Artie sat at his desk going over Connie’s script and jotting down notes. It was an uneasy balance between documentary and propaganda, and Connie had fallen off the high wire. It was a matter of emphasis more than anything else. The world was as dark as you cared to paint it, and Connie had deliberately chosen a black palette. And yet …
He scribbled another note, then tore the pages from his notepad, crumpled them up, and tossed them in the wastebasket. The problem was not that she was right or wrong—he knew she was right—but how the hell did you sell it? People would watch the bad news only if you told them somebody was doing something about it, that there was progress, that the water was safer to drink, the air safer to breathe, and a number 50 sunblock would take care of the hole in the ozone layer.
“Did you hear anything from Mark?” Connie had come up behind him and was looking over his shoulder at the script.
It took an effort to keep from jumping.
“Don’t do that, Connie—I’m not in the best of moods. And no, I haven’t heard anything from Mark.” He wished to hell she hadn’t asked. He had tried to
wall it off in his mind and had almost succeeded. “I called the cops this morning—they don’t know anything. They’re not too excited about it.”
“Susan?”
“Called our lawyer. He hasn’t heard from her. She’ll undoubtedly, want her own lawyer anyway.” He waved at the pages of the script spread out on the desk. “I was wrong: It needs work but it’s honest and it’s something people need to know. Trying to market it will be something else. Our ratings will suck—we’ll only hold the PBS crowd—but what the hell, we’ll have done our bit. As you put it, maybe we’ll make a difference, and God forgive me the cliché.”
Mary would be proud of him, wherever she was. Then he wondered if she would even see it.
For one of the few times he could remember, Connie leaned back in her chair and lit a cigarette. “I’m afraid we’ve got a problem.”
Artie couldn’t possibly think of any problem more serious than those he already had.
“Like what? We can always cut it if we have to, juggle sequences to make it more linear … .”
“I’m talking about Adrienne—who turns out to have been a prize bitch.”
He looked at her, suddenly wary. “What about her?”
“You may have noticed she wasn’t here yesterday. She didn’t come in today. We called, nobody home. I sent Jerry over to check her apartment, expecting God knows what. The apartment was clean. She wasn’t there and neither was anything else. No furniture, no dishes, no rugs, no books, no nothing. Jerry talked to the landlord and it seems she moved in with a futon and a hot plate and a telephone and that was it. That woman really traveled light.”
“Surprise,” Artie muttered. Which was no surprise at all. After the fight in the parking lot, nobody was ever going to see Adrienne again. “Anything else?”
“Oh, yes. I went over her resume. She claimed she’d
gotten her bachelor’s in communications at McMurphy University in some little town in Nebraska. It doesn’t exist. I called previous stations where she said she’d worked. Half of those don’t exist either, and the other half never heard of her.”
“She did work in Sacramento, right?” Artie sensed where all of this was going and wasn’t sure he wanted to hear it.
“Right. But the news director who hired her left three months ago and seems to have disappeared. He didn’t leave a forwarding address.”
Artie definitely didn’t want to hear it. “So? What do we do now?”
“You haven’t asked me what her last assignment was.”
He already knew. “Let me guess.”
“You’ve got it—she was working on a series about the environment. I asked if anybody had seen her tape and they had so I asked them to describe it.”
“And ours is the same as hers.”
“Down to the same exact examples. Cookie-cutter time.” She shook her head. “How the hell is that possible?”
Artie knew how it was possible: Adrienne had orchestrated the series from the very beginning. And how many other Adriennes were scattered about the country, all of them pushing the same special?
He felt as if somebody had just opened up a window and a cold draft had blown in. There were the Hounds and the bystanders like Mary, and now a different branch of the Old People. One devoted to a last-ditch effort to convince Homo sapiens of the errors of its ways. In one sense, not dangerous. A lot of people would agree with them. But it was an indication that there was a conspiracy, and it might be more tightly organized than he’d thpught.
“I don’t know, Connie. I haven’t the foggiest. Did you talk to Hirschfield about her?”
“He said he was shocked. I’m not so sure. I checked and it turns out he’d interviewed her for only about five minutes and decided the station couldn’t get along without her. Maybe he banged her after all.”
