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  “And in light of the military style raids on the grow ops,” Sandovan continued, “we thought it was a strange coincidence.”

  The captain’s brow furrowed. He picked up a pen from his desk and twirled it absentmindedly. Hernandez watched the pen twirl through the captain’s fingers and said, “You know I’ve always wanted—”

  The captain glanced at him to shut him up. “Did you check the neighborhood? Talk to the people who might have seen someone at that time of the day?”

  Sandovan answered. “Nobody’s up at that time of day in that neighborhood—it’s Twenty-Second Avenue and Cornice Street. There’s a newsstand at the southeast corner, but the lady who runs it doesn’t raise the shutter until six thirty. This call came in before that.”

  The captain put the pen back on his desk. “There’s a scuzzy bar down on Twenty-Second. It’s called the Rusty Bayonet. I was a regular there after my last divorce. It’s owned by a shriveled-up dude who makes Yoda look like a teenager. Guy’s name is Ferguson. He’s about a hundred and forty years old, but so fucking pickled in whisky that he’ll never die. He was in Korea as an infantry grunt—still hears reveille in his head every fucking morning, so he’s an early riser. I’ve heard all his stories. Go talk to him. Order up the halibut and chips. Fucking make his day. If there’s anything to this, he’ll know.”

  The men stood there.

  The captain leaned back in his chair.

  The men looked at him.

  The captain looked at the men.

  “What?”

  Mitchell spoke. “We’re waiting for you to tell us to fuck off out of here.”

  The captain smiled. “Fuck off out of here.”

  Mitchell and Sandovan arrived at the Rusty Bayonet close to lunchtime. They could see why the captain had been a regular. The place was a profanity. The exterior hadn’t been painted in decades. The sign, which extended out from the building, was missing the a the y and the t on one side, so it read “Rusty Bone.” There was a permanent urine stain on the brick wall near the alley. The door handle almost came off in Sandovan’s hand as they entered.

  The interior delivered on the promise of the exterior. The floor was dark brown hardwood, stained in some places and worn white where people had walked for decades. They went to the bar and sat down. An old guy who looked exactly as the captain had described him was sitting behind the bar doing the crossword from the morning paper. He didn’t look in their direction.

  Sandovan cleared his throat.

  Nothing.

  Mitchell picked up a battered salt shaker and started to tap it on the bar.

  Nothing.

  A woman, as ancient as the man, came out of the back. She looked over the old guy’s shoulder for a second, then said in a loud voice, “Sixteen down, dendrite!”

  She turned toward Mitchell and Sandovan. “Who are you?”

  The cops looked at each other and laughed. “We’re customers.”

  The woman looked over the top of her half-moon glasses at them. “You ain’t customers. I know all our customers, and you ain’t among them.”

  Sandovan took the initiative. “We were told the halibut and chips here is really good. By a regular.”

  The woman’s jaw clenched slightly. “And who might that be?”

  Mitchell badged her, “Our Captain. Eighth Precinct Captain Ramsey.”

  “Ramsey! How the fuck is he?”

  “He’s fine. Said he spent a lot of time here trying to get past his divorce.”

  The woman elbowed the old man. “Hey Ferg! These boys are friends of Ramsey’s.”

  Without lifting his gaze from the crossword, Ferguson said “Bullshit. Ramsey don’t have any friends.”

  Sandovan looked at Mitchell. “Harsh,” he said.

  The woman asked them what they wanted.

  “Two orders of the fish and chips, and a quick word with Ferg there if he doesn’t mind,” said Mitchell.

  She looked at her husband. “He minds, but I’ll tell him he has to do it. Hey Ferg! Put your hearing aid in and talk to these boys.”

  Ferguson ambled over as his wife disappeared back into the kitchen. He put an earpiece in his left ear and cranked the volume. “What do you want to talk about?”

  “The other morning there was a bit of a commotion out here in front. Couple of ambulances?” Sandovan said.

  “That’s right. They banged on the door, and I let ‘em in. Gave ’em some free coffee. You gotta do right by the medics.”

  Sandovan continued, “See anything else that morning?”

