The Gods of Greenwich

by Norb Vonnegut

  Until he wasn’t.

  The Beemer’s engine was losing power. Up ahead, Cusack could see exit six. He could see parking lot B. He would run the last half-mile. He pulled into the breakdown lane and looked in his rearview mirror, making sure he could open the car’s door. What he saw horrified him.

  Shannon was back. The human Mack truck parked just behind the blue Beemer. He burst from his white Audi and ran toward Cusack.

  Jimmy sprang from his car and crouched in a boxer’s stance. Circling. Ready to throw a haymaker. On the highway, cars raced past the two men. When Shannon and Jimmy were no more than five feet apart, one car full of college students thundered past the two men.

  “Fight, fight, fight!” they hollered out the window.

  “That was a cute trick back there,” yelled Shannon, his bass tones cutting through the din.

  “I don’t have time for you,” Cusack yelled back.

  “In my car,” the big man ordered.

  “Get away from me,” yelled Cusack, turning toward the parking lot. “Before I kick your ass.”

  Shannon grabbed Cusack’s shoulder.

  Jimmy whirled around, cocked his arm, and threw a knockout punch from the ghost of Jack Dempsey. He aimed at the big man’s face, at the gapped teeth that looked like a broken zipper.

  Shannon hardly moved. Did not flinch. With his massive left paw of a hand, he caught Cusack’s fist and absorbed every ounce of power like a sponge.

  “Knock it off,” Shannon ordered. He controlled Cusack with his left hand, crushing Cusack’s fist like a vise, bending back the wrist, bringing the smaller man to his knees.

  “My wife’s in trouble,” Jimmy gasped, uncertain what to say, bending lower and lower under the big man’s power.

  Shannon eased his grip, allowing Cusack to stand. “I know.”

  “Say what?” asked Cusack. He was confused. Shannon was no longer crushing his hand.

  “Get in the car.”

  “I need to help Emi.”

  “We’ll reach her faster if you get in my car.”

  “Who the hell are you?” Cusack demanded, heading toward Shannon’s Audi.

  “I’m the cavalry. But you can call me Daryle Fucking Lamonica.”

  CHAPTER FIFTY-EIGHT

  HOLD ME CLOSE AND HOLD ME FAST …

  “Hello.” Leeser answered Cusack’s cell phone, silencing the Louis Armstrong ringtone.

  Nothing.

  “Hello.”

  Nothing.

  Leeser scrutinized Emi, his eyes like slits, hers round and ripping with the “guilty” look of a mug shot. He clicked off the phone and reached out his hand, palm up. “Let’s have it.”

  “What?” She pretended not to understand.

  Rachel reached into Emi’s coat pocket and pulled out the phone. Emi had punched in Cusack’s number before Cy and Rachel nabbed her. She pressed the Dial button, cell phone buried in her pocket, and connected with a nightmare.

  “See what I borrowed from your better half.” Cy flashed Cusack’s BlackBerry. His coal eyes glowed, more from anxiety than triumph. His long black hair, always so carefully coiffed, had gone on strike. It dangled in his face, ruffled and askew.

  “Where’s James?”

  “Waiting his turn,” gloated Rachel.

  “We need to move.” Cy glanced at his watch and then scanned the paths. Nobody was in sight. He was nervous. Anxious to move along. Field operations were never his thing.

  Emi tried to stall. Anything to buy time. Anything to attract attention. But how? She dragged her feet, lumbered from the weight of her pregnancy.

  Rachel poked Emily in the ribs with the Taser. “Stop acting like a seal.”

  “I need to pee,” snapped Emily. It was the only excuse that came to mind.

  Leeser rolled his eyes.

  “Keep walking,” instructed Rachel. “You’ll pee your brains out in the polar bear pen. The bladder’s the first thing to go.” The familiar instincts had returned. Rachel was toying with her prey.

  “I need a bathroom,” Emi insisted.

  “Shut the fuck up,” Leeser barked, his voice taught and strained. “Or I’ll fucking zap you myself.” He looked left, right, and checked everywhere. Fieldwork was not his thing.

  Rachel shrugged her shoulders. “I really wanted a primer on the polar bear.”

  “Let’s get this over with,” snapped Leeser.

  * * *

  Shannon roared past parking lot B, thirty miles per hour too fast. The Audi rumbled up to the admissions gate, scattering visitors left and right. Cusack and the big man bounced out of the car and raced through the zoo’s entrance.

