by Stuart Gibbs
“Maybe,” I said.
“He’s a good-looking guy,” Summer observed. I must have looked upset, because she quickly corrected, “Not as good-looking as you, though. And he’s dumb as a box of rocks.”
My phone started to ring. According to the caller ID, it was Lily Deakin.
Before I could answer it, though, Marge O’Malley called over the radio. Even though I was holding the earpiece in my hand, she was loud enough for me to hear her. “Eagle Eyes, come in,” Marge said. In addition to naming our operation, she had also insisted on giving us all code names. “This is Mamma Bear.”
I reluctantly flipped off my phone, figuring I could call Lily back, then made sure there weren’t any tourists watching before sticking the radio earpiece back in and turning my radio microphone on. Summer did the same thing.
“Eagle Eyes, this is Mamma Bear,” Marge repeated impatiently over the radio. “Do you read me?”
“Yes, Mamma Bear, we read you,” I begrudgingly replied. “And we have visual contact with you too.”
Marge and Kevin were now off to the side of the giraffe paddock, in a spot without too many tourists, where Marge felt it was safe to check in. Even so, she wasn’t doing a great job of being inconspicuous, bending her neck at an unnatural angle to speak directly into her microphone. “Any suspicious activity to report in Operation Hammerhead?”
Summer said, “If there was any suspicious activity, we would have reported it.”
“We have a potential bogey in the feeding area at nine o’clock,” Marge informed us. “Requesting visual confirmation.”
The feeding area was circular, which allowed six groups of tourists to feed the giraffes at once. As part of her determination to make our stakeout as military as possible, Marge had broken the area down into twelve zones, each corresponding to an hour of time on a clockface.
I had brought one of my father’s cameras with a big telephoto lens to help with our reconnaissance. A surprising number of people brought cameras like that to FunJungle, allowing them to zoom in on distant animals in SafariLand or get extreme close-ups of animals that were closer by. So it didn’t look too suspicious for me to peer through it at the giraffe feeding area. After all, no one could tell I was using it to focus on the tourists, rather than the giraffes.
I zoomed in on the far left of the feeding area, where nine would have been on a clock. A middle-aged couple wearing Harley-Davidson T-shirts was gleefully feeding a giraffe. The man had a big, thick beard, while the woman was as skinny as the legs of a flamingo. They didn’t look threatening or mean-spirited in the slightest. “Marge, are you talking about—”
“Use the code names, Eagle Eyes.”
“Sorry. Mamma Bear, are you talking about the people in the motorcycle shirts?”
“That’s affirmative. Shirts like that are a red flag. I’m thinking they might be members of a biker gang. And biker gangs are often involved in the drug trade. Especially crystal meth.”
“So your theory is that a biker gang is drugging the giraffes?” Summer asked skeptically.
“Possibly,” Marge replied. “Meth addicts are capable of extremely depraved behavior.”
I zoomed in closer on the couple in the T-shirts. FunJungle got a fair share of serious bikers. There were lots of windy roads in the Texas Hill Country that motorcycle enthusiasts enjoyed cruising, and FunJungle was the biggest tourist destination in the area. I had been a bit suspicious of the first bikers I had seen in the park, as many looked awfully mean and imposing in their leather riding outfits, but they had turned out to be as enthusiastic and excited as any other tourists. I had actually witnessed one burly, heavily tattooed biker squeal with delight upon seeing a baby zebra. The couple I was watching now seemed like more of the same. They might have looked tough when seated astride their motorcycles, but at the moment, they were laughing giddily as the giraffe ate lettuce leaves from their hands.
“I don’t think they’re drug addicts,” I reported. “They look like normal tourists.”
“Well, keep a close eye on them anyhow,” Marge ordered. “See if maybe they have any suspicious tattoos.”
I thought about arguing that this was ridiculous, but it was easier to just pretend to do it.
Next to me, Summer’s phone rang. She checked the caller ID and reported, “It’s Violet. I’m gonna take it.” Then she popped her earpiece out, flicked off her microphone, and answered, “Hey! What’s up?”
