Stuffed (4 page)

Angie yelped louder than I did. I was bent over with blood running off my scalp and down my arm, the vision of warm red fluid dripping from my elbow making me a little woozy. Nice mouth, Garth.

Next I got a kick in the ribs, my hair was pulled, and I fell over on the floor. There was arguing among the attackers. Even with the imp of agony dancing on my skull, I was reminded of the stagecoach robbery scene from
The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance.
I was James Stewart, naive lawyer from the East, confronted with the business end of Lee Marvin’s bullwhip. I seemed to recall that “Duke” Wayne didn’t come to the rescue then either.

“Back off, man, back off!” This third intruder had an accent, a brogue of some kind. I didn’t remember Father Duffy being part of Liberty Valance’s gang.

“I’ll wup this shit seven ways from Sunday!” Lee Marvin couldn’t have delivered the line better.

“Christ, let’s not have another stiff!” Brogue implored. “He’s down, can’t y’ see?”

C’mon, Duke! Where are you? If only somehow, by some miracle . . .

I heard Angie shriek, “Stop!”

“Shut her up!” There was the sound of Angie struggling.

I wheeled around, fresh hormones flooding my noggin with the imperative to protect her. That’s when I felt another blow to my side, and then to my head again. Next thing I knew I was looking up, and the world was fading purple. Now the three ski-masked men, one holding Angie by the neck, stood over me.

“What is it you want?” Angie yelped. “Garth, stay down, darn it! Anything . . .”

“Open the door, dang it,” one of the bandits barked. “Hear?”

Raspy put his foot on my head, pushed me back down. “Next time, fellah, you watch your mouth. Who’s crazy now, huh?”

He had me there, all right. Only an idiot or a lunatic sasses a man with a gun, and I preferred being bonkers—at least there’s some hope for a cure. I’d pretty much resigned myself to the ugly reality that we were completely at their mercy and there wasn’t a damn thing I could do about it. Duke wasn’t going to show. A policeman wasn’t going to peer in the front door. I’m not what you’d call a religious person, but at a moment like that, you find yourself praying, the last resort of the helpless. Or in my case, the hapless. If God wanted me to go to church, sacrifice goats, proselytize on subway cars, or hand out pamphlets in Penn Station, I’d do it if he’d just get us out of this.

I was trying to keep my eyes trained on Angie, watching to see if one of them laid a hand on her, when I saw a fourth figure—a tall, broad one—appear from around the corner. No army surplus here. He wore an oversize hooded sweatshirt, his face obscured by shadow. But I could see the glint from his eyes, two bright stars, and I could feel the intensity of his stare. My heart skipped a beat: He looked like the Grim Reaper. I didn’t suppose he’d let me have a go at playing him in chess.

The others looked to him, as though waiting for instructions, but the Reaper said nothing.

I heard Angie fumbling with her keys and our front door scrape open.

“Into the basement, lady,” Raspy commanded. “Throw him in the basement too. Now.”

Husky started pulling my hair.

“I’ll take him!” Angie protested. “We’ll go, just don’t hurt—”

“Shut up—”

I heard a slap, and then felt myself sliding on my back down the stairs, my jacket cushioning the trip only slightly. A door slammed and we were left in the dark. I heard Angie crying. Maybe I passed out for a minute or two, it was hard to tell. I could smell the emulsifier that the caribou antlers were soaking in, the cedar oil we spray on the mounts to moth-proof them. Well, at least Otto had been busy while we were out. The next I knew, Angie had me cradled in her arms, and she was holding something to my head to staunch the bleeding. I could hear her sniffling, felt a tear hit my face, heard her heart pounding in her chest. My legs were still partially on the basement steps. One of my feet felt cooler than the other, and I could feel the sock down around my toes. I waved my foot in the air in a vain attempt to see what was going on with my foot.

“Where’s my shoe?” Hapless, hopeless, and now slaphappy. “I had two.”

“Shhh,” she said back to me. “When they’re gone . . .” Angie left it at that.

