Zero Sum Game

by SL Huang

“Door-to-door salesman?” I muttered.

  “Don’t think it’s a coincidence he waited till the cops left,” Tresting muttered back.

  The suit reached the porch and pressed the doorbell. As Dr. Kingsley pulled the door open, he reached into his suit jacket, and I already had a gun out and aimed before we saw he was only flashing a badge and ID at her. Leena Kingsley spotted us over his shoulder at the same time.

  “What’s going on?” she asked, her eyes going back and forth between Tresting’s face and my gun.

  The suit turned, a lanky white guy with a scraggly beard, and saw the barrel of my newly acquired Smith & Wesson in his face. He stumbled back a step, immediately raising his hands in the air. “Miss, please put down the weapon.”

  I’d thought he was familiar when he first turned, but now I definitely recognized him: Mr. Nasally-Voiced, one of the fine examples of humanity who’d been sacking Courtney’s place. Oh, hell.

  Tresting grabbed the leather badge holder out of the guy’s hand and scrutinized it. “FBI?”

  The man nodded. “Agent Finch. Now, please put down the weapon.”

  FBI? That didn’t track at all, not with what I’d seen him doing earlier. “No,” I said. “Let’s go inside.”

  Tresting either agreed with me or wanted to present a united front. He gestured Finch ahead of him, and Leena Kingsley apprehensively stepped back to let us in.

  I glanced back at the street as I went inside, but nobody was stirring. With luck, our little cowboy stunt had gone unnoticed. I kicked the door shut behind us; Tresting was already closing the blinds in the living room.

  “Sit down,” I ordered our new friend.

  He did so, sinking onto an upholstered chair, arms still raised. “What do you want?” he asked calmly.

  “To know who the hell you are, first of all,” I said. I could feel Tresting’s eyes on me, questioning. “Ten to one the badge is a fake,” I told him. “Now, who are you?”

  “I’m SSA Gabriel Finch,” the man repeated. “I’m here to speak with Dr. Kingsley—”

  “Check him,” I directed Tresting.

  He came forward and patted down the man quickly and efficiently, finding a mobile phone in his pocket and a Glock in a shoulder holster. Glocks. Why did everyone like Glocks?

  “Please,” broke in Leena Kingsley, “What’s going on?”

  Tresting stepped over to her. “I was targeted,” he said in a low aside. “Worried about you and Ned now. He at school still?”

  “Ye—yes.” Kingsley inched closer to Tresting, her posture tense as she regarded my tableau with Finch. “You think he isn’t who he says?”

  “Possible,” said Tresting neutrally, looking at me.

  “I assure you, I am with the Federal Bureau of Investigation,” Finch repeated, much more tranquil than I wanted him to be. “Now if you’ll put down the weapon, I’m sure we can sort this out.”

  “Courtney Polk,” I cut in. “Skinny kid, frizzy hair. What do you know about her?”

  “Nothing,” said Finch, with a poker face I would have killed for.

  I smiled slowly. “Oh, see? You just lied to me. That’s a bad idea.”

  “I’m not lying,” said Finch guilelessly. “I have no idea what you’re talking about.”

  “Miss Polk killed this woman’s husband,” Tresting said, tilting his head at Leena. “You got any information at all about her, this ain’t the time to withhold it.”

  “That’s true,” I said. “You don’t have to worry about me making holes in you; Dr. Kingsley’ll put your head through a wall.”

  “I, uh…” said Kingsley miserably, and trailed off.

  That pinged me as all wrong, considering the firebrand she had been that morning. Out of the corner of my eye, I could see Tresting staring at her in confusion. Oddly, so was Finch, with the first sign of apprehension he had shown the whole time.

  “Please finish, Dr. Kingsley,” said the would-be FBI agent, his nasally voice suddenly sounding strained.

  Her face tensed as if she didn’t like being in the spotlight. “I was going to call you,” she said to Tresting.

  He reached out and touched her elbow, steadying her. “About what?”

  She started twisting her wedding ring back and forth on her finger. “I…I want to call off the investigation.”

  What the…? Dr. Kingsley wouldn’t have given up this investigation voluntarily—

  “What’s going on?” asked Tresting gently.

