Stuffed (6 page)

I concentrated and managed to read the e-mail. He’d set up an interview for me the day after next, at 8:00
A.M.,
at their offices downtown.

“What made you think I’d be available at this time?” I waved the paper.

“Are you?”

“Well . . .”

“Look, Garth, these openings don’t come up often. You’re exactly the kind of guy they need to help their department crack down on the trade of endangered species. You’d do very much what you do now: travel around to all these little stores, and to some big ones, and report the violators.”

I groaned.

“This is a job with the U.S. government, Garth. Can you say
pension? Health plan? 401K?
Angie could be on your insurance plan. Just go, and if you decide it’s not for you, then turn it down. But once you make your choice, you’re going to have to stick with it and be happy.”

“I’ll go,” I moaned. “I’m sorry, Pete, and I’m grateful to you for your efforts. But mostly I’m conflicted, you know that.”

Pete punched me in the shoulder. “Okay,
Señor
Carson. But if you ask me, you take all this way too seriously. Do whatever you feel is right and no regrets. Life is too short. Hey—” He fished through a pocket and handed me a slip of paper. “Maybe this will cheer you up. When you said over the phone you had a white crow in the lot that was stolen, it rang a bell.”

The document he’d given me was from some sort of Internet search vehicle and read:
MOOSE HEAD 4 SALE: MUST GO. U HAUL. NORTHEAST U.S. (888) 901–4123.

I smiled. “Hey, a cheap moose head!”

“Not that.
Below that.”

I read on:
WANT MY WHITE CROW BACK. No questions asked, finder’s fee. P.O. Box 34, Wells ME 04090.

“Egads. Another white crow. That is quite a coincidence. But this moose head . . . if they say
U HAUL
it sounds big. And
MUST GO
means cheap.”

“Still hooked on cheap moose heads, eh?”

“I’m not without my vices.” A cheap—but good—moose head is like a dream. A fantasy, perhaps—my criteria are pretty demanding.

Antlers: Perhaps the most important part of a moose. They should be large, more than sixty inches, with expansive palms and well-curved tines, no bullet holes. The antlers should be masterful, imposing, threatening.

Pelt: Egads, do I see a lot of baked moose heads that have been mounted over the fireplace. Stick your finger between the hair on the neck and press. It should give without cracking. Pet the moose. No crunching, no falling hair. As if taxidermy isn’t transient enough as it is, a dried-out mount of any kind is ruined and effectively worthless.

Ears & Dewlap: Whole, free of cracks, glue, or bug shucks. Ears are one of the first things to get damaged on any mount, and next to noses and maybe cat lips they’re the most prone to drying and crumbling.

Eyes, Nose, Lips: I can live with small cracks. Patch them up with plastic wood, paint them black. But shriveled facial derma is a distortion nobody can repair well.

Pose: Chin up, snout slightly turned, ears forward, and by all appearances alert to the hunter’s approach. Or, if I could find it, a grunting moose, mouth open, tongue partially extended. That would approach moose-head quintessence.

Of course, if I really wanted the damn thing, I could find it. I could go to a world-class taxidermist and buy a museum-quality mount. I could do that, and pay full price. But I’m a dealer. It’s more than an occupation. It’s a creed. I live for deals. And to me, moose heads have come to represent the ultimate deal, though perhaps an unattainable one. You see, over the last fifteen years, people claim to have seen—at a garage sale, a thrift store, an estate sale, the Salvation Army—a moose head selling for fifty dollars. The result is that I can’t bring myself to buy a moose for more than that because I’m deluded, foolishly convinced that any day I might just stumble upon the mythical cheap head. Or better still: Where is the estranged wife of the great white hunter who thinks her dear departed’s giant moose is a worthless monstrosity and will
pay me
fifty bucks to haul it away?

Silly? Well, I prefer to think of it as a natural part of the human condition. Everybody seems to be searching for something—a lottery jackpot, consensual sex, a great lawn, true love—that is so improbable it crosses over from seething aspiration into apotheosis.

“Garth? Hello?”

“Sorry, Pete, I was just—”

“Yup, I know, dreaming about the perfect moose head. I thought the white-crow ad would interest you.”

“It does, it does. Where’d you find it?”

“We have a special Web program that searches eBay and online classifieds nationwide. It looks for animals on sale that might be protected. The only reason I saw the crow was because it was next to an African pelt ad. And white crows are rare enough that I didn’t forget it.”

“That is weird. This crow ad was dated three weeks ago. Think someone is out to corner the white-crow market?” Of course, I was talking crow but still thinking about the moose.

