Endangered Species (10 page)

“Not really. She's a skinny kid. Works over at Animals Galore.”

Tim grimaced at the name.

“She's got a couple of albino boas, some poison arrow frogs. Not run of the mill stuff. I was just curious.”

“Name doesn't ring a bell. You want me to ask around?”

“Please.” Tim had assumed the presidency of the Herpetological Society of Syracuse six months ago.

“This has to do with Manuel and his cousin, doesn't it?” he asked.

“Probably not. I'm just checking.” I scanned the mail and put it aside. It was all bills and circulars. Then, because I figured I might as well cover all my bases, I asked Tim about Nestor.

“You mean Nestor Chang?”

I nodded.

Tim picked up a broom and began to sweep. “Sure I know him. He was in my ethics class at OCC. Why?”

“He's the guy that stole Eli's suitcase.”

Tim's eyes widened slightly. He scratched his chin with a finger. “I never would have pegged him for something like that.”

I began cleaning out the gerbil cages. My meeting with Chapman had put me behind with my chores. “Obviously the class didn't do him much good.”

“He was smart. Really smart.”

I remembered what Adelina's mother had said about Nestor always thinking he knew more than anyone else as I scooped the old bedding out of the cage and poured the new bedding in. “Sorry, guys,” I told the four milling gerbils. They were distressed because I'd taken their store of food. I gave them some pellets and watched as they stuffed them into their mouths.

“Anything else?”

Tim stopped sweeping and thought. “Not really. We talked about assignments a couple of times, but that was about it. I saw him at the Jazz Fest this summer. He was with this pretty Latina and a little girl.”

I took out the water bottle. “That must have been Adelina and one of her sisters.”

“We just said hello.”

“Did he talk to anyone else in your class?”

Tim shook his head and went back to his sweeping. “He kept pretty much to himself. He usually came in right before the class started and left right when it ended.”

“Maybe I should talk to his teacher.”

“He's in California now,” Tim informed me as he started on the floor around the front door.

So much for that idea. I went in the back and refilled the water bottle. I was starting on my third cage when the phone rang. Tim was still sweeping, so I caught the call.

It was George. “Have you watched TV recently?” he asked me before I could say anything.

“Since I don't have one strapped to my wrist, no. Why?”

“Because I think we have a problem.”

G
eorge was right. We did have a problem. A big one. He'd just caught a breaking news story while he'd been channel surfing. A reporter had come on to announce that a West Side man taking a shortcut on his way to work through an abandoned lot had stumbled over the body of a male, who was later identified as Nestor Chang. Police were investigating. Anyone with information was urged to come forward.

“Shit,” I said.

“My sentiments exactly,” George agreed.

“But we don't know Nestor was killed in the Myers's house,” I said, anticipating George's next comment.

“We don't know he wasn't,” George replied.

Tim stopped sweeping. “Someone killed Nestor?”

“It seems so.”

He put his hand up to his eyes. “That's horrible.”

I agreed with him that it was.

“You don't sound as if you care,” Tim observed.

“Well, I'm not breaking out in sobs, if that's what you mean. But of course I care. I don't like to hear about anyone dying. It's just hard to feel really bad for someone you've never met.”
Especially,
I wanted to add,
since he's someone you haven't heard anything good about.

Tim put down his broom. “I'm going to take a couple of minutes to myself.” He walked into the back.

“What was that all about?” George asked.

“Tim's upset about Chang.”

“He knew him?”

“Vaguely. They took a class together, an ethics class.”

George snorted.

“You know,” I pointed out, “that newscast didn't say anything about homicide. For all we know, Nestor could have gotten drunk, passed out, and died of hypothermia,” I continued. “I looked through the house. Everything was in place. If Nestor was killed there, whoever did it should give clean-up lessons.”

“Believe me, I sincerely hope you're right. I'd have less trouble believing that if you hadn't gotten hit on the head.”

“Because if we go down to the Attorney's Office...”

“We can keep Manuel out of it,” George said, anticipating my line of thought. “No reason why he should get his ass handed to him because he was worried about you.”

“But what about us? We could be charged with a B&E.”

“They won't do that.”

