Live the Game: The Game Trilogy, #2

By Third Street Press

John Benton once played the game, now he's part of it.

He watches players place bets where the stakes are life or death. At home, he tries to keep his family from being pulled into the danger that he faces every day.

But John doesn't know there's an even deadlier game, one without rules. When he's forced to play this secret game, he faces powerful opponents who will stop at nothing to get what they want.

John must walk the tightrope between doing his job and keeping his family safe.

Live the Game is an exciting, fast-paced thriller by Robin Morris, where nothing is as it seems, and trust is an illusion.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Third Street Press
• Release date: Nov 29, 2022
• ISBN: 9781948142557

Book preview

1

C alm down, Mr. Harris.

Sweat ran down Bob Harris’s face. I wasn't sure if he could hold it together long enough to finish the hand. Even in the construction site, lit only by a few work lights, I could see that he was losing it.

How much time? he asked in a whisper.

I took the game clock out of the pocket of my suit. I kept my voice low. Six minutes.

Somewhere out there, behind a steel column or a pile of cement bags, was Bob’s opponent and the opponent’s referee. The ref, Mr. Keckman, was an older man who had been with the game for many years. The opponent was a young guy who spent too much time at the gym.

I was forbidden to give advice to the player or help in any way. Sometimes a ref can subtly help without helping, as Mr. Khalid had once done for me, but that could lead to trouble.

Bob took out his semi-automatic pistol and held it in one trembling hand. He shouldn’t need a gun to steal a hammer from a construction site, but you could never be sure when you played the game.

It’s the perfect plan, Bob had told me, as he drove me in his dented Chevy Venture.

He had lingered after work and left the hammer out instead of putting it away. It was out of sight, under a metal box, but it would be easy to grab. He could get there and pick up the hammer while his opponent was still trying to figure out where Bob was.

I had never thought of setting up an easy win when I was a player. I might have done a lot better if I had.

Make sure you fire that only at your opponent, I told him. There are very strict rules about hurting a ref.

Bob nodded, but his mind was on the hammer and the box it was under. His plan turned sour when we saw the opponent’s BMW pull up and park right behind the mini-van. Instead of running to grab the hammer right away, Bob hid behind a wall and let time slip away.

All I could do was wait and observe. It was Bob’s hand; I was just the ref. He was a new player, just past the hand where he brought in another player. We called players like him fodder. He had a small beer gut and a receding hairline. This hand was his last, he told me in the car. He would take the winnings and walk away. His wife would never know he had played the game.

Sounded familiar.

If he lost, he would lose everything. He had taken all the money out of his joint checking account, told his wife that work had asked him to do a late shift, and gone out. I could see him thinking about that, about what he would say to her if he went home empty-handed.

He also knew that he might not go home at all.

Four minutes, I said, without being asked.

We didn’t know where the opponent, Mr. Graber, was. Bob might be able to stroll over to where the hammer was, pick it up, and win the hand. Or Graber might be lying in wait, his shiny .44 in hand.

Fuck it, Bob said. He whirled away from me and ran toward the hammer.

I tried to follow closely, but the ground was uneven. My job was to witness the final moments and judge who won.

I found Bob kneeling on the ground, scrabbling with one hand under the metal box. It’s not here! he shouted.

Lose something, Bob? Graber waved his cell phone flashlight over the large construction hammer in his hand. His ref stood nearby, but not directly behind the opponent. Refs know to stay out of the potential line of fire.

Bob stood. How did you know that was there? he shouted. His voice was hysterical. You cheated! He raised his gun.

I checked the clock. There was less than a minute left, but Bob could still win. He would have to take the hammer from Graber, and the only way to do that was to kill him. That was completely within the rules.

Graber, in his arrogance, had left his gun in a holster on his hip. He had his cell phone in one hand and the hammer in the other. He assumed Bob would give up. He didn’t know what I could tell by Bob’s cracked voice, which was that he had gone over the edge.

Two bullets hit Graber in the chest. He fell and lay still.

Fourteen seconds left. I was ready to call the hand in Bob’s favor, but he didn’t lean over to take the hammer. He turned to Graber’s ref.

You helped him! Bob shouted, still out of it. You helped him cheat!

He aimed at the ref.

No! I shouted.

I lunged toward my player, tried to pull his arm away, ruin his aim.

Mr. Keckman didn’t have time to draw. One bullet took him in the neck. I smelled the blood as he collapsed.

Mr. Harris! I turned the man around and hit him in the nose. He went down. I kneeled on him and took his gun.

They cheated, Bob burbled.

What have you done, Mr. Harris? I told you there are rules.

He started to cry. What do I tell Nancy?

I’m sorry, Mr. Harris. There’s nothing I can do. I put his pistol against his forehead. The rules are very clear.

Bob realized what I was doing. His eyes widened.

I pulled the trigger.

