Playing the Game (5 page)

Without the faxes though, the bodies of the two girls would still have been where The Chemist left them now. We hadn’t even been close to finding them. I was beginning to think these games were un-winnable, that it was just some sick fucker trying to get infamous quickly. I hated to admit it, but The Chemist was succeeding on that count. After Jennifer’s body had been found we were keen to stop the similarities between the two leaking to the press. We made no mention of Clozapone during any questions fired at us by the media but someone had been unable to stop themselves from leaking the pertinent information. Whether this was accidental or someone purposefully providing information for their own gain was yet to be determined, but once the media found out about the similarities, hysteria had broken out. A third would not only fuel that panic but would also send the message to the public that the LAPD were powerless to stop this from happening. And that pissed me off big time.

            When we weren’t busy playing
The Game
we had our other PD requirements to attend to but we spent all the time we could, including most evenings and several sleepless nights trying to figure out who could be behind this horrific spate of murders. A few possibilities had come up; but one by one we had eliminated them all for various reasons.

The mechanics and structure of the games told us we were dealing with one seriously intelligent and motivated individual, but I guess you didn’t need to be Sherlock fucking Holmes to work that one out.

We drove the last couple of minutes in a grim silence, each wondering what lay in store for us at this address. I was pretty sure it wouldn’t be ‘number three’; we were far too early into
The Game
for that. I could only take solace in the fact that at least we
had
broken part of the code and that we had therefore made more progress in this one than in the previous two. I just had a feeling that we were making exactly the amount of progress that The Chemist wanted us to make. Just as this thought sent an unnerving shiver down my spine, we pulled into Sutherland Boulevard.

12

Last week

At just before nine, the piercing sound of the alarm clock interrupted a particularly deep, and some would say – well at least he would say, deserved sleep. He had a rare day off; no meetings scheduled, no media requirements, no magazine interviews. Actually, scratch that. He did have a meeting with a couple of the guys down at the Chester Washington golf course at noon, where he hoped to avenge the narrow defeat of last month’s eighteen holes and with any luck, make back the four thousand dollars that defeat had cost him. Not that he particularly needed the money, he just fucking hated losing.

Eyes still half closed, sticking the alarm clock on snooze, Conrad Conway rolled over, arm outstretched, expecting to feel his wife lying beside him, but felt nothing. Where was she? He half remembered her saying something about going out when they went to bed last night but he hadn’t been paying too much attention. He suspected that it might involve shopping of some sort, something his wife had become very, very good at, using up a sizable chunk of his ample annual earnings on regular basis. As long as it wasn’t even more shoes he could live with that. Nevertheless, he made a mental note to double check his next credit card statement; there would probably be several additions on there.

Deciding to forgo the snooze, he got up, and putting on his robe he headed down to the kitchen. Ah, at least she had put the coffee on before she had gone out, that was good. Pouring himself a large cup, he wandered to his front door to collect the paper. This was how a day should start; cup of coffee, a read of the sports page …. Not that he didn’t love his job and all the power, money and fame that came with it but he did occasionally miss having his own time to relax. That was certainly a rare commodity nowadays!

Picking up the paper, something caught his eye that afforded a second glance. A white envelope hung through his letterbox. Knowing it was too early for his lazy postman – he very rarely received his post before eleven, Conrad idly wondered what it could be. It was marked just ‘Conway’, no other postal markings and no stamp

Taking a large gulp of coffee, he strolled back to the kitchen. Eyeing the back of the sports page, he was pleased to see that his good friend Manny Ramirez had hit two home runs during the LA Dodgers’ decisive victory over the Arizona Diamondbacks last night, taking his season total to fourteen, and a staggering .396 average. He had missed the game last night as he’d had to attend a charity function and didn’t get in until just after midnight. He’d have to give Manny a call later on and congratulate him.

Sitting down at the breakfast table which was cluttered with the usual condiments and mess, an eye still half on the sports page, he tore open the envelope and pulled out the contents.

