by Mary Walker
Katherine felt a sudden gush of pleasure spread through her body. It seemed years since anyone had praised her. “Thank you for telling me that,” she said. “It makes me want to purr.”
“So … what shall I tell him?”
“Tell him thanks, but I plan to stay at the zoo. I’m going to learn to be a credit to Alonzo Stokes if it kills me.” She took a big swig of wine and looked away from his puzzled expression.
* * *
As they finished off his chocolate intemperance and another glass of wine apiece, Katherine took a deep breath and asked the question she had been framing all evening: “Vic, is it possible that a ranch in Kerrville has a bongo and some aoudads?”
He looked up with eyes so wide his forehead wrinkled. “Aoudads, sure. Lots of the game ranches have big herds of them, but a bongo, no. They’re on the endangered list, hard even for zoos to get hold of. We were damn lucky to get our young male.”
“The one that’s over in quarantine?”
“Yeah. He’s the only one in Texas. Houston, Dallas, San Antonio—none of them have any.”
“How did we get ours?”
“Through an animal dealer who has contacts in the Congo, all over Africa, really. And the Driscoll Foundation was generous enough to put up the twenty thousand dollars for it. Why, Katherine?”
“I saw a photograph of a bongo being unloaded at a ranch in Kerrville on October second.”
“October second … that’s when we got ours,” Vic said. “Are you sure it was a bongo?”
“Pretty sure.”
“May I see the photograph?”
Katherine took a deep swig to finish off her wine and pushed her glass away. She’d reached her limit. That reminded her she needed to find the ladies’ room. She stood up without answering his question. “I’ll be right back,” she said.
In the bathroom she splashed cold water on her face to clear her head. She needed to make a decision. Now. If she was going to investigate the documents her father had left her, she had to ask direct questions, take some chances. She was sorely tempted to show them to Vic and get his opinion on how to proceed. But what if he was involved in whatever it was that was going on?
She patted her face dry with a paper towel. She needed help, that was certain. But could she trust him? She pictured the white teeth against his dark skin. God, he looked like a dishonest camel trader. Why pick him to confide in? But who else was there? Sam McElroy? No way. Alonzo, certainly not. Hans Dieterlen? No. Her uncle? Impossible.
She felt a burning need to talk to someone about it. But Vic? Why take the chance? She thought about his knee pressing her leg, the way his hair curled under his ears. Maybe it was just wine and hormones at work here, but she had to take a chance on someone. And even if Vic was involved, at least she would have taken some action that might jar something loose.
She stopped at the pay phone in the hall to call Sophie at her parents’ house. They’d agreed to come back home at the same time so neither would be in the house alone. Sophie answered the phone and agreed to meet Katherine at ten-fifteen outside the house, so they could go in together.
As she approached the table, Vic finished signing the bill and rose from his chair. “Hard question, huh?” he asked.
“What?”
“About seeing the photograph.”
“Oh, that. Very hard,” she said.
“You ready to go?” he asked.
* * *
When he pulled his old Volvo station wagon into the gravel driveway, he left the engine running and turned to face her.
Before he could say whatever it was he had on his mind, Katherine said, quickly, before she could back out, “Can you come in for a minute, Vic? I want to show you something.”
He nodded enthusiastically.
Just as they reached the front door, Sophie pulled her BMW into the driveway next to Vic’s car and jumped out. “Perfect timing,” she said. “Hi, Vic.” She had to shout to be heard over Belle’s barking.
Vic looked puzzled. “Sophie,” he said.
“Sophie’s staying with me,” Katherine explained as she unlocked the door, soothing the dog with her voice. “Easy, Belle. Good girl.”
As they entered Vic caught sight of Ra undulating toward them. “This must be the dual champion, Amun-Ra,” he said.
“Radiant Sunrise’s Amun-Ra,” Katherine said, scratching the dog on the chest.
