The Tournament Trilogy

by B. B. Griffith

  “Stop! Stop it! Dad, you’re off your face! Someone get a hold of him!”

  A younger man intervened and pulled Jeanie’s snorting father back into the recesses of the house while Frank sputtered and blinked away the sting in his eyes. His every breath now reeked of hand-warmed scotch. He smacked his mouth like a dog and blew out of his nostrils. He hated scotch.

  “Good Lord. Someone grab the man a towel. Wipe yourself off.”

  At her weak gesture, a dish towel appeared. Frank swiped at his hair and face and dabbed at his collar. It could have been worse. It had been worse before.

  “Forgive my father,” she said hoarsely. “He’s had a bit much. What’s this all about?”

  Frank rubbed his eyes as he spoke. “Your husband’s policy was modified close to his death. Are you aware of that?”

  “I’ve no idea about the details of my husband’s life insurance policy. His work handled all of that,” Jeanie said, wiping her own eyes and slumping in her chair. Her mother absently rubbed circles around her large back while glaring at Frank.

  “Are you aware of how much you stand to gain from this?”

  Jeanie sniffled loudly and swallowed. She continued to look down at her hands in her lap as she said, “I’ve no idea. Nor do I much care.”

  “A significant amount of money.”

  Jeanie drooped in silence. Those around her studied Frank, interest replacing animosity.

  “Several million dollars, Mrs. Beauchamp.”

  Some in the mourning party gasped outright and set to muttering. Jeanie fluttered her eyelids and clenched her jaw. There was grief in her face, Frank knew, but it now conflicted with some other emotion. Surprise? Fake surprise? Disbelief? Frank stopped himself short of stooping to get a better look at her.

  “Now perhaps you’d feel more comfortable discussing this with me in private? It was never my intention to make your personal matters so... public,” Frank said, digging at some residual stinging in his tear duct.

  “No,” Jeanie said softly. “Right here is fine.”

  Frank shook his head. If she wanted to play it this way, fine. He took out his dampened reporter’s pad and patted at himself until he located a chewed ball point in his breast pocket.

  “Did you adjust the insurance policy, ma’am?”

  “No.”

  Feeling as though he should use the pad under the watchful eyes of those around him, Frank wrote no and then scribbled about in an official manner.

  “Did your husband adjust the plan?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “Your husband never mentioned that he increased his payout by several million dollars?”

  “No.”

  “He never spoke of the substantial monthly payment increases that would entail?”

  “No.”

  “It would have been in the thousands per month, Mrs. Beauchamp,” Frank said, lowering his voice. “Had he lived to make a payment, that is.”

  The muttering around him increased in volume and animosity. Frank cleared his throat and stood up out of the slouch he’d found himself incrementally falling into of late.

  “You understand why this looks questionable, don’t you ma’am?”

  “I do,” Jeanie said, ever quieter.

  “You’ll have to forgive me if I say you’re not very forthcoming.”

  Jeanie started a sort of silent, breathless weeping that reminded Frank of dainty dry heaving. Her mother continued to rub her back, but stared at Frank with abject hate, as if Frank had killed Bill Beauchamp himself.

  “I’m afraid I’m going to have to recommend an inquiry,” Frank said, suddenly very tired. He let the pen and pad flop to his waist.

  “I think you probably should,” Jeanie said, so softly Frank could barely hear.

  “What? Ma’am, do you know what an insurance inquiry entails? It’s like an IRS audit, but without the charm.”

  “Do what you must, but leave me in peace right now,” she said, dabbing at her eyes with a marred and wadded tissue.

  So Frank did.

  The Colorado Springs branch of the Barringer Insurance conglomerate occupied an old converted medical building snatched up on the foreclosure market. Frank’s office was a modified patient room, windowless, with hooks still on the doors from which clipboards once hung, and roughly patched screw-holes in the walls where disposal containers had once been. Everything in the office felt exposed and unfinished, like a temp building. It was a M.A.S.H. Unit of insurance salesmen.

