Stuffed

by Brian M. Wiprud

  The flood of fire carried the Penguin Boy with it, his flippers flapping wildly like he was trying to take flight. Tumbling head over heels toward the crashing waves, the flicker of the knife wobbled after him. In a wink he and the knife slipped from view, consumed by night’s black gullet.

  Too bad penguins can’t fly. He was in for a pretty rocky landing.

  Through the smoke I could make out the open door at the far end of the room. Angie and Otto were gone, escaped, and I aimed to be right on their heels.

  My mind zapped back into my head as if awakening from a nightmare.

  The torrent of heat and flames that had burst the windows had ceased. The floor was clear of smoke, but the whole room was humming from the ferociousness of the fire, like a woodstove on a winter morning. I could still make out my malevolent spectators, now just fire with eyes, Hades portent working its will.

  I began to crawl, my vision swimming with black jigsaw pieces that I knew meant imminent unconsciousness. I felt myself crumple against the side of the desk. The puzzle of unconsciousness and death crowded in, and I remember thinking:

  “Watch me, swingers, and let’s all strive

  To do the Mambo Rumba Two-Hand Jive

  Get down low, and back up high

  Shimmy those hips, give it a try.”

  I’ve never been so ready to die. Overcome by smoke and heat, I lay there in a half-conscious state, waiting, almost hoping for the Reaper’s guiding hand. Come on, take me. I’m through.

  But I was uncomfortable, the floor was lumpy, and my body was moving. My head thumped against something a couple times, and it hurt. I smelled a familiar odor through the smoke, not exactly cologne. . . . Why wasn’t I out of my body yet?

  I was cold, and it was suddenly dark. The bumping had stopped. Now I must be dead.

  My face was wet.

  “Garth!”

  It was Angie’s voice. I hoped she wasn’t dead too. Though I have to confess—I was glad she was with me, wherever I was.

  “Garth!”

  I could feel her touch. That was nice. They think of everything in heaven.

  “Garth!”

  Visual sensation, light, and then flashing red lights. I was moving, and there were some metallic clunks as I was jostled onto a stretcher. I opened my eyes and I was in an ambulance, tubes and things overhead swinging to the sway of the vehicle.

  Angie was stroking my forehead. Her eyes were red, her soot-smeared face streaked by tears. Here I was again, just like that shoot-out in West Harlem with Smiler.

  “Let go of it,” she said.

  Let go of what? I could feel my arm moving.

  I tried to say something but couldn’t speak. Devil hadn’t got me, only my tongue.

  Angie held up my hand in hers. Doggedly clenched in my hand was what was left of the crow: singed legs and a sooty white belly and tail. I was gripping it by the branch, which was humming hot in my hand but undamaged. Figures that the least valuable part went unscathed.

  And to think they could have had this for five hundred dollars. It’s sad to see taxidermy destroyed. Nobody should have to die twice, not even an albino crow.

  I relaxed my hand. Angie tossed the crow aside and threw her arms around my neck, sobbing.

  I was pretty sure I wasn’t dead.

  Chapter 20

  As much as I’d rather Angie had not been caught up in that deal at Partridge’s spook house, I’ll admit I was relieved someone else got to tell the bizarre story to the cops for a change. It’s my guess that blond-haired, green-eyed Angie comes across as a heck of a lot more credible than I do.

  And as much as I’d just as soon stay out of hospitals, I have to admit that being flat out with your face and hands bandaged is a better vantage point than an interrogation room from which to explain your story. I looked a lot worse off than I was: mainly first-degree burns on my face, scalp, forearms, and hands accounted for the mummy wrap. It was about as bad as a sunburn. My hair was a tad crispy—the horror of split ends. I also had a few choice bruises from being dragged out of the inferno. Mainly I was there under observation, for smoke inhalation.

  Dragged? Well, here’s the thing. I know I passed out, that I couldn’t go any farther once I reached that desk. Ergo, somebody must have dragged me out. Angie had hidden Otto behind a hedge and raced back to find me, which she did, on the door stoop. My shirt and jacket were hiked up almost over my head from whoever had latched hold of them and pulled. Ah, yes, but who? The band of brown midgets? Doubtful. There was only one person from the guest list not accounted for, the one who was supposed to show at 2:00 P.M. The buyer. Whoever that was. But why did he bother to risk his neck for me? My brain hurt just thinking about it.

