Game of Death (43 page)

‘Your boss’s old girlfriend.’

‘The whore?’ NetMaster asks. ‘She was murdered.’

‘What did you have to do with it?’

I can read the confusion on NetMaster’s face. ‘Nothing,’ he says. ‘I have nothing to do with that.’

‘Your boss, then,’ Cormack presses. ‘He relies on you; surely he told you something.’

‘No, he have nothing to do with it. Ask police; they arrest someone for that already. Caldwell. Nick Caldwell. He kill her!’

I can feel the eyes of the other men in the room on me.

‘That’s what the police think,’ Cormack says. ‘But that’s not the truth, is it?’

‘Yes, it is truth!’

Cormack nods at Toby, and Toby looks at NetMaster malevolently. He presses the button and keeps it down for close to five seconds. The giant’s body twitches and quivers like it’s a
chunk of bacon on a griddle. I can smell burning hair, and I’m watching as his face twists, his tongue sticking out like a slab of meat.

‘That’s enough!’ Cormack shouts.

Toby allows a beat before he takes his finger off the button.

NetMaster is having trouble catching his breath, and he is doubled over. ‘It is truth!’ he pants. ‘I know nothing else. My chest!’

‘Tell us,’ Cormack yells back at him. ‘Tell us, and we can let you go!’

‘I don’t know nothing. Nick Caldwell! He kill!’

‘Tell us!’

It’s too much for me to take. I have an image of Josh torturing Yvette in my head, and as awful as the thought of him torturing Kendra was, the thought of the same thing happening to
Yvette is unbearable. Combined with the doubt that I can see in the eyes of the other men in the room as they look back and forth between the two of us, it feels as though my head may explode.
Before I know what’s happening, I am moving toward the gasping man strapped to the chair.

‘You’re lying!’ I scream, as I punch him in the face. ‘You’re a fucking liar! Tell the truth!’

‘I tell. I tell!’

‘You’re a liar! Tell us about Pinkerton.’

‘No, not Pinkerton. Caldwell! I tell the truth!’

I’m hitting him repeatedly now. Blood pours from NetMaster’s broken nose, and his lips are sliced to ribbons, but I keep swinging, no longer fully in control of my actions.
‘Tell the truth! He killed her!’ I pull off my ski mask, grab him by the ears and stick my face right in front of his. ‘Tell me, you motherfucker, or I swear I’ll kill you
right here and now!’

His eyes go wide as he recognizes me. ‘You!’ he screams. ‘You! You kill girl!’

‘Liar!’

‘You kill girl!’

I am punching him again, holding him by the throat, his blood and sweat sticky in my hand. I am aware of the other four men in the warehouse moving behind me, talking – saying something to
me – then screaming at each other. Out of the corner of my eye I see Toby hold up the dial. I hear him echoing my own demands of ‘Tell us!’ I hear Cormack scream,
‘No!’

A split second later it’s as though the world has caught fire. I feel like the wrath of the gods has been visited upon me through NetMaster. It’s running from my hands, up my arms,
into my shoulders and spreading throughout my body. I’m looking him in the eyes, and they are burning into me. Both of us are shaking. I can hear Cormack somewhere far off, screaming through
miles of cotton candy, muffled and barely audible. ‘Turn it off! You’re fuckin’ killing them!’

It stops and I fall to the concrete floor, the world sliding onto its side as I lose consciousness.

My eyes open slowly, and with great pain. My vision is blurred and I can’t seem to move. It’s as though every nerve in my body has been shorted out. I try to lift
my head, but it feels like, if I do, it may separate from my body.

‘Easy there,’ a voice says. I have the sense that I recognize the voice, but it’s muffled, and I can’t be sure.

‘Where?’ I choke out.

‘Where are you? Union office, down on the docks.’ My vision clears a little, and I can see Cormack standing over me. ‘This here’s our sickroom. Bed’s pretty
comfortable. It seemed the best place to take you. Couldn’t very well admit you to the Emergency Room. Too many questions, you understand. And I didn’t want your ma to see you in the
condition you were in. She’s got enough to worry about.’

‘What happened?’

He moves back, sits in a chair a few feet away. ‘Toby let his anger get away from him,’ he says. ‘Stupid fuck. He cranked the dial to ten and hit that fat fuck with the maximum
juice. You were holding onto his neck, so the current went straight through him and into you. For a moment I didn’t think you were gonna make it. You looked like a fuckin’ hot dog
that’d been left too long on the charcoal. Lookin’ a bit better now.’

