"You"ve got loboxes and the capacity to breed more. We"re both aware of what a lobox can do. You"ve got articles of clothing from both Harper and me. That"s your insurance policy. Now, you give Harper"s sweater back to her, but you keep my jacket. If I break my word, if you ever have any trouble you think I caused, you can cart one of your loboxes into my neighborhood, prime it with my jacket, and let it loose. If I break my word, I"ll know I run the risk of one day walking down the street and having one of those things jump out from some alley to tear my throat out. I know I can"t defend myself against a lobox; even if I wanted to put a stop to you, I"d know that the price would be a horrible death. I certainly don"t want to be constantly looking over my shoulder for a prehistoric creature that has nothing more on its mind than making a meal out of me. That"s your guarantee that I"ll keep my mouth shut."
Zelezian glanced first at the lobox, then at his son. Luther Zelezian, who I somehow suspected might be on our side, nodded to his father. He said, "If I loosed one anywhere in New York City, it would keep stalking, no matter how long it took, until it found and killed him. We know that from the trials. Frederickson seems to have a strong argument."
"All right," Arlen Zelezian said, looking back at me. "Agreed. Now answer my questions."
"Ah. Now, how do I know I can trust you to keep your part of the bargain?"
"Even if you are no longer, as you Americans say, on my case, who else might be?"
"How do I know I can trust you, Zelezian?"
"You don"t have any choice but to trust me. Now, tell me how you came to know so much about me."
"Computer," I said, watching the lobox. "The bank that sold you the circus ended up with all its transactions on the public record because they were in financial trouble and under investigation by federal regulatory agencies. That"s how I got the name of Battle Eagle Corporation. Then it was just a matter of checking out Battle Eagle with contacts I have in Interpol, the CIA, and the FBI."
Arlen Zelezian grunted. "What about your brother? Why isn"t he out here with you?"
"My brother"s back in New York State working on other matters. He has no part in this. He doesn"t even know I"m here."
The tall, gaunt, bearded man raised a large hand, c.o.c.ked his index finger, and pointed it in my face. "A lie. The Frederickson brothers always work together. Indeed, if he were to fail to hear from you for any length of time, it"s a certainty that he would come looking for you."
He paused, as if waiting for me to respond to what he"d said, or try to refute it. I remained silent. It seemed he knew as much, or more, about the Fredericksons as I knew about the Zelezians. But then, a lot of people knew about the Fredericksons. It was the price of success-and why we constantly tracked each other.
Zelezian continued, "Suppose we were to work out some arrangement whereby you and the woman would be free to go in exchange for your promises of silence? How would we manage to keep the other half of Frederickson and Frederickson out of our business?"
"I"ll call him and give him some kind of story about how I"ve lost interest in the matter. You can listen in on the conversation."
"Oh, I most a.s.suredly would. Now, you"ve already told me one lie. Another lie will cost the prying man who wore this jacket his life, so be very careful what you say. I don"t bluff. Who else knows about my business here? What individual, private firm, or government agency hired you to check up on me?"
"I"m not working for anybody but myself, Zelezian. Phil Statler had a breakdown after he lost the circus. I found him a few days ago, sick and dying, an alcoholic who"d been living on the streets of New York City. I feel I owe the man. I figured that if I could find a way to buy back the circus for him, it would give him a reason to live and clean up his act. My first stop was a circus community in Florida to see if I could line up some financial backers, which is how I happen to have Harper with me. Check with your son. He"ll tell you I tried to sound him out about buying the circus."
"I"m aware of that, Frederickson. Luther told you the circus was not for sale. Did you think you could somehow get him to alter that decision by sneaking around here in the middle of the night? I think you had a pretty good idea of what you might find here."
There was something in his voice and manner I didn"t like at all. "Just hold on and listen, Zelezian," I said quickly. "I did have an idea what I might find here, but not because of any official or extensive investigation. Nate b.u.t.ton, the man you"re threatening to kill, approached me in Lambeaux, the last town you were in. He was investigating the killings, which you already know, and he a.s.sumed I was in this part of the country to do the same thing. He was the one who said he was convinced it was a lobox doing the killing, and he told me what a lobox was. I didn"t pay any attention at the time-the same as n.o.body is going to pay any attention to him now. It was only after I started thinking of your background, bioweapons, and where a large mammal that would kill over such a large range could remain hidden that I thought of the circus, and then decided that it was my civic duty to check out the situation. n.o.body else, with the possible exception of Nate b.u.t.ton, has any notion that World Circus has any business other than making its paying customers happy, and n.o.body will care what Nate b.u.t.ton thinks. That"s it."
