Chaingang

“It means that for whatever reason, they've written me off. And that means you're in great danger. Happy and his biker goons are still running around loose. For all I know, this so-called serial killer they keep talking about is part of this whole mess. I have nobody I can go to. The FBI doesn't appear to give a shit. It's as if this were a U.S. government operation of some kind. It's got like a security umbrella over it—almost as if a the bad guys had diplomatic immunity."

What he didn't say would have just frightened Mary more, and for no point. He rubbed his ankle where the sheath knife was itching. He didn't even have any weapons to protect them with. His shotgun was in the pawnshop, and didn't work too well to begin with. He'd had a Saturday night special he'd sold to buy coke one night. She had no idea what a bodyguard he was. He looked up at the fireplace, noticing the pegs in the stone, as if an old musket might have hung there once. Even it was gone.

“Did you have a gun up there once?” He hoped it was still around.

“Yeah,” she said, “it was broken—didn't shoot.” Her mind was on other things. She was thinking about that money he'd borrowed. About what Marty Kerns had told her. “Something was broken off it. It was an old antique. It'd been Sam's grandfather's. I think he decided it would get ripped off and he put it in our cold storage box. I haven't seen it for a long time.

“I want to ask you something. When you borrowed that five thousand dollars ... it was for cocaine, wasn't it?"

“It was for gambling. I was supposed to scurry about and act like a junkie dealer would act. Trying to get his investment money together. It was all planned. But I had to make it look real. You were convenient, and I knew there was no risk—I wasn't going to lose."

“How did you know that?"

“There was a dealer at this place—The Rockhouse—where all the stoners hung. This one dealer, she was one of us. She'd been put in place just to make sure I'd win my seed money."

“So I was just a—somebody to be used, to you."

“You have to understand, babe, when you think like that all the time, it becomes an unshakable habit. I'm a user. It's my nature. Did you ever see that movie with Charlie Chaplin—Modern Times? Remember the scene in the factory where Chaplin is caught between the gears? That's the way it is—the way it was—for me. You reach out for whoever or whatever is at hand, you know?"

“Yeah.” She knew.

27

NORTH OF WATERTON

Doyle Genneret, the belligerent, rich, and ruthless “cattle rancher” who was the owner of the “World-famous Genneret Ranch and Exotic Animal Farm,” was in the main office with a bookkeeper, Sally Peebles, and his hirsute foreman, Dean Seabaugh.

Genneret's background had been in livestock and farm machinery. He'd made a killing in the market and sensed an undeveloped category of stock sales: “exotics.” Giraffes, camels, lions, tigers, bears, kangaroos. “Lordee!” he was fond of saying. “If you don't see it here, it don't shit."

His main customers were farm boys who wanted to show off for a good year in wheat, or play one-up against the neighbors, something for the grandkids to ooh and ah over. He was aware that a lot of these old boys were turning around and selling exotics themselves, some of them were in the breeding game. But he didn't mind—he knew what the market could stand, and it was fat and juicy. You could turn on the radio or the TV and hear what hogs was a-bringing', but they didn't have a quote on leopards or honey bears. He knew where the roof was on the prices—there flat wasn't one.

The primary cash producer was the Genneret auction, a monthly “Exotic Animal, Livestock, Gun Show and Auction."

They'd had a few problems with some of them humane society dingbats, but nothing to worry over. He didn't even call ‘em animals, he called ‘em his “stuff.” He kept his stuff in a series of twenty-three overcrowded barns and corrals which required a staff of nearly two dozen hands. More when he went on the road with an exhibit.

His rule of thumb for hiring was simple: you got to be smarter than the stuff. Dean Seabaugh, his foreman was a like mind. He was infamous, even on the ranch, for having whipped a lion to death. He has a slight temper. He shared the boss's view that if them animal rights assholes want to worry about something, “let ‘em go take a tour through the freakin’ slaughterhouse. Whey do they think them streaks, ‘n’ belts, ‘n’ shoes ‘n’ crap come from?"

Magic Silo had come to the edge of the Genneret property line and flashed on a tubular opening in the thick, junglelike wooded area. His storehouse retained the images of masses of gigantic verticillate leaves, looped and whorled like huge fingerprints, that papered the walls of the jungle conduits similar to this one.