Wild Meat (31 page)

“You
want to follow someone who comes out of this Top Gun place?”

“That’s a possibility. I also wouldn’t be above a little coercive questioning if we can corner someone.” She ran the tip of her index finger gently across his cast as though caressing his actual skin.
“I doubt the opportunity will arise, but if it does, I’ll do to both of someone’s hands what they’ve already done to your left one, and then ask how attached they are to their kneecaps. I mean it. I don’t have even a slight problem with it.”

That thing she was doing
was doing with her finger distracted the hell out of him, made him wonder for the first time whether something might happen between them, an idea that he’d always pushed aside before. Then he figured that maybe she was doing it to distract herself, that she was more nervous than she let on about the prospect of seeking out and instigating violent confrontation.

“They’ve tried to kill us,” Amy said, “and as far as I’m concerned, everyone involved in this thing deserves to die.” Her eyes
locked onto his as she grabbed his uninjured right hand and squeezed. “I won’t hold it against you if you don’t care to assist me in any extreme measures. But if you have any thoughts of standing in my way, or even dissuading me, then just think about some big fucker fingering a gun in his pocket while he’s sitting on Elaine’s couch and talking to little Lucy.”

“
I get it.”

She stared for a few seconds
, then released his hand and sat back. Stephen could tell from her suddenly measured breathing that she was trying to calm herself. After a minute she grinned and said, “Maybe we should call your friend Mario and ask if he knows of a good Inquisition-surplus store. Somewhere we can pick up a few toys for the job.”

***

The cats and iguana were packed into Amy’s safe-house bedroom along with food, water, and an improvised litter box full of garden soil. Amy and Stephen folded themselves back into the Camry and headed for the 110 freeway.

They exited near downtown, drove east through Little Tokyo, then further east through a wilderness of silent warehouses and brittle, aged factories. Loading docks had their metal doors locked up tight for the weekend. The only retail business in sight was a single liquor store, a magnet for inhabitants of cardboard and burlap dwellings that lined the sidewalks. Stephen was at the wheel, managing to drive one-handed.

A few blocks past the liquor store, Amy shouted so startlingly for him to stop that he slammed on the brakes and sent her laptop hurtling against the dash.

She pointed down an alley to where a green van was parked. Its rear end and left side were visible, and they could see a dark, mottled circle on the driver’s door, where a logo had once been. A homeless man was on all fours behind the vehicle, apparently gathering something off the street.

“I want to see what’s inside that van,” Amy said. She hopped outside and headed down the alley. Stephen pulled over, parked, and caught up with her. He was still holding her keys, and noticed a miniature jackknife on the keychain.

“I think I’m going to need a heftier weapon than this,” he said.

The homeless man stood up and put something in his pocket. He was tall and broad-shouldered. Though the day was hot, he wore a battered jacket and a red ski cap with a white tassel at the tip. His face was frozen in an expression of horror and anger. A moment after standing, he seemed to go into a brief seizure. When it passed, he lumbered toward the front of the van and, without hesitation, climbed into the driver’s side. A second later the engine started.

“Let’s try and stop him,” Amy said.

They both ran. Amy’s hand shot into her pants pocket, and Stephen knew she was gripping the gun.

The van had begun to roll when
Stephen got his fingers around the edges of the nearly closed door and jerked back with all his strength. He watched in surprise as the driver tumbled out and thumped down onto the pavement. The guy rolled completely over once, coming to rest face up, and in the process his ski cap came off. The van kept moving until it hit a dark brown brick wall that would have made a convincing backdrop for an adaptation of a Dickens novel.

The homeless man’s head was clumsily dressed with a filthy bandage. Amy and Stephen stood over him as he sat up and began mumbling. They saw now that he wasn’t grimacing or snarling at all. It only looked that way because his face had been hideously reconfigured. A deep gash extending from the left side of his mouth made him constantly seem to be straining from some great effort. Symmetrical cuts on his cheeks looked almost like ritual scarification.

A second after he struggled to his feet, he tightened into another of the clenching spasms. Amy and Stephen had read about that side effect in the Baja papers and on the boof-related web forums, and Amy a similar episode during her escape from the logging camp. This guy had had more contact with Top Gun Security than just driving one of their vans. And with those scratches on his face…perhaps he’d been introduced to the stuff the old fashioned way, not from an eye dropper.

“Where did you get this van?” Stephen said to the bandaged man.

“My goddamn van,” was the reply. “From my goddamn office.” He turned back toward the vehicle.

Stephen grabbed the man’s arm and pulled him back. “Your van?”

“My van, my company, and my stink monkeys, as far as I’m concerned. So fuck Eloy, and if Eloy sent the two of you, then fuck you, too.”

For the first time, Amy took a close look at the man’s clothes. The jacket and trousers actually matched, and he was wearing what had once been a dress shirt.

She took a shot in the dark. “What if Eloy did send us?”

The filthy shirtsleeve had slid up on the arm Stephen was holding. The flesh beneath was a mess of scratches, gashes and bites that couldn’t have been more than a week old.

The guy held up a wrist like a woman asking someone to smell her perfume. “Well, come on, then. If Eloy sent you, then lay it on me”

“You just said fuck us if Eloy sent us,” Stephen said.

Amy changed the subject. “Is Sanderson at the office?”

“Sanderson’s coming to town,” the man mumbled. “Fuckin little eco-faggot-messiah thinks he’s a wise guy
now. Fuckin….” He trailed off.

“He’s coming to town now? Today?” Stephen said.

