Wild Meat

by Newton, Nero

  He’d visited the place three times on his last visit to Southern California, and the experience had been intoxicating. He’d discovered an entirely new brand of thrill being among men who had probably engaged in the most extreme and exhilarating violence. He’d stood right up close to the fire whence issued the smoke that filled this valley. He’d already learned to interact with lesser thugs like the two logging-camp guards. Now he’d begun rubbing shoulders with real American mobsters. Looking them in the eye, trying to manufacture in his own face a reflection of the reptilian treachery he read in theirs.

  Once, when the voice of the green path was particularly strong, he had taken a slow look around the office at the men – at the devils – who inhabited the valley, and had begun to get a sense of his place among them.

  Burr’s young, shave-headed representative from Detroit was sharp, and he oozed danger. The same went for Eloy, the little guy with the pointy beard with whom Sanderson had begun to make special, private arrangements.

  The hulking, brush-cut country boy named Cody just seemed like a big, dumb lout. So did the only Italian in the group, a huge man named Vendetti, who had gigantic, square teeth and always wore an elegant silk tie offset by a cheap suit.

  Vendetti was the titular boss of Top Gun Security, and he clearly didn’t like having Hugh Sanderson around. His comments indicated that he thought of Hugh as just some celebrity guest, and that they couldn’t talk serious business around him. More than once, Vendetti had said something like, “Well, Mr. Sanderson, it was great of you to stop by and let us know what to expect, and we’re really looking forward to your team arriving and getting us all set up.”

  But Hugh didn’t want to say a permanent goodbye to the ruby trade, and knew he still wouldn’t want to after a couple more months, not even after all the animals had been delivered and he’d been paid in full. Not even after he’d said his long-overdue farewell to the timber industry.

  Having breathed in the valley’s smoke and smelled its blood, he never wanted to be fully out of it. He wanted a place there. He wanted his own seat at that particular board-of-directors table, where he’d earned his position without William. It was his creation, one that he took pride in, and he meant to keep a piece of it.

  If Vendetti couldn’t accept that, then he would have to be taught that Hugh Sanderson knew how to stand his ground.

  CHAPTER SIXTEEN

  “Doctor?” an intern said, stepping into Dr. Roland Ngwene’s office. “Do you remember me mentioning a possible recurrence of Loggers’ Syndrome?” The intern was a lean young man with large, serious eyes and a soft but steady voice. Like Ngwene himself, he’d spent time in the army before entering medical school, and it still showed in his manner.

  Ngwene sprayed more cleaner onto his varnished desktop and continued scrubbing without looking up. After a moment he said, “I don’t remember it, but if you say it happened, I believe you.” He held the bottle of cleaner up to the window and looked through it. “I’ve diluted this so many times it’s about ninety-five percent water.”

  The Ministry of Public Health did not have enough money for antibiotics to keep children in the eastern villages from shitting themselves to death, as Ngwene had watched his younger brother do forty years before, as he had nearly done himself as a child. Why should there be any money for cleaning supplies?

  The intern continued. “The symptoms have appeared over the past few weeks, but not in any of the logging camps. About thirty patients have turned up in a couple of health clinics, all of them young tourists who have been camping about twenty miles out of town. They don’t have the bleeding sores, but the disorientation and wild delirium, the lethargy and the odor are all there, more severe than before.”

  “A new strain of whatever caused the cases in the logging camp?”

  “That’s the first thing that comes to mind. I went to the clinic where the symptoms have been reported. A number of tourists had shown up in generally depleted health, and it was only among them the signature stink was present. It dissipated after a day or so under care. A nurse reported that almost all of those patients had the periodic spasms that were seen at the logging camp. Sometimes the mental incapacitation lasts for well over 36 hours, and there is frequent loss of bowel and bladder control. That happened only infrequently at the camp, according to your report.”

