This Is Not a Game (20 page)

We should consider ourselves nudged. We should assume that the death of Austin Katanyan is a part of the game until proven otherwise.

But it was in the papers! The
real
papers! Great Big Idea can’t plant phony stories in the
L.A. Times
! Not stories that big, anyway.

If we solve all the puzzles like good little players, everything will be revealed.

So how are we going to find Litvinov? His rap sheet doesn’t list any known associates in Los Angeles.

Let’s not forget that the rap sheet lists a number of aliases. We should search for those as well.

Dagmar watched as the messages appeared on Our Reality Network, followed by concerted action as the available players located an online Los Angeles telephone directory, divided up the alphabet between themselves, and began to call motels.

Dagmar could only hope that Litvinov hadn’t googled his name and found this bulletin board, and wasn’t aware that his cover identity had been penetrated.

People in places like Dubai, the Low Countries, and Ceylon began calling motels in places like Culver City, San Gabriel, and Costa Mesa. Observing the process was fascinating, and Dagmar watched the messages pile up for the next forty-five minutes as more and more people got involved.

If Litvinov was staying at a hotel under any of his known aliases, he was dead meat.

Good,
she thought.

Her handheld played “Harlem Nocturne,” and the display showed Charlie’s name.

“Where are you? ” she answered.

For the second day in a row, Charlie hadn’t come into the office—and today Karin wasn’t in, either, so Dagmar hadn’t been able to ask anyone where Charlie had gone.

“Right now? ” Charlie said. “I’m at home.”

“You haven’t been in your office.”

“I’ve got stuff to do.”

Dagmar figured she wasn’t going to get any more out of him than that.

“I’ve been trying to reach you,” she said. “For starters, I had to have Great Big Idea swept for bugs.”

Somewhat to Dagmar’s surprise, there was a long, thoughtful silence on the other end.

“Probably a good idea,” Charlie said. “Did you sweep the rest of the building? ”

“I don’t think Joe Clever is
interested
in the rest of the building.”

“Joe
Clever?
” Charlie’s surprise was palpable.

Again there was an awkward silence.

“Charlie,” she said, “whose bugs did you
think
I was trying to sweep? ”

Charlie gave a nervous laugh.

“I got paranoid when you started talking about Austin being killed by the Russian Maffya,” he said. “I thought—I thought maybe Austin
did
step on them in some way.”

“My recollection,” Dagmar said, “is that you had pretty comprehensively dismissed that possibility.”

“Well,” Charlie said, “it’s still damned
unlikely.
”

Dagmar wished she could see him face-to-face. He was hiding something, and his expression might have told her what it was.

“Did you find out anything at the meeting?” Dagmar said. “When you met with Austin’s partners? ”

“No,” Charlie said. “No Maffya connections.”

“Are you sure? ”

“We didn’t talk about Austin’s projects in that kind of detail. We mainly talked about who we could get to take Austin’s place, and how we could manage the company until we got the replacement.”

“How’s that going? ”

“Karin and I are sitting in my living room cold-calling rich, busy, successful people. How do you
think
it’s going? ”

Dagmar laughed. “So that’s why you’re calling me. You figure I won’t hang up on you.”

“Partly to hear the friendly voice, yes. But I actually have business to discuss with you.”

“I’d better give you an update first.”

She told him about Joe Clever and his James Bond van, about how she’d nudged the players toward helping the police find Litvinov and how Lieutenant Murdoch had furnished the Ainars Vilumanis identity, which she’d then passed on to Joe Clever to post in his Consuelo guise.

She told him how she was planning on altering the structure to make Austin a character in the game. She’d tentatively decided that Austin the game character had been killed because he possessed a piece of information he didn’t know was important.

“Of course,” she added, “we can change that if we ever find out why he was really killed.”

“Sounds good, I guess.” Charlie paused. “I don’t know how I feel about using my friend’s murder as an element in an online game.”

“I know how
I
feel,” Dagmar said. “I feel like a complete shit.”

