Native Tongue

  He strolled out to the pavilion, where he found a group of tourists milling around the empty mango-vole exhibit. A tarpaulin had been hung to cover the mess, but somebody had lifted a corner to peek inside the enclosure, which was littered with glass and smudged with fingerprint dust. A yellow police ribbon lay crumpled like a dead snake on the porch of the vole hutch. Some of the tourists were snapping pictures of the scene of the crime.

  A voice behind Joe Winder said, “You work here?”

  It was an old woman wearing a floppy pink Easter hat and a purse the size of a saddlebag. She eyed Joe Winder’s ID badge, which was clipped to his belt.

  “You a security man?” the woman asked.

  Winder tried to remember what Chelsea had told him about speaking to park visitors; some gooey greeting that all employees were supposed to say. Welcome to the Amazing Kingdom. How can I help you? Or was it: How may I help you? No, that wasn’t it. How can we help you?

  Eventually Joe Winder said, “I work in Publicity. Is something wrong?”

  The old lady made a clucking noise and foraged in her enormous purse. “I’ve a little something for you.”

  In a helpful tone Winder said, “The Lost and Found is down by the killer-whale tank.”

  “This isn’t lost and it isn’t found.” The old lady produced an envelope. “Here,” she said, pressing it into Joe Winder’s midsection. “And don’t try to follow me.”

  She turned and scuttled off, one hand atop her head, holding the Easter hat in place. Winder stuffed the envelope into his pocket and started after her. “Hey! Wait a second.”

  He had taken only three steps when a fist came out of somewhere and smashed him behind the right ear. He pitched forward on the walkway, skidding briefly on his face. When he awoke, Joe Winder was staring at shoes: Reeboks, loafers, sandals, Keds, orthopedics, Hush Puppies, flip-flops. The tourists had gathered in a murmuring semicircle around him. A young man knelt at his side, asking questions in German.

  Winder sat up. “Did anybody see who hit me?” His cheek stung, and he tasted blood on his lower lip.

  “Beeg orange!” sputtered a woman wearing two cameras around her neck. “Beeg orange man!”

  “Swell,” Winder said. “Did he have a cape? A ray gun?”

  The young German tourist patted him on the shoulder and said, “You okay, ja?”

  “Yah,” Winder muttered. “Fall down go boom.”

  He picked himself up, waved idiotically at his audience and retreated to the men’s room. There he tore open the old lady’s envelope and studied the message, which was typed double-spaced on ordinary notebook paper. It said: “WE DID IT. WE’RE GLAD. LONG LIVE THE VOLES.”

  It was signed by the Wildlife Rescue Corps.

  With copies, Joe Winder noted glumly, to every major news organization on the planet.

  Bud Schwartz shook Danny Pogue awake and said, “Look who’s here. I told you not to worry.”

  Molly McNamara was in the kitchen, fussing around. Danny Pogue was on the sofa in the living room. He had fallen asleep watching Lady Chatterley IV on Cinemax.

  Bud Schwartz sat down, grinning. “She brought the money, too,” he said.

  “All of it?”

  “No, just the grand. Like she said before.”

  “You mean the two grand,” Danny Pogue said. “One for each of us.” He didn’t entirely trust his partner.

  Bud Schwartz said, “Yeah, that’s what I meant. A thousand bucks each.”

  “Then let’s see it.”

  Molly came in, drying her hands on a flowered towel. She looked at Danny Pogue as if he were a dog that was supposed to stay off the good furniture. She said, “How’s that foot?”

  “Hurts.” Danny Pogue frowned. “Hurts like a bitch.”

  “He’s all out of them pills,” added Bud Schwartz.

  “Already?” Molly sounded concerned. “You finished the whole bottle?”

  “Danny’s got what you call a high resistance to pharmaceuticals,” Bud Schwartz said. “We had to double the dose.”

  “Bull,” said Danny Pogue. “Bud here just helped hisself.”

  “Is that true?” asked Molly McNamara. “Did you take some of your friend’s pills?”

  “Aw, come on,” said Bud Schwartz. “Jesus Christ, there’s nothing else to do around here. I was bored stiff.”

  “That was prescription medicine,” Molly said sternly.