Through the telephoto, I saw that the man in the Harley T-shirt did have a tattoo. But it was of Mickey Mouse, which I didn’t think counted as suspicious. I reported this to Marge, who didn’t seem convinced.
“Mickey Mouse?” she asked cynically. “Is Mickey doing anything unsavory in the tattoo?”
“You mean, like poisoning a giraffe?” I said. “No. Mickey’s smiling. I think these people are theme park fanatics, not criminals.”
Summer paused her conversation to tell me, “Violet, Ethan, and Dashiell are going to be at the park today. Think they can swing by? It won’t ruin the operation, will it?”
“No,” I said. As far as I was concerned, the more Summer and I looked like kids hanging out with our friends, the less we looked like junior detectives on a stakeout.
Summer returned to her call. “Sounds good. We’re going to be here all day. When do you want to come by?”
The biker couple fed their last lettuce leaf to the giraffes and reluctantly gave up their spot to some other eager tourists. I shifted the telephoto lens away from them, sweeping it across the feeding area. . . .
When I did notice some people behaving suspiciously. A couple in their twenties was looking about furtively, making sure the staff at the feeding area wasn’t paying attention to them. Both were dressed unusually formally for FunJungle tourists. The man wore khakis and a button-down shirt with a tie, while the woman wore a very pretty dress. In all my time at FunJungle, I couldn’t recall ever having seen a tourist wearing a tie before. Since I was looking at them with a camera, I snapped a few photos. As I did, the woman quickly pulled something from her purse and turned toward the giraffe.
I didn’t get the chance to see what it was, though, because a group of tourists stepped into my line of sight. It looked like the woman in the dress was holding something out to the giraffe, maybe even feeding it, but I couldn’t tell what. “Marge!” I exclaimed, forgetting to use her code name in my excitement. “There’s some suspicious activity in the feeding area!”
“Where?” Marge demanded.
Before I could answer her, Summer told Violet, “Great! See you at two o’clock!”
“Two o’clock?” Marge replied, mistakenly thinking Summer had been talking to her. “I’m on it!”
“Wait!” I pleaded, but Marge had already bolted for the feeding area.
“You can’t hesitate in the face of crime!” she told me, bowling over a gaggle of little kids on a church field trip.
Kevin trailed right behind her, blindly following her lead.
The tourists who were blocking my line of sight moved out of the way. Whatever the young, formal couple had done to the giraffe already seemed to be over. The woman was slipping the suspicious object back into her purse, while the man was now making a show of feeding the giraffes for the staff there. I quickly snapped a few more photos of them.
They were standing at what would have been twelve o’clock. I shifted my focus to two o’clock. To my dismay, a family was gathered there. They appeared to be tourists from eastern Asia: two parents, three young children, and two grandparents.
Marge had now reached the entrance to the feeding area. She barreled her way through the line of guests waiting to go in, then flashed her badge to the startled woman working the entry gate. “FunJungle Security!” Marge bellowed, shoving through the turnstile. “We have a situation!”
Summer hung up with Violet, staring in astonishment at Marge. “What’s she doing now?”
“She’s supposed to be going after those people,” I said,
pointing to the well-dressed couple, then I indicated the Asian family. “But she’s going after them instead.”
Summer rolled her eyes, then shouted into her microphone. “Marge! Don’t! Stop!”
“Don’t stop?” Marge asked. “Roger that!” She bore down on the unsuspecting family.
“You’re heading for the wrong people!” I yelled.
But Marge didn’t respond. Later on, I would learn that she had knocked her earpiece loose while shoving aside yet another Giraffe Staff member, but Marge was so gung-ho in the midst of a mission she might have ignored me anyhow. Her microphone was still in place, so I could hear her as she yelled at the hapless family, “Put your hands in the air and step away from the giraffes! I have a taser and I am not afraid to use it!” She snapped the taser from her belt and flipped it on, allowing electricity to crackle between the prongs.
