"You know, Mr. Farleigh," Ray said. "Truth is, sometimes I find myself wishing it was the other way around. It was me that had the cold heart, me instead of Orlon. I gotta say, there's moments I'm jealous of guys like you two. Nothing bothers you. You got no sensitivities.
"I have these thoughts sometimes, lying in bed at night. I think maybe that's where we're all headed, the human race. Like it's actually Orlon who's evolved in the right direction. Guys like him and you, Harry, out on the cutting edge, you've gotten yourselves all ready for the slash-and-burn twenty-first century. No matter how shitty it gets, guys like you will get through somehow."
"Yeah, yeah, there you go," Orlon said. "Same as Road Warrior. Me and Mel Gibson, we're the fucking cockroaches, we'll be around no matter what. Bomb goes off, acid rain eats up all the trees, ozone completely evaporates, fucking sun starts scorching everything — shit, we don't care. It'll be Mel and me and the cockroaches slithering around in the rubble. The mean bastards, not the 'Hail Mary, full of grace' assholes like you, Ray. That's good. I like that."
Harry felt the wind on his face, a cool sea breeze, thinking of that tree, that maple. How some days he'd climb up high and jump from the tree just to feel that short, incredible thrill of freedom before the lurch of impact.
Harry Farleigh ducked through the broken pane, out onto the ledge. He looked at the horizon, that hairline seam that separated heaven from earth. He felt his knees sag. And Harry remembered how it was as a boy, a moment's impulse, a second of bravery was all it took.
Without another thought, Harry Farleigh stumbled forward into the empty air, falling facedown, shirtsleeves rippling hard, gulping gallons of air. His vision blurred, everything below him becoming a watery smudge, so he wasn't absolutely sure, but for an instant it looked to him as though Ray had been right. It seemed that Winslow was indeed waiting for him in the street below.
CHAPTER 37
It was nine-thirty. The Haitian taximan had made himself a drink, tested all the furniture, chosen the couch. He was stretched out there with the TV zapper, moving through the channels. Allison went upstairs to her room, dialed the long-distance number again. She told the Sheraton operator this was an emergency, just keep ringing till the party in the room picked up. Three, four, five rings.
Allison sat looking at the wall behind her desk, at a framed photo of Broom taken only a few weeks after she'd rescued him from the roadside zoo. Broom, his expression still guarded, sitting in Harry's easy chair, hand on the wood lever, ready to cock it down, recline. A worried look. Waiting for some signal from Allison. Uncertain if he was allowed this pleasure, this strange control over his own existence.
Ten, eleven, twelve.
Someone picked up the phone in Brunei. Allison stiffened, turned her eyes to the desktop.
"Hello?" Sean's voice was strained, groggy.
"Is he there?" Allison said. "Is Patrick with you?"
Faintly, Sean said yes.
"Are you all right?"
"Yes. I'm all right."
"Does he know you know?"
She said yes a third time. Voice choked, been crying.
"All right, now listen to me," Allison said. "Listen carefully."
"I hear you."
"You're going to lead Patrick to Broom. Lead him there a step at a time, don't tell him where you're taking him or you might become dispensable. Not the name of the place, nothing about it. Do you hear me?"
"Yes."
"Good," Allison said. "Now let me speak to him."
Allison glanced up at the orangutan again, drew a long, deliberate breath. Hearing the bump of the phone passing, then his voice, coldly cheerful.
"Hello, Allison. How are you? How are things in Miami?"
"Here's what we're going to do, Patrick. Listen to me. I don't care what you and Harry were up to. It doesn't matter to me in the least. Your plan, your project. And I don't even care what your role was in Winslow's death. That's all done. Do you hear me, I don't give a damn about any of that."
"I hear you, Allison. The reception is excellent."
"I have the roll of film Winslow took. Pictures of you and the White brothers shooting your rifles in Borneo. There is an orangutan tied to your belt. Now, this might not prove anything in any court of law. But, Patrick, I am certain the sultan would be deeply shocked to see these pictures, to discover the kind of men you've been consorting with, and what kind of business you've been doing with them."
