MUSIC BLARED FROM the food prep area downstairs at Friday’s pool. It was five o’clock in the morning and Gabriel was taking his turn doing fish house. When he was done, he hoisted a bucket from the Gorilla Rack and trudged up to the pool top.
The first sign of trouble was that Friday wasn’t in his customary place at the slide-out area, mouth open and ready for breakfast—normally his favorite meal since it meant he had both food and company again after a long night alone. Instead, the killer whale huddled in a far corner of the pool, his nose just inches from a blind concrete wall. His blue ball was beside him and he had gathered his other toys nearby.
When he exhaled, his breath was pink.
Gabriel walked to him and said softly, “Hey, buddy. What’s the deal here?”
Friday didn’t respond, just breathed in quick, shallow breaths. Gabriel’s heart sank. When he signaled the whale to open his mouth, Gabriel was shocked to see his palate and gums peppered with small hemorrhages. When Gabriel scratched the whale’s head, the skin tore and wept blood. Friday pressed farther into the corner, his blue ball bobbing gently by his head.
Something was very, very wrong.
Gabriel went downstairs and watched the killer whale from underwater, but after fifteen minutes Friday hadn’t moved, so he pulled on his wet suit, grabbed the rest of his scuba gear, and was in the pool within five minutes, ignoring his own rule that no one should ever get in the pool alone. Neva wouldn’t arrive for another hour, but he suspected they didn’t have any time to lose. Even up close, Gabriel couldn’t find any sign of injury. Then, on a terrible hunch, he put his hand inside the killer whale’s genital slit, opened it several inches—and released a dense cloud of blood.
He surfaced, grabbed his first-aid pack, and from underwater took a blood sample from the underside of Friday’s flukes. Normally when he drew blood he was a stickler for alcohol swabs and antibacterial protocols, but this wasn’t anything normal. He drew several vials, and when he withdrew the hypodermic needle, a thin stream of blood continued to wind through the water.
Downstairs, he labeled the vials and called Truman at home. “We have a problem,” he said, quickly describing what he’d observed. “I don’t have any idea what we’re dealing with, so I need Neva to run some blood samples to the hospital and convince their lab to treat it as a rush.”
He heard Truman relaying the information to Neva in the background; when he got back on the line he said, “She’s leaving now—she says to meet her at the loading dock. She’ll call ahead to the lab on her way. Is there anything I can do?”
“Just for the hell of it, would you check with your security guys and see if they’ve seen anything unusual during their rounds over here in the last week or two?”
“What are you thinking?”
“I just want to cover all our bases. Look, I need to get back upstairs. I’ll update you when either I know what we’re dealing with or the whale dies, whichever comes first.” Gabriel hung up, but instead of going upstairs, he lifted the receiver again and dialed Monty Jergensen’s phone number. “Hey, doc,” he said when the vet picked up the line, “We’ve got a sick whale up here.” He described Friday’s symptoms, including their rapid onset. “Does that sound like anything you’ve come across?”
“Well, whatever it is, it’s hemorrhagic.”
“Yep.”
“How’s his breathing?”
“Bad. Shallow.”
“And you haven’t changed the fish you’re feeding him—gotten a new delivery recently or anything like that?”
“No—same fish, same vendor.”
“And it came on pretty quickly?”
“He seemed fine yesterday.”
Marty paused, then said, “How’s security up there—pretty good?”
“I wouldn’t go that far. It’s probably adequate, but it’s a small zoo with a small staff.”
“So if someone wanted to, they could get their hands on the whale.”
“Yes. I had the same thought.”
“I’ve never seen this in marine mammals, but in my old small-animal practice I’d see an animal every once in a while that had ingested brodifacoum.”
“Bro—what?”
“Rat poison.”
“You’re kidding.”
“I wish I were. Someone would put out pellets or bait and their dog or cat would eat it and a few days would go by and they’d begin to bleed out. It doesn’t show up right away—it takes up to two weeks to present symptoms, and there’s a lot of internal bleeding before it reaches the stage you’re describing. The endgame is massive bleeding into the chest—constricts the lungs—and they die. When you take the blood samples in, tell them to look at his vitamin K levels, and for the presence of prothrombin, proconvertin, and Stuart factor. If something’s blocking his ability to produce vitamin K, his capillaries and blood vessels are all leaking.”
“And if you’re right?”
“Start him on vitamin K one right away—oral. If we’ve gotten to him in time, he may pull through. My guess is today’s the tipping point. He’s either going to turn the corner or he’s going to die. We’ll know one way or the other within the next twenty-four hours.”
“Son of a bitch,” said Gabriel.
“Look, I’m e-mailing you a script right now for the vitamin K, phytonadione—there, you should have it. Hopefully your local hospital has a lot on hand. E-mail me the lab results as soon as you get them, and make sure you tell Margie to find me.”
“Okay, doc, thanks.”
As soon as Neva pushed open the office door, Gabriel handed her the prescription and told her to turn around and fly.
AFTER SPEAKING WITH Gabriel, Truman called first Ivy and then Sam, briefly describing the situation and asking them to come to the zoo. By the time Neva came back with the medication and Gabriel gave Friday his first dose of phytonadione, the others had assembled, grim-faced, in the killer whale office. Across the pool Friday huddled, motionless, in his far corner with his blue ball beside him. His urine was red; his stool was red; his breath was pink. Even Gabriel’s usual calm was shaken.
“For god’s sake, close the gallery,” Gabriel said. The zoo was set to open in fifteen minutes.
“Already done,” said Truman, knowing it would mean yet another media onslaught.
“The security logs don’t show anything at all?” Gabriel asked. “It could have been as long ago as two weeks.”
“Nothing. Toby and Janice have been swing shift and graveyard the last couple of weeks, and I’ve already talked to them. There was nothing.”
“Crap,” Neva muttered.
“Rat poison, though?” said Ivy. “Doesn’t that sound just a little far-fetched? Couldn’t it be some obscure Colombian virus—whale ebola or something?”
