by Tory Cates
“I’ll bear that in mind,” Landell commented, “and not be taken in by any wily macaques.”
That was far from the moral Malou had intended to be drawn.
“Now, much as I’m enjoying all this, I have a closing I need to get back for, and if I miss it I’ll be out a healthy chunk in earnest money. That would make for a fairly pricey natural history lesson. So, if you have no objection, could we move on to the part of this story that concerns me?”
Malou was so irritated that she had to look away to hide the fumes she felt were pouring off of her. Her glance fell on old Kojiwa and his adopted daughter, Jezebel, lounging in the shade of a leafy mesquite. This is for you, she thought, bringing herself under control. She was a model of composure when she turned back to face Cameron Landell.
“Of course,” she demurred sweetly, picking up the thread of her narrative again. “In 1947, the Japanese institutionalized their affectionate regard for the snow monkeys by declaring them national treasures.”
“Sort of like sacred cows in India, eh?”
The analogy was completely off base, but Malou bit her tongue and continued. “Well, they were protected, and the entire mountain was turned into a monkey sanctuary. Primatologists laid out rations of wheat and apples to coax the animals down out of hiding so they could study them.”
“Hmmphf.”
Malou ignored Landell’s derisive snort and went on. Whether Cameron Landell realized it or not, what she had to say was important; and whether he was interested or not, he would hear it.
“Anyway, the monkeys were close enough that researchers could study them, but their social patterns, which caging would have destroyed, were intact. That was so important.”
Unconsciously, the urgency that Malou felt leaked into her words. “That’s how scientists learned how vital kinship is in the macaque world and how it’s the basis for each member’s status in the troop.” Malou’s excitement about the area that was the subject of her life’s work came through, enlivening what she said.
She stopped short when she glanced over and found Cameron Landell staring, no longer at the monkeys capering past, but at her. Staring very hard and very long. She stared straight back. Landell was the first to break off the gaze. “It all sounds like monkey heaven back there in the Land of the Rising Sun. So why did the beasts end up here where there is not only no snow, but damned precious little water in any form?”
“You’re right,” she began again. “It was heaven until a bit over ten years ago. Then, with all the provisioning and protection, the population of the Storm Mountain troop exploded and split into two groups. The alpha male stayed with the old troop and they drove the new group off, keeping it away from the rations at the food station. The hungry monkeys of the new troop were led by that old fellow over there.”
Malou pointed to Kojiwa. Abruptly, as if he didn’t like being talked about by the meddling humans, Kojiwa turned his pink rump to them and took off, bounding stiffly on all fours across the field.
“With old Kojiwa in the lead, the new troop left Storm Mountain and started raiding gardens in Kyoto. Worse than that, though, the raiding band took to sleeping in the rafters of the Buddhist temples.”
“Ho-ho,” Landell signaled his comprehension, “and the national treasures became a public nuisance. I can imagine that monkey manure in the temples was not a popular decorating idea with the Japanese people.”
His conclusion was annoyingly accurate.
“Not popular at all. There were a lot of suggestions about how to deal with the renegades.” Malou tried to keep her voice light, but inwardly she shuddered as she said, “One small faction of primatologists felt that the offending monkeys would make ideal candidates for the . . .” She stumbled over the words. “The dissection table. Primatologists around the world rose up to protest such an immoral waste.” Her voice rose with the ongoing urgency of her story. It was a tale whose end had still not been told.
“Not too hard to guess which faction you agreed with, is it?”
“These monkeys, with all that’s known about them and their family histories, are invaluable for behavioral research.”
The quirk of Landell’s eyebrow made Malou aware that she’d turned her last few sentences into an impassioned plea. Her voice was neutrally calm when she began again. “A worldwide search was conducted to find a new home for the displaced monkeys of Storm Mountain. When the Japanese primatologists called Professor Everitt of the anthro department at the university, he called Mr. Stallings. In addition to being a rancher and a big landowner, Stallings was known to be an animal lover.
