“What money?” she said.
“One million seven hun’red t’ousan dollars,” the one on the other side of the tree said.
“I think you’re in the wrong apartment,” she said.
“I don’t theenk so,” the first one said.
Very heavy Spanish accents on both of them, something suddenly clicked. The men on the narrow dirt strip in Guenerando, Mexico, except that earlier this month they’d been wearing baggy white cotton pants and wrinkled shirts.
“I don’t know what money you’re talking about,” she said.
“Dee money we paid you for a hun’red kilos of pure cocaine,” the one with the gun said.
“I don’t want to know anything about that cargo,” she said.
“You delivered the money, we gave you dee fockin cocaine …”
“I didn’t know what the cargo was. I don’t know anything about the money, either. All I did was hand it over.”
“We know that.”
“We know you were only dee messenger.”
“We want to know whogave you dee money.”
“I don’t know his name. Look, if the money was short, I’m sorry. You should have counted it more carefully. Anyway …”
“We did coun’ it carefully.”
“It took us a fockinhour to coun’ it.”
“We counted itvery carefully.”
“Dee moneywassen short,” the one with the gun said. “Who gave it to you?”
“I told you, I don’t …”
“His name,por favor .”
The gun was in her face now.
“He called himself Frank. But I’m sure that wasn’t his real name.”
“Frank what?”
“All he gave me was Frank.”
“Where wass this?”
“I was living in Eagle Branch at the time. He was introduced to me by someone I know.”
“Andhisname? The one who introduce you?”
“I don’t want to get anyone in trouble. If the money was short …”
“Dee moneywassen short.”
The gun in her face again.
“Then why …?”
“We delivered quality cocaine. We expected …”
“I don’t want to know about it.”
“Wherewassthis in Eagle Branch?”
“A bar.”
“Tell us his name. The one who introduce you.”
She suddenly wondered how much Randy Biggs had got for introducing her to the man who’d paid her $200,000 for making four trips to Mexico, to transport—at least on the last trip, anyway—what now turned out to be cocaine.
“Wha’ wass his name?” the one with the gun said again.
“I told you …”
“We don’ want to kill you,” the other one said.
“Then tell him to put the gun away.”
“Su nombre,”the one with the gun said.
She knew with absolute certainty that he would kill her in the next instant if she did not give up Randolph Biggs. She wondered what she owed Randy, wondered what she owed the one who’d called himself Frank and who seemed to have offended these men in some unspeakable way. She decided this was not the Persian Gulf. She was not sworn to tell them only her name, rank, and serial number.
“His name was Randolph Biggs,” she said.
2 .
DETECTIVE STEVE CARELLA WISHED that one of the lions hadn’t dragged the victim’s left leg into the 88th Precinct. That was what brought Fat Ollie Weeks into the case. As it was, most of the vic’s body was being consumed by three lionesses, a young lion, and a big thickly maned patriarch, apparent leader of the pride, none of whom seemed at all disturbed by a fascinated audience of detectives, zoo personnel, and television reporters gathered outside the Lion Habitat at the Grover Park Zoo.
Half of the zoo was in the 87th Precinct.
The other half was in the 88th.
By Carella’s rough estimate, four-fifths of the vic’s body was in the Eight-Seven. The remaining fifth, the vic’s leg, was over there in the Eight-Eight, where Fat Ollie—watching a young lion claw and gnaw at the leg—was beginning to get hungry himself.
This was Saturday morning, the twenty-third day of December, the true start of the big Christmas weekend that only yesterday had included the first full day of Hanukkah, now history. Carella and Meyer had caught the squeal some twenty minutes ago, at a quarter past seven, when the man in charge of the zoo’s Animal Commissary called the police to report that a woman had wandered into the habitat and was at that very moment being attacked by a pride of lions who hadn’t yet been fed this morning.
At seven-thirty-sevenA.M ., there was a heavy layer of snow on the paths that wound past the barred fence, and the moat beyond that, and then the island habitat where the lions and lionesses feasted. The television reporters were having a field day. Never before had a photo op like this one presented itself, a pride of lions tearing apart a woman wearing nothing at all on one of the coldest days of the year, the animals greedily feasting on the woman’s flesh and bones. Some fifty feet away, in the 88th Precinct, a solitary lion contentedly gnawed on the victim’s leg.
Detective Oliver Wendell Weeks had caught the squeal some ten minutes after Carella and Meyer had, which was when the young lion had dragged the leg over into the Eight-Eight. None of the detectives were particularly happy to have caught a case like this one—oranycase for that matter—a half-hour or so before their shifts ended, especially on a holiday weekend, when they had shopping to do and trees to put up and gifts to wrap.
On a morning when the temperature hovered at just above freezing, Ollie was wearing only a sports jacket over dark slacks, a white shirt, a food-stained tie, white socks, black shoes, and a red woolen watch cap. He had eaten breakfast an hour ago, but all the activity out there on the island was making him wonder if the zoo’s coffee shop was open yet. By contrast, Carella and Meyer were both wearing heavy overcoats, gloves, and mufflers. They were each and separately wishing Fat Ollie hadn’t been dragged into the case by the victim’s leg. They were each and separately wondering how they were going to get the victim off the island before there was nothing left of her but chewed-over bones.
The Emergency Services truck had arrived not five minutes ago, and the captain in charge of the ES Squad was talking to the zoo’s Assistant Director, a man named William Boyd, who had been notified at home by the Commissary Superintendent who’d told him that one of their people had just finished feeding the great apes and was approaching the Lion Habitat to deliver two hundred pounds of horse meat enriched with vitamins and minerals when he spotted a woman being attacked on the island there. Boyd was now advising the ES Captain that he should take his truck and his team and go home.
“Our own personnel are quite capable of getting onto the island and recovering whatever’s left of the dead woman,” he said.