The Theory of Games (11 page)

“No!” the congregation said with one voice.

“Forsaken! Forsaken by
his own people!”
Bishop Miller responded, incredulous, “Forsaken by his own people!” Bishop Miller sadly shook his head.

Bishop Miller stopped cold, and slammed his bible down upon the lectern and stared at each and every member of the congregation.

“Who will bury this lost White man?” And then Bishop Miller answered his own question, “We will. We will bury this good white man.”

“Amen!” said the congregation.

Bishop Miller walked from behind the lectern.

“We will bury this good White Man,” Bishop Miller repeated and then he asked the congregation “Are we not all equal in death?”

“Yes!” the congregation replied as one.

“And if we are not all equal in death are we not all equal in life?”

“Yes!”

Bishop Miller nodded to me and I began the introduction to “I’ll Fly Away.” Some glad morning when this life is over… I’ll fly away…” G|G7|C|G|G7|G/F#|E minor G|D|G. I’ll fly away, O Glory, I’ll fly way. When I die, hallelujah, by and by, I’ll fly away.

And John Styles picked up, again, the thin thread of the hymn, by himself and sang it out clear, an affirmation, “I
will fly away!
” And then the choir came in; and then Clyde the Foot.

And then Bishop Miller held up his right hand and stopped the band and he began his sermon. “And God saw everything that he had made, and, behold, it was very good. - Genesis 1:31.” and the only sound from the congregation was the rustling of the pages of their Bibles as they turned to that passage.

“God saw
every
thing that he had made,” Bishop Miller repeated, “and, behold it was very good.”

Uh, hunh
! The large woman responded.

Bishop Miller looked at each and every man and woman in the congregation. He looked up into the choir loft. He looked at John the Howler. He looked at Clyde the Foot. He looked at Bill and Katelynn. He looked at me. And, again, he repeated, “God saw
every
thing that he had made and, behold it was very good.”

A sigh breathed from the congregation.

Bishop Miller stepped back, took a handkerchief from his pants pocket and wiped his brow. He took a great deal of time replacing the handkerchief into his pants pocket before he turned, on a dime – sharper than John the Howler – “God made the earth and God made the seas and God made people,” and Bishop Miller looked again at Bill, “and God made dogs, God made all the creatures!” And then he stopped.

A chorus of
Amens!
rippled through the congregation.

“And God made the Angel of Death. And even the Angel of Death is good because God made him!”

The congregation was shocked into silence.

Bishop Miller looked about the congregation. He had our attention. He walked down the three steps from the altar and placed his right hand on Nick’s casket. “Nick Constantine is not in this box. The body of Nick Constantine is in there, but Nick, himself, is with God!”

“Amen!” the congregation roared.

“Nick Constantine is in his Eternal Home that Almighty God has prepared for him! And even the Angel of Death
that God Almighty created
had his part to play. O Death, where is thy sting? First Corinthians 15:55.” Bishop Miller turned and walked back up to the altar as the sound of turning Bible pages filled the still air of the First AME church.

“O, Death, where is thy sting?” Bishop Miller sadly shook his head at the folly of the Angel of Death. “Do you believe that this man is now with God?”

“Yes!” Howled the congregation.

Is he with God?

YES! Howled the congregation and I smashed a G7th on the piano.

Is he with God?

YES! Howled the congregation and I smashed a G7th+9
^th
/B on the piano.

And then Clyde the Foot – beside himself with joy – went
whap!, whap! whap!
and then the bass picked it up. And I found myself playing a C7th and then an C# diminished and then a C with a D on the bottom and then the riff that I have to go into with faith because it never feels like it’s going to come out right because you have to accelerate through it, E minor, F, F# and then we had turned around just right and we were back to the G7th…

Clyde was playing in 2/4 – straight 2 over 4 – and the bass was driving and then John the Howler began to sing, “Some glad morning when this life is over… I’ll fly away. I’ll fly away, O Glory, I’ll fly way. When I die, hallelujah, by and by, I’ll fly away.”

And all was bliss.

And then…

And then the six big Black men got up from their seats and walked back down front and took Nick in his casket out of the church and we all followed out and got back in our cars and followed the hearse to the cemetery.

