by Mark Coggins
Bishop opened the hinged doors that covered the tub, stripped off his robe, and stepped inside. Jodie paused to flip the switch that controlled the jets and then followed him into the bubbling water. Bishop eased his arm around her as she settled in. “This is the life, eh Riordan? You should have taken your chance when you had it.”
“Yeah, it seems I miss a lot of chances.”
Bishop gestured to a small clasp envelope I had carried from the car. “So, you have my chess software in there, do you? I did notice a PCMCIA flash card had gone missing, but I couldn’t be sure that Terri had taken it.”
I opened the envelope and pulled out the card. I held it between my thumb and forefinger and turned it slowly like I was admiring a thing of great beauty. “I still can’t get over these cards,” I said. “They say the more advanced a technology is, the more it seems like magic to the uninitiated. Well, these babies seem pretty magical to me. But to answer your question: yes, I’m told by someone who’s up on this stuff that your source code is on the card. I guess it’s pretty valuable to you now. Being your only copy and all.”
“It’s immensely valuable. In fact, I’d appreciate it if you would return the card to the envelope and place it on the deck. I wouldn’t want to handle it with wet hands.”
I looked down at Bishop. His pale skin and spindly build made me think of a plucked squab being parboiled. I leered at him and calmly flicked the card into the water. A strangled cry erupted from Jodie.
“What in the hell do you think you’re doing?” thundered Bishop, but made no effort to retrieve the PCMCIA card. It fluttered to the bottom of the tub, a dark square visible through the bubbling water next to Bishop’s overgrown toenails.
“If I wanted to be poetic, I’d say I was returning a red herring to the sea.”
Bishop’s eyes bored up at me. He pulled his arm out from behind Jodie’s shoulder. “You’re going to have to explain that.”
“You couldn’t stop me if you wanted to. While I was waiting for you in the study I arranged the chessmen on your chess computer the way they were after the tenth move in a match between Anderssen and Kieseritzky. It’s called ‘The Immortal Game’-I expect you’ve heard of it. Anyway, the one thing I learned about your software is that your program is the only one on the market that could be expected to duplicate Anderssen’s next move when placed in the same situation. You told me that Terri McCulloch had taken or destroyed all the copies of the software. Imagine my surprise when the computer in your study also duplicated Anderssen’s move exactly.”
“So that’s what you were up to,” said Bishop. “But you’re quite mistaken about the chess computer in my study. It’s running a chess program I wrote several years ago. That program is good, but it doesn’t have anywhere near the capabilities of my new one. Never mind that you’ve completely lost sight of my reasons for hiring you. Why would I pay to recover something I still had?”
“You wouldn’t. But you would pay good money to frame Terri McCulloch for Roland Teller’s murder.”
Jodie moved away from Bishop. Her eyes flashed back and forth between us. Bishop sat mute, his arms tightly crossed.
I crushed the envelope into a ball and bounced it off his forehead. “What’s the matter? Does the Great Oz lack for words?”
Bishop roared and slapped at the envelope where it floated in the water. “You are an insolent cretin. Terri McCulloch stole that software, sold it to Teller, and killed him. There’s rock-solid evidence to support every one of those assertions. You yourself recovered the software from her purse.”
“I don’t doubt Terri stole a copy of your software. And I’m sure she pitched it to Teller. But even Teller wasn’t dippy enough to license software without talking directly to the principal. I think he contacted you after he was approached by McCulloch and told you what he had been offered. The funny thing is, you weren’t really hurt by the theft. As her experience with Mephisto proved, it would be very hard for Terri to sell the game. And while she did take a copy of the source code, and maybe even destroyed a backup or two, someone as experienced as you would have backups to your backups.
“But the theft did give you an idea. It gave you the idea of killing Teller and pinning the blame for his murder on McCulloch.”
“You should write for the Inquirer, Riordan. What possible motive could I have for such a thing?”
“Revenge, of course. And I don’t mean for the software theft. I mean revenge for something she did to you that hurt you very much more. She gave you AIDS.” Bishop blanched at the word.