I flex my arm and manage to push myself into a sitting position. It still feels as though all of my extremities may fall off the rest of my body. ‘NetMaster?’

He shakes his head. ‘I’m not sure he would’ve made it much longer anyway. You carry around that kind of weight, it takes a toll on the heart. He certainly couldn’t take
the last jolt, though. He was belly up before you hit the floor.’

‘Where is he?’

‘You don’t need to worry about that. Toby’s in charge of disposal. He has experience, and it’s his punishment for fucking up. Toby had a difficult childhood, and I think
he let that cloud his thinking on this job.’

‘That’s it?’

Cormack shrugs. ‘Not like the world’s the worse off for not having the likes of that man in it. There’s not a child in a twenty-mile radius that isn’t safer now than they
were this morning. And I can’t imagine there’s anyone who’ll miss the bastard. It’s not how I planned it, but it’s part of the risk when you start in on a business
like this.’

‘We didn’t get anything from him.’

‘No, we didn’t.’

‘He wouldn’t give Josh up.’ Cormack looks away. ‘What?’

He looks me in the eye. ‘I’ve seen a lot of men pushed hard during interrogations. I’m not proud of that, but it’s a fact. I’ve got a pretty good eye for when a
man’s gotten to the point where they’ll give everything up, no matter what the consequences.’

‘And?’

‘And that worthless pile of pig shit was well beyond that point. He was telling the truth. I have no doubt.’

‘So you think I killed Kendra?’

He shakes his head slowly. ‘I’m not saying that. I’m saying that he believed you killed the girl. He certainly wasn’t protecting his boss. He would have said anything we
wanted to at that point, but he was genuinely telling us what he believed was the truth. When you were out of the warehouse, he copped to all sorts of ugly shit. Trafficking in children, rape, all
manner of crimes against God. He was done, and he knew it. He wasn’t holding anything back anymore.’

I shake my head, and the motion sets off a firestorm of neurological distress as my nerves learn how to function properly. ‘It’s hard to see Josh doing this without involving
NetMaster.’

‘I’m only giving you my honest view.’

I’m stumped. ‘How does a guy like that end up here with Pinkerton?’

‘Well, it’s logical actually,’ Cormack says. ‘The sex trade was moonlighting for Dieter. His real money came from working on the Internet.’

‘The Internet?’

‘Yeah. When he was in Amsterdam, his specialty was cybercrime. Identity theft, electronic extortion, things like that. It’s a huge business these days. Very organized and well
funded.’

‘And that makes him a good fit for NextLife?’

‘If you want to protect your system, the best people to have working for you are the people who would know how to compromise that system, so they can figure out ways they can prevent
others from getting in. It’s logical. Lots of banks and top Internet companies seek out the rebel types and hire them to be on their team.’

‘I guess that’s right,’ I concede. It does make some sense.

‘Frankly, I’ve always thought that was why your company hired Yvette. I know there’s no one better at hacking than her.’

The mention of her name sends a new kind of pain crashing through my nervous system. ‘Yvette!’ I exclaim, bolting painfully to my feet. ‘Where is my phone? I need to call
her.’

‘I called her when we were on our way here. I left a message.’

‘She didn’t pick up?’

‘No, but maybe she didn’t have her phone with her.’

‘How long ago was this?’

‘A few hours. You’ve been out for a while.’

‘And she hasn’t called since then?’

He looks a little unsettled, but it’s nothing compared to how I feel. ‘She hasn’t. I didn’t give it any thought. Why? What’s wrong?’

I pick up my phone and check for messages, but there’s nothing. I dial Yvette’s number and it rings four times before I get her voicemail. I leave her a message and hang up the
phone.

‘What’s wrong?’ Cormack asks again.

‘She’s in danger,’ I say. ‘Serious danger, and we have to find her.’

Cormack drives me to pick up my car at the warehouse. The mere sight of the place is enough to make me feel sick. I wonder how Toby disposed of NetMaster’s body, but I
would never ask. I assume he was probably chopped up and mixed with chum and is currently being dropped bit by bit into the Atlantic several miles offshore. That’s one of the advantages of
being on the water as a leader of organized crime. There’s never any real problem with disposing of bodies.

