Bestiary

CHAPTER THIRTY-TWO

“I don’t believe you.”

That was just like his mother. Anytime he gave her good news — which, Greer had to admit, hadn’t been all that often — she thought he was lying.

“Show me your pay stub,” she said.

“They pay me in cash.”

She put a cup of tea on the tray, right next to her toast and jam, and waddled back into the living room with it. “Hold this,” she said, and Greer did, as she settled herself back into her chair. “Now, you can rest the tray across the arms.”

He wished he had something to prove it to her — a company ID, a contract, a uniform. “Remember that guy from the army who called here the other day?”

“Yes,” she said, spreading the jam and paying more attention to The People’s Court than to him.

“The one I told you wanted me to complete a survey?”

“You were lying about that, too, I think.”

Damn, her radar was really pretty good. “I was, a little. He wanted to know what I was doing now as a civilian, and I had to tell him I was having some trouble finding work.”

That she heard. “Of course you couldn’t find any — you didn’t look.”

Why did he bother? What had made him think he should even tell her anything? But he was going to plow ahead. He was going to get this out. “He told me about a guy — a very rich guy, up in Bel-Air — who needed someone to run his entire security operation. He put me up for the job, and I got it.”

He was standing to one side of her chair, and she was looking at the TV, and the whole setup reminded him uncomfortably of the time he came home to tell her he’d been made captain of the baseball team and she’d been watching something on the TV — the big old one that still had an actual aerial on top — and instead of saying anything like “That’s great!” or “Good for you!” she’d said, “Your father’s run off again, and this time I think it’s for good.”

“When do you start this so-called job?”

“I already have. I told you.”

She bit off a hunk of the toast — more jam than bread at this point — and shrugged. “Does that mean you’ll be getting your own place?”

He couldn’t tell how she meant that — whether she was hoping he would or hoping he wouldn’t. She hadn’t exactly welcomed him home when he’d returned from Iraq, but seeing as he’d been wounded and all, she could hardly turn him away. And then she’d gotten used to the extra cash his disability payments had brought in, for groceries and rent and utilities and stuff. If he’d had to guess, he’d have said she was kind of torn.

“Maybe,” he said, letting her twist a little. “I’ll see how far the salary goes.” He liked the word “salary”; made it sound more authentic than the wad of bills Jakob had tossed him.

“If you’ve got a job,” she said, having had a minute or two to think about it, “why aren’t you there now?”

“It’s not that kind of a job, where you punch in and out. It’s an executive position.”

She looked dubious.

“And I’m going there now, in fact.” What was the use? He turned and headed for the door. He grabbed his windbreaker off the hook, and just before he closed the door, he heard her turn up the volume on the TV.

But she was right, whether she knew it or not — it was time he got a place of his own. This shit was definitely not worth it.

On the way to the VA hospital, where he’d been heading all along, he listened to a tape of Grand Funk Railroad — the old stuff was still the best — at full volume. His life, he thought, was coming together, but in a very weird way. What had started out as a blackmail plot — never a very good one, as he could never figure out exactly where the leverage was — had turned into a regular gig. He’d asked al-Kalli if his title was “Head of Security Operations,” and al-Kalli had said that was fine with him. Now here he was, a decorated Iraq vet, working for an Arab billionaire, in L.A. yet, and guarding a bunch of… dinosaurs, for all he knew. That guy he’d seen on TV–Carter Cox — was a paleontologist, and that must have been why al-Kalli had let him in. The only other guy Greer had seen let into the bestiary had never made it out again.

And al-Kalli must actually think of him as more than just a security officer; why else would he have invited him to that fancy party? Although — Christ — that food had been some of the worst he’d had since his deployment.

At the hospital, he parked in his usual spot — a patch of shade off at the far end, just around the corner from the door — checked in at the front desk, and was halfway down the hall when the guard said, “Hold it, Captain!”

What, had he signed in on the wrong line? The army could find more ways to bust your balls…

“Got an advisory here,” the guard said. “You’re to report to the supervisor’s office.”