“Hard to say, hombre.” Pete twirled his mustache thoughtfully. “Seems like the thieves who took the crow, this clipping, the college kid in Vermont—albino crows are suddenly downright popular. Funny they’d take all your other critters if they went to the trouble to send that Korean fellah to tip you off. Brainteaser. Let me know what you dig up in your investigation.”

“Investigation? No, sir.” I showed him my palms, pushing the notion away. “That gallbladder stuff I did for you guys was the end of it. I’ve got no love of danger.”

He smiled. “C’mon, don’t kid. Admit it. You were pumped after we busted those bladder guys.”

“If you recall, I ended up gun-whipping you.”

“By accident.” He crinkled his nose and waved it off like I’d merely nailed him with a spitball. “That was nothing. I mean, if you shot me, I’d have been a little peeved, especially if I died. A gun-whipping? Could happen to anybody. Anybody who’s pumped, that is.”

“You got me all wrong, Pete. I leave the cops-and-robbers stuff to you, Renard, and Walker. Let me guess. Even now you’re probably into something that’s liable to seriously jeopardize your health. Other than scorpions, that is?”

“All very hush-hush.” Pete leaned in. “Something’s going down in Chinatown. Something big.”

“Yeah? What’s it this time?”

He winced. “All I can tell you is that there’s some guys from Korea coming to town with alligator briefcases so full of money it looks like a Brinks truck crashed into the Everglades.”

“Could be almost anything. Ivory? Rhino horn?”

“Yeah, could be.” Pete shifted gears and raised his can. “Anyway, here’s to recovering your varmints.”

I raised my bottle and glanced up at Ernie bullying Spencer Tracy.

“Here’s to staying out of trouble.”

Chapter 6

T
wo days later, I returned to my apartment after my interview with U.S. Fish and Wildlife and found my phone ringing.

No, it wasn’t the Elks. I’d finally reached them and toted my giant bugler over to the Sheraton where their convention was being held.

No, it wasn’t the penguin wrangler telling me my birds were pecked to ruination. As far as I knew, his beasts were being kept at bay and my two-tone dwarfs were still A-OK.

No, it wasn’t the cheap-moose people. I’d left a message as soon as I got home from my lunch with Pete—not a peep. Probably snatched up already, dag nabbit.

It was the Massachusetts State Police. They’d found my stolen taxidermy in the safety net at a bridge rehabilitation project over the Connecticut River. I thought that pretty odd, and so did the Massachusetts State Police. But as you can imagine, my puzzlement was secondary to joyous relief at recovering my prime pelts. I didn’t waste any time pondering the whys or wherefores. After dancing around the apartment, whooping and kissing Fred on his cracked nose, I was out the door and headed north.

The weather was convertible-friendly, so Angie came along for the breather. She got a kiss too. I was in a kissing mood and gave her a few extras.

We had to swing by a TV studio farther up the West Side to drop off Aunt Jilly. She’s a standing bear Angie affectionately named after an aunt of hers. I never met the woman, but Angie claims she had thick black fur on her arms and beady yellow eyes. So up to the Network Theater we went. While Angie waited in the double-parked Lincoln, I wheeled Aunt Jilly into the stage entrance. I found the guy who writes the checks; he signed the rental agreement and handed over the deposit. By the time I got downstairs, Angie had circled the block twice to avoid a ticket.

Then we hit Peter Van Putin’s town house on the Upper East Side, where Angie ran inside and delivered her portfolio. I drummed my fingers on the steering wheel for half an hour before she came trotting down the steps.

“Sorry it took so long. But Peter was right there, and we got to talking. . . . Garth, it went really well, it was almost like the interview. We flipped through the portfolio together. . . .” She crossed fingers on both hands.

Angie had been trying to break into the high-end art jewelry scene for a long time, first on her own and then on the coattails of someone like this Van Putin character.

“Tremendous. You’ll probably get it, but don’t get your hopes up too high, okay? You’ve had disappointments before, so just take it easy.”

“You’re right.” She pinched her eyes tight like she was making a wish, an affectation that looks like something she picked up from
Bewitched.
She can be Samantha anytime she wants, but don’t expect me to be Darrin. “Whatever happens, happens.”

We charged across the 97th Street Transverse through Central Park, back to the West Side Highway, up the Henry Hudson Parkway, and got our butts outta town before noon. We were approaching the Henry Hudson Bridge before we said much of anything.

“Where did you go so early this morning?”

“Hmm? Oh, I had to go down to the DEC about permits. Get there early, avoid lines.”

“You wore a tie.”

“Hmm?”