"Go on." His voice a tight whisper.
"I'll turn the negatives and the prints over to you. I'll put them in your hands only when Sean is safely with me. Sean for the photos. I want her here in Miami on Sunday. That'll give you time to get back here. Sunday at nine P.M."
"You've thought this through," he said.
"Sean for the photos. Sunday at nine. No debate, no negotiating. Sean knows where to meet me. She'll direct you there. If she's not with you, the deal is off, the photographs go to the sultan, to Brunei's religious leadership, to the press, everywhere. Is that clear?"
"Abundantly," he said.
"And if you hire somebody to kill me," Allison said, "the photos are automatically released as well. The animal project you and Harry have been building is finished."
"I see."
"And there's one more thing," she said. "I want Thorn present at the exchange."
"Who the hell is Thorn?"
"I believe your associates, the White brothers, may know where he is. I want him there. Is that understood?"
"And is that all?"
"Let me speak to Sean again," she said. "Then I'm done."
"No," he said.
There was a sharp snap and her head filled suddenly with an unstable electronic buzz as if some frenzied wasp had lost its way in the ticklish inner canals of her ear.
***
The laboratory assistant was still cleaning the gibbon cages at ten o'clock on Friday evening when the professor left for the weekend. It routinely fell to her to return to the lab on Saturday and Sunday, feed and water the test animals. Giving up her weekends earned her two hours of extra credit.
Tonight after she'd finished her chores, she stayed on in the lab. She sat at the professor's desk, turned the wedding ring around and around on her finger. Nearly a perfect fit.
After a while she got up, went over to the orangutan's cage. The ape was hunkered in a back corner staring at his feet. When she opened the door he did not look up. She tried to tickle some response from him, running her fingers in circles against his smooth soles, but the ape continued to stare listlessly at his toes.
She sighed, then reached inside and clasped the orangutan by the waist and drew him out. He did not resist. Carrying the passive ape in her arms, she paced up and down the aisle between the cages, speaking in low tones, cuddling, cooing, trying to soothe him, revive some of the zest he'd shown when he first arrived.
Nothing seemed to have any effect until by chance she passed close by the storage closet where the calibrated arm was stored. Perhaps the ape could smell the propane, or perhaps he had a sixth sense, the ability to detect trace amounts of danger. However it happened, the ape knew what was behind the closed doors, for he began to chirp loudly and squirmed out of the lab assistant's arms, climbed onto her shoulders and took an awkward grip on her head.
Moving quickly from the closet, Bernice untangled the ape's fingers from her hair, wrestled him safely into her arms again, and once more he fell into a stupor. For ten more minutes she tried to rouse him, but failed.
Bernice took him to the front windows of the lab and let him look at the lights outside. The college gymnasium was across the road, the pool as well. Both were well lit. Groups of students walked by on the road talking loudly. But the orangutan was not engaged by what he saw. He closed his eyes, turned his head from the view, and pressed his face against her chest.
For the last three years Bernice had been an honor student. Only one semester remained until she was to begin graduate work in behavioral psychology a
t Duke. She was not a rebel, not a malcontent. While she did hold membership in several animal-rights organizations, she was not a letter writer or a political warrior of any kind.
So it made her giddy and somewhat nauseous to carry the orangutan outside the lab with her, lock the door and lug him to her car. It was clearly a mad, self-destructive act to drive with him in the seat beside her, and to park in one of the rarely used parking lots and wait there until she gathered her nerve.
Just after midnight she carried the ape into her dormitory. Once safely in her room, she lay him on her bed and opened her small refrigerator and searched the vegetable bin. She laid out an array of vegetables on her bedspread. Several minutes passed before the ape took any interest in the food. And then only after he'd consumed a bowl of grapes and an entire green pepper, did the animal rouse himself sufficiently to begin to explore her room.
***
Thorn's fingers were gashed and bleeding badly. He'd pried loose one of the steel bars from its weld and worked it back and forth a few thousand times till it had finally broken free. Then he found the goddamn thing had an edge as sharp as broken glass and before he even felt the slice, blood poured from the fingers on his right hand.
