Game (36 page)

The ring of a phone made Jazz jump. Had he not silenced his phone before sneaking in here? What an idiotic—

No. The sound was coming from a corner of the bookcase. Jazz scrambled over and noticed three identical cell phones there. One of them was ringing, and Jazz snatched it up and opened it before thinking it through.

Before he could say anything, a voice said, “Nine. Five and four. Nine.” A chuckle. “Looks like you’ll be staying close to home again, eh?”

Jazz couldn’t swallow. Couldn’t breathe. He knew the voice.

It was his father.

Jazz struggled for words—for
thoughts
—unable to filter either. He had suspected, on some level, that Billy was involved with Hat-Dog, but now to have confirmation…

“Did you hear me?” Billy said, voice now stern and icy. “I said nine. If I don’t hear a response, you’re going to help me redefine misery.”

A response. What kind of response could Billy possibly want? Every second—every millisecond—that Jazz hesitated, his father was gathering information, processing it. Jazz had to act. Quickly.

“I understand,” he said. There had to be more. “Nine is confirmed,” he went on, fighting to disguise his voice. He was pretty good at this—he had a decent range of voices to fall back on, none of them related to any specific person, but all of them different from his own. Right now, he was going for as close to Belsamo as he had in his repertoire, a sort of grim yet uncertain bass. He usually used it on the assistant principal at school when he needed to get out of a class.

And now… what? Hang up? Jazz waited, just in case his father had something else to say.

Dead air for a moment. And then just a heartbeat too long. Jazz realized he should have hung up.

Belsamo would have known exactly what to say. And how to say it. Just my luck he leaves his phones home when Billy decides to call. What are the odds?

The same odds, he figured, as any other mistake a serial killer would make.

“Nine is confirmed?” Billy asked in slightly perturbed amusement. “ ‘Nine is confirmed,’ eh?”

If he hung up now, Billy would know something was wrong, would know that it wasn’t Belsamo who’d answered. Jazz had no choice—he had to try to keep Billy on the line, keep him talking. Learn whatever he could.

“Nine,” Jazz repeated.
What would Billy want—“
Thank you,” he said.

“Well, now,” Billy said, “that’s mighty kind of you to say! You’re quite welcome.” A beat. “Jasper.”

Busted.

“I was wonderin’ when I’d be hearing from you, son! Are you enjoying New York? It’s a hell of a town, isn’t it? I should have come here years ago.”

So much for disguising his voice. Jazz shot a panicked glance at the door. Belsamo could come back at any moment. Stay here and gab with Billy? Or run?

While he tried to decide, he said, “New York’s not bad. So, I know why
I
came. What brings you to the Big Apple? Just playing some kind of game with the Hat-Dog Killer?”

Billy laughed. “Oh, hell, Jasper. You like firing off words at me, thinkin’ one of ’em’ll get some kinda reaction, don’t you? Anyhow—I didn’t come to New York for Hat-Dog. I came to New York for… well, I came here looking for someone special.” Now Billy sounded almost wistful. “And fortunately, I found what I was lookin’ for.”

Someone special
. Who was Billy’s latest prospect?

“But speakin’ of someone special,” Billy went on, “I been meaning to talk to you about your little lady friend.”

“I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

“Oh, sure you do! You think the Impressionist was runnin’ around Lobo’s Nod all that time, spying on you, without stuff getting back to me? You got jungle fever, Jasper! You got yourself some dark meat!” He sounded highly amused. Almost giddy.

Jazz gritted his teeth. Billy knew. About Connie. The thought terrified him more than anything else had in his life. It frightened him more than the power he knew he possessed. “I don’t know what you’re talking about,” he lied, amazed that he could keep a tremble out of his voice.

“Oh, yes, you do. Oh, yes, you surely do, young man!” Billy sounded like a parody of a lecturing schoolmarm for a moment. “You know precisely what I’m talking about. That girlfriend of yours.”

Jazz glanced around wildly, as though Billy were spying on him right now. He had to leave. Now. He made for the door and slipped out into the hallway. “What do you mean? What girlfriend?”

Now Billy’s voice turned stern. “Don’t go lying to me, boy.
You ain’t so big and so old that I can’t whup you with my belt like my old man done to me. Or maybe I’ll just cut off one of your girlfriend’s fingers for you. Sort of like old times, you know?”

