“I doubt this monkey place will be crowded,” Kingsbury was saying, “except for the baboons.”
“We’ll be careful,” Pedro Luz assured him.
“You get caught, no offense, but I don’t know you. Never seen you bastards before in my life.”
“We won’t get caught.”
Kingsbury snapped his fingers. “The files, I’ll give you a list. Don’t do anything till you get my files back. After that, it’s your call.”
Pedro Luz looked at his wristwatch and said it was time to go. The wheels on the IV rig twittered as it followed him to the door.
“I wanted to ask,” Churrito said, “is it okay I look at the pitcher again? The one with your wife and those real McCoys.”
“Be my guest,” said Kingsbury, beaming. “That’s what it’s there for.”
One problem, Bud Schwartz realized, was that he and his partner had never done a blackmail before. In fact, he wasn’t sure if it was blackmail or extortion, technically speaking.
“Call it a trade,” said Danny Pogue.
Bud Schwartz smiled. Not bad, he thought. A trade it is.
They were waiting in the rented Cutlass in the parking lot of Monkey Mountain. Mrs. Kingsbury’s chrome-plated pistol lay on the seat between them. Neither of them wanted to handle it.
“Christ, I hate guns,” said Bud Schwartz.
“How’s your hand?”
“Getting there. How’s your foot?”
“Pretty good.” Danny Pogue opened a bag of Burger King and the oily smell of hot fries filled the car. Bud Schwartz rolled down the window and was counter-assailed by the overpowering odor of monkeys.
Chewing, Danny Pogue said, “I can’t get over that guy in the house, Molly’s friend. Just come right in.”
“Bigfoot,” said Bud Schwartz, “without the manners.”
“I just hope he don’t come back.”
“You and me both.”
Bud Schwartz was watching out for Saabs. Over the phone Kingsbury had told him he’d be driving a “navy Saab with tinted windows; so far, no sign of the car.
He asked his partner: “You ever done a Saab?”
“No, they all got alarms,” said Danny Pogue. “Like radar is what I heard. Just look at ’em funny, and they go off. Same with the Porsches, I fucking whisper just walkin’ by the damn things.”
At two minutes after four, Bud Schwartz said it was time to get ready. Gingerly he put the gun in his pocket. “Leave the files under the seat,” he said. “We’ll make the trade after we got the money.”
At the ticket window they got a map of Monkey Mountain. It wasn’t exactly a sprawling layout.
“Hey, they even got a gorilla,” said Danny Pogue, “name of Brutus. From the picture it looks like an African silverback.”
“Fascinating,” Bud Schwartz said. He’d had about enough of animal lore. Lately Danny Pogue had been spending too many hours watching wildlife documentaries on the Discovery Channel. It was all he talked about, he and Molly, and it was driving Bud Schwartz up the wall. One night, instead of the Cubs game, he had to sit through ninety minutes of goddamn hummingbirds. To Bud Schwartz they resembled moths with beaks; he got dizzy watching the damn things, even the slow-motion parts. Danny Pogue, on the other hand, had been enthralled. The fact that hummingbirds also inhabited North Key Largo heightened his sense of mission against Francis X. Kingsbury.
As they set out for the Baboon Tree, Danny Pogue said, “Why’d you pick this place, Bud?”
“Cause it’s out in public. That’s how you do these things, extortions.”
“Are you sure?”
The visitor paths through Monkey Mountain were enclosed by chicken wire, giving the effect that it was the humans who were encaged while the wild beasts roamed free. Bud Schwartz was uncomfortable with this arrangement. Above his head, screeching monkeys loped along the mesh, begging for peanuts and crackers that Bud Schwartz had neglected to purchase at the concession stand. The impatient animals—howlers, gibbons, rhesus and spider monkeys—got angrier by the second. They bared yellow teeth and spit maliciously and shook the chicken wire. When Danny Pogue reached up to give one of them a shiny dime, it defecated in his hair.
“You happy now?” said Bud Schwartz. “Damn, I can’t believe it.” Danny Pogue stopped to stick his head under a water fountain. “Don’t they ever feed these goddamn things?” he said.