Mary had to talk to Katy, explain what was going on. She went out and sat down on the concrete next to her daughter, who was staring intently at the ground.
“What are you doing?” Mary asked.
“Watching the ants,” Katy replied.
A column of Pavement Ants (Tetramorium caespitum) marched along the concrete, each carrying a disproportionately large load.
Katy thought ants were pretty cool, especially after her dad had told her about the vicious Legionary Ants (Labidus coecus), sometimes called Army Ants. These ferocious pests routinely devoured other insects as well as small vertebrate animals like chickens. Intrigued and motivated by that gruesome tidbit, Katy had done a little research on her own, borrowing some of her dad’s insect books, and had discovered that some ants actually enslaved ants from other species. Wow! Imagine that! Ant slaves! They were probably forced to make their masters’ beds and clean up their rooms and take out the garbage and stuff like that.
Katy also read that another kind of ant actually secreted formic acid from its anal glands. Ouch! she thought, but still, pretty cool.
Mary watched as Katy picked up a twig and laid it in the ants’ path, being careful not to crush any of the workers. The ants hesitated briefly, while a flurry of antennae communicated that their minions should walk over the obstacle and carry on their job—complaints would not be entertained.
“Honey,” Mary said softly, “I’m sorry I took you away from your dad. Can I try and explain?”
Katy didn’t look up as she spoke to her mother. “‘Member the last time Daddy tried to start the business and he got real sad when it wasn’t working and you told him you believed in him and you’d support him and stuff and said he should keep at it as long as it was what he wanted to do? ‘Member?”
Mary smiled wryly and nodded; she was afraid she knew where her precocious little doodlebug was going.
“Why are things different now?” Katy asked, hitting below the belt with a perceptive point.
“Well, honey, sometimes, especially when you get older, things don’t turn out to be as simple as you thought they were.”
Mary picked up a small rock and put it in the ants’ path. They walked around it and continued their work.
“Do you still love Daddy?”
“Of course I do. It’s just that he didn’t keep his word to me and I got upset and I thought he might need time to think about what he did.”
“You didn’t keep your word either. ‘Cause you said you’d do whatever you had to so he could work with the bugs until he got it right.”
Katy was determined to nail her on this.
“Well…you’re right, honey. I guess your dad and I both need time to think about it.”
Mary blocked the ants’ path with a large leaf and watched as about fifty of them assembled and pulled the leaf out of the way. It seemed that no matter what obstacle she put in front of them, they would overcome it.
As Mary continued testing the ants, she discovered how remarkably strong and resolute they were. They reminded her of Bob. Except, of course, for their geniculated antennae.
Chapter Thirty-three
The security force around the Bolivian fortress of Miguel and Ronaldo DeJesus Rivieria was as impressive as it was expensive—fifty well-armed soldiers patrolled the grounds; sentries with full night-vision goggles watched from a dozen twenty foot tall towers; heat and motion sensors dotted the hillside and connected to a central security computer, and attack dogs patrolled both inside and outside the twelve foot high wall that surrounded the compound. Every member of the force also had state-of-the-art communications equipment and all were well trained in how to deal with intruders.
The only person ever to attempt an assassination here had been tracked from 2,000 yards outside the wall by a sophisticated tracking device installed in the flora surrounding the compound. The guards had known in advance, however, that the killer was coming. And as any security consultant will tell you, information, especially inside information, beats electronics any day of the week.
That last attempt had come when a high-ranking member of the Medellin cartel’s security force had betrayed his employer and sold Miguel information regarding an assassination attempt. He even supplied Miguel with the day of the hit.
After consulting with the head of security, Ronaldo and Miguel decided to let the killer get inside so he would have nowhere to run when they descended on him.
The day came and so did the killer. All along the watchtowers, the sentries kept a view while Miguel and Ronaldo watched from inside on video monitors. The killer must have felt proud and invisible after bypassing the electric perimeter, scaling the wall, and getting halfway to the palace without the slightest hitch. It would have been a short-lived euphoria, however. After the gunfire stopped, the bullet-riddled gunman was stripped to the bone by the vicious and hungry dogs.
