Early one morning, seven months after the orangutan moved into the cage alongside state highway 744, an outraged animal-rights activist used a blowtorch to cut the bars of the cage. The young man freed the ape and drove it to a wildlife refuge in South Carolina. After a month of long-range legal battles with the bar owner, the woman who ran the South Carolina refuge agreed to pay an out-of-court cash settlement to the bar owner, and all criminal charges were dropped.
A month later the animal was shipped back to Borneo, where it spent the next four years in a rehab center in the Tanjung Puting rain forest. Gradually it was taught how to forage for food in its natural habitat, and reintroduced to its traditional behaviors. Eventually one morning it disappeared into the jungle.
The mother orangutan roamed the jungle for fifteen years before it was shot by the poachers. From its months in the research center in Arizona, the mother orangutan had retained a half dozen of the words the professor taught it. At the time of her death, she could still sign the words tree, nest, fruity, sad, sleepy, and her favorite word, shit.
The orangutan with the silver patch of hair had seen his mother use all six of these signs in the four years it had spent with her. And now, as the young orangutan hung upside down in its four-by-four cage and looked around at the stark warehouse, it made the sign for fruit.
Because it was hungry and bored, it made this sign again and again.
CHAPTER 14
Allison charged from the bathroom, swinging her bottle of mouthwash. Sean ducked out of range, stumbled backward, then both of them froze for a second, absorbing the situation, the absurdity of it. Allison looked down at the bottle in her hand, and chuckled, then Sean joined in, and both of them let go, began to laugh in earnest. The first good laugh they'd shared in a while. God, such a release, it felt wonderful to Allison, pushing away all the accumulated poisons of grief and confusion.
But now the ludicrous moment was well past, and Allison was still laughing, her stomach cramped, eyes full of tears, knowing full well she was out of control, hysterical, that her laughter was rolling ahead on its own momentum, crossing a border into more serious emotional territory. But she couldn't stop, one flurry of chuckles after another, couldn't stop even though she saw the worry in Sean's eyes, the frown, knew that whatever had begun to heal between them was already being injured again.
Fighting it, Allison gasped, drew in a deep gulp of calming air, tried to bite back the next gush of air, but a trickle of laughter broke free, a suppressed giggle, a hiccup, several small bursts.
"All right, Mom. Quit it. Quit."
With a helpless smile fluttering on her lips, Allison drew in a huge breath and expelled it harshly as though she were trying to blow down a cobweb.
"Goddamn it, stop!"
Allison kept her lips sealed against a great bubble of laughter growing in her throat.
"Okay, now listen," Sean said, and took a long breath. "I came over here because I wanted to know what you did about Dad."
"What?"
"Did you tell him yet?" Sean braced herself against the side of the bed, eyes wandering the room. "Did you tell him you were leaving?"
"No," she said. "Not yet."
"He's worried about you, Mom." Eyes coming back to her, gray-blue like warm steel. "He cares about you."
"Cares about me."
"That's right," Sean said. "And he's very upset about Winslow. Deeply upset. He tries not to show it, to be strong, but it's hurt him very bad. He's depressed. I can tell."
Allison felt the humor drain from her face, and the weight of gloom begin to seep in again, dragging at her eyes and mouth. She took a shaky step toward Sean, but her daughter stepped away, then assumed a stiff and distant perch on the edge of Allison's bed. Drew one leg up, hugged the knee. She glanced around at the disarray, the jumble of clothes on the floor, a bottle of red wine overturned on the rug in the corner, the wastebasket still smoking.
"What the hell've you been doing in here, anyway?"
Allison opened her mouth, but had nothing to say. Sean shifted her seat on the bed. She was wearing white jeans, an oversize blue button-down shirt, white and gold Nike running shoes. Comfortable clothes. But her face was shut up tight, all the animation held rigidly in check below the surface, as though her face were some brittle mask that might crumble from even the slightest twitch of emotion.
