It wasn’t the notion of captive wild animals he hated, it was the specific place itself-the National Zoo off Connecticut Avenue. He hated the commotion and the bratty children. He hated walking on an unending bed of peanut shells, and the overpriced crap food and cheap souvenirs. But mostly he hated the smell-the odiferous stench of beasts, pissing on straw beds, buzzing with flies. Something about the rank smell reminded him of the majority of the vets who relentlessly harassed his office begging for handouts. He assumed that his intense distaste for the place went back to the trips he had taken there with Denise and the girls before she had left and poisoned them against him. But it really didn’t matter. He hated the place and that was that. Why his CIA contact had picked the zoo as his meeting point he had no idea. An unfortunate coincidence was his best guess, but by no means his only one. They had ways of knowing things-everything.