As Ronaldo stood over the mangled corpse, he turned to his brother and said, “Pride, my young brother, goeth before the fall.”
Miguel, as it turned out, knew his Proverbs better than Ronaldo. He recited, “Pride goeth before destruction, and an haughty spirit before a fall.’”
What followed as they headed back inside was a pedant’s debate on quotation and paraphrasing.
But that was almost a year ago. Since then, there had been no breaches of security and the latest CIA contract on Ronaldo seemed no cause for alarm. Or so they thought.
It was after midnight when the ski-masked man dressed entirely in black stood on Ronaldo’s balcony looking down. Oddly, he pulled out a grappling hook, attached it to the railing and tossed the rope to the ground below.
The masked man then tried the door leading inside. Damn! It was locked. He then tried a nearby window. It was open, so the man climbed in.
A moment later and the man in black was in the bedroom, standing ominously at the foot of Ronaldo’s bed. Ronaldo, who never slept well due to his appetite for alkaloids, sensed something and woke, fumbling around for the light. When he finally turned the switch, illuminating the room with a harsh 75 watts, he saw the man in black raise his gun.
“Madre de dios! No!” Ronaldo pleaded to no avail.
FWUMP! FWUMP! Two silenced shots, one dead drug lord.
The man in black peeked out the doorway then calmly exited through the door to the hall. He slipped down and into Miguel’s room.
Once inside, he flipped on the lights and peeled off his ski-mask. It was, perhaps, the only man capable of circumventing the security forces. It was Miguel, Ronaldo’s next-of-kin.
He quickly stripped to his briefs and put on a bathrobe. He then mussed his hair and hit the alarm button before bursting back into the hallway screaming, “Seal the compound! There is an assassin! Someone has shot my brother! Get the doctor!”
Mayhem ensued. Within seconds twenty soldiers appeared, all with guns drawn. They searched for the killer as Miguel stayed at Ronaldo’s side feigning grief.
Outside the dogs barked in a blood-hunting frenzy. Shots occasionally fired into the dark Bolivian night.
Several soldiers poked around in closets and behind the furniture while Miguel laid the grief on pretty thick. Suddenly, and much to Miguel’s surprise, Ronaldo lurched, his chest heaving for air.
Was that a gasp for breath?! Did anyone see it?! Miguel wondered.
In an exaggerated show of anguish, Miguel began wailing. He embraced Ronaldo’s head, smothering his nose and mouth to snuff out whatever life might have been left. The gurgling noises muffled into Miguel’s sour armpit and Ronaldo finally kicked the bucket—or, as Ronaldo’s uncle from Nicaragua might have said, he peeled the garlic. Then again, if Ronaldo himself had been given his choice of idiom for the occasion, he might have chosen what they said in El Salvador…he tied up his bundle.
Ronaldo always loved the idioms of
Central and South America. He felt they were more colorful than their English counterparts. For example, whereas a Bolivian in New York would be a fish out of water, a New Yorker in Bolivia would be a cockroach at a chicken dance. But of course none of that mattered anymore because Ronaldo was dead as a dodo.
A soldier checked the locked balcony doors, another looked in the lavatory. “He came in through the bathroom window!” the soldier yelled.
“Well, what are you waiting for?” Miguel barked. “Find him! Kill him! No, bring him to me! I will kill him with my bare hands!” Miguel was quite the thespian. “And you!” he said as he grabbed a passing soldier. “Alert the press! Tell them my brother has been killed by an American assassin and that I have a statement for them!”
The security forces and the hounds combed the compound and the surrounding mountainside until daybreak, but no killer was ever found. The grappling hook and rope were the only clues left behind.
Miguel eventually called off the search and gathered the entire security force into the large flagstone courtyard. The men were relieved to hear that Miguel wasn’t angry the assassin had escaped. However, there was a nasty rumor going around that someone was going to have to pay for letting the assassin into the palace in the first place. And they soon realized that a large flagstone courtyard in the center of the palace was a great spot for a grieving relative with an automatic weapon to exact revenge.