Artie waved at the pages on the desk.
“Did you show this to him?”
“This morning, before you came in.”
“And?”
“He loved it. He thought it was great.”
Artie suddenly realized he had to go to the bathroom, bad. Maybe not all the Old People were lawyers or Hounds or TV news reporters after all. Maybe some of them were news directors.
Connie shook her head in disbelief.
“What the hell’s going on, Artie? There’s no way in the world two different people could think this much alike. Adrienne and I never had a conversation all the time she was here; we barely nodded to each other when we passed in the hallway. I always considered her an ice queen.”
“So let’s change the script.”
Connie snuffed out her cigarette. “You’re right. She’s good, we’re better.”
They worked on the script for the next few hours, rearranging segments and rewriting Connie’s voice-over. Adrienne’s Sacramento tape was being held for the same after-the-holidays doldrums. Theirs had to be different, which meant drastic shifting and cutting. It was two in the afternoon before Connie called a break.
“You want lunch, Artie? My treat.”
He shook his head. “Go finish your Christmas shopping while you’re at it. I’m going to grab a cameraman and go to the zoo.”
“What for?”
“The zoo’s part of a nationwide cooperative breeding program to preserve endangered species. Some species you can only find in zoos nowadays—they’ve disappeared completely from the wild. A lot of the
specimens we’ve got—here, in the San Diego, the Brookfield and the Berlin Zoos, and a couple of dozen others around the world—are all there are; there ain’t no more.”
She looked surprised. “How come you know all this?”
“The Grub knows everything, Connie. I had him print me out a list of the different endangered species; it’s as thick as a small phone directory.”
He was slipping into his raincoat when Connie said, “Artie? I hear they’ve got a Siberian tiger out there—shoot some tape of it for me, will you? I’m kind of fond of tigers.”
It was after three by the time they got to the zoo and the daylight was already fading. It was cloudy and misting by the ocean; they wouldn’t be able to shoot outside for much more than an hour and Artie wasn’t sure whatever they got would be usable; the zoo had insisted they not shine lights on the animals. But at least it would serve as a guide if they had to come back another day.
Almost all the big cats were inside, and Artie watched while the cameraman shot tape of them moving around inside the large cages, then angled for what might be used as a head shot. The King of Beasts, with the background out of focus behind him, looking majestic. It was humid and, as usual in the cat house, it stank. After ten minutes Artie was ready for fresh air, even if it was chilly.
The Siberian tiger was in a special outdoor display, a large moat and high iron fence separating it from the curious spectators. It would make for better tape if it were spring and there were dozens of people around staring and pointing. As it was, the only people there besides himself were a middle-aged woman in a heavy cloth coat with the collar up around her ears and a teenager with a colorful scarf half wrapped around his face, the ends trailing in the stiff breeze.
They were a good ten feet apart, obviously not a family group; not much in the way of human interest when it came to an interview.
Artie watched the tiger for a few minutes, letting the cameraman shoot as much tape as he wanted. It was a gift from the Cincinnati Zoo, and Artie wondered what they’d gotten in return. A dozen buffalo? Maybe a couple of Kodiak bears—that might be more fitting for a zoo in the heartland. But if he were a zookeeper and had to choose between them, he’d pick the tiger, a good five hundred pounds with long, pale fur and sheer grace to its movements.
How many were left in the world now? he wondered. Less than five hundred, at best? Less than fifty? Connie would make a copy of the tape for her home library and her kids would show it to their kids and by that time wild Siberian tigers would be long gone, a fading memory along with their original habitat, probably destined to be a collection of resort towns, fancy hotels, and upscale restaurants in a distant, crowded future. The tigers would be nothing more than photographs in encyclopedias and “Mammals of the Twentieth Century,” or creatures captured for a moment in time on scratchy videotape. With luck some natural history museums would have animatronic versions, and a few zoos would be desperately trying to breed them back.
Connie would have an odd sort of memento. Or maybe memorial, and that might be a line he should use.
Artie squinted at the sky. Not much more than half an hour of light left; they’d have to come back in the morning or preferably on a day when it was sunny.
