The Case of the Dirty Bird (2 page)

“It was the broom,” Dunc said. “Mrs. Burdgett’s broom. She was wild with it.”

She’d broken most of the lamps, some
knickknacks, a porcelain figure, and a front window, and the two boys had followed the cat out and hadn’t been back.

“I’ve been doing a little research,” Dunc said.

“That’s how all this started, remember?”

“No, now listen. Parrots are always associated with who?”

“Fertilizer companies?”

“Come on, be serious. Who do you always think of when you think of parrots?”

Amos frowned, thinking. “Well, I guess sailors.”

“Yeah—but what
kind
of sailor?”

“One that stinks?”

“Amos …”

“All right, I don’t know.”

“A pirate. You always see parrots on pirates’ shoulders, don’t you? I mean in pictures and things?”

Amos thought about it, nodded. “All right, sometimes. But you also see them in beer commercials.”

“No—not this time. Now listen. Here’s this old, old parrot. Maybe a hundred and fifty years old. He’s so old—”

“He stinks.”

“Amos. Quit that. He’s so old he could have belonged to a pirate. We live on a river not too far from an ocean. So what if he belonged to a pirate and the pirate lived a long time ago and maybe he knows something?”

“Like where a buried treasure is, because he said ‘treasure map.’ Is that what you’re saying?”

“Well—it could be.”

Amos shook his head. “Remember now, remember what happened the time you bought a metal detector and we were going to find that treasure left by the Spanish conquistadors?”

“So it didn’t work out.” Dunc shrugged. “I can’t always be right.”

“Always?
Always
be right? We must have found close to a million old beer cans and bottle caps and nails. I don’t remember a single bit of gold from the Spanish conquistadors.”

“Well, that was a magazine article. They’re not always too dependable.”

“And this parrot is?”

“I think so. I mean I think it’s worth a shot. He said ‘treasure map,’ and he seems to respond to certain code words.”

“Those ‘code words’ could get us arrested, or at least get me restricted until I’m about forty. The last time I said the one that I used when I hit my elbow and my dad heard me, I was spitting Ivory for a month.”

“I thought he was more progressive than that.”

“Right. He’s fine on letting me do things alone, but if I swear—well, I’d rather not think about it.”

“So I’ll do the swearing. You’ll see, it’ll be different this time.”

“Well …”

“Come on, let’s go back to the pet store and see the parrot again. Maybe the owner has a list of the people who have owned the parrot. That might help. I mean, if it
was
a treasure and we missed it, you’d never forgive yourself.”

“Well …”

“Then, too, there’s Melissa.”

“What about her?”

“Well, if you’re a millionaire or maybe even more, she might take notice of you.”

Amos rubbed the back of his neck. “Yeah. I could get a car, a red sports car, and learn to drive or have somebody drive me until I was old enough for a license. It could work.”

And Dunc knew he had him.

Dunc stared at the parrot.

The parrot stared at Dunc. If anything, it looked worse than it had the time before. It seemed to have lost more feathers and looked to Amos like a large, plucked,
ugly
chicken.

The bottom of the cage was half an inch deep in what the parrot dumped.

And it smelled worse than before.

Dunc tried another word, one he’d seen written on the back of a biker’s T-shirt. He whispered it cautiously, looking around the store first to make certain nobody was within hearing range.

The parrot ignored him, looked away, looked back, belched, reached up with one claw, and delicately scratched a runny sore on his neck.

“He’s not answering you,” Amos said.

“Thanks. I figured that out.”

“That’s the fourth word you’ve used. I didn’t know you knew that one. What does it mean?”

“I haven’t the slightest idea. It was on the back of a biker’s jacket, and I didn’t think I should stop him and ask.”

“Can we go now? I’m worried somebody will see us and think we’re crazy—even crazier than we are.”

“Maybe …”

“What?”

“Maybe it’s you. Maybe you have to be the one who says things to him. It’s not just the words—he’s coded to you. Sometimes they respond to voices, patterns. I read that in research. Maybe you sound like one of his owners—maybe even the pirate.”

“No.”

“Amos—we’ve got to try this. It was your
voice that made him talk. Just try it once, and if it doesn’t work, we’ll go. I promise.”

“Just once? And you promise?”

“Absolutely.”

“All right.” Amos said a word he had heard his uncle Alfred say when his mother ran over his foot with the car while backing out of the garage. Amos did not say it as loud as Uncle Alfred had said it—Uncle Alfred practically removed paint from surrounding buildings when he yelled it. Instead, Amos held his nose, leaned toward the parrot, and whispered it.

The effect was immediate. The parrot belched again—about two points on the Richter scale—and looked directly at Amos and said:

“Treasure map.”

“See? It’s you—you’re the one!” Dunc almost jumped up and down. “Try another one.”

Amos hesitated. “You said one.…”

“Oh, come on, you have to do it now.”

