Bleeding in the Eye of a Brainstorm

Chapter 4

Margaret awoke around ten o'clock looking very tired and pale, and with two swollen black eyes-the only external legacy, as far as I could see, of the copious amount of blood that had leaked from her during the night. "Oh, my," she sighed in a hoarse, small voice as she turned her head and saw me.

"Are you all right, Margaret?"

"I … I don't know. I feel so tired, Mongo. I don't know what's wrong with me. I had. . this terrible nightmare."

"Yeah. Me too. I know about your nightmare, Margaret. I shared it. That's why I'm here."

She pulled back the blanket covering her, started to try to get out of bed, stopped when she saw the blood-soaked bedding beneath her. "Oh," she said in the same weak voice. "I must have gotten my monthly. I'm sorry."

"There's nothing for you to be sorry about. I'm the one who's sorry."

"But I've ruined your sheets and blankets. And I think I'm late for work."

"Don't you worry about the sheets and blankets; I've got more. And you're not going to work. I'm your boss, and I'm ordering you to take the day off. I'm going to change the bed and give you one of Garth's sweatshirts to wear, and then I want you to get right back into bed and stay there. I have things to do, but I'll have Francisco look in on you from time to time, and he'll bring you your meals. If you need anything, just press the blue button on that intercom on the wall next to you. That will connect you to the office downstairs, and Francisco will come right up, or take care of whatever it is you need. Okay?"

Her swollen eyes went wide. "Something bad happened, didn't it?"

"Yes. Something very bad happened. I know now you were telling the truth about what happened on the street and how you got the pills. I apologize for not believing you, Margaret."

"But I was still crazy then. I don't know how much of what I told you was real."

"I think it was all real enough." I paused, pointed to the bag of capsules I had replaced on the nightstand after removing a few. "There are your pills, Margaret. I've borrowed a couple, and I'll try to put them to good use. The man who gave them to you was right when he said you have to take one every day. I helped you take one during the night while you were having your nightmare, so you might want to wait until this evening before you take the next. Then be sure you keep taking one every day at bedtime, until you hear differently from me."

"Then you're. . not going to make me leave right away?"

"No, Margaret, I'm not going to make you leave right away."

I gave her a bath towel to cover herself, helped her out of bed and into the chair, then brought her one of my brother's old, baggy sweatshirts to wear as a nightgown. I changed the sheets and blankets, then helped her back into bed and tucked her in. Her eyes were already closing, but she seemed to be breathing and moving without pain or undue difficulty, and I judged that she would be all right.

"Thank you, Mongo," she sighed.

"You're welcome. You should eat soon. Nap now, and Francisco will wake you in a little while and give you some breakfast; I hope you like liver, because that's what you need to eat. Then you can sleep as long as you want. I'll see you later."

My first stop was a nearby commercial testing laboratory owned and operated by a chemist and pharmacologist, Dr. Frank Lemengello, who was also a friend. The tall, handsome, sad-eyed black man who was going into another room when I entered the main office was not a friend; neither was he an enemy, at least I didn't consider him one, but he was a bit more than just an acquaintance. He was most certainly a victim, in this case of his own past hubris, arrogance, and greed, aspects of his personality that had been thoroughly squeezed out of him by the courts, serious hang time on Rikers Island, and the opprobrium of his ex-colleagues in academia.

Dr. Bailey Kramer had once been a rising star in the international science firmament, a brilliant organic chemist lauded for his pioneering research on some curious chemical beasts called mega-long-chain polymers. But Bailey Kramer had wanted to make some big money in a short time, and he'd taken a hard fall. In the course of an investigation into industrial espionage in the pharmaceuticals industry, Garth and I had uncovered the fact that Bailey Kramer, renowned researcher, was also the brilliant sole creator and hopelessly inept wholesale distributor of a certain illegal, cheap, and highly addictive "designer drug," a new amphetamine, that had begun turning up on ghetto streets around the country. We'd turned him in.