Arlen Zelezian stared at me with his black, dead eyes for a few moments, then slowly shook his head. He turned toward Luther, nodded in the direction of the shredded jacket back in the ring. Luther, who looked uncomfortable, hesitated a moment, but then turned around and walked to the ring. He picked up the torn fabric, slowly walked back.
The lobox quickly rose off its haunches, and its ears stiffened as it turned and looked at Luther. This was a routine, obviously, with which it was well familiar, and its hide had again begun to quiver.
"What are you doing, you sons-of-b.i.t.c.hes?" I said tightly, having to force the words out of a constricted throat as I looked back and forth between father and son. "I"ve told you what you wanted to know, and now you keep your end of the bargain. Don"t kill that man."
Arlen Zelezian nodded once again to his son.
"Kill!" Luther commanded as he threw the tattered remnants of Nate b.u.t.ton"s jacket toward the main entrance to the Big Top.
Harper screamed as the lobox, its driving paws kicking up clots of sawdust, bolted away, racing toward the far end of the tent. I watched in horror as it disappeared into the night, wondered just where Nate b.u.t.ton was at the moment as death raced toward him like an express train from h.e.l.l, ready to disembowel him and tear out his throat.
"I warned you that your next lie would cost that man his life," Arlen Zelezian said to me in a low, calm voice that had a slightly reproachful tone. "And I warned you that I didn"t bluff. Did you really expect me to believe an absurd story about you wanting to buy back this circus to give to your poor, old, sick ex-boss? Do you take me for a fool? Come, now. Tell me the truth, or the woman will be next. Who sent you to spy on me? Who else knows I"m in this country, and why?"
For a few moments I was too paralyzed with shock and horror to speak, but then the words erupted out of me in a half shout, half scream. "That"s the truth, you dumb f.u.c.k! Do you think I"d have brought a woman along with me if I"d known I was going to find a crazy killer like you! Jesus Christ, you just killed that man for nothing!"
I stood trembling with rage, fists clenched at my sides, as the bearded man hovered over me, looking down into my blood-engorged face. Finally, he shrugged. "Yes," he said evenly, "I see your point. Perhaps I was a bit too hasty. Now I think you may have been telling the truth after all."
I lunged for him, going for his kneecaps and groin. The barrel of his Magnum came up fast and hard, catching me on the side of the head. I was probably unconscious long before I hit the ground, but there was the sensation of a considerable amount of time pa.s.sing as I floated down a long, black well shaft echoing with screams, growls, and the gnashing of teeth until I finally landed in an ocean of blood that drowned out everything.
Chapter Eight.
Arlen Zelezian apparently hadn"t thought much of my story-or, more likely, he had never intended to keep his part of the bargain. Whether or not he"d believed me was impossible to tell, but it was obvious that he was willing to kill us and take his chances.
I regained consciousness only to find myself in a drugged stupor-the result, I suspected, of having animal tranquilizers injected into my right arm, which was sore. I was imprisoned in what looked to be an old-fashioned circus cage, mounted on a flatbed truck. The bars of the cage were covered on all sides by wooden shutters, but faint illumination was provided by a naked light bulb dangling on the end of a frayed cord suspended from the ceiling and presumably running on current off the truck battery. I slept most of the time, managed to occasionally awaken with just enough energy to relieve myself in a galvanized steel pail set up in a corner near a locked trapdoor. I knew that we were traveling, for through my drug-induced dreams I could feel the cage swaying and b.u.mping over potholes, could hear the m.u.f.fled roar of the truck engine. It seemed we were on our way to the next stop, wherever that might be.
I wondered what they had done to Harper.
I wondered where we were going and what was going to happen when we got there.
I wondered where Garth was.
Finally, I awoke with my head relatively clear, but with a splitting headache and a taste in my mouth like rotten blubber. My cage and my body had been hosed down, and I was lying naked on the rough, splintered wood floor in a corner of the cage, covered with a towel. On the floor over by the trapdoor, neatly folded, were my charcoal suit, blue T-shirt, shorts, socks, and shoes. I found the discovery ominous.