I head to Yvette’s place, with Cormack following me. It’s after ten o’clock, and dark outside. No lights are on in the house. I know where she hides a key behind a gutter in
the back of the house, so I retrieve it and we go in.

There are only a few rooms in the place – two bedrooms and a bathroom upstairs; kitchen, living room, dining room and half bath downstairs – so it doesn’t take us long to go
through the place, but there’s no sign of her. I try her cell again, but with no luck. I leave another message. Cormack calls the Cambridge office and asks for her, but he’s told that
she left several hours before. I call Ma’s house, just to make sure she’s not waiting for me there, but Ma says she hasn’t heard from Yvette. Getting off the phone with Ma is a
challenge.

‘What’s happening?’ she asks.

‘I don’t know. That’s what I’m trying to figure out.’

‘The other thing? The part that you and Cormack were handling? Did anything happen there?’

‘Nothing helpful, Ma. I can’t really talk about it.’

‘I understand. Is Cormack there with you?’

‘Yeah.’

‘Okay. Is there anything I can do?’

‘I don’t think so, Ma.’

‘I can still be useful, y’know.’

‘I know. I’ll call you later.’ I hang up.

‘Your ma okay?’ Cormack asks.

‘Stressed.’

‘I guess that makes all of us.’ We’re in the living room, and he paces for a moment, looking through the bookshelves for nothing in particular. ‘Is there any other place
where she might go?’

‘Not that I can think of,’ I say. ‘And certainly not any place where she wouldn’t have her cellphone with her.’

My cellphone buzzes and I grab it out of my pocket. It’s a text message from Yvette. ‘It’s her,’ I say.

‘Thank God,’ Cormack says. ‘Where is she?’

I read the message on my phone screen, and it sucks the breath out of my lungs:
I have her. Marblehead. Midnight. Simple swap: you for her. Tell no one. Someone is watching you; come alone
or deal’s off, and you can live with the consequences. J.

‘What does it say?’ Cormack asks.

It takes a moment for me to get enough air into my chest to speak. ‘It says she’s fine, and she’ll be home soon.’

I’m sitting in Ma’s kitchen. Ma’s upstairs asleep and I don’t want to wake her, so I don’t even bother turning on the lights. I’m staring at
the wall, thinking through my options. There aren’t many. Josh Pinkerton is a man of endless resources, and there is no question that he could easily have someone keeping an eye on me, making
sure that I’m acting alone. If that’s true, then if I let anyone know what’s happening or where I’m going, he’ll pull the plug and I have no doubt Yvette’s body
will be found sometime in the near future, violated in ways I can’t even bring myself to think about. For all I know, he’s even got my phone tapped. I don’t trust him to follow
through on his promise to let Yvette go if I show up; but I have no question that he’ll follow through on his threat to kill her if I don’t. It’s a bad situation any way you look
at it.

I glance at my watch for the twentieth time in five minutes; it’s ten-forty. Marblehead is on the North Shore, around twenty miles from Boston. I’ve been to Josh’s house for
dinners and company parties several times, so finding the place won’t be a problem. At rush hour it could take more than an hour to get there, but at this time of night I’m pretty sure
I can make it in a half hour or so. I’ll leave at eleven, just to be sure.

I’m sipping a glass of Scotch. I figure it can’t hurt; particularly in light of what could possibly happen to me later tonight. I’ve thought about the LifeScene Yvette
described with the two of us in it, and the mental image of being run through with a sword as I’m chained to a wall is not an appetizing picture. The drink doesn’t fix that, but it
makes it a little easier to bear.

The light flashes on, and I turn to see Ma standing in the doorway. She’s looking a lot better, and I wonder whether there may be a bit of a remission in the cancer. Oddly, I have mixed
feelings about the possibility. On the one hand, I’m thrilled at the prospect that she might be around for a few more years. On the other hand, given what may happen to me in the next few
hours, and the possibility that I may be convicted of murder even if I make it through the night, the thought that she might have to live those years carrying my shame is less than pleasant.

‘Sitting in the dark with a drink,’ she says. ‘Not a good sign.’

‘It’s fine, Ma.’

She sighs heavily and sits next to me at the table. ‘Nick, you’ve never been a decent liar. I take it you didn’t get what you needed from that disgusting mountain of a
man?’

‘It’s worse than that.’

‘How much worse?’

‘Yvette’s in danger. Josh has her, and it looks like he’s planning on . . . doing things to her.’