I had never seen an individual so thoroughly crushed, humiliated-and sincerely contrite, contrition being an exceedingly rare quality in the usual kinds of people who are involved in the making, buying, and selling of illegal drugs. Even the prosecutor had felt pity-an even rarer quality among New York City prosecutors. After agreeing to turn state's evidence and testify as a key witness against the others involved, he had been given a relatively lenient sentence. He had served time, been a model prisoner, and then been released on early parole. I'd gotten him his present job after I'd discovered him driving a taxicab, underemployment I'd considered a waste of knowledge and talent for society as well as Bailey Kramer. I didn't think that Kramer had lost sight of what I'd done for him, but neither did I think he'd forgotten what Garth and I had done to him. I could understand how his feelings toward me might be mixed.

Not so his boss, who simply considered me a rather good fellow. "Hey, Mongo!" Frank Lemengello boomed as he entered his office. "How're you doing, my friend?"

"I'm doing the usual. How about yourself?"

"I'm doing the usual too. Bring more river water for me?"

"Not this time. What about Kramer? Is he working out?"

The burly scientist finished pumping my hand, then rolled his eyes toward the ceiling. "Are you kidding me? Model employee. He's working out just fine. But it sometimes feels strange having an assistant who knows ten times more about your work than you do. He's taught me a lot. I'm giving him top dollar for a technical lab assistant, but I can't afford to pay him what he's worth."

"Don't worry about it. There isn't that much demand in industry or the academic world for organic chemists who are also convicted drug dealers. Actually, he's probably making almost as much money with you as he did as a research professor, and he's making a hell of a lot more than he was as a taxi driver. Besides, he likes what he's doing."

"Bailey told you that?"

"He hasn't told me anything; he doesn't much like talking to me. But he's a scientist, and he's doing science, which is something he probably thought he'd never be doing again."

The heavily muscled, curly-haired scientist shrugged his broad shoulders. "What we do here is pretty cut-and-dried. It must be boring for him."

"He's got an attitude problem?"

"Not at all. Sometimes it's hard to tell if he has any attitudes or emotions. He's always polite, but he doesn't seem to care much to talk to me either, so we don't talk. I just let him go on about his business, which he does just fine. This a social visit, Mongo, or have you got something for me?"

"I've got this for you," I said, taking one of the black-and-yellow capsules out of my pocket and handing it to him.

He rolled the capsule back and forth between his fingertips, then examined it against one of the bright fluorescent lamps in the ceiling. "Hmm. No brand name on the casing, not even a lot number. The gel feels just a tad thicker and heavier than what most American manufacturers use. I'd guess this was made in Europe."

"Ever seen one like it before?"

"Nope. Black-and-yellow is an unusual color combination; can't say it looks very appetizing. Patients and drug addicts usually like whatever they're taking wrapped in more soothing colors."

"I haven't seen anything about black-and-yellow capsules in police or FBI bulletins. Have you seen anything like this mentioned in the trade or professional journals?"

"Nope, can't say I have. What do you think this is, some kind of medication, or a street drug?"

"That's what I'm hoping you'll be able to tell me. It could be either. I want you to tell me all the ingredients in that thing, and then give me your best guess as to what effect taking it could have on the human mind and body."

"Where'd you get it?"

"I'd rather not say right now, Frank. I wouldn't want to influence your analysis."

He stopped studying the capsule and looked at me, raising his thick eyebrows slightly. "What, are you kidding me? I'm a chemist, not a palm reader. My spectrograph doesn't give a damn where what I feed it comes from, it just gulps it down and burps readouts. But there are tests, and then there are other tests. If you could give me some idea of where it came from, it could give me a clue as to what it might be. That could save me time, and you money."

"I don't mind paying for your time, Frank," I said, turning and heading for the door. "Just run a full analysis on whatever is in that capsule, and give me your opinion on what it does. Can you have something for me tomorrow?"

"No problem."

"Thanks, Frank."

My next stop was the public library. I read The New York Times every day, but the Times wasn't big on reporting what it considered routine street crime in the city, and I had seen no mention of anybody being shot on 56th Street. With the mounting toll being taken by the ice-pick killer, whose victims, as of that morning, now numbered twenty-five, it was more than likely that one more old-fashioned shooting hadn't made the news. When I found no mention of any killing in my neighborhood in the Thanksgiving editions of the Daily News or Post, I reluctantly headed for the Midtown North precinct station house.

