Bird Brained (7 page)

“This won’t be enough to protect you next time. I love you, Rachel. Don’t make me regret that.” Jake picked up the pepper spray and dropped the can inside my shirt pocket.

“Danger comes in all different forms,” I sharply reminded him. “Sometimes it’s a razor. Sometimes it’s white powder that people snort up their nose.” I instantly regretted the remark, as Jake nailed me with a look that chilled me to the bone.

“That was my past, Rachel. What we’re talking about is your present and our future.” Santou picked up the wine bottle and refilled both our glasses. “This is something we’ve been needing to discuss for a while anyway. It might as well be now.”

My stomach twisted into a tight knot, already aware of where the conversation was leading. “Backup or not, your job is just as dangerous as mine,” I pounced, taking the offensive. “The only difference is that I manage to live with what you do. Why can’t you accept me for who I am, and realize that my work is as important to me as yours is to you?”

Santou sighed deeply. “Because I have enough stress just dealing with my own career. And I don’t think I can stomach downing any more Mylanta.”

“Whoever asked you to deal with mine?” I quickly retorted.

Jake stared at me for a long moment, as if weighing what he was about to say. “There’s no way I can help it,
ch
è
re
.” Then, taking hold of my finger, he dipped it into his wine glass and slipped the tip into his mouth, gently sucking on it until my soul clung to the edge of my skin. “Remember, I said there’d be no games between us?” His voice was as deep as a tom-tom beating a warning.

Those were the words Santou had used back in Las Vegas, when he’d first asked me to marry him. My finger fell from between his lips, and I suddenly felt cold.

“We can’t put this off any longer, Rachel. It’s way too important, and you’ve been dodging the issue for months. I’m ready to settle down. I want a real home, with a wife and children. I’m not talking about some time in the foreseeable future. I mean here and now.”

“Don’t tell me: You’ve got a justice of the peace hidden around the corner, just waiting for you to give him a sign,” I teased, trying to ignore the lump in my throat.

“Say the word, and I’ll have one over here faster than you can whip up a wedding garter,” Santou challenged.

“I don’t even know if I can get a transfer back to New Orleans,” I replied, playing for time. “Unless you’re thinking of applying for a job with Metro Dade. In which case, I’ll have to check and see if Fish and Wildlife would be willing to let me stay on in Miami indefinitely.”

Santou’s expression put a stop to my rambling. “That’s what we need to talk about, Rachel.” He hesitated and my heart teetered on the edge of a bottomless precipice. “The more I think about it, the more I realize I can’t deal with a part-time wife and mother who fits me and our kids in between working on cases and shrugging off death threats.”

I began to laugh, only to realize that Jake was serious. “You’re joking. You expect me to give up my job?” I asked incredulously. “All for kids that we don’t even have yet?” Santou veered away from my gaze, but only for a moment. Then his eyes met mine, their intensity settled into stubborn resolve. “That’s part of it. I also need someone who’s there for me, 100 percent of the time.”

“Don’t you think I am?” I asked, the words dry as sawdust in my throat.

“Only when it fits into your schedule,” he replied. “From what I can tell, you’re interested in a relationship that takes place in installments, depending on where you’re transferred next. That’s not something that I can live with.”

I couldn’t be certain which was pounding harder—the beat of my heart, or the throb of my growing anger. “You’ve known from the start that I’m not the domestic type. Since when did you become such an old-fashioned guy?”

Santou’s jaw visibly tightened. “Call it what you want, Rachel. But I need to be number one in your life, and our children number two. You can’t deny the fact that your job takes precedence over everything else, at the moment.”

“I didn’t realize my work posed such a threat,” I responded with forced coolness. “But if those are your demands, then maybe I’m not the right woman for you.” I held my breath, waiting for him to vow that there was no other woman in the world for him.

A nerve twitched beneath Jake’s right eye, as if in reaction to an invisible slap. “Should I take that as your final word on the subject?” he quietly asked.

I nodded, unable to speak.

“Then maybe you’re right, Rachel. Maybe you’re not the woman for me, after all,” he replied, equally cool. And then he stood up.

“Where are you going?” I asked numbly, too stunned by the speed of events to believe what was happening.

