The Zoo Job

by Keith R. A. DeCandido

  “Okay.” Parker reached into her backpack and took out Hardison’s jump drive, sliding it into one of the USB ports, and also took out a listening device and put it under McAllister’s desk. The jump drive’s yellow light went on and stayed on. Parker stared at it. “How long will it take?”

  “It’ll be done when the light goes off. How long depends on how much is on the computer. Longer it takes, the more we got, and the better off we are.”

  “Fine.” Parker sighed. The monkey chose that moment to climb up onto her right shoulder, his long tail wrapping around to her left shoulder. “Awwww.”

  “Awww what?” Hardison asked.

  “Uh, nothing,” Parker said quickly, then started shuffling the papers on McAllister’s desk. “McAllister’s got some, uh, some papers on the desk.”

  “What kind?”

  “Receipts and invoices and packing lists,” Parker said, shrugging.

  “For what?” Hardison asked.

  Blowing out an annoyed breath, Parker grabbed the papers and flipped through them one by one. “Let’s see—some of this is food. I’m guessing for the animals, ’cause otherwise, yuck. Some gardening things—sod, tools, weed killer, stuff like that. There’s a bill for a pickup from a fertilizer company. Why would—” Then it hit her. “Ew.”

  Luckily, that was when the yellow light on the jump drive went off.

  “Okay, done. Now, how do we get out of here?”

  “We?”

  Parker blinked and winced. “I . . . how do I get out of here? Sorry, it’s like you’re here with me, y’know?” She gave the monkey—whom she was thinking about naming “Alec”—an apologetic look.

  “I’m always with you, baby girl, you know that.” Parker could hear Hardison’s doofy grin—which she had to admit to liking. He put his serious voice back on after that, though. “A’ight, I’m gonna lead you through the front yard and out the main gate—follow my instructions exactly, otherwise you’re gonna set off the eye beams.”

  Parker frowned. “Why didn’t I just come in that way?”

  “Because the route I’m about to give you takes you right under the sunroom window, in plain sight of the security guard—who’s now seven minutes from being back on post, so time to move.”

  “Got it.” Parker nodded, got up from the chair, made sure it was back in the position she’d left it, then did likewise with the papers. “Tell me where to go.”

  “Just follow me, baby girl, and I’ll bring you home.”

  Patting the monkey—Alec—who had settled on her shoulder, Parker proceeded to follow Hardison’s instructions to get her out of the estate. From there it was a bit of a hike to the lot where she’d left her car. Luckily, she’d bought hiking boots . . .

  THIRTEEN

  Nate Ford was somehow not surprised to find himself back, for the first time in five years, on the wide steps that led to the Boston Museum. The last time was when he—with the unwitting help of the four thieves who would later make up his team, and also with the witting help of the museum’s security chief, Theodore Coswell—uncovered the scam being run by the museum’s owner, Edgar Gladstone.

  Now Gladstone was serving time in a minimum security prison—a bit that would be up soon, if Nate recalled correctly, thanks to Gladstone’s giving up his confederates—and Coswell had moved on to work for some security firm or other.

  But IYS was still the Boston Museum’s insurance carrier, and the museum was starting up a new exhibit of Pre-Raphaelite art. According to IYS’s records, on which Hardison kept regular tabs at Nate’s request, Elizabeth Turre was going to check over the exhibit security, make sure everything was up to IYS’s standards. The security protocols that Sterling had put in place were not all still intact, but a lot of them were, and—much as it galled Nate to admit it, especially after Sterling got the drop on Sophie and Eliot in Malani—they were good ones.

  Elizabeth wasn’t the best investigator IYS had, but she was probably the most dogged. What she lacked in imagination and instinct she more than made up for in thoroughness. Nate knew full well that he had the gift of observation; Elizabeth didn’t have it in the least, but she knew this about herself, and made up for it.

  Nate and Elizabeth had traded voice-mail messages the night before, and this afternoon they were meeting for lunch at the museum. Right now he was sitting on the steps, along with dozens of other lunch goers, workers, tourists, and more.