2

Laila was asleep on the couch when I got home, shortly after dawn. Brianna slept also, sprawled on her mother, drool on her chin. The TV was on, an infomercial for the best kitchen helper ever conceived in all of time.

I closed and locked the door, thumbed the fingerprint sensor on the small gun safe next to it and put my Glock 19 inside, next to Laila’s smaller 43.

Honey, I wanted to say, your husband, the murderer, is home.

I didn’t say it. I turned off the TV, then sat in an armchair and watched my wife and child. Beautiful Laila, though she might not want me to say that when her mouth was wide open and her eyes closed, was my miracle. She stayed with me through stuff that would make other wives run for the nearest divorce lawyer.

I asked her once if she’d like to take one of those DNA tests. She knew about her Filipino mother, African-American father, and at least one Caucasian grandparent, but there might be more contributions to her genetic stew. She decided to leave the past in the past.

I would come out English or Irish mostly, if I took a DNA test. Boring stuff. Together we had produced a little girl with light brown skin and a shock of black hair that stood up off her head: A tiny human who I loved so much I was willing to shoot Bob Harris in the face to keep this job.

Not that I could quit. You don’t leave the game. The job paid well, allowing me to afford this modest two-bedroom apartment in L.A., buy a new Kia Optima, and save for Brianna’s college. But if I ran away, the house would make a third-level bet that me and my family would live to a ripe old age. No matter where we went, there’d be a player willing to take that bet. And they’d likely win the hand.

Brianna opened one eye and saw me. She struggled to get up, so I walked over and picked her up. We went back to my chair and settled in. She sang a little song, with words that I didn’t understand.

Laila sat up and looked panicked. She looked around. Bree?

I got her.

You’re home. Laila sat up on the couch. Her hair was pushed all on one side.

Anything exciting happen while I was gone? I asked.

The usual. Locked in here, following a two-year-old around.

I said the wrong thing, as usual. You can take her out in the stroller.

That’s an hour. Then back to these walls.

You can watch TV. I gestured at our large flat screen.

I do. Way too much. Breakfast?

Just coffee. Then bed.

How you sleep right after you have coffee I will never understand.

Can’t sleep with a caffeine headache.

She stood and went to the kitchen. I bounced Bree up and down a few times and she giggled. What was her life going to be like? Game brats often went bad. I was determined to get her out, clean. That was allowed, as long as they didn’t know anything.

Keeping her ignorant was not going to be easy.

A coffee mug appeared near me. I took it and sipped. Black gold.

Laila sat on the couch again.

John, she said, after a while.

Something was up. What?

Getting cabin fever in here.

There were other kids in the building. I would suggest a play date but they were game kids. The parents were game people.

I want to work, Laila said. I’ve always worked.

You never had a kid before.

Laila stared at me.

I’ll find out if we can take her to a day care outside the game.

Thank you. How was your shift?

I hesitated, knowing the next word would be a bombshell. Okay.

Laila stiffened. She knew what it meant but couldn’t say anything. Usually when I came home, I said work was Fine. Our code was that Fine meant I didn’t have to shoot anybody. Okay was the opposite. Today was the first time I had said Okay.

The game monitored everything, and we assumed there were bugs in the apartment. We were very careful about what we said.

Laila came over and sat on the arm of the chair next to me. She gave me a hug. We stayed close together for a couple of minutes.

Then I caught a bad smell. Our daughter stinks.

Laila pulled away a little but made no move to stand up.

I’ll do it. I took Bree to the changing station in the second bedroom. When I came back, I put her down and let her toddle.

Laila was gone. I found a note on the fridge. Gone for walk.

I checked the gun safe. She had taken the Glock 43 with her. Good. We couldn’t be too careful.

3

Y ou will not recite the Gettysburg Address in its entirety within one minute.

I hit the start button on the clock. Ms. Stanhope sat back with a smirk on her lips. She knew she had him.

In one of the tiny game rooms, with dark red walls and ceiling, a single light bulb above creating harsh shadows, I was hoping to have a boring day. I had asked Ms. Stanhope if I could be her ref for the day.

When I was a player, I was told not to depend on bets that were too easy. Mr. Quarling said that people talk in the lounge and wouldn’t play with someone who won too much. As a ref, I learned that there was always new fodder, people who came and left in a short time, so the Read Warriors and other such groups always found suckers.

What the fuck? Mr. Golodny said. Recite the what? He was sunburnt and squinty-eyed, a man used to working outdoors.

Ms. Stanhope and her group were what I called the Read Warriors. I encountered them in my playing days. They bet that their opponent would not know quotes from books or famous speeches. To win, the player had to show that they did know the quote.

Ms. Stanhope used to be a fact-checker for a famous game show. She made sure the questions were accurate. They cut her loose after almost twenty years, and she went through some hard times until she found a different kind of game.

