Bones of the Barbary Coast (14 page)

"I don't believe you'd do that. If it was me, I'd pack them in my van and take them someplace and start my own private reintroduction project. Don't you ever—"

"No, Mr. Raymond. We don't. That would be illegal, wouldn't it." LeGrand's look made it clear he didn't like the question, and Ray guessed it was time to change the subject.

"So . . . Moeris Foundation. An unusual name."

LeGrand had started toward the barn, but the question put a hitch in his stride. He answered in a flat voice, "It's from a poem by Virgil. A nice classical wolf reference, sounded legit. Dignified."

"No. Moeris was a werewolf. From Virgil's poem "Alphesiboeus," written in 39 BC. Why a werewolf, as opposed to any
of
the famous wolves of history? If it's personal for you, the wolves-saving-your-ass theme, why not Luperca? Or Romulus and Remus?"

LaGrand spun back to face Ray. "Listen, I don't know what you got going, but I don't need it around here."

"I told you. I wanted to meet you and learn more about the foundation. And I'm considering making a substantial donation."

"No you're not. People who make substantial donations don't come here in three-year-old minivans. I got a radar for creeps, Jack, and you're dicking me around. So you got two choices, you can tell me what's up, or you can leave. Which is it?"

The drilling, suspicious eyes and macho tone got Ray's juices going—his arrogance, his assumption he knew enough to make a judgment of Ray. LeGrand looked fit, but Ray had no doubt who would come out ahead in a fight. For a few seconds he debated provoking him further, forcing a showdown right now. Then he decided to do things differently.

"Maybe I caught you at a bad moment. I'll go now. I'll come by again another time."

"Oh, you'll go. But you're not coming back." LeGrand pointed to the side yard of the house. "Go around the outside. I don't want you in my house."

It required a lot of self-control to walk away. LeGrand followed him to the driveway, watched as Ray got into his car, and stood there glaring as he drove back down the hill.

A headache had begun during the confrontation and as Ray drove away it threatened to blossom into a full-blown supernova, the kind that fuzzed the edges of objects with jittery rainbows of light. It was the pressure. He was never sure whether the pressure made him think a certain way and get into a certain mood, or whether certain kinds of thoughts and feelings brought on the pressure. Whichever, he decided to return later to take the edge off LeGrand's hubris and make him answer some questions. LeGrand's behavior made it all the more evident he was a good person to get to know.

He drove to a gas station in Lafayette and while his tank filled he dosed himself with a mix of dexamethasone and epinephrin, which reliably eased the head pain and gave him a charge of euphoria and energy. He also bought a county map and studied it as he had a BLT and a milkshake at the attached diner. When he was done eating, he got out his checkbook, went over his finances, and wrote out a check for five thousand dollars, which he folded and tucked into his back pocket. He read the newspaper and killed time until the sun had set, then drove back up the hill.

He parked at a turnout two miles below LeGrand's house, went up a brush-lined ravine until he was out of view of the road, then cut ewer the hill. With his practiced night vision, w his way to the far end of the fenced area, about a hundred yards from the kennel.

He scaled the fence and dropped down on the other side. He stayed in a crouch for half a minute, listening, but heard no reaction to his arrival other than the increased agitation of the wolves. Shapeless dark forms moved in the kennel runs, up and back, spinning, swaying.

Ray appraised the layout of buildings and selected the shadowed corner of the barn on the left side. The chain-link of the first run began about six feet short of the corner around which LeGrand would likely come, leaving a place for Ray to stand, invisible even if Judd brought a flashlight or there was a yard light on the house.

First he'd say hello to the wolves. He slipped down silently, but of course they anticipated him. Two came uneasily to the ends of their runs, but the third slunk into its door, the tip of its muzzle wagging side to side in the black doorway. The two outside grew more excited, swaying, growling, lifting heads to scent the air. As he got closer, he could see that their ruffs were up.

