Free The Chinese Beverly Hills by John Shannon Page B

once been the powerhouse team of the Almont League, but ever since the Chinks filled up the school, they’d had a hide-your-face record of 0–10 for twelve straight years.
    “We going for the power lines?”
    “Yeah. The rest of the world’s too civilized.”
    The area was unfenced, weedly land under the high-tension power lines that crossed town, fine for al fresco parties. They only had to push Sgt. Manny Acevedo in the Monterey Park P.D. to get his pals to look the other way for an afternoon. Open container in public, etc.
    Zook still had dreams of reanimating the Commandos. It would be good to keep their name out there. “Seth can get real bucks, so let’s be good to him.”
    They did a soft high five and watched Beef jig around for a few moments.
    Zook had a sudden sour feeling. Life was whizzing past—his mom drinking too much now, an endless run of dead-end jobs. He’d won a scholarship to UCLA but chosen to stay at East L.A. City with his pals. Zook had tremendous loyalty to the last of the old gang.
    “Zook,” Marly Tom said softly. “You saw that shadow watching us the other night, the one Beef took a shot at.”
    “Coulda been anyone.”
    “I don’t know. I think it was dogging us the whole time.” He sighed. “What about that Chinese chick you said was following you?”
    Ed Zukovich shrugged. “Must’ve given up.”
    *
    “Seth, be a man,” Andor said without inflection. “Show us what a he-man from the Golden State can do.”
    “I’m no big game hunter. I trained on an M16 in Iraq, but I never touched it after basic. I was in Legal Services.”
    Out on the verandah in Indiana, Andor was insisting he take the bolt-action rifle. The barrel appeared unusually fat. Seth Brinkerhoff finally took the weapon and sat on one of the rattan chairs.
    Andor nodded toward the two deer browsing peacefully at a big salt lick about a hundred yards away across the pond.
    “Don’t I need a license or something to shoot a deer?”
    Andor gave him a big stink-eye.
    Gustav belched on purpose. “It’s said that Lenin once dismissed the British Communist Party by saying that when it came time to seize the railroad stations, they’d all line up to buy platform tickets.”
    Andor chuckled.
    “You quote Lenin?”
    “I quote Ayn Rand a lot, too, but it doesn’t make me a cunt. Afraid of killing a deer, Mr. B?”
    Seth Brinkerhoff weighed the rifle in his hands. “This is a big one, isn’t it?”
    “You might say,” Andor said.
    “In the nineties, I sent my first kid to survival school,” Gustav told him. “Toughen up the whiny little prick.”
    “What sort of stuff do they do there?” Seth asked.
    “They survive. You never went?”
    “I’m not sure we had them.”
    “That’s California. You got Mr. John Chinaman Democrat representing your own damn district. He’s one hundred and ten percent liberal socialist. I want you to get him out. Find out if he likes boys, find something.”
    Brinkerhoff sighed a little and settled with his left elbow on the verandah’s outer wall and the rifle stock tucked against his shoulder, anticipating a bad recoil. A stag with lots of antler had wandered up to guard the deer.
    Reluctantly, Brinkerhoff settled into the firing discipline the Army had taught him. Left hand cupping the forestock halfway forward, cheek firmly against the stock, open sights aligned on the head of the deer, squeezing the trigger a millimeter at a time until you felt resistance, breathe and hold, start squeezing again so you surprise yourself with the moment of fire.
    All went well until a horrendous explosion went off near his head and the rifle butt smashed into his shoulder like a baseball bat in full swing, the rifle cartwheeling out of his hands.
    “What the F—!”
    Seth’s chair fell over, and Andor behind him caught the rifle as it flipped. Gustav and Andor chuckled as Seth lay on his side.
    “I love you guys,” Seth said grimly. “Great sense of humor.”
    Across the small