“And for all this I’m expected to do what?”
Marcelin gestures in the direction of the room full of monitors. “Primary duties are to ensure the safety and security of our employees and guests. Secondary responsibilities are to minimize breakage, vandalism, and theft, most normally in the form of shoplifting.”
“Sounds my speed,” Bell says.
“Bullshit,” Marcelin says. “You’re overqualified for the position, and we both know it.”
Bell doesn’t say anything, and this time he thinks Marcelin is going to try to wait him out. The silence stretches, brushing up against becoming awkward. He wonders idly if Chaindragger’s cover contained any mention of military service, if he had any awkward questions to avoid during his job interview. He suspects not.
“You heard about the murder?” Marcelin asks, finally.
“I did not,” Bell lies.
“One of our employees was found dead out by the northwest parking lot, the staff lot. He’d been beaten and stabbed.”
“They made an arrest?”
Marcelin shakes his head. “Investigation is ongoing.”
“I hadn’t heard.”
Marcelin studies him further, scratches the back of his neck, seems on the verge of saying something more, asking something more. Bell can see the wheels turning. He’d suspected Marcelin was smart; now he’s certain of it.
“What were you? Special Forces? Green Beret?”
“Like that.”
“But not that. And you just drop out of the sky to fill this position, and all the right people are saying that you’re my man for the job. I’m no more paranoid than the next guy, but this doesn’t seem like a coincidence to me.”
“Coincidences do happen.”
Marcelin shakes his head. “Job vacates and here you are. I have to ask. Is something going to happen to my park, Jad?”
“Not as far as I know, Matt.”
It takes a couple of seconds, then Marcelin sighs.
“You’re either legit or you’re not,” he says. “But like I said, all the right people are telling me you’re a gift, and I’m not going to look that horse in the mouth. Most people in your position, they leave the military, they go either corporate or private.”
“This doesn’t count as corporate?”
“We’re not exactly KBR, Jad.”
“Not my thing.”
“No, apparently not. So what do you say?”
Bell thinks, wonders just how hard to get he should play this. Not hard at all, he decides, offering Marcelin his hand.
“When can I start?” he asks.
Chapter Four
Gabriel Fuller hates Pooch.
He hates his boundless enthusiasm and his good-natured idiocy and his desire to chase every ball that’s thrown his way. He hates his lack of pedigree, his complete renunciation of anything that might’ve, once, harked back to his wolf ancestry. He hates the simplicity that dictates that Pooch loves Gordo and Betsy and All Kids; hates that he goes crazy when offered a bone but is nowhere allowed to piss, shit, or fuck. He hates the fact that, even after all this time, he cannot be certain if Pooch is a boy or a girl.
Every Friend who portrays a character in WilsonVille has “allowed behavior,” which is another way of saying “things you must and must not do.” Some are general rules, applicable to every employee in the park: for instance, under no circumstances are they allowed to strike a park visitor. Self-explanatory, but good to remember on days when the fifth little tyke in a row has vomited on your paws or climbed onto your back and then taken a tinkle. Some are specific to character: for instance, Lily is forbidden to remove her antlers in public view. Doing so can result in immediate dismissal for “violation of character.”
Pooch’s rules are very simple. One, Pooch is a dog. Two, as a dog, he walks on all fours. Three, as a well-trained dog, he does tricks, and he does them on command: Pooch can fetch; Pooch can hop up on his hind legs for hugs and to dance about; Pooch can walk on his forepaws for short distances, to indicate excitement or approval; and, in the ultimate hypocrisy, Pooch can sign his name.
But he has to sign with his mouth.
This means that Gabriel Fuller, wearing eighteen pounds of Pooch costume, including a headpiece that stinks of sweat and shed skin cells, spends most of his days in the park walking on all fours. And when he’s not doing that, he’s pretty much guaranteed to be walking on his hands as often as his legs, because that’s what the masses have come to see. Sometimes, Gordo gives a kid a ball, and he gets to fetch it.
Signing autographs is actually the easiest task, though it requires some balance to execute properly. The headpiece is such that control of the mouth and tongue are accomplished by a wire system in the forepaws. When signing, Gabriel Fuller takes the offered pen into his mouth, closing it, then frees one of his hands-being right-handed, his right-from the paw and moves it up his front, to the inside of the mask. In this way, he can sign his name using his hand. But this also means that, while on all fours, he has to support most of his upper body on his left hand. His upper body plus the weight of the costume. Sometimes he’ll sit on his haunches to do it, but it’s a hard posture to hold for more than thirty seconds or so at a time.
At least management understands that the costumes are physically taxing, and for every thirty minutes he spends in the park Gabriel Fuller gets to spend sixty on break. By the time he’s made it to one of the employee areas and gotten out of his headpiece and freed enough of his upper body to effectively use his hands, he has forty minutes left. He’s drenched with sweat and dying of thirst, especially if it’s been a hot day (and almost every day seems to be a hot day). He sits on a bench in one of the common areas that anchor the theme park’s tunnel system, and sometimes he gets to chat with other Friends, but most of the time he’s given a wide berth, because he reeks. The female performers, in particular, avoid him, especially the Flower Sisters.
There’s prestige in whom you’re wearing. Right now, Gordo, Pooch, and Betsy are at the bottom of the ladder, though it’s anybody’s guess who’s in last place of the three. Probably Gordo, who has steadfastly refused to grow with the times, it seems; Betsy, at least, got to move “tomboy” in the last few decades, out of her floral print dresses and into cutoffs and sneakers. For the men, though, the character to be right now is Hendar. Hendar gets marriage proposals, and sometimes Mom has been known to whisper an indecent proposal in his ear, or even slip him a hotel key card. It works in private, too, with the Friends cast as Hendar renowned for “picking up a Penny” with impressive frequency. For the women, the prestige part is a toss-up, either Agent Rose or Nova. Penny Starr’s jumpsuit is tight, of course, but Nova’s superhero outfit actually gets to show a little skin, and her costume has some cool accoutrements. Agent Rose gets the trench coat and the hat and a comedy-tragedy porcelain mask with the lips painted blood-red, and who doesn’t love a Bad Girl?
All this means that, more often than not, Gabriel Fuller is left alone when he’s not out in public, not chasing Gordo’s goddamn oversize soft foam baseball or dancing in circles around Betsy or having someone pee on his back. He’s left alone, and even if he’s wearing half a giant mutt costume, he’s often unnoticed. This suits him fine. It’s time he’s used well in the last couple weeks, mapping the service tunnels and marking the generator locations and the pump rooms and generally getting the lay of the parts of WilsonVille that sixty-plus thousand people a day don’t even pause to consider. The apparatus within the apparatus; the world that allows the park to exist.
Gabriel Fuller has been doing prep, and it’s almost complete. Gabriel Fuller has set eight charges, loaded a cache with the equipment he’ll need when it all goes down. He’s done this because it’s what the Uzbek told him to do. He’s done this because, when it all goes down, he’ll be on the inside, he’ll be running the show on the ground.