  “Nothing,” said Kingsley, shaking him off. “It’s just—I’ve done so much thinking today. I can’t do this anymore.” She drew herself up and turned back to Finch and me. “Whoever you’re with, Agent Finch, if this is about Reginald, it’s done. I’m taking my son and moving back to Washington.”

  Agent Finch went white as a sheet.

  “Somebody better start explaining fast,” I declared into the silence. When nobody spoke, I waved my gun a little. “Hey. Kingsley. This morning you bit our heads off about this being the most important thing in the world to you. What gives?”

  “It was—it is—it still is,” she faltered. “But I think that needs to change. I need…for my son’s sake. For my sake. I can’t keep doing this to us.” She took a deep breath. “This has gone on long enough. We need to rebuild our lives, to move on. I have to try.”

  I didn’t buy that for a hot second.

  “Dr. Kingsley,” said Finch, very tensely, “May I ask if you’ve had any visitors today?”

  Her brow furrowed. “Um…two police officers; they said they’d had another threat. I’ve had a lot of threats since this started,” she explained to nobody. “It’s one of the reasons…”

  Tresting crossed his arms. “Doc, the first time you got a death threat you called and asked me what kind of shotgun to buy, and then told me to bug your phone and said you hoped they’d keep calling so they’d give something away.”

  “You see? This is why I have to stop this,” she pleaded. “It’s madness. It’s been like an addiction. I can’t—”

  “Please,” interrupted Finch. “Did you have any other visitors today?”

  “Well, you, I suppose.” She looked at Tresting as if asking for help, but his eyes were pinched, and he said nothing. She waved her hands weakly. “That’s it. No one else.”

  “Dr. Kingsley,” said Finch. “This is very important. Can you recount your entire day for me?”

  Getting no help from Tresting, Kingsley looked at me. I gave her a slight shrug. It was unnerving that Finch seemed to have taken over completely while still being at gunpoint, but I very much wanted to see where this was going. “My whole day?” she finally repeated.

  “You saw these characters this morning, yes?” said Finch, nodding at Tresting and me. “You can start after that.”

  She glanced around at the rest of us again, as if wondering when the world had gone mad. “Well, I came home, and then I suppose I took a nap. Then someone was knocking—those police officers—and I spoke to them for a while, and then just as they left, you arrived.”

  “Thought you said you did a lot of thinking on all this today,” said Tresting.

  Her expression twitched, confusion rumpling her features. “Yes. No. That is, yes, but not—it’s been between everything else.”

  “Do you remember lying down to take your nap?” asked Finch.

  “Well, yes,” said Kingsley. “I suppose I do…?”

  She blinked and looked away from us, her words trailing into silence.

  “You keep using the word ‘suppose,’” said Finch after a beat. “Are you not certain, Dr. Kingsley?”

  A red flush began creeping up her neck. “I don’t have to answer these questions.”

  “Please, Doc,” said Tresting. “Bear with us. Something hinky—”

  She straightened her spine, recovering some of her prior imperious fire. “I told you I’m done. I’m sorry, Mr. Tresting, but this mad crusade is over. Leave my house, please. All of you.”

  I didn’t know
about Tresting, but I wasn’t leaving until I had some answers. And I thought I knew who could give them to me.

  I stepped closer to Finch, tilting my Smith & Wesson so the front sight lined up with his forehead, right between the eyes. “You know what’s happening here, don’t you.”

  Finch took a breath. “Please take that weapon out of my face.”

  I hesitated, then lowered the gun. It wasn’t like I needed it anyway. “Now, what the hell is going on?”

  He wet his lips. “Someone got to Dr. Kingsley. That’s all I’m at liberty to say.”

  Hell if I was going to let him stop at that. “Someone who?”

  “Pithica,” said Tresting.

  Chapter 15

  My hand tightened on the grip of the Smith & Wesson—I itched to have a target again, but who was my enemy? Or what? “I say again,” I addressed the room at large. “What the hell is going on?”

  “I interviewed Senator Hammond’s assistant,” said Tresting. “From Kingsley’s, Reginald Kingsley’s, notes. Same thing, almost word for word. Assistant remembered the Senator saying he ‘supposed’ he had a liedown. Except then he about-faced on a nuclear arms treaty.”

