Endangered Species (12 page)

I didn't see the harm in telling him. “Eli Bishop.”

Littlebaum smacked his lips while he thought. “The name sounds familiar.”

“He was friends with someone called Nestor Chang.”

“Now that one I know.” Littlebaum flicked another piece of debris out of his beard with his free hand. “He's been here a couple of times. I buy stuff off of him once in a while.”

I didn't correct Littlebaum's use of tense. Obviously, he hadn't flipped through the morning rag, because if he had, he wouldn't be referring to Nestor in the present tense. But then, when I thought about it, I realized that Littlebaum probably wasn't a paper-reading kind of guy. Which was just as well, since I wasn't interested in getting involved in a conversation about Nestor's death at the moment.

“He gives me a good price on stuff,” Littlebaum added. “Better than yours.”

I didn't ask how he knew what my prices were. “I'm sure.” He probably did, too. It's hard to compete with stolen merchandise, not that I cared. In fact, I enjoyed the idea. Animals Galore deserved all the bad luck it could get.

“What's he done?”

“Sulfin hasn't done anything.”

“No.” Littlebaum frowned. “I mean Nestor.”

“He took off with a suitcase that wasn't his.”

Littlebaum petted Matilda some more.

I gave him a closer look. “You wouldn't happen to know anything about that, would you?”

“Are you accusing me?” Littlebaum's tone was belligerent.

“Not at all.” I moved to calm him down. “I just need Sulfin's address. Please,” I added.

Littlebaum's expression softened. “If you find him, tell him to come in,” he said after he'd told me where I could locate him. “I need him. I can't clean all these cages by myself.”

I was promising him I would when Matilda sneezed.

A worried expression flickered over Littlebaum's face. “I shouldn't have been standing out here like this. She's going to catch a cold,” he said. He began closing the door. Then he stopped as a thought occurred to him. “You're not going to tell anyone about her, are you?” he demanded.

I assured him I wouldn't.

“Because my neighbors don't know.”

“That seems wise.” I pictured what my neighbors would say if they knew that they were living next door to a lion.

“You don't like me, do you?” Littlebaum said suddenly.

“Of course I do.”

“You're lying.” Littlebaum's eyes got smaller and meaner. The cords on his neck stood out. “You're here to take my animals away.”

I held up my hand Boy Scout style. “I swear I'm not.”

“You know,” he told me, his words tumbling out so quickly it was difficult to understand him, “these animals are a hell of a lot better off with me than in some goddamned circus.”

“Oh, I agree.” My palms were starting to sweat. I bobbed my head up and down hoping to calm him down. It didn't work.

He pointed at Matilda. “No one wants her. I'm the only chance creatures like her have. Think of that before you open your mouth.”

The cat began to growl.

“I told you I wasn't going to,” I protested. I could have saved my breath.

He jabbed his hand in the air. “Anyway, you're one to talk,” he continued as if I hadn't spoken. “Selling hamsters and gerbils to kids that are going to pet them to death. Please. Please, Mommy. Can I have one.” His voice rose in a savage mimicry of a little child's. “Mommy, Mommy, it isn't moving! I just fed it a Snickers because I thought it would like it. Why can't I put the snake in the oven to warm it up? You said they liked the heat.”

“You're exaggerating.”

“Am I?” Matilda's growling was getting louder. She tossed her head. Her tail began to twitch in earnest now. “You know what I think,” Littlebaum continued. “I think that it would be a good thing if the whole human race just died ... was wiped off the face of the earth.” He threw his arms out. “It would serve us right. We have been the scourge of this planet. . . . Do you know how many species we are killing? How many plants and animals disappear each day?”

The funny thing was, I agreed with him. Theoretically. We are killing our planet, and by extension we are killing ourselves. I just didn't want to be a martyr to the cause. But I didn't say that. First of all it, wouldn't have helped—Littlebaum was off on his own private tear, and, secondly, I was too busy watching Matilda.