Allison looked away. She paced slowly around the room from window to window, glancing into the branches. Gathering herself, feeling the chill return to her blood, the shiver she'd been battling since that afternoon two weeks ago.
"I came over here," Sean said, "to ask you a favor."
Allison heard a roar outside, and turned to the front window. Some idiot in a black Corvette was gunning along the edge of the golf course, tearing up the grass. The car swerved out onto the street, burning rubber, and peeled away. A couple of codgers in their golf carts yelled and shook their fists as it passed.
Allison could smell fresh bread baking. Poor Mrs. Casines next door. A widow for fifteen years, her children never visited, no friends. Cooked all day, set places every night for five people. Trying to lure the phantoms to her table, but they never showed. Always those wonderful smells wafting from her house. Cook, cook, cook, it was all the woman knew, all that kept her going. Roasts, arroz con polio, cobblers, meat loaf. Three garbage cans on her sidewalk every Monday. Maybe that's how Allison would turn out, using orangutans instead of food. The crazy old lady down the street with her house full of orange apes.
"What is it, Sean?"
Sean let go of her knee, crossed her legs, a loose lotus.
"Go on."
"Just give it some more time, okay?"
"What?"
"I don't think now's the best time for you to be making major decisions. For Dad's sake, and for your own. Couldn't you just wait, think it through some more? Keep the family together."
Allison crossed her arms across her chest, tried to hug the shiver away. She took a slow breath.
"I've already thought it through, Sean. There's nothing more to consider."
"Mom." Sean swallowed. "You're under severe strain. You need to calm down, give yourself time to get your balance back. I'm worried about you, we're all worried about you. How you've been acting."
Allison shook her head to clear it.
"My balance? You mean my mental health?"
Sean glanced around Allison's room. Stared at the smoking wastepaper can, the wine bottle, the disarray. The room of a crazy lady.
"Mom, come on. Don't you see it? This isn't the best time to be making such decisions. Throwing away your marriage. That's all I'm saying. You've got enough stresses to deal with already."
"Well, yes," Allison said, trying for a smile, a light tone. "It is a little stressful to be shot at."
"See," Sean said. "That's what I mean."
"What?"
"Nobody's shooting at you, nobody's trying to kill you, Mom. Nobody."
"They aren't?"
"No, Mother, they aren't."
"And what about Winslow? What about Bronson?"
"Bronson was a robbery victim. And Borneo, that was just poachers. Winslow stumbled into their path, they killed her."
"They weren't poachers," Allison said. "They spoke English."
Sean stared at her blankly.
"What the hell does that mean?"
Allison turned away, stared out the window.
"They spoke English. Poachers don't speak English."
"What the hell does that mean?"
"It's complicated. You'd have to understand the animal trade."
"I've got a minute — why don't you explain it to me."
Allison heard the throaty rumble of Harry's Porsche in the drive. His new toy. For twenty years he'd driven blackwall Fords, bland government cars. Never flashy; not his clothes, cars, or personality. A requirement of the State Department; live a drab, circumspect life or find another line of work.
But since he'd returned to Miami
he'd been transforming himself. Gaudy car, sharper suits, a new hairstyle. The last traces of the innocent country boy she'd married were disappearing behind his trendy sunglasses.
Allison heard the front door shut. Harry called out that he was home.
"Okay," Allison said. She took a breath, looked around the room. "There're levels. Like every business, animal smuggling has levels of workers. Animal trackers are the lowest. Poachers. In Borneo they're Ibans, Dayaks, villagers. They know the jungle, they know where the orangutans live, so they're the ones who shoot the mother apes, cage the babies in their villages, then, when they have enough of them, they transport them in a group downriver to the coastal cities, Kuching, Damai.
"The smugglers pick them up like smugglers everywhere — the same methods. Fast boats, night crossings, all that. They take the orangutans to storage pens in Singapore, Djakarta, Bangkok — bird shops, places like that. When the deals are made, it's the smugglers' job to forge paperwork, package the animals, walk them through customs.