The tourists did not speak English. And since Marge was not wearing her official FunJungle uniform and had pocketed her badge to grab the taser, she did not look like a security guard. Instead, she looked like a deranged park guest wielding an electronic weapon.
Thus, the Asian tourists did what they probably thought was the sensible thing: They ran. So did most of the other tourists in the feeding area. The children and grandparents fled for the exit, while the father protectively placed himself in between Marge and his family.
Marge mistakenly perceived the family’s flight as proof of their criminality, rather than self-preservation. She lunged with the taser, catching the poor father in the arm. He trembled in pain as the electricity jolted his body, while his family screamed in horror.
And then, the biker with the Mickey Mouse tattoo and the Harley T-shirt came to the rescue. He body-slammed Marge, knocking the taser from her hand and driving her into the railing.
Marge now mistook the biker as a fellow giraffe-poisoning conspirator, instead of a good samaritan trying to protect some innocent tourists from a crazy woman. She shifted her attention to attacking the man, rather than trying to maintain her balance while being shoved up against a railing with a ten-foot drop on the other side. She tried to clobber the biker with a right hook, swinging at him with all her might. The man deftly sidestepped the assault—and Marge’s momentum carried her over the railing. Marge pitched into the paddock, dropped the ten feet, screaming the whole way, and landed flat on her back in a pile of hay.
Several tourists gave the biker a standing ovation.
The giraffes paused to inspect the loud, screaming woman who had plummeted into their paddock, then went back to eating.
Kevin Wilks didn’t have any idea what to do. His whole plan that day had been to simply take orders from Marge, but now even his dim brain seemed to realize that following Marge’s lead at this point would be a bad idea. So he simply backed away from the feeding area and acted as though he had nothing to do with Marge at all.
In the chaos, I lost sight of the suspicious well-dressed couple. They had fled the feeding area with everyone else, falling in right behind the Asian family, but then dispersed into the crowd.
“C’mon!” Summer shouted, leaping to her feet. “Let’s go after them!”
I stayed rooted to my spot. “We’re not supposed to get involved this time.”
Summer gave me an annoyed look. “They’re getting away!”
“They could be dangerous,” I argued.
“They might have poisoned the giraffes!”
I knew this was true. But I also knew that the last time I had gone after a criminal, I had ended up in the polar bear pit. So I hesitated.
“Fine,” Summer said angrily. ‘I’ll go after them myself.”
“Summer, wait!” I yelled.
But she didn’t listen. She ran off anyhow, while I stood there, staring after her impotently.
Summer had already wasted too much time waiting for me, though. By the time she got down to the giraffe paddock, she couldn’t find any sign of the well-dressed couple.
Our best lead in the giraffe poisoning case was gone.
7
BAD BEHAVIOR
Summer and I had never had a fight before. Sure, we had been annoyed at each other at times, but never really angry. Until Operation Hammerhead.
After failing to find the well-dressed couple, Summer returned to our spot under the tree near the giraffe paddock. At the time, everything was even more chaotic than it had been when she left, so we didn’t have a chance to talk right away—but it was obvious Summer was upset with me.
The Giraffe Staff had temporarily closed the feeding area while they tried to make sense of what had happened, which created a lot of exasperated tourists; they had already paid their money and waited patiently in the hot sun, and now they wanted to finally feed some darn giraffes. Meanwhile, the FunJungle paramedics had arrived to deal with Marge. While FunJungle had one of the finest medical teams on earth for animals, the medical care for humans wasn’t so impressive. When my mother had injured her ankle earlier that year, she had chosen to go to the veterinarian to have it fixed, rather than the regular doctors.
Given that Marge had fallen ten feet, she hadn’t injured herself too seriously, thanks to landing in a pile of hay. Instead of breaking her neck or getting a concussion, she had escaped with only a broken leg. Unfortunately, Marge was a very bad patient. She howled in pain so loudly that tourists were showing up at the giraffe paddock expecting to find a pack of wolves on the hunt. The giraffes were unsettled by her wailing; they kept getting spooked and stampeding around their enclosure. The Giraffe Staff was seriously considering shooting Marge with the tranquilizer gun until the medics finally sedated her.
