Going Shogun (24 page)

Thoughts twirl as we stand in
silence, barbequing the buttocks.

Why don’t I? 

It would be easy. 

Forklift, buddy, compadre, mi
amigo.  I’m out of here.  You’re on your own.  I have a pixie rebel with a car
parked nearby and I’m going to go find my own Ascension Sux! t-shirt
.

But I can’t. 

Whatever the undiscoverable truth
may be behind the real Forklift, the guy has been my hero for two years, my
rock, the giant whose shoulders I’ve been standing on all this time, and I
absolutely cannot make myself walk away and let him face the rest of tonight
alone.

I want to scream.  I want to rage.

I want to kick the shins of gods.

Calvin Coolidge sneaks into my head
one last time.

The slogan “Press On” has solved and
always will solve the problems of the human race.

Even mine.  I hope.

“Now are we ready?” I ask.

He pulls out his phone, checks the
time.  “Critical mass is mere...I mean, yeah.  Dorna should be long gone by
now.”

“Good.”

“Is it okay to say we’re going
shogun?”

It’s such a timid request that I
have to consent.  “That one’s fine.”

“Good.  That’s my favorite.”

***

The last class I took to finish up
my degree was called The Effect of Cinema on Cultural History, and we had to
watch a film called
Star Wars
then write a paper about how it affected
so many sci-fi movies throughout the decades that followed.  The leader of the
bad guys was called Darth Invader or something.  That doesn’t sound right. 
Maybe it was Darth Vader.

That doesn’t sound right either. 
Darth
Vader
?

Whenever this guy walked into a
scene, the soundtrack played this tune of impending doom wherever he went.

I can hear that music in my head as
we walk up the block toward Wishful Thinking.  I don’t want it to be in there,
so I start humming a jazz-metal melody by Tender is the Fright. 

“Good song,” Forklift says. 
“Appropriate.”

I happen to notice he’s not
agitating.  It’s a minor detail, but it’s not the
right
Forklift.

I let it go.  It’s futile to make any
more guesses about what’s been going on with him.

When we left the bus stop, it was
about five minutes after midnight, and it’s roughly an eight-minute walk from
there.  The Minotaur told us to be at his place in Urine Town by 3AM.  We have
plenty of time left.  Plenty of time.  No reason to rush.  No reason to get
sloppy and make mistakes.

People have gone to bed.  Nobody’s
out strolling the streets to identify the perpetrators.  No cars cruise by to
get a good look at us.  The only thing we see is another transit bus, interior
lights off, probably heading back to the yard, driven by some tired R11-1 eager
to get home.

We’re alone on this march.

Bingo’s car is supposed to be a
purple Hozda with white trim, and I see nothing resembling that description parked
anywhere near Wishful Thinking as we turn the corner and walk the last hundred
yards.  My expectations go Titanic on me. 

Forklift puts an arm across my chest
and we stop at the back left corner of the restaurant, then move over into the
shadows.

“Hang a sec.”  He does some visual
reconnaissance of the street, of the vehicles nearby, of the windows in the
shops across the way.  Satisfied we’re unobserved, he says, “Quick now.  Around
the back,” and we dart into the deepening darkness.

The motion detectors must be on the
fritz because no lights come on as we sneak up to the employee entrance.  The
door is glass and during the day, it lets in natural light for ambiance.  He
checks the time again, says, “Two minutes.”

“What?  Why?  Let’s just get it over
with.”

“No.  Minute forty-five.”

“Dude, let’s get this—”

He flashes an expression that I’ve
never seen on his face before.  It looks like contempt but it’s so foreign to
his features that I can’t tell.  “Shut.  Up.  Seriously.  I know what I’m
doing.”

“Okay, okay.”

The seconds tick down and my anxiety
ticks up. 

“It’s time.” Forklift takes off the
backpack, unzips one of the pockets, and hands me a pair of gloves.

I put them on while he applies his
own set.  Then he unzips another pocket and pulls out an ID card.  He reaches
up to swipe it through the access box.

I grab his arm, jerk it away.  “Are
you nuts?  We can’t use your card to get in.  They’ll check the access records
and know it was you.”

“Calm down.  It’s not mine.”

“Whose is it?”

“A copy of Dorna’s.  I snatched hers
about a week ago and had a duplicate made.  Remember that day she was throwing
things out of her office, trying to find it?”

“How were you able to afford that?” 
Illegal reproductions of ID cards cost thousands upon thousands to get made. 
Coming up with the cash for it would be hard enough.  Finding someone to do it
that’ll risk life imprisonment, possibly even a death sentence, would be
exponentially harder.

“I have connections.  Relax,
dudeness.  We’re okay.”

He swipes the card and slings the
backpack over one shoulder.

Before I have time to protest, the
door is open and we’re in.  He stops by the alarm system and pokes out a series
of numbers.  The LED display reads: SYSTEM DISARMED.

I’m astonished.   “You know the
alarm codes?”

He doesn’t answer. 

There’s no slowing Forklift.  I
follow him as he speedwalks down the hallway, across the dining room, and into
the far hallway where he stops in front of Dorna’s office.  He tries the
doorknob.

Locked.  As it probably should be.

He stoops, removes the backpack,
pulls out some small contraption, and inserts it into the keyhole.  A few
mechanical
whirring
sounds happen inside his device.  The lock clicks,
he turns the knob, and the office door swings open.  “Where did you get that?”
I ask.

He doesn’t answer.

Instead, he walks straight in, back
to the safe, pulls out a different electronic device.  I follow him in, lean
over his shoulder.  He attaches a couple of wires, pushes a couple of buttons,
beep-beep doodly-beeps the box, and opens it effortlessly.

