The Monkey Handlers Read online

  Michael Stone turned toward the big man and rose. Stephanie could see when he turned that he was smiling. It was a small smile and, she thought, not one that she would ever want directed at herself.

  It was one of those situations, Stone thought as he rose, in which totally unrelated events just seem to fall fortuitously into place. He remembered the T-shirt that he had substituted for an undershirt that morning as he had dressed for court, the one with the military emblem and motto that couldn’t be seen through his blue dress shirt. Stone unbuttoned his shirt cuffs first, then started on the front as he said, pleasantly, “Okay. You want to see my colors? I’ll show you my colors.”

  This unexpected event brought the proceedings to a temporary halt as the bikers stilled, watching Stone like stalking predators waiting for their prey to decide in which direction to bolt before they gave chase. Stone’s fingers moved deliberately from one button to another until, the last removed from its buttonhole, he took off his shirt, dropping it over the back of Stephanie’s chair, and stood facing his would-be assailants. In blue, across Stone’s deep and expansive chest, was an eagle, wings spread, head bent down to its right, talons clutching an antique flintlock pistol and Neptune’s trident, superimposed over an anchor. Beneath the emblem was the legend: The Only Easy Day Was Yesterday.

  There was a moment of such absolute stillness that Stephanie was sure everyone had stopped breathing. A biker, whose arms were covered with nautical tattoos, broke the silence with an awed whisper that penetrated every corner of the room. “Jesus,” he muttered, “the Budweiser!”

  What?” barked the leader, snapping his head around to address him.

  “That thing on his shirt looks like a Budweiser label? That’s what they call it. I seen it before once, when I was inna navy. Inna Philippines. Special Warfare.” He raised his voice to address Stone. “Hey, sorry, man. It’s cool.”

  Furious at this challenge to his authority, the leader turned on the speaker, thrust his chest against him, and said, “Hey, you cocksuckin’ wimp. No Head backs off other colors. ’Fucks the matter with you?”

  Chest-to-chest, the smaller man made a pleading gesture and dropped his voice to a half-whisper. “For Chrissake, Tiny, I’m tellin’ ya, that guy ain’t no pussy. He’s a fuckin’ maniac is what he is. They all are. Knows all kinds a shit. Rather kill than fuck. I ain’t goin’ near that motherfucker. You wanna fuck with him? Go ahead. He’ll tear your head off and shit’n your chest cavity fer openers.”

  Tiny grabbed the smaller man under both arms and hurled him against the front wall. He hit with the back of his head first and slumped down to the floor, unconscious. Tiny, like any leader, knew fear could be contagious.

  Stone, the wine list held firmly in both hands, walked slowly toward the bar. Good as his word, the bartender disappeared slowly beneath it. “Rice-burner-ridin’ little shit.” Tiny muttered toward the unconscious figure on the floor, then he turned and strode toward Stone.

  “Hey, asshole,” he called to Stone as he approached him, “where the fuck ya think you’re goin’?”

  Stone made no reply. He altered his stride imperceptibly to time and position himself precisely as the two men came together, Stone still holding the wine list in both hands.

  Stephanie Hannigan held her breath. Tiny arrived in front and slightly to the right of Stone, blocking his path to the bar. If Stephanie had blinked, she’d have missed it. Hands never leaving the wine list, Stone’s right elbow came up and his whole upper body twisted to the left and back with strobelike speed. The motion was accompanied by a sound that reminded Stephanie of her girlhood, when she accompanied her mother to an old-fashioned butcher shop where meat was cut to order on a block before the customer, the sound of a leg of lamb being slammed down on the block prior to trimming. Jawbone fractured and completely dislocated as it was driven with terrible force out of its socket and into the nerve ganglia behind it, Tiny fell, mercifully unconscious, to the floor. Stone kept walking.

  The bodybuilder snapped out of it first. He pulled a boot knife and, holding it out in front of him, pointed at Stone, said, “There’s four of us, for Christ’s sake!” and led the charge.