But worse was the fact that all his work served no purpose. He stuck his arm through the opening, wedged it between the bars up to the elbow, but his hand was still several feet from the tools hanging on the opposite walls. A wire clipper, a pair of pliers, hammers and files.
He should have realized from the beginning. It was so goddamn obvious. The cages stood six feet from the opposite wall, laughably far away, but then Thorn wasn't thinking clearly. The blows he had taken had spun his brain around, the rattlesnake torture put a serious dent in his rational process. For the last few hours he'd been so goddamned cramped inside the cage he wasn't getting enough air. Dizzy and sick, bleeding, weak. His head buzzing with a dreamy whirl of voices. Around him the other animals shifted and burrowed, squeaked and rattled, the gibbons hooting their mysterious songs.
He drew his arm back inside the bars, took a couple of breaths, repositioned his butt against the grid of steel. He crammed his torn fingers into the fold of his bent leg, stanched the blood.
He closed his eyes and after a moment or two, willing himself to relax, Thorn felt his breath coming easier. The mist began breaking up, lifting from his mind. Still trapped, still helpless and in danger, but composed now, a growing optimism.
He opened his eyes, peered across from him, took a measuring look to either side, examining the physics of his situation. Just how the hell he'd ever thought that prying a bar loose from the door would help his predicament, he didn't know. The hinges were the only vulnerable spot on the cage. They seemed to be made of thin strips of aluminum fashioned into a nearly closed C. The axle on the door riding in the hollow of the C.
Already the top hinge was slightly bent. The door jiggled loosely as he shook it. Probably twisted out of whack as the White brothers crammed a struggling animal in through the door. Like closing an overstuffed suitcase, softening the hinges in the process.
Thorn tested the aluminum with his thumb. Pried at it. He huffed, his face reddening as the metal gouged his flesh. No good. Keep on trying that and all he'd get was another sliced finger. He drew his hand away, eased back into the fetal ball he'd been assuming.
With a knife, even a coin, Thorn could pry open that hinge in ten, fifteen minutes, be on his way. But in his position, he couldn't even reach a hand to his pocket to see if he had a coin, much less extract it.
Then the answer came to him as answers so often did, not in words, but through his bones and muscles, his body tissues. Shifting his weight inside the cage, feeling the half-inch sway and tip of the unwieldy structure.
Thorn rocked backward, then pitched his weight forward and the stack of cages shuddered and leaned. The monkey above him screamed and began to run in jittery circles around his tight space. Thorn relaxed for a moment more, tried to focus on the gradients and trajectories of his task.
The workbench was six feet in front of him. If he could tip the whole set of cages over, redirect the angle of descent a foot to the right, and if the momentum was sufficient and the angle correct, Thorn's cage door would strike a glancing blow against the corner of the workbench. Whether or not the jolt would be sufficient to wrench the door from its hinges, he couldn't judge. But in any case, it was a hell of a lot better than staying put. Feeling his strength seep away moment by moment.
He took a deep breath, another, then Thorn began to rock the cages. Heaving forward, drawing back, gradually finding the rhythm and pushing harder on each forward arc. The monkeys in the adjacent cages hooted and wailed, but Thorn kept at it, the cages tottering farther each time, nudging away from the wall, leaning, top-heavy. Thorn kept the tempo going, muscling forward, drawing back as if he were rocking a car out of a muddy trench. The unstable stack of cages lifted up on the fulcrum of its front edge, yawing forward.
Thorn rode the wave one more time, rocked back with all his weight, gathered himself in that half second, and heaved forward, grunting hard as the cages leaned over, tottered at the brink of their balance point, seesawing. He lurched forward, jamming his cheek against the door of the cage, grinding onward, moving every ounce he could into the downward arc.