“I’ve got an appointment first,” Greer said. Through the glass wall of the therapy room, he could see Indira tending to Mariani in his wheelchair. He wanted to talk to her — he needed to talk to her. Things had been bad for a while, but now that he was straightening out his life, he wanted to tell her that. He wanted to tell someone who would care.

“No, you don’t,” the guard barked, coming out from behind the semicircular counter he sat behind. “You’re making an immediate left, and reporting to the supervisor. Last door at the end of the hall… Captain.”

These pricks really killed Greer; the guy was in uniform, but Greer was damned if he could see any combat patches on him. Greer glanced into the therapy room again, and saw that Indira was looking out at him. He raised one finger and mouthed “Right back,” then moved off down the hall.

The supervisor, Dr. Frank Foster, looked like he was in worse shape than some of the patients. He was a scrawny, walleyed guy with a glistening sheen of sweat on his pale face — even though the office air-conditioning was working fine — and the rabbity look of a smoker wondering where, and when, he could safely light up. Greer, gambling on his hunch, took out his pack of cigarettes and offered him one.

“Don’t be ridiculous,” Dr. Foster said, though his eyes did linger for that extra split second on the pack. “There’s no smoking in this building, and you shouldn’t be smoking anyway. Put them away.”

Greer slipped them back in his pocket and tried to get comfortable in the hard plastic chair; it was sculpted for somebody, but that somebody wasn’t him. And tempted as he was to ask what was up, he knew enough about the military and its protocols to keep his mouth shut and only volunteer whatever information he had to.

Dr. Foster swiveled in his chair, pulled a manila folder off a pile behind him, and slapped it on the messy desk. Greer noticed a telltale pack of matches mixed in with all the other crap. The tinny sound of a cheap radio, playing classical music, emanated from somewhere, maybe one of the desk drawers.

“We’ve made some corrections to your file,” Dr. Foster said, “in light of some new information that has come our way.”

New information? Greer wanted to ask, what new information? But didn’t.

Foster riffled through some papers again, and said, “How long have you had your drug dependency problems?”

Greer stayed silent.

“And what drugs are you currently using?” He looked up expectantly, pen poised, waiting for Captain Greer to start spilling his guts. “Well?”

“The clinic has records, doesn’t it?” Greer asked. “Ask my therapist, Indira Singh, what I’ve been prescribed.”

“We know what you’ve been prescribed. We also have information that leads us to believe you’re abusing other, nonprescription drugs. If you have drug dependency and addiction problems, problems that could affect the course of your treatment here, we need to know that.”

“Now how would you know anything like that?”

“We’re not at liberty to divulge that information, nor is it relevant. All that matters is whether it’s true or not.”

“It’s not true,” Greer said. “Okay? So we’re done.”

“Are you currently working?”

That one came out of left field. “Why?”

Foster shrugged. “We have to keep the records current, especially if your new employer offers any kind of private health insurance benefits. We’re here to help the veterans, Captain Greer, but we also like to see that the veterans are trying to help themselves.”

Greer was starting to smell a rat.

“So, are you currently employed, and if so where?”

A big rat with a grudge. Greer had to think fast, wondering how to play this one. His first inclination, as always, was to lie, and he saw no reason to depart from tradition now. “No.” Even though he’d been planning to tell Indira, he was going to ask her to keep it under her hat.

The walleyed Dr. Foster just stared at him blankly. Greer wondered if his eyes were enough in sync, or if he saw two different images. “You have not recently been employed as a security officer?”

Greer laughed, as if he’d never heard anything so absurd. “Yeah, a gimp with a bad leg, no experience, and no references. Where am I supposed to be working? Wells Fargo, or Fort Knox?”

“We don’t look kindly on the falsification of records, Captain Greer. If it comes to light that you have not been forthcoming, or that you have in fact provided us with misinformation, the Veterans Administration can, and will, take action.”

“That’s just what I’d expect them to do.”

“The file is still open,” Dr. Foster said, pointedly leaving it so on the desk. “I’d advise you to keep us up-to-date on the developments in your life, both medical and professional.”