I turned to Jodie, “And she probably gave it to you too, cupcake- or Eddie here passed it on. In any case, you wanted revenge just as bad. That explains why you tipped me to The Power Station with the concerned friend act at my office.”
Jodie squealed and jumped out of the hot tub. She ran back towards the house. I continued pounding on Bishop:
“At first I couldn’t figure Teller’s role in the scheme, but now I think you told him you needed his help to make a better case against McCulloch for the software theft. You probably offered Teller the legitimate rights to your game in return for his cooperation. The risk to him was slight-McCulloch would find it hard to prove he was lying-and the reward for being the publisher of your game was great.
“Or so it would seem to him. What you didn’t mention to Teller was that a key component of your plan involved chilling him off with Terri McCulloch’s gun. You set him up by sending him a key to the East Palo Alto apartment and asking him to meet you there. Then you shot him. With Teller out of the picture, my role was to bear witness to the whole story and encourage the police to think McCulloch capable of murder. You may not have planned on me being at the apartment house that night, but it actually helped your cause since it forced me to pass on your lies to the cops that much sooner.”
Bishop tilted his chin up and stroked his beard like before. He was about to give me the benefit of his superior intellect. “I think the blows you received to your head have scrambled your brains completely, Mr. Riordan. My training as a chess tactician and computer scientist has taught me to analyze problems dispassionately in a thoroughly logical manner. Your theory doesn’t hold together; there are too many inconsistencies and unexplained behaviors. How could I have obtained the key to Terri’s apartment to send to the unfortunate Mr. Teller? I have not had any contact with Terri since she left my employ. Second, if the chess computer in my study has the significance you claim, then why would I leave you alone to play with it? That would be the last thing on earth I should wish you to see. Finally-and this point is the most damaging of all-why would I give a copy of my chess program to Teller? Him of all people. Why would I risk losing control of the most sophisticated chess software in the world merely to revenge myself on a cheap prostitute?”
I laughed at him. “Your dispassion is slipping a little, Bishop. I don’t know how you got hold of Terri McCulloch’s apartment key, but I’ll make a special effort to find out. You weren’t concerned about my playing with the chess computer in your study because you didn’t expect a cretinous private eye would be able to make anything out of it. As for your last point, your mention of chess tactics is quite appropriate. In the Immortal Game, Anderssen begins his match with Kieseritzky with a gambit. He sacrifices one of his pieces at the start of the game to gain the advantage at the end-just like you risked losing control of your chess program by giving it to Teller. The piece Anderssen sacrifices is a bishop: that opening is known as a bishop’s gambit.”
The guy behind me wasn’t very good. But then, he never really had been. I heard him as soon as he stepped onto the redwood decking. He made a rush for me, swinging at my head with a wicked leather blackjack. I twisted to my left and the sap burned at my ear and cheekbone instead of cracking open my skull. The sudden movement threw me off balance and I ended up on all fours at the edge of the hot tub. As I struggled to stand up, the lad with the blackjack took a long step and dove straight into my kidneys. My hands slipped forward
into the water, and the next thing I knew my attacker had a fistful of my hair and was thrusting my head under the bubbling froth.
Fortunately I was too far into the water for him to have much leverage. I reached up and grabbed his wrist and then dug my toe into the decking and pushed for all I was worth. He tried to pull back, but it was too late. We both fell into the tub, a mass of swirling bubbles and tangled clothing under the water. My foot touched bottom and I shot up to the surface for air. I found Bishop cowering in the corner of the hot tub and his goon attempting to wrap me up in a bear hug. I slipped my hand under my suit coat and jacked out the Glock. After days of walking into blackjacks and drawn pistols, Riordan finally pulls out his gun when it will do some good. I swung the butt down square on the brainpan of my dance partner, felt his grip slacken, and then watched as he floated on the surface like a dead mackerel. It was Todd Nagel of course. I yanked his head out of the water so he could breathe.
Bishop saw which way the wind was blowing and tried to scramble out of the hot tub. I reached my hand up and grabbed him by the waistband of his swim trunks and pulled him back into the water. I slammed the automatic into his jaw and viciously wedged the barrel into his mouth.
