Wild Meat (20 page)

“So what?” Cody said “It’s already gonna be a murder scene.” He kept grinning as they went inside.

“Not if somebody heard you and the cops are on the way right now.”

They went into the kitchen and Cody immediately opened the fridge. He pulled out a half-full bottle of chardonnay, plucked out the cork and chugged most of the wine down before offering it to Eloy, who declined.

“Anyway,” Eloy said, “the way I plan to do this, no one will know what the hell happened. It won’t look like any murder anyone ever saw before.”

Cody’s smile vanished. “Aw, Jesus. Come on. You’re not still thinking about using one of them, are you? What if it gets away?”

“You weren’t thinking ‘what if’ when you kicked in that door.”

In the living room, Eloy looked around to decide where to put the crate once they brought it inside. There was plenty of space; the room was sparse, with only a desk, a sofa, and an end table next to the standing lamp. His gaze stopped on the end table, and it took a moment to realize that what had caught his eye were the pictures in a big book that lay open.

The photos were of animals that looked almost like the two they had in crates in the SUV. The ones in the picture were a hell of a lot smaller; one was perched on a human hand. Their bodies were rounder, too, looking sort of delicate, like baby chickens. But there was no denying that these were something related to the things their boss had been put in charge of receiving and transporting.

Cody stepped over next to him and said, “Damn.”

Beside the book was a wad of brown shipping paper. Eloy straightened it out and found the target’s Cascabel Drive address written in some kind of frilly, old-timey lettering. The return address was in Oakland. He stuffed the paper into his pocket.

“Old Vendetti’s gonna pat our little heads for this one, Cody, m’boy.”

“What do you mean?” Cody said.

“I mean whoever sent her this book…well shit, man. Somebody’s on to the stink-monkeys. Look at those pictures. This lady’s some kind of undercover something, and so’s whoever sent her this package. We might be saving Vendetti’s ass with this.” He patted his pocket.

Eloy decided to take the book along, too, so it would be easier to explain to Vendetti why the address was important. Vendetti could be a dumb shit sometimes.

There were papers underneath the book, drawings that looked even more like the animals they were tending. There were handwritten notes, one of which ended with, “See you soon. –Steve.”

Cody paid no attention to the drawings or the note. He said, “If she’s really got money to go to places like Africa, there’s got to be something here worth taking.”

Eloy shook his head. “Come on. Let’s get that thing in here and get the crate open before the sun’s gone. We do it with sunlight coming in and it won’t even try to touch us.” He looked through the kitchen at the broken back door. We’ll have to jam that door from the inside, then we go out the front. Otherwise the thing might get away, and then we really will have something to worry about.”

Cody shook his head. “I don’t know, bro. I say we just wait in here and do this the simple way.”

“Come on, man. This is worth an extra two grand each for us.”

Hugh Sanderson had promised them the bonus if he could glean from the news and police reports that the job had been done using the animal.

Cody still looked doubtful. “But we work for Vendetti, not Sanderson. And besides, Vendetti hates that rich fuck.”

“Are you telling me you don’t want to see one of these things in action? You’ll never get this chance again. Once we deliver them down south, we don’t see them again ever.”

“We won’t see it in action anyhow; we’ll be waiting in the van.” Cody’s face clouded over. “You’re not thinking of sitting in here and watching, are you? Everybody says these things are beyond dangerous. We’re not supposed to even take it out of the crate without space suits.”

“They tell us it’s dangerous to open the crate because they don’t want us to get any ideas about stealing it. And no, I don’t mean I want to watch it. But we’ll get to see what she looks like when it’s done. Now that you mention it, though, it wouldn’t be bad to watch through a window.”

Cody groaned.

“Problem with that, though,” Eloy continued, “if we go messing around outside the house before the thing jumps her, she might hear us and open the door or something. Maybe even come running outside. Then it’d get tricky.”

“It’s already tricky. We lose this thing and we’re dead.”

Eloy knew Cody was right. They shouldn’t even have been here tonight. The woman was a distant second priority after delivering the two crates down south. On deliveries there were to be no detours, no passengers, no stopping for gas, food or restrooms along the way. No speeding
or expired tags, nothing that might get you pulled over.

But the woman would have to be done eventually, and an extra two grand was worth breaking a few rules.

“We’re not gonna lose it,” Eloy said, “because it’s been starved, and when they’ve been starved, they sleep for hours after they do their business. Besides, none of them’s gotten away from us yet, right? And we can bring the tranq guns in from the car. Even if it’s not out cold, it’ll be moving way too slow to miss.”

“But if we guess wrong about how drowsy it is,” Cody said. “ and it sprays us both, then we’re as fucked as it gets.”

Eloy spat on the carpet. “Look, we’re going to do this thing here, then we’re going to put the stink monkey back in the crate and do the delivery, and this time Vendetti’s going to give us each a bottle of his country-club booze because we scored some vital information for him.” He patted his pocket again. “Come on.”

Cody sighed but didn’t protest, and shuffled toward the back door.

Eloy smacked him hard between the shoulder blades. “Hot dog! I knew you wouldn’t pass this up. The cops are gonna piss themselves trying to figure out what happened here.”

Cody ignored him. He picked up the telephone on the kitchen table, decided it had a lot of interesting buttons, and said, “I’m taking this phone. I got a shitty phone at my place.”

EIGHT
EEN

Amy got home a little after ten o’clock, went through the darkened living room to the kitchen and flipped on a light. A bottle of Chardonnay she’d opened weeks ago was on the counter, empty. Rita must have gotten back from work early, and really wanted to party. Maybe she’d gotten so excited about the idea of traveling that she’d quit her job way ahead of schedule.