I may have passed out again, but suddenly light flooded the basement, and in a blur I could see the stairs leading up to the doorway. Angie shifted and started to pull me away from the stairs. I think she thought it was the attackers again. But I saw my naked foot and a very distinctive silhouette creep into the open doorway.

“Oo, my Got! Garv! Yangie! Not lookink!”

Chapter 4

E
ven though there’s a lot of nice domestic wildlife taxidermy around and a healthy market in commercial interior decoration, I can’t deal in top-of-the-line exotics. The dinguses in demand by folks with bushels of money I’m not allowed to sell. Like lions, tigers, polar bears, and over a thousand other species listed in parts 17 and 23 of CFR 50, a rule book written by thirty-six countries through an authority known as the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species and Wild Flora and Fauna (CITES). However, this doesn’t necessarily keep me from owning them, provided I submit U.S. Fish and Wildlife form 3-200 and receive approval in the form of a permit. And it doesn’t keep me from renting or “lending” them for commercials or photo shoots. And it doesn’t necessarily keep me from buying and selling them, provided said merchandise is packing a New York State Department of Environmental Conservation form 82-19-21 certifying it was harvested legally before 1974, though taxidermy with “papers” isn’t as common as it should be. And if I want to sell an endangered or protected piece I bought in New York in Maine, I need a comparable permit from the other state. Welcome to the taxidermy paper mill.

In order to sell endangered animals killed after 1974, even if they were road kill, you basically have to prove it’s being used for educational purposes. I have an easier time acquiring such pieces because I supply schools, museums, and tourist traps that pass for museums. But usually such institutions aren’t real moneymakers and can’t pay what the things are worth—i.e., what the black market would pay or what pieces with “paper” would get on the open market.

The pelts of some endangered species have considerable value on the black market. Some folks ignore CITES authority and sell ivory, crocodile leather, and exotic pelts permit-free to private collectors. I’ve crossed paths with shadowy types who deal both on the fringes and in the fold of this black market, and they have a compelling incentive for continuing their crimes: money. And not just from pelts and rugs but from animal eviscerae. Asian apothecaries turn all manner of animal vestiges into costly folk medicine, and while some of it’s taken legally from bears by hunters, a lot of it is taken whenever and however. Machine-gunning hibernating bears in their dens is one popular method. Then there’s rhino horn and tiger penis, which are never in season but can be purchased just the same, though usually you’re just being sold very expensive ground arrowroot. Aside from the devastating effect this sleazy activity has on biodiversity, it’s an inexcusably rapacious crime that might just put me and PETA in the same lynch mob.

The reason Big Bro makes it such a pain to collect endangered and protected species, even those taken before the ban on captive animals, is fairly obvious. A legal market for the stuff would encourage even more poaching, which is already alarmingly common. Now, I’m not sympathetic with those who think nothing of making animals extinct to alleviate lumbago or to sport a nifty wrap at the club social. By the same token, I take a dim view of zoos or “conservation parks”—habitat penitentiaries that amount to animal jail. But I can’t help but commiserate with those who want to collect animals freed by natural death or harvested legally, a dignified end for some of Mother Nature’s most exquisite creations. Taxidermy is the ultimate form of flattery.

Be that as it may, I was less than disposed to the assault team that ransacked my collection and smacked us around. After a chat with a couple uniformed cops, I paid a visit to the hospital for stitches to my scalp, an X-ray, and a sleepless night. The next morning found me at home, playing host to Agent Renard, a plainclothes ECO (Environmental Control Officer) from the New York State Department of Environmental Conservation. He was a balding and tawny black guy with reading glasses and the disposition of an indifferent schoolmaster. Only by virtue of the fact that I’m a longtime New Yorker, exposed to every conceivable ethnic variety, could I venture to say his clipped, lilting accent was West Indian—Haitian, perhaps.

Also enjoying my hospitality was a New York City Police Department detective named Walker, who looked on with distaste. I knew him from our local precinct. That is to say, he had been gently harassing me for years, convinced that my entrepreneurial bent with taxidermy was somehow a crooked enterprise. Police have always just seemed to have an innate feeling that I’m up to no good, ever since I was a kid. With my younger brother, Nick, it was even worse, though in his case it was justified. And I did have a great-uncle who was a bank robber. Maybe it’s genetics—I got the felon’s pheromones but not the inclination. Walker had gotten a rotten whiff off me right from our first encounter.