  Stone dropped the wine list and turned toward the knife-wielder. Pivoting to his right to avoid the blade point, he brought the heavy long bone on the underside of his left forearm down with some forty pounds per square inch of concentrated force on top of the wrist behind the knife-holding hand. The radial nerve in his right arm paralyzed, the bodybuilder stared in disbelief as the knife fell from his lifeless fingers, now powerless to hold it. Retaliating, he swung hard with his left fist at Stone’s head, but Stone merely stepped back easily to let the blow pass, then caught the inside of the wrist of the extended arm and, in a repeat performance of his upper-body twisting motion, drove the base of the palm of his right hand as hard as he could directly into the back of his opponent’s elbow. The bodybuilder screamed as both forearm bones popped wide apart in a dislocation that tore out his ligaments and shattered his rotator cuff.

  Stone never stopped moving. But such was his grace, economy of motion, and precision that he seemed to Stephanie to be moving almost in slow motion as he pivoted back to his right, right hand forming a fist with the second knuckle of his middle finger projecting outward sharply. He deflected a left hook from the biker to his left with the underside of his own left arm, then drove the projecting knuckle of his right fist unerringly into the man’s left floating rib, severing it cleanly. The skinhead gasped, curled over to protect his side from further damage, and rolled out of harm’s way. In doing so, he temporarily blocked biker number five, the man who had originally passed Stone and Stephanie on the road to the tavern.

  The fourth thug thought to exploit his one-time ability as defensive tackle on his high school football team before he was sidelined for academic failure and dropped out of school. He hurled himself low and hard in a classical football hit, but Stone wasn’t there when he arrived. Off balance, the ex-tackle hurtled forward and slammed his shaven skull, which in his enthusiasm he had forgotten was not protected by a helmet, into the wall behind Stone.

  Stone eyed his remaining opponent, who was still trying to negotiate his way around his broken-ribbed biker brother in an effort to get at him. The beer-belly blubber that made the bearded gang member so awkward also served as a kind of armor over his vitals that would be difficult to penetrate. Stone, seeing that he had plenty of time, decided to try. He wound up like a baseball pitcher with no one on base and, using his right fist as the ball, hurled it overhand with a perfect follow-through directly into the bloated biker’s sternum. The man’s chin fell, and he bent over sharply at the waist. Stone took aim, then drove his right knee directly into the big biker’s face, pulping his nose and breaking both cheekbones, to the accompanying sound once again of a slab of meat hitting the block of Stephanie’s mother’s butcher. Stone stepped over him and headed for the man who had recognized his insignia, now fully awake and cowering at his approach.

  “Man,” the biker protested, “don’tcha remember? I’m the one told them not to fuck wit’ you. Please…”

  Stone held his hand out to the man, who looked at his face carefully, then took it. Stone lifted him to his feet with ease and led him over to the bar. The biker jumped in reaction when Stone slapped the bar, leaned over it, and said, “Okay. All clear. You can come up for air now.”

  Slowly, the bartender arose from the floor behind the bar. He looked at Stone, then, incredulously, at the carnage Stone had wrought.

  “Jesus!” said the bartender.

  Stone took out a five-dollar bill and put it on the bar. “This is for beer for my old shipmate here. He needs it.”

  Stone turned toward the rest rooms’ door. Stephanie scurried into the ladies’ room. Stone saw the outer door swing back the one inch from Stephanie’s peeking position. He went through it, walked up to the ladies’ room door, knocked on it, and said, “Ally ally in free.”

  The door opened slo
wly, and Stephanie emerged. She looked at Stone and said, “You’re back.”

  “Yeah,” said Stone, “I said I’d come knock.”

  “That’s not what I meant,” Stephanie said as they walked into the dining room.

  “I know,” Stone said.

  Stone retrieved his clothing while Stephanie stood looking at the now-groaning bikers. “God,” she said.

  As Stone and Stephanie walked out to his car, she said, “Where were you back there?”

  “It’s a long story.”

  “Want to talk about it?”

  Stone didn’t answer at first, pondering the question. He helped Stephanie into the car, got in himself, and sat for a moment more, hands in his lap. Abruptly, he said, “Yeah, I guess I owe you that.”

