“I’m guessing you’re right.” I started rewrapping the eggs. I was assuming they were viable, so I didn’t want them to get chilled. The air vent had been warm enough to work as an incubator. The temperature was chillier in the store.
Tim picked one up and held it to the light. “What are you going to do with them?”
“Take them to George’s.” He had an electric oven. Set at 150 degrees, with the door ajar, it could do as a stand-in for an incubator.
Tim handed the egg to me. “He’s going to be pleased,” Tim observed, crooking one side of his mouth up in a half-smile.
I knew Tim was right. George wouldn’t be pleased at all, but there was nothing I could do about it. “They’re not going to be there for that long.”
“So, what do you think they are?”
“Bird. They’re too large to be reptile.”
“Maybe a parrot? A hyacinth macaw? Some sort of cockatoo?”
“Could be.” Egg identification was not my specialty.
“But why not just go out and buy a bird?” Tim asked. “You can buy captive-born ones at any store. What’s the point?”
“Trophy hunting. Some people like to keep theirs on the wall and others like to keep theirs in cages.”
“That sucks.”
“Agreed. But most people don’t care.” And I went outside to warm up the car so that the eggs wouldn’t catch a chill. Then I called George and told him I was coming over.
George greeted me at the door. He was wearing a pair of jeans and a red pullover and looked better than I did, having shaved and showered and changed his clothes since he’d picked up me and Eli at the Public Safety Building earlier this morning.
“So these are them?” He pointed to the shopping bag. “This is what Chapman hid?”
“You got it,” I said, stepping inside.
“Eggs?” George’s voice rose in disbelief.
“Eggs that are probably worth ten to twenty thousand.”
“That much? How do you figure that?”
“Because any less and it wouldn’t be worth Chapman’s while to set me up.”
George meditatively rubbed his chest with his right hand. His face looked like a judge’s—a judge I wouldn’t want to be standing in front of. “Believe me,” he said. “He’s going to be sorry he did this.”
“I know.”
“I’ve got the stuff. It’s in the hall closet.”
“That’s good.”
“I hope so.”
I stopped in front of the living room and said hello to Manuel.
He took his eyes off the TV for a few seconds, gave me a wave, and went back to his program.
“Nice to see you’re improving your mind,” I told him.
He grunted. I continued on into the kitchen.
“Where’s Eli?” I asked George, who was right behind me.
“Upstairs asleep. I feel like I’m running a combination day-care center and zoo here,” George complained as I went over to his stove.
I set the shopping bag down. “You did say you wanted to help,” I reminded him.
“I know. It’s just that I didn’t have this in mind,” he answered as he watched me turn the oven dial on his stove to warm. “Why can’t we switch places?”
“Because Chapman is expecting me, not you.” I opened the door, and gently laid the shopping bag on the middle shelf. “This should work,” I told him. “My grandmother used our stove once for a baby squirrel. Just make sure and leave the door ajar so it doesn’t get too hot in there.”
“Yeah,” George intoned. “I wouldn’t want to bake the suckers. I wonder what twenty thousand dollars worth of hard-boiled eggs would taste like.”
“Cute.” I went over to the kitchen sink and got myself a glass of water. Usually George’s sink was immaculate. Now it was full of dishes. “Boys getting to you?” I asked.
“They’d get to Martin Luther King. How long do you think I’m going to have to play Dr. Doolittle? When is this thing going down?”
“That depends on Chapman. I have to call him and set up the meeting, which I assume he will want to take place as soon as possible. After that, I figure things should go pretty fast.”
George shook his head. “Anyone who would pay ten thousand dollars for one of those things . . .”
“Irridiated tortoises . . .”
“Whatever . . . that I have in my bathroom is nuts.”
“Let me ask you this? Would you pay five thousand dollars for a baseball signed by Babe Ruth?”
“Not.”
“What would you pay for?”
George stroked his chin while he thought. “I don’t know ... maybe a first, signed edition of Richard Wright’s Native Son or one of Chester Himes’s books.”
