Forests of the Night (3 page)

“We believe in what works, whatever it may be based on. Skills like yours, for instance, may appear to be clairvoyant at first glance, but they aren't. They're simply skills. Highly developed, perhaps. But still skills. You're a gifted code cracker. Only your codes are human and emotional. It may be instinctive for you, but it's nevertheless a very, very rare talent.”

He ate more of his salad. Took a long swallow from his mug. He patted his mouth with the napkin and looked around at the room full of cops and secretaries. A couple of her friends were looking over at her curiously.

“Let me ask you a couple of questions, Monroe?”

“The answer is no. I'm happy doing what I'm doing.”

“I understand that. But would you say that your ability to anticipate behavior and read body signals and facial expressions has benefited your police work? Perhaps even kept you safe at times?”

“Maybe. That and good training.”

“Think about it, Monroe. If we could learn more about these skills you possess and improve our methodology in teaching them to others, the applications would be immense. Take a Customs official at the airport, stamping passports, making eye contact, asking a couple of innocuous questions. He has maybe ten seconds to make a judgment about each person passing before him, an individual entering the country. He's the last line of defense.
What if that official was able to correctly distinguish honest answers from dishonest ones seventy, eighty percent of the time? Think of the impact, what catastrophes that might avert.”

Charlotte was silent. Weighing his argument, but not buying it fully. Catching liars at airports was a long way from preventing catastrophes.

“Could you do something for me right now, Charlotte? A small favor.”

“I'm listening.”

“When you look at me, at my face, my eyes, my mouth at this particular moment, what do you see?”

“Hey, I'm off duty. It's lunch, okay?”

“Officer Monroe, from the results I've seen, I don't think you're ever off duty. Yours is the kind of gift that doesn't shut down. I believe you're always watching, evaluating, making highly informed judgments. Maybe it's happening just below the surface of your awareness, but it's there.”

“Everybody does it.”

“But few do it so well.”

“Two weeks of tests. What does that prove?”

“What I'm guessing is that you're relieved to know you have this skill. Most of the time it probably feels like you're eavesdropping on people's thoughts. Invading their privacy. That's how I've heard it described by one of the other members of our team. A man who's incredibly good at reading faces and body language. Our most gifted associate. That is, until you cropped up. The best results we've ever come across, by the way, are from a Tibetan Buddhist monk. Thousands of hours of meditation have apparently given him the empathy and focus to detect and decode those fleeting facial expressions that can give away true emotions. Forty milliseconds, that's how fast they come and go. But he can see them. And apparently so can you.”

Charlotte put down the rest of the chip and looked into Mears's eyes.

“Fedderman said prison inmates were the best.”

“That's true, inmates score very high. Surrounded, as they are, by world-class deceivers and liars, it's life or death to figure out who to trust.”

“Buddhists and convicts, that's quite a brotherhood.”

“Like it or not, Monroe, you're at the top of the class.”

“So if I read your mind you'll leave me alone?”

Mears held her gaze but said nothing. His face neutral.

“Okay. I see a guy who's so good at hiding his feelings, he's not sure what they are anymore.”

Mears nodded, lips relaxing, then tightening.

“Fair enough. Though that would be true for a lot of men. Especially in my profession.”

“And I see a guy on edge. Anxious. Not as poised as he comes across. Like right at this moment, it's like you're waiting for a bomb to go off. Those tension lines below your eyes, a twitch in your right eyelid. The way you dab your tongue at the corner of your mouth. Four times in the last two minutes. You're anxious, and I'm guessing that's an unfamiliar feeling for you.”

“You should be banned from the poker table, Monroe.”

The cell phone on his belt chirped.

Mears held her eyes for a moment and let it ring.

“I believe this may be the bomb you were referring to, Ms. Monroe.”

Mears snapped the phone open, listened, and said, “Yes, sir, she's right here.”

He handed the phone to Charlotte and a second later she was listening to a gruff, familiar voice. She'd never met the man, but she'd heard him speak on television often over the last nine years. Harold Benson, director of the FBI.

He was courteous but aloof. Giving her a brisk speech that had the practiced rhythm of one he'd made a few hundred times before.

