Forests of the Night

by James W. Hall

  She turned and padded barefoot across the red tile floor. He followed her through the house, the rooms cool with high ceilings and exposed beams, chandeliers dangling in their diamond halos. She led him outside onto a sunny patio next to the largest swimming pool he’d ever seen, and she turned to face him. Her eyes were bloodshot and muddled as though she’d just awakened and was still sorting out her nightmares.

  “How do you know Levi?”

  “We found each other on the Internet.”

  “The Internet? Levi said you were a dumb-ass Indian, living in a tepee or a mine shaft or some shit.”

  Her lips were halfway to a grin, testing how easily he got pissed off.

  “Even dumb-ass Indians use the Internet,” he said.

  Her smile tightened.

  “My name’s Shirlee. That’s with two e’s.”

  “So that makes you special,” he said. “Not like all the other Shirleys.”

  “You got that right.”

  “Do you have something for me?”

  “You’re just a kid. I was expecting an adult.”

  She craned her neck to the left and right, as if working out a kink.

  Her breasts were small, with tiny raisin nipples standing up, and at the edges of the strip of green shiny material across her crotch, black hair coiled out. Now that he had a better look, Jacob saw that the tattoos on her arms and circling her ankles were oversize scorpions with their barbed tails poised to strike.

  “I’m almost thirty. Do you require ID?”

  “Oh, I’ll make an exception this time, honey. But if it’s frog toxin you want, forget it. Big order last week wiped me out. More diaperheads on their jihad—Saudis, Iranians, whoever the hell they were.”

  In the swimming pool, a large gray fish swam in circles as though searching for a way out.

  “Then you have no venom.”

  “Did I say that? I have venom. Just not from frogs.”

  Jacob said, “Frogs, eagles, donkeys. It doesn’t matter.”

  “As long as it’s lethal, right?”

  She smiled at him and stroked her left breast, keeping that nipple awake.

  “Nudity bother you?”

  “I’ll let you know if it begins to.”

  Jacob watched the brittle light bounce off the surface of the pool. The fish rose from the water, cast a look their way, then plunged beneath the surface. It was four or five feet long, gray and silky. In the mountains, Jacob knew the name and habits of every insect and sentient creature, but the ocean and its residents were a mystery.

  “When Levi said ‘Indian,’ I asked if he meant Gandhi or the tomahawk kind. Know what he said?”

  “That I’m no Gandhi.”

  She smiled and picked up a Baggie that lay on the table next to a brass pipe. She opened the ziplock, took a pinch of weed, squeezed the fibers into the bowl of the pipe, lit it with a plastic lighter, sucked down more than seemed possible for such a skinny woman, and blew the smoke toward the empty sky.

  She held out the smoldering pipe.

  Jacob stood motionless. She released the last of the blue smoke.

  In her scratchy voice she said, “All business, huh? No time to socialize.”

  “I have the five thousand,” he said. “In hundreds as Levi suggested.”

  “Five thousand buys a lot of socializing.”

  She had short, spiky black hair and dark eyes. Skinny arms and legs with her ribs showing. Like one of those women who starved herself, thought that was pretty, or maybe just forgot to eat, all the drugs she was using. Either way, she wasn’t Jacob’s idea of sexy. Even with the long nipples and the crotch hair showing, she was no more attractive to him than a bundle of dry kindling with a cottonmouth lurking inside.

  “You know, kid, you’ve definitely got that exotic thing going on.”

  Jacob waited. She had to say what she had to say. She had to get it out before they did their business. So Jacob waited. Savoring the fertile air, taking it in, letting it out. Sandalwood and saltiness.

  “So you’re what, part Cherokee? Like a half-breed or whatever the trendy word is these days?”

  Jacob watched the fish rise and fall from the sleek water.

  “Your skin, it’s not all that red, maybe a little rusty, that’s all.”

  She reached out and dabbed her fingertip against his temple, then looked at her finger like his makeup might’ve come off.

  “I mean, I see it in the forehead, how broad it is. And your eyes, that hooded look. But the hair, no way. I don’t think there’s any blond Indians, are there? Unless that’s peroxide, which it doesn’t look like.”