  Anyway, turns out the kid at the motel did call the cops, complaining about an abusive clown, and when Angie found me on the stoop next to MacTeague’s dead body, the fuzz had just pulled up. An ambulance arrived a short time later to find me slipping into shock, and Otto with a gunshot wound to the left hand. The slug had passed cleanly through the meaty part between his thumb and forefinger, missing bone and any vital muscles or nerves.

  While Angie had given the police her version of the events of that night at Partridge’s, they of course wanted my version, which I gave them on the second day I was laid up. (They couldn’t make heads or tails of Otto’s description.) I chose to leave out the Belle Beverly moments, as much to spare myself the horror of that delightful encounter as to keep the story as plausible as possible. Hey, they already thought I was nuts, and I needed to retain what little credibility I had left.

  The cops had done their homework and found that pygmies did indeed fletch their arrows with leaves. The toxins they use in Africa are usually layered on the arrow points and made from insects, berries, and plants. They use them to hunt colobus monkeys, which are a good deal smaller than humans, so it takes several hits to incapacitate a human. In this case, the arrows were tipped with hemlock root, rendered salamander oils, and Drano.

  Now, of course, I was more popular than ever with the authorities. I had not only Walker of the NYPD, and Renard of the New York State Department of Environmental Conservation, and Danny DA from Brattleboro, Vermont, but also the Wells Police and Maine State Police crowded around my bed, picking at my story. All while passing around two zip-seal evidence bags. One contained the remnants of the white crow. The other, a handful of tiny pygmy arrows. Each in turn gave the bird’s remains and the arrows a squinty, skeptical examination.

  I concentrated my story on Tex, MacTeague, and Flip. I mean, they were the ones who’d committed serious crimes, right? Murder, kidnapping, possibly arson. Isn’t that enough?

  Apparently not. The authorities kept trying to drag me into it, asking me where I got “the gun.” I’d had a full day to muse over the particulars and was ready for them. I didn’t have a gun, and I never saw Otto with one. All the guns, as far as I knew, belonged to Tex, MacTeague, and/or Flip.

  Them: But it was a Gapov, a Russian revolver, and your friend is Russian.

  Me: I never saw Otto with a gun, not before or during the episode. He burst into the room and they shot him.

  Them: From what we can tell, there were at least eight shots fired in there.

  Me: I don’t know what happened before I got there. As I said, there were a few shots fired while Flip and Tex struggled. And the two of them and MacTeague had obviously had a falling out of some kind. The pygmies were sneaking around somewhere ready to back up Flip and obviously finished off MacTeague.

  Them: You went into the house without any weapon? Any weapon at all?

  Me: That’s right. No weapon. I’m a kung fu master.

  Them: Wasn’t that kind of foolish? And dressed as a clown?

  Me: Angie was in there. I wasn’t thinking about my personal safety. As for the clown getup, that was the result of a pen exploding red ink into my mouth after it got stuck in Walker’s handcuffs.

  I mean, you’d think they’d be satisfied with what they had. When
they searched the sideshow, they’d found the taxidermied remains of Gobo the gorilla Frankensteined to a grizzly bear pelt, the fur dyed to a uniform color and made into a Big Foot. Thus, the story of the conspiracy to sell Partridge a fake Sasquatch to collect the reward was substantiated.

  But there were two—no, make that three—things that bothered them, and in the interview, they kept returning to them.

  1. What happened to Flip the Penguin Boy? How did he happen to be defenestrated, and why hadn’t his body washed up? I told them I assumed that a rush of air from the fire broke the windows and sucked him out. I fell to the floor and was not sucked out. They didn’t like this, and I think they thought I’d shoved him. They kept asking about “when you pushed him . . .” and I had to keep countering that “I never touched Flip, not once.” As to why he hadn’t washed up after falling one hundred feet into the ocean, I couldn’t help but answer: “Well, he was part penguin. Maybe he migrated to the Shetland Islands?” If they were going to put me through the third degree while I was flat on my back in a hospital, I had to get my digs in too, didn’t I?

