Under the afternoon sun, Raymond touched the warm metal revolver. Sweat slipped down his temples. Lights whirled from the cruiser's roof.
"Get your hands up and step away from the car!" the officer shouted.
Time became something that happened elsewhere. Raymond could see the silvery snaps on the cuffs of the officer's sleeves. The sight at the end of his pistol. A mole on the side of his neck.
"I'm just here to feed my family."
"Hands up or I spread you like mustard!"
Half hidden behind his car, Raymond eased out the revolver, slung it into the far corner of the trunk, and raised his hands. They'd find it. He knew that. He just wanted to introduce deniability. He took a slow step from the car. The cop sidled from behind his door, relaxing his elbows, black pistol swallowing the sun.
From the front of the Ralph's, three quick shots spooked a flock of screams. Raymond flinched down, shoulders scrunched against his head. The cop twitched his gun, following him, then aimed it upright and charged across the sunny lot. His partner spilled out of the car and followed on his heels. Raymond pawed the rest of the groceries into his trunk, slammed it, squeezed in behind the wheel, and pulled out. Shoppers ran past, covering their heads and ducking, pinging erratically across the asphalt. Raymond swung around a woman carrying a kid in her arms. A shopping cart banged off his bumper. The abandoned cop car stretched across the exit. He rolled up beside it, left tires shuddering over the concrete-bordered strip of grass that ran alongside the lot, then jolted back down into the road with a harsh metal screech. Back at the front of the Ralph's, gunshots popped in the humid air. Raymond finally registered the upcoming light was red and stomped the brakes, his car bucking stopped six inches from the rear bumper of an Expedition.
Hands shaking, he waited for the light to turn.
His senses returned homebound on the PCH. It had happened so fast, shortcircuiting his rational thought. The cop with the gun, had he known or suspected Raymond of looting? Had he been stopping everyone to sort it out? Had Raymond seriously considered, however briefly, pulling his gun? Had he intended to bluff, or try to shoot his way out, envisioning arrest for armed robbery, an impossible bail, years without Mia? On the other hand, why not?—but maybe for a lesser crime. Was it better to go to jail than to go broke?
He didn't know. All he could remember was the glint of the officer's buttons, the small black brick of his pistol, the sense his world was about to slip beneath the breakers. Yet he'd thrown down the gun. A stranger had fired his own instead. Raymond's future had popped above the waves, taken a juddering breath, and resumed paddling.
He pulled into his driveway. Time to recohere. You become what you pretend, so pretend to be something good.
In the trunk, he hid the revolver under an old coat and started hauling groceries. Mia smiled at him from the recliner. "How went the job hunt?"
"Riotous."
"At you? Or with you?"
"Literally." He set down an armload of cereal and tomatoes and shook his head like they were discussing a 6-year-old dragged under by a shark. "I'm picking up some applications at this strip mall, right. So I see the Ralph's is having this big sale. Go inside, load up my cart, and all of a sudden everyone starts looting the place."
Mia sat up, plunking her elbows between her knees. "Looting? Really? Did the Lakers win again?"
"I think people are afraid."
"Should we be?"
"Do you feel sick?"
"No." She smiled then, chin tilted. "So you robbed the place blind, right? How much bacon did you get?"
He looked up, thinking. "About five packs?"
"Wait, you did?" She glanced to the side, as if seeking the support of an unseen audience. "Does this mean I'll finally realize my lifelong dream of sleeping with a felon?"
"Possibly. Will you still be turned on if it turns out I'm just a misdemeanist?"
"So what happened?"
"One minute I'm piling up the rice and things, the next minute everyone's screaming and stampeding for the door. Somebody had a gun, was waving it at the checkout lines. I just got out of there."
"And the groceries got with you."
He shook his head again. "It all happened so fast. I didn't have time to think. Do you think I should take them back?"
"I don't know." She tapped her teeth. "I think if you go back, you're confessing. Places like that have insurance, don't they?"
"I think so." He jerked his thumb toward the door. "Want to give me a hand?"
