Bestiary cc-2

by Robert Masello

  She didn’t answer him, either.

  The other man, in a short-sleeved shirt that revealed some sort of tattoo on his forearm, picked up a fishing bag and said, “C’mon on, Stan. Let’s get going.”

  But Stan didn’t look ready to leave. Stan looked as though he were just getting started.

  “You’re not bad looking,” he said to the girl. “You know that, right?”

  She nodded, once, barely perceptibly.

  “So what are you doing with this piece of shit?”

  She had no answer to that one — and by now Carter had seen enough. He glanced over at Del, who lowered his head in assent, and Carter stood up, and in a loud voice said, “Hey, it’s right here, Del! That waterfall!”

  He barged into the clearing, making as much of a commotion as he could, and strode onto the little bridge, next to the Hispanic boy.

  “You take a fall?” he said, putting his hand on the kid’s shoulder and steering him away from the guy named Stan. “Let me take a look at that.”

  With his eyes, he swept across Stan and his tattooed partner, making damn sure they knew he knew what was up; Del emerged from the brush, holding a handy little club he must have just made.

  “That’s my friend Del,” Carter announced to the two men as he took the boy over to the shaken girl. “He bats a thousand — want to try him?”

  The two men exchanged a long look, and Carter dropped his backpack onto the ground. “Didn’t I hear you were leaving — Stan?”

  “Nah, I like it here.” He squared off, ready to fight, when his friend grabbed his elbow and said, “What the fuck are you doing? We’re done here — let’s go.”

  Del moved around behind them and took a casual, but hard, whack at some branches.

  Stan stared at Carter, then pulled a pair of Ray-Bans out of his breast pocket and put them on. “Does kind of smell like shit around here.”

  That was when Carter knew he’d won the standoff. He said nothing more as Stan and his pal moved back toward the trail and headed down the mountain. Carter knelt down next to the girl and said, “You okay?”

  She looked up at him with watery eyes and murmured, “I guess.”

  “You have a cell phone?”

  She shook her head.

  “They threw it in the water,” the boy said. Del was dabbing at the blood on his cut lip with a couple of leaves.

  “You’re going to be fine, both of you,” Carter said. “Can you stand up?” he said to the girl. As he held her arm, she got up. “You feel able to walk down?”

  She didn’t say anything, but walked over toward her boyfriend. “You okay, Luis?”

  But he wouldn’t look at her.

  “You okay?” she repeated, reaching out to touch him on the arm, but he pulled away.

  “Just don’t touch me, okay? Just let me alone.”

  Carter knew what was going on — he’d just been beaten up in front of his girl and he was in no mood to face her.

  Del knew, too. “What’s your name?” he said to the girl as he drew her away and toward the trail. “I’m Del Garrison.”

  “Lilly.”

  “Nice to meet you, Lilly.” He guided her back to the trail, with his club still in one hand. “It’ll be a lot easier going down.”

  Carter picked up his pack and led Luis in the same direction. He was slight and not very tall, and his Nike shirt was spattered with blood in front.

  They walked in silence, all their eyes on the loose rocks and dirt of the trail. There was no sign of the two men who’d attacked them, and Carter had heard enough that he didn’t have to ask any questions.

  Del, just to distract them, kept calling out over his shoulder what they were seeing or passing by. “That’s called a popcorn flower over on your right. And deer weed all around it. Buckwheat brush on the ground up ahead, and twining snapdragon hanging down. Golden yarrow. Purple nightshade. Silver puffs.” The list went on and on, and before long they were passing the abandoned shack. In the sky above it, a lone hawk circled slowly on the updraft.

  Who had lived there? Carter wondered as they marched slowly past its boarded-up windows and padlocked door.

  Only one other hiker passed them, going up the trail as they went down — a young woman in a big straw hat who gave them a very curious look — and when they got to the parking area, Carter said, “Which one is your car?”

  Luis gestured at a red Trans Am with wire wheels. And four flat tires.

  “Fuck!” Luis said.

  “How’d they know it was yours?” Del asked.

