Harlan's Race

from us is not what he’ll do,” the cormorant said. “If he gets to some dense brush, he might jump into it and crawl for a while, on a zigzag pattern. Best one is — he might run full speed and straight for a ways, to make us think he’ll keep on like that. Then all of a sudden, in a spot where he’s out of our sight, he’ll slow down and veer right or left, and double back around, like this ... and leave the park on a different heading entirely.”
    “Hey, Chino,” Vince asked, “let’s say you grab him first. What are you gonna do?”
    “Oh... make a citizen’s arrest,” said the SEAL blandly. “If he’s still alive.”
    “Gotcha,” Vince smiled.
    I frowned. That was still the difference between Chino and me. I still had the hope of the bad guy standing trial in shackles.
    Chino rubbed his fingers on his eyes and yawned. “Chingao ...” he wondered. “How much longer can LEV. push this thing?”
    “If he’s as tired of it as we are,” I said, “it’s a question of who makes the first mistake.”
    ‘Yeah. I still don’t like our odds. We’re spread so thin. We’re still feeling around for that needle in a hay-stack. Especially on surveillance in the park—watching for him to show up. I’d like to saturate the area with professional security. But I can’t do that... our guy would probably spot them. We don’t want that. So the boss and I are thinking how to get better surveillance another way.”
    We were quiet for a few minutes.
    “Have we done everything we can to lure LEV. in?” I asked.
    “Who knows?” said Chino.
    “I know one thing we haven’t done,” Vince said. “Be a lot more blatant about Harlan being there. He should get as much coverage as me. The widowed lover who is now saying up yours to the world... determined to go on doing his thing. He should speak at the awards. Hey—that would really piss LEV.” Chino nodded agreement.
    Speak at the awards? No. I’d probably cry in public.
    “No speeches,” I said. “But we can announce I’m running.”
    So we got a story about me into the gay press, hoping that LEV. would spot them.
    But by the end of August, there was still no sign of life from LEV.
    No letters from him, no rocks through windows. Nobody had tried to kill our dog. In fact, life was curiously back to normal — what I’d dreamed of. At times, I felt silly, like on Fire Island. Maybe this was all a wasted exercise. But never mind — it felt good to be taking action.
    Vince and I were running 4:10 miles and 16:00 5-Ks in time trials, and his knees were holding up. Russell delivered the four T-shirts, made of mesh with a Kevlar insert that covered our chests front and back. The shirts were wonderful — they weighed only 19 ounces. To get used to our shirts, Vince and I started wearing them on workouts. We wore light loose pullovers over the top, so the inserts wouldn’t be visible.
    In between, we made movies, and laughed with our familia, and played games with Chino and Harry—backyard practice at stick-fighting and knife-throwing to keep ourselves sharp. Vince’s health stayed good. He glowed. His T-cell count had actually climbed a bit. Michael and Astarte were looking good too. Michael was surprisingly dedicated to his running, starting to talk about going for a medal in the Memorial, maybe serious competition.
    Running the rolling course again and again, we determined that the men’s fastest winning time would be around
    14 minutes, a few seconds more, depending on how hot it was that day. The women’s fastest winning time might be around 15:30.
    The first few days of September were the final countdown. It was also Falcon’s fourth birthday on September 2.
    Vince was handling his own nervousness by applying line-producer skills to race director.
    “You promised to donate a thousand pounds of bananas for the breakfast,” I heard him on the phone. “Not sell. Give.”
    September 5
    Harry and Chino were working out their “saturation” plan. They contacted the local gay veterans’ association, and got ten volunteers who’d be watchers for us. They’d park themselves around the course for a few hours, like idle Sunday visitors. They’d have tiny walkies the size of cigarette packs, which had cost Russell a bundle. If anything suspicious moved in the maze of green, they would radio Chino.
    September 6
    Over 700 mail-in entries came from as far away as New York, Canada, Hawaii. More would enter on race morning. TV ads were running,