Parrot Blues (24 page)

I put Wes Brown's .45 in a drawer, intending to turn it over to Special Agent Violet Sommers. The only weapon of mine the feathered mask hadn't confiscated in the desert was the Punch on my key ring. I took it.

Before I left I called the lab. I didn't want to run into Rick Olney again; I figured I'd already gotten all the information I'd get out of him. The phone rang five times, then the answering machine picked up. I was more than a little spooked by the voice that answered, Deborah Dumaine's. Rick had not wanted to (or had not gotten around to) changing the tape.

Deborah seemed to be speaking from beyond the reach of the law or the curve of the earth. “The Psittacine Research Facility is closed,” she said. “Office hours are from nine to five, Monday through Friday. Call back then.” She didn't ask me to leave a message. I had no message to leave. I picked up a pair of gloves and a pair of headphones and I went out the door.

The rain had stopped, but the pavement was slick with black water. The stars were twinkling on one by one and the moon slipped out from under a silver-bellied cloud. Someone had stuck a note beneath
my
windshield wiper. “Park in your own space, goddamn it,” it read.

I ripped the white paper in pieces and offered it to the wind goddess, but she wasn't taking. The scraps dropped into a puddle and sank.

There were no cars in the parking lot when I returned to the Psittacine Research Facility. The door was shut, the lab was silent, the lights were off. I put on my gloves and took the key from my pocket. The key slipped in like the lock was made of butter. The tumbler turned, the dead bolt slid open. I stepped inside and bolted the door behind me. The lab was pitch dark. The parrots, having squawked the sun to bed, seemed to be sound sleep. They were so quiet it was possible to imagine they'd flown the coop. Rick had gone home or to Alice's. I had a pocket flashlight, which I shined across the floor until I located the box of plastic booties. I managed to pull a pair on over my running shoes; I didn't want to be leaving New Balance glyphs all over the place. I also didn't want to waste my time taking running shoes on and off.

Following the flashlight's lead, I made my way across the lab to the room that housed the indigos. I lifted the light once to see what the birds were doing, and got a quick glimpse of two big macaws asleep, snuggled together on their perch. The one place in this lab an outsider would not be able to enter was this cage. The two scimitar beaks in there were capable of snapping a finger off, and one of the indigos, I knew, did not like strangers. If I were going to hide something valuable in this lab, I'd be tempted to put it inside the cage. If the macaws could keep Terrance out, they would have scared off any snooping security men. There was a tray underneath that collected the bird's droppings. I pulled the handle, slid the tray out and beamed my flashlight over the contents. Nothing but bird shit on the top sheet of a stack of white paper. Apparently the top paper was pulled off whenever the cage was cleaned. I ran my hand under the bottom sheet and felt only the flat bottom of the tray. I pulled the tray all the way out. There was a subfloor under it, covered by a plastic mat. One floor ought to be sufficient to catch the bird droppings. I shined my light quickly on the indigos again—still sleeping, still snuggling—stuck my arm through the bars and into the cage. I slid my gloved hand under the mat until it slipped into a depression, a compartment under the cage. Inside I found a box and a plastic envelope. I pulled them out and shined my light on them. The box had the familiar shape of a video, the envelope contained a manila file folder. “All right,” I whispered.

I put the tray and papers back into place, took the envelope and video into the lab, sat down at the table and scanned them with my flashlight. The video was your basic black plastic model with a label that read “Property of Terrance Lewellen” in his EKG scrawl. The file contained the valuable papers of Deborah Dumaine, the first of which was her will. That document left everything to the parrot trust, but Deborah didn't have all that much to leave. Her prenuptial agreement (also in the file) said that she would take out of the marriage exactly what she'd brought in, which was close to nothing. Academics rarely get
rich.
I found letters to her attorney that said she was indeed trying to get out of her prenuptial agreement. The attorney had been encouraging her to pursue this path by whatever means were available, which is something I wouldn't have done. Different strokes for different lawyers.

