The Tournament Trilogy

by B. B. Griffith

  Although there were words coming from Daniel’s tired, lined mouth, Ian couldn’t hear them, just a low murmuring. Neither saw him, neither could see him, because although Ian was there, he was not, and he knew this.

  Ian looked past them into Kayla’s room and was taken inside. There were two men there, standing strangely still. One was in full cassock, and he recognized him as Father Darby. The other was in state-issued prison orange, and he knew him to be his own father, Jacob Finn; a man who could not be there, a man who could only be behind bars. Their faces were angled away from him. When he tried to look upon them, they shifted like mirages, always away from him. Darby gestured at the bed, and Jacob stepped away to reveal Pyper, draped over the foot of the bed, either weeping, or sleeping, or both.

  Then he saw Kayla. She was pale unto ash, her skin as thin as the pages of a Bible. She barely made an impression under the blankets, and her eyes were closed.

  Ian sobbed then, but it was like screaming underwater, and no sound came out.

  He stepped up to the bed and took her hand and it felt light and smooth, like a bird’s wing. His tears fell upon her face, and her eyes snapped open, as piercing and green as they were the day he first met her, and they shined only for him. She grabbed him and pulled him to her and kissed him, breathing softly, weakly into him, her lips a seal against his, sure to let nothing escape. Her eyes smiled at him as her breathing slowed, slowed, slowed until there was only the smell of her skin and the taste of a distant springtime, a springtime that would never come. Her eyelashes brushed the wet skin of his cheeks as they closed one final time.

  Then winter settled over Ian’s heart.

  ————

  Ian jolted awake with a heave of breath as strong and as deep as the last respite of a drowning man. The two Tournament Medics attending him screamed bloody murder and fell over themselves to get away, slamming into the white metal walls of the back of a moving ambulance.

  “She’s gone,” Ian rasped.

  “Holy hell! You’re awake!”

  “I’ve lost her,” Ian said, his eyes still distant, but regaining their focus.

  “Lost who? Jesus! You’re not even supposed to be moving! You were in a full coma!”

  “I’ve lost them all!” Ian roared, sitting up from the gurney.

  One medic jumped forward to him, pressing him back. “Listen to me, Ian! Your heart is arrhythmic, your body is still in shock! Take it easy!”

  It was true. His second breath wasn’t coming so easily, nor the one after that. His chest, where Mazaryk shot him, felt like it had been carved out with an ice cream scoop. He needed to make sure his lungs were still there.

  “Cigarette,” he croaked.

  “Are you serious?”

  “Give me... a cigarette.”

  “Forget the cigarette! We’ve got to get you to a hospital!”

  “My gun.”

  “We’ve got your gun. Right there, in the box next to you, see? We’ll make sure you get it back,” said the other medic, wiping his brow and still catching his breath. “Christ,” he said, nodding at the first who began prepping a syringe. “Hopping up like that, you scared the shit out of me. Nobody is gonna believe this one. Now just relax while we give you a little somethi—”

  Ian promptly ripped the IV from his arm and rolled off of the gurney onto the metal box beneath, crunching his hip on its edge and yelping along the way. He shot a hand into the box and fished around until he felt the cold metal of his handgun. He ripped it out and pointed it at the two medics in turn. Neither moved.

  “Ian, listen to me,” said the first, raising his arms slowly into the air. “We’re not the bad guys.”

  “Stop the car,” Ian said.

  “How about you just sit down for a second. We’re almost at the hospital. I’ve never even heard of anyone coming out of a diode coma without the adrenal shot. You’ve got to calm down, or you could kill yourself.”

  “I’m perfectly calm.” Then he shot out the rear facing window with a flash and bang that reverberated throughout the interior and hit their ears like a piece of sheet metal to the head. All three of them cringed, but Ian rose again.

  “I just. Want. A cigarette!”

