by Brady Hammes
Mateo was responsible for everything from washing dishes to basic handyman work. He was in his mid-twenties, a good decade younger than Laurent and considerably less friendly. He was almost clinically averse to eye contact, and for a long time Jonah assumed he was a mute, an assumption that was quickly disproved when he caught him singing a Lady Gaga tune while scrubbing dishes.
“Why are you back already?” Laurent asked, stepping onto the ground and making his way toward the front door of the restaurant. “Miss me?”
“Somebody stole my camera last night,” Jonah said, following him.
“Really?”
“Yep.”
“Have you told Marcus?”
“Not yet. It just happened.”
“This is a problem,” Laurent said, stepping through the door.
“Yeah, to say the least,” Gavin said, following him inside. “Can I borrow your computer? Need to send some emails.”
“Sure,” Laurent said, carrying a couple empty glasses to the kitchen. “You know where it is.”
Little Clement sat at a table, hunched over a coloring book. “Hey, bud,” Jonah said, but the boy was too engaged with his art to acknowledge Jonah’s presence.
The restaurant wasn’t much to look at. There were a dozen small plastic tables draped with floral tablecloths and a makeshift bar constructed from cinder blocks and scrap plywood. Mounted on the wall were family pictures and an old Zenith television that showed whatever football match the antennae could find. But what the restaurant lacked in design and aesthetic continuity, it made up for with the cheery, welcoming disposition of its proprietors.
Jonah walked to the kitchen, where Helen was chopping vegetables while listening to the BBC on a small radio. “Good morning,” he said, grabbing a Fanta from a small commercial refrigerator emblazoned with an eighties-era Pepsi logo.
“You back already?” Helen asked. She was a few years younger than Laurent, with the poise and austerity of someone who doesn’t suffer fools. Jonah sometimes wondered if she considered him one of those fools.
“I forgot my batteries,” he said.
Helen shook her head and made a little tsk sound before returning to her work.
Jonah stepped into a large closet that doubled as the restaurant’s office and grabbed the batteries from the charger plugged into the wall. He then sat down at the desk, which contained an ancient IBM laptop Marcus had brought from Vanderbilt when he first arrived. Despite being almost a decade old, the computer was surprisingly useful so long as you didn’t need anything more than a word processing application, a few simple games, and a spotty Internet connection.
Jonah logged into his email account and found a message from his mother: How are you feeling? Are you getting enough to eat? Are you wearing bug spray? He skipped the questions he didn’t plan to answer and got to the paragraph where she filled him in on the news from home. Apparently, Gavin’s TV show had been canceled, which didn’t surprise her because she never did understand what it was about, which wasn’t a knock on Gavin, whose performance was actually quite good, much better than his co-stars in her opinion, and though he’s a little bummed about the whole thing, she’s certain he’ll bounce back. She wrote that Sam wasn’t returning emails and she had no idea if she’d even booked a flight back yet, which was beginning to worry her, because the idea of not having all her kids home for Christmas was enough to break her heart. Jonah rarely spoke with his siblings, usually relying on his mom to keep him updated on their lives, and since moving halfway across the world, his connection with them was essentially nonexistent, which was why he was looking forward to rendezvousing with his sister in Paris. He wrote back to his mother letting her know that everything was going well, that he was excited to come home. He hit send, then began transcribing his letter to Sam.
When he was done, he took a seat at the bar. The television was broadcasting a football match between the Ivory Coast and Cameroon, the sounds of the game distorted by static, the picture nothing more than a swamp of muddy colors. It was a slow, scoreless game, so he decided to go for a walk. The town was relatively quiet. There was a woman hanging clothes out to dry and a skinny dog chasing a rooster down the street and some kids acting out a scene in which one of the boys held a toy gun to the other’s head, while a third one filmed it with what appeared to be Jonah’s video camera. The gunman had the smaller boy in a headlock, the gun pressed to his temple, and Jonah quickly realized that some kind of fictional hostage situation was taking place. He ran toward the kids, yelling, “Cut, cut, cut!”
