Sleepless. Part 27

"And Melrose Tom and Tad, and I think his name was Zhou."

"With the scimitar earring?"

"Yeah, him."

Beenie nodded.

"Yeah, that's Zhou. f.u.c.k. f.u.c.k."

He started to cry, stopped himself, started again, punched the roof of the car, and stopped.

"f.u.c.k. Those guys. They. That's just f.u.c.king 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 b.u.mper and started strapping his clips to his riding boots.

"Park, how the f.u.c.k 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 s.h.i.+t 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. s.h.i.+t, 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 s.h.i.+fted 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.

Returning after my first tour, the two weeks spent in Odessa were the most difficult. Far more trying than Special Forces a.s.sessment and Selection, more brutal than the six-month Special Forces Qualification course MOS 18B SF Weapons Sergeant. That had been second nature. But trying to hang out with my buddies from the football team after a year in-country had been akin to torture.

Ah, torture.

That was why I was reminiscing so vividly.

Yes, those callow youths. Chasing tail. Trying to tear off a piece. Guzzling Lone Star. Asking me how many gooks I'd killed over there.

The most troubling aspect wasn't the tedium, it was the aching desire I felt almost every moment I was with those friends of mine to kill. It would have been quite easy. There was no lack of firearms. Virtually every day of my leave included some form of drunken blasting at small animals or the endless supply of empty beer cans we produced.

After five days of it I refused their invitations. Preferring to stay at home with my father, sitting on the patio of what had once been the family horse ranch, staring at the horizon beyond the small stone that marked the place where he had buried my mother. We spoke little enough to each other. I knew that he had been with Darby's Rangers and scaled the cliffs at Pointe du Hoc on D-Day And he knew that I had seen action myself. What could we possibly say to each other?

Returning with my beret, a.s.signed to the Fifth Army group at Nha Trang, I walked back into the jungle, only my excellent training and self-discipline keeping a bounce from my step.

Remembering the jungle made more sense than remembering Texas. If, during torture, you are going to attempt to cast your mind to another time and place, the best strategy is to choose a time and place where you were happy.

Though it is imprecise to say that I was happy in the jungle, more accurate that I was most myself there. Nowhere else, at no other time, has my nature been so nurtured and rewarded by an environment. By simply relaxing all restraints on my impulses, I thrived. No choking jungle vine flourished as did I.

Truly, I didn't wish to come home.

In fact, it's hard to say that I did come home. I most definitely did not return to Texas. Nor did I return to the name I had been given at birth. From the great distance I had traveled since then, it was hard to see what connection or relation I could possibly have with the rawboned, sunburned youth grappling at the line of scrimmage on a playing field that was mostly dirt and rock.