“Yes,” said Matthew. “That’s right.”
Martin squinted. “So are there inadequacies?”
“I’m afraid I’m not qualified to make that judgment.” Lavinia took a sip of tea. “Her yard is a bit small, I would think.”
“Small, huh? Okay, so what else? Food okay? Is she treated right? I mean, she always looks kind of depressed when you go down there, now that I think about it. She’s usually just standing around with this crummy old tire. Except when she’s painting or something. Playing the drums.”
“All of those are excellent questions,” Lavinia said. “Perhaps that’s where you should begin your investigation.”
He didn’t remember having said anything about an investigation. But now that she mentioned it, this could be just the launching pad that would propel him through the doors of the Seattle Post-Intelligencer. Yeah, boy.
Matthew helped him gather up his things and walked him to the door, saying, “Stay with this story, Martin. I believe this is just the beginning.”
“Oh yeah?” So what did he know that Martin didn’t? “Such as like what, exactly?”
But Matthew just smiled enigmatically and clapped him on the shoulder, saying only, “I envy you, young man. You have a great story to tell—now go and tell it!”
“Well, sure,” Martin said. “Okay.”
In his side-view mirror as he pulled away, Martin could see Matthew watching with his hand raised in heroic farewell.
And suddenly he felt like a million bucks in spite of the wracking headache. This was what investigative reporting was all about—finding that story, pulling off that scoop. He had a tiger by the tail, now. He could handle that. He drove straight to the zoo, striding into the reception area only to find yet another new receptionist. The place sure had a high turnover rate, worse than the News-Gazette, and that was saying something.
“Yes, Martin,” Harriet Saul said from the door to her office before he’d even finished introducing himself to the girl. It was creepy how she always seemed to know when he was there.
“Hey, how are you? Have a great Thanksgiving? Look, I just heard about Hannah’s trustee thing. Can you fill me in?”
“No,” Harriet said flatly.
Martin blinked. “No?”
“No.”
And then, to Martin Choi’s lasting astonishment, the woman stepped into her office, turned her back, and closed the door.
The next morning, Matthew left the house at seven o’clock to buy the newspapers. Truman and Winslow arrived just as Lavinia brought coffee, orange juice, and English muffins to the sun porch table. Beside her place lay a pair of white cotton gloves, her customary protection against the drying effects of newsprint. She had long, white, beautiful hands, even at seventy-two.
Matthew handed around three copies of the Bladenham News-Gazette. A front-page, above-the-fold headline in forty-point type proclaimed, TROUBLE AT THE ZOO? FAVORITE ELEPHANT HAS NEW BOSS. It was bylined, of course, Martin Choi.
The three of them fell to, while Winslow read the comics.
“Well,” Lavinia said brightly when she was done. “One can only wonder what he would have written had he been sober.”
Matthew looked at his grandson, who had finished the comics and was playing a piece of music on the arm of the sofa. He beckoned the boy over to stand beside him, put his arm around him, and began to smile puckishly. “Winslow, have you learned to play chess yet?”
“No.”
“A pity,” Matthew said. “It has so many useful analogies.”
“Such as,” said Truman.
“The one that first comes to mind is ‘check,’ because that is what we have done so far.”
“And?”
“And then, of course, there’s ‘checkmate,’ which is, of course, the endgame.”
Winslow stood still within the half-moon of Matthew’s arm.
“Now then,” Matthew said, “I have a story to tell you. Just a story, you understand, but it’s an instructive one that you might choose to pass along to your friend—is it Reginald? yes?—when you see him at the zoo today. Shall I tell you?”
“Okay.” Winslow loved Matthew’s stories. He waited, slipping Lavinia’s discarded white cotton gloves on and off.
“I believe you know that Hannah is a social animal, a bighearted girl with a very small family. And who might that family consist of?”
“Sam Brown?” Winslow guessed.
“Exactly. And who else?”
“Neva Wilson?”
“Well, she certainly helps Mr. Brown take care of Hannah, but they aren’t very well acquainted yet, not enough to be considered family. Who else?”
