Gumshoe Gauntlet

Caleb leaves the arcade with a soda in his callused, plump hand. He is wired from staring at a screen, from knee-jerk reactions to priests behind curtains, from lead projectiles in place of forgiveness, from muggers and gang lords who jump out at him, who wish to jump him, men who ultimately were bested by a gumshoe that knew which buttons to press at just the right sequence, how to tweak the joystick just so. He downed the Dr. Pepper, the Mr. Pibb, whatever gut rot kept him going. Normal folks would vomit, fall ill, but CAD was hard as iron, tough as nails, a real boot-faced SOB. He knew he was close to summiting gumshoe mountain, the tallest peak along the arcade range. He just needed some air, a sixteen ounce gulp, a walk in the park.

But it wasn’t a walk in the park. It was running the gauntlet. It was citywide strife. It was one tough guy after the next, sideways cops and assassins, overt threats peppered with smiling, decoy children, tikes with bright, baby-toothed smiles and hand grenades, Molotov cocktails dressed as milk bottles. Postmen with packages, bombs in a box addressed to our hero. Women too. Plenty of birds, pretty feathers and sweet song. They flocked to Caleb, some in distress, some with a proposition and a motel address, each one with a handgun in their purse, a vial of poison nestled in their bra, an ulterior motive tucked neatly behind their false intentions.

Arnie Mitchel has summoned them all, mustered the bruisers, bobbies, and babes. He has an axe to grind, a score to settle, a score to safeguard, to protect from CAD, a genuine, upstart SOB. He just can’t seem to outpace the fire, to rise above the climbing smoke, to dodge the well-aimed bullet. At 240,000 miles away, he hadn’t run far enough from trouble.

Caleb, by contrast, didn’t need to run from trouble. He faced it head-on, one level after the next. Outside the arcade, on 1st Avenue, he resisted a phoney arrest, wrestled the billy club from a rozzer on the streets, whacked the constable smart, gifting him with a concussion and a midday nap. “Serves you right, bribable bastard.”

He turned a corner on 2^nd Street to face a riotous throng, rabid youth with sleeveless tops and sleeves of ink, baseball bats studded with nails, keen eyes and mean smiles. They converged on Caleb, who snatched a baby bottle from a passing mother and her sleeping child, each paid off to play the part. He took the so-called milk, dripping at its rubber nipple, and struck a match. In a past life, Caleb was a chain smoker, but in this soft, soda-guzzling iteration, he didn’t partake in the habit, yet he carried matches for occasions that called for them: to offer a lady a light, to illuminate a dark corner, to ignite a combustible thrown object into a crowd. A gang went up in flames, and studded baseball bats hit the pavement.

A black cat crossed Caleb on the corner of Third Avenue. He knew that calling it bad luck was a wives’ tale, but wives can be the worst --his first two, for example, were no picnic. And let’s not forget, the commissioner’s wife turned out to be the mole on the force, feeding her husband’s post-coital secrets to the mob boss for wads of cash that financed her gambling at the races. She was good at picking winners, but ultimately, she squandered what she earned, turning to baddies for more opportunities to sell them the fruits of the commissioner’s loose tongue after sex. With this in mind, black cats (wives’ tales or not) should never be ignored. Caleb aimed the barrel of his gun at the feline, but turned just in time to fire into the belly of a man who surfaced from the shadows, a secret assailant now clutching his wound and dropping his blade, cursing his bad luck, and the cat that crossed his path.

4^th Street was rife with oil-slick puddles and garbage, plenty of riffraff, ruffians and rogues. They cracked their knuckles and lurched toward Caleb, who baited them to 5^th Avenue, where demented taxi drivers tried their best to flatten Caleb, inadvertently saving him, crashing into his maniacal pursuers.

Down 6^th Avenue, food carts lined the curb, steaming with all kinds of aromatic hints of good grub, the sort of stuff to boost your health bar. At the ramen stand --his favorite-- Caleb was alerted by the absence of Akiro, the noodle master who never missed a shift.