Clean clothes could mean that execution day had arrived.
As if in response to my foreboding, the wooden shutters at the front of the cage suddenly flew open, banging against the sides of the enclosure. Wherever we were, it wasn"t with the rest of the circus; with the truck engine turned off, it was completely still. It was night, the darkness pierced by what I presumed were car or truck headlights shining into my prison.
"Get dressed, dwarf," a voice with a heavy East European accent said.
I stepped back a pace, shielded my eyes from the headlights with my hands, and squinted. Now I could see that the voice belonged to the potbellied roustabout with the bulbous, Technicolor nose. With him was another man, gaunt and unshaven, who was dressed in ill-fitting coveralls and a stained Greek seaman"s cap. Both men were holding guns.
"Where"s the woman?"
The potbellied man raised his pistol and aimed it at my chest. "I told you to get dressed."
I got dressed. The gaunt man in the coveralls and seaman"s cap said something to the potbellied gunman in a language I thought might be Polish or Hungarian, then produced a key which he used to open the padlock on the wooden trapdoor at the side of the cage. The potbellied man motioned with his gun, indicating that I should get out. I ducked through the opening, descended to the ground by means of a short wooden ladder, then turned toward the two men. Now, without the headlights shining in my eyes, I could see that the potbellied man had a huge shiner; his right eye was swollen shut, and the whole right side of his face was a dark rainbow of black, purple, violet, and muddy yellow. He motioned with his gun toward the car off to his left, and I started walking.
"I like the looks of your eye," I mumbled to the potbellied man as I pa.s.sed him. "Too bad whoever did that to you didn"t take your head off."
"Shut up, dwarf," the man said, his thick accent making his words just barely intelligible. "That f.u.c.king big brother of yours is going to get his guts spilled just a little while after you lose yours. Next stop."
I stopped and stiffened, started to turn, then froze when I felt the bore of a pistol suddenly press hard against the base of my skull. It was the gaunt man in the coveralls; he was good with the gun-and watchful. It wasn"t going to do anybody any good for me to get my brains blown out; I knew I was going to have to be patient and pick exactly the right time to make a move on these two men. "You have Garth?"
It was the potbellied man who answered. "Whatever the big f.u.c.ker"s name is, we"ve got him."
"How do you know he"s my brother?"
"Because Mr. Zelezian told me."
"What happened to the woman who was with me?"
"Shut up and get in the f.u.c.king car, dwarf, or Janek will put a bullet in your brain."
I continued walking toward the car, at the same time looking around me. Not only had we left the circus, but we appeared to be in the middle of nowhere. As far as I could see in all directions, there was nothing but flatland, with no lights to indicate any houses or a town. Arlen Zelezian"s men had chosen a completely isolated spot to let me out of the cage, and I was pretty certain I knew why. I wondered how many miles it was to the nearest tree.
I opened the back door of the car. The interior light came on, and I could see Harper sitting in the back seat, hands folded in her lap. She was wearing the same outfit-jeans, silk blouse, and sneakers-as when I had last seen her. Her face was ashen, the hollows under her eyes dark from sleeplessness, but she looked otherwise unharmed. She saw me, and her maroon eyes went wide.
"Robby! I was so afraid you were . . ."
I got into the car, slid across the seat, and wrapped my arms around her. I held her tight, buried my face in her hair. "G.o.d, I"m glad to see you," I murmured. "Did they hurt you?"
She shook her head. "They just kept me tied and gagged in the back of somebody"s trailer. What are they going to do with us?"
"I don"t know," I lied. In fact, I was virtually certain I knew exactly what they planned to do with us.
"They have your brother."
"So I hear. Our friend with the black eye just told me."
"They trapped him. I heard it from the trailer. He confronted them. He seemed to know they had you."
"Yeah. Garth has quite a nose for evil."
"No talking!" the potbellied man snapped as he got into the back seat next to me, pressing me hard against Harper. I felt the bore of his gun dig into my ribs, on a direct line with my heart. The position didn"t leave me a lot of room for maneuvering.