Vic stopped as they walked through the dining room–studio to glance at the walls of photographs. He immediately spotted the color ones of Katherine and went to study them. “Very nice work your father did,” he said. “Very nice.”
The three of them sat down in the kitchen and talked for a few minutes until Sophie said, “Time for me to turn in.” She looked at Katherine. “Late night last night. I don’t know how you do it.” She walked out, headed toward the library with Belle at her heels. They heard her door closing.
“I’m going to get the photograph. I’ll be right back,” Katherine said, rising from her chair. She stopped in the doorway and looked back at him, on the verge of asking him to take a pledge of secrecy, but she decided it would sound melodramatic, and it would be useless anyway. He was either trustworthy or he wasn’t. And she was wagering that he was.
She left without saying anything.
She pulled the envelope from under her mattress and carried it back to the kitchen, her foggy head full of warring emotions. No doubt the wine and lack of sleep over the last twenty-four hours were contributing to this act of indiscretion. But she was going to risk it.
She lay in front of him the page on which she’d copied the four photos that had been marked with the date 10/2/89 and “RTY Ranch, Kerrville.” “These are just copies, but you can make them out well enough.” She pointed at one of the photos. “This is a bongo, isn’t it?”
“Oh, yes,” he said. “Even in black and white, there’s no mistaking the vertical white stripes on the body and the leg markings and the hunched line of the back. It’s a bongo, and not ours.” He counted the stripes with his index finger. “This one has twelve stripes; ours has fourteen.”
Katherine turned the page over. “This is what was written on the back of each of these pictures,” she said.
“October second, 1989,” he read, “RTY Ranch, Kerrville. I’ve been there. About five years ago. It was the first of the big game ranches. Their profit comes from charging hunters immense fees to shoot exotic game to nail up on their walls. I’ve heard you can even shoot big game there if you have enough cash. This outfit’s run by a guy—Robert Yost—whose family owned the ranch for generations. Old Texas money. But they had fallen on lean times until he had the idea of stocking exotic game.”
He turned it back over to look at the other photos on the sheet. “This is an aoudad, a Barbary sheep, of course. And look at this, Katherine.” His voice rose with excitement. “Here’s two greater kudu. What the hell! And an oryx.”
He looked up at her. “Your father took these, didn’t he? What did he say about them?”
“Nothing. He left them hidden for me. I found them after his death. There are more.” She laid another page in front of him.
He stared at it. “A pair of bushbuck! We don’t even have bushbuck at the zoo. Well, shit! A sable antelope and an addax!” He turned the page over and read, “August tenth, 1989, PLS, Lampasas.” He looked into the distance trying to remember something. “August tenth. We got a shipment August tenth, I think. It was the two wildebeest for our herd.”
“I know,” Katherine said. She handed him the page listing zoo acquisitions for August. She’d marked the date and the two entries. She watched his reaction carefully. His forehead was crinkled and he looked genuinely perplexed as he studied the record and then the photos.
“There are more,” she said, handing him the rest.
He sat in silence for about five minutes, studying them, checking the dates on the photos against the acquisition records. Katherine alternated between pacing the floor and pe
ering over his shoulder. When he finally looked up, his mouth was a tight line and his eyes were unfocused as if he were trying to visualize something but couldn’t quite get it in view.
“Well, what do you think?” Katherine asked, waving a hand over the documents on the table. She sat down so she could listen better.
Vic shook his head and rubbed his fingers across his furrowed forehead. “If these photographs are labeled accurately, for the past six months, each time the Driscoll Foundation buys some new animals for the zoo, on that same day, one of four Texas ranches gets a shipment of animals. Some of the animals are illegal by federal and international law. And all of them have no business going to a game ranch to get shot.”
Katherine was impatient. “Yeah, I know that, but what does it mean?”
He took a deep breath. “This is hard for me to believe, but it could be that there’s some … scam going on and that people at the zoo are involved. Probably your uncle, too, since he’s head of the foundation.” Vic looked her in the eye. “What are you planning to do about this?”