  Frank sat in a decade old chair behind his cluttered desk and formally requested an inquiry of the Beauchamp claim. Before he could even submit, his gray block of a phone buzzed and he was summoned to see his boss. He sat back and narrowed his eyes at the off-white wall across from him before getting up. On his way he passed the water cooler, stopped, went back to the water cooler, poured a cone full of water and sipped for a minute. That finished, and with nothing else to detain him between where he stood and the big converted doctor’s office at the end of the hall, Frank walked in to see Winston Pickett.

  Winston Pickett was a small, round, and dismissive man in his mid-forties, proud as hell of his large office and convinced of his singular right to occupy it. He insisted that his management and his management alone kept the Colorado Springs satellite division of Barringer Inc. afloat. He had a window but he sat with his back to it, choosing instead to plop his desk in the middle of the room facing his door. The door was always closed because Pickett reasoned that in the three seconds it took for a visitor to open the door he might prepare himself for their arrival, which meant sitting back in his chair, steepling his fingers, and staring at the door as if he expected a visit all along.

  “Fraaaank,” he said, smiling.

  His squatty, rotund appearance had inspired nicknames. Frank’s favorite was Winnie the Pickett. Frank fought the urge to turn right around much as he fought the urge to peer up in to Jeanie’s weeping face back at her husband’s wake.

  “I was just in the process of submitting a request for inquiry,” said Frank.

  “So you think we have something then!” Pickett chirped.

  “She was genuinely distraught,” Frank said, ignoring his boss’ grating enthusiasm. “But something doesn’t smell right.”

  “Doesn’t smell right!” Pickett barked. “Atta boy! Look at you! We got a regular Dick Tracy over here!”

  Frank said nothing.

  “And that’s good! Because you’re heading up the inquiry!”

  “Sir, I really don’t think—”

  “Don’t think what? You’re a pretty bright guy. You’re familiar with the case.”

  “They aren’t very happy with me over there,” Frank said lamely.

  “They’d hate anyone else I sent over there just as much. Nature of the beast, Frank.”

  “Sir, I—”

  “Ah!” Pickett chirped again, holding up a single finger as if warning a dog. “You can do it, Frank. Just do it. Status report on my desk at the end of the week.”

  Pickett warded off any further protest with a dismissive wave.

  For the rest of the day, Frank halfheartedly researched the claim through the Barringer database. He succeeded in finding nothing other than the fact that Bill Beauchamp had signed the coverage increase form himself, and that he had been employed by a company named BlueHorse Holdings. Their co-sign on every pertinent document had been a rubber stamp, a generic swoosh and scribble.

  Though he’d accomplished little, at the end of the day, Frank felt twice as exhausted as normal. When he left his darkened office he fought another urge: this one to keep walking and never return. He won out. Barely.

  When he could catch Frank at home, Frank’s neighbor Andy Billings often talked to Frank through the thin walls of their respective housing units. In an especially shameful display of unit-to-space maximization their duplex had been designed to share a bathroom wall. When Andy spoke to his mirror, he was in effect speaking to Frank on the other side. The acoustics
of the conversations reminded Frank of the tin can telephones he had made as a kid, but Frank could hear every word. He could even hear whenever Andy turned on a faucet, or flushed his toilet, or dropped his shaver onto his linoleum floor, a floor identical to Frank’s in every way. It all made Frank slightly ill, but Andy enjoyed it.

  “You in there good buddy?” Andy shouted, and Frank shook his head.

  Andy began to whistle, and when Frank didn’t respond, he spoke again, “Frank! You over there?”

  “I’m really tired. It was a very long day. I think I’m just going to sleep for as long as I am able.”

  “Goodnight Frank!”

  “Goodnight Andy,” Frank said, already on the way to his bedroom.

  Settled into the well worn groove in the center of his twin, Frank listened to the clatter and roll of various sundry items as Andy completed his clumsy nighttime routine.

  In the morning, he would do it all over again.