“Professor Everitt made Stallings the oddest proposition of the old man’s life: If he would fence in a couple hundred acres of his land, he would become the owner of a monkey troop. In return for provisioning the monkeys, once the troop was established, Mr. Stallings could sell any surplus animals he wanted to for lab studies.”
“But there never were any ‘surplus’ animals, were there?” Landell asked with his usual irritating accuracy. He pointed toward the troop poking around for breakfast. “I mean, every one of those stumpy creatures out there is some vital link in the great monkey society you’ve got going here. Stallings never made a dime on the deal, did he?”
“He stopped caring about that,” Malou blurted out, aware too late that she’d tipped her hand. But it was too late. Besides, it was the truth and she was tired of tap-dancing around it. “He found out that there are more important things to care about than making money. That the monkeys, keeping them alive and together, was the most crucial thing.”
“Most crucial to you,” Landell amended.
“Mr. Stallings believed in what we’re doing,” Malou protested. “Besides, keeping the monkeys wasn’t that expensive. My salary is paid by a grant from the National Science Foundation, and Mr. Stallings had money anyway.”
“ ‘Had’ is right,” Landell shot back. “I didn’t know it, but by the time I met him, his money was either all gone or going fast. There had been a couple of oil wells that ended up spouting dust and a few other bad business investments. When he came to me for a loan on a wildcat well up north, he used his south Texas holdings, including Los Monos, as collateral. That well was a duster too. Mr. Stallings died broke and I ended up with a monkey ranch on my hands.”
Landell stopped and stared down at Malou. “There’s one other thing you should probably know. Stallings went bust trying to protect these monkeys you esteem so highly. Maybe the day-to-day costs of maintaining them don’t seem high to you, but there are a few hidden expenses you’ve no doubt overlooked. Like keeping a couple hundred acres of land fallow. Not using them to raise beef or citrus or anything else that’s going to pay you back for the use of that land while taxes are eating you alive. Now that, I guarantee you, is not cheap.”
Landell pivoted around, sighting along the fence lines winging out in either direction. “All this fence. Not cheap. And that pond.” He pointed to the pond that had been dug into the brown earth for the monkeys to use as their swimming pool, cooling off during the scorching days. Even now, two youngsters were splashing happily. “Not cheap to keep water pumping through that.”
He continued his survey, looking now at the research station. “Having those buildings and that road put in. Stringing power lines all the way out here. Putting in a septic tank, a well. Phones. None of it was cheap.”
Malou was caught off guard. Like a four-year-old child, she’d entered this world and accepted it without question. The range cubes she fed the monkeys once a day during the driest part of the summer were the only expenses she’d seriously considered.
“Never thought about any of it, did you?”
Malou didn’t disagree—the truth was too obviously written on her face to attempt a lie.
“Didn’t think so. Your type never does.”
“My ‘type’?”
“Okay, those of your ‘socio-economic status.’ Those of you from the creamy top of the middle class. Correc
t me if I’m mistaken.”
Malou didn’t. Child of the suburbs, her father a university professor and mother a pharmacist, she couldn’t. Indulged, an only child, she had existed all her life at that creamy top. “Well,” she shot back, stung again by the acuity of his perceptions, “correct me if I’m wrong, but judging from your car, clothes, and speech, you haven’t exactly led a life of deprivation.”
“You’re wrong,” he stated flatly. The only elaboration he offered was, “Cars, clothes, even speech can be acquired if you want them badly enough.” Abruptly he changed the subject. “What would one of”—he pointed to the group of monkeys hovering nearby—“your little buddies sell for?”
“As a laboratory animal?” Malou choked out the words. If she hadn’t been sure Landell could find his answer in five minutes without her help, she would have refused to answer. But he could. “Fifteen hundred dollars.”
He nodded. “Fifteen hundred. Not a spectacular return, but enough to balance off some of Stallings’s debt.”
“You can’t be thinking what I’m afraid you are,” Malou said, her very worst nightmare about the troop’s future coming to life—the nightmare that all the families would be torn apart and the monkeys sold to labs.