“Where did you get
that
?” I
ask.

He doesn’t answer.

He reaches into the safe and takes
out two metal lockboxes that probably contain tonight’s take from the floor. 
Then, he reaches in and removes a small, white, spiral-bound folder.

Opens it up, scans a sheet or two, and
then smiles.  “Goldmine,” he says.

It looks like it may have fifteen
sheets of paper in it.  That can’t be all of Dorna’s secret recipes.

It’s all too convenient, too
calculated
. 
Where did he get the money for the replicated ID card?  All of this equipment
that’s making our silly little heist super simple?  How does he have the
knowledge to work it?  How did he know the alarm code?

Something else is at play here. 
Something hidden.

“What is that?” I ask.  “That’s not
her recipe book, is it?”

The words that come out next are not
in the voice of Forklift, and I don’t mean his razzle-dazzle impervious
dialect.  I mean the actual, physical, larynx vibrating with the passage of air
voice is different.  The timbre, tone, and pitch have changed.  It’s deeper,
but cleaner, like he hasn’t been smoking for years.  Like this is a different
person talking to me.

“No,” he says.  “That’s probably
this thing.”  He reaches into the safe and pulls out a much larger spiral-bound
folder, an inch thick, and promptly tosses it into the trash can.

“What’re you doing?  That’s what we
came for, isn’t it?  What’s the goldmine?  And what happened to your voice?”

He ignores my last question.  “This,”
he says, “is the entire list of Dorna’s suppliers and her extremely illegal,
Off Paper drug transactions.”

“Her what?  Drug transactions?  Why
would she write that down?”

“Safety net.  Bargaining power.”

“Why keep it here?” 

“Smarter than keeping it in her
house.”

A revelation is gestating inside me,
though I can’t quite hear the heartbeat yet.

“What do we need that for?”

“It’s the key to the secret
ingredient.”

“Which is what?”

“Whiz Sticks and Pop Roxy,
mi
amigo
.  Small amounts in each dish, but enough to develop withdrawal
symptoms if you have it a few times a week.  Why do you think people keep
coming here to eat this nasty shit?”

“Dorna is getting people
addicted
to her dishes?  With
drugs
?”

“Yes she is,” he says with a self-satisfied
certainty.

“And what’re we gonna do with that
information?”

“We’re certainly not selling it on
RollerNinja.”

And then it hits me. 

We were never doing this to steal
the recipes. 

Strike that. 
He
wasn’t.

We were never going to sell them on
RollerNinja.  We were never going back to see The Minotaur.  We were never
starting a restaurant together.  Dream Chasers.

Dream
Chaser
.  Singular. 
Me
. 
Not
us
.

It was all subtle subterfuge.  Every
bit of it.

I say, “Something tells me we’re not
selling the Top Secret Recipe Book on there either, are we?”

“Bigger battles, buddy.  You ever hear
the phrase ‘two birds, one stone’?  Give it about...” he says, checking the
clock above Dorna’s desk, “ten more minutes and all will be revealed.”

The cryptic nature of his last
statement detonates everything inside me.  I’m not waiting ten minutes.  I don’t
know who this guy is standing in front of me, but he’s not my buddy.  He’s not
mi
amigo
.  He is not my hero.

This person, this fraud, that
brought so much
life
into mine, has done it under the guise of someone
entirely different.  I feel betrayal so deep I almost retch.

Enough is enough.  I am no longer
anyone’s chess piece. 

I lunge forward as fast I can and in
an adrenaline-fueled, superhuman fury, I wrap a hand around his neck, lift him
completely off the ground, feet dangling, and slam him down on the desktop. 
I’m grinding my teeth so hard I could crush diamonds between my molars, strangling
his neck that has to be tender from last night’s run-in with the man in the
blue shirt. 

I shout cannon booms into his face.

Spittle flies like Bouncing Betty
shrapnel.  “Who are you?  What is going on?  You tell me now or I swear I’ll do
this slowly and use up every last second of those ten minutes.”

I’m bigger than he is.  Stronger. 
More powerful.  His weapon is his mind, and it’s useless against a 225-pound,
violently pissed-off juggernaut with the upper hand.

Ten seconds go by.  Twenty.  I
squeeze tighter.

“Your choice,” I scream.  “Your
choice!”

He’s clawing at his neck, trying to
pry my hand loose, but I won’t let go. 

I won’t ever let go. 

I am going shogun on Forklift.

This is what happens when irony
crossbreeds with deception.

He raises both hands in submission,
giving up.  I release my grip and move away from him, then watch as he rolls
onto his side, coughing and gagging, sucking in great heaps of air.

I feel no remorse.  No regret.  I
remain flexed, tense, in a boxer’s stance, every single muscle poised, ready to
pounce again.

He hacks and spits all over Dorna’s
desk.  Reaches up, grabs his two front buckteeth, wiggles them loose, and pulls
out a full row of upper-teeth mouthpiece, saliva dripping from it, revealing
another element of the puzzle. 

He exhales.  Defeated.  “Do you know
how uncomfortable that thing is?” he asks, tossing it onto a pile of paperwork.

I knew Forklift wasn’t really Forklift,
but this...this is surreal. 

A familiar stranger sits up on the
table.

“Stay right there.”

“You’re stronger than you look,” he
says, rubbing his neck.  When I don’t respond, he adds, “I deserved that.”

“You think?”

“I think.”

I risk a peek at the clock.  “What
happens in eight minutes?”

“Can I explain later?”

“No.  Now.  Time’s wasting.”

“Then let’s go into the dining room
and I’ll tell you there.  We have to be ready.”

“Ready for what?”

“Them.”