  The ambulance swerved out in a ring and came to a stop as the glass rattled about the cabin. Both medics covered their ears and hunkered in the corners as Ian calmly stepped over debris and equipment and reached through the open window to unlock the back door. He stepped through and onto the sidewalk of a busy London street. A scattering of passersby peered at him, and traffic was already slowing. He turned around and faced the two medics, and the driver, who poked his head warily around the side, his face pale.

  “A cigarette.”

  One medic twitched and withdrew a pack from his breast pocket. He flicked it out at Ian. Ian caught it, pulled one cigarette from it and placed it behind his ear, then he took another and popped it in his mouth. Then he tossed the pack back. He fished his tarnished bronze lighter from his jeans pocket and sparked it, inhaling deeply. Finally! He could again feel his lungs.

  Then he exploded in a series of racking coughs and doubled over until he spit a teaspoon of blood. He tried to wipe his mouth with his left hand, but it shook like a wet dog so he shouldered the red spit from his face. He brushed his front clean of the last stray bits of glass. Then he began to walk.

  “Hey! Hey, where the hell do you think you’re going?” the driver shouted.

  “West.”

  He left a subtle trail of smoke behind him.

  Chapter Twenty-Two

  “WHAT AN APPALLING CITY,” said Alex Auldborne.

  He walked with Draden Tate down a busy sidewalk of the Inwood neighborhood in northern Manhattan. He was dressed against the cold in a trim, grey wool overcoat capped with a heavy black scarf. Beside him, Tate said nothing, but eyed everyone nearby with simmering malice. He’d been briefed by Mazaryk, then given barely an hour of turnaround time from London to New York City. He’d packed his gun, nothing more.

  “Now, London... that’s a beautiful city. Roughly the same amount of people, same space constraints as this mess.” He gestured out at the thickening rush hour streets with gloved hands. “And yet, you go to London and you see charm. You see order. There is history there, true history. A subtle touch of class. New York is a cesspool.” He shook his head. “There is absolutely nothing redeeming about this city. They piled shit on top of more shit and it pooled out like an overflowing toilet into what we see here, that’s all there is to it. How long have we been here now?”

  “Three days,” muttered Tate.

  “Three days too long. If I’d known we were going to be here this long I’d have tarried in Hyde Park and finished Ian Finn myself.” His eyes glittered like sun-struck granite at the thought. Beside him, Tate spat. Auldborne paused and turned to him.

  “I know you’re not pleased, Draden.”

  “Finn shot Christina.”

  “And Mazaryk shot him. The circle of life. It’s unfortunate that she had to fall, but it is what it is. Maybe next time she’ll do less talking and more shooting.”

  Tate grumbled and crossed his hulking arms defiantly, forcing several pedestrians off the path. None of them challenged him.

  “You act as if it was your house he violated,” said Auldborne. “Or your mother he held at gun point. Trust me when I say that Ian Finn will suffer terribly. In good time.”

  Auldborne paused at an inconspicuous mailbox. He assured himself that nothing more had been written upon it before he continued walking and Tate followed. They turned a corner onto a side street gritty with construction dust, the sidewalk littered with bits of wood and papering. A series of barriers directed the pedestrian traffic through a plywood underpass. Auldborne ushered Tate ahead of him.

  “That’s another thing. They’re never done with the place. Always building. And Americans actually want to move here.”

  Tate squared himself and cut through the throng of people ahead of him, allowin
g Aulborne easy passage in his wake. Where the throughway ended there stood a bodega with a faded red canvas awning and a key-scratched front window that read Market in stenciled English and Arabic both. They paused.

  “Watch for her. I’ll find the boy,” Auldborne said, as he went inside.

  The bodega smelled strongly of incense and the floor was tracked in a clear path of most-use. Auldborne looked about as he walked up to the cashier, a heavily bearded Qatari by the name of Sahyed. He opened his arms and smiled.

  “Hey!” he said. “My man!”

  “Yes, yes,” said Auldborne, brushing it off and eyeing about the store. “What news?” he asked. “Any change?”