The commander of the precinct was one Captain Felix MacWhorter, and our relationship dated back to the days when Garth was an NYPD detective. MacWhorter hadn't liked Garth or me then, and he still didn't like us-the reason I had tried the library first. I didn't know why. I suspected there had been bad blood between Garth and MacWhorter over something, but Garth had never said anything to me about it, and I hadn't inquired, so I put it down to a personality conflict between two cops which, by reason of family ties, had included me. I had never exchanged more than a few words with the man, but I had always felt his hostility. I didn't plan on exchanging any words with him now. I was on my way to the desk to talk to the booking sergeant, who was a friend of mine, when MacWhorter spotted me through the glass wall of his nearby office, rushed out, and intercepted me in the middle of the stained tile floor. I hadn't done more than walk into the building, and already I could see that he was angry. His green eyes flashed, the tendons in his thick neck were straining at his shirt collar, and his face and the flesh of his scalp showing through his close-cut, thinning brown hair were pink.

"What do you want, Frederickson?" the big man growled.

"Take it easy, Captain. I'm just visiting my local outpost of peacekeepers. "

"We're a little busy, and we don't give tours. I don't want you in here wasting the time of any of my men."

"Hey, hang on a minute. I'm a taxpaying citizen, I don't have any outstanding parking tickets, and I have as much right to come in here as anybody else."

"Other taxpaying citizens aren't all private investigators who are always trying to use the police station as a reference library whenever they want some information. And other private investigators don't suck up to cops and ask the cops to do their work for them."

"You must have this confused with another planet, Captain. Every private investigator I know sucks up to cops all the time, and most of them, including my brother, used to be cops. If we couldn't get cooperation from the police from time to time, we'd all be out of business. Sometimes that cooperation works both ways. So why the attitude, MacWhorter? How come you've got such a hard-on for Garth and me?"

Shadows moved in MacWhorter's emerald eyes. "The Frederickson brothers just piss me off. The media thinks both of you walk on water."

"You've never seen us do that?"

He was not amused. "If a cop fires his gun at a suspect in self-defense during the commission of a crime, he's more than likely to end up before some civilian review board. The two of you leave corpses piled up all over the world, and you're treated like heroes. The cops solve thousands of crimes a year, and most of the time we get shit on; you bust two or three off-the-wall cases, and you wind up rich and famous. Now the two of you don't even get your hands dirty; you spend all your time doing donkey work for fat-cat corporations and collecting fat fees. If your brother had any real balls, he'd still be a cop, instead of a pussy who went running to you when he got into trouble and ended up cashing in big as your partner."

I glanced around me. Cops, perps, and suspected perps had all stopped whatever they had been doing and were staring at the sight of a six-foot-two-inch, two-hundred-twenty-plus police captain and a dwarf carrying on a one-sided, heated colloquy in the center of the station house. Angel Gonzalez, the booking sergeant, averted his gaze and bowed his head slightly in embarrassment. Captain Felix MacWhorter, who was obviously more than just a tad jealous of Garth, was looking to embarrass me, not Angel, but all he had managed to do by his reference to my brother was get me riled a bit.

"You've got your fat head up your fat ass, MacWhorter," I replied in a voice that wasn't as loud as his but was of sufficient volume to be heard by everyone. "If the NYPD hadn't thrown Garth to the wolves, he'd still be a cop-and I'd have been killed a long time ago. Garth had the guts to stand up to a bunch of corrupt Feds, and the NYPD brass didn't. First they caved, and then they cut Garth loose. My guess is that you don't have a clue about what happened back then, so I don't want to hear any more of your horseshit. Fuck you and have a nice day. I'll take my business downtown."

"Hey, Frederickson!" MacWhorter shouted as I headed for the door, smiling at a couple of hookers who were sitting on a bench to my left, staring at me. When I didn't react, he tried again, louder. "Frederickson!"

