“Just the night,” said Luna. “Phil Cassava is picking Mars and me up at 10:00 tomorrow and taking us to Paul and Anna Lee’s in Kentucky. And Ned will go back to Florida. He’s been the best. ”
She threw him another grateful look. Ned was suffused with delight, then with a sense of impending loss.
“Why did Adam do this?” asked Esther.
“Because he’s in love with her!” said Ned loudly. He glanced around in surprise, as if the statement had emerged from one of the potted palms.
“Aha,” said Esther. She topped off her glass, then lifted the decanter inquiringly toward them.
“Yes, please,” said Luna.
“Yes, please,” said Ned. “Though neither one of us are doing a very good job of keeping up with you.”
Esther gave a mirthless laugh. “No one can keep up with me,” she said.
After dinner they sat on easy chairs on the patio. The garden was dotted with lanterns, the lawn flecked with fireflies. The decanter sparkled in the moonlight.
“You ‘member when Meryl Streep played Isak Dinesen in Out Of Africa?,” asked Esther, proceeding in a breathy Danish drawl. “‘IIIIII had a faaahm in Aaaahfricaaah.’ Well, tha’s me, ‘cept IIIIII have a baaaatcaaave in naaawthernnn Geooorgiaaaa.”
Ned and Luna hooted, their ribs aching from the past hour of increasingly garbled story-swapping. “Look!” said Luna and pointed to the half dozen bats catching insects above them. Esther gazed upward, and the joy on her face faded.
“Ned,” she said, her words only slightly slurred. “Luna understands, but you don’t. You think bats are creepy, nasty things. Rats who fly and get tangled in your hair. They’re not. They’re beautiful. They’re so beautiful. I watch them fly, and I see miracles. Their eyes. Their bones. They care for each other, they feel the same pain we do. This disease is killing them all, and I can’t stop it. I’ve been in caves where the colony is strong and healthy and ready for winter, and I go back in the spring and they’re all dead. Maybe two or three survivors out of hundreds. I’m trying my best. But I look at them and I see all the wonder of nature inside one small creature, and sometimes I feel as if all I do is watch them die.”
Ned looked up, trying to map their intricate patterns as they fluttered and zigzagged, swooped and reversed, disappeared into the silhouette of a sweetgum, and emerged again. He pictured Esther sitting alone on a distant summer night, her face lined, her hair white, remembering when she could still look into a starry sky and see the tremulous flight of a bat. To his surprise he rose, sat beside her, and put his arms around her. She started, then hugged him back.
“Thank you,” she said.
Finally she pulled back. “Y’know,” she said, regarding him. “White-nose exists in Europe, but it doesn’t kill them. Maybe the bats and I should all move there.”
Juan and Isabella appeared. “Is time for sleep,” said Isabella.
“No fucking way,” replied Esther. “Where’s my phone? I have to text Bob and tell that syphilapic…syphilonic…syphilitic little boil that I’m going to kick him and all his muskrats right square in their uropatagiums.”
Isabella shook her head firmly. “If you stay up late you can’t work,” she said, as she and Juan each took one of Esther’s arms and helped her to her feet. “You know the alarm goes off at six.”
Esther turned to Ned and Luna. “You must accompany me to my chambers,” she said grandly, “or I shall deem you rude.”
Esther sat on the edge of her bed, her eyes nearly closed, as Isabella gently pulled off her cardigan. She leaned back into the pillows, and Isabella removed her shoes and tucked her beneath the sheets. “We know she will win,” said Juan, standing in the doorway between Ned and Luna. “She will save the bats.”
They followed Juan and Isabella down the stairs. “She said to remind you to watch the eagle movie,” said Juan, as he and Isabella headed off to their house.
“The eagle movie!” said Luna, holding onto the wall for support. “I forgot! Whoa, that bourbon packs a punch!”
“Hell yeah!” agreed Ned, swaying. “But what eagle movie?”
The large screen television in a corner of the library flickered to life as Luna struggled to feed a disc into the CD player. “Patrick filmed it,” she said, sitting beside Ned on the couch. “Patrick is an elf biologist in South Dakota!”