“Maybe not to you, but the DA's office doesn't like me very much.”

I didn't hear George disagreeing.

I peeled a fingernail. “Let me talk to Eli again before we go downtown. Let's see what he has to say. Then I'll get back to you.”

“And if he's not there?”

“I'll phone you either way and we can go from there.”

George wavered.

“Come on. Nestor's dead. A couple of hours one way or another aren't going to matter much.”

In the end, George gave in. I was about to hang up when I remembered about the license plate number.

“Yeah. I was going to call you about that. My friend got an ID.”

“Great!”

“Not really. The car Chapman is driving is registered to a Zachariah Block down in Westchester.”

“Did you ...”

“Yes,” George replied. “I tried phoning him. Unfortunately, Mr. Zachariah's number has been disconnected. We have a dead end.”

I sighed. Maybe I should light a candle to change my luck, I thought as I went into the back to tell Tim I was leaving. He was leaning against the sink with Slick, an eight-foot boa, curled around his arm.

“At least you know where you stand with these guys,” he said, looking up at me.

The snake's tongue flicked in and out of his mouth smelling the air.

“Not always. You could have a snake for ten years, feed him once a week, handle him every day, and then—bam—for no reason at all he'd turn and nail you.”

“They eat what they kill,” Tim said. “You can't say the same about people.”

I couldn't argue with that. I told Tim where I was going and left.

As I drove over to Eli's, I replayed my morning's talk with him over and over again in my head. No matter what construction I gave his words, I just didn't make him for a killer. But then, I reminded myself, people always said that about the guy who turns around and murders his wife and kids.

“I can't believe it,” the neighbor would say, putting his hand to his mouth. “He was such a nice, quiet man. So helpful. When I was away, he always took in my mail and watered my plants.”

Well, I hoped Eli wouldn't fit into that category as I parked my car and walked up his steps. “Eli!” I yelled as I banged on his door. “I need to speak to you.”

“He ain't there. He's gone.”

I turned. A kid decked out in a bright-red snowsuit was standing down on the street looking up at me. I started down the stairs. “When did he leave?” It couldn't have been that long.

The kid began flipping the scarlet hood of his snowsuit up and down in time to a tune playing in his head that I couldn't hear. “A little while ago. He said he'd pay me for shoveling his steps when he came back.”

I hoped Eli wasn't paying him a lot. The kid had shoveled a narrow path up the middle of the stairs, while leaving snow on either end. The steps looked as if they'd been given a reverse mohawk.

“And when was that going to be?” I asked as I reached the pavement. I brushed flakes off my jeans.

“He said he'd be right back,” the kid answered. “But that was a couple of hours ago. You a friend of his?” he asked, wiping his nose with the back of his hand.

“Not really. Was he carrying anything with him when he left?”

The kid squinted up at me. His gaunt face, thin mouth, and deep-set, watchful eyes had poverty stamped all over them. “But you know him, right?”

“Yes, I know him,” I allowed.

The kid made a hole in the snow with his heel, then hit me up for some money. “I could use me a couple of bucks for a candy bar.”

I handed him two ones. The cost of doing business.

“That's it?” he complained.

“Are you buying chocolate wrapped in gold?” I complained, but I pulled out two more ones and handed them to him. “That's four dollars, three more than you should be getting.”

He looked at the crumpled bills lying in the palm of his hand disdainfully. “These bills is old. Ain't you got anything newer?”

I fought an urge to lift the kid up by his hood and hang him on the fence post. “I can take them back if you want.”

“No. That's okay.” He hastily tucked my money in his snowsuit pocket. Then he pointed to my backpack. “He was carrying one of those. A big one.”

“Anything else?”

“Not that I seen.”

“Which way did he go?”

He pointed down the street in the direction of East Genesse. “That way.”

“Walking or driving?”

“Driving.” The kid gave me a look of pure disgust. “You think Eli's gonna walk anywhere? He was in that old Chevy of his.”

“Did he say anything to you?”

“I already told you. He said I should shovel the stairs and that he'd give me twenty bucks when he came back.” The kid lifted up the snow shovel he was carrying. It was bigger than he was. “How about you pay me? Then you get the money from him,” he said, gesturing up to where Eli lived.

