She stepped forward and returned his kiss. Briefly drew in his scent of sun and sweat, and the faint sweet pungency of Pongo, the orangutan he had held in his arms all day.
Abruptly she told him good night, made it to her room, shut the door. Looked across at the bars on her window, the perfect darkness beyond the screens. And this moment felt to her like the conclusion of something long and complicated and very sad. The beginning of something else entirely.
***
"Do you have to go?"
"Sean, we can't stay in bed forever."
"Why not?" she said. "I'm not tired, are you?"
"Not tired," he said. "Raw."
Patrick, standing at the mirror in Sean's bathroom, smiled over at her, then went back to drying his hair with a towel. His skin glowed from the hot shower. Just beyond the open door she lay on her stomach in the bed, giving him a loose, drugged smile as if she were tranquilized on some deep chemical level.
"It's business," he said. "I won't be long. I promise."
"It's two in the morning, Patrick. What kind of business?"
"On this side of the world it's two in the morning," he said. "But my business is more wide-ranging than that."
Patrick smiled again, and after a reluctant moment she smiled back.
He was dressed in a pair of baggy jeans he'd found in Sean's closet. A red flannel shirt. Her clothes, he assumed. Another depressing American custom, the sexes dressing alike.
Finished with his hair, Patrick came back into the bedroom, sat down beside her, leaned over and kissed her on the forehead.
"I won't be long, lover."
She chuckled. Closed her eyes, let her head sink back into the pillow.
"That's what we are now, isn't it? Patrick and Sean. Lovers."
"Yes. We most certainly are that."
"Strange," she said. "Strange how it happened."
"Not so strange, really," he said. "Inevitable."
"Was it?"
"Yes," he said. "Predestined. Written in the heavens."
"You seduced me, didn't you? You had this whole thing planned out. You came all the way over here to seduce me. You planned it for years, to get me into bed."
"We seduced each other," he said. "That's how it happened."
"I don't like being tricked," she said, a pout in her voice.
"It happened," he said, "because we both wanted it. I didn't trick you any more than you tricked me. It was mutual."
He bent down again and kissed her frown away. Their lips lingered, tongues touched, his blood beginning to smolder, Patrick about to tumble forward into bed for a few more hours. But he pulled away.
Sean was breathing hard, her nipples wrinkled tight. White dust on her cheek, their accumulated sweat leaving its powdery crust. Twenty-four hours of continuous sex. Coming back to her apartment after their swim at the beach. Both of them with the same insatiable urge. Pushing Patrick's limits beyond anything he'd known. An entire day without sleep. Driven by years of lust for her, years of yearning. The American girls, the beautiful, dreamy Farleigh sisters.
Damp, knotted sheets. Moving around her apartment, finding new positions, new angles of pleasure. Arrangements of flesh Patrick had only imagined. She was so limber, so athletic, so hungry for him. Almost as much as he was for her.
Pushing himself beyond any limits he'd known. She said she'd never done this before. Never this long, this sleepless craving. She said she had no idea that all this was inside her. She said she was usually so rational, so clearheaded. What had he done, drugged her? The sweet funk of sex blossoming in the air.
Now Patrick touched a finger to Sean's cheek and told her he would be back as soon as humanly possible.
"You'd better be," she said.
He took his rented Cadillac west on Tigertail, got lost almost immediately in the center of the Grove, found himself in a black ghetto, stopped at a red light, groups of men on corners staring at him, one of them drifting away from his friends, heading Patrick's way.
He flattened the accelerator, ran the red light, squealed onto Douglas Road and in a mild panic raced south.
At last he found the traffic circle, and took the second shadowy spoke-road off it. Doing this from memory, from an hour of studying the Miami street map on the Concorde over. Driving south through a tunnel of banyans, fifteen minutes watching the houses grow larger, the lots deeper, until the mansions disappeared altogether behind stone walls, tall manicured hedges.
Then three more turns and he drew into a circular drive.
He checked the address on the business card. Then he looked at himself in the rearview mirror, combed back a strand of hair. His face smooth, flushed from the continuous fucking. Feeling more relaxed, more composed than he had ever felt.