  “They didn’t,” Carter said, looking around at the other three or four cars — including his own — in the lot. All of their tires had been punctured.

  “At least they’re thorough,” Del said.

  “We can walk to Gelson’s,” Lilly said to Luis, who still wouldn’t even acknowledge her. “I can call my mom.”

  “Maybe you should call the police first,” Carter said, “and file a report. I’ve got a cell phone in my car.”

  “No!” Luis blurted out. “No fuckin’ police report.” He wheeled around and glared at Lilly. “Nothing happened — okay?”

  “If you don’t call, I will,” Carter said.

  Luis glared at Carter, too. “You do what you got to do. I’m out of here.”

  And he marched off toward Sunset in his bloody T-shirt and his jeans… with Lilly, who turned and held up her hand in a wave to Carter and Del, in slow pursuit.

  “No good deed,” Del said, “goes unpunished.”

  Carter nodded.

  “But let’s call Triple A first,” Del added. “I know from experience; it could take them awhile to get here.”

  CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

  “What do you mean, it won’t eat?” al-Kalli said in a cold fury.

  Rashid, the keeper of the animals, visibly shook in his boots.

  “I saw the man killed myself,” al-Kalli said, rising from his chair behind the ornate desk in his library. “I saw him pulled down from the tree. I saw his body dragged into the lair.”

  Rashid, in a spotless white lab coat, nodded vigorously in agreement. “Yes, I am sure that is true. I am sure that is what happened.” Rashid, who had been barred from the bestiary that night, had no exact knowledge of what had transpired. But knowing his master, he had a fairly good idea. And he had seen the remains inside the cave.

  The largely uneaten remains.

  “But the beast has not changed his habits… not since…” He did not know how to complete the sentence, nor did he have to. Not since the beast lost its mate. Rashid did not like even to advert to that sad fact, for fear it would rekindle al-Kalli’s anger. He knew perfectly well who was considered at fault for that.

  “And the other animals?”

  Rashid swallowed hard and lied. “Admirable. They are all doing admirable,” he said, using one of the favorite English words he had learned during his training at the American school in Cairo. In reality, several of the beasts were showing strange signs and behaviors. The bird was shedding long feathers with brittle quills, the larger beasts were exhibiting signs of labored breathing and had a lackluster look in their eyes. The sudden expulsion from the compound in Iraq, the long journey to America, the new and unfamiliar quarters — in Rashid’s view the creatures had never fully recovered. No matter what he did, no matter what new and innovative measures he tried — from changing their diets to altering the air temperature and composition inside the facility — he could not find the means to restore them to their former health and glory.

  On many a dark night, he anticipated becoming a meal for the beasts himself. Al-Kalli, he knew, was not above it.

  “I will be down to see the situation for myself later this afternoon. Go and tell Jakob to bring the car around.”

  “Yes, sir. Right away.” Rashid backed out of the room all but bowing, and before he pulled the double doors closed, he could hear al-Kalli shout, “Admirably! Admirably!”

  * * *

  Al-Kalli would
have liked to throw him to the beasts, but it wasn’t that simple — Rashid and his ancestors had been caring for the creatures forever, and even though al-Kalli had his doubts about Rashid’s intelligence and abilities, the man still knew more about them than anyone else could ever know.

  And how, given the nature of his menagerie, could al-Kalli recruit anyone more knowledgeable, or trustworthy?

  He picked up the phone to make a quick call to the Getty to tell them he was coming over to see how the work was progressing, but then put the phone back down. No, why alert them? Why not catch them unaware, and discover in that way how diligently they were pursuing the project he had entrusted to them?

  The armored limousine was waiting outside in the porte cochere, and Jakob opened the passenger door as soon as al-Kalli stepped out of the house. “The museum” was all al-Kalli had to say.

  On the drive over, al-Kalli gazed out the tinted rear window at the hot, sunny day. It wasn’t really so different from the Middle East. Without all this constant irrigation, even in the teeth of a drought, all of Los Angeles would retreat to what it naturally wanted to be — a desert. All but the palm trees would die, the lawns would turn sere and brown and blow away, the roses would wither and the bougainvillea would die on the vine.