He walked into the Primate Discovery Center, the new monkey house, stopping at a small cage complete with waterfall, rocks, and trees. The plaque on the railing identified the monkeys as macaques, the most widely ranging primate genus outside of man. You
could find them in almost every country in Africa and Asia, from Morocco to the Philippines.
There were three white-faced monkeys inside the enclosure, all lined up behind the glass, staring at him. Artie stared back, feeling vaguely uneasy. There was rope netting inside the cage on which they could swing and climb: why the hell weren’t they? He moved on to another cage to stare at more monkeys staring back. He was the only visitor on a chill and windy day and apparently the prime attraction.
He shivered and went back outside, stopping at the small island of rocks surrounded by a deep moat that was home to the chimpanzees. How long ago was it that several of the chimps had escaped from the island and scared the hell out of a dozen housewives who reported prowlers in the backyard? Years now—it had been a different, low-tech zoo back then.
He leaned against the railing and watched the few chimps shivering on top of the pile of artificial rocks, searching for any scraps of food they might have missed earlier in the day. One patriarch with graying fur sat at the edge of the moat and glared back at him.
A moment in time, Artie thought. A moat, five million years, and less than two percent of encoded genes separated them. How surprised the chimp’s ancestors must have been when they saw the first primitive hominids venture out of the forest, creatures not that much different from themselves but swaying awkwardly from side to side as they tried to walk upright on two legs. Larger heads, flatter faces, and less fur. Ugly creatures who didn’t have sense enough to stay in the forest where they at least had a chance of escaping the big cats and the other predators.
And how shocked a similar patriarch and his fellow chimps must have been to see the hominids make fires outside their caves to keep them safe during the long night Artie imagined the years rolling past and the upright creatures becoming taller and heavier, shedding
more of their hair while their heads grew ever larger and their faces flatter and their noses more defined. About the same time something curious must have started to appear in their eyes, something that frightened that early patriarch when he first saw it. Something that made it difficult for him to look the new creatures in the eyes for any length of time before he had to drop his own.
That patriarch was undoubtedly familiar with tools; he probably used sticks that he thrust into termite mounds and pulled out with a dozen juicy termites sticking to it. And he probably knew how to use logs and rocks to crack nuts and how to drive away predators by throwing rocks at them from the safety of a tree limb. But the new creatures did something else with the stones: They struck them together and used the chips that cracked off to cut meat and clean bloody skins so they could wrap them around their waists to take the place of the hair they no longer had.
That ancient ape might even have tried to imitate them and struck two. rocks together and watched the sparks fly, but that was all that happened. There was probably a dim thought in the back of his mind that perhaps the other creatures used different rocks, but it was a difficult thought to grab hold of and he probably couldn’t tell the difference between the rocks anyway.
He must have been afraid of this strange animal and the curious things it did, more afraid than he was of the big cats or the protowolves that hunted in packs. The new creature was more dangerous than all of them.
Artie smiled at the old chimp staring back at him. He was probably very much like that patriarch of long ago. Now he was too old and too slow to fight for mates and most likely considered himself fortunate to be in a zoo where old age might be a problem but not survival itself, and where the zoo veterinarian gave him
odd-tasting stuff to ward off the chills he occasionally felt and where the keepers might save a particularly juicy piece of meat for him that was easy to eat because he had long since lost most of his teeth.
he might trade it all for a real forest, monkey … .
Artie suddenly felt sweaty and frightened. He glanced quickly around. There was nobody there, at least nobody he could see. He was alone in the middle of an almost deserted zoo and suddenly imagined all the cage doors swinging open to leave the animals free to roam the walks and buildings. What better place to be hunted than in a zoo?
take another look … .
Artie turned back to the island and caught his breath. The old chimp had disappeared and in its place was a naked man sitting on his haunches at the moat’s edge, his eyes dull and only casually curious. It took a moment before Artie realized he was looking at himself.
your future home, monkey …
Artie waited, but there was nothing more in his mind than the sound of raucous laughter. It faded and he was looking at the elderly chimp again, slowly scratching itself and turning away from the fence to amble back to the center of the island. The middle-aged woman—probably a schoolteacher—and the teenager were now at the far side of the enclosure, staring at the little group on the rocks.
