He drew his upper lip down with his teeth and nibbled on it. “Actually, I don’t think she did know,” Eli reflected. “I think what happened was, she went home and checked them out in one of her books.” He paused again as another thought struck him. “I should have given her the money she asked for, for the frogs. If I’d done that, none of this would have happened, because she never would have come up here.” He nibbled on the bottom of his lip. “What pisses me off the most is I think she stole some money from me on top of everything else. I had five hundred dollars in my wallet. And it was gone when she left. All she wanted was three hundred bucks. Why did I have to be so cheap?”
“What does this have to do with anything?” I asked, trying to move the story along.
“I thought you were supposed to be smart,” Adelina said to me.
“Obviously not.”
“She went and told me,” Adelina answered. “And I told Nestor.”
“He didn’t know what they were before you told him?” I asked.
“Nestor wouldn’t have known an asp from an anaconda,” Eli observed.
Adelina brought the palms of her hands together and raised them to her lips. “I don’t know what I was thinking of, telling him. With all the crazy ideas he had.”
Eli leaned forward. “Nestor came to me. He told me he had this foolproof scheme to get the tortoises away from Chapman, without him knowing what was going on. The way he explained it to me, I thought it would work.”
I looked from Eli to Adelina and back again. “Let me get this straight. You’re telling me that the suitcase was never stolen?” My voice started to rise as I understood the full import of what Eli and Adelina were saying. “That this whole thing was a scam?”
Eli mumbled something and slowly nodded, almost as if he was doing it against his will.
I opened my mouth and closed it again. I didn’t know what to say. I couldn’t have said anything even if I’d wanted to. I was too angry to talk.
Manuel didn’t have that problem.
He sprang away from the corner he’d been leaning against. “You’re kidding me, right?” He glared at Eli. “Right? Answer me, you piece of shit.”
Eli avoided his gaze, looking everywhere else but at his cousin.
Manuel strode toward him. His jaw was out and his fists were clenched. “I’m going to kill you myself, you little fat fuck.”
Eli stood up, trying to get away, but he wasn’t fast enough. Manuel buried his fist in Eli’s soft, white belly.
Eli doubled over. “Please,” he whimpered.
“Fuck you,” Manuel said and punched him again.
Eli gagged and went down on all fours. A line of drool snaked its way out of his mouth and onto the floor.
“Do something!” Adelina screamed.
Much as I didn’t want to, I grabbed hold of Manuel’s shoulder. “That’s enough,” I told him.
He whirled around. “No, it’s not!” he shouted, spraying spittle in my face. “I’m going to beat the crap out of him.”
Manuel and I were standing nose-to-nose. Out of the corner of my eye I could see Eli crawling in back of me.
“Take it down a few notches,” I ordered, enunciating each word slowly and distinctly. The last thing I needed on top of everything else was to have to take Eli to the ER room.
“He deserves it,” Manuel said.
“I agree. You can beat him up later. In fact, I might even help you.”
“You wouldn’t do that,” Eli cried as he scrambled up onto the sofa.
“Shut up,” I told him. “You deserve whatever you have coming to you.”
Eli gasped.
I kept my eyes on Manuel. His breath was hot on my face. A car honked outside. Finally he took a couple of steps back and turned to Eli.
“You lied to me,” he said to him, his face contorted with hurt. “You straight out lied. You used me. You dragged my friends into your mess.”
Eli wiped his mouth with the tips of his fingers. “I tried to tell you I didn’t need you to help me, but you didn’t listen. You never listen to what anyone says.”
“What the hell was I supposed to do?” Manuel took a step forward, turned, then took another step back. “What was I supposed to do?” he asked rhetorically. “I hear you carrying on. You come up with this story. What was I supposed to do? Ignore it. You’re family. How was I supposed to know you were trying out for the Academy Awards?”
“I want you to know...” Eli began, but Manuel cut him off.