“I said, you wore a tie.”

“Yeah, well . . . they treat you better if you wear a tie.”

Angie didn’t say anything to that. She just made a humming sound that I knew meant she wasn’t completely satisfied with my answer.

Why was I lying? Well, I wasn’t lying, was I? I
was
down at the DEC. And the job did concern permits. And at an interview, they do treat you better if you wear a tie. So it wasn’t a lie. But I didn’t much like telling her a half-truth either.

See, if I told her about it, she would give an opinion. Or even if she didn’t, I’d read something into whatever she said, thinking she wanted me to take the job or not take it. Then, if I did what I thought she wanted me to do and I regretted it, I might hold it against her, or stick with a job I hated to please her, which might lead to more resentment. Then again, if I did what I thought she didn’t want me to do and I liked my choice and she didn’t, then she might resent me. Of course, she might encourage me to do what she thought I wanted rather than what she really wanted, and if I countered by doing the opposite of what she said she wanted and it turned out badly, we might resent each other. Or not. Whatever—it made my head hurt working all the permutations. I felt the decision was mine alone to make in the vacuum of my own panic.

They had offered me the job on the spot. It paid roughly what I was making now
plus
the benefits. How could I turn it down? I had a week to let them know.

“Tell me again how they said your stuff ended up in a safety net?” Angie smiled into the sun, the wind whipping her hair. She looks great in sunglasses of all kinds, sort of the way women can look great in all kinds of hats. Sunglasses were her accessory vice, and she owned dozens. Catty black shades with rhinestones had been chosen for this trip.

“Dunno.” I gulped, suppressing thoughts of
the job.
“Someone must have thrown it off the bridge. I figure it wasn’t for safekeeping. Man, I can’t believe the luck of it. Getting all my stuff back. Never thought I’d see it again. Wanna find the E-ZPass?”

“How do you mean?” She opened the glove compartment, found the transponder, and held it up to the windshield.

“How do I mean what?” The tollgate flipped up.

“Throwing it off the bridge.”

“What I meant was, someone was trying to throw my stuff into the Connecticut River and didn’t see the netting. Animal lifers?”

Angie adjusted her sunglasses and made a sour face, the one she makes at a crossword puzzle that doesn’t fully cooperate. “Drove a long way just to dump the goods. Most of those animal lifers want their stunts publicized. No publicity in just dumping it off a bridge. And they usually break into places when nobody is there. These guys were too confrontational. Didn’t seem like PETA types to me.”

I bobbed my head in agreement and gunned the Lincoln onto 9A. “Well, whoever they were, they took a greater risk getting caught by going out on that bridge with all my animals. Why not just bury them in the woods somewhere? Or burn them somewhere publicly so it would make the news?”

“Hmmm.” Angie nodded. “It’s like they just wanted to make the loot disappear, y’know? Say they panicked. Or maybe the bridge was on their way somewhere else, or they were just driving and had this impulse.”

“Why go to all that trouble?” I adjusted the rearview mirror. “And why take the booty so far away?”

“Unless this was near where they live, or, like I said, on the way somewhere.”

“So you’re suggesting they came all the way to New York from Massachusetts to case our apartment and steal my livelihood? Some shiftless Gloucester fishermen happen to be thumbing through the Manhattan yellow pages and say, ‘Hey, let’s rip this guy off.’ Quite a stretch, sweetie.”

“I’m just thinking out loud.” She stuck her tongue out at me. “Did the police say whether anything was damaged?”

“All he said was that it was in plastic garbage bags, except the tusks, of course. Should at least have been kept reasonably dry.”

Our quizzing subsided into mutual perplexity, so Angie set upon the latest
New York Times
crossword book as I took us from the Cross County to the Hutchinson Parkway to 684 to Brewster, then headed east on I-84. It was a gorgeous day, uncommonly dry and warm for late May. Angie besieged me with crossword clues for a couple hours. She answered most of them herself, of course, but I miraculously got three in a row. Across, three-letter word for percentage:
VIG.
Down, beginning with V, a nine-letter word for reprisal:
VENGEANCE.
Across, beginning with G, a six-letter word for a penguin’s nest:
GABLIT.
You could see where my mind was. We passed through Hartford, and once on I-91 we off-ramped for a pit stop. I filled the Lincoln’s tank and Angie emptied hers. Back on the road in a jiffy.

“Y’know,” Angie began, pointing a Slim Jim at me, “it could be that the thieves were on their way to sell the booty, like in Rangely or something.”

I taxied the Lincoln onto an entrance ramp. “Still doesn’t explain why they dumped the stuff.”