The gaunt man called Janek got into the front seat, behind the wheel. He started up the car, an ancient Plymouth, put it into gear, and started forward; apparently, even the area we were in wasn"t considered sufficiently isolated. The car"s engine sputtered and coughed, and there was a strong smell of exhaust seeping up through the floorboards.
"Are you going to kill us?" Harper asked the potbellied man sitting next to me.
"Shut up, lady. We"re just going for a little moonlight drive."
"It would be a terrible waste to kill somebody like me, wouldn"t it?" Harper"s voice had suddenly grown even huskier than usual, pitched at its most alluring. As she spoke she leaned forward slightly in order to look across me at the potbellied man-in the process giving him a good glimpse of bra and b.r.e.a.s.t.s. I could see now that her blouse was unb.u.t.toned, and I felt a shudder of disgust as she reached across me with her right hand and placed her palm on the inside of the man"s thigh, just above his knee. "Can"t you think of something better to do with me?"
"Don"t bother, Harper," I said, trying to keep my disgust and disappointment out of my voice, and failing. "That"s not going to do either of us any good. He"ll just use you, and you could get hurt."
"Mind your own business, Robby," Harper said curtly. She didn"t look at me, although her face was only inches from mine as she leaned across me. "I know what I"m doing; I"m doing what I want to."
Now Harper took the man"s hand, brought it across me to her chest, pressed it down inside her bra. The potbellied man began to breathe heavily as he kneaded her breast.
I loathed the sight of what was taking place almost literally under my nose, and if it was a ploy to allow me to make a move on the man, it wasn"t working; the potbellied man had transferred the gun to his left hand and was pressing the bore up hard under my chin, right over the carotid artery, forcing my head back. I certainly hoped the weapon didn"t have a hair trigger, for I could feel his whole body beginning to tremble with pa.s.sion. Having my head accidentally blown off by a cretin whose mind was elsewhere seemed a particularly bad joke considering some of the sc.r.a.pes I"d survived, and I closed my eyes so that I couldn"t see the man savoring the same flesh I had been savoring not long before.
Harper moaned softly.
"You"re a hot little b.i.t.c.h, aren"t you?" the man said in a hoa.r.s.e, quavering voice. His breath smelled of onions, his body like an old sock.
"I want it," Harper said in her low, husky voice. "I want it now. Let"s get out."
The man in the front inclined his head back slightly and said something in Polish or Hungarian, sharply; the man with the gun to my neck replied in Polish or Hungarian, sharply. I didn"t need a translator to tell me that the potbellied man wanted Janek to stop the car. An argument ensued, during the course of which my unwelcome seatmate often chose to emphasize a point by jabbing the bore of the gun even harder against my carotid artery. My companion apparently won the debate, because Janek abruptly braked and pulled off to the side of the potholed road. Then he turned around in his seat and aimed his pistol at my head. The potbellied man took his gun away from my throat, shoved it into the waistband of his trousers. He got out, started around the car, stopped in the back to unzip his pants and relieve himself.
Harper cast a quick glance at the man in the front seat, then leaned toward me. For the first time since she"d started playing whatever game she was playing, she looked directly into my eyes.
"Remember what I said about wild things, Robby?" she asked softly.
"You"ve talked a lot about wild things," I replied tersely, averting my gaze. I was feeling surly. Incredibly, I was also feeling hurt. Of all the things I should be feeling at the moment, I thought, hurt was the most inappropriate. But there it was.
"You tame wild things, Robby. It"s your nature. But wild things can take care of themselves. From everything I"ve read and heard about you, you"re likely now to try something impossibly heroic because you think you have to try to save me from being degraded. I"ve also read that you"re deceptively quick and powerful. You might even be able to take this skinny guy with the gun on you."
I glanced back through the rear window. The potbellied man had finished relieving himself and was zipping up his pants. In response to our whispered conversation, the man in the front seat had stiffened and was concentrating even harder on keeping his pistol aimed at the exact center of my forehead; if there had ever been a chance of surprising and disarming him while his companion had his way with Harper, it was gone now.
"Thanks a lot, Harper," I said with a deep sigh, looking up at the car roof. "I can always use that kind of encouragement."