But in the end, Miguel did little more than shove a few of the men around and call them ‘fraidy cats, weenie-boys, and pussies before heading off to take over the business.
He swept into Ronaldo’s office and, over the next several days, redecorated. There was a garish $4,000 Caucasus Mountains kilim for the south wall displayed far too close to the $3,200 Peruvian corner cabinet. The $1,500 Bernard Colin hand-forged coffee table clashed with the $9,500-a-pair Spanish Colonial Revival bronze floor lamps. The $10,000 monumental Art Deco floor vase threatened to scuffle with the $3,800 1910s Duffner & Kimberley stained glass lamp, while the $5,800 English pine case clock revolted against the $1,600 Orkney Islands chair with the rush back.
In the midst of the impending furniture skirmish, a soldier entered.
“Are the reporters here?” Miguel asked.
The soldier nodded.
“Show them in.”
The soldier ushered three dozen reporters into the office. Miguel was blinded by the exploding xenon flashes that fired repeatedly from the still cameras and the brutal beams of electric blue light that sprayed from the video units. Miguel winced and shielded his eyes as the reporters peppered him with questions about his brother’s death. Miguel raised a hand to silence them.
“Please, I have a statement to read. I will not entertain your questions.” He produced a piece of paper and read from it: “Awhile ago we learned that America’s Central Intelligence Agency had put out a contract on my brother. Several days ago,” Miguel said, pausing, “it appears they succeeded.”
Miguel took a moment to feign gathering himself. He wanted to display machismo in the face of grief. “On his death bed, Ronaldo said three things to me. First, he said I was to take control of all Riviera business interests. Second, he said I was to avenge his death. Third, and finally, he said ‘capullo de rosa.’”
As members of the press glanced curiously at one another murmuring “Rosebud,” Miguel pressed a button on his desk. The office door swung open and the scribes gasped in unison when they saw the man called Ramon.
His features were disfigured and menacing. The scarring on the right side of his face was the result of a blow torch savagely applied by pro-Sandinista forces during Ramon’s days as an optimistic political science major in his native Nicaragua. Ramon had hoped one day to run for office to unite his people and bring peace and prosperity to his country. Unfortunately one of his term papers, a poorly written biography of Augusto Cesar Sandino, fell into the wrong hands and was thoroughly misinterpreted. What resulted was best described as a very bad mark.
In a cruel, if simple, twist of fate, two months after the blow torch incident, the left side of Ramon’s face was splashed with hydrochloric acid by U.S.-backed Contra rebels who read and also misinterpreted his Sandino paper.
Souring on the political process in his native land, Ramon—now an angry, mean-spirited man—packed his bags and moved to Bolivia. There he joined Riviera’s private army where he became an expert in the use of high explosives as a means of influencing elected officials and members of the judiciary.
Miguel gestured at Ramon. “I am sending my best soldier to avenge my brother’s death.” Miguel hammered his fist on the podium as he spoke with increasing intensity. “I will not rest until this American assassin, this Exterminator, is cold in his grave with bugs feasting on his rotting flesh!”
Chapter Thirty-four
Mike Wolfe looked at Ronaldo Riviera’s file and smiled. He opened his top drawer and removed a rubber stamp. He moistened the stamp with red ink and stamped the file—“inactive.” He closed the file and handed it to Parker. “Well, I think our Mr. Dillon may have just cracked the top ten list. Pay the man.”
Parker dutifully went to his computer. He moused around on the pad, rolling and clicking and electronically sending the necessary information to the accounting department, where it was promptly processed.
Two stories down in accounts payable, the paper platen spooled a blank check into the check printer. The account name on the check was Consolidated International Associates, Inc. At “Pay to the order of,” a laser-sharp stream of black ink neatly spit the name “Bob Dylan” onto the check. The machine then paused, as if sensing its mistake. Efficiently reversing itself, it erased n-a-l-y-D. A second later, correcting the error, it spelled out D-i-1-1-o-n. Then, under “Amount,” “One Million dollars and no/100.”
