by Newton, Nero
Stephen spoke slowly, still trying to absorb the enormity of what Amy had just told him. “So Sanderson’s the main link that gets the animals from there to here…and he’s not done shipping yet. Wouldn’t that mean there’s a chance that the deal could still fail somehow?”
“Yeah….” Amy’s voice sounded expectant, like she hoped she knew where he was going with this.
“And if the whole operation were seriously messed up, actually failed, then you and I wouldn’t be a threat to Sanderson anymore, because there would be no boof business to threaten.”
Her face lit up. “Does that mean you’re thinking we should maybe do something about this other than hide out?”
“Well, since the whole thing may be happening right here in the Golden State….then yeah. I can’t stop thinking about Elaine and her family. As much as I would love to spend the next couple of months on an extended vacation, I feel like we ought to try and find some way to proactively screw this thing up for Sanderson..”
“I’m glad to hear that. Because that’s what I was going to do with or without you.”
Amy was wound up and doing close to ninety. She seemed irritated when Stephen pointed this out, but finally took her foot off the gas and let their speed sink a little.
CHAPTER TWO
Amy called Rita’s cell phone when they were still an hour north of L.A.
“Good to hear from you, darling,” Rita said. “There’s a development, according to Phil.”
“Deputy Phil?”
“Deputy Phil. He knocked on a few doors in our old neighborhood and asked people to report anything that looked weird, like people slowing down as they passed our houses – and that’s exactly what happened a few hours after he left Cascabel Drive. Somebody called in a license number. Just a four-door sedan this time; no van.”
“Did Phil track it down?”
“He did. Traced it to a rent-a-cop outfit called Top Gun Security. Easy name to remember, huh? It has an office a little east of downtown L.A. – but just outside the city limits, so it’s in the sheriffs’ jurisdiction. Phil went there and asked if they ever did business in the foothills. They said no. Phil also named the guy that got killed in your break-in, Cody Barnes, or Burns, or something, and asked if he worked at the security company. They said they never heard of him, but check this out: about a year ago, this Cody got himself arrested, and he listed Top Gun Security as his employer. Phil also saw a green van parked across the lot from the office, a perfect match for the one those creeps drove away after I caught them snooping around your place.”
“You get the address of this company?” Amy said.
“I heard part of Phil’s phone conversation while he was checking it out. He mentioned a street called Belvedere Court, but I didn’t get the building number. I would ask him, but he’d be pissed that I’ve even told you this much.”
“Thanks. I won’t let on that you said anything to us. I’ve got a lot of new information about who’s after me; I’ll fill you in when I get there, but the big thing is about our friend from the pornographic cartoons. It looks like he’s personally behind the attacks on me, as well as being the main mover and shaker behind that “boof” thing we read about online.”
“Unbelievable.” Rita was quiet for a moment. “Well, maybe some crazed anti-environmentalist will shoot the son of a bitch sometime soon. That’d make things a lot simpler.”
“You got that right,” Amy said. “The green movement wouldn’t suffer in the least because he’s just a phony.” She thought for a moment. “In fact they’d have a martyr. No matter who got blamed for shooting him, there’d be lots of conspiracy talk about whatever really became of Hugh Sanderson. Alive, he’s just a fake. Assassinated, he’d help vilify the anti-environmental lobby. How are you doing? Everything alright at the safe house?”
“Okay, I guess. Met a few of the neighbors, and they seem nice enough. Oh, and speaking of neighbors, I called some of the people on Cascabel Drive. You remember Matilda?”
“I remember the cat Matilda,” Amy said. She thought of the cream-colored feline that lived across the street, but had adopted Rita’s place as a second home.
“That’s who I mean,” Rita said. “Matilda’s sick.” These last two words spoken in a pouty baby voice.
“Oh, no.”
“There’s something going around the neighborhood. The last couple of nights, the animal shelter’s been getting calls from people who’re waking up and finding dogs and cats sacked out under their porches. One guy even found a llama sprawled out in his tool shed. And two people have been found in the same condition, all scratched up. People were worried about rabies, but they tested clean for that.”
“Back up. Did you say llama?”
“Yeah. Didn’t you know we have neighbors who keep a pair of them in their backyard?”
“Nope. Didn’t know that.”
“I guess you wouldn’t, being gone so much of the time. They’re around the bend from us, about a quarter mile. I talked to one of the owners, the husband. Says he woke up feeling like he had a hangover, found his back gate open and one of the llamas gone. Anyway, the domestic animals that turned up sick were all clean-looking pets, with tags and everything, but they were limp and droopy when somebody picked them up. Apparently they also smelled sick.”
“Aw, crap.” The situation sounded horribly familiar to Amy.
“And they found wild animals in the same condition, too, like raccoons and deer. There was even a bear. I haven’t heard of a bear coming down this side of the foothills for years. It made the Pasadena Star-News. Yesterday morning, a lady and her six-year-old daughter went into their backyard, where they have a big row of out-of-control lantana bushes, and they heard something that sounded like a sneezy dog snuffling. The little girl went running over and started digging in the bushes before her mom could stop her. Put her hand right on the bear’s nose, pulled it out covered with blood, and started screaming. The bear was asleep, and it never woke up, even when the sheriffs got there. I guess they shot it like they always do. Doesn’t that suck?”
