Next (23 page)

CH051

I
t had been
raining all day in southern Sumatra. The jungle floor was wet. The leaves were wet. Everything was wet. The video crews from around the world had long since gone on to other assignments. Now Hagar was back with only one client: a man named Gorevitch. A famous wildlife photographer who had flown in from Tanzania.

Gorevitch had set up beneath a large ficus tree, unzipped a duffel bag, and removed a nylon mesh sling, like a hammock. He set this on the ground carefully. Then he brought out a metal case, popped it open, and assembled a rifle.

“You know that’s illegal,” Hagar said. “This is a preserve.”

“No shit.”

“If the rangers come through, you better get that stuff out of sight.”

“Not a problem.” Gorevitch charged the compressor, opened the chamber. “How big is this guy?”

“He’s a juvenile, two or three years old. Maybe thirty kilos. Probably less.”

“Okay. Ten cc’s.” Gorevitch pulled a dart out of the case, checked the level, and slipped it into the chamber. Then another. And another. He clicked the chamber closed. He said to Hagar, “When was the last time you saw him?”

“Ten days ago.”

“Where?”

“Near here.”

“He comes back? This is his home range?”

“Seems to be.”

Gorevitch squinted down the telescopic sight. He swung it in an arc, then up to the sky, then back. Satisfied, he put the gun down.

“You got a low enough dose?”

“Don’t worry,” Gorevitch said.

“Also, if he’s high in the canopy, you can’t shoot because—”

“I said, don’t worry.” Gorevitch looked at Hagar. “I know what I’m doing. Dose is just enough to unsteady him. He’ll come down by himself, long before he collapses. We may have to track him on the ground for a while.”

“You’ve done this before?”

Gorevitch nodded.

“With orangs?”

“Chimps.”

“Chimps are different.”

“Really.” Sarcastic.

The two men fell into an uneasy silence. Gorevitch got out a video camera and tripod, and set them up. Then a long-range microphone with a one-foot dish, which he clipped to the top of the camera with a mounting pole. It made an ungainly apparatus, but effective, Hagar thought.

Gorevitch squatted on his haunches and stared out at the jungle. The men listened to the sound of the rain, and waited.

In recent weeks,
the talking orangutan had faded from the media. The story had gone the way of other animal reports that didn’t prove out: that Arkansas woodpecker nobody could find again, and the six-foot Congo ape that nobody could locate despite persistent stories by natives, and the giant bat with the twelve-foot wingspan that was supposedly seen in the jungles of New Guinea.

As far as Gorevitch was concerned, the declining interest was ideal. Because when the ape was finally rediscovered, media attention would be ten times greater than it would have been otherwise.

Especially because Gorevitch intended to do more than record the talking ape. He intended to bring it back alive.

He zipped his jacket collar tight against the dripping rain, and he waited.

It was late
in the afternoon, and starting to get dark. Gorevitch was dozing off when he heard a low gravelly voice say
, “Alors. Merde.”

He opened his eyes. He looked at Hagar, sitting nearby.

Hagar shook his head.

“Alors. Comment ça va?”

Gorevitch looked slowly around.

“Merde. Scumbag. Espèce de con.”
It was a low sound, throaty, like a drunk at a bar.
“Fungele a usted.”

Gorevitch turned on the camera. He couldn’t tell where the voice was coming from, but he could at least record it. He swung the lens in a slow arc, while he watched the microphone levels. Because the mike was directional, he was able to determine that the sound was coming from…the south.

Nine o’clock from where he was. He squinted through the finder, zoomed in. He could see nothing. The jungle was becoming darker every minute.

Hagar stood motionless nearby, just watching.

Now there was a crashing of branches, and Gorevitch glimpsed a shadow as it streaked across the lens. He looked up and saw the shape moving higher and higher, swinging on branches as it went up into the overhead canopy. In a few moments the orang was seventy feet in the air above them.

“Gods vloek het. Asshole wijkje. Vloek.”

He took the camera off the tripod, tried to film. It was black. Nothing. Flicked on night vision. He saw nothing but green streaks as the animal moved in and out of the thick foliage. The orang was moving higher and laterally.

“Vloek het. Moeder fucker.”

“Nice mouth on him.” But the voice was growing fainter.

Gorevitch realized he had a decision to make, and quickly. He set the camera down and reached for the rifle. He swung it up and sighted down the scope. Military night vision, bright green, very clear. He saw the ape, saw the eyes glowing white dots—

Hagar said, “No!”

The orang jumped to another tree, suspended in space for an instant.

Gorevitch fired.

He heard the hiss of gas and the
thwack
of the dart smacking the leaves.

“Missed him.” He raised the rifle again.

“Don’t do this—”

“Shut up.” Gorevitch sighted, fired.