“I wonder if the crow got all futzed up,” Angie pouted. All I could envision was someone with a hacksaw cutting up my tusks, or my beautiful tiger rug sitting in the mud on the bottom of the Connecticut River. I had dismissed the loss of the fifty-dollar crow, not to mention the issue of whether anybody would go to such extremes to possess it. Until, that is, we reached the Massachusetts State Police barracks. My possessions were all there and in good condition, even the tusks. Everything except for the crow. I looked up at the officer holding the pen and clipboard out to me.

“Is this all of it?”

“Yessir. Damn lucky they were inspecting the bridge this month and that net was there, I’ll say.”

“But there was no crow.”

“A what?”

“A crow, a white crow in a bell jar?” Angie chimed.

The trooper looked suspicious and jabbed the clipboard at me. I took it.

“Just what you see here. Sign the top, bottom, and middle. Press hard.”

Angie and I stowed all ten leaf bags of beasts in the Lincoln and drove off to find an early dinner. Along the way, we crossed a bridge over the Connecticut River.

I pointed to a sign. “Hey, this is the bridge.”

“French King Bridge?”

“Yup, that’s the one he said.”

“Pull over.” Angie waved at a rest area on the far side of the bridge. It was connected to a pedestrian walkway that followed the length of the bridge. There was a terrific view up the river, and the bridge seemed monstrously high. I had trouble looking down without vertigo kicking in. But I looked long enough to see the net where my taxidermy had been found, about forty feet down. Five’ll get you ten Liberty Valance and his thugs dropped their ill-gotten gains at night and didn’t even see the net.

Back on the road, we quickly found one of those humdrum middle-America places called Bob’s Family Restaurant. The kind of die-stamped joint that’s in every mall from Miscoganie to Missoula. Once outside New York, the eateries are so repetitive from Palookaville to Palookaville, you’d swear you were driving in circles.

A young waitress came by and took our orders, and when I asked if I could have my fries well done, she said, “Sure, mister.”

As she sauntered away, I turned to Angie. “I ask you, why am I suddenly
mister
? Not
bub,
not
fellah,
not
sir.
But
mister.
Do I look like a
mister
to you?”

“This is weird, Garth.”

“I know. I don’t feel like a
mister.”

“Could you stop obsessing for a moment? I was talking about the crow. The crow is weird, id-jit.” She straw-slurped her cherry cola.

“I’ll get you another present.” I gave her my squinty, vexed look. “The point is that—”

“I know: You got your treasures back. What I mean is—”

“Right, right—that the crow was missing. Nothing to do about that. I feel damn lucky to have gotten any of it back. I’ll assume the loss as a sacrifice to the gods.” I knew where Angie was trying to go with this train of thought and vainly attempted to steer her away.

“Lucky, sure, but you should feel spooked too. Those guys obviously came all the way from somewhere up here to swipe that crow. Like Jim Kim said.”

“There are at least a dozen other explanations—”

“Name ’em.”

“Okay.” I held up a hand and began pointing to my fingers. “They threw the crow in the river separately and it missed the net. It was heavy and tore through the safety net. They dropped the crow somewhere else. One of the construction workers who found my stuff kept the crow. The burglars decided to keep the crow. . . .”

She grabbed my pinky. “That net is meant to catch hefty construction workers who slip and fall, ya big dummy. Can’t see how the bell jar would tear through. Don’t you think it might be that they took the other mounts just to make it look like they weren’t stealing the crow?”

“Like the crow was packed with cocaine or something? Microfilm? What?”

“Garth, don’t get like that with me.”

“Like what?” If Pete Durban is a terrier, Angie can be a pit bull when it comes to puzzles, brainteasers, and the like. I sometimes kid her she’d be better off hitched to Alex Trebek. He drives a convertible, I’m sure.

“Sarcastic. And blind. It’s just like that gallbladder thing. You didn’t want to see what was going on because you were afraid to find out.”

“Damn right, Angie. And I’ve got a lot to be afraid of if that Fletcher guy came all the way to our house to steal that crow.” I glanced at some gawkers at the next table and stuck my tongue out at them. I lowered my voice. “If there are Colombians, Nazis, cultists, or terrorists who want the crow that bad, they can have it, because after what almost happened to us—”

“Fletcher?” She arched an eyebrow. I hadn’t bothered to tell her about Frat Boy.

“What?” It had occurred to me in the days since the robbery that maybe, just maybe, one of the attackers had been that Bret Fletcher who tried to fight me for the crow back up there in Bermuda. But that was pretty damn far-fetched.