“Not yet.”
Clench and shiver.
“Not for a couple days, Eloy says. And he’s stopping down south first. Eloy’s out of town too, and he forgot to leave me anything.” Another clench and shiver.

“Down south?” Amy said. “What, Mexico?”

No answer.

“Forgive me,” Stephen said. “Eloy told me your name but….”

“Vendetti. Now, you’re going to lay it on me, right?”

“We’ll take you back to the office first,” Stephen said.

“What for? Nobody’s there.”

“But the
v-chimps are there, right?” Amy said.

“The what?”

“The…the stink monkeys.”

“Fuck off.”
Clench and shiver.

“
The stink monkeys aren’t at the office?” she said. “They’re down south?”

“Not yet. Still in the big basement.” Vendetti
nodded his head to the right, indicating a different direction than that of Belvedere Court.

“
How do we get there,” Stephen asked.

Vendetti’s eyes, already squinting, narrowed further. “Why do you want to know that?”

“What we got for you,” Stephen explained. “Eloy says it’s there. He told us to go dip into the big supply, but to give you just enough for the next couple days. He can’t trust you with any more than that.”

“Why didn’t he just tell you where the big basement is?”

Amy took the gun out of her pocket again and polished the barrel with her shirtsleeve. “He said it would be easier just to let you show us where the animals live.”

“That’s a load of shit. It doesn’t even make any sense.” He put his face in his hands for a moment. “You really don’t have any on you?”

“No, but there’s plenty in the big basement,” Stephen said. “Show us where that is, and whoever’s there will know that we’re allowed to take a couple days’ worth of it for you.”

“Like I said, I know that’s a fuckin lie.”

Amy drew the gun and leveled it at him. “When we get there, who else will be there?”

Vendetti stared at the gun for a long moment, then at her. “If there’s anybody there, it’ll be the guys who feed the stinkies, and they won’t give us anything. And they each carry a
lot bigger gat than that one you’re holding, sweetie-pie. If there’s nobody there, you can shoot the padlock off the door and we can go down and pick up as much as you want, and after that, I don’t give a shit what happens to you or to whoever you’re working for.”

“So let’s go,” Stephen said.

Vendetti looked around, went into another bout of shaking. “First buy me a bottle of something to keep the shivers down. Liquor store near the bus station.”

Amy smiled. “What’s your pleasure, champ?”

CHAPTER FOUR

For the first half hour after Hugh Sanderson arrived at William’s office, the atmosphere between the two brothers was remarkably friendly. Hugh had just come from dedicating a sixth-grade class’s rooftop gardening project in the Bronx, and now he spoke about it with great effervescence. The children and their teacher had been aglow with pride after their weeks of hard work on the project, and Hugh said he had been truly touched at how much his presence meant to them. 

In fact, he talked in detail and with unprecedented enthusiasm about other components of the green campaign. It seemed to William that Hugh was not only back on track with his role, but learning to embrace the responsibility that had been laid upon him. And William had to admit that it was a hell of a responsibility, one that required a kind of talent and perceptiveness that not many people possessed. Hugh had always managed
delicate tasks of persuasion in the past. It couldn’t have been easy to woo the Equateurian officials, but Hugh had come up with the idea of throwing exclusive parties with traditional bushmeat on the menu. His skills had effectively won the company unlimited logging concessions throughout the little country. Then he’d gone on to handle both phases of the green campaign. And now he was on fire in a way that seemed altogether new. At age forty, the kid seemed to be finally growing up for real.

So William was swept up in a tornado of bewilderment when Hugh suddenly said
, “Now that it’s all going so well, wouldn’t it be best if I passed the baton to someone else?” He gazed at William with an open, inquiring, sunny smile, his lips relaxed and soft.

William stared back, searching his brother’s face for some evidence that this was a joke. He saw none.

“Please tell me you’re not serious.”

“I’m entirely serious. There’s no sense in keeping me as the poster boy until all the mojo’s wrung out of me. Better to bring on a fresh, new star who’s got years of
vitality and dynamism ahead of him.”

“Huey, that makes no sense at all. You’re not just the star; you’re the story. You couldn’t be replaced even if we had someone better looking, with more talent
– which we don’t. This role is yours because this story is all about you, because of what you’ve already done.”

Hugh’s expression didn’t change. “I don’t think so at all. Why not use Gimble. I know I’ve made jokes to that effect in the past, but I’m serious now. Just think of all he brings to the table.” He blinked
. His lips settled back into the same soft smile.

William felt the anger rise before he realized what he was reacting to. This was shaping up to be a joke after all, but not a friendly one.

“Even if this is meant to be funny, you are seriously pissing me off and I want it to stop.” He waited.

Hugh’s expression remained frozen for several seconds; then his smile stretched just a
little further toward the edges of his face.

“Alright,” William said. “Tell me exactly what you want and I’ll tell you whether or not I think we can work it out.”

“Leave me in charge of Wild Adventure Land and give the rest of the green campaign to someone else.”

William shook his head. “You’re still not making any sense. Once you’ve cut the ribbon at Wild Adventu
re, you’re done with the place. Your only presence there will be in pictures on the website and on the lemonade cups. What is it you think you need to do there? Serve ice cream?”

“The park is special to my heart, Will. Special to my heart.”

“What the hell does that mean?” William was roaring now, and his neck and face were burning. “Your job is to act the part that we’ve given you to act. Improvise, choose your own wardrobe, add your own dialogue, but you stick to the part. Why the hell should the company pay you to drop everything and spend all your time farting around in California? Christ, Huey, you think you’ve charmed us like you’ve charmed the eco-public? Nobody here’s charmed by you. You’re getting paid to do a job for the company.”