Want To Play? (Monkeewrench)

12

The Monkeewrench loft space was cavernous and silent, still asleep like most of the city. The sun was just beginning to creep over the eastern horizon and its weak light struggled to penetrate the bank of windows on the far wall.

In the dark maze of desks in the center of the room, a computer monitor hissed to life – an eerie blue window glowing brightly in the gloom. Slowly, letter by letter, red pixels coalesced on the screen and a message materialized:

WANT TO PLAY A GAME?

Down on the ground floor, the freight elevator rumbled and groaned, then wheezed to a stop at the loft. Roadrunner emerged, walked over to the computer monitor, read the message, and frowned. He tapped a few keys, but the message remained and his frown deepened. He tapped a few more keys, then shrugged and headed for the coffeemakers.

As he started grinding beans, he gazed out the windows at the awakening city below. In the distance the Mississippi River flowed sluggishly, as if it were practicing for its winter hibernation in ice, and even the first wave of commuters was moving more slowly on this frosty morning. Winter was a state of mind in Minneapolis, and it always started long before the first snows flew.

He began the meticulous work of leveling tablespoons of fresh coffee and carefully depositing them into a new filter. He was so intent, so focused on his chore that he never saw the massive figure creeping silently, stealthily, toward him through the shadows.

‘BEEP, BEEP!’

Roadrunner twitched convulsively and sent coffee grounds flying. ‘God damnit, Harley, that was Jamaican Blue!’

‘Heads up, little buddy.’ Harley shrugged off his battered leather bike jacket and tossed it on the back of his chair.

Roadrunner started scooping up coffee grounds with angry sweeping motions. ‘Where the hell were you, anyhow? I thought the place was empty.’

‘I was taking a leak. And you gotta loosen up a little. You got a spooky little ritualistic thing going on with that coffeemaker. Every time you get within five feet of it, you enter a fugue state. It worries me.’ He glanced over at the monitor where the red message still glowed. ‘You working on Grace’s computer?’

Roadrunner looked over his shoulder. ‘Do I look suicidal? It was up when I got here. Check it out. I can’t get it to clear.’

Harley punched a few keys with sausage fingers, grunted, then gave up with a shrug. ‘Another glitch.’ He blinked in surprise when the letters disappeared abruptly. ‘Gone now. Grace must have been transferring data from home. Guess what?’

‘Your dick fell off.’

‘You stay up all night thinking of that, you asshole? Listen to me. I checked the site this morning. Almost six hundred hits, over five hundred preorders for the CD-ROM. Some of them are ordering two, three copies. We are gonna be filthy, stinking rich.’

An hour later Annie and Grace were at their respective computer stations, clattering out lines of arcane programming language that the computer would eventually translate into the twentieth murder scenario. Harley was loading a CD into the boom box on the counter while Roadrunner circled around him, snapping impromptu mug shots of him with a digital camera.

‘What the hell are you doing with my camera?’

‘Just seeing how you look pixeled. We need to take care of the photo shoot today so I can start integrating it.’

Harley shook his head. ‘I’m not going to be the dead guy.’

‘It has to be you. I’ve already been the dead guy three times. And it has to be a man.’

Grace lifted her eyes as the freight elevator rumbled up from the parking garage. ‘Ask Mitch.’

Annie snorted. ‘Right. You’d have to drug him first. What the hell is this music?’

Grace listened for a moment, then grimaced. ‘ZZ Top. Harley, take it off.’

‘ZZ Top happens to be a seminal band of the 1980s, you cretins.’ He collapsed under the weight of Grace’s gaze. ‘All right, all right, but no more classical. That stuff puts me to sleep.’

Harley settled for instrumental jazz, then went back to his chair and swiveled to prop his jackbooted feet up on Roadrunner’s pristine desk. ‘You know what I’m going to do with my share of the money?’

‘Get your feet off my desk.’

‘I’m going to buy a really nice place in the Cayman Islands. Or maybe the Bahamas. Grass roof, nice stretch of beach, big hammock under a palm tree. And chicks in thongs with huge tits. You guys can come down and visit whenever you want. Mi casa, su casa.’

Grace rolled her eyes. ‘I can’t wait.’

‘Harley, if you don’t get your feet off my desk . . .’

Harley gave Roadrunner a toothy grin and swung his feet back down to the floor. ‘How ’bout you, Grace? What are you gonna do with the loot?’

She shrugged. ‘I don’t know. Maybe get an underground bunker in the Idaho panhandle, start stockpiling weapons, get a few cabana boys in thongs with huge . . .’

They were all laughing when the elevator gate slid up into its moorings. Mitch walked into the room, a newspaper clenched tightly in his right fist.

Grace waved him over. ‘Come on, Mitch. Smile for the camera. You have to be the dead guy for number twenty . . . Jesus. What’s the matter with you?’

Everyone looked up and an ugly hush fell over the room. Mitch was not looking good. His face had a decidedly unhealthy gray cast, he was wearing a polo shirt and chinos instead of a suit, and his hair was uncombed. For anyone else, this would be the equivalent of going out in public naked.

He laid the newspaper down on Grace’s desk. ‘Has anyone seen a paper?’

‘Not since ’92,’ Harley said. ‘What’s up?’

‘Just read it.’ He pointed to the article, then stood to one side as the others crowded around Grace’s desk to read over her shoulders.

Grace started to read aloud. ‘ “The body of a young woman was discovered early this morning. . .” ’ She stopped abruptly.

‘Oh my God,’ Annie whispered.

They all read in silence for a moment, frozen in position. Harley was the first to look away. ‘Jesus Christ on a crutch.’ He took the few steps to his desk and sat down very slowly. Annie and Roadrunner did the same, and then they were all sitting, looking at their hands or their monitors or at anything except each other. Only Mitch remained standing, the evil messenger.

‘Maybe it’s a coincidence,’ Roadrunner mumbled.

‘Oh, right,’ Annie snapped. ‘People are flopping dead girls over that statue all the time. Oh, Jesus God, this can’t be happening.’

‘It just said she was on the statue, not on top of it,’ Roadrunner insisted desperately. ‘Maybe they found her on the pedestal. Maybe it was a drug thing, or a gang thing. For Christ’s sake we don’t know what goes on in that cemetery, it could have been anything . . .’

‘Roadrunner.’ Harley’s voice was uncharacteristically gentle. ‘We have to find out. We have to call the cops. Right now.’

‘And tell them what?’ Mitch asked, his eyes on Grace. She was still staring at the newspaper, her face absolutely expressionless.

‘I don’t know. That maybe there’s some freak out there who liked one of our murder scenes so much he decided to do it for real, I guess.’

Roadrunner’s eyes slid sideways to his monitor, where the number of hits on the game site kept climbing as he watched.

‘If that’s what’s happening, he’s one of our players,’ he said. ‘He’s got to be.’

Grace’s hand reached for the phone, then just rested there.

‘Grace?’ Mitch asked softly. ‘You want me to do it?’