  “No change,” said Sahyed.

  “Have you been watching?”

  “Yes! Me and the boy. Between us both, all the time.”

  “Where is the boy?”

  Sahyed shrugged. “Around here or there, always running around.” He cleared his throat meaningfully and made a brief rubbing gesture between his thumb and forefinger. Alex leaned slightly over the counter.

  “You’ll get your money after I talk with the boy,” he said through clenched teeth. Sahyed’s eyes went wide and he backed up slightly.

  “Okay, okay, we’ll find the boy,” he said, his arms up. He moved through a hanging plastic doorway into the back of the store and began calling a name Auldborne couldn’t pronounce if he wanted to. Sahyed shouted continually for the boy, but it was Tate who ultimately found him. He half ushered, half prodded a young Arabic child to the front counter. The child was frightened, Auldborne could tell, but there was still defiance in the way he met his glance full on, however briefly.

  “Why do you make me find you every time?” Auldborne asked.

  “Because I don’t like you,” said the boy. “It’s not good to spy on sad ladies like that.”

  Sahyed scolded him in a stream of Arabic as Auldborne ground his teeth. He looked at Draden, who smirked. Auldborne contemplated making an example of the child, and even stepped forward a hitch before a couple walked through the doors.

  “Sad ladies? Listen to me, you little shit. Tell me you saw her packing her suitcase, and we will never have to see each other again.”

  “Yes,” the boy said. Auldborne straightened.

  “Go on.”

  The boy shrugged. “She puts things in a small suitcase. And she talks on the phone, and cries. And when she’s not on the phone she looks at it and cries. And the dog. She looks at the dog.”

  “But she hasn’t left yet?”

  “No. I think she will leave very soon.”

  Auldborne slowly smiled. He reached in the breast pocket of his jacket and withdrew a roll of bills and tossed it at Sahyed, who let out a single, sharp laugh. Only the young boy seemed wary. He shied away from Auldborne’s smile like it was the full-toothed grin of a breaching shark.

  “Then it’s time.” Auldborne walked past the boy and back out the door, motioning Tate to follow.

  Outside the two studied the small, ground floor apartment across the street. There was indeed movement through the blinded front windows, silhouetted in the light. A woman moved back and forth almost frantically, carrying something from here to there, pausing mid-stride and turning about as if lost. At one point it looked as though she held her hand to her head, perhaps running her fingers through her hair.

  “She looks perturbed, doesn’t she?” Auldborne suggested, breath misting out into the city’s damp cold. Tate was leaning against the brick alley of the bodega, panning the street, his eyes lingered on each hurried pedestrian. He looked bored, but was not. He snuffed and spat against the brick. Auldborne turned to him and crossed his arms.

  “All right,” he said, exasperated. “Out with it. You and Christina both spit when you’re angry, a filthy habit by the way, but you’ve been spitting across the entire city. What is it?”

  Draden looked pointedly at him and turned down his mouth ever so slightly. “The Russian,” he said, as if it was the most obvious thing in the world.

  “What about him?”

  “You trust him?”

  “Absolutely not. It’s not wise to trust sociopaths.”

  “Then why are we here?”

  “Eddie Mazaryk may not have a soul, but he does have a brain. A remarkable one, as it goes. If he says this woman will lead us to Max, she will.”

  “And Blue.”

  “Blue... Auldborne shook his head. “There is no Blue. Not anymore.”

  “That’s not what Mazaryk said.”

  “There is whatever sad experiment Greer Nichols is putting on, yes.” Hard impatience crept into his voice. “That doesn’t concern me now and I’m quite sure it never will. Max Haulden concerns me. We started something on that dock that we never finished. I need to speak with him. Forcefully.” He turned back to watching and tapped one gloved forefinger against the other with the soft surety of a metronome

  Draden Tate knew when to stop pressing his captain. Auldborne was a man of planning and action; his mind was like a datebook filled with precise notes that he flipped in measured time. Chula Vista had jarred his internal clock, and if Tate could be honest with himself, had also put him in a particularly foul mood. But Tate had a final nagging question. It had picked at him as they watched the comings and goings of the apartment for the past seventy-two hours. Now, in the silence of the alley and in the harsh yellow of the streetlight above, the question came out.

