Michael Gruber: Night of the Jaguar

“Oh, there’s Geli!” she cried and ran to greet her friend with hugs and Jennyesque babble, at which Geli collapsed into sobs. Jenny led her away to a nearby bench, where the two engaged in what seemed like intense conversation. Zwick, Lola, Beth, and Amelia had missed this byplay and were now splashing in the shallows of the pool.

“I sort of figured you had her stashed here,” said a voice at Cooksey’s side.

“And why did you think that, Mr. Paz? Although stashed is not the word I would have used. Geli seems to be having family difficulties.”

“Oh, yeah, you could say that. Difficulties you arranged.”

“Again, arranged would not have been my word. I think that what’s happening here is something rather outside any concept of arrangement. Or perhaps, having been a copper, you see everything in terms of plots and conspiracies.”

“Tell me you don’t have anything to do with the guy who’s been blowing up pumping stations.”

“Oh, that. I suppose I had some purely theoretical discussions about how to make, shape, fuse, and detonate certain charges. Kevin and his friend were interested, and being a professional teacher, it’s hard for me to keep from sharing information at my command, especially as the same material can easily be found on the Internet. I suppose I was concerned that they not blow up merely themselves. I explained to them that it would be quite futile to restore the Glades by explosives alone, but, you know, impetuous youth. The terrorist’s name is Kearney, by the way. He worked at the zoo, which is where they got the jaguar droppings for the silly game they played at the houses of the Consuela people. He shouldn’t be hard to find.”

“You didn’t try to discourage them or call the cops?”

“No, I didn’t, although I just gave him to you. I would feel responsible were he to kill himself or anyone else. I suppose, being a scientist and a beneficiary of western civ, I should be quite against tearing it to pieces. But these children do so much less damage than western civ does to itself that it seems absurd to go bonkers about their pathetic efforts. When it does collapse, that will not be the way.”

Paz ignored this and said, “And obviously, you knew that Moie was doing these murders, and you helped him.”

Cooksey smiled at this. “Well, he hardly needed help. Moie and his spotted friend are quite capable of doing anything they please. As for going to the police…they’d think I was barking mad if I told them the truth. They’d think you were as well, as I imagine you know.”

“Yeah, you got that right,” Paz admitted. “I’m curious about one thing, though. I already figured out that you got the names of the Consuela people from Ms. Vargos there, and that you got them somehow to this priest in the jungle. How did you know that Moie would come?”

Cooksey chuckled and rolled his eyes skyward. It was getting hard for Paz to see his face in the growing dusk, but he saw that. Cooksey said, “Honestly, my dear man, you give me far too much credit. Our Jenny will have told you about the death of my wife, how she exhausted herself trying to rescue some tiny portion of the living information being turned into money during that time, and so met her doom. What Jenny didn’t say, because I didn’t tell her, is this. First, the destruction of that particular patch of forest was a Consuela operation, and so all the calamities that followed in my life may be laid at the door of that firm. Second, after she died I went quite insane. I took acanoa and traveled upriver until I got to San Pedro Casivare, the last place on the map. I drank pisco. I had enough money to drink myself to death, which was my plan. There was one other fellow there who seemed to have the same thing in mind.”

“The priest,” said Paz.

“Just so. Father Timothy. Well, not to draw this out, we exchanged sad stories, and after that we drank a little less each day, and fished more. He decided to return to being a priest, to the extent that he resolved to seek holy martyrdom among a tribe of people we’d heard of, who routinely killed anyone who strayed within their borders. He convinced me that I owed it to my daughter to go home and take care of her. So I did; I took care of her by killing her. She was the image of my wife.”

Cooksey fell silent here. Paz waited, observing that Cooksey was staring at the group by the pool, and especially, it seemed, at the frolicking Amelia. The adults had removed varying levels of clothing. Zwick and Scotty were in their shorts. Jenny was entirely nude, as was Beth. Lola and Amelia were in suits, Geli in bra and panties. Someone had brought the aguardiente bottle out and a bottle of Mount Gay rum to keep it company; little remained in either. The first faint feelings of uneasiness prickled in Paz’s belly. There was something a little too exuberant about the scene. Geli Vargos, for example, had been depressed a moment ago; now she was near naked and whooping.

Cooksey began to speak again, distracting him from these thoughts. “The priest went to the Runiya, and I came here. When I found out who Geli was, I encouraged her to discover what Consuela was doing, and I passed the information on to the priest, who used it to achieve his martyrdom, a little late, but better late than never. I imagined that naturalists or environmentalists or whoever would pick up on that information and make a fuss. I assure you I did not expect Moie.”

“Why didn’t you make a fuss at this end? You had this whole environmental organization here.”

“Yes, well, that would have compromised Geli, wouldn’t it? She has, let’s say, mixed loyalties. She wanted to avoid what eventually happened, Colombian bad boys arriving in force. Also, as soon as we began to make the sort of stink respectable environmentalists can make, Consuela would have vanished in a tangled trail of dummy companies. And the cut would have continued. What I hoped for was that Father Tim would appear on the scene full of wrath, with photos and so forth. But in the event he somehow sent Moie. But you understand, of course, that something much larger is happening here.”

“What do you mean, larger?”

“Well, to begin with, why did you suddenly decide to arrive tonight with this group of people? A rather peculiar thing for you to do, yes?”

“I was advised to in the course of a…religious ritual,” said Paz, and felt stupid at how this sounded.

“Yes, I’d imagined something like that. You know, personally I have virtually no sympathy in that area: nothing to do with belief or disbelief, a matter of temperament, I suppose. Perhaps in reaction to my mother: she was always looking vaguely off and predicting events.”

“Did they happen?”

“More or less. Mum was a competent plain witch, and had been trained by several famous shamans. In any case, whatever talent she had didn’t pass on to me, although I can usually spot it when I see it in another. You have it-I noticed it when we met earlier-and of course our Jenny is in a class of her own.”

Here he gazed to where Jenny was poised on a flat rock at the lip of the waterfall, about to dive into the pool. The pool lamps illuminated her from below, setting red sparks in her hair, and giving to her face and body the appearance of a sculpted figure from a forgotten and terrible cult.

“Ah, magnificent!” Cooksey exclaimed softly when she had vanished in a splash of dark water. “But not entirely human. Do you know, when she arrived, everyone here thought she was mentally deficient, but that’s not the case at all. She’s perfectly competent at the ordinary tasks of life, and in at least one area, wasp taxonomy, she’s nearly brilliant, despite being a practical illiterate. She has what we call a feeling for the organism, very rare indeed. I think her story is that her upbringing was so perfectly dreadful that at an early age she simply drew a magic circle around some inner core of her being and sheltered there, while responding minimally to what was happening to her body. A perfectly empty vessel, perfectly open to…whatever. God. Gods. The pulse of nature. Moie thinks she’s quite something, and he should know. But back to tonight. Here you are, summoned in some way, and here we are, and why do you suppose that is?”