Now I stopped, turned back. MacWhorter's face and scalp had gone from pink to a beet red, which gave me a certain satisfaction. He was apparently tired of crossing words with me in public, because he motioned with his head toward his office. I went in. He followed behind me, shut the door and closed the blinds, then turned to where I stood, leaning against his desk.

"I know you've got friends in all sorts of high places, including One Police Plaza," he continued. "Do you really think I give a shit if you go over my head to get whatever it is you want?"

There was still fury in his voice, but he'd turned down the sound level, and that was a welcome relief. "You don't know whether I want anything, Captain," I replied quietly. "You never bothered to ask. You just went apeshit when you saw me. You keep losing it like that, and One PP is going to be packing you off to a police shrink."

MacWhorter continued to glare at me, but the green fire in his eyes gradually cooled. He took a deep breath, then abruptly brushed past me and sat down behind his desk. "You want something. What is it?"

"I just came in to verify that a man's body was found within a block or two of my home a week ago, last Tuesday night. That's something any citizen would want to know. He would have been shot. I checked in the papers, but there wasn't any mention of it."

"Did you see it happen?"

"No. If I had, I'd have reported it."

"Then how do you know a man was shot-if a man was shot?"

Now I had to be very careful what I said. Becoming an NYPD commanding officer is not the easiest thing in the world. MacWhorter might be a hothead on occasion, and harbor all sorts of twisted feelings about Garth and me, but I knew from casual conversations with other cops that he could also be cold and calculating. His irrational outburst in the other room notwithstanding, he was by no means a stupid man. There might not be much hair on his head, but there wasn't any moss growing there either. This could be round two of the fight he had tried to pick with me a few moments before, a variation on a theme. There were all sorts of nasty rhythms, like obstruction of justice or withholding evidence or even illegal possession of a dangerous drug, MacWhorter would almost certainly love to tap out on my skull if given the opportunity, and I was going to have to do some serious bobbing and weaving if I hoped to act in the best interests of my houseguest.

If the police, or any other city agency, found out about whatever it was Margaret Dutton was taking, the black-and-yellow capsules would undoubtedly be confiscated pending analysis and investigation, and no amount of pleading or claims that without them she would suddenly plummet back into madness and spontaneously bleed to death would be heeded-until it was too late. And there was no doubt in my mind that that was exactly what would happen to the woman if she did not ingest a capsule every twenty-four hours. She would die. Horribly.

"Frederickson?" MacWhorter continued quietly. "It seems a simple enough question. What's taking you so long to answer it? What makes you think a man was shot in your neighborhood last Tuesday night?"

"Somebody saw it."

MacWhorter raised his eyebrows slightly. "An eyewitness? Who?"

"Mama Spit," I replied evenly, watching him.

His lips drew back from his teeth in a thin, wry smile, but there was no hint of amusement in his eyes. "Mama Spit? You've got to be kidding me. Mama Spit wouldn't recognize her own hand if she was holding it in front of her face."

"Even schizophrenics can have their lucid moments, Captain."

"Oh, can they? Well, thank you, Dr. Frederickson. I didn't realize your degree was in medicine."

"You know it isn't."

"Did Mama Spit say Martians did it?"

"She said a couple of teenagers did it-a boy and a girl. They might be young, but they were cool and professional. They trapped him, pinched him in when they came at him from opposite ends of the block. So now, if there was somebody killed on my block, you have a description of the killers."

MacWhorter was no longer smiling. Now he was studying me very carefully, like a cobra measuring a small, furry candidate for lunch. I hoped I could successfully play mongoose. "If Mama Spit is the eyewitness, why isn't she here?"

"Like you said, most of the time she wouldn't recognize her own hand. Schizophrenics may have their lucid moments, but they're still only moments."

"And she told you all this during one of those lucid moments?"

"Yes."

"If Mama Spit saw these killers, why didn't they see her? Why didn't they kill her?"

"It's possible they didn't see her; the streetlight was out, and she was back in the shadows. Or maybe they did see her, but weren't worried about some homeless woman who was probably crazy."

MacWhorter mulled it over for a time while he drummed his fingers on the desk, finally said, "All right, Frederickson, there was a man killed in your neighborhood last Tuesday night. He was shot once in the back of the head, and then tossed into the Dumpster in the street down by Carnegie Hall."

