Endangered Species (15 page)

The markup on them is extremely lucrative. The tortoises sell for anywhere from ten to twenty thousand apiece at their destination. They've usually been purchased for five hundred. The markup is actually better than the markup on cocaine. In addition, the penalties are a whole lot lighter. If you're caught, three hundred thousand dollars in smuggled animals might earn you two to three years jail time max (with probably half of that off for good behavior) and a ten- to fifteen-thousand-dollar fine. Sometimes, most times, if it's a first offense, you get away with a warning and a fine. Compare that with what you get if you smuggle drugs and you can see the attractiveness of the proposition to a person with certain proclivities.

Especially since it is so easy to get the animals—if you have the right contacts. Farmers in places like Madagascar, Borneo, and India, who are eking out a subsistence living on small plots of stony land, can earn enough money selling two or three snakes or one tortoise to feed their families for a year. If you were they, which would you choose? Food for little Consuela or the tortoise? Let's guess. Everyone benefits. Except the animals, of course.

But what the hell.

There are too many species around anyway.

I walked out onto the porch. Eli came after me.

“Did you find the suitcase?” he asked at my elbow.

“Nope.” I pressed my cigarette into shape, lit it, and took a puff. “No Nestor. No suitcase. No nothing. It looks as if you're out of luck.”

“But Adelina said . . .”

“Maybe Adelina was lying,” I told him. “That is, if you really spoke to her.” A fact I wasn't prepared to bet on.

“I did,” Eli protested. “She said Nestor wanted to work out a deal.”

“Why would he want to do that?” I asked, curious to hear what Eli was going to say.

“I think because he realized he didn't know what to do with the tortoises. He didn't know where to sell them.”

“Why didn't he call up Chapman?”

“Maybe he's scared to.” Eli shivered. I didn't think he was shivering from the cold, although I could have been wrong. A slow, penetrating wind had kicked up since I'd gone inside.

I put my collar up as I watched the wind ruffle the fringes of a piece of cloth hanging over the back of an armchair squatting in the front yard. Even though it was chilly out and I couldn't close my jacket against the wind's fingers, I still preferred the outside to being back in that house with the candles burning.

I flicked an ash off my Camel. George was right. This whole thing had been a waste of time from beginning to end. Running around. Getting involved with stupid people doing stupid things. I should sell the store. Leave the city. Go back to the newspaper and the life I used to have. Move on. The thing to do would be to notify the proper authorities and see if they could get the suitcase back from Nestor. Maybe they could find him before he sold the tortoises.

“Why would Adelina do that?” Eli asked, breaking the silence.

“Do what?” I replied.

“Lie. Why would she lie?”

“Lots of reasons.”

“Like what?”

But I didn't reply. My attention was taken up with Zsa Zsa. She'd run down the front steps and was barking at a sofa off to the left. Her left front leg was crooked and off the ground, her tail was out, her back was straight. She was pointing, her bark telling me to look.

I yelled at her to be quiet. She didn't listen. I told myself that, knowing Zsa Zsa, she could be carrying on about anything. A shoebox. A ball. A bag full of garbage. A rat. It was all the same to her. I'd had enough for one evening. I didn't want to look. I didn't care.

On some level, I think I knew that what I was going to find wasn't going to be good. I think I figured if I didn't see whatever it was, if I played monkey with its hands over its eyes, I wouldn't have to do anything about it.

This time I ordered Zsa Zsa to get her ass up on the porch. She ignored me and kept barking. I hate when my dogs do that.

“Obedience school for you,” I told her. Her barks, high and yapping, were beginning to get on my nerves. Evidently I wasn't the only one, because a minute later I heard a window open. I looked up.

The man next door had his head stuck out. “Shut that fucking thing's yap before I come down and pound you!” he screamed. “I'm trying to watch TV.”

“Screw you, too!” I yelled back. But I went and got Zsa Zsa anyway.

She was barking at what had been Nestor Chang.

