Bestiary

“You’re not seriously working for that Arab piece of shit?” Sadowski said.

Greer leaned down and rubbed a little feeling back into his leg. He’d been standing on it too long tonight.

“Because if you are, you owe me a cut.”

“Why would that be?”

“You wouldn’t have known diddly-squat if I hadn’t told you. You wouldn’t have known he was up there, you wouldn’t have gotten past the gate, you wouldn’t have seen all those animals you told me about. The weird ones that supposedly ate a guy.”

That was something that Greer did regret. He should never have shot off his mouth that night; he’d just been so shocked by what he’d seen, and what had happened, that he’d let it spill. And that, he knew, was never a good idea.

“Yeah, well, it turns out I might have been just a little bit high that night.”

“What?” Sadowski was very suspicious.

“My meds needed some adjusting.”

“You telling me now that what you said was bullshit?”

“Wouldn’t be the first time.”

Sadowski was getting twisted into a pretzel, wondering whether to believe what he was saying now or what he had said back then. Besides being his commanding officer, Greer had always been a slippery fuck. To this day, Sadowski suspected he’d been shortchanged for his part in the mission outside Mosul.

“I don’t give a shit if it’s true or not.” Sadowski had come to a realization. “Reggie told me about your little shakedown action, and that’s what got my ass fired. In fact, Silver Bear’s starting to look back at all the other robberies that went down on houses I had the specs to. I could be in deep shit, Greer.”

Greer always noticed when Sadowski dropped the instinctive “Captain”; he’d been doing it a lot lately.

But maybe he had a point, and Greer was feeling generous tonight. After all, he still had the thousand bucks, in cash, that Jakob had given him. He reached into his pants pocket, took out his paper-clipped wad, and peeled off a couple of hundred-dollar bills. He slapped them into Sadowski’s hand, but Sadowski just kept staring at the wad that remained.

A couple of tourists, eating cotton candy, strolled past them.

“How much did he give you?” Sadowski said. “My cut is half.”

“Since when?”

“From now on.”

Greer should have seen it coming. But that didn’t make it any easier to take. Something in him just kind of turned over, and he thought, Better put a stop to this right here, or else it’ll never stop. Nor did he miss the irony of being shaken down on the very spot where he had brought al-Kalli for the same purpose. He looked out over the railing toward the dark ocean water surging below the pilings of the pier. From where they were standing, the drop had to be fifteen or twenty feet.

“That’s how it’s going to be?” Greer said, reaching down as if to rub his bad leg again.

“You got it.”

And then he grabbed hold of both of Sadowski’s pants legs and with one big heave lifted him up and over the railing. Sadowski made a desperate but futile grab for the railing as he went over, and plummeted headfirst, screaming all the way, into the water. There was a huge splash, and as the cotton candy couple turned to see what had just happened, Greer shouted, “Call the cops! A guy just jumped off the pier!”

He hobbled off, as if frantically looking for help, while the couple craned their necks over the railing. “Look,” he heard the man say, “there is somebody in the water!”

Greer’s only regret was the two hundred bucks.

CHAPTER THIRTY

Either Carter was in an unusually amorous mood — breathing hard on her face and licking her hand — or it was Champ, anxious to go out.

Beth raised her head from the pillow — it felt heavier than normal — and glanced at the clock; it was later than normal, too. Nine forty-five in the morning.

Champ was standing beside the bed, his tail wagging back and forth as regularly as a metronome.

“Okay, I’m up.” For a second, Beth wondered why Carter hadn’t let him out, but then she glanced at Carter’s side of the bed and she could tell he’d hardly been in it. After they’d come home from the party last night, she’d gone straight up to bed and Carter had stayed downstairs. “Something I’ve got to work on,” he’d said before disappearing into the garage, where boxes of their books were still stacked against the walls.

Beth sat up, and she felt like something had just shifted inside her head. At al-Kalli’s party, she’d had more to drink than she customarily did. It had become so hard to keep track. Every time she took a sip from one of her wineglasses, or cordial glasses later on in the garden, some servant had stepped up and silently refilled it. And the array of wines and spirits had been wide.

“Carter?” she asked aloud, hoping for an answer. Her voice came out as more of a croak than common, even for first thing in the morning. And there was no answer.

She slipped her feet into her flip-flops, pulled on her robe, and went to check on Joey. Who was lying on his back, eyes open, smiling up at her. Was this the best baby ever? she thought. She’d heard so many horror stories about colic, and crying, and parents who hadn’t been able to get a decent night’s sleep in months. But she’d experienced none of that. If it was this easy, she’d definitely have a couple more.

After washing up, she took Joey and Champ downstairs. The living room looked like an all-nighter had been pulled, with books and papers still scattered all over the coffee table and floor. Most of the open books and loose papers had Post-it Notes slapped haphazardly all over them. But where she might have expected to find Carter passed out on the sofa with a book spread open on his chest — it wouldn’t have been the first time, not by a long shot — she found only the lamp still on and the sofa untenanted.

In the kitchen, she plopped Joey into his high chair, opened the back door to let Champ out — he was off like a shot to warn some squirrel or chipmunk off their property — and turned on the coffeemaker. Right next to it, where they usually left each other notes, was a yellow sheet from a legal pad, on which Carter had scrawled in his barely legible hand, Gone to the office. Call you later! Love.

As the coffee started to percolate through the filter, she thought, Sunday. It’s a Sunday. And he still has to go to work?

Of course she did understand the impulse. If it weren’t for the printed-out translations from the secret letter in The Beasts of Eden, translations which she took with her pretty much everywhere she went, she might have been tooling up to the Getty herself today. A fine pair, they were.

She was nearly done feeding Joey, and just starting to wonder what she wanted to fix for herself — a soft- boiled egg, whole wheat toast? — when she heard the sound of tires crunching in the driveway. With Carter home, maybe she’d make something fancy, like French toast or blueberry pancakes. Probably wouldn’t be the worst remedy for a mild hangover, either.

But then the doorbell rang — had he lost his keys? — and she went to the front window, pulled back the curtain to peer out, and saw a mud-spattered pickup truck, with those big tires, parked in the drive.

Which could mean only one thing.

“If you’re still in bed, Bones, get up!” Del shouted from the front portico.

Beth let the curtain fall back and went to open the door.

“Oops,” Del said, seeing that she was still in her robe. “Hope I didn’t wake you.”

“Not at all. Carter’s not here, but come on in.”

Del was dressed for the great outdoors, in camo pants and hiking boots and a red bandanna tied around his prematurely white mane. It was like inviting Willie Nelson into the house.

“Hey, boy,” Del said as Champ trotted up to bark a warning. He squatted down and extended the back of one hand. “Don’t you remember me?”

Champ eyed him warily, glanced up at Beth to make sure everything was okay, then allowed Del to rub him