She shrugged. “My father wrote me that he had something he wanted me to do, something only I could do. Then he left these for me. I want to find out what was going on and do whatever he had in mind for me to do.” She sat back in her chair. “I wish I knew what that was.”
Vic was silent for a long minute. Then he thumped his knuckles on the pictures. “This scares me. If your father collected this information, it could be the reason he was killed.”
Katherine nodded. “If there were something illegal going on at the zoo, can you see how it might work?”
He looked into space. “I’ve been trying to, but it’s so hard to believe that I can’t quite imagine it. I know there’s big money in the exotic-game business.”
She nodded again. “Vic, what might my next step be to find out more?”
He stared at the black window, thinking. “I’m reluctant to tell you because I’m afraid you’ll do it and then get into trouble for it.”
“Let me worry about that. If you want to help me, give me some advice.”
“Do you have access to the Driscoll Foundation records and numbers?” he asked.
“No. Don’t you?”
“No. Cooper Driscoll keeps them. Could you possibly get him to let you look at them?”
“No. I’ve tried.”
“Let me think this through,” he said. “We could call one of these ranches and pretend to be hunters, say we wanted to hunt a bongo or a kudu or an oryx, but I don’t think they’d tell us and it would make them suspicious. No, that wouldn’t work. But…” He stopped.
She leaned forward toward him. “What?”
“I can think of only one thing.” He pushed the first page of acquisition records across to Katherine and pointed to the column labeled “Source.” “The last three shipments came from our main dealer, Max Friedlander. That’s what the initials MFWAD stand for: Max Friedlander Wild Animal Dealer. You could ask him what animals were in the October second, August tenth, and April seventeenth shipments.”
Katherine drummed her fingers nervously on the tabletop. “Where would I find him?”
“He lives in New York or New Jersey. I could get his number for you from the files, but I don’t know if he’d talk to you about his business. The zoo’s a big customer. Katherine, maybe you ought to leave this alone. What have you got to gain?”
“My father wanted me to do something about this and I’m going to do it.”
He covered her hand with his, stilling the movement of her fingers. “Okay, but will you promise to keep me in the picture here? I don’t want you doing this all on your own.”
Katherine thought about it. “Yes, if you continue to be useful.”
He laughed, loud. She put a finger to her lips in warning to keep quiet. “Sophie doesn’t know about these. It’s touchy.”
“Yeah, I can see that.” His hand pressed down on hers.
She looked away from him and stifled a yawn.
“Time for me to go?” he asked.
She nodded. “Thanks for dinner … and the day. Can you get that number for me tomorrow morning?”
He rose. “Okay. Against my better judgment.”
She stood up, too quickly, and felt a wave of dizziness. Vic wrapped an arm around her shoulders. “You okay?”
“Just tired … and drunk. That was great wine.”
He slid his hand from her shoulder to the back of her neck, underneath her hair. “It was.” He bent down and kissed her softly on the lips, lingering just long enough for her to taste the Beaujolais, the chocolate intemperance, and the tang of something unknown.
When he took his hand way from her neck she could still feel the imprint of it and the heat.
* * *
The pointman slipped his hand into the neck of his shirt and held on to his lucky charm for a moment. He clenched his teeth and tried to regulate his breathing, but the anger would not stay down; it kept churning up into his throat, spewing bile and acid into his mouth.
He’d had it all planned out to perfection, just like he’d done with the others. But, fuck, this goddamned woman was so changeable. She just had to foul everything up. Thinks everyone should jump just because she says so. Even though it ruins everybody’s plans.
He watched the bushmasters through their exhibit window. The big female lay next to the log in the back corner. Her old skin, looking like cloudy cellophane, was caught on the rough bark and she was slithering out of it. But it was glacially slow. Like a woman with no arms trying to wiggle out of a tight nylon stocking by rubbing against a tree trunk. The beadlike scales of her freshly molted front half glistened in the fluorescent light; they formed a dark pattern—lateral triangles of charcoal outlined in yellow—distinct and handsome. The pattern and colors of the unmolted back half were cloudy and dull.