It was almost dusk now and all he wanted was to get the hell out of there. He’d sent the cameraman over to the Primate Center to get some close-ups of some of the monkeys on Jerry’s list of endangered species, but it was time to go; he didn’t dare stay longer. Connie would want to know just what they had shot, but he’d draw up a list for her back at the office. At least she’d be pleased with the tiger.
Besides, he had more important things to think about than a television series. He’d try Susan’s phone
number once again, hoping against hope that the disconnect message had been a mistake. She might even have called him; she’d have to sooner or later. And maybe Mark had checked in.
Wishful thinking, but that was all that was left to him.
He was suffering from terminal frustration, Artie thought. He was in the middle of a conspiracy that nobody but him and Mitch even realized existed, and if he tried to tell somebody, they’d think he was nuts. He had to try to stay alive and find his family—and work on the series as if nothing was happening around him.
He glanced at his watch. He’d check again with the police, then he’d call Mitch and they’d pay Charlie Allen a visit. Charlie knew everything about everybody.
Maybe he even knew where Cathy Shea was hiding.
“Anything I can get you guys? More coffee, soda, some cake? Franny made a chocolate one for the kids—it was Nathan’s birthday today and chocolate’s his favorite.”
Artie settled back on the living room sofa and shot a glance at Mitch in the big easy chair, concentrating on his coffee and trying to ignore Charlie Allen overdoing his role as host.
“We were thinking about Larry and Cathy,” Artie said. “You were closer to Larry than we were. We wondered if there was anything you remembered about him that might be relevant.”
Charlie looked confused. “Relevant to what? His murder? I told Schuler everything I knew. It wasn’t much—no more than you guys know.” He cut into his slice of cake. “Somebody cut him down in the city and I’ve no idea why. He was a sweetheart; he didn’t have any enemies.”
“What about Cathy?” Mitch asked.
“What about her?” Charlie washed down a bite of cake with a sip of coffee and leaned back in the chair
by his desk, the inner man temporarily satisfied. “Cathy was a goddamned saint, if you ask me. Took care of Larry and the kids like nobody else, believe me.”
Franny was almost a shadow in the room, filling their coffee cups and murmuring offers of more cake, then sitting on the edge of the chair by the doorway, ready to fly into the kitchen at the slightest indication of hunger or thirst.
“Cathy have relatives here in town? Anyplace where she might have gone with the kids?” Mitch was doing his best to cut to the chase.
Charlie shook his head. “Nobody in the Bay Area, not that I know of. A cousin in San Luis Obispo, another in Seattle. Think she was an only kid—both parents died in a car accident about ten years ago.”
“Any close friends?” Mitch asked.
“Aside from everybody associated with the Club? Hell, I don’t know. Probably the parents of some of her kids’ school friends—I think she was active in the PTA.”
“Any lovers?” Mitch asked it as if it were the most natural question in the world.
Charlie looked from one to the other, frowning. “Something going on that I don’t know about? Why do you want to know stuff like that?”
He was irritated more by the idea that he might have been left out of the loop than by anything else. Mitch tried to soothe him.
“We’re just trying to figure out where she might have gone. She’s the only one who might have some information that could lead to Larry’s killer.”
Charlie concentrated on his cake. “That was one happy marriage, Mitch. She idolized Larry.”
It was Artie who caught Franny’s expression, the slightly sour look of disapproval that fled across her face to disappear into the rolls of happy fat that framed it.
“What do you think, Franny?”
She looked surprised and faintly annoyed at being caught out. “Oh, I agree with Charlie. Completely. She was very committed to her family. But …” She let it dangle out there, a worm on a conversational hook.
Mitch leaned forward in his chair, looking at her over the top of his glasses, clinically curious. “But what, Franny?”
A wave of the hand. “Nothing, really.”
She wanted it teased out of her, Artie thought. She wanted to be encouraged to damn with faint praise and vomit twenty years of resentment all over the living room floor. Franny had been a member of the Club when it started, then had married Charlie early on and vanished into her family. She would still show up at occasional parties, though never at meetings. She hadn’t cared for the other women in the Club and never bothered to hide her opinion that they were all a bunch of elitists.