He got out, went to the big double doors. Rang the bell.
In less than a minute the porch light came on, and the door swung open. The man in shorty pajamas said nothing for a moment, staring out at Patrick on the porch.
Then he said, "Jesus, will you look who's here."
A second later his taller, slightly smarter brother appeared behind him in matching pajamas. A ghastly expression coming to his face.
"Well, hello there," Ray White said at last. "Partner."
Patrick smiled at their discomfort.
"Did I catch you boys at a bad time?"
CHAPTER 21
Allison lay still for a long while, forcing herself to think rationally, to bring her focus to the White brothers, the logical next step, what to do tomorrow.
"I heard their voices," she could tell the police.
"You heard their voices, but you didn't see them?"
"That's right, but I have a very good ear for voices."
"A very good ear, Your Honor. Yes, Allison Farleigh is a woman with a very good ear for voices. She remembers exactly what her daughter's killers sounded like over there in Borneo. What's that, Your Honor? No, sir. No, I have no idea whose jurisdiction Borneo is. I don't even have any idea where the fuck the place is located."
Or go back one more time to Fish and Wildlife.
Sure.
"So you are claiming that one of these gentlemen, Mr. Raimondo White or possibly Mr. Orlando White, shot your daughter. And furthermore, you're claiming that the Whites now have in their possession a wild-born orangutan illegally obtained from the very jungle where your daughter was murdered. All right, then, let's assume that this is all true. Then please help us out with this, Mrs. Farleigh, how is the presence of an orangutan in the White brothers' warehouse proof of murder? What is it, exactly, Fish and Wildlife are supposed to do? Interview the orangutan, see if we can get it to corroborate your story? Is that what you're asking us to do? Interview an ape? Oh, yes, and by any chance is this the same ape, Mrs. Farleigh, that told you about Joshua Bond?"
As the first gray moments of sleep began to take her, she had a brief vision of her father. He was lying on his bed upstairs in the Coconut Grove house, the room darkened. A doctor in one corner, Allison's mother weeping downstairs. Allison was nineteen. She kissed him on the forehead, brought her ear close to his lips. "I'm thirsty," he said.
No wisdom sent back from the brink of eternity. No final blessing or admonition. Not even an I-love-you. Just that: I'm thirsty. Smacking his withered lips.
Nine months later she was married to Harry Farleigh.
***
"Key deer," Patrick said, and looked up from his typed sheet. All business, giving Ray one of those impatient looks, like he was doing three or four other things in his head at the same time, using only a little fraction of his brain to deal with the White brothers.
Ray's way of dealing with people like him was to slow way down, drag things out, make the guy adjust to his rhythms, not the other way around. A cornerstone of bargaining. Whoever controls the metronome wins.
"Okay, yeah, the best count we got on key deer is, there's two hundred and fifty to three hundred left in the world," Ray said. "All those are down on Big Pine Key, couple
of hours south of here. We got a guy down there working on it. Old-time trapper. And what he's telling us is, it's not going to be all that easy, everyone is so Bambi-happy these days. He's got to go out in the woods in the dark, dodge the tree-huggers, nab that deer — which even by itself is a hard enough job, the thing is so spooky. So all in all, it's gonna run ten thousand for his trouble."
"Male and female," Patrick said.
"Right," Ray said. "That'll be twenty thousand."
Patrick didn't flinch at the amounts, just looked over at Betty again, lying there on the couch, stomach down, the green silk kimono riding up to expose half her naked butt. Her flesh was glowing red from all the weekend sun. As far as Ray could tell, Betty didn't wear any clothes except for her House of Pancakes uniform and that kimono.
Sometime yesterday Orlon had convinced her to shave herself and now her crotch was as slick as his. She still had her mane of blond hair, but Ray wouldn't be surprised to find her bald any minute now. Man, it was time to send this one back to the dumb-blonde factory, solder in some fresh silicone chips, have the technicians dial back her nymphomania a few notches. The two of them, Betty and Orlon, were rubbing their parts together so much they were becoming a goddamn fire hazard.
Still staring at Betty's rear, Patrick said, "And the West Indian manatee?"
"Yes, sir," Ray said. "We've captured one of the last two thousand in existence down there in Key Largo. That one's a male, I believe."
"No, it's a female," Orlon said. "Pregnant female manatee."
Orlon rearranged his balls inside his pajama bottoms. Ray was feeling a little foolish doing business with both of them sitting there in matching knee-length pj's. Green-and-red candy-striped patterns on a white background. The pajamas were one of Ray's Christmas presents to Orlon last year. He always gave Orlon practical things, socks and underwear, even though Orlon inevitably groaned and fussed when he opened the boxes.
Ray said, "So that'll be seventeen thousand dollars on the girl manatee. Twelve grand for the boy — that is, when our lady friend down there catches the male. But that shouldn't take too long. The idiots swim right up to her dock every day for lettuce and a drink from her hose, so it's just a matter of picking which manatee looks right, lure it over into the cage."
"And that brings us up to two hundred and forty-one thousand dollars," Orlon said, scratching on his yellow legal pad. "Not including shipping costs."
"Tell me something," Patrick said. "Just where in hell do you come up with these amounts? You pull them from the air?"
"We're professionals," Ray said. "This is our stock-in-trade. We know the numbers. We know value. That's why you're working with us."
"The reason I'm working with you," Patrick said, "is because I was convinced that you were capable of delivering the animals I wanted, protected or not. Legal or illegal."
"Yeah, and who was that anyway? I never do remember you mentioning who referred you to us."
Betty turned over, fluffed the couch pillow, and lay herself out flat for all to see, giving a little halfhearted tug on the bottom of the kimono, but it rode right back up, showing everything, her new hairless self. Patrick shook his head in distaste, but couldn't seem to pull his gaze away.
Ray locked his eyes on Betty's, giving her an ugly stare, though it didn't seem to have any effect.
Patrick cleared his throat and Ray looked his way. The man gave Ray a hollow smile and said, "You were planning to subtract one hundred thousand for my share of the orangutans, weren't you, boys?"
Orlon looked over at Ray, waiting for him to jump in, say something about having that incriminating photo. But Ray just gave his brother a little head shake and looked away. No, this was not a situation for kryptonite.
"Sure, we hadn't forgot about that," Ray said. Orlon coughed loudly, and out of Ray's peripheral vision he saw him shifting around in his chair, but Ray didn't look over, just kept smiling at their esteemed colleague.
Patrick got back to his list and they ran through the rest of it. Roseate tern, wood stork, ivorybilled woodpecker, Bachman's warbler, Kirtland's warbler, Cape Sable seaside sparrow, condor, bald eagle, sandhill crane, whooping crane, blue-tailed mole skink, sand skink, American croc and alligator, loggerhead turtle, leatherback turtle, gray bat, Florida panther.
Ray said, "I told you last time, that damn Florida panther is going to be a bitch. Maybe impossible. We deal with a lot of trappers around the state, and I can tell you, there aren't any of them willing to go out there in the Everglades and trap one of those big cats, risk spending the next sixty years eating jail slop. Fish and Wildlife guys are big-time serious about panthers.
"Hell, they even got video cameras set up in the underpasses out in the Everglades, those things running twenty-four hours a day, so if a panther crosses from one side of the highway to the other, it's gotta go through that underpass, and its picture is on that film. Those guys know where just about every last one of them is, got agents out watching all the time. Some of the panthers even have transmitter implants sending out radio signals."
"Once again," Patrick said, like he hadn't been listening. "I want the male and the female. If you can't manage it, let me know now and I'll use one of my other people to do it. You don't 1 think you're the only ones working for me, do you?"
"Hell, we can do it," Orlon said. "No sweat, Rayon's just a goddamn mother-hen worrywart. Haven't we got you everything else you wanted? Those Sumatra rhinos, for chrissake. Shit, anything you can name, we can get you."
"Little blue macaw."
Ray looked at his copy of the list, ran his finger I down it.
"This a new addition?"