Gabriel said, “Friday has essentially been in quarantine since he got here. Even if he brought something up here with him, it’s way too late to develop symptoms. If we were using real seawater, I guess it would be possible for something to come in despite the filtration, but we’re not.”
“Could the Instant Ocean have been tampered with?” Neva asked. “Did you ask life support?”
“I will,” said Gabriel. “But if I wanted to poison him, feeding him something would be a whole lot simpler and quicker than messing with the water quality.”
They subsided.
“Crap,” Neva said quietly.
“I don’t know what kind of person would go after an animal like that,” Sam said. “Must be some kind of monster.”
“Where’s Libertine?” asked Neva. “She’s not here.”
Truman ran his hand over his face. “I didn’t call her.”
“No!” said Ivy. “Absolutely not.”
“I’m sorry, but I think we need to consider it,” said Neva. “Given her ties to the animal rights community. Even if she just enabled someone else—it wouldn’t even have to have been deliberate. Maybe she described the layout of the pool and access from the outside. Or left a key out. Or talked about his diet. It might have been enough for them to make a plan.”
“She’d never do any of those things,” Ivy said hotly. “Never. She loves that animal as much as any of us, if not more. For god’s sake, you don’t try and kill something you love.”
“The animal rights people would tell you that’s exactly what you would do, if the animal’s captive,” said Neva.
“She’s right,” said Gabriel.
“All right, look,” said Truman. “Let’s not get ahead of ourselves here. I gather this is her regular day off, right? I’d appreciate it if none of you talk with her about this just yet, at least not until we know whether he was poisoned in the first place.”
“The lab said they’d have results for us by noon,” said Neva.
“All right,” said Gabriel. “So in the meantime we’ll take care of him like always. Though—and I can’t believe I’m going to say this—prayer wouldn’t be a bad idea, if anyone feels so inclined. If the blood work confirms he was poisoned, he’s been bleeding internally for at least a day and probably two. If he’s still alive by tonight, he’s got a fighting chance.”
“Crap,” said Neva. “So do we go into the pool with him?”
“Absolutely not,” said Gabriel. “He’s got his blue ball, and one of us will be sitting with him all the time, but in case he starts acting erratically, no one gets in the water—no one. I also want someone observing from the gallery.”
“Are you going to let the media know what’s going on?” Neva asked.
Truman sighed. “In light of our recent fiasco, yes. Starting, god help us, with Martin Choi. Happily, the News-Tribune’s not due out for another three days, so at least by then we’ll know the cause and the outcome. Anyway, let me worry about all that. You’ve got your hands full. If media calls start coming in here, just refer them all to me. Ivy, I could use your help. Would you mind working the phones with me?”
“By all means, put me to work. I don’t think I can stand just waiting.”
“Crap,” said Neva. “Crap crap crap!”
“Look, this is going to be a very tough day,” Truman said. “So let’s take it one step at a time, all right? Gabriel, I’d appreciate an update every hour—sooner if anything changes. And let me know as soon as the lab work comes back. Good luck.”
The meeting broke up in silence. What was there to say that could possibly make a difference?
ACROSS TOWN LIBERTINE was doing laundry when she had a sudden premonition that something was terribly wrong. She dropped her laundry basket and ran. At the pool she flew up the stairs two at a time. “Something’s happened,” she cried to Gabriel, who was sitting in one of the lawn chairs on the side of the pool beside the killer whale.
“How do you know?” he said guardedly.
“I don’t know, I just do,” she said. “Oh my god, he’s so sick. How could he have gotten this sick?”
“What do you know?” he’d gotten out of his chair and moved toward Libertine as though he meant to prevent her from reaching Friday.
“I don’t know anything,” she said, taking a step back. “I just felt him. I think he might be dying.”
“We think he was poisoned,” Gabriel said bluntly.
The radio at his hip crackled. “Neva to Gabriel.”
“Go for Gabriel. Switch to channel two.” Libertine knew that channel two was secure and couldn’t be picked up by any but specifically designated radios. She watched, feeling increasingly uneasy, as Gabriel switched channels and said again, “Go for Gabriel.”
“He just had a bowel movement. It was mostly blood. A lot of blood.”
“Okay.”
“He’s also posturing.”
“How?”
“He’s sort of doubling up, like he has stomach cramps.”
“Okay,” Gabriel said grimly. “You’re keeping a log, right?”
“Yes.”
Sam came up to the pool top and caught Gabriel’s eye, then indicated Libertine by the slightest inclination of his head. “You want us to go into town?” he suggested. “We could pick up a donut or two. Sometimes sugar’s just the ticket at a time like this.”
“No,” Gabriel said. “Thank you, but she’s all right.”
“You sure?”
“I’m sure,” said Gabriel. “Thank you.”
“I’ll be back downstairs, then.” Sam looked again at Libertine before saying to Gabriel, “You just let me know if you need anything.”
Libertine got it. “You can’t possibly think it was me!” she cried to Gabriel in disbelief. “How could it be me? I work with him every day like you do. I love him as much as you do.”
“We’re just trying to be prudent,” said Gabriel quietly. “Until we know more. We don’t even know yet what’s wrong with him.”
Libertine marshaled all her composure and said very quietly, “May I stay?”
“I think it would be best for you and for us if you didn’t, at least not for now. We should hear from the lab by noon, and then we’ll know what we’re dealing with.”
Libertine stared at him for a long beat, and then, too devastated to speak, she turned and walked away.
IT WAS QUIET at the Oat Maiden. The only table that was occupied when Libertine got there was the celestial table, where a couple of white-haired women were laughing over a packet of snapshots. Johnson Johnson was in the run-up to lunch: Libertine could smell cookies and rising pizza dough. She went into the kitchen, where he had his back to the swinging double doors, and put a hand gently on his shoulder so she wouldn’t scare him, but he was startled anyway. She’d been trying to get him to put a mirror on that wall, so he could see who was coming, but so far he hadn’t done it.