“Que diable?” the cinematographer said, looking up from his viewfinder. “Nous faisons un film.”
“Where’d you get the camera?” Jonah asked the kid, who looked to be about fifteen years old.
“Not your business,” the kid shot back in surprisingly good English. “Who are you?”
“Who are you?” Jonah said.
“I’m Oliver.”
“Well, Oliver, I’m the owner of that camera.”
“This is my camera. My dad gave it to me for my birthday.”
“No, it’s not.” Jonah grabbed the camera from his hand and pointed to the small sticker on the bottom. “See that sticker? It says PROPERTY OF VANDERBILT UNIVERSITY, which is a college in the United States. This camera is for documenting elephants, not making amateur action movies. I’m very sorry, but I have to take it back.”
“I’m telling my dad.”
“Oh yeah?” Jonah asked, turning and walking back to Laurent’s. “Who’s your dad?”
“Your worst nightmare,” Oliver yelled after him.
Jonah did a little pretend shaking motion, then laughed to himself. “Whatever, pal.”
* * *
—
WHEN JONAH ARRIVED BACK at the restaurant, Laurent and Mateo were eating smoked fish at the bar. “Where’d you run off to?” Laurent asked.
“Went for a walk,” Jonah said, holding up his camera, “and found this.”
“Where?”
“Some kids were using it to make an action movie.”
Mateo had been enthusiastically tearing at his fish, but he looked up when he heard Jonah’s explanation.
“And you just took it?” Laurent asked.
“Of course,” Jonah said indignantly. “It’s my camera.”
“I understand,” Laurent said, sounding concerned. “But maybe that wasn’t the most diplomatic approach.”
“What was I supposed to do?” It seemed to Jonah like the obvious course of action, and he didn’t understand why Laurent thought otherwise.
“I don’t know. But probably not that.”
Mateo nodded his assent, then returned to his fish, spitting a sliver of bone onto the ground.
After Laurent’s comment, Jonah replayed the scene in his mind, wondering if he’d been too cavalier in his handling of the situation. He convinced himself it was fine, just some smart-ass kids, nothing to worry about.
Laurent and Mateo finished their meals and carried the dishes to the kitchen. The day’s heat had settled on the town, cooking the metal roof to a temperature better suited to making waffles. Laurent said they’d have to wait till tomorrow to finish that particular job, but in the meantime, they could try to figure out what was going on with the toilet that had stopped flushing after Mateo’s extended visit with it earlier in the day.
Jonah grabbed the camera and began scrubbing through the video. There was a quick, frenetic montage of the young gunman arming himself, followed by a prolonged chase scene in which he stalked his target through the surrounding forest, into a hair salon, and finally to the open stretch of dirt road where Jonah had found him and his buddies. He rewound another ten minutes and hit play. He watched a shaky hand run with the camera through the dark forest, followed by a few minutes of black during which two voices were heard speaking in French and then, a minute later, a sig
ht that made his heart sink. It was hard to make out at first, but as the camera moved closer he recognized his own sleeping body in soft focus. The camera lingered for a moment, then moved closer, revealing his face in the weak light, his mouth open wide, his snoring light but steady. It was alternately familiar and terrifying. He immediately recognized the mistake he’d made by repossessing the camera, a mistake that snapped into chilling clarity when he saw a man on a motorcycle approaching from down the road.
The bike coughed to a stop, and the man dismounted and dropped it on the ground like an old bicycle. Jonah guessed he was close to fifty; muscular, with cheeks pocked with acne scars and a fleshy, bulbous nose acquired from heavy drinking. He wore camouflage army fatigue pants, a Tupac Shakur T-shirt, and the displeased countenance of someone forced to attend to business for which he doesn’t have the time. “You took my camera,” he said in toneless English.
“Excuse me?” Jonah said.