“I could have been out dancin’ tonight instead of running all over the city chasin’ your sorry ass down.” Manuel pointed a finger at Eli. “Don’t you be asking me for nothing after this. We are quits. Quits.” And Manuel stalked back over to where he’d been standing and leaned against the wall.
A few seconds later, he whirled around, brought his foot up, and kicked it. The plasterboard cracked. A hole appeared. “Asshole,” he muttered. “Fucking asshole.” He kicked the wall again.
“Manuel, that’s enough,” I said.
Byway of an answer, Manuel kicked the wall for the fourth time, then walked away a little ways. No one spoke. Adelina looked shaken. Eli was studying the window blinds. I waited a few seconds to see if there were going to be any more outbursts from Manuel before continuing.
“All right,” I said when no more were forthcoming. “Let’s get back to where we were. Eli, if I understand you, the total sum of your plan was to tell Chapman that Nestor had stolen the suitcase and assume that he’d write it off?”
“Yes,” Eli whispered.
“How could you have been so stupid?” In away, the sheer imbecility of the plan offended me more than anything else.
Eli looked down at his hands.
“What did you expect Chapman to do?” I continued. “Say, Oh, well. Too bad. I guess I’ll call my insurance agent.”
“He didn’t seem like such a bad guy in the beginning,” Eli mumbled. “I didn’t think he’d get so upset. I thought he’d just get mad at Nestor, not at me.”
“Which presumably wouldn’t matter, because he wouldn’t be able to find him.”
Eli nodded.
Manuel was right, I decided. He was smarter than Eli. “What about Chapman’s putting you in prison, or was that just a made-up story too?”
Eli studied a spot on the wall. “Nestor said he wouldn’t arrest me. That it wasn’t worth Chapman’s effort, because I’d get a suspended sentence. He said I was worth more to Chapman out of jail than in it.” He recited the sentences, as if he had memorized them a while ago and trotted them out whenever he needed reassurance.
“What did Nestor say about Chapman’s threats?”
“He said he was using psychological warfare and that he really wouldn’t do anything.”
I remembered the beads of sweat on Eli’s lip. “But you weren’t sure, were you?”
“No,” Eli muttered.
“Did you think he’d hurt me?”
“I wanted to tell you,” Eli stammered, “but Nestor was afraid that if we did, you’d be so angry you might go to Chapman.”
“Nestor thought we could pull it off,” Adelina added. “He said that if Chapman couldn’t find us, eventually he’d calm down.”
“Except that Nestor is dead and your friend here”—I indicated Eli—“is being sought by the police for questioning regarding Nestor’s death.”
Chapter 27
I studied Eli and Adelina for a moment. They looked as tired as I felt. Even the air in the room smelled tired. I got up and opened one of the windows a crack, then sat back down. It helped a little, but not much.
Eli hung his head and contemplated his hands. “If I had known Nestor would end up dead, I never would have gotten into this. I feel awful,” he said again.
“Under the circumstances, I don’t think that’s nearly enough.”
“I know.” Eli began kneading one hand with the other.
I massaged the back of my neck to relieve some of the tension in it. It
didn’t help. My muscles felt like rocks. “Where were you going to sell them?”
“We had a buyer in New York. Down in Chinatown. One of Nestor’s cousins. He was going to sell them in Germany and Japan.”
“Didn’t you think Chapman was going to hear from his sources that people had bought them and trace them back to you?”
“No, I didn’t. Nestor’s cousin is in one of the Tongs. They’re very secretive. They have connections all over the world.”
I shifted my position. My legs were stiffening up. “I think you might have been underestimating Chapman. He has a large network available to him, too.”
Eli nervously pinched at the roll of fat around his middle. “Even so. Nestor was doing the selling, so he was taking most of the risk.”
“Is that what he told you? Because I think he lied,” I informed Eli. “According to the way Chapman looked at it, you were the responsible party.”
Eli licked his lips. “Do you think he knew I was lying?”
I shrugged my shoulders. “I’ll ask him when I see him.” And I changed the subject. “Why did you ask me to meet you at that house?”