Angie sat on the couch, hunched glumly over a cup of tea, holding an ice pack to her bruised cheek. I had an ice pack of my own clamped over the back of my head where I’d been gun-whipped. But I was too agitated to sit and paced back and forth in front of Fred. Even though he’s a fairly valuable African piece, I guess the attackers figured he was too cumbersome to grab quickly. I should really have him spring-loaded, so whenever an intruder enters, Fred lurches forward and scares the bejesus out of them. I can still picture those trick-or-treaters running down the dark driveway.

Renard cast a sleepy eye over my list of missing property, cleared his throat, and read it aloud:

“Skins: two leopard, five zebra, one tiger, one panther, two lioness, three lion, one grizzly. Rugs: two polar bear, two Kodiak, one lion. Skulls: three ocelot, one tiger, four lion, one cheetah. A pair of carved ivory elephant tusks . . .” He paused to inhale. “. . . And one white crow in a bell jar.

“Tell me.” Renard closed his eyes, and for a second I thought he’d dozed off. “You have papers for this, and the rest of your collection?” His eyes tweaked open, peering closely at a snipe on the shelf by his elbow.

Papers?
Put him in a black leather trench coat and he’d be a shoe-in for the Gestapo. Most ECOs use the word
documentation.

I knew Renard’s predecessor, Pete Durban, a bold character who had once been a lion tamer. No lie. Circuses still need lions tamed, after all. Durban had come to trust that I was on the up-and-up. He’d gone through all my
documentation.
Now I had to break in the new kid, and at a time like this.

“He’s got paper up the wazoo,” Walker laughed, “if you think that means anything.”

“Detective Walker is a big fan of ours,” I said, trying to get Agent Renard to look at me. “He’s been over for tea and scones lots of times, you know, just to check up on us, make sure we’re all right.”

Walker flushed. “Patrolmen seen all kinds of things going in and outta here. Five’ll get you ten this operation isn’t completely kosher, Renard. And what’s it with this character? This Russian? Hey.” Walker snapped his fingers at Otto. “You saw these bandits?”

Otto was posed in the booth by the window like a Rodin bronze in the clutches of some existential conundrum.

“But of course. Workink many job. My vife, Luba, not happy, so I vurk. Vhen voman like Cossack, not good go to home, eh? Not lookink.”

“What’s this guy talking about?” Walker sneered.

“He was working late, Walker,” I growled. “He was out back smoking a cigarette when it all went down. He heard the commotion, looked in the window.”

“Yes. Vindow I look. KGB come, take. Not lookink. I fraid, because for me, is at very difficult. I vait, then come to find basement Yangie and Garv.”

“What the f—”

“Muggers, thieves—bad people—he calls them KGB.
Not looking
means wrong or bad.”

“You’d think these people come to America, they’d speak American, for chrissake. Okay, so what did they look like?”

Otto donned an expression of dismay. “KGB always like KGB. Verink black. But!” Otto jumped to his feet. “Boss man, off he take black mask face, eh?” Otto stepped up close to Walker and winked. “I see boss. Teeth big, vood in leeps.”

“What’s this creep talking about?” Walker pleaded.

“Big teeth and a toothpick,” Angie translated.

“Is that it?” Walker poked Otto in the sternum.

“But of course, eh?” Otto poked Walker in the sternum. “Otto big eyes.”

Walker looked like he was going to head-butt Otto, but he turned crimson instead. “Renard, I tell you, between this creep and these animals there’s something very illegal here.” Walker rocked on his heels, grinning wolfishly. “And I’m gonna find out what it is too.”

I cleared my throat. “And when he catches us red-handed with a crate brimming with bald eagles, the police chief himself is going to make him detective sergeant and invite him over for a pool party.”

Walker took a step forward, and I was ready to do the same—I’d had about all I was willing to take from him. But Renard swung out an arm toward a small brown bird, blocking Walker’s advance.

