The Tournament Trilogy Read online

  His company thought nothing of it, but peppered about the bar several sets of eyes discreetly followed him, slowly peering over their shoulders or over the rims of their glasses. As Auldborne stepped out through the door these eyes looked at one another, and then one of their number, a nondescript male, perhaps thirty, stood up and walked out half of a minute later, following.

  Outside, Auldborne looked about for a moment before spotting Pinkton walking over to a black BMW. It looked to be illegally parked in a back-alley about a block away from the dark-bricked rear wall of The Meridian. He was fishing about in his pockets for his keys as he walked, in no particular hurry.

  “It’s just you then, isn’t it, holding this over my mother. I thought and I thought about who it could possibly be, but I must admit I had quite given it up,” Auldborne said in his detached way of thinking aloud. Pinkton stopped, looked over his shoulder for a moment, and then spun around. He squinted his eyes in the dark. Auldborne kept walking until they were within arm’s reach of each other.

  “You really are an idiot,” Pinkton said, leaning in to jab his point home on Auldborne’s chest, but he never got the chance. Auldborne shot out both of his hands, dug them into the fleshy hollows on either side of Pinkton’s neck just behind his collarbone, and with one forward tug snapped them both. It was a single, fluid motion, like a bird plunging its beak into the soft earth after spying movement. The cracking sounded wet and hollow. Pinkton collapsed and let out a scream that was quickly cut off as Auldborne slammed his hand over Pinkton’s mouth.

  “If you make another sound I’ll break your neck,” Auldborne said, as if murmuring to a friend over dinner at a quiet restaurant. There was no anger in his voice and his face was a sculpted calm, but Pinkton looked up into Auldborne’s eyes and saw within their flecked depths a terrible malice. They were now the gray of milling sharks glimpsed briefly through the light-filtered waters of a rolling wave.

  “Thank you for your part in this messy business. It saved me a good deal of trouble. Now. You are done with my mother. If you ever talk to her again I will kill you. Accounts are settled. Do you understand me? I will kill you.”

  Auldborne’s hand still clamped over the lower half of his pale green face, and streaming silent tears, Pinkton nodded. Auldborne slowly took his hand away. Pinkton didn’t scream, he only muttered softly to himself and twitched weakly about on the ground.

  Auldborne stood and wiped his palm off on his leg. When he turned around he saw a man watching him, just one, in a dark shirt and dark slacks, perhaps thirty years old, hands in his pockets. Tucked nonchalantly under his right arm was a file folder.

  For a moment the two looked at each other. Auldborne watched the man as if wholly unaware of the danger of his current circumstance, having just assaulted a man in a dark alley. Neither did this stranger show any emotion. Both seemed detached from the dark world about them.

  After a moment the man slowly approached Auldborne, his patent leather shoes clicking on the sidewalk, one foot after the other. He stopped in front of Auldborne and looked distastefully down at Pinkton whimpering in the fetal position, his hands hovering over his disfigured, purpled collar bone as if afraid of what they might touch.

  The man removed one hand from his pocket and grabbed the folder with it, glanced at it perfunctorily, and handed it out to Auldborne who took it without speaking. The folder was gunmetal gray in color; its sheen reflected the harsh orange of the utility lights about the alley. The cover was adorned with a single, stylized letter T.

  “Read what you find in there,” the man said, in a slightly nasal Birmingham drawl. “If you’re interested, let us know. We’ll contact you in two days.”

  Auldborne looked silently from the folder to the man, down to Pinkton, and back to the folder.

  “You had better get back inside. Your alibi will only hold for so long. We’ll take care of... this,” he said, gesturing dismissively towards Pinkton, who had finally slipped into unconsciousness.

  Auldborne looked at the man for a moment more, lightly rubbed his chin, and set off towards the club again. He didn’t look back, but clutched the folder tightly in one hand. He was already having difficulty recalling the man’s face. Perhaps his mind, surging with adrenaline, had chosen not to remember it, or perhaps he had never even really seen it in the first place. The folder was very heavy and, without really knowing why, he decided to hide the symbol on its cover. But as he strolled through the doorway once again, he was sure that somehow he had shattered the status quo that was threatening on the horizon, perhaps forever.

