The Odds, page 12
“I want to punch something,” said Rick.
“Go punch Butch.”
“Screw you,” said Butch.
“Look,” said Gavin, “if you’re really bent out of shape about this, go ahead and make the call. We all know what they’re going to say, but at least you tried.”
“You know what? I’m going to do that. Maybe they’ll listen to reason.”
They had a separate phone that was just for communicating with the people in charge. Rick made the call and put it on speaker.
“Sounds like it’s going badly,” said The Claw Man. The guys in charge all had stupid-ass nicknames, though Rick did not share his opinion of these nicknames with his employers.
“It’s a disaster. I’d like permission to get him out of there.”
“No.”
“They’re going to kill him.”
“The danger is real.”
“It’s not the way the challenge was supposed to work.”
“And that’s part of the fun of the game. It’s unpredictable. You bribed a psychopath to hand over a clue and it went sideways. You do not have permission to pull him out of there. It plays out the way it plays out. Clean up the mess afterward.”
“There’s a house full of witnesses.”
“They’re druggies. Pay them off. A thousand bucks each to keep their mouth shut. If they’re the ones who killed him, it’s win-win for them. Lose-lose for you and Ethan, but it’s a game. Most of the players are going to lose.”
“All right,” said Rick. “I disagree with this but I’ll accept your ruling.”
“I’ll send you a comment card. Bye.”
“I told you,” said Gavin.
“Maybe he’ll surprise you and get out of this,” said Butch.
A man with a purple scalp (apparently he’d dyed his hair but then shaved his head) pointed a gun at Ethan. “Want me to do it?” he asked almost everybody in the room. Presumably he wasn’t seeking Ethan’s opinion.
“Hell yeah!” shouted the woman who’d been on Ethan’s lap.
“No, dude, don’t!” said another guy. “We don’t want cops showing up here to investigate the gunshots! We don’t want them getting all up in our business!”
The purple-scalped man lowered his gun.
Ethan swung the meat cleaver back and forth in the air, slowly making his way toward the door.
“He can’t stop all of us!” said the woman.
“She’s right,” said Ethan. “But I can take out a couple of you! Does somebody want to lose a hand?” Ethan wasn’t sure if he could actually lop off somebody’s hand with the meat cleaver, but he was pretty sure none of them knew, either. “You’ll win in the end, but whoever comes at me first will get seriously fucked up. Is it worth it?”
He continued moving toward the door. Nobody indicated whether or not they thought it was worth it, but the fact that nobody was currently rushing toward him was a good sign.
“I’m obviously not going to call the cops,” he said. “I just want to leave.”
He kept slashing at the air with the meat cleaver, not sure if he looked intimidating or ridiculous. Finally he reached the front door and opened it. Nobody made a move as if they were going to stop him.
Ethan kept the meat cleaver with him as he stepped outside, figuring that petty theft was no big deal when a man was bleeding out on the floor.
Tammy wasn’t in the car. Big surprise. But at least his car was still there.
He ran to the car, his relief at getting out of there far outweighing his fear over what might happen since he’d failed to obtain the clue, and really had no opportunity to get it now.
As he started the car, he felt an explosion of emotion building up...but, nope, he had to choke that down for right now. Keep it together. He wasn’t out of this mess yet, not by any stretch of the imagination.
He sped away from the house.
15
Rick called less than thirty seconds after he drove away. Ethan wondered if he’d been keeping tabs on what was happening in the crack house, or if he was just watching the car.
“I didn’t get the clue,” said Ethan. “Everything went to crap in there. It could not have gone worse.”
“I know,” said Rick.
“Did you see it?”
“I’m aware of what happened, yes.”
Ethan was trying to keep himself from having a cardiac arrest, but that was an interesting answer. I’m aware of what happened, yes. Why not just say yes? Was he admitting that he didn’t have hidden cameras in the house?
“What did you see?” Ethan asked.
Rick hesitated for a split second. Just enough to make it clear he had to think about his answer. “That’s not a question for you to ask. I know that you accidentally killed the man who was supposed to give you the clue.”
“Yeah, because he made us battle with butcher knives and meat cleavers! Was that part of the game?”
“I’m not answering that type of question.”
“Does what happened invalidate this round?”
“I wish it did,” said Rick.
“So I’m going to have a coke dealer coming after me now?”
“You should go home and get some sleep.”
“Are you out of your mind? You think I’m going to go home and go back to bed as if nothing happened? What the hell’s the matter with you? For all I know, the cops are on their way to my house right now.”
“They aren’t.”
“Oh, sure, you’re a guy I can trust!”
“I’ve never lied to you,” said Rick. “I’ve withheld information as part of the game but I haven’t lied. And because I can tell you’re extremely emotional right now, I’m going to assure you that you can go home, take a relaxing shower, and get some sleep.”
“Why would I believe you?” asked Ethan. “Seriously, Rick, why would I believe you?”
“Don’t do anything stupid. I’ll call you before you get home.”
Rick called The Claw Man again. “What?” his boss asked, sounding annoyed.
