Abruptly the gorilla came to life, sitting up with a shriek and flailing his chains. He whipped them right and left as the policemen jumped back, on the defensive. The waiters shouted encouragement. “Beat his hairy brains out!” “Show ’im who the hell’s boss!”
The helmeted officers needed no further prodding. Truncheons began to rise and fall, thumping Aldo’s shoulders and skull with crunching sounds. Caesar started to tremble. Just a little at first, then more violently, in response to the repeated blows rained on the gorilla.
Aldo was already feeling the effects of the injection. He swayed sluggishly as he sat on the ground, groping, trying to find the tormentors who dodged in and out, hitting harder, harder . . .
Caesar heard Aldo moan; saw blood over the gorilla’s eyes. And all the horrors of the day found release in one long, agonized cry:
“You—lousy—human—bastards!”
FOUR
Aldo the gorilla pitched over on his side, blood from his head smearing the pavement. No one noticed. The waiters, the half-dozen policemen, the handlers, a scattering of ordinary citizens drawn to the scene, had all turned in the direction of the outcry. Caesar confronted a wall of eyes—some merely curious, most hostile.
The policeman who had recognized the governor’s assistant stormed forward. “Who said that?”
Armando’s face glistened with sweat as he replied, “I did.”
The policeman looked dubious. He and his colleague approached Caesar, studied him with stony-faced thoroughness. Caesar fought to subdue his own trembling; to appear docile, witless. He knew it was a matter of survival now, because the expressions of the officers said that they weren’t buying Armando’s explanation.
Neither was the murmuring crowd. Here and there, Caesar saw a hand pointing in his direction.
Making another desperate try to save the situation, Armando snatched a handbill from Caesar’s fingers.
“He’s a performing ape for my circus—here, look for yourselves. That’s why I dress him like a human—I have permission. Official documents—”
He started to search an inner pocket. The policemen didn’t seem interested. Their glances snapped back and forth from Caesar to the handbill’s blurry photo.
The first policeman returned the flyer. “A performing ape. He talks, is that right?”
“Talks? Why, no, officers, that’s impossible. Everyone knows apes are unable to speak—I am the one who made the remark you heard.”
Caesar watched Armando’s fingers twisting and turning the end of the leash. So did the two policemen, who were being joined by the four other helmeted men.
“Don’t you know it’s a criminal offense to show disrespect to a state official?” the second policeman said.
“Certainly, certainly!” Armando exclaimed. “Let me assure you that the remark was unintentional. Thoughtless! But being sentimental about animals, I—” His words trailed off as he gave a helpless shrug, which did not satisfy the officers at all. The first one said flatly, “It didn’t sound like your voice to me. Why don’t you yell it again and let’s make sure.”
Panic claimed Caesar then. He felt trapped. Armando pretended not to understand, still trying to use his smile, his cheerful professional manner to disarm the suspicious policemen.
“What? You want me to . . .? Oh, sirs, please. Isn’t my profound apology sufficient to—?”
“No,” said the first policeman. “I want you to yell. Good and loud. ‘You lousy human bastards.’ Let’s hear it.”
“But—but that’s not what I said at all!”
Raising his truncheon, the second officer stepped close to Armando. The truncheon gleamed with the gorilla’s blood.
“That’s what we heard, mister,” the policeman said.
Voices in the crowd backed his statement. The policeman lifted the truncheon. “Yell it and yell it now.”
Armando swallowed hard, started to protest again. His glance flicked from face to hard face. His mouth turned down at the corners. Drawing in a big breath, he shouted, “You lousy human bastards!”
The first policeman jabbed his truncheon into Armando’s side. He gasped as the officer said, “We told you to yell!”
This time Armando’s cry had a strange timbre—“You lousy human bastards!”—and with a start, Caesar realized that what he’d heard was a passable imitation of his own voice.
Fresh murmurs broke out, more of the curious joining and swelling the crowd every moment. Caesar’s hope leaped a little then. On many of the human faces, he saw doubt.
The policemen who had started the questioning exchanged looks.
“Could be,” was the hesitant opinion of the second.
But the first shook his head. “I don’t think so.”
Arguments started in the crowd as people took sides. For a moment or so, Caesar thought the decision might swing in their favor. Then a burly waiter exclaimed to the man next to him, “You’re fulla shit, Max, it was that goddam ape!”
The waiter bulled toward the policeman to enforce his point. “I heard him and I heard him plain. The ape yelled it, not this greaseball in the fancy suit.”
At once, those who had leaned toward believing Armando became a minority. Caesar knew that many who probably weren’t at all certain were agreeing with the majority just because it was natural to think of apes—all apes—as potential troublemakers.
“All right, everybody shut up!” yelled the first officer. The crowd quieted. “I want to see hands. Who heard it and thinks it was the ape?”
Hands shot up, more than Caesar could quickly count. Sounding desperate, Armando said, “You’re wrong!” Then, louder: “You’re all mistaken! I have already admitted my behavior was inexcusable, and I’m deeply sorry. But I am the one responsible—”
“I think we’ve got evidence that says otherwise,” responded the first policeman. “So we’ll let headquarters decide.”
Armando’s cheeks blanched. “Headquarters?”
“Where you’re going for interrogation.” The policeman closed his finger’s on Armando’s wrist. The older man winced, started to struggle.
“This is grossly unfair! I have offered my apologies—pleaded guilty to an error in judgment—and you still refuse to believe me!” While he struggled and protested, the end of the leash slipped from his fingers, dropped to the pavement. The two officers warned him to calm down . . .
A woman screamed. Every head whipped toward the source of the cry. Aldo had somehow gathered strength for one last fight against the ravages of the injection. He was on his feet, swaying, eyes glassy as he clinked his chains. Any moment he might fall again—or whip a chain at someone’s head.
The waiters and spectators around him began to retreat, but the policemen and the two handlers moved in.
Aldo’s face was pain-wracked, a mess of drying blood and barely clotted wounds. Just one policeman stayed with Armando, holding his arm. No one at all was watching Caesar.
“Let’s take him from both sides,” one of the handlers said to the other, readying another injection. Warily, they began to edge toward the gorilla, whose fisted hands still waved back and forth, the dangling chains clinking—
It took Caesar only a moment to reach his decision.
He was the cause of Armando’s trouble. Therefore he must get his mentor out of trouble as best he could. He took a step backward.
Eyes alert, he watched for possible reaction. There was none. Every person in front of the building was concentrating on Aldo, whose eyes were slowly closing, then coming open again as he fought his drowsiness.