  “Hello, Nathan!” came a pleasant, if scratchy, voice from behind Nate. Rising to his feet, he found himself reminded of another of Elizabeth’s most effective tools as an investigator: she looked like someone’s grandma.

  Barely scraping five feet tall, Elizabeth had gone prematurely silver at age thirty. Rather than dye it, she let it go, and accentuated the look by wearing cardigans, simple dresses, and glasses that rested on her nose or dangled from a chain around her neck. Elizabeth actually had 20/20 vision, but the glasses tended to relax people into thinking her harmless.

  By the time they learned otherwise, it was often too late.

  Elizabeth held out her arms, and Nate leaned over to embrace his former colleague. “It’s good to see you, Elizabeth.”

  “Stop lying, Nathan. You never gave a damn about me one way or the other, and you’re only talking to me now because you need something from me. Now come on, I only have about twenty minutes, so I’ll buy you a lovely dirty-water hot dog.”

  The pair of them went down the stairs toward one of the hot-dog vendors. Trying to sound casual, Nate asked, “What, I can’t just look up an old friend who happens to be in town?”

  Elizabeth stared up at him from over her glasses, seeing right through him. “Nathan, you moved to Boston right after you brought Ian down. Since then, I’ve made thirteen trips to the Boston area, and seven more to New England in general. Not one of those times have you ‘looked me up’—though to be fair, two of those times were when you were in prison.”

  Nate didn’t know whether to be impressed or frightened. At this point, they were on line at the hot-dog stand behind three tourists from Eastern Europe, only one of whom spoke English, and she spoke it better than the Pakistani hot-dog vendor, who was having trouble parsing her accent. “How did you—”

  With a small smile, Elizabeth said, “That would be telling.” Then she uttered her musical laugh. “Oh, who am I kidding? James used to keep tabs on you, and then, when he bolted for Interpol, the rest of us kind of banded together to keep doing so. You’re a legend in IYS, Nathan. You took down Ian, you took down Owen, you drove James away—”

  “Sterling drove himself away,” Nate said emphatically. He refused to take credit for anything his former friend had done.

  “—plus, God, Nathan . . .” Elizabeth shook her head. “You’re living the dream.”

  Nate stared at Elizabeth as if she had grown another head. By this time, the tourists had gotten their hot dogs, pretzels, and sodas, and he and Elizabeth were up next.

  “Two hot dogs, both with mustard and sauerkraut, plus a Diet Coke.” Then she added, “And whatever he’s having.”

  For a moment Nate again stared at Elizabeth, wondering where, exactly, she was going to put two hot dogs, while simultaneously wondering what she needed a diet soda for when she barely weighed a hundred pounds soaking wet. Then he looked over at the Pakistani vendor and said, “One dog, mustard only, and a bottle of water.”

  The vendor nodded, pulled three buns out of torn shrink-wrap with latex-gloved hands, then opened a lid at the front of his stand. Steam floated out as in succession he speared three hot dogs floating in water of dubious cleanliness and placed them in the buns. After grabbing a squeeze bottle of mustard, he squirted some of the brown substance on all three, then opened another lid on the front of his stand, pulling out some sauerkraut to place on two of the dogs, then flipped open a rear lid. Bottles and cans
floated in ice-laden water, and the vendor grabbed an aluminum can and a plastic bottle.

  What was most impressive was that he managed to do all this within about five seconds. Nate hadn’t seen hands move that fast since he last witnessed his father playing three-card monte.

  Not particularly wanting to dwell on that memory, he walked back to the stairs alongside Elizabeth. “It’s funny, I was here for a class trip when I was a kid. The teacher let us get hot dogs for lunch, and the experience was almost exactly the same. Just three things different.” As they sat on a stair, he took a bite of the hot dog and tried not to laugh as he chewed. “Tastes the same, too.”

  That got Elizabeth to raise an eyebrow. “Three things? All right, I can guess the gloves. We’re the same age, so we can both remember a time when people were actually allowed to touch food.”