“Yeah,” Charlie said. “That’s how I feel, too.”

“But if it catches the guy . . .”

“Yeah. If.”

“If it weren’t for the game and Joe Clever, we wouldn’t have any idea who had killed Austin. We’d be completely in the dark.”

“To give the devil his due,” Charlie said.

“Set a devil to catch a devil,” Dagmar said. “That’s what we’re trying to do.”

Charlie’s voice turned weary.

“Well,” he said, “you did good.”

Something in Dagmar responded to the fatigue in his voice, and she felt her own exhaustion descend on her, weariness and sorrow that settled over her shoulders like a heavy cloak, its weight pinning her to her chair.

“Thanks,” she said.

“Listen,” Charlie said. “Why I called in the first place. The coroner is done with Austin, so his parents are flying in tomorrow to pick up the body. I’m going to be meeting them at their hotel. Do you want to be there? ”

She felt the sadness clawing at her vocal cords, turning them husky.

“Yes,” she said. “I suppose.”

“They’re going to bury Austin back in Bridgeport,” Charlie said. “I don’t know anyone there, and I’m swamped with work, so I’m not going to fly out there for the funeral. But do you think we should do something here? ”

“A memorial,” Dagmar said. “At Austin’s company, so it won’t be just the two of us and the Katanyans.”

“Good idea,” Charlie said. “I’ll call them and set it up.”

“Call everyone who knew him, whether they worked for the company or not.”

“It better be
you
who calls BJ,” Charlie said. “I’m pretty sure he wouldn’t take any calls from me.”

Surprise eddied through Dagmar’s veins. She hadn’t thought about inviting BJ at all.

Well, she thought, why not? BJ wasn’t on bad terms with Austin the way he was with Charlie.

“I’ll call him,” she said, and then couldn’t stop herself from adding another question. “You won’t mind if BJ’s there? ”

“I won’t
like
it,” Charlie said, “but I’ll remind myself that he’s poor and I’m not, and I’ll feel better.”

Dagmar hadn’t seen much of BJ since her return to California: she met him for lunch every three months or so, usually at an inexpensive diner so that BJ could afford to pay his half. He was very much the man she remembered: smart, quick, witty, easily distracted. She’d kept the conversation away from Charlie and AvN Soft, the company that BJ had cofounded and from which he’d been fired before it achieved success.

It was sad, that the man she remembered as being so brilliant had succeeded in nothing. She would have helped him if she could, but she couldn’t—there was no way Charlie would tolerate her hiring BJ for any of her projects.

His cell phone number was on her handheld and she dialed it. He answered on the third ring.

“Hi,” he said.

There were the sounds of clashing weapons and explosions in the background, electronic combat.

“BJ? ” she said. “Can you pause the game? ”

“No, I’m with a party and on real time. But go ahead and talk.”

His voice was fast and staccato, and Dagmar diagnosed too many cans of Red Bull.

“BJ,” said Dagmar, “did you hear that Austin was murdered? ”

For a long moment all she could hear were the sounds of combat, and she wondered if BJ had heard her. She was about to repeat herself when he spoke.

“No,” he said. “I hadn’t heard that. I guess I’ve been kind of busy.” His voice had slowed, as if shock had somehow knocked the Red Bull off-line.

“There’s going to be a memorial at Katanyan Associates in the next few days. Do you want to come? ”

“Yeah, but . . .” His voice faded away, and Dagmar heard a particularly violent explosion, followed by a series of gonging sounds. Then the voice came back.

“What happened to Austin? Who killed him? ”

Annoyance at BJ crackled through Dagmar. What did he think he was doing, continuing his game play in the face of this kind of news? She let the annoyance show in her voice.

“It’s too complicated to explain with you distracted,” she said.

“Okay. Sorry. This is how I make my living now, okay? ”

“Right.”

“I’ll call you tonight, okay? ”

“Fine.”

