Tilt-a-Whirl

CHAPTER FORTY

Ceepak radios for Jane Bright to join us at The Playland Arcade.

Jane spent a good deal of time with Ashley on Saturday morning. Ceepak wants Jane to ride into the city with us. He thinks when we get there, Ashley may need to talk to someone like Jane.

“Bring the photos,” he tells her. “Right. Ashley in the sundress. From when we found her in the street. Thank you.”

Ben Sinclair is nursing another Sprite, replenishing his fluids in an attempt to stop his brain from banging against the insides of his skull. I hope it doesn't work.

Mayor Sinclair is on his way over to, once again, rescue his son from the long arm of the law.

Ceepak looks at Sinclair and shakes his head.

“Wha-?” Ben asks, seeing the headshake.

I can tell he's had enough Ben Sinclair to last months. The kid disgusts him.

“Come on, Danny.”

We head for the door.

“Hey, she's laughing at you too, you know.” All of a sudden, Ben's dropped the whole gangsta act. He's just a whining, spoiled brat.

“Excuse me?” Ceepak says, one hand on the doorknob.

“This morning? On the phone? When she dumped me? She was all giggly and goofy and did like this nursery rhyme making fun of you guys, you pigs.”

“You mean us ‘bacon'?” Ceepak's a quick study. “What'd she say?”

“I dunno.”

“Tell me. I'm extremely interested.”

“Tough titty, po-po.”

Ceepak slams the door shut, rattling the glass in all the windows- and this office has a whole wall of windows.

“ What the hell did she say?’

I think he'll probably tell us what Ashley said now.

He probably won't call us pigs or po-po again, either.

“It was that Gingerbread Man deal … you know: ‘run, run, fast as you can,’ this is so lame….”

“Finish it.”

Ben shrugs.

“‘Cops can't catch me, I'm with the I–I-A, man!’”

“What's the IIA?” Ceepak asks.

“I dunno.” Ben sips his drink. “She's just wack.”

“Think harder,” Ceepak says. Ben looks at me.

“Time Crisis Three,” I say. “The International Intelligence Agency. IIA.”

“What's that?”

“It's a video game. I play it all the time. They have one here.”

“Show me.”

The first time I played Time Crisis Three was in the lobby of a multiplex movie theater while we were waiting for The Stupid Lame Comedy of the Week to start.

The game is huge. It has two video screens, both about as wide as a car door, set up inside these hulking black boxes. Two people can play at once. You get to pretend you're these good-guy super agents with the IIA, the International Intelligence Agency, and your job is to basically shoot as many of the bad guys as you can. The bad guys are these thugs who pop up all over the place-behind rocks and cargo crates, out of gopher holes and jeeps and this helicopter-type air-plane-and you have to make them go boom before they do the same to you.

It's extremely cool.

And extremely violent.

We leave the manager's office and go to where two kids are blasting away at the doublewide screens. They're knocking down the enemy, racing through a clip of ammo strung across the screen in a bar graph of bullets.

Their time runs out.

The one on the left must've done pretty good. He gets to enter his initials in the game's flashing list of top scorers.

He'll be number ten.

Another high scorer occupies spots one through nine: H-A-H.

“Harriet,” Ceepak says. “Ashley is her middle name. Harriet Ashley Hart.”

Seeing the letters stacked on top of each other, running down the screen in a list (HAH, HAH, HAH), I can hear Ashley laughing at us.

Ceepak turns his back on the machine.

“This must be where they sent her for target practice.”

I'm a little slow to follow, and my face shows it. He explains.

“Ashley is our shooter. This was her pistol range.”