We buried Nick just a few rows over from where Bix Beiderbecke, the legendary coronet player, forsaken by River City in life but embraced and celebrated in death, was buried. And Bill howled like his soul had been ripped out of his big chest. Don’t ever say that dogs are dumb and they don’t know what’s going on around them because they know. They know more than we will ever know. Bill just lay back on his hind legs and he howled and it just tore everything that I ever gave a damn about straight out of my body.

CHAPTER 3.6

It was when Kate, Bill and I had got back from the cemetery that Kate brought up what she had started to tell me the day before when Bishop Miller had called. “Jake, about Nick’s files,” she began.

“Kate I looked at them, they’re fine, they work, they read the database just fine,” I brushed her off.

“Jake, I know they work; that’s not the problem,” Kate answered, “It’s the time stamp on the file.”

“What’s the time stamp?” the Authoritarian Man asked.

“It’s the time a file was created, or in this case, copied on to a server,” I answered.

A light seemed to go off behind the Authoritarian Man’s eyes. Maybe he knew where this was going.

“Nick’s files were copied to my server at 2:17 AM,” I told the Authoritarian Man who was already furiously turning pages in Nick’s folder.

“But the time of Nick’s death was placed at 2:30 AM by the police.”

Exactly.

“So he sent you the file and then hung himself,” the Authoritarian Man answered his own question. “You said Nick was efficient to the end; those were your exact words.”

“Yes, I said Nick was efficient, but Nick used our WiFi network to send his files. It’s the only external way into our network. Do you remember the effective radius of our WiFi network?” I asked and wondered to myself
surely there had to be some minimum intelligence test to be an Authoritarian Man; some simple logic puzzles or something
. Guess not.

It was beginning to dawn on the Authoritarian Man but not so fast that he could put it all together so I answered the question for him, “It’s maybe a hundred yards. So Nick was within a hundred yards, tops, of my house at 2:17 AM. Not even fifteen minutes later he’s dead on the other side of town. That’s impossible.”

The Authoritarian Man’s jaw fell open like a drawbridge.

And that’s how I know that Nick was murdered.

“And that’s how I know Nick was murdered,” Kate finished telling me and it was obvious that she was right.

What was within a 100 yards of our house?

The answer was also obvious: Mount Mary College. Nick was murdered somewhere on campus and then his body was taken to his apartment and strung up on the ceiling fan.

•

Kate and Bill and I went out to the back porch and took a look at the campus. The sun was setting behind Morton Hall and shafts of golden light filtered through the leaves of Pudgy’s oak tree. “Wanna try snooping around in a couple of hours?” Katelynn asked.

“Yeah, I think that would be a good idea,” I answered. I went back in to the house and returned with three cans of beer and a soup bowl. I handed one to Kate, poured another into the bowl for Bill and opened the third for myself.

The three of us sat on the porch drinking our beer and watching the sun set. It hadn’t even been two weeks since we had last sat here the night I had been fired; the night of the party when everything was wrong and everything was right and Katelynn had wiggled her multicolored toenails. Oh, Lord, how the world had turned upside down since then. But the worse was still to come. We just didn’t know it.

Bill’s dog tags clinked against the soup bowl. “Ready for another?” I asked. Bill wagged his tail.

“Jake, you’re spoiling him!” Kate reprimanded me.

“Doc Farmer said some alcohol is good for him,” I replied, “besides we’re not taking Ninja Bill on this mission. Hopefully he’ll be taking a nap in a couple of hours.”

Katelynn just shot me a look. “One of you is an alcoholic and the other is an enabler,” she said looking at me.

I just looked at Bill and he looked at me. “’Enabler’ is a pretty fancy word, Bill,” I said, “I guess I’ll be the alcoholic,” and I went back into the kitchen for more beer.

Strapped to this gurney, the memory of that porch and that night is all that is keeping me sane. I don’t know how but Bill and I are going to get back there. And right now, I’m ready to kill anybody who stands in my way.

CHAPTER 3.7

Kate and I watched as Duncan, the lone Mount Mary College security guard (limited budget plus small private college equals one security guard for the entire campus) turns the corner around the Nursing Building and wander off into the distance.

