The Emperor of Ocean Park (49 page)

“It promotes,” I mutter in irritation, like a child attending his first lesson.

“Exactly, exactly, it promotes, it becomes another piece—usually a queen, everybody knows this, but it can become any other piece, too, whatever the player wishes. That is the point of the Excelsior—the pawn may promote to any other piece. It does not become a queen. It becomes something else. We call this underpromotion. You have heard the term?”

“Yes.”

“Good. Because you see, Doctor, the ordinary Excelsior is child’s play, so easy that, if you are solving problems and you see the words
Helpmate in five moves,
the first thing you do is look for a pawn to start pushing. If the only way to force mate is for a pawn to make five moves and then underpromote—well, then you have your Excelsior.”

“I understand.” But his didacticism is beginning to wear on me, and I wonder if I am on a fool’s errand.

“Good. Because, Doctor, the Double Excelsior—ah, well, that is a challenge for the sophisticated designer only.”

“Why?”

“You have forgotten what I said before? That in a helpmate it is black who plays first and the two sides cooperate to checkmate black? The Excelsior requires five moves. So does the Double Excelsior. But there is a difference. In the Double Excelsior, each side must make all five moves with just one pawn, and, on the fifth move, both sides—first black, then white—must promote to the same piece. So, if we have a Double Excelsior with a rook, black moves first, makes five moves, and on the fifth move the pawn becomes a rook. And white moves second, makes five moves, and on the fifth move the pawn becomes a rook. And after white’s fifth move, black is checkmated—but there must be no other possible line of play leading to mate except for each side to make five moves and promote to the same piece on the fifth move. You are with me, Doctor?”

“I’m with you.”

“So, a Double Excelsior with the knight would mean that the only way for white to give mate in five moves is for both players to move a single pawn exactly five times, at the end of which both players promote to a knight, and black is checkmated.”

“But you said it’s impossible . . . .”

“That is correct.” I have touched, finally, his pedagogic side, and he is almost patient, now that he has the opportunity to do some actual teaching. “You have to understand that the other Double Excelsiors have been demonstrated. Both players promote to a rook? Done. Both promote to a bishop? Yes. But nobody has managed to make it work with the knight. Thirty years ago, forty, something like that, a chess writer issued a challenge, and offered a significant money prize to anybody who could successfully demonstrate the Double Excelsior with the knight. But the challenge has never been answered. Lots of composers have tried, but nobody, even with the aid of computers, has managed to do it. So, most of us have come around to the view that it cannot be done.”

I frown, trying to take this in. My father was trying to solve a chess problem that the composing world believes to be impossible. His immortality? I think not: his mind was more subtle than that, unless it was as simple as Lanie Cross suggested, that he suffered a nervous
breakdown and was not thinking straight. But I am not so sure. I think the Judge would have wanted more. Oh, he might have possessed the raw ambition to compose the problem nobody had ever managed. He might have dreamed of being the one to do it. But the reason he put the word
Excelsior
in his note to me . . .

“Karl?”

“Yes, Doctor?” The mocking tone has returned. Karl’s attention has wandered back to the suddenly crowded room, and therefore to his regular duty of making lives miserable. “Is there a problem? Was the explanation too complicated? Or do you perhaps resent that it is black instead of white who is checkmated at the end?” He laughs. “But in the chess problem it is always black who is checkmated at the end, is it not?” Cackling, he makes to rise.

“Wait,” I say, more sharply than I intended, as though he is a student.

Karl’s eyes widen. Very little surprises him, but my tone does. Now that I have his full attention once more, I take my time. Something he just said—
it is always black who is checkmated
—was that it? In the Double Excelsior, black is indeed checkmated, but . . . but Lanie Cross said . . . wait . . .

“Karl, look. In the Double Excelsior with the knight—I mean, if you yourself were to try to construct one—which pawn would you use?”

“Eh?”

“The pawn that becomes a knight at the end? The knight that gives checkmate? It has to start somewhere, right? So—what is it, a rook pawn, a bishop pawn, what?”

“Oh, I see. It is the white queen’s knight pawn.”

