Bestiary (47 page)
Authors: Robert Masello
Tags: #Literature & Fiction, #United States, #Mystery; Thriller & Suspense, #Thrillers
“I don’t give a shit if it’s true or not.” Sadowski had come to a realization. “Reggie told me about your little shakedown action, and that’s what got my ass fired. In fact, Silver Bear’s starting to look back at all the other robberies that went down on houses I had the specs to. I could be in deep shit, Greer.”
Greer always noticed when Sadowski dropped the instinctive “Captain”; he’d been doing it a lot lately.
But maybe he had a point, and Greer was feeling generous tonight. After all, he still had the thousand bucks, in cash, that Jakob had given him. He reached into his pants pocket, took out his paper-clipped wad, and peeled off a couple of hundred-dollar bills. He slapped them into Sadowski’s hand, but Sadowski just kept staring at the wad that remained.
A couple of tourists, eating cotton candy, strolled past them.
“How much did he give you?” Sadowski said. “My cut is half.”
“Since when?”
“From now on.”
Greer should have seen it coming. But that didn’t make it any easier to take. Something in him just kind of turned over, and he thought,
Better put a stop to this right here, or else it’ll never stop.
Nor did he miss the irony of being shaken down on the very spot where he had brought al-Kalli for the same purpose. He looked out over the railing toward the dark ocean water surging below the pilings of the pier. From where they were standing, the drop had to be fifteen or twenty feet.
Better put a stop to this right here, or else it’ll never stop.
Nor did he miss the irony of being shaken down on the very spot where he had brought al-Kalli for the same purpose. He looked out over the railing toward the dark ocean water surging below the pilings of the pier. From where they were standing, the drop had to be fifteen or twenty feet.
“That’s how it’s going to be?” Greer said, reaching down as if to rub his bad leg again.
“You got it.”
And then he grabbed hold of both of Sadowski’s pants legs and with one big heave lifted him up and over the railing. Sadowski made a desperate but futile grab for the railing as he went over, and plummeted headfirst, screaming all the way, into the water. There was a huge splash, and as the cotton candy couple turned to see what had just happened, Greer shouted, “Call the cops! A guy just jumped off the pier!”
He hobbled off, as if frantically looking for help, while the couple craned their necks over the railing. “Look,” he heard the man say, “there is somebody in the water!”
Greer’s only regret was the two hundred bucks.
CHAPTER THIRTY
EITHER CARTER WAS in an unusually amorous mood—breathing hard on her face and licking her hand—or it was Champ, anxious to go out.
Beth raised her head from the pillow—it felt heavier than normal—and glanced at the clock; it was later than normal, too. Nine forty-five in the morning.
Champ was standing beside the bed, his tail wagging back and forth as regularly as a metronome.
“Okay, I’m up.” For a second, Beth wondered why Carter hadn’t let him out, but then she glanced at Carter’s side of the bed and she could tell he’d hardly been in it. After they’d come home from the party last night, she’d gone straight up to bed and Carter had stayed downstairs. “Something I’ve got to work on,” he’d said before disappearing into the garage, where boxes of their books were still stacked against the walls.
Beth sat up, and she felt like something had just shifted inside her head. At al-Kalli’s party, she’d had more to drink than she customarily did. It had become so hard to keep track. Every time she took a sip from one of her wineglasses, or cordial glasses later on in the garden, some servant had stepped up and silently refilled it. And the array of wines and spirits had been wide.
“Carter?” she asked aloud, hoping for an answer. Her voice came out as more of a croak than common, even for first thing in the morning. And there was no answer.
She slipped her feet into her flip-flops, pulled on her robe, and went to check on Joey. Who was lying on his back, eyes open, smiling up at her. Was this the best baby ever? she thought. She’d heard so many horror stories about colic, and crying, and parents who hadn’t been able to get a decent night’s sleep in months. But she’d experienced none of that. If it was this easy, she’d definitely have a couple more.
After washing up, she took Joey and Champ downstairs. The living room looked like an all-nighter had been pulled, with books and papers still scattered all over the coffee table and floor. Most of the open books and loose papers had Post-it Notes slapped haphazardly all over them. But where she might have expected to find Carter passed out on the sofa with a book spread open on his chest—it wouldn’t have been the first time, not by a long shot—she found only the lamp still on and the sofa untenanted.
In the kitchen, she plopped Joey into his high chair, opened the back door to let Champ out—he was off like a shot to warn some squirrel or chipmunk off their property—and turned on the coffeemaker. Right next to it, where they usually left each other notes, was a yellow sheet from a legal pad, on which Carter had scrawled in his barely legible hand,
Gone to the office. Call you later! Love.
Gone to the office. Call you later! Love.
As the coffee started to percolate through the filter, she thought,
Sunday. It’s a Sunday. And he still has to go to work?
Sunday. It’s a Sunday. And he still has to go to work?
Of course she did understand the impulse. If it weren’t for the printed-out translations from the secret letter in
The Beasts of Eden
, translations which she took with her pretty much everywhere she went, she might have been tooling up to the Getty herself today. A fine pair, they were.
The Beasts of Eden
, translations which she took with her pretty much everywhere she went, she might have been tooling up to the Getty herself today. A fine pair, they were.
She was nearly done feeding Joey, and just starting to wonder what she wanted to fix for herself—a soft-boiled egg, whole wheat toast?—when she heard the sound of tires crunching in the driveway. With Carter home, maybe she’d make something fancy, like French toast or blueberry pancakes. Probably wouldn’t be the worst remedy for a mild hangover, either.
