The Edger Collection

by David Beem

  Necessity being the mother of all invention, Han, this would-be Cookie Child of Destiny, was a boy of initiative. Striking out on his own, Han developed no fewer than ten different “Silent Paths of the Cookie.” Today, these supersecret stealth techniques are known as “ninja walking.”

  Sadly, the founding father of ninjutsu grew old and fat and died of complications due to a mouthful of abscessed teeth. But before he flying-side-kicked the bucket, he first passed on everything he had learned to his son. And that son (who also died old and fat and with a mouthful of abscessed teeth) passed on all his knowledge to his two sons. And a good thing there were two sons here, for one of the two brothers, having lost both a father and grandfather to what essentially amounted to a bunch of untreated cavities, vowed to devote himself to a life of dentistry. And just think, if there hadn’t been a second son to continue the secret art of cookie walking, ninjutsu might’ve been lost forever.

  But ninjutsu wasn’t lost forever.

  Eventually, the great-great-great grandson grew to be a man and moved to the mountains, where all the fashionable peasants were going, to a place called Iga. There, for hundreds of years, the secret art thrived, developing into the deadly capital of ninjutsu historians have come to revere today.

  Hattori Hanzo (1542-1596) is easily the most famous of these Iga ninjas. He did not have a thing for sweets. In fact, he trained his ninja villagers to eschew all foods contributing to body odor, since being an effective ninja meant being invisible to all the senses, and how bad would it have sucked to scale the castle wall, made it past all the security guards, literally spidered across the ceiling to sneak up on the person you’re about to assassinate, only to tip him off with a bad case of the zombie armpits? Here, the Historical Society of Dead Historians strike a rare accord: that indeed would have straight-up sucked.

  Chapter Fifty-Five

  “Edger Bonkovich, Hattori Hanzo. Hattori Hanzo, Edger Bonkovich,” says Bruce Lee.

  “Charmed,” I say, offering my hand to shake.

  Hattori Hanzo is wearing the traditional black ninja threads. His eyes lower to take in my hand, then scan right to take in Bruce Lee. He steps back and clasps his hands together, making this weird ninja knuckle wrap thing with his fingers, and bows. I try to copy him with the ninja hands, pop a knuckle, and decide to cool it and just go for the bow instead.

  [“How may I be of assistance?”] asks Hattori Hanzo.

  [“Hey—I can understand—but you’re—you’re speaking in Japanese!”] I exclaim, and my eyes widen. [“Wait a minute. I’m speaking in Japanese! Wax on, wax off!”]

  [“Mr. Bonkovich requires your expertise in overpowering men with guns,”] says Bruce Lee.

  [“You’re speaking in Japanese too!”] I cry. “This is so dope!”

  Next thing I know, our entire situation flashes before my eyes as Bruce Lee brings Hattori Hanzo up to speed: schematics for Qualcomm Stadium, locations of enemy targets, security personnel, exit routes—all of it in fast-forward, just like when Killmaster did it in Emerald Plaza. Bruce Lee even teaches Hattori Hanzo the finer points of American football. All this flashes before my eyes in a second.

  “Whoa,” I say, my heart positively banging in my chest.

  “Whoa,” agrees Hattori Hanzo, who faces me and pulls up his ninja mask. His features are smooth and youthful. His eyes are twinkling with mischief. He looks nothing like what I imagine a ninja would look like. Which would be Sho Kosugi, I guess, the icy bad guy from Enter the Ninja. But Hattori Hanzo looks more like Robin Shou, that nice guy who kept Chris Farley from stabbing himself in the penis in Beverly Hills Ninja.

  “Well, Mr. Bonkovich,” says Hattori Hanzo in stiff English, smiling. “It’s Game Day.”

  His face fades and becomes translucent as the timer on my suit expires. My limbs become light, like they’re inflated by helium. My hair stands on end. The soul-stars spin down from the sky and snatch me in a funnel cloud made from the lives of our distant ancestors.

  I wake up in a graffitied bathroom stall. Through the Collective Unconscious, I can sense Hattori Hanzo and Bruce Lee are still there. I can also sense that I’m alone in the bathroom. A surge of relief flashes through me that I won’t be seen exiting the stall dressed like Batman’s armored space ninja cousin.