  She went back to the kitchen and got her handbag. It was the largest handbag that Bud Schwartz or Danny Pogue had ever seen. Molly took out another plastic bottle of codeine pills and handed them to Danny Pogue. Then she took out her gun and shot Bud Schwartz once in the left hand.

  He fell down, shaking his arm as if it were on fire.

  In a whisper Danny Pogue said, “Oh Lord Jesus.” He felt the blood flooding out of his brain, and saw the corners of the room get fuzzy.

  Molly said, “Am I getting through to you fellows?” She returned the gun to her purse. “There will be no illegal drug activity in this condominium, is that clear? The owners’ association has very strict rules. Here, take this.” She handed Danny Pogue two packets of cash. Each packet was held together with a fresh bank wrapper.

  “That’s one thousand each, just like I promised,” she said. Then, turning to Bud Schwartz: “Does it hurt?”

  “The fuck do you think?” He was squeezing the wounded purple hand between his knees. “Damn right it hurts!”

  “In that case, you may borrow your friend’s pills. But only as needed.” Then Molly McNamara put on her floppy pink Easter hat and said good night.

  * * *

  Nina was naked, kneeling on Joe Winder’s back and rubbing his shoulders. “See, isn’t this better than sex?”

  “No,” he said, into the pillow. “Good, but not better.”

  “It’s my night off,” Nina said. “All week long, all I do is talk about it.”

  “We don’t have to talk,” Joe Winder mumbled. “Let’s just do.”

  “Joe, I need a break from it.” She kneaded his neck so ferociously that he let out a cry. “You understand, don’t you?”

  “Sure,” he said. It was the second time in a week that they’d had this conversation. Winder had a feeling that Nina was burning out on her job; practically nothing aroused her lately. All she wanted to do was sleep, and of course she talked in her sleep, said the most tantalizing things.

  It was driving Joe Winder crazy. “I had a particularly lousy day,” he said. “I was counting on you to wear me out.”

  Nina climbed off his back. “I love you,” she said, slipping her long legs under the sheets, “but at this moment I don’t have a single muscle that’s the least bit interested.”

  This, from the same wonderful woman who once left fingernail grooves in the blades of a ceiling fan. Winder groaned in self-pity.

  From the other side of the bed came Nina’s delicious voice: “Tell me the weirdest thing that happened to you today.”

  It was a bedtime ritual, exchanging anecdotes about work. Joe Winder said: “Some creep claimed he found the missing voles, except they weren’t voles. They were baby rabbits. He was trying to con us.” Winder left out the grisly details.

  “That’s a tough one to beat,” Nina remarked.

  “Also, I got slugged in the head.”

  “Really?” she said. “Last night I had a caller jerk himself off in eleven seconds flat. Miriam said it might be a new world’s record.”

  “You timed it?”

  “Sort of.” Playfully she reached between his legs and tweaked him. “Miriam has an official Olympic stopwatch.”

  “Nina, I want you to get another job. I’m serious.”

  She said, “That reminds me—some strange guy phoned for you this afternoon. A doctor from the park. He called twice.”

  “Koocher?”

  “Yeah,” said Nina. “Interesting name. Anyway, he made it sound important. I told him to try you at the office, but he said no. He wouldn’t leave a message,
either, just said he’d call back. The second time he said to tell you a man from Security was in the lab.”

  Joe Winder lifted his head off the pillow. “A man from Security.”

  “That’s what he said.”

  “Anything else?” Winder was thinking about the empty laboratory: lights on, phone ringing. Maybe he should’ve tried the door.

  “I told him you’d be home soon, but he said he couldn’t call back. He said he was leaving with the guy from Security.” Nina propped herself on one elbow. “Joe, what’s going on over there?”

  “I thought I knew,” said Winder, “but obviously I don’t.”

  With a fingertip she traced a feathery line down his cheek. “Do me a favor,” she said.

  “I know what you’re going to say.”

  She scooted closer, under the covers, and pressed against him. “But things are going so great.”

  Winder kissed her on the tip of the nose, and started to roll out of bed.

  “Joe, don’t go crazy on me,” Nina said. “Please.”

  He rolled back, into her arms. “All right,” he said. “Not just yet.”