“That’s my point. The people that are willing to pay ten thousand dollars apiece for those tortoises probably don’t even know who Richard Wright is.”
“I suppose,” George allowed grudgingly.
“So, you talked to Mike?”
George nodded. “Everything’s all set.”
“Okay then.”
“Can you stay and have some coffee?”
“I’d love to, but I have to get the last tortoise from Littlebaum.”
“You’ll call?” George asked.
“As soon as I know anything,” I promised.
We kissed. George nuzzled my neck.
“A half hour won’t make any difference,” he whispered in my ear.
He was right. It wouldn’t. We tiptoed up the stairs.
“You want to do me a favor?” he asked when we came back down.
“Sure.”
“Take Manuel with you. I’m going to commit severe bodily injury if he stays here any longer.”
“He does tend to have that effect on people,” I observed.
When I walked into the living room, Manuel was sprawled on George’s gray leather sofa with his feet on the teakwood coffee table and the remote in his hand watching the Home Shopping channel. A lady was selling a silk blouse paired with a velvet skirt.
“I think you’d do better in a different style,” I said, leaning over and taking the remote out of his hand. I clicked off the TV.
Manuel looked up at me resentfully. “What you have to do that for, Robin?”
“Because you’re coming with me. Let’s go.”
“Why?” he whined. “I’m tired. Thanks to you I didn’t get any sleep last night.”
“Too bad.” I nudged his feet off the table with my leg. “Neither did I. You can sleep in the cab.”
“The cab sucks.” Manuel reluctantly sat up. “How can you expect me to sleep with that broken spring stabbing me in the back? I need to stay and help George.”
“George is the one that asked me to take you,” I told him.
Manuel pulled his hat further down on his head and folded his arms across his chest. “Where are we going anyway?”
“Back to Littlebaum’s.”
“Fucking great.”
“Get going.” And I pointed to the door.
Manuel glared at me. Then he grabbed his jacket and strode out the door. I followed him out of George’s house.
“What were you doing upstairs anyhow?” he demanded as I started up the cab.
“Talking.”
“Yeah. Right.” Manuel reached over and clicked on the radio. He turned the dial to the rap station. Then he leaned against the seat, and closed his eyes.
I didn’t pursue the topic. As I watched him, I wondered how he could relax to music like that. It just made me jumpy. Then my thoughts drifted on to how I was going to handle my upcoming visit with Littlebaum. I wasn’t looking forward to it, not with Matilda at Littlebaum’s side. The weather didn’t help my mood. It hadn’t improved since this morning. The sky was still a study in gray. Raindrops dripped from bare tree branches. The asphalt on the road was shiny with water and occasional patches of black ice, making me drive slower than I normally did. When I turned off the main road, the cab skid
ded out. For a moment, I thought I was going to go into a fence post before I got it back under control. Manuel opened his eyes as he fell forward.
“Jesus,” he muttered, gripping the dashboard to steady himself.
I brought the cab to a stop. “Don’t say anything,” I warned him.
“Like what?”
I made a U-turn and got back onto the road.
“I knew I should have stayed at George’s,” Manuel muttered to the window.
Five minutes later, Littlebaum’s house came into view. As I drove down the access road, I realized that something about the house-looked different, but I wasn’t sure what it was. Then, as I got closer, I realized what was bothering me. There was no smoke coming out of the chimney. The window shades were down. The doors to the garage were closed. The house looked vacant. Then I spied a couple of cardboard boxes, the kind you use for packing, laying out side the front door and I knew.
Littlebaum was gone.
And he wasn’t coming back. He’d taken my advice and left town.
“I’m staying here,” Manuel told me as I parked the car.
I handed him his cell phone. “Call 911 if there are any problems.”
He snorted and powered up. By the time I’d closed the door of the cab, he was talking to a friend. I turned my collar up against the sting of the rain and jammed my hands in my pockets. Snow would almost be better than this, I thought as I started toward the door. I was halfway there when I saw another vehicle turning down onto the road. I rocked back and forth on my heels and waited for it to come closer as the rain dripped down my hair. The car, a beat up green VW bus pulled up next to the cab.