“Ethan’s a flight risk,” said Rick. “I think he’s going to go home, pick up his family, and flee. Or else he’ll call the police. We have a completely unstable situation happening right now.”
The Claw Man sighed. “All right. End it.”
“You mean this challenge?”
“You know perfectly well what I mean. End his game. Terminate him.”
“No,” said Rick. “If we’re going to be so damn concerned with the integrity of the game, we can’t kill him just because of what I think he’s going to do. He hasn’t done it yet. By the guidelines we’ve established, he doesn’t get penalized until he breaks the rules.”
“You just said we have a completely unstable situation.”
“We do. So we need to stabilize it. We have to fix it, not end his game.”
“You’re acting like you’ll get executed if he loses.”
“I’m not concerned with whether my player wins or loses,” said Rick. “I’m concerned with what’s fair. I’d rather figure out a way to stop him from violating the rules than have to clean it up later, or kill him prematurely.”
The Claw Man sighed again, longer and louder this time. “It sounds to me like you made a bad choice with your player.”
“I disagree. I made a bad choice with the crackhead. If I’d been able to do a full psychological profile on him before I gave him a hundred bucks to give Ethan an address, I’d have chosen somebody different.”
“How are you proposing we course-correct this?”
“The players don’t know how the points work, right? None of them have been told.”
“Correct.”
“So we tweak the rules. We tell Ethan that he can give up a point in exchange for bypassing a failed challenge. The whole idea of the briefcase filled with cocaine gets thrown out.”
“Do you think that will be enough to keep him in line?” The Claw Man asked.
“I’ll make sure it is.”
“We’d have to offer that option to the other players, too.”
“Great! What’s wrong with that? I think it’s a solid addition to the rules. Shouldn’t we try to keep strong players in the game longer?” asked Rick.
“See, now this is where I’m starting to question your motive. Ethan wussed out on the $100,000 broken arm challenge. He failed to save the woman in the grave. So you’re not going to convince me that we’d be losing an all-star player here.”
“That’s a fair comment,” said Rick. “That’s totally fair. But isn’t it better to keep players rather than lose them? We’re not lowering the stakes, technically, we’re just not letting one moment of bad luck destroy their chances. And we wouldn’t let them do it more than once. So if you, say, had three points, you couldn’t get a free pass on three different challenges. I honestly think that if this idea had come up in the planning stage, everybody would’ve been on board with it.”
Gavin walked over to the phone. “Hey, Claw Man, it’s Gavin. I’ll say that I agree with Rick. It’s not a bad idea.”
They both looked over at Butch.
“Yeah, hey, it’s Butch. I like the idea, too.”
“Well,” said The Claw Man, “your consensus doesn’t mean much to me since you’re all on Team Ethan. We do it for him, we have to do it for everybody. Harry in Tampa just got shot four times. How is this new rule fair to Harry?”
“He’s not dead yet,” said Rick. “He can use a point on the next round. I mean, he’ll probably fail at the next challenge if he’s been shot four times. It’s not completely fair, no, but this is our first play-through. We’re still discovering new things. We’re working out bugs.”
“You call it a bug. I call it a feature.”
“C’mon. Let’s do it. It’ll make the game more interesting.”
“You know what, I think you might be on to something,” said The Claw Man. “But I can’t make the final ruling on my own. I’m going to make a couple of calls, and we’ll put it to a vote. Sound good?”
“What if he calls the police before then?”
“Then you kill him and his family.”
“All right.”
“It’ll take two minutes. Talk to you then.” The Claw Man hung up.
Rick called Ethan back. “I think I’ve worked out a solution to your problem,” he said. “I just need you to trust me and stay calm.”
“Oh, sure, I’m totally calm. Never been calmer. Other drivers keep flagging me down because they want to compliment me on my calmness.”
“You sound like you’re having a nervous breakdown, and that’s completely understandable given the circumstances. But what I really need you to do is trust me, and trust that if you break the rules, you and your family will be punished. You saw for yourself what happens. If you think they’ll draw the line at shooting children, you are giving yourself a dangerous false sense of security.”
“You think I have a sense of security right now?” Ethan asked, his voice cracking like a teenager going through puberty.
“All I’m saying is, don’t do anything stupid.”
“Fine. I won’t do anything stupid from this point forward.”
“Thank you.”
Two minutes later, The Claw Man hadn’t called him back.
Another two minutes passed.
“Should I call him?” Rick asked Gavin.
“I wouldn’t.”
“They understand that this is an emergency, right? We’re not just sitting around playing cards.”
“What are you going to do if you don’t like the answer?” asked Gavin.
“Then I’m going to hope that Ethan doesn’t do anything stupid before the actors playing drug lords show up to shoot him in the arms and legs.”
“Hey,” said Butch. “Just got word that the junkies all happily took the bribe and the body is already gone. That chick Tammy got spooked and ran off before Ethan came out, but they caught her and put a bullet in the back of her head. So, go teamwork!”
The other phone rang. Finally!
“I’ve got some good news for you,” said The Claw Man. “I shared your proposal, and believe it or not, it got unanimous approval. Well done.”