Lazily the cages fell, and Thorn pitched his weight to the right, pulling the whole structure off center. It crashed against the workbench with such unexpected force he was momentarily paralyzed. For a few seconds the room was utterly quiet, then all around him the monkeys and gibbons broke into an insane, screeching chorus. And the cage itself squeaked and strained as it settled into its new awkward arrangement.
Thorn opened his eyes, saw blood on his hands, on his legs. Touched a finger to his forehead, felt the numb flesh of a new gash. His right shoulder was jammed against the door of the cage, the whole thing hanging a precarious yard off the floor, held in place by the workbench.
It was then he heard two car doors slam out in the parking lot and the voices of the White brothers, their profane banter.
He blinked away the fog, studied the door of his cage. Even though the door had struck a hard blow against the corner of the workbench the goddamn hinges had held. Stronger than they'd seemed. And the padlock was still in place. But on a second look he saw it. What had given way was the solder that held the steel locking hinge to the cages. The padlock dangled uselessly on its broken plate.
Thorn heard the White brothers unlock their front door, come inside the office. The gibbons and monkeys were quieting now. A pant, hoot and an occasional squeal. Thorn jimmied the door open and pried his head out the narrow breach.
He counted to three, then let himself down to the floor, and felt his legs give way under him. He collapsed on the linoleum beneath the half-toppled cages, his legs straight out in front of him.
Furiously rubbing the life back into them, he listened to the White brothers argue, listened to their raucous approach down the hallway. His skin was prickling. Sprawled on the floor, legs dead, Thorn reached a hand up to the workbench, patted around till his fingers bumped a wooden handle. He wormed out from under the cage, sliding along the floor, carrying the ball-peen hammer with him.
There was just time to scoot to the door, force himself into a sitting position. Thorn felt the bile curdling in the back of his throat, the acid rage. Positioning himself beside the closed door, legs still useless. He raised the hammer.
Their voices were a yard from the door, maybe less, when a phone rang in the front office. They halted, the big one ordering the little one to go back, answer it while he checked on the cages himself.
"You can stop bossing me," the little one said. "You got no hold on me anymore, Rayon. From now on, I do what I do, you do what you do. You hear me, man? No more of this mothering bullshit. It's over, man. Fucking over."
Quickly Thorn wiped the slick sweat from his hammer hand, took a fresh grip, raised it again. He could feel the sharp tingle of blood coming
back into his legs. He worked his toes, wiggled his feet, bent one leg at the knee.
The big one said something under his breath, so quiet Thorn couldn't make it out. He drew his legs up, pushed himself into a painful squat. He shot a glance down the dark hallway that ran into the reptile room. There was a door back there with a dead bolt, key in the lock. A back door out to the alley, the Dumpster. But there was no way he could make that distance in his condition. No way to outrun those two.
He could hear the big one speaking loud on the phone. Talking to someone a long way off, listening mostly, asking the person to repeat himself. Then a last "Yes, sir. Right away, sir," and he smacked the phone down.
It was the little one who came through the door first. Same black jeans, cowboy boots. Thorn struck him in the right knee. Then the shin. Heard him howl, frozen there in the doorway. Thorn hammered him in the other knee once, twice. Then slammed the toes of his left foot. Struck his foot again and again until the small man crumpled. Thorn raising the ball-peen hammer, taking aim on the man's forehead, a blow between the eyes. The small man writhing on the floor before him, a pistol showing at his belt. And Thorn hesitated a moment, his hammer aloft, poised. Wavered just long enough for the big blond one to get to the door, see what was happening, and wrench the hammer from his hand.
Thorn tried to come to his feet, but his legs gave way beneath him. He made a snatch at the little guy's pistol, but felt the big man's hands on his throat, holding him from above, strangling.
Thorn struggled, but couldn't break free. The small man scooted out of the way, rubbing at his knees, his shin, whimpering.
"Listen to me." The big man rattled Thorn's head, fingers gripping his neck so hard he felt something pop inside his throat. "I want to ask you a fucking question."
"I hear you," Thorn said.
The little one had his pistol out now, and he jammed it into Thorn's ear.
Gone Wild (Thorn Series Book 4) Page 37