"Hey, creatures," he whispered. "Hey, wolves. Hey, gorgeous beings." Being so near to them in the night exhilarated him and felt very intimate.

Both wolves were snarling and whining, and in the dim light their bared teeth were the brightest things about them, two savage mouths. But in fact they weren't gorgeous. From this close he could see the weakness in them. The big one was old, hair going tufted, long teeth missing on one side, hindquarters stiffening. The smaller had a pale bald patch on its shoulder, mange or a shaved area left over from some surgery Their smell was not a good animal smell but the musty, sick scent of dirty fur and sawdust, shit and dog food.

Creatures of the cage. Ray's heart broke at the realization.

He rattled the mesh violently and the urgency of their growls increased. He kept rattling until a light snapped on above the deck of the house, throwing the shadow of the barn across the yard and the kennel runs.
So
stupid,
Ray thought.
Now you can't see in the dark. Moeris, my ass.
Now the terrified wolves were flinging themselves at him, hitting the mesh and staggering back. When he heard the aluminum door open and shut, he moved into position at the corner of the barn. He hoped it wasn't the wife.

Footsteps crunched on the gravel and then stopped, someone pausing to assess the situation. In another moment, LeGrand's voice came: "That you, Mr. Raymond? If it is, you should know I'm coming out with my gun and I'll blow your ugly head off."

LeGrand couldn't be sure, Ray thought. He had to be wondering if it wasn't just a tussle between the animals, or a deer come around and setting them off.

The footsteps resumed. A second later LeGrand's shadow stretched past the corner, shadow arms at its sides, hands at the ready but carrying no gun. The instant LeGrand came abreast of him, Ray snapped out of his crouch and tackled him at the knees. LeGrand's legs went up and his body rolled off Ray's shoulder. Ray toppled him onto his face, then dropped himself onto LeGrand with one knee on the smaller man's back. LeGrand's breath coughed out of his lungs, and Ray exploited the shock to bring his arm up behind him. He levered the arm until LeGrand's back stiffened, then used it to drag him into the deep shadow at the corner of the barn. He put his knee into place again and with his free hand pushed the bristle-cut head down against the gravel.

They held the position and panted in the darkness. The wolves had retreated inside and were moaning eerily.

"Where's your wife?" Ray whispered.

"You touch my wife, better kill me first. Because I'll hunt you down and tear your guts out. Believe it."

"I don't want to hurt either of you. I just want to ask you some goddamned questions. We need a few minutes. If your wife calls out looking for you, you just tell her everything's okay and you'll be inside in a minute."

"She's taking a fucking shower."

"So much the better. Now, I'm going to explain why we're doing this. Your attitude completely pissed me off. Maybe it gets you by with used-up alkies and cons, or with kindly animal lovers who are easily impressed with a tough guy act. But it doesn't cut it with me. I don't like being insulted, and I want more than your standard song and dance. I want you to dig a lot deeper, Judd. I want all you've got."

"You're on drugs, right?" LeGrand grated. "But you don't have to be a victim here. Even right now, you have the power to choose not to do this."

"Tell me about Moeris. I've gotten information on two dozen wolf advocacy groups, but the only one named after a werewolf is yours. Why?"

"You need
help,
man. Trust me, I can help you. I've seen a hundred guys like you."

"No, you have not!" Ray jerked the arm up until LeGrand wheezed. "Treat me like an individual, Judd. Treat me like I matter. Imagine for a moment that we have something in common. Did you kill people in Vietnam? Is that what fucked you up?"

Another grunt of pain. "What do you think?"

"What else? Seeing people get killed? Seeing people killing each other?"

"All that shit. You got it right, Sherlock."

"Okay. And you came back and were a junkie and a drunk for fifteen years, in and out of jail, arrested twice for assault. Why?"

"I was fucked up. Like you are
now"

Ray sighed and rolled his shoulder to relax the cramp that was starting there. He was getting tired of sitting like this. LeGrand's neck was twisted hard and the gravel had to be hurting his cheek. Ray didn't like seeing a man in that position.

