The Way of All Fish: A Novel (30 page)

K
arl, Lena bint Musah, and Danny Zito walked through the glass and marble lobby of the Spurling Building at ten
A.M.
the next morning. They went up fifteen floors in the time it would take to zip a body bag and made a smooth exit as the doors whispered open.

Danny was in all black—merino wool jacket, Lauren turtleneck, Boss jeans. In garb very hot for a sunny September day, Danny looked very cool.

Lena was wearing a high-collared black silk dress.

Karl wore a pin-striped suit, pale blue shirt, and abstract-art tie.

To any eye, they were an impressive trio. They were intimidating, chief intimidator being Danny, who, when Sigourney fake-smiled and asked them to “wait here,” raised his eyebrows, did not take a seat, suggesting that “wait” was in a language foreign to him. Quickly, Sigourney opened the door to Mr. Hale’s office, slipped in and out again.

There had been some anxiety expressed that Danny might be recognized as the author of
Fallguy,
an exposé of the Bransoni family that had sent him into the Witness Protection Program. Danny had scoffed when Karl brought up the fact that Danny’s face had been plastered on the back cover of fifty thousand books.

“You don’t think these suckers read, do you? Anyway, I look like a couple hundred other guys.” Which sounded extremely modest and self-effacing until he rattled off who some of the couple hundred were: Al Pacino, Robert De Niro, Joe Mantegna, and on and on, until he got around to Steve McQueen and Candy had to stop him. McQueen had been tall and blond and blue-eyed; Danny was short and dark, with eyes like marbles.

“I’m a chameleon, a man of many faces.”

“One of which is a chameleon.”

Danny had haggled over that all the way across midtown, which was such a sea of yellow cabs that they could have been driving through Wordsworth’s daffodils.

Wally and Rod jumped up when the three walked in, ignoring Sigourney’s announcement. They were into chairs before she finished struggling with the name bint Musah.

Danny molded himself to the white Philippe Starck chair. For purposes of this visit, his name was Zeller.

“Mr. Zeller,” Wally said, “may I ask—”

“You may,” said Danny, lighting up a Marlboro and dropping his lighter back into his jacket pocket.

“—what your role is here?” Wally smiled. Or smirked.

Danny blew smoke out of his nostrils. “Bluefin Alliance.” He blew more smoke, as if his head were full of it.

Wally and Rod regarded each other with something other than admiration for their Armani suits. They looked scared.

Rod said after much throat-clearing, “That’s the organization that, uh, oversees the import of exotic fish?”

Danny stubbed out his cigarette and smiled. “Especially the sort that makes the government nervous.” From somewhere he’d taken a toothpick, stuck it in the corner of his mouth.

“So, may we ask—”

“We protect the interests of our colleagues, such as Ms. bint Musah.”

“Ms. bint Musah feels she’s being harassed by the U.S. government,” said Wally knowingly. “We need to be apprised of the extent of her involvement in the importation and distribution of illegal species.”

Danny took the toothpick out of his mouth. “Who said illegal?”

“You did, didn’t—”

Suddenly, there was a commotion in the outer office, raised voices coming nearer and nearer to Wally Hale’s office, the door of which opened with a thrust. Although Sigourney (to give her credit) was attempting to block their entrance, a man and a woman shouldered past her, he tall, blond, and dressed in gabardine that had never seen the inside of Façonnable; she, of medium height, fiery hair, dressed in a hot-pink suit and wearing heels so high and thin, they could have impaled a squirrel.

“Wallace Hale?” said Arthur Mordred.

“Roderick Reeves?” said Blaze Pascal.

They spoke simultaneously as they whipped out their government identification.

“U.S. Fish and Wildlife, sir.” Arthur spoke softly but assuredly. He pushed back the horn-rimmed glasses he’d bought at CVS.

Danny slid down in his chair. “Not you two.”

Arthur’s smile was not friendly. “Yes, we two. How have you been, Mr. Zeller?”

Danny didn’t reply.

Wally and Rod had stood and were crowding each other toward the corner where the window met the wood filing cabinets.

“What is this?” said Wally, showing some spunk. “How dare you burst into my office? Where’s your authority?” He looked at Rod.