  Ferguson stared out the window. “Rusty Bayonet” was painted on it and illuminated by the sun streaming in. You could see the brush marks where someone had free-handed the lettering years before. Probably Ferg.

  “Nothing really,” he said. “There was the usual crew of vagrants while I was spraying down the sidewalk. They disappeared into the alley. They like to poke through the dumpsters. After a while there was another man. Tall, dark fella.”

  “Dark, like, African American?” Sandovan asked.

  “Nope. Dark features. Eyebrows like Omar Sharif. Good posture. I remember I stopped hosing Walt Shepard’s stomach contents off the sidewalk from the night before to let the man past. He had one hell of a spit-shine on his boots. Gotta respect a man who takes care of his boots.”

  Ferguson gave them a surprisingly detailed description of the man. Then his missus. appeared with the fish and chips.

  “You boys want ketchup?”

  “Yes please,” Sandovan said.

  “We don’t have any,” she replied.

  Mitchell shrugged, and they tucked into their lunch. Ferguson admired the plates of deep-fried splendor. “Coupla beers to wash that down?” he said.

  “No thanks,” Mitchell said.

  “You fellers homosexuals?” Ferguson said.

  “No. We’re cops.” Mitchell said with a laugh.

  Fifteen minutes later Sandovan put a twenty on the counter. “That cover it?”

  Ferguson looked over from his paper. “Yep. With room to spare. That lunch special’s only two ninety-nine. I’ll get you some change.”

  Mitchell and Sandovan looked at him. “Two ninety-nine? How do you stay in business?”

  Ferguson opened the register as he replied, “Alice gets the fish outta the garbage cans behind the market there. Brings it in before it can thaw, so it don’t cost us nothin’. I gotta give you all ones for your change, that okay?”

  “Keep it.”

  Mitchell and Sandovan left the bar and walked into the alley. “Wonder if that’s why he was hosing the guy’s stomach contents off the sidewalk,” Mitchell said.

  “Maybe,” said Sandovan. “Think Captain Ramsey knows where the Rusty Bayonet gets the catch of the day?”

  “No doubt. I think that’s why he told us to order it.”

  They took a quick look in the dumpsters. There was a discarded crock pot that still bore evidence of some kind of stew. A plastic bag that had split open to reveal a collection of porn magazines. There was a dented VCR, a carton of eighteen individual yogurts a week past the best before date, a tattered blanket, and one sofa seat cushion with a questionable stain in the center.

  The highlights of the second dumpster were a broken full-length mirror, five polka CDs, and a thigh-high black latex boot with a five-inch heel. In the third dumpster, barely visible in an empty stewed tomato can obscured by pizza boxes, they spotted a cell phone. New.

  Sandovan leaned over and extracted the phone with a latex glove.

  “Well well. Looks like it’s right out of the box. Let’s get it back to a tech and see if it gives up any prints or a call history,” he said.

  When they got back to the precinct Sandovan logged the phone in with a fingerprint tech. Then they continued to work their respective networks of snitches, comparing notes with Ryerson, Hernandez, and Nelson.

  Mitchell also gave Mrs. Vargas a call to see if she had heard from Rammi.

  “He called me two d
ays ago and told me that he was going out of town,” she said.

  “Any idea where he was going or for how long? We really need to talk to him.”

  “He said that he and his girlfriend were going to be house-sitting for a friend.”

  “Did he say where?” Mitchell said.

  “He said it was somewhere in the Bahamas. And it might not have cellular service, so I shouldn’t worry.”

  “You’ll let us know if he checks in, and give him my number if you don’t mind?”

  “I will do that. By the way, I met with Mr. Emilio.”

  Mitchell laughed. “And what did Mr. Emilio think of your butter tarts?”

  He could tell she was smiling her shy smile. “He said that he should have trusted that Mr. Sandovan would know a good pastry.”

  “Ha ha. And are you busy baking?”

  “Oh yes. He said he would take the three dozen every Monday morning. And he’s giving me eighty-five dollars.”

  “Hmm, not bad. Maybe he’s not as tough a negotiator as I said he was,” Mitchell said.

  “Or perhaps I am more ruthless than you know,” she said.

  Mitchell laughed again. “I suppose after raising two kids single-handed you know how to put your foot down.”