“Harriet Saul?” Winslow said doubtfully.
“Ah! Now there’s a good guess. But Ms. Saul is a busy woman, an excellent administrator who is responsible for running a very complicated business, namely the zoo. So who does that leave Hannah with?”
Winslow frowned. “I don’t know anyone else. Just Sam.”
“Exactly! Mr. Brown to you, Winslow, but yes, she has nobody except Mr. Brown—and Mrs. Brown, of course. But here’s a problem: Mr. Brown is ready to retire. He’s worked hard for a very long time, but he’s not in good health anymore, and he’s earned the right to rest. Who does that leave for Hannah then?”
Winslow looked alarmed. “Nobody.”
“Precisely! That means—hypothetically, you understand—that Hannah must either find a new family or be alone for the next twenty years, since I gather that elephants can live into their sixties. And who would make a better new family than other elephants? They have no plans to retire, they don’t have to go home at night, they don’t want to take a summer vacation, and they don’t have any interest in getting a different job. Ms. Saul knows all this, because she’s a woman with a big heart. But she’s also an excellent administrator, so she knows it’s too expensive to bring another elephant to Havenside. So there’s really only one alternative. What would that be, Winslow?”
The boy looked at Matthew. “What?”
“Sending Hannah to other elephants!” Matthew crowed.
“Is she going to do that?” Winslow said. “Really? Because, oh boy, I bet Hannah would rather play with other elephants any day than hang out with an old guy.”
“Let’s not cast aspersions on old men,” Matthew said.
“Sorry, Grandpa.”
“Now, Ms. Saul is a good woman, and any good woman who cares more about an elephant’s quality of life than about a zoo’s financial well-being would send Hannah away, wouldn’t she, if there were a place where she’d be better off?”
“Is there?” Winslow asked.
“As a matter of fact, there is. It’s a place called the Pachyderm Sanctuary near Sacramento, California.”
“Do you think they’d take Hannah?” Winslow said, leaning close to Matthew.
“I believe Harriet Saul is working on that right now.”
“That was masterful,” Truman told Matthew as he saw them to the car.
Matthew shrugged disparagingly. “It’s what we old dogs call ‘seizing the higher ground.’ School him a little on the ride home.” Matthew waved a disingenuous, grandfatherly goodbye to Winslow through the back window. “Especially about Harriet Saul’s goodness.”
chapter 19
With a freshly minted, bylined, front-page, above-the-fold story to his credit, Martin Choi was a man on the move. God, it was good to be him. And it wasn’t over yet! Matthew Levy had as good as promised that. So for the second day in a row, he made tracks to the Biedelman Zoo despite the fact that, technically, it was his day off. But he was a professional newspaperman. It wasn’t always just about the paycheck.
To his disappointment, the zoo’s administrative offices were locked. He pounded on the front door several times, but if Harriet Saul was there—and when wasn’t she there?—she wasn’t showing herself. He headed down to the elephant yard and found Samson Brown outside, scooping slippery green muck out of Hannah’s tiny mud wallow
. Martin could smell it clear across the yard and outside the fence, where he was standing. The stuff was ripe enough to fell trees.
“Hey! Do you remember me?” he called.
“Don’t think so,” Sam said, squinting. “Am I supposed to?”
Martin stood a little straighter. “I’m a reporter with the Bladenham News-Gazette—actually, I’m the one who broke the front page story in today’s paper. Have you seen a copy of it yet?”
“Yeah, I’ve seen it. Someone had it out at the Dunkin’ Donuts when I stopped.”
“What did you think of it?”
“Didn’t think anything. I didn’t read it.”
“But you’re Hannah’s guardian. Aren’t you interested in the way the story’s being covered?”
“Naw. Seems like something that should stay between me and Hannah—me, Hannah, and Harriet Saul,” Sam said, pitch-forking Hannah droppings into his wheelbarrow.
“Yeah, what about Harriet Saul, huh?”
“Couldn’t say,” Sam said. “Ask her.”