“Really!” chortled Ned. “Does he study fairies, too?”
“Ha ha! Elk! I meant elk! Okay, so watch this.” She lowered her voice dramatically. “It’s the eagle courtship ritual!”
Ned blanched in mock horror. “Not the courtship ritual!”
“Otherwise known as the Death Spiral!”
“They sure got that right!”
The camera followed an adult Bald Eagle as it flew across a cloudless sky. “Look how clear is is!” cried Luna. “Sometimes this kind of footage is pretty blurry.”
A second eagle appeared on the screen. They flew directly toward each other, seemingly on a collision course, but just before impact the first eagle lifted its feet and turned upside down. The second eagle reached out and they cartwheeled downward, each holding the other’s talons, tumbling, spiraling, swinging like square dancers, hurtling ten thousand feet through the crystal sky and plunging toward the unforgiving earth. The top of the treeline appeared, and the eagles broke apart, spread their wings, and rose back into the air.
Ned looked at Luna in disbelief as eagles, bats, cedar waxwings, panthers, and armadillos all surfed the amber bourbon wave cresting around his head. He blinked them away and stared at the slight, curly-haired woman, and she gazed back in a way he couldn’t even begin to comprehend.
“What happens now?” he gasped.
“They do it again,” she blurted.
They reached for each other at the same time, pressing their lips together and grasping each other with delirious need. Luna pulled back and stared at Ned, at the warm brown eyes behind his horn-rimmed glasses, at his sudden expression of concern. She stood abruptly, and he followed her lead.
“I have to go,” she said.
“Oh…uh, yeah! Me too!”
“Ok, goodnight,” she said, and left the room. Ned sat down heavily on the couch, and watched the eagles whirl through the sky.
• • •
The West Indian Mahogany tree towered over the parking lot of a nondescript office building, the base of its trunk screened by underbrush. The area was deserted, lit only by widely spaced street lamps. Warren assembled his rifle, strapped it to his back, and pulled on a lightweight face mask and thin leather gloves. He grasped one of the strangler figs encircling the tree, and began his ascent.
He could almost climb it with his eyes closed, having done it at least a dozen times before. The last time had been the previous night, when he noted where the branches and vines had flourished, where they had withered or broken, and made a mental map of the best hand- and footholds. When he reached the top he discovered a bit of new foliage which obscured his line of sight, so he had pulled out a small pair of clippers and done a bit of judicious pruning.
Warren climbed silently and carefully. He couldn’t understand the need to kill a grizzly, an elephant, a 12-point buck, all living beings seemingly too powerful to be taken down by a mere human. He thought it a particularly disgusting form of sacrilege to cut off a piece of one and hang it on a wall.
A piece of Matheson, however, would look mighty fine mounted in his living room.
He’d almost done this six months ago, right after she married him. But it would have left her in the middle of a billion-dollar feeding frenzy, so, wise to the ways of the natural world, he’d simply waited for her to call it quits herself. Which, of course, she had done.
He reached his spot, and the lights of Key West sparkled before him. The tree provided a solid limb for his feet, a sturdy branch against which he could lean, and another upon which he could rest his rifle. Its leaves furnished additional cushioning, as well as a protective screen. Smooth and light-c
olored when it was young, the tree’s bark had darkened and become heavily furrowed, supplying a coarse, slip-free surface. Warren ran a gentle hand over a branch, and positioned his rifle.
A single bullet. It would be like destroying malaria or dengue fever, and peace and goodness might have a chance in hell of ever reigning over the land.
The pool glittered. Warren checked his watch, and fifteen minutes later Adam appeared alone, stretched, and dove. Warren knew he would swim exactly fifty laps, then pick up a pair of weights and do three sets each of dumbbell, preacher, cable, and hammer curls. Warren watched him churn through the water, back and forth, back and forth, thinking, Jesus, man, you’ve got an entire ocean at your doorstep and you’ve probably never stuck a toe in it.
Adam emerged from the pool, and slowly Warren closed one eye. He squinted through his scope, his forefinger perfectly still against the trigger. Adam flexed his arms expressionlessly, betraying no hint of effort. His forehead, centered in Warren’s crosshairs, was smooth.
