Bronx Noir

Akeley took stock. Down the path toward the African Plains he saw a family—Mom, Dad, ten-year-old, toddler, swaddled baby in a stroller. They were out of earshot, and even if they hadn’t been, they would merely have seen two zoo employees talking. Nothing worth giving a second thought to.

Cabrera cut a glance at Akeley’s duffel. “What you got in there?”

“Books.”

“Huh.” Imbuing the single word with scornful disbelief. “Why don’t you open it and show me?”

The hunter shook his head and started off again, moving faster this time. He felt a hand on his arm, shrugged it off, then felt it grab him again, hard, and half-spin him around.

“You come with me.” Cabrera spat out each word. “Now.”

“Okay,” Akeley said, “I won’t fight you.”

“Good.” But Akeley thought that the guard looked a little disappointed.

They walked together, Cabrera still holding his arm. Up ahead loomed the dark, squat stone walls of the World of Darkness. Akeley waited until they’d gone ten more steps, fifteen, and then broke free and headed up the path toward the building’s front doors.

“Oh, for fuck’s sake,” Cabrera said, and came after him.

They went through the turnstile, the door slamming open once, and then again, and into the permanent near-blackness designed to encourage nocturnal animals—bats, skunks, snakes, wildcats—to put on a better show. The hunter could see perfectly in the darkness, an ability he’d possessed for as long as he could remember. But the people inside, hearing the sound of the slamming door, turned dim, clouded eyes in his direction.

Behind him Cabrera, blind, fumbling, tried to put him in a bearhug. Akeley turned and hit him three times, hard, twice in the gut and once in the jaw.

The guard made a small, despairing sound in his throat and slid to the floor. The hunter spoke into his ear, a whisper that no one else could hear over the squeaking of bats and the rustle of porcupine quills.

“You don’t stop me,” he said, “before I’m done.”

One corner of the exhibit was roped off for construction. Quickly Akeley carried the unconscious man past the barricade and dropped him against the wall. No one would see him there, and he would stay quiet for a while. For long enough.

Akeley headed back toward the door, past a pair of teenagers staring at the fruit bats and a small figure bent over the glass scorpion case: the little blond girl from the Monkey House, turning to look at him as he went by. Her eyes had adjusted to the darkness by now, and she recognized him as well.

“It’s you,” she said in a half-whisper.

“Yes.”

“Look at this.” She pressed a button, and instantly a black light came on. Under the glass, a pair of large scorpions fluoresced, a brilliant glowing blue. “Aren’t they cool?”

“They sure are.”

As he went out the door he heard her say, “Hey, Mom, look—”

He stood for a moment outside, the north wind in his face. The sun, heading for the horizon, had at last pulled free of the low clouds, and cast weak shadows behind the spindly trees and litter-snagged bushes.

The hunter drew the cold air deep into his lungs and started heading west, toward the setting sun.

Wondering if he’d already lost too much time.

Was “Akeley” even his real name?

No one asked. Even where he came from, where he’d been born, was a mystery. Some said Germany, others England, still others swore he was the son of a ranching family that had lived in Rhodesia for generations. His quiet voice, with its gruff edge, seemed to carry a slight accent, but gave no firm clue to its origins. Nor did anyone know how he had gotten the scar that began beneath his jawline and ran along the side of his neck before disappearing under the collar of the long-sleeved safari shirts he always wore.

A man out of time, people said. Stories told at gun shows, in gentlemen’s club lounges, and in the field, creating only this blurry portrait, all the more compelling for being so incomplete. If he chose to call himself Akeley, that had to be good enough for them.