Bronx Noir

Even Smithfield, the CEO, had seemed awed when they first met. “Were you the one—” he had started to say, before something in Akeley’s expression made it clear that he shouldn’t finish. Smithfield didn’t usually care what other people wanted—why bother when you could fire anyone who disagreed with you?—but he’d stopped short, cleared his throat, and finished, lamely, by saying, “Glad to know you,” in an unexpectedly hoarse voice.

But he’d recovered by the time they got down to business. “Fifty thousand each?” he said. “Why not make it a hundred?”

Getting some pleasure watching the others wriggle a bit. Then seeing Kushner, the guy who drilled into your skull and fucked with your brain, frowning as he put an end to that. “Fifty,” he said. “As we discussed.”

Everyone else nodding.

But Kushner’s eyes were on Akeley. “And you’ll match it.”

“That’s what I said.”

“Make it five hundred thousand?”

“What it adds up to,” Akeley agreed.

That had been the deal from the start, but still, there was something about hearing it out loud. Smithfield laughed, a sound like a zebra’s bray.

But Kushner wasn’t smiling. “Why?” he asked. “Why are you raising the stakes?”

The hunter stretched like a cat in his chair. “Added incentive,” he said.

Though, really, this group hardly needed any.

The zoo would be closing soon.

Not that it mattered much, not usually. In preparation, the hunter had spent a week living here, on the grounds, and no one had ever gotten a hint of his presence. You couldn’t “close” something so big and sprawling and overgrown, you could just tell people it was time to leave and assume they’d listen.

And because people were sheep, they usually did.

Cawing flocks of crows flew overhead, blown by the wind like flakes of soot as they headed toward their nighttime roosts. Below the heedless black birds, the last few zoo visitors, scattered groups of two or three, hurried toward the parking lots near the Bronx River Parkway and Fordham Road.

But the hunter had someplace else he needed to be.

Moving faster, staying in the lengthening shadows, he kept to his course.

West.

Toward the African Plains.

* * *

“We all decide who wins,” Smithfield said.

Everyone nodded. It was the only fair way.

Wilson said, “We get together afterwards and vote.”

More nods.

“And fill each other in.” Smithfield’s lips turned upward. “Every last detail.”

Their favorite part from the beginning.

“We decide where yet?” Kushner asked.

“Great Western Gun Show,” Akeley said.

“Salt Lake City, that is?” Kushner asked.

Akeley nodded.

“Listen, though,” Wilson said. “If we can’t, like, agree, who gets the tie-breaking vote?”

Everyone looked at him, but no one spoke. They all knew the answer to that one.

There.

The prey. As unaware, as self-deluding as the monkey had been, and the bear. Another degraded animal that had convinced itself it was wild, free, unfettered.

The hunter felt himself relax. He was in time.

Just.