Native Tongue (25 page)

Matters were further complicated by the appearance of an ill-mannered pinhead from U.S. Fish and Wildlife, who had barged into the theme park and demanded follow-up data from the “project manager.” Of course there was no such person because there was no project to manage; research consisted basically of making sure that the rodents were still breathing every morning before the gates were opened. With the feds suddenly asking questions, Charles Chelsea had quietly put out an all-points bulletin for a legitimate biologist—a recruiting effort that eventually induced Dr. Will Koocher to come to the Amazing Kingdom of Thrills.

Kingsbury decided not to burden Rachel Lark with the details of the doctor’s grisly demise; it was irrelevant to the purpose of his call.

“Forget the money,” Kingsbury told her.

“I must be hearing things.”

“No, I mean it.”

“Then what do you want?”

“More voles.”

“You’re joking.”

“My customers, hell, they go nuts for the damn things. Now I got spin-offs, merchandise—a major warehouse situation, if you follow me.”

“Sorry,” Rachel Lark said, “it was a one-time deal.” She’d pulled off the endangered-species racket on two other occasions—once for a small Midwestern zoo, and once for a disreputable reptile farm in South Carolina. Neither deal made as much money as the mango-vole scam, but neither had wound up in the headlines of the
Washington Post
, either.

Kingsbury said, “Look, I know there’s no more mango voles—”

“Hey, sport, there never
were
any mango voles.”

“So what you’re saying, we defrauded the government.”

“God, you’re quick.”

“I’m wondering,” said Kingsbury, “those fucking furballs I paid for—what were they? Just out of curiosity.”

Rachel Lark said, “Give me some credit, Frankie. They were voles.
Microtus pitymys
. Common pine voles.”

“Not endangered?”

“There’s billions of the darn things.”

It figures, Kingsbury thought. The blue tongues were a neat touch. “So get me some more,” he said. “We’ll call ’em something else—banana voles or whatever. The name’s not important, long as they’re cute.”

The woman who called herself Rachel Lark said: “Look, I can get you other animals—rare, not endangered—but my advice is to stay away from the feds for a while. You put in for another big grant, it’s a swell way to get audited.”

Again Kingsbury agreed without objection. “So what else have you got, I mean, in the way of a species?”

“Lizards are your best bet.” Rachel Lark stretched on her belly and motioned the masseur, whose real name was Ray, to do her spine.

“Christ on a Harley, who wants goddamn lizards!” Kingsbury cringed at the idea; he had been thinking more along the lines of a panda or a koala bear. “I need something, you know, soft and furry and all that. Something the kiddies’ll want to take home.”

Rachel Lark explained that the Florida Keys were home to a very limited number of native mammals, and the sudden discovery of a new species (so soon after the mango-vole announcement) would attract more scientific scrutiny than the Amazing Kingdom could withstand.

“You’re saying, I take it, forget about pandas.”

“Frank, they’d die of heatstroke in about five minutes.”

Exasperated, Kingsbury said, “I got problems down here you wouldn’t believe.” He nearly told her about the blackmailing burglars.

“A new lizard you can get away with,” she said, “especially in the tropics.”

“Rachel, what’d I just say? Fuck the lizards. I can’t market lizards.”

Rachel Lark moaned blissfully as the masseur kneaded the muscles of her neck. “My advice,” she said into the phone, “is stay away from mammals and birds—it’s too risky. Insects are another story. Dozens of species of insects are discovered every year. Grasshoppers, doodlebugs, you name it.”

There was a grumpy pause on the other end. Finally, Francis X. Kingsbury said, “Getting back to the lizards. I mean, for the sake of argument …”

“They’re very colorful,” said the woman who called herself Rachel Lark.

“Ugly is out of the question,” Kingsbury stated firmly. “Ugly scares the kiddies.”

“Not all reptiles are ugly, Frankie. In fact, some are very beautiful.”

“All right,” he said. “See what you can do.”

The woman who called herself Rachel Lark hung up the phone and closed her eyes. When she awoke, the masseur was gone and the man from Singapore was knocking on the door. In one hand was a small bouquet of yellow roses, and in the other was a tan briefcase holding a large down payment for a shipment of rare albino scorpions. Real ones.