I pushed it down his throat until I heard him start to gag. “Got milk?” I said through clenched teeth.
ENDGAME
DUCKWORTH AND I WERE ALREADY SITTING DOWN to a lunch of Big Macs and fries at the East Palo Alto McDonald’s when Stockwell came up.
“Who the hell is that?” he asked, gesturing at Duckworth.
“He’s my partner,” I said. “We’re starting a new business doing people’s colors.”
“Sea foam green,” said Duckworth. “That’s a color that would work for you, Lieutenant. Much better than that tepid, uninspired brown you have on today.”
Stockwell elbowed his way onto the plastic bench next to me. “Is that right? Well, I think you two would look great in dog-dick pink. What do you have to say about that?”
Duckworth tittered.
“Dicks and the color pink are topics I wouldn’t care to broach with Mr. Duckworth, here,” I said. “I asked him to join us because of all the help he’s given me on the case. I felt I owed him.”
Stockwell eyed Duckworth suspiciously, working overtime to process my comment about dicks. “Okay,” he said finally. “I expect you’d only blab it to him later.”
“Now you’re learning. You want to order some lunch? I might even buy.”
“No, my wife doesn’t let me eat this crap-and I don’t want to drag this out any longer than necessary. This isn’t exactly a social occasion.”
“And all this time I thought you liked me. All right, then. What do you have for us?”
“Well, first of all, you fucking broke two of Bishop’s teeth off. Did you know that?”
“I might have noticed a certain gap-toothed aspect to his smile when the San Mateo County Sheriff’s deputies helped him into the car.”
“Oh, very observant of you. He says you rammed a gun down his throat.”
I took a big bite of my hamburger and munched it thoughtfully. “They are right about this sauce. It is special.”
Stockwell glared at me and then grabbed a couple of fries and popped them into his mouth. He chewed them like they were fighting back.
“Ketchup?” asked Duckworth.
“Shut up.”
“Enough about Bishop,” I said. “He should be glad I didn’t rip him apart with my bare hands. What did you find out about the people who are dead?”
“That you were right. The autopsy showed that both McCulloch and Hastrup were HIV positive.”
“So McCulloch infected Hastrup, and when he found out he was positive he killed himself,” said Duckworth.
“Yeah, looks that way. We never did find a note, but it turns out he donated blood a couple days before he died. They routinely screen donations for HIV, and when they got the results back from his, they called and told him he was positive. The administrator at the blood bank said he took it very badly. Said he fell to pieces right on the phone.”
“Still,” said Duckworth. “That’s no reason to kill yourself. They can do a lot more with the virus than they used to.”
“For Hastrup, it wouldn’t just be the health aspect,” I said. “For a macho asshole like him there would also be the stigma of having a disease that only gays and drug addicts are supposed to get. That and the fact that Terri McCulloch had given it to him. He’d see it as a humiliating betrayal.”
“You seem to have a keen insight into the macho asshole mentality,” said Duckworth. “Wonder why.”
I looked over at Stockwell and watched him shovel in a handful of fries. “Don’t look at me,” he said with his mouth full of masticated potato. “You brought him.”
“Everybody makes mistakes. What about Bishop and Jodie? Do they have it?”
“Bishop refuses to take a test, and there’s no way we can force him. Nor can we subpoena his medical records. The law guarantees confidentiality. Jodie does admit to being positive, however. It looks like she’ll admit to a great deal more, too, in order to save her hide.”
“But what about Nagel?” asked Duckworth. “He’s the real mystery man. What’s his connection to all this?”
Stockwell popped another fry into his mouth and smiled. “Yes, he is the mysterious one, isn’t he?” Stockwell gave me a hard elbow to the ribs. “We finally matched up that fingerprint from the picture in McCulloch’s apartment. The one you said didn’t mean anything. Who do you think it belongs to?”
“Your mom?”
“Fuck you. It belongs to Nagel, of course. He’s the one who hit you from behind and he’s the one who killed Teller. There’s almost no doubt of it.”