  2. Why did the carny gang want the crow? I replied that they never told me why. And that was true. I did mention that Flip said, “The kving-kie is mine,” which I explained referred to an apparently extinct wild cow from Asia that Partridge had been after. But the crow was clearly not a kving-kie, so I didn’t know what he meant. No doubt my pal Jimmy Kim could clear some of this up, if I ever saw him again. And I hoped I wouldn’t.

  3. Why was there a frozen penguin in my trunk? I explained that his name was Reggie and that this penguin wrangler owed me a penguin because his live penguins had attacked and killed my dead penguin, whose name was Sneezy on account of the fact that I had seven penguins named after the seven dwarfs.

  That shut them up for almost ten seconds.

  Anyway, now the crow was destroyed and all opposing parties were dead. Bret, MacTeague, Tex, and Flip were all dead. Only the pygmies remained, and they’d lost their leader, Flip. So I was satisfied that this whole thing was over. However, the attending Steve McGarretts, Dannos, and the Five-O crew were not satisfied. They approached the issue of what the carny crew wanted at least thirty times. And I replied at least thirty times that I still had no idea what the unemployed traveling freak-show types wanted the crow for, or why it was valuable.

  They finally left, convinced, I think, only that they needed to come up with some new needles of evidence to poke holes in the balloon that was my story.

  After they’d left, Angie walked in with a guy named Frank Franks. No lie. He was a lawyer, one that actually cost money, and I gave Angie a sour look when I surmised that this shyster was going to fleece me. I’m suspicious of police, if for no other reason than they’re always suspicious of me, but I’m not crazy about lawyers either. Remember Public Defender Phil? What a gem he was. Anyway, my prejudice was slightly assuaged by this guy Franks. First thing I liked about him was that he was trim and looked like a Marine. I’ve got a lot of respect for those who serve their country, and Marines have done more than their share. And unlike the cops, he seemed to get it right out of the box. He got it that Angie and I were victims. Which is what you’d expect from your lawyer, sure. But he only needed it all explained once and didn’t care one whit about Reggie or anything other than the salient details, like lack of motive or evidence against us. What’s more, he said he’d have us on our way back to New York the next day. So he told me what I wanted to hear. If he delivered, so much the better.

  Franks gave a casual salute and left. Angie and I were alone for the first time since the ambulance ride. She looked exhausted, circles under her eyes, and wasn’t without her own bumps and scrapes. Ever have duct tape put over your mouth and then ripped off? You could still see the squared edges around her mouth. She was freckled with little blisters on her arms and face where burning ash had singed her flesh.

  But thankfully, the nurses had managed to get the red ink off my face so I no longer looked like Krusty the Clown.

  Angie tucked her hair behind one ear, and as she looked down at me, her brow furrowed.

  I smiled. “I’m going to be fine, Angie. We’ll be back home tomorrow night.”

  “I just feel like this is all my fault somehow.”

  “Your fault?” I snorted. “How do you figure?”

  “Well, I was the one, when we picked up the skins from the state police, who said we should go back to Gunderson’s, to Bermuda. If we’d only just gone home the way you wanted to . . .”

  I took her hand. “Sugar lips, we’re a team. There’s no me or you, just us. A year from now, we’ll look back on this and—well, maybe we won’t laugh. It’s been an adventure, though, hasn’t it?”

  She was working her tear ducts with her fingertips, trying to stop them.

  “All for what? That stupid crow. What did they want it for, anyway? We didn’t even find that out.”

  “Who cares, at this point?” I wasn’t about to start in on the kving-kie. No way. Next thing you know, she’d be out the door and on a flight to Korea. “Look, we escaped with our lives, my stuff, and even that nut Otto, all roughly intact. Lemme tell you, that guy Otto, for all his smoking in the house and wacky behavior, he came in real handy. Though I’m glad to know he’s been separated from that gun. You know, his mother gave that to him. Or at least that’s what he said.”