Chapter Thirty-five
The Lexington Avenue local was crowded for the early morning commute—greedy lawyers and investment bankers heading downtown buried their heads ostrich-like in the sand of their Wall Street Journals, secretaries stared vacantly into their bleak futures, and frightened elderly couples clung desperately to one another hoping they wouldn’t be killed before lunch.
Standing among the huddled masses yearning to be free was Bob with his tool kit and several more boxes of bugs marked “Assassins, Strain Two.”
Unlike the others, Bob was looking forward to the day. He was on his way to the Lower East Side, where he would move his second strain of hybrids into a dilapidated apartment building. This, he hoped, would bring him one day closer to perfecting his method and one day closer to a reunion with Mary and Katy.
Doing his best to avoid threatening anyone with eye contact, Bob read the overhead advertisement for the Gay and Lesbian Lover Psychological Abuse Hotline that was next to an ad promising Clear Beautiful Skin via some sort of chemical peel.
Directly beneath that ad was an elderly woman standing in the aisle, struggling to hold on to her purse and the stanchion at the same time. Seated in front of the teetering old woman was a man wearing a fatigue jacket and a bushy blond beard that looked like an electrocuted cat.
Suddenly the man screamed, “She’s a big girl now and she belongs to me!” He looked around to see if anyone wanted to argue the point. There were no takers.
Bob remembered the man from the day he quit his job with Bug-Off. The man’s suspiciously darting eyes complimented nicely the facial tic that danced on the left side of his face. You didn’t need a Rorschach to see this guy was nuttier than pecan pie—an amalgam of Norman Bates, Bernard Goetz, and Colin Ferguson from the paranoid school of schizophrenia. He was the sort who was prone to scratch where it didn’t itch.
Still, certifiable or not, it was rude to make the grandmotherly woman stand, so Bob broke one of the many unwritten rules of the city and spoke up.
“Hey, pal, why don’t you let the lady sit down?” he said.<
br />
Before the words were out of his mouth, Bob knew he had screwed up.
The man’s face twisted tight, threatening to pinch off his nose. He reached aggressively into his jacket.
“Uh, listen,” Bob said nervously. “If you’d rather not, it’s okay. I know how sometimes you just have to sit. Right now, for instance. No problem, forget I mentioned it.”
But it appeared to be too late, the damage had been done. The man looked like a human thermonuclear device rapidly approaching critical mass.
Suddenly, six passengers leapt to their feet and forced the disinclined elderly woman to sit.
“I said fuckitallgoddammit!” the lunatic screamed again. “You ain’t gonna keep me down on Maggie’s farm no more! No sir!” Then, as if he had settled his inner dispute, the man calmed noticeably, snatched a section of newspaper from the floor, and began reading.
The elderly woman closed her eyes and prayed.
Bob and his bugs remained standing until he transferred to the Sixth Avenue local at Washington Square.
Bob emerged from the subway on Delancey Street and began his trek through the Lower East Side, looking for a run-down apartment building with a Silverstein Enterprises sign in the window.
At Bowery he passed a woman wearing a leopard-skin, pillbox hat, bell bottoms, platform shoes, and blue-tinted granny glasses. He watched as the woman crossed Delancey and disappeared into the Planet Waves Beauty Salon.
This used to be Little Italy, but the neighborhood had lately been subsumed by an ever expanding Chinatown. Tough-looking Asian kids with Elvis hairdos played handball and hoops where Pacino types had once ruled. All that was left of Little Italy seemed centered on Mulberry, Hester, and Grand Streets a couple of blocks southwest of there.
Bob continued down Bowery before crossing over to Chrystie Street, where he found the apartment building he was looking for. It was white with key-lime-green trim and a matching fire escape. He fished a large ring of keys from his pocket, unlocked the door, and entered the neglected structure. This would be the new home for Bob’s second strain of hybrids.
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