  “What’s wrong with you?” a woman scolded. She was pushing a stroller.

  “Hey, what are you doing?” yelled one of the attendants. She was dressed in a zoo uniform. “You can’t park here.”

  “Take care of it,” Shannon shouted. Never breaking stride, he flipped his keys to the uniformed woman.

  “This isn’t valet parking,” she barked, snatching his key ring from the air.

  “Call the police,” screamed Shannon. “We need help fast.” He never stopped. Never broke stride. He hurdled the turnstile, hundred-meter style, leading into the Bronx Zoo.

  “Do you know Emi Cusack?” Jimmy asked an attendant.

  “She’s the scientist,” she replied. “Pregnant, right?”

  “Have you seen her?”

  “She works at the World of Reptiles.”

  “I know,” Cusack responded, unable to mask his annoyance. He broke into a run.

  “She likes to eat at the Somba Village,” the woman called.

  “You guys need to pay,” another employee hollered.

  Shannon and Cusack raced full bore. They turned left at the World of Birds, Bison Range off to the right. Tiger Mountain, and they turned left again.

  Shannon never broke a sweat.

  “We split up at the bears,” Cusack panted. “You go left to Somba Village. I go right for the World of Reptiles.”

  “Roger that.”

  They abandoned the plan immediately. In the distance Cusack saw Emi, Cy, and a woman dressed in black. “There they are,” he panted, air heaving from his lungs.

  Shannon darted forward, leaving Jimmy in a cloud of dust. “Come on,” he growled over his shoulder.

  * * *

  Cy, Rachel, and Emi marched past the grizzly pen. Every other second, Leeser pushed Emi from behind. “Pick up the pace.”

  Two massive bears lounged in a pool shaped like an oversized hot tub. One bear’s flank was turned to the other. The second grizzly scrubbed the first one’s back. Emi hesitated for a moment, only to feel the cattle prod from Rachel’s C2 Taser.

  “Down the stairs,” ordered Leeser.

  Rachel gestured with her pink stun gun. A couple emerged from a small seating area to the left. Rachel poked the Taser into Emi’s side. The jab hurt, but nothing like the excruciating pain of 50,000 volts electrocuting baby Yaz.

  Emi winced. Said nothing. The three walked down the stairs. No one was in sight outside the polar bear pen.

  Leeser spied the bear. It was white. It was huge, at least one thousand pounds of raw feeding power.

  “What’s wrong with that thing?” Cy muttered.

  On the left side of the pen, the tall lanky polar bear walked to one cave. It retraced its steps and walked to another. Over and over the bear checked the caves, back and forth, first one then the other, as though locked in a stiff-gaited OCD trance.

  “Maybe Osama bin Laden is hiding in there,” replied Rachel.

  “Push her in,” demanded Leeser.

  “We need the hot dogs,” Rachel replied.

  Emi blinked, unsure what to expect.

  “Make this fast,” Leeser snapped, “before anybody gets close.” He scanned the perimeter for gawkers.

  The three walked along a split-rail fence separating visitors from a ten-foot ravine that prevented the polar bear from escaping. The bear could descend stee
p stairs into the ravine. But it could not climb out of the ten-foot gully into the open zoo. Nor could visitors who fell in.

  Rachel trained her Taser on Emi the whole time, never losing focus, never veering, not once. She reached into her black bag and pulled out two of the hot dogs. With a quick, underhand motion, the cleaner tossed them onto the stairs leading to the great, ten-foot ravine.

  The polar bear stopped checking the caves. The giant beast raised its long snout to the air, sniffing something foreign. It bellowed once and bounded for the stairs in long, gangly strides. Drawing closer and closer. Fangs glistening in the morning light.

  Leeser could not believe its speed. “Push her in.”

  A twig snapped.

  “That thing can outrun the beaters on an electric mixer,” whistled Rachel, checking for the source of the noise, delaying on purpose.

  Emi and Rachel had seen the polar bear charge before, Emi as a scientist and Rachel during practice runs. Emi’s heart beat like a bongo drum. Rachel burned with anticipation.

  “Watch this, Kemosabe,” the nurse crowed, proud of her animal trick, the way she wrenched the bear from its cave ritual.