Jake leveled me with a look. “I’m going back to New Orleans,” he said, his voice betraying the slightest tremble. “We’re headed in two separate directions, Rachel. It’s best we realize that now, before it’s too late.”

How could he give up so easily?

In a fit of white-hot rage, I snapped, “You’re absolutely right. Any man who truly loved me would never feel threatened by what I do. And he certainly wouldn’t demand I give up something that’s so important to me. I’m glad I found out how you feel before I made a terrible mistake.”

Santou didn’t answer. Instead, he turned and walked away, his footsteps echoing as he headed down the path, through the arch, and out to his car. Then I began to cry too hard to hear anything more.

When I woke up, my bed felt empty. I caught a whiff of Jake’s scent on his pillow and put my head against it, fighting back tears. I thought of the promises Santou had made in the past. At one time, he vowed I would learn to trust him. He’d been right about that. I had allowed myself to believe that true love was real and we were meant for each other. One more fairy tale shot to high hell.
Damn
the man anyway!

I showered and dressed, moving on automatic pilot to a cockatoo serenade. Then I headed into the kitchen, determined not to let thoughts of Santou rule my day. I found my landlady, Sophie Gertz, waiting with two steaming cups of
caf
é
con leche
, an unlit cigar stuck in her mouth. Sidestepping into her midsixties, Sophie could have been your typical Jewish grandmother—but with a definite twist.

Sophie had unceremoniously dumped her husband of twenty-two years and moved from New York to Miami a decade ago. That’s when she’d come roaring out of the closet. She claimed to have spent the majority of her life toiling as a designer in the garment district, though to look at her, I had my doubts. Along with a weakness for turbans, Sophie dressed as if she’d been peeled off a pop art canvas. In addition, her taste in sunglasses was as varied and changeable as the colors she painted the house.

This morning she was decked out in a nod to the fifties, wearing a hot fuchsia top and white capri pants that had pink poodles running up and down both legs. A kelly green turban sat like a beehive on top of her head. The only modern item was her deck shoes. I walked in with Baretta Jr. perched on my shoulder, but I had the feeling Sophie already knew what to expect. She’d have to have been stone deaf not to have heard last night’s antics.

“Like the specs,” I said, hoping to defuse the situation with some flattery. Her sunglasses were encrusted with a sea of tiny rhinestones, their frames flaring out larger than the fins on a late-fifties Caddy. Her penciled-in eyebrows hovered above, looking like two bats in flight.

“These are the glasses I wear when I haven’t been able to sleep,” Sophie rumbled, her voice half Mixmaster, half Lauren Bacall. She locked onto the twenty inches of white feathers that stared back at her. “Don’t I have a rule about no birds somewhere in my rental clause?” she queried, handing me a cup of brew.

I took a sip. The thick espresso and steamed milk was loaded with enough sugar to rattle my teeth. Mmm… just right.

“Not that I know of.” I girded myself for the inevitable jolt of high octane that rushed through my body.

“Remind me to stick it in next time,” she flatly replied.

“Have a nice weekend?” I asked.

“Trying to get me off the subject?” she parried without a blink.

Sophie and her Cuban lover, Lucinda, took off on weekend jaunts whenever there was a hot-to-trot rally taking place along the East Coast. The only requirement was that the battle be pro-gay, pro-woman, pro-choice, antiviolence, or anti-Castro.

“What was the rally and where was it held this time?” I grabbed a banana and an orange, figuring they’d pass as breakfast for the bird until I stocked up on its proper feed.

Sophie handed me part of her
Miami Herald
, and we headed into the garden with our coffee.

“Columbia, South Carolina. Gay and lesbian rally.” She balanced her cup on the bench and struck a match, holding the flame to the tip of her cigar.

“You’re not supposed to smoke that, you know,” I reminded her.

Sophie was trying to quit cigarettes for the umpteenth time. Her new theory was that cigars helped dull her craving for them, along with the Nicoderm patch that she wore.

“Smoking means inhaling. Do you see me inhaling?” She adjusted her turban, which had begun to lean at the same angle as the Tower of Pisa.

“Puffin’, puffin’!” interjected my feathered companion.

Sophie removed her glasses and studied the cockatoo. “That’s exactly right, what I’m doing is puffing. You’ve got yourself a smart bird. All right, you can keep him.”