The louder, the angrier Littlebaum got, the more agitated she became, and when cats become agitated, they do not go for a walk to cool down. They remove the cause of their agitation. Which was me. The time for telling Matilda she was a nice puss was gone. Her tail was in full twitch mode. She'd shifted her weight to her hindquarters and gone into a crouch. She was getting ready to go straight for my throat.

I fixed her with my eyes and waved my hands in the air and made myself as big as possible.

I did this because the books I've read on wild animals say that's what you're supposed to do when you meet a puma in the back country. It shows them you're not prey and they go off and look for something easier.

“You are a bad, bad cat,” I told her in the loudest, sternest voice I could manage.

Matilda stopped for a second while she considered my statement.

Then she sprang.

So much for theory.

A
ll I can say is, thank God Littlebaum's door was partially shut.

I wondered if I could get my money back for the book as I kicked it closed.

I heard the lock click a second before I heard the thump of Matilda's body against the wood. The door shivered, but held. In another couple of months, it probably would have come off the hinges.

Then I turned and ran to the car, slipping and sliding in the melting snow. I didn't look back. If Matilda was going to get me, I didn't want to see it coming. But Littlebaum didn't let her out. He probably didn't want her to get her feet wet.

Once I got onto James Street, I pulled over to the side, and had a smoke to settle my nerves. Then I went looking for Sulfin. It took me a little over an hour to track him down. He wasn't at his place on Clarington or at the three other addresses people gave me. I finally found him over on the North Side in an overheated apartment off Lodi, killing rats.

He answered the door stripped to the waist. He was holding two large, dead rats by their tails. They dangled down from his left hand. I guess he'd taken his shirt off because he didn't want to get it dirty. He was a runt of a guy, five feet two inches at the most, with a pigeon chest and an oversized, flat head that looked as if it belonged on someone with shoulders three times as broad as his. His hair, fixed in a series of marceled waves, and skin were so pale they were almost white. The only thing that saved him from being an albino were his eyes, which were a dark brown. The contrast was disconcerting, reminding me of two raisins set in a sea of dough.

“I'm busy,” he said after he answered the door. “And Stan ain't here. Come back later.”

“I don't want to speak to Stan. I want to speak to you.” I stepped inside the apartment. It stank of dirty laundry and pine-scented air freshener, but most of all it stank of rodent. I nodded at the rats he was holding. “Maybe you should get the city in here.”

His brow wrinkled like the marceled waves in his hair. “For what?” Then understanding hit. “No. I raised these. They're for snakes. Now, what do you want?”

I could have told him, peace, prosperity, and good will to men, but I didn't. I told him I had a message for him from Littlebaum.

Sulfin's nostrils flared. His eyes went deeper into his head. “He wants me to come in now, right?”

I nodded.

He scowled. “For God's sake, I told him yesterday I'd be in this evening.”

“Don't get mad at me,” I protested, glancing around the apartment. It looked as if it should have been condemned. “I'm just telling you what he told me to say.” One wall was covered with graffiti. There was a hole in the other. The window I could see was covered up with Saran Wrap. The linoleum on the floor rippled like waves in the ocean. The only attempt at decoration was a picture of a deer painted on a velvet background hanging on the wall across from me. “Maybe Littlebaum forgot. He looks like a man with a lot on his mind.”

“What mind?” Sulfin muttered. “The guy's a total burnout. He's migrated to a different planet.” I lit a cigarette as Sulfin casually shifted the rats to his right hand. The smoke helped mask the smell of the place. “When did he tell you this?”

“I was just there. He told me he's been calling you all morning,” I lied.

His mouth tightened. “Yeah, he thinks I should be at his beck and call. Well, I got my own stuff to attend to.”

As I took a puff of my Camel, I realized I could hear squeaking noises coming from the direction of what I took to be the bedrooms. “I had a boss like that once.”

Sulfin held up the rats. “If these work out I'm gonna have people working for me soon.” The thought seemed to cheer him and he smiled. Each canine had a small diamond chip in it. “Did you meet Matilda?”

I allowed as how I had.

“She's cute, isn't she?”

I tried not to grimace. “Adorable.”

“Did Littlebaum say anything else?”

“Just that he can't clean all the cages by himself.”