  She brushed her fingers through the hair at Jacob’s temples. It was sandy and coarse, and in the last year he’d let it grow till it touched his shoulders. Back when he was young and vain and wanted more than anything for a woman to fall in love with him, he’d kept his hair short and tried to style it in the modern way, but it was so thick it ruined combs and defied brushes. Now he simply used his fingers when it was snarled.

  “And those slick baby cheeks, yeah, I can picture how it happened. Some dark-eyed Pocahontas gets down and dirty with a square-jawed Irish stud. Quite a mix. I know a guy, a photographer down in South Beach, one look at you, he’d faint. He’s always searching for that one-of-a-kind primitive mojo. Of course, you probably wouldn’t want your picture in a fashion magazine, would you? Post-office walls, that’s more your style.”

  Jacob waited. Polite. He forced himself to smile.

  “Tell me something, okay?”

  Jacob was silent.

  “You’re an Indian, you live in the goddamn forest, commune with the birds and beasts. How come you don’t go milk a rattlesnake or something? You gotta buy your poison from people like me?”

  “That’s not a skill I have, milking rattlesnakes.”

  “But you know what I mean. Your ancestors, they didn’t have to buy venom. They got their own. Brewed it up, whatever the hell they did.”

  “I have my own ways,” Jacob said. “My own reasons.”

  “What happened to self-sufficient? That’s what Indians do, right? They live off the land, commune with the spirits, rub two sticks together.”

  “Those days are a long time gone.”

  “Well, you’re a disappointment,” she said. “You’re my first Indian and look at me, I’m standing here full of disillusionment.”

  “Venom from the forest would provide clues to those who pursue me.”

  She considered it for a moment.

  “Yeah, okay,” she said. “That makes sense. Throw them off.”

  Jacob watched the fish circling the pool, rolling and diving.

  “You know about cone snails?” Shirlee said. “Conus purpurascens.”

  “I’m prepared to learn.”

  “I found this kid, he’s doing a postdoc down in Miami, studying neuropharmacology. They’re producing some shit-kicking hallucinogens these days, painkillers you wouldn’t believe. One taste, you’re gone for a week, flying wherever the hell in the universe you want to go, then you wake up, you’re fine, no hangover, nothing. Amazing shit. This kid, he’s hard up for cash, got some kind of habit, poor guy. So we worked out a deal, our mutual benefit. And yours, too.”

  “I don’t want to hallucinate,” Jacob said.

  “Yeah, yeah, I know. You want to wax somebody, ship ’em to the embalmer. Sure. That’s what I’m talking about, cone-snail venom. Same stuff, different strength, that’s all. A tiny bit gets you high, a little more kills the pain, and a teensy bit more gets you dead. It’s all about portion control.”

  She drew on her pipe and blew out a stream near his face.

  “First phase hits like cobra toxin, second phase like puffer-fish venom. Different peptide fractions cause different nerve reactions. Paralysis, numbness, total shutdown of neurological receptors. One peptide targets skeletal muscle sodium, another does neuronal calcium channels. Bottom line, this is seriously bad shit. A little dab’ll do. Three seconds yo
ur guy is frozen, can’t breathe, three seconds later, you got yourself a corpse.”

  Jacob nodded again.

  “That’s what you want, then? A cone-snail cocktail?”

  “How much does five thousand dollars buy?”

  “With or without the blow job?”

  “Just the venom.”

  She drew on the pipe again, but the weed had gone out, so she tapped out the remains into the flowering red plants that filled the beds behind them.

  “What’re you, sexually challenged?”

  “I’m on a tight schedule,” he said.

  The scorpions on her shoulders were blue and green and they seemed to be moving, a slow dance across her tan flesh. Maybe it came from breathing the cloud of dope, or maybe it was some leftover trace of his old self warming to this twisted woman, making his eyes play tricks. A year ago Jacob Panther would’ve seized the chance. Happy to test his stamina against this she-devil, fly to whatever planet she was from, plant his flag in that ground. But not now. That Jacob was gone. Only some last stray molecules left.

  “Just the cone venom.”

  “All right, all right. Christ, you don’t like girls, whatever, fine.”

