Steve looked at her.
“I’ve seen worse, though. That bandage will hold it until she’s anesthetized. I’m pretty sure I can stitch her up in time.” She looked at him levelly. “If you were trying to save her life, you probably did.”
Steve turned this notion over in his mind, examining it. He smiled. “Yeah?”
“Yeah. It really was dumb, though.”
Steve sighed, wishing for a cigarette. “The Buddha teaches respect for all life.”
“Oh.” She considered this. “Are you a Buddhist?”
“No. I’m an asshole. But I keep trying.”
II
Ten minutes later Naga was back on the table. They put the stretcher on the floor. Steve had muscled her onto it while she was still semiconscious. As he did this, Naga stretched her tongue out and licked blood off the back of his hand.
“It’s OK,” Steve said, stroking her cheek. “No big.”
When Naga’s eyes were shut he, Jerri, and Dr. Alsace lifted her up onto the examination table. While they were waiting for the anesthetic to fully kick in, Steve borrowed some bandages and started taping himself up.
Halfway through what was shaping up to be a really bad job, Dr. Alsace said, “Point that gun at me.”
“Beg pardon?”
“Point that gun at me.”
“Er…OK.” Steve pulled the HK out of his waistband and lifted it in her general direction.
“What’s that you say?” Dr. Alsace said. “If I don’t bandage you up, you’re going to shoot me? Well, I guess I have no choice, then.”
Steve blinked, smiled at her. “Thanks.”
“Jerri, turn your back. I’m about to set a bad example.” Jerri obliged. Dr. Alsace cleaned out the scratches on Steve’s back with a bottle of saline, then injected him with something. A minute or so later his back was numb. “Get me a rapID, would you?”
Jerri, gloved, went outside for a second and returned with a clear plastic tool about the size of a paperback book with two pinchable handles. “What’s that?”
“Staple gun.”
“What?”
Ka-blap!
“Ow! Fuck!”
“Sorry. Hold still.” Ka-blap!
“Ow! I’m not a two-by-four!”
“Don’t be such a baby. I don’t have time to suture.”
Steve managed to keep quiet for the next couple, but his face contorted with pain. He grunted on the sixth, seventh, and eighth ka-blaps.
“There we go,” Dr. Alsace said. “All done. Hold the gun on Jerri and tell her to bandage you up.”
Steve pointed the gun at her.
“Eeek! Don’t shoot. Hang on, I need to get more tape.”
She returned a second later, eyes wide. “Um…mister?”
“My name is Steve.”
“Steve? There’s a guy out there. He says he wants to talk to you.”
Steve’s stomach knotted. “Cop?”
“I’m not sure. He has a gun.”
Steve thought about this for a second. He pursed his lips, nodded. “Tell him it’s OK. Tell him to come in. I won’t shoot anything.”
A second later Erwin walked in. “Glad to hear it,” he said. He glanced at Naga. “Hmm. Nice lion.”
“Thanks.”
“When I heard the call come in, I had a feeling this might be you. You’re really extra-fucking-special under arrest. You know that, right?” Erwin pulled a set of those plastic cuffs that looked like cable ties out of his back pocket.
Steve didn’t move. He was thinking about the front door, the tree line behind the strip mall, the taxi.
“No,” Erwin said, seeing him tense. “You shouldn’t do that.”
“No?”
“No.” He pointed back in the general direction of the waiting room. “There’s a guy on the roof back behind that dry cleanin’ place. I used to work with him. He’s a good shot. You try anything, he’s going to put a bullet through your center of mass. It’ll leave a hole in your back about a foot across. Half your guts’ll blow out with it. You’ll be dead before you even know what hit you.”
Steve walked out into the lobby and peeped out the window. “Oh…” he said. “Oh, wow.” There was indeed a guy on the roof of the cleaners with a rifle. There were also around ten squad cars in the parking lot, blue lights flashing. A hundred yards away people streamed out of Walmart, heads down, running. He scanned the roof line and saw another sniper on top of the Monsieur Taco. “Fuck,” he said. “After all that.”