  Ngwene thought for a moment. “As I remember, we concluded that the odor must have come from contact with the animals, just like the skin rashes – some kind of contact dermatitis.” He wondered whether there were something infectious among the forest animals that had spread beyond the basin where the afflicted logging camp had been. “Have there been animal attacks at this tourist campground?”

  “I asked. No one has reported any such thing. The patients I interviewed seemed surprised at the question.”

  “What about blood samples?”

  “Still nothing unusual,” the intern said. “The good news is that the death rate is quite low. Of the thirty or so who were given beds at the clinics, only two have died, apparently from liver failure. The others recovered completely.”

  “A rate that low could even suggest that the deaths were from complications of other problems. That was our conclusion at the camp, as well.” Ngwene was quiet for a moment. “Someone, let’s say you and two or three others, should go to the campground itself. Get blood samples and interviews from as many of the tourists as will cooperate.”

  The intern was writing quickly on a legal pad. “I’ve already planned a visit there.” He folded a sheet of paper around the back of the pad and poised his pen at the top of a fresh page. “Should we prepare a report for the World Health Organization?”

  “We should prepare one, although I doubt the minister will allow us to send it. We’re lucky he doesn’t know who leaked the logging camp situation to the W.H.O. in the first place.”

  CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

  Cody and Eloy, off-the-books employees of Top Gun Security, parked on Cascabel Drive an hour before dusk. The street was a curvy one, the highest of several parallel streets on a hillside. The backyards of the houses on the north side all extended up into the wild brush of the hilltop.

  The tall bitch next door to the target, the one who’d stuck her nose in when they’d come here the first time, didn’t seem to be home. No car was in her driveway, and a big, cream-colored cat rested in hen pose on the front porch, looking like nobody was around to let it in.

  The sheriff’s patrol car that was making the place sticky lately had left the neighborhood half an hour earlier, while Cody and Eloy watched from around the corner. The cops would have been on the lookout for a green van, and this time they had come in a white SUV with the back seats torn out to make room for cargo. Its tags could be linked to their employer, which was one reason they weren’t supposed to be using it to address this particular task, but Eloy was sure no one would find out. Rather than rent-a-cop uniforms, they now wore dark brown coveralls that read, “Phelps Appliances.”

  Walking behind the target’s house, they found a dense jungle of vines and fruit trees that hadn’t been tended for years. It was impossible to tell where the back yard ended and the county-owned wilderness began. Sanderson had said that this lady had enough money to travel all over the world but at home lived like a hippie or some kind of religious nut. Eloy thought that sounded about right, judging from the state of the place.

  “Why the hell we going into the place before she gets home?” Cody wanted to know.

  “Just making sure,” Eloy said, and refused to answer when big Cody asked what they needed to make sure of.

  The back door turned out to be solid, secured with a deadbolt. They hadn’t brought along anything for opening locks because this task wasn’t part of the day’s official agenda, but no big deal. Eloy, light-framed and five-foot-two, had gone through plenty of windows before. “I’m going to find another way in,” he said. “Listen for anybody coming.”

  Big Cody stood with his hands in the
pockets of his coveralls, watching the smaller man scamper off through the overgrown grass. He supposed Eloy thought he looked cool with that beard of his, trimmed to a thin strip along his jaw and pointed at the end like some kind of Keebler-elf version of Robin Hood. But Cody thought it made Eloy a goof, plain and simple.

  The guy was tough enough, and Cody had seen him give plenty of people a lot of pain, so maybe the look was a good disguise. Still, goofy was goofy, and Cody couldn’t respect it. Plus Eloy always let it show that he thought Cody was dumb and needed to be told what to do. Like nagging him all day about looking right for the job, and now telling him to shut up and stand still while he found some clever way inside.

  Fifteen feet away, Eloy found ancient wisteria vines, two inches or more in diameter, growing so densely up the back of the house that they might as well have been bars over the windows. They smothered the eaves above and had already crushed part of the rain gutter.