  [Hurry!] calls Hattori Hanzo. [No one is looking!]

  He seizes control of me. My shoulder slams into the stall door, rattling my teeth and snapping it off the hinges as I barge into the empty bathroom. My head is light, and it’s like I’m in this out-of-body trance as he produces a tiny but heavy black marble from my utility belt. The rapidly auto-assembling nano-fibers transform the ball in a matter of seconds. A grappling gun solidifies before my eyes.

  [Amazing!] Hattori Hanzo exclaims.

  Holy crap, I reply. The grappling gun is black and chrome. The scent of gun oil wafts into my mask’s breathing filter. I don’t care how many times I see that happen. It’s never gonna get old.

  I race out of the men’s room, Hanzo timing it so no one is looking. He fires the grappling hook into the rafters. I rocket into the air. My right shoulder jerks and my left hand snatches the right for support; arms and abs strain under the effort. The reel whistles. My stomach knots. Rafters rush up at me. My legs swing forward. The momentum carries me over the beams, the cable wrapping once as I alight on the balls of my feet without a sound and using the heads-up display to shrink the device. The cable unwraps, sizzles back, and I return a tiny black marble to its pouch on my belt in one smooth motion. Hanzo, who is still in control of my body, has me shake my head.

  [We must focus. The enemy is on the move.]

  “Hey, Mommy, look.”

  The voice is coming from the drinking fountain near the women’s room, where a freckled little girl in a Wonder Woman shirt is tugging on her mother’s arm and pointing at me with her free hand. She is literally the only person in the mezzanine level not preoccupied with something else. Hattori Hanzo has me grab a throwing star on my utility belt. My left arm grabs my right arm as I struggle to take back control.

  Are you insane? I exclaim.

  [She will expose us!]

  Through the Collective Unconscious, I double down for control; my arms jerk violently up and down, left and right and, for a minute, I’m teetering on the rafter looking like I’m battling one of those possessed monkey paws.

  You can’t throwing star a little girl! I yell.

  [Can too!]

  What he means is—you shouldn’t throwing star a little girl, says Bruce Lee, and Hanzo grudgingly yields control.

  [Oh,] says Hattori Hanzo. [Well, I don’t like the look of her.]

  Having won back control, I promptly lose balance. I tip left, my arms shoot out right. Hattori Hanzo seizes control again and allows me to fall backward; my right hand shoots up and closes on the beam, and my momentum carries me in a circle—nearly pulling my shoulder out of its socket. A second later, I’m perching on the balls of my feet again and rubbing my sore shoulder.

  Little Wonder Woman is gaping up at me, one eye scrunched and the other wide open. I gesture with my finger for her to turn around. She doesn’t even blink. Huh. Maybe it’s because of the whole monkey-paw-trapeze-artist thing. Or maybe it’s because I look like a space ninja.

  I gesture again with a little loop of the finger.

  Come on, little girl. Turn around.

  She doesn’t. I try again—this time thrusting my palms in the direction of the football field to her right, then miming my head exploding from the awesomeness of being at a Charger’s game. Hey-hey. Check out Caleb Montana. Amaze-balls, right?

  Nothing.

  “Mommy, Mommy!” she cries.

  “No-no!” I whisper, putting my finger to my lips. “Shh! Shh!”

  “It!” says the girl, making a tiny jump and grinning.

  I wave my hands, shake my head. “Stop that,” I whisper. “Shh!”

  “It!” says the girl, beaming.

  “Shh—”

&
nbsp; “—it!”

  “Sh—”

  “—it!” The girl giggles. “We’re saying shit!”

  “Susie!” The girl’s mother hauls off and slaps her. Hattori Hanzo seizes control of me. We race down the beam, silent as a mouse.

  Chapter Fifty-Six

  Wang had slipped past Reggie the security guard no problem. Since then, however, he’d been taking his sweet time. He’d been down in that locker room for somewhere going on less than an hour, but definitely more than five minutes. The brownies made it difficult to know for sure.

  Shmuel stuffs another one in his mouth. He leans back in his seat. Reggie the security guard had been good enough to provide an extra folding chair once he learned there’d be more brownies involved. He even joked about deputizing Shmuel, which sounded pretty good until he’d said something about Shmuel being “honorary vomit cleaner upper.” That didn’t sound like a legitimate form of security, no matter what Reggie said.

