Chapter 29
I
t took George ten minutes to drive over to Sulfin's. During that time the silence in the room was broken only by the sound of the TV. We all kept our eyes fixed on the screen. The air was thick with unspoken recriminations. No one said anything. We were all too tired. Everyone looked up when George walked through the door.
“So, this is what the fuss is about,” he said, taking in the tortoise in Manuel's hand. “I mean, it's pretty. But ten thousand dollars?” He shook his head. “I don't know.”
“There are probably no more than two thousand of these species left in the wild. For all practical purposes, it's a museum piece already.” I shrugged. “It's all about supply and demand.”
“What isn't?” George gestured to Adelina, Manuel, and Eli. “What are you going to do with them?”
“As soon as I hear from Tim, I'm going to take them downtown.” Eli opened his mouth and I told him to close it. “Tim just got to the store,” I continued. “Hopefully, it won't take him long to find what Chapman left.”
“All right, then.” George gave me a peck on the cheek. Then he and Manuel left.
I suppressed a shiver as the door closed. I didn't know whether I was cold because it was cold in here or because I was tired and hungry.
“So, we just have to sit here and wait,” Sulfin complained, having suddenly become reenergized.
“That's right.” I massaged my wrist and leaned against the wall. I hoped Tim would call soon. I was so tired my teeth were hurting. And the colors in this room weren't helping things. The red rug and the acid-green walls pulled at my nerves.
“Why?” Sulfin demanded. His eyes had sunk further into his head. They looked like two raisins that had been left in the oven for too long. “Why take us downtown? You have what you want. Let us leave.”
“There's the slight matter of Nestor,” I reminded him.
“I didn't have anything to do with that,” Sulfin retorted. “It's not my problem.”
“You're wrong,” I answered, trying to work the kink out of my neck, tilting my head first to the right and then to the left. “Someone is dead. That's everyone's problem.”
“Not mine,” Sulfin insisted.
“You're a liar,” Adelina told him, her face flushed.
“And you're crazy.”
Adelina pointed to me. “She has the gun. Now what do you have to say?”
“What gun?” Sulfin asked, feigning ignorance. “I don't know what the hell you're talking about.”
“She's talking about this.” I took the 9mm out from my pocket, and showed it to him.
Sulfin barely glanced at it. “Get real,” he sneered. “I wouldn't kill anyoneânot even Nestor. Not that that two-bit piece of shit didn't deserve it. She just wants to get me in trouble because I dumped her.” He grinned. “What's that line about don't dump your lady, 'cause they'll come back and do you? Well, she wants to do me good.”
Adelina walked over to where he was standing. “No, Ratboy,” she spat. “Remember. I dumped you.”
He wiggled his tongue inside his mouth. “You couldn't get enough of me.”
Adelina put her hands on her hips and thrust out her breasts. “You're a freak! I just slept with you because I felt sorry for you and I thought you needed something in your life for a little while besides those disgusting rodents of yours.”
Sulfin took a step toward her. “That's a lie and you know it.”
I showed them the gun. “Enough.”
Sulfin bounced up and down on the balls of his feet. “All you got is talk.”
Adelina pointed to the automatic in my hand. “You gave that to me, remember? You told me to keep it safe.”
Sulfin looked incredulous. He turned to me and indicated Adelina. “She's lying, just like she always does. I don't think I've ever heard the truth passing through those lips.”
“It's passing through now. Eli and me, you'd better believe we're not getting stuck for something you did.”
Eli cringed at being pointed out.
“I didn't do anything,” Sulfin reiterated. “I don't have a clue what you're talking about.”
“You certainly do, you fucking liar.”
I turned to Adelina. “One question. Did you actually see him shoot Nestor?”
“No. ”
“Then you don't know that he did.”
“He told me.” She jabbed her finger in my face. “Why would he tell me if he didn't?”
I turned to Sulfin.
“The bitch got wax in her ears. She should go to the doctor's and get it cleaned out. Look around, you'll see I ain't got nuthin' to hide.”
“That's a good idea,” I said. “I think I will.”
“What?” Sulfin squawked.
“Look around your apartment. Let's go. All of you.” I didn't expect to find anything, but at least it would give me something to do while I waited for Tim to call.
“Why do we have to go?” Eli protested. It was the first time I'd heard him open his mouth since we'd left the house.
“So I can keep an eye on you.” And I herded them in front of me.
I wandered into the kitchen first. There was nothing much of interest in the room, unless you liked dirty dishes, evaporated milk, Golden Grahams cereal, and macaroni and cheese.
“This is disgusting,” Adelina said to no one in particular.
