Sleepless. Part 26

"Sir, your ID, please, sir."

Again leaving his left on the wheel, Park lifted the badge from his chest, ducked his head out of the lanyard, and offered it to the young man.

There was a pause while the sergeant raised a hand in the air, flashed several fingers at his squadmates in quick succession, like a catcher running through his signals, and stepped forward, reaching for something on his belt. Park almost ducked as the RFID interrogator was raised, a gesture that surely would have required a few rounds fired, but he recognized the device at the last moment and remained still as the Guard aimed it at the badge, pulled the trigger, read the results, and flashed another series of signals that resulted in most of the weapons in the immediate vicinity being aimed in other directions.

"Sir, Officer Haas, sir, I need to ask what your business is, sir."

Park dropped the badge back around his neck and replaced his hands on the wheel.

"I'm on a.s.signment, Sergeant. Venice Beach."

"Sir, I have to ask if this a.s.signment is urgent business, sir. If it is not, I have to request that you return to your home or domicile."

Park knew it wasn't by chance that this Deep South native had found his Guard unit dropped in California. Patriot II policy was to deploy the Guard away from their native states when suppressing civil unrest. The fewer the connections the soldiers had to the locals, the more easily they would pull the trigger when necessary.

Park looked at the other Guards. All as young as this one, nearly all black or brown, arrayed behind the barricade of cars that they knew would do little to stop any remotely decent firepower. Let alone provide cover from an RPG or, G.o.d forbid, a car bomb. Neither of the two Humvees parked behind the barricade had been up-armored, and only one was equipped with a heavy machine gun. The young woman behind the machine gun kept pus.h.i.+ng her helmet up as it repeatedly tilted down over her eyes.

"Yes, Sergeant, my investigation is urgent."

The NCO pulled a logbook from one of the side pockets of his fatigues.

"Sir, I'll need an address, sir."

Park gave him a random sequence of numbers and the first Venice Beach street name he thought of.

The sergeant wrote it down, returned the logbook to his pocket, nodded at Park, and leaned against the car, dipping his face close to the open window.

"Sir, I don't suppose you've heard anything, sir."

Park shook his head.

"I was just about to ask you."

He looked over his shoulder at his command and smiled.

"He was gonna ask me what the f.u.c.k is going on. Believe that?"

A round of weary soldiers' laughter went through the squad.

He looked back at Park.

"They ain't told us s.h.i.+t. We get what y'all get from the radio. Some bad guys shot a rocket at some of our guys. We hit Little Persia. Little Russia. Things didn't get kerf.u.c.ked until we hit a Church of the New American Jesus in Hollywood and a couple flash-bangs started a fire and burned the f.u.c.king thing down. That was around thirteen hundred hours. We got rolled here by fourteen hundred. Haven't heard s.h.i.+t from the s.p.a.ce ants since."

Park nodded.

"Wish I knew something I could tell you, Sergeant."

The sergeant flashed another sequence of fingers, and the Humvee with the gun mount backed up a few yards to clear a s.p.a.ce in the middle of the barricade.

"s.h.i.+t, we ain't worried."

He pointed at the hood of the Subaru, and Park started the engine.

The sergeant looked north, where all the trouble was.

"This is America, motherf.u.c.kers. We'll be just fine."

He waved a hand, and Park drove through the opening. West, away from the worst of it.

The few other cars on the boulevard were driven by those whose cares were great enough to take the risk, who were stupid enough not to see the danger as real, brave enough to face it with a desire to find some way to help, or the sleepless. No reason to fear anything, they wandered the sidewalks and drove the roads. Sudden bursts of speed, violent turns, or constant meandering between lanes tipped one off that the car ahead should be given a wide berth.

After turning south onto Oxford, Park found another checkpoint at the Admiralty Way entrance to Marina Del Rey This one manned by an impromptu militia of boat owners and sail buffs who had failed to get their vessels out before the Navy sealed the marina to cut it off from use by smugglers bringing arms in to the NAJi.

Carrying sporting shotguns last used shooting skeet from the decks of their yachts, a few illegally modified a.s.sault rifles ostensibly necessary for repelling South Asian pirates but more often fired during drunken barbeques in international waters, two flare pistols, and one spear gun, they told Park to turn around and f.u.c.k off.

He showed them his badge.

They asked him who he was there to see.

He told them to get out of the way and stop interfering with police business before he put in a call to the Guard checkpoint on Was.h.i.+ngton and told them there was a well-armed insurgent group raiding the marina.

They let him pa.s.s, and he drove out Bali Way onto one of the relatively low-rent piers, parked, walked to the end of the fourth dock, found Beenie's day cruiser floating in its slip, and crept on board, his Walther PPS in his hands.

Coming down the steps from the deck into the cabin, the boat bobbing gently, he leaned back to duck under the hatch and found his left ankle grabbed from below, his leg pulled from underneath him. Twisting, he fell to the side, his hip, elbow, and shoulder cracking against the steps. The gun slipped partially from his grasp, and he fumbled his finger inside the guard while bringing it up.

Someone waved an arm from beneath the steps.

"What the f.u.c.k! What the f.u.c.k!"