  The condition of the vegetation offended the sensibilities that Eloy had developed in the course of his considerable experience in residential lawn and garden maintenance. The closest he’d ever come to legitimate work had been bossing crews of migrants on landscaping jobs in San Marino. It had really been another front for laundering Vendetti’s various incomes, but the gig had ended up forcing Eloy to do plenty of actual landscaping work. The customers over there would never allow anything but delicate little ivy to grow in contact with their houses, and even the ivy wasn’t permitted to reach around the eaves and go up to the roof. Wisteria grew only on trellises. Shrubs had to be sculpted into hedges, cones, or spheres, and those near the house had to be dug up and replaced when they got to a certain size, lest their roots attack the foundations. The woman who lived here clearly had no regard for such principles, and that led Eloy to conclude that she must be a seriously undignified fruit loop.

  He eventually found a spot where some wisteria shoots had grown between a Dutch window and its frame, and had wrenched one hinge partly out of the wood. He managed, uncomfortably, to squeeze between the vines and the house, and worked for several minutes on loosening the window enough to climb in.

  He had just succeeded in pulling the window open when a loud thump startled him. Then came two more thumps, followed by a crunch.

  He wrestled out from behind the vines and saw Cody still standing by the back door, hands still in his pockets, his usual sullen pout replaced by an enormous grin.

  The back door was open, the deadbolt protruding into empty air and the frame splintered inward where the female end of the lock had been. Eloy glared at Cody and Cody shrugged.

  “So what?” Cody said “It’s already gonna be a murder scene.” He kept grinning as they went inside.

  “Not if somebody heard you and the cops are on the way right now.”

  They went into the kitchen and Cody immediately opened the fridge. He pulled out a half-full bottle of chardonnay, plucked out the cork and chugged most of the wine down before offering it to Eloy, who declined.

  “Anyway,” Eloy said, “the way I plan to do this, no one will know what the hell happened. It won’t look like any murder anyone ever saw before.”

  Cody’s smile vanished. “Aw, Jesus. Come on. You’re not still thinking about using one of them, are you? What if it gets away?”

  “You weren’t thinking ‘what if’ when you kicked in that door.”

  In the living room, Eloy looked around to decide where to put the crate once they brought it inside. There was plenty of space; the room was sparse, with only a desk, a sofa, and an end table next to the standing lamp. His gaze stopped on the end table, and it took a moment to realize that what had caught his eye were the pictures in a big book that lay open.

  The photos were of animals that looked almost like the two they had in crates in the SUV. The ones in the picture were a hell of a lot smaller; one was perched on a human hand. Their bodies were rounder, too, looking sort of delicate, like baby chickens. But there was no denying that these were something related to the things their boss had been put in charge of receiving and transporting.

  Cody stepped over next to him and said, “Damn.”

  Beside the book was a wad of brown shipping paper. Eloy straightened it out and found the target’s Cascabel Drive address written in some kind of frilly, old-timey lettering. The return address was in Oakland. He stuffed the paper into his pocket.

  “Old Vendetti’s gonna pat our little heads for this one, Cody, m’boy.”

  “What do you mean?” Cody said.

  “I mean whoever sent her this book…well shit, man. Somebody’s on to the stink-monkeys. Look at those pictures. This lady’s some kind of undercover something, and so’s whoever sent her this package. We might be saving Vendetti’s ass with this.” He patted his pocket.

  Eloy decided to take the book along, too, so it would be easier to explain to Vendetti why the address was important. Vendetti could be a dumb shit sometimes.

  There were papers underneath the book, drawings that looked even more like the animals they were tending. There were handwritten notes, one of which ended with, “See you soon. –Steve.”

  Cody paid no attention to the drawings or the note. He said, “If she’s really got money to go to places like Africa, there’s got to be something here worth taking.”