My fingers dug through the orange rind and a geyser of juice hit a small green lizard that lay on the ground, enjoying the sun. It raised its head and glared at me through the bright yellow circles orbiting its eyes, before skittering off on fragile toes into the underbrush.

“Who’s that for, anyway? You or the bird?” Sophie asked.

“The bird,” I answered, squirting myself in the eye.

“Figures he’d eat better than you.” She took the orange out of my hand, and the cockatoo immediately hopped onto her arm. “Just give him the whole thing.”

The bird sank his beak into the rind and tipped his head back, extracting the juice with his tongue. Then, holding the orange in his claw, he tore the fruit apart.

I figured now was as good a time as any to hit Sophie with the news. “By the way, you know the cage that you keep your houseplants in?”

She grimaced at me, her Mixmaster voice set on grind. “Don’t tell me. The cage comes as part of your lease?”

I grinned and took a sip of coffee, turning to the paper she’d given me. The news was filled with the usual deluge of dirt: fiscal mismanagement, a commissioner being sent off to jail for digging into the city’s till, and election fraud in which absentee ballots were signed by long-dead voters. All in all, nothing unusual.

I scanned the rest of the paper while the bird continued to whoop it up with the orange. Microsoft was battling it out again in court, some militia group in the West was high-fiving it in a government standoff, and another invisible electric-fence company—also referred to as pet containment—had been blown up, this time in central Florida. Invisible electric-fence companies were recent targets in a series of bombings that had started in Georgia and were working their way down through the South. So far, no employees had been hurt.

Just then, Lucinda walked out and joined us. A short, compact woman with closely cropped jet black hair, she was garbed in a wildly colorful robe that was a Sophie Gertz creation and a pure Peter Max rip-off.

“Whatcha got there?” Lucinda asked. The bird had finished with the orange, and was preening my tresses.

“We’ve got ourselves another tenant. What do you think? Should we raise the rent?” Sophie quipped.

A light, silvery laugh trickled from Lucinda as she stepped out of her robe, displaying an original Gertz bikini along with the body I had wanted since I was twenty years old.

Lucinda was a born-again bodybuilder who’d begun lifting weights on the day she turned fifty. She made it a practice to religiously oil her skin every morning, while still wet from the shower. The result was that rays of sun dappled her form like a beautiful work of art, highlighting each well-developed muscle.

She raised a cup of coffee to her lips, unconsciously flexing a bicep that Arnold would have been proud of. Not an ounce of flab reared its head on a stomach so tight it would have reduced Jane Fonda to tears. The latissimus dorsi muscles in her back rippled like miniature dolphins at play under skin as sleek as a cat’s. As for her buns, they were solid as Mount Rushmore, but better sculpted. Hers was the kind of butt men wanted to reach out and touch, just to see if it was truly real. Woe had befallen the few males crazy enough to try. All this came wrapped up in one amazingly feminine package.

Lucinda eased her feet into a pair of Rollerblades, preparing for her morning spin. God, I envied the woman.

“Sugar, you can have this body, too,” she’d once told me in authentic Jack LaLanne fashion. “But I can’t lie. You’re gonna have to work hard to get it.”

I’d decided to forego the bikini, instead. I put the paper aside and filled Sophie and Lucinda in on how I’d wound up with the bird.

“So, what do you think?” I asked Lucinda. “Does the murder sound like it could have something to do with Santeria?” She was open about the fact that many of her Cuban relatives were followers of the faith.

“Listen, darling. I know there are stories floating around about graves being robbed for body parts to be used in black-magic rituals. But I’ve never heard of any followers resorting to murder for their religious beliefs. Of course, that doesn’t mean they won’t kill you for some other reason.” She grinned.

“I’ll keep that in mind,” I replied.

Lucinda’s attention migrated to the cockatoo on my shoulder. “Aren’t you worried, letting that bird sit out here in the open? It might decide to just spread its wings and fly away.” The cockatoo rubbed his head under my chin as I scratched along the side of his neck. “He can’t. His wing feathers have been clipped. That makes him too unbalanced to fly.”

Lucinda wrinkled up her nose at the thought. “Sounds just as barbaric as Santeria to me.”