  Nate chuckled as he swallowed. “Yeah.”

  “That leaves—what?”

  Shaking his head, Nate took another bite before answering, remembering again that Elizabeth was dogged, not observant. “Better mustard. When I was a kid, you were lucky if you got a brand-name yellow mustard. This is actual brown mustard with small seeds in it. That was the super-expensive stuff when we were kids. And the soda choices back then were just Coke, root beer, and Tab.”

  “Ah, yes.” Elizabeth popped the last bite of her first dog into her mouth. Nate honestly couldn’t recall if she’d chewed any of it, and he’d been sitting next to her this whole time. “You know,” she said after swallowing, “they still make Tab? Nearly impossible to find it in L.A., but I’ve found several places in New England that carry it.”

  “You drink Tab?”

  She shook her head. “No, saccharine gives me a headache, but Anton is addicted to the stuff.”

  “How’s he doing, anyhow?”

  “He’s a junior in high school now.”

  Nate winced.

  To her credit, Elizabeth noticed right away. “I’m so sorry, Nathan—Sam would’ve been in high school by now, wouldn’t he?”

  Waving it off, as he didn’t particularly want to dwell on the subject of his dead son, Nate said, “Don’t worry about it—I was the one who asked.”

  “True, you did.” She shook her head. “We’ll be looking at colleges soon. And by ‘we,’ sadly, I mean just me and him, since his father has officially decided not to have anything to do with his life beyond the child support payments. He moved to Winnipeg, of all places, a year ago, and gave up his visitation rights.” She sighed, looking at Nate. “I envy you your relationship with Maggie. At least you’re on speaking terms.”

  Unbidden, the words Maggie had said to him, after the team brought down Blackpoole and again after Kiev, arose in his mind: that she didn’t love him anymore, but that she liked the man he’d become. Somehow, it didn’t surprise him that his ex-wife had come to be comfortable with the new Nate Ford before Nate himself could manage it.

  “But enough of this,” Elizabeth said, patting Nate on the knee. “You didn’t summon me here for nostalgia, you summoned me to ask about the Brillinger Zoo policy.”

  “Yeah, about that—why are you working on that and on the museum? I thought you just handled the animal-related stuff.”

  “Ah, Nathan, you never were all that good at understanding consequences. With Ian’s departure and the board, in their infinite shortsightedness, deciding to not hire anyone new anytime soon, resulting in a staff of eight where once there were a dozen, the company rearranged things a bit. We’re now given assignments based on geographical regions, not on type of policy.”

  Nate blinked. “That’s insane.”

  “Yes, but it makes travel arrangements considerably cheaper, which was the point.”

  Trying very hard not to think about what Elizabeth was saying about consequences, Nate barreled forward. “All right, what I’m wondering is why is it that the zoo’s policy had a rider attached that requires the general manager to sign off on any insurance claim.”

  This prompted a derisive snort from Elizabeth as she bit off more hot dog. “Well, as little as I think of IYS’s board of directors, they are paragons of virtue in comparison to those of the Brillinger Zoo. I’ve never seen so many frivolous claims in my life. We came within a hairsbreadth of canceling the policy, but then Marney stepped in and asked if she could fix it by having her approve all claims.” She ate the last of dog number two and, after chewing and swallowing, said, “Honestly, Nathan, there are times when I believed that they were trying to get the zoo shut down.”

  Nate nodded while he sipped some water and wiped the sweat from his forehead. They were sitting right in the sun, and he was starting to seriously feel the heat. “Do you know who on the board made the claims?”

  Shaking her head, Elizabeth said, “Couldn’t say. They were all sent by the group as a unit. The official submission was by the chair, but it could’ve been anyone on the board who suggested it and pushed it through—or the board as a whole voting on it. Who knows?” She gulped down a great deal of her soda, then let out a truly impressive belch, its volume and resonance in direct contrast to the size of the person uttering it. “Excuse me,” she said with a demure smile.

  Chuckling, Nate said, “I’m not sure that’s really excusable.”

