16

The Studebaker drove east, back through downtown, with its flashing signs and jostling streetcars, and joined up with Valley Boulevard until there was nothing but pasture and produce trucks and lonesome gas stations and the odd farmhouse or seed store. Daisy hung back a quarter mile, watching the Big Six’s courtesy lamp on the driver’s side like a beacon. Sam commented on the lamp being a great thing and Daisy shot back that it didn’t really matter because there was nothing else out here besides farmers and cows and orange trees. The hills were silver and rolling in the moonlight, the wind coming through the Hupmobile’s cab warm on Sam’s face, the dashboard glowing under the instrument panel and showing off Daisy’s lean legs as she mashed the accelerator when the Studebaker would disappear around another lone turn.

VISIT GAY’S LION FARM read the billboard. At El Monte on Valley Boulevard.

“You don’t think?” Sam asked.

“I don’t like animals.”

The Studebaker rolled off a little access road and Daisy slowed to a near stop. There was a dusty lot and a broad stucco entrance bragging about the place being Internationally Famous, and from his vantage point Sam could see the figure of the lean man walk through the gates and disappear. Daisy followed, parked, and killed the engine. The only other machine in the lot besides the Hupmobile and the Big Six was a long flatbed truck with slatted sides.

Flies buzzed in the back of the truck, and in the moonlight Sam could see rancid meat and blood.

The entrance gate was open, and they followed the man down a winding path of crushed pebbles. Signs to the lion cages were fashioned from bamboo and oak trees canopied the path, past small red barns and little kiosks that sold postcards and stuffed lions and gum and cigarettes. They were well down the path when they heard the first scream.

“What’s that?”

“The King of the Beasts,” Sam said.

“They keep ’em locked up, don’t they?”

“One would hope.”

There were more screams and roars-definitely roars-and Daisy stepped back from the lead to take a stride beside Sam, too worried to lead but too proud to follow. The trees looked old, spared from the bulldozer and plow, and it all seemed natural and prehistoric in the moonlight.

They stopped and listened for steps but only heard the screams until the screams seemed to be coming from all around them. It was a great ring, a chain-link circle as wide around as a baseball field, at least thirty feet high, with bleachers and long nets strung from what looked like telephone poles.

“Where are they?” she whispered.

“I don’t see ’em.”

“You see him?”

“I don’t,” Sam said.

“This was a goddamn fool thing to do.”

They kept on the path, over a little bamboo bridge and toward a long red barn lit up with tiny white bulbs. Sam nearly ran into Daisy when she stopped and pulled him behind the large trunk of an oak. From the barn, an engine started, and soon another flatbed truck, identical to the one parked in front, came rambling down the path, breezing past their hiding place and slowing to an idle by the giant cage. The headlights lit up the center of the ring, and the long, lean man, Jack Lawrence, unlocked a gate and walked inside. Sam and Daisy stood watching at the narrow spot in the path well back from the idling truck.

They watched Lawrence squat on his haunches and walk backward with the edge of a tarp, the dust and gravel falling away and choking the night air. The beams of the headlights caught the dust as Lawrence emerged into the light and removed one large wooden beam and then another before disappearing for several moments down below and returning with a large crate. They could hear the bottles jostle and rattle against one another as he slid the crate into the truck and went back for more. On his third trip down into the hidden hole, Daisy walked down the path and into the headlight beams and locked the cage door.

Sam followed.

Soon Lawrence emerged with another flat of hooch and walked to the closed doors and looked puzzled, before he saw Daisy and asked, “What gives?”

Daisy twisted her knee inward and removed the pearl-handled.22 and aimed it through a diamond in the chain-link. “Got to hand it you.”

“Who are you?”

“Daisy Simpkins, federal dry agent.”

“This isn’t what you think.”

“What is it?”

“It’s mineral oil,” Lawrence said with a noticeable Australian accent.

“For the animals.”

“Sam, hold ’im.”

Sam walked up to the man, who was still hoisting the crate in his arm, and he pulled a gun and showed it. He winked at Lawrence.

“I didn’t do nothing.”

Sam smiled back.

“Hey,” Lawrence said. “What’s she doing? Hey!”

Sam heard the rusted bars and the metal gates swing open one after another. The cries of the lions had stopped, and as the animals filled the ring through their now-open chutes there was soft, contented purring. Lawrence dropped the hooch. The bottles cracked and broke, and Sam shook his head at the damn shame of it all.

“Keep the gun on him,” Daisy called out.

“Them animals will kill me,” Lawrence said.

He rattled the door and Sam squeezed the padlock with a tight click. The purring became more insistent, and in the headlights Sam noted one male, with a large, regal mane, and three females. The male hung back, his noticeable set of balls moving to and fro, while the females circled the bootlegger.

A long, trailing spot of wetness showed on Lawrence’s trousers.

“Tell us about Frisco,” Daisy said.

“It’s a nice town,” Lawrence said.

Daisy fired off the.22 at his feet. The cats growled.

“I’ll shoot you in the leg, sure as shit,” Daisy said. “You brought the booze to Arbuckle.”

The man held up his hands in the light. The truck continued to idle.

“We met at this garage,” Lawrence said. “This man opened his trunk and we loaded him down. I was paid and the man drove away.”

“Who was it?”

“His name was Hibbard.”

“First name?”

“I don’t know. Jesus, I don’t know.”

“Hibbard,” Daisy repeated. “The stuff you brought matched cases we took out of a joint called the Old Poodle Dog in Frisco. That jackass brandy came in the same bottles. The Scotch was bonded out of Canada.”

“So what?”

“You work for H. F. LaPeer.”

“Never heard of him,” Lawrence said.

“If those big cats smell a little blood, they’re gonna want a taste,” Daisy said.

“You’re crazy.”

“When’s LaPeer’s next shipment?”

One of the female lions sauntered over and ran herself between’s Lawrence’s legs, purring and growling. The male jumped from five feet away, knocking Lawrence flat on his back, his screams not unlike those of a little girl. The male straddled his chest, balls in Lawrence’s face, and yawned. Another female licked at the man’s hand while yet another sniffed at his crotch.

“I can find out.”

“What’s that?”

In a whisper, “I can find out. I can find out. I can find out.”

“And what about the Arbuckle party?”

“It’s all I know. Jesus, God. Holy hell. Mother Mary.”

“What do you think?” Daisy asked.

“I think the man has been properly motivated,” Sam said.

ROSCOE FOUND FREDDIE FISHBACK at the Cocoanut Grove bar at midnight, talking to a barmaid wearing a beaded headdress and veil, a golden bodice, and a long flowing skirt. She was laughing at one of his jokes and Freddie was laughing, too, until he saw the shadow of Roscoe over him and his smile simplified into something more like Freddie, droll and impersonal, and he offered his hand.

Roscoe looked at his hand as if it were a dead mackerel.

Freddie shrugged and puffed on his cigaratte.

The girl in the Arabian getup looked to Roscoe and bit her lip before moving on back down the bar. People were whispering and pointing, and Roscoe didn’t give a good goddamn.