Garth stood close by, watching the wolf‘s reactions carefully, and he didn’t object when Mary removed the animal’s muzzle. On his way back to the house he picked up the jacket off the lawn, then put it at the back of the top shelf of a closet before going to the phone.
“Yeah.”
“You took your goddamn sweet time, pal.”
“You want to tell me what’s on your mind, or do you want me to hang up?”
“I’m calling about the ad in the paper. You’ve got something that belongs to me.”
“What?”
“A wolf.”
“Right.”
“I want it back. I’ll give you a couple of bucks for your trouble.”
“Where are you?”
“Blauvelt.”
“I’ll meet you at Hook Mountain in Nyack, in the parking lot down by the beach, in half an hour,” Garth said, and then hung up without waiting for a reply.
He checked on Mary, who was playing with, “working,” the wolf, then went to his car and drove south to the state park in Upper Nyack, where he was waiting, sitting on a picnic table, when the wolf’s owner arrived in a battered, rusting Jeep with two bumper stickers proclaiming White Power and a large window decal depicting a white bolt of lightning flashing across a red cross on a yellow background. The three young men in the car looked like identical triplets with their shaved heads; they were dressed alike in studded black leather jackets, pants, and boots, and even wore the same contemptuous sneers.
The man driving the Jeep got out, looked around, settled on Garth, and swaggered over to him. Garth put his age at twenty-three or four. His face was a map work of purplish acne scars that almost matched his maroon eyes. He stopped in front of Garth, put his hands on his hips.
“You the guy I talked to on the phone about the wolf?”
“Yep.”
“Where is it?”
“Home.”
“What the hell-?!”
“The ad said to call for information, which is what I’m looking for. I’m not here to give the wolf back. I want to know how you got it.”
“It’s none of your damn business,” the man replied in a tone that was marked as much by surprise as anger. Then he signaled to his two companions. “You must be out of your mind, pal.”
The other two identically dressed young men sauntered across the parking lot, stopped on either side of the scar-faced man to form a wall of flesh and studded black leather.
The wolf’s owner leaned very close to Garth. “Now, what were you saying about not giving me back my wolf?”
“It’s my wife’s fault that I can’t give him back to you,” Garth replied easily. “She’s an animal lover, and she doesn’t like the way you’ve been treating him. She wondered how he happened to end up in the river.”
“He ended up in the river because I kicked his ass off my friend’s boat,” the scar-faced man said with a humorless laugh that was filled with malice. “I’ve got two of ’em, and they were acting up and pissing all over the place. Now I can’t do anything with the other one, and I’m thinking of blowing the bitch’s brains out. I may shoot this one too if it doesn’t come around, but that’ll be my choice. Now why don’t you come along with us? We’ll go to your house to pick up my wolf, and then we’ll bring you back to your car.”
It explained what the wolf was doing in the river, Garth thought, as well as its desperate struggle against tide and current; it was swimming in the direction where its mate had gone. “I don’t think there’s room in your Jeep for all of us,” Garth said, and when he saw the owner’s two companions reach into their pockets, he slammed his foot into the groin of the man on his right, then abruptly shoved off the table as he brought the heel of his right hand up under the scar-faced man’s jaw, breaking it. The wolf’s owner slumped unconscious to the ground next to his writhing companion. Garth stepped over the body, then turned to face the third man, who was standing as if frozen to the spot, his mouth open. Finally he brought his hand, which held a knife, all the way out of his pocket. He flicked his wrist, and a six-inch blade snapped out of the handle.
“That’s a mistake,” Garth said to the young man who would later come upon him on Floyd Kunkel’s estate after pointing him to it. He stooped down over the scar-faced man at his feet and unbuckled the thick leather belt the man wore, snapping it from around his waist. Then, lazily swinging the buckle end of the belt over his head, he slowly advanced on the young man holding the knife. “I doubt very much that you’ve ever killed anyone, my young friend. You like to try to scare people to death. I’m just the opposite; I don’t care if you’re scared, but I will kill you if you don’t drop that knife. Look around, and you’ll see lots of people staring at us. They’ll testify that I was attacked by three skinhead thugs. No problem.”
