The Immortal Game

by Mark Coggins

  “If you say so.”

  “Yeah, I do. I’ve been given the word from high to close this case, and I’m more than happy to. You should be happy too. You’ve been bending the rules like cooked spaghetti. Nothing I could nail you for exactly, but it was only a matter of time. In fact, it wouldn’t surprise me if you walked off with more evidence from that hotel. Hang it up now, Riordan. It’s time. This is the best outcome you could hope for.”

  “I thought you called me to thank me, not lecture me.”

  Stockwell growled into the phone. “I knew there wasn’t any point in telling you to keep your nose clean. Call me when you’re humping for bail. I’ll chip in a quarter.” He slammed the phone down.

  I hung up at my end and fell back in bed. Staring at the ceiling, I thought about all the things I should have done differently. It was hard to count that high. Then I thought about the things that were left. That was a much shorter list. I needed Duckworth’s help again to see if Bishop’s software was on the PCMCIA card I had taken from the hotel. If the source code was there, I would return it to Bishop to try and dig myself out of that hole. If not, I didn’t see any point in giving it to the cops. It would just make more trouble for me-especially after Stockwell’s irksome remarks on the topic of stolen evidence. The last thing I could think to do was look up Ronan O’Grady and find out more about Terri McCulloch’s death.

  I reached into the nightstand drawer and fished out a pack of desiccated cigarettes. I lit one and took a pull. The old tobacco burned like a fuse. I watched as the smoke from the butt curled and eddied up to the ceiling fixture. Thinking about Terri McCulloch reminded me there was an item rattling around in my trunk that I’d never taken time to fully review: the S&M tape of her and Bishop. I decided I would add that to the list of TBDs. It seemed unlikely there was anything on the tape that would bear on the case, but in spite of Stockwell’s exhortations, I wasn’t ready to hang it up entirely. Besides, it’d be stupid not to give the tape a quick run through after taking the trouble to nick it from the East Palo Alto apartment.

  I was pulled sharply out of my ruminations by the cigarette. It had already burned down to my fingers. I cursed and stubbed it out violently like I was mashing a scorpion.

  I cleaned up and got dressed and then walked over to Postworth to have a late breakfast while I read the paper. The afternoon Examiner was already out, but it hadn’t seen fit to alter the Chronicle headline Stockwell dictated to me in any significant way. “Teller Murder Suspect Found Dead. Heroin Overdose in Tenderloin” was how it read. The reporting on Terri’s discovery was pretty thin. Dale Pace was not mentioned at all, and I was referred to only as a “San Francisco Private Detective.” Much more substantive was the discussion of the significance to the Teller case. The SFPD spokesperson made it clear that the department considered the case to be closed, and found plenty of juicy credit to baste themselves in. Poor old Stockwell only got his name in print one time, and that was in a quote thanking members of cooperating police forces. It sounded like the winning pitcher thanking the batboy.

  On my way home I snagged the videotape from the Galaxie’s trunk. It was a little worse for wear-one corner of the plastic housing had chipped off-but I figured it would still play. At the apartment I got the tape in my VCR without problem and rewound it to the beginning. I didn’t want to miss the socko opening scene.

  The tape began as I remembered: in the dungeon with Bishop in fetters on the wooden wheel and Terri flaying away at his butt with a birch rod. He made every bit as much noise as before, but with the benefit of a full play-through, I also got to hear Terri’s contributions. In a continuing patter, she barked a series of orders, observations, and questions at him like a perverted drill sergeant. “You like this, don’t you, Edwin?” she said. “You need this... you can get hard now, Edwin... I give you permission... only I decide what you do with your cock... it’s mine... relax your cheeks... give yourself up to the rod,” and so on.