Amos knew he was right. He turned his face away, took another deep breath, held it, leaned forward, and said one that was in
a movie about two truckers, a herd of wild pigs, and a monster that lived in Cleveland and ate tourists.

Again the effect was instant. The parrot burped, looked at Amos with something close to fondness, and said:

“Boxes of riches, boxes of riches.”

Dunc dug frantically in his pockets for paper and a pen. The store owner was out for the afternoon and the woman taking his place was busy with customers, but she took the time to give Dunc a piece of scrap paper and a ball-point.

“Treasure map,” the parrot was saying again as Dunc came back, “boxes of riches, boxes of riches, a nineteen sixty-two Chevrolet Impala is only seventeen hundred dollars and is styled just right for you.”

“What?” Dunc was writing as fast as he could. “What was that?”

Amos looked at him. “It sounded like a television commercial for a nineteen sixty-two Chevrolet Impala. Weren’t they the ones with the big fins?”

“A commercial? What did you say to him?”

“Don’t come at me like that—it wasn’t my fault. I just used the word that’s written in Pete Fulner’s locker.”

“Well, don’t use it again.”

But it was too late. The parrot only stopped for a moment, burped, then started again.

“Sarah is a lot prettier than Judy, but she wants to get married. General Electric refrigerators are the only ones that self-defrost and save you all that ugly chipping and steaming eight paces in from the tunnel mouth but this is why
I
chose to feed my family Chef Boyardee spaghetti and meat-balls.”

“There,” Dunc said. “What was that?”

“More commercials, I think—refrigerators and canned food and something about girls.”

“No, that other thing. Something about eight paces in from the tunnel mouth.” Dunc had been writing furiously, trying to get everything the parrot said as soon as he said it, and he’d missed it.

He shook his head. “This is no good.
We’re going to have to get a cassette recorder and come back.”

“Dunc …”

“No, really. We’re going to miss something if we don’t. Let’s run home and get my Walkman.”

He was out the door before Amos could tell him that the parrot was starting to speak again. Amos followed him, leaving the parrot who was busily explaining the virtues of something called Brylcreem and about how a little dab would do him.

The parrot looked at Amos.

Amos looked at the parrot.

Dunc watched the parrot watching Amos. “Go for it.”

They had had to wait another day. When they returned to the store, the owner was there again and Dunc decided that he wouldn’t like the boys standing in front of the parrot cage whispering and holding up a tape recorder.

“Hit him with a good one.”

Amos shook his head. “You’re wacko, do you know that?”

“Do it!”

Amos tried one he’d seen written on a girl’s tennis shoe at school.

“Willywack?” Dunc said. “What’s that?”

“It’s a word.”

“But it’s not the right kind of word.”

“Probably the greatest benefit of owning a new nineteen fifty-eight Buick is the status it lends your life,” the parrot said. “You can put margarine on it and it tastes just like bread two paces left and one down I think Sharon might go out with me—”

Dunc scrambled to get the recorder going and held it up.

“—diamonds are forever and say what you really want to say if you want really clean, white teeth use Ipana go for the gold smoke Old Gold cigarettes flash, flash, the Japanese have attacked Pearl Harbor follow the line, follow the line twice as much for a nickel too you know Pepsi is the drink for you—”

“Isn’t he ever going to shut up?” Amos said.

“Shh. Let him talk.” Dunc had an intent
look on his face as he watched the parrot, listening to each word.

“—fresh eggs are eleven cents a dozen and you can clean your drains without a brush use Saniflush—”

For two hours.

Dunc held the recorder up until the cassette ran out, turned the tape over, ran that side until it was gone, and the parrot was still rattling on. Finally, after two and a half hours, when Dunc was on his second tape and Amos was wandering around the store and so bored he had started to watch gerbils, which he hated, and had memorized everything he saw, even the name of a dog wormer medicine, finally, the parrot stopped.

Dunc turned the recorder off. “He’s done.”

Amos came back over to the cage, smiled maliciously at Dunc, and said a word he’d seen spray-painted on the ceiling of the school bus when they were on a field trip.

“Tickets are on sale now for the Frank
Sinatra concert which is impossible to tell from the real thing I’d walk a mile for a Camel—”

Dunc raised his arm again—it was like lead—and hit the record switch, and Amos wandered off to the video game in the other end of the mall to watch Hank Evvert get creamed by the gorgons on Gorgon Mania.

He’d been there an hour when Dunc walked in. His arm hung limply at his side, the Walkman dangling by the cord.

“He’s done,” Dunc said.

“I could come and do another word,” Amos said.

“No, I mean really done. He started to repeat the original Chevrolet Impala ad. But there’s information there, I know it. Now we just have to go home and translate it, get the good stuff out of the commercials.”

“Oh, good,” Amos said. “We can listen to him again.”

But Dunc was already gone, out the door and headed for the exit from the mall.

Amos waited a moment, shook his head, and followed.

It wasn’t, he thought, like he had any choice. What if there really
was
pirate treasure?

“All right, I think we’ve got something.”