Going Shogun (15 page)

Even so, the BAs don’t take murder
lightly, no matter which level it’s in.  Cold-cases rarely become cold, and if
we do manage to pull off our scheme and avoid going to prison within the next
couple of days, it’ll be years before we can serve up a dish at Dream Chasers
without expecting a Board Agent to walk through every time a door opens.

The neighborhoods begin to change
back to the type of R11 content I’m familiar with as we cautiously cruise. 
Rows of tiny houses are bundled together tightly from street to street, like
six-packs of Ascension Alcohol lined up along the cooler shelves at a grocery
store.  This particular contractor must have picked a palette of alternating
coral colors that each homebuyer had to abide by, because they’re all different
shades of soft pinks and creamy oranges.

I look over at Forklift, fazed out,
eyes focused on the road.  “Where we going?” I ask quietly, trying not to wake
Bingo.

“Sixty parks his penile protrusion
in the lady cave over by Johnson Square when he’s not going caveman in his
apartment.  R12 sub-div, where the kitty prowls the alleys.”

“Sixty?”

“Yeah.  LX.  Sixty.  Those Roman
numeral things.  Do I have to explain everything?”

“Do you even have to ask that
question?”

He smiles.  “Negative,
mi
compadre
.”

“So why are LX and Cat both R12? 
What’d they do?”

“LX put on a collar for signing
Johnny Hancock to a fake check.”

“Really?  Forgery?  People still do
that?”

“Thought he could go old school. 
Sneak one by.”

“And Cat?”

“Pole swinger.  Champagne room raid
with some extra coin in her purse.  Jelly?”

“She went nighthoney where people
could see her?”

“
No inteligente. 
First time
I saw the Cheshire smiling was her whirling in circles upside down over at The
Rabbit’s Foot.  People are brain-popped, dude.  Crazycakes.  Think just because
The Board ain’t prevalent their juice is freeroam cluck-cluck.”

For as long as I’ve known Forklift, a
couple of years now, he’s talked like this.  I’ve always asked if he
has
to, but never
why
.  I figured he’d tell me if he ever thought it was
appropriate, but now that we’re in the situation we’re in, I need to know so I
can hopefully talk him down from it.  Clear communication has to come first. 
I’m sure it won’t work, but it’s worth a shot.

I say, “Ok, dude, I gotta know. 
Why?”

“Why what?”

“Why talk like that?  Why is
everything in code?  Why speak your own twisted, razzle-dazzle language when
nobody can understand you?  Doesn’t it ever get old, having to go translator
fifteen different times, especially when all you’re trying to do is order a
sandwich?  And don’t tell me it’s to maintain your individuality so you won’t
have to muzzle your chops or whatever.  There has to be a reason behind it.  Really,
dude, we’re about to fall off a cliff and I’ve asked you a thousand times to
tone it down tonight. 

“But, it keeps coming back, keeps
coming back.  Don’t get me wrong, most of the time I can understand you to some
degree because we’re usually on familiar territory.  You know, playing video
games in your nasty-ass apartment or slinging cuisine at work.  But tonight,
man.  Tonight, I feel like I’ve taken one single Spanish class and you’ve
dropped me in the middle of a car chase in Barcelona without a map and I can’t
read any of the damn road signs.”

Forklift ponders for a moment, and
doesn’t give his usual huff of vexation whenever I ask him to pretend like he’s
normal.  He starts a sentence, and then stops himself.  He starts another, and
stops that one.  Finally he says, “It’s funny.  I’ve been doing it for so long
that it’s harder to speak normally than it is to come up with wicked new slang
every time I try to talk.  Reminds me of my cousin Bonk that can say his
alphabet faster backwards than he can say it forwards.”

“Yeah, but think about how hard it
is for everyone else to figure out what in the hell you mean.”

“Truth,” he says, making a right
turn with all four tires on the ground, amazingly enough, as he leads us out of
the R11 neighborhood.  The wipers push away a layer of rain and under a
streetlamp, I can see an R12 Level Marker with a sign that reads, “Remember to
Apply Yourself!” except, the “Apply” has been spray-painted over and the word
“Screw” spray-painted above it.