Mia unfolded from the recliner. "What, and be an accessory?"
Which was exactly why he hadn't told her the truth. He waited for a knock, a call, a radio crackling from his back steps—he had to protect her from those consequences. He went online to see what the news had to say about them and found his looting had been the third of the day. A Best Buy in Long Beach, the usual stereos and TVs carted out through broken windows by brown people, but also a Sprouts in Torrance, blonde mothers clinging to their kids with one hand and stuffing organic heirloom tomatoes into their purses with the other. Watts caught fire the next day, smogging the valley. At night, sleek black SUVs rolled down the curvy lane. Glass shattered down the street; later, Raymond rose for a glass of water and saw his windows painted by the spinning lights of a cruiser. Two young Hispanic guys lay facedown on the sidewalk, hands cuffed behind their backs, a potbellied white cop shouting at them as he paced. Raymond could see no obvious evidence of a crime. He moved the revolver to a drawer in the bedroom.
Craigslist blossomed with security-wanted ads. Raymond embellished his resume, added a paragraph about his home invasion defense experience. He got a call later that day for an interview up the street in Palos Verdes.
While Mia, still home from work, researched mortgages and liens and applied for credit cards (both of them had somehow made it this far in life with nothing more than debit cards), Raymond drove up the winding roads into the ocean-gazing hills, his dusty Altima conspicuous among the glassy-bright Benzes and Porsches, and pulled onto the long driveway of a Tuscan-style manor fronted with whip-thin, forest-black pines. From the third story of its wide-windowed turret, a curtain fell closed.
A middle-aged Asian man in suit and glasses answered the bell. Raymond's sneakers squeaked on the stone floor. Should have worn something black and shiny as a beetle's back. Oh well, regrets were no use: Just do better next time. The servant led him to a well-lit study of thick white carpets. A fresh marine breeze slipped through the slats built into the wall. From behind a glass desk, Kevin Murckle picked at a stain on his wash-worn t-shirt, looked up, and snugged his surgical mask into place.
"Frankly, I'm looking for someone bigger. Possibly blacker. A shaved head helps."
"Sure," Raymond nodded. He wasn't surprised; he was 5' 9", 155 pounds, with arms that neither popped nor wilted. "But try squeezing one of the big guys into the air ducts when your daughter's kidnapped."
Murckle laughed, creasing his tanned face. "You've seen my movies."
"I'm smart. I've got my own piece. I can start today."
"Your experience is a little flimsy. Some might compare it to a greasy Fatburger wrapper."
Raymond leaned back in his wireframe chair. "Why haven't you skipped town?"
Murckle waved at the ocean sparking below his window. "I live here."
"And two or three other places, right?"
"Five."
"Everyone else in your tax bracket has fled for a ranch in Wyoming or a mountain in Colorado. You've got something you want to protect—your house, your business, your girlfriends."
"Something like that."
"I've got something I want to protect, too. She's ten minutes away. You find yourself with an emergency, that puts me ten minutes away from providing backup. Day or night."
The man stuck out his chin, scratched his thumbnail along the salt-and-pepper whiskers lining his neck. "We'll get back to you. Show yourself out, will you?"
Raymond kept putting in applications. At nigh
t they smelled the smoke from Watts. The news started running death tolls: first hundreds nationwide, revised to thousands by the next day. The warble of ambulances yanked them from sleep. Murckle called him three days later.
"Swing by tonight."
"Great," Raymond said. "What tipped the scales?"
"You were the only applicant without a criminal record."
"Sure. I'm a clean-cut guy."
"I don't consider that a positive. But I need somebody with a clean record. Now get over here so my doctor can stick a needle in you."
The middle-aged man in suit and glasses led him to a dustless garage where two other men waited, one big bald black guy and one big bald white guy, both in their underwear. Small metal instruments and syringes rested on a glass table.
Raymond raised one hand hello. "What's up?"
The white guy elbowed the black guy. "Bet you fifty when the doc draws his blood he collapses like a used condom."
"That's disgusting," the black guy said.
