“So we should stop playing the game?” asks Gabriella. “Right? That’s the vibe I’m getting here?”
We all stare at her.
“Henley was murdered,” says Bernard, finally. “Fine. I agree. The game is over.”
17
“We should keep playing,” urges Bernard an hour later, reversing himself utterly. “Are we really all just going to give up? He would want us to keep going.”
We’ve all had a lot to drink. The rest of my siblings can’t really hold their liquor. Not like me, not like Henley. We’ve been telling stories about our dead dirtbag brother, trying to make some kind of meaning from his death.
“What are you talking about?” says Gabriella. “We already decided. You even said!”
“No, I’ve been thinking about it,” says Bernard, his normal reticence to express himself shaken loose. “How else are we supposed to find whoever did this if we stop now? Nothing would catch the Game Master more off guard than if we didn’t even blink—if we just kept right on playing his game.”
“You have a helicopter,” says Gabriella. “Of course you would say that.”
Angelo Marino has been putting the finishing touches on our police reports in the next room. Now he comes in holding a sheaf of color-coded binders.
“Maybe we should take a vote,” says Bernard.
“What does voting matter?” I say. “Surely no one would believe that this was our father’s last wish, to kill all of his children. Anyway, whoever wins now, the case will get tied up in court unless we agree to a settlement.”
“Yes, but none of that is the point,” says Bernard. “The point is to play the game. Maybe Dad isn’t running the game, but he still set it all up. We are honoring both him and Henley if we keep going.”
What Bernard is saying is undeniably true. The scavenger hunt has all the hallmarks of something Dad would make, of one of his notoriously buggy and lame first drafts, before teams of creative professionals have gotten ahold of it and turned it into something polished and ready for the masses. Before it has been playtested.
“I’m going to keep playing,” says Bernard. “Fuck it. Who else?”
He raises his hand. Angelo Marino sits down at our father’s desk and lines up the colored folders in front of him. There is one for each of us. How has he managed to type up what we know and what we have seen so quickly?
“Okay,” says Bernard, when no other hands shoot up. “So it’s just me then.”
“It’s just you,” I say. “Congratulations, you’ve won the big prize.”
“So you should all give me your game phones, then,” says Bernard. “Since you won’t need them anymore.”
“I assume they are all evidence, actually,” I say. “In a murder investigation. We should give them to the police.”
“If they even ask for them,” says Bernard. “This Jay and Rutledge don’t sound very professional. Do you think they’ve ever had to work a murder before?”
“Surely,” I say, though now that he mentions it, I find it extremely hard to believe that these two men have much experience with the actual work of being detectives. What horrible luck for Henley to fall into the jurisdiction of the subway tunnels under Midtown.
“I’m not giving you my phone,” I tell Bernard. “We’ll all turn them over to the cops together.”
“If they ask for them,” Bernard repeats, petulantly.
“These are finished,” Angelo Marino says, gesturing to our reports. “If you wouldn’t mind signing them, I will have them couriered to the precinct and then we can all go home and get some sleep.”
We pick up our file folders. I’m the only one who bothers reading my statement before signing it. Actually, I’m a little shocked to find out how much of the statement is simply the truth, as strange and incomplete as the truth is.
I sign my statement and pour myself another glass of bourbon to take downstairs to my room. I say goodnight to everyone, my eyes lingering on Alistair, who looks like he has something he wants to say to me.
“What?” I ask gently, but he just shakes his head.
When I reach my room, I collapse onto my bed. I try to find some kind of soothing ambient music to lull me into a stupor along with the rocking dizziness of all the liquor, but nothing helps. I lie on my back for a long time, trying to force myself to fall asleep, but sleep won’t come.
I think about how I will have to tell my daughters that their beloved uncle is now also dead, just like their beloved grandfather. They’ll blame me for it on some level. They’ll wonder about their own fragile place in the universe. They’ll wonder what it means that even though we have nearly infinite money and all the power that money brings, we were not able to avoid such a strange accident.
Unlike the poor unfortunates, my children will not have dreams of aspiration. They will not suffer from the delusion that if they simply work hard enough and acquire more wealth and power they will be able to avoid their own doom, to bargain with the forces of darkness and then come out on top. Yes, their lives will be easier. But there is something devastating about growing up in a world where you know exactly what money can—and cannot—buy.
I am actually more afraid that this double blow will raise Ben’s standing in their emotional calculus. He represents a form of achievement and growth that is not material and that seemingly has no clear boundaries. He represents a fake world of flattering ersatz spiritual transcendence, of proletarian renunciation, of self-denial and commitment to dubious higher principles. I can only teach them to be ruthless and to wield power responsibly in a way that benefits the most people without diminishing the paralyzing force of the Nylo name. I can teach them that being “the one who decides” confers the imperiousness of power but that these decisions don’t