  It didn’t take very much of this to send me scrambling for the remote and the fast forward button. I thumbed it down and watched as McCulloch whipped Bishop’s butt in herky-jerky movements like a mad woman. In a minute or so, the scene changed abruptly. I lifted my thumb. Bishop and McCulloch were still in the dungeon and Terri was wearing the same thing: black leather corset, black boots, and the satisfied expression of a woman who enjoys her work. Bishop, however, had a whole new look. He was standing upright, firmly shackled to the concrete wall by wrists and ankles. A cushioned support at kidney height was visible on either side of his hips. The apparent goal of this was to thrust his pelvis forward, bending him off the wall like a sail in the wind. But that was just the half of it. Wrapped tight around his scrotum was a black leather strap. Attached to that was a black iron chain-and dangling from the chain was a metal ball the size of a shot put. I pressed my knees together and grimaced in sympathetic pain.

  In spite of the medieval torture, or perhaps because of it, Bishop had an erection. I’m not usually one to comment on the physical endowments of others, but if Bishop was an Oscar Meyer Wiener, he would definitely be a cocktail frank. Terri stood in front of him, batting his dick around with crimson-clawed hands the way a cat bats an injured mouse. She said:

  “Now your little soldier is standing at attention. But only because I ordered it. Isn’t that right, Edwin?”

  Bishop looked over at her. “Yes, Mistress,” he answered miserably.

  McCulloch grabbed a tuft of Bishop’s underarm hair and yanked it. He yelped like a kicked dog. “Answer more promptly. And keep your eyes down.” She cuffed Bishop’s dick particularly hard. “I think he’s ready for some action. Let’s see, what will it be?” She reached between her legs and undid several snaps. The bottom half of her costume fell away, leaving her naked from the hips down. Her pubic hair was trimmed in a narrow stripe.

  “A frontal assault?” she said, and rubbed herself suggestively. She passed the hand that had been between her legs under Bishop’s nose and then licked her fingers. Bishop whimpered. “A sneak attack?” she continued. She stood with her back to Bishop and bent over, spreading the cheeks of her ass. Bishop’s eyes grew wide behind his glasses. “Or an amphibious landing?” She turned to face Bishop and made exaggerated licking motions inches from his face.

  “Yes,” she said. “We’ll do the amphibious landing. Let’s just hope your little pecker doesn’t get swallowed in the stormy seas.” She kneeled in front of Bishop and took hold of the chain between his legs. Tugging down hard on it, she pulled the head of his cock to the level of her mouth. Bishop groaned and scrunched his eyes tight. She teased him for a while with her tongue, and then took him all the way into her mouth. Things finally seemed to be going well for Bishop. Terri’s head went up and down rapidly while he made inchoate huffing noises in response.

  Then she bit him.

  Her head stopped mid-stroke, her jaws clenched, and suddenly Bishop screamed like he hadn’t screamed before. For a horrible moment, I thought she had taken his penis clean off. I fingered my earlobe where McCulloch had bitten me and thought, “There but for the grace of God...” I saw that I was wrong, however, when she stood up smiling. Bishop’s dick was still firmly attached, but there was blood dripping from it in fat drops that fell lazily to the floor. Terri’s lips glistened with it. She leaned over and kissed Bishop hard on the mouth, marking him too. “You’ve got to expect a few casualties in any action, don’t you, Edwin?” she said.

  She didn’t wait for a reply, but took her left leg under the knee and swung her foot up to the wall, planting her spiked heel just under Bishop’s arm. Then she reached for his cock and slid on top of it. Her ass was a thing to behold as she moved up and down with the ponderous rhythm of a cricket pump. The metal weight oscillated between their legs in counterpoint, the amplitude of its swing increasing until it pounded the concrete wall like a wrecking ball.

  Bishop at first seemed stunned by this “frontal assault,” but very quickly adapted to the new state o
f affairs. Once again, he began to make noises of obvious pleasure. They rose in frequency and volume in synch with the swinging ball. As things reached a crescendo, Terri commanded, “Beg for it, Edwin. Beg me to let you come.”

  Like the obedient dog, Bishop repeated, “Please, Mistress, may I come... please, Mistress, may I come,” until he was overtaken by orgasm. At the end of it, he hung limp from the chains with his chin on his chest and his hair pasted with sweat to his forehead. The ball drifted back and forth like a metronome left running after the song has finished.