When Summer got back, Chief Hoenekker was grilling me about what had happened. He had arrived on the scene with six FunJungle security guards, who had immediately been put to work calming angry tourists and trying to restore order. Pete Thwacker, the head of Public Relations, had also shown up, along with a few other people who I assumed were lawyers, because they were all wearing suits. (No one who worked at FunJungle wore suits except Pete and the lawyers, not even J.J. McCracken himself.) They had caught up with the Asian family and were talking to them and the bikers, probably figuring out what they could offer to keep them from suing FunJungle.
“Did you find the suspects?” Hoenekker asked Summer.
“No,” she said, then glared at me. “No thanks to Teddy.”
I was hurt that Summer had said this, but I didn’t think it was worth arguing about at the time. Hoenekker seemed to have very little patience left as it was.
“I took some photos of the suspects,” I said. “And we know exactly what time they were in the feeding area. Are there security cameras around here?”
“Of course,” Hoenekker answered. “There’s security cameras pretty much everywhere in this park.”
“It shouldn’t be hard to identify them, then,” I said. “You can check the footage and see what they were doing.”
“And if you act fast, you can probably put out an alert to everyone in security around FunJungle,” Summer added. “The suspects shouldn’t be too difficult to spot, given what they’re wearing. You could catch them before they leave the park.”
“Let me see the photos,” Hoenekker told me.
I brought the photos up on the screen of Dad’s camera and easily found one that showed the suspects clearly. Hoenekker took a photo of that with his own phone, forwarded it to his entire staff, and then called his video supervisor to have her examine the giraffe paddock footage from 12:05 in the afternoon. After all that, though, he still questioned Summer and me for another fifteen minutes, learning exactly what had gone wrong. Every once in a while, he would groan in frustration at something Marge had done—or at Kevin’s complete failure to do anything at all.
“Why did you even assign them to this job?” Summer asked. I got the sense her annoyance with me was making her annoyed about everything else, too. “They can’t possibly be the best people you have.”
“You’d be surp
rised,” Hoenekker replied. Summer started to respond, but he quickly cut her off. “If you have an issue with that, bring it up with your daddy. If he wants a better security staff, he needs to pay for it. Because right now, he’s paying my people less than he pays the janitors. Marge and Kevin might not be the sharpest tools in the shed, but they both follow orders and try their best—which is more than I can say for most of my employees. I have guards that I wouldn’t trust to mail an envelope, let alone go on a stakeout.”
Eventually, Hoenekker seemed satisfied that he’d learned all he could from us and left to deal with other business. The FunJungle paramedics got Marge onto a stretcher, brought a small truck into the giraffe paddock, and drove her to the hospital. Pete Thwacker and the lawyers bought off the family and the biker couple with offers of ten years’ free admission to FunJungle, three complimentary nights at the FunJungle Safari Lodge (redeemable at any time), and vouchers for $500 worth of free food and FunJungle merchandise. Since the giraffes were still skittish after all Marge’s howling, the giraffe feeding was closed for the rest of the day; the angry tourists who’d bought tickets for it had their money refunded and were given free limited-edition anniversary souvenir soda cups and Li Ping panda bobbleheads.
Even though the feeding was canceled, the giraffes were still on exhibit, so Summer and I resumed our stakeout. Hoenekker assigned two new guards to help us. (Marge was obviously out of commission, while Kevin went to the locker room to take a nap, as he had to work a late shift that night.) Sadly, the new recruits were proof of Hoenekker’s complaint about how incompetent his staff was. They were locals who had failed to graduate high school, and both could barely figure out how to work their radios, let alone help us hunt for criminals. One actually stuck the microphone in his ear and tried to talk to us through the earpiece, while the other somehow accidentally dropped his down his pants.
I finally got around to checking the message Lily Deakin had left for me before all the chaos had started. She said that she and Tommy had learned something important, and that I needed to call her back immediately, but when I did, all I got was her voicemail, so I left a message.