In the trees above, there was a momentary pause in the thrashing sound.

“You hit him,” Hagar said.

Gorevitch waited.

The crashing of leaves and branches began again. The orang was moving, now almost directly overhead.

“No, I didn’t.” Gorevitch raised the gun once more.

“Yes, you did. If you shoot again—”

Gorevitch fired.

A whoosh of gas near his ear, then silence. Gorevitch lowered the gun and moved to reload it, keeping his eyes on the canopy overhead. He crouched down, flicked open his metal case, and felt for more cartridges. He kept looking upward the whole time.

Silence.

“You hit him,” Hagar said.

“Maybe.”

“I know you hit him.”

“No, you don’t.” Gorevitch popped three more cartridges into the gun. “You don’t know that.”

“He’s not moving. You hit him.”

Gorevitch took his position, raised the rifle, just in time to see a dark
shape come plummeting downward. It was the orang, falling straight down from the canopy more than 150 feet above them.

The animal crashed to the ground at Gorevitch’s feet, splattering mud. The orang didn’t move. Hagar swung a flashlight.

Three darts protruded from the body. One in the leg, two in the chest. The orang was not moving. The animal’s eyes were open, staring upward.

“Great,” Hagar said. “Great work.”

Gorevitch dropped to his knees in the mud, put his mouth over the orang’s big lips, and blew air into his lungs, to resuscitate him.

CH052

S
ix attorneys
sat at the long table, all shuffling through papers. It sounded like a windstorm. Rick Diehl waited impatiently, biting his lip. Finally Albert Rodriguez, his head attorney, looked up.

“The situation is this,” Rodriguez said. “You have good reason—sufficient reason, anyway—to believe that Frank Burnet conspired to destroy the cell lines in your possession, so that he could sell them again to some other company.”

“Right,” Rick said. “Fucking right.”

“Three courts have ruled that Burnet’s cells are your property. You therefore have a right to take them.”

“You mean, take them
again.
”

“Correct.”

“Except the guy has gone into hiding.”

“That is inconvenient. But it does not change the material facts of the situation. You are the owner of the Burnet cell line,” Rodriguez said. “Wherever those cells may occur.”

“Meaning…”

“His children. His grandchildren. They probably have the same cells.”

“You mean, I can take cells from the kids?”

“The cells are your property,” Rodriguez said.

“What if the kids don’t agree to let me take them?”

“They may very well not agree. But since the cells are your property, the children don’t have any say in the matter.”

“We’re talking punch biopsies of liver and spleen, here,” Diehl said. “They’re not exactly minor procedures.”

“They’re not exactly major, either,” Rodriguez said. “I believe they are ordinary outpatient procedures. Of course, you would have a duty to make sure that the cell extractions were performed by a competent physician. I assume you would.”

Diehl frowned. “Let me see if I understand. You’re telling me I can just grab his kids off the street and haul them to a doctor and remove their cells? Whether they like it or not?”

“I am. Yes.”

“And how,” Rick Diehl said, “can that be legal?”

“Because they are walking around with cells that are legally yours, hence with stolen property. That’s felony two. Under the law, if you witness a felony being committed, you are entitled to perform a citizen’s arrest, and take the offender into custody. So if you were to see Burnet’s children walking on the street, you could legally arrest them.”

“Me, personally?”

“No, no,” Rodriguez said. “In these circumstances one avails oneself of a trained professional—a fugitive-recovery agent.”

“You mean a bounty hunter?”

“They don’t like that term, and neither do we.”

“All right. Do you know of a good fugitive-recovery agent?”

“We do,” Rodriguez said.

“Then get him on the phone,” Diehl said. “Right now.”

CH053

V
asco Borden
faced the mirror and reviewed his appearance with a professional eye, while he brushed mascara into the graying edges of his goatee. Vasco was a big man, six-feet-four and two-forty, all muscle, nine percent body fat. His shaved head and his trimmed, black goatee made him look like the devil. One big mother of a devil. He meant to appear intimidating, and he did.

He turned to the suitcase on the bed. In it he had neatly packed a set of coveralls with a Con Ed logo on the breast; a loud plaid sport coat; a sharp black Italian suit; a motorcycle jacket that read
DIE IN HELL
on the back; a velour tracksuit; a breakaway plaster leg cast; a short-barrel Mossberg 590 and two black Para .45s. For today, he was dressed in a tweed sport coat, casual slacks, and brown lace-up shoes.

Finally, he laid three photos out on the bed.

First, the guy, Frank Burnet. Fifty-one, fit, ex-Marine.

The guy’s daughter, Alex, early thirties, a lawyer.

The guy’s grandson, Jamie, now eight.

The old guy had vanished, and Vasco saw no reason to bother finding him. Burnet could be anywhere in the world—Mexico, Costa Rica, Australia. Much easier to get the cells directly from other family members.