“Of course he can't,” Sulfin groused. “I told him he has to hire more people, but he won't listen.”

“Maybe he can't afford to.”

“Oh, he can afford to all right. He's just too cheap to do it.”

I stubbed my cigarette out on the floor. Given their condition, I didn't think Sulfin would mind. For some reason, the smoke was making it harder to breathe, not easier. “How much are you getting for those anyway?” I asked, gesturing to the dead rats.

“Two-fifty a pop. The little ones are a dollar.” He gave me a speculative look. “Why? You interested. Most women don't like this kind of stuff.”

I told him who I was.

Sulfin giggled. “Gee. The way Tim described you, I figured you for older. You don't look so bad.”

“Thanks.” I made a mental note to have a word with my employee. “How do you know him?”

“I talked to Tim about advertising in the herp newsletter.”

That made sense. The herp newsletter ran features, convention news, and a sprinkling of ads, all having to do with reptiles of one type or another. I gestured toward the rats with my chin. “Do you sell them locally?” I was curious to know from a business point of view.

He shrugged. “I got a couple of people in the city, but mostly me and Stan freeze ‘em and then ship 'em out to places in Madison, Chenango, and Oneida counties. Places where you have to drive to get to a pet store.”

I walked into the living room, with Sulfin trailing behind me. I had the feeling he would have liked to tell me to leave, but he wasn't going to say that because he didn't want to make me mad if he didn't have to. After all, I might be a customer of his someday.

There was a pile of maybe ten dead rats in the middle of the coffee table and another ten in a box over by the TV. He dropped the two he was holding over in that one. I went over and looked inside a cardboard box sitting on the chair. It was full of mice, both adults and pinkies. A size for every variety of snake.

“I try to freeze them right away,” Sulfin explained.

“This is quite a business you have going.”

He grinned proudly. “I got the idea from the back of
Reptiles.
One of those little ads. I sent for this booklet for $5.99. Told me everything I needed to know. It was the best investment I ever made.” He shrugged. “Reptile ownership is going up. And, hell, snakes got to eat, too. I'm just helping out the people who don't like to kill things themselves.”

Of which there are a plentiful supply. Enough to support companies that specialized in shipping frozen dead mice, rats, and rabbits.

“We got a superior product here.” Sulfin wiped his brow with the back of his arm. “One whole bedroom is breeding tanks.” Which explained the persistent squeaking I was hearing. “I feed them good stuff. All high-grade, organic food. I get the leftovers that the supermarket is throwing out from a friend of mine. We got a big freezer in the kitchen set really low, so we put them right in there. I figure if things keep on going this way and we keep expanding, I'll be able to give up delivering pizza and working at the store and concentrate on doing this.”

“What pizza company do you work for?” I asked so I'd make sure not to order from them again.

He gave me the name. It was one of the major chains. Maybe this was how urban legends get started.

“Excuse me, but I gotta get back to work.”

I followed Sulfin as he went into the kitchen.

If he minded my tagging along, he didn't show it. The smell of fear hung in the room. I thought of Matilda as I took a sniff and recoiled at the sour odor. I wondered if the rats knew what was going to happen to them as Sulfin grabbed a small one by its tail. He lifted it out of the aquarium it had been in.

“So, if you don't want Stan, what do you want?” he asked as he cracked the wriggling animal's neck. He threw it back on the table and went over to get another.

“I want to talk to you about last night.”

He looked up. “What about it?”

“Eli told me you drove him up to the Myers house,” I lied, curious to hear what he'd say.

“I don't know why he said that” He picked the next rat by the tail. The thing squeaked and flailed around as it dangled above the floor. “We tried, but the weather was so bad we never got there.”

I averted my eyes. Why this slaughter was bothering me, I didn't know. But it was. Maybe it was the numbers. Or the smell. After all, it isn't as if I hadn't done this for the snakes in our store. I have.

