Unflappable

by Suzie Gilbert

  • • •

  Ned opened his eyes, sat up, and found himself alone in another unfamiliar bedroom. Light seeped through the edges of the blinds.

  The night returned in hallucinatory pieces. He had shared a drink with Roland Edwards in the living room of Hélène de la Croix. Volunteers scrambled eggs as the sky turned lavender. Luna emerged, pale and bandaged, and fell asleep on his shoulder. Roland carried her effortlessly up the stairs to one of the bedrooms. As he slid in beside her, Ned thought, this time it’s really over.

  He dressed, went downstairs, and found three-quarters of a cup of coffee left in the pot. The house was empty. He wandered to the office, to the clinic, and to the small auditorium, but no one seemed to know where to find Luna. Eventually he ran into Philipe, who led him to one of the flight cages. In the far corner, Hélène sat in an ornate wicker chair.

  “They’re unreleasable,” said Philipe, gesturing to the great dark creatures watching him from various perches. “Half of them are education birds. They’re used to people. You can walk right through.”

  Ned thanked him and regarded his latest obstacle course: a slatted airplane hangar filled with a dozen free-flying eagles. He snorted, closed the door behind him, and walked determinedly toward Hélène.

  “Good morning,” she said.

  “Good morning,” he replied. “I’m having trouble finding Luna.”

  “She’s not here.”

  “Where is she?”

  “She left.”

  “What do you mean, she left? Where did she go?”

  Hélène regarded him steadily. “She needs some time.” She shifted her eyes to the eagles, as if signaling the end of the conversation.

  “But I need to talk to her.” When he received no response, his voice rose. “Where is she?” he demanded. “Are you hiding her from me?”

  A flash of contempt crossed her face, and Ned felt a swirl of disorientation. “I just want to make sure she’s all right!”

  The contempt disappeared. “You are a good man,” said Hélène. “You have my respect and support. You are welcome to stay here as long as you like. Whenever you wish to leave, one of the volunteers will drive you to the airport.”

  “But what about Luna?”

  “I’m not hiding her, Ned. I am respecting her wishes. You would do well to do the same.”

  • • •

  Gunderman sat in the Falls International Airport, waiting for his flight home. Ned entered the room and stood uncertainly, his clothes rumpled, his taped glasses at a slight angle. When he saw Gunderman he sighed, trudged over, and sat beside him.

  “Matheson’s plane was here, but now it’s gone,” said Gunderman. “Is she staying at the sanctuary?”

  “I don’t know where she is.”

  Roland appeared, carrying a leather overnight bag, and spotted the two of them. He frowned and glanced around, as if searching for alternatives, then he crossed the room and sat on the other side of Ned. “Where’s Luna?” he asked.

  “He doesn’t know,” said Gunderman.

  “Where’s Warren?” asked Ned.

  Roland shrugged. “I don’t think he uses public transportation.”

  They sat in silence. “Thanks to this, I’ve got no job,” said Gunderman finally.

  “I’ve got no job and no family,” said Roland.

  “I’ve got…” Ned began, then stopped as two uniformed marshals appeared before him.

  “Ned Harrelson?” said one. “We are authorized by the government of the United States of America to return you to the State of Wisconsin, where you are wanted for crimes against the persons and property of both state and federal officers.”

  Ned rose, and the second officer pulled his hands behind his back and snapped the handcuffs shut.

  “I’ve got nothing,” Ned finished, as they escorted him toward the door.

  • • •

  The plane touched down in Chicago. No town car, SUV, or limousine waited for him, so Roland waited in line until a battered cab pulled up. He climbed into the back seat. The springs were shot.

  A block from his building, he told the driver to stop. He entered the park, sat on a bench, and stared at Lake Michigan. He had been sitting on the same bench, swigging Jack Daniels and replaying his doctors’ words, when Adam called him for the second time. He pulled out his phone and turned it off.

  Nearly an hour later he picked up his overnight bag and walked to his building. He rode the elevator to the top floor, and pulled out his keys. The door was unlocked. Instantly he tensed and pictured his Glock, disassembled and in a case in his bag. He turned the knob slowly and silently, until the slimmest beam of light shone through.

