Bird Brained (26 page)

“For chrissakes, Porter. Don’t you have better things to do with your time?” Stevens snapped. “Like maybe focusing on your own work, for starters? You don’t see us jumping all over you feds. How about getting off the rag and giving us a break?”

I hung up without responding. At this point, I was ready to scan the Yellow Pages and see if there might be a group more willing to take the necessary action. Something like Dial-A-Vigilante.

I stopped at a local health food store and, after careful consideration, picked up a pack of whole-wheat, organic fig newton bars. It took only one tasteless bite to understand why they’d never made it to the shelves of my local grocery store. Faced with the dilemma of chucking them or chewing ’em, I polished off the fruit bars and made one last call.

“Get the hell off my leg, dammit!” yelled the voice in my ear.

Bambi could have been dealing with the dog, her kids, or any other bizarre entity in her life.

“Bambi? It’s Rachel. The police want you to come in and file a formal complaint against Willy,” I lied.

“Bullshit, they do,” Bambi responded without hesitation. “Don’t screw with me, Porter. They care about what happens to me about as much as they care whether you ever nab your parrot burglar.”

“Then how about at least hightailing it out of town for a week or two? Go visit a friend or some relatives. Think of it as a vacation,” I suggested.

“Vacation, my ass,” Bambi spat back. “A vacation is planting my behind in a lounge chair on some tropical isle with a drink in my hand, and a rich old man dying at my feet with a pen and a will in his paw. Otherwise, I’m not dragging my sorry butt around with two screaming kids, one horny dog, and a deranged bird. You wanna do something worthwhile? Tell Willy it’s time he starts watching his own ass.”

The phone clicked dead in my ear. I figured at this point, I might as well top off my day by going into the office and facing Carlos’s wrath.

I found my boss sitting back in his chair with his legs stretched out and a gun in his lap, watching the hallway as if he somehow knew I was about to show. He picked up the gun and took a deep whiff, sniffing along the end of its barrel as he caught sight of my head poking through the door.

“Agent Porter. So nice to know you still work here. I wasn’t sure you planned on coming back,” Carlos purred. “By the way, let me express my deepest sympathy.”

“For what?” I cautiously asked, aware I was stepping into a trap.

“For the fact that someone in your family must have unexpectedly died. Otherwise, I can’t think of any possible reason why you haven’t been working at your desk since I last saw you,” he snarled.

I knew there were only two choices. Come clean with Carlos and fill him in on what I’d discovered, or spend the rest of my career chained in paperwork purgatory.

“There’s a good reason why I haven’t been here,” I began.

“There always is,” Carlos answered, his accent heavily saturated with irony.

I pulled Willy’s three passports out of my back pocket, dug the hyacinth feather out of my purse, and placed the evidence on his desktop.

“Willy has been muling both hyacinths and Cuban Amazons for years. He was working for Dominguez.”

“You already filled me in on something like that a few days ago,” Carlos reminded me. “Remember? Right before you took it all back and told me you weren’t really sure exactly what you’d seen in that sack?”

He held my gaze, reducing me to a pupil caught in a lie by her teacher. Then he picked up the passports and examined them.

“I’ve got another flash for you, Porter. Dominguez is dead—which makes all this old news. You’ve been running around wasting your time and mine, along with the government’s, for nothing,” he informed me.

An internal bonfire made my cheeks burn bright red. “But the fake passports!”

Carlos cut me off, adding fuel to the fire. “Those illegal passports fall under Customs’ jurisdiction. Or do you want to do their job for them, too?”

He picked up the feather and thrust its shaft into the barrel of his gun, creating an in-your-face vase. I was going to have to give up all the information I’d been holding, and hope I could convince Carlos to let me handle the case.

“I’m certain the smuggling’s still going on,” I reluctantly revealed.

Carlos sat up straight in his chair and placed his palms on the desk, all business now. “Why is that?”

“One of my informants was hauling cigars in for Dominguez. He’s led me to believe that Alberto had other Cuban partners involved in the bird trafficking. They’re being brought in by boat, as well as by plane.”

Carlos remained silent, contemplating the handle of his gun. When he finally spoke, his tone was subdued resignation. “Did he say if these Cuban partners were also involved in Dominguez’s cigar dealings?”

“I was told absolutely not. Evidently, if anyone in the Cuban community had known about it, Alberto would have been ostracized.”