  “No, you don’t,” Stephanie said as Stone drove slowly out onto the road and headed back toward Rhinekill. “You owe me a meal. The talk is purely voluntary, or I don’t want to listen.”

  Stone was silent again for a while; then, as he turned toward the bridge, he said, “Okay, I want to talk about it.” He turned to face her directly. “Not because I have to. And not because I’d even want to to anyone else. But, for some reason, I want to talk about it to you.”

  Stephanie turned to look out the window to keep Stone from seeing her eyes. “Thank you,” she said. Then, turning to look at him, she said, “That’s the nicest thing anyone’s said to me in a long while.”

  Stone shifted out of fifth for fourth to take the downhill onto the bridge. The V-8 burbled, accentuating the silence between them. Stephanie came to a decision.

  “Tell you what,” she said, “it’s closer to dinnertime than lunch, and with all that energy you just expended, you’ve got to be even hungrier than I am. And I’m hungry. I’m also a good cook, if I say so myself. You seem to be in a trusting mood. Trust me enough to try my supper?”

  Stone grinned at her. “Geeze, I dunno. The contents of my soul is one thing. But my stomach? Are you as good a cook as I hope you are a listener?”

  “I’m a damn good cook,” Stephanie replied with vehemence. Then, gently, “I’m an even better listener.”

  Stone just nodded in reply. They were both silent for a time, but neither was bothered by the fact. It was, thought Stephanie, a comfortable silence and, between men and women, that was rare in her experience.

  Stephanie guided Stone to a small, neatly kept two-story house in an older part of town. He pulled into the curb directly in front of the place, because there was no driveway. The front yard was defined by a low white picket fence that wouldn’t keep out a determined dachshund. Behind it was a beautiful confusion of multicolored rambler roses, then a neat lawn.

  “My mother planted that garden,” Stephanie said.

  “It’s beautiful,” Stone replied.

  Unaccountably, the events at the tavern coursed through Stephanie’s mind as they walked toward the front door. She paused there, fumbling to get her key from her purse. She found it, then gave an involuntary shiver and said to Stone, “You’re not a porpoise at all, are you?”

  “What?”

  “You’re a killer whale!”

  Stone regarded her calmly. “Actually,” he said, “I’m a SEAL.”

  7

  The Massachusetts institute of technology graduate student lay in the powder-fine burnt sienna–colored sand of the Mexican desert seven miles south of the United States border at the state of Arizona. His clothes, like those of his much older companion, consisted of jeans tucked into athletic socks; worn, cloth-topped jogging shoes; a long-sleeved shirt with the collar turned up; and a soft tennis hat, brim down all around. All of it, from shoes to hat, had been dyed with cheap red wine and coffee to blend into the sun-seared, boondocked, wash-scarred landscape.

  From behind one of the boondocks, the young man peered through a pair of ten-powered, lightweight, roof-prismed binoculars at a railroad tank car. It sat alone on a crude trestle that took a short spur track from the main line over a wash, only to end at a pile of cross-ties a few hundred yards farther out in the desert. The area was halfheartedly fenced off by barbed wire bearing a sign reading PELEGRO!

  The binoculars came into focus on the largest feature on the side of the car, a stylized logo of an N inside a B, then moved to the next-largest, the capital letters BN, followed by a serial number. Next was a warning stenciled in white paint:

  Warning CORROSIVE liquid

  Oleum

  Hot, concentrated, fuming sulfuric acid

  Below that was a diamond-shaped sign depicting two test tubes being poured out onto a human hand and a flat object. The word Corrosive appeared again, and the legend “UN class 8.”

  The MIT man let out a low whistle.

  “What?” asked the man lying next to him.

  “That stuff’s got an equivalent acid concentration greater than pure H2SO4—pure sulfuric. It’s much stronger-acting.”

  “What d’they use it for?”

  “Make explosives, for one thing. Or dyes, drugs, petroleum refining…” He took the glasses away from his eyes and glanced upward. “Light looks to be right now,” he said. “Try to get it all, but focus on the serial number. That’s the most important. Then the DOT number. The rest of those are just weights and capacities and stuff.”