Ironically, you're not supposed to feed caged snakes live animals. They can get bitten, which leads to infections that are both difficult and costly to treat. But their food still has to be warm, because snakes, fussy creatures that they are, don't like cold meals. People get around this by either killing the mouse and giving it to the snake or, in the case of Sulfin's customers, by taking the mouse or rat, defrosting it, and warming it up on top of the heating lamps. Sometimes that works and sometimes it doesn't. It depends on whether your snake is an easy feeder or likes its prey with its heart still beating. Which is one reason I've come to appreciate animals such as hamsters and gerbils. Their diets are vegetarian.

“So, how come you took Eli up there? I thought you were Nestor's friend?” I asked, getting back to the matter at hand.

Sulfin gave me a lopsided grin. “Eli tell you that?”

“Actually, Myra did.”

He cocked his head. “Where'd you meet her?”

“At the store.” I decided if I took shallow breaths in through my mouth, maybe the smell wouldn't be so awful. “I got the impression she doesn't like him too much.”

Sulfin giggled. “That's one way of putting it. So, what else did she say?”

“Not much. That Nestor was stealing from the store.”

“He steals from everyone.” Sulfin killed another rat and tossed it on the table and wiped his hands on his pants. “The guy is a klepto. I wouldn't let him in my house.”

“Do all of his friends feel that way?”

“Nestor doesn't have friends. He has business opportunities. Why do you care anyway?”

“For several reasons. The first one being that I did reach the house.”

Sulfin shot me a look. “The house again. What does that have to do with anything?”

“I'm trying to tell you.”

He crossed his arms over his chest. “Go ahead.”

“I got a call from someone”—I left Manuel's name out—“telling me they needed help. They gave me that address.”

Sulfin licked his lips. They were so thin they were almost invisible. “I don't see where this is going.”

“I went through the house. No one was there. On the way out, I bent down to look at something and someone hit me on the head.”

“So?” Sulfin uncrossed his arms and put his hands on his hips. His head looked even larger. “What does that have to do with me? Hey,” he cried, finally picking up my train of thought, “are you saying I did that?”

I hadn't been going to, but as long as he suggested it, it didn't seem like a bad idea. “No. I'm asking.”

I watched a tinge of red blossom on Sulfin's cheek. “The answer is no. Why the hell would I want to do something like that? And even if I had—not that I would—big deal. You look all right. I mean you're walking around, ain't ya? I don't see what the big whoop is. Actually, this is pretty funny. Yes, it is,” he insisted when I didn't say anything. “You broke in, and now you're pissed because you got hurt. I love it.”

“That isn't the issue.” And I explained about Nestor's death and Eli.

Sulfin took a step back. “You're kidding, right?” he asked in a shocked tone of voice.

“No.”

“So when was he ... ah ... when did he die?”

“Early in the morning.”

“Oh.” A quick smile flitted across Sulfin's face and was replaced by a look of studied indifference.

I clicked my tongue against the roof of my mouth and studied Sulfin. He fidgeted under my gaze. “He's alive, isn't he?” I guessed.

“Hey, you just told me he was dead.”

“I think I made a mistake. Do you mind if I look around?”

Sulfin did belligerent. “Yeah, I mind.”

I ignored him. My eyes roved around the room and lit on a list of numbers posted on the wall over by the phone. I walked over to get a better look.

“Come on,” Sulfin whined, “you're holding me up.”

I pointed to a number with the letters
Ne
written in neat script in front of them. “Would that
Ne
stand for Nestor by any chance?”

Sulfin came up behind me. I moved down wind. “So what if it does? I never said I didn't know him.”

I picked up the phone and began dialing the number for the hell of it.

“What are you doing?” Sulfin squeaked.

“Just seeing who picks up.”

Sulfin's shoulders sagged. “Okay. I spoke to Nestor about an hour ago.”

“How'd you speak to him?” I asked as I wondered whose body the police had.

“The usual way,” Sulfin replied peevishly. “By phone. What you think? I was using a Ouija board or channeling through one of these?” He picked up a dead rat and held it to his ear.

“Very nice.”

Then before I realized what he was doing, Sulfin dropped the rat, reached up, tore the paper off the wall, and ripped it to shreds. “There,” he said, dropping the pieces in my hand. “Now you got no reason to stay.”