  In a flash the polar bear seized the hot dogs and sucked them down. Gnawing. Gnashing. Gulping in frenzied motion. It raised its massive head to the three gawkers as though to say, “More. I want more.”

  Rachel spied two women at the grizzly pen. They turned and walked away.

  “Okay, Emily,” taunted Rachel. “What’s it going to be?”

  “Push her in,” Leeser barked. “And let’s get the fuck out of here.”

  Rachel paid no attention. “The easy way or the hard way?” she asked Emi.

  “What are you talking about?”

  “You’re stoic,” observed Rachel, still checking the coast was clear. “I’ll give you that. Not even a quiver of the lip.”

  “You got three seconds to jump,” bellowed Cy. “Or we fucking Tase you in the gut, in which case you’re falling anyway. You make the call.”

  CHAPTER FIFTY-NINE

  BREAKFAST …

  Polar bears, otherwise known as Ursus maritimus, are the world’s largest walking carnivores. In the wilderness adult males reach 1,500 pounds, about twelve times the weight of an average Great Dane. There are reports of some bears tipping the scales at a ton.

  They require four or five pounds of fat every day just to survive. Their stomachs, however, hold much more—up to 20 percent of their body weight. Grown males can ingest up to 300 pounds of meat. That’s like a 180-pound man eating 144 quarter-pounders in one day.

  Ringed seals, which weigh about 120 pounds, are the favorite meal of Ursus maritimus. On land the bears stalk the seals, creeping closer and closer, white fur, arctic ice. When their prey is fifteen feet away, the polars charge furiously. They nab the seal heads, clutching and tearing and gnawing with four fearsome canines.

  These canines are longer, sharper, and set wider apart than those found in other bears. The extra space improves the ripping motion and makes it easier to peel flesh from bones. The other thirty-eight teeth don’t get in the way.

  With seal heads lodged deep inside four canines, the polars flip their quarry through the air, end over end, to safer spots on the ice. Ursus maritimus eat the skin and fat first, followed by the meat. They rinse frequently in the nearby arctic waters. Things get sloppy with all the blood and blubber, the chomping and crunching of forty-two teeth, the matting of white fur under the gush of entrails.

  Watching polar bears feed is a fearsome sight.

  * * *

  Rachel waved the C2 Taser toward the polar bear and ordered, “Move it, sugar.”

  “Is it money you want?” Emi begged Cy.

  “Hurry up because early don’t last all day.” Rachel poked Emi in the flat of her back, and pain shot up the pregnant woman’s spine.

  “How much is enough, Cy?”

  Rachel smacked the back of Emi’s head and said, “Get on with it.”

  “You do that again, lady, and I won’t be able to help you.”

  Rachel prodded her with the Taser.

  Emi picked one leg up over the split-rail fence, then the other. She moved stiffly, slowly, trying to devise Plan B. She peered down the ten-foot gully, trembling, too afraid to scream, uncertain what was worse—50,000 volts or the bear’s teeth. She eyed the polar bear.

  The polar bear eyed her back and licked its chops, a long pink tongue slathering round its snout of forty-two teeth: four canines, twelve incisors, sixteen premolars, and ten molars.

  Yaz kicked deep inside the womb as Emi studied Rachel, trying to find some way out of this mess. She could feel her knees buckling, her balance giving way.

  “What kind of woman are you?” Emi demanded.

  “The last one,” snorted Rachel, “you’ll ever see.”

  On the other side of the split-rail fence, Leeser chafed from the chitchat. “Come on, Rachel, push her in.”

  And Rachel Whittier nudged Emi Cusack closer to the edge of the ten-foot ravine with her metallic pink stun gun.

  “Use your fucking syringe,” instructed Leeser. “Do something. We gotta go.”

  Emi screamed.

  * * *

  A freight train flashed behind the two women. Something dark. Something black.

  The Taser tumbled from Rachel’s hand, skittered into the bushes. The bag full of hot dogs flew from her shoulder. Emi slipped. And a woman tumbled into the ravine. She went down butt first with a sickening thud.

  Somehow, she righted herself and yelped like a seal.

  The polar bear roared. Its bellows drowned out the woman’s screams. The sound carried for miles, the fierce thunder of violence in the wild.

  Ursus maritimus charged down the stairs, its movement clumsy on the steep incline. The polar bear skidded. Its massive hindquarters scooted under forepaws.