"The smugglers ship them, and the dealers stay home in their offices, expensive suits, portable phones. They take delivery of the animals, house them for a few days till they find buyers. All they do is run the switchboard. Two here, three there.
"At every level it's different people. Separation of labor. And the ones my organization goes after are the people at the top, the large international dealers. Possibly an occasional smuggler when we get a tip, or if someone is discovered in the act. The dealers speak English. But not the poachers."
"But these poachers did," Sean said.
Allison was silent, wanting Sean to do this.
"So you're saying it wasn't a poacher out there at all, but a dealer trying to cut out both the middlemen?"
"Not likely," Allison said. "The poachers don't get paid enough. Smugglers make a little more, but it wouldn't be worth it for some dealer to fly in from Europe, the States, put himself at that kind of risk, stalking around the jungle, sweating, shooting a gun, all to save a few dollars."
Allison heard Harry speaking quietly to someone downstairs. In the bar, the sound of glasses, the clink of ice. Another man's laugh. The second voice sending a brisk flutter of recognition through her.
"Then why? If they weren't poachers, why were they in the jungle?"
"Maybe they weren't hunting orangutans."
Sean came off the bed, stood stiffly, peering at Allison.
Allison looked out the front window again, at an oak branch swaying, its shadow passing across the floor of her bedroom. She brought her gaze back to Sean.
"After they shot Winslow, they yelled my name."
"What!"
"They called it out over and over. Allison, Allison. Trying to scare me. Flush me out."
Allison lowered her head, pressed her thumb against one eyelid, her first finger against the other. Squeezed her fingers together at the bridge of her nose.
"Oh, come on, Mom."
"It's true, Sean."
"Wait just a damn minute. These guys bump into Winslow, this young American woman in the jungle, and instantly know she's Allison Farleigh's daughter? How in the hell could that be?"
Sean's mouth was set, her eyes fixed hard on Allison.
"They were hunting for me, Sean. They knew I was out there."
"Hunting for you!"
"There's no other explanation. They were Americans. I recognized their accents. It was somebody my organization was after. They were tracking me, looking for the right time to kill me. And Winslow just got in the way. If things had been a little different, all three of us would have been killed that afternoon."
Allison heard Harry's steps on the stairway. The low murmuring of male voices, the clitter of iced drinks.
She walked across to the half-open bedroom door and turned around. In the center of the room Sean stood with her arms at her sides, legs spread, shaking her head, the rigid mask beginning to crack at the edges.
"They were hunting me," Allison said. "That's what it was."
Sean stepped close, her face dark and twisting into a bitter scowl.
"Joshua Bond. Is that what you're saying? This is about Joshua Bond again."
"Maybe."
"Goddamn it, Mother. Listen to you. Just listen. It's like everything has to revolve around Allison Farleigh. Winslow is murdered, it's got to be because of how important Allison Farleigh is. How threatening she is to the big, bad animal traders. Bronson gets shot. It can't be a simple robbery. It's got to be because of Allison Farleigh again."
"I'm not paranoid. This is not some fantasy, Sean."
Sean's face colored, seemed to grow tight as if she were holding her breath.
"What I said in the church is true. Winslow had no business being where she was. That wasn't her fight. If it wasn't for you, if it wasn't for all this damn animal business, your obsession, I'd still have my sister. You did this, Mother. You did it."
Allison wrenched her head to the side as if she'd been slapped. And at that moment the door swung open behind her.
"Hey, everybody," Harry said. "Look who I've brought."
Allison turned. She had to wipe the blur from her sight, and for a second she didn't register anything but the man's eyes. The same steady gaze he'd had seven years before. A boy of seventeen, staring at Allison's teenage girls, contemplating them from afar.
"Aren't you going to say hello, Mrs. Farleigh?" Patrick said.
She murmured a greeting. He stepped forward, reached out, took hold of her hand, bowed his head, and brushed her knuckles with his lips.
