Lunging toward the door of the cage, Allison heard the crack of a rifle. A man yelling.
"Shit! Shit, shit, shit."
She had the key out of her pocket, fumbled with it for a moment, gouged it at the lock, and managed to unfasten the thing. She was out the door, slamming it behind her, when another rifle shot sounded from nearby. She saw the glitter of sparks as the slug clanged the bars a yard from her head, and for a second she cut her eyes toward her attackers, long enough to see the small one wiping his face furiously with both hands. Trying to scrub it clean. Making a retching noise.
Broom had nailed him with a handful of his own feces.
"Jesus, shit! Jesus! Shit, shit, shit."
The other man was holding the rifle. He was tall, had white hair, or blond. Beyond that she could tell nothing. The gun was stretched out toward her, the barrel floating her way. Allison ducked her head and dove for the mass of philodendrons beside the cage, rolled through them and down a grassy bank that sloped to the pink-flamingo pond. She heard the man up the hill shouting, heard the bark of another shot, heard Broom bellow at them again.
She came to her feet at the edge of the pond, sprinted for the cluster of oaks on the western edge. Heard one more blast and the spurt of water a dozen feet behind her. Lousy shots. She churned into the shadows of the oaks, cut sharply to her right toward the exhibits of macaws and cockatoos, took a hidden maintenance footpath behind the gift shop and down an alleyway of fire bushes and golden dewdrops.
Eyes lashed blurry with branches, dodging the dagger thorns of the century plants, but getting a hard poke in the thigh anyway. She yelped, stumbled briefly, plucked out the spike, took a hard whistling breath and ran on toward Bronson's shack. Hearing his radio now, the same female DJ rattling on. Bronx accent, bullying one of her callers. His radio coming from the darkness like the beam of a lighthouse. Her man with a side arm.
All over the park the birds had erupted into wild squawks and squeals, as if feeding time and mating season and a lightning storm had combined. She heard Broom's roar louder than all the birds together, the dark air booming.
She jogged to Bronson's guardhouse, but he wasn't there. His phone was torn out of the wall. The radio blared on. She stared at his empty chair for a moment, spoke Bronson's name as she gaped at his small cubicle.
In a moment she heard the men's breathless voices coming quickly up the pathway. Allison turned and rushed toward the park's entrance amid a great clatter of wings, the brilliant screeches of a hundred parrots. She could hear the men coming to the crest of the hill beside Bronson's shack.
She threw herself against the gate, but it didn't budge. She heaved against it again, and then she saw him. Bronson was squatting down, wedged inside the metal cage of the revolving door, a single bullet hole through his forehead. Head flung back, eyes open as if he were gawking at the moon.
She drove forward, both hands against the door, all her panicked weight inching it around, finally breaking it loose, expelling Bronson's body inside the park as the revolving door spun. And Allison hurtled across the parking lot, hearing one more shot a long way behind her. Racing across Killian Drive and into the protective labyrinth of dark, expensive neighborhoods.
CHAPTER 11
At dawn on Tuesday, the police took her statement in Bronson's shack at Parrot Jungle. Harry was there, standing silently in the doorway. Thorn arrived, got the news from Crystal Slayton, one of the park attendants. Allison nodded at him, then went back to staring at Bronson's radio, answering the half dozen questions she'd answered a half dozen times already.
Two men. One short. One tall; white hair or blond. The other one, she wasn't sure. He had his hands over his face, trying to scrape away ape shit. It was midnight, after all; she was terrified. What did they say? She told them, calling out her name, looking for her, the same as they had in Borneo. And what was she doing in the ape's cage in the first place? She had no answer for that, just looked across at Harry. She does that sometimes, Harry said. What? the lieutenant said, you mean she comes down here, goes into the ape's cage? Why? All the cops looking at each other, trying to hold back their grins.
Harry came forward. Told the lieutenant that his wife had been under a lot of stress lately. She might not be acting a hundred percent normal. So we gather, a beefy cop said. So, Mrs. Farleigh, you think this has something to do with Mr. Joshua Bond? one of them asked her. Someone snickered. She looked up at the cop. Of course it does, she said. The beefy one stepped in front of his junior partner, addressed Harry. So is your wife given to paranoid delusions? Everything happens, it's gotta have something to do with her. Like a regular mental cycle.
