THE THIRTY-THIRD SQUARE

Unremitting rain fell from a dark November sky, each drop straight and purposeful, intent on fulfilling its singular destiny. In contrast the weather that morning had been bright and sunny but by early afternoon the skies had darkened and the rain had set in; a good day gone bad.

It would be something of a mercy if New York detective Jim Donovan could be described merely as a “good cop gone bad”, but Jim had been bad from the beginning. If there were a list of achievements that a dirty cop should accomplish in life, he’d be able to tick them all: corruption; extortion; planting evidence; beating suspects; sleeping with whores for free in return for letting them go; selling confiscated drugs; murder. Yep, you heard me; this ignoble wearer of the illustrious NYPD badge had even stooped to murder.

He’d gotten away with it too; the execution he had so recently attended was testament to that. Not only had he killed the uptight Park Avenue bitch, he’d gotten her hoity-toity husband fried for her murder into the bargain; special today, two toffs for the price of one. Oh yes, the ex Mr and Mrs Pemberton-Smythe, even their names were poncey. It wasn’t like anyone would miss them anyhow; they were nothing but a couple of namby-pamby socialites living off “daddy’s” money. Jeez, they even went in for chess competitions, the photos and trophies adorning their former home were proof of that. Chess for cripes sake, that ain’t no contest; now baseball, that’s a contest.

Watching baseball was by far his favourite past-time, more so even than screwing prostitutes, as the two tickets to the next Yankees game currently burning a hole in his pocket would testify (he’d accepted them as a bribe from some geeky guy he’d caught with the wrong kind of porn on his computer; he’d turned him in anyway). The late Mr and Mrs Pemberton-Smythe; beating her brains in with his three thousand dollar chess board had been a nice touch. Check-frigging-mate.

On the darkened New York streets the rain continued to fall. On a corner above a coffee shop, as empty of customers as the night was of promise, an ancient blue neon sign glowed fitfully, its reflection bejewelling an ever expanding puddle on the sidewalk. The urban beauty of this was completely lost on Detective Donovan; pulling his coat collar tighter to his neck he merely continued his journey home, his feet shattering the illusion as he splashed through the puddle, cursing as it soaked into his shoes.

The moment he opened his front door Donovan knew something was wrong, his instincts for a dangerous situation as finely attuned as his instinct for a fast buck. He drew his gun and flicked on the lights.
‘Come out where I can see you,’ he barked. ‘There’s nowhere for you to hide’.

In that he was apparently mistaken, for despite the apparent emptiness of his loft apartment (“the best in modern open plan living”), he couldn’t shake the conviction that someone was there. He quickly cast his eyes around the room, looking for anything out of place; the coffee table immediately caught his gaze. An ornate chess board, heavy, inlaid with highly detailed brass work, sat on the table; it must have cost three thousand bucks if it cost a penny. Arranged in orderly ranks beside it was an equally ornate chess set; he recognised them immediately.

When last he had seen the chess board it lay on the floor beside the lifeless body of Felicity Pemberton-Smythe. Now it was pristine but back then in had been spattered by a gruesome casserole of blood, hair, bone fragments and brain matter. The last time he’d seen any of the pieces they had been stuffed, by him, into Felicity’s once delicate mouth, as if in some macabre attempt to set some ridiculous world record. To the horror of the Medical Examiner, a man who’d thought he seen every kind of desecration of a body the human imagination could contrive, her mouth was not the only place he’d stuffed them.

‘Ah Detective Donavan, so pleased you could make it. Do make yourself at home, but of course you are home aren’t you?’

The voice was low and sibilant, disembodied and distant; of the person it belonged to there was as yet no sign. The hairs on the back of Donovan’s neck rose instantly. He tried to fire his gun, hoping to get a lucky hit, but his finger on the trigger was powerless to respond. A shiver, starting deep in his chest before quickly spreading outward, took a grip on his body. A delicate bead of sweat formed on his temple then slid slowly down the side of his face. Against his will he walked leadenly to one of the comfortable low chairs flanking the coffee table. It, like the chairs, was obviously expensive, as was everything else in the apartment; amazing what you can buy on a cop’s salary. As he sat down unseen fingers easily prised the gun from his hand; in thirty years as a cop no perp had ever taken his piece away from him.