As Charlotte was surely aware, the world had recently become a far more dangerous and unpredictable place than it was a few years before. And the FBI was responding aggressively and creatively to these new challenges. One way was by assembling teams of uniquely talented individuals with a variety of highly developed skills. Along those lines, the director had examined the results from the two weeks of testing Charlotte had undergone and he was highly impressed. She had an extraordinary gift, and he hoped she would consider the offer that Deputy Director Mears was making.

His pitch was short and ended abruptly.

“We know you have commitments in Miami. We could work around
that. We need you, Monroe. Used properly, your skills could save lives and make a fundamental difference to your country. We'll be in touch.”

And without waiting for a response, he was gone.

She handed the phone back to Mears. He smiled at her. No more tongue dabbing.

“Triple your salary, big step up in your benefits package. Maybe a trip to D.C. now and then, but you'd be based here in Miami with Fedderman and a few others we'd send down. We'll even give you a three-month grace period to try it out, see if it works. If for some reason it doesn't suit you, your job's still open at Gables PD. No need to decide right now. Tomorrow is fine.”

Jacob Bright Sky Panther parked the red Ford pickup he'd stolen in Daytona Beach three blocks north of the Palm Beach address, tucked his Smith & Wesson .357 under the front seat, and set off down the beachfront boulevard, unarmed for the first time in months. He'd been told by his contact that the woman was harmless but would not do business with him if she found he was armed. Though it had been his experience that no man or woman was truly harmless, he took the risk and left his weapon behind.

The sun floated in a cloudless sky, turning the Atlantic a flat, perfect blue. On the sharp line of the horizon Jacob watched a half dozen slender clouds glide southward like a war party of ghostly canoes. As if the ancient chiefs were monitoring him from afar, wagering on his chances for success.

At the front gate of 267 Ocean Drive he buzzed the speaker button, and moments later a husky voice asked who the hell it was. Jacob gave his alias and the voice thought about it, then growled, “You're twelve hours early.”

Across the street, on the beach where the ocean crashed and foamed, white-haired people with big bellies marched back and forth as if guarding their stretch of sand from any riffraff who might try to sneak ashore.

“I'm here now,” he said.

Jacob waited. He watched the clouds thicken and re-form into clumsy
battleships, and he listened to the explosions of surf. He watched the seagulls circle and splash.

At the end of the broad avenue a white patrol car with a blue stripe appeared and came prowling his way. Motionless, Jacob watched it pass, offering his face to the policeman. Cowering wasn't his way. If it was his fate to be captured at this place and time, then so be it.

But the cop was gazing out to sea, missing an excellent opportunity to advance his career.

When the gate finally buzzed, Jacob pushed it open and stepped through, shut it, and walked down the long brick pathway toward the main house.

Scattered about the walkway were courtyards and columns topped by gargoyles. In tiled fountains, lazy goldfish circled the lily pads and naked cherubs pissed into the sultry air.

Jacob advanced along the shaded walk, trailing his fingers across the cool braille of the stucco. It felt thick enough to withstand cannon fire.

While he waited beside the double doors, Jacob turned and stared back through the front gate, watching the waves shatter against the white sand. He breathed the ocean air. Salty, with a hint of fresh oysters and sandalwood.

Jacob blinked and drew a disciplined breath.

He had spent his life in the mountains and hadn't been prepared for the sea. It was bigger than he'd imagined. It went out so far, it disappeared into itself. A blue empty distance.

Jacob wasn't sure how long he waited on the front porch. He'd never worn a watch. What mattered was day and night, summer, winter, not the second or minute. What good were the clicking gears of a timepiece, pulverizing each day into fine, meaningless powder?

He had a natural talent for keeping himself occupied. His senses perpetually alert, like now, feeling the prickle of sunlight on his skin, inhaling the mix of ocean scents and the new-cut grass. This instinctive watchfulness served him well this last year. Hunted as he was, his first impulse when arriving somewhere new was to chart the best path of escape.

Behind him the hinges squealed, and he turned to find a woman, darkly
tanned with tattoos circling her upper arms. Except for a tiny swatch of glittery green fabric over her crotch, she was naked.

She eyed the length of his body, her gaze returning slowly to his face.

“Who sent you?”

The password ritual.

“Levi,” Jacob said.

The name clicked the tumblers in her eyes, and her jaw muscles eased.

“You're early. I don't like early.”

It was the voice from the speaker box, harsh and croaky as if she'd been gargling beach sand.

