Charlie Huston - Sleepless

He waited on the curve of track behind one of the field’s end zones, trying not to fidget with the thumb drive hanging around his neck, one of the ten-gig drives Rose had used for work, onto which he had loaded a copy of his reports.

Driving around the neighborhood before they bought the house, he and Rose had talked about how loud it might be on game nights, both of them enjoying the idea of hearing the dull roar on Friday evenings. But by the time the season began and many parents pulled their children out of school, and particularly off the football squad (sports in which blood was regularly spilled did not seem like a wise choice of extracurricular activities in a time of plague), there weren’t enough players to field a team. Not that they would have played more than one home game. It wasn’t long after the school year began that most districts across the country began canceling all sports, dances, clubs, band practice, theatricals, or any other event that might require students to gather after school hours. Eventually the classes themselves would be canceled. For the time being a much-reduced curriculum was still offered to students whose parents signed waivers relieving the schools of all liability for any harm that might befall their children from morning to final afternoon bell. Classes taught by teachers who had signed similar waivers for the privilege. The numbers on both sides of the classroom greatly reduced, it was, nonetheless, a sad fact that teacher-to-student ratios had not improved overall.

Park rubbed his foot back and forth on the latex track surface, the sole of his shoe squeaking. He’d taken another Dexedrine spansule before leaving home. He hadn’t felt he needed it to keep awake, having passed his window of sleep opportunity yet again, but his thoughts were unruly; he’d need to marshal them to make his case to Bartolome. Twenty-four hours of hard sleep was out of the realm of possibility, so the speed had been his best option. He’d taken the pill, recorded it in his journal, police report, and dealer inventory, and left Rose playing Chasm Tide in the office, with the baby cradled around her neck in a hammocklike carrier, both of them wide awake but neither of them crying.

He looked at his father’s watch.

“Where’d you get that watch?”

Hearing the voice, Park almost bolted. Dealer’s instinct fueled by the speed almost sent him sprinting down the length of the football field, aiming for the dry L.A. River runoff beyond the parking lot.

“I don’t remember seeing that watch.”

Before he could run, another instinct had overridden the first. Cop instinct, telling him that if he ran he’d end up with boots in his backside, if not bullets.

“I’d have remembered a watch as nice as that.”

Parked thumbed the rotating bezel that his father had used to time course changes when sailing with only a compass and the sun or stars.

The man walking from the parking lot raised one of his arms and displayed a pair of handcuffs.

“I’ll make you a trade, my bracelets for your watch.”

He grabbed the back of Park’s neck and squeezed, kicking his right foot out from under him, and Park went to his knees.

“Only I’m gonna want my bracelets back.”

Park didn’t move as the watch was removed from his wrist.

“I’m going to look for that in my property envelope.”

The wrist that had worn the watch was pulled to the small of his back and forced upward, and the cuff went on.

“Yeah, you look in there, trust me, you’ll find a fucking watch.”

Hands patted him down, took his keys and phone, his wallet and the backup thumb drive, all that he’d carried with him out the front door, and he was yanked to his feet.

He looked at the man who’d come from underneath the bleachers as he shook the watch and held it to his ear.

“That watch better be the one I find when I look in my property envelope.”

“Or what, asshole?”

“Or I’ll come looking for you.”

The man shoved Park toward the street beyond the west bleachers.

“Asshole, you come looking, you better pray you don’t fucking find me.”

He shoved Park again.

“And by the way, that’s fucking threatening a public officer as far as I’m concerned, and I’m putting it in your jacket along with obstruction, no matter what the fuck kind of rat-fink asshole you are. Asshole.”

Park said nothing more.

He’d asked for a sit-down with Bartolome. He’d gotten Hounds. He knew when he was being told to shut up.

I HAD DISPENSED with burglar alarms and other home security measures long ago. That was shortly after I had become an independent contractor and found myself at odds with a long-established firm that provided services similar to mine. A boutique operation, they’d had business cards. No name, just the discreet number of an old-fashioned answering service, and a motto: Solutions for Extreme Circumstances.

As you can imagine, having such a card offered to you by a crew-cut gentleman with obviously scarred knuckles, wearing a well-tailored suit, was very impressive. This operation had a wonderful sense of theater. They were also, I must admit, quite good. Their solutions were effective more often than not, and most definitely extreme. The specific reason they had become displeased with me personally had to do with what they perceived as my poaching of a client they had serviced for some years. Poaching was the word they used when they called to advise me that I should desist and renege on the contract I had already accepted. All fairly polite but rendered with the unmistakable subtext that I had best get the fuck out of town on the next train. Or something equally Old West.

I declined.

There were a minimum of ways they could menace me. I was young. Capable of excellence in my field. Confident in my ability to succeed in the marketplace against any form of competition. And I lived within a highly secured property. The rule of law was strong, and my business was largely conducted in civilized countries; I had little to fear while engaged in my professional affairs. Having established what I believed to be my terminal exposures, I set to defending them, and went about my working days.

They came at me at night. Within the unbreachable security of my home. Dulled by the sense of safety that the locks, pressure-sensitive plates, armored doors, unbreakable glass, air density detectors, CCTV cameras, and obligatory infrared beams had imparted, I did not know I was at risk until I awoke with a blade at my throat. I was saved only by the fact that these were the kind of men who felt that an affront could be redressed only to the offender’s face. If they’d been of another sort, the kind who are genuinely happy to discover their victims asleep and to kill them in that state because of the many hazards and difficulties it eliminates, they would have survived. They were not of that sort.

I am.

So, finding myself alive when I should have been dead, I knew I had a slight momentary advantage. That advantage born of two facts: the first being that they clearly believed me to be helpless and at their mercy, the second being that I was clearly more ruthless than they.

No one expects that a naked man who was fast asleep only a moment ago will ignore the knife you have at his throat and attack you. What sane person would do such a thing? What sane person would do anything but beg for his life and pray for God’s forgiveness of his sins?

It is not a trick question. I am, by any recognizable measure, quite sane. Baroquely obsessive, but not to the point of insanity.

Regardless, I attacked. From my supine position I brought my knee up and struck the back of the knife wielder’s head. Simultaneously I slipped my hand between my body and his wrist, preventing him from cutting my neck deeply when my knee made contact and he lurched forward. Taking hold of his knife arm at the wrist and elbow, I pushed over to my right, rolling him off the edge of the bed while shielding myself with his body, discouraging his friends across the room from opening fire. That discretion would last only a moment. Landing atop my assailant on the floor, I maintained my grip and bent his arm at the elbow, forcing the knife into his throat just above the thick shield of the thyroid cartilage. I was deft enough that I could have thrown the knife at the others. Not so much out of any real hope that I could kill or disable either of them but rather to distract them for a precious moment while I took the dying man’s side -arm from its shoulder holster. But there was no real need to attempt such a high-risk maneuver. Instead, I ran and hid in the closet.