  “I do.”

  20

  Curtis and J.A. got the bad news about the tenth house from Amari, one of Otis’s cadre of leg breakers. Amari’s neck had a twenty-three-inch circumference, and his arms were the size of Curtis’s legs, but his voice was unnaturally high. Otis said he was scary until he opened his mouth.

  “This is not going to go over well. What was that kid’s name again?” asked J.A.

  Curtis looked in his smartphone log of the personnel they had assigned to the southeast houses. “That was Rammi. The guy with the car and the cutie license plate.”

  “Damn. I thought that kid seemed cocky. Do we have him?”

  “Yep. Amari said he went by to check on him and found the kid and his girlfriend in plasti-cuffs and the crop gone.”

  “Otis is going to be steamed. That house had a full load of the Seraphim. There are only two others that have the new hybrid,” said J.A.

  The men walked up the staircase from the sub-penthouse and knocked on Otis’s office door in the penthouse. They heard a muffled shout.

  “Come.”

  They entered and stood in front of the desk. Otis was eating a lychee berry. The juice trickled down his chin and he wiped it with a silk handkerchief. After waiting for a moment, J.A. opened his mouth to speak.

  “I heard,” Otis pre-empted him.

  “It was the new—” Curtis began.

  “I know.”

  They stood in uncomfortable silence as Otis finished the fruit. Curtis’s phone buzzed. He switched it off in his pocket without looking at it. Far below, they heard an ambulance speed down the street, siren wailing as if a portend for Otis’s reaction to this latest news.

  “I have the kid,” he said.

  “Amari told us,” Curtis nodded.

  “It is my feeling,” Otis said, pausing to choose another lychee from the ornate bowl on his desk, “that this organization needs a motivational video.”

  J.A. glanced at Curtis and then back at Otis.

  Otis reclined and put one foot on the edge of his desk. He inspected the textured skin of the lychee. “What is the most primal human fear?” he asked his men.

  J.A. thought for a second. “Fire,” he responded.

  Curtis, upon seeing that Otis was waiting for his answer, scrambled for something to say.

  “Uh, drowning?”

  Otis bit into the lychee, savoring the pulp. “Good guesses. But you’re incorrect. The most primal of our fears, dating back into the very beginnings of human consciousness, is the fear of being eaten.”

  J.A.’s stomach began to sour.

  The Salento Zoo and Botanical Garden was fairly easy to break into. In hindsight, Otis thought, it was probably due to a matter of perspective. So much attention is devoted to keeping the animals in that relatively little thought is given to keeping people out.

  There is also the matter of budget. Zoo complexes are large, and therefore difficult to secure. The most formidable impediments are usually high fences and security cameras at main entrances. Security guards inside are few and far between. With budgets facing an anaconda-like squeeze, most funds go to staffing, maintenance, feeding, educational programs, and breeding initiatives aimed at expanding the gene pools of endangered species.

  With a cameraman in tow, Otis cut through the zoo’s perimeter fence at two thirty a.m. on a moonless night. Amari had the straitjacketed and gagged Rammi Vargas slung over his shoulder. Whereas daytime zoo visitors meandered through the grounds or did a tour guided via headphones, Otis knew exactly where he was going.

  Of all the species within a large zoo, the Siberian tiger is the undisputed king. They are the apex predator of their environs. The male at the Salento Zoo was on loan from a Safari Park in Scotland, in the hope that he would impregnate the zoo’s female, Tatya. The male, Baika, measured nine feet long and weighed 460 pounds. Otis had done his research and found that Siberian, also known as Amur tigers typically hunt between dusk and dawn. Although Baika had been fed 30 pounds of raw horsemeat earlier in the evening, he was still likely to rise to the occasion.

  The men neared the tiger grotto. It was set into the ground, with sixteen-foot-high concrete walls in accordance with the standard specified by the Association of Zoos and Aquariums. Amari put the wide-eyed Rammi down on the ground and began to set up a portable floor crane the cameraman had wheeled in behind him along with his steel camera case.