“Did the article mention the disease?”
“Yeah, in fact the story was mainly about that; the bear was just the hook. They said the shelter called Animal Control, and Animal Control got some specialists to do all sorts of tests on the animals they picked up, but they still couldn’t figure out what was wrong. After a while, most of them seemed to get better anyhow. About twenty-five animals altogether. They still haven’t released all of the pets they tested, and the owners are pissed.”
Just like the medical team at Sanderson’s camp, Amy thought. They didn’t test for chemicals, because they were looking for microbes
“But they didn’t take Matilda?” Amy said.
“Nope. Jenny – her owner – didn’t report her, and isn’t letting her out at all anymore. She usually keeps her locked in at night anyhow, because of the coyotes, but she got out the other night and didn’t come back. Jenny said she went calling her all around the neighborhood, and the next morning she went up into the hills. She finally heard Matilda crying and found her under a really dense bush.”
“Did she act like the light hurt her eyes?”
“How’d you know?”
“And I bet now she whines to get out at night, like there’s something really important she wants to get at out there.”
“Amy, darling, what’s going on here?”
“I’ll tell you all about it when we get to town.”
CHAPTER THREE
“Top Gun Security doesn’t have a website,” Amy said, tapping keys on her laptop. “But I don’t suppose they’re looking for legitimate business anyhow.”
At the safe house, Stephen slurped down the last of his instant ramen broth while Amy consulted her laptop. They had rested for a day and a half, and Stephen was feeling better, even energetic. He’d gotten into the swing of doing a lot of things one-handed.
“I found Belvedere Court on a map,” Amy said, “and it doe
sn’t look very big. Might be just a driveway into an industrial park.” She looked at Stephen for a long moment. “What do you say we head over there and see what we see? We might notice something that helps us figure out what to do next.”
“I guess it can’t hurt.”
She showed him the map on her screen. “Over here is First Street in Little Tokyo,” she said. “Just a couple of miles east of there is where most of the warehouses and factories are. And here’s Belvedere Court.”
“The downtown cathedral’s on our way there,” he said. “Maybe we should we go pick up a couple of silver crosses and a half liter of holy water.”
“I’m fine with Andre’s latte burner. Seven rounds in the clip, and a couple boxes of ammo around here somewhere.” She leaned across the kitchen table and locked eyes with him. “Tell me something, Stephen.”
“Yeah?”
“About your friend Mario. In Guatemala, when he was trying to protect those campesinos from the assholes with guns, did he ever pick up a weapon and fire back at them?”
“He never mentioned using a gun, but he told me he once brained a couple of soldiers with a baseball bat when they came into the church looking for some kids he was hiding.”
“Killed them?” she asked.
“He says one for sure, the other maybe.”
“You think he regrets it?”
“Not Mario. Not a chance.”
“Remember what I told you Rita said? How it’d be a lot simpler if someone just shot him?”
He nodded, studying her face.
“Because if I see Sanderson, and if it looks like I can get away with it, I’ll kill him. I’ll cut him right down. I’m dead serious.” She continued to stare into his eyes as she spoke. “And if we don’t find Sanderson himself at this place, maybe we’ll find someone who’ll lead us to him. Or lead us to where they’ve set up their v-chimp kennel, and we can smash it to bits. Put the captive animals out of their misery. Make the whole thing way more trouble than it’s worth for all of them, supplier and buyer.”
“You want to follow someone who comes out of this Top Gun place?”
“That’s a possibility. I also wouldn’t be above a little coercive questioning if we can corner someone.” She ran the tip of her index finger gently across his cast as though caressing his actual skin. “I doubt the opportunity will arise, but if it does, I’ll do to both of someone’s hands what they’ve already done to your left one, and then ask how attached they are to their kneecaps. I mean it. I don’t have even a slight problem with it.”
That thing she was doing was doing with her finger distracted the hell out of him, made him wonder for the first time whether something might happen between them, an idea that he’d always pushed aside before. Then he figured that maybe she was doing it to distract herself, that she was more nervous than she let on about the prospect of seeking out and instigating violent confrontation.
“They’ve tried to kill us,” Amy said, “and as far as I’m concerned, everyone involved in this thing deserves to die.” Her eyes locked onto his as she grabbed his uninjured right hand and squeezed. “I won’t hold it against you if you don’t care to assist me in any extreme measures. But if you have any thoughts of standing in my way, or even dissuading me, then just think about some big fucker fingering a gun in his pocket while he’s sitting on Elaine’s couch and talking to little Lucy.”
“I get it.”
She stared for a few seconds, then released his hand and sat back. Stephen could tell from her suddenly measured breathing that she was trying to calm herself. After a minute she grinned and said, “Maybe we should call your friend Mario and ask if he knows of a good Inquisition-surplus store. Somewhere we can pick up a few toys for the job.”
***
The cats and iguana were packed into Amy’s safe-house bedroom along with food, water, and an improvised litter box full of garden soil. Amy and Stephen folded themselves back into the Camry and headed for the 110 freeway.
