Pop Goes the Weasel

school, perhaps to Winchester, where his grandfather had gone. Shafer gave his son a crisp military salute. Once upon a time, Colonel Geoffrey Shafer had been a soldier. Only Robert seemed to remember that part of his father’s life now.
    “I’m only going away to London for a few days, and this is work , not a holiday. I’m not planning to spend my nights at the Athenaeum or anything like that,” he told his family. He was smiling jovially, the way they expected him to be.
    “Try to have some fun while you’re away, Dad. Have some laughs. God knows, you deserve it,” Robert said, talking in the lower-octave man-to-man’s voice that he seemed to be adopting lately.
    “Bye, Daddy! Bye, Daddy,” the twins chorused shrilly, making Shafer want to throw them against the walls.
    “Bye, Erica-san. Bye, Tricia-san.”
    “Remember Orc’s Nest,” Robert said with sudden urgency. “ Dragon and The Duelist. ” Orc’s Nest was a store that sold role-playing books and gaming equipment. It was located on Earlham, just off Cambridge Circus in London. Dragon and The Duelist were currently the two hot-shit British magazines covering role-playing games.
    Unfortunately for Robert, Shafer wasn’t actually going to London. He had a much better plan for the weekend. He was going to play his fantasy game right here in Washington.

Chapter 4
    HE SPED DUE EAST, rather than toward Washington’s Dulles Airport, feeling as if a tremendously burdensome weight had been lifted. God, he hated his perfect English family, and even more, their claustrophobic life here in America.
    Shafer’s own family back in England had been “perfect” as well. He had two older brothers, and they’d both been excellent students, model youths. His father had been a military attaché, and the family had traveled around the globe until he was twelve, when they’d returned to England and settled in Guildford, about half an hour outside London. Once there, Shafer began to expand on the schoolboy mischief he’d practiced since he was eight. The center of Guildford contained several historic buildings, and he set out to gleefully deface all of them. He began with the Abbot’s Hospital, where his grandmother was dying. He painted obscenities on the walls. Then he moved on to Guildford Castle, Guildhall, the Royal Grammar School, and Guildford Cathedral. He scrawled more obscene words, and splashed large penises in bright colors. He had no idea why he took such joy in ruining beautiful things, but he did. He loved it — and he especially loved not getting caught.
    Shafer was eventually sent to school at Rugly, where the pranks continued. Then he attended St. John’s College, where he concentrated on philosophy, Japanese, and shagging as many good-looking women as he possibly could. All his friends were mystified when he went into the army at twenty-one. His language skills were excellent, and he was posted to Asia, which was where the mischief rose to a new level and where he began to play the game of games .
    He stopped at a 7-Eleven in Washington Heights for coffee — three coffees, actually. Black, with four sugars in each. He drank most of one of the cups on his way to the counter.
    The Indian cashier gave him a cheeky, suspicious look, and he laughed in the bearded wanker’s face.
    “Do you really think I’d steal a bloody seventy-five-cent cup of coffee? You pathetic jerkoff. You pitiful wog.”
    He threw his money on the counter and left before he killed the clerk with his bare hands, which he could do easily enough.
    From the 7-Eleven he drove into the Northeast part of Washington, a middle-class section called Eckington. He began to recognize the streets when he was west of Gallaudet University. Most of the structures were two-storied apartments with vinyl siding, either redbrick or a hideous Easter-egg blue that always made him wince.
    He stopped in front of one of the redbrick garden apartments on Uhland Terrace, near Second Street. This one had an attached garage. A previous tenant had adorned the brick facade with two white concrete cats.
    “Hello, pussies,” Shafer said. He felt relieved to be here. He was “cycling up” — that is, getting high, manic. He loved this feeling, couldn’t get enough of it. It was time to play the game.

Chapter 5
    A RUSTED and taped-up purple and blue taxi was parked inside the two-car garage. Shafer had been using it for about four months. The taxi gave him anonymity, made him almost