The Apex Predator (Kindle Single)

by Michael Koryta

  Belov asked him if he remembered the warehouse on Fulton Avenue where they had stored stolen cars, more than a hundred of them at times. Thor had driven a Lamborghini into the building once and nearly kept it, such a beautiful machine, but it did not suit his needs, it drew the eye and that was the last thing he wanted. He said that he remembered the warehouse, and Belov told him to go there and pick the rug he wanted.

  They drank more then, they finished the bottle. Belov commented on how much Thor drank and how swiftly. He usually did not indulge. Thor knew that this was not a pleasing sight for Belov, who took such reassurance in the fact that Thor was not a man of indulgences.

  “It is a special bottle,” Thor said, and on this they could agree. He shook his boss’s hand then and left the house and walked into the snow and sparkling lights. When he got into his car he intended to go home — he knew there were doors you should not open and that this was one of them — but instead he found himself on Fulton Avenue.

  There were 59 tigers in the warehouse. Some nearly full grown, some the size of the cub he had once fed with a bottle. Those that were grown were kept in cages so small that they could not stand.

  “This instead of cars?” he asked the man who was guarding the place.

  The man shrugged. “Belov enjoys them. He enjoys the thrill of the hunt.”

  Thor felt an ease slip into his bloodstream in the way that alcohol worked for some men. The hunt. This he had not understood.

  “He shot it?”

  “With a gun the size of my leg. Still it took two rounds.” This was said admiringly.

  “Where did he hunt it?”

  “Out to Sheffield Lake.”

  “Sheffield Lake.” Thor thought of the tiny town and tried to imagine where one might safari there. “I am afraid I am not following. There is a preserve of some kind?”

  The man regarded Thor curiously — uneasily, that was the better word, and it was an expression Thor knew well — and said, “Of some kind, yes. Listen, that’s not my end of things. I don’t know what to tell you. What does Belov want? Why did he send you here?”

  “I’m to pick one,” Thor said.

  “So pick.”

  “Not just yet.”

  * * *

  In the week that followed, he tried to count the men he had killed. It wasn’t as easy a task as it should have been. There were occasions in which he was not sure if it had been his bullet or another’s that had extinguished life, those firefights in which chaos ruled. He knew that he had killed many, though. Many.

  He believed that such knowledge should help him now.

  It did not.

  * * *

  The private investigator had retired, or so Thor understood, but he still ran a gym on the west side of the city. Thor went there in search of him only to learn that he was working again. That was interesting. Thor had heard nothing of him in some time and was curious that he had returned to the business. He had never imagined needing a detective, but he had always operated within the confines of Belov’s empire, as well, and it was necessary now to step outside of it. Thor did not trust many people in the world, and it was strange how readily Perry came to mind.

  But Perry knew secrets that could have harmed Thor and Belov, and he had never shared those secrets. It was possible that he had not because he was afraid of the consequences — this was how it typically went where Thor was concerned — but somehow he was convinced that wasn’t the case with Perry. The man seemed to understand that sometimes honor was hidden in shades of gray.

  The detective agency was in a stone building with an ancient clock on the exterior wall. Second floor, corner room. It felt strange to enter such a place, but even stranger to knock, so he simply walked inside instead.

  “You realize,” Lincoln Perry said after a long silence, “that this is exactly how most of my nightmares begin?”

  “You remember me.”

  “Yes, Thor. I have a recollection or two. Professional detective, you know. Trained to remember things. I’m particularly good with people who have weighed the pros and cons of taking my life.” He tapped a fingertip off his skull. “Steel trap when it comes to that. Steel trap.”

  “There is something,” Thor said, “that I would like to report to the police. Or maybe not the police. To some…proper authority.”

  Perry looked at him as if Thor had spoken in his mother tongue instead of English.

  “It would not be wise for me to do this personally,” Thor continued. “I try to…limit my conversations with such figures. You understand.”

  “I get the gist, sure.”

  “Would you be willing to do me a favor?” Thor said.

  “Has anyone ever answered that question with a no to you?”

  “Not twice,” Thor said, and Perry smiled. Then Thor told him the favor, and the smile went away.

  “You’re serious about this?” Perry was tapping his hand lightly on the desk now, and Thor knew without asking that there would be a gun under the desk. He didn’t believe that Perry would consider reaching for it, but still it interested him. Perry knew him as well as Tobias had, perhaps even better in his own way, and yet he had notions of self-defense. It was either impressive or sad.

  “The brave die young,” Thor said.

  Perry stopped moving his hand. “I intend to be an old, old man.”

  “Find out where it happens, and how,” he said. “There may be a third part but that is mine to handle. When you are done with your parts, I will do mine.”

  “Why do I have to do two-thirds of the work? Seems a little unfair.”

  To Thor’s silence, Perry said, “You’ve never been one for joking, have you?”

  “That is not true. I am just not as easily amused as you seem to be.”

  “Fair enough,” Perry said. “But I’ll admit that I’m confused.”

  “Is this a rare condition for you?”

  “A familiar one, sadly. But I assure that I’m not the man people usually contact when they’re looking to go tiger hunting.”