“Put me to work,” she said simply. “There are a couple of tables I can bus and wipe down. After that, I’ll ask you for something else to do, so please find it.”
“ ’Kay,” he said, and then looked at her for the first time. “You look sad.”
She thought she probably looked a whole lot worse than that, but she just said, “I’m okay. I wasn’t, a little while ago, but now I am.”
Johnson Johnson was evidently satisfied with that. Grateful beyond words, Libertine grabbed a spray bottle of diluted bleach and a wet rag and went out into the café, wiping down all the tabletops. She set out fresh flatware and napkins, filled the salt and pepper shakers, straightened up the shaker jars of oregano and Parmesan, and aligned the sugar and artificial sweetener packets in their baskets. Then she went back to the kitchen and Johnson Johnson said without preamble, “Let’s make dough.” She couldn’t have asked for a more cathartic task. She’d never made it from scratch before so she had to focus, following him step by step, measuring, mixing, punching, and kneading until they’d made enough dough for seventy-five pizzas and her heart rate had finally returned to normal.
And through it all, Friday, gone for so long, now keened in her head. She implored him, like a mantra: hang on, hang on, oh, please, just hang on.
IT WAS AN in-service afternoon at school, so Reginald walked home at noon in the rain. He was a block from the house when a car pulled up beside him, soaking his pants to the knee.
“S’up?” called Martin Choi.
Reginald slapped at his pants. “What’s wrong with you, man? Now I’m going to catch pneumonia and it’ll be your fault.”
“Sorry, dude. Got any interesting stories for me?”
“No. And even if I did, I wouldn’t tell you. You ratted me out the last time.”
Reginald kept walking and Martin crept along beside him in his car. “No way.”
“Well, someone did.”
“Hey, if someone tells me something, I’ll take their name with me to the grave. That’s what journalists do.”
“Yeah, well, I got nothing to say to you anyways.”
“Then let me tell you something. The whale’s sick. Like, really sick. Really really sick.”
“He is?” Reginald said with surprise.
“Yep. They closed the gallery again, and this time they admitted there’s something wrong, they just won’t say what. I’ve left, like, a dozen messages, but so far, nothing. Did Sam mention anything when he went into work this morning, maybe?”
“No, man, he’s not gonna tell me secret stuff. He’s the one who busted me last time.”
“Okay. But hey, if you find out anything, you let me know, huh?”
“Yeah, right,” said Reginald, thinking he wouldn’t call Martin Choi if he saw someone grow wings and fly.
Martin’s cell phone went off on the passenger seat. “Okay, guy, gotta take this call. See you.”
“Hey!” Reginald called after him.
The reporter leaned out the car window. “Yeah?”
“What’s my name?”
“Winston. You think I’d forget a funny name like that?”
“Just checking,” said Reginald.
THE LAB RESULTS came in at eleven twenty-four: sometime in the last ten days or so, someone had given Friday rat poison. Most likely, the delivery system had been fish into which poison had been stuffed or injected. Friday’s best hope was that the massive doses of vitamin K would restore the clotting agents destroyed by the poison, stopping the hemorrhaging. If that didn’t work, the bleeding into his chest would suffocate him. Unfortunately the zoo only kept its security videotapes for forty-eight to seventy-two hours, and while Truman asked his team to go over what they had with a fine-tooth comb, the chances were excellent that they’d never find out who had done it.
IN A VACANT cubicle in Havenside’s administrative offices, Ivy and Truman spent the afternoon sitting back-to-back like cornered gunfighters, except each wielded a telephone. As soon as the lab results came in, they had split up a master media list and e-mailed a statement confirming that Friday had been poisoned, was in critical condition, and would be off-exhibit until further notice. Once the story was on the wire services, calls streamed in from everywhere.
Both Ivy and Truman were blunt in reporting the likelihood that Friday would die. From his blood work, Monty Jergensen had told Gabriel that Friday should already be dead; how he was continuing to hang on was anybody’s guess, but it wasn’t likely to last. As he continued to bleed out, his blood volume was dropping below critical levels, and there was no practical way to transfuse him, even if they’d had the blood on hand, which they didn’t.
Truman insisted on giving the media even the grimmest details of Friday’s condition; against Gabriel’s advice, he even invited the AP stringer and his cameraman to come to the pool and take two minutes of starkly graphic footage with the understanding that they would distribute it as B-roll to any television station requesting it. “I want whoever did this to know just what a poisoned animal looks like when it’s dying,” he’d said grimly. “We owe Friday that much.” No, no one had stepped forward to claim credit for the crime, and no, neither Truman nor Ivy would speculate. They only hoped the culprit was watching the news.
More than one reporter was in tears by the time he hung up. In all his years Truman had never spoken with the force he’d discovered now, fueled by rage and helplessness.
THOUGH THE KILLER whale viewing gallery was closed, the zoo itself was not. As word spread, a steady stream of people, hundreds and then thousands of them, came to the gallery doors to leave roses, wreaths, stuffed killer whales, balloons, photographs, and homemade cards. In the late afternoon Brenda interrupted Truman’s telephone marathon, forcibly pulling him from his chair and to his office window. As they looked across the zoo grounds, he saw nearly seven thousand people keeping silent vigil outside the gallery. “I overheard someone say a Native American shaman is here,” said Brenda. “Can you believe all those people?”
“Yes,” Truman said simply. “I can.”
Once every hour he continued to get a call from either Gabriel or Neva, and every hour it was the same: not yet.
GABRIEL HAD CARED for thousands of dying animals. It went with the business. He’d learned a long time ago to guard his emotions, to appreciate the animals he worked with while keeping them at a professional distance. And yet here he was, keeping watch over a dying animal that, more than any other he’d rehabilitated, deserved better. He’d survived some of the worst living conditions Gabriel had ever seen; he’d made it through a long transport and adapted to a completely new way of life with enthusiasm, courage, and a sense of humor. He’d grown, healed, and hurt no one, and now he would die at the hands of the very people who claimed to love him most. Better dead than captive.