“What? That I might be so unspeakably callous as to want to make back a fraction of the money I’ve already lost? Yes, believe it or not, that’s what I want to do.”
Malou turned away, unable to face him with the look of sick shock on her face.
“Though it’s absolutely none of your business,” Landell informed her, “I’ll tell you anyway. I got beat on this deal. Beat bad. Stallings, wonderful humanitarian and friend to monkeys everywhere that he might have been, skinned me on the loan I made to him. He represented Los Monos as a going concern, turning a healthy profit every year. He made off with roughly five times what this place could ever conceivably be worth, sunk it into that duster, then died and left me holding the bag.”
“How very discourteous of him.” The ice in Malou’s voice fairly cracked in the heat.
“So the pretense of cordiality shatters,” Landell observed. “And all because I’m not willing to fill in for Stallings as troop benefactor to the tune of a few hundred thousand a year so you can play Jane Goodall or Dian Fossey down here.”
Malou was stunned and angered to hear the names of her two childhood heroines on Landell’s lips. Stunned that he even knew of the existence of the two women who had rewritten the book on primate study, and angered that he used their names with such cynical contempt. “Those two scientists have added immeasurably to our knowledge of primate behavior.” Malou couldn’t help the note of prim outrage that tightened her voice. If she’d given in to her true emotions, she would have wept right there in front of this odious Cameron Landell. “If I can make even the smallest fraction of the contributions they have, I’d be delighted to ‘play’ them for the rest of my life.”
“You’d better start thinking about doing it on another stage,” Landell told her. “Because I’ve made all the contribution to monkey study I intend to. This whole fiasco has blown up at just about the worst time imaginable. I needed Stallings to pay back that loan with hard cash and healthy interest so that I could cover my own debts. Not that I expect you to care, but I have two very short weeks before my banker expects me to start paying off the largest note he ever allowed me to put my hands on.”
Malou looked away, unwilling to face Landell or the troubles he was telling her of. She had enough of her own.
He took his hat off and slapped it against his thigh in a gesture of annoyance. “Prepare to start dismantling this operation, Ms. Sanders. I’m selling out to the highest bidder who comes along, and if that happens to be a laboratory, so be it.”
Malou bit down hard on the inside of her mouth. She would not cry. Not now. She had to think. To do something. To stop him. A chaotic jumble of ideas churned through her mind. She blurted out the first one she could articulate.
“I won’t let you do it,” she threatened. “I have friends, reporters. If you try sacrificing the troop to your greed, I’ll plaster the paper with stories about you slaughtering innocent animals, wasting a priceless research resource.”
“So, you plan on adding monkey murderer to my list of credits. A bold threat, Malou, and not a particularly wise one. You’ve got a lot to learn about the delicate art of negotiation. For starters, it doesn’t flourish among heavy-handed threats. I think I’ve seen enough. I’ll be in touch with you about closing the place down and shipping the animals off. If you really care about them, you’d be wise to hunt up a few new homes that are to your liking.”
He strode off without a good-bye. His clipped gait now seemed almost forcefully brutal, but it was herself that Malou derided. She had been heavy-handed, and now it was too late to know what might have happened if she had been more reasonable, more open to compromise. The SUV had faded to a bloodred drop against an immense, sun-bleached background by the time Malou slumped down onto a rock.
Several juveniles cautiously approached her. Soon they were scrambling over the rock she sat on, touching her hair and clothes. As usual, though, it was her binoculars that fascinated them most. They were forever entranced by anything shiny and metallic. Anything that glinted in the sun. She felt a tiny furred paw hesitantly reach up and touch the tear shimmering on her cheek.
Malou smiled wanly at the little face lifted up to hers, just a figure-eight of deep pink inside a furry ruff. There was so much she’d never be able to make them understand, so much she never wanted them to have to understand. A glimpse of Jezebel crouching down to slurp a drink out of the pond reminded Malou that she still had to find the flighty monkey’s baby and see if she could prod Jezebel into taking up her maternal duties. With a great heaviness weighing her down, Malou stood and set off to scout the backcountry where Jezebel might have borne her infant.