When the man suddenly threw the knife to the ground, turned and started to run for the car, Garth snapped, “Hold it!” The man stopped, slowly turned back. Garth pointed to the two men on the ground. “There’s no littering here. Take your garbage with you.”
Still lazily swinging the belt, Garth sat back down on the bench and watched as the man with the large, muddy brown eyes helped the man Garth had kicked in the groin to his feet. Together, they carried the scar-faced man back to the Jeep, threw him in the back, and quickly drove away. Garth noted the plate number, intending to pass it on to Jeffrey Bond, whom he found waiting for him when he returned home. The Cairn chief of police was sitting in the music room with Mary, who looked pale and upset.
“We’ve got a problem with your wolf, Garth,” the policeman said, rising to his feet as Garth entered the room. “A report just came in of an incident up in Ulster County. Yesterday an animal described as a wolf was let loose in a synagogue. There was a group of men, a minyan, praying in there. The wolf attacked. It killed one man, managed to get at his throat, and chewed up three others pretty good before somebody managed to get to a phone and call the police. They came and shot it.”
Garth looked away as he felt sorrow well in him at the thought of the shock and horror the men must have felt as a gray juggernaut of death suddenly exploded into their midst. He would never understand the thinking of those responsible for the releasing of the wolf, but he did understand hatred. He hated. He despised these purveyors of hatred and death to the core of his being, and their very existence offended him. They were the human pustules on the face of life his mother had spoken of so often to his brother and him when they were children, the holes in the world through which good escaped and evil entered. He looked back at Jeffrey Bond, said, “The attack took place yesterday. It wasn’t our wolf.”
Bond stared at Garth for a few moments, slowly blinked. “That’s an odd reaction.”
“What’s an odd reaction?”
“You don’t seem surprised.”
“I’m not surprised.” Garth reached into his pocket, took out the slip of paper on which he had written the plate number of the Jeep, handed it to the policeman, “That’s the license-plate number of a Jeep that I think belongs to the wolf’s owner. He may live in Blauvelt, but if he doesn’t, it should be easy enough to find out where he does live. I just met him and two of his buddies. They’re skinheads, neo-Nazis probably allied with the Angry Cross people who run your friendly little bookshop here in town. You should have the Orangetown Police check this guy out, because he says he has another wolf—a female.”
Bond studied his friend’s face, nodded. “I’ll certainly do that. How did you come to meet these skinheads?”
“I put an ad in the paper about the wolf. One of them answered it.”
“You were thinking of giving the wolf back?”
“I was thinking of trying to find out who’s breeding those animals here, or carting them down from Alaska.”
“I appreciate your bringing this matter to my attention,” Bond said carefully, narrowing his eyes slightly. “Everybody knows that you and your brother are the best private investigators in the business, but this has become a
personal thing with you. Now, why don’t you call your friends in Alaska like you said you would, and let me do my job?”
“I’m not interfering with the police, Jeff. And I am looking into this on behalf of a client.”
“You didn’t tell me that. May I ask who it is?”
“Mary, give me a dollar.”
Mary looked at her husband in surprise. “What? My purse is in the bedroom.”
“Jeff, lend Mary a dollar, would you?”
The police chief sighed and rolled his eyes, then took out his wallet and handed Mary a dollar bill, which Garth immediately took from her. “I’d hate to have you think I was acting like an amateur, Chief,” Garth said with a slight smile. “Now Mary’s officially my client. She’s a very serious animal rights person, and this business of wolf captivity and mutilation offends her.”
“That’s right,” Mary said, stepping close to her husband and kissing him loudly on the cheek.
The police chief grunted, shook his head. “Why don’t you two righteous animal lovers take me to see this hairy friend of yours?”
Garth and Mary led the police chief out of and around the house to where the wolf was staked. The animal looked up, immediately leaped to its feet, bared its fangs, and charged to the end of its chain, where it was yanked back. It charged again, ears back flat against its head as it struggled to get at the man standing between Garth and Mary.
Jeffrey Bond paled, took a step backward, and reached for his gun.