“That’s my camera,” the man said, pointing to the camera in Jonah’s hand.
“I actually think this is mine,” Jonah said. “Well, not mine, exactly, but the college’s. It’s for research. For the elephant research. For the college.” He was stammering, clumsily casting about for an explanation that might appease this indignant fellow.
“I know about your research,” the man said. “I’ve seen your camp in the jungle. My brother, he is the police chief, and he tells me about you and the elephants. I try not to cause any problems with your elephants, but then you steal my camera so now I don’t know.” He summoned something phlegmy from the depths of his throat and discharged it into the dirt. “What happened to the other elephant man?”
“Marcus?” Jonah said. “He went home.”
“So now it’s just you?”
Jonah nodded.
He exhaled loudly as if dissatisfied with Jonah’s answer. “I liked the other elephant man better,” he finally said. “He didn’t cause me trouble.”
Jonah took a step back, imagining how he might weaponize his camera should the man lunge at him. “Honestly, the last thing I want is to cause you trouble.”
The guy looked off in the distance, as if considering where he wanted to steer the conversation. “Tell me again why you are here.”
“I’m doing research on forest elephants,” Jonah explained.
“Yes, but why. What do you wish to know?”
Jonah wasn’t sure how detailed an explanation the guy was looking for, so he said, “I’m studying how they communicate. Vocal patterns, things like that.”
The man smiled condescendingly. “So you go into the forest to talk to the elephants? Is that right?”
Jonah knew he was being made fun of, and he hoped that some gentle teasing might be the extent of the man’s wrath. He adopted a more conciliatory tone. “If you feel like I’ve stolen your camera, we can speak to the police.” He then remembered the man’s claim that his brother was the chief of police.
“Yes,” he said. “I think I may do that. I’ll speak to my brother and see if we can find a happy ending to this camera.” He clapped Jonah on the back, causing him to flinch. The man laughed, then picked his motorcycle up off the ground, kicked it to life, and rode away.
Jonah went back inside the restaurant, where Laurent was standing by the door, holding a broom in his hand, apparently eavesdropping on the exchange.
“Who was that guy?” Jonah asked.
“He’s a bad man,” Laurent said, shaking his head. “A very bad man.”
“Yeah,” Jonah said. “That’s sort of the impression he gives. Do you know him?”
“I know of him.” Laurent explained that the man’s name was Lionel, but everyone called him Slinky. As a boy, Slinky had acquired his nickname by trapping large snakes with his hands. He soon realized that in addition to the thrill of the hunt there was a substantial amount of money to be made. A few years ago, he joined forces with two Rwandan men with connections to exotic animal collectors across the globe, and together they formed one of the largest black market animal smuggling rings in West Africa. Slinky and his team of hunters were responsible for acquisitions, while the Rwandans handled sales and delivery.
“So this is an organized thing?” Jonah asked.
Laurent nodded.
“And he more or less gets away with it?”
Laurent explained that as the chief of police Slinky’s brother had connections with the Gabonese minister of the interior, which ensured that the appropriate heads would be turned at the appropriate moments, allowing Slinky and his team complete freedom to transport an almost limitless number of wild animals. A year ago, Slinky trusted a relative newcomer to the business, a Nigerian man named Gibby, with moving six Nile monitor lizards from his home in Benin to a Finnish dealer in Cameroon. When Slinky arrived at Gibby’s apartment with the delivery instructions, he found his product snacking on the corpse of his newest employee, Gibby’s midsection picked clean by the eight-foot lizards. Slinky packed what was left of the man into two large suitcases, which he dumped in the Gulf of Guinea. Slinky considered the whole ordeal a minor hassle, but his Rwandan partners—rattled by the graphic realization that one could actually be eaten alive by lizards—abandoned the exotic animal trade for the relative safety of the diamond business. With his connections gone and no support structure to help with a line of work as logistically complex as his, Slinky made a career move of his own, this time into the ivory trade, realizing that animals were easier to deal with dead than alive. Now he spent half his time interfacing with brokers in Libreville and the other half hunting elephants in the forests outside Franceville. As its unofficial mayor, he presided over the town with the unbending discipline of a warlord. When a man from a neighboring town reported Slinky to the authorities, the man was taken into the forest and given a backwoods colonic with a three-foot elephant tusk.
