The arcade was dark and it took a few moments for Decker’s eyes to adjust. But the assault on his ears was immediate. Bings, bangs, bongs, whistles, screeches, low-pitched wails—a cacophony created by bits and bytes. His pupils finally dilated and he was immersed in flashing lights in Day-Glo colors. The place was twenty by sixty, the walls lined with arcade machines and bisected by two rows standing back to back. At the rear were the cashier’s kiosk and a half-dozen enclosed booths containing simulated consoles of spacecraft, race cars, and submarines. There were also a couple of air-hockey boards. Decker could hear the steady chock, chock, chock of the puck caroming off the walls. Fantasyland—where a lonely kid could be something for a couple of hours.

He soon saw that two categories of adolescents populated the arcade. The Dungeons and Dragons set featuring wispy mustaches, unwashed hair, pencils in shirt pockets, and glasses with taped nosepieces. Then there were the super-coolers with slicked-back hair—also unwashed—clad in leather and denim adorned by metal chains. The D&D’ers played the machines with class, expending energy and sweat only when the heat was on. The wiseguys, on the other hand, banged on their buttons at frenetic speed, muttering constant obscenities regardless of the outcome of the game:

“I was fuckin robbed, man.”

Or

“I was fuckin hot, man.”

He glanced to his right. A monitor exploded into a thousand pinpoints of light. An electronic rendition of the Star Wars theme tooted out. That was drowned out by the chuck, chuck, pops of Centipede, the pops turning to rapid machine-gun fire as the target worm parts were blasted to oblivion.

Onward and upward.

Decker showed the picture around—first to the brainiacs, next to the leather set. The results were the same. Nobody had ever seen Noam Levine. Decker realized the snapshot was probably misleading. If Noam had fled to the outside world, the first thing he’d do was change his appearance. But he tried anyway, asking people to make allowances for the ethnic dress, saying Noam might be wearing a Guns ’n’ Roses T-shirt.

Still no luck.

After meeting with rejection, he tapped a D&D’er on the shoulder and asked if he could speak with him for a few minutes. The boy he’d chosen was a lanky pimply-faced teen with glasses and very straight teeth—an ortho job that had taken four thousand buckeroos out of Dad’s paycheck. The lanky kid looked at Decker suspiciously.

“What do you want?” he asked.

“I want to ask your opinion about something.”

The boy’s eyes went to Decker, then to his friends, then back to Decker. A slow smile spread over his lips. He said, “My opinion will cost you.”

Decker said, “I’m a cop.”

“Just kidding,” the kid announced.

“Thought so,” Decker said.