Cole Perriman's Terminal Games

by Wim Coleman

  “To do what?”

  “To make Elfie a body,” she said with a defensive edge. “What do you think?”

  Marianne clicked Elfie into the Factory, which displayed row upon row of variously shaped heads and bodies. Marianne picked a head for Elfie—one with a pointed chin and a wide brow. Then she moved her pointer across the selection of bodies, stopping at a short, chunky one.

  “Nah,” Nolan snorted. “Make her taller.”

  Marianne looked at him disapprovingly. “She’s an elf.”

  “So what?”

  “Elves are supposed to be little.”

  “Yeah, but does she have to be squat like that? Besides, who says she has to look like all the other elves?”

  Marianne sighed, struck a command that made the little body rubbery, and stretched it a little taller and thinner. Then she slapped the head on top of it. The basic body was sketched out now, but completely unadorned. Nolan watched raptly as Marianne used computer brushes and pens and textures to give Elfie more detail—green pants and a green jacket, curly-toed shoes, and large pointy ears that stuck out through a halo of yellow hair. The skill and speed with which Marianne operated the graphics tools astonished and delighted Nolan.

  “There,” Marianne said when Elfie’s large, round eyes were in place. “That should do it.”

  “Wait a minute. This Elfie’s supposed to be a ‘she,’ right?”

  “I hadn’t really thought about it.”

  “You hadn’t thought about it? It’s kind of an important question, isn’t it?”

  “She’s androgynous, okay?”

  “Did you ask her if she wanted to be androgynous? What if your parents had decided to make you androgynous? What would you have to say to that?”

  Marianne crossed her arms. “Maybe you’d like to take over,” she said.

  “No, no. You’re the computer expert. I bow to the higher authority.”

  “No, let’s work this out. I don’t want you to walk into the Casino del Camino with an elf that embarrasses you. What do you want me to do to make her look feminine?”

  Nolan scratched his chin. “You could make her rounder,” he said.

  “Rounder?”

  “Yeah.”

  “How?”

  “What do you want, an anatomy lesson?”

  “Rounder in the hips?”

  “That would help.”

  “Rounder where else?”

  Nolan felt his own face redden now. “Well, she could use some breasts,” he said.

  “Breasts?”

  “Sure.”

  “What kind of breasts do you want?”

  Nolan shrugged. “Just any old kind. Who am I to say?”

  “Oh, don’t be so modest. I’m sure you’re quite the connoisseur. How do you want them? Round, global, beach ball-ish? Or cone-shaped, pointy, nipple-driven?”

  Nolan gulped.

  Better concede defeat, fella.

  “Roundish would be fine,” he said.

  “Will that be all?”

  “That should do it.”

  “Well, thank you for your input, Lieutenant Grobowski,” Marianne said.

  Nolan grinned at her. “My friends call me Nol.”

  Marianne grinned back. “Why don’t I meet you halfway and call you Nolan?”

  “Nolan would be fine.”

  He was pleased. He liked Nolan better, anyway.

  *

  “Isn’t this supposed to be a game of chance?” Marianne asked a little while later, after Nolan had directed a really rather voluptuous-looking Elfie through several hands of poker.

  “Not the way I play it, no-o-o,” Nolan replied with a gravelly, nasal W. C. Fields twang and drawl.

  Indeed, Nolan’s luck struck Marianne as uncanny. Oh, he had folded two hands and had lost two others, but he had won five hands altogether. Marianne remembered how tired the detective had been when he showed up at the hotel room, all rumpled, slow-moving, and subdued. He certainly had come to life since then.

  And Elfie had come to life, too. She was sitting confidently at the table with two hundred and eighty dollars worth of white, red, and blue chips in front of her—and she had started off with only twenty dollars. But Marianne suspected that Nolan would blow Elfie’s luck before the evening was over. He seemed too sure of himself.