“And this.” Renard twinkled an eye in my direction. “A long-billed dowitcher. Part of your collection?” Still with the black-leather trench-coat stuff.

“That’s a snipe you’re looking at, and this is not a collection. I told you, I’m a dealer, I rent. This is my stock. The numbers at the bottom of that page are my personal tracking numbers.”

I tossed him a small key and gestured to a file cabinet in the corner. “The files on them are all in there, along with complete records of everything I’ve bought and sold over the last two years, where it was bought, where it was from, where it went, organized
Aardvark
to
Zebra.
Records from before then are in the basement in bankers’ boxes.”

Angie brought me a breakfast beer, and I rolled the icy bottle along the bruise gracing the side of my head. She ditched her tea for a cold one herself, still holding the ice pack to her swollen cheek. You’d think we were a couple of Canadians the day after a rousing midnight curling match.

Detective Walker chuckled. “Miss, do you mean to tell me that nobody touched your supply of gold wire and diamonds? That they didn’t even go through your studio, open any drawers?”

“Left my studio alone, sorry to say. At least my stuff is insured.” Angie sighed, and perched on the arm of a chair.

“Gimme a break.” Walker snorted. “They came in here just to steal these dusty old dead animals? Maybe these characters were some of Carson’s business partners who double-crossed him, a deal gone bad.”

“KGB not lookink.” Otto grunted, and he left for the backyard and a smoke. He’d been brooding fitfully all night and all morning about failing to save us from Liberty Valance’s hooligans. Now I think he’d had about as much as
he
could take of Walker.

Renard was playing with a calculator, his brown eyes shining.

“Detective, these ‘dead animals’ add up to at least sixty thousand dollars’ worth of merchandise. They have a very high resale value, better than most stolen property. And they were highly visible going in, going out, and on display. Thefts from large private taxidermy collections are not all that unusual. By comparison, the jewelry is small, and the diamonds are probably kept in a plain-looking little envelope in what to the untrained eye doesn’t necessarily look like a jeweler’s bench.”

Walker was fed up. “So, Carson, sell any bear gallbladders lately?”

“He doesn’t deal in that stuff anymore.” Angie looked at Renard. “In fact, he went undercover for you guys to break up a chop shop. Two years ago.”

I’d have preferred this not come up. The gallbladder incident had netted me $52,700 and got Walker on my case in the first place. I didn’t want the black leather trench coat to get any inkling that my dealings weren’t completely on the up-and-up. I could get along very nicely without any more of Renard’s sly innuendos.

“See?” Walker began, waving a finger in my direction. “They sent him in to rat out his pals.”

I gritted my teeth. “Check it out in your files, Renard. The agent I dealt with is named Pete Durban, guy who used to have your job before he went to U.S. Fish and Wildlife. When I reported this character named Park to the New York DEC, they had me go back and buy fifty thousand dollars’ worth of endangered skins for Candid Camera. And believe me, this guy was not a pal. He ran an animal chop shop.”

“Park?” Agent Renard raised his eyebrows at me, like his alarm clock had just now pulled him from a deep sleep. “Gallbladders. A lucrative business,” he added dryly. His sleepy indifference returned and he flipped randomly through a folder of my permits.

“Damn right. I dealt only once in bladders, when I brokered them for a taxidermist friend out west.” I’d made a nice chunk of change during that short stint too.

“And so: Why did you give it up?” Renard shoved the file closed and tossed me the key.

I pointed to the bandage on the back of my head and winced.

“’Cause of this kind of rough play. Sleazy characters. It was like doing a drug deal. Not to mention that it’s now illegal to sell gallbladders in most states.”

“I see.” Renard buttoned his jacket. “Did you mark your stolen acquisitions in any way that—”

“My pelts and rugs are branded on the underside, dead center, with my name and the ID number. Head mounts I brand behind the plaque, on the neck stopper. Skulls have a yellow sticker inside the skull cavity that’s a bitch to remove. The tusks have my brand on the stump, but that won’t help much once they chop them up.” It hurt just saying it. Those babies were part of my personal collection. “Dammit.”