  Eloy shook his head. “Come on. Let’s get that thing in here and get the crate open before the sun’s gone. We do it with sunlight coming in and it won’t even try to touch us.” He looked through the kitchen at the broken back door. We’ll have to jam that door from the inside, then we go out the front. Otherwise the thing might get away, and then we really will have something to worry about.”

  Cody shook his head. “I don’t know, bro. I say we just wait in here and do this the simple way.”

  “Come on, man. This is worth an extra two grand each for us.”

  Hugh Sanderson had promised them the bonus if he could glean from the news and police reports that the job had been done using the animal.

  Cody still looked doubtful. “But we work for Vendetti, not Sanderson. And besides, Vendetti hates that rich fuck.”

  “Are you telling me you don’t want to see one of these things in action? You’ll never get this chance again. Once we deliver them down south, we don’t see them again ever.”

  “We won’t see it in action anyhow; we’ll be waiting in the van.” Cody’s face clouded over. “You’re not thinking of sitting in here and watching, are you? Everybody says these things are beyond dangerous. We’re not supposed to even take it out of the crate without space suits.”

  “They tell us it’s dangerous to open the crate because they don’t want us to get any ideas about stealing it. And no, I don’t mean I want to watch it. But we’ll get to see what she looks like when it’s done. Now that you mention it, though, it wouldn’t be bad to watch through a window.”

  Cody groaned.

  “Problem with that, though,” Eloy continued, “if we go messing around outside the house before the thing jumps her, she might hear us and open the door or something. Maybe even come running outside. Then it’d get tricky.”

  “It’s already tricky. We lose this thing and we’re dead.”

  Eloy knew Cody was right. They shouldn’t even have been here tonight. The woman was a distant second priority after delivering the two crates down south. On deliveries there were to be no detours, no passengers, no stopping for gas, food or restrooms along the way. No speeding or expired tags, nothing that might get you pulled over.

  But the woman would have to be done eventually, and an extra two grand was worth breaking a few rules.

  “We’re not gonna lose it,” Eloy said, “because it’s been starved, and when they’ve been starved, they sleep for hours after they do their business. Besides, none of them’s gotten away from us yet, right? And we can bring the tranq guns in from the car. Even if it’s not out cold, it’ll be moving way too slow to miss.”

  “But if we guess wrong about how drowsy it
is,” Cody said. “ and it sprays us both, then we’re as fucked as it gets.”

  Eloy spat on the carpet. “Look, we’re going to do this thing here, then we’re going to put the stink monkey back in the crate and do the delivery, and this time Vendetti’s going to give us each a bottle of his country-club booze because we scored some vital information for him.” He patted his pocket again. “Come on.”

  Cody sighed but didn’t protest, and shuffled toward the back door.

  Eloy smacked him hard between the shoulder blades. “Hot dog! I knew you wouldn’t pass this up. The cops are gonna piss themselves trying to figure out what happened here.”

  Cody ignored him. He picked up the telephone on the kitchen table, decided it had a lot of interesting buttons, and said, “I’m taking this phone. I got a shitty phone at my place.”

  EIGHTEEN

  Amy got home a little after ten o’clock, went through the darkened living room to the kitchen and flipped on a light. A bottle of Chardonnay she’d opened weeks ago was on the counter, empty. Rita must have gotten back from work early, and really wanted to party. Maybe she’d gotten so excited about the idea of traveling that she’d quit her job way ahead of schedule.

  Then Amy saw that one of the two wooden chairs from the little kitchen table was out of place. It was leaning against the back door, the top of the backrest under the doorknob, jamming it closed. The doorframe was smashed inward right next to the lock.

  Fear crackled through her body. She turned to the kitchen table where she kept her phone, but it was gone, cord and all. Her cell phone was still in the car.

  She had another land phone, but it was in the bedroom. Besides the living room and the kitchen, there were only two rooms in the little house: the bathroom and the bedroom. If the intruder hadn’t left, he could be in either one.