  And the people? The people would disperse to other, more hospitable climes.

  A dog-walker with half a dozen different dogs on a tangle of leashes was walking along the opposite side of the street. The dogs’ tongues were hanging out, and a couple of them stopped to lap at something on the ground.

  So why, al-Kalli wondered, could his animals not thrive in this foreign, but not so very different, environment? He had saved all of them that he could, given the danger and the constraints at the time. He had spared no expense, he had done all that he could do to provide them with a safe and secluded and comfortable home. He had, in the larger sense, done everything he could to preserve the legacy of his ancient family, and to maintain its mysterious power… for he believed that all of these things were tied, in some ineffable way, to the beasts themselves.

  And now the beasts were in jeopardy.

  He knew, for instance, that Rashid had lied to him in the library. He wasn’t blind. He could see that the other creatures were languishing, too. Their cries were not so loud, their eyes were not so bright, their fur was not so thick or their hides so tough. Something was happening, and he had to find a way to stop it.

  At the Getty, his car was automatically waved through to a reserved area for distinguished visitors and guests. The plaza of the museum was crowded today with tourists clutching maps and cold drinks and their children’s sticky hands. But as with most such people, they knew to make way for al-Kalli. There was something about him — his impeccable clothes, his regal bearing, his aura, he liked to think — that caused them to stand back and pause as he strode past. That Jakob, clearly his bodyguard, followed two steps behind was probably not lost on them, either.

  When he entered the Research Institute, where Beth Cox worked, there was a flurry of interest and attention as he strode down the hall, past all the other offices and cubicles. Her door was open, and she was sitting next to a very pale boy who looked not much older than al-Kalli’s son, Mehdi.

  “Mr. al-Kalli,” Beth said, startled. “I didn’t know you were coming.” She stood up, smoothing her skirt, while the boy continued to click away at the computer keyboard. “Elvis,” she said, nudging him on the shoulder, “this is the owner of The Beasts of Eden.”

  Elvis ran off a quick trill on the keys, then looked up and said, “Hi. It’s an extremely cool book.” Then he went back to studying the screen.

  Al-Kalli looked at the cluttered surface of the desk, but saw no sign of the book itself. What he did see were Latin dictionaries, rafts of printouts, and colored photocopies of various, random pages that he recognized from The Beasts of Eden.

  It wasn’t hard for Beth to read his mind. “The book is with the conservators right now,” she said. “It’s just one building away.”

  “What are you doing with these?” al-Kalli said, gesturing at the photocopies.

  Beth hadn’t really wanted to get into this so fast; she always liked to complete her research and come to some firm conclusions before sharing her discoveries with the world. Or, more to the point, with Mohammed al-Kalli. He was not a man you wanted to offer partial accounts to, or whose questions you wished to duck.

  But he was already turning the photocopies around on her desk, and trying to ascertain why these particular pages were being worked on. Had he noticed that these were all the pages on which the quires had ended and the catchwords, pointing to the next quire, had been entered? Beth didn’t really know how much al-Kalli knew about his treasure. He had never said very much, apart from conveying his obvious attachment to the book and his fear that, during the restoration process, it might suffer some injury. For all Beth knew, he was a scholar of eleventh-century manuscripts and was just waiting for her to make some small misstatement before pouncing.

  “We’re collecting the catchwords and putting them together,” Elvis suddenly volunteered. “It’s amazing how they’re coming together into a kind of sentence.”

  Beth could have killed him.

  “The catchwords?” al-Kalli said, in his dry, upper-crust English accent.

  “The little words that run at the bottom of each section — Beth figured out that they were all connected.” Clearly, he thought he was doing her a service. “It’s like a treasure map or something.”

  Al-Kalli’s eye brightened, and he fixed his gaze on Beth. “Is this true? You have found something in the book that no one else has ever discovered?”

