Gumshoe Gauntlet

His top score was untouchable, too high to fathom climbing. Think K2, think Everest --now think taller-- expand them upward ten times over. In the mountain chain of arcade games, his tally lorded over the clouds, towering somewhere in the exosphere. No one would ever reach the summit of Arnie Mitchel’s record total. It had six figures, like enviable salaries. If points were miles, at 240,000, Arnie’s top score could extend to the moon.

Gumshoe Gauntlet was one of the harder dances in a ballet of mashing buttons, tapping joysticks, and flying by the seat of your pants. Like other games --Pac Man, Space Invaders, Street Fighter II-- if you wanted to make the list, it took something that transcended talent, something that surpassed skill. If you wanted your initials on the leaderboard, it required something nuanced and unnamed, something je ne sais quoi. Reflexes and instinct were only the start. Callused thumbs helped, but wouldn’t get you to the top unless you knew how to use them.

In life, arcade divas often fail, but in front of a coin-op cabinet, a panel of buttons, a slanted monitor, they become stars. They become who they are meant to be: a yellow, dismembered head eating pixelated dots, running from ghosts; a rocket pilot feeding lasers to a horde of galactic marauders; a martial artist with muscles hard as knotted wood, discipline to match, men and women who can harness their inner chi and throw fireballs.

In Gumshoe Gauntlet, an arcade guru embodies a private dick, a hard-nosed cop with a flair for the noir: cynicism, long shadows, cigarette smoke, a trench coat and a short-barreled revolver. Crime lords, corrupt cops, hoodlums, and of course, the femme fatale --only a seasoned gumshoe will dodge every bullet, avoid each poisoned whiskey, ignore every lady’s pass. To make it beyond level six, you had to possess an innate gift. To make it to level twelve --to beat the game-- you had to be a savant, a veritable gumshoe god.

Arnie Mitchel, as it were, may have been Jesus, if Jesus was a 16-bit Humphrey Bogart. His miracles came in the form of dominating the leaderboard, the top ten occupied by the holy trinity, his signature AMM (middle initial undisclosed). When it came to Gumshoe Gauntlet, Arnie Mitchel was the man, the big cheese. There were those who sought to match him, surpass him, to become the big cheese themselves, but for them, it was always the big sleep. The words would flash, hammered out in bullet holes across the screen: GAME OVER. Some made it all the way to level ten. Most hadn’t made it to three.

But one day that changed. One day a challenger walked in and donned the fedora and sullen scowl. He wore them like a champ. He made it to level ten, then --Christ!-- eleven, falling short the length of a snub-nosed revolver, nearly beating the game.

Enter Caleb Doyle, thumbs and fingers hardened, honed, and fat, with an eye of a hawk, a Maltese falcon, a gumshoe at heart, a serial soda drinker and an old soul, a middle-aged arcade gamer. The kids never lasted, no stamina for the classics, but Gen Xers are made of sterner stuff. They traded hours and days, weeks and months, relationships with women, for scores with six digits, three initials. It was a couch potato’s K2, or Everest. It was a mortal’s way into Mount Olympus, a plainclothesman’s ticket to the moon.

Caleb first broached the top-ten with a resounding 194,000, a bold CAD stamped into 9^th place. CAD --did those three letters hold more meaning than his name? Maybe so, maybe not. Whatever the case, he added his initials twice more before the day was out. Seventh place. Fifth place. 217,000? Who was this guy? Caleb Doyle. CAD.

Arnie Mitchel wasn’t soon to forget.

Over the next few weeks, AMM watched CAD juggle crime lords and felonious lawmen, sifting through femme fatales by the dozen, dropping them all before he, himself, was dropped. The shortened barrel of his revolver smoked. His ashtray smoked. His cigarettes smoked, a long chain of them, one after the next. His score was smoking, rising like fire.

There were the trials of the early levels: hoodlums and muggers. Easy. There was the mid-level strife: crooked cops, nefarious gangs, long legs and lipstick, a drive-by bullet or a poisoned bourbon. No issue.  Each time was quicker, easier, the gauntlet a race to the finish, a would-be execution well-executed, evaded.

Caleb was closing in on God, knocking on heaven’s door, flirting with 230,000. CAD did it all. He dodged the kamikaze bus driver, the deranged yakuza who crashed into the butcher’s window, who, after missing his mark, committed seppuku, one more carcass to join the slaughter of strung up pigs and sides of beef. Caleb kissed the girl, took the gun from her purse, threw it down the drain that guzzled rain, left her blushing in the cold, dark, street. He even avoided the rounds of fire through the confession booth, the level ten surprise that took precise timing to elude, a choreographed art on the joystick. The concealed sawed-off shotgun behind a screened partition was a doozy, a game-ending blast. The priest was paid off by the devil, the crime boss who was his marionette. Caleb had come to be absolved of his sins, the unavoidable violence in his line of work. Instead, he sighed, blowing smoke through the latticed wood. Even as he fired his gun, pressed the big, red button, he whispered Forgive me Father, for I have sinned.

CAD. 2^nd place. 238,800.

Fifty miles shy of the moon.