Allison said something short and angry. Thorn shouldered up to the door of the shack. Told the men to take it easy, goddamn it. This woman had lost a daughter; she wasn't crazy. If she said she was being shot at, then, by God, she was being shot at.
Somebody mind telling me who the hell this guy is? the cop said. He's nobody, Harry said. A friend, said Allison. The beefy cop asked Thorn to step back, this was no business of his. Any more outbursts, interference of any kind, he was going downtown.
They asked Allison the same half dozen questions again, but made it clear this was shadow play, the motions of an interrogation. Telling Harry that it seemed to them Bronson's murder was a robbery gone awry. The cash drawer in the gift shop had been rifled, the old man's wallet stolen. Somebody tried to pry open the safe in the main office, steal the day's receipts. Allison demanded police protection. A car outside her house until this was over. Everyone looked at her. Take her home, Mr. Farleigh, the beefy one said. See she gets some rest. And maybe you should see about some medication. My wife speaks highly of Xanax.
***
Five-thirty on that cool Tuesday afternoon. Thorn had planned on being back in Key Largo today, tying flies. Tying one on. Crack open that Herradura tequila that was sitting on his shelf for a few months, mix it with some Cointreau, lime juice.
He'd agreed to sub for Allison while she was in Borneo, ten days, maybe eleven. But for the twenty-first day in a row he was again at Parrot Jungle. Holding Pongo, the two-year-old orangutan.
Actually it was more the other way around, the ape hugging him, its arms very tight around Thorn's neck, right cheek pressed against his sternum, Pongo looking out at the dozen eleventh graders from Palmer Trinity, a ritzy private school. A biology field trip to Parrot Jungle. Thorn was just winding up his talk, letting them have a long look at the baby orangutan while a few feet behind Thorn, Broom lurked in his big cage.
Thorn still had the question-and-answer period, for ten, fifteen minutes max, then it was back to Snapper Creek Marina where he'd been living aboard his old wooden Chris-Craft thirty-footer. Maybe tonight he'd call a cab, go over and see how Allison was doing, offer to take her out on the Chris-Craft, anchor off Elliott Key, sleep out there in the laundered breezes, where the air still had some oxygen in it. That wouldn't cure her, but it was a damn good place to stay while she healed.
Thorn was ready to call it quits early, send this bunch of sour-faced teenagers on their way, when Sean came down the stone steps from the Asian parrot exhibit, heading toward the primates. Gray jeans, black shirt, running shoes, short blond hair glinting in the sun. Looking pretty, as usual, sexy, an athletic bounce in her walk, healthy, strong.
Looking better than she had four days before at the funeral. She was starting the long trip back from the airless canyons of her grief. Thorn knew the look. He'd hiked those gorges a few times himself lately, found himself stranded down there without map or compass. He could see it in her eyes. Still lost, but at least she was a few feet up the path, getting her confidence back. Gonna climb and climb till she could see the whole span of sky again.
Thorn looked back at the teenagers, shifting around, bored, the teacher giving Thorn another look. The guy had made Thorn as a derelict who'd wandered in here, clubbed the regular lecturer and was impersonating him for the day. Not far off, really.
Th
orn rearranged Pongo in his arms and went on with the talk.
"A mother orangutan will hold her baby twenty-four hours a day for the first three years. Travel together in the treetops. Never let go, no matter what."
One of the boys, the tallest, in overalls and a backward baseball cap, kept taking pictures, three rolls so far. Leaning in close to Thorn and Pongo, getting the lens a foot away and snapping. Thorn lifted his eyes to Sean, standing at the back of the group, just behind the teacher, Mr. Ranks. She smiled at him, halfheartedly, but a smile.
"The males are completely solitary, and most of the time the females are too. But not long ago a researcher observed a mother and her daughter bumping into each other as they moved through the jungle. Because the researcher knew the movements of these two females, she knew they hadn't seen each other for years. Mother and daughter wound up traveling together for several days before they separated again.