So he sat beside Friday all day, giving him massive doses of vitamin K every two hours, monitoring the rapid, shallow breathing, and sluicing him with water so his skin didn’t dry out and crack.
By evening, against all odds, the killer whale was still alive.
Gabriel tried to send everyone home for some rest, but they insisted on staying, and he conceded. This animal had touched every one of them. So they stayed on, even Corinna, Reginald, and Winslow stayed, bound together by the determination that if Friday died, at least he wouldn’t die alone.
At first light Gabriel startled awake. He hadn’t even realized he’d dozed off, but the sun was fully up—and Friday was gone. He immediately and heavyheartedly assumed the worst: that Friday had died and his body had been dragged into the medical pool to await necropsy.
And then he heard the familiar poooooo-siiiiip of a killer whale breathing.
Seeing him awake, Neva came around the pool, smiling. “He swam into the med pool about ten minutes ago, and he brought his ball with him.”
Gabriel chafed his face hard to wake up. “Have you tried to feed him anything?”
“I gave him half a bucket. I didn’t want to give him any more without checking with you. He was hungry, though.”
“Okay, bring up a bucket of fish, but we’re also going to have to intubate him. He’s got to be mondo dehydrated, plus we want to flush whatever’s left of that crap out of his system.”
While Neva was downstairs rounding up five gallons of fresh water, a funnel, flexible tubing, and lubricant, Gabriel went to the med pool and squatted beside Friday. “Hey, kiddo,” he said softly. “Some day we had yesterday, huh? Can you open?” He gave the whale the signal and Friday opened wide. Gabriel winced: the inside of his mouth was florid with petechial hemorrhages.
Neva trotted over with the bucket of fish and other supplies, and Sam hauled up the freshwater, warmed to body temperature. Gabriel fed about four feet of tubing down the killer whale’s throat and into his stomach. Friday jerked once as the tube went down, but that was all. Once it was in place Gabriel told Neva to insert the funnel into the other end and begin pouring in the water. When they were finished, Friday swallowed his next vitamin K dose and ate three fish, but couldn’t be persuaded to eat more.
“It’s okay,” Gabriel told him, giving the whale’s head the barest caress. “It’s a start.”
LIBERTINE HAD GOTTEN exactly two hours and fourteen minutes of sleep since yesterday morning. She hadn’t communicated with anyone at the zoo since leaving it, not even Ivy. For now, it was just as well. She knew Friday was still alive, and that was all that mattered. By midafternoon she dug a scrap of paper and her cell phone from the bottom of her purse and punched in the numbers.
Trina Beemer answered her call on the first ring, as though on high alert. When Libertine identified herself, the activist said, “Libby! God, I was hoping you’d call. Is he gone?”
“Who?”
“Don’t be coy—Friday. Has he died yet?”
“No. Not yet.”
“Well, it can’t be long now,” Trina said. “The important thing is, he’s going to be free. No more walls, no more jailers. What are they saying over there? I bet it’s a real cluster-fuck.”
“They’re frantic, of course,” Libertine said. “I’m trying to keep pretty much to myself, though. I figure I can be more help that way.”
“Help?” said Trina.
“You know. Help,” Libertine said. “Yay, team.”
She could hear Trina hesitate for a minute before she said, “Really? Because I was pretty sure you weren’t on our side anymore.”
“Oh, no,” said Libertine quickly. “I’m definitely on your side. I just didn’t want them to know.”
“Well, if you’re serious, here’s the thing that would help us the most. Let me know when he’s dead. A lot of people are waiting to hear, plus that way we can release a statement to the media. Anonymously, of course.”
“So it was FAS?”
“Did I say that?” Trina said. “I don’t think I said that.”
“There aren’t that many people courageous enough to have done what you did. I assume you know that.”
“I do. Listen, honey, I’ve got a call coming in, so I have to go. But you’ll let me know when he’s gone, right?”
“Absolutely,” said Libertine. “Wait for my call.” As soon as she hung up she called ahead, jumped in her car, and headed to the zoo.
TRUMAN AND IVY were waiting when Libertine arrived. Truman had briefed Ivy on what Libertine had shared with him when she called: that she had news about who’d poisoned Friday. When she knocked on the door to his office he thought she looked pale and tense, but then it occurred to him that he and Ivy probably looked just as bad. At his signal, Brenda closed the door behind her.
Libertine sat in the visitors’ chair, across the desk from Truman. Next to her, Ivy sat stiffly upright; in her lap Julio Iglesias wrested himself free and climbed over the chair arms into Libertine’s lap. She embraced him. “They always know.” she said.
“Know what?” said Truman.
“When we’re stressed out.”
“Well, we certainly are that.” He took in the dark circles under her eyes and said, “Are you okay?”
“Yes. Not really.” Libertine cleared her throat and said formally, “Thank you for seeing me.”
“Oh, for god’s sake,” said Ivy. “I disagreed with Truman—you should never have been exiled. But it’s his zoo.”
“No,” Libertine said quickly. “From your perspective, I think it was the right thing to do. You didn’t know what you were dealing with. Now we do. I just got off the phone with Trina Beemer—”
“Who?” Ivy said.
“Trina Beemer.”
“What a terrible name.”
“She’s a terrible person.”
Truman leaned across his desk toward Libertine. “Talk to us.”
“It was definitely Friends of Animals of the Sea who poisoned him,” she said. “Actually, I’m pretty sure it was Trina herself.”
“But why?” Ivy asked.
“Better dead than in captivity,” said Libertine.
“That’s ridiculous,” Ivy blustered. “No one would do something that horrible.”
“Oh, yes, they would,” said Libertine grimly. “They definitely would. They’re just waiting for him to die so they can declare victory.”
Truman said to Libertine, “The question is, can you prove it?”
“No.”
“What if you meet her and, you know, wear a wire,” Ivy proposed.
“I don’t think people really do that kind of thing,” said Truman.
“Sure they do,” said Ivy.
“Not people in Bladenham,” Truman amended.
