Bronx Noir

The original Big Five were on the menu too, though their prices were never listed. You had to ask. But if your pockets were deep enough, you could still follow a guide out and knock down a semitame lion or sluggish buffalo on a groomed veldt that looked like something you’d see on a golf course. And then go home and brag on it to your friends.

The state of big-game hunting in the twenty-first century.

Unless you wanted more, and knew how to get it.

Standing close to the glass, the girl peered up at him. She looked to be about seven, with fair skin, a scattering of freckles across the bridge of her nose, curly blond hair emerging from a green knit hat, and eyes so large and pale blue that he thought he might be able to see through to her brain if he looked right into them.

How much had she seen? She was old enough to understand, to tell her mother, to scream. She could ruin everything.

He leaned forward, looked past her, seeing only a young woman in a black parka glancing at the squirrel monkeys across the way. No one else was in the Monkey House.

He had choices, then. There were a couple of different ways this could go.

He tried the easiest first, and smiled at her.

She smiled back.

Okay. Good. Tilting his head, he gestured at the golden lion tamarins on the branches around him. Alarmed, they leaped away toward the farthest corners of the enclosure. But the girl saw only adorable little monkeys doing tricks, and laughed. Then she pointed to her mouth and made chewing motions. Feeding time?

He gave an apologetic shake of the head and showed her his watch. Later.

Her lips turned downward in disappointment, and she shrugged. Then she glanced over her shoulder. He heard her voice dimly through the glass: “Hey, Mom—there’s a man in there!”

But by the time the woman turned to look, he was gone.

Wilson and Crede, the lawyers, had bagged a bull elephant whose crossed tusks, as pitted and yellow as mammoth ivory, weighed a combined 407 pounds. Smithfield, the bluff and hearty CEO of a company with offices in Hong Kong, Singapore, London, and New York, had shot a black-maned lion in Namibia that measured eleven feet from head to tail. Clark, the lobbyist, tall and skinny, had faced down a charging three-thousand-pound black rhino, standing his ground and firing his Brno ZKK-602 until the great beast came crashing to the ground not five feet from where he stood. And Kushner, the tanned, nasal-voiced neurosurgeon, had discovered that the leopard he’d shot was still alive, and had finished the job by jamming his fist down its throat until it died of asphyxiation.

Or so the stories went. Who knew what the truth was? And who cared? They were good yarns, and to the Big Five the telling was almost as important as the feat itself.

Taking their time, they opened a new bottle. Soon the room was filled with a familiar camaraderie.