  “Did you do it?”

  Auldborne stopped tapping, but he kept his gaze forward. “Does it matter?”

  Not the answer Tate was looking for, but as he thought about it, surrounded by the ambient sounds of the city at night, a city whose hatred for him and his team was accumulating with the dripping persistence of a million leaking holes, faster and faster as more and more about the Tournament came to light, he realized that the verdict on Team Grey had been read aloud already, regardless of what Auldborne may or may not have done.

  “Suppose not,” he said, shrugging.

  Both men watched in dark silence until Tate spoke again.

  “How did Mazaryk know about her?” he asked, gesturing with his chin towards the apartment, where the lights were flicking out one by one.

  “Ah,” said Auldborne, smiling once more. “That, my friend, now that is a fantastic question.”

  ————

  The place didn’t feel right. Nothing felt right for Troya Parker. The house felt darker, the rooms colder, the odd bangs and clanks of old apartment living seemed louder. And now that she’d sent Chester to Cy’s friends in Chelsea it was even emptier. It was as if her life was shedding pieces of itself, like a bird’s nest, used with care for a flash of time and then forgotten and offered up to winter, brittle and bare.

  You need to come to me, he’d said.

  We need to talk about things, he’d said.

  It seemed cruel to bring her all of the way to Wyoming just to break off the engagement, and while Cy was many things, he was not cruel. Hopefully he had come to his senses with the Tournament. Hopefully he wanted to show her what he’d been doing, why it was that they no longer had any outstanding credit card payments or loans, and then that would be that and they would all come back to New York City, pick up Chester, and share a bottle of wine while she watched television and he shined his trumpets. She knew she was getting desperate when she realized she wouldn’t even mind hearing him play his dissertation composition through again.

  But Troya knew that life didn’t work like that. She’d heard as much about the Tournament as everyone else. People were getting feverish from it. New York was a city full of people from every sort of background. Fights had already broken out over this nonsense. Ugly fights. Two kids were shot in the Bronx a week and a half ago for wearing stark white tracksuits through a neighborhood where everyone was decked out in gold. The news called it “Tournament related.” A lot of things were “Tournament related” nowadays, and most weren’t good. Graffiti was popping up everywhere, gol
d and green and red and blue, layer upon layer on the bridges and overpasses and peeking out from the alleyways. It felt like the city was reverting back to some Technicolor shade of its 1980s self, but with a starker competitive streak. If you asked Troya, she saw no difference between “Tournament players” and gangbangers.

  She double checked the weight of her bag on their bathroom scale. It was right up to the airline limit. That’s what happens when you tell a woman to pack for a trip without letting her know for how long. She peered out of the window to watch for cabs instead of walking the street, still uneasy about Chester’s episode with the window. Soon enough one rounded the corner. She popped the lock and opened the door slightly, enough to peek out. Everything looked normal, and yet... There was a weighty silence of expectation that followed her around the apartment. She knew it was nonsense, all of it; pure, self-inflicted mind games. But Troya was still glad to be gone.

  She flagged the cab and plopped her bag down the stairs, where the cabbie took it and hefted it into the trunk. She confirmed that she would be going to the airport and bundled herself up against the freezing night air as they rolled away and down the street.

  It was a good thing that she’d been the first out to catch the taxi because there was a scuffle for a cab just behind them. An enormous black man literally walked into the middle of the street to stop the taxi and physically removed some poor young kid from the back seat. He scampered away like a goose as the big man and another fellow sat in his place. She was about to point it out to her driver, but then her own cab was turning the corner and she lost them.

  Yeesh, she thought. What a city.

  Chapter Twenty-Three

  GREER NICHOLS HAD TAKEN to driving.