“Well, I’d love to figure out how to set her up,” said Libertine. “She’s not just misguided and horrible, she’s smug.”
Truman mulled this over for a minute. “We’d need to take the right steps to make sure we get legally admissible evidence. It’s not quite as simple as it looks on TV.”
“You’re the lawyer,” said Ivy, who Truman could see was in high dudgeon. “Let’s roll! Hop to it! These people deserve to burn.”
“I’ll tell you what,” Truman told her. “I’ll look into it if you’ll put together an e-mail update saying Friday may be over the worst, but he still has a long road ahead of him. Don’t send it yet, just write it.” To Libertine he said, “You do know he’s turned the corner, right?”
“Yes—I sensed that.”
“We’ve been getting literally thousands of calls and e-mails,” Truman told her. “Jergensen told me he thinks Friday may be over the worst of it, but it’ll be a few days before he’s completely out of the woods.” Turning to Ivy, he said, “So you’ll draft the e-mail. Deal?”
“Deal.”
Then he turned to Libertine. “Someone needs to go out and let people know Friday’s still alive. I’d like you to handle that. Can you?”
“Yes,” she said.
From his window he watched her determined little figure cross the zoo grounds and approach the nearly ten thousand people now keeping vigil outside the gallery. As though she’d been born to it, she climbed onto one of the decorative planters so she could be seen, raised a finger—Attention!—and spoke.
Even in his office he could hear the crowd cheer.
HALF AN HOUR later Matthew and Truman were sitting at the elder Levy’s dining room table, where Matthew had been answering his e-mail on a laptop when Truman arrived. “Look,” Matthew said once Truman had brought him up to speed. “I know this has been quite an ordeal for all of you, never mind for the whale. But you know your aunt. She’s a generous, passionate woman, but she’s always had a tendency to go off the deep end.”
Truman smiled. “And this would be one of those times. But is there any other way—and by other, I mean legal—to gather enough information to implicate these people?”
Ruminatively, Matthew chewed the stem of his unlit pipe. Truman was used to these lengthy pauses; as a boy, he’d been astounded when, at friends’ houses, conversations unfolded at what seemed like warp speed. Finally Matthew said, “It’s all a matter of momentum. You don’t need to wire anybody—all you need is to dangle a carrot tasty enough to make them bite, and make sure there are witnesses present when they do.”
“All right,” said Truman carefully. “Do you have some ideas about where I might find such a carrot?”
“Here’s a hint: what’s black, white, and loved all over?”
“Friday?”
“Absolutely. Invite these people to come see him. And bring the media along.”
“By which you mean Martin Choi.”
Matthew nodded. “By which I mean Martin Choi. Though if you have anyone else, you can certainly use him or her.”
“There can’t possibly be two reporters like Martin.”
“I wouldn’t think so,” said Matthew. “But I always try to keep an open mind.”
“I could ask Libertine to invite them to the pool, I suppose,” Truman said, thinking out loud. “That wouldn’t arouse their suspicions.”
“You might also show them what’s happened—or failed to happen—to the poor creature.”
“He’s going to live.”
“Exactly. Bad news, indeed.” Matthew smiled a little impish smile.
Each was quiet for several minutes, thinking, until Truman said, “This has great possibilities.”
“Of course it does. It’s a shame you won’t be doing any lawyering. You’re a quick study.”
“On my best day, I couldn’t hold a candle to you,” Truman said.
“Yes,” Matthew agreed, “but I’ve had the benefit of a good many more years on the job.”
Truman stood up and pressed Matthew’s shoulder fondly. “I’m going to go to the Oat Maiden for a piece of pizza. I scheme better on a full stomach. Care to come along?”
“Thank you, but in my experience, scheming is an activity best done in solitude. Of course the value of a good cookie isn’t to be sniffed at, either.”
THREE O’CLOCK IN the afternoon was always a quiet time at the Oat Maiden. Truman chose the table that was his personal favorite, Johnson Johnson’s creation in honor of Hannah and Max Biedelman. High jungle grass ringed the outside of the tabletop, with Hannah walking through it, high on her feet, trunk extended in front of her, proudly reaching toward whatever lay in her future. Striding ahead of her was Max Biedelman in safari gear. Truman felt the table captured all that was good and admirable about the zoo’s eccentric founder and the animal she’d loved most.
Lost in thought, he was startled to find Libertine bringing him a menu. “Do you work here, too?” he asked.
She blushed. “I’ve been helping out when it gets busy, so. . . .” They both looked at the one other table that was occupied, hardly the sign of a busy café. Truman saw her blush deepen. “It helps him sometimes to have me around.”
“Well, I’m glad you’re here,” Truman said. “I want to run something by you.”
“I’d be honored. Let me just check on this other table, and then I’ll be right back.”
Truman watched her cross the restaurant. He wasn’t proud of the way he’d forced her to leave the zoo yesterday. She’d been treated as guilty until proven innocent, and he, of all people, should have upheld a higher standard. Plus he’d known she wasn’t capable of such a heinous act. They all knew it, even Neva, once Friday had rallied and she’d had time to calm down.
When Libertine came back, she brought along two slices of pizza, two cookies, and a couple of cups of coffee, which she divided between them before sitting down.
“Carbs, caffeine, and sugar—life’s essential stimulants,” Truman said, smiling.
“I don’t think any of us are sleeping well right now. I thought they might help.”
“Absolutely,” said Truman, taking a bite of pizza. He couldn’t remember when he’d eaten last—yesterday, he thought, before he got the call about Friday. “Okay,” he said with his mouth full, and then, remembering his manners, held up a finger and waited to say more until he’d chewed and swallowed. “Here’s what I’m thinking.” He laid out his plan. “And I’d like to do it tomorrow morning. Want to help?”
Libertine gave a small, sad smile. “Of course.”
“Good,” said Truman. “When you’ve lined it up, please let me know, and Gabriel, too. I’m going to alert the police chief, so we can have an officer on standby just in case.”
“Have you talked this over with him?”
“Not yet—you’re the key player.”
