MIKE SITS IN THE God Minister’s living room and waits for him to finish his lunch. Mike broils in the eerie domestic strangeness of it all. There’s a glass coffee table covered with documents. Two armchairs matched to the couch’s maroon velour. A fancy gold clock under a glass dome. The place is painfully quiet, and he can hear the minister in the adjoining room, talking on the phone as he pushes a knife around on the chinaware.
Mike has nothing to distract him from his thoughts.
Crashing the party last night was sloppy.
People know his face.
People know his name, probably.
Bad people.
The worst kind.
At least no one can touch him up here.
The housekeeper snaps him out of it. ‘Would you like some more tea while you wait?’
‘I’m good.’
He nearly got himself killed. Shot at by Christ-knows-who at the estate of a crooked copper. The deputy commissioner, no less. And then there’s the bunker and the callboy Jamie and all the rest of it.
The police files.
Piles and piles of files.
Mike reaches into his pocket and retrieves the one piece he could snatch up: the page of foolscap paper listing names and dates and numbers. He runs down the list and shudders for the tenth time. He knows more than a few of these names.
Lawyers and judges.
Media people.
Financiers.
Trouble.
Deep shit.
Ten minutes later, the minister slowly hobbles out. His crutches look ready to snap under his bulk. He’s so wide and tall, he takes up two seats on an aeroplane apparently. ‘Mike. I didn’t know we had something booked for today.’
‘We don’t. It’s an emergency.’
‘I see.’
He doesn’t sit.
Mike comes forward on the couch and looks up at him. ‘I’ve been doing what you asked and …’
‘Yes?’
Mike tells him everything. Everything except the page with the names.
The minister takes it all in without comment. His eyes widen, briefly, at the mention of Deputy Commissioner Sorensen’s secret filing room, but the rest washes over him. It’s all just information.
‘I’m worried,’ says Mike.
‘Why, son?’
‘They’re cops.’
‘I’m the Minister of Police. They answer to me.’
‘Do they?’
‘Of course they do. Just carry on with the Fantasyland job. If the hold-up with the park is purely money-related, and it sounds like it is, well, I can step in, I guess, but …’
‘What is it, sir?’
‘I’d have thought a man as resourceful as you might have his own ideas. Whatever upside you take from this is all yours for the keeping. Do as you please with the details. I just want the thing to open on time.’
‘Uh, okay … okay,’ says Mike, and the words are coming out, but it’s just sound in among the other noise in his head.
Mike stumbles back down the hill. He walks along the cliffs by the ocean and tries to let the vast open vista calm his nerves. It doesn’t work. In fact, the contrast just drives the point in even harder. This is bad. This is unnatural. This is going wrong. Turn back. But some spark deep inside him fires to life. It suddenly seems obvious what to do next: keep moving, stay alive. Win.
Back in his motel room, he throws together his stuff.
Unsure of when he’ll get another chance to call home, he picks up the phone.
His wife, Sonya, answers.
‘Can I talk to them?’
Without a single word, she puts his son on the line. ‘Dad?’
‘Hey, buddy.’
‘What’s going on?’
Mike covers his eyes, breathes through it. ‘Nothing much. Just wanted to say hello. What are you doing?’
‘Watching TV.’
‘What is it?’
‘The cartoons,’ and his son tells him the station.
Mike turns on the TV in his room so they can watch it together. ‘Who’s that?’
‘He-Man. Watch this.’
He-Man zaps his cat with a sword and turns it into a giant green beast.
‘Not bad,’ says Mike.
The cartoon show segues back to the host, a feral-looking puppet, like something you’d find in a bin. The puppet announces a guest.
Mike misses the name, but his son shouts, ‘Yes!’
A man in a police uniform appears on the screen. He sits down beside the puppet. There’s an overlay of text: Constable Chris. The policeman smiles out at the kids watching and Mike feels nothing but pure and complete terror.
It’s Chris from Sorensen’s party.
The man who grabbed him.
On the screen, Constable Chris is telling everyone about bike safety. He’s strapping on a helmet and the fucking puppet is strapping on a helmet, too.
‘Turn it off,’ yelps Mike.
‘What? No.’
He screams, ‘Turn it off!’
His kid is crying.
He hears his wife moving around, flustered in the background.
Mike stares into the haze of the screen and feels the world tilt.