  Later, alone in his loft, Alex read through the folder, and would have perhaps thought its contents to be a joke were it not for the way the faceless stranger had handled the situation in the alley, and for the fact that in subsequent days his mother’s problem vanished. Not only did Pinkton drop the issue, but he left the court system of England and Wales altogether.

  Madeleine never spoke to her son about this sudden turn in events, nor did he tell her what had happened. She kept waiting for the other shoe to drop, but it never did, and if she thought he had anything to do with the way things had turned out, she never let on. After a time she started to breathe easier, but she wasn’t exactly sure she liked what she occasionally saw in her son’s eyes as they sat across from each other on their once-a-week lunch dates, casually conversing. They were dancing, almost shimmering with what she could only describe as happiness.

  Madeleine could not possibly know the path that the faceless stranger and his folder had set her son upon. She could not possibly know that two days after that night at The Meridian Auldborne was visited by a woman he had never seen before. Madeleine couldn’t fathom the ramifications of the promise Auldborne would make to this woman.

  He was walking from the Temple stop back to his loft when she appeared beside him, matching his pace. She was small, smartly dressed in a dark linen pantsuit that flowed about her as she moved. She was, at most, five years older than Auldborne. As they talked, she looked over at him congenially, like they were old friends. She seemed excited, but was trying to conceal it and only partially succeeding.

  “Alex Auldborne?”

  He looked over at her and then forward again, still walking.

  “What’s your verdict?”

  He stopped and then she stopped a step after. She slid back in next to him.

  “I’m only going to ask this once, and then never again,” he said. “I want you to look at me.”

  She looked up at him.

  “Is this real?”

  “Absolutely.” She seemed to know that how she answered the question was just as important as what the answer was. “Far more real that you can even guess. Soon, if you agree to lead us, you’ll come to see what I mean.”

  Auldborne looked down at her for a moment, and then across the way, at all the bustling activity of Leicester square, the shops, the cars, the bars, the buskers working the crowds, the London that he knew.

  “Yes.”

  The woman seemed prepared for this, and smiled only slightly. She reached in the pocket of her three-quarter length coat and pulled out a small pager with a pink screen.

  “Then you’ll be needing this,” she said, as she handed it to Auldborne, “Keep it on you always.”

  She straightened herself and exhaled a clipped breath.

  “Now then,” she said, “let’s take you to meet your team.”

  Around a small circular table, at the very restaurant where he met his mother on a weekly basis, sat two others. They eyed him warily as he approached. Neither stood.

  To Auldborne’s immediate left sat a young woman with cold, black eyes and a small, perfectly proportioned face, smooth and doll-like, but not a child’s doll. She reminded Auldborne of the kind of doll that, beautifully poised, watches from a shelf on high, gaining in value while everything around it ages and goes to sod. This was Christina Stoke. She had the position of sweeper on what would become Auldborne’s team.

  An
d to his right sat the very same young man that had been the first person on earth to speak frankly to Auldborne, over the phone, all those years ago:

  “You and Aie? We fuckin’ done,” he had said.

  Except that they weren’t.

  This man, who was positioned as Auldborne’s striker, was a second generation Jamaican citizen of Great Britain. His hair was set in an explosive motley of ponytailed dreadlocks that geysered off of the back of his head. His name was Draden Tate and he was built like a brick wall.

  Auldborne immediately recognized Draden when the woman introduced them. Auldborne walked right over to him and shook his hand.

  “It’s wonderful to be back in business with you, I have only myself to blame for our earlier... falling out,” he said, smiling. Draden eyed him for a moment, and then let out a deep, roaring laugh that bared all of his pearl white teeth.