“Jeff, no!” Mary cried, clutching the policeman’s arm. “Don’t shoot him!”
“To call that animal dangerous is a serious understatement, Mary,” Bond said in a low, tense voice. “It would be irresponsible for you to give it to anyone, in Alaska or anywhere else. There’s no place for it. It’s going to end up being killed anyway, so you may as well let me do the job for you right now and get it over with before it kills somebody. There are people who walk along this beach.”
“It reacted to me the same way once, Jeff! There’s something wrong with him! Somebody’s done something to him to make him react that way!”
Bond kept his hand on his gun as he stared at the animal that was still straining at its chain, clawing at the sand under its feet, trying to get at him. “What are you talking about?”
“I don’t know why he came at you like that, Jeff! But—”
“I think I do,” Garth said as he took his friend’s arm and gently but firmly led him back around the house. “Give me your jacket and hat, Jeff.”
“What the hell are you talking about?”
“Just give them to me. Please.”
Bond hesitated, but finally removed the articles of clothing and gave them to Garth, who put them on and walked back down toward the beach. There was no reaction from the wolf, which was what Garth had expected. He returned to the side of the house, gave the blue jacket and hat back to the police chief. “It’s not the uniform,” Garth said. “My guess is that he came at you because you’re black. He’s been conditioned to attack blacks—and Jews, when he thinks he sees one.
“What?”
“You said the wolf up in Ulster County attacked a group of men inside a synagogue. A wolf won’t normally attack people. Unless it was cornered, which I seriously doubt, it would have slunk all over that synagogue, hidden under pews, whatever. That wolf had been conditioned to attack those men, probably because of what they were wearing, the same as this wolf was conditioned to attack you because of the color of your skin. If I’m right, we’re talking about more than the illegal importation and the keeping of dangerous animals in the state. Now we’re looking at murder, and conspiracy to commit murder. Somebody’s using trained animals as murder weapons.”
“How do you know all this?”
“I know something about wolves, and the rest is an educated guess based on my observations of this wolf‘s behavior. Give me time and I’ll prove it. The way the wolf reacted to you isn’t the wolf’s fault, any more than having its vocal cords cut was its fault. If it was conditioned, it can be unconditioned. If you want to see that I’m right, have Orangetown pick up that creep in Blauvelt and sweat him. And you can pick up whoever it is that’s running that hate factory in town. I think it’s Angry Cross people who are responsible for these wolves. If the police don’t act quickly, I predict there are going to be more wolf attacks, and more deaths:’’
Bond thought about it, gave a curt nod. “God knows you and your brother have some kind of track record at nosing out things like this. I’ll look into it. I’ll also check with the local cops upstate and see if I can’t get the state police interested. In the meantime, you’ve got a week to get rid of that animal.”
“The wolf may be material evidence.”
“Then the state police can take it, along with the responsibility.”
“You said I had a month,” Garth said to the policeman’s back as the other man headed up toward the driveway.
Jeffrey Bond stopped, turned back. “Garth, you said the animal was dangerous, and you were right. I’m sorry, but right now I’ll be responsible if some kid in this town gets eaten. If that wolf gets loose, or, God forbid, some kid walking the beach comes too close to it and gets hurt, it’s my ass—because I know you’re keeping it here. One week. Start making your calls to your friends.
He called a friend and neighbor, an Orthodox Jew who lived in the next block. When he had the item he had asked to borrow, he went to his computer, punched in the code for DMV listings, and in a few minutes had the name and address of Conrad Regent, the Jeep’s owner, who was just coming out of his mother’s house where he lived when Garth pulled up in front. It was not the acne-scarred man, but the skinhead with the mud-colored eyes, and when he saw Garth he bolted for the Jeep parked in the driveway. But Garth was on him before he could get in, knocking him across the hood of the Jeep, wrapping the black and white fringed tallis around his neck, dragging him across the lawn to the curb where his van, with the wolf inside, was parked.
“I brought your friend’s pet back,” Garth said quietly. “I’ve had a change of heart, and thought it was time you were all reunited.”
