Pipsqueak (3 page)

Chapter 4

W
hile my profession as taxidermy broker doesn’t seem the obvious fulcrum on which crimes would pivot, it has nonetheless happened twice in my past. Those episodes were both the result of my tangles with black marketeers who deal in such items as bear gallbladders, gorilla remains, and rare Asian wild bovids.

With Roger Elk’s help, I managed to stay out of the hoosegow this time, proving once again that the best thing about advancing years is wisdom. Okay, so I’m only forty-five and a half, but it feels (and is) a quantum advance over thirty-five and a half.

I’m not some kind of intrepid paladin or do-gooder, and I do my best to avoid trouble. But I keep being drawn into the designs of some inexorable fate. The T3 murder of Tyler Loomis was a third strike, a blow to the law of averages, a less-than-subtle suggestion that Garth Carson is jinxed. What were the chances that stopping at a Podunk shop would turn so perilous? By the same token, and after much reflection, I did an admirable job trying to convince myself that the chances of ever running into such a calamitous situation again were astronomical.

Of course, in the back of my mind, obtuse reasoning nurtured fresh doubt. Based strictly on the law of averages, auto insurance rates should go
down
after you have an accident, not up. I mean, if you have an accident once in ten years, it stands to reason that you probably won’t have another one for about ten years. If the universe is merely an entropy chowder, with no kismet chunks lurking in it, then the insurers should actually be raising their rates for those who’ve never had an accident because they’re obviously due for one. As I stare into my own bowl of soup, I suspect Mutual of Omaha must have a special insight into the cosmos that they’re not sharing.

Anyway, it was months after T3, late October in New York, and the time when street trees take their turn to rob the citizenry of fall colors. Sorry, pal: green to brown, no fancy stuff.

On this particular October evening, Angie had her back to me, hunched over her jeweler’s bench in the cubicle across the room. She was annealing some titanium earring components. The strap to her goggles fanned her sassy blond hair, and flickers from her torch popped like blue flashbulbs. As a professional jeweler, Angie does piecework at home for various manufacturers, gem setters, and art jewelers. Her current order was for the latter, a hoity-toity bauble involving rose diamonds and brown biwa pearls that to my discerning eye were dead ringers for Raisinets.

At my own workstation, I was putting my head into a lion’s mouth. Well, practically. My forehead rested against Fred’s nose while I made final adjustments to a newly installed tongue. I not only collect taxidermy but also spend a good deal of time restoring stuff acquired on the cheap. Fred (so named for the sidekick in the
Super Chicken
cartoons) has been in the family since I was a kid, a venerable member of Grandpa Carson’s trophy collection who wasn’t earning his keep. To rent my stuff for photo shoots, stage productions, TV, and the movies, a piece has to be presentable. My lion Fred is one of the early full-body “lunge” mounts, his hind feet planted on a wheeled base, his front paws extended and bristling with claws. Fred was mounted by a renowned British taxidermist in the fifties but suffered from shrinkage in the lip area, as many cat mounts do over time. Also, the phalanx folds on his claws were flaking and most of his whiskers were gone. It was time to update his choppers, resculpt his lips, cut back those cuticles, plant new whiskers, and darken his eyeliner.

“Anyway, Peter is being completely asinine about this thing for Madeline.” Peter was a jewelry auteur and working for him always made her a little batty. “He drove the pearl suppliers bananas over matching pairs. He keeps bringing them back, wanting to look at the ones he saw the day before. ‘No, not those, those other ones. You know the ones I mean.’ And of course, they don’t, and neither do I. Peter actually had me pop some pearls out and try to return damaged mabes. And I’ve shaped, reshaped, and de-shaped enough titanium settings to build a nose cone for an Atlas rocket! Yoo-hoo, Peter! I’m being paid by the piece, not the hour! Idjit.”

Angie’s default expression most often centers on a smile, though I’ll grant you, she isn’t always happy. I’d venture to say her smile just has a lot more versatility than most people’s. Put a hard squint with it, and she’s turning mordant. With one eye almost closed you’ve got chagrin. Forehead wrinkled: the smile of incredulity. Lopsided: tenderhearted. Eyes closed, breathing deeply, a gentle curve to her lips? Angie sleeping.