Park froze, the weapon half-raised, and waited as Beenie emerged.

"What the f.u.c.k, Park? I could have killed you, man. Hail the vessel before you come aboard."

Park lowered his gun.

"I thought. Was anyone here?"

Beenie put down the steak knife he was holding.

"No, man. Who's going to be here? No one is going anywhere. No one except Guards and. Oh, Jesus."

Park followed Beenie's eyes down to the badge hanging from his neck.

"Oh, Jesus, Park."

Park got up slowly, stretching his arm and leg, rubbing his hip, determining that nothing was broken.

He holstered his gun.

Beenie dropped onto his bunk and put his face in his hands.

"f.u.c.k, Park. I told you s.h.i.+t."

He looked up.

"I mean, f.u.c.k. We were friends."

Park looked around, found Beenie's day pack and held it out to him.

"We need to fill this with anything you can't live without."

When they drove away from the marina Beenie's favorite trail bike was in the back of Park's car along with his helmet, elbow and knee pads, riding clips, and halogen lamp, along with a solo tent and mummy bag strapped to the frame with loops of bungee cord. The day pack was in Beenie's lap. Inside were his laptop, several accessories, a jumble of thumb drives and cards, tangled chargers, an ounce of British Columbian weed, some clean socks, biking shorts and jerseys, his phone, a copy of On the Road, a set of silk long underwear, and a thick envelope filled with pictures of his wife and a letter he had never been able to read, written by her for him to open after she died.

Park had helped Beenie collect those things, opening drawers and digging under piles of dirty laundry as directed while Beenie changed into hiking pants with zip-off lower legs, an EMS Techwick s.h.i.+rt, and a boot-style pair of mountain biking shoes. He'd recognized the unopened light blue envelope with the frayed edges not because he'd ever seen it before, but because Beenie had described it to him one evening nearly a year before. On the anniversary of her death, uncharacteristically sober, he had told Park about it while they waited in line at Randy's Donuts. He'd told him that he kept trying to lose it. Carelessly flipping it to the back of a drawer, finding it after a few months and stuffing it into his pocket, leaving it there when he tossed the pants into a laundry pile, only to have it fall out before they went into a machine weeks later. On the boat, Park had found it poking from the bottom of a stack of cycling magazines, pulled it free, and, without asking, slid it in with the photos.

In the car, Beenie put the finis.h.i.+ng touches on a joint and showed it to Park.

"Any objections?"

Park shook his head; Beenie lit the joint and took a hit.

"Were you going to bust me?"

Park concentrated on the car ahead of him. It zigged across two lanes as if to make a last-second right at Ocean Avenue and then zagged back to the middle, straddling the broken white line, blocking both westbound lanes.

Beenie blew smoke out the open window.

"If whatever's happening hadn't happened, were you going to bust me?"

Park s.h.i.+fted into fourth, swung the Subaru into a gap in the spa.r.s.e eastbound traffic, and pa.s.sed the car, stealing a glance at the stiff-necked driver, an old man wearing no s.h.i.+rt, howling like a dog along to a German death metal song that was cracking his speakers.

He pulled back into the westbound lanes.

"Yes. I would have busted you."

Beenie looked at the joint pinched between his fingers and frowned.

"But now?"

Park drove them over the small bridge that crossed the Grand Ca.n.a.l, the water on either side sc.u.mmed with a thick pelt of algae broken by flotillas of plastic bottles.

"If I bust you, I think someone might kill you."

Beenie brought the joint to his lips, took it away without inhaling, and flicked it out the window.

"What's it about, Park?"

Park edged the car to the curb on Strongs Drive.

The Venice Beach encampment spilled up Was.h.i.+ngton from the sh.o.r.e. Tents, lean-tos, corrugated shanties, they stretched along the sand from the park at Horizon Avenue to just below Catamaran. A combination of the homeless who had long ago staked their claims to this stretch of oceanfront, canyon country fire evacuees, and refugees from Inglewood and Hawthorne. They had run until they hit the ocean. Those trying to flee farther north hit chain link and barbed wire on the southern edge of Santa Monica and found themselves turned about. No one bothered to go south. a.s.suming they could skirt the marina, the beach at the foot of the LAX runways was patrolled by Marines. If they somehow made it past either of those hazards, they would surely be machine-gunned by the private security agents at the El Segundo Chevron refinery.

There was still a great deal of tattered tie-dye and faded army surplus to be found in the encampment, but any vagabond spirit of the past was all but dead. Park had never thought of Venice as anything but a grimy sideshow distraction featuring dest.i.tute junkies and aging acid heads so thoroughly burned out that you could all but see the broken filaments behind their eyes. There was no romance in the legend of the place as far as he was concerned, but that didn't make its present less desperate.

He switched off the engine and ran his thumb along the teeth of his house key.

"It's about Dreamer."

Beenie dropped his head and shook it.

"f.u.c.k."

He looked at Park.

"I introduced you to Cager."

Park watched a scramble of dusty boys and girls kicking a soccer ball in and out of the darkness between two unbroken street lamps.

"I know."

Beenie opened his door and climbed out.

"f.u.c.k."

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 a.s.shole, 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?"