  6

  The next morning, in the hallway by the water fountain, Charles Chelsea seized Joe Winder by the sleeve and tugged him into the office. Two men shared opposite ends of Chelsea’s leather sofa—one was the immense Pedro Luz, chief of security for the Animal Kingdom, and the other was a serious-looking fellow with a square haircut and a charcoal suit.

  “Joe,” Chelsea said, “this gentleman is from the FBI.”

  “I can see that.”

  Chelsea cleared his throat. “This is Agent Hawkins.”

  Joe Winder stuck out his hand. “Billy, isn’t it? You worked a Coral Gables Savings job about four years back.”

  The agent smiled cautiously. “And you were with the Herald.”

  “Right.”

  “Dated one of the tellers.”

  “Right again.”

  Charles Chelsea was trying to set some sort of record for clearing his throat. “What a coincidence that you two guys know each other.”

  Joe Winder sat down and stretched his legs. “Bank robbery. Billy here was the lead agent. Funny story, too—it was the Grou-cho guy.”

  “Yeah,” said Hawkins, loosening up. “Wore the big nose and the eyebrows, even carried a cigar. We finally caught up with him in Clearwater.”

  “No kidding?” Winder said, knowing that it was driving Chelsea crazy, all this friendly conversation with a real FBI man. “All the way up in Clearwater?”

  “Gentlemen,” Chelsea cut in, “if you don’t mind.”

  “What is it, Charlie?”

  “Agent Hawkins is here at Mr. Kingsbury’s personal request.” Chelsea lowered his voice. “Joe, there were three notes delivered to employees in the park. Each was signed by this Wildlife Rescue Corps.”

  Winder reached in his pocket. “You mean like this?” He handed his copy to Billy Hawkins. He told him what had happened at the Rare Animal Pavilion—the old lady in the Easter bonnet, the phantom punch. Hawkins took it all down in a notebook.

  Chelsea tried to contain his irritation. “Why didn’t you report this to Security?” he asked Joe Winder.

  “Because I didn’t want to interrupt Pedro’s nap.”

  Pedro Luz darkened. Every now and then he dozed off in the security office. “All you had to do was ring the buzzer,” he snapped at Winder. He glanced at the FBI man, whose expression remained impassive and nonjudgmental. “I’ve had a touch of the flu,” Pedro Luz added defensively. “The medicine makes me sleepy.” For a large man he had a high tinny voice.

  “Never mind,” said Charles Chelsea. “The point is, everybody’s calling up for comment. The networks. The wires. We’re under siege, Joe.”

  Winder felt his headache coming back. Agent Billy Hawkins admitted that the federal government didn’t know much about the Wildlife Rescue Corps.

  “Most of these groups seem to specialize in rodents,” the agent said. “Laboratory rats, mostly. Universities, pharmaceutical houses—those are the common targets. What usually happens, they break in at night and free the animals.”

  “But we weren’t doing experiments.” Chelsea was exasperated. “We treated Vance and Violet as royalty.”

  “Who?” the agent said.

  “The voles,” Joe Winder explained cheerfully.

  Charles Chelsea continued to whine. “Why have they singled out the Amazing Kingdom? We didn’t abuse these creatures. Quite the opposite.”

  “You do any vivisections here?” asked Agent Hawkins. “These groups are quite vocal against vivisection.”

  Chelsea paled. “Vivisection? Christ, we gave the little bastards fresh corn on the cob every morning. Sometimes even citrus!”

  “Well, this is what we’ve got.” Hawkins flipped backwards in his notebook. “Two white males, aged twenty-five to thirty-five, fleeing the scene in a 1979 blue Ford pickup, license GPP-B06. The registration comes back to a convicted burglar whose current alias is Buddy Michael Schwartz. I might add that Mr. Schwartz’s rap sheet shows no history of a social conscience with regard to animal rights, or any other.”

  “Somebody hired him,” Joe Winder said.

  “Most likely,” agreed the FBI man. “Anyway, they dragged the truck out of a rock pit this morning. No bodies.”

  “Any sign of the voles?”

  Billy Hawkins allowed himself a slight frown. “We believe the animals are dead.” He handed Winder copies of the highway patrol reports, which described the incident with the tourist family in the red LeBaron, as well as the subsequent Winnebago attack. As Winder scanned the reports, Charles Chelsea reminded him to keep the news under his hat.

