Charlie Huston - Sleepless

The Venice Beach encampment spilled up Washington from the shore. 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. Assuming 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 destitute 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.

“Fuck.”

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.

“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.