. Maybe in the same tournament with Blyleven.”
“Which tournament,” Vaz said, startling both Dorsey and me.
Dorsey thought for a minute, then said, “The Holiday Open.” He couldn’t suppress a thin smile. “I tied for second place.”
“In which section?” Vaz wanted to know.
“The ‘under sixteen-hundred.’”
“I’ll be a moment, Jacob.”
Vaz left us and wound his way between tables to Koepke, who was watching a game in progress. Vaz drew him aside. I saw Koepke nod his head, then lead Vaz to a dais at the far end of the room. A table was set up there with a laptop computer and a printer. Koepke’s portable office.
I asked Dorsey, “What sort of skin thing?”
“What?”
“On this man’s face.”
“Oh. Like a bad burn, pink and purple and puckered up, all over his neck and chin.”
“Besides that, what did he look like? Black, white? Big, small? Young, old?”
“He was white, about average size, I guess. Older. About your age.”
Oh, thanks. “And he and Blyleven were friends?”
“I think so. I saw them together a few times at the club.”
“Did they arrive together?”
“I don’t know.” He stared past me and waved at someone. “Look, I’m supposed to play this guy tonight.”
“Okay, just tell me, is there anything else you remember about this man and Blyleven?”
He scrunched up his face and thought. “All I remember is after the Holiday Open we were talking about the tournament and replaying some of the games, and—”
“You and who?”
“Blyleven and the man with the burns. I’d played against them both, and we were analyzing our games. I got the impression that Blyleven and this other man didn’t know each other too well then, but after that they seemed to get real friendly. In fact, a few weeks later—and this is the only thing I can remember, okay?, and then I have to start my game—a few weeks later I saw them sitting together, talking, laughing, and I went over to see what was up. But it had nothing to do with chess.”
“What was it?”
“Germany.”
“Germany? The country?”
“Yeah.”
“What about it?”
“I don’t know. All I remember is they were talking about Germany. Look, I’m really supposed to play this guy.”
He nodded toward a skinny character with inch-thick eyeglasses standing behind me. I was in his seat. I stood and told Dorsey, “Thanks for your help.”
Vaz was alone on the dais, looking through several pages of computer print-outs.
I went up there and asked him, “What’s that?”
“The tournament record and some of the score sheets from the Holiday Open four years ago. Actually, four and a half—the tournament was in January.”
“Koepke has four years worth of records stored on that little computer?”
Vaz gave me an annoyed look. “Jacob, that’s a four-hundred meg hard drive.”
“Yeah, whatever.”
“The tournament was a Swiss-type,” Vaz said, “and each player had four matches. Dorsey tied for second place, as he said. He played Martin Blyleven and three others. Here, I wrote down their names.”
He handed me a scrap of paper with scribbles on it.
“I can’t read
this.”
“Never mind, I can. Also, I had Ed print out all four of Blyleven’s games.” He showed me pages filled with columns of letters and numbers—the moves of each game.
“Why?”
He shrugged. “Perhaps they will tell us something about the man.”
I didn’t see how. But this was Vaz’s territory, not mine.
“Let’s ask Dorsey about these names.”
Dorsey and his pal had not yet started their game, but they were itching to do so. Vaz read off the names of Dorsey’s four opponents in the Holiday Open.
“What was the third one again?”
“Stan Lessing,” Vaz said.
Dorsey nodded. “That’s him, the guy with the burns. And there’s something else I remembered.”
“What?”
“That time I heard them talking about Germany, remember?”
“A few weeks after the Holiday Open,” I said.
“Right, well, after that I didn’t see either one of them again. They stopped coming to the club.”
“You’re sure?”
“Positive.”
Vaz and I sat at a vacant table, and Vaz set up a chessboard. He played through all four of Blyleven’s games, talking to me in a low voice. Or maybe he was talking to himself, because his eyes moved only between the board and the score sheets.
“… e-four, c-five, knight f-three, knight c-six, d-four, pawn takes pawn, knight takes pawn, yes, yes, all book stuff, then here and here and here, black castles …” Shuffling the pieces about the board. “… then rook comes over, pawn moves, oh, but this is weak, bishop here, and queen takes …” And so it went for the better part of an hour.
When he was finished, he heaved a sigh and sat back from the board, looking like a college professor who had just finished grading term papers, and poor ones at that.
“Well?”
“It’s not very good chess, Jacob. I daresay you could do well against any of these players.”
“Gee, thanks. Is that it?”
“Well, I can tell you this about Blyleven. He plays two vastly different styles, depending on whether he’s white or black.”
“Isn’t that the nature of the game?”
“Yes, of course. White moves first and so has the initiative. Black must defend, and at some point he must counter white’s attack or be crushed. But Blyleven takes it to an extreme.”
“What do you mean?”
“In this tournament he played two games as black, and two as white. When he was black, he was overly cautious, timid, you might say, making small, careful moves, hardly even venturing onto his opponent’s side of the board. But as white, he went completely the other way, extremely aggressive, throwing caution to the wind, totally committing himself to the attack, no matter how unsound.”
“Which method paid off?”
“He had two draws with black. With white he won one and lost one. But I’ll tell you something, Jacob, it is almost like two different players here. One is meek and careful, the other violently aggressive.”
So much for Blyleven the chess player. I wondered which description best fit Blyleven the man.
Vaz bid good night to his friends, and we drove home.
Along the way he asked me, “Do you think Stan Lessing has anything to do with your case?”
“I’d say the odds are good. As soon as he and Blyleven became friends, they stopped going to the chess club. And two months later Blyleven’s plane blew up. Also, Vivian was certain that Blyleven played chess every Tuesday until the plane crash. Obviously, he was lying to her. And if he wasn’t playing chess, where was he?”