“Where’s Akiro?” He asked the chef who smiled too often, too wide, and handed Caleb his Tonkotsu ramen without receiving an order.

“Pork,” the stranger announced. “Your favorite.” Then, sweat beading on his forehead, “Eat up,” he added, smiling some more, bowing and gesturing to the food.

Nearby, at the donut stand, a police officer eyed the ramen cart with a sly, sideways glance. The whole scene smelled like pig, but Caleb didn’t think it was the tonkotsu. “You first,” he pushed the bowl back to the chef who finally dropped his smile.

“Not for me,” he insisted. “For you, Mr. CAD.”

Not even Akiro knew Caleb by this moniker. And so, it became clear: this was a setup. But Caleb played it cool. “Well, it sure smells good.” He smiled and picked up the bowl, inhaling through his nose and grinning his approval. Then, without any indication, any buildup whatsoever, Caleb reached behind the chef’s neck and slammed his smiling face down into the bowl of hot ramen. With both hands, he pinned the duplicitous cook into the delicious tonkotsu. Caleb sang his ABC’s, then, for good measure, sang them again. He let go of Akiro’s stand-in, a fake whose face likely no longer smiled, but remained unseen, submerged in noodles and hot, miso broth.

One stall over, a cop dropped his donut to take up his gun, but Caleb was gone, running down 7^th street, 8^th Avenue, 9^th and 10^th. Sidestepping bullets, kamikaze Hondas, femme fatales that came out of the woodwork, the brickwork, out of thin air, Caleb weaved through a shadowed cityscape without even spilling his soda.

A man from a music shop came out with a flying V guitar. He played a metal version of the theme from Mission Impossible, which wasn’t remotely noir. Caleb shook his head, almost pitied the man as he casually ducked from the guitarist’s attempt to garrote him with the E-string, turning to push him hard, right into the bent copper hot on his trail. The two men tumbled to the curb, sprawling into oncoming traffic, and were waylaid by a hellbent yakuza behind the wheel of a Toyota. The flying V splintered and snapped at the neck, just like the guitarist who had wielded it. The policeman became part of the road, a literal traffic cop, and resembled the filling of a jelly donut. With the metal music out of commission, the natural, smokey jazz resurfaced to occupy the ambiance.

Calmly, Caleb dispatched his would-be murderers. Casually, he circumvented each hazard, every pitfall and deathtrap. Artfully, he weaved through the chaotic, crime-ridden frenzy beyond 11^th street, all the way to the end of 12^th. In a wide loop, his madcap jaunt led him back to the arcade, where Arnie Mitchel stared, wide eyed, surprised to see him.

“Excuse me,” Caleb walked past Arnie, right through the door. He finished his soda with a noisy slurp, a rattle of ice, setting down the empty cup on the coin-op cabinet of Gumshoe Gauntlet, leaving a ring of condensation, prepared to leave his permanent mark at the top of the leaderboard.

“Got a quarter?” He asked Arnie.

And what else could Arnie say? Others were watching. “Sure.” He fished into his pocket, flipped Caleb a shiny coin.

Caleb fed the machine. Then it was all bright lights and 16-bit saxophone, gunshots and nervous sweat, damp armpits and a bladder full of soda, near to bursting by the end of level 12. Once more, Caleb ran the Gumshoe Gauntlet. This time, he was off to the moon.

Arnie Mitchel turned his back, leaving the arcade to walk out, unarmed, unprepared, into the mean streets without. Back inside, new blood stained the leader board.

CAD. 1^st place. 260,000.

Caleb Doyle was hard-bitten, a no-nonsense dick with a trench coat frayed from service on the force. He balanced on the shoulders of Arnie Mitchel, AMM, and other gumshoes lower down, from TED, to JEB, to BOB, to SEX. With a fedora angled down to shadow his face, obscuring the soda mustache on his lips, he gazed outward atop an insurmountable summit. From this untouchable vantage, he scowled, blowing smoke rings to halo the moon.