Cameron Capuno was beginning to think he even preferred the company of dead people to journalists.
He was a law enforcement officer. He carried not only the polished silver badge of the municipal police, but also the less impressive – but allegedly more powerful – identification plexicard of the Global League, its red trim proclaiming him an agent of the GL Security Detail.
He was, or at least would be in a couple of weeks, a fifty-year-old man, a veteran with solid credentials in both boardroom and street corner law. An immense presence, his broad frame carrying the most imposing parts of his Italian and Filipino lineage. His mother’s family boasted of local roots reaching back two centuries; his father he never knew, a brash wannabe in the consular corps that breezed through the islands one crazy summer. He was at once a native and an outsider, a man of few words who worked hard to earn respect in both worlds.
He was not, however, a tour guide. Nor a taxi driver.
And he hated the fact that the skinny guard at the top of the stairs had nonetheless, and understandably, come to that erroneous conclusion.
Cameron and the guard had been staring at each other – not in a menacing way, but not friendly, either – for the last five minutes. Cameron regarded the guard’s stiff white uniform and flat cotton hat, and how he likely had to stand and sweat all day only two meters from a door that opened into an extravagant and arctic-cold lobby, and pitied him. And the guard looked down at Cameron, sweating under a tattered thatched hat and practically melting in the hard metal seat of a dirty and half-rusted military ATV, and pitied him back.
“Cam, you dump that crier yet?”
He startled, knocking his hat to the ground. Swearing, he reached over and roughly jabbed his finger at the comm brick strapped to the cracking rubber dashboard. “Mind it, Yen, I’m still waiting for her, lucky for you.”
“Whatever, Cam... you just be sure not to call her a buzzer to her face.”
Cameron leaned far forward, as if he could somehow catch the sound coming out of the comm with his arms. “Shhhh!” he hissed.
They both laughed.
“Well,” Yen said, the shrillness of her voice made worse by the cheap equipment. “Stay off the Lili, some racers just painted it under Middle Street and your buddies just shut the whole damn thing down.”
“You calling in with a traffic report?” Cameron teased.
“Just a free tip, Cam. Actually, John said he found a couple of wits from the explosion downtown, and said you should see them before you sign off today.”
“Great,” Cameron said. He wasn’t being sarcastic, but he sounded it anyway. “Send the coordinates to my pad and I’ll head over as soon as I’m finished playing cabbie.”
“Okay,” she said, as Cameron’s terminal – lost somewhere in the back of the ATV – beeped its confirmation. “Now be nice.”
“Yeah, yeah,” Cameron said.
Conversation over, he resumed waiting. Too tired to glare at the guard, he tried in vain to lean back in his seat, letting his head fall back and staring straight up instead. Had it been a few hours earlier, he would have been a little more comfortable, sitting in the shadow of the building, a curved semi-circle tower of sky-blue glass that looked like exactly half a pipe sticking straight out of the ground.
Out of the corner of his eye, he could see the edge of one of the adjacent towers, that one a sharp-edged, right-angled rectangle monolith but built with the same white concrete and blue glass. Unfortunately, he couldn’t see the third tower, the shortest but most dramatically designed, a slightly-leaning triangle with almost seamless windows that made it look like the last standing shard of a broken window.
Together the three buildings looked like the toy blocks of a giant child. And the crooked pyramid was his favorite.
“Not bad for bird shit,” he mumbled to himself.
“Hello, I’m sorry, what?” A woman’s voice. A slight British accent.
Cameron jerked upright. “No, I’m sorry,” he said, flustered. He jumped out of the ATV and jogged around to greet his charge. “Miss Lum?”
“It’s Lam, but yes,” she said. She probably heard him, but if so, she wasn’t fazed.
“Are you here to take me to the plane?” She was a short, plump woman with short hair and a tall, oval face. Chinese, but with a voice straight out of a classy London bistro.“Yes, Ms. Lam, I’m Cameron with the GLSD,” he said, opening the flimsy steel door and folding down the step. “We’re running late, but I’ll get you there in time.”
“Well, it’s the League that’s making me late,” she said, climbing into the ATV. “You’re the ones checking and rechecking credentials every single day and insisting escorting journalists everywhere.”
“I apologize for that, Ms. Lam, it’s just procedure,” Cameron said, circling around and climbing back into the driver’s seat. The short round-trip around the vehicle left him out of breath.
“Kitty’s fine, Cameron,” she said.
He fumbled under the steering column for the power switch, and flipped the heavy metal toggle. The motor cycled up to speed, the low hum echoing off the building. He looked up at the guard, who was still looking down at him, and gave him a dismissive salute.
“Hold on,” he said, as he shifted into gear, and the ATV seemed to drop half a meter as it lurched forward.
Cameron realized too late that he’d just driven over his hat.
Posted by Ryan at November 12, 2002 1:15 AM