“I know.”
Beenie opened his door and climbed out.
“Fuck.”
Park got out, went to the rear of the car, opened the hatch, and stood aside.
Beenie pulled out his bike.
“Hold this.”
Park took the handlebars and held the forks off the ground as Beenie reattached the front wheel he’d removed to fit the bike in the back of the small five-do or.
“Even so, man, Cager is an asshole, but I don’t think he would kill me. I mean, you’re a cop. You can ruin my life, but what can you do to him?”
Park leaned the bike against the car.
“Someone hit the gold farm yesterday morning.”
“Hit it?”
Park looked at the kids again. An argument had broken out over the boundaries of the field.
“They killed Hydo and the guys. Shot them.”
Beenie winced.
“Keebler?”
“And Melrose Tom and Tad, and I think his name was Zhou.”
“With the scimitar earring?”
“Yeah, him.”
Beenie nodded.
“Yeah, that’s Zhou. Fuck. Fuck.”
He started to cry, stopped himself, started again, punched the roof of the car, and stopped.
“Fuck. Those guys. They. That’s just fucking stupid, killing those guys.”
Park nodded.
Beenie wiped his eyes.
“Cager?”
Park looked away from the kids.
“What was he doing with Hydo, other than buying artifacts?”
Beenie sat on the bumper and started strapping his clips to his riding boots.
“Park, how the fuck do I know? I didn’t even know you were a cop.”
He put his feet down, the clips tapping against the asphalt.
“Hydo was like his house dealer for anything in-world.”
He strapped on an elbow pad.
“Anything Cager wanted for Chasm, anything he wanted for one of his quests, Hydo got it for him. Only reason I was involved is because Hydo subcontracted some of it to me when Cager’s requisition list was too long. I came through, and every now and then Cager would throw me some business.”
Park reached in the back of the car, pulled out the other elbow pad and handed it to him.
“Why?”
Beenie strapped it on, grabbed the knee pads.
“Because he likes being in the middle. He likes the hustle. Like meeting you and making that Shabu deal on the fly. He could have that shit delivered whenever he wants, but he likes to play. He likes action.”
He sat with a knee pad in either hand, clacking them together.
“Me and Hydo talked about it. The way you talk about someone famous when you meet them. Try to figure out what they’re really about. That whole cult of celebrity thing and the way it gets inside your head, man. Like you don’t even want to think about these people, but they’re so relentlessly shoved in your face, you can’t help it. Then you meet someone you only saw before on TV, and you really trip out.”
Park was again rubbing his father’s watch.
“What did you guys think?”
“Thing about Cager is, we thought, he’s all about the game.”
He looked up at Park.
“He talks about Chasm different than other people. Lots of players, they talk about it like it’s real. Shit, I do sometimes. But he talks about it like it’s more than real. Or more important than real. The way he games out here, how he plays people, that’s him trying to live the game outside the game. Not like wear a sword or anything, but he loves barter. He loves to put together different teams to take on different tasks. He’s got groups of friends for gaming, groups for dancing, groups for getting into trouble. Different teams for different quests. Like those sleepless he puts together in Chasm. And just like in the game, he likes each person in one of his groups to be a specialist. Look at you.”
He bent to buckle on a pad.
Park put his hands in his pocket.
“What?”
Beenie buckled on the other pad.
“The way he swept you up, took you in. He wants to make you part of one of his teams.”
He sat up.
“He knows you’re smart. He took you to that gallery show. He probably wants to make you the dealer for his art team.”
He stood up.
“He invite you to something tonight?”
Park was looking at the kids. They had circled up around two girls who were shoving each other back and forth.
“Yeah. He said to text him, he’d let me know where.”
Beenie put on his day pack and tightened the straps.
“Welcome to the court of the Prince of Dreams.”
Park looked at him.
“What?”
Beenie nodded.
“What he goes by in Chasm. Prince of Dreams. Nice, huh?”
The fight hadn’t boiled over yet. Park stepped to the back of the car, exposed the spare, and pulled out the engineer’s bag.
Beenie straddled the trail bike.
Park flipped open the bag.
“Hang on.”
He took out a tube like the one he’d given Cager, put it back inside the spare, and offered the bag to Beenie.
“Here.”
Beenie took the bag and looked inside. He looked at Park.
“If this is an evidence plant, it’s the worst one ever.”
Park looked north, at the glow of the canyon fires.
“You can use it. Barter. Sell.”
Beenie closed the bag.
“Your bosses don’t keep track of this stuff?”
“They don’t care.”
“And neither do you?”
Park was watching the girls. One had picked up a rock.
“I do care. I just don’t need it to do my job anymore.”
Beenie took a dangling bungee from the side of his day pack and strapped the engineer’s bag to the frame of the bike.
“Thanks. Should be something in there to get me past the Santa Monica fence.”
The other girl picked up a stick.
Park shifted on his feet.
“From there?”
Beenie scratched the back of his neck.
“People camped out up in Big Sur, I hear. I always liked it up there.”
Park closed the hatchback.
“Yeah. It’s nice. Long way.”
Beenie pointed at the smoke and fires, the searchlights in the sky.
“May as well be riding somewhere else.”
Park stepped away from the car.
“Come back when things settle down. I’ll do my best to get you in the clear.”
Beenie shook his head.
“‘When things settle down.’ You’re an interesting guy, Park.”
“No. I’m not.”
Beenie shrugged, stood up on his pedals.
“Take care of the family.”
Park raised a hand.
“Travel safe.”
He didn’t watch Beenie ride away, turning instead toward the brewing fight, wading in, pulling the girls apart, stopping them before they could go too far.
I WAS REMEMBERING Texas.
This was odd, as I had endeavored for oh so many years never to remember Texas. Nonetheless, there it was, as if in front of me, the endless brown plain. Scrubby little Odessa. Youth recaptured.
Specifically, I was having visions of high school. The final month of my senior year, my eighteenth birthday, walking into the army recruiting office with my father and signing the papers, saluting the recruiting officer as I had been taught, turning heel-toe and saluting my father, holding it until he returned it. I was so happy that day.
I was even happier at Fort Bragg. I wouldn’t be qualified to apply to the Special Forces Recruiting Detachment until after I had finished basic and done a tour, but I could see the soldiers on Smoke Bomb Hill, going after their green berets. Rarely are the dreams of childhood so close and so tangible. Even the drill sergeants couldn’t ruin my mood at Bragg. Brutal and unfair, they were only slightly more abusive than the coaches on my high school football team.
None of it really prepared me for First Air Cavalry. Pure joy. Jumping in and out of Cobras. Patrols between Da Nang and Quang Ngai. Stringing jungle paths with claymore snares.
The message stamped on the business end of a claymore mine still strikes me with both its clarity and wisdom: FRONT TOWARD ENEMY.