Page 48 of Mastermind

He kneels and inspects the cover. There are crowbar marks on either side that haven’t been weathered or stained over yet.

“See those?” he asks.

“Yep. Looks like we have an exit point. But I have two big questions.”

“Only two?”

“Well, for starters. Who builds a chimpanzee enclosure over a sewer tunnel? And how do you get a bunch of chimps to make the crawl all the way through here? These are chimps, not Mexican drug-tunnel workers.”

“First, I don’t think it was always a chimpanzee enclosure. That moat looks like it had more water at one point. It may have been a crocodile pen,” he replies.

“Okay. Then who the hell puts a crocodile pen over a sewer? How does that make sense?”

“It’s not like they pick locks . . .”

“I’m still putting that in the bad-idea file.” I look around for video cameras on buildings but can’t spot any.

“I’m putting chimps in cages in the bad-idea file,” he replies. “As far as how you get them all in there? That’s easy: food. Getting them out? I suspect you scare them out.” Theo pauses, then stands up. He walks around the street, then kneels down by a concrete planter and sticks his hand in it.

“Careful, snakes,” I warn.

“I’ve learned that one the hard way. If you ever get bit, just call me. My blood can be used as antivenom.”

“Seriously?”

He nods. “Wait. What have we here?” Theo’s hand emerges with a syringe-like object that has a fuzzy end.

“Tranquilizer dart?” I ask.

“It would appear so. They probably put some kind of cage over the top and took them one by one. Although I don’t see how they’d coax the mothers with infants out of the tunnel.”

“You might be able to do it with sound. And whoever the inside man was could have sealed the grate shut.”

“We should ask Jack who he doesn’t trust,” says Theo.

“Or we could ask ourselves why we should trust the son of the owners of the zoo, who pretends to like apes but clearly doesn’t.”

“What are you saying?”

“Did you notice his shoes? Dolce & Gabbana. Thousand-dollar shoes don’t seem like a good idea for walking around in monkey poo. Also, the sunglasses were kind of pricey and not the kind you’d want a spider monkey to grab and run off with. He was late meeting us because he wasn’t even at the zoo. He wanted to intercept us first. Notice how he didn’t have a walkie-talkie?”

“Not until now,” admits Theo. “So, Jack helped arrange the theft right under his parents’ noses? I still think he had one or two people inside helping him. We’ll need to talk to staff and find out who Jack just sent home.”

I see Jack running in our direction from across the street. I wave to him, pretending we don’t suspect a thing.

“Hey, guys. What did you find?” Jack asks in his most helpful tone.

“This syringe. Theo pricked his finger, and I want to call a friend to make sure he doesn’t need to go to the hospital. But I can’t get a signal here,” I lie.

“Oh, here, you can use my phone,” says Jack, trying to be superhelpful while having an internal freak-out.

I take his phone and pretend to dial while I actually open the recent-call list. “Theo? What’s your friend’s number?”

He’s already ahead of me and has his camera app open. Theo pretends to look up a number while he surreptitiously videos Jack’s recently called contacts and numbers.

“Here you go,” he replies and calls out a number.

I go through the motions of dialing the number Theo gave me.