The Love You Crave

19.

I focus a pinpoint of light on the face of my watch as it turns 9:00 p.m., thinking, two hours ago Gwen Peters asked Carmine “The Chin” Porrello to have me whacked.

I’m in the Las Vegas Zoo, standing by the monkey cage. The monkeys are so surprised to see a visitor after closing time, they actually stop picking their asses to stare at me.

“You talkin’ to me?” I say, channeling my inner Robert DeNiro.

The zoo’s been closed three hours. It was harder to break in than you’d think. Probably because they house endangered cats, apes, and exotic reptiles, so their security needs to be top notch.

It’s dark, but not pitch black. I might need the pen light to see my watch, but I can see the monkeys without it, and they can see me. I snap the light off and put it back in my pocket, remove the ceramic device and move it around in my hand.

The monkey cage isn’t actually a cage. It’s more like a deep, circular pit with a rock mountain in the center, and some artificial climbing trees. The monkeys have lots of space to move around in, and the trees and mountain offer them opportunities to exercise. The chain link fence around the perimeter comes up to the middle of my chest, high enough to keep kids from falling into the pit.

I fling the ceramic device at the monkeys.

Several rush to the place where it strikes the mountain, and scramble around, fighting for it, until one emerges with the prize.

I watch with amusement as he tries to keep it away from the others. He jumps onto one of the trees and makes his way to the top. He sniffs it, puts it in his mouth. For a moment I think how funny it’ll be if he swallows it. But he removes it from his mouth and works it around in his hand the way I’ve been doing.

Pressing the button four times in ten seconds will fry my brain.

The monkey gives up and tosses the device to the ground.

Dozens of monkeys begin fighting over it, and I assume it won’t take long for this many monkeys to press a single button four times in ten seconds.

Why am I doing this?

I don’t know. It’s fun? I’m in Vegas? I need the rush? My fate is in the hands of a bunch of monkeys, which seems appropriate, somehow.

I start to laugh. And keep laughing. Kimberly’s not the only one who can push my buttons!

“Have at it!” I shout, and walk away. I get about five feet when something hits me in the back of the head.

I bend down and pick up the device.

The monkeys have spoken.

I wipe the device on my pant leg, put it back in my pocket. Then head to Carmine Porrello’s club, the Top Six.