Zapata leaned back into the faux leather seat of the Metro, heading away from the Staples Center. They could have walked to the hotel from the Staples Center, of course, but he was as intrigued by the Metro as he had been by Amtrak. He was mildly disappointed that he couldn’t bomb it, but after his Amtrak prank, another minor disaster would attract too much unwanted attention.
Besides, the hour was late, and a bombing now would affect so few people.
To take his mind off the various ways he could disrupt the workings of the Metro, Zapata was about to speak to Aguillar, who was nodding sleepily across the way, but a one-sided conversation at the far side of the car caught his attention.
A man sat there, a man in his forties with a cherub face and short, straight brown hair with a perfectly straight part. He was round and harmless-looking, and he was chatting with a young lady of about seventeen whom, Zapata deduced, was traveling home from her job working at one of the concession stands at Staples. He further deduced, with equal certainty, that the middle-aged cherub had also come from Staples.
“. I thought it wasn’t their best concert,” he was saying confidentially, as though whoever they were, they might be listening. “Did you see the one last year?”
The young lady, dark-haired and dark-eyed and uncomfortable, shrugged. “I didn’t work there then.”
“Oh, take my word for it, you would have liked it better,” he said with a wink. “More people, too. Can you believe we’re about the only two people on this train. A couple of night travelers, us.”
The young lady smiled politely. The cherub seemed to perceive her discomfort and sympathize. He didn’t change his seat, but he shifted away in his own, giving the impression of more space between them. “Sorry if I’m so chatty, I just end up riding the train a lot at night, and it’s usually all lonely.”
She nodded. “Yeah, I guess so.”
Zapata tapped Aguillar with the toe of his shoe. “Are you listening?” he said.
Aguillar’s eyes had been drooping, but they popped open. “Hmm? To them? Sort of. Why?”
Zapata leaned close. “Watch. In a moment he will make a suggestion that they walk together. He intends to rape her.”
Aguillar pivoted his shoulders as though to stretch his back, and in doing so was able to look at the cherub. When he turned back, he looked skeptical. “Him? I doubt it.”
Zapata spoke, as he often did, in the voice of mentor, though he kept it low and quiet, as though he and Aguillar were hidden behind some blind in the forest, observing wildlife. “The technique is classic. He has already established a connection, created an ‘us’ where it did not exist. He is imposing himself on her.”
Aguillar continued to disagree. “He’s sitting back, away from her.”
Zapata shook his head reproachfully, playing the disappointed tutor. “Would you sit next to a woman at this hour and speak to her?”
Aguillar considered. “I guess not. It would make her uncomfortable.”
Zapata nodded. “A harmless man not only does not make her uncomfortable, he goes out of his way not to. That was her warning sign.”
Aguillar had long ago accepted his role as the student and had never ceased to be amazed by his instructor’s insights. “So why didn’t she—”
“She is not allowed,” Zapata interrupted. “I mean, society doesn’t allow it. It’s rude. So instead of doing the smart thing and getting away from a man who is imposing on her, she sits there to avoid being rude. This is why the society must be destroyed.”
Aguillar inclined his head skeptically toward the cherub and his prey. “This?”
“An analogy. A microcosm,” Zapata said, intercepting his doubt. “The machine is broken and needs to be dismantled.”
The Metro train squealed and then slowed to a stop. “Come on,” Zapata whispered. “We’ll get off here.”
“Our stop is next.”
“Here,” Zapata said again.
The two men stood as the train doors slid open and
walked out. Zapata indicated that they should hang back for a minute as the young lady and the cherub exited the doors nearer to them. The cherub smiled and said good night, then laughed as he discovered, to his mild embarrassment, that he was walking up the same set of stairs.
“You still have your stun gun?” Zapata asked.
“Of course.”
The stunner was small, a black device about the size of an electric razor. It looked like a laser weapon from a science fiction movie. When Zapata pressed the trigger, an electric current crackled between the two prongs at its end. Zapata held him back for a moment, then nodded, and the two men walked up the same set of stairs the other two had taken. The stairs went up a flight to a landing, then turned and continued to the street above. The cherub had stopped the girl on the landing, and though he had not touched her yet, he was now clearly standing between her and her exit.
“. had a connection,” he was saying, “and I could tell you felt it, too.”
The girl folded her arms across her chest. “I really have to get home.”
“I can just walk you. I bet it’s on my way.” The man smiled.
“I’m sure it’s not.” Zapata spoke firmly. He was not a large man, nor very muscular, but he had force of will, and the shaved head helped him to look tough.
The man turned, his pudgy face caught halfway between expressions of predation and fear. “’Scuse me?”
“No.” Zapata shot him with the stun gun.
The cherub squealed and his knees gave out. Zapata looked at the young woman, who seemed suddenly far more afraid of Zapata than of the brown-haired man. “You’re afraid of the wrong thing,” he said. “Get out of here.