“Yeah,” Erwin said, “it’s a bitch.” He jiggled the plastic cuffs in the air. “You gonna let me do this, or do we gotta shoot ya?”
Steve looked at the front door, tested his weight on his bandaged ankle. Maybe I could duck out the back and…
“If you decide to run, can you give me a second first? I want to get them nice ladies out of the line of fire before the deppities start shooting. They’re all excited, like. I don’t think they’ll be real careful when they see you come running out with a gun. Be a shame if the rest of us got killed along with you.”
Steve put his palms up to his temples. He walked around the waiting room saying, “Shit, shit, shit!” He kicked a big bag of dog food. Then, with a sigh, “OK. You’re right. No way out. I’ve still got a problem, though.”
“Yeah? What’s that?”
“I knew how this was probably going to end up, but I came here anyway. Now it occurs to me that if I just drop the gun—”
“Don’t drop it,” Erwin said. “Might go off. Set it down gentle—”
“—yeah, sure. If I just drop it—”
“People on TV are always dropping guns. I saw a guy get shot that way once.”
“OK. Understood. I’ll just set it down. If.”
“If what?”
“If you”—he looked significantly at Erwin—“promise me you won’t let them just come in here and kill her. Promise me you’ll figure out, I dunno, something. A zoo. A circus.” He searched Erwin’s face. “Please. If you do that, I’ll help you as much as I can.”
“Help me? How?”
“I don’t know a whole lot, but I do know where they are—Carolyn and the rest.”
Erwin considered this. “Full cooperation? No holding back?”
Steve nodded.
“Can you sketch the interior of the place?”
“Sure.”
Erwin considered for a second. “I can’t take that lion back to my apartment, you understand.”
“I understand that. I’m just asking you to tell me that you’ll do your best.”
“Yeah,” Erwin said. “OK. You got my word.”
Steve nodded. He held out his wrists to Erwin.
“Put down the gun first.”
Steve set it on the reception desk, gently.
“Hands behind your back.”
He did that too. Blue lights flashed through the windows. He tilted his head back, shut his eyes. The sound the cuffs made as they closed was just like zipping up a plastic cable tie.
“Smart,” Erwin said. “They really would have killed you.”
“I know.”
Erwin leaned back and looked into Room Two. “That there’s a big-ass lion.”
Steve smiled a little. “You think she’s big, you should have seen her dad. Full-grown male. Maybe four hundred pounds?”
“Oh?” Erwin looked mildly alarmed. “He around?”
Steve shook his head. “Nope. Didn’t make it out.” He raised his voice. “Hey, how’s she doing, Doctor?”
They had started an IV and were giving Naga some sort of clear fluid. The bandage was off and Dr. Alsace was hunched over Naga’s leg. She didn’t answer. Jerri said, “Shh!” She walked over to the door and closed it, but slowly, giving the thumbs-up sign with her free hand.
Steve gave her a little nod. She nodded back, then shut the door.
“She yours?” Erwin said. “File didn’t say nothing about you having a pet lion.”
“Not really. We just met. We
’ve kind of been looking after each other.”
“Just ran into her on the street?”
“Actually, yeah.”
Erwin looked at him, waiting for a proper answer. After a minute or so he gave up. “Any chance I can get you to give a little more detail on that?”
“Sure, sorry. Other things on my mind. I was out for a jog and a whole bunch of mean dogs—like, dozens of them—tried to eat me. I shot some, but they had me down on the ground. I was a goner. Naga and her dad kind of came in out of nowhere and pulled the dogs off me. Saved my life.”
“Yeah? No shit?”
“No shit.”
Erwin considered. “That’s unusual.”
“I thought so too.” Steve shrugged. “Don’t argue with Santa Claus, I guess.”
“You think them lions have mebbey got something to do with this Carolyn chick of yours?”
Steve rolled his eyes. “Hmm. I don’t know. Let me think about that for a second.”
“Sorry. Dumb question. Do they…Hang on.” Erwin put his hand to his ear. “I’d love to keep chattin’ with ya, but them cops are getting antsy outside.” He lifted his wrist and spoke into his sleeve. “Yeah, ah, suspect in custody and shit.”