So Mama Spit had been absolutely right when she'd said he'd been tossed into the air and disappeared, been thrown away. I said, "It sounds like a professional job, an assassination. Did you find the slug?"

"Twenty-two, but tinkered with to lower mass and velocity. It didn't even exit from the skull."

"No mess."

"That's right."

"Unusual. Definitely the work of pros."

"I'd say so."

"What was the victim's name?"

"Unknown. If he had any identification, his killers took it with them. He had a dollar and seventeen cents in his pockets."

"What about his clothes?"

"Not exactly designer label. He wasn't killed for his money."

"Fingerprints?"

"No match with anything on file."

"Age?"

"Around fifty. Caucasian."

"Did the M.E. do an autopsy?"

"On a homeless stiff with a bullet hole at the base of his skull? They cut him to remove the bullet, but that's all. Why do you ask? It sound to you like he might have been poisoned?"

"Sorry. It was a stupid question. Thanks for your time, Captain."

"Hold on, Frederickson."

I'd made it as far as the door, and when I turned back I didn't at all like what I saw. Captain Felix MacWhorter had a very hard look on his round, florid face, and that did not bode well. It seemed I was not a very clever mongoose; I had been all too willing to meander into close quarters with this dangerous opponent, lulled by his seeming reasonableness and willingness to share information. I had asked too many questions too soon, and now he was loaded up with a few sharp questions of his own. I smiled. "What is it, Captain?"

"You lied to me," he said in a voice that had suddenly gone as cold as his eyes.

"I lied to you? I don't know you well enough, or like you enough, to lie to you."

"You told me you came in here to find out if a man had been killed near your place last Tuesday night. I told you there was. If you'd been telling the truth, that should have been the end of the matter. But you verify that there's been a homicide victim, and then you really start asking questions. Christ, you even want to know if there's been an autopsy."

"Just idle curiosity."

"Bullshit. You're working a case, Frederickson, some angle, just like you and your brother usually are when you stop by here to see if the police can make things easier for you. I want to know what you're working on, including the name of your client, and I want to know what you think it may have to do with this particular homicide. I want to know why you're in here asking all sorts of questions about a murder victim who ended up with a city Dumpster for his grave."

"I'm not working on any case," I replied evenly. "There's nobody paying me any money to look into this, and I'm not sticking my nose into any police business. I investigate things for a living, and when something like this happens virtually on my doorstep, I just get naturally curious."

"More bullshit. I know as sure as I know my ass is sitting in this chair that there's something you're not telling me, something I should know. That's obstruction of justice, and I don't have to tell you that's a serious matter. Actually, I think I'll be rather glad if it turns out you're trying to fuck me around, because I'd love to nail you. Somebody should have clipped the wings of the high-flying, shithead Frederickson brothers a long time ago."

This dim-witted mongoose's mental feet were getting tired from all the tap dancing I was having to do in front of the venomous fangs flashing in my face, but I just kept smiling; the object now was safe retreat, not to trade insults with the mysteriously-but seriously- aggrieved Felix MacWhorter. "You've got both Garth and me wrong, Captain. I don't understand why you're so hostile. Did Garth do something to you? I know I didn't. So where's all this pique and piss coming from?"

"Where's Mama Spit?"

"I don't know what's happened to Mama Spit," I replied evenly, considering this a not completely untruthful statement.

"You're lying!"

"Damn it, MacWhorter, if you think I'm lying, go check out her grate for yourself. You know which one it is. Maybe witnessing the killing unnerved her. For whatever reason, Mama Spit has moved on. If you don't mind, I'd like to move on too."

"I know you're lying to me, Frederickson. If I find out you're stunting on this one, if I catch you withholding evidence and obstructing justice, I'll have your license. And I'll press charges. I'll bring you down."

"Have a nice day, Captain."

I used a pay phone on the corner to call the office to see if Margaret was all right. Francisco had just left her; she'd eaten breakfast, including some liver, and was now sleeping. Her pulse wasn't exactly beating at jackhammer level, but it was steady. I thanked Francisco, hung up, and then, as if I didn't have other, more important things to ponder, I thought about Captain Felix MacWhorter as I rode the subway downtown to Washington Square Park.