“I tried, but yesterday she wouldn’t talk to me, and today I can’t find her. You have any idea why?”
“Nope.” Sam moved the wheelbarrow to the next manure pile.
Martin deflated a little. “Well, look, I don’t want to stop you from working.”
“Does it look like I’m stopping?” Sam said. “God Himself couldn’t stop me some days, so there’s no need for you to worry.”
“You know anyone else I could interview?”
“No.”
“All right, well, hey, let me give you my card in case you think of something you want me to know about. This is a multifaceted story, you know what I mean?”
“Don’t know anything about facets,” Sam said. “I just know about me and shug, and none of that needs to go in the paper.”
Martin held out his business card. “So you won’t take this?”
“Nope. Save it for someone who might use it.”
“Okay, well, the name’s Martin Choi. Martin Choi. If you think of something you want to talk to me about, just call the News-Gazette.”
Sam lifted his hand in a vague farewell and disappeared into the elephant barn.
Nuts.
Two boys—Reginald and Winslow, Martin remembered—rounded the barn with a pitchfork and wheelbarrow, scuffling and shoving each other. Martin called, “Hey! You want to be in the newspaper?”
“Sure, if you promise to put our pictures in,” Reginald shouted back. He and Winslow walked over to the fence.
“I might be able to arrange that. Can I come inside there with you?”
“No,” Reginald and Winslow said in unison.
“How come?”
“Because,” Reginald said.
“Because why?”
“Because,” Reginald said. To Winslow he said, “Jeez.”
“Watch your mouth,” Martin said, turning to a fresh page in his reporter’s tablet. “I might just forget your name.”
“R-E-G-I-N-A-L-D P-O-O-L-E.”
“Yeah, yeah. So tell me what you think about this whole Hannah thing,” Martin said. “What kind of stuff are you overhearing?”
Winslow frowned at Reginald. Reginald held up his empty palms: nothing.
“You boys are going to make me work, aren’t you?”
“What kind of stuff do you want to know, mister?” Winslow said.
“I want to know whether the trust is going to do anything, you know, radical. Like, say, changing the way Hannah lives. Or where she lives.”
Winslow looked startled. “How did you know that?”
Martin was just as startled. He’d just been talking; he hadn’t even been paying attention. “What—she’s going somewhere?”
The boy regarded Martin Choi for a long moment and then nodded.
“Yes? No shit! Hey, excuse me, kid. Where’s she going? When’s she leaving? Oh, man, this is it—this is it!”
“I don’t know. Someplace in California,” Winslow said. “Someplace where there are other elephants. They found out yesterday for sure.”
“So who’s working on this? Jesus, kid, this is big stuff!”
Winslow started to get nervous. “You should probably ask my grandfather. He’d know. His name is Matthew—”
“Yeah, yeah, I know him, kid. What’s your name again? Winfred. Odd name. Got it, kid. Look, hey, I owe you. You ever want a paper route, you just let me know.”
Less than half an hour later, Martin Choi was once again seated in Matthew and Lavinia’s sun porch.
“Hey, thanks for talking to me. I’ve heard the most amazing story from your grandson at the zoo. I wanted to run it by you, see if there’s anything to it.” Martin reviewed his facts while Matthew sat quietly, fingertips joined, listening.
“Yes, yes, all those things are true. There is also something else, but I can’t share it with you without an absolute guarantee of anonymity,” Matthew said.
“Yeah, hey, no problem,” Martin agreed. Sometimes people wouldn’t say the really ugly stuff except anonymously. Martin was okay with that.
“Then I would like to tell you something about Harriet Saul that she would never tell you herself—might even deny if you confronted her with it.” Matthew took a deep breath, lowered his voice, leaned forward, and said, “Harriet Saul is personally spearheading the effort to move Hannah to the Pachyderm Sanctuary. Personally, Martin. She’s committing an act of keen integrity, I might even say courage. I’m sure you understand fully how much more difficult her job as the zoo’s managerial and financial overseer will become without Hannah.”
