Zero at the Bone (27 page)

He turned it back over to look at the other photos on the sheet. “This is an aoudad, a Barbary sheep, of course. And look at this, Katherine.” His voice rose with excitement. “Here’s two greater kudu. What the hell! And an oryx.”

He looked up at her. “Your father took these, didn’t he? What did he say about them?”

“Nothing. He left them hidden for me. I found them after his death. There are more.” She laid another page in front of him.

He stared at it. “A pair of bushbuck! We don’t even have bushbuck at the zoo. Well, shit! A sable antelope and an addax!” He turned the page over and read, “August tenth, 1989, PLS, Lampasas.” He looked into the distance trying to remember something. “August tenth. We got a shipment August tenth, I think. It was the two wildebeest for our herd.”

“I know,” Katherine said. She handed him the page listing zoo acquisitions for August. She’d marked the date and the two entries. She watched his reaction carefully. His forehead was crinkled and he looked genuinely perplexed as he studied the record and then the photos.

“There are more,” she said, handing him the rest.

He sat in silence for about five minutes, studying them, checking the dates on the photos against the acquisition records. Katherine alternated between pacing the floor and peering over his shoulder. When he finally looked up, his mouth was a tight line and his eyes were unfocused as if he were trying to visualize something but couldn’t quite get it in view.

“Well, what do you think?” Katherine asked, waving a hand over the documents on the table. She sat down so she could listen better.

Vic shook his head and rubbed his fingers across his furrowed forehead. “If these photographs are labeled accurately, for the past six months, each time the Driscoll Foundation buys some new animals for the zoo, on that same day, one of four Texas ranches gets a shipment of animals. Some of the animals are illegal by federal and international law. And all of them have no business going to a game ranch to get shot.”

Katherine was impatient. “Yeah, I know that, but what does it mean?”

He took a deep breath. “This is hard for me to believe, but it could be that there’s some … scam going on and that people at the zoo are involved. Probably your uncle, too, since he’s head of the foundation.” Vic looked her in the eye. “What are you planning to do about this?”

She shrugged. “My father wrote me that he had something he wanted me to do, something only I could do. Then he left these for me. I want to find out what was going on and do whatever he had in mind for me to do.” She sat back in her chair. “I wish I knew what that was.”

Vic was silent for a long minute. Then he thumped his knuckles on the pictures. “This scares me. If your father collected this information, it could be the reason he was killed.”

Katherine nodded. “If there were something illegal going on at the zoo, can you see how it might work?”

He looked into space. “I’ve been trying to, but it’s so hard to believe that I can’t quite imagine it. I know there’s big money in the exotic-game business.”

She nodded again. “Vic, what might my next step be to find out more?”

He stared at the black window, thinking. “I’m reluctant to tell you because I’m afraid you’ll do it and then get into trouble for it.”

“Let me worry about that. If you want to help me, give me some advice.”

“Do you have access to the Driscoll Foundation records and numbers?” he asked.

“No. Don’t you?”

“No. Cooper Driscoll keeps them. Could you possibly get him to let you look at them?”

“No. I’ve tried.”

“Let me think this through,” he said. “We could call one of these ranches and pretend to be hunters, say we wanted to hunt a bongo or a kudu or an oryx, but I don’t think they’d tell us and it would make them suspicious. No, that wouldn’t work. But…” He stopped.

She leaned forward toward him. “What?”

“I can think of only one thing.” He pushed the first page of acquisition records across to Katherine and pointed to the column labeled “Source.” “The last three shipments came from our main dealer, Max Friedlander. That’s what the initials MFWAD stand for: Max Friedlander Wild Animal Dealer. You could ask him what animals were in the October second, August tenth, and April seventeenth shipments.”

Katherine drummed her fingers nervously on the tabletop. “Where would I find him?”

“He lives in New York or New Jersey. I could get his number for you from the files, but I don’t know if he’d talk to you about his business. The zoo’s a big customer. Katherine, maybe you ought to leave this alone. What have you got to gain?”

“My father wanted me to do something about this and I’m going to do it.”