The empty chair across from him was no longer empty. A figure, surrounded by a blue nimbus like a neon sign reflected in a puddle, sat on the opposite side of the chess board; quite fitting for the ghost of a champion chess player.
‘You killed my wife, Donovan, and you killed me; now I’m going to kill you.’
‘B-but your dead,’ the petrified cop stammered in return, displaying an uncanny gift for the obvious. ‘You can’t kill me, you’re just a, just a….’
‘Just a ghost? Indeed I am, but please, call me Chad, “Ghost” sounds so formal. As for not being able to kill you, I made me a deal with the devil; he said he’d give me the power to come back and do precisely that, all I have to do is a little favour for him in return. Actually, its more you who’ll be doing the favour.’
‘What favour?’ squeaked Donovan, a note of impending hysteria in his voice. ‘What favour? he asked again, forcibly deeper this time. ‘What do you mean?’
‘Have you ever heard the story of Sissa ibn Dahir, the grains of wheat and the chess board? No? Let me enlighten you. Sissa ibn Dahir tricked the rich and powerful Indian tyrant, King Shiram, into giving him a reward he would never be able to provide. Sissa asked only that King Shiram initially put one grain of wheat, to be given to Sissa, on the first square on a chess board, the very board he himself had so admirably invented.’

As if to demonstrate, a grain of wheat appeared suddenly on the chess board that separated the detective from his recently deceased nemesis.
‘I want you to imagine that grain of wheat is you, you’ll see why in a moment. Sissa then requested that two grains of wheat be placed on the second square.’
No sooner had the ghost spoken than two grains of wheat appeared on the second square of the chess board.

‘Now listen to me carefully, Donovan. These two grains represent two individuals that you will be required to kill. Not just any two people mind you, they must be two people who you feel have wronged you.’
‘That won’t be difficult,’ spat Donovan, some of his usual bullishness returning. ‘My ex-wife for a start, back stabbing whore. Give me back my fucking gun and I’ll get straight to it.’ He tried to stand but found he was completely paralysed.
‘My dear detective,’ Chad cooed. ‘You misunderstand. You will kill them after you are dead, just as I am going to kill you now I am dead.’
‘Please, no, no, not that,’ whimpered the once invincible Jim Donovan, moisture appearing from his eyes even as wetness appeared on his crotch.
‘Oh yes, Detective Donovan, my…. “employer” will see to it, of that you can be assured. Anyway, where was I? Oh yes. Sissa then asked that four grains of wheat be placed on the third square, then eight on the fourth, sixteen on the fifth, and so on, the number doubling with each new square. The two individuals who you kill will each have to kill a further two people who have wronged them, making four new victims. By “wronged” it can be anything, from their best pal sleeping with their wife to some old biddy stepping on their foot in the line for the movie theatre. They in turn will kill a total of eight people, who will kill a further sixteen, who will kill thirty-two; do you see? As with Sissa this pattern will repeat until….. let’s say until every square on the board has been covered. King Shiram thought he was onto a bargain, yet by the time they’d reached the twenty-ninth square the number of grains had topped five hundred million. Let me put that in perspective for you Jimmy boy, five hundred million, the population of the United States is only three hundred and eight million. Anyway, times a wasting Donovan, best get started.’

Seemingly without transition the spectral figure of the one time socialite and chess champion, hell bent on avenging the murder of his wife as well as his own wrongful execution, now stood directly in front of the lowlife scumbag who’d started the dreadful ball rolling. Chad’s insubstantial hand reached out to the policeman’s chest, passing through without effort or hindrance. Cold fingers took hold of Donovan’s erratically beating, terrified heart and began slowly squeezing the life from it; still paralyzed the detective could do nothing but wait for the end. Even as he died he heard this last admonishment from his killer.

‘As King Shiram found to his cost, the lesson will be learnt well before the sixty-fourth square. If we put the world population at say nearly seven billion, ex-detective Donovan, we’ll have run out of people by the thirty-third square. You’ve killed us all, Donovan, you’ve killed us all.’

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AUTHORS' NOTES:
1. Due to the exponential rate of growth, the total number of grains on the first thirty-three squares would be 8,589,934,591, or roughly 8.6 billion. If the entire board were to be filled in this way, the total would be 18,446,744,073,709,551,615, or (in European parlance) over eighteen quadrillion.
2. Since the death penalty was reinstated in New York no defendants have been executed. In 2004 part of the death penalty statute was declared unconstitutional and since then all first degree murder cases have proceeded non-capitally.

COPYRIGHT D M PAMMENT 26th JANUARY 2010