“One heck of a purple Atlas nose cone, though,” I said, trying to lighten her mood. Anodizing titanium brings out some stunning colors.

“A blue nose cone that he can shove up his”—her left eye tweaked closed—“nose.”

While facially expressive, Angie is one of those rare types who can’t bring themselves to make a lewd or untoward remark. And she won’t tolerate it from others either. A plumber came one day to clear a drain, and every other word from his mouth had four letters, most beginning with
F
and rhyming with
truck
. Angie shamed him into editing his language, and without his copious though limited modifiers, he was effectively a mute. It’s not like Angie’s a prig. She’s just principled and more than a little intrepid, a combination I find endearing and companionable.

“I assume you’ll charge him not just for the final piece but how many times you made it.”

“Doubtful.” She squinted. “He gives me the vaguest of direction, drawings done on cupcake liners, and expects me to read his mind. I try to call, to talk, to discuss it further, to show him some sketches, but he’s too bleepin’ busy planning his spiritual Khmer ‘liftoff’ trip to Angkor Wat. Then I bring him the piece by his deadline and he says I did it all wrong. I won’t even start about how long it takes to get a check out of Peter.”

“Then why work for him? You’ve got plenty of other clients, and it’s the busy preholiday season.”

“Two words, Garth: Princess Madeline.” Her grin tightened, eyes twinkling. “Earrings made by Angie, worn by royalty.”

I shrugged. “Yeah, but Mocano isn’t even a country, it’s a principality, for Pete’s sake.” I wiped my hands on a rag and took a step back from my work, giving Fred’s chops a critical once-over. I bowed before the finished product.

“Hail, Princess of Mocano! Hail, Viscount of Pago Pago! Hail, Exchequer of Walla Walla!”

“About ten minutes ago, Garth, you said you’d make coffee,” Angie sighed, forehead wrinkling, smile growing up one side of her face. “So how about it, Sugar Lips?”

I shrugged at Fred. “Want coffee, Marquis de Fred? Oh, that’s right, it keeps you
lion
awake at night.” Angie groaned from somewhere behind me.

I exited my cubby into the living room, which is also the kitchen, sort of. We live in one of those funky old New York City apartments folks rhapsodize over without realizing how drafty and cranky they really are. Remember soda shops, the kind where bobby-soxers slurped malteds and swooned to Dion 45s on the jukebox? No, not like the lame
Happy Days
set: older, the kind that looks like an old bar but with a big marble counter, black and white checked floors, and booths by a storefront window. That’s our place. We sleep in what once was a storeroom, the soda bar is our kitchen/dining room, and the booth in the window is our meal nook. The center of the room, where Angie and I broke our backs removing the decrepit black and white tile, is reserved for a colossal collection of taxidermy and some overstuffed furniture acquired on Park Avenue. Not in a store on Park Avenue but actually on the street, a common foraging ground for those of us who want real furniture (as opposed to IKEA breakaway stuntman furniture) but not the accompanying price tag.

Every now and then, in good weather, we cruise Park Avenue, maybe Gramercy Park or the low teens around Fifth Avenue, looking for discarded furniture either to upgrade or add to the crew. We luck out often enough, particularly on Sunday evenings when the building superintendents put the stuff on the street for Monday trash pickup. No cat-piss sofas here. We’re talking primo castoffs from those who buy new furniture every year or so to fend off the charity-ball blues. (Many supers in doorman buildings have exquisite furnishings, more than they can use or give away.)

Behind our soda bar, there’s a whole array of stainless-steel built-in containers that once held ice cream and toppings. Now they hold coffees, sugar, cookies, crackers, etc. And where the Mixmaster probably sat is the coffee grinder and coffeemaker. I scooped, ground, filled, poured, and grabbed two mugs from the forty or so we have lined up in front of the huge, discolored mirror behind the bar. Why so many mugs? Ask the people who think they make the perfect gift.

“A guy stopped by looking for you today, Garth,” Angie yelled. “Forgot to tell you.”