“Of course,” Laurent said, “this is all just gossip. Who knows how much of it is true.”
This last part was little comfort to Jonah, because he knew that if any of it were true, if even part of Laurent’s story was indicative of the kind of man who would not only steal his camera but then have the audacity to return in the middle of the night to film, with chilling objectivity, his sleeping body, then surely this was a man not to be fucked with. For the first time in his life, Jonah became acutely aware that someone might have a reason to kill him.
“Why is this the first I’ve heard about the guy?” he asked.
“He hasn’t been around much,” Laurent said. “I thought maybe he’d been arrested.”
“And the kid?”
“That’s his son apparently, though I believe he lives in Libreville with his mother most of the time. He goes to some fancy international school. I think his mom sends him out here during his breaks.”
Clement approached with a page torn from his coloring book, a purple rocket ship arcing over a yellow sun.
“C’est bon!” Laurent said, inspecting the drawing.
It was getting late in the day, so Jonah collected his batteries from the office and placed them in his backpack. “So what do you think I should do?” he asked Laurent.
“Well,” Laurent said, pausing either for effect or because he genuinely wasn’t sure what to say. “If it were me, I would probably do whatever he asks.”
GAVIN
HE LEFT BEFORE DAWN, before the freeways filled, heading west through the L.A. sprawl, past the factory outlets and the big-box retailers, over the Cajon Pass and through Barstow, where he once spent three terrible weeks shooting a low-budget horror film about desert zombies. He shook the city from him and entered the emptiness of the Mojave Desert, the interstate unrolling before him like so many miles of clean track.
This whole thing had come together quickly, maybe too quickly. He’d committed without really thinking it through, which, in the past, had often landed him in troubl
e, though he wanted to believe this time would be different. But he also had very little to lose, so there was that. As far as he could tell, the worst-case scenario was that he’d put an extra two thousand miles on his car. Mariana had followed up with him the next day, sketching out her thoughts on the play. From a directorial standpoint, she seemed far more intelligent than most of the hacks he’d worked with in L.A. She lived in Taos with her fiancé, a general contractor who also helped run the theater, though his involvement, she assured Gavin, was purely administrative. She didn’t want him to think this was some kind of crazy husband-wife directing duo. She financed the productions—typically one per season—through grant money and ticket sales. The casts consisted of locals, sometimes kids from the schools, hobbyists she called them, though occasionally she was able to lure a professional like himself from one of the coasts, a face the audience might recognize, someone whose legitimacy could be confirmed with an IMDb search. He wanted to tell her that an IMDb credit was about as legitimate as a child’s pilot wings, but he figured there was no point in negotiating against himself.
The winter production of Long Day’s Journey was a first for the theater, considerably darker than most of their previous work, feel-good puff like Annie or The Sunshine Boys. Mariana was worried it might be a struggle to draw the kind of crowds needed to square the bank account, which was why his involvement was so crucial. At least she’d have a name to hang on the marquee, though Gavin doubted many of the town’s residents would recognize a part-time player from a recently canceled show on a second-tier cable network. He’d done some research online, and for a community theater it seemed reputable enough; lots of poorly photographed headshots of the principal actors, a calendar of events with links to future productions. There was even a write-up in the Albuquerque Tribune, the theater critic calling a recent production of Our Town delightfully unexpected, praising Mariana’s empathetic direction. And if it was terrible, he’d find some excuse for why he couldn’t return after the holidays, though his conversation with Mariana gave him hope that it might be pretty good, certainly more satisfying than his previous role as an executive assistant with dreams of becoming a folk singer.