  She got up and marched into the house and when she returned, the vial she handed him was full to the brim. Jacob peered at the liquid, tipped the tube to the side. The fluid was oily and thick, with the tint of weak tea.

  Shirlee lit her pipe again and said, “Stab a needle through the membrane, leave it a second or two, pull it back out. Whatever traces are left on the point should do the job, unless you’re trying to kill an elephant, then maybe you’ll need two jabs.”

  Jacob jiggled the tube. A faint coppery vapor hung in the air.

  “There’s enough in that vial, you could put a dent in the Hundred and First Airborne.”

  Jacob slipped the ampoule in his shirt pocket and reached into his jeans and pulled out the envelope. A bank in South Carolina had provided the funds. Five thousand, Jacob told the terrified teller. No more, no less.

  “What’re you, anyway?” Shirlee said. “Hit man, terrorist, or just some guy gonna whack your wife’s boyfriend? My bet is terrorist.”

  “You lose.”

  “Aw, come on. You think I’m going to the cops?”

  “None of those,” Jacob said. “I’m just trying to stay alive.”

  “What’s that mean? This is for self-defense? Give me a break.”

  “What’s that thing in the pool?” Jacob nodded toward the water.

  “What?”

  “That fish.”

  “It’s not a fish, it’s a mammal,” Shirlee said. “It’s a goddamn dolphin. You never saw a dolphin before? Jesus, you must live in a mine shaft.”

  “So that’s a dolphin.”

  “Yeah, yeah. Big brain. Smart as you and me, maybe smarter, that’s what they say.”

  “If it’s so smart,” Jacob said, “what’s it doing in your pool?”

  At Miami International Airport, Jacob Panther found a bank of TV monitors and checked the arrival time of the US Airways flight from Charlotte. On time, arriving in forty-five minutes. He located a Burger King and bought a large Coke and got a plastic lid. At the first trash can, he dumped out the Coke and ice, then snapped the lid back into place. In the men’s room he locked himself in a stall. He pricked the rubber membrane with the dart, and swished the fluid over the point. After a moment more, he withdrew the needle tip and slid the dart, point first, into the white tube. He drew a pipe cleaner from his pocket and poked the projectile down the barrel of the blowgun until a speck of the shiny tip was exposed and the fletching was secure. When he had it positioned correctly, Jacob inserted the white tube through the plastic lid of his empty Coke cup.

  He flushed the pipe cleaner, then walked out of the bathroom to the head of Concourse H and eased in alongside the chauffeurs with their signs.

  Jacob held the cup, and every few minutes he touched his lips to the white straw that poked through the lid and moved his cheeks as if he were swallowing. The arriving passengers streamed out of the concourse exit, some of them stopping to hug loved ones. Most in a hurry, on cell phones, jostling toward the waiting cabs.

  Jacob watched the crowd and sucked on his straw that was not a straw.

  Hundreds of people passed by before the man appeared.

  Jacob saw his face through the swarm, on a route that would bring him only a few feet away from Jacob’s position. Jacob gripped the mouthpiece of his blowgun and drew it a few inches from the cup. But just as his target entered killing range, he made a sudden cut behind a group of women and Jacob lost the shot.

  The crowd swarmed, and the man passed by only two yards away, but shielded by women in bright dresses. He walked with his usual cocky strut, passing quickly with his long, even stride.

  Jacob swung around, bumped a tall woman holding up a welcome sign. He apologized and slipped through the crowd.

  At the head of the escalator, his target halted for an elderly lady who was balking, as if this were her first experience with moving stairs. A moment of providence.

  Jacob headed down the fixed stairway that ran between the up and down escalators. He slowed his pace, watched in his side vision as the elderly woman glided past, then the tall man with the familiar face. Jacob timed his descent to stay even with the man. Two feet away.

  Choosing the largest patch of exposed flesh, he used the move he’d rehearsed a hundred times. Drawing the straw smoothly from the cup, taking only a second to aim, then he puffed hard into the mouthpiece.

  The dart lodged two inches below the man’s left ear. In half a second, the blowgun was back in the plastic cover of the cup.