  “Gotcha covered,” said the older man, bringing to bear a single-lens-reflex camera with a 135 mm lens attached. “You make sure no rattler comes easin’ up behind us and bites my ass.”

  “I told you, no rattler’s gonna come near us. They’re as afraid of you as you are of them. Their first line of defense is retreat. You get ’em where they can’t retreat, they’ll try intimidation—that’s what the rattles are for. A strike is his last resort if you keep after him, or his first if you surprise him by not being careful when you move around out here. After he strikes, it takes him awhile to replace his venom. Which means he goes hungry in the meantime. Now, a scorpion, that’s something else.”

  “Great,” said the cameraman. “All I gotta worry about is a scorpion up my ass. For a while there, I was concerned. Ready to copy?”

  The young man put down his binoculars and twisted to remove a small pad and pencil from the buttoned breast pocket of his shirt. The back of his shirt, heated by the fierce sun, burned him, but so rapid was its evaporation in the 4 percent humidity, there was no trace of sweat. “Go,” he said.

  Through the 135 mm lens, the cameraman read off the serial number, then the Department of Transportation number. It could have been done more easily through the binoculars, but this way served as a check on the focus of the camera.

  “Got it,” said the MIT grad student.

  The cameraman fired off several exposures.

  “Jesus, that thing’s loud!” the young man said in a forced whisper.

  “It’s the motor drive and the mirror banging up out of the way. You want quiet, there’s only one way to go, an M Leica. It’s a range finder, for one thing, so there’s no mirror. And a leaf falling makes more noise than the shutter.”

  “So, how come we don’t have one?”

  “How long you been with Clean Earth?”

  “Four years. Why?”

  “They ever give you a Porsche to run an errand?”

  The question didn’t call for an answer and none was offered: Instead, the younger man put down his notebook and picked up his binoculars, scanning. Presently he said, “Uh-oh. Company.”

  The two men waited in silence as a battered old step-side pickup truck churned up a long dust trail approaching the wash at a leisurely pace. It pulled to a stop next to the railroad tracks before the trestle and two men wearing faded coveralls got out. They walked on the railroad ties through the fence opening for the tracks and out onto the trestle over the wash. As they did so, they pulled what appeared to be paint sprayer’s masks up over their faces. When they reached the tank car, the two men steadied themselves against its side, placing their feet carefully on the ties outside the rails until they reached the middle o
f the car. There, a metal ladder ran from wheel level up to a catwalk along the top of the car. One of the men climbed up toward it while the other waited below.

  The catwalk ran the entire length of the car. It consisted of open steel gridwork, designed to be nonslip to the sole of a shoe. The users were protected further by low steel handrails on both sides of the catwalk. The man on the ladder reached the top of the car and turned left on the catwalk. The man left below reached into the front of his coveralls and withdrew a pair of heavy gauntlets, which he proceeded to draw on.

  Both the MIT student and his companion followed the actions of the two men as best they could, the student through his binoculars, the other man through the telephoto lens of his camera.

  “What’re they up to?” asked the cameraman. “You can see a lot better with those things than I can with this camera.”

  “I don’t know,” said the student. “The guy on top is fooling around with that turretlike thing on the top right. The other guy’s just hangin’ out.”

  “Hell, I can see that. I mean what’s he doing with the turret?”

  “I can’t tell.”

  The man on the catwalk left the turret and proceeded along the top of the car to a similar turret at the other end of the car, then leaned over and waved at his coworker below. The man left his post at the middle of the car and walked along the ties, holding on to the side of the tanker, until he came to a spot approximately below the position of the man on top. Then, cautiously, he edged under the car, positioning his feet as far as he could safely on the inside of the rail, because the center section of all the cross-ties of the trestle beneath the tanker had been cut out so as to leave an opening to the floor of the wash below. There the smooth, rounded river rock and sunbaked sand had been stained a foul, sticky, malodorous yellow-brown. Nothing grew. Nothing lived. No snake, lizard, scorpion, or tarantula, however venomous, could match the lethal toxins wrought by man that waited in the wash like a cocked pistol for the cloudburst that would release the trigger, sending death randomly down the wash as far as the floodwaters would take it.