  Terri stepped off Bishop with the casual ease of an expert horsewoman. She took hold of his right nipple and tugged on it. She said, “Next time you will pleasure me, you miserable slave.” Then the screen went blank.

  I hit the stop button on the remote control. I ejected the tape from the VCR and walked it out to the apartment corridor where there was an opening for a garbage chute that emptied into the dumpster below. I broke the tape in two on the lip of the chute and dropped both pieces down without ceremony.

  I went back to the apartment. I felt like I needed another shower, but I settled for double bourbon.

  GUINNESS, O’GRADY, AND ME

  I WENT TO MY OFFICE. SOME NEW BUSINESS had come in that seemed closer to my speed-employee background checks-so I did what I could with the phone to get the ball rolling. The client was yet another high-tech software firm, and it didn’t take much checking to find that their candidate for VP of Marketing had a little problem with sexual harassment. Although no one in any official capacity would speak for the record, an HR director at a company where he had worked let slip that another ex-employee might share a tale or two. Turned out the guy had taken his direct reports sailing on the bay to celebrate the completion of a project, and with the benefit of a few wet ones down the hatch, had attempted some maneuvers with female employees that didn’t have much to do with steering the boat.

  I took it as far as I could without leaving the office, and then called the ambulance company where O’Grady worked. The dispatcher told me that O’Grady was off, and the best place to look for him at this time of day was a bar. That was a search I could really work up some enthusiasm for, but before I set out, I called Duckworth and made an appointment to meet him after he finished the early show at The Stigmata.

  I knew from the paramedics at the shooting range that the best place to look for O’Grady was The Rat and Raven. I’d been there a few times, and had read in one of the San Francisco weeklies that it had been selected “Best Bar to Get Hit in the Head with a Dart While Coming Out of the Men’s Room” in the annual “best of” issue. As that dubious distinction suggested, it was a somewhat cramped place modeled loosely along the lines of an English pub. They had an excellent selection of beer on tap, however, and that and the allure of being able to claim you were going out for “a little R & R” proved difficult to pass up for its young, mainly working-class clientele. It was located on Twenty-Fourth Street in the heart of a popular neighborhood known as Noe Valley.

  I asked the driver of the cab I took from the office to wait while I checked in the bar for O’Grady, but as soon as I stepped out I spotted him through the window at a table near the front. I paid off the cabbie and went inside. Very few people there were heeding the Surgeon General’s warning about smoking-and if he had anything to say about listening to Jimi Hendrix at high volume, they were pretty much ignoring the hell out of that too. O’Grady was sitting on a stool at a high table with a group of five people: three men and two women. Several were wearing paramedic uniforms, and they were all nursing a pint of dark beer. The foamy remnants of a pitcher of Guinness Stout stood in the center of the table. O’Grady had a flush on his face and he was telling a story in a loud voice between drags on his cigarette. He said:

  “So I ask them how it happened. Now your man-he is in too much pain to talk. And your woman-well, she knows her husband blames her and she don’t want to say anything that will add to her troubles.”

  “Quit building it up, Ronan,” said a man sitting across from O’Grady. “Just tell us what happened.”

  O’Grady smiled and took a big swallow of beer. He set his glass down and looked around the table with an amused expression. “Well, as I told you, they were an older couple. The wife still liked to use that aerosol hair spray that comes in a can. She’s in the WC getting ready for their night out, but she can’t get the hair spray to work. It’s clogged, you see. She’s shaking the can and shaking the can and still nothing comes out. Finally she gets the idea to ream out the nozzle with a pin. She does that, but then she gets to worrying that the spray will come out too fast. So instead of chancing it on her hair, she lifts the lid of the toilet and aims it into the bowl. It sprays out fine, and she puts down the lid and finishes getting ready.

  “Now the husband has been pacing outside in the hallway, puffing away on his cigar. He has to take the devil’s own crap and the wife has been in the bathroom for nearly an hour. Finally she comes out, and he rushes past her, drops his trousers and settles onto the can. But there’s no ashtray about, see, and his cigar ash has gotten long, so he parts his legs and flicks it down between his thighs. Well, the ash is burning and it ignites the hair spray that the wife has sprayed in the bowl. It goes up like a fireball, and whether from the force of the explosion or from the pain, the husband launches off the toilet and hits his head on the edge of a cabinet above him. And that is how when I arrived I found your man with third degree burns all over his arse, his pants around his ankles, and a four-inch gash in his head.”