“I’ll do that,” Greer said, starting to lever himself up and out of the chair. “But I’ve got a therapy appointment to keep.”

“Your therapy will have to wait today.” He tore off a perforated form with a number of black boxes on it and said, “Take this upstairs to the main desk.” Greer saw a lot of the boxes were already checked — for urinalysis, blood chemistries, etc. It didn’t take a rocket scientist to figure out what this was all about.

“We’re not here to punish you,” Dr. Foster said, with all the conviction you’d muster to read aloud from an eye chart, “we’re here to help you.”

“I feel better already,” Greer replied.

In the hall outside, he stuffed the form in his pants pocket; no point in getting any tests done today — he could think of at least three prohibited substances currently circulating in his bloodstream. And his blood pressure wasn’t going to be so hot either — all he could think about was finding Sadowski, the fucking snitch, and killing him. Hadn’t it even occurred to the moron that Greer had plenty of shit on him, too? He couldn’t get him fired from Silver Bear — that had already been done. But how about that arsenal he kept, and the supersecret Sons of Liberty? What exactly was their agenda, and wouldn’t the feds maybe like to be in on it? Greer even had the sense that they were planning their own little Waco to happen soon. That marked-up map he’d seen at the Blue Bayou, the new recruits, the meetings Sadowski had urged him to attend. Something was in the wind, and from what Greer knew of Sadowski and his mentor, Burt Pitt, it was going to be stupid, it was going to be destructive, and it was sure as hell going to be violent.

But he’d deal with that later. Right now he still had some business to conduct with Indira. Chances were pretty slim that he’d get another prescription out of her — Greer was confident his name was on some internal watch list — but it might be worth one last shot. And he still wanted to talk to her. She was about the only straight person he knew, the only one who might think this new job was for real and that he wasn’t just bullshitting.

Slipping quietly past the back of the reception booth, where the guard was watching the main doors, Greer entered the therapy room. Indira had Mariani’s wheelchair pulled up to a table where she was having him squeeze these metal hand clamps that were used to measure the power of your grip. It was one of the few things Greer had still registered well on. Mariani was squeezing one now, Indira was watching the meter to record the results, and Greer just stood off to one side waiting for her to finish.

A new guy, or at least somebody Greer had never seen, was lurching along on a treadmill with a prosthetic left foot. He had on headphones and a Yankees baseball cap. When he raised one hand off the bar to acknowledge Greer, Greer raised a hand back. Christ, Greer thought, at least he hadn’t wound up an amputee. What the hell was that like?

“You waiting for the treadmill?” the guy said, slipping his headphones down around his neck.

“No,” Greer said. “I couldn’t do two minutes on that damn thing, anyway.”

“Me neither,” the guy said, panting, “not with this fucking contraption on. But screw it — you go to a regular gym and everybody there wants to know what happened.”

Greer knew exactly what he was saying. “And here, nobody cares.”

The guy nodded, put the phones back on, and kept at it.

Indira wheeled Mariani over to the dispensary window, then came back to Greer with her hands pressed down in the pockets of her white lab coat. He could tell she knew all about it.

“You got time to work with me today?” Greer said, pretending all was well.

“Have you gone upstairs for the lab work?” she asked.

“Next time,” he said.

“I can’t. You know that. The supervisor has to okay all your treatments from now on.”

“I don’t suppose you could tell me what started all this.” He knew, but it never hurt to get independent confirmation.

“I don’t know,” she said, with evident sincerity. “But even if I did, I would not be allowed to tell you.”

“Yeah? Then maybe I won’t tell you that the stuff about the job was true.”

“A job?” she said. “So you have a job now?”

Either she was a better liar than he knew, or she really didn’t know anything about that. Another therapist brushed past them with a one-armed vet in tow. “I’m glad,” Indira said. “It will do you good to be working again.”