A thought slid through Warren’s focus. He hesitated.
A bullet through the frontal lobe produced no suffering. Matheson would die quickly, but his toxic legacy would live on. Still caught would be Luna, linked with murder as well as theft. His mission was to help her. Killing him would set Matheson free, and bind Luna more tightly.
But the sonofabitch deserves to die, thought Warren. He felt a breeze, and voices whispered through the rustling leaves.
Blessed are the merciful, said Sister Mary Catherine.
We lost the final appeal, said Audubon’s attorney.
Keep your fingers crossed for me, said Luna.
Warren sighted Adam between the eyes. He slid the rifle a hair’s breadth to the right, and pulled the trigger.
The lustrous collection of vases behind the lone figure burst into a thousand shimmering shards. Adam leaped into the air, landed in a crouch, and dove toward the pool house.
Warren gave a snort of amusement. A startled dildo could jump four feet straight up, and damned if Matheson hadn’t done just that.
He slid the safety into place, slipped the rifle back into its harness, and strapped it to his back. Pulling a miniature pair of binoculars from his pocket he surveyed the pool area, littered with shattered glass and porcelain but devoid of activity. He imagined Matheson in his poolhouse, the crotch of his suit warm and wet, suddenly realizing the downside of his solitary workouts. Maybe now he’d know what it was like to have his habitat invaded.
A single man rushed into the pool area. That’ll change, thought Warren, pocketing his binoculars and beginning his descent. In the future it won’t be so easy to take potshots at the damned bastard.
He paused. A nervous billionaire with heightened security — now, that would be a most singular challenge. He caressed the tree, looked up at the stars, and grinned. This was going to be a lot more fun than he thought.
Chapter 7
The seedy little club was noisy and crowded. Roland sat alone at the bar, wearing a track suit and sneakers. A shot glass of tequila rested in front of him, two empties beside it. The air was thick with sweat and cheap fragrance. Roland downed his last shot, pulled a twenty from his pocket, and slid it beneath the glass. The front door led to the street, a stretch of road populated by chain-link fences, crumbling buildings, and the occasional cruising SUV. The back door led to a maze of alleyways lit dimly, if at all. Roland rose and made his way to the back.
He took a deep breath, filling his lungs with the humid Key West air. He raised his arms, stretched, and started forward at a casual saunter. His car was parked a mile away.
A few minutes later he heard angry voices. He turned a corner, and found a tall, muscular man towering over a petite woman who wore a miniskirt and stacked heels. When she shouted at him, the man raised his arm and slapped her. The woman staggered backward, regained her balance, and wiped her nose.
Roland approached, and the man scowled at him. “Not your business, bro!” he rasped. Roland stopped and cocked his head. The man reached into his pocket, raised his hand, and with a heavy snap a six-inch blade glinted in the dingy light.
Roland’s first kick caught him in the solar plexus. The man grunted and doubled over, and the knife sailed through the air. By the time it clattered to the pavement, Roland’s uppercut had shattered his cheekbone, flipped him backward, and left him crumpled on the road.
Roland picked the knife up, folded it, and slipped it into his own pocket. He stuck a foot beneath the moaning figure, and rolled the man onto his back. Leaning over and grasping the hand that had held the knife, he stepped down, yanked up, and broke its adjoining wrist bone.
“Stop it!” shrieked a voice by his ear, as a small pocketbook crashed into the side of his head. “Leave him alone, you sonofabitch!”
The woman stood before Roland, a bloody smear trailing from nose to ear. “You pussy!” she screamed. “I’m going to call the cops! You goddamned mother…”
The slap sent her spinning to the ground. She sat up slowly and Roland reached down, grasped her by the throat, and pulled her to her feet. “I’m not hearing a lot of gratitude,” he said.
The woman gasped for air, her eyes wide. Her body began to tremble.
Roland’s phone chimed insistently, and he relaxed his grip. He pulled it from his pocket and regarded the screen. Absently he let her go, and she hit the ground with a soft thud.
“What,” he said into the phone. “All right. On it.”
He pocketed his phone and started walking east. After a few steps, he began to jog.