Then Amy saw that one of the two wooden chairs from the little kitchen table was out of place. It was leaning against the back door, the top of the backrest under the doorknob, jamming it closed. The doorframe was smashed inward right next to the lock.

Fear crackled through her body. She turned to the kitchen table where she kept her phone, but it was gone, cord and all. Her cell phone was still in the car.

She had another land phone, but it was in the bedroom. Besides the living room and the kitchen, there were only two rooms in the little house: the bathroom and the bedroom. If the intruder hadn’t left, he could be in either one.

She didn’t know if burglars generally did their business armed, but it seemed foolish to wait inside. Better to go straight out the front door and sprint over to Rita’s place. She had a key to Rita’s front door on her own key ring
; she could lock herself over there and call the police on Rita’s phone.

When she stepped back into the living room, now partly lit up by the overhead kitchen lamp, she saw that a vase had been knocked off her little end table. It was unbroken, but the water had spilled and a few of the gladiolas looked mashed. The end table’s single drawer had been pulled open.

What she saw near the front window gave her a good long gaping pause. An empty plastic crate as large as her kitchen table rested on its side, and nearby lay what must have been the lid.

The only thing that made sense to her was that someone planned to stuff the crate with loot. But Amy didn’t think she had enough of value to fill it even halfway.

She took another step toward the front door, heard a noise from the kitchen, and froze. She heard it again: a light thump against the back door. Then someone was pushing the door against the tilted chair, but without much force, as though testing it.

The next thump was harder. The guy was going to crash through any second now, and if he pursued her, she probably wouldn’t have time to make it to Rita’s place.

Instead of heading outside, Amy charged into the kitchen and retrieved Andre’s Lahti L-35 – she finally remembered the latte burner’s real name, as if it mattered now – from the top of the fridge. She switched off the safety, crouched and aimed at the door.

“I’m armed,” she shouted. “And the police will be here in about thirty seconds.”

If someone came crashing through the back door, she would shout for him to stop, and then shoot if he didn’t. She’d never shot at a person before. She’d fired tranquilizer darts at a few foxes and ocelots and other Great Plains fauna, after Andre had insisted on tagging along with the wildlife researchers whose work they’d helped fund. Other than that, no living targets.

Nor did she have to
shoot at any now. No one came bursting through. No more thumps.

There was no possibility of going outside anymore. She had to get to the phone in her bedroom. She kept hold of the gun and walked softly down the hall. The bathroom was on the right, the bedroom three paces further, at the end of the hall, its door a few inches ajar.

The bathroom was wide open. Holding the gun one-handed for a moment, she flicked the light on. No one there. She stepped back into the hall, both hands back on the weapon.

Just outside the bedroom she crouched, pushed the door open, and shouted, “Police! On the floor now!”

No sound came from within. She stood and turned on the light. Nobody there. She switched on the safety, put the gun in a pants pocket, and picked up the phone by her bed.

The 911 dispatcher told her to stay inside until someone came. Because of the winding roads in her section of the foothills, it might take up to twenty minutes.

She deep-breathed herself into a less alarmed state, then headed back into the bathroom, now that she was relaxed enough to use it. As she finished up, a light breeze rustled the pink plastic curtains on the window over the bathtub.

Amy knew she had closed those Dutch windows this morning, because she remembered a squirrel seeing her, fleeing, and briefly getting stuck in the thicket of wisteria.

She pulled one curtain aside and saw that one of the windows, which opened inward like doors, had been pulled off of its lower hinge and unlatched where it met its twin. It hung at an odd angle. The vines looked like they’d been pulled apart. Someone could easily have gotten into the house this way.

Or could have gotten out this way. Maybe the person who kicked in the back door had been in the bathroom when Amy got home, had heard her unlocking the front door, and had frantically scrambled out through those vines.

She reached over to try and latch the broken window closed, but immediately a loud scuffling came from just outside.

She let the curtain fall back in place and took a step backward, intending to run, but then stopped. If an intruder had come back, it would probably be best to confront him while he was pushing his way through that window instead of waiting for him to be on his feet.

The gun was back in her hand, the safety off.

The next sound she heard made her wonder if she’d simply lost her mind somewhere in the whirlwind of travel and near calamity that had marked these last weeks. It was the gentle whimpering of a young chimpanzee.

Possibilities flooded her mind. Had someone broken in and left a chimp for her as a present? Crazy.

Had some anti-environmentalist crippled a chimp and given it to her as a threat? Not impossible, but it seemed like an extraordinary effort for whatever payoff it might deliver. Why not just send a couple of guys to kill her?

The rustling continued, and the curtains fluttered.

Then they parted as the head of a juvenile chimpanzee pushed through them.

The animal seemed to be struggling, apparently still hobbled by the dense vines. Its eyes were squeezed shut.

Amy didn’t know whether to help the animal in through the vines or go out back and try to coax it down into her arms.

Those thoughts were cut short by the sound of footsteps and hushed male voices, one of them chuckling. The chimp also started at the noise, and pulled its head back outside. The curtains fell closed again.

The voices seemed to be coming from the walkway between her house and the neighbor’s fence, footsteps coming around to the back yard.

Thinking at first that the police had arrived, she nearly called out to them, but stopped herself, wondering why they would go to the back door. Why wouldn’t they announce themselves? And why hadn’t she heard the deep, urgent rush of a big V-six engine a moment before?

She ran back to the living room and looked out the front window. No patrol car.