Before she’d taken two leaden steps, Malou sighted Kojiwa returning to the troop. At first, Malou couldn’t believe what she was seeing. That dark spot on his chest, that couldn’t be . . . Malou grabbed for her binoculars. It was! A tiny newborn with the characteristic chocolate brown fur of the macaque infant was clinging weakly to the old fellow. He’d found the baby that the ditzy Jezebel had abandoned.
Kojiwa delivered the baby to Jezebel, transferring the infant to his mother’s chest, where it began to suck greedily. In the instant that the baby faced toward her, all Malou could register were two huge eyes staring helplessly out at a new and scary world. She christened the baby Bambi and entered the name into her census book.
Malou’s joy at the baby’s discovery was short-lived, however. She wondered darkly about what, precisely, the infant had been saved for.
Chapter 2
Cameron Landell was thirty miles outside of San Antonio before he stopped seething long enough to glance down at the speedometer and register the fact that he’d been speeding. He eased his foot off the accelerator and tried to remember the last time he’d been so provoked. Anger was a luxury he almost never allowed himself. It was a self-indulgent emotion that clouded perceptions and dimmed judgments. He could not afford to let his business judgments be either clouded or dimmed.
He’d let that happen once and look what it had gotten him. A monkey ranch, of all the bad jokes. And now, today, he’d finally gotten to the punch line—Malou Sanders. For the hundredth time, Cameron berated himself for letting the old man bamboozle him. Undoubtedly, he snorted to himself, Stallings had acted out of all the same self-righteous impulses that guided the infuriating Malou Sanders. For a fraction of a second, a memory of wheat gold hair dancing in the sunlight frisked across his mind. Cameron chased it away, tension gripping him even tighter around the neck and shoulders.
He glanced at his watch and relaxed a bit. His anger-quickened pace would put him into San Antonio in plenty of time for the closing. He even had a few spare minutes to drive by Landell Acres. He turned off on the loop that circled the sprawling city and headed west. A f
ew exits later he got off and pointed the SUV in the direction of his new development. At this point it was only row upon row of stick-figure houses, the bare bones of their frames outlining the structures they would become. The car moved slowly along dusty strips of future roads. Cameron couldn’t bother with a full inspection. He checked in with his foreman, Virgil Yates.
“Yessir, Mr. Landell, the Public Works inspector’s already been by, checked out all the new utility cuts and approved every one of ’em.”
“Good work, Virgil. Keep on it. And mind those trees we marked,” he cautioned his foreman, indicating the live oak trees with strips of orange plastic tied around their trunks. Roads serpentined around them.
“Count on it. We won’t so much as scrape the bark on any of them big boys.”
As Cameron headed out, a battered minivan pulled up at the entrance to the development and two young women and a man emerged. From the back of the car they unloaded signs that read, “Save the Golden-cheeked Warbler” and “Stop Landell Acres!!!” Cameron sighed at the familiar sight of the protesters. Odd that they’d never once bothered to come by and discuss the plight of their beloved golden-cheeked warblers with him. Just like that woman and her monkeys, all of them had jumped at the most melodramatic solution—trying to stir up public outrage rather than the less flamboyant, but usually more effective, method of private negotiation.
Minutes later, Cameron was back on the loop heading for his appointment. A deep, strangling tension grabbed him as he contemplated the upcoming meeting. He had to close on that piece of land along I-35 he was selling. He hated to do it. He knew for a fact that if he could have held on to it for a few more months, it would have appreciated in value faster than the price of an umbrella on Noah’s Ark.
That had been his strategy. Then Stallings had come along and he’d been fool enough to make the old man a short-term loan without bothering to check out the collateral he was offering. Never in a million years would he have guessed that Stallings, noted throughout south Texas for his honesty, would deadbeat on the loan. But he sure as hell had, leaving Cameron with what was euphemistically known as a “cash-flow imbalance.” He was strapped. If he didn’t raise the cash today to pay off the interest on the note on Landell Acres, he stood to lose everything.