“That was Nestor’s idea, too.” Eli’s glasses had slipped down the bridge of his nose. He moved them back up.
“It seems as if everything was Nestor’s idea and you just went along for the ride,” I couldn’t resist pointing out.
“It was all Nestor’s idea,” Eli told me, relieved at finally being able to pass the blame for this mess on to someone else. “All of it.”
“Which is why he deserved to die?”
“I never said that,” Eli cried. He looked contrite, but Eli’s looks meant as much as a fake ID. “Really,” Eli said. “I mean it. I’m sorry he’s dead. I didn’t know that would happen.”
Manuel snorted and turned away.
I stood up. “I’m sure that’s going to be a great consolation to Nestor’s parents.”
Eli gulped.
“What do you think they are going to feel like when they find out? What would your parents feel like?” I pointed to Adelina. “Or yours?”
Adelina and Eli both studied the material on the sofa. Adelina pulled at a stray piece of thread that was sticking out of one of the seams.
Looking at them made me angry enough to spit. “What a stupid way to die.” As if, I thought, there was a good way.
For a moment everyone was silent. The only sounds in the house were the scritch scratch of the tortoises’ claws on the floor. Somewhere off in the distance a dog was barking. I took a big breath and got myself under control.
“Tell me about the house,” I ordered, changing the subject.
Eli fiddled with his glasses for another few seconds before answering. “By that time Nestor was getting nervous. We were going to give you a couple of the tortoises to give to Chapman and tell you that the rest had died. We were hoping that would buy him off. That he would figure that twenty thousand dollars was better than nothing.”
“I was going to deliver them,” Adelina told me, taking up the narrative. “Nestor was coming straight from work and he didn’t want to leave them in the trunk of his car. Too cold. Tortoises don’t like the cold. Especially these ones.” Adelina paused for a second. “Only the fan belt on my car went. Which meant the car wouldn’t move. So I phoned Eli and he came over.”
“And put on an Academy Award performance for me.”
Eli gulped. “I called Adelina when I couldn’t find Nestor and asked what I should do. She told me I should give you the tortoises, but I didn’t want to do that.”
“Why not?”
“Because you’d know what a big liar I was and you’d tell Manuel and he’d tell his mother and she’d tell mine.”
“It’s nice to know you still have a slight sense of shame,” I observed.
Embarrassed, Eli picked up a piece of lint on his pants and flicked it away.
I pressed him. “Then how come you came in?”
“I called Adelina back and she told me I had to. I was going to.” He gave Adelina a beseeching glance. She examined a scratch on her bracelet. Eli looked back at me. “But when I saw you looking at me, I knew I was wrong.” He hung his head. “I knew I’d made a big mistake.” He shuddered. “And Nestor. Lying there like that. The gun. Saying those things. Nothing was right. I couldn’t breathe. I had to get out of there.”
“Who lit the candles?” I asked.
“Nestor did,” Eli said.
“Why?”
Adelina sat up straighter. She gently touched one of her gold hoops, as if to make sure they were still there. “He thought it gave the place more atmosphere.”
“Very romantic.” I thought about how much I wanted something to eat. Something chocolate. Something chocolate with almonds.
“That wasn’t the point,” Adelina said. “It was supposed to have made it harder for you to follow him.”
“How?”
Adelina looked peeved. “How the fuck should I know? He read it in some stupid book. He was always reading these stupid spy books. He thought that made him so smart. All it did was give him these crazy ideas. People shouldn’t be allowed to buy stuff like that. It makes them think about things they’ve never thought about. If I were in charge, I’d make that kind of stuff illegal and jail the people that wrote it.”
“I’m glad to know where you stand on First Amendment rights, but can we get back to the matter at hand?”
“I mean it,” Adelina said. “If it weren’t for those books—”
I interrupted. “Can we get back to Nestor?” I repeated. “Was he staying with you, too?”