I couldn't understand MacWhorter's animosity. The one man who would know if there was a valid reason, my brother, hadn't seen fit to discuss the matter with me when I'd once asked him about it, so I'd subtly checked around with other cops. The line on MacWhorter was that he could undermine his considerable intelligence by being pigheaded, but for the most part he was a good cop, respected and honest, one who'd never been involved in any scandal or charged with corruption. He ran a clean operation in the most high-profile precinct in the city, and any cop who wanted to make a little extra money on the side by going on the pad was well advised to steer clear of his command. He certainly had nothing to fear from Garth or me, and he didn't seem like the type to be so apparently jealous of an ex-cop's good fortune, so I figured maybe he was just overreacting in an attempt to protect his turf from a notorious set of brothers with a residence in his precinct and whom he must perceive as smart-ass interlopers and headline grabbers.

My concern with MacWhorter's hostility was for professional reasons, not personal. Private investigators do indeed need to keep lines open to the police for information that might not be available to reporters or the public, but, as I'd told the commander, providing useful information was a two-way street, and it was not unusual for a private investigator involved in a criminal case to provide the police with important leads they might not otherwise have found, or which would have proven expensive and time-consuming in terms of man-hours to develop. MacWhorter knew this as well as anyone, but in my case he had made it clear he did not want to play the game.

It wasn't that I didn't have a goodly number of reliable and friendly police sources in the five boroughs, including uniforms and detectives in Midtown North, who were happy to barter information with me. But MacWhorter was the precinct commander in my neighborhood, and I wanted to be able to freely approach him when the need arose. Perhaps it was simply a matter of local pride, in addition to the fact that I didn't need any NYPD captain angry with me and constantly looking over my shoulder.

I was finally able to put MacWhorter out of my mind when I reached the Washington Square Park station. I emerged from underground into bright, cold sunlight and walked to the southwest corner, where I found Theo Barnes and his "protege" with the brown hair, high forehead, and plastic shoes sitting at adjacent stone chess tables hustling tourists just as I'd known they would be. I stayed back for a time and watched.

The "protege" was now wearing a threadbare wool jacket that I recognized as Barnes's over the same Hawaiian print shirt, also belonging to Barnes, I'd seen him wearing the week before at the Manhattan Chess Club. If anything, he was even faster on the chess clock-actually a two-faced clock with a separate push-button control for each player-than Barnes, who was no slowpoke, moving his hand with lightning speed to stop his clock and start his opponent's each time he completed a move. He may have been playing in a beginners' tournament at the Manhattan club, but he looked to me to be no less skilled than his mentor; during the half hour or so that I watched him, he easily dispatched seven opponents, pocketing a five-dollar bill each time. Only once did I observe more than three minutes elapse on his clock. Finally I stepped out from behind the tree where I had been standing and lined up behind three two-legged pigeons, two men and a woman, waiting to challenge Theo Barnes.

"Your money's no good here, Frederickson," Barnes said as my turn came and I stepped up to the table. He didn't even look at me as he returned the pieces to their starting positions on the board. "Go play somebody else-unless you're willing to give me the odds I mentioned before. My five minutes to your one, fifty bucks a game."

"Let me see if I can't change your attitude toward my money," I said, reaching for my wallet. I found a ten-dollar bill and laid it out on the stone battlefield between the marshaled white and black armies. "Here's ten bucks, twice what you'd normally win in one game. A game between us would probably go the limit, ten minutes. So I'm willing to pay for ten minutes of your time, twice what you'd usually make."

"Five minutes," he said, picking up the bill and stuffing it into the pocket of his worn leather jacket. He pushed the button on his side of the two-faced clock, and the clock on my side started ticking. "That's all you'd have in a ten-minute game. The rest would be mine. So talk."

"Not here," I said, reaching out and stopping the clock.

"Hey!"

"At two bucks a minute, I want to be able to savor the sound of your voice in relative privacy. Let's go sit down on a bench."

"I can't leave. I'll lose my table."