“It’ll kill me if you put me in there!” the young man said in a strangled whisper as he clawed at the prayer shawl wrapped around his throat and gazed in wide-eyed horror as the wolf snapped and clawed at the window separating them. “It’ll be murder!”
Garth pressed the man’s face up against the saliva-streaked glass, rested his hand on the door handle. “Murder?” he said easily. “This is your friend’s wolf. He wants it back, doesn’t he? In fact, you came to help him pick it up, and you didn’t seem all that nervous then. Is there something wrong?”
“You … know! It’s the shawl! The wolf’s trained to go after anyone wearing one!”
“And people with dark skin?”
The young man with the shaved head nodded.
“Who trains them?”
“I don’t know!”
Garth banged the man’s head against the window, and the wolf redoubled its efforts to get at him, fangs striking against the glass.
“Otto!” the man shrieked.
“Otto who?”
“Just Otto! That’s what everybody calls him! He raises and trains them, cuts their vocal cords when they’re cubs! He works for Mr. Kunkel!”
“Who’s this Mr. Kunkel?”
“Floyd Kunkel! He’s the one who gives away the wolves! He’s the head of Angry Cross!”
Garth yanked on the prayer shawl, throwing the man to the pavement. “Where do I find Floyd Kunkel?”
The skinhead averted his eyes, swallowed hard. When he spoke, his voice quavered slightly, as if he were about to cry. “He lives in Cairn. He’s got a big mansion down by the river, next to the quarry.”
“Why does Kunkel give away the wolves? What are you supposed to do with them?”
The man had told him, and the rage that had surged through Garth then returned now, blotting out the pain in his ankle as he marched purp
osefully through the wooded grounds of Floyd Kunkel’s estate, heading back to the mansion that afforded the only exit from the enclosure. He came across three of Kunkel’s uniformed Angry Cross skinheads standing in an open, grassy area separating a firing range and an obstacle course. Garth made no effort to avoid the men as he stepped from the trees and walked at a fast pace directly toward them. The men saw him, started. The man on the left raised his weapon, and Garth shot him in the head. The other two men threw down their machine pistols, turned and ran. Garth tossed the MAC 10s into a clump of brush and continued on in the direction of the mansion, toward the little man with the ill-fitting toupee and the most dangerous storm trooper of them all, the real one, the professional soldier who was behind everything, the savage mercenary who would kill not only him, but also his brother, and even his wife, who had gently stroked his back as he’d checked his camera with its zoom lens and the miniature tape recorder strapped to his waist.
“I think what’s been done to those animals upsets you even more than it does me.”
“It certainly does upset me,” Garth replied evenly as, satisfied that his equipment was in order, he replaced the camera and zoom lens in their case.
Mary wrapped her arms around her husband’s waist, rested her head between his shoulder blades, and hugged him. “I love you so very much, you very strange man.
Garth laughed, reached back, and patted his wife’s bottom. “Now there’s a wonderful compliment.”
“There are so many things, so much feeling deep inside you that you never show to other people.”
“Well, whatever it is you think you see, I’m glad you approve.”
“If you know who’s breeding the wolves and giving them away, why don’t you just go to Jeff and tell him?”
“That’s exactly what I intend to do before the end of the day. But what you have to remember is that Jeff, as good a cop as he is, is only the head of a town police force. He’ll need all the help he can get to shut these people down, and it has to be done quickly, before anybody else gets mauled or killed. There’s only so much Jeff can do on his own, and there are strict legal procedures he has to follow. Judging from the place he owns, Kunkel has a lot of money, and the first thing he’s going to do when the police start showing interest in him is to hire a squad of sharp lawyers. Then the state police will come and impound our wolf, which will probably eventually be destroyed. The only killing that we know of that’s connected with the wolves and Angry Cross took place near Kingston, which is a hundred miles outside Jeff’s jurisdiction. We don’t know how many more wolves there are out there, where they are, or the mental state of the crackpots who have them. Kunkel isn’t going to give out those names to the police until he’s under a lot of pressure, after a long time. Meanwhile, I don’t want to wake up one morning and read in the paper about another wolf in a synagogue, or let loose on a playground filled with black children.”
Lone Wolves Page 6