Next I found the agreement, which stipulated, as Rick had said, that a trust fund had been established to care for the indigo macaws and the Amazons for the rest of their lives. The trust also provided money for the lab to continue its operations. Deborah was to manage the lab, and if she were unable to, Rick Olney would take her place. The lab's budget was attached and every expenditure was itemized, from the price of the birds' food to the size of the manager's income, which was even lower than mine. The budget was geared to the cost-of-living index and could be raised in times of inflation and lowered in times of deflation. Terrance continued to control the lab even from the grave, and he did it with a tight fist. Running the lab was a prestigious job in the bird world, but no one, including Rick Olney, would get rich doing it.

The last document was one of those do-it-yourself will forms that stated it was Terrance Lewellen's last will and testament and was dated July 15. Not one dime was left to Deborah Dumaine. Most of what Terrance had went to his mother, with the exception of two hundred and fifty thousand dollars earmarked for Sara. The will had been witnessed in the appropriate places and was signed with Terrance's uniquely sloppy signature. There was no evidence that Baxter, Johnson had been involved. Why not? I wondered. Because Buddy Baxter might have heard the testosterone talking and tried to change Terrance's mind?

I slid the file back in its plastic envelope and put on the headphones I'd brought. I plugged the male part into the cassette player and put the headphones over my ears so as not to disturb the sleeping parrots. I hit the Play button.

The first sound was the gentle but firm voice of Alice of the long blonde hair and the long graceful body.

“This is a … ?” she asked.

“Pen,” replied a parrot.

“Good boy,” she said, then, “pen?”

“Nut,” screamed a bird who was probably Max, the brightest and loudest bird in the lab.

“Good boy,” she said. Apparently she'd been testing him, showing him a nut and telling him it was a pen. This section of tape rambled on, with Alice showing the parrots an object, praising them if they identified it, correcting them if they were wrong. With his fascination for the newly beloved, Rick probably would have sat through this party dreamy-eyed, but I was soon bored. Why would he have had any objection to my listening to it?

I fast-forwarded to the next track and heard The Wicked Witch of the West cackle, “I'll get you,
my
pretty, and your little dog too.”

“I'll get you, my pretty,” echoed an Amazon, “and your little dog too.”

The next voice belonged to Deborah in a cantankerous mood. “Terrance, you are
such
an asshole,” she said.

“Terrance, you are
such
an asshole,” an almost identical voice responded, but it wasn't hers, I knew, it was Maxamilian. Anger in, anger out. Parrots imitate sounds with emotional content. Deborah was using her emotions to get a reaction from Max, which didn't strike me as exactly scientific.

This track seemed to be aimed at encouraging the parrots to imitate, which came naturally enough. The next track tried for a response which wasn't as predictable.

“What's your name?” I heard Deborah ask.

“Maxamilian,” her prize pupil answered.

“What's this?”

“Pen.”

“Good boy,” she said.

“Nut,” he answered.

There was a pause, then I heard the tentative, querying voice of Sara Dumaine. “Terry, sweetie,” she cooed. “I love you so much.”

“Malinche,”
a parrot screeched, so loudly my ears hurt. That voice didn't sound like an imitation person; it sounded like a parrot, one of the parrots that was not a good talker. I snapped the cassette player off and yanked out the earphones; I'd heard what I wanted to know. Malinche was the Indian girl who had acted as an interpreter to Cortes and become his mistress. In Mexico a
malinche
is a traitor.

My inner clock told me that my time in the lab was up. I put the documents back in the file, put the file in the plastic envelope and returned it to the indigos' cage. One quick flash of my light told me that Perigee and Colloquy were still snuggled together on their perch. I pulled out the droppings tray, lifted the plastic mat and slid the file back into its niche. The video was coming with me. The mat buckled into a ridge, and I couldn't slide the tray back in place. I pulled the tray out, reached through the bars and was tugging at the mat, trying to smooth it, when a flapping, fluttering whirlwind descended to the floor of the cage and latched onto my gloved finger with a grip that could snap a Brazil nut in two.

