63 -- Cheers in the distance

  

 "I hate you!" Marie said, staring across the table at Mike emblazoned eyes, her make-up cracked around her mouth in a permanent expression of grief.

 "No you don't," Mike said, calmly stirring his cup of coffee. "It's all in your head like you said it would be."

 "I said Daddy would convince me to come home," Marie snapped. "He didn't. I convinced myself. And you helped. If I never heard Daddy's voice, things might have been different. I wouldn't have cared. I wouldn't have thought of home. But I miss him. I miss being home. And I'm going back."

 "Why don't we wait until things blow over," Mike said. "Then we can talk more rationally about it."

 "I am being rational," Marie said. She looked around the food establishment and caught sight of Lance seated at the counter, his shoulders hutch in a deliberate attempt to seem uninvolved, taking his time coming back as to not interrupt the conversation. He seemed strangely vulnerable, lost among the supermen to whom she'd become attached, like a child with nowhere to go. And she wishing she could take him home with her.

 Look what I found on the road, Daddy. Can I keep him, please?

 "It's not going to blow over, Michael," she said. "It's going to blow up and I don't watch it, it'll blow up in my face. In the end, I'm going to wind up crying over your dead body, and I don't want that. I'd rather go back to Daddy where I won't have to think about you, this place, or anything we've done together, where I can be pretty little rich girl again and let people like you shoot each other."

 "Would it help if I promised to settle down?"

 "No."

 "Why not?"

 "Because even if I believed you this time-- which I don't-- I'm not sure that's what I want."

 "But if you go, you may never get away from your father again."

 Marie nodded, staring down at her shaking hands, noting the chipped nail polish and how the flesh itself seemed worn-- from picking pot plants to washing blood out of Mike's clothes. "I know. But I'm older now. And a few years in the house won't kill me."

 "And life with me would?"

 She looked up and straight into his eyes. "Yes, Michael. It could."

                ***********

 They were gone, as if by magic, their bumpkin faces vanishing from the crowds, leaving only the real tourists behind, the tourists who leaned too far over the edges of their boats in the lake to examine the lily pads, or clicked pictures constantly of everything that moved, chattering over the dark history that had left countless dead bodies among the trees. Baby bodies and ex-lovers showed up here often. Sometimes in pieces. Sometimes stuffed in cardboard boxes. A few years before, the park had made headlines when two bikers drowned in the lake, clinging to their cap-sized boat while hundreds of tourists clicked pictures.

 Advertisements for a "buck an hour" boat rides rested among the wooden ruins near the south end of the water, while in the center ducks quacked from the elevated surface of an equally decrepid raft. It had once been painted green, but now was mostly duck shit.

 In the distance, Lance could hear the cheering crowds from Dodger Stadium, more mumble than actual voices, echoing between the walls of the valley crease from which the lake had gotten its name.

 Though there were other names for the place, mumbled among various ethnic residence, each dating their invasion. Lance like "red gulch" best, though "High Heaven" seemed popular among the hippies. There were many of these, cluttered around the V-shaped lake like ducks, stretched out on blankets or unzipped sleeping bags. Some were naked and making love. Others too stoned to move.

 Twilight put most of the park in shadow, and what light there was floated down through the tips of the trees in a deep, orange glow, or reflected from the tips of the mountains to the east. On the darker lower sides of the valley, house lights twinkled like stars.

 "I don't like it," Mike said, sitting up the embankment from the lake in a small tangle of trees. The wind brought the smell of pot across the lake.

 "What?" Lance said, startled from his revere.

 "The feeling's wrong here."

 "That's what you said before when the Tinkertons were here."

 "I know. I just can't figure it out. It seems complicated. Like there were too many bad vibes pressing in from too many directions. But it's out there." He waved a hand in the general direction of the lake. "And I'm missing some important detail."

 "Maybe you're just used to the Tinkertons," Lance suggested, and saw the pain erupt again in Mike's dark eyes, rekindled coals of pain over Marie's going.

 "Maybe," he mumbled, then stiffened, his expression tightening into one of sudden enlightenment. "No!" he said and jumped to his feet. "But you're close. What's missing are the cops. I haven't seen one goddamn foot patrol since we sat down here."

 "That's bad?"

 "You bet it is," he growled and couched and glanced more carefully around, as Lance rose to join him, feeling the old panic begin, as if something would leap out of the trees-- an AK-47 erupting to cut down soldiers.

 "But why?" Lance asked. "I thought you'd want less cops, not more."

 "The normal amount would do," Mike said. "It would mean everything was normal. But someone's pulled all the uniforms out as to not upset the game."

 "You mean the cops know what's coming down?"

 "So it would seem," Mike said. "And I'm willing to bet Bobo's dope that there's more cops hanging around this park right now than there were Tinkertons before. Damn! That screws up the whole ball game."

 "I don't see why?" Lance said. "If no one sees them, what difference does it make?"

 "Buckingham'll notice, just as I did. He has the same instincts as I do. He'll feel the trap and avoid it." Mike stood up. "Come on."

 "Where to?"

 "Out of here. We'll have to set something else up for another place and time."

 But they just reached the gravel path along the lake when someone shouted, and out from the trees on the south side came Dan and Bobo, waving like tourists, much to Mike's chagrin.

 "Damn it, shut up!" he said, but not nearly loud enough for them to hear, or as loud as they got with their shouting. They charged on down to another part of the path as it wound around the south end of the lake.

 "Mike! Lance! Over hear!" Dan shouted and waved.

