She said, "Frankie, I need some money for my lessons."
Under his breath, Churrito said, "I give her some lessons. Chew bet I will."
Kingsbury said, "I just gave you – was it yesterday? – like two hundred bucks."
"That was yesterday." Mrs. Kingsbury's eyes shifted to Pedro Luz, and the bottle of fluid on the hanger. "What's the matter with him?" she asked.
"One of them crash diets," said her husband.
Churrito said, "Yeah, make your muscles get big and your dick shrivel up like a noodle."
Pedro Luz reddened. "It's vitamins, that's all." He gnawed anxiously on the end of the tube, as if it were a piece of beef jerky.
"What kind of vitamins?" asked Kingsbury's wife.
"For men," said Pedro Luz. "Men-only vitamins."
As always, it was a test to be in the same room with Mrs. Kingsbury and her phenomenal breasts. Pedro Luz had given up sex three years earlier in the misinformed belief that ejaculation was a waste of precious hormones. Somehow, Pedro Luz had acquired the false notion that semen was one-hundred-percent pure testosterone, and consequently he was distraught when a popular weightlifter magazine reported that the average sexually active male would squirt approximately 19.6 gallons in a lifetime. For a fitness fiend such as Pedro Luz, the jism statistic was a shocker. To expend a single pearly drop of masculine fuel on a recreational pleasure was frivolous and harmful and plainly against God's plan; how could it do anything but weaken the body?
As it happened, Pedro Luz's fruit-and-steroid diet had taken the edge off his sex drive anyway. Abstinence had not proved to be difficult, except when Mrs. Kingsbury was around.
"I don't like needles," she announced. "I don't like the way they prick."
Again Churrito began to growl lasciviously. Pedro Luz said, "After a while, you don't even notice." He showed Mrs. Kingsbury how the IV rig moved on wheels.
"Like a shopping cart," she said gaily. Her husband handed her a hundred-dollar bill and she waved goodbye.
There she goes," Kingsbury said. "Pedro, did you show your little buddy the golf painting? The one we did at Biltmore?"
"I saw," Churrito said. "In the living room."
"Those are the real McCoys," said Kingsbury.
Churrito looked perplexed. "McCoys?"
"Her tits, I mean. How you say, hoot-aires? Kingsbury cackled. "Now, about this afternoon, these assholes – I'm not interested in details. Not at all interested."
That was fine with Pedro Luz. He'd skipped the details the last time, too, when they had roughed up the old lady at the condo. Although Churrito had nagged him to lighten up, the beating had been therapeutic for Pedro, a venting of toxic brain fumes. Like the rush he got while pinching the heads off Joe Winder's goldfish.
"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.
Above them, the gang of furry, shrieking, incontinent beggars had swollen to three dozen. Bud Schwartz and Danny Pogue shielded their heads and jogged the rest of the way to the Baboon Tree, an ancient ficus in the hub of a small plaza. Bud Schwartz was relieved to escape the yammering din and the rain of monkey feces. With a sigh he sat next to a Japanese family on a concrete bench. A moat of filmy brown water separated them from the bustling baboon colony in the big tree. Danny Pogue said: "Know why they don't let the other monkeys together with the baboons?"
"Why not?"
"Because the baboons'd eat 'em."
"What a loss that would be."
"Let's go see Brutus."
"Danny, we're here on business. Now shut the fuck up, if you don't mind."
The Japanese husband apparently understood at least one word of English, because he gave Bud Schwartz a sharp look. The Japanese wife, who hadn't heard the profane remark, signaled that she would like a photograph of the whole family in front of the moat. Bud Schwartz motioned that his partner would do the honors; Danny Pogue had stolen many Nikons, but he'd never gotten a chance to use one. He arranged the Japanese in a neat row according to height, and snapped several pictures. In the background were many wild-eyed baboons, including a young male gleefully abusing itself.