"You"re angry with me because you"re thinking that I"ve put this other j.e.r.k.-.o.f.f. on guard and made it harder for you to put some kind of move on him," Harper whispered urgently as the other gunman came around to her door. "Well, you might have succeeded in taking away his gun, and then again, you might have been killed. Do me a favor, Robby. Let this wild thing take care of herself. For a woman who"s known as many men as I have, I"d be most surprised if the fat j.e.r.k.-.o.f.f. has anything new to show me, unless his whang has polka dots. You may be surprised to see how this works out. So just sit still."
There was no way I was going to try to put a move on anybody; any plans I might have had to take advantage of the potbellied gunman"s temporary distraction were canceled now. Not only had Harper put Janek doubly on his guard, but she"d taken the heart out of me. So I sat still, staring off into s.p.a.ce, as the fat man jerked the rear door open, grabbed Harper"s arm, and started to drag her from the car.
"Easy, big guy, easy," Harper said, abruptly pulling out of the man"s grasp and stepping out of the car herself. "I want you as much as you want me, remember? So there"s no need for any rough stuff. Now, let"s go find us some nice private place. I"ve got a few tricks I want to show you."
Harper slammed the door shut, then took the man"s hand and pulled him away into the night, toward a clump of bushes about seventy-five yards away that stood out in silhouette like an atoll in a sea of darkness against the flat, empty horizon. I sank back in the seat, crossed my arms over my chest, and stared back at the man in the front seat who was aiming his gun at my head.
"f.u.c.k you," I said with a big grin, just to see if he understood any English at all.
He either didn"t understand or didn"t care. He just kept staring and aiming his gun.
In my disgust and hurt and general all-around disappointment with Harper, another thought was clearing its throat in the back of my mind, trying to get my attention. It finally did. Harper was indeed a wild thing, I thought, but unless I had completely read her wrong, her behavior in the last few minutes was totally out of character. She was s.e.xy, yes, and certainly pa.s.sionate, but I simply could not understand why she would seduce a man she had to know fully intended to see her dead, no matter what she did.
And how could I possibly be surprised by how it was going to work out?
Suddenly, there came from the darkness in the direction of the bushes a sharp, high-pitched shout that could have been a cry of pa.s.sion. The gaunt man in the front seat started, momentarily took his eyes off me to look out the window toward the bushes. We waited together and didn"t have to wait long. Half a minute later, Harper, flushed and out of breath from running, appeared at the side of the car. She began pounding her fists against Janek"s window, apparently heedless of the gun in the man"s hand.
"Come with me!" she shouted at Janek, pointing to her chest and making gasping sounds. "Quickly! There"s something wrong! I think your friend has had a heart attack! Come on!"
The gunman, obviously torn between the need to attend to whatever emergency had come up and the imperative to guard his charge, kept looking back and forth between Harper"s twisted face at the window and me, nervously licking his lips as his p.r.o.nounced Adam"s apple bounced up and down in his throat. Harper hurried things along by finally yanking his door open and grabbing his arm-an action that made me wince and duck down. But the gun didn"t go off.
"Come on! Your friend"s dying!"
Janek made his decision. He got out of the car, grabbed Harper. He put the gun to her head, then spoke to me rapidly in Polish or Hungarian, pointing first to me, then at the car.
"I think I"ve got it, Janek," I said drily, emphasizing my words with slow and elaborate sign language. "If I get out of the car, you"ll shoot the woman. Bang-bang."
The man nodded enthusiastically as I again leaned back in my seat and crossed my arms over my chest. Then I watched through the window as Harper pulled him off in the direction of the bushes.
Things did not bode any better for Janek than they had for his potbellied colleague, I thought with a grim smile. I knew that I had been a fool.
Two or three minutes; there was another sharp cry, this one louder than the first, and then some enthusiastic but abbreviated cursing in Polish or Hungarian. I waited another minute, then got out of the car and walked slowly toward the black outline of the bushes.
I found Harper behind and slightly to the right of the clump of bushes, squatting down in the gra.s.s between the corpses of the two gunmen. In the faint moonlight I could just make out the men"s faces, and it was obvious that they had died not only quickly but unpleasantly; the flesh on their necks and the lower parts of their faces was swollen and black. Harper"s head was bowed, and she seemed to be fighting for breath. In her right hand she held the small, carved wooden box I had previously seen her take from her purse. She was holding her right wrist with her left hand. I stayed a distance away.