NativeTongue

Bud Schwartz was glad the children weren't watching. After the Japanese had moved on, Da

"I told you," said Bud Schwartz, "we're through with that. We got a new career." He didn't sound as confident as he would've liked. Where the hell was Kingsbury?

Da

"Fifty is what I told him." Bud Schwartz couldn't get the tremor out of his voice. "Fifty thousand, if he ever shows up."

In the parking lot, Pedro Luz and Churrito got into a heated discussion about bringing the IV rack. Churrito prevailed on the grounds that it would attract too much attention.

The first thing they noticed about Monkey Mountain was the stink, which Churrito likened to that of a mass grave. Next came the insistent clamor of the creatures themselves, clinging to the chicken wire and extending miniature brown hands in hopes of food. Churrito lit up a Marlboro and handed it to a rhesus, who took a sniff and hurled it back at him. Pedro Luz didn't think it was the least bit fu

The burglars – and it had to be them, greasy-looking rednecks – were sitting on a bench. Nobody else was around.

Pedro Luz whispered to Churrito: "Remember to get their car keys. They left the damn files in the car."

"What if they dint?"

"They did. Now be quiet."

Da

"Get ready," he said to Da

"But that ain't Kingsbury."

"You don't miss a trick."

"Bud, I don't like this."

"Really? I'm having the time of my life." Bud Schwartz stood up and approached the two strangers. "Where's the old man?"

"Where's the files?" asked Pedro Luz.

"Where's the money?"

Churrito held up the briefcase. It was plainly stuffed with something, possibly fifty thousand in cash.

"Now," said Pedro Luz, "where's the damn files?"

"We give 'em to the old man and nobody else."

Pedro Luz checked over both shoulders to make sure there were no tourists around. In the same motion his right hand casually fished into the waistband of his trousers for the Colt. Before he could get to it, something dug into his right ear. It was another gun. A burglar with a gun! Pedro Luz was consumed with fury.

Bud Schwartz said, "Don't move." The words fluttered out. Da

Churrito laughed. "Good work," he said to Pedro Luz. "Excellent."

"I'm go

The veins in Pedro Luz's neck throbbed like a tangle of snakes. He was seething, percolating in hormones, waiting for the moment. The gun barrel cut into his earlobe but he didn't feel a thing. Trying not to snarl, he said, "Don't push it, chico."

"I ain't kidding," Bud Schwartz said in a voice so high he didn't recognize it as his own. "You even fart; I may blow your brains out. Explain that to your friend."

Churrito seemed indifferent to the idea. He shrugged and handed the briefcase to Da

Even the baboons sensed trouble, for they had fallen silent in the boughs of the ficus. Da

"Too bad," said Bud Schwartz. And it was too bad. He had no clue what to do next. Da

Pedro Luz's steroid-marinated glands were starting to cook. Infused with the strength of a thousand warriors, he a

As they struggled, Pedro Luz said, "Shoot me, you pussy! Shoot me now!"

Out of the corner of his eye, Bud Schwartz spotted Da

Just as Pedro Luz was preparing to snap Bud Schwartz's arm like a matchstick, Mrs. Kingsbury's chrome-plated pistol shook loose from the burglar's fingers and flew over the moat. The gun landed in a pile of dead leaves at the foot of the ficus tree, where it was retrieved by a laconic baboon with vermilion buttocks. Bud Schwartz wasn't paying attention, what with Pedro Luz hurling him to the ground and kneeling on his neck and trying to twist his head off. Meanwhile the other man was going through Bud Schwartz's trousers in search of the car keys.

When Bud Schwartz tried to shout for help, Pedro Luz slapped a large moist hand over his mouth. It was then that Bud Schwartz spotted the bandaged nub of the right index finger, and assimilated in his dying deoxygenated consciousness the probability that this was the same goon who had brutalized Molly McNamara. The burglar decided, in the hastening gray twilight behind his eyeballs, that the indignity of being found mugged and dead in a monkey park might be mitigated by a final courageous deed, such as disfiguring a murderous steroid freak – which Bud Schwartz attempted to do by sucking Pedro Luz's hand into his jaws and chomping down with heedless ferocity.

The wailing of Pedro Luz brought the baboon colony to life, and a hellish chorus enveloped the three men as they fought on the ground. A gunshot was heard, and the monkeys scattered adroitly to the highest branches of the graceful old tree.

Pedro Luz rolled off Bud Schwartz and groped with his bloody paw for the Colt. It was still in his waistband. Only two things prevented him from shooting the burglar: the sight of fifty chattering children skipping toward him down the monkey trail, and the sight of Churrito lying dead with a grape-sized purple hole beneath his left eye.

Pedro Luz pushed himself to his feet, stepped over the body and ran. Bud Schwartz did the same – much more slowly and in the opposite direction – but not before pausing to contemplate the visage of the dead Nicaraguan. Judging by the ironic expression on Churrito's face, he knew exactly what had happened to him.

Now the killer was halfway up the ficus tree, barking and slobbering and shaking the branches. Mrs. Kingsbury's gun glinted harmlessly in the brackish shallows, where the startled baboon had dropped it.

The oxygen returning to Bud Schwartz's head brought a chilling notion that maybe the monkey had been aiming the damn thing. Maybe he'd even done it before. Stranger things had occurred in Miami.