Mr. Golodny was an unemployed cab driver. His whole profession was on its last wheels because of ride share services. He heard about the game from a friend and used his last cash to buy in. He was fodder, like Mr. Harris. He had won a few hands because he was allowed to win, brought someone new in, and then, without knowing it, started playing for real. Players strip them of everything they have, and they are sent home. Or they die.

Mr. Golodny’s eyes shifted.

Thirty seconds, I announced.

This is supposed to be about fucking doing shit, Golodny said. Not remembering some fucking speech.

At least he knew it was a speech. I gave him a point for that.

Come on, ref. She can’t make that bet.

A player may predict anything that is physically possible, and does not harm game employees, I said coolly, doing a bit of a Mr. Quarling impression for the benefit of Ms. Stanhope, who gave me a little smile.

I could see Golodny thinking about his options. Ms. Stanhope had predicted that he would not do it, so no matter what he did to her, up to and including using the .45 revolver that he thought he was hiding under his cheap jacket, the only way to win the hand was to recite the Gettysburg Address in the remaining time.

Ten seconds.

Instead of producing his pistol, he whipped out his cell phone and started typing with his thumbs.

I believe we told you that cell phones get no signal in here, I said.

Shit. Mr. Golodny sat back and accepted the inevitable.

Hand for Ms. Stanhope.

She collected the two chips on the table.

You may play again or withdraw, Mr. Golodny.

He started to get up from his chair, then plopped down again. One more.

Good. A boring day.

After my shift, I went out the back, down the long corridor, past all the game rooms with letters A to Z on them, then through an unmarked door at the end. That led me into a short hallway that ended in a bright red door with a flashing multicolored light over it. If I went through the red door I would be in the Back Room, which had ruined many people; players and employees both.

There was another door on the left, that looked like a janitor’s closet. I paused and looked up. Someone watching a monitor saw that I wanted to go through and unlocked the door remotely. I opened it and found myself in a warren of corridors, with closed doors, many locked.

There were cameras all over the buildings where the game was played, but also in the game rooms, the vans, the areas where the vans picked up and dropped off the players, and some said in the game-owned homes of employees. That was why Laila and I were so careful about what we said in our apartment.

I entered the men’s locker room. The lockers had no doors, no locks. There were no secrets in the game. No one stole from other people’s lockers, since they knew they were on camera. I was relieved to get out of my expensive suit. Laila said I looked sharp in it, but I’m not really a suit guy. I hung the jacket and pants in my locker, next to my spare suit. I took the work shirt with me. It needed washing.

I put the little lapel camera that recorded everything I saw into a slot in the wall, along with my earpiece. Mr. Quarling once played footage for me that showed me shooting Kyle Noble’s skinny friend. He said he would send it to the cops. I wondered where the camera was that took that footage, it didn’t seem to be up on a wall like a security camera. Then I learned that all refs have one on them while working.

The Bluetooth earpiece works through my phone. The game can tell me information about a player, their history, their account balance, anything. When I was a player, I wondered how they knew everything. That was how.

Wearing much more comfortable jeans and t-shirt, and a sweatshirt to hide the Glock in its shoulder holster, I walked past Mr. Khalid’s locker. He had a small empty glass bottle on the shelf. I dropped a penny in the bottle and left the locker room.

An elevator took me deep beneath the game building. Employees are not supposed to know where the building is. Of course I knew, because Laila had once successfully tailed a van I was in by putting a GPS tracker on it. Mr. Quarling told me that revealing that information would be very bad idea.

There were other buildings; the game rotated between them to keep players in the dark, but I could drive right up to the main one in my Optima, if I wanted to. I didn’t.

Vans took employees to work and back to their cars. I waited in a large room with cement walls. Every sound echoed. The only other employee waiting at the moment was a van driver. Drivers wore a uniform of dark pants and a white shirt. No patches or other distinguishing features. He glanced at me, then went back to whatever he was thinking.

Vans now had signal blockers on their exteriors, to keep any kind of GPS tracker from broadcasting. Laila’s trick would never work again.

A van came down a ramp and stopped in front of us. The driver who had been waiting opened the door and got in. I followed and settled into a seat.

We didn’t say a word to each other.

Bob Harris’s face hung in front of my eyes when I closed them, trying to take a little nap. I saw the widening of his eyes when he realized what I had to do. I shook my head and opened my eyes. Better to stay awake.

The off-duty van driver got out at one stop; I needed to go to another. As the van started up again, I idly wondered if the game would use self-driving vans in the near future. Next century, maybe robot refs. Then there would be no one who would see the death of Bob Harris replayed in his mind over and over.

When I got out in a parking lot that surrounded a dead mall, the sun reflected spears of light off the cars and into my eyes everywhere I turned.

Hey, Benton, said a ref, waiting with some others to get in the van and go to work. I knew him but his name didn’t click into place. I just waved and said, Hey, back.

The van pulled away with refs who lived in modest apartments, had modest cars, and lived average lives. They had families and worked every day for an illegal game that killed people.

That’s us, I thought. Middle class murderers.

4

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