“Figure he’s headed back to the security office in Sharp Hall?” I asked Katelynn.

She pulled back the sleeve of her black turtleneck to look at her watch, “Just about 9 o’clock. Time for America’s Funniest Videos. Yup, my guess is he’s good until they announce the $10,000 winner.” Kate was wearing her idea of a secret agent outfit: black turtleneck, black jeans, black wool cap and high-heeled boots. As always, she looked gorgeous. Me, I just had on jeans and a Family Guy T-shirt with Brian the dog saying, “So whose leg do I have to hump around here to get a martini?” and sneakers.

“Do you think we should synchronize watches?” I joked.

Kate shot me a withering look. “Let’s go,” she said and started out the back gate. I followed after her.

We had decided - around the third beer on the porch - that the most likely place that Nick had been was in Morton Hall. It was our old stomping grounds. Maybe he had been using the computer lab or what had been my classroom.

Bill had indeed been napping but he woke up as we were leaving and I had to tell him that he had to stay because he was in charge of the house.

“Okay, that’s it!” The Authoritarian Man yelled at me, “I warned you about joking about the dog.”

“I wasn’t kidding, Jim,” I honestly replied, “I really did leave him in charge. He’s more mature than the kids. And it’s not like he’s going to order a Pay-Per-View on cable or something.”

“Continue,” said the Authoritarian Man.

Kate and I started slithering around the corners of the Nursing Building and headed to Morton Hall staying in the shadows on the edges of the Quad. When we got to Morton Hall the doors were locked. I had turned in my keys in (as per my termination notice) so I started to head back home when Katelynn reached into her pocket, pulled out a set of keys, shot me an ‘Oh, Lord are you stupid’ look and unlocked the door. I forgot that Kate was a weekend work-study and still had a master set.

The halls were dark except the feeble illumination from the emergency Exit signs. I immediately tripped over the first of the steps. Kate grabbed my shoulder with her left hand before I smashed my nose into the linoleum and turned on a small pen light that she held in her right. Again, another ‘Oh, Lord are you stupid’ look from her. She shone the light ahead of us and we surreptitiously made our way up the steps and then turned the corner to what had once been my classroom. The door was unlocked.

I walked in and flipped on the lights.

Immediately Katelynn switched them off and shot me, yet another, ‘Oh, Lord are you stupid’ look.

“Kate,” I said, “there’s nobody here. Old Duncan is watching America’s Funniest Videos two buildings over.”

She immediately shushed me and in a stage whisper hissed, “We don’t know where Duncan or anybody else is. We’re not supposed to be here. Nick was murdered here. Let’s be discreet, okay?”

And then I understood why she kept shooting me those looks because I really was that stupid. We were all in over our heads. Maybe Kate knew it, or at least suspected it, but I was clueless until it was too late.

“What are we looking for, Kate?” I whispered.

“Anything, anything at all out of the ordinary,” she hissed back.

Kate was methodical, hell she had the pen light, I just ran my hands around the tops of the desks, underneath the monitors, opened the drawers and felt around in the dark. After fifteen minutes Kate came over and whispered, “You find anything?”

“Yeah!” I answered cheerfully, “I’d been looking all over for this pen I lost last semester. It was under this monitor.” It was probably good that she held the flashlight and I couldn’t see her face.

“Let’s move on,” she said, so we left my old classroom and shut the door behind us.

“Where to now?” I whispered.

“Let’s try the computer lab upstairs,” Kate answered in the dark. I shuffled after her in the gloom towards the stairwell at the end of the hall. I had walked this corridor a thousand times but it’s strange when you are in the dark with your hand brushing up against the painted cinder block walls and you are silently counting the number of steps to yourself. Kate’s flashlight flickered up ahead.

Kate suddenly extinguished the penlight. We were now in complete darkness. “What are you doing?” I hissed.

“Shush, I heard something,” Kate’s voice answered from the darkness.

I stopped my shuffling. I couldn’t hear a thing. I waited; still nothing. I started doing the Fibonacci sequence in my head to pass the time. “Kate, I don’t hear anything,” I whispered back into the darkness.