“Your informant is correct,” Carlos conceded. “All right. I’ll believe you on this one, Porter.”

“There’s something else that’s been bothering me,” I admitted.

Carlos cocked an eyebrow and stopped playing with his gun.

“There was a tattoo on Alberto’s left bicep.” I paused, wondering if I was beginning to get conspiracy crazy.

Carlos impatiently interrupted my thoughts. “Well, was there something about this particular tattoo? Or do you just have a distaste for body decorations?”

His abruptness made me wonder what Carlos had hidden beneath his own shirt. “The tattoo was of a parrot with a rifle clutched in its talons. I didn’t think much about it, until I saw someone else with the same tattoo on his arm the other day.”

“Do you know who the man was?” Carlos casually asked.

I hesitated, still not ready to give everything away. “Just someone I saw working in the back room of a cigar store in Little Havana.”

Carlos got up, pointed for me to sit down, and closed the door. Then he walked back to his desk and pulled out a cigar.

Being that he was such a stickler on rules, I filled him in on one. “You do know it’s illegal to smoke in this building, don’t you?”

Carlos propped his feet up on his desk and blew a smoke ring my way. “That’s what closed doors are for,” he responded.

I waited for about thirty seconds, which is generally the amount of time it takes before my patience meter runs out. “Okay, you didn’t have me sit down just to watch you smoke a cigar. What’s up?”

Carlos squinted at me through his man-made cloud of smoke. “That tattoo you saw? It’s the emblem of Omega-12,” he announced.

My pulse picked up speed. Maybe it’s the hidden gossip columnist lurking within me, but give me a secret and I go to town. As a child, I sniffed out my Christmas presents way before the holidays, no matter where my mother hid them. It had escalated from there into full-blown, collar-grabbing, “if you don’t tell me I’ll find out anyway” proportions. Okay—so it wasn’t my most attractive quality.

I pinched the skin between my thumb and index finger to keep from jumping out of my chair. “What exactly is Omega-12?”

Carlos took his time, fully aware that I considered that torture. “It’s a right-wing, Cuban paramilitary group. I’ve heard rumors they’re still active. You must have stumbled upon two of their members.”

“This is the group that trains out in the Glades?” I asked.

Carlos gave a silent nod, his way of letting me know I was going to have to work for any information.

“What kind of weapons do they have?”

Carlos gave a self-satisfied smile. “The sky’s the limit.”

“Where do they get their supplies from?” I wondered how much information he really had, and what he might not be disclosing.

“That’s something that nobody seems to know,” Carlos responded.

I threw down my last card.

“Have you ever heard of Elena and Ramon Vallardes?” I asked.

Carlos studied me unblinkingly as he took a deep puff on his cigar and blew a smoke ring in the shape of a noose.

Long pauses laden with silence drive me round-the-bend crazy. Forget water torture. Just put me in a room with someone who won’t talk, and I’ll do almost anything to fill the void. Usually it consists of a gibbering song-and-dance routine, before drowning them in my life story.

Okay, I’d start it and get the ball rolling. “They were close friends of Alberto Dominguez.” I paused for a moment. “They all grew up together as children,” was the next tidbit I threw out. “Alberto was over at their place all the time.” I stopped and waited. Still no response. “For god sakes! They’re very prominent in the Cuban community. How could you not know who they are?”

Carlos threw me the band off his cigar. “Of course I know of the Vallardes: Puffin is where I buy my cigars. Remind me never to send you into enemy territory. You’d give them our attack plans in no time, and then probably cook them dinner.”

I silently acknowledged the lesson: I’d handed him all my information without receiving anything in return. “How naive do you think I am? I haven’t told you the best part yet,” I bluffed.

Carlos obviously felt confident enough to go for the bait. “Which is?”

I smiled. “I’ve given you plenty. How about giving me something in return as a show of good faith?”

Carlos clasped his hands behind his head and smiled, amused at the game. “All right. Here’s something I bet you don’t know. Their father, Tito Vallardes, was one of the original founders of Omega-12, along with Alberto’s father, Jorge Dominguez.”

The information hit me like a one-two punch. I scurried to keep my wits before Carlos decided to pull the plug on Information Central. “Are they still active with the group?”