A crowd had gathered outside Adam Matheson’s ornate front gate. Roland drove past a TV truck and lowered his window at the gatekeeper’s station. “Evening, Mr. Edwards,” said the guard, buzzing him through. Parked in front of the house were four squad cars, lights flashing. Two officers talked on their radios.
“Mr. Edwards,” said one. “Need a statement.”
“Give me a minute.”
“One more thing — we’re going to need a list of people who might want to take a shot at Mr. Matheson.”
“We’ll be here ‘til next October,” Roland snorted, and walked into the house.
The office curtains were drawn. Carlos stood mournfully beside two uniformed policemen as Adam paced back and forth, clad in a sweat suit. His jaw was clenched, his eyes hard, but the hand holding the tumbler of Scotch was steady.
“Evening, Mr. Edwards,” said one of the cops, as they filed out and closed the door behind them. Roland looked at Adam with concern. “You all right?” he asked.
“Yeah.”
“What happened?”
Adam gestured to Carlos with a short, violent wave of his hand.
“I came back from checking the zoo,” said Carlos. “I was in the monitor room watching Mr. Matheson swim, then he came out and stood with the weights, and then all the art blew up. So I pushed the police station alarm and ran to the pool.”
“I’ve got windburn from a bullet on the side of my head!” Adam snapped. “And $12 million worth of Ming vases all over my goddamned patio.”
“You can go,” Roland told Carlos, then turned to Adam. “Any ideas?”
“No. Anything on the Cadillacs?”
Roland frowned. “The Cadillacs! Didn’t you just get shot at in your own back yard?”
“Yeah, yeah,” said Adam impatiently. “I have enemies. So - anything?”
“They tracked down two of them and there’s no connection. Still haven’t found the convertible.”
“What about Enrico?”
“Nothing.”
“What the fuck, Roland? How hard can this be?”
“Jesus, Adam! You think finding the shooter might be a little more important right now?”
“Let the cops handle it,” Adam replied dismissively. “I want you to take the plane to Pennsylvania tomorrow. I think those damned wildlife people know where she is. Shake them down.”
Roland scowled. “You got somebody aiming at you through a
night scope and you want me to go hassle the bird freaks? Why? Send the lawyers!”
“You’ll do a better job. They’ve probably never seen a black guy before, I’m sure you’ll scare the shit out of them just by standing there.”
Roland’s frown deepened. “I’m telling you,” he said. “You gotta ease up on this.”
“You know what she wants more than anything? She told me.”
Roland was silent.
“She wants to find a safe place. And I am her safe place.”
Here comes the iceberg, thought Roland.
• • •
Celia stood in her office, looking through the window at the eagle flight cage. She thought of the day the Department of Natural Resources brought Mars, starved and vicious, eventually gentled by the quiet girl with the bright blue gaze; the girl who would never have left Pennsylvania and married a billionaire had the eagle not accepted the one-eyed Banshee as his mate. She could see Banshee’s silhouette, alone and motionless on her perch. Celia thought of Luna, on the run.
Her phone buzzed. She tilted it toward her, and found a text from Carlene in Florida.
[email protected] If that dickweed took Mars there’s no reason he won’t come back for Banshee so you better be awful careful! Don’t you let him take her!
Celia swallowed, her throat burning. The door rattled and a tall, gray-haired man entered, his round, wire-framed glasses glinting in the morning light. Celia dissolved into tears.
“There, now, poor girl,” he said, sitting her down on the couch and putting his arm around her. “We’ll get him back, and Luna will be fine.”
“But Dad…”
“We’ll figure it out.”
Celia sniffled. “Mom?” came a voice, along with the sound of rapidly approaching footsteps. The door flew open. A young girl burst into the room, her red hair in a haphazard braid, her sneakers, jeans and T-shirt layered with grime, a long scabbed scratch running down one arm.
“Not again!” she cried. “Mom, you gotta pull yourself together!”
“Pipe down, Wizzie!” said Elias. “Your mother’s got a lot on her mind!”
“But two people are here, they hit a coyote and knocked her cold but they knew she wasn’t dead, so they picked her up and put her in the back of their car and they were halfway up the driveway when suddenly she woke up!”
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