Bestiary

vaulted over the bars of the crib, leaping straight at his throat. The impact sent Carter crashing back toward the door, his feet sliding on the bloody floor, his hands scrabbling at the beast’s jaws. He could feel its hot breath scouring his skin and the fierce teeth biting and snapping. Carter slid down the wall, holding the beast just a fraction from his face, but he could feel the others now jumping in, one on each leg, another tearing at his shoulder…

“Carter!”

No, he didn’t want Beth anywhere near this. She needed to get away, she needed to grab Joey and get away!

“Carter!”

His shoulder was still being shaken by the coyote. He flung it out, trying to free it from the animal’s teeth.

“Carter! Watch it — you’re going to kill me!”

The shaking stopped.

There was a bright light in his eyes, and Beth was saying, “Carter — wake up. Wake up, honey.”

His legs kicked convulsively, one more time.

“You’re having a nightmare.”

He opened his eyes; he could barely swallow.

“You’re having a nightmare.”

Beth was kneeling over him on the bed, looking very, very concerned.

“Whew,” she said when she saw that he was at last coming to. “For a second there, I thought you were going to punch my lights out.”

He took a deep breath, and then another.

“You alright now?”

He nodded. The sheet had been kicked off and was trailing on the floor.

He propped himself up on his elbows and looked around the room, bewildered.

“Whoa,” he said, exhaling.

“You can say that again.”

“Worst dream I ever had.”

“You want to talk about it?”

He sat up, legs bent. “No, not yet.” He swiveled off the bed. “I just want to check on Joey.”

He padded across the hall — the carpeting was clean and dry — and into the nursery. Champ was curled up on the rug, and Joey was just as he had pictured him in the dream, lying on his tummy in blue pj’s. But he was alone, thank God, in the crib.

Beth followed him in and, seeing that Joey was awake, lifted him up and cradled him.

“See,” she said to Carter, “fit as a fiddle. And getting heavier all the time. Here,” she said, “you hold him.”

Carter took the baby in his arms.

“I had this terrible dream, of coyotes,” was all he said. Joey looked up at him with solemn eyes.

“Not surprising. They were howling in the canyon, and I have this terrible feeling they caught somebody’s cat. They started Champ barking, too.”

Carter nodded, rocking the baby. The muslin curtains were pulled back, and he could see outside into the deep dark canyon, where the dry trees and brush rustled in the night wind. And even now he could hear a coyote’s distant wail.

CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE

Greer felt like a vampire, stepping out into the sun. He had on his shades and an Angels baseball cap, pulled down low over his brow, but there still wasn’t much he could do about the hot glare coming off the beach sand.

Zeke, the bartender, was somewhere down there on one of those volleyball courts just off the Pacific Coast Highway. When Greer had gone to find him the night before, at the Blue Bayou, they’d said he was resting up for the big tournament that day. Something about a round robin, sponsored by Adidas.

Greer had been pissed; he relied on Zeke to get him anything from Percodan to cocaine, amphetamines to ludes. Zeke was a big dolt, but for some reason he got good stuff — and he was reliable.

Greer had ordered a drink and sat at the bar for a while, not even watching the strippers work the pole. All he’d really wanted was to be out among people, with lots of noise. He wanted his head to be filled with something, anything, that wasn’t what he’d seen at the al-Kalli estate. It was funny, he’d seen all kinds of shit in Iraq — guys with their heads blown off or their guts spilling out, kids with missing limbs, an old lady cut neatly in two by an RPG — but the thing that kept him up at night, that intruded on his thoughts at all the worst times, was that creature in the private zoo. It was something out of a nightmare. His own nightmare, in fact: When he let his mind go back to that night in the palace outside Mosul, and he remembered the way that Lopez, and then the prisoner Hasan, had been snatched up and dragged off into the night, all he could see now was that beast. Now he knew what had done it, now he knew how close he’d come to being just another meal himself.

When the music changed, and Prince started singing about 1999, Greer swiveled on his stool. That was Ginger’s music, and sure enough out she came, in an outfit of purple plastic and foil and strutting the way Prince used to do in his old videos. Greer knew the outfit wouldn’t stay on long.

But his eye was drawn across the runway to a table on the far side, where he saw the back of Sadowski’s head; he was sitting with that guy Burt from the shooting range, and a couple of other guys that Greer vaguely recognized. Where had he seen them before? He took a long pull on his drink, then thought, Oh yeah, the recruitment party. These were guys who’d been studying the Sons of Liberty membership materials. Greer had to hand it to the organization — they knew how to rope these assholes in.

“You want another?” the bartender who wasn’t Zeke said, and Greer just shoved his empty glass at him.

Ginger was unzipping one purple pant leg, and a second later she was twirling the pants high above her head, then throwing them out into the crowd. She looked right at Greer, but in the bright lights that covered the runway — hey, nobody wanted to miss a thing — he doubted she’d even seen him.

Still, he felt a flicker in his groin and thought about buying a lap dance later. He wondered if he could get it on credit; cash was a little tight right now… though things might be looking up very soon.

After his visit to al-Kalli’s estate, he figured he now had something on him — something concrete and real and valuable. Those animals had to be worth a ton, not only given the facility he’d built to house them, but the fact that they didn’t exist — to Greer’s almost certain knowledge — anywhere else in the world. It was as if al-Kalli had his own little Jurassic Park up there, and from the security precautions alone — not to mention the fact that he fed people to them — Greer had a strong conviction that all the blackmail material he needed was now in hand.

When he’d sat down to write the new shakedown note, he’d felt on much firmer footing than the last time. First he introduced himself as the man who’d so capably delivered the goods in Iraq, then he explained that he was “very well aware” (he’d been proud of that turn of phrase — it sounded very professional to him) of the “rare and valuable livestock” al-Kalli kept on the grounds. He knew enough not to come right out and start spelling out the terms of the deal — how much he’d need to keep quiet, how the money should be paid, where they should meet to make the exchange — but he did make clear that he was not a patient man and he expected to hear back immediately, “or word might reach the proper authorities.” He still didn’t know who those authorities would be, or how exactly he’d reach them, but he was damn sure it wouldn’t come to that.

Since he didn’t know al-Kalli’s actual address, and didn’t want to wait the week it would take those assholes at the post office to get the letter to him, he’d driven up there himself. He’d gone at night, so he’d be likely to catch that same gatekeeper — the black kid, Reggie — who remembered him from the first excursion.

“Hey, Reggie,” he’d said, pulling up in front of the locked gates. “Got something here for Mr. al-Kalli.”

“You off duty?” the kid had said, noting that Greer wasn’t in his Silver Bear uniform or the patrol car.