What the fuck was this? Conrad was open mouthed as he thumbed through five photographs of him leaving his secret place in Figueroa Street with a young prostitute in clear view. There was also a letter:

‘Good morning Senator, I trust you’re having an enjoyable morning? Or were? As you will see from the photographs, I understand you have been keeping pretty busy in the early hours of the morning. What would your wife say? What would the papers say? …. Should we find out? I think not. Well, not yet anyway. My silence has a price. $50,000, 11pm, three days time. I will contact you with more details soon, you just get the money! Keep up the good work! The Bully.’

Conrad re-read the letter a couple of times before slamming it down on the table, almost knocking over his coffee in the process. The Bully? The fucking Bully? Who the fuck was that? Well if he wanted to play, let’s play.

 Never averse to operating beneath the law when needed, Conway poured himself a second cup of coffee and sat motionless in his designer kitchen, which he didn’t much care for; his wife had insisted that they get one installed despite, in his opinion, there being nothing at all wrong with the one they already had. Still, it made his life more peaceful; his wife had been pre-occupied with colours, cabinets and tiles for weeks. As usual though, he had picked up the bill.

 His mind was racing at a thousand miles an hour as he silently began to plan how to catch this prick, and what he would do with him once he was caught.  After half an hour or so, the rest of the sports pages remaining unread, he headed back upstairs for a shower. He had the fragments of a plan now, one he was sure would work but he’d need to make a couple of calls later. Despite this, he knew that his first day off for over three weeks, and his last for another two, was already ruined. He just hoped his back nine didn’t suffer as a result.

13

            James Tetley knew one thing for sure; there was no way he was going to do any more time in prison again. He’d just served three years for armed robbery and what a hellacious three years they’d been. He knew how to look after himself, and had had to do so numerous times throughout his time there. His two hundred and fifty pound frame of solid muscle meant that although he was by no means the biggest or meanest cat in the yard, the majority of fellow inmates kept a suitable distance, and very rarely fucked with him.

            There had been one or two notable exceptions. A couple of members of the Aryan Brotherhood hadn’t taken too kindly to his refusal to join The Brand, and had spent the best part of six months taunting, beating on, and eventually, trying to shank him. He had been prepared for that though, and had formed a secret alliance with a couple of inmates who had taken care of business for him, on the understanding that when he was paroled, ten thousand dollars would be transferred to two accounts of their choosing. These guys were well connected, and well respected. Non-payment was not an option. Always one to think on his feet, Tetley had agreed to those conditions and would worry about the money at a later date. Now was that time.

            Having no particular place to go, he’d made the relatively short journey from Marin County to Los Angeles and had hooked up once again with his old buddy Jimmy Burke. They had taken several scores over the years and worked well together. Well, apart from the time he had been caught, resulting in his three year stretch, obviously. Burke had been with him on that one as well but had evaded capture and Tetley was never going to give his old friend up as an accomplice and had served his time in silence to the authorities, despite the numerous attempts to prize the information out of him.

            He had spent a couple of weeks now, here in LA, celebrating his newly-paroled freedom with Jimmy, as well as several buddies he hadn’t seen in, well three years or so. He’d gotten word a couple of days ago, that the two inmates he’d agreed to pay for that favour were eager to see deposits made, and Tetley knew he had less than a week to make good on his word.

            All of which, had led him here, not only with Jimmy Burke but also a driver, Phillip Moseley who he didn’t know but who came with Jimmy’s strong recommendation, and that was good enough for him. They were parked discretely outside the Pacific Union Bank, which had been open for business for around an hour. It wasn’t the busiest bank in LA, but that was perfect. As long as they took thirty thousand dollars, the even split would be enough for him to pay off Billy Graziadai and Evan Seinfeld, the two inmates to whom he owed the money. He turned to Jimmy. ‘We’re in, we’re out right? No fucking about. We grab thirty to forty grand and split. We don’t have the time to get greedy, right? Three minutes max.’

