Rough Cut

Lions and Tigers and SnaresMid-afternoon is usually quiet at a big cat refuge, but the lion’s roar drowned out Captain Russo’s voice on my cellphone. “Hold on a sec, let me get past Walter Martin.” I strode past the lion cage. Flies buzzed over a beef leg at the cat’s feeding station; Walter had popped off the ends of the bones to lick at its yellow marrow. The rank odor of rotting meat and lion crap made me wrinkle my nose. The bucket of chicken parts stuffed with Imodium I carried had its own stench. What a job. “Who the hell is Walter Martin, and what is that frigging noise?” Captain Russo’s nasal tone wavered a bit. The signal was never strong at the Patacoochee Wildlife Refuge in north Florida. Eighty miles northwest of Gainesville, and fifty miles south of Tallahassee made it pretty inaccessible—for cellphones and visitors. I had the headset on so that if anyone were watching—not that it was likely, but I had to be careful—it would just look like I was talking to the cats. This time of day, the cats slept and the humans got out of the heat as much as possible. “He’s a lion that Kendall bought in a Wal-Mart parking lot, believe it or not. He’s just sounding off, letting everyone know this is his territory.” The lion’s guttural roars actually moved in my chest. The whump of air displaced by the animal was eerie and affecting. I stepped around a jaguar cage that held a stand of pine trees to help buffer Walter’s roars and kept moving towards the cougar habitat. “Better?” “Yeah, that’s better. Update me, Officer Reese.” “They’re buying my cover. I must look like a typical dumbass pre-veterinarian summer intern.” Russo snorted but let me keep talking. “There’s two main guys here: Ricardo Lopez and Kendall Knight. Ricardo is the money man; he definitely runs the show that way. Kendall is the animal handler; he’s licensed, very experienced with Class One carnivores, and he manages all the scutwork in the refuge.” “What do you know so far?” Captain Russo asked. The cellphone buzzed a little and I checked the signal—only two bars. “Ricardo’s an asshole: loud-mouthed, aggressive, chain-smoker. He’s always showing up unannounced with strangers. Buyers probably. He teases the cats from outside the cages, gets them all riled. They hate him. Kendall, though…“ I hadn’t quite figured out Kendall. With his muscular frame, soft brown eyes, and dark hair, he looked like a tough guy, but he was a real softie when it came to the cats. He clearly loved them. The week before I’d seen him stay up all night with a poisoned cougar somebody had brought in. He changed the cat’s IV, kept the cat calm, ran his sturdy hands over its shoulders and back when the heaves came on. Kendall’s hands. I ran a palm down my belly. “Kendall seems really dedicated to the refuge. He and his assistant keeper, Randy Duboy, are the only paid staff. Everyone else out here is volunteer. Kendall and Ricardo are pretty tense with each other. I’m not sure why. I did the night cage check earlier this week and saw them outside Kendall’s office, arguing.” “What were they saying?” “I don’t know, I was too far away. But I could tell by their body language they weren’t having a friendly discussion. Kendall was pissed.” I had stood in the shadows of a tiger cage and watched Ricardo drive away in his shiny Escalade. Kendall went into his office, left the lights off. I moved closer and saw him smoking in the dark. The acrid whiff of m*******a drifted outside on the breeze. I’d been tempted to go in and see what I could find out. Something made me wait. He’s not ready yet. And neither am I. “How fast can you get solid intel and evidence out of there?” When we first planned this detail, I was supposed to have the whole summer to infiltrate the operation and figure out if Ricardo’s and Kendall’s big cat refuge was a front for moving endangered and prohibited animals in and out of the country. Collectors paid enormous sums for an endangered species in their private zoos. Big game farms needed a steady supply of animals to kill and mount for “trophies”. And both markets paid animal dealers and wholesalers big bucks to produce the inventory to do it. The department had investigated for over a year, and we had narrowed it down to a supplier working in the Southeast. Right now, Ricardo and Kendall looked like our perps. Living animals as inventory. It made my teeth grind. “I don’t know. It’s not like I can just go pawing through the office to look for it.” “Find a way!” “Captain, I—” “Byron, that’s the whole point of undercover. You’re in there so you can go pawing through the office or get into the house or a computer. Get closer to Kendall and Ricardo, talk to that other kid. See what you can find out.” Get closer? To Ricardo—not a chance. To Kendall? Chance. And a pleasant one. “I’ll do my best. It’s kinda nice to be with the animals again.” I’d actually been a licensed handler until a few years ago. My uncle had a roadside zoo when I was a kid: tigers, a couple of cougars, and bears. Later, I’d volunteered at the Midwest Tiger Refuge. I’m fine with the animals. It’s the people that are hard to handle. “You okay? You keeping your cover?” Russo sounded on edge. He was always hyper about maintaining cover. “Sure.” “No calling your friends, no checking email, right?” “Nope. I’m isolated, just like you taught me.” That was a key to good cover, immersing yourself in the new world and leaving your real one behind. Not all cops could do it, but I’d managed it. My last lover, Miguel, didn’t much like my job. He’d put up with it for three years until having a partner who disappeared for months at a time finally wore him down. Through the bars of the cougar cage, I saw a bare-chested Kendall come out of his house, a log cabin onsite. Strange. He usually disappeared after lunch. He looked around, spotted me, and waved. He headed towards me. Shit. What the