I laughed. “Twenty bucks for what you did? You have to be crazy. That's worth about five. Tops. And anyway, how do I know you're not scamming me?”

The kid called me an asshole and left.

“That's not very nice,” I yelled after him.

He flipped me the bird over his shoulder and kept walking. I guess things could be worse, I thought as I got back in my car. I could be a teacher and have to deal with behavior like that all day.

So, had Eli skipped out or hadn't he? It looked to me as if he had, but I wasn't ready to admit that yet. I decided to wait another half an hour, then go back and check one last time. If he hadn't returned by then, I'd give George a call. In the meantime, I decided to get a cup of coffee at a café over on Harvard Place, a three-block walk.

A
blast of flamenco music hit me when I pushed the door open. The owner had painted the walls an Atlantic Ocean blue-green. A white fan whirred overhead. A couple of people, grad students from the look of them, were sitting at a table toward the back, talking and passing papers back and forth, but outside of that, the place was empty. I ordered a quadruple espresso and a hazelnut biscotti and took them over to a seat by the window. Across the street, a man wearing a bathrobe, pajamas, and boots was dragging two garbage cans out of the pile of snow they had been buried in.

I dunked the biscotti in the coffee and took a bite. As the biscuit dissolved in my mouth I considered what would happen if George called the police. It would not be good. I lifted the little white cup up to my lips and took a sip of coffee. It was bitter enough to make me shudder.

As I stirred some sugar into my espresso, I contemplated the distasteful fact that I should probably call my lawyer when I got back to the store. Now this is not something I like to do, because he is expensive. The money I'd gotten from Eli would cover about two hours of his time, unless of course his rates had gone up again, in which case, it would cover less. What was that saying about: if it looks too good to be true, it usually is?

I sat in the café, nursing my coffee for as long as possible, before climbing Eli's stairs again and knocking on his door one last time. There was no response. I wasn't really surprised. I was having a run of bad luck, and in my experience those things tend to stay around for a while. And I was right. On my way over to the store, I stopped off at the garage to see how the cab was coming along. Naturally, she wasn't ready.

“I'll have her for you in another couple of days,” Sam said, wiping the grease off his hands with a dirty cloth.

He was a good, honest mechanic and those are hard to find these days. Unfortunately, he took forever to get anything done. I sighed and drove back to the store. Not that there was anything wrong with the car I was driving, not really, not if you didn't count the fact that it had no acceleration and it cornered lousy.

“Eli there?” Tim asked me when I came back in. He had our hyacinth macaw perched on his shoulder. She was a beautiful bird I was trying to find a home for.

“Nope.” I fed her and Zsa Zsa each a dog biscuit.

“George called.”

I reached for the phone, but Tim wasn't finished yet. “And the teacher from the junior high school class . . .”

I supplied the name. “Nettles.”

“Yeah.” Tim snickered. “She wants you to pay the cleaning bills for everyone's clothes.”

“Great. Anything else?” As if that wasn't enough.

Tim consulted his pad as the macaw nibbled on his ear. “A guy named Chapman phoned.”

“What did he want?” I was betting that he'd heard about Nestor, too.

“Just that you should call him. Is that the one with the scissors?” Tim asked, making a clipping motion with his fingers.

“You got it.” I slipped out of my jacket and stuffed it under the counter. The macaw nipped at my hair as I went by him. I gave him another biscuit and dialed the beeper number Tim had given me. A moment later, Chapman called back.

“Was there something you forgot to tell me at our breakfast this morning?” he asked.

“Like what?” I asked, playing dumb.

“So you don't know?”

“About what?”

“About Nestor being dead.”

“That's terrible,” I told him, putting what I hoped was the appropriate amount of emotion in my voice. “What happened?”

Chapman's laugh was malicious. “I don't believe a word you're saying.”

“Why would I lie to you?”

“I don't know. It's a good question. Maybe you can give me the answer over dinner tonight.”

I leaned against the wall and closed my eyes. Suddenly I felt exhausted. Last night was catching up with me. “Yeah. Right.”

“I'll pick you up at nine. I know a nice little joint out in Fulton.”

