Nature of the Game Read Free

back.
    Don’t need bullets , he thought, I’ll just blow on ’em .
    He picked up the receiver, reconsidered: Do that last .
    On a sleeping residential street four blocks away he found a Chevy without a locking gas cap. Jud wore the cotton gloves. He slid the plastic shimmy along the passenger window, sprang the door lock, popped off the ignition cover, spliced the wires into a switch stolen from his old shop. The engine purred. He put his two bags on the front floor, eased the Chevy into gear, and coasted down the block with the lights out.
    He drove back to the pay phone, parked so the receiver was a fast step away from the open car door. Stared at the phone until it became nothing. Punched in a toll-free number.
    On the other side of the continent, where it was now 8:26 A.M., five men in conservative shirts and ties sat in a windowless room, enjoying croissants and coffee at their computer-laden desks. Clocks on the wall showed the time in every U.S. zone, Greenwich, London, Paris, Rome, Berlin, Moscow, Beijing, Hong Kong, and Tokyo. The men laughed about a woman they barely knew.
    A blue phone rang on the second desk from the left. The desk’s computer screen automatically split. The man at the desk looked like a Yale professor, an image he’d cultivated since graduating from the University of Wyoming five years before. He adjusted his earphone and mike headset, held up his hand for silence, then flipped a switch to answer the call.
    â€œHello?” he said, his eyes on his computer screen.
    â€œWhy don’t you answer ‘Security Force’ anymore?” said Jud.
    â€œHello?” repeated the man, frowning.
    â€œThis is Malice.”
    The man typed MALICE onto the screen, pushed the enter key. Within seconds, a six-word column appeared on the screen’s left side. The man chose the first word.
    â€œIs that M as in mother? ” he asked.
    â€œ M as in malign .”
    â€œ E as in …”
    â€œ Enigma ,” said Jud. “Lame, don’t waste time running the list. You know who I am.”
    The right side of the screen lit up.
    â€œYes,” said the man who’d answered the call as he read the computer’s instructions. “I think I know who this is.”
    The man’s coworkers looked over his shoulder. One whispered, “Malice—I had him twice.”
    â€œShame on you guys,” said Jud. “Shame on you.”
    â€œWhat?” said the man who’d answered his call.
    â€œThat was no way to say good-bye,” Jud told them.
    â€œI’m not sure what you mean.”
    â€œAsk around the Oasis Bar, Lame. You’ll figure it out. If you’re cleared high enough.”
    â€œWhat can I do for you?” asked the man Jud had called.
    Suddenly, in L.A., the dead man’s watch began to beep. Jud poked buttons on the watch dial. The beeps didn’t stop.
    â€œDo you hear a beeping noise?” asked the man in front of the computer screen.
    Jud banged the watch on his wrist against the pay phone’s glass wall. The glass cracked, but the watch kept beeping.
    â€œAre you there?” said the smooth voice in Jud’s ear.
    Jud curled his arm outside the phone cubicle so the beeping watch was on the other side of the glass.
    â€œCan I help you?” tried the would-be Yalie one last time.
    â€œYou tell ’em I said hello, huh? Not good-bye, Lame. Not like that. You tell ’em all I said hello .”
    Across the bottom of the right-hand screen the computer printed the number of Jud’s pay phone.
    â€œTell who?” asked the man. He kept his voice calm.
    â€œYeah,” said Jud. “Yeah.”
    He hung up.
    The watch quit beeping.
    â€œGod, I don’t need this,” muttered Jud. He fastened the dead man’s watch around the telephone receiver. Left that high-tech prankster for them . Drove away in the stolen Chevy. To the west waited the ocean. South was Mexico and bad karma.