            ‘Just like old times my man, just like old times’, Jimmy grinned revealing his uneven teeth, stained yellow from years of nicotine abuse. He’d loved taking scores like this with Tetley and had been genuinely gutted when Tetley had been arrested but never in doubt that his accomplice wouldn’t shop him to the police.

            ‘Hey, Moseley’, Jimmy instructed, ‘Keep it running’. Seizing the opportunity of a deserted sidewalk, they pulled down their balaclavas, and cradling their Mossberg 500 pump action shotguns that Jimmy had managed to acquire, debunked from their getaway car and made haste into the unsuspecting Pacific Union Bank, whose unsuspecting staff were about to have their quiet, mundane working day turned upside down.

14

            Driving slowly down Sutherland Boulevard, it appeared to be like any other typical suburban residential area. Well maintained houses and gardens; just your typical house for your typical family.  Toys and bikes lay on several front lawns where children had presumably being playing last night, which indicated that this was a seemingly safe neighbourhood, where parents would happily let their children play, comfortable that their surroundings offered no threat. It didn’t seem quite like an environment where you would find a potential serial killer to me. A couple of sprinklers watered some of the lawns we drove past and there were a couple of neighbours painting a fence, chatting and laughing as they did so. There were hundreds of areas just like this all across the state. So what was so different about this one?

            We pulled up about a hundred or so yards from number twenty-two, not wanting to alert anyone to our presence. For a couple of moments the car was silent as we both pondered what lay ahead. Then my cell rang again.

            ‘Patton, its Captain Williams’, he sounded pretty annoyed. Then again, like the rest of us, he was perturbed by the futility of our current situation. ‘Well no surprises, number three makes it official. Quantico has dispatched an agent to assist us in our investigation’. He was right, this came as no surprise to me; the FBI were always going to have made their presence felt if this went the way it had gone. ‘They’re sending an Agent Baler’, he continued. ‘When he gets here, I’ll have him hook up with you in the field. By all accounts this guy is pretty shit hot, maybe he could help us figure this out’. That the FBI deemed it necessary to send us someone didn’t dent my professional pride. Any help, any different angle we could get on this, would be welcomed. All that mattered was stopping The Chemist, and quickly. It didn’t matter how.

            ‘I hear you Captain’, I replied. ‘We’ve just pulled into Sutherland now, no sign of anything out of the ordinary as yet’.

            ‘Be careful boys’, Williams for a moment sounded almost fatherly. That was a new one. ‘Proceed with extreme caution’, he paused momentarily, checking something. ‘Backup is one minute out, three cars’.

            ‘Make sure their sirens are off’, I cautioned. ‘If we weren’t meant to break the code this early, I don’t want anyone announcing our arrival to the whole neighbourhood. Tell them we’re going in with a standard four by two formation’

            ‘Understood Patton,’ Williams acknowledged. ‘Stay in touch’.

            Charlie was nodding, signifying I didn’t need to repeat any of the conversation I just had to keep him up to speed. ‘Good call with the sirens man’, he growled, ‘this bastard could be going down right here and now’, he didn’t sound convinced. ‘I do have one question though. If we’re not supposed to be here now, then all well and good; we’ll surprise the fuck out of whoever is in there’. He paused, almost as if he didn’t want to ask. ‘But what if we
are
supposed to be here now? What if we’re exactly where this freak wants us?’

            I stayed silent. That was a question for which I had no answer.

15

Last week

            Paul Britland-Jones watched undetected as Conrad Conway loaded his expensive golf clubs into the boot of his Aston Martin DB9 coupe, a car which cost more that he had made in the last tax year. Conway, face like thunder, looked annoyed and somewhat distant. He took that as a good sign, the Senator must have received his special delivery this morning. He was far enough away from Conway’s house that he would not be noticed, but close enough to see that from the Senator’s reaction, his letter had been read.