  And in the morning, he would find that Jeanie Beauchamp jumped ship on him.

  He’d called on her again to follow up and found that she’d promptly cremated her husband’s body and then conveniently “taken some time off” to “get herself together” in Boca Raton... which meant he had hit a brick wall in his investigation. And pressing him up against that wall with the slow, relentless pressure of a garbage compactor was his horse’s ass of a boss. The mere thought of Pickett’s status report made Frank claustrophobic.

  BlueHorse Holdings. Glendale, California.

  Frank wasn’t going to get anything else done in the Beauchamp case unless he got to Beauchamp’s employer, but they’d stonewalled him on the phone the day before during his meandering research. Database documents told Frank that Blue-Horse Holdings had employed Bill, contracted through Barringer for his insurance, and approved the payout increase in case of untimely death. They were Barringer’s actual client. They were the key.

  Perhaps someone at BlueHorse would be a bit more forthcoming in person. A business trip might not be so bad; it would at least get him away from Winston Pickett and his sadsack office. He needed a change of scenery. What he really needed was a change of life, to jump track and veer wildly away from his current path. The very air was drying him out, turning him into an empty husk of a man, day by day.

  But in lieu of quitting his job, defaulting on his car lease and condo loan, draining his several credit cards to their limit and taking it all to some remote location in Switzerland, a little business trip to Glendale, California would have to do.

  Frank’s desk phone lit up. Winston Pickett.

  Frank sighed.

  If you hate what you do, you might as well be in California when you do it.

  Chapter Two

  GREER NICHOLS HAD a large office of dark wood. His desk was a sweeping mahogany arc gone near black with lacquering. On it sat a large, flat computer monitor, its screen a dull black. On the far wall in front of him an array of winking camera lenses mimicked the curve of his desk and looked down upon him like stage lights; they too were off. Things were quiet now. Greer could hear the whisper of the fan units cooling all of his hibernating hardware. Sitting in a large brown leather desk chair, he took a moment to consciously enjoy this quiet. He knew it wouldn’t last much longer.

  Greer was a large, naturally angular man. He wore well-tailored jackets and sharp-collared shirts. His head was shaved to a gleaming black even darker than the color of his desk, and he often whisked his right hand over it when contemplating. At the moment he contemplated the note that had been placed in front of him upon his arrival that morning.

  Bill Beauchamp is dead.

  Greer pressed a small red button to the side of his keyboard. Within one minute there was a tap on his door. A trim, young man, dressed in pressed track pants and a reflective athletic shirt, took two impatient steps inside of Greer’s office.

  “Problem?”

  “Is this your delivery, Allen?”

  “It is.”

  “Who is Bill Beauchamp, and why do I care that he is dead?”

  Allen Lockton pulled an electronic pad from a single strapped messenger’s bag behind his back and tapped through several pages until he found what he needed.

  “Bill Beauchamp is... was... on the Tournament lead weapons development team.”

  “The diode?”

  “His team was charged with continually developing the diode insertion system, yes.”

  “And now he’s dead.”

  “That’s right.”

  “And how does this concern me?”

  The courier fidgeted with the corner of his pad. Greer Nichols waited.

  “It would appear that his death may be work related.”

  “Ah,” Greer said, followed by a heavy, “Oh.”

  “Yes. It looks as though he tested the newest version of the diode on himself. It went poorly.”

  Greer rubbed his face. “Bill Beauchamp,” Greer said, thoughtfully. “An old guy?”

  “Sixty-two, I believe.”

  “Jesus. I thought we made it clear to all of the lab staff that they were only to test the diodes on animals.”

  “Bill Beauchamp’s team had been perfecting that diode delivery system for years. He knew what he was doing. My guess is he finally wanted to see what it felt like.”

  “At sixty-two? Unbelievable. For a scientist he was a goddamn idiot. May he rest in peace,” Greer added, and his gaze wandered to rest upon the arc of cameras peering down upon him like the eyes of a massive insect. The courier shied away from their dead gaze.