  The roster of players had changed during the last half hour. When Elfie had first approached the table, the group included Tin Lizzy, a metallic matron made from Model-T parts with a car-bumper brassiere and a radiator corset, and Sodbuster, a rural hick in overalls and a straw hat with a long weed dangling out of his mouth. The other players had been Ace, a Mississippi riverboat gambler with the requisite derby hat and gold watch chain, and Lucky, a pinstriped, fedora-wearing, cigar-smoking high roller straight out of Damon Runyon’s Broadway.

  Nolan had immediately voiced his suspicions of Ace and Lucky. He said they looked too much at home at a card table to be quite on the level.

  “They’re both really mechanical and repetitious,” Marianne agreed. “They’re probably just poker-playing programs, without human operators. Still, they do seem to win a good bit.”

  “Mechanical shills, probably,” Nolan said. “Just here to fill up the table—and take people’s money—until the game gets four paying customers.”

  Sure enough, the moment Elfie joined the game, Ace had folded his cards and departed. And when the Roman emperor Caligula sat down at the table, Lucky had left as well.

  Now the players were Tin Lizzy, Sodbuster, Caligula, and Elfie. Elfie’s hand of cards faced and filled the screen. She held three tens—not much, but enough to keep her in through one round of betting. Now the bets were coming around a second time. Caligula had just raised the pot, and it was Elfie’s turn to bet.

  “Better fold,” Marianne suggested.

  “What are you, crazy?” Nolan replied. “I’ve got him on the ropes. I’m gonna raise him.”

  “With three of a kind?”

  “Sure.”

  “You’re crazy. He’s got at least a straight.”

  “And I say he’s got nothing better than two pair,” Nolan said. “Look at him, Marianne. His upper lip’s sweating.”

  “It is not, Nolan.”

  “Is so. And he’s fidgeting in his chair, too. See?”

  “You can’t read his body language. He’s an alter. He only shows what his operator wants him to show. He’s not betraying anything.”

  “Even so, he’s bluffing.”

  “So are you.”

  “He’s not as good at it as me.”

  Nolan gave the command for Elfie to raise the bet. Sodbuster folded. Tin Lizzy called. Everybody showed their cards. Caligula had two jacks, a two, a three, and a five.

  Nolan laughed as Elfie pulled in her chips.

  “Hell, boy, your hand was even lousier than I thought,” Nolan said to Caligula. “Hope you don’t do this for a living, you arrogant son of a bitch.”

  Marianne laughed. “You’d better be glad he can’t hear you,” she said. “In a real card game, you might get shot for saying stuff like that.”

  And indeed, she almost thought she saw the emperor’s face redden and his scowl deepen.

  Just a trick of the light.

  “He must have been out of his mind,” Marianne added.

  “Yeah, well, these Roman emperors think they run the world.”

  “How did you know to raise him?”

  “Aw, it’s just the way he’s been playing. It’s not even like he really bluffs. He’s got no sense, is all. He thinks every hand’s made of gold. Also, I keep track of the odds. Hey, do they ever get any real players in this joint? This could get fun.”

  Still stinging from h
is wounds, Caligula typed in an announcement:

  clgla>this game is 5 crd std.

  The cybernetic emperor began to shuffle.

  “Where did you learn to play cards like this?” Marianne asked Nolan as Caligula began to deal.

  “When I was a young cop working undercover. There was this professional hit man named Sonny Wyke—a very busy guy the force wanted to put out of business. We got word that he held a running poker game at his apartment. Well, I figured I’d get in the game, gain his confidence, and maybe he’d tell me something. All my buddies thought I was crazy. They thought I was even crazier when I started spending all my waking hours studying poker strategy, reading books about odds and probability and stuff like that. They wondered what the hell poker could have to do with a homicide investigation. But I got myself into Sonny’s game, and Sonny got to like my style, because I was the only player who could keep up with him. We talked more and more during games, goofing around, coffeehousing.”

  “Coffeehousing?”