“Ow,” I yelled. It had to be Colloquy; Perigee knew me better and had better manners. He was awake now and beating his wings. Colloquy shook until my finger went as limp as a worm. “Goddamn it,” I said. “Let go.”

Perigee hissed
“Malinche.”
But I wasn't the traitor—not yet anyway. Perigee had gotten Colloquy's attention; she looked up at him, loosened her grip and dropped my finger, which I immediately yanked out of the cage. Blood was oozing through the glove. I pulled it off and sucked at my
knuckle.
I slammed the tray into place and rushed out of the lab, forgetting to remove the plastic booties, but remembering to bring the video and to lock the door behind me.

The booties came off in the car. The pain didn't kick in till I got home; the shock factor protected me that long. I let myself into La Vista, went into the bathroom, cleaned the wound, wrapped it sloppily in gauze with my left hand, had a shot of tequila and went to bed. I couldn't sleep—the finger throbbed to its own painful beat and lawyer thoughts dive-bombed me like mosquitoes—but I tucked my hand under the pillow and pretended I was out when the Kid let himself in around two. I knew I'd have to explain sooner or later, but I preferred later. He got into bed. When he leaned over to give me a kiss, I showed him the back of my head.

“What's that on your pillow, Chiquita?” he asked.

“Nothing,” I replied, admitting that I was already awake.

“It looks like blood.”

“I nicked my finger.”

“What did you use? A machete?”

“It's nothing.”

“Let me see.” He tried to pull the hand out from under the pillow.

“Ow,” I said.

“What is it?”

“I told you—nothing.”

“Show me.”

I pulled the hand out and showed him the gauze-wrapped wound. The only light in the room came from the mercury vapor lamps in the parking lot, but there was enough of that to see that blood had soaked through the gauze and stained the pillowcase and sheet. The Kid guessed the cause.

“A
loro
?”

“Right.”

“Which one?”

“Colloquy.”

He shook his head. “I told you she could take your finger off.”

“Okay, so you told me.”

“You put your hand in the cage?”

“Yeah.”

“Why'd you do that?”

“There was something in there I wanted.”

He had taken off the gauze and was examining the wound. The finger was swelling, but the cut
still
had the jagged shape of Colloquy's beak. “It looks bad,” he said.

“It's not that bad.”

“Was it worth it?”

“I'll know soon, but I think it was.”

“You never stop, do you?” he asked.

He already knew the answer to that, so he got up and went into the bathroom for some antiseptic to clean the wound. It hurt like hell, but I didn't let it show. With two hands he could wrap the gauze a lot tighter and cleaner than I could with one. “You're lucky,” he said. “It could be worse.”

“Right,” I replied.

“In the morning you go to the doctor.”

That sounded like an order to me. “What for? You already cleaned it.”

“I think it is broken.”

“All right,” I agreed, but the buzzing thoughts told me there were other things I had to attend to first. “Wes Brown was here earlier,” I told him.

“Yeah?” the Kid replied. “What'd he want?” The pilot light that burns steadily on the range of male/female relationships flared behind his eyes. I know better than to fan that flame, so I didn't mention Brown's rescue-me manner or that he had been drunk.

“He heard I was looking for him,” I said.

“Why were you looking for him?” The Kid knew Brown was trouble, and that it's better not to go looking for trouble. It comes after you often enough.

“I wanted to know where he was when Terrance died.”

“You think that
cobarde
did that?” He didn't have a high opinion of Brown's abilities.

“Who knows? The FWS arrested him for smuggling parrots anyway.”

“How'd he get out of prison?”

“Put up some smelly money.”

The Kid shook his head. “That's all it takes?”

“That's it,” I said.

17

T
IME IS OF
the essence in law and in life. My instincts told me that while I could solve the crime if I waited, I might not catch the criminal. There was some bank account information that only Charlie Register could give me, but first I needed to find out whether I could trust Charlie Register, and that depended on how badly he wanted the Lochovers. The one person who might be able to tell me was Terrance's mother, Candace Lewellen. Before I went to work or the doctor, I stopped at La Buena Vida.