  “Yeah, finally!” came Lyllis’s voice. “He’s been sitting on that goddamned bench for an hour. Yep, okay! I’ll tell him.”

  He opened the door and found Michael sitting on the easy chair, grinning, his sister Selma dabbing her eyes. Lyllis leaned on her crutches, trying to look happy instead of triumphant. “Warren wants to know wassup?” she said, and tossed her phone onto the couch.

  • • •

  The air was warm and humid. Gunderman stood in his cabin, wondering what breathing would be like in the next place he lived. Maybe his lungs would burn in the dry heat. Maybe they would smart from the sharpness of the cold. As long as they don’t ache from air conditioning, he thought, as he tried to be pragmatic.

  The television chattered in the corner. The news shows were grasping at straws, churning out increasingly outlandish stories about Adam Matheson, his runaway wife, and his shadowy trip to Canada. Gunderman started toward the television, intending to turn it off. “In a related story,” said the newscaster, “we go to the Western Pennsylvania Wildlife Center, where this story began.”

  Celia appeared before a bank of microphones, even paler than usual, flanked by Wizzie and Elias. Wizzie reached out and tapped one of the microphones. “Is this thing on?” she asked.

  Celia bit her lip, and Elias placed a hand on her shoulder. “Last night our missing eagle was returned to us,” she said determinedly. “Our bonded pair of Bald Eagles are together again, and it is thanks to…to the outstanding work of Wildlife Officer Erik Gunderman. We want to thank him. And we want to thank Daniel Whittaker, Chief of Law Enforcement for U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service. In this day and age, it’s rare to find such dedicated public servants. Both of them have the grateful thanks of all of us who care about the wild creatures of America.”

  Everyone smiled and clapped. Gunderman stared at the screen, confounded. She might have just saved my job, he thought.

  • • •

  Ned sat in his office, staring unseeing at his computer screen. He had been in variants of the same position for a week. Once again, he reached for his phone.

  bluestreak@juno.com Baby you all right? We’re still up here in Tallahassee if you want to visit

  stanleykw@outlook.com Hang in there Ned. Come help with the turtles if you need a break

  chiroptera@gmail.com I have a bottle of bourbon with your name on it.

  iris@bluemoonwildlife.org hello sweetheart why don’t you come back and let me give you another makeover? You probably need a touch up by now LOL

  Ned had arrived at the airport in Wisconsin flanked by marshals, wearing an orange jumpsuit and shackles. His mother stood at the gate with tears in her eyes. He could read his father’s lips: No, Neddo, no.

  An op-ed piece in the Milwaukee Journal-Sentinal wove a Shakespearian tale of forbidden love, corporate tyranny, and freedom in America, and was picked up by media outlets all over the country. This is what you want me to spend the taxpayers’ money on? shouted the prosecuting attorney, an avowed enemy of Adam Matheson, pushing Ned’s case to the top of his list. You have a rich and powerful figure who routinely pays fines instead of following the law, who started this whole thing by stealing a protected eagle, and you want me to try to max out a kid with an otherwise spotless record? I won’t do it!

  Ned had been given fines
, probation, and community service. He spent two days with his parents, then returned to his empty apartment. At work he found a large framed photo of himself wearing shackles, “Employee of the Week” emblazoned above it.

  The sequence he was working on might as well have been written in hieroglyphics. He rose from his chair and looked out his window. He returned to his desk and typed Luna Burke into his search engine. There was nothing new. He typed Port Clyde Eagle Sanctuary. Nothing. He envisioned the afternoon Gunderman and the police had closed in, and felt a small, blessed surge of adrenaline. He thought of Trish and Angelica’s house, with its undulating hobbit roof.

  They left me the house but I couldn’t live in it, Luna had said. I had nowhere to go.

  He typed Prattsville PA real estate, and an hour later his office manager looked at him in surprise. “What?” she said. “You’re leaving again?”