Forklift says, “You know my dad
taught at AU, right?  I ever tell you that?”

AU is Ascension University, and it’s
also the symbol for Gold on the Atomic Chart.  The clever play on lettering is
intentional, obviously.

In all the time I’ve known Forklift,
he’s never mentioned his parents, so he
knows
this has never come up.  I
say, “Seriously?  AU?  That’s the hardest school in the country to get into.” 
Bingo stirs in my lap and makes a sleepy lip smack, and I take note to keep my
voice down. 

This is shock beyond shock.  Like shoving
not one, but two metal utensils into a light socket.  I had no idea, and
probably could’ve guessed the actual number of stars in the known universe
before I would’ve predicted something like this.

The best of the best, brightest of
the brightest, wham-bammest of the wham-bammest college grads go on to AU, if
they’re lucky.  John Wenger, the guy that halfway proved Einstein wrong, didn’t
even get into AU.  Those that are good enough to get in are even luckier to get
out with their solid gold diploma.  AU grads go on to be future members of The
Board, or work on top secret military projects that even Board Members don’t
have access to.  We’ve even heard stories that communique was established with
an alien race a decade ago, and a select group of AU grads are holed up in some
bunker under Area 39 trying to decode their language.

For Forklift’s dad to actually
teach
these people?  I can’t imagine anything more flabbergasting.

I say, “Good lord, man, why wouldn’t
you have told me something like that?”

“Eh, not such a big deal when the
guy that gave a D-minus to a future Board Member is the same guy that taught me
how to throw a baseball.”

“It’s absolutely a big deal.  He
teaches people how to run the damn country or dig for uranium on Mars or
whatever the hell it is they’re doing up there.”

“Taught.”

“Taught?”

“Died a couple of years after I got
out of school.  Collapsed lung.  Man smoked like a carton a day.  Lot of stress
teaching geniuses, dig?”

“Oh, damn.  Sorry.”

“No biggums.  Long time ago.”  And
evidently his father’s death from smoking didn’t affect his habits too much,
because he lights up one of his own cigs, cracks the window just enough to let
the smoke out and prevent the rain from coming in, which is falling harder
now.  He says, “Douglas Cornelius Bookingham, aka Bookworm, taught English and
Linguistics to the fine fellows who make the world go ‘round.  Linguistics,
right?  The scientific study of language?  He used to tell me that words meant
what they meant because we assigned their specific meaning to them.  Somebody
says, ‘
What’s a dog?
’  We know what a dog is because we
call
it a
d-o-g dog.”

“Which is why you speak your own
language?”

“Sugar.  Which is why I speak my own
language.  Most of the time, you know exactly what I’m saying, even though I’m
not saying it how you’re saying it.”

“That’s debatable.”

“Regardless.  Dad, he was smart,
man.  IQ that reached up to the Space Station, but down to earth enough to
teach me the right way to hold a knife so I could cut my steak better.  You
know those guys that are supposedly trying to translate that alien language? 
Momma Bear told me after he’d died that they’d been trying to recruit him for
some secret project in Area 39 that required a linguistics expert, but he
wouldn’t go.  I always kinda hoped that’s what it was for, but now, who knows?”

“That would’ve been cool.  Aliens. 
Wow,” I say, because I can’t think of anything substantial for a reply, and
then something occurs to me.  “English and Linguistics, huh?  I thought you
hated reading.”

“I’ve never really said I
hated
it.  Just that I wasn’t the biggest reader.  Pops-a-top tried to get me to read
some of his faves now and then, but I wasn’t into it.  Doesn’t mean it didn’t
sink in though.”

“So your dad was a genius?  How ‘bout
you?  Ever get tested?”  Seems like a simple question.  I mean, he has his quasi-intelligent
eccentricities, but I wouldn’t call the dude to answer a math problem for me.