They exited near downtown, drove east through Little Tokyo, then further east through a wilderness of silent warehouses and brittle, aged factories. Loading docks had their metal doors locked up tight for the weekend. The only retail business in sight was a single liquor store, a magnet for inhabitants of cardboard and burlap dwellings that lined the sidewalks. Stephen was at the wheel, managing to drive one-handed.
A few blocks past the liquor store, Amy shouted so startlingly for him to stop that he slammed on the brakes and sent her laptop hurtling against the dash.
She pointed down an alley to where a green van was parked. Its rear end and left side were visible, and they could see a dark, mottled circle on the driver’s door, where a logo had once been. A homeless man was on all fours behind the vehicle, apparently gathering something off the street.
“I want to see what’s inside that van,” Amy said. She hopped outside and headed down the alley. Stephen pulled over, parked, and caught up with her. He was still holding her keys, and noticed a miniature jackknife on the keychain.
“I think I’m going to need a heftier weapon than this,” he said.
The homeless man stood up and put something in his pocket. He was tall and broad-shouldered. Though the day was hot, he wore a battered jacket and a red ski cap with a white tassel at the tip. His face was frozen in an expression of horror and anger. A moment after standing, he seemed to go into a brief seizure. When it passed, he lumbered toward the front of the van and, without hesitation, climbed into the driver’s side. A second later the engine started.
“Let’s try and stop him,” Amy said.
They both ran. Amy’s hand shot into her pants pocket, and Stephen knew she was gripping the gun.
The van had begun to roll when Stephen got his fingers around the edges of the nearly closed door and jerked back with all his strength. He watched in surprise as the driver tumbled out and thumped down onto the pavement. The guy rolled completely over once, coming to rest face up, and in the process his ski cap came off. The van kept moving until it hit a dark brown brick wall that would have made a convincing backdrop for an adaptation of a Dickens novel.
The homeless man’s head was clumsily dressed with a filthy bandage. Amy and Stephen stood over him as he sat up and began mumbling. They saw now that he wasn’t grimacing or snarling at all. It only looked that way because his face had been hideously reconfigured. A deep gash extending from the left side of his mouth made him constantly seem to be straining from some great effort. Symmetrical cuts on his cheeks looked almost like ritual scarification.
A second after he struggled to his feet, he tightened into another of the clenching spasms. Amy and Stephen had read about that side effect in the Baja papers and on the boof-related web forums, and Amy a similar episode during her escape from the logging camp. This guy had had more contact with Top Gun Security than just driving one of their vans. And with those scratches on his face…perhaps he’d been introduced to the stuff the old fashioned way, not from an eye dropper.
“Where did you get this van?” Stephen said to the bandaged man.
“My goddamn van,” was the reply. “From my goddamn office.” He turned back toward the vehicle.
Stephen grabbed the man’s arm and pulled him back. “Your van?”
“My van, my company, and my stink monkeys, as far as I’m concerned. So fuck Eloy, and if Eloy sent the two of you, then fuck you, too.”
For the first time, Amy took a close look at the man’s clothes. The jacket and trousers actually matched, and he was wearing what had once been a dress shirt.
She took a shot in the dark. “What if Eloy did send us?”
The filthy shirtsleeve had slid up on the arm Stephen was holding. The flesh beneath was a mess of scratches, gashes and bites that couldn’t have been more than a week old.
The guy held up a wrist like a woman asking someone to smell her perfume. “Well, come on, then. If Eloy sent you, then lay it on me”
“You just said fuck us if Eloy sent us
,” Stephen said.
Amy changed the subject. “Is Sanderson at the office?”
“Sanderson’s coming to town,” the man mumbled. “Fuckin little eco-faggot-messiah thinks he’s a wise guy now. Fuckin….” He trailed off.
“He’s coming to town now? Today?” Stephen said.
“Not yet.” Clench and shiver. “Not for a couple days, Eloy says. And he’s stopping down south first. Eloy’s out of town too, and he forgot to leave me anything.” Another clench and shiver.
“Down south?” Amy said. “What, Mexico?”
No answer.
“Forgive me,” Stephen said. “Eloy told me your name but….”
“Vendetti. Now, you’re going to lay it on me, right?”
“We’ll take you back to the office first,” Stephen said.
“What for? Nobody’s there.”
“But the v-chimps are there, right?” Amy said.
“The what?”
“The…the stink monkeys.”
“Fuck off.” Clench and shiver.
“The stink monkeys aren’t at the office?” she said. “They’re down south?”
“Not yet. Still in the big basement.” Vendetti nodded his head to the right, indicating a different direction than that of Belvedere Court.
“How do we get there,” Stephen asked.
Vendetti’s eyes, already squinting, narrowed further. “Why do you want to know that?”
“What we got for you,” Stephen explained. “Eloy says it’s there. He told us to go dip into the big supply, but to give you just enough for the next couple days. He can’t trust you with any more than that.”
“Why didn’t he just tell you where the big basement is?”
Amy took the gun out of her pocket again and polished the barrel with her shirtsleeve. “He said it would be easier just to let you show us where the animals live.”