“Who?”

“Said he’d stop by again. An old friend, he said.”

I didn’t like the sound of that. “What’d he look like?”

“Tweed suit, short hair. A slicker, that’s for sure.”

Didn’t ring any bells, except on the phone, which rang. I let the machine pick up.

“You’ve reached Carson Critter Rental. Leave a message and we’ll get back to you. Thanks.
Beep
.”

“Hello, this is Janine Wilson, Warner Brothers, and we’re doing a shoot over in Brooklyn? We’re kind of in a jam, and I was hoping—”

A distressed damsel with deep pockets? I picked up. “Sorry, I just walked in. This is Garth Carson. How can I help you?”

“Hi. We’re doing a picture up in Park Slope, and we’ve got this sporting-goods-store scene. You rent taxidermy, right?”

“Yup. Lemme guess: You’re looking for a stand-up bear, a deer head, a boar head too, perhaps, and then maybe something to sit on the counter like a beaver, otter, or wolverine?”

“Uh, yeah, something like that, you know, to make it look like a sporting-goods store.”

“Rental rates are structured by big, medium, and small. Full-body mounts like a stand-up bear or sailfish are big at $250. Most heads and fish under four feet are medium at $100. Squirrels, weasel, birds, and so on are small at $50. We rent by the day (or portion thereof) or by the week over five days. You can tell me exactly what you want or have me put together a variety based on how many you want of each category.”

“Thing is, we sort of need this right away. Do you deliver?”

I started untying my smock. “Delivery is included in the five boroughs with orders over two-fifty. But there’s a ten percent one-day surcharge for same-day service.”

“Whatever. How about two of each?”

“No preferences? Mammals, fish, birds? Mixed bag?”

“Mixed bag.”

“How many days?” My pen was poised over a pad.

“I dunno. Let’s just say a week.”

Zowie! $2,500 + 1,000 + 500 + surcharge = four thou and change. “Address?”

Minutes later, I brought Angie her full mug.

“Thanks.” She swiveled away from her bench, slid her goggles atop her head, and took the coffee. “Got work?”

“Warner Brothers, in Brooklyn, Park Slope.” I drained my coffee and went to the closet for some moving blankets and polystyrene logs.

“How many pieces?”

“Six. Two each, for a week.”

“Not bad!” Angie toasted the air with her coffee mug. “With the dreaded surcharge, no less.”

“You bet. Gimme a hand?”

“Sure.”

In about forty minutes we had the trailer loaded with the standing black bear, though we had him on his back on polystyrene logs and blankets like he was tucked in for the night. In bed with the bruin was a nasty full-body wild pig. In the wild, they go after snakes, so I always bring a snake mount to put in the pig’s mouth—no extra charge. Arranged among blankets in the Lincoln’s backseat I had a ram’s head, a barracuda, a twin squirrel mount, and a wall-mount pheasant.

Angie brushed some blanket fluff off her sweatshirt. “You’re set. Be home in an hour or so?”

“Not if I can help it,” said a tweed man sauntering toward us.

I was just a little thunderstruck. You know, just a little, like atop a castle in a storm holding a steel rod. I found no words, so the tweed man turned from me to Angie.

“Hi.” He put out a hand. “The name’s Nicholas. Nicholas . . .” He gave me a sly look. “. . . Palihnic. Garth and I go way back. Childhood friends.”

Angie sensed my shock but shook his hand cordially. “Hi. I’m Angie. You’ll have to excuse Garth, he’s just on his way—”

“Still with the dead animals.” Palihnic surveyed the car’s backseat and locked eyes with me, nodding. “Garth never really was much one for words, were you?”

“Hi, Nick,” I finally mumbled. “Where you been?”

“I don’t want to hold you up, Garth. You headed out somewhere? Why don’t I ride along, and we can catch up.”

“Yeah, sure.” I answered Angie’s stare with a glance and a wink to let her know nothing was wrong. “Let’s go.”

“Fine.” Nicholas paused before opening the passenger door and admired the Lincoln. “Still got your dad’s old car.” He gave me one of his big smarmy smiles. “He’d be proud.”