Forklift takes his eyes off the
road, and frankly I’m surprised they’ve been on it this long, and he gives me
this strange look, like he’s trying to decide whether or not to tell me, like
he’s about to give away the meaning of life.

Eventually, the revelation comes.  “I
have this memory of taking some test in school when I was about nine years
old.  Brought home the paperwork that had all these letters and numbers on it
that I didn’t understand.  When I showed it to my dad, he gave out this huge
laugh and at first I thought he was making fun of me, yeah?  But he bends down,
and I can see it in my head clear as day, he grabs these damn buckteeth,” he
says, grabbing them, “between his thumb and his forefinger, and he shakes my
head a little bit.  He’d do that instead of messing up my hair like most dads
do, right?  He shakes my head and says, ‘My, my.  You’ll be teaching
me
one day.’  And that was it.

“That’s the last I remember.  And it
wasn’t too long after that that I started doing shitty in school.  All of it
was so damn boring.  Seemed too easy.  I sat and stared out the windows, making
up my own words for things or trying to figure out different ways of saying
what the teacher was saying, waiting on the bell to ring.  Then later on I got
popped for drugs, lost my level, and he never spoke to me again.”  He takes a
drag off his cigarette, side-blows the smoke out the window.  “Damn.  That’s
the most I’ve talked normal since he died.  Wild.  I guess this whole Dream
Chasers thing, to Ascend, it’s like my own personal retribution.  I
need
this, you know?  For me.  Especially for my dad.”

And now, as it should, more of All
That Is Forklift makes sense.  His wicked wizardry with language and how he can
come up with it on the spot.  His cracked-out sense of style and complete
disarray of his apartment and his life.  His wanton ways with women and the
ever-fluctuating essence of his unrestricted manner in dealing with society. 
His construction of the entire plan to steal Wishful Thinking’s recipes, get
them on RollerNinja, and get us Ascending, all within about five minutes.

It explains so much.

He’s an unconventional genius, and I
had no idea.  Hiding the fact from me probably wasn’t as hard as one would
think, considering it’s doubtful he even sees himself that way.

Well.  Holy shit.

It gives me some added confidence to
the validity and strength of our original plans considering they were conceived
by a virtuoso, but at the same time, I have to wonder what else he’s been
hiding from me. 

Intentionally or unintentionally. 

Right? 

There were the couple of times
tonight where I could sense what felt like guilt coming from him, and the
weird, highly inopportune phone calls that I chalked up to him wanting to set
up a place to park his penile protrusion in some lady cave later on. 

For once, I decide I’m not going to
let something go.  I’m going to ask, to see if anything peculiar is going on
that I should know about.

But I never get the chance.  As I’m
trying to formulate the right way to ask my question, he pulls up in front of a
gray, left-side, right-side townhouse, and thankfully, there are no black
sedans full of Board Agents waiting on us.

“Good,” I say out loud, not really
intending to.

“Good what?” he asks.

“Was thinking earlier that there’d
be a horde of BAs sitting here waiting on us.”

“Go ice cube, Big Brick.  We’re
greasy,” he says with a level of calmness that’s confusing and relieving at the
same time, because I can’t help but wonder how he can be so certain.  I mean, I
know he sees life as this effortless playground, but my nerves are too on-edge,
too rattled, too skeezed-out to be freeroam cluck-cluck.

The rain picks up, more than a
shower, morphing into a downpour, but through the swishing wipers, illuminated
by the headlights, I see black, peeling-paint trim and a cockeyed screen
hanging loosely from one bottom-floor window, swaying lazily in the not-so-subtle
breeze.  One light is on upstairs.

It’s definitely an R12 living
establishment and has to be Cat’s place.

Bingo wakes up and sits up, sleepily
rubbing her eyes.  “Where are we?” she asks.

Forklift, right back into character,
says, “The opportunity acceleration location, Bingo-Bongo.  The info solution
resolution.”

“What?” she asks, not yet entirely
awake.

I say, “He means we’re here.  Cat’s
house.  Time to learn if LX is here and what happened in his apartment.”