Jeff, the kid from PETA that had been at my store a couple of weeks ago, got out. He was swathed in a black overcoat big enough to have accommodated two of him.
“What are you doing here?” I asked as he came toward me.
He did a double take and wiped the rain out of his eyes. “What are you?”
“I’m looking for Littlebaum.”
“He’s gone.”
“So I surmised. I repeat. Why are you here?”
He rummaged around in his pocket and came up with a large, filled key ring. “Myra asked me to pick up a couple of tapes she forgot.”
“Myra?” My voice rose in surprise. “How do you know Myra?”
“She’s my half-sister. Only I live with my dad.”
I looked at Jeff more closely. He and Myra both had the same body type—long and lean, and the same punk sensibility. I thought I detected a similarity around the eyes as well, but before I could make up my mind, he turned and unlocked the door and went inside. I followed.
Jeff and I were standing in a small entrance hall. The floor, dirty black-and-white tile, was muddy with water dripping off both of our jackets. The walls were covered with a collage of pages from the Sunday comics that someone, I assume it was Littlebaum, had pasted on. I glanced into the living room. A flowered sofa sat in the middle of the room. A TV stood to the left. The rest of the space was bare. I sniffed. The room smelled musty like the ape house at the zoo.
“He used to keep his monkeys in here,” Jeff said, as if reading my mind. “All caged up. See, that’s what I’m talking about. People thinking animals have no rights.” He brushed the water off his hair and shook it off his coat. “He shouldn’t have done that.”
“You’re right. He shouldn’t have.”
My answer appeared to mollify Jeff slightly because he stopped scowling. “Myra came over as often as she could and took them out and played with them. Monkeys need that or they go crazy—just like people.”
“She never said anything about that to me.”
“Maybe she didn’t want you to know,” Jeff suggested.
“Maybe,” I murmured.
When I didn’t say anything else, Jeff continued. “There was a spider monkey she particularly liked. Leo. She wanted to buy him from Littlebaum but my dad wouldn’t let it in our house. He said it would make too much of a mess.”
I thought about the Myers house, all neat and tidy. Somehow I didn’t see a monkey fitting in there. I’d known someone who’d had one once. He’d specialized in jumping on people’s heads from the curtain rod. It hadn’t been fun.
I walked into Littlebaum’s dining room. It was filled with stacks of newspapers and books. A chair lay on its side on the floor. A coat was draped over it. It looked as if Littlebaum had left in a hurry.
“Boy, my mom’s gonna be pissed,” Jeff said.
“Pardon?” I turned around. I’d been thinking about how fast Littlebaum had acted. Two days ago, he’d been here and now he was gone. I’d thought he might call my friend, but I’d never expected this. I hadn’t figured him capable of organizing anything like this himself. Obviously I’d been wrong. I reached in my bag for Manuel’s phone to call my friend Steve in Arizona and realized I’d left it in the cab with Manuel.
“When my mom finds out what Myra’s done,” Jeff explained, “she’s gonna make her go to some boarding school or something when she gets her back. I know it.”
“Why’d she go?”
“Just to help Littlebaum get settled. He offered her a lot of money to come. And anyway, she’s never been out West before.”
“How’d they move?”
Jeff gave me a boy-are-you-dumb look. “U-Haul. The usual way. I figure the animals will be better off out there. Littlebaum said he was going to build a big cage for the monkeys with bars to swing on and everything.”
I nodded while I thought about Matilda. She’d probably like it out there, too. Then I thought about the tortoise Littlebaum had taken with him. I wondered if that had anything to do with his decision to leave at this particular time.
“You’re not going to try and stop them are you?” Jeff asked anxiously, jingling his key chain. I knew he was thinking about Myra.
“No. I’m not. And anyway, I don’t think I could even if I wanted to.” His sister wasn’t my problem, and since I knew where Littlebaum was going, I could always get the tortoise back.