  ————

  Alex Auldborne was contemplating the London that he’d left behind, even as he still lived within it, when the pager he’d been given on that day five years ago flashed and buzzed for only the fifth time since he’d owned it. Auldborne felt its movement upon his chest inside the breast pocket of his jacket and let it be for a moment. Then he withdrew it. On its normally blank screen a countdown appeared, already ticking down.

  Auldborne allowed himself a slight smile. The time had come once again, as he knew it would. Things had ended badly for him in the last cycle. That they’d lost in the second round didn’t bother him nearly as much as to whom they had lost, and how.

  When he saw the Americans of Team Blue this time around, as he knew he would sooner or later, he’d make very sure that they paid dearly. Their captain he would personally break. He made a vow to himself that Grey would shatter Blue once and for all, no matter what.

  Chapter Four

  AT LAX FRANK RENTED a white two-seater and drove north on I-5, windows down. He had been to California only once before, when one of the Youngsmith Family Reunions happened to be in Anaheim. He was young at the time, and had forgotten most of it. This was his first real voyage to the west coast as a man, and he was determined to enjoy it, despite the circumstances.

  As the blacktop flew under him, Frank went over what he was to say. Pickett had made it clear that he wasn’t to appear confrontational, but he was to look like he had the power to bring BlueHorse Holdings to task if he had to. Insurance fraud was prosecuted by the Attorney General of individual states. Barringer could only make a case for their interests, but one of the finer points of Frank’s occupation was looking as if he had the power of authority behind him when in fact he didn’t. In reality, all he had behind him was his fat little boss.

  He reached Glendale in the early afternoon. From there he got horribly lost twice, even with the help of a laminated map he’d purchased at a gas station. His mind wandered and he forgot himself entirely when stuck in traffic for extended periods of time, and he wasn’t quite confident enough to make the required quick merges and exits. By the time he actually found BlueHorse it was just past four, and naturally he was unprepared for what he saw.

  It was massive. The lot itself encompassed several acres in the far north of the city. It had numerous corporate looking roundabouts with decorative cactus displays in their centers, out of which sprouted neatly printed directional signs. Frank saw brass statues of corporate art peppered about, including one of the California state bear looking bored and radiating heat. He saw a bird alight upon it and then take off again just as fast.

  Frank looped absurdly about as he followed the arrowed signs marked Visitor’s Entrance. The brass statues began to look the same, and he was increasingly worried that everything would be closed if he ever made it inside. Thankfully, there were still a few cars parked in the visitor’s lot as Frank pulled up. He got out, stretched, and made his way inside.

  The front lobby was a dry, air-conditioned cool. Several chairs were aligned along one wall, a few occupied by tired individuals who flipped idly through out-of-date magazines. Opposite the entrance a prim young woman sat behind a standalone mahogany desk in front of closed double doors. She was talking softly on the phone and writing something on a pad in front of her. She looked up at Frank as he entered and smiled absently. When he made no move towards her, she went back to her writing.

  The room was quiet to begin with, but just as the secretary hung up the phone the air conditioner also shut off and the silence became a heavy, palpable thing. One young man waiting against the wall even looked up, as if the disturbance had been the result of added activity and not retracted. Suddenly, Frank wanted very badly to move off to one corner of the room. He reminded himself that he knew none of these people, and that he would likely never see any of them again, and so he forced his way up to the front desk.

  To Frank’s immediate left a lean, slightly constipated looking fellow dressed in immaculate and shiny tracksuit pants was pulling letters from a single strap tote bag slung around his back and placing them in a series of locked mailboxes set in the wall. As Frank approached, he was dimly aware of the mailman watching him with undue interest.

  “Can I help you?” the secretary asked.

  Perhaps it was a combination of her small stature and the massive mahogany desk, but suddenly the woman seemed very far away and the doors even farther. For a moment the scene reminded him of talking to Pickett back at Barringer, but he quickly forced that disconcerting thought out of his mind. He had to look legitimate here, confident.

