Sean sighed as the ghost castled. “You always castle at this point. How many times do I have to tell you it’s the worst possible move you could make?”
“And what would you suggest?” the ghost asked. “A King’s Gambit?” “That’s an opening. You gave up that chance with your first move.” “And what about the chance you’re giving up?”
“What’s that supposed to mean?”
The ghost snorted, sending a fresh trickle of blood down his lip. “It means that I may have a weakness for castling, but you’re at least as bad about gambits.” he said. “Not that I don’t see the appeal. Sacrifice always plays better than prudence. Nobler, and all that. But there’s a very fine line between self-sacrifice and self-annihilation. I only hope you see the difference before it’s too late.”
Sean moved a knight. “Not only don’t I see the difference, I don’t see any gambits here. All I see is mate in seven moves.”
“I’m not talking about the chessboard, and you know it,” the ghost said, taking Sean’s knight with a bishop. “I’m talking about all that ‘stay away from me, I’m a monster’ crap. Keep it up, especially with your knack for dramatic demonstrations, and sooner or later, the woman’s going to get sick of it and just go ahead and take your advice.”
“Then I hope for her sake that it’s sooner. And that’s a lousy move.”
“I’m not here to win a chess game. I’m here to talk to you.”
“Kind of late in our relationship for a father-son chat.”
“Indulge me,” the ghost said. “I never got a chance the first time around.” Sean shrugged. “I suppose it beats watching you making a hash out of this game.” He concentrated on a few lightning-quick moves, then asked, “So where do you want to start? When a man loves a woman very much—”
“It’s easier to chase her away than admit how scared you are of being hurt,” the ghost finished the sentence for him.
Sean snorted and made a final move. “I don’t feel things, remember? High-functioning sociopath and, by the way, checkmate.”
The ghost just laughed. They could have been just another father and son spending time over a chessboard in a park on a beautiful day—if not for the fact that one of them was a shimmering, translucent figure with a bloody nose. And the other was seemingly talking to himself. Sean glanced over at the knot of lunchtime players who were usually willing to put up ten bucks to play against him. Not one of them would meet his eyes.
“No offense,” he said to his father, “but you’re not real good for customers. So, now that you’ve had your chance, would you mind moving along and making room for someone else? I’ve got a living to earn here.”
“Unfortunately,” the ghost said, “I’m afraid your regular opponents are going to have to wait a little longer.”
“Why is that? You haunt by the hour?”
“There’s someone else who wants a word with you.”
Something in the ghost’s voice made Sean glance up sharply from where he had been setting the chess pieces back into their original ranks. “And who exactly is that?”
“Me.”
An old man in a guayabera shirt and a porkpie hat slid into place across the chessboard from Sean. An old man that Sean was fairly sure had died years ago. Once upon a time, he had been a guy that everyone in the neighborhood knew, even though no one knew his name or where he lived. Everyone just called him Papi, and he always seemed to be sitting outside the run-down botanica playing dominos on an upturned crate. Some said he was a shaman, a holy man. Some said he was drug kingpin in hiding. Others said he was an assassin for the cartels. Whoever he was, no one questioned him, even when he had beckoned over a thin boy named Michael Grinnell and set aside his dominoes for a chessboard.
“You have got to be kidding,” Sean sighed.
The old man’s only answer was to advance his King’s pawn.
“This isn’t real,” Sean said. “None of it.”
But his hands moved of their own accord, advancing his pawn in response. Another pawn, then a knight, and already Sean—or maybe he was really the boy Michael now—knew he was destined to lose. For the old man’s style was like no one Sean had ever played—cagey, twisty, not a single move really what it seemed. Sean was nothing but a pawn himself, as the old man drove him down a series of fiendish forks that transformed the board into a maze—a tortuous path that took you around a blind corner and straight into defeat when you least expected it. The only reason Sean even managed to hold on for as long as he did was because the old man was letting him. Testing him. Drawing out the match to see every last weapon in Sean’s arsenal, before he reached across the board, tipped over Sean’s king, and said, “Once upon a time, I found you for your father.”
Something cold knotted in the pit of Sean’s stomach—something that might have been the whisper of an unwanted memory—and he tried to ignore it by setting up another game. “Found me where?”
But Sean already knew the answer, as surely as if the game they had just played had been a physical thing—a labyrinth of chess positions that all went nowhere except to curve back on themselves, trapping Sean in their center.