Martin looked up from his tablet, squinting suspiciously. “So if she’s such a hero, how come she won’t talk? Because she still won’t. She’s pissed.”
“Come on, Martin. Think. Harriet Saul’s not doing this to draw attention to herself; she isn’t doing this for self-aggrandizement or even basic recognition. She’s doing it for Hannah, because it’s right. Because it’s right. Pure and simple.”
“Well, sure,” Martin said, squinting. “Sure! That’s why—Jesus, picture being the head of an operation like the Biedelman Zoo, and knowing that the one animal you need most to put you on the map is the one who needs you to let it go? How are you going to explain that? You’re not! You’re not going to explain that! You’re just going to do it, because it’s right. Let the chips fall where they may!”
“So you understand,” Matthew said gravely.
“Damn right.”
“Martin.”
“Huh?” “Report it, son. Report it.”
Harriet crackled with fury as she huddled with Mayor Howard Bolton and City of Bladenham counsel Bob Medford at City Hall. “I’m not going to accept this—you can’t possibly expect me to accept this. It’s ridiculous, Howard, and you know it. You might as well shut down the zoo. Just go ahead and lock the gates right now and hang up a sign saying CLOSED FOR LACK OF INTEREST. Without that elephant, the zoo’s nothing but a collection of hoofed stock, barnyard animals, and a couple of ratty primates.”
“Now, that’s not true,” the mayor said. “The people of Bladenham love their zoo. They’re not—”
“Oh, shut up, Howard,” Harriet said.
Howard turned to his legal counsel. “Bob, in your experience, how much of a loophole might this thing have? If we contest it, would we win?”
“Probably not. The documents establishing the trust and setting its provisions are very straightforward.”
“Oh, we’ll contest it,” Harriet said in a low, dangerous voice.
“Now, Harriet,” Howard said. “We don’t want to get into any expensive, drawn-out legal battle. Especially one we’re likely to lose.”
“I assume the candidate who ran against you was a moron,” Harriet said bitterly. “Because why else they elected you I can’t imagine.”
Sam was the first one at work on Saturday morning, bearing a sack of pumpkin crème donuts and a custard one Rayette had slipped in for free. Juggling the bag, a lef
tover turkey sandwich, and cranberry sauce in a mayonnaise jar, he fumbled for his keys and tried the gate. The key wouldn’t work. He looked at his key, looked at the gate, reinserted the key. Nothing. While he was trying to figure out what was going on, a relief zookeeper Sam had only seen once or twice before came out of the barn. They saw each other in the same instant. The zookeeper, a pasty-faced man in his twenties, looked uncomfortable.
“My key won’t work,” Sam said. “You break this lock?”
“Nah. She had them changed.”
Sam could hear shug in there rocking. The shackle rang against the wall like a tolling bell. “What?”
“She had security change the locks this morning.”
“Why’d she do that?” Sam said.
“Look, dude, all I know is she told me to come in and feed the elephant, so that’s what I’m doing.”
Sam tried to stay calm. “You unchain the girl yet?”
“I’m supposed to leave her chained up for now. I gave her some hay, though.”
“Let me in,” Sam said.
“No can do, bud. I’m really sorry.”
Sam was struggling to stay reasonable. “Just unchain the girl. You can do that. Just let her outside. Won’t hurt you to at least do that.”
The zookeeper headed around the barn. “Sorry, man, but I don’t want to piss off the boss.”
Sam called as loud as he could, “You hold on, shug! Papa’s going to be right back, and then we’ll get you out of that place. Just hold on, sugar.”
He tore up the hill and straight into the house. Before he even came into the office suite he could hear loud voices: Truman and that Harriet.
“For god’s sake, Harriet,” Truman was saying. “You can’t lock them out.”
“Oh? And why not?”
“He has twenty-four-hour access. Legally.”
Sam stood outside the door.
“And I’m not contesting that,” Harriet said. “But the zoo is my domain. I can deny access to anyone I feel might be a destructive presence.”
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