“It’s a shotgun,” Jane informed him as Jason studied the firearm. “In Africa, when a hunter wounds an animal and chases it into the bush, he doesn’t take a rifle, he takes a shotgun. In Tanzania, my mother and I were often alone, far away from any human settlement, and heavily armed poachers are a constant threat. But I brought the gun back with me when I realized I can’t shoot anyone; it’s just not in me.”

Jason looked incredulously at the firearm he held it in his arms. Tucking the gun under his armpit, Jason read the note in the bottom of the case. “Tool: Atchisson AA-12 Shotgun, CQB Model.” This wasn’t just any shotgun, but a fully automatic shotgun. It was a ten-pound shotgun that fired like a machine gun, but due to a recoil spring and a gas operating system, the recoil was light enough that it could be fired one-handed. This model was a Close Quarters Battle variant, with a 13-inch barrel, which made it handy to use indoors, where shotguns tended to be too long and unwieldy. This weapon was an anachronism, which wasn’t invented until the 1970s, and appeared in the gritty Mac Bolan pulp novels, which made Jason wonder what people in the game thought or saw when they looked at the gun. Apparently it was just a hunter’s shotgun in Jane’s eyes.

“This is really nice.” Jason smiled broadly.

“I’d like you to have it,” Jane told him. “I know you’re going to need it.”

“Thank you,” Jason said as he tucked the shotgun back into the case and snapped it shut. He knew that this was a different era, and that it was a tremendous scandal for a man to spend the night in a lady’s room, even if the two of them merely kissed and held each other. Jason pulled her into him and kissed her. The wildness of her hair this early in the morning only made her more attractive to him. She wrapped her arms around him briefly, then let him go so he could get dressed. After Jason slipped on his shoes, jacket, and hat, she escorted him out of the Institute.

Jason went down to the street and caught the subway to the rescue mission. He had to wear his mask to get on the subway, but once he sat down with the shotgun case in his lap, he took the mask off—it was just too uncomfortable trying to breathe with a diaper over his face. The Spanish influenza, which had killed tens of thousands, had only ended in 1919, so maybe that explained why people were so scared. Nevertheless, Jason thought that people were bound to notice that the new Mitral virus was not the scourge that the Spanish flu was, with people feeling ill in the morning and dying by evening, even strong young people in their twenties. Looking around him on the subway car, the city seemed empty, with few people traveling outside their homes.

Jason arrived at the rescue mission and climbed the stairs. When he got to the landing, he saw bunks scattered in the chapel area behind the pulpit, and in the dining room along the wall.

“What have you got there?” Pastor Roy asked, noting the black case that Jason carried.

“I’ve been thinking of taking up the trombone,” Jason replied, and hurried past the pastor, the buxom Sister Belinda, and shy Sister Jamie on his way to his room.

Once he fished out the key and opened his door, he set the shotgun case under his bed and locked the door behind him. He reflected on what a wonderful night it had been with Jane Goodall, and how slim she felt snuggled against him, as well as the smell of her hair. But now Jason realized that he needed someplace to stash his weapons. If the RAPE goons decided to search his room, or if someone ever identified him and traced him back to the rescue mission, even a quick search of his room would turn up a stash of weapons, and although Jason hadn’t shot anyone yet, it was just a matter of time before those weapons tied him to a dead body. There was also the issue of the men of the mission, most of whom were good guys, but addicts were never fully in control of themselves, so there was the possibility, if not likelihood, of a drunk desperate for cash, rifling through his room and finding Jason’s stash of weapons, then pawning them at the first opportunity. Nor did Jason want to try to explain to Sister Belinda or Jamie, or any other woman who might come to his room, why he had an arsenal, which was illegal.

Jason sat at the table and looked out the window, thinking of what to do with his growing cache of weapons. So far, every bonus he’d earned in the game was a tool, but he was hopeful that he would receive talismans, objects with special power, and he couldn’t afford to have those stolen. If he got a safe or a strong box, it would just attract attention—people would know there was something valuable in it, and anyone with the government would have the resources to get it opened.

There was also the issue of being able to get in and out of his room secretly, whether he was in superhero mode or just wanted to invite a woman to his room. Jason got up and went to the wall. His room was at the end of the hallway, but what was on the other side? Jason decided to have a talk with Pastor Roy, and ask if he could borrow some tools. It was time to make a bat cave.

