The Way of All Fish: A Novel (38 page)

The Duchess stopped Bunny with an icy eye and an icier voice. Looking at the secretary’s ice-blue dress, Bunny thought she could be watching an ice floe drift by.

“Where are you going?” The Duchess was in the act of dabbing tangerine blush on her cheek. She had a whole flotilla of cosmetics in her desk drawers. Her name was actually Elsie Hoag, which she detested, both first and last, especially last, as most people pronounced it Hog (some deliberately). She could not summarily change the spelling while working for a brace of lawyers, unless she did so legally. So what she did was add an umlaut over the O. That made people puzzle over the pronunciation and not be so quick to say Hog. The barnyard was further invoked by the first name. This the Duchess changed to Elise, explaining that her birth certificate had transposed the I and the S. This change was
not onerous to her finicky lawyer-bosses. So the Duchess bore the artful name of Elise Höag.

“Hi, Elsie,” said Bunny, not answering the question as to where she was going.

The Duchess snapped, “Will you kindly remember my name, which is Ger—I mean Austrian—Elise?”

Bunny switched her chewing gum from the left to the right side of her mouth. “Sorry.” She held up the tin of fish flakes. “Feed the fish.”

“Mr. Sprague is busy with a conference call.”

No, he wasn’t, not if the unlit lights along the bottom of Elsie’s phone were testimony. “Okay, I’ll wait.” Bunny blew a bubble and sat down in a chair, where she hummed and swung her foot. It would irritate Elsie.

“I’ll just see if he’s still unavailable.” Elsie pressed the intercom, got no response. “Well, he must have stepped out.”

Bunny checked the wall clock. In ten minutes they’d be here. “Then I’ll go in while he’s out.” She didn’t wait for Elsie to reply.

Oscar was swimming in sync with four other fish, all looking as if they meant business, as if they were a gang. Bunny smiled.

In another five minutes, Jackson Sprague swung into his office in the company of Boyd Lloyd, one of his personal attorneys. When Jackson saw her, he frowned. “Was there something, Miss Fogg?”

“I had to feed the fish, and as you weren’t here . . .” Her voice trailed off. She had four minutes to kill if she wanted to be present when they came.

“Miss Fogg?” Meaning, “Why are you still here?”

She spent a few seconds pondering, then said, “Oh. You know, I’m a little worried that the blue tang’s branchiomycosis might spread to the other fish.”

Ordinarily, Jackson Sprague wouldn’t bother commenting on Bunny Fogg’s comments, but this word was so much like the tongue-twisting opaque terminology of Jackson’s chosen profession that he fell for it. “The what?”

“Branchiomycosis.” Bunny had looked up fish diseases. “It’s gill rot.”

Boyd Lloyd took a step back.

Two minutes to go. They could be filled with misinformation so easily that Bunny found it hard not to laugh. “See, it’s a disease that could
be really devastating or, on the other hand, not all that serious. In the worst-case scenario—”

“Miss Fogg—”

Bunny plowed on: “—the gills dehydrate and slough off.” That was probably not the way to use the word “slough.” With a look of grave concern, she turned back to the aquarium. “I don’t think that’s going to happen here.”

Voices in the outer office. She’d recognize Joe Blythe’s if it came from a space shuttle during liftoff. Her heart did lift off. She had met him just that morning, very briefly. She smiled at Jackson. “So you don’t have to worry.”

He was leaning on his fists on his desk. “Miss Fogg, would you please—” His head turned toward the door, as did Boyd Lloyd’s. “Who’s out there?” he demanded.

“Out there” became “in here” with a presence more intimidating than a hundred Jackson Spragues. The door seemed to blow open as three people stormed into the room. Who, wondered Bunny, was person number three? The stunner with the fiery hair? Where had she hooked up with the others?

“Jackson Sprague?” demanded Joe Blythe.

“Who the fuck are you?” yelled Jackson, returning to his King of Prussia roots.

“Joseph Bligh, FWS.” He nodded toward his crew. “Agents Morton and Pascoe.”

“FWS what?”

“Fish and Wildlife Service. Interior.” Joe frowned, as if any fool would know that. They all had their IDs out, small leather wallets holding badges, and all three were shoving them into Jackson’s face.

Bunny was thrilled. They all looked so regal, they fairly shone.

Joe went on, “Mr. Sprague, you’re in violation of paragraph 119(a) of the Endangered Species Act.”

