“You’ve cleaned up the wilderness? Just by being here?”
Micah took the comic book out of Cal’s hands and placed it back on the pile. “I’ve done stuff that would make your stomach turn.”
Cal didn’t doubt it. He waited for Micah to speak again.
“We cleaned up the Pirate problem.”
“How?”
“We trained the boys we got from Plank. We needed to get this area under control. It would surprise you what Plankers can do. Sailor, for instance? He looks like a teenage girl, but if some sack of shit’s been raping and pillaging, he’ll kill that fucker without hesitation.”
“So you obliterated the Pirates? For good?”
“I wouldn’t use that phrase, ‘for good,’” Micah said. “Nothing’s permanent anymore, is it? The boys and I utilized a combination of force and negotiation to solve the Pirate problem. Now they stay away from Pines, and they leave us be. Most of the people who were here on the Land when we arrived just want to be taken care of, and I gave them that.”
“It must be strange working with Pines,” Cal said. “How do you stomach it, after all you worked for in L.A.?”
“It’s complicated,” Micah replied.
“Is it?”
“Do you realize that the Communities benefited from the violence the Group enacted in L.A.? They could show their citizens, and their potential citizens, that they could protect them from all that.”
“They were safe from maniacs like you,” Cal said.
“Exactly,” Micah said, but the calculating look in his eyes had been replaced with anger.
“We had contacts in Calabasas and in Laguna Niguel who kept the right people aware of our intentions. They knew what I was about to do.”
“And you? Did you know the whole time that the Group was doing all the dirty work for the Communities? That the Group is the shill?”
“Or I was the shill.” Micah shook his head, and from the expression on his face it looked like he’d eaten something rotten. “From early on, the Communities were pouring money into our organization. I had no idea.”
“Did the Communities start the Group?”
“No way. I can’t believe that. But somewhere along the way, they got entangled.”
“‘They got entangled’? Not we?”
“You keep asking if we’re part of the Group.”
“Are you?”
“We’d like our contacts to think so. As far as they know, we’re doing what we’re asked to make Pines safer, and in return the Group continues to be funded. The encampment is growing, and so is the Group.”
“Isn’t that what you wanted?”
“That wasn’t the heart of it, Cal. Never was. I wouldn’t be surprised if our encampments were eventually turned into Communities. The Group isn’t what it used to be. I still believe the Communities should be destroyed. Safety is a right for everyone.”
Cal felt himself nodding. He agreed, and so would Frida.
“Toni is one of our main contacts in Pines.”
“Toni? Has she been there the whole time? I thought she left the Group a long time ago.”
Micah shook his head. “She isn’t really in the Group. Though she is to those who need to believe it. She makes sure our permits are renewed and that our information reaches the right people. She cultivates relationships for us. And she can slip something to us into, say, Frida’s beloved baking box.”
“Crate. Baking crate.”
Cal was picturing Toni. How she used to argue with Micah, yell at him, give him the finger, in front of other people, her posture stiff as a war general’s. Toni would do anything, if it meant enough to her.
“I still love Toni,” Micah said.
“I thought she couldn’t hold your attention.”
“I was a kid then,” he said. “Now…I get it.”
Cal raised an eyebrow.
“The point is,” Micah said, “someday, we might turn on Pines. The Group wants to be their little bitch, sure, but that’s not all of us. I’m forming my own Group, don’t you see? Let the old members get complacent. Everyone does, eventually.”
Cal blushed. He was slumped against the couch as if there were a ball game on. He’d been sitting like this ever since Micah had taken the comic book from him and had been fighting the urge to stand up again and pull one of the books from the shelves. He had his eyes on a slim blue volume of Kant. He remembered it from the Plank reading room.
Now he sat up straight.
“What are you going to do?”
“You mean what are we going to do,” Micah said.