Meaning the pawn that, at the beginning of the game, is standing on the square right in front of the knight that is two squares to the left of the queen.

“Why is that?”

“In theory it should make no difference. You could use any pawn to demonstrate the theme. But when Sam Loyd developed the original, he used the queen’s knight’s pawn. So a serious composer of a Double Excelsior would honor the original by using the same pawn.”

“The . . . uh, the
white
queen’s knight’s pawn.”

“Of course the white.”

“But the white queen knight’s pawn would be the second piece to move. Black moves first.”

“Again you are correct, Doctor. Of course, in the old days, some
composers designed helpmates in which white moved first, and it was white who was mated at the end.” He squeezes his jowls as though trying to shrink them. “But no true artist would do it that way. Not any more. A composer must follow the rules. It is black who must lose.”

“Still, if someone wanted to design the problem so black would win—”

“That would be silly. A waste of time. Unartistic.”

“But which pawn would move first?”

Despite himself, Karl is interested. He sighs to prove he isn’t. “Any pawn would do, of course. The true artist, however, would again use the white queen knight’s pawn. Only it would now be the black pawn, moving second, that would deliver mate on the fifth move.” He is on his feet again, surprisingly light and gay, leaping toward the narrow wooden bookcase that stands in the corner. Nobody is allowed to touch the old books, many of them in German or Russian. He selects a volume and, to my surprise, thrusts it into my hands. “Take this.” He nods with some enthusiasm. “It has many examples of the Excelsior theme. Keep it as long as you like.” This astonishing and uncharacteristic act of generosity brings a solemn hush to the dozen or so members in attendance tonight.

I know at once the book will be unhelpful. I already have what I came to get.

“Thank you, Karl, but this . . . it’s not necessary.”

“Nonsense. But we must protect the book, of course. Here.” He hands me an aged and torn manila envelope. “You will carry it in this.”

“Karl, I . . .”

He holds up a warning finger. “I have loaned perhaps three or four books in all my years in your fair city. You owe me thanks.”

And he is right. He is as controlling as ever, but he is trying to help. I do owe him thanks. “Thank you,” I say, and I mean it.

Except that Karl is now embarrassed, perhaps not sure what impulse moved him to such a kindness. I suspect it was simply his delight at finding someone—in these uncultured days, as he would say—who actually showed an interest in the area of chess he knows best, an area about which almost nobody cares. I remind myself how empty a life he leads, and I smile my gratitude even as I watch his face turn sour again. I know he is going to send me off with a fresh insult, and I know how badly he needs to do it.

“Just remember what I told you, Doctor.” His brutal laugh is back.

“The Excelsior must end with the white pawn promoting and giving mate. Black moves first in the helpmate, remember, but it is still white who gives mate at the end. Always white.” He falls silent and regards me suspiciously, as though no longer sure I have come to his club on legitimate business. He leans close, his tiny fists pressing on the table in front of me. “We cannot change the way of the world over the chessboard, can we, Doctor?” Chuckling at his success in getting in the last word, Karl wanders off to torment somebody else.

I am glad to be rid of him. I hang around for another half-hour, watching a couple of games and playing a couple of games, and then, carrying Karl’s book in its protective envelope, I slip out into the frosty night.

Excelsior,
my father wrote, and he repeated the word.
It begins!
Neither the popular Addison nor the social Mariah had much interest in chess when we were children; only the bookish Talcott. Which means that the Judge wanted me, but only me, to know that he was referring to the Double Excelsior. Unfortunately, I still do not know why he wanted me to know. Karl has told me how the Excelsior should work, and Lanie said that my father wanted black to win. But I am still chewing on cotton. I am sure there is something there that should jump out at me, but nothing does. I do not know how the arcane chess problem the Judge wanted desperately to be the first to compose could possibly be related to
Angela’s boyfriend
or
the arrangements.
Perhaps the white pawn delivered to me at the soup kitchen was a part of a composition, too, a composition with pieces that live and breathe and ache. If so, then my father was surely the composer. No doubt he was confident that I would see the connection, and the last elusive clue surely lies in that very confidence. Which leads to a question I have not heretofore considered: if I have the missing white pawn, who has the also-missing black one?