He covered her hand with his, stilling the movement of her fingers. “Okay, but will you promise to keep me in the picture here? I don’t want you doing this all on your own.”

Katherine thought about it. “Yes, if you continue to be useful.”

He laughed, loud. She put a finger to her lips in warning to keep quiet. “Sophie doesn’t know about these. It’s touchy.”

“Yeah, I can see that.” His hand pressed down on hers.

She looked away from him and stifled a yawn.

“Time for me to go?” he asked.

She nodded. “Thanks for dinner … and the day. Can you get that number for me tomorrow morning?”

He rose. “Okay. Against my better judgment.”

She stood up, too quickly, and felt a wave of dizziness. Vic wrapped an arm around her shoulders. “You okay?”

“Just tired … and drunk. That was great wine.”

He slid his hand from her shoulder to the back of her neck, underneath her hair. “It was.” He bent down and kissed her softly on the lips, lingering just long enough for her to taste the Beaujolais, the chocolate intemperance, and the tang of something unknown.

When he took his hand way from her neck she could still feel the imprint of it and the heat.

*   *   *

The pointman slipped his hand into the neck of his shirt and held on to his lucky charm for a moment. He clenched his teeth and tried to regulate his breathing, but the anger would not stay down; it kept churning up into his throat, spewing bile and acid into his mouth.

He’d had it all planned out to perfection, just like he’d done with the others. But, fuck, this goddamned woman was so changeable. She just had to foul everything up. Thinks everyone should jump just because she says so. Even though it ruins everybody’s plans.

He watched the bushmasters through their exhibit window. The big female lay next to the log in the back corner. Her old skin, looking like cloudy cellophane, was caught on the rough bark and she was slithering out of it. But it was glacially slow. Like a woman with no arms trying to wiggle out of a tight nylon stocking by rubbing against a tree trunk. The beadlike scales of her freshly molted front half glistened in the fluorescent light; they formed a dark pattern—lateral triangles of charcoal outlined in yellow—distinct and handsome. The pattern and colors of the unmolted back half were cloudy and dull.

The snake looked listless now, but just wait until she finished getting rid of that old skin. Then her aggressiveness would emerge, especially after he had a go at hurting her enough to bring out the meanness. She was seven feet long and when he was finished with her, every inch would be aggressive.

Touching the charm helped calm him. He was doing fine. This delay was nothing. After all, he’d waited so long. One more day wasn’t going to make any difference.

He smiled. Actually, the delay wasn’t such a bad thing at all; it gave him more time to anticipate her punishment. Because, really, he’d discovered that most of the enjoyment was in the planning and anticipating. After it was over, there was a letdown that felt like falling into a deep well.

Until he got involved with the next one.

Strange. Maybe his mother had been right. “Sonny,” she used to say, “happiness lies in keeping busy.”

Well, he’d been keeping very busy lately and there were times he felt almost happy.

17

IT was madness, absolute lunacy.

As the plane circled LaGuardia, Katherine opened her eyes and felt the flush of incipient panic start in her cheeks and spread down her neck. Worse, it was lunacy on borrowed money and borrowed time. The money—$384 for a round-trip ticket, coach class—she’d borrowed from Vic; and the time—his day off today in exchange for her working for him on Saturday—from Danny Gillespie. They’d both been generous and willing to accommodate her, but they didn’t know what she knew—that this was probably a wild-goose chase.

When she’d called Max Friedlander yesterday at his office in Manhasset, he had flatly refused to discuss his business dealings with her. Brusquely, he’d told her in his harsh Dutch accent that his affairs were confidential. When she’d tried to tell him about the unusual circumstances, he had cut her off mid-sentence to say it was impossible for him to discuss it with her. Then he’d hung up.

So what did she do? She had booked a reservation, borrowed the money from Vic, arranged to trade days off with Danny, lied to Sam and Alonzo, telling them her best friend had died in New York. Then she’d persuaded Sharb she’d be safer in New York than in Austin, borrowed a jacket from Sophie, and finally caught the 6
A.M.
flight, exhausted from all the arranging. Now she had no idea how she was going to persuade this unpleasant Dutchman to talk to her. Maybe the simple desperation of her coming all this way to see him would sway him.