“Stop it.” He was outside by now, back in the alley. Belsamo was nowhere to be found.

“I gotta admit, after the last time I saw you, I was curious about your love life, son. The way you went to all that trouble to misdirect me and mislead me when I asked about your—whatchacallem?—romantic prospects… I never thought you’d be with a colored girl.”

“No call for that kind of language,” Jazz said, his jaw tightening. He spun around suddenly. He was back on the main street now—What was it called? Where was the sign?—and darkness had fallen. The sidewalk was thick with pedestrians. Baby carriages. Dogs on leashes. Jazz couldn’t help thinking that Billy was watching him. But there were a dozen buildings within visual range. All those rooftops… more than a hundred windows…

“I don’t mean nothin’ by it, Jasper. You know that. I’m just from a, you know, a different generation. I was raised by a woman who didn’t have no appreciation for, well, for
diversity
, let’s say.”

“I know. I’m the one who’s been taking care of her since you got yourself locked up.”

“And I surely appreciate it. Just like I appreciate the, well, the poetic justice of you dating a black girl. Given that I never killed no black girls. Is it okay to say ‘black girl,’ Jasper? Or does that offend your sensibilities? Is it ‘African
American girl’ instead? ‘Girlfriend of color’? So many things to keep track of, and I’m such a busy guy to begin with. Things slip through the cracks.”

“Say what you need to say.”

“I just think it’s pretty damn ticklish. I don’t suppose… Oh, Jasper,” he gasped, as though something had just now occurred to him, “you didn’t go and put love in that poor girl’s heart just ’cause I ain’t never killed no one looked like her, did you?” When Jazz said nothing, Billy roared with laughter. Jazz could picture his father’s head thrown back as he howled. “Did you think that magical black skin, that kinky hair, those big brown eyes were gonna save your soul? Did you think somehow being with her would stop you from turnin’ into me?”

“Don’t be ridiculous.” Jazz used his very best annoyed voice.

“You did!” Billy wasn’t buying it. Of course not. “You
thought
that. Oh, Jasper. Oh, my boy, my son. Thought I raised you smarter than that. Thought a lot of things, I guess. So tell me, Jasper—what’s it like, being with a black girl? She go all ghetto in bed with you? What’s it like down there? Never had the pleasure myself, you know.”

“Don’t have anything to compare it to,” Jazz told him as officiously as possible. Trying to put Billy off balance. Shake him.

Impossible. Billy just laughed again, was all. “That what you think? You go on thinking that. Go on livin’ in denial.”

“I got your message,” Jazz said. “ ‘Welcome to the game.’ What was that about?”

“Don’t recall sending you a message,” Billy said, and as he did so, it finally occurred to Jazz that he should be contacting Hughes. He fumbled his own cell phone out of his pocket.

“You sent that message, didn’t you? The one welcoming me. You used the Hat-Dog Killer to get in touch with me. How long have you been in New York?” Stabbing in the dark, blind, but not deaf.

Something was wrong with his cell. It wasn’t working.

“Long enough, son. Long enough.” Wistful. A man on a diet, watching the pile of fries delivered to the next table over.

“And you’re controlling Belsamo, is that it?”

“Is that his name?” Billy asked. “I suppose you’ve already got him all trussed up for the bastard cops.”

“No. He wasn’t home.”
Oh, damn! Why did I tell him that?

He expected one of Billy’s low, gruesome chuckles, but instead there was nothing. And then: “I see.” Icy.

Jazz pondered that even as he realized why the phone wasn’t working—that cop had turned it off during the interrogations and Jazz had forgotten to turn it back on. While he waited for it to boot up, he said, “You were expecting him—” And then stopped. The cell phones. Disposables. Of course Billy hadn’t known
Jazz
would answer; he’d expected
Belsamo
to answer….

He spun around and ran back to Belsamo’s building. A man was leaving just as he arrived, and Jazz slipped in past him and charged up the stairs.

“You’re breathin’ all heavy,” Billy said. “Forget something back in that apartment you illegally entered? Been there. I empathize.”

Jazz hadn’t locked the door when he left Belsamo’s, so he had no problem getting back in. He made a beeline for the end table, the one with the mail on it. He hoped what he was looking for would be there….

It was.

He couldn’t believe it. It
was
.

“Kinda quiet there, Jasper,” Billy needled. “You findin’ what you need there?”