  “You know. Chattering. Distracting the other guys at the table. Messing with their heads. We had some real fun, Sonny and me, and we took a lot of each other’s hard-earned cash. Things went on like this for a couple of weeks. Then one day before a game, I got a real strong hunch something was going to click. So I asked for a lot of backup and went in wearing a wire. And sure enough, after the poker was through, Sonny and me wound up by ourselves, playing gin and talking on and on about everything you can think of—food, movies, sports, music, God, politics, family, ethics, morality. Then he tried to recruit me. Described in grisly detail practically every hit he’d ever done, saying over and over again how easy it was, how much money was in it. Told me I had a hell of a future. Finally, he mapped out the hit he wanted me to do.”

  Nolan shook his head and laughed a little. “Felt kinda weird to slap the cuffs on a guy who loved me like a brother. But you gotta get used to that kind of thing.”

  The whole time Nolan was talking, he had been deftly and busily working Elfie’s controls, guiding her through three rounds of heavy betting. This time, the chastened Caligula folded early, and Elfie won a sizable pot from Sodbuster and Tin Lizzy. Nolan was clearly having a great time.

  It was an amazing performance. The game required about twenty keyboard instructions, all of which Nolan had learned and mastered at a single sitting. Now he was handling the computer as if he were born to it. When had Marianne ever known anybody who learned things this quickly?

  He’s not like I thought he was.

  And what had she thought about him? Well, his first efforts to manipulate her had seemed transparent, even downright clumsy. She hadn’t thought very highly of him then. But of course, he suspected her of murder at the time, and that hadn’t exactly endeared him to her. He didn’t suspect her anymore—or at least he didn’t seem to.

  (Mental memo: Always remember, he’s a terrific poker player.)

  Then Nolan had showed a touch of human kindness, lending her the clothes.

  (Memo: Don’t forget they’re in the closet. Give them back before he leaves.)

  That was when she first noticed that he was actually rather attractive. She particularly liked his warm, pleasant voice. But even then, she had continued to think of him as primitive, rough, uncouth—anything but sophisticated.

  She had been a snob.

  Now she found herself astounded by the man’s sheer intelligence—and yes, by his sophistication. It was a sophistication bred by his way of life, the urgency of his profession. Marianne knew plenty of bright men and women in Santa Barbara, people who studied fine wines, learned foreign languages, stayed on top of the bestseller lists. But this man knew how to think on his feet—to learn things vigorously, earnestly, and with a sense of fun. That was brilliance of a different order.

  What kinds of things has he learned from life? What are his interests?

  Well, he had just recited a list …

  “… food, movies, sports, music, God, politics, family, ethics, morality …”

  Marianne guessed he was a self-taught expert in all those things. She wondered what other things besides.

  Elfie was shuffling the cards now. Nolan’s eyes darted about the screen, full of happy anticipation. Marianne was glad she’d waited so long to bring Elfie to life. It was fun to do all this in the presence of a real, live, flesh and blood human being—a marvelous, exuberant man.

  “All right, boys and girls,” Nolan announced rambunctiously as Elfie dealt the cards. “This game’s seven card stud.

  It would be all right to touch him. I could just reach over and rest my hand on his shoulder. It wouldn’t seem out of line. It would just seem like I’m sharing his excitement at his winning streak.

  But she immediately thought better of it. He was a cop on a case, and she was helping him learn some necessary skills.

  That’s all. That’s all that’s going on.

  She kept both of her hands folded in front of her, but it didn’t feel quite natural.

  10000

  SOLACE

  “What are you wearing that shit-eating grin for?”

  Nolan jumped slightly at the sharp sound of Clayton’s voice. He looked up from his desk chair. Clayton was sitting on Nolan’s desk, notebook in hand. He seemed to have appeared out of nowhere.

  Like an elf.

  “What are you talking about?” Nolan asked. He’d had no idea that he was grinning.

  “The grin that’s sprawled all over that big white face of yours,” Clayton said, with more than a trace of irritation. “What’re you so happy about all of a sudden? Did you get us a big break in the case or what?”