Libertine nodded and pressed up a few cookie crumbs from the tabletop with a finger. “May I tell you something?”
“Absolutely.”
“Friday trusts you—all of you. I think it’s why he hasn’t needed me.”
“But you knew he was sick—that came to you.”
She waved that away. “It was like overhearing a scream. It wasn’t meant for me—I just happened to intercept it.”
“Which makes all this just that much worse,” said Truman. “He deserves much better than he’s gotten. We’ll try everything we can to compensate for what we can’t give him.”
“I’m sure he knows that.”
Truman nodded. “Then let’s make this right. If you’d make the call and then let me know what time they’ll arrive, we’ll get the rest worked out. And thank you again for this.”
“Believe me,” Libertine said firmly, “it’s my pleasure.”
FOR AS LONG as she could remember, Libertine had always thought one of her faults was her compulsive honesty. Hardly anyone else was honest, she’d noticed. She had asked her mother about this and her mother had said, “Oh, grow up. Of course no one’s completely truthful. Can you imagine telling Mrs. Brubaker that her mole repulses everyone who sees her?” Mrs. Brubaker, Libertine’s babysitter, had a mole on her left cheekbone the size of a pea. It was all Libertine—and, she assumed, nearly everyone else—could think about when they looked at her.
“But maybe if we did tell her, she’d have it taken off,” Libertine had argued.
“No, she’d just rethink every single face-to-face encounter she’d ever had as far back as she could remember.”
“So you don’t really mean it when you say not to lie?”
Her mother had snapped at her, “For god’s sake, don’t be so literal. Of course I meant it—except for the little lies that spare people’s feelings. Little lies make the world go round. There’s a difference between lies and lies.” But Libertine had never been able to see the difference. Until now. Now, driving away from the Oat Maiden to make her call, she would have to give the performance of a lifetime, based on the lie that she agreed philosophically with Trina Beemer and her followers that animals were better dead than captive. And yet her conscience would be crystal clear. As soon as she was inside, she rang a small bell she’d begun to use to tell Chocolate and Chip that she was home, and took a strengthening deep breath or two. Then she pulled her phone from her pocket and punched in Trina Beemer’s number.
Chip popped out of the cat-tube, elegant as ever in his neat black morning coat. He wound around her legs as she paced, waiting for her to give him her lap. She sat and he jumped up, allowing her to run her fingers absently through his silky fur. Libertine gave a silent prayer that her blood pressure would go down because of his presence. Her heart was pounding so hard she was light-headed.
When she got Trina on the line she said, “I guess you know that it didn’t work—he’s actually getting better. They think he wasn’t given enough—either that, or he could have vomited. Anyway, he’s definitely not going to die.”
“I know,” said Trina, whose voice sounded nasal, as though she’d been crying. “We heard. That poor, poor animal.”
“But here’s the thing.” Libertine lowered her voice to what she hoped was a conspiratorial level. “I’ve asked if I can bring you in for a VIP tour.”
“And?”
“They said yes!”
“Really?” Trina said excitedly. “My god, how stupid can they be? Still, that’s great, Libby. Absolutely great. So when can we do this—how soon?”
“I think the sooner, the better, don’t you? He’s still in relatively bad shape, so it won’t, ah, take as much.”
They made the necessary arrangements, and as soon as they disconnected, Libertine called Truman. “Two o’clock this afternoon. Do you want me to call Martin or will you?”
“Me,” said Truman. “Oh, let it be me.”
MARTIN CHOI WAS beside himself with excitement. This could very easily be the story of a lifetime: militant animal rights wingding meets captive-care pioneer, with animal psychic on hand.
The wingding arrived first. She was a big, big woman with a voice that was weirdly flat while at the same time being loud enough to penetrate a concrete bunker. Her teeth were gray—he was not making this up—from, what, a vitamin deficiency when she was a kid? Scarlet fever? Poor dental hygiene? She wore a flowing skirt and rubber boots, and carried an enormous purse. He couldn’t imagine what was in there—a phone book? Several extra meals? A seal pup? Not that it mattered. He subscribed to the to-each-his-own approach to life.
Libertine was the next one upstairs, hailing the wingding. They embraced—Jesus, it was like watching a walrus hug a penguin—and together they approached the pool. Neither one of them acknowledged him. He’d noticed a long time ago that if you were behind a camera, people seemed to think you were on some other astral plane.
The wingding headed for the wet walk, toting her enormous bag.
“You know, you can leave that on the deck if you want,” Libertine told her.
“What’s the matter with you? Isn’t this what we came for?” Martin overheard her hiss to Libertine without even looking back. For a big woman, the wingding moved fast.
Gabriel Jump arrived on the pool top silently and moving fast, wet-suited and handsome in an older-guy kind of way. He reached the wingding just as she stepped into the wet walk near Friday, who was awaiting them, his chin on the edge of the pool. When he opened wide, Martin almost dropped his camera. Jesus—the whole inside of his mouth, which had always been a nice light pink like the belly of a puppy, was now dotted with thousands and thousands of little, dark red dots.
Then he caught Libertine shooting Gabriel a look. His acute reporter instincts homed in: something was about to go down. Martin had kicked on his auto-winder and started shooting, watching it all through his lens, when he saw the wingding pull from her tote a string bag holding four or five fish. Fish. What the hell?
From then on, at least from what he remembered later, things happened at lightning speed. The wingding leaned in to feed Friday the first fish; Gabriel vaulted forward to stop her, inadvertently throwing an elbow directly into Libertine’s diaphragm; Libertine flew into the icy pool with the wind knocked out of her; Gabriel took the wingding down in the wet walk, wrestling away the fish and then the tote; and Martin snapped photo after photo after photo: What a story! This was the stuff Pulitzers were made of. Hello, HuffPost; hello national byline.