“Great,” said Rick. “Great to hear. Thank you.”
“And...now I’ve got some bad news for you.”
“What?”
“We all loved your idea. It will be incorporated into the next game. But we all agreed that it wasn’t fair to start it mid-game, when another player has already suffered the consequences for failing to complete the same challenge. So the answer is yes, and you’ll get credit for the idea, but the rule change won’t go into effect until next time.”
“What about Ethan?” Rick asked.
“What about him? We have a protocol in place. We want to discourage it as much as possible, but a player breaking the rules is part of the game. Handle it appropriately. Do you need anything else?”
“No.”
The Claw Man hung up.
“What do you think?” asked Gavin. “Think Ethan will get himself and his family all shot up?”
“I’m going to be optimistic and say no.”
“He’s freaking out,” said Butch. “You could hear it in his voice. He’s not thinking straight. Twenty bucks says he runs.”
“With or without his family?” asked Gavin.
“With. I mean, he’s not a douchebag.”
“I’ll take that bet. What about you, Rick? Want to get in on it?”
“For twenty bucks?” asked Rick. “That’s not worth the time to shake your hands.”
He called Ethan again.
“How are you holding up?” Rick asked.
Ethan let out an incredulous laugh. “Is that a real question?”
“I’m not suggesting that you should feel particularly sane right now. I just wanted to make sure you were still of sound enough mind to know that you should keep playing by the rules.”
“Yes,” Ethan told him. “I’m sane enough not to do anything that’ll make you send your goons after me.”
“I’m glad to hear it.”
“I have to go now,” said Ethan. “I’m pulling into my driveway right now, but of course you already know that. I’ll see if I can fool my family into thinking that I’m not getting back from having slashed some guy’s throat.”
“I have faith in you.”
Ethan hung up. He pulled into his driveway. He left the phone in his car as he went inside. Jenny wasn’t in bed—she was sitting on the couch, so that would save time.
“You get Patrick and I’ll get Tim,” he said. “We’re leaving now. Don’t even take the time for them to get a change of clothes. Grab your purse and that’s it.”
Jenny nodded and stood right up. They hurried down the hall and went into separate bedrooms.
Ethan crouched down next to Tim and shook him. Waking him up for school every morning was an extremely difficult task, but there was no time to waste right now. When Tim groaned, Ethan shook him even harder.
“Tim, buddy, get up. Now. Let’s go.”
“What time is it?”
“Doesn’t matter. Get up.”
“I’m asleep.”
“Get up, Tim. Now!” Ethan grabbed his son’s arm and yanked him up.
“Ow! Okay!” Tim got out of bed. He was wearing underwear and a t-shirt instead of pajamas, but he’d just have to ride in his underwear for now. The time spent grabbing something out of his dresser drawers could be the difference between getting out of here before Rick realized what was happening.
Ethan and Tim entered the hallway just as Jenny and Patrick emerged from his bedroom. The four of them ran into the living room and out the front door.
“What’s going on?” Patrick asked.
“I’ll tell you as soon as we’re on the road,” said Ethan. “Let’s go, let’s go, let’s go!”
They all got into the car. Ethan looked around. There was no immediate sign that anybody was coming toward the house. He started the engine, backed out of the driveway at a dangerous speed, then drove off.
“You’re getting a call,” said Jenny, picking up Ethan’s phone.
He took the phone from her and answered.
“What the fuck are you doing?” Rick demanded. “I was trying to help you!”
“I decided to help myself.”
“Ethan, turn the car around. What are you doing? This is how you die.”
“I’m hanging up now.”
“No! Don’t you dare hang up! We may still be able to salvage this.”
“Not interested.”
“You’ll never make it to the police station. You know that, right?”
“I guess we’ll find out.”
“Do you think we didn’t anticipate something like this?” Rick asked. “Do you think there wasn’t a contingency plan? You’re going to get Jenny, Patrick, and Tim killed. Your whole family is going to die and it will be your fault.”
“I’m done talking,” Ethan told him.
“There are explosives attached to the underside of your car. I can set them off with the push of a button. Stop the car immediately or you’ll leave me no choice.”
Rigging Ethan’s car to blow up was totally in character for Rick and his associates.
It could also be a desperate bluff.
Quite honestly, blowing up and dying instantly might be a better option than continuing to play this game. Just end it all now.
Ethan rolled down his window.
“What’s he saying?” Jenny asked.
“Nothing,” Ethan told her.
“You have three seconds,” said Rick. “Stop the car in three seconds or I detonate the explosives. I really don’t want to do this.”
Ethan’s foot hovered above the brake pedal.
“I don’t believe you,” he said, flinging his phone out the window.
16
Had three seconds elapsed?
Even if Rick started counting after he was done talking, it had been three seconds, right?
He didn’t want to blurt out “I love you,” because that was the kind of thing you said when you thought you were all going to die in a car explosion, and the words wouldn’t really matter if they all died an instant after he said them, and if the car didn’t explode, it might be better if Jenny, Patrick, and Tim didn’t know that he was calling a bluff with their lives.