“I found you,” the old man said, “in between. And I led you out of there. I showed you the way.”
The chill in Sean’s gut was getting worse, the memory rising. “Truth be told, I don’t remember much about that part of my life,” Sean lied.
“But you remember me.”
No. What Sean remembered was something vast and ominous, his face so terrible it must stay hidden beneath the porkpie hat. Something that made him keep his eyes focused on the chess pieces for fear that if he looked up right now, he would see it sitting across the chessboard from him, meet its eyes and die.
“Maybe.”
“Don’t trifle with me! You know who I am. I am the stranger you meet at the crossroads. I am the one you ask for directions. I am the one who showed you the way. I am the one who gave you the map.”
“What map?” Sean asked, looking up despite himself.
He saw nothing but an old man in a guayabera, who asked, “Do you know the Immortal Game?” His gnarled fingers moved for the pieces once more. “The greatest chess game ever played.”
Of course Sean knew the Immortal Game. There wasn’t a chess master alive who didn’t. Adolf Anderssen and Lionel Kieseritsky on June 21, 1851. But that was adult Sean remembering. The boy Michael remembered the Immortal Game in an entirely different way, as a path that simply appeared one day among the labyrinth of chess games that trapped him, leading him from darkness into light. Leading him home. The boy Michael had followed the shining path—so straight, clear, and pure. No forks, no twists and turns, just the most cunning series of gambits ever played, a seeming fool’s errand that suddenly snapped back on the hapless King, who capitulated in an explosion of light and sound.
And Sean was sitting at a chess table in a park, blinking at an old man in a guayabera who couldn’t possibly be real.
“So, now the time has come to pay the piper?” Sean asked. “Rumplestiltskin without the cute dwarf?”
“I know no Rumplestiltskin. I know I need your help. Just as I helped you all that time ago.”
Sean’s mouth twisted. “Let me guess. You want me to lead Jonas Croswell and the rest of the lost boys back from Neverland?”
The old man’s face darkened. “The spoiled white boy is not my concern,” he said. “It is my sons, my lost boys, you need to save.”
And as Sean just stared at him, at a loss for words for arguably the first time since he had been ... found, the old man vanished, and it was Sean’s father who once again sat opposite him at the chess table. “God in heaven,” Sean said. “What in hell have you done?”
“Whatever I had to in order to ransom you. And that is a decision I have never regretted in my life.”
“Seriously?” Sean asked. “You expect me to believe you made a bargain for my life and saddled me with some immortal debt to a rogue orisha who just happened to have a hunch that he would need me to save his sons, a bunch of hoodlums, sometime in the future when he was presumably dead or called to another dimension or otherwise too disembodied to help them?”
“As one does,” the ghost said, “when one loves one’s son.”
Sean stared at his father for a long time before he shook his head. “This isn’t real,” he said. “Some kind of post-traumatic stress over your death. A hallucination.”
The ghost smiled. “It’s possible, of course. But as highly as I have always valued your intelligence, I honestly never would have credited you with that kind of imagination.”
Of course it was Sean’s imagination. Forget ghosts, forget rogue orishas— go ahead and even forget that the encounter had cost Sean pretty much a day’s income. The whole fiasco had been nothing but a needlessly showy NOTE TO SELF that there was a folder wedged in the bottom of Sean’s fiddle case that urgently needed attention. A bulging folder he had come across as he had paged through his own records late last night, as others might page through an old family photo album—or he supposed, scroll through cell phone photos of their exes—when neither music, nor chess, nor whiskey had been enough to lull him to sleep. As if conjuring the entire Santeria pantheon would have done anything to hide the fact that what was keeping him up at night had nothing to do with any Faustian bargains that his father might have made, or even the enormity of the truth those papers suggested about him. The only truth Sean cared about had long, red hair and a taste for medieval saints’ causes. And the only enormity he cared about was what she might feel if she ever found out what those papers implied about him.
He supposed it was some kind of mid-life crisis. He was what? Thirty-six? Thirty nine? He’d given up on counting birthdays a while ago. But even if you counted him an old soul, it still struck him that he was kind of young for all that. Much more likely that this all stemmed from his father’s death. Unfinished business, as the ghost himself kept repeating. How much more of a clue did Sean really need?
Well, if that were the case, at least he was handing out pretty specific instructions. So what was Sean waiting for? A chess game he could win? With an angry shake of his head, Sean hurried out of the park, his fiddle case bouncing across his shoulder, as he struck out for Riverdale—All Saints’ side of the Bronx—where diplomats lived in gated communities and teams still played cricket in pressed whites in Van Cortlandt Park. Time to test the old saw that you couldn’t go home again.
He loped along the shady streets as unerringly as if he had never left them, until he reached the river and a waterfront compound that crouched behind a sign that read “Yacht Club. Private.” He ignored the sign, heading straight in through the front gate like he had been a member for years— which, for all he knew, he had been.
Trey was sharing a bottle of wine with an intern on the deck that overlooked the marina, one hand working his way up the girl’s thigh beneath the tablecloth. And ‘girl’ was the only word you could use. Sean wondered if it was a flash of pity he felt for his sister at the sight. Wondered how it could be when he hadn’t so much as seen Marie in years. But how else could you explain how hard it was to keep his voice calm and detached as he said, “Afternoon, Trey. Mind of we take this some place private?”
“Now is not the best time,” Trey said, ignoring him as if he were nothing more than an annoying waiter. He squeezed the girl’s thigh. “If you know what I mean.”
“What I know,” Sean said, “is that if you think my sister is capable of making a scene over something like this, you haven’t met me. So here we go. Hello, Trey, I’m Marie’s bro—”
Chairs scraped backward, Trey snarled something, and the girl fled. Moments later, the two of them were striding down to the boat dock, where Trey turned to face him.
“What are you doing here?” Trey asked. “Are you seriously proposing to stake your claim as Mi—”
“Actually, I go by Sean these days,” the fiddler told him. “But as for the rest, yes. That’s the gist of it. Sorry to miss the wedding. My invitation seems to have been misplaced.”
“Sean, then. Makes things easier, I admit. So, Sean, why are you here? Some kind of penance? Making amends?”
“Does this look like a church basement?” Sean snorted. “A twelve-step program? I told you my name was Sean. I didn’t ask you for a cup of coffee and a cigarette.”
“Money, then?”
“Are you offering?” Sean cocked his head at Trey. “How much? What would you give me to just go away and never come back? Ten million sound like a good place to start?”
“You’re selling yourself cheap. Grinnell is worth a hundred times that. Literally.”
“Yeah, but at heart I’m a lazy bastard. Hell of a lot of work managing a Fortune 500 company—especially one that’s going to be facing a pretty nasty class action suit. Why should I pull your fat out of the fire, when I can make myself comfortable instead? Especially when there might not be any money left for that after you finally crawl out of court.”
“In other words, you’re threatening to come back and sue for your share of the estate if I don’t pay you off now?”
“Aw, hell, no. I told you. I’m a lazy bastard. Certainly far too lazy for that.”
Trey shut his eyes in disgust. “Look, I’m a busy man, Sean. Got a lady waiting for me, in case you didn’t notice. So what do you say we quit this fencing, and you come out and tell me what you want?”
“I’m here on behalf of a third party.”
“Your sister get in touch with you?” Trey asked, frowning.
“Not so much as a Christmas card,” Sean said. He paused a moment before dropping his bombshell—nothing but a cheap effect, really, but he was surprised how badly this asshole pissed him off. “I’m here about the gang of drug dealers you’ve been using the Outreach Center to entrap.”
Trey’s jaw dropped—literally. As in gaping. It made him look like a carp suffering a thrombosis. And once again Sean felt an unfamiliar surge of pity for his sister. “Why should you care about them?”
“I don’t care about anyone. High functioning sociopath and all that, remember?”
“Then why do you think I’m going to give them money?”
“Because if you don’t, I’m going to start by suggesting the police check the age of that young lady you were just drinking with,” Sean said. “After that, I’ll move on to the serious stuff. Like the other records I found hidden with my own files.”
Another taste of the hypertensive fish. And then Trey’s face settled into lines Sean was much more familiar with: those of a man racing to calculate his options. “You mean the files you stole.”
“I’m not going to quibble about semantics. Because even Father Gregory isn’t going to care how I got those papers once I tell him what I found in there.” Sean shook his head. “Christ, Trey, how stupid can you be? You didn’t just leave a smoking gun. You left an entire road map of exactly how you have been entrapping the Lazaritos for nearly a year.”