Jackson Sprague was white with fear and red with rage. To Bunny, he looked striped. She thought of all the times she’d seen him humiliate other people, including Elsie Hoag, and she wanted to cheer.

Arthur said, “You’re in possession of a
P. boylei
. That’s illegal, Mr. Sprague. Blair.” He nodded toward the aquarium.

The redhead moved quickly, extracting a small net and a heavy plastic bag from her tote. She snapped the bag open smartly. Her back turned to the lawyers, she winked at Bunny, then asked her to help with the hood of the tank. Together they carefully removed the cover.

Gap-mouthed, Boyd Lloyd was jerking his head from Joe to Arthur to Jackson and back again. “What’s a
P. boylei
?”

“Clipperton angelfish. Maybe the rarest exotic fish known, certainly the priciest,” said Joe. “You’ll come with us, Mr. Sprague.” It was not a question.

Jackson blubbered. “This is ridiculous. Those fucking fish aren’t mine. I didn’t buy them!”

Blaze turned, holding up the plastic bag. “This Clipperton, this fish tank.” She hooked her thumb over her shoulder. “In your possession.”

Jackson glared at Bunny as if her misdirected presence had caused all of this. “Security! Get them. Where’s Miss Höag?” he yelled.

Elsie had already appeared in the doorway. Breathlessly, she said, “Yes, sir?”

“Get security! Immediately!”

She disappeared like vapor.

Boyd Lloyd said, “That tank is maintained by an aquarium service. Probably supplied the fish, too. Mr. Sprague has nothing to do—”

Joe Blythe didn’t look at him, only at Jackson. “Does it strike you as likely that an aquarium service that provides these fish would have possession of a Clipperton angelfish, which they would put in
your
tank? Unless your service is linked to Bluefin.” His smile was contemptuous. “Will you step around your desk and come with us now?”

“Bluefin? Go with you where?”

“Our office. Downtown.”

Downtown. Bunny pressed her hands more tightly against her face. Manhattan. “Downtown.” She loved it.

When Jackson stood there, rooted, Joe Blythe reached around under the back of his jacket—

Bunny was twice thrilled to see handcuffs emerge from where they’d been secured at his back by his belt.

Jackson took several steps back, then held up his hands, palms out, warding Joe off.

Elsie was back, just as breathless. “I can’t reach them.”

“What the hell do you mean, you can’t reach them?” Jackson bellowed. “Security is always reachable!”

No answer to that. Elsie vaporized again.

Bunny recalled Bobby speaking to Ben Wink: “. . . something I’d like you to do . . .” Yeah. She smiled.

“This is ridiculous! I’m the chief counsel for D and D. I’m a lawyer, dammit! I know my rights!”

Arthur dropped a paper on the desk.

Jackson, eyes bulging more than any fish’s, stared at the paper.

“Warrant. Search and seizure,” said Arthur.

This—or, more likely, the handcuffs—brought Jackson out from behind the armor of his desk, objecting. “You can’t do this!”

“Yes, we can,” said Joe Blythe.

It was almost as wonderful as hearing Barack Obama repeat his political slogan.

As they moved in a wave toward the door of the office, where Elsie had returned, looking dazed, Jackson yelled at Boyd, “Get my lawyer!”

Boyd said, “I
am
your lawyer.”

Jackson’s voice came from the outer office. “Then get another one, goddammit!”

Bunny rushed to the outer office and looked out the door while Jackson was calling for his legal team all the way down the corridor.

From doors left and right, people were popping out as if on springs.

Bryce Reams, Sprague’s associate, lounged in his own doorway, watching Jackson’s departure with something less than despair and eating an Eskimo pie.

C
indy Sella dropped a few flakes of food into the new aquarium and waited for the two clown fish to corkscrew up and get it. They didn’t. They kept touching the anemone, moving up to it and away from it, almost drunkenly.

She had purchased the tank that morning from a little fish-supply store in the East Village, and the owner had helped her carry it to a taxi. The cabdriver had not helped her get it out of the cab, but fortunately, Mickey was on duty and had carried the tank from the sidewalk up to her apartment. It wasn’t terribly heavy, just awkward.

Now she was sitting on the bench beside Gus and looking at the clown fish and wondering if they liked their new place and all the extra room. They liked the new pink anemone.

Gus was off the bench and at her feet giving her his castaway look, as if he’d been stranded on a desert island and was waiting for someone to get him food. Anything, anything at all, a nice bit of foie gras, a clown fish, anything you hit upon . . .