Rod picked up some of Wally’s leftover spunk. “You can’t barge into these offices!”

Arthur shot out his arm, his hand holding the ID. “The U.S. government, gentlemen. That’s my authority.”

Karl shot from his chair. “Mr. Hale here is within his legal rights to call security.”

Arthur faced him nearly nose to nose. “You don’t know zilch about what’s going on here, buddy. So stow it!” He turned to Blaze Pascal, who had retrieved a net with a collapsible handle from her voluminous bag. She had also taken from it a clear plastic box.

“You’re in possession of a peppermint angelfish, Mr. Hale. Where are the papers?”

“Papers? What papers? What fish? What are you talking about?” He nodded toward the aquarium. “I don’t know anything about that. Someone else takes care of it.”

“Then bring in the someone else.”

Rod punched the intercom, told the girl to send in Sigourney. “Now!”

Wally said, “So what’s this peppermint, anyway?”

“Peppermint angelfish, Mr. Hale. The ones in captivity you could count on the fingers of one hand. You have to get FWS permission to own one. You, we were told, own one. And we have authority to seize it.”

Sigourney came through the door, looking out of character, with stray locks of hair around her ears and streaked mascara.

“Who maintains the fish tank?” said Wally.

“Fish? Fish tank? Why?”

“Never mind why. Who supplies the fish?”

“No one in the office. It’s a professional firm. The work is leased—”

“Get the name.”

Sigourney nodded, looked over the room’s occupants, shook her head, and left on wobbly heels.

Blaze had netted Oscar and was transferring him to his fish hotel. “Got him,” she said to Arthur.

“We’re confiscating the fish, Mr. Hale. We’ll be back with a warrant to search your office.”

Wally’s voice had gone up a treble note. “I know nothing about this operation.”

“Right. You’ve got Lena bin Musah—”

“Bint,” corrected Lena, spearing a black grape from a large platter of fruit on the table with the knife in her brooch.

“You’ve got Ms. bint Musah and Danny Zeller sitting right across from you, and you’re saying you know nothing? Tell me another.”

Jesus, thought Karl. “Tell me another!” “Stow it!” Who was writing Arthur’s dialogue?

As quickly and obtrusively as they’d arrived, the two of them left.

Or, rather, the three of them, if one counted Oscar.

Wally and Rod seemed completely dazed by the little play that had just unfolded. Danny Zito, however, all but jumped from his chair to go and gaze at the aquarium’s contents. “Where in hell did you get a peppermint angelfish? Who’s your supplier? It’s not Bluefin.” Danny straightened up to give them a threatening look.

“We don’t have a fucking supplier.”

Danny looked at Lena. “It ain’t her, is it?”

Wally hit the intercom. “Sigourney? Have those people gone? How did they get past the front desk?”

The voice of Sigourney was anything but composed. “Government agents, what were we—”

“Why didn’t you call security? They had no warrant! They seized our
property—and where in bloody hell is the company that put these goddamned tanks in?”

Sigourney sounded wounded and weepy. “I’ve been trying—”

Wally swore for five seconds, shut her off, turned to Rod. “We’ll sue.”

Lena sighed. She drew out her silver case, plucked a cigarette from it, said, “I told you, didn’t I? Now, however”—she leaned toward the lighter in Karl’s hand, then back—“now we might be of help.”

Rod muscled in. “Help? What are you talking about?”

Lena looked at Karl, who said, “We can make it disappear.”

“Or make them disappear.” This contribution came from Danny Zito, who seemed enthralled by the fish.

Wally and Rod stared at them and then at each other.

“Don’t get carried away, Mr. Zeller.” Lena eyed him through tendrils of smoke as she exhaled.

Karl said, leaning forward, “Look, it’s a bullshit charge, but they’ll make it stick. Probably just a fine, but—”

“A big, big one. And jail time.” Danny was back and happy to make a bad situation worse. “You don’t know what this world is like, Wally. That little fish they just took outta here? That pep angel we could get forty K for. We got clients”—Danny eased himself to the edge of his chair, closing in on Wally’s desk—“clients got tanks like that”—he jerked his thumb over his shoulder toward the office aquarium—“in their living rooms, but that’s just a blind. That ain’t where the action is, no, the real fish, the fortune in fish, they don’t display them in public. What? They’d be nuts. No. Their green arowans, their Clippertons. This is big business, Wally. A lot of this fishing for exotics is in the Philippines because they got next to no regulations there. Aquarium fishermen shooting up the corals with cyanide. Huge business. And these collectors, these people, they got rooms built underground like fucking bomb shelters. Walking into one of those rooms, it’s like scuba diving in the Indian Ocean. You can’t imagine what they got. Except protection.” Danny smiled a sharklike smile.