  O’Grady’s companions pounded the table with their glasses and laughed appreciatively. I had to chuckle myself. O’Grady downed the rest of his beer, and finding the amount remaining in the pitcher insufficient to meet his needs, slipped off his stool and went up to the bar for a refill. I came up beside him and said:

  “This round’s on me, Ronan.”

  O’Grady turned sharply and stared at me a little bleary-eyed. “August!” he said, slapping me on the back. “I’m going to look under the bed tonight before I go to sleep. The way you keep popping up, I won’t be surprised to find you there.”

  I smiled. “The last time was a coincidence. This time I went looking for you. I wanted to talk to you about the woman you picked up at the hotel.”

  “She’s dead, August.”

  “I know. I thought you could tell me more about how she died.”

  “Was she a particular friend of yours?”

  “No. No friend at all. But she was important to a case I’ve been working on. If you read the paper today you know what it’s about. It’s mostly over, but I wanted to tie up the loose ends.”

  “I don’t mind talking if you don’t mind listening. But since you’re buying, why not get two pitchers: one for us and the other for that pack of troublemakers at the table.”

  I bought two pitchers as O’Grady suggested and we took ours to a corner table by the window. O’Grady poured the Guinness slowly, being very careful to let the foam settle just so, and then took a sip from his glass. “It’s crap,” he pronounced.

  “What do you mean?” I said. “I thought all you first-generation turf gobblers loved this stuff.”

  “Jesus above. Don’t be calling me a turf gobbler. That’s reserved for the hicks-as you would say-from outside of Dublin, and most especially for people from Cork. I’m direct from Dublin, as I think I’ve told you. Anyway, the problem is not with Guinness in general, but with this Guinness in particular. It gets ruined coming over. This tastes nothing like what you get from a pub in Ireland.”

  “At least it’s not in cans.”

  “Now you are blaspheming. So what is it you want to know in return for your beer?”

  “Well, I’m not sure. Maybe you could just tell me what happened after you left the hotel. I gather she didn’t die in the ambulance.”

  “No, she didn’t, but she certainly tried. She stopped breathing almost as soon as we had her downstairs and we had to put her on the respi
rator. You saw me give her the shot in the hotel room?”

  “Yes.”

  “That was something called Nalline. It’s a drug that neutralizes the narcotic effect of heroin. If you give it to someone quickly enough, it will bind with the heroin in the blood stream and bring the patient out of their coma. It works so well at times that a patient can wake up angry and frustrated because you’ve completely destroyed his high. It’s ironic-you have someone who almost died from an overdose and he’s already craving another fix.”

  “But that’s not what happened with Terri McCulloch.”

  “No. She had too much dope in her system for too long a period. That was why her breathing stopped. In high doses, heroin has a paralytic effect on the respiratory response. Still, we kept her going with the respirator and started a Nalline IV drip, so she had a fighting chance. I was a bit surprised when I heard that she had died at the hospital.”

  “Why?”

  O’Grady took out a penknife and scraped idly at the wooden table. “Oh,” he said. “A couple reasons. The first is that in spite of all your 1960s rock stars and such ODing on heroin, not that many people die from an overdose these days if they receive medical attention. So the odds were in her favor, even if we did get to her late. The second reason is that she seemed to me to have stabilized by the time we got her to the hospital. I thought she might have turned the corner.”

  “What happened then? Why didn’t she pull through?”

  O’Grady set the knife aside and picked up his glass. He swirled the beer and looked down at it thoughtfully. “I don’t want you to misunderstand me. I thought the odds of her living were better than her dying, but they weren’t so much better that I would have bet money on it. And I don’t mean to imply that the hospital staff mucked up her treatment. But given the circumstances, there are one or two things I can imagine that might have tipped the scales against her.”