The snake looked listless now, but just wait until she finished getting rid of that old skin. Then her aggressiveness would emerge, especially after he had a go at hurting her enough to bring out the meanness. She was seven feet long and when he was finished with her, every inch would be aggressive.
Touching the charm helped calm him. He was doing fine. This delay was nothing. After all, he’d waited so long. One more day wasn’t going to make any difference.
He smiled. Actually, the delay wasn’t such a bad thing at all; it gave him more time to anticipate her punishment. Because, really, he’d discovered that most of the enjoyment was in the planning and anticipating. After it was over, there was a letdown that felt like falling into a deep well.
Until he got involved with the next one.
Strange. Maybe his mother had been right. “Sonny,” she used to say, “happiness lies in keeping busy.”
Well, he’d been keeping very busy lately and there were times he felt almost happy.
17
IT was madness, absolute lunacy.
As the plane circled LaGuardia, Katherine opened her eyes and felt the flush of incipient panic start in her cheeks and spread down her neck. Worse, it was lunacy on borrowed money and borrowed time. The money—$384 for a round-trip ticket, coach class—she’d borrowed from Vic; and the time—his day off today in exchange for her working for him on Saturday—from Danny Gillespie. They’d both been generous and willing to accommodate her, but they didn’t know what she knew—that this was probably a wild-goose chase.
When she’d called Max Friedlander yesterday at his office in Manhasset, he had flatly refused to discuss his business dealings with her. Brusquely, he’d told her in his harsh Dutch accent that his affairs were confidential. When she’d tried to tell him about the unusual circumstances, he had cut her off mid-sentence to say it was impossible for him to discuss it with her. Then he’d hung up.
So what did she do? She had booked a reservation, borrowed the money from Vic, arranged to trade days off with Danny, lied to Sam and Alonzo, telling them her best friend had died in New York. Then she’d persuaded Sharb she’d be safer in N
ew York than in Austin, borrowed a jacket from Sophie, and finally caught the 6 A.M. flight, exhausted from all the arranging. Now she had no idea how she was going to persuade this unpleasant Dutchman to talk to her. Maybe the simple desperation of her coming all this way to see him would sway him.
She’d planned to spend the flying time plotting a strategy, but the early hour and the vibration of the engines weakened her will. She’d put her head back, lowered her lids, and drifted into reverie. She replayed her dinner with Vic the night before last, imagining a different ending to the evening. Instead of poring over pictures of animals in the kitchen, she leads him to the bedroom and slowly peels off his clothes, taking hours to do it. Before unbuttoning his shirt, she slips her hands underneath and feels the texture of the skin on his back.
It had been almost a year since she had broken her engagement to John Rehnquist, and in all that time she hadn’t felt the stirrings of passion for anyone. She had thought, with some relief, that perhaps her capacity for passion had withered away from disuse. But now here was lust reasserting itself, alive and well at a most inappropriate time. Well, she had a date with Vic tonight, if she got back as scheduled, so she could test it out—see if it had atrophied or not.
As the jet bumped down and taxied to the gate, she dragged herself up from the fantasy and began to think of how she could get Max Friedlander to talk to her. Vic had said he was a crusty old Dutchman who’d been dealing in animals ever since the end of the Second World War, when he’d emigrated to the United States. He was one of three big animal dealers in the country, generally reputed to be the best. Vic had met him several times and had the impression that he was an honorable man, unlikely to be involved in any illegal dealings.
Driving the rental car to Manhasset, she watched the dying foliage of early November speed past her window. It reminded her of what she had chosen not to think about: November seventh was only four days away. There wasn’t a chance in the world now that she was going to save her home from that auction on the courthouse steps. She needed to face up to it.