Or so the stories went. Who knew what the truth was? And who cared? They were good yarns, and to the Big Five the telling was almost as important as the feat itself.
Taking their time, they opened a new bottle. Soon the room was filled with a familiar camaraderie.
The only thing slightly off was the presence of the sixth man in the room, the one sitting a little back from the circle. A decade older than the others, tall and rangy, he had sun-creased skin, a mustache that had once been blond but was now white, and deep-set eyes the faded blue of sea glass. He sat slouched comfortably in one of the teak-and-gold chairs, his long, tapering fingers occasionally drumming an odd rhythm on his thighs. His piercing gaze moved from one to another, and though he smiled at their loud jokes, he spoke only rarely himself. His drink sat untouched on the table beside his chair.
The others would have liked it if he’d joined in, maybe shared some of his own stories. But no one even considered asking.
They all knew his reputation. He was the one who sometimes disappeared for months at a time, going where no satellite could find him, living off the game instead of just bringing it home to show off. The one who people said could read a landscape with cheetah’s skill, follow the herds as relentlessly as a hunting dog, stalk his prey as silently as a leopard. The one whose obsession for the kill had once made his guns seem like extensions of his body. The one who had seen everything, shot everything, lived a life the rest of them could only dream of.
He was the one they all wanted to be.
Which was why they’d come to the Executive Suite.
A red-tailed hawk was circling over the thatched roofs of the zoo’s fake African village, peering down from the steel-gray sky at the shaggy baboons milling about on their pitiful, barren hillside.
Akeley had seen ospreys here, peregrines, once even an eagle that had wandered over from the Hudson. Predators all, their brains always processing the information their eyes transmitted. He wondered what they thought when they looked down on the apes, tigers, and wolves below.
Probably something like: Man, if I could kill that, I wouldn’t have to hunt again for weeks.
“Sir?”
Shit. He’d been drifting, something he did a lot more frequently these days than he once had.
Drifting could get you killed.
“Sir, I need to talk to you.”
A deep voice, Spanish accent. Slowly the hunter swung his gaze down from the sky and focused on the man dressed in white shirt and blue slacks, an inadequate navy-blue jacket zipped up in a hopeless attempt to block out the icy wind. A walkie-talkie swinging from his belt. The name on his white laminated badge read, F. Cabrera.
A zoo security guard, with chapped cheeks and watering eyes. Unhappy to be outside in this weather, but staying polite for now, probably because of Akeley’s age.
Still, the hunter could see that F. Cabrera was young and self-confident. A smile and a few conciliatory words wouldn’t stop him. And his politeness wouldn’t last long if he didn’t get the answers he was looking for.
Too bad.
“Sir, I had a report of a man fitting your description exiting an authorized-personnel door of the Monkey House.”
Akeley didn’t reply, just turned away and started walking, heading south and east, his strides eating up ground.
“Hey!” Cabrera sounded shocked by this display of insubordination. “Hey, I’m talking to you.”
Akeley kept going.
The guard got in front of him again. Now his face was stony, and he showed some teeth when he talked. His hand hovered over the walkie-talkie.
“Papi, you really think it’s a good idea to make trouble?” he said.
Akeley took stock. Down the path toward the African Plains he saw a family — Mom, Dad, ten-year-old, toddler, swaddled baby in a stroller. They were out of earshot, and even if they hadn’t been, they would merely have seen two zoo employees talking. Nothing worth giving a second thought to.
Cabrera cut a glance at Akeley’s duffel. “What you got in there?”
“Books.”
“Huh.” Imbuing the single word with scornful disbelief. “Why don’t you open it and show me?”
The hunter shook his head and started off again, moving faster this time. He felt a hand on his arm, shrugged it off, then felt it grab him again, hard, and half-spin him around.
“You come with me.” Cabrera spat out each word. “Now.”
“Okay,” Akeley said, “I won’t fight you.”
“Good.” But Akeley thought that the guard looked a little disappointed.
They walked together, Cabrera still holding his arm. Up ahead loomed the dark, squat stone walls of the World of Darkness. Akeley waited until they’d gone ten more steps, fifteen, and then broke free and headed up the path toward the building’s front doors.
“Oh, for fuck’s sake,” Cabrera said, and came after him.
They went through the turnstile, the door slamming open once, and then again, and into the permanent near-blackness designed to encourage nocturnal animals — bats, skunks, snakes, wildcats — to put on a better show. The hunter could see perfectly in the darkness, an ability he’d possessed for as long as he could remember. But the people inside, hearing the sound of the slamming door, turned dim, clouded eyes in his direction.
Behind him Cabrera, blind, fumbling, tried to put him in a bearhug. Akeley turned and hit him three times, hard, twice in the gut and once in the jaw.
The guard made a small, despairing sound in his throat and slid to the floor. The hunter spoke into his ear, a whisper that no one else could hear over the squeaking of bats and the rustle of porcupine quills.
“You don’t stop me,” he said, “before I’m done.”
One corner of the exhibit was roped off for construction. Quickly Akeley carried the unconscious man past the barricade and dropped him against the wall. No one would see him there, and he would stay quiet for a while. For long enough.
Akeley headed back toward the door, past a pair of teenagers staring at the fruit bats and a small figure bent over the glass scorpion case: the little blond girl from the Monkey House, turning to look at him as he went by. Her eyes had adjusted to the darkness by now, and she recognized him as well.
“It’s you,” she said in a half-whisper.
“Yes.”
“Look at this.” She pressed a button, and instantly a black light came on. Under the glass, a pair of large scorpions fluoresced, a brilliant glowing blue. “Aren’t they cool?”
“They sure are.”
As he went out the door he heard her say, “Hey, Mom, look—”
He stood for a moment outside, the north wind in his face. The sun, heading for the horizon, had at last pulled free of the low clouds, and cast weak shadows behind the spindly trees and litter-snagged bushes.
The hunter drew the cold air deep into his lungs and started heading west, toward the setting sun.
Wondering if he’d already lost too much time.
Was “Akeley” even his real name?