Orange County Noir (Akashic Noir) (32 page)

he happiest place on the entire planet, my ass ...
Derek called me into the office, his voice an out-oftune reed instrument in my earpiece, just as I was
herding a dozen sunburned tourists and their jabbering children off the teacup ride, which had broken down for the third
time in a week. "Carl, we need to see you immediately," Derek
said. "Headquarters, now." He acted as if being a security
day-shift lead made him Batman, or at least Commissioner
Gordon. Sure, he had military and a little police experience
on his resume, and since 9/11 that was all anybody valued in
security. The downing of the Twin Towers changed everything
at the park-not because terrorists have ever shown up on
Huck Finn's Island or among the mannequin pirates on the
splash-splash boat ride, but because the new security hires all
thought they were better than the rest of its, especially me. My
twenty-three years of experience counted for nothing to them.
All that mattered was that I'd been hired during a "kinder,
gentler" period of American history, sans military or police
experience, when former school teachers like me were considered adequate for the job of herding tourists off broken-down
attractions, managing crowd-control during the fireworks
display, or busting preteens for smoking cigarettes on the sky
ride. I knew the new breed thought of me as a middle-aged,
hefty embarrassment, particularly after I became literally the last of the "old guard." I knew how much they wanted to put
rat ears on my head, shove a tail up my ass, and send me out
the main gate forever. But I always did my job and there was
nothing they could do to get rid of me-at least, not until the
day Derek called me away from the teacups.

When I got to the security office, Derek wasn't even involved in the inquiry.

It was Jeffrey, the department head, former FBI, who asked
me to take a seat in the conference room, which I'd visited
only once before, in '98, to help plan a birthday party for one
of the secretaries. The room hadn't changed. Dozens of large,
framed photographs of the park's long-dead founder lined the
walls. Two grim Anaheim city policemen entered, their handcuffs jangling on their polyester pants and their boots echoing
across the linoleum floor. They sat at the long table, accompanied by a lawyer from corporate, a stenographer, two interns,
and a video technician. Excepting the cops, everyone wore
standard employee name tags-first names only. Bob, Tom,
Steve ... Friendly, huh? But how else would you expect employee relations to be at the world's happiest place? The video
technician made final adjustments to a small camera pointed
in my direction, then indicated we could begin.

"We're videotaping for legal purposes," Jeffrey said, his
smooth delivery more like that of a weatherman than a topcop. He was weatherman handsome too. All he needed was a
name like Dallas Raines or Johnny Mountain and his toothy grin
would have been on TV screens instead of here in my face.

"What's this all about?" I asked.

"We've had a complaint," Jeffrey said, indicating a manila
folder on the desk. "A female guest in her teens filed a report
that says you followed her around the park, leering at her."

"What?" I recalled no particular young lady. How could I? Every hour of every day I saw thousands of girls in their
teens walking around the park (just as I saw thousands of
sour-faced, divorced fathers scrambling to keep up with their
children, thousands of overwrought mothers toting handywipes and pushing strollers, thousands of obese tourists reeking of sweat and tanning lotion, thousands of school-age boys
and girls who moved like flocks of birds from one "land" to
the next, thousands of retirees in souvenir T-shirts and sun
visors, thousands of foreigners in baseball caps, thousands of
chattering children in pirate hats, thousands and thousands
and thousands of everything ...). "One paranoid guest files a
complaint and you call me in for this inquisition?"

Jeffrey smiled. His manner remained friendly but coldblooded, doubtless a technique learned at Quantico. He
turned his chair to face me directly. "Need I remind you that
here at the park we do not tolerate dissatisfaction in any form
from any of our guests."

"Sure, but one report-"

He interrupted: "Are you suggesting that following only
one young woman around the park, bothering her with unwanted and aggressive sexual attentions, is acceptable?" He
straightened in his chair, his expression growing stern.

"Aggressive sexual attentions?" This was outrageous. The
others at the table averted their eyes. At first, I assumed they
were embarrassed to be part of this kangaroo court. But after
a moment I realized they were embarrassed for me, as if I'd
actually done something wrong. "Look, I don't even talk to
guests, male or female, unless they talk to me first. So even
if I happened to be following an attractive young woman, it
would only have been out of boredom, nothing more."

"Is following an attractive young woman `out of boredom'
a part of your job description?" Jeffrey asked.

"I was speaking hypothetically."

"But if one actually did such a thing?" he pressed.

"Well, no. Obviously, it's not part of my job description, if
I did such a thing."

He nodded, smug, and turned to the video technician
across the table. "Run the video, please."

Every square foot of the park is covered by cameras, primarily for the legal department's use in defending lawsuits (as
opposed to the stated purpose of busting criminals or terrorists or nine-year-old boys pocketing souvenir pencils from the
gift shops). The particular time-stamped surveillance footage
compiled for our viewing showed me walking directly behind
a nubile park guest who wore a revealing halter top and very
short shorts. From the angle of the camera it appeared that I
may indeed have been staring at her ass. But one angle proved
nothing. Unfortunately, they had more than one angle-the
video cut to another camera that picked up where the first left
off, capturing the two of its moving in single file through the
Land of Cliched Yesteryear to the Land of Harmless Adventures and on to the Land of Saccharine Fantasy, the footage
from all the cameras edited together to form a single, incriminating sequence. I didn't remember the girl, though for a few
minutes of a particular day she had undeniably engaged my
attention. It was not pleasant to observe-the security guard
uniform made me look heavier than I actually am (and everyone knows video adds ten to twenty pounds to anyone's
appearance); additionally, I was old enough to be the girl's
father and my attentions toward her, isolated and edited in
this manner, were humiliating.