Two seconds later, the front door burst open. Half a dozen sheriff’s deputies flowed in, guns drawn.
“Easy, fellas,” Erwin said. “Everything’s fine. Federal custody, remember?”
“I remember,” said a guy with a lot of stripes on his sleeve. He spoke through gritted teeth. “What about the lion?”
“It’s asleep,” Erwin said. “Havin’ an operation. That’s why he came here.”
“Don’t hurt her, OK?” Steve said.
“What?” The cop looked at him like he was a bug on the road.
Steve felt his inner peace slip a notch. “Pretty please?”
“Animal Control is on the way. Can’t keep a lion as a pet in this town, son,” the cop said. “City ordinance.” A couple of the other cops snickered.
Steve felt his rage boiling. “Erwin?”
“Yeah?”
“Remember what we said.”
“I remember.”
“Good. If you want, I can take you to where they—” The phone clipped to his waistband started ringing.
“Who’s that?”
Steve thought frantically. “It’s her, probably. Carolyn. She gave me the phone. She’s called a couple of times already. Want me to talk to her?”
Erwin considered this. “Nah. We’ll be seeing her in a minute anyway.”
“You already know where she is?”
“Oh yeah. Nice little neighborhood about two miles from here. We’ve had the place surrounded since around lunchtime. We’re waiting until we get all the neighbors evacuated, then we’re going in.”
“You don’t sound too enthusiastic.”
Erwin gave him a long look. “Fact is, I’m not.”
“What’s the matter?”
“I’m just not sure what—” Erwin cut himself off. “That’s not true. I am sure. Something bad is going on, I just don’t know what. I feel the way a rat must feel sniffing the peanut butter on a trap.” He looked at Steve. “Is your buddy in that house?”
Steve looked at him blankly.
“The guy with the knife thing. The one who broke you out of jail. Is he there?”
“Oh. His name is David. Yeah, he’s there. Last time I saw him, anyway.”
Erwin frowned. “I was afraid of that.”
“He’s not my buddy, though,” Steve said. “You’re wrong about that. I’ve got no idea who those people are or what they want from me. And that guy’s crazy. He scares the crap out of me. He scares the rest of them too, I think.”
“The rest of who?”
Steve opened his mouth to speak, shut it. “What about Naga?”
“The lion? I’ll try the zoo.” Erwin sounded a million miles away.
Steve gave him a skeptical look.
Erwin glanced up. “You got my word. I’ll figure something out.”
Steve continued to look skeptical.
With a sigh, Erwin turned to the guy with all the stripes on his sleeve. “Frank? Listen up. That lion is evidence in a federal investigation. Take good care of it.”
“Her,” Steve said.
“The hell you say,” Frank said.
“No,” Erwin said. He turned to face the man. He spoke quietly. He was polite. But in that moment Steve understood for the first time how extraordinarily dangerous Erwin truly was. “I do say. You call the fucking zoo, you call Animal Control, you call whoever you need to call, but if anything happens to that animal…you and me, we’re going to have a problem.”
The cop was an inch or two taller than Erwin. When the two of them locked eyes, he was looking down. He held Erwin’s gaze…but only for a moment. Then he withered visibly. His chest un-puffed. He averted his eyes. His men watched this. “All right,” he said. “Yeah. OK.”
Erwin turned back to Steve. “That good enough?”
“Good enough,” Steve said. His mouth had gone dry. He swallowed hard. “Thank you. OK, I don’t know a whole lot. The first time I ever saw him was the same time you did, at the jail. I saw what he did in the hall”—ropey guts dangling from the fluorescents—“and started squirming. He got pissed off and knocked me out, I think. I woke up in the house a couple miles from here, like you said. There were a bunch of them there. Carolyn said they were her brothers and sisters, but they didn’t look like family to me. There were two black guys that looked like twins, and a creepy lady who smelled like dead ass—I think she was, like, Polynesian or something, except she was so pale her skin was almost blue. But I dunno, maybe they’re adopted. They all spoke the same language, anyway.”
“What language? Could you tell?”
Steve shook his head. “I never heard anything like it before. Maybe a little bit like Vietnamese? Except not.”