  I was trying to get her mind off the guilty jag. Wasn’t working.

  “And then the thing with the gallbladders a while back. I got you into that mess too.”

  Time for reverse psychology.

  “Well, you’re right, you did almost get me killed that time. Ow!”

  She punched me in the shoulder. A real wallop too.

  “It’s not funny, Garth!”

  She turned to the window, and silence overcame us, boxers in their corners waiting for the bell. During the intermission, I mused about the job offer. My guilt could certainly compete with hers. Maybe even cancel it out. I’d started composing my opening remarks and overall gambit when Otto burst into the room. Sometimes he had perfect timing.

  “Garv, my friend!” He grabbed me by the face with his good hand. The other hand was wrapped in bandages. “How’s lookink?”

  I yowled—he was squeezing my burns. “You’re killing me!”

  “My Got!” He pointed at me. “Not lookink. Yangie, please to tell me my friend Garv not killed.”

  She didn’t say anything, didn’t turn, which Otto took as a bad sign. Falling to his knees, he literally howled, and broke into the most ferocious, soul-rending wailing I think I’ve ever witnessed. Imagine a coyote, a full moon, a brisk night, and a passing fire engine. Stirred from her reverie, Angie wheeled around and tried to calm him, to explain that I wasn’t dying. But he was overboard. Off the deep end. Piloting a sub far below the Arctic ice. In a diving bell at the bottom of the Mariana Trench. Fathoms under Loch Ness with the monster.

  It would have been comical had the ruckus not drawn a crowd of angry nurses, orderlies, and doctors who seemed to hold me accountable for this outburst, virtually dragging him out of the room by his heels, kicking and screaming. Angie, of course, went with them, still doing her best to quiet the tormented Russian wolf.

  I heard his paroxysms trail off down the elevator and then outside in front of the hospital and for three blocks as Angie drove him somewhere to chill out.

  Whew.

  I hadn’t slept much, as you might imagine. I’d no sooner get Sandman in my eyes than Belle Beverly’s voice would surge up like a cauldron of magma in my subconscious. If that’s not the stuff nightmares are made of, I don’t know what is. I used to sorta like Belle’s songs too, especially the “Mambo Rumba Two-Hand Jive.”

  At least the crow was away from me for good. Somehow, that thing was the cause, directly or indirectly, of everything that had happened.

  That’s when Renard walked into my hospital room.

  Holding the evidence bag with the crow in it.

/>   Renard didn’t even ask if he could come in. Just made himself at home in the chair next to my bed, his blue plaid hat in his lap.

  I sighed. “I thought you guys were through with me today.”

  A slight smile played on his lips, which told me he wasn’t going to deign to reply.

  “I have just a few more small questions. If you’re up to it.”

  “And if I said I wasn’t, would it stop you from asking them?”

  “This Flip, the freak: Was he after you or the crow when he happened to fall out the window?”

  I stared at the ceiling. “Didn’t notice. All I was looking at was the knife.”

  “Were you holding the crow?”

  “When?”

  “When the two of you went toward the window.”

  I glanced over, and he was looking at the crow remnants, not me.

  “I don’t remember. A lot was happening, the room was on fire,” I said flatly, as I had said before for the full audience. “Look, we just went over all this.”

  He sucked his cheeks, stroking the feather in his hat for a moment until his chocolate, half-lidded eyes lifted to mine.

  “You really don’t know what this is about, do you?”

  “Look, Renard, you have the bird. It’s all yours. Go test it, get the FBI to figure out what this is all about. Me? I’m through. So leave me alone already.”

  I detected the slightest glow in those damnable dark eyes. There was something else going on.

  He looked away.

  “We’ll run some tests on this.” He waved the bag nonchalantly before dropping it into his briefcase and locking it. “Where will you stay when they release you tomorrow?”

  I felt like telling him off, bragging about how my mouthpiece Frank Franks was going to be sending me back home. But I was afraid I’d jinx it.

  “A motel, somewhere.”

  He tucked the briefcase under his arm and went to the exit. Before the door closed behind him, I heard Renard say: “We’ll find you.”