He started to reach into his pocket for a cigarette, then remembered where he was. “Yeah, well, we’ll see how it goes. But the money’s good, and I think there’s actually a lot I can do there.” It was odd, but he had indeed found himself thinking, seriously, even when he wasn’t up at the estate, about al-Kalli’s security needs. Having been waltzed onto the estate by Sadowski, he knew how lax some of the present measures were. He knew where the walls could easily be breached, he was learning where the motion detectors were and what areas they failed to properly cover. It was as if his mind had been waiting for just such a challenge, for something to think about besides his next score, or his next trip to the Blue Bayou. On the one hand he knew that al-Kalli was a cold-blooded murderer — hell, he’d seen him in action — and on the other, to his own great surprise, he wanted to prove to him that he’d made a smart move in hiring Greer.

“Indira,” the other therapist called out, “I could use some help when you’re free.”

“I’ll be right there,” Indira replied.

“Okay, you gotta go,” Greer said. “But I’ll come back for those tests.”

“Do that, Captain,” she said, sincerely.

“And then maybe we can try again.”

“Yes, of course, then we can schedule another therapy appointment.”

That wasn’t what he’d meant — and he wondered if she knew that or not. But for now, he decided to just let it go. “Right.”

On the way past the security desk, the guard requested that he sign out, but Greer just kept on going.

“Captain Greer!” the guard shouted after him. “You have to sign out of the building!”

Greer, without turning around, raised the middle finger of his left hand and kept on walking.

He stopped just outside the front doors to light a badly needed cigarette. And to think about how he was going to handle the Sadowski situation. Maybe he shouldn’t have dumped him off the pier, he thought, though the memory of it even now brought a smile to his face. Just the sound of his scream, and the big splash a second later… life didn’t get much better than that.

The sun was beating down on the parking lot, and he was glad he’d parked in his secret shady spot around back. And since he hadn’t spent any time getting therapy, or getting tested, he had an hour or two to kill. In the past, he’d have simply tooled over to the Blue Bayou, or maybe down to that beach parking lot where he’d watched Zeke play volleyball — he could get high in the front seat and mellow out. But instead he found himself seriously considering a run up to Bel-Air. He was wondering about how well secured that back gate was, the one that Sadowski had arranged for him to exit from. And he was sorry he’d ever told him anything about the animals up there. Information was a weapon, and that one he’d put in Sadowski’s hands himself.

The roar of the traffic on the 405 was a steady drone, but it was otherwise kind of peaceful here. Only one other car was parked around back, one of those new Hummer 3s. Just the sight of them pissed off Greer. If he never set foot in another Hummer, it would be too soon. And now, here were all these civilians playing soldier — and that included that horse’s ass bodybuilder now known as the Governator— driving around Beverly Hills and the Palisades in cars that were probably better armored than the buckets he’d originally traveled in back in beautiful Baghdad. He’d even seen one that had fake bullet holes decaled across the back bumper. At the time, it was all he could do not to reach under the driver’s seat and pull out his Beretta, which he kept hidden there in a Weight Watchers box he’d retrieved from his mother’s trash, and blow some real holes into the back of the damn thing.

But as he approached his own heap — now that he was a working man, he wondered what it would cost to get the thing painted — he noticed that the Hummer was occupied. There was somebody in the driver’s seat, and possibly somebody beside him; the windows were too tinted and narrow to tell. But something went off in the back of Greer’s head, some little warning bell — the same sort of thing that would tell him not to open a closed door in Mosul, or step off the road to free a dog tied conspicuously to a post in the middle of nowhere. That was how Gaines, a softhearted black sergeant, had bought the farm.

He stubbed out his cigarette and, while keeping an eye on the Hummer, approached his own Mustang. There was the smell of cigarette smoke in the air, but it wasn’t his; where was it coming from? He glanced at a concrete wall — clearly some kind of security addition — that jutted out from the side of the VA hospital, about fifteen feet past the parking area. Was there somebody behind it? Even if there was, he’d already decided he could make it to his car, and the Weight Watchers box, before anybody could get to him.