Click.

I went to my wallet again, took out two twenties. I held them up for Barnes to see, but did not put them down on the table. "I'll make it worth your while. Fifty bucks for you, and fifty for your partner over there if he'll talk to me too."

Click.

Barnes combed the fingers of both hands back through his long, stringy blond hair as he stared at the bills. "Where's the rest of the money?"

"That goes to your partner, if he'll talk to me. If you two have some kind of management agreement, you can work out the commission with him."

"All right," he said as he pushed his button, then snatched up the clock and started to walk away. "Let's go."

"Hey!" I shouted as I hurried after him. "Travel time shouldn't count! You should at least stop the clock while we're walking!"

"Time is money, Frederickson!" he called back over his shoulder. "It's going to take me a while to get my table back!"

I made sure we walked fast, but not far, a couple of dozen yards beyond the playing area, where all I had to compete with to be heard was a country band and two singing jugglers. We sat down on a stone bench, and Barnes placed the clock between us. I had four minutes left on my clock before the minute hand tripped the red flag at the top.

He held out his hand. "Let's have the rest of my money."

I gave him the two twenties, and quickly said, "First, I want to make sure you don't lie to me, Theo. I goddamn well know what you're up to. You've found yourself some very gifted but unknown natural talent, and you're giving him a crash course in what competitive chess is all about. You put him in that tournament at the Manhattan Chess Club to get him a provisional rating, but that rating is going to be well below his real strength. You're going to enter him in one of the lower-class sections at the New York Open, and you figure he has a good chance to win his section, even against the other sandbaggers who've been deliberately losing rated games and dropping their ratings for that tournament. You figure he's got a good chance to pocket eight thousand dollars, which I assume you'll share."

Click.

Theo Barnes didn't appreciate my observation, and blood rose to his pockmarked face. "You're full of shit, Frederickson. But even if you're right, I'm not doing anything illegal."

Smack.

"Right. But if I find out you've lied to me, I'll go to the tournament directors and blow the whole thing. They don't like sandbaggers. He'll be forced to enter the Open section, and he's not going to get very far playing against grandmasters. What's his name?"

Click.

"Michael."

Smack.

"Give me a break, Theo. Michael what?"

Click.

"Michael Stout."

Smack.

"Tell me about him."

Click.

Barnes laughed, then grinned at me as if he'd just executed some marvelous combination that would give him a forced checkmate. "You're not going to get much for your fifty bucks, Frederickson. I don't know a damn thing about him except his name, the fact that he's the most gifted natural chess player I've ever met, and he'd never played in a single tournament before he met me. Who gives a shit about anything else? He will win his section of the Open. You can bet on it. The people he'll be playing are probably two or three hundred rating points below him in real strength."

Click.

"Where does he come from?"

Click.

"I don't know."

Click.

"How did you meet him?"

Click.

"Your flag's going to fall pretty soon."

Click.

"It hasn't fallen yet. I'm paying big bucks for this little game, Theo, so answer the damn question."

Smack.

The chess hustler shrugged, then leaned back on the stone bench and crossed his legs. "He just came walking into the park a couple of weeks ago. He saw us playing, came over and stood around watching. He was wearing rags, and he looked like shit-scared, maybe a little dopey. But he was paying real close attention to what was going on. At first he was standing back quite a ways, but after a couple of hours he started coming closer-like a few inches at a time. He was real interested in the games. Finally he ended up actually standing between two tables, looking back and forth at the games on either side of him. We were busy playing, so nobody gave a shit where he stood as long as he didn't interfere with the paying customers. Then he lines up at the table where Buster Brown is playing. It comes his turn, and he takes sixty-seven cents out of his pocket and challenges Buster to a game. Can you believe it? Well, there's nobody else waiting, so Buster takes him on. Damned if the guy doesn't beat Buster." Click.

"Buster isn't that strong." Click.