  “No,” Nolan said.

  “Then what the hell is it?”

  Nolan didn’t particularly want to admit that he’d been lost in memories of yesterday evening—the computer games and Marianne Hedison’s company. Not when Clayton was in such a cantankerous mood.

  “I was just thinking what a joy it is to be a cop,” Nolan said with mock sincerity. “I was thinking about the short hours, the easy workload, the public gratitude. Don’t you get that feeling once in a while yourself? Doesn’t it sometimes just sort of wash over you in a slathering glob of warm, delicious goo?”

  Clayton glowered at him. “You been snackin’ on that impounded weed, ain’t ya?”

  “Get off my desk,” Nolan replied.

  But Clayton didn’t move. He just started thumbing through his notebook. Nolan hated it when Clayton sat on his desk and thumbed through his notebook. The body language was too damned obvious—implying that Nolan’s mind and attention weren’t sufficiently engaged by the business at hand. Nolan was annoyed by the simple fact that Clayton was right.

  “So did you pay another visit to Pritch and Maisie?” Clayton asked.

  “Kim and I went down this morning,” Nolan said. “They seem to be on the job, but Auggie still hasn’t put in an appearance on the network.”

  “Anything else?”

  Nolan paused. Did he really want to go into the other thing he had found out from Pritchard and Maisie?

  “It’s tough to explain,” he said reluctantly.

  “I love it already,” Clayton growled.

  “Do you remember hearing about that magazine publisher falling off a building in Chicago several weeks back?”

  “A guy named Braxton?”

  “That’s right.”

  “Sure, I remember. It was a suicide, right?”

  “Not according to the cop I worked with in Chicago. He told me it was murder. And he happened to mention that Braxton was logged onto a computer network at the time he died, playing canasta in a virtual casino. I didn’t think anything about it for a while, but this morning I asked Pritchard and Maisie to check their files. And it turned out that Braxton was a member of Insomnimania.�
��

  Clayton stared at Nolan blankly for a minute.

  “So what?” Clayton said.

  “Well, it might mean that the Braxton killing was linked with our two in L.A.”

  Clayton groaned. “Come on, Nol. The game’s got a lot of members. A few of them are gonna die from time to time.”

  “Hey, you’re the one who ought to be interested.”

  “Why?”

  “You suggested a connection between Gauld and Judson.”

  “Yeah, and we’re still trying to figure out if there’s anything to that. Whydya have to go dragging some dead dork from Chicago into the picture?”

  “So you don’t think it’s possible that their high diver is connected?”

  “I’m not saying that. But look, Nol. I like to follow a hunch and get in over my head more than you do most of the time. But what are we supposed to do about something that happened in Chicago, anyway?”

  Nolan shrugged. “There isn’t much to do,” he said. “I called the cop in Chicago and tipped him off.”

  “And what did he say?”

  “He was about as receptive and open-minded as you are.”

  “Great. Leave it at that. Let Chicago solve their own homicides. Let’s stick to the mess at hand.”

  “Okay,” Nolan said with a resigned and weary sigh. “So how was your morning? Great, I take it.”

  “Well, you can write off Larry Bricker as a suspect. I’ve checked out his alibis and they’re all solid. A neighbor even saw him pull into his garage just when he said he did.”

  “What about those fibers you found in Gauld’s closet?”

  “Same as the ones under her fingernails. Whoever killed her definitely hid in there.”

  “What kind of fibers were they?”

  “Red and white acrylic knitting yarn—the kind you find at any bargain store.”

  “A knit cap? A ski mask?”

  “Maybe. Wasn’t a cashmere sweater, anyway.”

  Nolan and Clayton looked at each other blankly. They were stuck.

  Guess it’s time to get out the old tape deck. He and Clayton made a point of recording a freewheeling, question-and-answer session on a cassette tape every day while working on a difficult case—particularly when they found themselves drawing mental blanks. They usually picked up some new insight along the way, if not an actual breakthrough.