  “So someone from Pithica is telling her to say this,” I said.

  Tresting was watching Dr. Kingsley very closely. “Or something.”

  Kingsley drew away from him. “What are you implying?”

  Tresting didn’t answer. “What do you say, Agent Finch?”

  “Unfortunately, this is need-to-know,” said Finch. “What connection do the two of you have to Dr. Kingsley?”

  “Unfortunately, that’s need-to-know,” I parroted back at him, and raised my gun again. “You know something about Polk, and about Pithica, don’t you? You’re going to tell us.”

  “This has gone far enough,” said Kingsley. Her voice was firm again, with the strong charisma of authority, and it was hard to believe she didn’t mean it. “Leave, all of you, or I’m calling the police.”

  Tresting reached out and grasped her shoulders. “Please, Doc. Talk to me. What happened today that made you change your mind?”

  She twisted back from him, fury clouding her features. “Let go of me! This is my decision. Mine, not yours, and not anybody else’s! How dare you imply someone talked me into it?”

  “’Cause nothing else makes sense!” cried Tresting. “Doc, you’ve been in my office almost every day for the past six months bullying me about this case! You moved across the country; you got Ned a bodyguard, for God’s sake—and now you say you’re giving up?”

  “That’s exactly why I have to! This—this obsession, it’s destroyed my life. I have to let go of it!”

  “But we have a lead now,” I argued, gesturing at Finch. “This guy knows something. I saw him at Courtney Polk’s house. Don’t you want to know—”

  “No!”

  The absolute denial rang through the room, unqualified and final.

  Something echoed in my memory.

  Kingsley took a breath, resettling her composure. “I’m done. Please, just leave.”

  “Holy shit,” I said.

  “What is it?” asked Tresting.

  I ignored him and turned to Finch. “Okay, how’s this? If you don’t tell us what’s going on, I will bring you somewhere and tie you up and call someone who can make your worst nightmares come true.” I met his eyes squarely, never mind that something inside me was starting to feel creeped out and terrified, and my headache had returned with a pounding thunder. “And then I think you’ll spill everything.”

  “Wait,” said Tresting, his voice quick and panicked. “Don’t—”

  The man really had to do something about his fixation with Rio. “Stop getting your knickers in a twist; I don’t mean him.” I was about to step off a cliff, and the vertigo was dizzying. This was little more than a shot in the dark, but I was right. I knew I was right. “I have a phone number,” I said to Finch, “for Dawna Polk.”

  Finch blanched.

  I’d thought he had gone white before, but now all the blood drained from his face as if sucked away, leaving him gray as a corpse behind his scraggly beard. It threw me off balance; I tried to cover with more bravado. “I’ll do it,” I pressed. “I’ll leave you somewhere, and I’ll call her.”

  “You don’t want to do that,” Finch croaked. “You don’t know what you’re dealing with.”

  “Oh, really? Why don’t you tell me then, Mr. SSA Finch?”

  Sweat had broken out all across his face, exacerbating the grayness. He rolled his gaze desperately toward Tresting, but the PI’s expression was unreadable. “I…I can get you a meeting with my supervisor,” he offered finally. “Please.”

  I began to be more than a little unnerved by his reaction. The man was folding like a wet piece of cardboard. Who the hell was Dawna Polk? Christ, my head hurt. “Fine,” I said. “Let’s go.”

  “You’ll come with us,” added Tresting. “We’ll set up a meet in a neutral place.”

  “Yes, all right, okay.” Finch sounded so desperate that I wouldn’t have been surprised if he’d started offering up friends and family as human sacrifices to us. “We can do that.”

  The doorbell rang.

  We all jumped.

  Tresting went to the window and peeked around the closed blinds. He swore softly. “Cops.”

  I looked at Leena. “Can you go out and tell them nothing’s wrong?”

  Tresting shook his head. “Too many. Shit. They already think something’s going down here. Someone must’ve seen us pull a weapon.”

  Finch raised a hand weakly. “I can take care of them.”

  I snorted. “I wouldn’t trust you to give me a band-aid for a paper cut.”

