Robert Crais - The Monkey

“No.” Toreo. Next it would be Thai cuisine or decorative macrame. A guy like Duran, you’ve got to let him run his course. Especially if you don’t want to get hit a lot.

“To the shame of the United States. It’s an art of great passion and beauty.”

“Yeah, all that red.”

He shouted something to one of the men working at the truck, then turned back to me. “Much of what happens between the man and the toro grows out of jurisdiccion. To cite the toro, to make him charge, you must place yourself in his jurisdiccion. You invade his place. You offer yourself to his horn.” He looked at the sword, then touched it to my chest. The point curved down. If he shoved it in, the blade would follow the curve to my heart. “The most courageous matador, he offers his balls.”

I looked at the Eskimo, who was staring off across the yard, probably watching for narwhals. My back hurt, but feeling had returned to my arm. Maybe I could take him. Maybe I could do something to his eyes, then put him down on the ground to neutralize his size and go to work on his throat and groin. Sure. I looked back at Duran. “You mean the whole idea is that the bull is coming for your balls.”

“Yes.”

I shook my head. “Dumb.” I think the Eskimo smiled, but I wouldn’t swear to it.

The ranch hands slammed open the truck’s gate. A brown and gray steer looked out, then trotted slowly down the ramp and into the pen. He didn’t look like much. Then, almost as if in slow motion, a heavy black bull not quite the size of Godzilla came down the ramp to stand beside the steer. He stood very still, feet squarely placed, head up, looking first at the ranch hands, then at us. A Russell sculpture. It was impossible to imagine a chest and shoulders more powerfully formed. His horns came up and out then curved back in. They were very sharp. Duran nodded. “See how he carries his head, see the way he looks about. This is pundonor. Great pride, a very great jealousy of his jurisdiccion. He accepts the duty of protecting what is his.”

Maybe Duran was thinking about adopting him. I said, “Why the steer?”

“ Cabestros. To calm the bull for the journey. The herd instinct, you see? They are friends.” He looked at me again. “Would you offer yourself to such an animal?”

“Maybe with a rocket launcher.”

“Imagine standing before his charge, watching him come, waiting for him.” Duran smiled, maybe remembering. “We will breed them, the bull and the cow. The young one will inherit the looks of the father, the courage of the mother. She is very brave. She killed a man in the Pampas.”

I said, “I don’t have your cocaine. I don’t know anything about your cocaine.”

“I am told you do.”

“You were told wrong. I was hired to find Morton Lang. He’s been found. I don’t guess you guys know anything about that. Now I’m looking for his wife and his little boy. I think you’ve got them.”

He touched me with the sword again. I wondered if I could take it away from him before the Eskimo nailed me. I said, “Maybe Morton Lang didn’t steal your cocaine. Maybe somebody else did.”

“No.”

“Maybe Nanuk here took it.”

“No.”

“Look, if Mort had taken the dope and now I had it, wouldn’t I be trying to sell it back to you?”

Duran touched a button on my shirt with the point of the sword. He pressed. The button split. “Return my property. Perhaps then you’ll find the woman and the boy.”

The ranch hands began to chatter. When I looked, the bull had lifted his snout and begun to trot around the pen. The hands scurried to open a gate on the far side, but Duran snapped an order and they stopped. The bull made a coughing sound and lowered his head. There was drool streaming out of his mouth. The steer, eyes wide and rolling, edged away.

Duran said, “He smells the female.”

The bull charged the steer. When they hit, it sounded like a mortar round, whump. The bull caught him in the gut by the hindquarters, then lifted and twisted, ripping forward into the ribs. You could hear them pop like green wood. The steer brayed and went down. The bull stayed with him, lowering the thick neck and hooking his horns two lefts and a right like a boxer throwing combinations, once almost lifting the steer off the ground. Then Duran nodded and the hands threw open the far gate, shouting and waving their hats. The bull backed away from the steer. His horns glistened red. He pawed the ground then ran through the gate. The steer flopped around for a while, then managed to gain its feet. When it did, most of its intestine fell out onto the ground. It wobbled and staggered but stayed up. Some friend.

Duran looked at me, then vaulted the fence. I was dismissed. The Eskimo led me back to the limo and opened the door. A full-service thug. Kato was still behind the wheel. The Eskimo said, “He’ll take you where you tell him.”

“What if I tell him the police?”

“He’ll take you there.”

“That easy.”

The Eskimo shrugged. “Play it the way you want. Mr. Duran was lunching at the Marina today. He can prove that. If you consider what has happened and what could, he won’t have to. You will do as he tells you.”

“I don’t have the dope.”

He looked at me.

I said, “The woman and the boy, they’d better be all right.”

Something like a grin touched the Eskimo’s lips. He said, “Nanuk,” then turned and walked back toward the corrals.

I got into the car. The last thing I saw was Domingo Garcia Duran approach the steer and drive the sword to its hilt down through the steer’s shoulders at the base of its neck. The steer dropped, the ranch hands cheered, and I shut the door.

When I got back to my building I went to the deli to pick up the corned beef sandwich. They’d saved it and weren’t happy about it. I wasn’t so happy about it myself. I snapped at the blonde behind the register to prove I was still tough, then brought the sandwich and three bottles of Heineken up to my office. I was so tough I forgot I didn’t have an opener and had to ride all the way back down to the deli to buy one of theirs. Buck sixty-five for a piece of tin.

I let myself into the office and locked the outer door. There were two messages on my machine: the first from an auto parts store letting me know that the genuine 1966 Chevrolet Corvette shifter skirt I’d ordered four months ago was finally in, the second from Lou Poitras, returning my call. I reset the machine, opened the balcony doors for air, sat down behind the desk, opened the first Heineken, and drank most of it.

The smart move would be to call the cops. That’s what I’d advised Ellen Lang. More often than not, the cops crack the case, the cops get their man, the kidnapped come back alive when the cops are involved. The Feds will supply you with statistics that bear this out. Lots of neat black lettering on clean white sheets that don’t have much at all to do with some dead-eyed psychopathic sonofabitch saying that if the police come in a little kid and a woman get dead. Well, no, Your Honor, he didn’t actually say it, but he strongly hinted that that would be the case…

I finished the rest of the Heineken, dropped the bottle into the trash, opened another, and unwrapped the sandwich. It was cold and the bread was stale. My back hurt where the Eskimo had hit me and my hand hurt from hitting Kimberly Marsh’s boyfriend and the thick-necked Mexican. I ate some of the sandwich and drank more of the beer and thought about all this.

I couldn’t see Morton Lang ripping two keys of cocaine off Domingo Garcia Duran. Trying to set up a deal and blowing it, that’s one thing. But to shove two plastic packs of dope in your jockeys right in the man’s house and walk out, unh-unh. That took cojones. There was Garrett Rice, but he didn’t strike me as being particularly well-endowed either. Maybe someone else. Anyone else. The Eskimo, the guys in the Nova, Manolo, the fat guy at the ranch. Maybe the rich Italian Kimberly Marsh had mentioned. I drank more beer and ate more sandwich. What did I know? Maybe Mort had swiped it and Ellen knew about it and that’s why she hadn’t wanted the cops involved. Maybe she’d known all along and right now the dope was buried in a coffee can under the swing set in her back yard. I killed the second Heiny and opened the last one.