The Taste of Fear (10 page)

The ranger shouted over the noise of the engine for them to put on their seatbelts. Scarlett promptly obeyed, wondering what he knew that she didn’t. Suddenly the Land Rover swung off the dirt track they’d been following west and jerked over the uneven ground through a forest of strangler figs. The trees thinned and they emerged in a clearing shaded by an immense kopje, parking beside a doused bonfire. Sal paid the ranger whatever they had agreed upon, and he and Scarlett got out while Silly unloaded their luggage.

Scarlett barely had time to give the ranger a tip before a bald, barrel-chested man dressed in khakis emerged from the nearby mess tent and called jovially, “Mr. Brazza? Miss Cox? Merry Christmas! And welcome to the Safari Moving Camp. Cooper’s the name, and wildebeest are the game!” He pumped both their hands with equal enthusiasm. “Sorry about the rough jaunt in, but it’s too dangerous to set up out in the open. You’ll understand if I don’t want to wake up smack-dab in the middle of a sea of wildebeest.”

“We didn’t see any on the way in,” Scarlett said.

“That’s because they haven’t arrived yet.”

“Do they need an invitation?” Sal remarked.

“Predicting where the herd is going to be isn’t an exact science, Mr. Brazza. They follow a general migration pattern. But their speed and direction are determined just as much by the weather. Where it’s raining, to be precise. They may congregate in one area for two days or five days, it’s impossible to say for certain.”

“So you’re saying we’re not in the right position?”

“Oh, we’re in the right position. They’ll be coming down this way, that’s for sure. They just might not be getting here today, that’s all.”

“But we’re only here for one day,” Scarlett pointed out.

“Don’t you worry about a thing, love. That’s why we have the balloon. As soon as you’re ready to go, I’ll show you more of those ugly beasts than you can count. In the meantime, come with me.” He led them to the mess tent. “Kitoi!” he bellowed. “Get out here and meet our guests.”

A lanky black man wearing loose trousers and a plaid button-down shirt emerged through the zippered door.

“This is Kitoi,” Cooper announced. “Or Kit, if you can stand being affectionate toward him. He’s my tracker, and the best I’ve ever seen. He can follow the spoor of a chipmunk through Times Square.”

Kitoi smiled at the compliment, showing very white teeth. “That is true. Without me, Mr. Cooper cannot even find his boots in the morning.”

“His English is better than his humor. Now, let’s head around the tent. You’re late for lunch. Mind you, watch where you step.”

“Snakes?” Scarlett said.

“Shit. Great piles of it, love. Giraffe, rhino, elephant—you name it.”

They arrived at a small outdoor table done up with a red-and-green tablecloth, red candles, china, crystal, and silver. Scarlett appreciated the Christmas touch. Kitoi apologized for not having turkey and served them duckling sautéed in curry tomato sauce, cooked bananas, potatoes, cassava,
ugali
made with white cornmeal, and papaya for dessert. A couple lilac-breasted rollers and ring-necked doves hovered nearby throughout the meal. Scarlett suspected they were either hungry themselves or trying to see if it was their buddy on the menu. After the late lunch, all four of them packed into the double cab of a Toyota Hilux and drove to an open patch of grassland about a mile from camp.

“We’re lucky with the weather,” Cooper told them as he unloaded the balloon equipment from the bed of the pickup. “Meteorological conditions are lovely after a storm. Visibility and wind speed, perfect. Kit will follow us on the ground so we can pack everything back up when we land.”

With everyone lending a hand, the balloon assembly went quickly. They stretched the rip-stop nylon envelope on the ground, attached it to the wicker basket with special carbines, then hooked up the burner to liquid petroleum gas cylinders with intake hoses. A petro-powered ventilator blew cold air into the envelope. Cooper fired a burner to heat the air, which expanded, becoming less dense than the ambient air. The envelope plumped up. When there was sufficient lift, Sal, Scarlett, and Cooper hopped into the basket. The tear-shaped balloon rose from the ground. Below, Kitoi untied the anchor rope that was attached to the Hilux’s bull bar, and Sal reeled it in.