A tone of mischief entered his voice. “Is Charlie coming to the memorial? ”

“He’s organizing it.”

“Maybe I’ll mad-dog him from across the room.”

“No”—sternly—“you won’t.”

“Okay,” he said. “Only if I catch him alone.”

She stabbed the Stop button and cut off the call. It was only then that her phone chimed to tell her that she had voice mail. Her nerves gave a jolt as she recognized Joe Clever’s voice.

“Dagmar,” he said, “I found Litvinov! He’s in room three twenty-two of the Seahorse Hotel in Santa Monica, registered under the Vilumanis name. I wanted to make sure that it was the right guy, so I got a pizza and went to the door and pretended I was delivering to the wrong room. It was him all right!”

Dagmar stared at the office window, the twilight outside.

“I don’t know what to do now,” Joe Clever went on. “Do I call the police or what?

“He was pretty good,” he added. “He stayed in character the whole time.”

Dagmar had reached for a pen and jotted down the relevant information. It took her a few frantic moments to locate Lieutenant Murdoch’s card, and then when she called, he wasn’t in. She persuaded whoever had answered that it was an emergency, and he told her to hang up and expect a return call from Murdoch.

The call came in two minutes. But by the time the police burst into Litvinov’s room, the assassin was gone.

 

No, it wasn’t that I alarmed him with the pizza trick. I thought that
went real smooth. I think the police must have made a mistake setting
up their raid.

 

The Seahorse is a big hotel and I couldn’t watch every exit, so I kept the
front office under surveillance in case Litvinov checked out, but he must
have gone out the back way. His transportation must have been back
there, too, because the police didn’t find his bike or a car or anything.

 

What do I do now? Keep checking hotels and stuff?

 

 

Keep checking hotels and stuff.

 

Don’t contact him this time. Once is intelligible; twice begins to look
like carelessness.

 

It was hard dealing with Austin’s parents. The mother was prone to silent weeping, and the father was angry. He insisted on going straight to the coroner’s office to make certain that they hadn’t made some kind of mistake. Charlie drove the minivan he’d rented for them, and Dagmar sat in the back with Austin’s mother.

She knew that Austin’s parents had met over gaming, playing
D&D
back in the seventies. She tried to find the college-aged gamers in them and failed.

She couldn’t bring herself to see Austin’s body. When the father emerged after the viewing, he was pale but angrier than ever. He complained over the forms necessary to ship Austin’s body home to Connecticut and then demanded to meet Lieutenant Murdoch.

Murdoch worked out of the North Hollywood Station, which rather implausibly shared its building with the Studio City Chamber of Commerce. Murdoch had met a lot of grieving parents, fortunately, and met Austin’s father with a bland, helpful demeanor that helped to redirect his anger. He explained that Litvinov would certainly be caught sooner or later, probably when he tried to leave the country, and that a police raid had missed him only by a few minutes the day before, in Santa Monica.

Murdoch tactfully refrained from telling Austin’s parents that the raid had been spoiled when Litvinov was spooked by the appearance on his doorstep of a wild-haired amateur detective claiming to be a pizza delivery man.

Dagmar watched the detectives in their squad room, knowing this would end up in a piece of fiction one day. She noted the metal desks in cubicles, the glowing computers, the pictures of family on the desks, the soft-spoken detectives who contrasted with the wild variety of other people in the room—the slumped or frantic victims, the defiant suspects, the transvestite with the calico dress and the heavy five o’clock shadow, and others too drunk or stoned to do more than sit and stare dully at their surroundings.

Everyone seemed right out of central casting. All that was needed were three sassy hookers.

Lots of guns, she noted. She didn’t know if that made her feel safe or not.

By the time Charlie returned Austin’s parents to their hotel on Cienega, they were clearly exhausted.

“I’ll let you rest,” Charlie said, “and then I’ll take you to Katanyan Associates tomorrow morning.”

Charlie and Dagmar left the room, and Charlie turned to Dagmar. “Can we talk? ”