  • • •

  Ned drove steadily, his arm out the window of his rented car, listening to the swell of cicadas in the afternoon heat. He drove past rolling, sun-drenched fields, glancing into the rearview mirror at the clouds of dust swirling behind him. He turned off a country road and passed a mailbox.

  At the top of the hill stood a farmhouse, and behind it a barn. Ned pulled up by the house and turned off the engine.

  The front door was covered with graffiti. Three windows were broken. The barn’s sliding door hung haphazardly from its hinges, held in place by a large padlock. Of all the fool’s errands he’d been on, he thought, this was by far the most idiotic.

  “I can work remotely,” he said into his cell phone, as he sat on the top step of the back porch.

  “Are you out of your mind?” demanded Earl, leaning against a ’74 Trans Am in his garage in South Carolina. “You haven’t even talked to her! She’s officially a Missing Person! And she already told you she didn’t want to live in that house!”

  “I know. But she left it a long time ago. Maybe if I changed it around a little, she’d feel…”

  “What’s wrong with you, man? Why don’t you go out and get laid? You’re a celebrity — you can have anyone you want!”

  “I’m not a celebrity, and I don’t want anyone else!”

  “What do you think the odds are of this working?”

  “The kind I’m used to,” said Ned. “Two hundred billion to one.”

  Chapter 30

  Harper closed her laptop, slid it into her bag, and stepped out into the brilliant sunshine of Cielo Azul. She walked past the pool and the tennis courts to the formal garden, where she picked a single red hibiscus and slid it into her hair. When she reached the zoo, she performed a final patrol.

  She had found homes for all of them. Good homes, too, not mere holding pens where they would languish. The camels, the kangaroos, the flamingos, the spiders, every one of the 38 different species in Adam Matheson’s zoo had been carefully placed. The pairs would be kept together, and all would receive the best of care and enrichment.

  The property had sold in a day. The wife was a romantic, and wanted to erase all trace of its multi-married former owner and re-create her honeymoon villa. The husband was a germaphobe, and wanted to erase all trace of the zoo so there was no possibility of bird flu. The bulldozers would arrive on Monday.

  Harper closed the gate behind her, and Carlos emerged from the house. They walked toward each other, and met in the middle of the luxurious green lawn.

  “Good morning, Miss Harper,” said Carlos.

  “Good morning, Carlos,” she replied. “Have you decided where you’re going?”

  “Yes. I am going to Orlando, to join my brother’s landscaping company. And you? Will you go to live with the dolphins?”

  “I hope so. I’m looking for a way.”

  “Good luck to you, Miss Harper.”

  “Good luck to you too, Carlos.”

  They bumped their fists together, and parted ways.

  • • •

  These clowns in Washington are slicing the shit out of my budget, Whittaker had said.

  Gunderman glanced at the neat row of locked canoes, and continued down the North Trail. The late afternoon sun shone behind him. He heard a rattling call, and paused to watch an anhinga soar past him and land in a cypress tree.

  I can’t afford to fire you to prove a point, Whittaker had continued. I don’t know what kind of stupid shell game went on with those eagles, but if the public thinks we’re heroes, fine. This is a crazy time, Gunderman. Any minute I’m expecting the fuckers in this administration to start selling licenses to shoot endangered species to the highest bidders.

  Gunderman passed the visitor center, and continued to his cabin. He had made peace with it all. Three unreleasable eagles would live out their lives in luxury, doted on by volunteers. Once he would have fought this breach of law and order, but while tracking Luna Burke he had begun to realize that sometimes delicate colors appeared in the crevices between black and white.

  He grabbed a beer from his refrigerator, went out to his porch, and sat down. He thought about Celia, Wizzie, and Elias, even though there was no point. He had spoken to Celia after the news segment, a short and stilted conversation filled with awkward silences and overlapping attempts at banter. She was rooted firmly in Pennsylvania, he in Florida. There was no more to be said.

  His reunion was next month. He would attend, reconnect with his fellow wildlife officers, and catch up on all the years he had missed. He would swap stories and feel the camaraderie. Maybe, he thought, I’ll track a couple of them down this weekend.

