Grandmaster by David Klass Page A

sets, books, and accessories. Liszt kept hold of my arm and chatted as if we were old friends out for a stroll. “My second round opponent crumbled like a piece of toast,” he said, smirking. “Fifteen moves, and he was an expert, too. It happens to some strong players when they play grandmasters. They see my rating and they give up before they sit down at the board. I can see the fear in their eyes. And you won your game, right? This was your first blood?”
    “Where are we going?” I asked. “What happened to my dad just now, and what else do you have to tell me?”
    “This tournament isn’t half bad,” Liszt said. “Quite well run. As soon as he started running his mouth, the refs were right on it. He took the warning and shut up. I’ve always thought he knows that he’s doing it, and that to a certain extent he can control it. But when he bottles it up, it gets much worse.”
    “What gets much worse?”
    We were on a long escalator, descending toward the first floor lobby. “You look just like him, did you know that?” Liszt asked me. “The way he used to look.”
    “No, I don’t…” I began to object.
    “I’ve known him a lot longer than you have,” he pointed out. “This way.” He yanked me to one side, and we walked through the swinging glass doors of a coffee shop in the hotel’s lobby. A corner table was open and in a minute I found myself sipping a cup of tea with milk and watching Grandmaster Liszt lick beads of chai latte off his mustache. “So,” he said, “first of all, as you must have realized, I’m not exactly a pal of your father’s.”
    “I gathered that.”
    “Nor would I say I am completely an enemy.” He ran a hand through his shaggy beard. “I’m a very competitive guy and he was the best of us, and I never could quite accept that. I say, he was the best of us, because he’s been away much too long. He’s struggling now against Voorhees, and even if he wins this one he’ll get thrashed by any of the top dozen players here. Ring rust. And he’s not up on the latest theory.” Liszt took another sip of latte and gave me a puzzled look. “What I don’t get is that Morris made the right decision. He got out while he could. He left it behind before it destroyed him, and he made a clean break. I gather he has a career, and a family, completely outside of the chess world, and I haven’t seen him at a tournament in thirty years. Why the hell did he come back?”
    “I brought him back,” I confessed. “Some kids from my school were entering this tournament. They found out about him and asked me to get him on the team. He’s doing this for me.”
    Liszt raised his bushy eyebrows, which looked like untended hedges, and nodded as if this was beginning to make sense. “Well, if you got him into this, you’ve got to get him out,” the hulking grandmaster said. “And the sooner the better, or you may be guilty of patricide.”
    “Why?” I asked. “It’s just one three-day tournament. I know he had some problems with his temper back in the day, but he says he can control it.”
    Liszt’s deep rumble of laughter sounded like thunder in the mountains. “‘Some problems with his temper’? That’s rich.” He jabbed a finger as thick as a banana in my direction. “Let me tell you a little about your dad’s unfortunate difficulties controlling his temper. They almost killed him, not to mention poor Stanwick.”
    I looked back at him. There was still time to get up and walk out of this coffee shop and not listen to this. But I found myself asking: “Who is Stanwick?”
    “Nelson Stanwick. I still see him in tournaments from time to time. He’s just a shadow of what he was. The truth is I don’t think he ever fully recovered.”
    I knew I was opening a door to something I didn’t want to hear about, but I had to know. “Stop messing with my head,” I told the big man. “Just tell me what happened.”
    “Sure,” Liszt said, and I got the feeling he was