Charlie stared at her in surprised silence and Mitch, and Artie let the silence grow. Franny turned to her husband.
“Come on, Charlie. You remember how Cathy used to flirt with every man who came to our parties? She toned it down after she got married, but she still did it.”
The jealousy flickered in her eyes like flames while she glanced from one to another searching for encouragement that wasn’t there. She shrugged and began to backpedal. “It really wasn’t anything serious. I suspect most of you weren’t aware of it at all. But the other women were.”
He had been aware of it, Artie thought, though he never would have called it flirting. Cathy was the type of woman whom men found easy to talk to, even to confide in. She didn’t represent a threat to any happy marriage, but if you were in an unhappy one, you would have been drawn to her. Not that anything would have happened. Cathy drank too much at parties
and she liked to kiss all the men good night and sometimes, the kisses were really sloppy, depending on how much she’d had to drink. If you couldn’t avoid it, you made a joke of it. Larry never noticed, or he’d spent so many years deliberately not noticing that he’d become genuinely oblivious to it.
The typical suburban housewife’s night out: You knew instinctively when to avoid her at the door and nobody held it against her afterward. It rated the same as Charlie’s occasional belch at the dinner table.
Franny was up and busy with the coffeepot to cover her own embarrassment. “I’m sure she never meant anything by it.”
“No, I’m sure she didn’t,” Mitch murmured. Charlie looked slightly put out and Artie made a big thing about changing his mind over the cake. Give Franny a chance to excel at the things she was good at, rather than regretting that she hadn’t been the belle of the ball like Cathy.
But still, there was something there.
When Franny had left the room on a mercy errand to get more cake, Artie said tactfully; “Anything you can remember about the early years with Cathy …” If there was anything to be found, it would be early on. There wouldn’t be many surprises in the later years.
Charlie waved at the shelf of notebooks about the Club. “Hell, it’s all in there. You’re free to look through them.”
“I wouldn’t know where to begin.
“I’ll flip through the early ones and pick out those that include anything about her. I don’t remember much, but there may be something. Tell you what—I’ll put those copies aside and take them down to the library. You can pick them up there.”
If Charlie pulled more than a dozen, it would take longer than one night to go through them, Artie thought. But any information on Cathy’s background might be useful.
He forced himself to eat another slice of cake and sit through half an hour more of start-and-stop conversation with an unhappy Franny sitting silent and sullen in the corner. Then Mitch yawned and Artie muttered something about early-morning work on the series.
Outside, on the porch, Charlie closed the door firmly behind him, looked faintly uneasy, and coughed. Mitch tried to anticipate him.
“I don’t blame Franny, I can see—”
Charlie said, “It’s not about Franny. She’s a little on the jealous side, always has been. I take it as a compliment. It’s about Nathan.”
Nathan was the eight-year-old boy, Artie remembered. Quiet kid, a little on the chubby side, like his father.
Mitch was all professional calm. “Something wrong, Charlie?”
Allen took a breath. “He’s been playing with matches.”
“Normal enough, nothing serious. Just talk to him—”
“I have. Three times now. We had to call the fire department the last time. He started a fire in the basement—two of them, actually: a pile of rags soaked in kerosene beneath the bottom of the stairs, another by the water heater and the gas line. The firemen said they were very … workmanlike.”
“You sure it was Nathan?”
Charlie was looking progressively more unhappy. “We caught him a couple of times before, in the kitchen and in his own room. Little fires, easy to put out. But the firemen said we found these just in time.”
Artie could feel the hair stir on the nape of his neck. Nathan hadn’t thought of it all by himself. He’d had help. If the house had gone up and Charlie and the family with it, somehow Nathan would have survived
and confessed and once again it would have been murder by proxy.
But why Charlie? He didn’t know a damned thing.
Mitch clapped Charlie on the back and said briskly, “Call me at the office tomorrow—we’ll make an appointment for the boy.”
The consummate professional, Artie thought with a trace of irritation. Levin was friend and clinician, but seldom both at the same time.