He looked at the photo of the daughter, Alex. A lawyer—never good, as a target. Even if you handled them perfect, you still got sued. This gal was blond, looked to be in decent physical shape. Attractive enough,
if you liked the type. She was too skinny for Vasco’s taste. And she probably took some Israeli defense class on weekends. You never knew. Anyway, she spelled potential trouble.

That left the kid.

Jamie. Eight years old, second grade, local school. Vasco could get down there, pick him up, collect the samples, and be done with this whole thing by the afternoon. Which was fine with him. Vasco had a fifty-thousand-dollar completion bonus if he recovered in the first week. That declined to ten thousand after four weeks. So he had plenty of reason to get it over with.

Do the kid, he thought. Simple and to the point.

Dolly came in, the paper in her hand. Today she was wearing a navy blue suit, low shoes, white shirt. She had a brown leather briefcase. As usual, her bland looks enabled her to move about without attracting notice. “How does this look?” she said, and handed him the paper.

He scanned it quickly. It was a “To Whom It May Concern,” signed by Alex Burnet. Allowing the bearer to pick up her son, Jamie, from school and take him to the family doctor for his exam.

“You called the doctor’s office?” Vasco said.

“Yeah. Said Jamie had a fever and sore throat, and they said bring him in.”

“So if the school calls the doctor…”

“We’re covered.”

“And you’re sent from the mother’s office?”

“Right.”

“Got your card?”

She pulled out a business card, with the logo of the law firm.

“And if they call the mother?”

“Her cell number is listed on the paper, as you see.”

“And that’s Cindy?”

“Yes.” Cindy was their office dispatcher, in Playa del Rey.

“Okay, let’s get it done,” Vasco said. He put his arm around her shoulder. “You going to be okay, doing this?”

“Sure, why not?”

“You know why not.” Dolly had a weakness for kids. Whenever she looked in their eyes she melted. They’d had a fugitive in Canada, ran him down in Vancouver, the kid answered the door and Dolly asked if her father was home. The kid was a little girl about eight, she said no, not there. Dolly said okay and left. Meanwhile the guy was driving up the street, on his way home. His darling kid shut the door, went to the phone, called her old man, and told him to keep going. The kid was experienced. They’d been on the run since she was five. They never got close to the guy again.

“That was just one time,” Dolly said.

“There’s been more than one.”

“Vasco,” she said. “Everything’s going to be fine today.”

“Okay,” he said. And he let her kiss him on the cheek.

Out in the driveway,
the ambulance was parked, rear doors open. Vasco smelled cigarette smoke. He went around to the back. Nick was sitting there in a white lab coat, smoking.

“Jesus, Nick. What’re you doing?”

“Just one,” Nick said.

“Put it out,” Vasco said. “We’re heading off now. You got the stuff?”

“I do.” Nick Ramsey was the doc they used on jobs when they needed a doc. He’d worked in emergency rooms until his drug-and-alcohol habit took over. He was out of rehab now, but steady employment was hard to come by.

“They want liver and spleen punch biopsies, and they want blood—”

“I read it. Fine-needle aspirations. I’m ready.”

Vasco paused. “You been drinking, Nick?”

“No. Shit no.”

“I smell something on your breath.”

“No, no. Come on, Vasco, you know I wouldn’t—”

“I got a good nose, Nick.”

“No.”

“Open your mouth.” Vasco leaned forward and sniffed.

“I just had a taste is all,” Nick said.

Vasco held out his hand. “Bottle.”

Nick reached under the gurney, handed him a pint bottle of Jack Daniel’s.

“That’s great.” Vasco moved close, got in his face. “Now listen to me,” he said quietly. “You pull any more stunts today, and I’ll personally throw you out the back of this ambulance onto the 405. You want to make a tragedy of your life, I’ll see that it happens. You got me?”

“Yeah, Vasco.”

“Good. I’m glad we have an understanding.” He stepped back. “Hold out your hands.”

“I’m fine—”

“Hold out your hands.” Vasco never raised his voice in moments of tension. He lowered it. Make them listen. Make them worry. “Hold your hands out now, Nick.”

Nick Ramsey held out his hands. They weren’t shaking.

“Okay. Get in the car.”

“I just—”

“Get in the car, Nick. I’m through talking.”

Vasco got in the front with Dolly, and started driving. Dolly said, “He okay back there?”

“More or less.”

“He won’t hurt the kid, right?”

“Nah,” Vasco said. “It’s just a couple of needles. Few seconds is all.”

“He better not hurt that kid.”

“Hey,” Vasco said. “Are you fine about this, or what?”

“Yeah, I’m fine.”

“Okay then. Let’s do it.”

He drove down the road.