“What? What?”
“You shot me, you asshole,” Peck said. He was holding his hand flat on his head, and when he took it away, there was a splash of blood in his palm. His baseball cap, which had been given to him by a crew member of the movie The Revenant, lay on the floor. Peck told people it was a gift from Leonardo DiCaprio himself, though he was lying about that.
“Let me look, let me look,” Simonian said. Behind him, Katya threw herself at the cage again, a rattling impact that bent the chain-link fence.
“Hurts, hurts, hurts,” Peck cried, still wandering in circles.
Simonian nervously watched the agitated cat as he and Peck moved to one of the work lights, and Peck tilted his head down. Through his thinning hair, Simonian could see a knife-like cut that was bleeding, but seemed superficial. “It’s not bad,” he reported. “Must have been a ricochet, a little scrap of metal or something. You could press some toilet paper against it and the bleeding would stop.”
“You sure?”
“Yeah. It looks like a paper cut,” Simonian said. “It’s nothing.”
“Hurts like a motherfucker. I’m lucky I’m not dead,” Peck said. “I’m going to go find some toilet paper. You drag the cat out of there.”
“Drag the cat? Man, he weighs six hundred pounds or something…”
“Use the dolly. I didn’t expect you to throw it over your shoulder, dumbass,” Peck said. “I’m gonna go get some toilet paper. I’m bleeding like a sieve here.”
“Okay.”
“Speaking of dumbasses, where is your dumbass brother? He was supposed to be here an hour ago.”
“He had to get a knife, a special knife for removing the skin,” Simonian said. He dropped the rifle, which hit the floor with a noisy clank, and Peck flinched away. Simonian picked it up and said, “No bullet in the thing.” He tapped the bolt.
“No bullet in the thing,” Peck repeated, shaking his head. “You’re a real fuckin’ gunman, you know that, dumbass?”
“If I’m such a dumbass, how come I shoot the tiger and it drops dead? One shot?” Simonian asked.
“Blind luck,” Peck said. He added, “I gotta get some toilet paper.” He picked his hat up off the floor, looked at it, said, “You shot a hole in it. This was my best hat and it’s ruined. I’m amazed that you didn’t shoot me between the eyes.” He tramped off toward the door and out onto the slice of green lawn that Simonian could see from where he was standing. A second later, Peck stepped back and said, “I’m sorry about that dumbass thing. I’m a little tense, you know? That was a good shot. I’m proud of you, Hamlet. I mean, except for the part where the shrapnel hit me. You’re sure the tiger’s dead?”
“He better be,” Simonian said, “or Hayk gonna get one big surprise when he tries to skin that bad boy.”
“Yeah,” said Peck. “I’m going to get toilet paper.”
He disappeared into the sunshine, headed for his truck, where he kept a first aid kit. He wasn’t really sorry about calling Simonian a dumbass, because Simonian was a dumbass. He had to pretend, though, because he still needed the brothers. For a while, anyway. That was simple good management.
Back in the barn, Hamlet Simonian turned back to the cages, where Katya was making desperate purring sounds at her mate, as though trying to rouse him from a deep sleep.
She knew he was dead, Simonian thought. He could see it in her eyes when she turned to look at him.
Another thought occurred to him: he should shoot her now. He shouldn’t wait, despite Peck. If he didn’t shoot her now, something bad would happen. Like, really bad.
He thought about it, then started rolling a dolly over to the dead tiger’s cage. He didn’t have the guts to shoot another tiger, at least, not on the same day that he’d shot the first one.
But not shooting the girl, he thought, was a mistake.
They were going to make it anyway.
4
Virgil made a hurried trip from Frankie’s farm back to Mankato, where he lived. He left Honus at the farm, and as he left, the dog stood in the driveway and barked once.
The bark was a familiar one and translated as “asshole!”
Honus stayed with Frankie and her kids when Virgil was out of town, but preferred to hang with Virgil, because Virgil had the best arm and also took him for long lazy walks, and because out in the woods, Virgil would occasionally pee on a tree, like a good dog. Honus was named after Honus Wagner, the shortstop. No grounder ever got past him, although he was occasionally fooled by pop flies.
Since he would be working in the metro area, where BCA officials might see him, Virgil traded his Creaky Boards band T-shirt for a plain black golf shirt, added a sport coat, kept his jeans, and put a quick polish on his cowboy boots. Heeding advice from his departed boss, Lucas Davenport, he got his pistol out of the gun safe in the truck and wore it, though it was uncomfortably heavy.
“Bureaucrats are afraid of guns,” Davenport had told him. “If you wear one, it gives you an edge.”
The zoo was on the south side of the metro area, seventy-five miles away. He made the trip in a comfortable hour: Jon Duncan, his new boss, said it was an emergency, so he went up with flashers and an occasional siren to move the lagging left-lane drivers, because it was not only faster, but also because it was fun.
–
Frankie called as he was headed north: “I got Sparkle and Bill settled in. Bill worries me. He’s too nice and normal for my household. He’s even made friends with Sam.”
“What’d he do, show him how to make dynamite?” Sam was Frankie’s youngest, a fourth grader, the kind of kid who’d eventually jump off the barn roof with a homemade parachute.
“Almost as bad. He showed him how to drive Sparkle’s Mini. Sam was driving it around the yard when Sparkle and I went to see what was going on. Anyway, they’re going to stay. I might spend more than a few nights at your place. Sparkle’s already gotten on my nerves.”
“How’s that?”
“Well, for one thing, you spent an unusual amount of time checking her out in the swimming hole,” Frankie said.
“Hey. A good-looking naked woman jumps in a swimming hole with you, you’re gonna check her out,” Virgil said. “That’s normal, been going on for a million years, and there’s nothing in it.”
“That’s good, because you mess around with Sparkle, you could get yourself stabbed,” Frankie said.
“She carries a knife?”
“No, but I do.”
–
The Minnesota Zoo was in the town of Apple Valley, a bedroom suburb south of Minneapolis and St. Paul. Virgil left his 4Runner in a no-parking spot, flipped his “Bureau of Criminal Apprehension-Official Business” card onto the dashboard, and walked down to the main entrance. A pack of kids was playing on a couple of full-sized bronze buffalos at the end of the parking lot and Virgil nodded at a pretty mother, and down the sidewalk, more kids were playing on some bronze wolves and Virgil gave another young mother a nod.
–
Duncan was waiting for him by the admission counter. “Man, am I happy to see you,” he said. Duncan was on the tall side, with neat brown hair, thickly lashed brown eyes, and big teeth. TV cameras liked him and he liked them back. “You even got dressed up. You even got your gun. All right. They’re waiting inside.”
“Who’s they?” Virgil asked.
“Virginia Landseer, the zoo director, she’s the one with gray hair; Robert McCall, the chairman of the board, he’s got the black-rimmed arty glasses; and a couple of other rich people, a maintenance guy, and an Apple Valley investigator,” Duncan said. Duncan had been a fair street cop, but he was happier as a manager. “They were talking about wolf fetuses when I came out to look for you.”