  Reggie laces his hands behind his head. He kicks his feet up on the pillar and smiles.

  “Bein’ a security guard at the Q ain’t all football and brownies, you know,” says Reggie at the same time his walkie-talkie squeals with static. He adjusts the volume dial, sighs, and peers off into the rafters like they hold the secrets to the universe. Which, in Shmuel’s experience, they just might. “Sometimes you gotta be sleuthy.”

  “No shit?” asks Shmuel.

  “No shit. Take your basic cow.”

  Shmuel’s sits abruptly upright. “Uh—my cow?”

  “Well, yeah,” says Reggie, his face going screwy. “I mean, not yours specifically. It’s a manner of speech. You know, like ‘take your basic Shakespeare,’ or ‘take your basic Bible,’ or ‘take your basic surgical scalpel.’”

  “Where are we takin’ all this stuff?” asks Shmuel, a flash of suspicion surging through him. In his experience, security wasn’t supposed to be in the business of stealing.

  “No, no, no,” says Reggie. “We’re not taking anything anywhere. I mean ‘your,’ like, ‘how well do you know your Machiavelli,’ or, ‘how well do you know your classical history,’ or ‘how well do you know your Chargers’ stats.’”

  “Not well?” Shmuel frowns. He hoped there wouldn’t be a test. He hated tests. There must be an easier way to become a security guard at the Q. Seemed an awful lot of trouble just to clean up vomit.

  “No, no,” says Reggie, dropping his feet to the floor. He scoots his chair back and faces Shmuel. “I don’t mean yours personally. I mean yours universally. The universal ‘yours.’”

  “Oh!” cries Shmuel, laughing. “The universal yours!”

  “Yeah. The universal yours.”

  “Kinda like the royal wee-wee?”

  Reggie’s head jerks back. He blinks and goes still. Shmuel smiles, getting into it.

  “Yeah, yeah,” he says. “I gotcha. I know what you mean. You mean like, ‘your basic hammer,’ or ‘your basic bong,’ or, ‘your basic stash.’”

  “Okay. Yeah. That’s it.” Reggie nods, his face still screwy as he scoots his chair back to where it’d been and again puts up his feet. “Yeah,” says Reggie, peering into the rafters. “Your basic hammer.”

  “Your basic stash,” says Shmuel, before adding, “but not mine, though?”

  “No. Not yours,” Reggie agrees. “Everybody’s.”

  “Everybody’s basic stash? I don’t have enough for everyone.”

  “Universal,” says Reggie.

  “Oh, right, right.” Shmuel releases a sigh and puts his feet up also. But not before taking another brownie from the tray. After some chewing, he says, “Would be awesome to find that universal stash, though? There really should be a universal stash?”

  “Sleuthy,” says Reggie.

  “I mean, if it’s universal…you wouldn’t have to be sleuthy? It’d be kinda like a community garden? That’s the whole point of it being universal?”

  “No, no,” says Reggie. “What we were talking about before. Bein’ sleuthy.”

  “Oh, right.” Shmuel squints. “Bein’ sleuthy.”

  “Take your basic cow. The one in the locker room.”

  Shmuel gives him the side-eye. “Not my cow, though, right?”

  “No, no. The universal cow.”

  “Right. Universal cow. Royal wee-wee.”

  “Us security guards’ve gotta be clever. I mean, what’s a cow doin’ in a locker room in the first place? What motivates him? Is it all primal instinct—or is it something more? And why’s it in Green Bay’s locker room? I mean, is it from Wisconsin? Does Wisconsin have a better variety of grass than San Diego? Or is this about cheese and dairy products and so forth?”

  “Ri-ight, ri-ight,” says Shmuel, impressed, despite knowing Reggie had it all wrong. Chicowgo hated the Packers. And she’d eat just about anything. Left-foot shoes, for example. Those were the ones he could never find. “You really know your universal basic shit from your universal basic shinola, huh?”

