"Will you please let me go now? Please?" The words were slurred.
He was begging. Reggio liked it when they begged.
The portly man looked down at the terrified form of Assola al Khobar.
The Saudi terrorist was bleeding profusely from the mouth. A river of crimson poured down over his chin, dribbling to the concrete floor of the shed. The faint odor of manure mixed with some kind of ammonia-based cleaner was in the air.
The blood was really just a special effect. Reggio knew so much blood wouldn't come from a couple of small puncture wounds. Most of it was blood mixed in with buckets of saliva. It looked horrible, but was relatively harmless. The victim never thought so, however.
Reggio felt good. He was sitting on a stool near the kneeling form of al Khobar.
The terrorist was bent over a wooden crate. His lower lip had been pulled out as far as it could reasonably go without tearing. Four of the nails Reggio had brought with him had been pounded through Assola's lip and into the wood of the crate below. They successfully prevented the terrorist from moving. There were a few rotten teeth laying on the crate, as well, their bloody root ganglia dripping onto the wood. This had been the reason for the pliers. Where lips sometimes failed, teeth always worked.
When he was a young up-and-comer in the Pubescio Family, Reggio had had a habit of nailing people's lips to things. His affection for that particular part of the human body was what earned him his moniker "Lips." In recent years he'd gotten away from what had made him a kind of local legend. In a way it was nice to go through the old routine again. Even if it was only a one-shot deal.
"Gimme a minute here, Mr. Koala," Reggio said politely.
One thing everyone who knew anything about Reggio Cagliari knew. He liked to be certain of things.
Dusting the powdered sugar off his hands, Reggio fumbled at his front pocket. He pulled out the check from Bindle and Marmelstein, which had been the first thing he'd given Assola to sign.
Behind him a lion growled. He glanced over. There were several of the animals on the other side of a prisonlike cage door. Only one had taken a real interest in the activity going on inside the shed. Its nose was sniffing curiously at the bars as Reggio turned back to the all-important check. Reggio checked the signature carefully. He wasn't quite sure what he was looking for, but it seemed okay. He stuffed the check back into his pocket. "We're all set here, Mr. Koala," he said. "Sorry about all this." He shrugged as he passed a fat hand over the pulled teeth. "Business and all."
His work done, Reggio glanced around for the hammer he'd brought in along with the rest of his meager supply of equipment. He thought he'd left it on the crate near Koala's extracted teeth. It wasn't there.
Grunting, Reggio leaned one hand on the crate, careful not to touch any of the blood-and-saliva mixture.
Nope, the hammer wasn't there. He was beginning to think he'd left it in his truck.
"I can get you more than that," al Khobar said. His voice was close to Reggio. His tongue lisped through the newly formed gaps in his gum line.
"Thanks. I'm all set here, Mr. Koala," Reggio said.
Of course it wasn't in his truck. He'd used it to pound the nails into the Arab's lip.
Reggio exhaled loudly. A puff of confectioner's sugar blew from his large lower lip.
It must have fallen to the floor somehow.
With an effort Reggio got to his knees. They ached from the strain. He felt around the side of the crate.
Nothing.
There was really no place the hammer could have fallen. And wouldn't he have heard it?
"You Americans are all the same. Fools motivated solely by money."
Al Khobar sounded more confident now. Even with the nails which still fixed him in place. His voice came from above Reggio as the big man crawled on all fours around the side of the small wooden crate.
"Yeah, we all gotta make a living, right, Mr. Koala?" Reggio Cagliari asked, red faced.
"Death is my living," al Khobar hissed.
Reggio looked up in time to see the grimace of fierce intensity on the face of Assola al Khobar. He also saw his missing hammer. It was in the terrorist's hand and was even now in the process of swinging down toward Reggio's own head.
The hammer connected solidly. Reggio felt a surge of sudden, intense pain above his right temple before the world grew coldly black.
AL KHOBAR WATCHED the Mafia thug drop to the floor.
Red-rimmed eyes traced the hammer. The irony that it should be his salvation was not lost on the terrorist. He could almost hear the snide laughter of his billionaire construction-magnate father.
The pain in his lip was excruciating. Quickly Assola twisted the claw end around, slipping it awkwardly into the space beneath his nose. He pushed it under a nail head.
With a scream that made the nearby lions bellow in rage, he pulled the first nail free.
THE FIRST THING REMO SAW inside the Los Angeles Zoo was what appeared to be the half-eaten carcass of a metallic creature lying in the bushes just inside the main entrance. A mangy-looking pelt lay near it.
"Hey, what's my animatronic camel doing here?" Hank Bindle demanded.
Remo spotted the reason why a few moments later. They were zipping along the pedestrian path in their Taurus jeep when he caught a glimpse of several Arabs near the monkey house. They appeared to be handling one of their fellow Eblans roughly. As they shoved the man forward toward the gorilla cage, Remo recognized a familiar voice.
"Do you people have any idea how many Academy Awards I've been nominated for?"
Bindle and Marmelstein spun toward the shouted voice. From where he sat in the speeding studio jeep, Hank Bindle was only able to see the animals on exhibit.
"Hey, that monkey sounds like Tom Roberts," Bindle mused, nodding toward the gorilla cage.
"Monkeys can't talk," Bruce Marmelstein said, irritated. He had seen the Arabs and suspected who was really shouting. The Eblan soldiers vanished inside the monkey house.
"Oh," said Hank Bindle. "So I guess those ones must be animatronic."
No one bothered to explain the truth.
They found the lion cage a few minutes later. "Stay here," Remo ordered.
Bindle and Marmelstein didn't argue. They sat dutifully in the rear of the jeep while Remo trotted over to the lion paddock.
There was the familiar scent of blood in the air. Remo attributed it to the carcasses that were regularly fed to the jungle predators. He circled the large pen from west to east, keeping his senses tuned to their maximum.
The path he took brought Remo near a large shedlike structure built into the side wall of the pen. He noted as he passed around the front of the building that a gate at its rear, which led into the lion's pen, had been left open.
At the front of the building, he noted a pair of fresh skid marks in the asphalt. Someone had left here recently. And whoever it was had been in a hurry.
As he reached for the door, he caught another whiff of blood. Unlike the stale scent wafting from the main paddock, this was not from an animal that had been prepared for consumption by a zookeeper. The smell of blood here was fresh.
Pausing for a moment outside the door, Remo sensed a few large and distinctly nonhuman heartbeats coming from the interior of the shed. Having seen the open gate on the other side of the shed, Remo had little doubt what was inside.