Patrick Bendari Sagawan. Royalty once-removed. One of the sultan's nephews. The last time she'd seen him was in Singapore's Changi International Airport, the afternoon when she'd been riveted to the cages of monkeys in the back room at customs, pestering the officials about who the animals belonged to, where they were going, was this legal, had they been attended to, they looked so sad, so thirsty.
At that moment the Sultan of Brunei and his brother and young Patrick swept in with armloads of presents. Flew all the way from London to wish the Farleighs good-bye. Embraces all around. In the midst of the hubbub, Winslow and Patrick had stolen away, disappeared for fifteen minutes. She came back clinging to his hand. They kissed at the gate, the first and only time Allison had seen Winslow kiss a boy, a real kiss, deep and long. Inconsolable, Winslow cried for the first half of their long flight home.
"I was terribly sorry to hear about Winslow." Patrick stepped farther into the room, shifting his drink to his right hand. "Mrs. Farleigh, Sean, I don't know what to say. Your loss must be unbearable."
He held Allison's eye for a long moment, then she mumbled an apology for the mess the room was in, turned her back on them, and limped into the bathroom and shut the door.
CHAPTER 15
"All you do is, you take the bag of snakes to the door, hand it to the motorcycle guy, wait for your money, then turn around and come back."
"He's gonna make me come inside. A guy like that, he's not gonna do business on his front porch."
"Now, look, Orlon, you gotta face your fear, man. Sooner or later you gotta stare right into its cold, bottomless eyes."
The Corvette was idling on the shoulder outside a yellow wooden house on a busy street in Hialeah. A few other houses just like it nearby, but mainly transmission shops, donut places. A couple of broken-down gas stations, a Farm Store, pawnshop.
Out in the dusty front yard of the yellow house, there were half a dozen Harley hogs neatly lined up. All the shades were drawn. No sign of anything weird going on.
But Orlon had his hand on the shift lever, revving the engine, looking straight out the windshield at the traffic streaming past, hadn't even taken a peek at the place yet. Seeing his brother that way, knowing his love of violence, Ray was getting a little spooked himself.
"I'm telling you, Orlon, you need to get past this. Just take the goddamn snakes in there, collect the cash, come back out, we can go eat supper somewhere. We'll do Denny's, have the r
ib eye, the cherry pie. Celebrate getting over your trepidation."
"You're not going in there with me."
"That's right. I'm sitting here and letting my little brother go up to that front door, stare down his demons."
Orlon fiddled with the shifter, rocking it side to side in neutral.
A woman was coming up the sidewalk toward them, a grandmother in her white organdy dress, a pink parasol in one hand. She got a little closer, took a better look at the White brothers in their Corvette, cut her eyes to the Hell's Vipers' clubhouse, scowled, then started on across the street, weaving through the cars stopped for the light.
"Face my fear, huh? Stare down my demons. That the way your shrink talks, is it? Bottomless eyes?"
"Don't start with that. You're just trying to distract yourself from the issue at hand."
"You pay that psychology doctor eighty an hour and all she tells you is you ought to face your fear? I mean, hey, for eighty bucks she should get out her whip, give you a few lashes."
"You going in there, man, or I gotta start looking around for a new brother?"
Orlon stared ahead out the windshield.
"All you want, Ray, you want somebody handles the dirty business. That's all I am to you. I do the real work, you kick back, add up the profits. Buffing your fingernails."
Ray wasn't going to trade insults. He was tired of this whole scene. Wanted to get home, knock down a few rumrunners, call the drugstore, see if those photographs were developed yet. That was where their future was, getting the dirt on their business partner. Not this pissant stuff, selling snakes to bikers. That was the old White brothers. The White brothers a year ago.
The grandmother was on the other side of the street, standing in the pink shade of her parasol, waiting next to the bus bench. Staring at the Corvette through all the rush hour traffic along Northwest 103rd Street. Must've been a slow afternoon in grandmotherland if the best entertainment the lady could find was to glare at the White brothers. Standing there like that, her parasol in one hand, the woman was starting to remind Ray of somebody, he wasn't sure who.
Gone Wild (Thorn Series Book 4) Page 14