  Agent Hawkins said, “I heard something on the radio about a million-dollar reward.”

  “Right!” Winder said.

  “How can you do that,” the FBI man said, “when you know these animals are dead?”

  Joe Winder was having a wonderful time. “Go ahead,” he said to Charles Chelsea. “Explain to the gentleman.”

  “Where’s Koocher?” Chelsea grumbled. “I left about a dozen messages.”

  “Let’s ask Pedro,” said Joe Winder. “He sent one of his boys over to the lab yesterday. Must’ve had a reason.”

  Charles Chelsea folded his hands on the desk, waiting. Agent Billy Hawkins turned slightly on the couch to get a better angle on the security chief. Joe Winder arched his eyebrows and said, “How about it, Pedro? Something else happen at the Rare Animal Pavilion?”

  Pedro Luz scowled, his tiny black eyes receding under the ledge of his forehead. “I don’t know what you’re talking about,” he said. “Nothing happened nowhere.” He fumbled with his clipboard. “See? There is no report.”

  The Security Department at the Amazing Kingdom of Thrills was staffed exclusively by corrupt ex-policemen, of which there was a steady supply in South Florida. The chief of Security, Pedro Luz, was a black-haired pinheaded giant of a young man who had been fired from the Miami Police for stealing cash and cocaine from drug dealers, then pushing them out of a Beechcraft high over the Everglades. Pedro Luz’s conviction had been overturned by an appeals court, and the charges ultimately dropped when the government’s key witness failed to appear for the new trial. The witness’s absence was later explained when bits and pieces of his body were found in a shrimper’s net off Key West, although there was no evidence linking this sad turn of events to Pedro Luz himself.

  Once the corruption and murder charges had been dismissed, Pedro Luz promptly sued the police department to reclaim his old job, plus back wages and vacation time. Meanwhile, to keep his hand in law enforcement, Pedro Luz went to work at Francis X. Kingsbury’s vacation theme park. The pay was only $8.50 an hour, but as a perk Pedro was given free access to the executive gym, where he spent hours of company time lifting weights and taking anabolic steroids. This leisurely regimen was interrupted by the embarrassing daylight theft of the prized voles—and a personal commun
ication of urgency from Francis X. Kingsbury himself. Chief Pedro Luz immediately put the security staff on double shifts, and rented a cot for himself in the office.

  Which is where he snoozed at one-thirty in the afternoon when he heard a knock on the bulletproof glass.

  Pedro Luz sat up slowly and swung his thick legs off the bed. He stood up, strapped on his gun, straightened the shoulders of his uniform shirt. The knocking continued.

  Through the glass, Pedro Luz saw a wiry brown man in a sweaty tank top. The man battled a spastic tic on one side of his face; it looked as if a wasp were loose in one cheek.

  Pedro Luz opened the door and said, “What do you want?”

  “I’m here for the money,” the man said, twitching. He clutched a grocery bag to his chest. “The million dollars.”

  “Go away,” said Pedro Luz.

  “Don’t you even want to see?”

  “The voles are dead.”

  The wiry man said, “But I heard on the news—”

  “Go away,” said Pedro Luz, “before I break your fucking legs.”

  “But I found the mango voles. I want my money.”

  Pedro Luz stepped out of the office and closed the door. He stood a full foot taller than the man with the grocery bag, and outweighed him by a hundred pounds.

  “You don’t listen so hot,” Pedro Luz said.

  The man’s face twitched uncontrollably as he tried to open the bag. “Just one look,” he said, “please.”

  Pedro Luz seized the man by the throat and shook him like a doll. The grocery bag fell to the ground and tore open. Pedro Luz was so involved in assaulting the derelict that he didn’t notice what came out of the bag: two half-starved, swaybacked ferrets, eyes glazed and bluish, lips flecked with foam. Instantly they settled in chewing on Pedro Luz’s right ankle, and did not stop until he tore them off, bare-handed, and threw them with all his might against the nearest wall.

  One hour later, the Publicity Department of the Amazing Kingdom of Thrills faxed the following statement to all media, under the caption “Rare Voles Now Believed Dead”: