Gone Wild (Thorn Series Book 4)

by James W. Hall

  "Now you're coming with me. We're going to have a little talk. You, me, and a fence post."

  Thorn turned for the Cherokee, swung the guy with him, his toes just brushing the ground. Going to hammer his slick head against the fender till he was unconscious. But he felt the guy wriggle and squirm, then a hard and familiar shape jammed against Thorn's sore ribs.

  "I told Ray you were an ape-kisser. I spotted you from the get-go." The small man dug the pistol deeper against Thorn's bruised ribs. Thorn released his grip and the hairless man stepped back.

  "So, Senor Muy Macho, where is she? Where's my friend Allison hiding out?"

  "Fuck you, Charlie."

  "Oh, yeah? Fuck me? Is that your big speech? Your Robert Mitchum tough-guy's comeback? Hey, we're going to have to go somewhere, work on your dialogue, man. You'll never win an Oscar with lines like that."

  "Give me a minute," Thorn said. "I'll think of something that'll have you in stitches."

  The bald man blinked, then studied Thorn more closely.

  "Oh, now, that's better," he said. "You keep working on it, kid, maybe we'll give you a screen test later this evening." He prodded Thorn in the ribs again, pushing him toward a black Corvette parked across the street. "Of course, that all depends," Orlon said, "if later on this evening you're still alive."

  CHAPTER 30

  "I've given this a lot of thought," Tricia Capoletti said.

  It was Friday afternoon. An hour earlier she'd called Ray at work, and he'd rushed home, changed into better clothes, and gone to her office. "I cleared my calendar, canceled my afternoon appointments. We need to talk, Ray." And bing, he was there, dreading this but at the same time welcoming it. Heart singing. Sloughing off all that shit last night in the Everglades, Meriwether getting shot. The whole mess.

  It all felt different now with Tricia, not client and shrink, but Ray and Tricia. She even sat in a different chair, the one behind her desk, and Ray sat in the green one she usually used during their sessions. He wondered if she'd peed before he'd come in. Thinking about yesterday, her bladder, their day together at Brad Randolph's ranch and the 7-Eleven, all of it gave Ray a honey glow in his chest. Things happening between them. Deepening intimacy.

  She was in a brown cashmere sweater today. Another blazer, this one hunter green with a bright pin on the lapel, some kind of animal. Beige wool pants, her usual brown loafers. A far cry from Betty Penski and her vinyl miniskirts and red knee-high go-go boots, see-through blouses.

  Ray had put on a pair of faded jeans with a hard crease, a woven leather belt, a blue button-down chambray shirt with the top button undone, red striped tie worn loose at the throat. A white loose-fitting jacket, new Adidas tennis shoes. He'd seen some actor dressed like that in one of the Hollywood magazines Orlon subscribed to, looking hip but easygoing, arm in arm with his fashion-model wife. Ray tore out the page and went shopping. Soft-core preppy, the way Tricia liked, but Ray adding on a little extra spice — the stripes in the red tie were actually, if you looked real close, rocket ships.

  He was thinking of that, those rocket ships, imagining the moment when he showed them to her, Tricia edging in to see them, her face a few inches from his, Ray figuring that would be the moment he'd been waiting for, perfect opportunity to put a hand on her shoulder, draw her close, kiss her, thinking of the rocket ships, that soft incredible first kiss, as Tricia said:

  "Ray, why did you do this? Why did you shoot that boy?"

  "I told you. 'Cause he hit the woman that looked like my mom."

  "But why did you feel you had to shoot him? Were you angry?"

  "Damn right I was angry. The little shit."

  "But that's what I'm for, Ray. When you can't deal with a situation, when something makes you mad like that, you come to me, we'll talk it through. You shouldn't try to settle things with a gun. That's not civilized. It's not rational, Ray."

  Ray sat up straighter. She saw the look on his face and held up her hand like she was halting traffic.

  "Ray, I want you to make reparations for what you did to that boy."

  "Make what?"

  "Reparations," she said. "You can't just let this go. You have to do something, something that costs you in some major way. Something that's equal to your wrongdoing."

  "Reparations."

  "That's right."

  "What is that actually? I mean, I think I know. It's like an offering at church. Is that what you're saying?"

  "Not exactly."

  " 'Cause, you know, that really isn't a word in my current usage. I mean, I want to do exactly what you think is the right thing here, but I gotta have a different word from you. Maybe if you just put it another way, a more familiar phrasing, that might be better."

  "You're going to have to figure this out yourself, Ray."

  "Figure it out myself."

  "Yes. Figure out how to make amends, do what you think is appropriate. You'll know when you've accomplished it."

  Ray said the word silently to himself. Reparations.

  "I have to be completely honest with you, Ray. Since you told me what you did, I've given a lot of thought to calling the police, bringing them in on this. Laying it all out in front of them."

  "You can do that? I thought it was against some kind of rule in your profession. Unethical."

  "After a great deal of thought," she said, "I decided not to proceed in that way. I decided to give you the chance to wrestle with this by yourself. Choose exactly what the appropriate way to redress this crime would be for you. This is not something I think I should solve for you."

  Ray stood up, angled over to her desk. Tried to seem at ease, thinking of the Hollywood guy in these same clothes, how comfortable he'd appeared, big tall blond woman on his arm. Tricia looked up at him from a yard away. Ray could smell her perfume, something with a meadowy smell. Sunlight, grass, bees.

  He gripped the point of the tie, held it away from his shirt. Looked down at it.

  "Rocket ships," Ray said. "That's what these are. From a distance, you know, they look just like ordinary stripes. But if you see it up close . . ."

  She squinted at him. A quiver in her chin or eyes, somewhere he couldn't pin down. Hair drawn back today, clamped in a tortoiseshell barrette. Ray preferred it loose, down on her shoulders, a softer look, hair you could spread on a pillow.

  "Have I put myself in danger, Ray, saying this to you? Do you see me as a threat now?"

  The quiver growing.

  "A threat? You? Hey, you gotta be joking."

  "I want you to tell me how you feel, Ray. Tell me what's going through your mind right now, okay? Be honest."

  He let go of his tie, smoothed it into place against his flat stomach.

  "Right now? This exact second?"

  She kept squinting at him, the slightest nod. "A bunch of different things," he said.

  "Tell me."

  "Are we doing psychology again?"

  "I'm asking you not as your counselor, but as a friend. What you're thinking."

  "Okay," he said, feeling a sudden creamy warmth flow through him; Tricia, his friend. "I'm thinking, I don't know. I guess I was thinking of going to a bookstore, buy a dictionary. Look up a few words, see exactly what it is you want me to do."

  "That's all, Ray?"

  "No," he said. "I was thinking about your hair, how the sunlight does different things to the color."

  She looked down at her desk, ran her hand over her big green ink blotter in its leather holder.

  Ray said, "And one more thing. I guess I was thinking how maybe when this is all over, when I've gotten healthy and normal, maybe the two of us could go out together again. Attend another wedding maybe. Is that something you might be interested in?"

  ***

  Thousands of lightbulbs. To be exact, fifty-one thousand, four hundred and ninety lightbulbs in that one building. Five hundred and sixty-four chandeliers, some of them as big as compact cars, weighing more than a ton.

  Sean was somewhere deep in the inte
rior of the Sultan of Brunei's main palace, Istana Nurul Iman, where according to Patrick roughly two hundred lightbulbs burned out each and every day. Just imagine. Two hundred a day. One servant's full-time job was to unscrew two hundred dead ones, screw in two hundred fresh ones. All day, every day. Week after week after week. One man's lifetime career, to change those bulbs.

  Patrick was giving her the tour. The sultan was away in London, visiting one of his hotels, the Dorchester. He wasn't scheduled to return until after the first of the year; both his wives, the queens, traveling, too, and Patrick apparently with the run of the palace. He was dressed in a tight-fitting pale green linen suit, a pleated ecru shirt with a round collar, hair combed straight back. Just before landing they'd showered and changed in the Concorde, been met on the tarmac by a Bentley, and were driven directly to the palace where they were greeted by two of Patrick's uncles, the sultan's brothers, several girl cousins, all of them coolly civil toward Sean. Standing aside as Patrick began to conduct his tour.