I hustled them out and tried the bathroom next. It was hot pink, not a color I would have chosen, but at least the walls were painted one color. I kept one eye on the three of them as I opened the medicine cabinet door.
“Hey, you're invading my privacy,” Sulfin complained.
“Too bad,” I told him as I scanned the contents. Plenty of sunscreen, which, given Sulfin's pallor, made sense, a vial of medicine for seasickness, iodine, which was unusual until I remembered you could dilute it and use it to treat infections from rodents, and a can of shaving gel and a razor blade. In short, nothing.
We tried the bedrooms next. The first one was almost austere. The walls were white. It was furnished with a twin bed and a desk. A water bowl, a food dish, and a heat lamp were arrayed against the far wall. A half-fixed-up aquarium sat in the middle of the floor.
“I was going to put Zeus in that,” Sulfin explained, looking genuinely sad. “It would have been nice.”
Somehow I didn't feel sorry for him.
I motioned everyone to go on to the next room. I caught my breath when I saw what was inside. I could have been in Vegas. The focal point of the room was a king-size, canopied, four-poster bed. The sheets were black satin, the blanket was some sort of white, shaggy, fake fur. The walls were a deep red. The ceiling was mirrored. I've never been in a bordello, but this is how I imagined one would look. It was amazing, but Manuel had been right about Sulfin after all. Either that, or the guy had an incredibly active fantasy life.
Eli's jaw had gone slack when he caught the view. He kept looking around, taking everything in. Adelina's face, on the other hand, showed no expression, but then, why should it? She'd been here before. The thought of her and Sulfin together in this room was enough to make me shudder. Maybe there was something to be said for good taste.
“Now that you've had the tour, can we go?” Sulfin said, hands on hips. I watched as he stalked over to his closet and threw the door open. “See,” he said. “Nothing there. Or here, either,” he continued, striding over to his dresser.
He was about to open one of the drawers when Adelina pointed to something small and silver, sitting next to a box of cookies. “What's that?” she demanded.
“Nothing.” Sulfin's smile flickered along the edges of his mouth and went out. “Nothing.” He picked it up, but before he could get it in his pocket, Adelina had swooped down and pried it out of his hand.
It was a silver, monogrammed lighter.
Adelina held it up. “This was Nestor's. You have Nestor's lighter. I can't believe you took Nestor's lighter.”
Sulfin planted his feet apart and folded his arms across his chest. “He gave it to me.”
“He'd never give it to you,” Adelina answered, her face swollen with emotion. “He hated you. His father gave it to him. That's why he had his initials engraved on it. So he wouldn't lose it. You shot him and you took his lighter. Like a trophy. Like he was some sort of animal.”
“I wouldn't do anything that dumb. He gave it to me,” Sulfin insisted. “And you can't prove otherwise.” He smiled. “You're going away for his murder. For a long, long time,” he added maliciously. “By the time you get out, you're going to be old and fat and no one will look at you.”
“You fuckin' faggot!” Adelina screamed, attacking him with her nails.
Sulfin tried to punch her and missed, his blow glancing off her cheek.
“Stop it!” I yelled as Adelina picked up a lamp off the dresser and threw it at Sulfin. He ducked and it crashed against the wall, missing Eli by inches.
Sulfin tackled her and threw Adelina to the ground. She grabbed his hair and pulled. He screamed as she came away with a handful. As she brought her hand toward his eyes, he grabbed it and bit down as hard as he could. She shrieked and punched him in the face with her free hand. He let go.
I grabbed the back of Adelina's shirt and pulled. The material stretched. For a second, I thought it was going to tear. She whirled around and scratched me. I slapped her across the face as hard as I could. My hand stung. She gasped. A line of blood snaked down her nose. She let out a roar and charged me. I sidestepped. She crashed into the side of the bed. I was on her. I reached around from the back and pinned her arms to her sides.
“Goddamn it,” I cursed as she kicked at my ankles. “Calm down.”
“Let me go.”
“No.” I gritted my teeth. I was dragging her out of the room when Sulfin got up and kicked her in the belly. She fell against me and I tottered and went over, too, hitting my head on the side of the dresser. Adelina tried to get up. I grabbed for her foot. She kicked my hand loose and then aimed a kick at my ribs. I rolled to avoid it and reached for my gun, but it wasn't there.
The next thing I knew I heard a shot.
I looked up. Sulfin had my gun.
“Give me the money,” he said to me.
I got up. My ankles hurt. So did my wrists. I'd had it. “It's in my backpack. Go get it.”
“If you think you're taking all the money, you're out of your mind!” Adelina screamed. “It's mine. I worked for it. It's mine.”