  “Oh, yeah.” Reggie’s feet come back down. His eyes are tense as he scoots his chair nearer Shmuel. He glances over his shoulder, apparently to see if anyone is near enough to eavesdrop. Shmuel checks also. Except for the two identical and suspicious-looking men-in-black standing near the women’s room that’d been watching them like hawks ever since Wang snuck down to the locker room, there was nothing unusual.

  “You wanna know what I think?” asks Reggie, his tone hushed and breath reeking of chocolate and pot.

  “What?”

  “I think it might be a government operation.”

  “Nuh-uh!”

  Reggie nods. “Uh-huh.” Reggie scans the mezzanine level, his gaze passing right over the creepy men-in-black like he didn’t see them, but Shmuel suspected he probably did see them and was just so amazing at the sleuthing part of his job that he could convincingly pretend he hadn’t seen them. It was really something to see.

  “Don’t look now,” says Reggie. “But there’re two government agents standing next to the men’s room, another two over by the food truck, and another two by C Gate.”

  Despite the “don’t look now” part of Reggie’s statement, Shmuel’s gaze moves with a mind of its own. He’d already identified the two suspicious-looking men-in-black near the women’s room, but, lo and behold, there are the others, right where Reggie had gestured. They’re wearing identical black suits and sunglasses. And matching haircuts too, right down to the pomade pâté on top. They even have identical right angle jawlines, thick, bushy eyebrows, and pointy noses. It’s like they’re twins, except there’re more than two of them. He could only conclude these government agents must be sexytuplets.

  “Whoa,” he says.

  Reggie nods. “You’re staring.”

  Shmuel licks his lips. “Dude. They look so alike.”

  “Uh-huh,” replies Reggie. “You’re still staring. And do you know what else?”

  “What?”

  “There’s an armored space ninja in the rafters.”

  “Bullshit!”

  Shmuel’s gaze snaps to the rafters and spots a black-and-chrome armored space ninja running along a beam like…well… After all the pot brownies he’d eaten, the space ninja running along the beam looked like a centipede space ninja who is also running along a beam, except without ninety-eight of its legs.

  “Shmuel.”

  “Yeah?”

  “Stop staring.”

  Shmuel lowers his gaze.

  “Sleuthy,” says Reggie.

  Shmuel breaks into a cold sweat. He sinks into what he hopes is a nonchalant slouch in the back of his plastic seat back. Then he licks his lips self-consciously.

  “Play it cool, man,” says Reggie, stuffing his face with another brownie. “Play it cool. I happen to be a highly trained professional.”

  “Huh,” says Shmuel, his neck straining against the urge to look directly at the space ninja in the rafters. That’s definitely some shit you don’t see every day. “So… I guess that’s what y
ou’d call your basic armored space ninja.”

  “Huh?” snaps Reggie. “He’s not my armored space ninja. I figured he was yours.”

  Chapter Fifty-Seven

  Ted and Ed stand with their arms folded before the white picket fence, a plot of plastic grass, and no cow.

  “Where’s the cow?” asks Ted. “Shouldn’t there be a cow? I thought you said there’d be a cow.”

  “Can’t drop felony charges without a felony-charge-dropping cow,” says Ed.

  Judas blurts, “Saboteurs—”

  “Saboteurs?” says Ed, snatching his sunglasses from his face.

  Judas steps back. Ted and Ed always wore their sunglasses. Now Judas saw why. Ed’s eyes are two gleaming caricatures of cray-cray with a quivering side of arched eyebrow. The effect: Maniac Level: Hugo Weaving.

  “I mean,” says Judas, shrugging. He scrubs a finger under his nose and sniffs. “Saboteurs. Yeah.”

  “What kind of saboteurs?” asks Ted.

  Judas clears his throat, unsure how best to field this one. “Yeah, well…uh…” A hand on Judas’s arm shatters his already confused focus.

  “Uh, sir?” asks Sheldon, who has abandoned his position inside the food truck.

  “What is it?” he snaps, snatching his arm back, and surging with relief to have a subordinate to boss around. This, at least, is familiar to him. “Can’t you see we’re in the middle of something, Team Member Sheldon?”

  “Yes, sir,” Sheldon replies. “It’s just—I found the cow!”

  “What? No, no, no. You don’t find the cow. I find the cow.”

  “Okay, sir,” says Sheldon, pointing. “Then find it over there!”