I stepped away from Roger and looked through the chain-link fence that surrounded the park. The sun was setting, and in the last light of the day there wasn’t much to see from here; the same clutter of gaudy signs and rides I remembered, now battered and greatly faded after so many years of neglect in the cruel Florida sunlight. Looming over everything was the tall and extremely unpiratical tower they had named the Mainmast. It had a half dozen metal arms hanging off it, each with a caged car dangling from the end. I had never understood what it had to do with buccaneers, no matter how many signs and flags they’d draped on it, but Harry had just patted my head when I asked him and said they got a deal on it, and anyway it had been fun to ride up to the top. There was a great view from up there, and if you closed one eye and muttered, “Yo, ho, ho,” you could almost forget that the thing was so modern-looking.
Now the whole tower seemed to lean slightly to one side, and all the cars but one were either missing or shattered. Still, I wasn’t planning on riding to the top today, so it didn’t seem important.
From the fence where I stood I couldn’t see much more of the park, but since there was nothing else to do but wait for Chutsky, I let the nostalgia in. I wondered if there was still water in the artificial river that wound through the park. There had been a pirate ship ride on that river: Roger the Pirate’s pride and joy, the wicked ship Vengeance. It had cannons that really fired sticking out of each side. And on one bank of the river, they had one of those rides where you sit inside a fake log and ride down a waterfall. Beyond it, on the far side of the park, there was the Steeplechase. Just like with the tower, the connection between a Steeplechase and pirates had always escaped me, but the ride had been Debs’s favorite. I wondered if she was thinking about it.
I looked at my sister. She was pacing back and forth in front of the gate, glancing up the road and then into the park, then standing still and folding her arms, and then snapping back into a walk, back and forth again. She was clearly about to pop from the nervous anticipation, and I thought this might be a good time to calm her down a little and share a family memory, so as she paced by me I spoke to her back.
“Deborah,” I said, and she whipped around to look at me.
“What?” she said.
“Remember the Steeplechase?” I asked her. “You used to love that ride.”
She stared at me as if I had asked her to jump off the tower. “Jesus Christ,” she said. “We’re not here to walk down memory fucking lane.” And she spun back around and stalked away to the far side of the gate.
Obviously, my sister was not quite as overwhelmed by fond recollection as I was. I wondered if she was becoming less human while I became more so. But of course, there was the strange and very human moodiness that had been afflicting her lately, so it didn’t seem likely.
In any case, Debs clearly thought that pacing and grinding her teeth was more fun than sharing happy memories of our youthful frolics in Buccaneer Land. So I let her stomp around while I looked through the fence for five more long minutes until Chutsky arrived.
And he finally did arrive, steering his car up behind Deborah’s and climbing out holding a metallic briefcase, which he put down on the hood of his car. Deborah stormed over and gave him a typically warm and loving greeting.
“Where the fuck have you been?” she said.
“Hey,” Chutsky said. He reached to give her a kiss, but she pushed past him and grabbed for the briefcase. He shrugged and nodded at me. “Hey, buddy,” he said.
“What have you got?” she said, and he took the case from her and popped it open.
“You said hardware,” he said. “I didn’t know what you were expecting, so I brought a selection.” He lifted out a small assault rifle with a folding stock. “Heckler and Koch’s finest,” he said, holding it up, then laid it on the hood and reached back into the case and came out with a pair of much smaller weapons. “Nice little Uzi here,” he said. He patted one affectionately with the steel hook he had nowadays instead of a left hand, and then put it down and took out two automatic pistols. “Couple of standard service models, nine-millimeter, nineteen shots in the mag.” He looked at Deborah fondly. “Any one of ’em a whole lot better than that piece of shit you carry around,” he said.
“It was Daddy’s,” Deborah said, lifting up one of the pistols.
Chutsky shrugged. “It’s a forty-year-old wheel gun,” he said. “Almost as old as me, and that ain’t good.”
Deborah dropped the magazine out of the pistol, worked the action, and looked in the chamber. “This isn’t the siege of Khe fucking Sanh,” she said, and she slammed the magazine back into the pistol. “I’ll take this one.”
Chutsky nodded. “Uh-huh, good,” he said. He reached past her into the case. “Extra magazine,” he said, but she shook her head.
“If I need more than one, I’m dead and fucked,” she said.
“Maybe,” Chutsky said. “What are we expecting in there, anyway?”
Debs shoved the pistol into the waistband of her pants. “I don’t know,” she said. “We were told he’s in there alone.” Chutsky raised an eyebrow at her. “Twenty-two-year-old white male,” she explained. “Five-foot-ten, a hundred fifty pounds, dark hair—but honest to God, Chutsky, we don’t have a clue if he’s really there, or if he’s alone, and I sure as shit don’t trust the bitch that gave us the tip.”
“Okay, good, I’m glad you called me,” he said, nodding happily. “Old days, you would have gone in there alone with your daddy’s popgun.” He looked over at me. “Dex?” he said. “I know you don’t like guns and violence.” He smiled and shrugged. “But hey—you don’t wanna go in there naked, buddy.” He tilted his head at his little armory, spread out on the hood of the car. “How ’bout joo say hello to my little fren?” It was the worst Scarface impression I’d ever heard, but I stepped forward for a look anyway. I really don’t like guns—they’re so loud and messy
, and they take all the skill and pleasure out of things. Still, I was not here for the fun of it.
“If it’s okay with you,” I said, “I’ll take the other pistol. And the extra magazine.” After all, if I needed the thing at all, I would probably really need it, and nineteen extra bullets don’t weigh that much.
“Yeah, great,” he said happily. “You sure you know how to use it?”
It was a small joke between us—small mostly because only Chutsky thought it was funny. He knew very well I could handle a pistol. But I played along anyway and held it up by the barrel. “I think I hold this end and point it like that,” I said.
“Perfect,” Chutsky said. “Don’t shoot off your balls, okay?” He picked up the assault rifle. It had a strap that he slid over his shoulder. “I’ll take this little beauty. And if it turns into Khe Sanh after all, I’m ready for Charlie.” He looked at the weapon for a moment with the same fondness as I had looked at Roger the Pirate—clearly there were some happy memories there.
“Chutsky,” Deborah said.
He jerked his head up to Debs as if he had been caught looking at porn. “Okay,” he said. “So how you wanna do this?”