Jeffrey turned to the stenographer. "Will you please read
back to us what Carl said after I asked him if following young
women `out of boredom' was part of his job description?"

"There's no need for that," I interjected.

The stenographer looked from me to Jeffrey, awaiting
direction.

At last Jeffrey indicated to the stenographer to remain
silent.

I'd had enough. "Okay, fine. I won't follow any women
around the park, ever again. Okay?"

Jeffrey was not satisfied. "Why don't you tell us why you
left teaching?"

"That's irrelevant ... it was in the late '80s, for God's sake."

Jeffrey pulled a paper from a file. "On your application here
you indicated that you resigned from your teaching position."

"I did."

"We dug a little deeper, contacting the school district,
and discovered that you were pressured to go. Why don't
you explain?"

"Look, I never touched anybody."

"No one said you did. Please answer the question."

"One of the girls needed a little watching over. She was
just a freshman, a lonely kid. My concern was only for her
safety. Would I be in this uniform if I didn't take an interest in
the welfare of others?"

"You `maintained surveillance' on this girl after school
hours?"

"Well, that's generally when the bad things happen. . ."

He nodded. "Bad things, indeed."

"Look, I'm not some kind of stalker, if that's what you're
suggesting."

Jeffrey shrugged. "It's not me who suggests it. It's you,
Carl. It's your behavior."

The silence and averted eyes among those gathered
around the table suggested they concurred.

In this manner, the security department had its way with
me.

Over the next half hour we arrived at a settlement that
reduced my retirement benefits by 50 percent. The lawyer had
all the paperwork ready. He was very friendly. I merely had to
sign at the places he'd marked with colorful, sticky arrows. A
child could have done it.

"Why now?" I asked as the inquisition came to its inglorious end. "After all these years?"

Jeffrey nodded. "You're right, it's our oversight. We should
never have hired you. But at least we identified the problem
before any serious harm was done."

Harm? I never touched anybody-not in all these
years.

Happiest place on the planet, my ass ...

So you can imagine my surprise when five weeks later I got a
call at home from none other than supercop Jeffrey.

"How've you been?" he asked, exuding his weatherman
charm.

"Fine," I said, though I'd actually not been so good. It's
funny, but that overpriced, overcrowded, oversanitized amusement park, known the world over for its fairy-tale castle, which
is actually made of plaster so thin that on that last day, as my
former colleagues marched me across the park on my way out
forever, I was almost able to punch my fist right through it ...
well, despite all that, the place gets into your blood. The truth
is, I missed the park as one misses a lover. Hell, more than one
misses a lover. It's been three years now since Mandy went
back to her old job in Bangkok, where I'd met her on a humid night, paid her bar fee, and then won her heart with my
tales of foiling the amorous antics, petty thievery, and juvenile pranks of park guests (everybody the world over has heard of
the park, and being in its employ is almost like being a celebrity). The first gift I ever gave Mandy, the first acknowledgment of my deeper-than-mere-business feelings for her, was
my spare name tag from the park, which I'd brought along
on vacation in hopes I might indeed meet a young woman
worthy of wearing it. So, sure, I suffered sleepless nights after
Mandy left me. We'd had a good eighteen months and I really
thought she loved her new country and our little apartment.
Nobody likes losing a lover or wife or whatever. But losing
the park proved harder yet, almost enough to make me start
drinking again. There's no place like it, unless you count its
iterations in Florida and overseas.

"I want you to know I didn't enjoy doing what I had to do,
Carl," Jeffrey said over the phone.

What did he want from me, sympathy?

"It's the bitch end of the job, let me tell you," he continued.

I'd be damned if I'd let him know how bad I'd been feeling.
"Well, I've been great, Jeffrey. How're things at the park?"

He laughed. "As if you care anymore, right?"

I pretended to laugh too. "Right you are, Jeffrey."

It didn't make matters easier for me that my garden apartment, which I'd only recently cleared of the last signs that
Mandy had ever inhabited it with me, was barely a mile from
the park's front gate. Every night at 9:30, when the fireworks
display started, the sounds of explosions would jerk me away
from whatever TV show I'd been employing as distraction.
Boom, boom, boom! I felt every sonic reverberation in the deepest part of my chest. I've always loved fireworks. Most nights
I'd still walk onto my tiny patio to watch them-gunpowder
flowers blossoming over the park, red, white, and blue. Boom,
boom, boom! When that became too painful, I'd close my eyes. But even then I couldn't help picturing the thousands of guests
lined along the park's main avenue or along the banks of its
circular river, their eyes turned heavenward, a scene I helped
supervise for years. Afterward, the quiet on my patio was even
more painful than the display itself-silence and the drifting
away of the smoke clouds into the night sky. Who wouldn't
miss a place like the park, a place that offers to all (except me,
now) a simulation of life designed to surpass the real thing.
Losing it had made me almost angry enough to want to hurt
somebody. But I'd be damned if I'd let Jeffrey know how I felt
about these things.

"Carl, can you meet me tomorrow morning for breakfast?"

The head of park security, former FBI, wanted to eat with
me?

"Carl, are you still there?"

"Yeah, sure."

"Yeah you're still there, or yeah you'll meet me?" he
asked.

"Why do you want to have breakfast with me, Jeffrey?"

"Look, I know you were good at your job, Carl."

I did my job but I don't know that I was actually good at
it. I only know that I showed up every day.

"Have you found employment yet?" Jeffrey asked.