  “Fair enough.” She got to her feet. “I do need to get back inside. Did that answer your question?”

  “It did, actually.” Nate also rose.

  “Good.” She put a hand on his arm. “I meant what I said, Nathan. You are living the dream. You get to help people in ways that I can’t even imagine. Hell, you get to help people. There are times . . .” She shook her head. “It’s a dreadful job. I gravitated toward animal-related policies because I knew that, at the very least, I’d be helping creatures who are incapable of defending themselves. After all, the food chain never took paperwork into account.”

  Nate smiled.

  “But now—” She let out a very long, very tired sigh. “I wish I could do what you’re doing.”

  This brought Nate up short. Circumstances had conspired to put him into this situation, but he couldn’t imagine choosing it. It had been chosen for him, by Sam’s death, by Victor Dubenich, and then by the team members themselves.

  Weakly, Nate said, “Well, good luck, Elizabeth—and thanks. In all seriousness, the next time you’re in New England, call me. We’ll have a proper lunch. I know a great pub.”

  “McRory’s, right?” Elizabeth started jogging up the stairs, calling out behind her, “Let’s try somewhere else, all right? I prefer not to have my food move. Take care of yourself!”

  As she went up the rest of the stairs, Nate said, “Elizabeth?”

  She stopped and turned around, an inquisitive look on her face.

  “There’s nothing glamorous about what I do. Powerful people have tried very hard to kill me, and almost succeeded. I’ve served time in jail. Hell, I’ve been shot several times—I can’t even lift my arms over my head anymore. This isn’t exactly what you’d call a great lifestyle choice.”

  Elizabeth walked back down the stairs until she was eye to eye with Nate. “Allow me to refute your points, Nathan. I’ll give you jail—though I will add that it was medium security and your sentence was commuted. But you were shot on the job while you were working at IYS, too—by an art thief, if I recall the story correctly—and powerful people tried to kill you then, too. The difference is, now you’re doing what you do to assist people in need rather than serving a corporation whose purpose is to try to avoid paying the very services that people specifically pay us to provide. I’d definitely say you’ve moved up in the world.”

  With that, she turned on her heel and went back up the rest of the stairs, eventually being swallowed by the museum’s revolving door.

  Nate turned and ambled slowly down them, heading toward the parking lot where he’d parked
his car for an exorbitant rate, and muttered to himself, “The food doesn’t move . . .”

  FOURTEEN

  NOW

  Amalia Sanger walked into Michael Maimona’s office, trying not to scream.

  Unsurprisingly, as soon as he glanced upward and saw the look on her face, he hit control and S on the computer keyboard. The disk drive whirred as it saved whatever he was working on—next weekend’s sermon, from what he’d said half an hour ago when he went into the office.

  “What is the problem, Amalia?” he asked.

  “That new doctor. I don’t like her.” Even as she said the words, she winced. In her head, when she’d rehearsed this, she’d sounded forceful, but when she actually spoke, she sounded—well, whiny.

  Michael folded his arms and leaned back in his chair. “What, precisely, do you not like, Amalia? I don’t know how much of a physician she might be, it’s true, as we’ve been fortunate enough not to need those services from her, but—” He shook his head. “Have you seen what she’s done with the files? Amalia, for the first time since I opened this place, I can find things in those bloody cabinets.”

  Amalia let out a small growl. “I know that, it’s just— Something about her feels off somehow.”

  “What, precisely? Her bedside manner is superb. Honestly, I’ve never seen the patients more at ease.”

  The words then burst out of her. “She’s too good with people! Nobody who’s that good with people becomes a doctor.”

  Michael couldn’t help himself. He laughed, long and hard. Removing his glasses in order to wipe the tears away, he started to say something, but was consumed by more paroxysms of laughter.

  All Amalia could do was stand there and take it, annoyed that he was responding so cavalierly to her opinion, even though his reaction was pretty well justified. Her accusation was, on the face of it, ridiculous. Eventually, she had to say something, which she did when his laughter started to die down. “Are you finished?”