First Daughter - Eric van Lustbader [64]
Jack doesn't know where they're headed; he doesn't care. He has sunk back into the world he knew through newspapers, TV, and the movies must exist, yet could never have imagined. It has come upon him too soon, its implications too much for him to handle. He wonders at all the tears he's shed because he can't remember shedding even one before this. He made it an iron-bound rule never to cry when his father beat him, not even when his father slunk back across the apartment and the strains of "California Dreamin' " winked out like a fearful light. He never cried when Andre and his crew took him into the alley behind the electronics store. Tonight, it seems, he can't stop.
It takes Gus just eleven minutes to get to 3001 Connecticut Avenue NW, the front entrance to the National Zoo.
Jack turns, peers out the window. "Gus, it's night. The zoo isn't open at night."
Gus opens the door. "Who says it ain't?"
LOOKA HOW small he is." Gus stares up through the branches at the tiny black-and-white face staring down at them. There are other marmosets elsewhere in the large cage, but this one, having taken notice of them, has come the closest. The others are busy eating fruit held in their claws or gnawing at the tree with startlingly long lower incisors.
Jack studies the black eyes staring down at him. The face looks so full of intelligence and insight, as if the marmoset sees a world at once smaller and bigger than he does.
"What's he thinking?" Jack says.
"Who knows?"
"That's just it." Jack's voice is full of wonder. "No one knows."
Gus puts his arm protectively around Jack's shoulders. "Don't get too close now, kid," he says gruffly. "Mebbe these things bite."
Jack doesn't think to ask Gus how he managed to get the zoo open at this hour, because he knows Gus won't tell him. Anyway, he doesn't want to spoil the magic of the moment, which has temporarily banished all thoughts of death, thousand-mile stares, the stench of death. There is life here, strange and beautiful, its strangeness making it all the more vibrant. Jack feels his heart beating strongly in his chest, and a kind of warmth suffuses him.
"Hello, marmoset," he says. "My name is Jack."
TWENTY
ALLI CARSON, being fed a hamburger, rare, with mustard and slices of crisp Mrs. Fanning's bread-and-butter pickles, looked into Ronnie Kray's face, so close to hers. His expression was altogether unthreatening. He might have been a mother bird feeding her chick.
She savored the tastes in her mouth, then, almost reluctantly, she swallowed. In his other hand he held a coffee milk shake with one of those bendy straws stuck into its thick foam. He brought the straw to her lips and she sucked down the sweet drink.
"How do you know my favorite foods?" she asked quietly. She didn't fear him now. She had learned that she was allowed to speak without permission during mealtimes.
Kray smiled in a way that somehow drew her to him. "I'm like a parent," he said in a voice as quiet as hers. "I'm the father you always dreamed of having, but never thought you would."
She made a motion with her head, and he gave her more burger. While she chewed, her eyes never left his face.
"I know what you like," he continued. "And what you don't. Why would I want to know that, Alli? Because I value you, because I want to please you."
Alli sucked down more of the coffee milk shake, swallowed. "Then why am I bound to this chair?"
"I bought that chair in Mexico seven years ago, at the same time I purchased a painted sugar skull, on the Day of the Dead. The chair is my most prized possession; you're privileged to sit in it. Up until I put you into it, only I have sat in it."
Intuiting her hunger, he fed her the last of the hamburger. "Do you know about the Day of the Dead, Alli? No? It's the one day of the year when the door between life and death is open. When those alive may talk to those who are dead. If they believe." He cocked his head. "Tell me, Alli, what is it you believe in?"
She blinked. "I . . . I don't know what you mean."
He hunched forward, forearms on his knees.