Carlos hesitated, and I jumped in with both feet. “Come on. Fair is fair. I’ve given you plenty so far.”

He munched on the end of his cigar, attacking the spongy shreds of tobacco as if he were noshing on a hot pastrami sandwich. I could almost hear the wheels of his brain grinding, carefully weighing what information to hand me.

“What I’ve got is reeeally good,” I added temptingly.

Carlos sighed in admission that I’d won him over. “Jorge died in Miami from too much of the good life a few years back,” he disclosed. “As for Tito? He’s a prisoner of Castro’s hospitality.”

I kept a damper on any outward sign of excitement. “How long has he been there?”

“Let’s see…” Carlos closed his eyes, pondering. “I’d say it’s been about eighteen years now. The son of a bitch was caught hauling rockets over to anti-Castro groups that still exist within Cuba.”

“Rockets!” Oops—it was too late to cover up my astonishment.

Carlos grinned, as if he’d known it was just a matter of time before I tripped over my own enthusiasm. “That’s right. In fact, Omega-12 claims Tito was doing it undercover at the request of the U.S. government.”

“Is that possible?” I asked in amazement.

Carlos gave a small shrug. “The U.S. government tried its best to overthrow Castro for thirty years. I don’t see why Omega-12 wouldn’t be telling the truth. But there’s something much more interesting about Omega-12’s background.” He chuckled.

I bit my tongue, curling my toes and fingers into tight little knots in a show of overwhelming patience.

Carlos took several quick puffs on his cigar. “You’ve heard of the Cuban-American United Stand Foundation?”

I nodded. “They’re a lobbying organization.”

“Not just
any
lobbying organization,” Carlos corrected. “One of
the
most powerful lobbying organizations in the U.S. They’ve raised more than one million dollars for both Republicans and Democrats.”

Carlos removed the cigar from his mouth and held it reverently. His fingers firmly tapped its burning end, sending smoldering ashes to the ground in a flurry of fairy dust. “CAUSF likes to spread their money around. That means they wield enormous political power, no matter which party holds the reins at any given time. It’s due to the influence of CAUSF that there’s been no loosening of the economic embargo against Cuba.”

Carlos gave a dramatic pause, allowing just enough time for my pinpricks of anticipation to spread until my whole body tingled deliciously.

“Now that I’ve told you all that, do you have any idea who the founder of CAUSF is?” Carlos’s eyes twinkled and his mustache twitched.

I shook my head, barely daring to breathe.

“It’s Frederico Vallardes. Tito’s brother,” he revealed.

“Elena and Ramon’s uncle?” I marveled, beginning to wonder where this was all leading. “But CAUSF advocates only a nonviolent approach to bringing about Castro’s downfall.”

“That’s right,” Carlos agreed. “Publicly, that’s exactly what CAUSF espouses.” He played with the end of his mustache, letting the information sink in. “But, privately, just how do you think Omega-12 got started? Both Frederico and Tito Vallardes, as well as Jorge Dominguez, fought in the Bay of Pigs together. Bonds like that are never broken.”

“So CAUSF is the nonviolent, political front, and Omega-12 is their underground paramilitary offshoot?” I ventured.

Carlos barely arched an eyebrow. “I suppose some would say that’s possible. After all, not many people know of their connection.” He pulled his chair forward and leaned in toward me. “Okay. I’ve given you plenty. Now tell me the rest of what you’ve got.”

“Huh?” I was caught off-guard, too busy absorbing all I’d been told to have any idea what he was talking about.

“We had a deal,” he reminded me. “Now it’s time for you to put the rest of your cards on the table.”

Uh, oh. I’d forgotten about that part. Then it hit me.

“Hey, wait a minute. That was a great history lesson on Cuban-American politics, but what does it have to do with my case on birds?” I challenged.

Carlos gave a sly smile, letting me know who was still master when it came to the art of game playing. “I never said it did. You asked what I knew about Elena and Ramon, and that’s exactly what I told you.” He gave a satisfied chomp on his cigar, and cracked his knuckles one by one. “You may not be a rookie, Porter, but you’re still not a seasoned agent. You forgot all about your real objective here. Wasn’t it to learn more about the illegal bird trade in Miami?” He pointed his cigar at me. “Don’t let perps steer you off course so easily, or your curiosity and enthusiasm will be your downfall. Now I’ll hear the rest of your information.”