"Remove your clothes, please," said the man who'd answered the door. He waited in perfect stillness while Raymond tugged off his shirt and dropped his pants, then took them away before Raymond had a chance to look confused, folding them with crisp snaps of his wrists. Raymond thought he heard him sniff. An old guy with a laurel-leaf of white hair fringing his head walked through the door.
"Okay, boys," the old man said, tugging the hems of his jean jacket. "A little jab, a quick physical, and we'll send you on your way."
The white guy gave the other man another elbow. "That's the same line you use on the dudes, isn't it?"
"Christ."
The doctor drew their blood, checked their breathing, prodded the glands around their throats. "Naturally, if you are ill, you will not be invited back. I will call with your results tomorrow afternoon."
Raymond turned out clean. So, apparently, did the other two. He met them the next afternoon in Murckle's sun-splashed foyer, their arms folded, bulging in their tight black suits.
"You will wait here," the doorman said. His footsteps echoed up a curled flight of stairs.
"We better be on the clock," the black guy mumbled.
They stood in silence a couple minutes, shuffling, eyeing the airy living room, red couches on white carpet, lurid old movie posters framed on the walls. When he couldn't take it, Raymond introduced himself, earning a handshake from Bill, the guy who'd spoken a minute earlier, and a nod from Craig.
"You guys done this kind of work before?"
Bill gave him a wry smile. "So it says on our resume."
Craig tipped back his head, eyes slits in his beefy face. "You packing?"
"Of course," Raymond said.
"Let me see your piece," he beckoned. Raymond handed over his revolver butt-first. Craig cracked the cylinder and cackled. "Yo, check this out."
"You steal that thing off a Confederate?" Bill said.
"Sure. Everyone knows they can't fight back."
Craig shook his head. "You're in here in street clothes packing some John Wayne cap gun and we're supposed to feel good you got our backs. What kind of desperate-ass times are these?"
"I know how to use it," Raymond said.
"Sure. Just aim and run away." Craig tipped the gun and tapped the cylinder, clattering shells over the stone floor. Raymond held out his hand. Craig sniffed and passed it over. Raymond held it a moment, feeling its reassuring weight.
The doorman cleared his throat, scowling from the top of the stairs. Craig gazed back placid as a cow. The doorman descended, planted himself in front of them, and folded his hands behind his back.
"I am Mr. Hu. Naturally, Mr. Murckle will not risk himself to exposure when he has no idea where you go home to each night. I will therefore introduce you to the facilities and function as the go-between when Mr. Murckle has tasks beyond keeping the grounds safe from burglars, looters, and assorted ill-wishers."
"How are we supposed to guard his body when we can't even see him?" Craig said.
"By ensuring no one else is able to see him, either."
Bill chuckled. Craig socked him in the arm as soon as Hu turned his back. Hu showed them the entries, the ground-level windows, the yards, the cliffside deck where a mild fog speckled Raymond's face, the security pads (but not how to work them), the panic room, the control room and its nine TVs, where Raymond toggled cameras like a pro while Craig struggled to zoom. Straightforward enough: watch the monitors, prowl the grounds if anyone showed up, be ready to use your weapon. Could you really just hire a man off the street to use deadly force while on your property? Would he even be able to pull the trigger on another person? He wasn't at all certain of either. He was all but certain, however, that it didn't matter on either count. There wasn't going to be any house-to-house looting or roving bands of harm-doers burning down hillside manors and running off with the jewelry. This bodyguard thing was just an absurd fad. One he would take advantage of to earn a few bucks while he waited for the video store to officialize his hiring.
Hu told them their schedule—Craig had first shift—then showed Bill and Raymond to the porch. With the evening sun pouring over the Pacific, Bill jiggled a Marlboro from his pack and lit up.
"I feel like we're into something strange here."
Raymond squinted. "Yeah?"
"So this dude is looking to hire himself some security." Bill glanced at the windows, lowered his voice. "Somehow none of the three guys he hires has any direct experience?"
"Everyone's got the flu. Anyone who isn't is probably tending to their own family."