"On the other hand, researchers have never seen unrelated females do the same thing. So what it looks like is, orangutans have a sense of family, even if it is very loosely structured."
One of the students stepped out in front of the others.
"Mr. Ranks told us orangutans were the only primates that commit rape."
Thorn brought his gaze to the girl who'd spoken. Around seventeen, chunky, hair shaved on the sides, a few inches of blond mop left on top. A silver staple in her nose. Looking at Thorn with a very pissed-off squint. Both parents probably doctors. A BMW in her future if she kept her grades up. She wore blue jeans, a shapeless green T-shirt, combat boots.
"Mr. Ranks told you that?"
"It's true, isn't it?" the teacher said. He was a young guy in a polo shirt and madras walking shorts, a gold hoop in his ear.
Hell, everybody was wearing an earring today. Everybody but Thorn and Pongo.
"Yeah, it's true," Thorn said. "But I wouldn't say it's the most important fact about orangutans."
"I never claimed it was the most important fact, I simply thought it was a fascinating detail," the teacher said. "Primates that rape."
"Well, yeah." Thorn shifted his gaze back to the girl. "It's true. The young males sometimes have forcible sex with females. At twelve to fifteen years old, the males haven't developed their cheek pads. Those are the large red sacks on the side of the face that the adult males fill with air, like bellows, to amplify their mating calls."
The girl was staring at him, paying utter attention.
He said, "Most female orangutans are only attracted to males with large cheek pads. The bigger the cheek pads, the more attraction. Fact is, a lot of the females initiate sex with the most dominant males. Go up to them, slap them on the face, punch them, then turn around and present themselves. So the big cheek padders pretty much have their pick. But even when they're in heat, female orangutans ignore the subadult males. So those males get very frustrated seeing the females standing in line for a cheek padder. As a result sometimes the subadults resort to rape."
"And that makes it right?" the grunge girl said. "They get frustrated, so then it's okay? Listen to you, you're standing there trying to justify rape."
Thorn glanced helplessly at Sean. Her eyes fixed on him. Thorn took a breath, gave the grunge girl a patient smile.
"It's not fair," he said, "to compare animals to humans. Start doing that and there's a whole lot we can't defend in the way animals act. Your own dogs or cats, they don't behave the way we think would be decent for humans. But that doesn't mean we condemn them."
The grunge girl looked back at her preppy teacher.
"He's got a point," Mr. Ranks said coolly.
Pongo shifted in Thorn's arms, then stretched his long hands up to Thorn's hair and hauled himself up, the ape's hairy chest sliding across Thorn's face as he worked onto Thorn's shoulder. He sat sidesaddle there, the ape's warm belly against Thorn's ear, gripping his hair like reins.
"Which is smarter, a chimp or an orang?" one of the boys asked. Sounded like he had a bet with his buddy: twenty bucks says chimps.
"Well, first of all," Thorn said, "the word orang means 'person' in Malay. Orangutan means 'person of the forest.' So when you say orang, what you've really said is person"
"Well, ex-cuuuse me."
The kid looked at the boy beside him and gave him a major eyeroll. Looked back at Thorn, and spoke with mocking respect.
"Okay, sir, which is smarter, a chimp or an orangutan?"
"It's not easy to say." Thorn smiled. "IQ's tricky."
"Chimps are smarter," said the teacher, glancing around at his charges. "I've read the literature."
"Well," Thorn said, "I wouldn't say that."
"Oh, you wouldn't, would you?" A smirk.
The kids chuckled, looked at Thorn.
"Okay," Thorn said to the group. "Which are smarter, dogs or cats?"
A chorus of dogs, a sprinkling of cats.
"Why?"
One of the neatly dressed girls said, "Dogs do tricks. Fetch the ball, sit, roll over, that kind of thing."
"Yeah," another girl said. "Dogs listen to you."
"Dogs are pack animals," Thorn said. "To survive in the pack a dog has to be alert to signals of authority. They get it wrong, they could get their face torn off. That's why most of them respond to humans.