Jazz stared at the envelope in his hands. The one with the wrong name. “C. D. Williams.” A mash-up and switch-around of Billy’s own name, William Cornelius Dent. It wasn’t a misdirected piece of mail or something for a previous resident. It was an alias.

The return address said it was from something called U-STORE-IT-ALL.

I was wondering where his trophies were. Not enough room here. And we might come here. So he stored them somewhere else. That’s where he is now.

“He’s not here,” Jazz said. “We spooked him today. At the precinct. So he went to visit his trophies, didn’t he? It calms him, I bet. Always worked for you.”

“We? You still thinkin’ you’re on
their
side, Jasper? Not enough to catch that poor jackass thought he was me? Now you gotta come here and catch this other guy?”

“That’s the game, isn’t it?” He caught Belsamo’s laptop
out of the corner of his eye, still open on the floor. He closed it with his foot and nudged it back under the bed. He contemplated tucking the envelope into his pocket, but realized someone as OCD as Belsamo would notice it missing. He snapped a quick picture of it with his phone, which had booted up by now.

Then, just out of curiosity, he squeezed the envelope, just enough to get the plastic window to lift away from the contents so that he could get a peek inside. All he saw was another line of text:
Re: Unit 83F.

Good to know.

“That’s the game,” he said again to his father. “You put another serial killer in play and goad me into catching him. You must have been pissed when the cops jumped the gun and brought me onto the court before you were ready. Were you really running all of this from prison? You never answered any of your so-called fan mail, so how did you do it?”

Billy chuckled. “You know what I love most about you, boy?” he asked as Jazz once again left Belsamo’s apartment. Jazz started a text to Hughes:
I have billy on phone!!!!!
and included the names of the street signs he finally spied across the way. “I’ll tell you. It’s this: You’re so goddamned smart, but even so, you’re only about half as smart as you think you are.”

“So educate me.” He watched the blue meter on the screen fill—slowly—as his text crawled through the ether to Hughes. He realized now that Belsamo would probably notice the
missing disposable phone, but he wasn’t about to surrender this line of communication with Billy.

“It’s a game, but not the kind you think. There’s no court. And it’s not about you. Not at all.”

“Sure it is. I know all about Hat-Dog now.” Time for another knife lunge in the dark, bluffing: “I know about Ugly J.”

At that, Billy burst into raucous laughter. It wasn’t Billy’s usual laughter, the fake crap he used to catch people off guard. No, Jazz detected genuine amusement. Billy was laughing involuntarily because he thought something was truly funny.

“Glad to amuse you,” Jazz told him. His phone buzzed in his hand. From Hughes:
WTF??? On my way.

“Oh, Jasper. You have no idea. About Ugly J. But I’m impressed you got far enough that you know the name.”

“I know more than the name,” Jazz lied. Fast. Smooth. Sure. Best lie he’d ever told. Hell,
he
believed it.

“You don’t. Because if you knew anything about Ugly J, trust me—you wouldn’t be on this call with me. You’d be curled up in a corner somewhere. Or you’d be sitting in a dark room with a knife and some pretty little girlie’s toes piled up next to you while she begged you not to cut anything else off.”

“You talk big, Billy, but I’m still working with the cops.”

“Not for long. You’ll come around. You’ll see how the crow flies.”

Just then, a bright light exploded around Jazz; his heart
flopped madly in his chest, a strangling fish desperate for water. Billy had found him.

No. Not Billy. Headlights. Hughes, behind the wheel of an unmarked car. Jazz gestured frantically at him.

“What about crows?” Jazz asked. “Why is Belsamo obsessed with them?”

“He’s not,” Billy said, sounding hurt for the first time. “Don’t you remember the story I used to tell you? About the Crow King?”

The Crow King… the dove
…

“Of course.
That’s
what this is all about?” Maybe Dear Old Dad was crazier than Jazz had imagined. “You’ve got this guy all twisted up over that old fairy tale?”

“Not a fairy tale,” Billy said angrily. Lecturing. “And not a fable. Those are magical BS. I told you folklore, Jasper. I told you
myth
.”

“And this myth is supposed to mean what, exactly?”

“If you ain’t figured that out yet, well… well, then maybe my parenting was a little subpar. I’ll take that. But maybe, just maybe, Jasper, you’re out of your depth here. Ever consider that? Think maybe you’re in over your head?”