Bill shrugged his thick shoulders. "Look, you seem like an all right guy, you know? Watch out for yourself."
He went home to bring Mia the good news. A frown fought a smile for her face. "I'm glad you're working. I was starting to get scared about moving out. But now I have to be scared for you at work instead?"
"It's not a big deal." He clicked open the cabinet under the microwave, snagged the bottle of Captain Morgan Private Stock she liked. "It's sitting behind a desk in a little tech room watching screens."
"And getting shot like a redshirt if something goes wrong."
"The guy's Hollywood. If something goes wrong, he'll have a SWAT team in three minutes."
She mashed her lips together and absently accepted his celebratory rum and Coke. "Don't get hurt, okay? If anything happens to you, I'll run away with the mailman."
He woke before his alarm, rolled up to the manor eight minutes early. Craig met him on the porch, blear-eyed.
"Have fun, kid. I was too bored to beat off."
He learned quickly what Craig meant. For all the break-ins, looting, riots, and fires around Los Angeles County, none of that manifested itself on Murckle's quiet cliffside street. He had the nine closed-circuit screens to watch, but except for the constant soft sway of the fronds, he may as well have been watching nine still lives of palms. He tried to find an internet radio feed for the Mariners and discovered the games had been postponed. For the Mariners, that was probably a mercy.
He wandered the grounds. A light fog clung to the cliffs, dewing the grass and the planks of the deck. He went back inside. The radio reported riots in a park in New York, three deaths and a couple dozen injuries, armed anarchists clashing with police over accusations the disease was an escaped government project. In Atlanta, crowds had been forced away from the CDC with live ammunition.
Bill clapped him on the shoulder that afternoon. "Anything go down?"
"Just my heart rate."
"Guess them crooks haven't figured their way up to the hills yet."
Before he left, Hu asked him to drop off a box of files in Hawthorne. The windows of the looted Ralph's were dark, gaping, glass glittering on the asphalt. Men stood on their front porches eyeing pedestrians and traffic, baseball bats and golf clubs dangling from their hands. At a Spanish bungalow with an iron fence around its rooftop barbecue, Raymond handed off the box of files and got home an hour before dark.
"I made $96 to
sit in a room and watch a bunch of TV screens," he told Mia. "I think we'll be okay."
She gathered her long dark hair behind her head, sticking out her lower lip. "No one tried to break in?"
"It was so quiet I could hear the mice in the walls plotting their heist."
So was the next day. When Bill showed up to relieve him, Hu handed Raymond an address. "Mr. Murckle has some files he needs delivered to Torrance. Do you know Torrance?"
"Enough to get around."
"When you arrive, knock on apartment 218 and return to the car. When the man comes downstairs to the car, pop the trunk. Do not speak to him. Once he accepts the files, return here and see me before you begin your rounds."
Down the hill in Torrance, tarps fluttered from smashed windows. In the Sprouts parking lot, cops stood over a line of men cuffed and laid out on their bellies. Ambulances howled down the PCH, shepherding the thinned traffic to the sides of the road. Raymond turned off, passing a bowling alley, liquor stores. He parked in a weedy lot between two beige stucco apartment buildings, stepped out into an afternoon as warm as a dog's breath, climbed the stairs, knocked on 218, and returned to the car.
A minute later, a skinny white guy with a shaved head and the long, drooping jaw of a basset hound jogged down the steps, reached into the open trunk, and pulled out a briefcase.
Raymond drove back to Murckle's. Hu opened the door before he could knock. "Everything went well?"
"Perfectly," Raymond said. "Hey, I think I left something in the control room."
Hu nodded and gestured him upstairs. Raymond took them at a walk. In the control room, Bill clasped his hands behind his head and gazed blankly at the ceiling. Raymond knocked on the open door and Bill flailed to keep from falling from his chair.
"Christ, man, I'm trying to goof off in here."
Raymond closed the door. "You were right. We're into something strange."
Bill glanced at the door and leaned forward, suit drawn tight over his shoulders. "What's up?"
"I think we're dealing drugs."
8