On the morning of July 23, a semi-tractor truck leaving North Key Largo lost its brakes on the Card Sound Bridge. The truck plowed through the tollbooth, jackknifed and overturned, blocking both lanes of traffic and effectively severing the northern arm of the island from the Florida mainland. The gelatinous contents of the container were strewn for ninety-five yards along the road, and within minutes the milky-blue sky filled with turkey buzzards—hundreds of them, wheeling counterclockwise lower and lower; only the noisy throng of gawkers kept the hungry scavengers from landing on the crash site. The first policeman to arrive was Highway Patrol Trooper Jim Tile, who nearly flipped his Crown Victoria cruiser when he tried to stop on the freshly slickened pavement. The trooper tugged the truck driver from the wreckage and, while splinting the man’s arm, demanded to know what godforsaken cargo he’d been hauling.

“A dead whale,” moaned the driver, “and that’s all I’m saying.”

*         *         *

Charles Chelsea was summoned to Francis X. Kingsbury’s office at the unholy hour of seven in the morning. Kingsbury looked as if he hadn’t slept since Easter. He asked Chelsea how long it would take to get the TV stations out to the Amazing Kingdom of Thrills.

“Two hours,” Chelsea said confidently.

“Do it.” Kingsbury blew his nose. “On the horn, now.”

“What’s the occasion, if I might ask.”

Kingsbury held up five fingers. “Today’s the big day. Our five-millionth visitor. Arrange something, a fucking parade, I don’t care.”

Charles Chelsea felt his stomach yaw. “Five million visitors,” he said. “Sir, I didn’t realize we’d reached that milestone.”

“We haven’t.” Kingsbury hacked ferociously into a monogrammed handkerchief. “Damn this hay fever, I think it’s the mangroves. Every morning my head’s fulla snot.” He pushed a copy of the
Wall Street Journal
at Chelsea. A column on the front page announced that Walt Disney World was expanding its empire to build a mammoth retail shopping center, one of the largest in the Southeastern United States.

“See, we can’t just sit here,” Kingsbury said. “Got to come back strong. Big media counterpunch.”

Chelsea skimmed the
Journal
article and laid it on his lap. Tentatively he said, “It’s hard to compete with something like this. I mean, it goes so far beyond the realm of a family theme park—”

“Bullshit,” said Kingsbury. “The Miami-Lauderdale TV market is—what, three times the size of Orlando. Plus CNN, don’t they have a bureau down here?” Kingsbury spun his chair and gazed out the window. “Hell, that new dolphin I bought—can’t you work him into the piece? Say he rescued somebody who fell in the tank. A pregnant lady or maybe an orphan. Rescued them from drowning—that’s your story! ‘Miracle Dolphin Saves Drowning Orphan.’”

“I don’t know if that’s such a good idea,” said Chelsea, though inwardly he had to admit it would have been one helluva headline.

“This celebration, make it for noon,” Kingsbury said. “Whoever comes through the turnstiles, strike up the band. But make sure it’s a tourist, no goddamn locals. Number five million, okay? In giant letters.”

His gut tightening, Chelsea said, “Sir, it might be wiser to go with two million. It’s closer to the real number … just in case somebody makes an issue of it.”

“No, two is—chickenshit, really. Five’s better. And the parade, too, I’m serious.” Kingsbury stood up. He was dressed for golf. “A parade, that’s good video,” he said. “Plenty of time to get it for the six-o’clock news. That’s our best demographic, am I right? Fucking kids, they don’t watch the eleven.”

Chelsea nodded. “What do we give the winner? Mr. Five Million, I mean.”

“A car, Jesus Christ.” Kingsbury looked at him as if he were an idiot. A few years earlier, Disney World had given away an automobile every day for an entire summer. Kingsbury had never gotten over it. “Make it a Corvette,” he told Chelsea.

“All right, but you’re looking at forty thousand dollars. Maybe more.”

Kingsbury extended his lower lip so far that it seemed to touch his nose; for a moment he wore the pensive look of a caged orangutan. “Forty grand,” he repeated quietly. “That’s brand new, I suppose.”

“When you give one away, yes. Ordinarily the cars should be new.”

“Unless they’re classics.” Kingsbury winked. “Make it a classic. Say, a 1964 Ford Falcon. You don’t see many of those babies.”

“Sure don’t.”

“A Falcon convertible, geez, we could probably pick one up for twenty-five hundred.”

“Probably,” agreed Chelsea, not even pretending enthusiasm.

“Well, move on it.” Francis X. Kingsbury thumbed him out of the office. “And tell Pedro, get his ass in here.”

Pedro Luz was in the executive gym, bench-pressing a bottle of stanozolol tablets. He was letting the tiny pink pills drop one by one into his mouth.

A man named Churrito, lounging on a Nautilus, said: “Hiss very bad for liver.”

“Very good for muscles,” said Pedro Luz, mimicking the accent.

Churrito was his latest hire to the security squad at the Amazing Kingdom of Thrills. He had accompanied Pedro Luz on his mission to Miami, but had declined to participate in the beating. Pedro Luz was still miffed about what had happened—the old lady chomping off the top joint of his right index finger.

“You’re useless,” he had told Churrito afterward.

“I am a soldier,” Churrito had replied. “I dun hit no wooman.”

Unlike the other security guards hired by Pedro Luz, Churrito had not been a crooked cop. He was a Nicaraguan
contra
who had moved to Florida when things were bleak, and had not gotten around to moving back. While Churrito was pleased at the prospect of democracy taking seed in his homeland, he suspected that true economic prosperity was many years away. Elections notwithstanding, Churrito’s buddies were still stuck in the border hills, frying green bananas and dynamiting the rivers for fish. Meanwhile his uncle, formerly a sergeant in Somozas National Guard, now lived with a twenty-two-year-old stewardess in a high-rise condo on Key Biscayne. To Churrito, this seemed like a pretty good advertisement for staying right where he was.

Pedro Luz had hired him because he looked mean, and because he’d said he had killed people.

“Comunistas,”
Churrito had specified, that night at the old lady’s apartment. “I only kill commoonists. And I dun hit no wooman.”

And now here he was, lecturing Pedro Luz about the perils of anabolic steroids.

“Make you face like balloon.”

“Shut up,” said Pedro Luz. He was wondering if the hospital in Key Largo would sell him extra bags of dextrose water for the IV. Grind up the stanozolols, drop them in the mix and everything would be fine again.

“Make you bulls shrink, too.”

“That’s enough,” Pedro Luz said.

Churrito held up two fingers. “Dis big. Like BBs.”

“Quiet,” said Pedro Luz, “or I call a friend a mine at INS.” He couldn’t decide whether to fire the guy or beat him up. He knew which would give more pleasure.

“They got, like, three flights a day to Managua,” he said to Churrito. “You getting homesick?”

The Nicaraguan grimaced.

“I didn’t think so,” said Pedro Luz. “So shut up about my medicines.”

Charles Chelsea appeared at the foot of the weight bench. He had never seen Pedro Luz without a shirt, and couldn’t conceal his awe at the freakish physique—the hairless bronze trunk of a chest, cantaloupe biceps, veins as thick as a garden hose. Chelsea didn’t recognize the other fellow—shorter and sinewy, with skin the color of nutmeg.

“I’m working out,” said Pedro Luz.

“Mr. Kingsbury needs to see you.”

“Who ees that?” Churrito said.

Pedro Luz sat up. “That be the boss.”

“Right away,” said Charles Chelsea.

“Can I go?” asked Churrito. He didn’t want to miss an opportunity to meet the boss; according to his uncle, that’s what success in America was all about. Kissing ass.

“I’m sorry,” Chelsea said, “but Mr. Kingsbury wants to see Chief Luz alone.”

“Yeah,” said Pedro Luz. As he rolled off the bench, he made a point of clipping Churrito with a casual forearm. Churrito didn’t move, didn’t make a sound. His eyes grew very small and he stared at Pedro Luz until Pedro Luz spun away, pretending to hunt for his sweatshirt.

Churrito pointed at the scarlet blemishes on Pedro Luz’s shoulder blades and said: “You all broke out, man.”

“Shut up before I yank your nuts off.”

Backing away, Charles Chelsea thought: Where do they get these guys?

Francis X. Kingsbury offered a Bloody Mary to Pedro Luz, who guzzled it like Gatorade.

“So, Pedro, the job’s going all right?”

The security chief was startled at Kingsbury’s genial tone. A ration of shit was what he’d expected; the old man had been livid since the burglary of his private office. The crime had utterly baffled Pedro Luz, who hadn’t the first notion of how to solve it. He had hoped that the mission to Eagle Ridge would absolve him.

“I took care of that other problem,” he announced to Kingsbury.

“Fine. Excellent.” Kingsbury was swiveling back and forth in his chair. He didn’t look so good: nervous, ragged, droopy-eyed, his fancy golf shirt all wrinkled. Pedro Luz wondered if the old fart was doing coke. The very idea was downright hilarious.

“She won’t bother you no more,” he said to Kingsbury.

“You made it look, what—like muggers? Crack fiends?”

“Sure, that’s what the cops would think. If she calls them, which I don’t think she will. I made it clear what could happen.”