He followed her into the kitchen, where she spooned out his favorite food from a new can. She put the dish on the floor. Gus sniffed. Then he thrust his tail in the air as if it were a ladder that she would never be capable of climbing and walked away.

Just be glad Lulu isn’t your owner.

She returned to her chair, her notebook, and her computer, neither of which had seen any fresh writing. She wondered if Lulu was indeed her Waterloo and if she would ever finish
You Had Me at Good-bye
. She fiddled with a corner of the notebook page, turning it down and up and down and thinking about Joe Blythe, whom she hadn’t heard from
since the night he’d saved her. Literally saved her. And then came back here, and they’d had that hall party with Edward stopping by. That didn’t mean Joe was interested in her, though. He’d have done the same thing for anyone in such a crisis.

Lulu, for instance.

If Joe Blythe had walked by Lulu’s car and seen her sitting there with her head against the steering wheel, he’d have tapped on the window or yanked the door open. He’d have done something.

More, obviously, than Cindy was doing. She poked at a couple of keys on the computer with her index finger and wondered if Joe Blythe had gone, and where he’d gone, and what he did.

She wondered what he was doing right now, right this moment.

J
ackson Sprague, free of his handcuffs but not of his insufferable in-house-lead-counsel overbearing facade, sat on one side of a plain deal table in a plain office thrown up as fast as a billboard along an L.A. freeway. This was on the first floor of Candy and Karl’s converted warehouse on Houston. The floor had not been converted, so they were using it as the “temporary” Manhattan office of the Fish and Wildlife Service investigations team. That was lettered neatly in gold on a new-old door with pebble glass recently inserted into the doorframe. Its temporary furnishings included a large photograph of Barack Obama on one wall, an American flag standing by it; a couple of filing cabinets; a watercooler; and against another wall, a merciless quantity of tape-recording equipment and indications that this equipment had been manned recently by several people who had left personal belongings—scarves, sweaters—draped over chairs before departing.

“I’m lead counsel for New York’s biggest publisher! Don’t you understand? An attorney! I’m no rube; I’m no mere civilian you can shove around and not expect reprisals! I’ll have your jobs!”

All of this was shouted out as if from Shirlee Murphee’s manuscript pages, italicized and exclaimed to Joe Blythe, whose cool blue eyes looked at and then slid off the face of Jackson Sprague as if it were the blank wall behind him, the empty air around him.

“Mr. Sprague, sit down.” Joe’s hand on his shoulder saw to that.

Agents Morton and Pascoe (Arthur Mordred and Blaze Pascal) were sitting opposite Jackson Sprague.

Arthur leaned forward over the table. “The Bluefish Alliance. We’ve been after them for five years.”

Jackson yelled again: “The what?”

Blaze said, “Illegal imports of exotic fish, a huge business. We think you know.”

“I don’t fucking know what you’re talking about. And these are fish!
Fish!
Fucking aquarium fish, for God’s sake. Why should you be dragging someone out of his office and down here because of
fish
?”

Arthur looked up at Joe Blythe, still standing, arms folded. Said Arthur, “He can’t be that stupid.”

Joe Blythe, blue eyes riveting Jackson Sprague to the back of his chair, arms braced on the table as he leaned in to him, said, “Your ‘fucking aquarium fish’ are as rare as red diamonds. We can put at least twelve fatal shootings in Manhattan down to these fish. So if you’ve got anything to share with us, do it now, Mr. Sprague, and stop jerking us around.”

Jackson, nothing if not noisy, banged his fists on the table and nearly drowned the sound of the knock on the door.

Joe pulled it open and nodded to Graeme, who was wearing a suit for the occasion. “Agent.”

Graeme ushered in Lena bint Musah. She stood there in one of her silky crimson dresses with a black stole stashed around her shoulders. Joe thanked her for coming. Jackson Sprague, whose back had been to the door, turned around when it opened, thus presenting his face to Lena.

“Is this him?” Joe asked her.

Lena carefully lit up one of her brown cigarettes, drew in, and blew out a curlicue of designer smoke. “Miles Mutton. Yes.”

They all looked at Jackson, whose head swiveled from one to the other. “Who the hell is Miles Mutton?”

Lena exhaled another curl of smoke. “That would be you.”

After many and sincere thanks from the Fish and Wildlife Service, Lena left.