"Tell me why the name Moeris. Moeris, he used herbal potions to turn himself into a wolf—is that what you did? Drugs made a monster out of you?"

"Yeah. That's right." LeGrand labored to breathe. "What's your point?"

"Can't you tell? Me coming here like this, isn't it something you might have done? To sort things out?"

When LeGrand didn't say anything, Ray thought that maybe he'd gotten through.

"So we have a lot to talk about. But I don't want to do it like this, and I don't want you to diss me again. So I've got a proposition." Ray took his left hand off LeGrand's head, reached around and found the check he'd put into his pocket earlier. He started to put it into LeGrand's back pocket, then felt something metallic and hard in there. A switchblade knife, his fingers told him, definitely an item to be kept out of the picture during an encounter like this. He zipped it into his jacket pocket before tucking the check into LeGrand's jeans.

"That's a check for five thousand dollars. My gift to Moeris Foundation. I want to let you up. If you try to run to the house and call the police or get your gun, you probably won't make it before I stop you. But even if you do, you'll never know why I'm here. I'll also put a stop on the check—what a waste of an easy five grand, right? So will you talk with me like a nice guy, or are you going to continue giving me a hard time?"

"Have to take a chance, dickhead."

Ray was getting accustomed to LeGrand's style. More than ever, he hoped they could talk. He released the arm and took his weight off the knee.

LeGrand bolted the moment he got his arm back. He beetled toward the edge of the light, and Ray had to move fast to stop him. He landed hard on LeGrand's back and bent to put his throat in a forearm choke-hold. He worked him back into the shadowed nook and lay almost entirely on his body, their faces close. Inside the barn, the wolves were moaning again. Ray heard the quick scrape of claws as they skittered.

"What is the
matter
with you?" Ray hissed. "Why can't we have a meaningful conversation?" His anger flared and he was tempted to say something hurtful:
You think those scabrous, neurotic things are real wolves? All
you know is caged animals.You don't know about freedom. Your life is a lie.
But it was bad enough to humiliate LeGrand physically.

"Judd, listen, you're a strong guy. I admire you, I really do. I think you're strong because you broke once and you healed stronger than you were before you broke. Tell me about that." He adjusted his hold so LeGrand could speak.

"You don't get stuff like that this way."

"You're not giving me any other way. Give it a try."

LeGrand strained uselessly against the chokehold, but at last Ray felt a softening in the back and then a hiccup like a suppressed sob.

"I wasn't sure what people were anymore. What I was." A throttled, half-whispered rasp.

"I understand exactly! Why the werewolf motif?"

"I had seen guys turn into predators. I had been a predator. It was hard to stop. I had to think about that. When I got into taking care of wolves, it was like a metaphor. I was a damaged wolf myself. Then I started working on rehab stuff and I had to deal with all this prejudice and misinformation. It goes way back, a million years. Fear of the unknown. Fear of the wild. Fear of what's inside you. Superstitious fear. I read up on werewolves because that's where the ideas came together. About what v/as human and what was animal. It was like a catalyst for me. Moeris, it seemed like a good symbol for all that. That's it. So let me the
fuck
up."

Ray decided to chance it. He slid his arm out from under the throat and lifted himself away. He squatted as LeGrand pulled himself onto all fours, then sat upright and backed himself against the side of the barn. Even in the deep shadow, Ray could see him wince as he rolled his neck side to side. A wolf snout emerged from the doorway to his left, scented, withdrew. The wolves were calmer now.

"What do you feed them? The rabbits you raise?"

"Scrap meat donations from Safeway Dog food. And rabbits, yeah."

"Alive or dead? You kill the rabbit yourself first, or—"

"Why the fuck do—?"

Ray leaned suddenly forward and LeGrand twitched back. "Or do you just toss the live rabbit in?"

"For the wolves going into release programs, alive, yes."