“Good. Because he said not to tell anyone.”
“Aside from your parents, I don’t think many people are going to care.”
Jeff moved into the kitchen. The place looked as if a cyclone had hit it. All the cabinet doors were open. Drawers were ajar. Paper bags littered the floor.
“Good,” said Jeff, looking toward the far counter.
I followed his glance.
“Myra’s Pink Floyd tapes,” Jeff explained, going over and stuffing the tapes in his pocket. “She wants me to keep them till she gets back. Listen. I gotta go.”
I stayed for a few minutes more. I went upstairs and poked around. I didn’t find anything of interest, but then, I hadn’t really expected to.
Littlebaum had left all his furniture behind, not that there was that much of it to begin with.
But, still.
He’d just taken what was important to him: his animals. As I closed the door to his house, I wondered if he saw himself as a modern-day Noah bopping down the Interstate, heading for the safety of the desert before the rains came.
I hoped he and Matilda made it.
Chapter 32
I could hear the music from the radio blasting outside the cab. Manuel turned it down as I got in.
“You’re going to go deaf,” I told him.
“That’s what my mom says.”
I wondered if “you’re going to go deaf” had replaced “you’re going to lose an eye” in the annals of maternal advice as I held out my hand. “Could I have the phone, please.”
Manuel gave it to me reluctantly. “Why can’t you get your own?”
“I will.”
“When?”
“When I have a chance.” And I called Steve in Arizona.
“You’re calling long distance?” Manuel yelped. “Do you know how much that costs?”
“I’m charging it to my calling card, so be quiet,” I snapped as the operator came on.
But I
could have saved myself the bother. Steve wasn’t home. I left a message on his voice mail.
“Now what?” Manuel said as I cleared the number off.
“Now I’m dialing my house and seeing if I have any messages.”
I’d expected one on there from Chapman and I wasn’t disappointed. I took a deep breath, dialed his beeper number, and left Manuel’s number for him. I had an idea that things were about to heat up.
Chapman called back almost immediately. “I heard you had fun last night,” he began, never one to let an opportunity to get a dig in pass.
“I missed you. I expected to see you there.”
“Nah. I figured you didn’t need me to remind you of what you have to do. How’s our project coming?”
“Well.”
“That’s good. I was beginning to worry you were getting other ideas.”
“Why would I do that?”
“A misplaced sense of chivalry.”
Chivalry. The word sounded odd coming out of Chapman’s mouth. I was surprised he knew it. I wondered if Chapman was going to allude to what he’d hidden in my store, or was he going to get me to give him the tortoises and have me arrested anyway? If I had to bet, I’d say the latter.
“Good. Let’s meet in an hour,” I said.
“An hour?”
“Do you have a problem with that?” Suspicion made his voice bristle.
“No. Not at all. I want to get this over with and go back to things the way they were.”
“At Eli’s.”
“No. In a public place.”
He laughed unpleasantly. “Why? What do you think I’m going to do?”
“I don’t know and I don’t want to find out.”
“If I’d wanted to do anything, I would have done it already.”
I didn’t say he had.
“At Lefty’s then,” Chapman said after a moment’s silence.
“Works for me. And we’ll be quits?” I couldn’t help adding.
“Absolutely.”
The scary part was, he really sounded as if he meant it.
I hung up and phoned George. “I’m meeting Chapman down at Lefty’s in an hour.”
“Don’t worry,” he said. “I’ll have everything packed and waiting.”
It had stopped raining by the time I got to Lefty’s and the temperature had moved up a couple of degrees. According to the weather forecaster on the radio, it was supposed to be in the forties tomorrow, five degrees warmer than usual for this time of year. He was almost done with a spiel tying the weather we’d experienced this winter into the trend towards global warming as I pulled into a parking spot across from the bar. I wondered if that meant I’d own beachfront property right here in Central New York in twenty years as I clicked off the radio and checked my watch.
Endangered Species Page 27