* * *

The classroom was unusually quiet, due to the test in progress. Jason walked up and down the aisles, watching for students whose necks were craning to look at others’ tests, or had notes written on their desktops. When a student turned his or her test face down, that was a signal for Jason to go over and collect it. He returned to the front of the room, and monitored the test in progress.

At the back right corner of the room, next to the wall, the principal’s son sat at his desk. Ms. Ylarregui’s son was one of two black students in this small-town Idaho high school. The two boys had been adopted from Haiti, and a student related to the principal told Jason that Ms. Ylarregui was a lesbian, which explained why she never married and why she adopted children. Jason didn’t really care about the principal’s private life, nor had he asked about it; a student had volunteered the information. What Jason did care about, though, was the fact that Amiri, Ms. Ylarregui’s son, kept looking down at his side.

Amiri held his right hand down below the desk where Jason couldn’t see it. With the quietness of the class, it was an easy matter for Jason to study the young man’s body language, and there was definitely something odd about the kid’s looking off the desktop and down to his side, to a hand held beneath the desk. When Jason went to collect Amiri’s test, he saw a scrap of paper on the floor, on the right side of the desk where Amiri had been holding his hand low. Jason bent down and picked up the scrap of paper and took it to his desk, along with the finished tests.

The class routine was that students wrote flashcards for the new unit while Jason graded their tests, so as the students worked, Jason looked at the scrap of paper that had fallen beside Amiri’s desk and saw that it was a cheat sheet, with a list of Spanish months and days of the week, part of today’s test, written in small print. Jason sighed. He hated this part of the job.

“Amiri,” Jason called out to the young man, who was writing up a new set of flashcards, “can I speak with you for a moment?”

Amiri, who was a husky kid who wore his frizzy hair in a set of tight braids, came up to Jason’s desk. “Yes?”

“During the test I saw you looking down at your side multiple times, and you were holding your hand below the desk.” Jason held up the cheat sheet. “Then I found this in the same spot where you appeared to be holding something, and were looking. You know the rules, if you’re caught cheating, you get a zero, and you can’t make the test up. I’m sorry, but you’ve got a zero.”

The kid said nothing, but pursed his lips and went back to his seat.

Now Jason had the further unpleasant task of sending an e-mail to the principal, telling her that her son had been caught cheating, received a zero on the test, and couldn’t make it up. Cheating really made no sense, because students could always retake tests in Jason’s class, risk-free, meaning that a lower score was thrown out, and the student kept any higher score, as is, without any deductions. Jason detailed the incident in an e-mail, and sent it to the principal.

The class was hardly over, and the next period just started, when Jason received a reply from Ms. Ylarregui. He was stunned to read the e-mail. She told him that according to Amiri, he merely had a study sheet with him that he was using to study before the test, which he put away in his pocket, but when he got up to leave, the study sheet must have fallen out of his pocket onto the floor. “How dare you accuse my son of cheating!”

Jason hoped that the woman was lying, covering for her son to protect him, because if she really believed that the kid wasn’t cheating, she was a deluded fool. Did she think that because she was a white woman who adopted two black kids that she was pure and noble, while Jason was motivated by racism to pick on her black son? The dysfunctional woman was a disaster as a principal, but the real victim was her son, because coddled, protected kids learn they can cheat and loaf, and mommy will save them.

Jason then sent her a reply e-mail, telling her that Amiri would be allowed to re-take the test. It was against his policy, but she was his boss, and she and her son were going to have to live with the consequences.

What was it his grandfather had said, that according to the Buddhists, he suffered because he cared? Once he stopped caring, then he would be okay. Apparently, Buttafuoco wasn’t the only delusional ape in a position of authority.

* * *

Frank’s eyes grew wide in surprise. He held the Dixie cup in his hand and looked at it appreciatively, then smacked his lips. “Wow, that’s the good stuff!”

“We were all out of orange juice,” Jason replied with a straight face, “so I had to improvise. As long as you’re taking your meds, that’s what counts.”

Cecil was next to take his pill, and wash it down with a shot of Seagram’s 7 in a Dixie cup, poured discreetly from a bottle wrapped in a paper bag. “You know Brother Jason, I don’t think I’ve ever eaten Italian food, but that spaghetti we had for lunch was delicious!”

“I’m glad you liked it,” Jason said with a smile. Today was one of those occasions when Jason cooked for the rescue mission. The secret to his spaghetti sauce, the second dish he’d learned to cook, was a bottle of wine, but due to the mayor’s liquor ban, Jason had been forced to go to Rico, owner of Enrico’s Ristorante, and buy a bottle on the sly. The Italians working the docks were connected to the mob, who were quick to spot an opportunity, and now profitably circumvented the mayor’s liquor ban. Regardless of the mayor’s authoritarian emergency orders, no Italian was going to go without wine.