 "They're a fucking advertisement," Mike said, grabbing Lance by the arm and hurrying him to the eventual meeting of ways at the southern most point.

 And the closer Lance came, the more easily he could see the bundles of weapons the other two carried, like rookie soldiers wandering into the jungle for the first time with field packs filled for every eventuality.

 "Just the men we wanted to see!" Dan said, pausing, short of breath from the jog down the hill. "We've come to get you out of here."

 "You're going to get us busted," Mike said. "There are cops all over this park."

 "That was Dan's doing," Bobo said. "He told Demetre everything."

 "What?" Mike exploded.

 "I had to," Dan said, casting a dark look at his armed companion. "It was the only way we could get in to see Free Press Bob."

 "What happened to him?"

 "Buckingham got to him," Bobo said. "But was in too much of a hurry and muffed it. Left the poor boy alive. At least for the moment."

 "Did Bob see Buckingham?" Mike asked.

 "No," Dan said. "But I think I know who he is."

 "Not that old theory again?" Bobo moaned.

 "Who?" Mike asked, ignoring Bobo.

 "Demetre."

 Mike stared at Dan for a moment, then laughed. "Demetre as Buckingham? Have you lost all your marbles, Dan?"

 "But it makes sense!" Dan insisted.

 "Not to anyone who knows him as well as I do. He's as straight as an arrow, and no more Buckingham than I am. But you've fucked things up pretty well."

 "But if Demetre isn't Buckingham, who is? There aren't many suspects left."

 "But there is one," Mike said. "One with what would appear to be a never-ending supply of dope."

 "Dale?" Bobo said. "That old Beatnik's less likely than Demetre."

 "Is he?" Mike asked. "Where did he get his dope then with the town as dry as it is?"

 "He has connections up in Frisco," Bobo said. "Everybody in town knows that."

 "And what was all that back at the house? It looked like some kind of cult."

 "Maybe," Bobo said. "But everybody's into something these days. That doesn't make him Buckingham or a killer."

 "No," Mike admitted, shifting his feet as he stared down into the water. Something small leaped from one of the lily pads. "But I have a feeling he's connected, and we've already seen what connections to Buckingham mean."

 "NO!" Lance shouted, his voice echoing off the distant hills. "He can't go and kill them all!"

 "Calm down, boy," Dan whispered. "You're attracting attention."

 Indeed, faces looked up from various ends of the park, lovers from their embraces on the benches along the water, men walking their dogs along the higher grass. Even a few of the hippies looked, suddenly less stoned than they'd appeared a moment before.

 "Calm down?" Lance roared. "How can you tell me to calm down? That's my old lady back there."

 The fire flared up in him. He could see visions of death, whole villages roaring into flame or blown to pieces, not all guilty of being the enemy.

 Sometimes the innocent get hurt, one officer told him. Sometimes they have to die for the good of the whole.

 Innocents dying for being in the wrong place at the wrong time, for doing stupid things and making foolish mistakes, like accepting love with the wrong community, or taking communion with the wrong cult. Wasn't that what had happened with the Manson people? Hadn't they made the mistake of trusting the wrong leader, or letting themselves go too far?

 Lance staggered a step, then another step. Confused again. Hearing the sound of choppers as they flew down out of the clouds.

 No.

 No choppers. A passing jet. And yet, war had come home with him. People had died. Back on the road from Denver, Dan had killed two men. And then again, in Phoenix. And again in Griffith's Park. He still felt the blood from the cop on Vermont, as if he had done the killing himself.

 The horror of it! The shame! What right did people have to bring war home, to fight it over and over again in the streets, in the name of peace and love.

 How dare America become a world like that!

 "Someone stop him!" Mike shouted. But Lance had started running, his legs obeying some deeper command, some instinct that even Vietnam had not used up.

 Sarah! I'm coming, Sarah!

 Lance leaped like some insane kid, down the grass and along the asphalt path, running the circle the way the joggers did-- though screaming Sarah's name the whole while. People looked up, jumping away from him as if he was a bull enraged. He had to get to that house before Buckingham did! Had to yank Sarah out of harm's way.

 Bobo, Dan and Mike all shouted, their own footsteps thumping down the turf after him. But theirs were not the only footsteps. Others rose out of the shadows like ghosts, up from blanket beaches and park benches, out from behind their cameras. Strangers all with the professional glint of cop in their eyes.

 Something hit Lance's legs and bowed him forward into a hard hitting tumble. He found Bobo tackling him, rolling down the embankment towards the scummy water. Ducks scattered and their feathers fluttered in their air like odd-shaped dust, coming down onto both men as Bobo pinned Lance.

 "You idiot!" Bobo growled. "What are you trying to do, get us all killed? Calm down, or I'll knock your craziness out of you!"

 "No time for that," Mike said, sweeping down the hill. "The cops are onto us. Run!"

 Dan stumbled and coughed as he caught up, a pistol in either hand. "Some of them aren't cops," he said, his face, a mixture of expressions. Panic tainted with something that looked to Lance like relief.

 "Buckingham?" Bobo said, swinging his own heavy pistol out of his belt.

 "Drug company boys," Dan hissed and couched, peeping up over the lip of the hill at the approaching figures. "Somebody's been very busy spreading the news of this."

 "Then run, damn it!" Mike growled, shoving each of them back. "The dip for the lake'll give us cover. Don't shoot unless you have no choice. God knows most of them probably think we've already been killing cops."

 Mike and Dan charged ahead. Bobo yanked Lance to his feet. "Come on, fool," he said. "Let's see what the army taught you over in Vietnam."

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