"Yes," Patrick said. "My bird people tell me there are only a few individuals left. On the edge of extinction."
"Where's it from?"
"Northeast Brazil."
"Jesus," Ray said. "We know anybody in Brazil, Orlon?"
"Not at the moment."
"Can you do it or not?"
"Little blue macaw," Ray said. "Yeah, yeah, sure. We'll get on the phone, talk to our Latin associates. No problem."
"All right, then," Patrick said. "That leaves us with only the unfinished business from our last meeting."
"What?" Orlon said. "Our little jungle soiree?" Ray took a breath and looked down at the coffee table.
"But before we talk, we need to get rid of her." Patrick waved at Betty, lying there on her back, pillow over her face, making a snoring sound.
"Oh, don't worry about her," Orlon said. "She's deaf and dumb. She can't even read lips." Patrick glanced at Ray, but Ray kept his face neutral.
"Deaf and dumb?"
"That's right. Lost her hearing as a kid, poor thing. Had a hippie mother took her along to too many rock concerts."
Patrick scowled at Orlon, then reached into his pants pocket and came out with a pearl-handled .25, fit-in-your-palm special.
Ray stood up.
"Hey, man. None of that bullshit. Put that fucking thing away."
Patrick aimed the .25 up at the popcorn ceiling.
"Deaf and dumb?" he said.
"Hell," Orlon said. "Go on, test her out, see for yourself."
"Put it away," Ray said. "Put the thing down, right now."
Patrick looked at Ray, hesitated a moment, his hand wavering. Finally, his expression hardened, and he fired the pistol.
A large chunk of plaster crashed onto the rug. Ray jumped to the side, but Betty didn't so much as juke a muscle. Probably so zonked from her days of sex with Orlon that she was in some kind of subterranean alpha state.
"See," Orlon said, smiling. "Like I said, if you got things to discuss, then go right on and discuss them."
"And no more goddamn gunfire in our house. You got that?" Ray took his seat again.
Patrick slid the pistol back into his pants pocket.
"Jesus Christ." Ray stared up at the gash in the ceiling. "Mary, mother of Christ. What kind of crazy fucking person are you, shooting a gun off like that in a civilized person
's house?"
Patrick washed his hands against each other, then set them in his lap. Untroubled, he looked over at Ray.
"I want to know why she's still alive."
"We're picking our moment," Orlon said. "You can't just go do the last tango on somebody willy-nilly."
"It's next on our list," Ray said. "Don't worry. Top priority."
"I don't know what the fucking hurry is," Orlon said. "If the woman had seen it was us over there in Borneo, the police would've been at the door already. She didn't see us, that's pretty clear."
"Don't worry, Patrick. We're doing her. Tomorrow."
Patrick slid his cold eyes slowly to Ray. The man had an aura about him. Gave off a spooky heat that Ray had only felt once or twice before. Like charisma, or whatever the hell it was called. Dominant dog in the pack. Eyes that could harden into black ice. The kind of guy, if you had a hundred just like him, you could set yourself up as a dictator of some little island country, rule forever.
Staring back into those empty eyes, Ray said, "That's the real reason we were over there in the first place, isn't it, in Borneo? You dragged me and my brother off the rhino hunt just to shoot that lady. You damn well knew she was going to be there. That's what it was all about. You didn't care about hunting any orangutans over there. That was just your cover story. What you were doing, you were trying to get us to do your dirty work."
Patrick smiled.
Ray had wrestled with the issue for days. Why the hell Patrick wanted to go hunt orangs. Then a second ago, all of a sudden he understood it, in a flash. Seeing what had happened, him and Orlon getting snookered into this situation.
"Well, it certainly took you long enough to figure it out."
"What I want to know is, why?" Ray said. "Why do you personally give a flying fuck about Allison Farleigh?"
"It came to my attention," he said, "that she was attempting to put you two in jail. And, you see, if that happened, where would I get these difficult-to-locate animals?"
"Bullshit" Ray said.
"Yeah, double that. Two bullshits," Orlon said.
Gone Wild (Thorn Series Book 4) Page 21