  “All I said was that I want to know how it works.”

  “It’s run by your people. Why can’t you ask?”

  Thor didn’t speak.

  “I suppose I’m not to worry about that aspect of this,” Perry said.

  “I would rather you didn’t worry about any of it.”

  “That chance ended when you walked in the door.”

  “You are an investigator. People come to you and want answers on a thing, and you provide the answers, do you not?”

  “Sure,” Perry said. “By the way, you ever going to speak using a contraction? I’ve been waiting all these years. One day you’re bound to slip up.”

  “I was taught to enunciate. To speak clearly. When I speak, I do not wish for there to be any confusion as to my message.”

  “I’m sure there rarely is.”

  “If there is no confusion, then just do your job,” Thor said. “I would like to retain you to do this job.”

  “Retain me,” Perry said.

  “How much does that cost?”

  “I’ll review your tab, but I think your credit is looking pretty good.”

  “Nice of you to remember.”

  “Impossible to forget.”

  Once, at a cabin not far from the city, Perry had watched Thor kill two men and take a third. They were men who had been busy trying to kill Perry at the time. Thor imagined that it was indeed that sort of thing that lingered in the mind of a man like Perry. He was somewhat saddened to consider how little the incident had lingered in his own. Maybe it was for this reason that he surprised even himself by offering at least a bit of an answer as he stood and went for the door.

  “If the place is not what I hope,” he said, “then I would rather not see it myself.”

  * * *

  Thor heard from him the next day, and he was not surprised by this. He had always suspected that if he required a favor from Perry it would be treated as something of a rush job. Perry
invited him to return to the office, but as a general rule Thor preferred not to meet anyone in the same place on a consistent basis, and so he provided a different location, a bar in Rocky River where they made their own beer and drew large crowds to watch the Cleveland Browns play football. Thor didn’t drink beer, and he didn’t watch football, but he had determined that there was no better way for a man to be invisible in this city than to sit in a place where there was drinking and Cleveland Browns football. Unless you unplugged the televisions, you were likely to go unnoticed.

  “Didn’t figure you for a fan,” Perry said when he sat down at the high-top table where Thor waited.

  “I think they will be good this season. Kosar, he is not bad.”

  Perry looked at him and then away, rubbed his eyebrow with a thumb and nodded.

  “And you said I could not joke,” Thor said. “Kosar has been gone for many years. This much, even I know. You were afraid to correct me, though.”

  “It didn’t seem prudent,” Perry said, and Thor wanted to smile but he couldn’t. It struck him that even an attempt at humor required referencing the threat he carried with him at all times. He wished now that he hadn’t tried the joke.

  “What can you tell me?” he said, back to business, because that was where he belonged.

  Perry kept his eyes on the television. “I’m not entirely clear on what you’re after. If it’s the chance to kill a tiger, you’ll get that. You can have the fur, the head, the claws. You can have the meat. You’ll be offered an opportunity to pose with your kill as well. It will cost you $10,000.”

  “Ten thousand.”

  “Yes.”

  “What if I do not succeed in shooting the tiger? What will I have to pay then?”

  “You won’t fail.”

  “Is that suggesting your trust in my accuracy?”

  “I don’t doubt your accuracy,” Perry said. “But you won’t need it.”

  “Would you look at me, please.”

  Perry turned to face him. He held the eye contact and Thor tried to read it and then said, “It is not going to be much of a hunt, is it?”

  Perry took out a manila folder and passed it across the table. Inside were photographs that had clearly been taken from a long distance. They showed a series of cages in a long line, with benches opposite them, just outside of the bars.

  “Those cages are 10-by-10,” Perry said. “The shooting bench is there for your convenience. It takes a big rifle to kill a tiger, and they can be heavy and hard to aim.”

  “The tiger is in the cage.”

  “Yes.”

  “The shooter is outside of it.”

  “Yes. Once you’re in position, you’ll signal them, and they’ll open a steel door on a slide gate and the tiger will come out through a chute.” Perry’s jaw worked and he looked away from Thor again and said, “They’ll come out happily, because that’s how they’re fed every day.”

  “And people do this often?”

  “I’m not sure. Often enough.”

  “Who runs it?”

  “There are two men who handle the feeding and the, um, hunting operation. But I wouldn’t say that they run it.”

  “Then who does?”

  Perry was quiet for a moment, and then he said, “Well, the cats have to come from somewhere.”

  “Correct. Where?”

  “I think you may know that already.”

  Thor looked away from Perry and back at the pictures. He studied them for a long time. He thought of the cub that he had fed with the bottle, and of the rug on Belov’s floor. Then he closed the folder and slid the photographs back to Perry and said, “Thank you for inquiring about it for me. I would like to retain you again. Find someplace for them to go.”

  “The cats?”

  “Yes.”

  Perry said, “You realize that some of your people might have problems because of this.”

  Thor was silent.

  “Why in the hell did you send me out there?” Perry said. “You want them to go down?”

  Thor looked at the television. The Browns were losing. The crowd at the bar was growing disgruntled.

  “Does anyone know that you’re doing this?” Perry asked.

  “Only you.”