“Don't bother.”

“It would be a mistake on your part not to be there,” Chapman told me, his voice oozing through the phone like sugar syrup.

“And why is that?”

“You'll find out.” And he hung up before I could tell him to fuck off.

I tapped the phone against my teeth while I thought.

“What are you going to do about him?” Tim asked.

“I don't know yet.” I pulled myself away from the wall and went into the back and made myself a cup of coffee. I took it into my office, sat down, put my feet on my desk, and lit a cigarette. What I needed was a vacation, I reflected as I studied the toes of my sneakers, a nice long one. Belize couldn't come soon enough for me. I wondered when George was thinking of going down. I reached for the phone and punched in his number, but no one answered.

I was about to leave a message when the bell that signals the opening of the front door went off.

“Where's Robin?” I heard Manuel say.

“She's tired,” Tim told him. “Leave her alone.”

“I got to speak to her.”

“Have to,” Tim corrected. “You have to speak to her.”

“Who gives a fuck?”

“Your attitude sucks. I'm just trying to help.”

I sighed, picked up my coffee, took another drag of my cigarette, and walked out front. “What do you want, Manuel?”

He moved toward me. “It's Eli,” he cried. “He wants to turn himself in for Nestor's murder.”

“Murder?” I echoed. So much for my insights into human nature.

“Wow,” Tim said.

“Wow,” the Hyacinth macaw cackled. “Wow. Wow. Wow.”

“I know,” Manuel agreed. “I told him to wait till I spoke to you.”

I rubbed my forehead. “You want me to get him a lawyer?”

“No.” Manuel resettled his baseball hat on his head. “I want you to talk him out of it.”

I stared at Manuel. “Why?”

Manuel pulled up his pants. “Because he didn't do it.”

“But I heard you say he's confessing,” Tim said.

“Yeah,” Manuel said.

I pushed my hair out of my eyes. “I'm confused.”

“He thinks it would be a good idea.”

“Instead of what?” I snapped. “Going to Florida? Do I confess to a murder or take a bus trip?” I made a weighing motion with my hands. “Gee. I don't know. Let's flip a coin and find out.”

“Here.” Manuel took what looked like a shoebox wrapped in the Sunday comics out of the shopping bag he'd been holding and pushed it across the counter. “This will explain things.”

I eyed it warily. I haven't looked at packages in the same way, since some moron had UPSed a viper to the store.

“Go on,” Manuel urged. “Open it.”

I unwrapped the paper and gingerly lifted the lid. Nestled inside the folded sheets of white tissue paper were a large pair of pinking shears, an alarm clock, and something black I couldn't recognize. I picked it up.

“Jesus.” I dropped it back in the box.

“That's disgusting,” Tim spat, cold fury in his voice.

We both stared down at the amputated paw of a cat.

“Here. There's this, too.” Manuel reached in and handed me a typed note. It read: “Don't be a cat's-paw. Not all feet are lucky. A deal is a deal. Time is running out.”

“That fuck,” I said through gritted teeth. “He is a dead man.” I pushed the box away from me. I didn't want to look at it.

Tim reached over and picked up the shears. The polished blades gleamed in the light. They were designed to cut material, my grandmother had used shears such as these when she'd sewn my clothes, but obviously that wasn't what Chapman had in mind. “The man is crazy,” Tim said, putting the scissors back.

“He's dead is what he is.” I took a deep breath and told myself to calm down. “I'd like to use them on him,” I added as I ground out my cigarette on the lid of the soda can I was using as an ashtray. I gestured toward the box. “When did Eli get this?”

Manuel unzipped his jacket and tipped his baseball hat back on his forehead. “A little while after you left. It was right outside the door.”

I wondered if the kid in the red snowsuit had seen Chapman putting it there. Then I wondered if it mattered.

“Eli's at your house, waiting for you to call,” Manuel said.

While I'd been looking for him, he'd been sitting in my living room watching TV. It figured. I lit another cigarette and inhaled. Then I blew a smoke ring and watched it dissolve on the air. “So, let me get this straight. He wants to confess to a murder he didn't commit.”

Manuel nodded.