But then the doorbell rang—had he lost his keys?—and she went to the front window, pulled back the curtain to peer out, and saw a mud-spattered pickup truck, with those big tires, parked in the drive.
Which could mean only one thing.
“If you’re still in bed, Bones, get up!” Del shouted from the front portico.
Beth let the curtain fall back and went to open the door.
“Oops,” Del said, seeing that she was still in her robe. “Hope I didn’t wake you.”
“Not at all. Carter’s not here, but come on in.”
Del was dressed for the great outdoors, in camo pants and hiking boots and a red bandanna tied around his prematurely white mane. It was like inviting Willie Nelson into the house.
“Hey, boy,” Del said as Champ trotted up to bark a warning. He squatted down and extended the back of one hand. “Don’t you remember me?”
Champ eyed him warily, glanced up at Beth to make sure everything was okay, then allowed Del to rub him on the top of his head. “That scar’s healing up nicely,” Del said, standing up again.
“Would you like some coffee?” Beth said. “I was just making it.”
“Sure.” Del stopped to look around the living room as Beth went into the kitchen. “What happened here?” Del said. “Did the study group break up early?”
“Looks like it,” Beth called out as she poured a mug for Del. “How do you like your coffee?”
“Strong and black, just like my women.”
She brought him the mug, and found him poking through the books and papers scattered around the room. “Thanks,” he said, studying another one of the Post-its. “Looks like your hubby was working on some very odd theory here.”
“Why do you say that?” Beth asked, as Del sauntered around the coffee table to take in another of the open volumes. There was a picture of a saichania skeleton, from the Late Cretaceous period, unearthed in the Gobi Desert. He took a sip from his mug. “Good coffee,” he said. The next picture, in a book beside it, was an illustration of a lycaenops, a mammal-like reptile from the Late Permian, Del’s own special area of study. He leaned down and flipped the pages to the next fluttering Post-it note. There was a black-and-white sketch, not bad really, of a homotherium, a scimitar-toothed cat that had hunted mammoth in Europe and North America before dying out, along with its favorite prey, at the end of the Pleistocene ice age. “Because he’s examining critters from all different epochs, and all different orders, from all over the globe.” Del couldn’t resist trying to put it all together—was there something that united the things he was looking at? Some thread Bones was following that he, for the life of him, could not see? He’d have to ask him, if he could ever find him.
“I left him a couple of messages on his cell,” Del said. “I thought we’d go hiking again, or even fishing.”
“Fishing?” Beth said, with a laugh. “Carter?”
“Don’t dismiss it,” Del said, “the boy needs some R&R. He works too hard. I told him that even when he was just a grad student.”
“I guess it didn’t take,” Beth said. “He left me a note saying he’s at the office.”
“Not when I called there,” Del blurted out, then instantly regretted it. Oh man, had he just blown Carter’s cover story? (But what the hell would he be covering up for?)
“You tried his office?” Beth said, trying to sound unconcerned.
“Well, maybe he’s in the lab, or down in the basement with our pal, the La Brea Man.”
That was probably it, Beth thought. “Say, I was just planning to make some breakfast. You like blueberry pancakes?”
“No, I don’t like them,” Del said. “I
love
them.”
love
them.”
While Del lingered over the books and papers, Beth popped upstairs to put on some shorts and a tank top; fixing breakfast for Del, in her robe and slippers, felt just a little too domestic. But that was interesting what he’d said about the bewildering nature of Carter’s research downstairs. Last night, when al-Kalli had escorted him back from wherever they’d been for the whole duration of the outdoor concert, he had looked altogether out of it. His eyes seemed focused on something that was no longer in front of him, but which he was seeing, nonetheless. And on the way home, when she’d asked what that had been all about, he’d just dismissed it by saying that al-Kalli had shown him some old bones from Saharan Africa that he’d wanted Carter’s take on.
“So, were they important?” Beth had asked.
And it was as though Carter hadn’t even heard her; he was just staring out the windshield of the car, driving as if on autopilot, already tuned back to some other frequency. The last time she’d seen him this consumed was back in New York, when the packet had arrived with the pictures of the fossil found in the cave from Lago d’Avernus. Like then, he had completely submerged himself in a world of interior theorizing and rumination. And much as she would have liked to continue to compare notes on the party while driving home, she knew enough not to take offense.
That was just Carter being Carter.
By the time she got back to the kitchen, Del had released Joey from his high chair and was down on the tile floor, playing with him. “His motor skills are exceptional,” Del said, in what she knew was meant as a warm and cuddly comment.
“How are yours?” Beth said, taking some eggs from the fridge. “Want to run the egg beater?”
“I think I could manage that.”
While the two of them prepared the pancakes and bacon—though Beth didn’t eat it, Carter did—Beth asked about how Del was liking L.A., how he liked living with his sister and her husband, and the answers were what she expected.
“No offense,” he said as the first pancakes were coming off the griddle and the bacon sizzled in the pan, “but I do not understand how anybody can actually live in a place like this. Way too many people, way too many cars, way too much noise. You can’t even hear yourself think.” He took the syrup and a plate of pancakes from Beth and put them on the table in the breakfast nook. “And the air’s so bad you can see it before you can breathe it.” He pulled out a chair and sat down. “But these look good enough to eat.”
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