  “Wonderful. I’d had this fear recently that I was going to be able to sleep through the night. Thanks for ridding me of that.”

  “You do not trust me,” Thor said, and Perry seemed perturbed by the observation.

  “That’s not what I meant. I was just —”

  Thor lifted a patient hand to interrupt him. “What you indicated was that even if you do trust me, it comes also with a measure of fear. You know me too well to trust me without fear, essentially. Is this correct?”

  Perry’s face had changed from unease to deep interest as he said, “Yeah, that’s true enough. Why does it matter?”

  “I just like to have an understanding of such things.”

  “You sure as hell never intended to go tiger hunting,” Perry said. “That much is clear. So I’m left to assume you want them to go down for it.”

  “You may assume what you would like,” Thor said. “But you are wrong in one respect. I fully intend to go on a tiger hunt.”

  He got to his feet and left then. Inside, the bar crowd was booing the home team, and outside it had begun to snow. He sat in his car and left the engine off as the snow clouded the windshield and then filled it until the bar was gone from sight and all that was left was the sound of the place, and then he called Dainius Belov and said that he would like to go on a tiger hunt the next morning.

  * * *

  It had snowed all night and into the morning and the air was crisp and smelled clean even in the city. Thor drove west along the lake, passed Belov’s home and on into the suburbs and then beyond, until he reached the town of Sheffield Lake and pulled into a bar called Risko’s, as were his instructions. The bar was closed and the neon signs were dark. There was supposed to be a black GMC Yukon waiting for him, but Thor had a habit of arriving early, and wasn’t surprised that he had to wait.

  It was 20 minutes before the Yukon arrived. Two men got out, dressed as if they were true hunters, in full camouflage. One was short but heavy-chested, with muscled forearms and in need of a haircut. The other was thin enough to look gaunt, and in his camouflage he looked foolish, a boy playing at being a soldier. Thor was wearing jeans and a black leather jacket and they looked him up and down and then one said that he could trade him jackets for the picture.

  “No need, thank you.”

  “Your pictures won’t look believable, with you dressed like that.”

  “No need.”

  The man shrugged and made introductions. His name was Dave and the thin man was Robert. Thor didn’t offer his own name, nor was it requested. When Belov made arrangements, they probably knew better then to ask after names. They suggested he get in the Yukon with them, and he declined and said he’d follow in his own car. They didn’t like that suggestion.

  “I will drive myself,” Thor said, and they did not argue beyond that point. Once again, the instructive quality of his voice seemed to work.

  He followed them a few more miles along the lake and then they turned south and then west again, winding further out into the rural countryside. The snow here was clean, sparkling occasionally under a sun that kept making an effort to break through. They’d been driving for about 15 minutes when the Yukon pulled off the road and up to a farm gate that was closed and padlocked. The thin man, Robert, got out and opened the lock and then pushed the gate back into the snow to allow for the cars to pass.

  They were on an old farm property, maybe 200 acres of it. Only one of the acres was surrounded by fencing, though. It was the back side of an old barn built of corrugated metal. Thor recognized it from the pictures that Perry had taken. Seeing the farm in its entirety, he realized how difficult it must have been to get into position to take those pictures without being detected. Perhaps Perry was more than met the eye.
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  The Yukon pulled into a garage bay and the lights went off as the engine was killed. There was room inside the garage bay for another car, but Thor left his out in the snow. Inside the garage, Robert and Dave were having a conversation in soft tones. Thor was beginning to think there was something about him they didn’t like.

  He waited in the snow until they came out to him.

  “We go through the barn,” Dave said.

  “We hunt in the barn?”

  “No. It’s just…we need to walk through it.”

  Thor nodded and followed them past their vehicle and through a door and into a narrow corridor with loose straw underfoot. Here you could smell the stink of animals.

  “So who cares for the animals, most of the time?” Thor asked.

  “We do.”

  “Feed them, clean them, all of that?”

  “You got it. Trust me, tiger shit stacks up fast.”

  “So they know you.”

  “The cats?” Dave turned and gave him a strange glance.

  “Yes. Do they recognize you?”

  “Sure.”

  “Interesting.”

  They crossed through to another door and Dave opened this one and they came out into a sort of courtyard between the high fencing and the barn. To the left were the cages and benches from the pictures, and to the right another wing of the barn made a 90-degree turn, forming a wall. All of this was surrounded with a perimeter fence of perhaps 15 feet, with three strands of wire at the top. The wire was electrified.

  “So here we are,” Dave said. He sounded nervous. “You’ll do your shooting just over there.”

  “On the bench?”

  “Yes.”

  “With what?”

  Robert had the rifle. It was a Remington Model Seven, bolt-action, a heavy rifle that would fire a heavy bullet, probably a .350-magnum. Robert handled it lovingly. It was the first time he had not seemed awkward to Thor.

  “I’ll show you how to use it,” he said. “I’ve already got it loaded, and you can test-fire before we —”

  “I know how to use it.”

  They looked at each other and then back at him and decided that they believed him.

  “All right.” Robert handed the rifle over, and now, without it, he looked awkward once more. “There are targets if you want to practice.”