One of his hands was covering his face, as if shielding it from the light, while the second one was resting on his chest. He could have been taking a nap.

Only he wasn't.

The blood seeping through the fingers on his chest told me that.

It turned out the police had been right all along.

Nestor was dead.

They'd just gotten their times mixed up.

I walked back up to Eli. “Are you sure Adelina told you to come? Is that the story you want to stick to?”

“What do you mean?” he stammered.

“You tell me.” And I guided him over to the sofa.

E
li's fingers frantically plucked at the sleeve of my jacket. “I didn't do this,” he wailed. “It wasn't me. I swear. It wasn't me. Why would I show up here if I did something like this?”

I shook my head. “I don't know. But I'm sure the police will come up with a dozen or more reasons.”

“It doesn't make any sense.”

“Actually, it does.” And I recited the lines about guilt, remorse, and the killer returning to the scene of the crime.

“No.” His eyes had gone wide with terror. Before I could stop him, Eli fell to the ground and put his arms around my knees. “Please help me,” he sobbed. “You have to.”

“Jesus.” I pulled him up. “What the hell is the matter with you?”

He wiped his nose with his jacket sleeve. “Just give me half an hour.”

“To do what?”

He made a vague gesture toward the street. “Leave. That's all I'm asking.”

I sighed. “Eli, it won't matter if I do. The police will find you anyway. It'll look better if you go in voluntarily.”

“But they're going to put me in jail,” he cried.

“Not necessarily. You haven't been indicted.”

“But they will. Why shouldn't they? I'm their best suspect.”

I didn't disagree.

Eli went on. “I'm never going to finish school at this rate,” he lamented.

I tsked. “My grandmother used to say everything happens for the best. Maybe she was right. I understand the state offers correspondence courses you can take from prison.”

He recoiled as if I'd hit him. I massaged my wrist. It was throbbing. I must have sprained it when I tripped over Zsa Zsa.

“Do you have money to pay for a lawyer?” I asked, thinking I might call mine.

“I told you I don't If I had money why would I have done this?” he demanded sullenly.

“Then the court will appoint one.” Mine didn't do pro bono work. The word free wasn't in his vocabulary.

“Fine.” Eli hung his head. His shoulders slumped. He put his hands in his pants pockets. “If that's what you think is best.” His tone was meek. He looked like a dog that's been kicked one too many times.

“I do. Really.” Absurdly, I felt bad for him. Eli seemed to have the ability to evoke that feeling in me. I was going to pat him on the shoulder when I saw the gun he was pointing at me. “Where'd that come from?” I said stupidly. It looked as if I should have been feeling bad for myself.

“In here.” He gestured down to his pants pocket with his chin. “I'm sorry, Robin. I really am.”

I didn't answer.

“Aren't you going to say anything?” he asked.

“Like what?”

“Anything.” This time his voice was a little more desperate. If he was looking for absolution, he wasn't going to get it from me.

“All right.” I hunched my shoulders up against the wind. It was picking up. The scent of snow was suddenly in the air. “So this whole thing with you down on your knees. Begging? What was that, exactly?” I asked as I watched a piece of newspaper tumbling across the street. “An act?”

“No.” Eli's gun hand was shaking slightly. His voice rose. “I meant it. I didn't want to do this.”

I snorted. “I'm forcing you? Is this something like the robber saying to his victim, ‘If you weren't wearing that Rolex on your wrist, I wouldn't have had to rob you.' ”

“Come on, Robin.” Eli's voice had taken on a wheedling quality. “I tried to give you an out. I begged you to let me go. You wouldn't listen.”

“I wasn't holding you. You could have walked anytime.”

“You would have come after me.”

“Not necessarily. So now what? Are you going to kill me, too?”

“No.” Eli sounded genuinely shocked. “Of course not. I could never do anything like that.”

I nodded toward Nestor's body. “Except for the occasional slip.”

He took a step back. “I didn't kill him. I already told you that. A half hour. That's all I'm asking. Now give me the keys to your car.”