“Great,” said Duckworth. “But that still doesn’t explain who he is.”
“Did you ever think that Bishop’s last name was a little too cute? I mean him being a whiz at chess and having a name like Bishop and all.”
“Yeah,” I said. “It did seem a little coincidental. It could have worked the other way around, though. He has the name and he decides he’s going to try to live up to it.”
“Well, that’s not the way it worked. The way it worked is his name was originally Nagel. Todd Nagel is his younger brother.”
“Ah ha!” said Duckworth. “I knew it all along. I’ll be right back.” Duckworth got up from the booth.
“Where’s he going?” asked Stockwell, and ate still another fry.
“To get the color wheel. But back to Nagel. I guess that explains how he could afford the house in Daly City. Bishop must have been giving him money.”
“That’s right. We got hold of the bank records and there’s a regular stream of checks from Bishop to Nagel. The phone records tie them together too. Bishop had another unlisted number that Nagel regularly called. Not that it matters. The fingerprint and the fact they are brothers are more than enough.”
“All right. Let’s see if I can walk us through this. McCulloch is working for Bishop. She contracts AIDS-either by sharing needles or through sex. She infects Bishop. Bishop tumbles to it and fires her. Or maybe he doesn’t even know about the AIDS at that point and he fires her for drug problems like Jodie told me. Doesn’t matter. In order to get back at him, McCulloch steals the chess software and tries to erase all of his copies.”
“Probably, but Bishop had an off-site backup service. To protect against earthquakes, etc. Even if she zapped every copy in the house, there’s no way she could have got to that.”
“What I figured. So she takes the software and goes to Teller with it. He’d love to get his hands on it because he’s trying to squeeze every dime he can out of his business, but he doesn’t trust McCulloch. Teller contacts Bishop and asks if she’s legit. By now Bishop knows about the AIDS if he didn’t before. He could just warn Teller off, but instead he cooks up a scheme to revenge himself on McCulloch by framing her for Teller’s murder. He co-opts Teller by promising him legitimate rights to his so
ftware and then sets him up for the kill at McCulloch’s apartment. But how does he-”
Duckworth came back to the table with another Big Mac. “Here you go, Lieutenant. I hate to see a big, strapping man like you go hungry. And I’d like to eat a few of my own fries-thank you very much.”
Stockwell looked down at the hamburger. I could tell he was beginning to get an idea about Duckworth, but hunger won out over homophobia. “What the hell,” said Stockwell. “My cholesterol is only 205. I’ve got a good thirty-five points before my heart seizes up.”
“The longest journey begins with the first step,” I said. “But here is what I want to know-and I’ve wanted to know it for a very long time. How did Teller get a key to McCulloch’s apartment? And don’t give me that nutzo theory about Teller having an affair with McCulloch because that just doesn’t wash.”
A big glob of special sauce ran down Stockwell’s chin. He wiped it with the back of his hand, then licked it off. “The landlady,” said Stockwell. “Bishop bribed her to give him a key. Bishop sent a copy on to Teller with an invite to meet him there. Nagel shows up instead and knocks you out and then kills Teller with McCulloch’s gun. A gun, by the way, that was a gift from Bishop.”
“How’d you get all that?” I asked.
“The landlady told us about the key when we explained to her exactly what conspiracy to commit murder was. Jodie gave us most of the rest of it, although she wasn’t there for the kill.”
Duckworth pulled the straw out of his soft drink and waved it frantically to get our attention. Droplets of Coke splattered Stockwell’s shirt and he swore sharply. Duckworth was oblivious. “Time out you two. All this is fine and good, but I’m having trouble with the motives. I can see how Bishop would want to get back at Terri, but would he really kill an innocent man to do it? And would Jodie really go along-even if she was infected?”
“Teller was far from innocent as far as Bishop was concerned,” I said. “Bishop felt Teller had ripped off the user interface of one of his earlier games. Killing Teller to ensnare McCulloch would be Bishop’s idea of a masterstroke of revenge on both of them.”