And then, as abruptly as it began, the whole mess was over. The wingding was sitting in the wet walk on her fat ass weeping; Gabriel was throwing her confiscated fish into a cooler and locking it with a padlock; Friday was nowhere to be seen. Martin lowered his camera, scanning the pool top. Where was Libertine? He’d seen her fall into the water, but come to think of it, he hadn’t seen her since. Could she still be in the pool? Holy crap! There wasn’t so much as a ripple on the surface, so if she’d gone down, it had been a while ago, maybe a minute, minute and a half. Enough time to drown.
But before he could even yell, he heard a chuff, loud and deep, as Friday surfaced. Libertine was sprawled across his back and one outstretched pectoral flipper like wet laundry. The whale swam to the side of the pool and gently tipped until she’d rolled onto the concrete. She retched, vomited water, coughed explosively. Gabriel ran over. Friday stayed nearby, his mouth closed, eyes inscrutable.
And Martin had gotten it all—the weeping wingding, the gasping psychic, the weird stuff with the fish. What was the deal with those fish?
“They were poisoned,” Gabriel was saying over his shoulder, though Martin hadn’t been aware of speaking out loud. “Did you get pictures of all of it? Because you’ll be a key witness, and the photos will be evidence.” In the distance he could hear police sirens, growing closer. Silently he uttered his thanks to God for dropping this überopportunity upon him.
“HOW DO YOU think he knew you were drowning?” Neva asked Libertine. Swimsuited, they sat on one of the teak benches in the shower. Neva sat behind Libertine, chafing her arms to try and warm her up.
“He must have heard me,” Libertine said, her teeth chattering violently.
“But none of the rest of us did.”
“Not heard me; heard me. In his head. I remember him swimming up to me and picking me off the bottom with his teeth. He had ahold of my sweater, the hem of it. After that there was nothing but a white light. There really is one.”
“Gabriel’s said the same thing.”
Libertine nodded. “Next thing I knew, I was on the deck with his pectoral flipper under me. And I could feel him saying. Don’t. That’s all it was, over and over: Don’t.”
“Don’t what?” Neva asked.
“I don’t know. He was vocalizing like crazy, too. Did Gabriel say anything about hearing him?”
Neva shook her head. “I think he was focused on stopping her from giving him those fish.”
They heard a knock on the door and Truman called, “Is she okay?”
“I’m fine,” Libertine called weakly.
“She’s fine,” Neva hollered. “Just cold. What’s going on out there? Did the police come?”
“Right on schedule. They took her with them. You’ll be a witness, you know.”
“Me?” Neva asked.
“Libertine.”
“Go ahead and open the door so we can hear you,” Neva yelled over the sound of the shower. “We’re decent.”
Truman looked in. Neva thought he looked grim. “So did she say anything?” she asked. “Trina Beemer?”
“Not really,” said Truman. “She kept crying and babbling about how she’d ruined the whale’s one real chance to escape this earthly hell. Those were her exact words—‘escape this earthly hell.’ ”
“Some ninja warrior, huh?” said Neva.
THAT EVENING THEY all gathered for dinner at the Oat Maiden: Neva, Truman, Gabriel, Libertine, Ivy—everyone but Sam, who volunteered to take the evening watch at Friday’s pool. They’d agreed that someone should be with him around the clock until the medical crisis had passed: as soon as he had deposited Libertine on the pool deck, Friday had gone back to his corner, winded and exhausted. A security guard would also be stationed at the pool all night, every night, from now on.
“So how much time do you think she’ll get?” Ivy asked Truman. She was disappointed that she hadn’t been on the pool top to see Trina Beemer apprehended.
“You’d have to ask my father. It should be a watertight case, though.” He smiled wanly. “So to speak. We have eyewitnesses, plus Martin’s photos, plus my hidden video camera. I doubt it’ll even go to trial. I think she’ll plea-bargain.”
“Maybe she’ll rat out the rest of the FAS people,” Neva said.
“Doubtful,” said Gabriel.
“Why?”
“They don’t do that. They martyr themselves. It’s part of the creed.”
Libertine brought a tray of drinks to the table and joined them. Johnson Johnson followed with two pizzas.
“What creed?” Ivy asked.
“Better dead than captive,” Libertine, Neva, Gabriel, and Truman all said as one.
While Neva handed around pizza slices, Ivy considered Truman for a long beat.
“What?” said Truman.
“What if there was a third alternative?” Ivy asked. “Besides dead and captive, I mean. What if we really do release him?”
That got everyone’s attention. “Oh, boy,” Gabriel said.
“Wait, wait, let me talk,” Ivy said. “Clearly captivity’s been no great shakes. He’s been hit, bullied, parboiled, starved, and now poisoned, and he’s hung on through it all. Obviously here it’s better, but what if there’s an even better choice? He was wild once.”
“As a calf,” Neva pointed out. “He was collected right out of the crib, so to speak.”
“Why do you all say ‘collected’?” Ivy said irritably. “He was captured. Call a spade a spade. He was separated from everything he knew—and yes, including his mother. He spent a year in a small holding pool in Norway, getting some basic training—open your mouth, swim, eat this dead fish.” She turned to Gabriel. “All of which is stuff that would help you, right?”
“You’re starting to sound like one of the animal activists,” said Neva, staring at her. “And not in a good way.”
“Look, I’m just reviewing the facts,” said Ivy. “Have I gotten anything wrong yet? No.” She turned to Gabriel and said, “How old was he when he was caught?”
“One. Give or take a few months.”
“Do you know that?” Neva asked in surprise.
Gabriel nodded.
Ivy said to Neva, “Ask him how he knows. Go on—ask him.” When Gabriel sent her a look she said, “Oh, come on—let’s not be coy.”
Neva said, “What are you talking about?”
“Gabriel was the one who ‘collected’ our little boy in the first place,” Ivy said.
“Who?” Neva said.
“Friday,” Ivy said impatiently. “Gabriel was the one who caught him.”
Gabriel stared at her.
