William Lashner - Bitter Truth

I couldn’t see who was coming because of the curve of the wide corridor, but I knew enough not to want them to see me. There was an exit to the left marked EMPLOYEES ONLY and I darted to it, but the handle wouldn’t turn, as if the door knew exactly who I wasn’t. I looked back down the corridor, still saw nothing, and started running, past the mongoose lemurs from Madagascar, running to the far door, the sound of the footsteps gaining. Just as I hit the first of the double doors a herd of schoolchildren stampeded in, followed by their teachers. They pushed me back, drowning out the sound of the following steps with their excited baying. I found myself unable to wade through the waist-high gaggle and as the kids streamed by, I stopped and turned to face whatever fate it was that was chasing me.

The woman from the ticket window.

“Sir,” she said, her mole creasing with a smile, holding up two bills in her fist. “You forgot your change.”

I forced myself to take a deep breath. Even as I trembled, I stretched my lips into a smile. “Thank you,” I said softly, “that was very kind.”

“Here you go.”

In her outstretched hand was a ten, a one, and two quarters. I took the one and the quarters and said, “Thank you, you can keep the rest.”

“I can’t do that sir. Really, I can’t.”

“Think of it as a tip,” I said, “for restoring my faith in human nature.”

She blushed and her mole creased considerably and she tried to protest but I raised a hand.

“Thanks a lot,” she said. “Really, that’s great,” and finally she spun around to leave. Then I, with my faith in human nature restored, stepped slowly from the building, searching about me all the while for the men who were trying to kill me.

There was nothing suspicious on the wide brick walkways. Huge Galápagos turtles, safe in their shells, stared passively as I hurried by. Emus strutted and hippos wallowed and a black-and-white tapir lumbered about, looking suspiciously like a girl I used to date. At the rhino pen I leaned on the fence and watched a mother rhino and her calf. I was jealous of their great slabs of body armor. A girl in a purple dress stood on the tips of her Mary Janes and slipped her golden elephant key into the story box. A voice poured out.

Throughout Africa and Asia the rhinoceros is being hunted almost to extinction. For centuries certain cultures have believed the rhinoceros horn, blood, and urine possess magical and medicinal power .

While leaning on the bars and listening to the lecture, I slyly looked back along the path. As I did I spotted a figure at the top of a rise and my breath stopped. A beefy man in a maroon suit, looking around with a fierce concentration.

Scientists estimate there are only fourteen hundred greater one-horned Asian rhinos remaining in India and Nepal .

I didn’t know him, and I wouldn’t have recognized him except for the suit. Maroon suits are rare enough, but that shade was simply radiant in its repulsiveness, and not easily forgotten. I had seen it just that morning, at Jimmy Vig’s funeral. Its owner was one of the downtown boys for sure and not, I was sure, here to commune with nature. I froze and let my breath return in tiny spurts.

To help preserve this endangered species the Philadelphia Zoo cooperates with other zoos in a program called a species survival plan .

I waited, watching the man in maroon from the corner of my eye, and when he turned around to wave at something behind him I ran for the nearest building and rushed inside the doors.

I was in a wide, modern corridor, with huge plate glass windows fronting scenes of natural glory. Massive tortoises stared; a gray anaconda slept. A monitor, half submerged in a jungle pool, observed me with carnivorous eyes. At the end of the wide hallway were two huge windows with the superstars of the Reptile House, the alligator, squat and fierce, and the crocodile, pale and patient and hungry. Where the corridor made a sharp turn to the left I stepped away from the great predators so that while I was hidden, a view of the doors I had come in was reflected for me in the alligator’s window. Just be calm, I tried to tell myself, wait patiently and let him pass the building by as he searches the rest of the zoo. Better waiting and hiding then darting around the zoo’s maze of walkways like a zebra on the loose. Slow and patient, like my friend the crocodile, I told myself, while the bruiser lumbered past and disappeared. I evened out my breathing and the lump in my throat had almost dissolved when off the windowed front of the alligator’s cage I saw the door open and a flash of maroon.

I backed away until I hit a large wooden cube in the middle of the corridor. I slipped around it into the desert alcove. The windows here were smaller, like terrariums studded into the wall. Rattlesnakes, coachwhips, skinks, lots of skinks. I passed the Gila monster and then, using the wooden cube as a shield, I made my way into the older section of the building, toward a second set of doors. The atmosphere turned slippery and green. I backed my way to the far exit, past ropy snakes and tiny poisonous dart frogs and a North American bullfrog, staring at me with passive eyes that seemed to discount my fear. Your legs look mighty tasty, you bastard, I thought as the bullfrog sat comfortably on a synthetic log and watched me sweat. With the wooden cube still acting as a screen, I turned and made fast for the far doors, trotting then running then sprinting, sprinting too fast to stop when the doors opened and a figure, blackened by the light streaming in from behind, stepped through.

I ran right into it, bounced off as if hitting a wall, sprawled backwards onto the floor. The figure took one step toward me. When I recognized Peter Cressi looking down at me I quailed.

“Yo, Vic,” he said. “How’s it hanging?”

Behind me I heard steps.

“Geez, what happened wit’ you?” said Cressi as he eyed my tattered condition. “You crawl into one of the cages? Did some gorilla take a shine to you?”

I staggered up and immediately felt a hand fall onto my shoulder. I spun around. The beefy boy in maroon was grinning at me. He was missing a tooth. “Dante said we’d find someone here and he was right.”

I spun around again and stared at Cressi.

“Quite a thing what happened with that van,” said Cressi. “Quite a thing. To think such a thing like that could happen in this day and age.”

I tilted my head in thought while still staring at Cressi. “How’d you find out about the attack, Peter?”

“Dante, he told us and sent us on over.”

“And how’d he find out about it?” I asked.

“How do you think?”

“You tell me, Peter, dammit.”

My anger and fear all balled together and went directly to the muscles in my arms and in a tremendous shot of energy I slammed my hands into his chest, pushing him back against the doors.

“How’d he know, Peter?” I said. “Tell me that, you bastard.”

Again I pushed him back, this time so hard he hit his head on the glass.

“How’d he know unless he set it up? And you set it up with him. You bastard. Why the hell are you trying to kill me?”

I meant to slam him again but before I could two arms slithered fast as cobras around my shoulders and behind my neck and suddenly I was lifted off the ground.

“You bastard!” I shouted.

“Whoa, Vic,” said Cressi, giving me a strange look. “You’re going ballistic on us. Quiet yourself down or Andy Bandy here is going to have to quiet you for me. We don’t want no scenes in such a public place.”

Still struggling while held aloft, I said, “How’d you find out?”

Cressi gave me a look and then reached into his jacket and I stopped kicking as I waited for what I knew was coming. But what he pulled out of his jacket was a cellular phone.