I am still turning these problems over in my mind when I realize I am being followed.

CHAPTER 27
A PAINFUL ENCOUNTER

(I)

T
HIS TIME
there are two of them.

I have known for some while that I have shadows. Not just the roller woman in a green car in Washington, but other people, other times. How long have I known? Hours. Days. Weeks. Never anything concrete, just hints, impressions, a face glimpsed too often, the same car in the rearview mirror for blocks at a time in the middle of the night, a step matched too quickly to my own. When I could no longer put it down to paranoia, I consoled myself with the words of Jack Ziegler in the cemetery and the late Colin Scott two weeks later: that my family and I are safe from whatever might come. I have, in other words, allowed myself to be reassured.

Now I wonder whether I have made a mistake.

When I finally left the chess club, it was almost ten, and I hurried down the dangerous staircase, wondering what I would tell Kimmer.

By the time I reached the edge of the campus, the men were behind me.

Crossing the darkened Quad with Karl’s package under my arm, scurrying toward my shortcut to the law school—the alley between the computer center and one of the dorms, a street, then the alley between the administration building and another dorm—I try to figure out why the two dimly seen figures a block or so behind me seem so much more ominous than the watchers of recent weeks, who have been little more than ghostly background impressions. Perhaps it is the very solidity of these new arrivals, the confident, aggressive tread that makes no effort to hide its purpose. Either they are not very good at remaining surreptitious or they want me to know they are behind me.

Both possibilities frighten me.

The campus is nearly deserted this time of night. I pass the occasional student, hear music faintly through the dormitory windows, closed against the weather. I quicken my pace, heading for the first of the two alleys. I sense rather than see the two men behind me speeding up to match me.

The computer center has a guarded entrance, courtesy of an unfortunate incident three years ago involving a fraternity prank and several gallons of orange juice, and I consider going to the guard and asking for help, but what would I say? That I, a tenured professor, think I am being followed? That I am frightened? No Garland could do such a thing, least of all on such scant evidence. Passing the building, emerging at the crosswalk for Montgomery Street, I glance over my shoulder. At the far end of the alley, I see, at most, one shadow moving in my direction. So perhaps my imagination is overactive after all.

I am on the other side of the street and heading for the second alley when I look down at the package in my hand. The book Karl gave me. The battered old envelope. Slowly, I begin to get the point.

The key word is
old.

Somebody has jumped to the wrong conclusion.

I look back. My stalker is on the other side of the street, staring directly at me. He is standing under a streetlamp, and I can see him clearly. At first I suffer from a hallucination, both reassuring and startling, for the man who is after me looks like Avery Knowland. Only they have nothing in common but a sloppy ponytail, and, in the cone of light, I can see that my pursuer’s hair is slicker and darker than my arrogant student’s. Besides, the man who has followed me halfway across the campus is shorter and more muscular and thicker around the middle, and his ruddy face has been colonized by a disorder of dun-colored hair. His fierce red eyes are wild, as though he is high on something. He is wearing a leather jacket and I can envision him, easily, in a biker bar.

At the entrance to the alley, I hesitate. He is starting across the street, heading directly for me. Perhaps it is a coincidence. Perhaps he is not interested in me at all. On the other hand, the man who reminds me of Avery Knowland is now less than fifty feet away, and I have to make a decision.

He is still moving toward me, and his intentions do not seem honorable.

Adrenaline is pumping now.

For all my fevered imaginings, I could still be wrong. Or, if I am right, I can still make it through the alley and over to the law school before my follower can reach me, unless he is some sort of Olympic sprinter.

So I rush into the space between the administration building and two connected Gothic structures on the other side, first the university library, then a dormitory. The alley is really the side of a grassy hill, with the glass-walled solemnity of the administration building at the summit, and the library-dormitory complex at the base. The library is, as usual, undergoing renovation, and there is scaffolding all the way up the side that borders the alley. I slow my steps briefly, peering into the scaffolding, wondering whether some other watcher might be hiding there, but it is too dark down the hill, and I cannot see anything.