  The creature rolled, ass under elbows, but just for a moment. It regained footing. It stormed toward the screaming prey. The polar bear opened its mouth wide and angry, wide enough to swallow a seal head, all four canines glistening under the October sun.

  Every animal in the Bronx Zoo—painted dogs to gelada baboons—pricked their ears. They sniffed. They waited. They smelled death wafting through the air.

  The woman turned. She legged it, polar bear on her tail. She was slow off the mark, her ankle twisted from the fall.

  The bear lunged. It struck like a guided missile. Its powerful jaws engulfed the woman’s head. And they locked. For the first time in a long, long time, the polar bear savored the satisfying crunch of teeth against skull and oatmeal.

  CHAPTER SIXTY

  SECONDS EARLIER …

  Emi teetered backward and started to fall. Rachel sensed motion and whipped around. It was too late.

  Shannon grabbed Emi with his left hand. He jerked hard. Just in time. The pregnant woman sailed past him onto the safety of the landing. Landed in the brush.

  “Dammit,” screamed Leeser.

  Shannon’s right arm slammed against Rachel. She flipped from the impact, arms windmilling, grabbing, searching. Shannon reached for her arm but missed.

  Rachel crashed into the ravine.

  “Fuck you,” screamed Leeser, a murderous rumble rising from the back of his throat. He charged Shannon’s back.

  LeeWell Capital’s head of security was a massive target of opportunity. Vulnerable, poised on the brink over the polar bear’s ravine. His back turned to Cy. Exposed to the blow that would send him over the edge.

  * * *

  Cusack, three steps behind Shannon, launched at Leeser. Shoulders low, he flew through the air and speared him. He blasted against the money manager, whipped him off to the side like a sack of laundry.

  The two men crashed the fence hard. Cusack’s head cracked against the railing. The impact dazed him. Round and round they rolled. Leeser came up on top.

  He punched Jimmy with a crushing blow to the cheekbones. Left. Right. Fists like his voice, the double-punch rhyt
hm of a speed bag. Something cracked. Cusack’s face started to give way. It felt like a cantaloupe that had gone rotten and all mushy.

  Leeser clambered to his feet and ran. A small crowd had gathered. He pushed through, some people gawking, but most gaping into the ravine where the massive bear was chewing Rachel Whittier’s scarred right hand. Her head looked like hamburger. The crowd, so late to arrive that morning, screamed in horror.

  * * *

  Cusack was dazed. Losing consciousness. Face pulpy.

  He shook his head, waking even as his brain screamed, “Sleep.” His ribs pulsed. He glanced at Leeser running through the crowds and up the stairs.

  “James,” screamed Emi. Blood trickled from his cheekbone. His jaw was already swelling, his right eye beginning to shut. She lumbered for him.

  Cusack struggled to his feet. His face twisted more crooked than ever. He hugged Emi and ran, wincing, shedding the grogginess. At the top of the stairs, Cusack sighted Leeser.

  Cy glimpsed left and scanned right, confused by the zoo’s directions. Even the staff found them bewildering. He darted toward Somba Village.

  Pain. A thousand knives ripped through Cusack’s face. Another thousand ripped through his side. He was out of breath. He had cracked two ribs from his crash against the rail. He legged it anyway.

  Cusack flew across the clearing, the grizzly pen to the left. One of the two grizzlies bellowed and raised an arm. Visitors parted as Cusack chased after his boss.

  Leeser cut through a wide corridor, high walls and open at the top. He raced through a booth with glass panels for viewing into the Baboon Reserve. He exited into the seating area at the Somba Village. A handful of mothers chatted with each other as they checked their baby strollers every thirty seconds to ensure all was okay.

  Cusack, younger by fifteen years, caught Leeser. Flinching from the pain, Jimmy grabbed Cy’s left shoulder and spun him around. With an uppercut from the right, he hammered Leeser’s left jaw with torque and a fist resurrected from the old neighborhood.

  Leeser’s head snapped. But he caught himself. He popped Cusack’s nose with a quick jab. Blood squirted everywhere. Cy, the better boxer, turned to run.

  Jimmy, the better runner, caught his boss and threw a wild right. He somehow nailed Cy’s nose, mushing cartilage against cheek, and the fight was on. The two men circled. Cusack squared, blocking the direction Cy had been running.