Up and up they went until Cooper pulled a chord to open the parachute valve at the crown of the envelope. Hot air escaped, the ascent halted, and they began to drift horizontally. Scarlett remained holding tightly to Sal’s arm, half expecting to hear a loud pop, and for the balloon to zigzag wildly through the sky before crashing back to earth. That never happened, of course, and slowly her fear ebbed. To her surprise, she realized there was no wind because they were moving with the wind. She finally let go of Sal’s arm, baby-stepped over to the high wicker rail, and peered down. She swallowed back a shot of vertigo. The savanna unfurled beneath them in every direction for as far as she could see, the scattered trees appearing in miniature.

Cooper told them the word
Serengeti
came from the Masai word
siring
which meant “endless plains.” He pointed to a golden tawny eagle wheeling through the sky, and later, a swirl of dark specs in the distance that he said were vultures circling a potential meal.

Then a long black line materialized on the horizon. As they sailed closer, the line became a thick column several miles long. Eventually it resolved into an army of wildebeest hundreds of thousands strong. Their bodies, tiny from so high up, coated the ground like a colossal oil spill. Scarlett had never seen anything quite like it before.

“Incredible,” she breathed.

“They live in greater concentrations than any other animals on this planet—well, except for us, that is.” Cooper opened the parachute valve again, causing the balloon to descend. After fifty feet or so, he released the cord and fired a silent flame. “Liquid propane,” he told them. “Not as efficient as gas form, but this way we won’t scare the beasties.”

From the lower altitude Scarlett could make out the wildebeests’ long, boxy faces, curved horns, and unruly manes. Their upper bodies were well-muscled, but their hindquarters were slender, the legs spindly, giving them the appearance of being top-heavy. They were making a low, ceaseless bleating, which sounded like a football stadium full of croaking frogs. Burchells zebras were scattered throughout the herd at a count of about one to ten. Scarlett thought they were the ones making the yelping bark.

“Where do they all come from?” she asked.

Cooper gestured vaguely to the north. “From the permanent waters on Kenya’s Masai Mara Game Reserve. They come down here during the rainy season because of the abundance of lush grass. In February they’ll give birth to almost a half-million calves within a three-week period, right around here.”

“The calves would be sitting ducks.”

“It’s simple mathematics. They’re easy prey, yes. But there’s only so much a predator can eat in such a short timeframe. It’s nature’s version of a buffet.” He slapped his solid belly. “Stuff yourself now, but you’re not allowed to take any home.”

A harsh ringtone trilled.

Scarlett frowned.

Another ring.

Scarlett zeroed in on Sal. Before she could ask why he’d brought his phone with him, he stepped away to the far side of the basket, turned his back to her, and answered the call.

Fitzgerald stood atop the large kopje, watching the hot air balloon drift slowly away until it was nothing more than a dot in the rapidly clearing sky. Below, speeding across the African veldt, the pickup truck followed the balloon’s progress. Then both balloon and truck disappeared from sight. Fitzgerald started down the steep-sided rocky hill toward the safari camp. What he had planned wouldn’t take a minute.

“It’s me,” Danny said. “I’m with our guy.”

Sal’s blood boiled at the mention of the man who’d tried to kill him. The fact that this particular man was rich and powerful himself, revered as a god in parts of Asia, made the attempted assassination only slightly less insulting.

“Put him on,” he said.

Raspy breathing sounded on the other end of the line.

“Hello, Don,” Sal said.

Silence.

“I want a name.”

More silence.

“Danny!”

Seconds later: “I’m here.”

“I told you I wanted him in a talking mood.”

A few muffled words followed. What sounded like a sob.

“Yao Wang,” Don Xi said weakly.

“Who is he?” Sal demanded.

“I don’t know.”

“You hired him.”

“I never met him. That’s not how it works.”

Sal cursed under his breath. But at least he had a name. “Is he going to try something again?”

“No.”

“Give me Danny.”

“Yeah, capo?”

“You heard all that?”

“Yeah.”

“Is he lying?”

“I don’t know. He’s a tough old nut. Wouldn’t talk talk until I mentioned his boy.”

“Tell him—” Sal lowered his voice. “Tell him if we find out he’s lying, we’re going to—” He trailed off meaningfully. “Tell him now. Then put him back on.”

Another muffled exchange. Sal glanced back over his shoulder. Cooper and Scarlett were both staring straight ahead, but of course they were listening.

“Please,” Don Xi said. His voice was still weak, but it was as clear as it had been yet. “Let my son be. Have honor.”