  From the three outfits Sean had brought along, she'd selected a floral shirtwaist dress with a full, sweeping skirt. Blue background, subdued hibiscus blooms. Half-sleeves, a navy belt. The most conservative thing she'd packed, though even so, Patrick had his doubts. "Don't forget it's changed since you were here last," he said. "The fundamentalists have much more say in things. Everything's more orthodox."

  "So what am I supposed to do, wrap myself in a sheet?"

  "Sean!"

  She told him she was just kidding. Just kidding, really. He studied her suspiciously while Sean tried to rid her face of any trace of irony. Finally Patrick sighed and let his eyes stray away. The moment passed, but it grated on her, lingered. Giving their rapport a chilly undercurrent. He was different here in his own land, harder to reach, preoccupied, more serious. As if perhaps the man she'd fallen for was a man on holiday, the relaxed version of Patrick, and now she was seeing the real one.

  They walked through the palace, past soldiers with red sashes, handguns in patent leather holsters, and other khaki-uniformed guards carrying assault rifles, servants everywhere, all coming to soft attention as the two of them approached.

  She was deeply exhausted from a string of sleepless nights, the jarring flight. Rubber-legged, body vibrating, brain full of nettles. Though she wished only to check into her room at the Sheraton Utami, lie down and sleep for days, she followed quietly behind Patrick as he marched through the palace, sweeping his hands at this or that amazement. Dutifully she tried to come along on this ride, share his excited state, but the palace struck her as cold and bland and at the same time incredibly garish. Like some sterile concrete parking garage that had been furnished and decorated by drag queens.

  According to Patrick, three hundred and fifty million dollars built it. Oil money, of course, and natural gas. The Brunei division of Shell Oil working the Seria oil fields just offshore.

  All the money he'd lavished on the palace was little more than pocket change for the sultan. The man was worth three times Queen Elizabeth, more than all the Saudis. By far the richest man in the world. Thirty billion dollars put safely away, maybe thirty-five by now. Who could keep track? It grew more mountainous every second. Patrick rattled it off, the numbers, the breezy view of his uncle. Sean watched him, hearing his voice, a quiet vibrato of fervor creeping into it.

  Though by all accounts, Patrick said, the oil was running out. Within their lifetime the fields would be pumped dry. The great cash machine forever silenced.

  "That's my job," he said. "To help his Majesty diversify. Find other revenue sources for the next century."

  The palace was larger than Buckingham Palace or the Vatican. Two hundred and fifty toilets, eighteen elevators, forty-four staircases. Sewage treatment for 300,000 gallons per day. Enough for a hundred thousand people flushing at once, though on a regular basis the palace housed only two members of the royal family.

  "Well, you never know who might drop in," Sean said. Patrick didn't smile.

  Sean tagged along. Ooohed the best she could. Nodded as if she were as dazzled by the palace's vital statistics as he was. Perhaps it was her grogginess that was putting the strange shine on the place, a shimmery unreality. But maybe not. Maybe the shimmer was there anyway, and groggy was the best condition for this tour, that or drunk. If she'd been cold alert, surely she would've made cracks she'd regret, shown herself to be an unappreciative snob, too bourgeois to savor the splendor.

  Seventeen hundred rooms, over two million square feet of floor space, which worked out to roughly fifty acres. Thirty-eight different types of marble covering fourteen acres of floors. Gold-plated walls. Giant golden domes. Parking for eight hundred. Louis XVI chairs and tables in sleek-windowed, modern rooms. A banquet hall whose ceiling was five stories high, with seating for four thousand. A sports complex that housed a dozen indoor tennis courts, polo practice field, Olympic swimming pools, badminton, squash, handball courts. And this, Patrick said, was only one of several palaces in the royal family.

  "Do you have a palace?"

  "No," he said, smiling at her. "Not yet." Then, quietly, seriously, "Does it matter?"

  They were in the doorway of one of the four kitchens. This one a stainless-steel gymnasium.

  "Patrick," she said, taking his hand. "I'd like you even if you were rich."

  His smile seemed to weaken around the edges.

  "Like me? Is that all?"