She turned and padded barefoot across the red tile floor. He followed her through the house, the rooms cool with high ceilings and exposed beams, chandeliers dangling in their diamond halos. She led him outside onto a sunny patio next to the largest swimming pool he'd ever seen, and she turned to face him. Her eyes were bloodshot and muddled as though she'd just awakened and was still sorting out her nightmares.

“How do you know Levi?”

“We found each other on the Internet.”

“The Internet? Levi said you were a dumb-ass Indian, living in a tepee or a mine shaft or some shit.”

Her lips were halfway to a grin, testing how easily he got pissed off.

“Even dumb-ass Indians use the Internet,” he said.

Her smile tightened.

“My name's Shirlee. That's with two
e
's.”

“So that makes you special,” he said. “Not like all the other Shirleys.”

“You got that right.”

“Do you have something for me?”

“You're just a kid. I was expecting an adult.”

She craned her neck to the left and right, as if working out a kink.

Her breasts were small, with tiny raisin nipples standing up, and at the edges of the strip of green shiny material across her crotch, black hair coiled out. Now that he had a better look, Jacob saw that the tattoos on her arms and circling her ankles were oversize scorpions with their barbed tails poised to strike.

“I'm almost thirty. Do you require ID?”

“Oh, I'll make an exception this time, honey. But if it's frog toxin you want, forget it. Big order last week wiped me out. More diaperheads on their jihad—Saudis, Iranians, whoever the hell they were.”

In the swimming pool, a large gray fish swam in circles as though searching for a way out.

“Then you have no venom.”

“Did I say that? I have venom. Just not from frogs.”

Jacob said, “Frogs, eagles, donkeys. It doesn't matter.”

“As long as it's lethal, right?”

She smiled at him and stroked her left breast, keeping that nipple awake.

“Nudity bother you?”

“I'll let you know if it begins to.”

Jacob watched the brittle light bounce off the surface of the pool. The fish rose from the water, cast a look their way, then plunged beneath the surface. It was four or five feet long, gray and silky. In the mountains, Jacob knew the name and habits of every insect and sentient creature, but the ocean and its residents were a mystery.

“When Levi said ‘Indian,' I asked if he meant Gandhi or the tomahawk kind. Know what he said?”

“That I'm no Gandhi.”

She smiled and picked up a Baggie that lay on the table next to a brass pipe. She opened the ziplock, took a pinch of weed, squeezed the fibers into the bowl of the pipe, lit it with a plastic lighter, sucked down more than seemed possible for such a skinny woman, and blew the smoke toward the empty sky.

She held out the smoldering pipe.

Jacob stood motionless. She released the last of the blue smoke.

In her scratchy voice she said, “All business, huh? No time to socialize.”

“I have the five thousand,” he said. “In hundreds as Levi suggested.”

“Five thousand buys a lot of socializing.”

She had short, spiky black hair and dark eyes. Skinny arms and legs with her ribs showing. Like one of those women who starved herself, thought that was pretty, or maybe just forgot to eat, all the drugs she was using.
Either way, she wasn't Jacob's idea of sexy. Even with the long nipples and the crotch hair showing, she was no more attractive to him than a bundle of dry kindling with a cottonmouth lurking inside.

“You know, kid, you've definitely got that exotic thing going on.”

Jacob waited. She had to say what she had to say. She had to get it out before they did their business. So Jacob waited. Savoring the fertile air, taking it in, letting it out. Sandalwood and saltiness.

“So you're what, part Cherokee? Like a half-breed or whatever the trendy word is these days?”

Jacob watched the fish rise and fall from the sleek water.

“Your skin, it's not all that red, maybe a little rusty, that's all.”

She reached out and dabbed her fingertip against his temple, then looked at her finger like his makeup might've come off.

“I mean, I see it in the forehead, how broad it is. And your eyes, that hooded look. But the hair, no way. I don't think there's any blond Indians, are there? Unless that's peroxide, which it doesn't look like.”

She brushed her fingers through the hair at Jacob's temples. It was sandy and coarse, and in the last year he'd let it grow till it touched his shoulders. Back when he was young and vain and wanted more than anything for a woman to fall in love with him, he'd kept his hair short and tried to style it in the modern way, but it was so thick it ruined combs and defied brushes. Now he simply used his fingers when it was snarled.