The men all lined up for their meds, and the few who didn’t need meds got vitamins, all of them washed down with a shot of Canadian whiskey. To Jason, that was the key, that if a man was controlled by liquor, then his life was a miserable wreck, but if he added just a little booze, then life was a joy, full of color and happiness.

When the last man finished his pills, Jason took the empty bottle outside and dumped it in the neighbor’s trash bin, just to make certain the whiskey bottle couldn’t be linked to the rescue mission. He then wrapped his coat tightly around him and headed in the direction of the Punch Drunk bar. Due to the quarantine, there were few people on the street, and Jason realized that he forgot his mask, so he gathered up his red scarf at his neck and had it ready.

When he reached the Punch Drunk, he saw a sign in the small glass window set into the door, which was covered with red diamond-tuck upholstery. “PRIVATE CLUB. MEMBERS ONLY!” Jason knocked on the window. An older man with a bald crown surrounded by a ring of hair came to the door and looked through the window, saw Jason, then said loudly enough to be heard from inside the bar, “Members only!”

Jason was about to leave, when the man turned around to look behind him and engage someone in a conversation, which was indistinct to Jason. The partially bald man unfastened the deadbolt and opened the door a fraction. “You know somebody?” the man asked, and Jason heard the ice in the man’s drink tinkle.

“I know the retired cop. I don’t know his name, but he gave me a sap and showed me some moves on the bag in the back room.” Jason realized he didn’t even know the cop’s name.

“All right,” the man said with a jerk of his head, “come on in.”

“Thanks,” Jason replied, and walked into the dim bar, straight to the table where the cop sat, drinking what looked like an old fashioned.

“Have a seat,” the cop said, gesturing to the seat opposite his. A thin ribbon of smoke trailed up from a cigarette balanced on the rim of an ashtray.

“Thanks.” Jason sat down and straightened out his suit. “I just realized I don’t know your name. I’m Jason Whitlock.”

“I’m Frank Mulroney.” He extended a weathered hand, and the two of them shook.

“So what’s with the members-only sign?” Jason asked. “I hope I’m not intruding.”

“It’s the damn wop mayor with his liquor ban. I don’t know what the fuck he thinks he’s doing, but there are ways around his stupid-ass dictate, like making the bar a private club.” The cop drained his drink and rattled his glass, then took a drag from his cigarette. “The executive order bans the sale, manufacture, and import of liquor. This bar has a stash of liquor that’ll last for several years. Can I get you something?”

“Yeah, that sounds good.” Jason lit up at the idea. “A gin Rickey.”

Frank turned to speak to the bartender, who had been polishing bottles. “Let’s get the kid here a gin Rickey.”

“Comin’ up,” the bartender replied.

“The other day,” and here Jason leaned forward conspiratorially, “I got an invite to the mayor’s suite, and I was weaponless. What do you do when you can’t take a weapon with you?”

Frank smiled. “Good question. You don’t ever want to be in a fair fight. If you’re in a fair fight, and unarmed, you’re sloppy, and just aren’t thinking. Always give yourself an edge.”

“Thanks,” Jason said to the bartender who brought him his drink.

“Remember the palm sap?” Frank asked. He took a puff on his cigarette and stubbed it out in the ashtray. “You take a glove, and slip four or five silver dollars into the palm. Voila! You got yourself a palm sap.”

Jason listened intently as the former cop explained numerous ways to arm oneself on the sly, and by the time Jason finished his gin Rickey, he felt that he had a lot to work on when he got back to his room.

“Thanks for the drink,” Jason said as he got up from the table.

“You’re welcome.” He called out to Jason as he was leaving, “Oh, and consider yourself a member of the club.”

Jason waved and returned to the rescue mission, where the worship service was just starting, albeit with the men scattered over the chapel, the landing, and the dining room to comply with the mayor’s edict. Sisters Belinda and Jaime finished leading the singing, and the pastor started his sermon.

“Bullshit,” someone said loudly enough to be heard over the Pastor Roy’s deep voice. The heckler was new, a blonde man with an unruly shock of blonde hair, who continued interrupting the pastor. “My ass.”

Somebody needed to confront this guy, who had a dangerous wildness in his eyes.