  Sean watched as two servants passed in the corridor, pushing a black handcart with broom handles sticking out. On its side were gold and silver inlays of palm trees and birds in flight. A ten-thousand-dollar janitor's cart.

  She said, "You want me to be the first to say it? The magic word?"

  Patrick examined the servants walking past. "No," he said. "Perhaps now is not the best time for declarations of that kind."

  He squeezed her hand, then let it go.

  Later, when they were finished with the tour, they loafed on the palace's west docks looking out across a mangrove lagoon, a wild stretch of the Brunei River that led into the interior jungles of the country. A half dozen armed guards were spread out on the nearby lawn eyeing the steady stream of outboards ferrying tourists slowly up and down the river so they could snap their photos of the palace.

  Just a few miles up that river was Brunei's jungle, lush and abundant, still covering eighty percent of the countryside. With all their oil, the Bruneians had not been forced to strip their land of timber, as the rest of Borneo was doing. Through the luck of the geological draw, a tiny country like Brunei could afford the luxury of rain forest preservation, something her neighbors in the rest of Borneo could not.

  Last month, only an hour west of where she stood now, Sean and Winslow and Allison had flown into Kuching, coming in low over the countryside. Sean had seen the wide, depressing vista. Bald hills, thousands and thousands of acres of rough mountain terrain utterly stripped of green. And countless new logging roads were being carved into the few remaining virgin forests.

  From above, the rivers were a muddy yellow, clogged with branches and rejected trees, smoke billowing from vast burn sites. Land where some great upheaval was taking place, a war zone. The country was in the midst of swapping its ancient forest for fleeting cash.

  "Are you all right, Sean? You're so quiet."

  She turned from the river, looked into Patrick's uneasy eyes.

  "I was just thinking how strange this all is, being here. The palace."

  "Strange? What's so strange?"

  "Well, for one thing," she said. "Fifty-one thousand lightbulbs. That's pretty damn strange."

  "Yes?" he said. "How?"

  "Well, I mean it's amazing," she said. "Someone counted all of them. You knew the exact number."

  "So?"

  Patrick retreated a half step, regarding her warily. His face was flushed and perspiration stood out on his forehead. It was a hot, clear day, but his sweat seemed to be coming from some sudden inner heat. A flinch in his blue eyes, something cl
ose to childish hurt.

  "It's nothing," she said. "Nothing, really."

  "Go on, make your joke, Sean. That's what you were going to do, wasn't it? Something funny about lightbulbs."

  The anger that was roughening his voice had appeared so quickly and unexpectedly that she was momentarily dumbfounded. Two hours ago they'd been making love nine miles up. Now they stood beside a tropical lagoon in the shadow of the world's largest and most expensive palace, the hot, airless breeze more oppressive than a Miami August, and the man she'd fallen in love with, coming with him to the other side of the globe, was now twisting his face into a bitter parody of itself. A sudden stranger. Sean felt it all at once, a pang of fear, the shadowy swirl of sadness and dislocation. Culture shock, lover shock. No longer certain exactly where she'd landed, who exactly she'd landed with.

  "What is it you're doing with my father, Patrick? The oil business?"

  "Not oil, no. As I said before, diversification. Something for when the oil runs out."

  "Diversify to what?"

  "Tourism," he said. Rocking his head back and smiling with satisfaction at a patch of sky just above her head. "Attracting foreigners to Brunei: Europeans, Americans, Asians. People from all over the world."

  "What? You're building another Disney World?"

  "No," he said. "Something much, much better. Something that no one else has. The only one of its kind in the world."

  "But you're not going to tell me."

  "Tell you? No," he said. "I'll take you there. Tomorrow we'll fly out to the De Novo site. You can see what your father and I have been up to these last few years. The fruits of our labor."

  She was going to ask him more, but Patrick seemed to be elsewhere now, his eyes disengaged, turned inward as if he were savoring some exquisite aroma too private for words.

  ***

  The movie star himself telephoned Ray White, turned on his considerable charm, but the dealer was unswayed. He was not willing to accept the orangutan back. No refunds. Never. Mr. White listened to the movie star describe a couple of the ape's violent episodes, throwing a favorite dog out an upstairs window, then climbing out the window himself and running amok through the wedding party.