“No. He was staying with a cousin of his out in Mattydale. He was washing dishes in his restaurant and sleeping in the basement of his house.”
I studied her face. “Are you sure you didn’t kill Nestor?” I asked.
“Me,” she cried. She flushed. “Of course not. Why would I do that?”
“The question is, why wouldn’t you?”
She crossed her arms over her chest and gave me a defiant look. “You can’t prove that I had anything to do with that.”
“I’m not so sure.” I took a guess. “What about this gun, for instance?” I indicated the 9mm I’d taken away from her at her house.
Adelina patted her necklace and sat up straighter. She was trying to give the impression she had nothing to hide, but she wasn’t succeeding very well. “What do you mean?”
“I mean, if the forensics unit does a ballistic test, will they find that the shell that killed Nestor was fired from this barrel?”
She gave an unconvincing little laugh. “How would I know?”
I smiled. “You’re right. But I feel certain the police will. I’m sure they’re going to want to talk to you.” My eyes rested on Eli. “And him, too. I think it’s time I called them.”
“But I didn’t have anything to do with Nestor’s death,” Eli protested. “I swear.”
“After what you’ve been doing, you expect me to believe you?”
“But it’s the truth,” Eli insisted.
“A much abused commodity around here,” I observed.
“The police are never going to believe me,” Eli said.
“Quite possibly,” I told him unkindly.
“I’ve made such a mess of things. Such an incredible mess.” Then he buried his face in his hands and began to cry.
“Give me your cell phone,” I said to Manuel, trying to ignore Eli’s weeping.
He handed it to me.
I touched the top button of my shirt. “Manuel,” I said.
He gave me a vacant look.
“Remember. We agreed.”
“On what?”
“You’re going.”
“Oh, yeah.” He scratched his sideburn. “I decided I’d rather stay.”
“What about your mother?”
He made a dismissive gesture with his hand.
“Who are you calling?” Adelina demanded as I powered up.
“I already told
you. The police.”
Eli’s sobbing filled the background. He was rocking back and forth. “I’m so sorry, so sorry,” he kept on repeating over and over and over again.
Itwas an appalling display. Sometimes there’s such a thing as being too in touch with your emotions.
Adelina put her hand out to stop me. “Don’t,” she said. “Please.”
I waited.
“Sulfin is the one you want.”
I snorted and resumed dialing. “You hate Sulfin and Sulfin hates you.”
“You have to listen,” Adelina pleaded. “Sulfin and I had a deal going and Nestor found out.”
“You were going back to Sulfin?” My voice crackled with disbelief.
Manuel turned. “Get out of here,” he told Adelina.
She looked at Manuel and then at me and nodded.
Eli lifted his head up and stared at her. His eyes were swollen from weeping. His complexion was mottled. She avoided his gaze.
“And you were going to bring the tortoises with you?” I asked.
She swallowed. Then she nodded again.
Eli sniffed. “You were going to do that to me?”
Adelina didn’t reply.
“But I thought you liked me,” he wailed. “I thought we were friends.” He sounded so stricken I had to look away.
“We are,” Adelina assured him.
I wondered what Adelina’s definition of friendship was as Eli spoke. “Then why’d you do it?” he demanded, curling his hands into fists. “Why?”
“Some things are more important.” Adelina pressed her lips together into a thin line and narrowed her eyes. “I needed the money. I started thinking about it when Nestor wanted to give you two of the tortoises to take to Chapman.” She lifted her head up. “Eighty thousand dollars is good, but one hundred thousand dollars is better.”
“Especially if you split it two ways instead of three,” I observed. “Eighty thousand dollars, split three ways or one hundred thousand split two. I can see your point.”
Adelina’s nostrils flared. “Fifty thousand dollars is enough to give my mother a little peace of mind, a little breathing space. She deserves it. She’s had a tough life.”
“Don’t blame this on her,” I told Adelina. “Lots of other people are having a tough time, too, and you don’t see them doing what you are. Does your mother even know about this?”
Endangered Species Page 24