  “Are you going to tell them?” he asked, gesturing at the cameras with the back of his head. “I mean, a Tournament employee has died, after all, as a result of Tournament work, in all likelihood.”

  Greer ran his thumb down the sharp line of his jaw as he pondered the cameras.

  “I don’t contact them. They contact me. When they’re ready. And I doubt they would be interested in the goings on of one such as Bill. His team was one of many. They don’t care about the how. We’re all just players in the game to them. As long as the next cycle of the Tournament starts when they want it to, as long as they can still bet on the world’s biggest game of chance, everything else is irrelevant.”

  “And you think it’s coming again?”

  “They give me reason to believe the Tournament is coming again, yes. Any moment now, actually.”

  “Who are they?”

  “That is the wrong question to ask.” Greer turned to look him evenly in the eye. “I want you to listen to me now. You are a runner. You get information where it needs to go. That is all. Don’t ever ask me that question again.”

  Hours later, the courier long gone, Greer Nichols was still watching the centermost lens with a silent intensity, pondering, when a small light below blinked an angry red. It could only mean one thing. He pressed another button, one on the underside of his desk. The angry red blinking became muted green. He could see the eyes focus on him, each in time, like a spider awakening.

  “This is Greer Nichols,” he said clearly.

  The voice on the other end was singular, but Greer knew it spoke for many. An unknown number of faceless bettors, an elite group of patrons he would never know. The voice was distorted, low and guttural, like rolling rocks.

  “The task of Master of Ceremonies for this, the fifth round of the Tournament, has come to rest upon your shoulders. Has it not?”

  “It has,” Greer said, as formal acknowledgement of the job that had fallen upon him by rightful rotation of participating country administrations.

  “And do you pledge to fulfill the position of Master of Ceremonies with total objectivity?”

  “I do,” Greer said without hesitation.

  “Then, Greer Nichols, for the duration of this cycle, you will cease to be Administrator for Team Blue, and will become Master of Ceremonies, beholden to no team.”

  “I understand,” Greer said solemnly.

  “Master of Ceremonies. It is time. Dispers
e the Couriers. Notify the teams. Start the countdown.”

  Greer nodded at the cameras, and they lingered upon him for several moments before shutting off once more. Their lenses unfocused as the green light first turned red and then went black.

  Chapter Three

  MOST OF THE TWENTY-FOUR people who would receive the page indicating that the Tournament would begin again were caught unawares, but Alex Auldborne was not. Auldborne never questioned how he ended up with his remarkable lot in life. Auldborne took his station for granted. His entire life he’d been wholly unaware of limitations. The lack of money, the lack of a myriad of convenient familial connections, lack of respect, lack of sex appeal—no such limitations applied to Alex Auldborne. Becoming the leader of England’s team, coded Team Grey, seemed the natural progression of things to him.

  Before Grey recruited him, Auldborne was dealing cocaine to fellow students in his last year at Eton College in Windsor. Up until then he had been nothing more than a name on a list, another potential amongst hundreds watched for years by the Tournament’s unseen eyes.

  Auldborne didn’t deal drugs for money; he had never wanted for money. He dealt because of the reputation it provided him. He didn’t even like the drug itself. He considered narcotics beneath him, but he savored the power to provide it and deny it on a whim to those he’d made addicts. He was successful in the way that the reckless are: wildly and briefly. Then he was caught.

  Having successfully distributed to all who wanted it on campus, often blatantly within the administration buildings, and sometimes during class, Auldborne grew bored. The next time he spoke to his supplier over the phone, he decided to change things for the sake of changing things.

  “Tell you what. I’m not paying you what we agreed upon any more. I’m halving it,” he said, his crisp accent enunciating each word. He then went silent and awaited the reaction, as if he were merely adding a new ingredient into a soup.

  “Oh, is that what you goin’ ta do, Alex?” came the reply, a growling mix of dirty British and Jamaican English, fast and slow at intervals, dangerously upbeat.