“One of the board members at the Whale Museum put it all together last week.” She turned to address the rest of the table. “They went out with a fishing boat with a bunch of nets and they separated him from his pod and brought him back to a tank in a little town on a fjord in Norway and started training him up, so he’d know a few things by the time he was bought and taken to whatever zoo or theme park was willing to pay the most. That’s how Gabriel knows he’s a North Atlantic whale. That’s why he went to see him every few years. And that’s why Friday recognized that signal Neva accidentally gave him. Gabriel was the one who taught it to him in the first place.”
Stunned, they turned to Gabriel as one.
“Is that true?” Libertine finally asked.
“Yep,” he said, unfazed, reaching for another piece of pizza. He looked up, saw everyone looking at him, and stopped with the pizza halfway to his mouth. “What?”
“But you’ve never said a word,” Libertine said. “Why haven’t you ever told us?”
“Would it have made any difference if I had?” he asked, taking a big bite. “No, it wouldn’t. And that sort of information in the wrong hands can be dangerous.”
“Oh, come on,” Ivy said. “That’s a little hole-and-corner, don’t you think?”
“Is it? I traveled under assumed names with fake passports for years because there’d been death threats made against me. Threats, plural.”
“But didn’t it just rip you up to take him like that?” Libertine asked incredulously.
“No.”
“Really?” she said. “I can’t believe that.”
Gabriel sighed, lowered his pizza slice, and looked at them all. “Look, for one thing you’re being anthropomorphic—this is an animal, not a child. Second, I’m not a heartless bastard and I didn’t do it for financial gain. It all comes down to conservation. There’s a huge need for zoos and parks to educate people. You don’t save animals and habitats you’ve never seen before and know nothing about. If there’d never been Shamu, people wouldn’t give a damn about killer whales. Now they do.”
“Blah blah blah,” Ivy broke in. “I’m sorry, but all of that is just so much mealymouthed hokum. Let me ask you a question. What if we let him go back there, to where you caught him?”
Truman stared at her. “What?”
Gabriel put his head in his hands.
“What if we let him go?” Ivy said. “I’m serious. Tell me why we can’t.”
“I’m not saying we can’t. I’m saying we shouldn’t.”
“Why?”
“You may not believe in captivity,” Gabriel said, “but he’s spent nearly his whole life being cared for by humans. Yes, the conditions were miserable, and yes, he’s been a victim. But there’s captivity and then there’s captivity. Here, he’s healthy—well, you know what I mean, except for the poisoning thing—and challenged. He has great food, people to watch, games to play, and people to swim with. He’s safe. Yes, we failed him by allowing him to fall into the wrong hands, but that’s over now.”
Ivy shook her head.
“Look,” Gabriel said. “You can’t compensate for past harm by turning him loose, even if he were allowed to be, which, by the way, would never happen—partly because if it ever came down to it, I’d do everything in my power to prevent it. He doesn’t have even a slim chance of surviving on his own. Do you know how long ago he last caught and ate a live fish? Eighteen years.”
Libertine said to Ivy, “Is it his being alone that bothers you?”
Ivy regarded her. “Well, it does give being captive an extra layer of awful. It would be like landing on another planet and having no way to ever go home or even see another member of your species again. It gives me goose bumps. I started thinking about it a few weeks ago, and now I can’t stop.”
“You have to,” said Gabriel. “You’re reacting purely on emotions, and that’s exactly when bad decisions get made.”
Julio Iglesias, who had been curled up in Libertine’s lap, suddenly sat up, chucking her under the chin with his hard little skull. “Ow,” she said. He turned his face up and licked her chin.
“Oh, for god’s sake,” Ivy snapped at Libertine. “You might as well just take him—he clearly prefers you. He seems to prefer all of you. And to think of everything I’ve done for him over the years.” Then, turning back to Gabriel, she said, “Is it possible to teach survival skills to an animal that’s been in captivity as long as he has?”
Before Gabriel could answer, Johnson Johnson approached the table with a platter of cookies.
“Yum!” Truman said, trying to lighten the mood. “Sugar, the brain food of champions.”
But Gabriel ignored him. “It was actually tried at a facility on the Oregon coast in the late nineties, with debatable success. That killer whale was also caught in the North Atlantic as a calf, spent twenty-three years in captivity, and then got released off Iceland.”
“And?” said Ivy.
“I know this story,” Neva interjected. “He swam across the ocean to a fjord in Norway—which is where he might actually have been from—and died of pneumonia. The whole project was underwritten by a billionaire, nearly ruined the institution that took him in, and in the end, at least in my opinion, it was pure folly. Everyone hoped he’d hook up with a pod, but he never did. He went where the people were. The fjord he chose had a little town on it, and people came down all the time to see him. You could argue that that was why he stayed there.”
“There was a little more to it than that,” said Gabriel.
“Politically and diplomatically there was a lot more to it,” agreed Neva, “but the outcome was still death.”
Gabriel conceded the point, but said, “Look, people, snap out of it. We’ve been through something heinous, but Friday’s going to be fine. We’ll be much more vigilant, and nothing like this will ever happen again. We’ll do everything we can to make sure his life is the best we can possibly give him. Is that really so bad?”
“No,” said Ivy. “It’s just not what I’d have chosen for him.”
“Actually, you did choose it for him,” Truman pointed out.
“Well, then I wouldn’t choose it now,” Ivy conceded.
Gabriel leaned way over the table and spoke so quietly that some of them had to lean in, too, to hear. “Look. You want him to have all the skills of a wild whale, but he doesn’t. He hasn’t, in years and years and years. No matter what you might want for him, you can’t change that. He’s smart, funny, resilient, adaptable, and he’s managed to stay alive and sane through more years than anyone would have given him credit for. Let him be what he is, not what you or anyone else out there thinks he should be.”
“Then I propose a toast,” Truman said firmly. “To Friday. May only good things be in his future, and may that future be long and happy.”
“To Friday,” they echoed.
But on the drive back to Matthew and Lavinia’s house, Ivy found herself thinking something over and over: Would it have been so bad if he’d died rather than face more years of isolation? Not a horrible and protracted death, of course, but something swift and painless?
Would it really have been so bad?