hell did he want? “I’ve got to get off the phone, Captain. I’ve got company on the way.” “All right. Check back when you have something solid or a week if you don’t,” Russo instructed. “Yes, sir.” I bent down to the food slot and slopped out the chicken for the cougar. He ambled over, sick enough to be not-all-that-interested in food just yet. In a couple of seconds I had the headset off, and the phone tucked into a pocket. I heard Kendall approach but stayed down, talking to the cougar. I needed the time to get centered again, to just be Byron Smith, refuge intern, wanna-be veterinarian, just a harmless college kid. Well, maybe a college kid with a crush. “Hey.” Kendall’s voice was deep enough to make you have to really listen to him. He put a hand on my shoulder and I looked up. He wore only cargo shorts, and Goddammit if he didn’t have great legs to match his solid torso. It wasn’t a body you got at the gym, it was a working man’s body—balanced, tanned, and he looked f*****g delicious. “Hey yourself.” When I stood, I noticed his face had crease marks on one cheek; he must have been sleeping. I wondered who he’d been sleeping with and what it would be like to take a nap in the afternoon, and wake up next to him. Stop it. Concentrate on doing your job. “I need your help tonight. Can you work some overtime?” “Sure. What’s up?’ “We’ve got a big shipment of cats coming in; it’ll be late. Probably after midnight. Randy’s got food poisoning, we think. He’s been throwing up all day. Can you help?” “Sure. Just let me know what time.” “I’ll call you at your trailer.” “Why so late?” His face closed off a little. “The truck’s just running behind schedule.” “What’s coming in?” “Leopards and jaguars, a couple of lions.” “Yeesh, leps and jags. Not my favorite.” “Not mine, either, but that’s the gig.” Leopards were the most difficult of all the big cats to manage. All the animals here were wild—and dangerous, of course—but funnily enough, lions and tigers, though much larger, were easier to handle. You can read lion and tiger facial expressions pretty easily and gauge their body language to get a sense of what they might do. Leopards and jaguars were harder; their faces weren’t as animated as the other big cats and worse—they planned ahead. I’d seen a pair of leopards work together once to grab a domestic cat who had wandered into their cage. One of them stalked it from behind; the second deliberately jumped against the fencing, ricocheted off and chased the housecat into its partner’s claws. The smartest of the big cats. That made them the scariest. “Do you need help to get the holding pens ready? I can stick around after my shift.” Kendall touched my arm. “No thanks, I can manage that. Just let me call you when the truck gets in so we can get these animals offloaded.” His gaze held me, those soft brown eyes, and now I noticed his thick eyelashes. And his lips were so full and inviting… My arm tingled where he touched me. “Call me later,” I said past a swallow. “Thanks, Byron.” I watched him walk away. His shoulders were wide and brown, he had long legs and a high butt. My c**k snaked over inside my pants, just a little. Geezus, this job was turning messy. * * * * The thunderstorm woke me before Kendall called. A huge crack of lightning snapped close by my trailer, the clock radio flickered, and then went dead. I sat up, disoriented. The dream I’d been having left tendrils of confusion in my head. Did I really kiss Kendall or did I just dream it? Ten minutes after he called, I was back at the refuge. A semi puffed exhaust into the rainy night. Oak trees swayed in the wind and clumps of Spanish moss and leaves lay on the ground. The rain pounded loud as hail on my little Ranger. Great. The cats will love this s**t. To my surprise, Ricardo was there. Big-bellied and bearded, he smoked constantly. He used a walking stick, whether affectation or genuine need, I couldn’t tell. He wasn’t out in the rain, of course, but he barked orders from the shelter of the quarantine barn. Randy was there, too, looking pale. He and Kendall had the truck’s back doors open, and I smelled the cats in the cargo area. The acrid smell of cat piss and wild animal permeated the hold. I got soaked just running from my truck to the semi. The rain stung against my face and arms. We went to work. Most animal dealers used steel cages fitted with special load units at the top so you could slide in the metal gripper bars to lift the cages without coming too close to them. We off-loaded a half dozen of the spotted leopards this way, sliding them out to the gate, riding the noisy ramp down to the ground, then carrying them into the quarantine kennel. The cats growled and spat at us; they would have anyway, but the thunderstorm didn’t make it easier. They paced in their little travel cages, knocking us off-balance as they jerked from one side to the other. I slipped and fell once, and we dropped the cage into the mud. One of the big male leopards clawed through the bars, his thick paw reaching out to snag at us. My shoulders ached after just fifteen minutes. Kendall looked pissed. He didn’t talk to the cats like he usually did; he just lifted, grimaced against the weight, and kept us moving. We put a black leopard into a quarantine cage, and as we closed the door, Randy bent double and puked on the concrete floor. “Oh, s**t, I’m sorry. s**t!” He heaved again, grabbing at his belly. Kendall put a hand on his back. Randy kept vomiting, not bringing up anything substantial. Kendall kept rubbing Randy’s back, soothing. The same way he did with that sick cougar. “It’s all right,” Kendall said. When Randy stopped heaving and wiped off his mouth, Kendall stepped to the mini-frig at the end of the aisle; we usually kept meds in it. He pulled out a Gatorade and handed it to Randy. “Sit down and rest for a while. Drink this. And then you’re going home.”