  Grabbing at the sting in his neck, the man looked directly at his killer. Recognizing Jacob, his eyes flared with dark lightning. A second later the light drained away, and his mouth opened into a savage yawn, and he tumbled forward just as the old lady was stepping from the escalator.

  Behind Jacob a woman shrieked. Two men in dark suits hustling down the escalator halted at the bottom and stared at the body sprawled on the linoleum before them. One of them glanced at his watch, spoke in Spanish to his friend, and they tiptoed around the dead man and hurried on.

  Jacob pretended to take sips while he mingled with the crowd that gathered around the man. Edging backward little by little to the perimeter of the throng until a security guard arrived, kneeled over the man, felt for a pulse, and began to bark into his radio.

  Jacob walked out the exit and headed for the airport’s Flamingo Garage, where he’d parked the red pickup. One more stop. Another man to deal with.

  This one he’d been wanting to meet for a long, long time.

  Three

  Charlotte Monroe didn’t recognize the red pickup truck parked in her front drive. It didn’t belong there, that was for sure. In fact, it was illegal. One of the nitpicky rules of the city of Coral Gables was that no pickups were permitted to be parked in residential driveways overnight anywhere within the city limits. Workmen were okay in daylight hours, as long as they returned to their own shabby neighborhoods before nightfall. Charlotte had never written a ticket for a pickup truck parked overnight, and she didn’t know anybody on the Coral Gables PD who had. But still, the law was there and at least once a week a good citizen called 911 to turn in a violator. City Beautiful. This was her beat. Protecting people who spent way too much time spying on their neighbors. Her beat and also her home.

  Her patrol car was in the motor pool for its sixty-thousand-mile service and there were four officers waiting ahead of her for spare cruisers, so when she saw Jesus Romero pulling out of the parking lot, she flagged him down. Her old partner, back in the early days.

  Now as Jesus stared at the ornate wrought iron gates blocking the drive, he grunted as if marveling at an attractive woman crossing his path.

  “Yeah, yeah, I know,” Charlotte said. “Go on, give me some shit.”

  Charlotte drew the remote from her purse and aimed it through
the windshield and, as the heavy gates rolled back, Jesus chuckled.

  “Say it,” she said. “Why the hell do I keep slogging along in the sewers when I could stay home all day and boss around a dozen maids?”

  When the gate was open, Jesus pulled into the brick drive and eased up to the front door. But Charlotte sat there for a moment looking at the red pickup truck in the headlights.

  “If I could afford a place on the Gables waterway, I sure as hell wouldn’t buckle on my piece one more day. I’d be trolling for sailfish from dawn to dusk, perfecting my margarita recipe.”

  “I live here, Jesus. It’s a house, not a way of life.”

  He waved his hand at the Mediterranean villa.

  “I see you every day, but I always forget you come from this.”

  “I don’t come from this. I live in this.”

  “It’s just weird, that’s all. Being a cop, for you it’s like some volunteer thing. The Peace Corps, missionary work. You don’t need it.”

  “Screw that,” she said. “I need it all right.”

  He looked at her for a moment, then nodded. Jesus was one of the very few who knew her story and understood where her need was rooted.

  High school, her senior-year spring break, she’d ridden to Florida with Teddy Miles in his rusty Olds Cutlass. Him to get drunk and ogle bikini babes, Charlotte to escape Murfreesboro and for the tan. All the way to Lauderdale, Teddy bummed gas and food money from her, so she knew he was flat broke and pissed off about it, but she didn’t know exactly what he intended to do about it until their first hour in South Florida.

  Teddy pulled into a Qwik Mart for more beer, Charlotte looking for crackers, sandwich meat, anything cheap and filling. When she wasn’t paying attention, Teddy drew a handgun on the clerk, a black woman in a dashiki and tons of jewelry. Down the cracker aisle, Charlotte screamed at him to put it away, but he ignored her. Grabbed the cash, yelled for Charlotte, then noticed the surveillance camera on the way out, firing at it but missing. By then the cashier was howling like a wounded dog. Teddy turned and shot her twice, just to keep her quiet, he said later. First slug kicked her against the cigarette case, the second one killed her.