For a few seconds I toyed with the idea of not handing them over, but in the end I did. I believed what Eli had said. I didn't think he would shoot me if I didn't give them to him, but I wasn't prepared to bet on it. After all, I hadn't thought he had a gun, either. Plus, Eli's hands were shaking. Which meant he was nervous. Which made me nervous.

I wasn't in the mood to gamble with the consequences of not doing what he said. I wasn't in the mood to try and take the gun away from him. That was the way accidents happened. And I didn't need another one. I didn't want to spend time in the hospital recovering from a gun shot wound in God knows what part of my anatomy. I'd done too much of that all ready. Pain had long since lost its charm for me.

“Now what?” I asked.

“Now this,” Eli said, pitching my keys into the yard as he would a baseball. Fortunately, he didn't have a very good arm because they didn't go very far.

Then he turned and ran. I didn't try and go after him. There didn't seem to be much point. Instead, I watched Eli go out of the front yard and down the block. He shambled rather than ran, his legs bowing out slightly. When he was almost at the end of the block, he stopped and got into a car. I'm not sure what kind, because as I told the police, I was too far away to see the make and model. I heard the engine cough and sputter a few times before it turned over. A moment later, the car's headlights came on. A few seconds after that, Eli nosed the car out into the street, made a U-turn, and sped away.

The block was quiet again, the only sounds the mewling of a cat and the rustle of sheets of newspaper blown by the wind.

I ambled over in the direction Eli had thrown my keys. Calling the police a little later rather than a little sooner really wasn't going to make that much of a difference when it came to locating Eli, and it certainly wouldn't matter to Nestor—given the condition he was in, he was beyond timely matters—but it would make a big difference to me.

I had my house and my store keys in addition to my car keys on the ring that Eli had tossed away. What was worse was that they were my spare set of keys, since I'd lost my other pair last month. Having a duplicate made was one of the things on my list I hadn't gotten around to doing. Once I called the police, they'd rope off the area and I wouldn't be able to get them. Which would be a real pain in the ass for me. Not that the police would care.

It took me ten minutes of lighting matches and cursing while I pricked my fingers on sharp-edged objects as I felt around through rusted soda cans, sodden clothes, and crumpled-up newspapers before I located them.

After I put the keys in my pocket, I walked over to the house next door and rang the bell.

I figured, what the hell, the guy who'd yelled at me from out the window was probably still up anyway. And if he wasn't, then he should be, given what he'd called Zsa Zsa.

 

 

I stared down at George. He was sprawled out on his back in his bed. His left hand was gripping the edge of his quilt, while his right hand was resting on his chest, just the way Nestor's had been.

The thought gave me the heebie-jeebies.

I took a deep breath and refocused.

I made myself study George's face instead. I noticed what looked like the beginning of a mole near his chin. I noticed he had a crease in his left earlobe. I noticed his lips were slightly parted. A low whistle was coming out of them. Zsa Zsa jumped up on the bed and licked the edges of his mouth. He brushed at her with his hand, mumbled something, and turned on his side.

I leaned over, grasped his shoulder, and shook. He snorted and buried his head in his pillow.

“Get up.”

He didn't stir. According to George, he could sleep through anything, and had, a fact he'd demonstrated by snoozing through a fire in the kitchen of his apartment when he was twelve.

I shook him harder, my irritation mounting by the second. I was not in a good mood. It had been a long, crappy day, climaxed by an even longer, crappier night. The only reason I was here at all instead of down at the police station was because I was lucky enough to know one of the detectives that had caught the call.

I'd given him a good deal on a couple of king snakes for his son last year. He returned the favor by cutting me some slack. He took my preliminary statement and let me go instead of dragging my ass downtown.

He'd pointed a finger at me. “First thing tomorrow morning.”

“Without a doubt.”

“I mean it.”

“So do I. How's your kid?”

He broke a smile. “He's doin' okay. So are the snakes. Now get out of here.”