He had the key in the lock when he heard the doors of the Hummer opening and the sound of swift heavy footsteps. Shit. He turned the key too quickly, and the rusty lock caught. He turned it again, glancing up, and he could see Tate and Florio, the two new Sons of Liberty boys, bearing down on him. Tate was in a tight black T-shirt, Florio was wearing a red tracksuit, and both of them were carrying what looked like brand-new aluminum baseball bats.

He wrenched the door of the car open, but it was too late — Tate took a short swing, Greer ducked, and the bat took out the front window of the Mustang with a shattering explosion. Greer ran around to the other side of the car — fortunately these two were so stupid they’d come at him together from the same side — and waited while they regrouped.

“This can’t be what the Sons of Liberty have been planning all along, can it?” Greer said, catching his breath. He knew he could never make a run for the hospital doors, or all the way out onto Wilshire Boulevard, without their catching up to him. But how was he going to get to his gun?

“Go around back,” Tate told Florio. Florio lumbered toward the back bumper of the car, keeping his eyes on Greer the whole time.

Greer had no choice. He pulled open the passenger-side door and lunged across the front seat, scrabbling under the seat for the Beretta. Tate couldn’t get in a swing from this angle; he dropped the bat with a clang on the concrete and reached for the back of Greer’s shirt to haul him out. Greer could feel his fingers on the damn box; he could even feel the cold steel of the trigger guard inside. He braced himself against the bottom of the steering wheel with one hand while he groped to get the gun out, and then he felt Florio grabbing his ankles and trying to pull him out the other way.

“I’ve got him!” Tate shouted angrily. “Let the fuck go!”

Florio grunted and let go, and Tate grabbed hold of Greer’s hair with both hands and dragged him out of the car, face-first and empty-handed. As soon as he felt his face scrape the concrete, Greer spun himself over — Tate was aiming a kick at his ribs and Greer was able to catch his foot and push it back. Tate flopped against the side of the car, but he didn’t go down, and Florio was coming around fast to join him. Greer was scuttling backward like a crab, and figuring there was no way he was going to come out of this alive, when he heard a voice say, “What’s going on here?” from somewhere behind him.

Greer kept scuttling toward the sound of the voice, and Tate and Florio were suddenly flummoxed like the dumb oxen they were. Greer smelled the cigarette smoke again.

“Security’s been called,” the man said. “Nobody moves a muscle.”

Tate and Florio looked at each other — Tate said, “Shit!”—then bolted for the Hummer.

“I said hold it right there!” the man said, and Greer was able to whip his head around now and see that it was that supervisor, that Dr. Foster. The one he’d suspected was a secret smoker, only he was holding a cell phone now and not a cigarette.

The Hummer roared to life, drove right over the cement parking spot barrier, and rumbled toward the Wilshire exit. An entering van, horn blasting, had to swerve to one side to avoid getting hit. Greer took a deep breath and lurched to his feet. His left leg was singing like a choir.

“Captain Greer?” Foster said, his voice a little shaky, as he came closer.

Greer touched his cheek; there was a bloody scrape, but no serious damage.

“What was going on here?”

“What do you think?” Greer said. “Where’s this security you called?”

“I didn’t, I’m afraid,” Foster said, opening his palm to reveal that it wasn’t a cell phone at all — it was a transistor radio.

Greer heard a chorus of honks as the Hummer barged into the traffic flow and headed off toward Sepulveda.

Greer had to laugh. Jesus, that had been a close call — and he had to hand it to the doc. His timing couldn’t have been better.

“Did you know those men?”

“Yeah, but we’re not really friends.”

Foster paused, then laughed nervously. “I guess not.”

Greer reached into his shirt pocket and took out the pack of Marlboros. He put one in his mouth, then held the pack out toward Foster. “Go ahead. Your secret’s safe with me.”

Foster took a cigarette — his hands were still trembling a bit — drew a pack of matches from his own pocket, and lighted them both. “You know this is bad for your health,” he said, as if he just couldn’t stop himself.

They both inhaled deeply, and stared out at the stream of cars flowing past the far end of the parking lot. Like it or not, Greer felt that he owed the guy now; someday when he was clean, whenever that might be, he’d come in and get his blood and urine tests done.