Honor? Sal thought. Where’s the honor in trying to roast someone while they slept? “You sure there’s nothing more you want to tell me about Yao Wang, Don? You heard what Danny said.”

No reply.

“Don?”

A papery sigh. “There is another.”

Sal’s hand tightened around the phone. He knew it! Goddamn Chinese were as double-faced as a two-headed dragon. “Keep talking, man,” he said.

“An Irishman. His name is Redstone. That’s all I know.”

Another bloody assassin.

“You stupid old man. Danny!”

“Yeah, capo?”

“Find out everything you can on this Redstone.Everything. I’ll call you later.” He punched End, then turned back around.

Cooper raised a bushy eyebrow. “You run a tight ship, captain.”

Sal grunted and rejoined Scarlett at the basket rim. “Did I miss anything?”

“I don’t want to talk to you right now.”

“Why not?”

“Not now, Sal.” She moved to the other side of the basket.

He frowned. He’d chosen his words to Danny carefully. She couldn’t have gathered much from the snippets of conversation she’d overheard. Nevertheless, he shrugged the concern aside. It wasn’t important right then. What was important was what he’d learned.

There is another. An Irishman. His name is Redstone.

Sal said to Cooper, “This thing’s safe, right?”

“The balloon?”

“It can’t somehow catch fire or anything?”

“The skirt’s made of Nomex. Completely fire retardant.”

“What about these things?” He kicked a propane tank. “Stable?”

“I’ve never known one to blow up, if that’s what you mean.”

Sal noticed Scarlett shift her weight from one foot to the other nervously, as if she was suddenly uncomfortable to be hanging out in the sky in a basket. She knew what he was getting at. But she’d already taken her stand. She was mad at him, didn’t want to talk to him. Wouldn’t break that silence, even now, even when she thought they might be in danger.

Cooper fired the burner in a continuous stream, explaining they had to clear the herd so they could land and so Kit could meet up with them. As the balloon floated upward, the wildebeest once more dissolved into a dark splash on the earth. At five hundred feet they caught an eastwardly wind and changed course.

Sal’s thoughts returned to Don Xi. He hadn’t sounded very well on the phone. In fact, he’d sounded as though he was holding onto life by a thread. Sal felt no remorse.
And where the offence is, let the great ax fall.
He didn’t know which work of Shakespeare that was from—he’d never been a big Shakespeare guy; life was too short, time too precious to be reading four-hundred-year-old texts—but he knew that particular verse because his Uncle Frank had told it to him. It was a family motto of sorts.

Sal’s great-great grandfather, Rocco, had been part of the original Mafia, or what eventually became known as the Mafia, which arose in the chaotic years after Italy annexed Sicily in the 1860s. By the turn of the century Rocco had become capo of the largest and most influential family in Palermo. When Mussolini tried to wipe out the Mafia and their political allies, Rocco and his wife and son fled to New York City, where he got right back in the protection/racket game.

When the Castellammarese War ended in 1931, and the new boss of bosses created the Five Families of New York, Rocco’s son, Bernardo, was made boss of the Monrealesi family. Soon after “Beautiful Bernie”—a nickname he got when a gangster from a rival family dunked his head into a fish tank alongside a housecat with very sharp claws—was murdered thirty years later in his Park Avenue office, his son, Frank, was installed in the vacant post. “Crazy Frank”—whose nickname was self-explanatory—was a shrewd businessman, and before anyone else was doing it he staked out major interests in a casino in Havana, Cuba, and the Riviera in Vegas. Skimming the winnings became the family’s most lucrative business. But then everything changed in the seventies. Hippies and free love cut into strip club profits. Off-track betting picked up, taking a chunk out of the bookkeeping operation. And the Feds finally started cracking down on organized crime. To top it all off, big business was moving into Vegas, squeezing the gangsters out. So by the mid-eighties Frank was running a pretty clean shop: waste disposal, restaurants and bars, vending machines, trucking.

During this time Sal had just graduated from college and was working in his father’s restaurant. When Frank came by for dinner one night, and mentioned he was looking for a bookkeeper for The Cleopatra, his Atlantic City casino, Sal jumped at the opportunity. After several dull months of analyzing the gaming revenue journal entries, Sal pitched Frank a plan that involved leasing slot machines to third parties, issuing mortgage bonds, and using equity financing to free up capital to reinvest in the casino and improve profit margins. A gambler by nature, Frank went with the suggestions.