  Beth blushed and said, “It’s possible.” With one hand that was out of al-Kalli’s sight, she pinched Elvis, hard, between the shoulder blades. He squirmed, but had the sense to say nothing more.

  “What does it say so far? What have you learned?”

  Elvis pretended to be absorbed in the computer screen, while Beth, reluctantly, drew out the stapled sheets on which the catchwords had been assembled. “It’s not entirely complete, there are some words we might have misread or mistranslated, and I have not yet had a chance to—”

  But al-Kalli had already snatched the pages from her grasp and was studying them. She glimpsed Jakob, the ever-present Jakob, loitering in the hall outside.

  “These words connect, you say?” The catchwords, their rough English equivalents, and Beth’s interpolated queries, were highlighted in yellow, and he began to put them together and read them aloud as he flipped the pages. “Brought here [question of volition] / to this land / an honored guest / now a prisoner / laboring in obscurity / my name to sleep [vanish?] / beneath a cloth [blanket?] / blue sky and white clouds / pity the [too faint to decipher at present] / beasts [demons?] / in our Lord [Christian god? temporal employer] / for eternity / ivory grave [sepulcher?].” Al-Kalli flipped the last page again, looking for more, then raised his eyes to Beth. “I’m not sure I understand. What is this?”

  Beth quickly explained the use of catchwords — so he wasn’t secretly an expert in these matters, after all — and then added that these were possibly, or even apparently, a message encoded by the scribe, to be read—“possibly, again, we can’t really say for sure yet”—by other scribes who later came into possession of the book.

  “But who was he?” al-Kalli said, his enthusiasm visibly waning. “And why did he claim to have been a prisoner of my family?”

  Funny, Beth thought, he spoke of his family — some distant ancestors from a thousand years in the past and half a world away — as anyone else might speak of his own parents or kids. He was indignant at the scribe’s imputation.

  “Is he implying that we forced him to create The Beasts of Eden? That he was ill used?”

  “I wouldn’t say that,” Beth replied. “It was common practice for scribes and illuminators to complain about their patrons.”

  But al-Kalli’s feathers still looked ruffled, and h
e appeared disappointed at what he had just read. What, Beth wondered, had he been hoping to read or find? A clue to some other treasure? From what she could surmise, the man was already as rich as Croesus. “I want to see the book,” he said.

  “Of course,” Beth said. “I’ll take you right over there.” She was just as glad to get him away from Elvis, who might unwittingly start some other trouble. “Elvis,” she said, before leaving, “would you call Hildegard and tell her we’re coming over?” She didn’t want what had happened to her — a surprise visit — to befall her favorite conservator.

  The walk to the East Building, where the conservation work was done, was a short one, along a pathway shaded by a row of perfectly aligned London plane trees; if you looked directly at the one on the end, all the other slender trunks disappeared behind it. Al-Kalli, Beth noticed, was still clutching the sheaf of catchwords. Beth slipped her ID card into the slot at the door, and the electronic locks released. She escorted al-Kalli and the silent Jakob into the elevator, then down to the conservation workshop where the formidable Hildegard — a large woman in her sixties, who favored shapeless dresses in what could charitably be called earth tones — was laboring at a wide, stainless steel table, with filtered tensor lamps attached to its rim.

  Beth knew she didn’t like to be interrupted at her work, but she had not been about to deny al-Kalli a glimpse of his treasure.

  Hildegard brushed a wisp of gray hair away from her eyes and greeted al-Kalli politely, if not warmly. The book lay on the table in front of her, and to Beth’s horror — and she could only imagine how al-Kalli was reacting — its precious covers had been entirely removed and lay on a separate table behind her.

  “How’s it coming?” Beth jumped in, to forestall any explosion.

  “Slowly. The boards are beech, which is unusual, but surprisingly solid and uncompromised. The inside of the spine shows sign of dry rot, and the thongs are as brittle as twigs, but in a manuscript this old it would be a shock not to find such damage.”

  “What have you done?” al-Kalli finally said, surveying his dismembered treasure. “You have torn the covers from the book? They have never been separated from the book, ever, in over a thousand years.”