  Once the crane was set up, Otis pulled the hook free and motioned for Amari to pick up Rammi Vargas. The crane’s load capacity was a thousand pounds, which was more than equal to the task. When he realized what was going on, Rammi began to struggle for his life. Amari’s huge fist knocked the wind out of him. Otis, shaking his head, attached the hook to Rammi’s straitjacket.

  Rammi was crying. Mucous blew in and out of both nostrils as paroxysms of fear wracked his body. Amari extended the boom of the crane. The cameraman fired up his lighting rig, and the men looked over the wall into the grotto.

  Baika was nowhere to be seen.

  Otis drew an aluminum flask from his pocket. He took a long swig of brandy, smacked his lips appreciatively, then offered Amari a hit, which Amari politely declined. Otis carefully screwed the top back on, wiped down the flask, then threw it into the grotto.

  It hit the ground, rattling and bouncing for five feet before coming to rest under a rock outcropping. The effect was instantaneous. Baika bounded out of a cave on the left side of the enclosure and stopped to sniff the air.

  Rammi began to struggle anew as Amari lifted him over the side. Baika, head raised, padded over to investigate. Amari began to turn the crank and lower Rammi. Otis suddenly yelled “Stop!”

  Rammi looked hopefully back toward them.

  Otis turned to the cameraman. “How’s the framing? Can I have a look?”

  The cameraman stepped away from the tripod.

  Otis checked the framing. “I want a nice smooth pan down, understand?”

  The cameraman nodded.

  Otis leaned on the railing. “Action,” he said.

  Amari began to crank once again.

  21

  The following morning, Sandovan walked into the squad room with a box of donut holes. He started the coffeemaker and got the cream out of the mini-fridge.

  As the rest of the shift wandered in, the conversation grew to a steady rhubarb. Mitchell was sitting in front of his computer with a smudge of powdered sugar on his upper lip. He took a sip of the coffee Sandovan had brought him.

  “Fuck me, Sandman. We have got to get some decent coffee beans in this place. Don’t get me wrong, I appreciate the gesture. But this,” he pointed to the cup, “is a tragedy.”

  Captain Ramsey appeared in the doorway.

  Sandovan p
iped up when he saw him. “Hey Cap, Mitchell is trying to organize a work-to-rule campaign. He says we’ll hold out until the department starts buying fair trade Ethiopian Sidamo coffee beans.”

  The men braced themselves for the tsunami of blue language. Instead, Captain Ramsey took a deep breath and rubbed his eyes with his thumb and forefinger. “Mitchell, what was the name of that kid you were looking for? The one with the vanity plate? Whose mother you and Sandovan have been in touch with?”

  Mitchell said the name without looking up from his monitor. “Rammi Vargas, Cap.”

  Ramsey sighed. “The paramedics found him. At least, they found half of him.”

  Sandovan and Mitchell went straight to Salento Mercy Hospital. The attending physician for Rammi Vargas was clearly rattled as he sat down in his office with them.

  Mitchell started. “So how is he?”

  The doctor clicked his pen absentmindedly. “He’s in critical condition. Actually, critical condition might be an understatement. He lost about as much blood as anyone we have ever admitted to this hospital.”

  Sandovan pressed the doc for details.

  “The paramedics brought him in at four forty-five this morning. He was unconscious. There were massive multiple lacerations to his abdomen. His left leg was gone at the knee. The right foot was missing, and all the tissue was stripped from the right tibia and fibula.”

  “What happened to him?” Mitchell asked.

  “The paramedics found him suspended over the tiger enclosure in the zoo. The male tiger was just able to reach his lower body. A cat like that has jaws that are powerful enough to basically amputate limbs. I have no idea how Mr. Vargas is still alive. The shock—never mind the trauma itself—would kill most people.”

  “Who called it in?” Sandovan said.

  The doc looked at a sheet of paper on his desk. “A couple of students. They were out at a bar and had had too much to drink, so they were walking back to the university campus. They took a shortcut and were walking past the northeast perimeter fence of the zoo when they heard the commotion. Thankfully they had the presence of mind to call nine one one.”

  “Jesus Eddie,” Mitchell said. “How are we supposed to tell Mrs. Vargas?”

  Sandovan ran his hands back over his head and stared at the ceiling.