"You've got that right. Buster's only a C, maybe low B player. But he talks trash, he's intimidating, and he's pretty good at speed chess, where the other guy is under pressure. Still, he's just been beaten by this dopey-looking guy, and we're all laughing our asses off at him. Buster Brown doesn't like that. He gives the guy sixty-seven cents, challenges him to play for double or nothing. They play again, the guy beats him again. Well, before you know it he's got ten bucks in his pocket. That's enough to interest me, so I challenge him to a game for the ten bucks, figuring I'll blow him away. Then the son of a bitch beats me! How would you rate my strength, Frederickson?"

Click.

Smack.

"Any questions you have get answered on your time, not mine. We've never played a serious game, but I'd rate your strength in the mid-nineteen hundreds, close to expert."

"I like you, Frederickson."

"I'm aware of that, Theo. You're a man who wears his heart on his sleeve."

"You're a player. You don't let the fact that you're little get you down."

"That's very good, Theo. A real howler."

"What?"

"Play me the rest of the story."

Barnes shrugged. "He ends up beating every one of us, over and over. By the time it got dark he's won close to a hundred and fifty dollars. Now we're not laughing anymore. Some of the other guys are getting downright pissy. Nobody hates being hustled more than a hustler, and that's what we figure he's been doing. I mean, like maybe this guy is a grandmaster from Liechtenstein or someplace like that, and he's come downtown to pick up some pocket money while he makes fools of the poor, dumb local yokels. Buster Brown's getting ready to clean his clock, but this guy-"

"Michael Stout."

"Yeah; that's who I'm talking about. He swears he hasn't played chess in years, not since he was a kid. He didn't say where he'd come from, only that he'd been kind of out of it-those were his words-for a long time. He swore he wasn't very good when he did play. He swore he'd never played in any tournaments, and had never heard of the United States Chess Federation or FIDE. By this time Buster Brown's got his fist up against the guy's nose, but the guy sticks to his story, says he doesn't have any idea why he's suddenly so good; he says he just discovered that afternoon that he was able to glance at a position on the board and know what each player had to do in order to defend or win. Well, who's going to believe a total bullshit story like that? Buster Brown still wants to punch his lights out. But, you know, there was something about him, something about the way he kept swearing that this fucking fairy tale was all true, that made me kind of start to think that maybe he was on the level. I mean, I've got a good bullshit antenna, and I wasn't picking up liar vibes."

"I'm constantly amazed by your fine-tuned sensibilities, Theo."

"Yeah. So, anyway, I get Buster Brown out of his face, and him and me cut a deal. What the hell. The guy's already taken thirty-five bucks from me, so I didn't have anything to lose by checking him out. If he was telling the truth about never having played in competition, he'd make the perfect sandbagger. We could clean up in at least one big tournament-and maybe even two or three, if they came close enough together, and if we could get him into the lower-class sections before his adjusted rating from the first tournament was published. He didn't have a place to stay; he'd been living on the street, picking food out of trash cans and riding the subway all night. The deal was that he could stay with me, and I'd teach him the ropes about hustling so he could start to earn his keep. We'd get him signed up with the USCF, put him in a beginners' tournament where he'd intentionally lose most of his games to ensure him a low provisional rating, and then enter him in the C or D section of the New York Open, and maybe a couple of others around the country if they offered decent prize money and fell within the next month or so. I was to be his manager. Since he was flopping at my place and eating my food, it seemed only fair that I get a percentage of his winnings at tournaments, or at hustling down here. Hell, I was giving him career training and a job. That's it, Frederickson. I don't know a goddamn thing about where he comes from or what he used to do. I think he may be either sick or psycho, or something like that, because he's on some kind of medication. He takes these pills-big suckers. But I don't give a damn about that just so long as he keeps his shit together long enough to earn us some big money. How come you're so interested?"

Smack.

"I assume you did check him out, and he wasn't a USCF member or a Liechtenstein grandmaster."

Smack.

"Right. We wouldn't have been at that tournament last week, and he wouldn't be living with me, if I'd found out he hustled us. I'd have put Buster Brown back on his case."

Smack.

"Theo, I think you did a decent thing by taking him in, and by looking out for him now. But just out of curiosity, what percentage of his earnings do you take?"

Smack.

"Uh-uh. Your flag's down."

So it was. I got up off the bench and walked back toward the stone chess tables.