“That’s what the Bluefin Alliance is all about. Not only do we furnish fish like this, we protect our clients. You can’t believe what is underground here in the so-called City of Light.”

Rod frowned. “That’s Paris.”

Wally cuffed him.

Karl said, “So what Lena says, it’s true. We can make the charge go away. You have a big firm here, Wally. Rod.” Karl felt a little sorry for Rod and gave him a nod.

“All right,” said Wally. “Do it. We’ll owe you.” He flashed a smile.

“Not really,” said Karl.

Wally raised his eyebrows, surprised there could be a favor that called for no payback. He opened his mouth to say that, but Karl moved in on him. “What I mean is, you won’t owe us because you’ve got something we want, and we’d like it ASAP.” Karl smiled.

“What’s that?”

“Cindy Sella’s file.”

Both of them were nonplussed. Rod recovered first. “Why do you want her file?”

Danny Zito said, “Bluefin needs to see what’s in that book this woman is writing.”

Their perplexity increased. Wally said, “We don’t have it.” Looking at Karl, he said, “You’re the one who told us about it. We had no idea she’s working on an exposé of the illegal fish trade. If that’s what you’re talking about.”

“Right. The point being,” Danny went on, “I need to have a look at it just in case she splashes stuff around about me and the Alliance.”

Wally sat back, looking relieved that he didn’t know anything. Rod was puzzled over how to react. He had perched himself on the corner of Wally’s desk, arms folded, brow knotted.

“It’s called
Fish, Inc.,
” said Karl. “From what I understand, it’s real bad news for your illegal importers.” He was sorry that Candy wasn’t there to tell them just how bad the news was.

Danny had another toothpick in his mouth, moving it around.

Lena was slicing a small black plum.

Rod, somewhat recovered, ate a fig.

“So you’ve got nothing on Cindy Sella we could use—”

Wally seemed at last to realize that if he had nothing to give them, they would have no reason to take care of the government agents. “Just a minute, just a minute. You’re talking attorney-client privilege here.” He said it like any lousy-acting TV lawyer would.

Karl nodded. “We understand that. I guess that’s it, then. Lena? Danny?”

Lena wiped her knife on the snowy linen napkin, clicked the point back, and reinserted it in the brooch. She smiled at the two lawyers and rose.

Wally’s mind was firing, actual currents of thought snapping across synapses, reminding him that the stuff they had on Cindy Sella, someone else also had. It had nothing to do with Bluefin Alliance, but what the hell. It was something to hand over. If the leak came out, the source could be attributed to the two strange men who’d turned up in Hess’s office. More confident, Wally said, “You need leverage, is that it? To make her relegate this fish book to the trash?”

Karl nodded. “Right.”

Wally snapped his fingers at Rod. “Get what we have on Sella.”

Rod pushed away from the desk and went to the cabinets, slid open a drawer, danced his fingers along the tops of the folders, and pulled out one, fairly fat. He handed it to Karl.

Karl opened it, flicked a few pages, and landed on just what they wanted: a memo from L. Bass Hess to Wallace Hale. Subject: C. Sella. “We should speak ASAP regarding the Hess Agency’s complaint re: this person.” Karl raised his eyes to see Wally eased back in his chair and Rod, one hand in his jacket pocket, lounging against the wooden cabinet like a Hugo Boss ad. They were wearing self-satisfied smirks.

Karl smiled his own self-satisfied smile. “Yeah, this should do it.” Assholes. “Shall we go? Lena? Zeller?” He looked around.

Danny Zito was still watching the fish.

“Zeller?”

Danny turned. They all smiled. All of them, including Wally and Rod.

Wally said, “So the little problem goes away, correct?”

“Correct,” said Karl. And a bigger one comes back.