"And just because cats seem cold and distant, it doesn't mean they're dumb. It's only the way animals act when they live alone. They make their own rules, and don't give a damn what people think one way or the other.
"Dogs are like chimps, cats are like orangutans. Pack animals versus solitary. It has nothing to do with intelligence."
"My, my," the teacher said. "I guess he put me in my place, didn't he?"
Thorn looked at the man for a moment, then took a step in his direction. Mr. Ranks stiffened, brought his hands up for a little tae kwon do or something. Thorn smiled innocently, leaned just enough to his right to bring the small orangutan within striking distance. It took the ape a moment, but finally Pongo's hand darted out and he hooked a finger through the shiniest object in range, Mr. Ranks's earring.
The man clapped a hand to his ear, tried to pry himself free, but Pongo wouldn't let go.
"So," Thorn said, holding still, "orangutans have developed a very high intelligence because their food sources required them to. In the jungle they eat figs and other fruits. To sustain their huge bodies, they have to be very efficient at finding the fruit, or else they'll spend more energy searching than they take in eating it. And if they do that too often, they'll starve."
The teacher was motionless, eyes frozen, glaring at Thorn helplessly. Pongo was stretching the young man's earlobe. Not to the danger point yet, but that goddamn ear had to hurt.
Thorn said, "Orangutans keep a map in their heads of the fig trees and durians and other fruit trees within their range. They also keep close tabs on the state of ripeness of each tree. Orangutans prefer sour or slightly unripe fruit. If he arrives at a tree too early, the fruits don't have much nourishment. If he's too late, the gibbons, monkeys, squirrels, and birds will already have stolen it all.
"To keep track of so many trees and to know down to the exact day when each tree will be filled with edible fruit, the orangutan has evolved a very complex brain. He has a very large map and a very accurate calendar that coordinates with it. Every day he accomplishes by himself what it takes a whole pack of chimps to do."
Thorn reached out and carefully unhooked Pongo's finger from Mr. Ranks's earring. The teacher groaned, turned his back on the group, and rubbed the life back into his ear.
The grunge girl angled forward, looked like she was ready to leap on him.
"Rape is bad," she muttered. "If it's an animal that rapes or a human, it's still bad. I don't give a shit what you say."
Most of the kids groaned and looked away from her. Heard these outbursts a few times before. One of her girlfriends moved in close and patted her hard on the back, as if the grunge girl were choking on a bone.
"That's all for today," Thorn
said. "You can go now."
Mr. Ranks swung back around. He looked at his watch.
"That's not right. You can't do that. Just cut us off like that when things don't go your way."
"Tour's over, folks. I have to put the animals away."
The kids grumbled, then started to peel away. The boy in overalls took a couple of last shots of Pongo playing with Thorn's hair, braiding it into a complicated tangle.
Rubbing his ear, Mr. Ranks gave Thorn a we'll-see-about-this stare and headed back up the stone steps.
The grunge girl stayed on for a moment more, glaring at Pongo as if he were the source of all her misery, then she turned and followed her classmates back to the parrot exhibits.
Sean stepped down to the viewing area. Thorn waited for her behind the waist-high fence.
"This is what I've been doing lately," he said.
"You're good at it."
"I listen to the shit coming out of my mouth and I can't believe it. I talk more in a day in this place than I talk at home in a year."
"It's probably good for you."
"I doubt it. But I like the animals."
Pongo peeped in his ear. Sean looked down at the sand, rubbed her open palm against the hip of her jeans as if trying to scrape away some sticky film. A nervous move. She looked up at him.
"I heard about Bronson," she said. "I couldn't believe it. I've known him all my life. Killed for a few dollars."
"He was one of the good ones."
She drew a breath and stared hard at him.
"Are you having an affair with my mother?"
"What!"
"Are you, Thorn?"
"Hell, no." He looked around the area. Just a couple of tourists wandering slowly through, cameras ready. "Absolutely not. Your mother is married."
"And you don't have affairs with married women?"
"Haven't so far."
She held his eyes for a long time, as if replaying his words, running them through some personal polygraph.
Gone Wild (Thorn Series Book 4) Page 11