“Because I didn’t want to interrupt Pedro’s nap.”
Pedro Luz darkened. Every now and then he dozed off in the security office. “All you had to do was ring the buzzer,” he snapped at Winder. He glanced at the FBI man, whose expression remained impassive and nonjudgmental. “I’ve had a touch of the flu,” Pedro Luz added defensively. “The medicine makes me sleepy.” For a large man he had a high tinny voice.
“Never mind.” said Charles Chelsea. “The point is, everybody’s calling up for comment. The networks. The wires. We’re under siege, Joe.”
Winder felt his headache coming back. Agent Billy Hawkins admitted that the federal government didn’t know much about the Wildlife Rescue Corps.
“Most of these groups seem to specialize in rodents,” the agent said. “Laboratory rats, mostly. Universities, pharmaceutical houses—those are the common targets. What usually happens, they break in at night and free the animals.”
“But we weren’t doing experiments.” Chelsea was exasperated. “We treated Vance and Violet as royalty.”
“Who?” the agent said.
“The voles,” Joe Winder explained cheerfully.
Charles Chelsea continued to whine. “Why have they singled out the Amazing Kingdom? We didn’t abuse these creatures. Quite the opposite.”
“You do any vivisections here?” asked Agent Hawkins. “These groups are quite vocal against vivisection.”
Chelsea paled. “Vivisection? Christ, we gave the little bastards fresh corn on the cob every morning. Sometimes even citrus!”
“Well, this is what we’ve got.” Hawkins flipped backwards in his notebook. “Two white males ages twenty-five to thirty-five, fleeing the scene in a 1979 blue Ford pickup, license GPP-B06. The registration comes back to a convicted burglar whose current alias is Buddy Michael Schwartz. I might add that Mr. Schwartz’s rap sheet shows no history of a social conscience with regard to animal rights, or any other.”
“Somebody hired him,” Joe Winder said.
“Most likely,” agreed the FBI man. “Anyway, they dragged the truck out of a rock pit this morning. No bodies.”
“Any sign of the voles?”
Billy Hawkins allowed himself a slight frown. “We believe the animals are dead.” He handed Winder copies of the highway patrol reports, which described the incident with the tourist family in the red LeBaron, as well as the subsequent Winnebago attack. As Winder scanned the reports, Charles Chelsea reminded him to keep the news under his hat.
Agent Hawkins said, “I heard something on the radio about a million-dollar reward.”
“Right!” Winder said.
“How can you do that,” the “FBI man said, “when you know these animals are dead?”
Joe Winder was having a wonderful time. “Go ahead,” he said to Charles Chelsea. “Explain to the gentleman.”
“Where’s Koocher?” Chelsea grumbled. “I left about a dozen messages.”
“Let’s ask Pedro,” said Joe Winder. “He sent one of his boys over to the lab yesterday. Must’ve had a reason.”
Charles Chelsea folded his hands on the desk, waiting. Agent Billy Hawkins turned slightly on the couch to get a better angle on the security chief. Joe Winder arched his eyebrows and said, “How about it, Pedro? Something else happen at the Rare Animal Pavilion?”
Pedro Luz scowled, his tiny black eyes receding under the ledge of his forehead. “I don’t know what you’re talking about,” he said. “Nothing happened nowhere.” He fumbled with his clipboard. “See? There is no report.”
The Security Department at the Amazing Kingdom of Thrills was staffed exclusively by corrupt ex-policemen, of which there was a steady supply in South Florida. The chief of Security, Pedro Luz, was a black-haired pinheaded giant of a young man who had been fired from the Miami Police for stealing cash and cocaine from drug dealers, then pushing them out of a Beech-craft high over the Everglades. Pedro Luz’s conviction had been overturned by an appeals court, and the charges ultimately dropped when the government’s key witness failed to appear for the new trial. The witness’s absence was later explained when bits and pieces of his body were found in a shrimper’s net off Key West, although there was no evidence linking this sad turn of events to Pedro Luz himself.
Once the corruption and murder charges had been dismissed, Pedro Luz promptly sued the police department to reclaim his old job, plus back wages and vacation time. Meanwhile, to keep his hand in law enforcement, Pedro Luz went to work at Francis X. Kingsbury’s vacation theme park. The pay was only $8.50 an hour, but as a perk Pedro was given free access to the executive gym, where he spent hours of company time lifting weights and taking anabolic steroids. This leisurely regimen was interrupted by the embarrassing daylight theft of the prized voles—and a personal communication of urgency from Francis X. Kingsbury himself. Chief Pedro Luz immediately put the security staff on double shifts, and rented a cot for himself in the office.