“And those slick baby cheeks, yeah, I can picture how it happened. Some dark-eyed Pocahontas gets down and dirty with a square-jawed Irish stud. Quite a mix. I know a guy, a photographer down in South Beach, one look at you, he'd faint. He's always searching for that one-of-a-kind primitive mojo. Of course, you probably wouldn't want your picture in a fashion magazine, would you? Post-office walls, that's more your style.”

Jacob waited. Polite. He forced himself to smile.

“Tell me something, okay?”

Jacob was silent.

“You're an Indian, you live in the goddamn forest, commune with the birds and beasts. How come you don't go milk a rattlesnake or something? You gotta buy your poison from people like me?”

“That's not a skill I have, milking rattlesnakes.”

“But you know what I mean. Your ancestors, they didn't have to buy venom. They got their own. Brewed it up, whatever the hell they did.”

“I have my own ways,” Jacob said. “My own reasons.”

“What happened to self-sufficient? That's what Indians do, right? They live off the land, commune with the spirits, rub two sticks together.”

“Those days are a long time gone.”

“Well, you're a disappointment,” she said. “You're my first Indian and look at me, I'm standing here full of disillusionment.”

“Venom from the forest would provide clues to those who pursue me.”

She considered it for a moment.

“Yeah, okay,” she said. “That makes sense. Throw them off.”

Jacob watched the fish circling the pool, rolling and diving.

“You know about cone snails?” Shirlee said. “
Conus purpurascens
.”

“I'm prepared to learn.”

“I found this kid, he's doing a postdoc down in Miami, studying neuropharmacology. They're producing some shit-kicking hallucinogens these days, painkillers you wouldn't believe. One taste, you're gone for a week, flying wherever the hell in the universe you want to go, then you wake up, you're fine, no hangover, nothing. Amazing shit. This kid, he's hard up for cash, got some kind of habit, poor guy. So we worked out a deal, our mutual benefit. And yours, too.”

“I don't want to hallucinate,” Jacob said.

“Yeah, yeah, I know. You want to wax somebody, ship 'em to the embalmer. Sure. That's what I'm talking about, cone-snail venom. Same stuff, different strength, that's all. A tiny bit gets you high, a little more kills the pain, and a teensy bit more gets you dead. It's all about portion control.”

She drew on her pipe and blew out a stream near his face.

“First phase hits like cobra toxin, second phase like puffer-fish venom. Different peptide fractions cause different nerve reactions. Paralysis, numbness, total shutdown of neurological receptors. One peptide targets skeletal muscle sodium, another does neuronal calcium channels. Bottom line, this is seriously bad shit. A little dab'll do. Three seconds your guy is frozen, can't breathe, three seconds later, you got yourself a corpse.”

Jacob nodded again.

“That's what you want, then? A cone-snail cocktail?”

“How much does five thousand dollars buy?”

“With or without the blow job?”

“Just the venom.”

She drew on the pipe again, but the weed had gone out, so she tapped out the remains into the flowering red plants that filled the beds behind them.

“What're you, sexually challenged?”

“I'm on a tight schedule,” he said.

The scorpions on her shoulders were blue and green and they seemed to be moving, a slow dance across her tan flesh. Maybe it came from breathing the cloud of dope, or maybe it was some leftover trace of his old self warming to this twisted woman, making his eyes play tricks. A year ago Jacob Panther would've seized the chance. Happy to test his stamina against this she-devil, fly to whatever planet she was from, plant his flag in that ground. But not now. That Jacob was gone. Only some last stray molecules left.

“Just the cone venom.”

“All right, all right. Christ, you don't like girls, whatever, fine.”

She got up and marched into the house and when she returned, the vial she handed him was full to the brim. Jacob peered at the liquid, tipped the tube to the side. The fluid was oily and thick, with the tint of weak tea.

Shirlee lit her pipe again and said, “Stab a needle through the membrane, leave it a second or two, pull it back out. Whatever traces are left on the point should do the job, unless you're trying to kill an elephant, then maybe you'll need two jabs.”

Jacob jiggled the tube. A faint coppery vapor hung in the air.

“There's enough in that vial, you could put a dent in the Hundred and First Airborne.”

Jacob slipped the ampoule in his shirt pocket and reached into his jeans and pulled out the envelope. A bank in South Carolina had provided the funds. Five thousand, Jacob told the terrified teller. No more, no less.

“What're you, anyway?” Shirlee said. “Hit man, terrorist, or just some guy gonna whack your wife's boyfriend? My bet is terrorist.”