She’d planned to spend the flying time plotting a strategy, but the early hour and the vibration of the engines weakened her will. She’d put her head back, lowered her lids, and drifted into reverie. She replayed her dinner with Vic the night before last, imagining a different ending to the evening. Instead of poring over pictures of animals in the kitchen, she leads him to the bedroom and slowly peels off his clothes, taking hours to do it. Before unbuttoning his shirt, she slips her hands underneath and feels the texture of the skin on his back.

It had been almost a year since she had broken her engagement to John Rehnquist, and in all that time she hadn’t felt the stirrings of passion for anyone. She had thought, with some relief, that perhaps her capacity for passion had withered away from disuse. But now here was lust reasserting itself, alive and well at a most inappropriate time. Well, she had a date with Vic tonight, if she got back as scheduled, so she could test it out—see if it had atrophied or not.

As the jet bumped down and taxied to the gate, she dragged herself up from the fantasy and began to think of how she could get Max Friedlander to talk to her. Vic had said he was a crusty old Dutchman who’d been dealing in animals ever since the end of the Second World War, when he’d emigrated to the United States. He was one of three big animal dealers in the country, generally reputed to be the best. Vic had met him several times and had the impression that he was an honorable man, unlikely to be involved in any illegal dealings.

Driving the rental car to Manhasset, she watched the dying foliage of early November speed past her window. It reminded her of what she had chosen not to think about: November seventh was only four days away. There wasn’t a chance in the world now that she was going to save her home from that auction on the courthouse steps. She needed to face up to it.

When she finally located Max Friedlander’s office address in Manhasset, she parked three blocks away and walked through the cold wind, aware suddenly of how meagerly she was clothed. It seemed that every time she came north, she was unprepared for the weather. It was thirty degrees and she was shivering in her lightweight silk slacks and blouse, with only the thin jacket she’d borrowed from Sophie.

She stood on the filthy sidewalk, staring at a decrepit dark-red brick building. The sign on the building said
LENNY’S HARDWARE
and the streaked window displayed a few dusty tools and kitchen gadgets. But the address was right. Near tears, Katherine looked up to the second floor and saw painted on the window in black and gold, “Max Friedlander, Wild Animal Dealer.”

She let out a long breath, which appeared as a puff of smoke in front of her. To the left of the hardware store, a door with peeling black paint seemed to be the only way to get to the second floor. She opened it and climbed the dark wooden stairs, still trying to perfect the lie she would tell. The door at the top had a small brass plate with his name, but she didn’t know whether to knock or just enter. After a minute of hesitation she knocked and waited, glancing at her watch. It was eleven thirty-five.

Please be here.

There was no answer, so she knocked again. The door jerked open. A rotund elderly man with a fringe of flyaway white hair and a well-trimmed white beard stood there, looking angry. “I called, ‘Come,’ but you stay out here.” He glowered at her. “So? Now I’m here, say what you want.”

“Mr. Friedlander?” Katherine asked.

“Yes. Yes. Who else? You see the name on the door.” He pointed to the plate.

He made her feel like a naughty ten-year-old. “I’m Katherine Driscoll. I talked with you yesterday, but I—”

“You called me yesterday. From Austin, yes?”

“Yes. But it’s so important I flew up today so I could see you in person.”

He clasped his hands behind his back and rocked back on his heels, as if her impertinence had knocked him off balance. “You thought maybe I was kidding you yesterday? That I would talk private business with just anyone who calls?”

“But I’m not just anyone.” Katherine squared her shoulders and stood up straight.

“Oh?” he said, throwing his head back and sticking his paunch out. “And who might you be, then?”

This was perhaps her only chance and she was going to go for it. “I’m the granddaughter of Anne Driscoll who set up the foundation that has bought millions of dollars’ worth of animals from you. I’m the daughter of Lester Renfro, who was killed eighteen days ago by a tiger who was sired by a tiger the Austin Zoo bought from you. I’m a reptile keeper at the zoo … but I’m really a dog trainer,” she finished lamely.