“So this is blackmail.”
“I’m not interested in money.”
“Then what are you interested in? And please don’t try to convince me you’re genuinely concerned about those thugs.”
Well, maybe Sean wasn’t, but someone else on the power grid sure seemed to be. But what did he care about what Trey thought was going on, so long as the asshole did what he wanted.
“Might be more accurate to say I’m concerned about fair play. I’m a chess master, remember? Stickler for the rules. Positively hate it when people cheat. Unfortunately for you, the way I see it, what you’re doing to those kids is nothing short of cheating. And, frankly, Trey, that just burns my ass.”
Trey just stared at him. “You’re not what I expected,” he finally said.
“You are exactly what I expected,” Sean said. “Which is why I’m fairly certain you’re not going to do the smart thing and take my offer, even though it’s clearly in your best interest.”
“The smart man doesn’t give into blackmail.”
“But a smart chess player does know when he’s being offered a fork. That means a forced choice, if you’re not up on your chess terms. It also means that a smart man takes the lesser of two evils when it’s clearly presented.”
“And what exactly do you think the greater evil is?”
“Well, I’d toyed with the idea of handing those papers over to Sister St. John. But even I’m not that sadistic. Instead, I think I’ll give them to those kids. And suggest they find themselves one hell of a good lawyer. When all the dust settles, they should be able to afford it.”
A thunderous pause. Trey pushed his jacket back and put his hands on his waist as if ready for a shoot-out at the OK Corral. He looked Sean up and down slowly, clearly not happy with the view. “You’d honestly put the nuclear football in the hands of those lowlifes?”
“Don’t see how the world is any better off with you having it,” Sean said.
Trey fell silent, nodding slowly. It was hard to read the expression on his face. It might have been appalled. It might have been admiring. It seemed to land somewhere smack between the two. “They always said you were a ruthless bastard.”
“I prefer the term ‘focused.’ I think the religious types call it ‘purpose-driven’.” Sean said. “Born without a moral compass. Even you would be surprised how liberating it can prove.”
He turned to go, but Trey stopped him. “Then why not take the money for yourself? We can come to an arrangement. I’m a reasonable man.”
“I told you. I’m not interested in money.”
“So it would seem,” Trey said with an expressive glance at Sean’s threadbare coat. “But you’re not going to convince me you give a shit about those punks either. So what is this really about?”
Who in the hell knew? Rogue orishas? Red hair bouncing in the sunlight? Or was Sean simply losing his mind?
“Trust me, you wouldn’t believe me if told you.”
Something in Sean’s voice must have given him away, because Trey glanced at him sharply, and then his lip curled in disgust. “Oh, God. It’s the woman, isn’t it? Clare Malley?”
Sean shrugged. “If that’s how you need to think about it, why not?”
“Then why don’t you want the money? Hey, I’d be the first to say, ten million looks good on a man.”
Sean’s hand snaked out and grabbed Trey’s wrist so fast he was shocked— no, he was horrified. He hadn’t done something like that in years, and the stench of the human cesspool that was Trey Carey was overwhelming. Sins and cheats, both venial and mortal, pressed in from every side, from the laxatives Trey had laced a track rival’s water with in seventh grade to an intern that had not only been stupid enough to get herself pregnant, but had been even stupider to believe she could force a rising star in the prosecutor’s office to marry her.
“I will cut you slack this time,” Sean said, struggling to keep his voice level. Indifferent. Informative. “Because if you really had done your homework about me, you never would have said something as painfully stupid as you just did. But if you ever talk about Clare Malley that way again, I will chew you up and spit you out as fodder for every tabloid out there. Starting with the intern named Daisy—if you even bothered to ask her name.”
And then Sean had to let go. Needed to let go, before twenty years of carefully cultivated oblivion was destroyed by a single thoughtless surge of anger.
“You have no idea who you’re dealing with here,” Trey hissed, massaging his wrist.
“Unfortunately, I have far too good an idea,” Sean said, still fighting to keep his voice neutral. Disinterested. In control. “So consider this your fair warning. If you’re smart, you’ll do what I ask and be my next meal ticket. If you’re stupid—which, just for the record, I’m pretty sure you are—you’ll be my next meal. So all I can really do is warn you that I’ve got one hell of a nasty reputation for playing with my food.