"You got to remember one thing. I wasn't just taking falls in the long shots. When they hired Cap Ryder they knew they were getting some fancy talent. Not many stunt men can handle animals. You ever see any of those old jungle pictures on television — Tarzan movies, stuff like that? Well, in over half of 'em I'm the guy handling the cats. Lions, leopards, tigers, you name it."
"Sounds exciting."
"Sure, if you like hospitals. Wrestled a black panther once, like to rip my arm clean off in one shot they set up. Seven-fifty sounds like a lot of loot, but you should have seen what I laid out in medical bills. Not to mention what I paid for costumes and extras. Like the lion skins and the ape suit—"
"I don't get it." Dave frowned.
"Sometimes the way they set a shot for a close-up they need the star's face. So if it was a fight scene with a lion or whatever, that's where I came in handy — I doubled for the animal. Would you believe it, three grand I laid out for a lousy monkey suit alone! But it paid off. You should have seen the big pad I had up over Laurel Canyon. Four bedrooms, three-car garage, tennis court, swimming pool, sauna, everything you can think of. Melissa loved it—"
"Melissa?"
Ryder shook his head. "What'm I talking about? You don't want to hear any of that crud about the good old days. All water over the dam."
The mention of water evidently reminded him of something else, because Dave saw him reach for the bottle again. And this time, when he tilted it, it gurgled down to empty.
Ryder cranked the window down on his side and flung the bottle out into the rain.
"All gone," he muttered. "Finished. No more bottle. No more house. No more Melissa—"
"Who was she?" Dave said.
"You really want to know?" Ryder jerked his thumb toward the windshield. Dave followed the gesture, puzzled, until he raised his glance to the roof of the cab. There, fastened directly above the rear-view mirror, was a small picture frame. Staring out of it was the face of a girl; blonde hair, nice features, and with the kind of a smile you see in the pages of high school annuals.
"My niece," Ryder told him. "Sixteen. But I took her when she was only five, right after my sister died. Took her and raised her for eleven years. Raised her right, too. Let me tell you, that girl never lacked for anything. Whatever she wanted, whatever she needed, she got. The trips we took together — the good times we had — hell, I guess it sounds pretty silly, but you'd be surprised what a kick you can get out of seeing a kid have fun. And smart? President of the junior class at Brixley — that's the name of the private school I put her in, best in town, half the stars sent their own daughters there. And that's what she was to me, just like my own flesh-and-blood daughter. So go figure it. How it happened I'll never know." Ryder blinked at the road ahead, forcing his eyes into focus.
"How what happened?" Dave asked.
"The hippies. The goddamn sonsabitching hippies." The eyes were suddenly alert in the network of ugly wrinkles. "Don't ask me where she met the bastards, I thought I was guarding her from all that, but those lousy freaks are all over the place. She must of run into them through one of her friends at school — Christ knows, you see plenty of weirdos even in Bel Air. But you got to remember, she was just sixteen and how could she guess what she was getting into? I suppose at that age an older guy with a beard and a Fender guitar and a souped-up cycle looks pretty exciting.
"Anyhow they got to her. One night when I was away on location — maybe she invited them over to the house, maybe they just showed up and she asked them in. Four of 'em, all stoned out of their skulls. Dude, that was the oldest one's name — he was like the leader, and it was his idea from the start. She wouldn't smoke anything, but he hadn't really figured she would and he came prepared. Must have worked it so she served something cold to drink and he slipped the stuff into her glass. Enough to finish off a bull elephant, the coroner said."
"You mean it killed her—"
"Not right away. I wish to Christ it had." Ryder turned, his face working, and Dave had to strain to hear his voice mumbling through the rush of rain.
"According to the coroner she must have lived for at least an hour. Long enough for them to take turns — Dude and the other three. Long enough after that for them to get the idea.
"They were in my den, and I had the place all fixed up like a kind of trophy room — animal skins all over the wall, native drums, voodoo masks, stuff I'd picked up on my trips. And here were these four freaks, spaced out, and the kid, blowing her mind. One of the bastards took down a drum and started beating on it. Another got hold of a mask and started hopping around like a witch doctor. And Dude — it was Dude all right, I know it for sure — he and the other creep pulled the lion skin off the wall and draped it over Melissa. Because this was a trip and they were playing Africa. Great White Hunter. Me Tarzan, You Jane.
"By this time Melissa couldn't even stand up any more. Dude got her down on her hands and knees and she just wobbled there. And then — that dirty rotten son of a bitch — he pulled down the drapery cords and tied the stinking lion skin over her head and shoulders. And he took a spear down from the wall, one of the Masai spears, and he was going to jab her in the ribs with it—
"That's what I saw when I came in. Dude, the big stud, standing over Melissa with that spear.
"He didn't stand long. One look at me and he must have known. I think he threw the spear before he ran, but I can't remember. I can't remember anything about the next couple of minutes. They said I broke one freak's collarbone, and the creep in the mask had a concussion from where his head hit the wall. The third one was almost dead by the time the squad arrived and pried my fingers loose from his neck. As it was, they were too late to save him.
"And they were too late for Melissa. She just lay there under that dirty lion skin — that's the part I do remember, the part I wish I could forget—"
"You killed a kid?" Dave said.
Ryder shook his head. "I killed an animal. That's what I told them at the trial. When an animal goes vicious, you got a right. The judge said one to five, but I was out in a little over two years." He glanced at Dave. "Ever been inside?"
"No. How is it — rough?"
"You can say that again. Rough as a cob." Ryder's stomach rumbled. "I came in pretty feisty, so they put me down in solitary for a while and that didn't help. You sit there in the dark and you start thinking. Here am I, used to traveling all over the world, penned up in a little cage like an animal. And those animals — the ones who killed Melissa — they're running free. One was dead, of course, and the two others I tangled with had maybe learned their lesson. But the big one, the one who started it all, he was loose. Cops never did catch up with him, and they weren't about to waste any more time trying, now that the trial was over.
"I thought a lot about Dude. That was the big one's name, or did I tell you?" Ryder blinked at Dave, and he looked pretty smashed. But he was driving OK and he wouldn't fall asleep at the wheel as long as he kept talking, so Dave nodded.
"Mostly I thought about what I was going to do to Dude once I got out. Finding him would be tricky, but I knew I could do it — hell, I spent years in Africa, tracking animals. And I intended to hunt this one down."
"Then it's true about you being an explorer?" Dave asked.
"Animal-trapper," Ryder said. "Kenya, Uganda, Nigeria — this was before Hollywood, and I saw it all. Things these young punks today never dreamed of. Why, they were dancing and drumming and drugging over there before the first hippie crawled out from under his rock, and let me tell you, they know how to do this stuff for real.
"Like when this Dude tied the lion skin on Melissa, he was just freaked out, playing games. He should have seen what some of those witch doctors can do.