“Shut up, Adelina,” I cried. Sulfin's hand was trembling. I watched his finger.
“Don't,” I told him. “Take the money and go.”
He was breathing hard.
“Please,” I pleaded.
He opened his mouth to say something when we heard a crash, followed byâ“Police.”
Sulfin dropped the gun and ran for the window.
Chapter 30
I
t was a raw, overcast day, the kind of day that makes you want to stay inside and feed logs to the fire. The temperature was hovering in the low thirties as I pulled into the store's parking lot. The sky was a mottled dark gray. An icy drizzle was falling. The few people out on the street walked hurriedly, hunched over, anxious to get where they were going. Even the crows and the pigeons were huddling under cover. But I wasn't complaining. I was just happy to be out of the Public Safety Building. This was the second time in less than two weeks I'd been in that place. It was getting to be a habit I'd prefer not to cultivate.
The aroma of the store, a combination of cedar shavings, hay, and brine shrimp, washed over me when I opened the door to Noah's Ark. I smiled and took a deep breath, chasing the last bit of the air from the PSB out of my lungs. Tim nodded when he saw me. He had a cup of coffee in one hand and a Pop Tart in the other. He also had large dark circles under his eyes from having been up all night. His lips were chapped, something that always happened when he didn't have enough sleep.
“Any luck?” I asked as I walked toward him.
He shook his head and took a gulp of coffee. As he did, I noticed that faint stubble was growing on his skull. I hoped that meant he was going to let his hair grow in. I liked it better that way.
“If Chapman put something here, I can't find it. Are you sure about this?”
I repeated what George had overheard.
“That could mean anything,” Tim pointed out.
I rubbed my eyes.
“Here.” Tim pushed the box of Pop-tarts toward me. “Have one. You look as if you can use something to eat.”
“Thanks.” I ripped the foil covering open with my teeth and took the pastry out. “Strawberry,” I said, looking at the light pink icing. I took a bite. It was so sweet it made my teeth ache. I was so hungry I wolfed it down anyway.
“Take this, too.” He indicated his coffee. “I'll pour myself another one.”
I accepted the offer gratefully. I'd had a couple of cups since I'd gotten out of the PSB, but I'd need a lot more to get me up to speed. A moment later, Tim returned from the back room, new mug in hand.
“It didn't even look as if anyone was here,” he informed me. “Everything was exactly the way I left it.”
I took a sip of lukewarm coffee. I still thought I was right. Chapman had put something here. If Tim hadn't found it, that didn't mean it wasn't here. It just meant it was something unexpected. But what? Livestock was hard to hide, so it had to be something else, something small, something that was worth a lot of money, something like vials of powdered black rhino horn or tiger bones. Said to promote male potency, sold by Chinese herbalists, there was a big market for stuff like that down in Chinatown. The glass vials the powders came in were usually about eight inches long and no more than an inch around. They'd certainly be easy enough to hide here. Maybe in the ceiling tiles, I mused. The air vents were another possibility.
“Where were you anyway?” Tim asked, interrupting my train of thought. “I kept waiting for you to call.”
“I couldn't. I was at the Public Safety Building.” And I told him about my evening.
“I was wondering how you got those scratches on your face. ”
“And you haven't seen the black-and-blue marks on my leg.” I touched my cheek and chin gingerly, Tim's comment having brought them to mind. I couldn't believe how much the scratches still stung.
“Poor Nestor.” Tim took another sip of his coffee and shook his head. “I liked him.”
“It seems as if you are one of the few that did.”
“He always had plans.”
“In this case, it would have been better if he hadn't.”
Tim wiped a drip off the rim of the mug. “So what's going to happen? Is Sulfin being charged?”
“Who knows? No one has told me anything. And, believe me, they won't. I'll read about it in the newspaper along with everyone else, unless George's friend tells him and he tells me.”
Tim raised an eyebrow.
I put my cup down. “Listen, I'm just glad I wasn't charged with anything. I expected Chapman to walk in at any second. Thank God he didn't. But it wouldn't surprise me if they do charge Adelina and Sulfin. Let's put it this way. They released Eli and me. As far as I know, Adelina and Sulfin are still downtown being questioned. You mind?” I asked, pointing to the Pop-tarts.
Tim pushed the box toward me. “Be my guest.”
I unwrapped another one and took a bite. A trickle of raspberry jam slid down my chin. I wiped it up with my finger, then licked my finger clean.
“Why did the cops let Eli go?” Tim asked.
“I'd say because Chapman hasn't informed them about the implications of the tortoises. What a surprise.” I finished off the Pop-tart, collected the two foil wrappers and threw them in the trash. “I wonder where he's going.”