  He let out a strangled laugh that had no humor in it. “Believe me when I say that I’m currently viewing you as a child playing with a nuclear missile. This is above my pay grade, and I don’t care who’s holding the gun, but I’m not letting you out of my sight if I can help it. Even to be arrested.” He held out a hand to Tresting. “My badge, please?”

  “What are you going to do?” I demanded.

  “You are free to listen in,” he said, picking up a receipt that was lying with a pile of mail on the coffee table and scribbling STING OPERATION IN PROGRESS on the back of it. He folded it into his badge holder and stood up, some of his previous equanimity returning. “Now, I suggest you all stay out of sight.” Without waiting for our response, he moved toward the door.

  It looked like I was either going to let him try this, or things were going to get violent. Normally I’m in favor of violence as an easy answer, but with cops involved—fuck.

  I kept my gun out and ready, but stepped back.

  The living room was separated from the house’s foyer by a wide, open doorway. I tucked myself into the corner just on the other side of the archway from the door, where I’d be able to hear every word. Tresting herded Leena to the opposite side of the living room, where they’d also be out of line of sight from the porch.

  I heard Finch unlock the door and swing it open. “Is something wrong?” His nasally voice had the tone of a concerned homeowner.

  The cop on the doorstep hesitated way too long. I imagined him taking in Finch’s badge and the scribbled-on receipt and trying to figure out what to say. “Uh, we had a report of a disturbance,” we finally heard. “Do you live here, sir?”

  “Yes, I do. Uh, my wife was screaming at me a little while ago for breaking some plates; maybe the neighbors heard it.”

  “Very well, sir,” said the officer. “Sorry to have disturbed you.”

  “No problem, Officer.” I could hear people moving around outside. “You all have a good day, now,” called Finch, and shut the door.

  He hurried back into the living room. “We’re in trouble,” he said. “Someone give me my mobile back, now.”

  Tresting squinted at him, but did as he asked.

  Finch hit a few numbers. “Indigo,” he said into the phone. “Verification needed,
Los Angeles Police Department. Eight five oh three two bravo.” He paused, then added, “And Saturn. Used Redowa as a threat. They want to meet.”

  I snapped my fingers in his face. “Cut out the code words, superspy. What’s going on?”

  He whirled on me furiously. “Look, missy, they’ve got SWAT out there. They’re not going away just because I waved a badge at them. And meanwhile you and your friend are a couple of children playing at something you know nothing about, and you’re going to get a lot of people killed unless I clean up your mess here, so now would be a good time to shut up.” He turned back to his phone. “Yes, sir. Yes. No objection. I’ll let them know. Thank you, sir.”

  He hung up the phone and I punched him.

  “What the hell!” cried Finch. His nose was fountaining blood. It was getting all over his suit.

  “That’s for calling me ‘missy,’” I said. “Now, clearly you have some super string-pulling powers, so I’m not actually that worried about those police anymore. Like you said, that’s your mess now, with my thanks. What I am worried about is you thinking this is your game to run. It’s not. So I’ll thank you to talk to me like the heavily armed person I am.”

  Finch glared at me, trying to staunch his bleeding nose.

  Tresting touched my arm. “This gets us nowhere,” he murmured.

  “Maybe,” I said. “But it felt really good.”

  Tresting shook his head at me slightly, warning me back, and I felt a flare of resentment. He had no call to tell me how I ought to conduct myself. This wasn’t his game to run, either.

  “Everybody calm down,” Tresting said to the room. “One crisis at a time. Let’s find out what’s going on.” He pulled out his phone and hit a button; as soon as someone picked up, he said, “We’re at Kingsley’s place. Everything’s under control, but I’d like some intel.” There was a slight pause, and then the person on the other end swore copiously and creatively, loudly enough for all of us to hear over the speaker. Tresting winced and held the phone away from his ear a little. “I said everything’s under control,” he tried to insist over Checker’s tirade. He looked at the rest of us. “Be right back.”

  He headed through the foyer and into Leena’s kitchen, trying to get a word in edgewise. He didn’t close the door, however, instead leaning against the counter still in sight of the living room. I wondered if he was keeping an eye on me to make sure I didn’t punch anyone else.