Harlan's Race

tiny security force had their energies stretched to breaking.
    I almost closed my eyes — and didn’t, because the bronze medal was on Vince’s neck now. Nothing had happened.
    He walked off the platform, and nothing happened.
    Was it possible that LEV. had turned his attention elsewhere? Or died? That we had put in the effort for nothing?
    “... Second-place man, overall, is Michael Brown,” the club president was saying.
    Radiant with pride, my son stepped up on the platform to claim his first trophy. If I hadn’t been so baffled about LEV., I might have felt insufferably proud.
    Then, as Mason’s loudspeaker voice was filling the air, and the silver medal slipped around Michael’s neck, things happened.
    To everyone else, it looked like the two security professionals had suddenly gone berserk. Harry bolted along the row of latrines. My eye traveled past him, and saw a door that was barely ajar, toward the platform. Chino flew across the stage and shoved Michael down on the platform, with himself on top. Simultaneously, Harry hurled himself against the toilet door, slamming it so hard that the whole unit toppled over on its side.
    Screams went up. People fell this way and that.
    In a fury, Harry was on the latrine, yanking the door. It was locked and we could hear the occupant thrashing inside. Finally the door-latch gave, and Harry dragged the shaken occupant out. The cyclist’s backpack was askew, his tights now tie-dyed ridiculously with blue chemicals and a little shit. Up close, he looked like an older hippie — mid-
    40s, with a broad nose over that Frank Zappa mustache. “Jeez,” he was yelling in indignation.
    Harry grabbed the man by the shirt, and slammed him against the next toilet like an enemy prisoner he was about to interrogate.
    “Where’s the gun?” he barked.
    “Jeez!” the guy shouted. “I was just taking a crap!” With that expert speed that Angelenos have when violence shatters their world, everybody stampeded away from the area. Two LAPD men ran to the latrine, shoving Harry away from the cyclist. These were cops who didn’t like faggots or private security, and Harry was both. Harry wisely didn’t resist.
    “Lay off, gumshoe,” said one cop. “This is our gig.” “He had a weapon,” Harry insisted.
    The cops did a quick pat-down on the cyclist, glanced inside the toppled latrine. They looked inside the backpack and saw a half-eaten sandwich, a few bicycle parts and repair tools, a rusty old bicycle pump. They gave Harry a disgusted look.
    “Beat it,” they told the cyclist. ‘You’re clean.”
    “Listen, fag,” the other cop said to Harry, “we could take you in for assault.”
    Harry was controlling himself. “I saw a weapon, man. Search the fucking latrine.”
    “If you argue with us and F us,” the first cop said, “we’ll add charges of obstructing.”
    I was staring at Michael, who left the platform with Chino. My son looked shaken and mystified. Suddenly my whole body became one pulse of adrenaline. If there was anything I trusted, it was the two vets’ intuition and powers of observation. “They” had really done the unexpected this time — put the crosshairs on my kid. After the news show, the hit shifted to Michael. The sniper planned it at Hide A
    — couldn’t get an opening because Michael was buried in the pack. So he made a last-ditch decision to try it later... walked cooly into the area with the gun broken down in his backpack, and assembled it inside the toilet. The loudspeaker and applause would swallow the pfffft! By the time the tiny bullet-hole in Michael’s head was discovered, the cyclist would have jammed the gun into the latrine and walked off into the crowd.
    Vince and I looked at each other. He swallowed hard.
    The cyclist calmly zipped his backpack, grabbed his bike, and walked off.
    Harry’s eyes were black with rage. He watched the hippie walk away up the sloping lawn, toward the trees.
    While this was going on, Chino caught my eye. The same thought crossed all our minds. The hippie shooter had just bluffed his way out. We couldn’t let him get away.
    Still arguing, Harry walked after the cops. The cops were yelling back. Now Denny had actually walked over, and gotten into the discussion. Taking advantage of the diversion, Chino quietly told Michael to go join Harry. Vince gave his medal to Michael. Then the three of us eased away through the gawking crowd. Chino’s move would be interpreted as moving his two