“Are they like him? Carolyn and the rest? Dangerous? I’ll tell you for free if my guys go in there and get hurt because you lied to us, I’ll go hard on you.”
Steve considered the question, and not just because Erwin had threatened him. “I don’t know,” he said finally. “I don’t think so. They all seem really afraid of him.”
“Good,” Erwin said. “I’ll—”
“But I think they might be dangerous in other ways,” Steve said. “Everything I told you about Carolyn was true. Everything. She’s not like that David guy, but I think she’s got…something.”
“Got something?”
“I don’t know. She just doesn’t seem, I dunno, helpless. Some of the others, sure. A couple of them I’m pretty sure I could take. But not that David guy, and not her. There’s something about her…” Steve shook his head. “I don’t know. I’d be careful, is all.”
Erwin was studying him. “How many of them were there? The family?”
“I’m not sure. I didn’t count. About a dozen, I think, give or take. Plus the old lady who owns the house. She’s normal, not one of them.”
Erwin clicked his tongue, deep in thought.
“Don’t you believe me?”
“Yeah,” Erwin said. “I think I do. A couple hours ago we had an RC-135 do a flyover. Infrared showed thirteen people inside. You didn’t know that. If you were going to lie about something, that would have been a good place to start.”
Infrared? But that raised another question. “Hey,” Steve said, “how’d you find me, anyway?”
“You brought a lion into the vet, son. Even without the gun, a thing like that is bound to cause talk.”
“So…you were just here on vacation or something?”
“Oh, I gotcha. No. I’m in town as sort of an expert advisor with the strike team. I’m the only one we know of who’s seen him and lived. Besides you, a’course.”
“ ‘Strike team’?”
“Oh, yeah. Lotsa heavy hitters in town today. Delta, couple snipers from SEAL Six, even some Marine recon. Your Miss Sopaski, she’
s about to have company.”
“How’d you find her?”
Erwin frowned. “Crazy bitch called up the White House. Can you believe that?”
III
Erwin walked Steve out of the vet’s office and left him, handcuffed, in the backseat of a squad car for half an hour or so. At Steve’s request Erwin cut off the plastic cuffs behind his back and re-cuffed him in front. That was a lot more comfortable.
Steve found that half hour or so weirdly relaxing. It was a nice autumn day. The car window was cracked enough to let in the breeze. He wasn’t in immediate mortal danger. There weren’t any big decisions to make. Also, I don’t have to worry about getting caught anymore. There’s that, too. He didn’t quite sleep, but he might have dozed a little. Erwin did paperwork and argued with the cops. After a little while a truck stenciled with the words EASTERN EXOTIC CAT SHELTER pulled up. Steve smiled at that.
He was hoping to see Naga again, but before they brought her out Erwin opened the door of the squad car. “Wakey-wakey.” He jerked a thumb over his shoulder. “Out.”
Steve blinked. Maybe he had slept, a little. “Where to?”
“My car.”
“This isn’t your car?”
“Do I look like a cop?”
“Actually…”
Erwin gave him a look.
“No,” Steve said. “Of course not.”
Erwin nodded. He took Steve by the shoulder and walked him over to a nondescript Ford sedan parked thirty yards away.
“This is a State Department car. I signed for it.” Erwin peered at him. “You gonna give me any shit?”
“I’m not planning on it.”
“OK. You can ride in front if you want. I gotta leave the cuffs on, though.”
“Sure, I understand. Hey, am I still bleeding?”
“A little. Not much. Actually…” Erwin rooted around in the backseat, grabbed a newspaper. He unfolded the paper and laid the sports section across the passenger side of the front seat. “OK. Sit on that.”
Steve looked stung.
“Son, your shirt’s a mess. And you need a fuckin’ shower. Any stains get on that upholstery, I gotta clean ’em. No offense.”
“Nah,” Steve said. “It’s OK.” By now it was getting to be late afternoon, 4:13 p.m. according to the dash clock in Erwin’s car. They turned out of the parking lot and headed back down Highway 78. Steve gave Monsieur Taco a longing look as they drove away. He was getting hungry. “Where we going?”
The Library at Mount Char Page 24