“With Stan Lessing.”
“That’s my guess.”
“What do you make of Blyleven and Lessing talking about Germany?”
“I have no idea, Vaz. But there’s something else. Probably only a coincidence.”
“What?”
“Lessing’s face had been severely burned, and Blyleven’s body—or whoever’s body it was—was burned beyond recognition.”
Vaz shook his head. “That’s a stretch, Jacob.”
“I guess.”
When I got to the apartment building, I double-parked in front.
“Aren’t you coming in?”
“I have one more stop to make,” I said. “Thanks for coming with me tonight.”
“I enjoyed it. Good night, Jacob.”
“Good night.”
I waited until he had gone up the poorly lighted walk, unlocked the front door, and stepped inside.
Then I headed to north Denver to see my good friend Jack.
16
IT WAS A LITTLE before ten when I turned east off Federal Boulevard. I drove past Jack’s triplex, continued on to the end of the block, and parked the Olds around the corner. The streetlamp was dead, but the neighborhood was fairly well lighted by city glow. I unlocked the trunk and shoved a few handy tools of the trade in my jacket pockets. Then I lifted out a hefty paper bag. It was filled with goodies I’d purchased that afternoon at the hardware store.
Never visit a friend’s house empty-handed.
I walked back toward Jack’s place. It was a pleasant, still night. Pale light from TV sets flickered in front windows along the way. Most people in the neighborhood had settled in to watch the evening news and maybe Letterman before heading to bed.
The end units of the triplex were dark—so Jack wasn’t home, and the gang-bangers I’d seen earlier were probably out cruising the streets. The window shades in the middle unit glowed with yellow light. I hoped they’d brought their puppy in for the night.
They had.
The backyard was empty and quiet. Diffused light from the neighbors’ windows fell on the clothesline pole, the limp chain, the water bowl… and Jack’s back door. It took me longer to get the pick out of my pocket than it did to open the lock. I stepped into the kitchen and closed the door behind me.
Enough light came through the flimsy curtains for me to make out shapes: refrigerator, sink, table, two chairs, doorway.
I put the sack on the table and clicked on my small flashlight. Then I moved from the kitchen, keeping the yellow-white circle of light at my feet.
The doorway led into a minuscule hallway. There was another doorway straight ahead into the living room, and open doors to the right (bathroom) and left (bedroom).
I checked the bedroom first. The double bed was unmade, with the sheets tossed back from one side and one of the two pillows on the floor. In the closet I found a winter coat, a lightweight zippered jacket, a pair of pants hung crookedly on a hanger, and three shirts. Jack was not a clothes horse. The secondhand dressing table held nothing but smelly socks and underwear, a couple of sweaters and T-shirts, and a switchblade knife with a six-inch blade.
I slipped the knife into my pocket.
Then I poked my head in the bathroom. There was a dank, fetid odor. A scummy shower curtain hung limply around a filthy bathtub. The toilet seat was up, but hey, so was mine. The door to the medicine cabinet hung open. Inside were a couple of throw-away safety razors, a sticky-looking comb, and a half-full bottle of aspirin. On top of the sink lay a toothbrush and a deformed tube of toothpaste. I guess even scumbags clean their teeth.
The living room was furnished in Neo-Goodwill—a sagging couch, a battered chair, and a coffee table littered with empty beer cans. On top of the TV set in the corner was a small plastic box. At least he had cable.
I sat in the chair in the semidarkness and waited for him to come home.
The neighbors’ TV entertained me with a muted mumble. An hour later all was quiet.
At 11:30 a siren screamed by on Federal Boulevard.
At 12:20 a car passed in front of the triplex.
At 2:15 a car stopped out front.
I stood and moved beside the door. I didn’t dare risk a peek through the front window shade because he might see the movement. A car door creaked open, then chunked closed. I waited, putting my weight on the balls of my feet, flexing my
shoulders and fingers, getting ready.
Suddenly, there came a loud sound from the kitchen. Shit. It hadn’t occurred to me that Jack would walk around to the back door. I hustled into the kitchen. And discovered my stupid mistake. The sound I’d heard was the refrigerator kicking on. Now it chugged merrily away.
The front door opened. The living-room light came on.
I stood beside the kitchen doorway and slipped the sap from my jacket pocket. It’s a leather-wrapped, ten-ounce lead disk at the end of a spring-loaded grip. Payback’s a bitch, ain’t it?
I heard Jack go into the bathroom and piss and fart at the same time. The toilet flushed. I wondered if he’d go straight to bed or watch TV for a while or come into the kitchen for a nightcap.
He stepped through the doorway, reaching for the light.
I nailed him, and down he went.
When I flipped the switch, the room filled with a sickly yellow glow. Quickly, I opened the sack on the table and got out the roll of duct tape—another nice irony, I thought. I flopped him over on his stomach. He moaned, and gave me a whiff of whiskey. I pulled his arms behind him and taped his wrists together, running the tape in a cross pattern, between and around. Then I hoisted him off the floor. He was short, but compact and heavy, and I had to strain to get him into one of the kitchen chairs.
“Huh?” He blinked, trying to focus his eyes.
I pulled his arms up and over the chair, so that the back stuck up between his elbows. Then I started wrapping tape around his chest and arms and the back of the chair to keep him in place.
“What the fuck?” He shook his head. “Hey!”
“No talking,” I said, and slapped a strip of tape over his mouth.
He struggled with his bonds and cursed me behind his gag. Then he leaned forward and stood, hunched over, with the chair still taped to his back, as if he thought he could run away. I took out the sap and showed it to him.
Grave Doubt (The Jacob Lomax Mysteries Book 5) Page 9