“Chapman?”
I nodded.
“What makes you think he's going anywhere?”
“Because he's just here on some sort of special assignment. According to George, he lives down in Fort Myers. I bet he's going home as soon as he gets the tortoises.”
“Why should he do that?”
“Why should he stick around?” I countered. “What's here for him? The beautiful weather?”
Tim grunted.
I realized I was drumming my fingers on the table. I gulped the rest of my coffee down and brought the mug out back. It was time to start looking for whatever Chapman had hidden.
“Where's Eli?” Tim asked as I stood in the middle of the store, thumbs hooked into the loops on the waistband of my jeans, considering where I was going to start my search.
“He's back at George's place.” I rocked back and forth on my heels.
“What about the tortoises?”
“They're there, too.”
Tim ran his fingers over the top of his skull. “I bet George is pleased.”
“Well, I didn't want to leave them at Eli's.”
“I can see that. And Manuel?”
I gnawed on my fingernail. “He's at George's, too. Tim, did you go through all the bedding and rocks when you searched?” I asked, changing the subject.
He looked offended. “Of course I did. I went through every single one of the reptile cases, I looked through all the bedding in the rabbits, guinea pig, hamster, and gerbil cages, and I looked in the gravel and moved all the rocks in the aquariums. Let me tell you, there is nothing in any of those things that shouldn't be.”
I held up my hands. “Okay. I was just asking.”
“Go ahead. Look.” Tim gestured around the store with his right hand. “Maybe you'll have better luck than I did.”
“I hope so,” I replied as I walked to the shelves. Since Tim had gone through the livestock pretty thoroughly, I decided to concentrate on the rest of the stuff.
I began with the shelving. First I took every box of fish food, every can of gerbil treats, every piece of stock in the store off the shelves and put them back on. Nothing. I got down on my hands and knees and eyeballed the floor. I ran my hands underneath the shelves. Still nothing. I got up and went over to the vents in the walls and removed the plates and stuck my hand in them and felt around. The only thing I got for my trouble was a lot of dust.
“Told you,” Tim said as I sneezed.
“I know,” I said when I'd stopped. “But I have to try.” After I replaced the covers, I went out back and brought out the stepladder and checked the light fixture coverings.
“That's taking it a little far, don't you think?” Tim observed as I climbed back down.
“Maybe.” Another thought hit me. The window display. Hidden in plain sight. I climbed up and ran my hands through the gravel in the aquarium. I inspected the stacked bags of dog and cat food for holes. They were all sealed.
“You don't even know he's done this,” Tim said. “Look at yourself.”
I caught a reflection of myself in the mirror. My hair was plastered to my head. My shirt and jeans were covered with dust. I had black smudges on my forehead and nose.
“I don't not know it, either,” I told him, and I went in the back and started looking there.
Actually, the back was worse because we had things piled everywhere. I went through the utility closet and the bathroom. I looked in the freezer, where we keep the brine shrimp, and the barrels where we keep the live grasshoppers. I looked in the coffee can and the sugar bowl. I inspected the boxes of deliveries we hadn't gotten around to shelving to see if any of them had been opened. I surveyed the bags of dog food, cat food, and cedar shavings. All of them appeared intact.
Almost two hours had passed since I'd begun and I had nothing to show for my work but a pulled muscle in my shoulder, aching feet, dirty hands, and a runny nose from all the dust. Maybe I was wrong. Maybe George had misunderstood his friend. Or maybe his friend had misunderstood Chapman. Check any or all of the above.
I pulled out the chair from my desk and sat down and watched one of the geckos we let run free to keep the roaches in check wander up the far wall. It occurred to me I kept on saying I hated this store, that it was a pain in the ass, but the truth was, I didn't want to see it go. It'd invested too much of myself in it now. Or if it did go, I wanted to be the one making the choice. I sighed and rolled a pencil around on the desk with the flat of my hand and watched the yellow color go round and round, while I surveyed the top of my desk. It was piled high with bills, brochures, samples, empty soda cans, candy wrappers, and copies of
The New York Times.
You could have buried an elephant in the debris and never found it.
Damn. I leaned back in my chair and contemplated the mess I'd made. Why was I such a slob? I was taking a deep breath and settling myself to get to work when I noticed what I thought was something small and white in the air vent on the far wall. My heartbeat went into overdrive. I got up, walked over, and knelt in front of the vent. It hadn't been a trick of the light. There was something in there all right. I pried the cover off, reached in, and took out what was inside.
“Hey, Tim,” I cried. “Come in here. I found it.”