“Because he thinks he'll be safe from Chapman in jail.”

“Exactomundo.
”

“And then do what? Tell the police he was lying when I find the suitcase.”

“Something like that.”

I put the lid back on the shoebox and pushed it toward Manuel with one finger. “I have another suggestion. How about bringing that in to the cops and lodging a complaint about Chapman?”

“For what?”

“Harassment ... menacing are two words that come to mind.”

Manuel raised his eyebrows. “This guy Chapman will be out the next day. And that's if they can find him.”

I massaged my temples and blew another smoke ring. “Manuel, tell me something.”

He shifted his weight from his right to his left foot. He didn't know what was coming, but he didn't like it. “If I can.”

“What the hell is in this suitcase?”

“Cigars.” I flicked an ash into the empty dog food can by the register.

“Try again. No one goes to this much trouble for something like that.”

“They're Cohibas or some weird name like that.”

“That is the wrong answer.” Normally I would have been more tolerant, but the last couple of days had not put me in the best of moods.

I walked around the counter and grabbed Manuel by the front of his blue Tommy Hilfiger jacket. “Thanks to you, I now have someone calling me for a dinner date, someone who cuts paws off cats. Not to mention the fact that I broke into a house because of you, a house someone may have been killed in. My fingerprints are all over the walls and the phone and, oh, yes, I got knocked out, and last but not least, George is now involved in this whole mess. Now, I want you to tell me what's going on.”

“Chill.” Manuel pried my fingers off the material. “Don't be doing that to me. This is new. You're going to ruin the material. I already done told you I don't know. All I know is Eli's in trouble and he's really scared. I'd tell you if I knew anything else. Believe me.”

“Is that the same as ‘trust me'?”

“Why you gotta take that tone with me?” he objected. “You really put people off actin' like that.”

“Manuel, can the crap.” But I took a step back and looked him in the eye. He returned my glance. Not that that meant anything. It would take a better person than me to get Manuel to talk if he didn't want to.

I stubbed my cigarette out and fought the urge to light another one. “All right, Manuel. Here's a question you might be able to answer.”

He carefully brushed off the front of his jacket, inspecting it as he did. “Are we on
Jeopardy
or something?”

“Don't be cute. How do you know Eli's telling the truth about not killing Nestor? He certainly has a motive.”

“Sulfin says he was with him last night.”

“And you believe Sulfin?”

“He's got no reason to lie.”

“You don't know that.”

“I don't not know it,” Manuel countered.

“It, it, it,” the macaw echoed.

I raised my voice. “You know, we don't even know Nestor has been murdered. So far, the death has been listed as suspicious. That's all.”

Manuel shrugged. “Given what Chapman is gonna do, big deal.”

“Making a false statement to the police is a felony. Eli could go to jail for something like that.”

Manuel looked up. “They can do that?” he said, sounding surprised.

I yielded to temptation and lit another cigarette. “They most certainly can.”

“I didn't know that.”

“Contrary to your opinion of yourself, there are a lot of things you don't know. And here's another thought for you. What if it turns out that Nestor was murdered? And what if the police believe his confession? What if they put together a circumstantial case on him? What if he goes to trial on a murder two beef? You know innocent people have been prosecuted before and found guilty.”

Manuel bit his lip. “I don't think that's occurred to him.”

“I don't think a lot of things have.”

“That's why I want you to talk to him.” Manuel looked at me expectantly. “Please, Robin.”

It was the
please
that did it. “All right. But first I want to speak to Sulfin.”

“Eli isn't lying,” Manuel said, his eyes asking me to agree with him.

“He probably isn't, but it would make me feel better if I knew a little more first.”

“All right.” Manuel said this reluctantly. “Can I come along?”

“Not.”

Manuel's shoulders sagged. His mouth turned down. I put my hand on his shoulder. “I need you to talk to your friends. See if any of them have heard from Adelina.”

“Why?”

“Because if Chapman doesn't have the suitcase and Eli doesn't have the suitcase, then Adelina probably does. And I want it.” I thought about what Chapman had done to that cat. “I want to see what's inside it.” Now I was hoping there was something in it that would help me turn Chapman over to the police.