I didn't have to be told twice. By now the area was crawling with the crime-scene crew. Neighbors, awakened by the commotion, were standing outside, watching the show and doing running commentaries among themselves. They'd seen enough of these to have a perspective. I spotted the man who'd yelled at Zsa Zsa over by the side of the yard. He was carrying on to a fat woman with her bathrobe peeking out of her overcoat about how he had to get up early to go to work the next morning. She told him to shut up and moved away, leaving him standing by himself.

I didn't feel much sympathy. Short of the winos and the hopheads, everyone had to get up early. I should have gone home and gone to bed, but I didn't. I was too tired to sleep. Instead, I'd driven over to George's and let myself in. There were a couple of things I wanted to get straightened out.

“George. Wake up, goddamn it.” By now I was practically yelling in his ear.

He opened one eye a crack. “Wha?” he mumbled.

“I want to talk to you.”

His other eye opened. He ran his hand through his hair. Black strands curled around his fingers. “What time is it?” His voice was hoarse with sleep.

“Two o'clock.”

Zsa Zsa nipped in and licked his chin. He pushed her away, then rubbed the dog saliva off with the back of his hand and lifted his head off the pillow. “Jesus,” he groaned. “What's going on? What's wrong?”

“Nestor's dead.”

“This is what you woke me for?” George put his head back down and closed his eyes. “He was dead before.”

“Not really.”

His eyes snapped open. “What do you mean ‘not really'? The newspaper said . . .”

“They made a mistake.”

“Friggin' morons,” George grumbled. “I'm surprised they even get the date right. Just a minute.” He got up. He was wearing his usual pair of ratty boxers.

I watched him pad out of the room. A moment later, I heard the toilet flush, followed by the sound of water running. Then that was gone. George returned. “You want to start again,” he said as he crawled back into bed.

“Someone shot Nestor. I just had the pleasure of finding his body a little while ago.”

“That doesn't make for a nice evening.”

“Not unless you're a necrophiliac.”

“So who's the other dead guy?”

I shrugged. “Got me.”

“I'm surprised the SPD let you go.”

“Pete let me go. I have to be downtown early tomorrow morning.”

“That was nice of him.” George yawned. The corners of his eyes were still crusted with sleep. He rubbed his face with the palm of his hand.

The lights from a passing car briefly illuminated a yellow maple leaf stuck on the storm window. I wondered where it came from; there were no maple trees around George's house.

“Do we know who the shooter is?”

“No, we don't. But Eli was at the scene.”

George shook his head in disgust. “I told you we should have turned his ass in when we had the chance.”

“Don't go putting this on me. And, anyway, I thought you tried.”

“What the hell are you talking about?” George demanded.

“I'm talking about the fact that you tried to haul Eli downtown despite the fact you gave me your word that you wouldn't. Then you let him get away.”

“Is that what he told you?”

“Yes.”

“Wow.” He sat back a little. “Stop right there. I didn't take him away.”

“He said . . .”

“He's lying.”

I bit my lip.

George scowled. “You really don't trust me at all, do you?”

“God, let's not get into that again.” This was an old argument, one that was never resolved.

He grabbed my wrist and pulled me to him. “Let's. This guy tells you a story about me and you believe it. I don't like that. I don't like that at all.”

“All right. I apologize. It's been a long day. I tried calling . . .”

“I've been out.”

“I know.”

“Anyway, an apology isn't the issue.”

“Then what is?”

“Your pervasive and ongoing lack of trust.” George loosened his grip. I pulled my wrist away. “I'm getting tired of it. Look, I know you had a rotten marriage. I know what Murphy did. I should. He was my best friend. It's true. He treated you like shit. He lied to you all the time. Fine. You had a bad deal. But it's time to move on.”

“Please. Stop with the two-bit psychology. I'm not in the mood for it right now. Let's just stick to Eli.”

“I'm serious about this.”

I folded my arms across my chest. “You really want to get into this now?”

“Yes,” George said. “I do.”

“So you're telling me I should trust you without hesitation?”