  “I hope so,” he said, clearing his throat. “I’m with the criminal investigations unit of Barringer Insurance,” Frank said, standing straight. The woman politely wrinkled her forehead.

  “I’m here to undertake a formal inquiry into a claim filed by an employee of yours, recently deceased. A man named William Lee Beauchamp.”

  At this Frank thought that the mailman might have frozen briefly in his deliveries, but when he looked over the man had continued about his business, although his unlocking and dropping movements seemed far too deliberate. After each delivery he would re-lock the box and check that it was thoroughly sealed, as if he was waiting, drawing it out. Frank frowned.

  The woman finished her searching and looked at the screen for a prolonged moment before turning back to Frank.

  “We don’t have any record of a William Beauchamp in our system, sir,” she said, but she seemed to focus on the top button of Frank’s shirt. Frank watched her for a moment. She itched under her nose and seemed, unbelievably, to glance at the mailman of all people for reassurance.

  “Ma’am, with all due respect, I have a copy of his policy, signed by this company. So let’s not make a big deal out of this, shall we? It’s very hot and we’re all tired.”

  “What are you, a policeman?”

  This from the mailman. Frank spun around. The man seemed to be standing slightly on his toes, his legs pressed tightly together and his fists in little balls at his hips. Frank almost laughed until he realized that his own fists were also in little balls at his own hips. He sighed instead.

  “No. I’m an insurance agent, actually.”

  “Well then we’re under no obligation to tell you anything.”

  With visible effort, Frank eased the tension in his body. His characteristic slump returned. He rubbed the back of his damp neck as he shuffled towards a seat against the wall. He sat heavily. The entire room was still watching him.

  “You’re right. I’m just an insurance guy. But I’m kind of at the end of my rope here, and I’ve got a boss who’s...” Frank shook his head. “Look. I’ve been doing this for way too long, long enough to know a red flag when I see one. Something is not right here, and I’m about to throw the whole file at the Attorney General and say to hell with it and let them sort it out. Then it turns into a mess. Especially if the case crosses state lines and the FBI throws their hat into the ring. A mess for everyone involved. If you’ve got nothing to hide here, then you need to work with me, or we’re all screwed.”

  Fr
ank deflated in his chair as if his very words were all the substance he had within him. The secretary still looked to be deferring to the mailman. The air conditioning kicked on with an exaggerated click and whoosh. Allen Lockton looked down at the rumpled and scruffy figure Frank cut with both pity and disgust. His use of the collective “we” concerned the courier. Allen Lockton never wanted to stand any chance of being thrown in with the same lot as the wilted individual slumped in front of him. The man looked desperate. The Tournament would do well to steer clear of desperate men.

  “Deborah,” he said, addressing the secretary behind the desk. “Did you cross reference the name Bill? I don’t think he ever went by William Beauchamp. Just Bill.”

  The assistant took the hint. She tapped on her keyboard a few moments more. Frank glanced up.

  “Ah,” she said as the courier moved behind her to check the screen himself. “Yes. Bill Beauchamp. Here he is.”

  “But Hank...” the courier began.

  “Frank.”

  “Yes, Frank, our records do nothing but coincide with yours. It shows he is recently deceased and claiming full benefits. I’m not sure what more we can do for you,” the courier said with a pronounced clearing of his throat. He looked blatantly from Frank to the door behind Frank.

  “Well, there is one way to clear this all up once and for all,” Frank said, heaving himself to his feet once more. “Answer me this. Was Bill Beauchamp’s policy an abnormality?”

  “How’s that?”

  “Did Bill work in a team?”

  “I’m not sure I’m at liberty to...”

  Frank closed his eyes. All of this was giving him a headache, and it certainly wasn’t helping BlueHorse Holding’s case. Why couldn’t these people see that they were all the same? Frank was a pencil-pusher and paper-shifter just as surely as they were. This anal-retentive mailman was a mailman for crying out loud. His loyalty to his job unnerved Frank, as if any one company could possibly be fundamentally different from another.