  The knock on the door startled him. When he opened it Celia gave him an inquiring smile, and Wizzie raised her hand in greeting. Both were in shorts and t-shirts. For a moment, he was too surprised to react.

  “You see?” said Wizzie. “I told you we should have called first!”

  “We’re on vacation,” said Celia. “Wizzie wanted to come to Florida, but I didn’t want to impose on you, you know? So I thought we’d just say hello, and then we’ll go.”

  “But you can come with us if you want,” added Wizzie, “and give us a tour.”

  Gunderman grinned. “Come in,” he said, and he tumbled into a world of primary colors.

  • • •

  Roland let himself into his apartment and found Lyllis emerging from the bedroom in a scarlet evening gown, a blaze of diamonds around her neck.

  “Holy mother,” he said, his eyes sweeping her from head to foot. “You are one fine woman.” He crossed the room, his eyes widening at her necklace. “Where’d you get that? Now what have you done?”

  “Oh, stop it,” she retorted. “It’s Luna’s. She was wearing it the night she showed up in the rain. Will you hurry up? We’re going to be late.”

  “Did she give it to you?”

  “Nah, she just left it. I’m keeping it for her, because someday she’s going to come back from wherever she went and need some money.”

  “Maybe she won’t want it.”

  “She’ll want it after I get through with her. It’s her fee for being kidnapped and manhandled and everything else. If there was any justice in this world, me and Michael would have one, too. I’m wearing it tonight, then I’ll put it in the safe deposit box in the bank.” She pushed him toward the bedroom. “Go. Get dressed. How’s the team?”

  “Good,” he replied, and smiled. “They’re good kids.”

  Lyllis smiled back at him. After a moment he blinked, as if something had startled him into motion. “Sorry,” he said. “I’ll be five minutes. It’s just…sometimes I don’t want to do anything but stand still and look at you.”

  She beamed. “Go,” she said. “You can look at me when we’re not late.”

  He peeled off his clothes in the bedroom. His phone rang, and he glanced down.

  “Yeah?” he said, guarded.

  “Roland,” said Adam. “You have a minute?”

  “I’m on my way out.”

  “This won’t take long. Listen. Now that some time has passed, I just wa
nt to tell you how sorry I am. Especially about the car. You know that wasn’t supposed to happen.”

  “I know.”

  “Things got out of hand. It was temporary insanity. Anyway, I’m sure you’ve heard I’m done with Luna.”

  “I gotta go.”

  “What do you say we get past it? Why don’t you come work for me again?”

  “No.”

  “You’ve said that to me before.”

  “This time I mean it,” said Roland, and hung up.

  • • •

  Adam regarded his phone. Roland will change his mind, he thought. The driver opened the door, and Adam sent Darcy a quick text.

  adam@matheson.com Change of plan. Back next Wednesday.

  Paszkiewicz accompanied him to the private elevator, then to the penthouse. He took a seat in the bar, and Adam continued into the dining room. The restaurant was booked a year in advance, but one of his assistants had called that morning and reserved a table next to the window. It was set with antique china and crystal. His favorite champagne rested in a silver bucket. The lights of Manhattan sparkled below.

  Waiting for him was Sophie König, whose latest film had just won the Palme d’Or at Cannes, whose agent was currently negotiating her first big-budget American picture, and whose career was on a nearly vertical climb. She was there unbeknownst to her boyfriend, a German actor with whom she had been living for the past four years.

  Sophie talked about her childhood, career, and ambitions, and Adam smiled, nodded, and thought about the shit storm he had faced when he returned from Canada. His marketing and PR people were hysterical, investors were jittery, and the media was all over him. He answered his phone the second day and heard the voice of Joe Reiner, his mentor, frequent business partner, and friend. Adam, he said. Come have dinner with me tomorrow night. Seven o’clock.

  Adam arrived at the cavernous apartment and followed a woman to the roof garden, where Joe sat holding a gin and tonic and looking out over the city. Adam sat beside him, and a young man handed him a Scotch on the rocks. Adam, said Joe. What are you doing?