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'Graff?' said Gallen, in her accomplice voice again. 'Was that Schupp?'
'His name is Schrutt,' I said, and thought: So that sudden phantom was old O. Schrutt.
Whose reception was instantly flung through the zoo, in echoes bouncing off the ponds: the Famous Asiatic Black Bear's nightly rage. Gallen scurried down the hedgerow to me, and I held her through this second phase of zoo-watching, on this week-old anniversary of poor Siggy's unreasonable conclusions; in the Hietzinger Playhouse with everyone playing his own, separate role, of not living very well with each other; where I was decision-making - there were just these three choices: the anticlimax, no climax at all, or the raging, unreasonable but definite climax demanded by the Famous Asiatic Black Bear.
First Things First
WHEN O. SCHRUTT FINISHED his first round, he went back to the Small Mammal House and turned on the infrared.
'Graff,' said Gallen. 'Please let's get out of here.' And I held her behind the hedge. Coming through the root gaps, far down the fence line, there was a purple light reflected on the wire hexagons.
When the first muffled complaints from the Small Mammal House came to us, Gallen said, 'Please, Graff. Let's just get the police.' And for a moment I thought: Why not? How easy that would be.
But I said, 'How would we explain our being here?'
'They'd understand, Graff,' she said. And although I'm not absolutely sure they wouldn't have, I didn't consider it further. My own variations on the theme were anticlimactic enough.
And besides, I remembered, if one was to even come close to Siggy's absolute faith, the idea for the zoo bust existed before O. Schrutt.
O. Schrutt was simply an added feature. Who happens to come first in any overall plan.
'O. Schrutt comes first,' I said to Gallen, and going over the plan once more, I sent her on her way to the Monkey Complex while I passed by the complex myself, and took a stand behind the children's drinking fountain.
The gelada baboon didn't see me. Unlike Siggy's evening, on this occasion the baboon was not on guard for anything. So when I waved back to the corner of the complex, Gallen began her business in the brush just outside the trapeze terrace. I listened to her, shaking the bushes and making low, girlish grunts of an inappropriately erotic nature. Perhaps, though, not inappropriate for the old gelada male and his fiery red chest, which suddenly flashed between the dark terrace bars - catching a bit of the blood-lit reflections coming out the Small Mammal House door.
Then I couldn't see the old primate; I could hear him huffing and wrenching down on the trapezes, one by one, which he used to swing himself from one long end of the terrace to the other. Where Gallen must have had some fright, thinking he'd sail right through the bars and get her.
The trapezes tangled and clanged on the wall. The gelada baboon wailed his frustration; he ranted, doglike and crow-like - all sounds of all animals were compressed and made one in this frotting baboon.
And, of course, the zoo joined in. And Gallen slipped out of those bushes; I saw her - just a bit of her nice leg flicking out in the doorway path of blood-purple light from O. Schrutt's research center.
Then there was old O. himself, his scar stretched over his face like a worn-thin spot on a balloon. And when he went bleating past me, flashlight aimed at the gelada baboon's corner, I ducked behind him and ran the other way, into the Small Mammal House. And in lurking fashion, hid myself behind the door of his office room.
Around me, I surveyed: the gaffing-hook thing, the electric prod, the zoo ledger open on the desk.
The binturong was still rarely diseased; the ocelot was still expecting; the giant forest hog still suffered from his ingrown tusk. But there was nothing entered concerning the bandicoot who had been dying - who was either dead or better.
Most likely dead, I thought - as I heard O. Schrutt cursing the gelada baboon, his voice on a pitch with the shriller monkeys, his key loop ringing the terrace bars like a gong.
I took up the electric prod and waited for Schrutt's surly footfall coming down the aisles of the maze.
When O. Schrutt came in his room, I stepped up behind him and snatched his revolver out of the handy open holster, and as he turned round to me, grabbing for the truncheon in his boot, I zapped him with the prod across the bridge of his nose. He fell back, blind for a moment. He threw his flashlight at me; it hit my chest. But before he could go for the truncheon again, I zonked his wet lips with the neat, electric prod. That seemed to buzz him properly; he spun around and tripped himself; he was down, sitting on the floor, his arms wrapped round his head, making a spitting sound - as if he were trying to get that electric fuzz off his gums.
'O. Schrutt,' I said. 'If you open your eyes again, I'll clean out your sockets with this electricity. And shoot off your elbows with your own gun.' And I clicked the safety on and off, just so he'd remember that I really had it.
'Who?' he said, his voice furry.
'O. Schrutt,' I said, in a deeper and older voice than my own - an ancient voice, I attempted. 'At last I've found you, old O. Schrutt,' I droned.
'Who are you?' he said, and went to move his hands off his eyes. I just skittered the prod over his fingertips. He howled; then he held his breath, and I held mine. The room was tomb-still; down the maze, even the small mammals were hushed.
'It's been a long time, O. Schrutt,' I said, in my creaky voice.
'Who?' he said, in a little huff. 'Zeiker?' he said, and pressed his eyes so hard that his blotchy knuckles whitened.
I laughed a low, gritty laugh.
'No, Beinberg?' he said, and I held my breath for him. 'Who are you?' he screamed.
