Bird Brained (4 page)

I was aware of the steady pounding in my head before I realized I lay sprawled on the floor. No hangover had ever been like this before. I brushed aside the cobwebs in my mind as a raging fire kicked in, burning the back of my throat in a fury. Then I remembered. I hadn’t been drinking. I closed my eyes and listened. No guttural cough could be heard; only Alberto’s silent scream which slithered around me, as constricting as any choke hold.

I inched my way up, resting on my butt before attempting to rise to my feet. My eyes throbbed as they struggled to focus; my fingertips gingerly probed my neck. I scanned the room, but my attacker was nowhere to be seen. Also missing was the muslin sack with its valuable cargo. In its place was a white handkerchief. I picked it up and took a whiff, only to have the drum in my head pound harder. Chloroform still clung to the fabric.

Goose bumps covered me like a second skin. The murder could have been the work of the Cuban bird ring. Even worse, I might have been responsible: it was at my insistence that Alberto had set out to infiltrate the group. Perhaps his ruse had been uncovered and this was his punishment for planning to squeal. Up till now, the gang had stuck to robbery. Alberto might have been their turning point.

I hauled myself up and dug through the mess, finally locating Alberto’s phone. But the effort proved to be worthless—I couldn’t get a dial tone. Either Alberto hadn’t paid his bill, or last night’s storm had knocked out the line.

I headed outside to the Tempo and dug through my black hole of a glove compartment, finally excavated my cell phone, then placed a call to Metro Dade to report Alberto’s death. I’d still have plenty of time to poke around on my own. When it came to dealing with dead bodies, Metro Dade police were thoroughly buried up to their necks. They would be in no rush to get to another.

I wrestled my way back into my car, where I grabbed a flashlight and a pair of white cotton gloves before walking down the driveway and out the front gate. Sure enough, a wire hung dangling from the telephone pole that led to Alberto’s domain. It didn’t take much examination to reveal that the damage wasn’t due to any storm, though. The wire had clearly been cut.

I hightailed it back inside the house, anticipation sharpening my curiosity. The best way to get to know someone is to have free rein to prowl through that person’s things. Unfortunately, this isn’t considered socially acceptable in most cultures. Unless, of course, that person is dead. I donned the gloves and let my fingers do the walking as I poked through Alberto’s closets and drawers, resolutely ignoring his corpse.

I soon found the four coolers stashed beneath Dominguez’s bed. Why do people always think that’s the last place a robber will look? The tune “Getting to Know You” began to play in my mind as I flipped open the first lid. The cooler was chock full of illegal cigars—pedigree Cubans, straight from Havana. The other containers held exactly the same. Altogether, 120 boxes of Cubans lay neatly wrapped in plastic, nestled inside their makeshift humidors. Either Alberto had quit the smoking habit, or he’d been busy raking in mucho dinero. Each individual smoke could sell for up to fifty dollars on the black market.

It’s been illegal to import and sell such cigars since 1962, when JFK slapped a trade embargo on Cuba. Punishment for violating that is severe. Alberto could have received a $250,000 fine and ten years in jail for his crime—a far harsher penalty than he would have paid for hawking endangered species. Looked like Alberto had found himself a sideline. I closed the lids and moved on, certain he must have something I’d find of more interest.

In the living room, Alberto’s desk offered fertile snooping ground. Poking through drawers has always come as second nature to me, and my fingers danced through the minutiae of Alberto’s life. A stack of bills included one from a local feed company for bags of bird seed, along with another from a lingerie store for a number of girdles and bras. The thought that Alberto might have been a cross-dresser was quickly dismissed. A mistress with a weakness for lingerie seemed more likely.

I moved on to the next drawer, which contained an assortment of anti-Castro propaganda. An array of bumper stickers proclaimed
CUBA SÍ, CASTRO NO
, while another variation touted
NO CASTRO = NO PROBLEM
. It was unusual in Miami not to find a car without at least one such sticker plastered onto its rear.

The bottom drawer served as Dominguez’s file cabinet, where hanging folders held receipts for assorted bills. While it was nice to know that Alberto had paid regular visits to his doctor and dentist, I skipped past those files, being privy to his current state of poor health. My fingers kept going until they reached a folder marked
BREEDS
, with a complete inventory of Alberto’s birds. Recorded were the usual blue-and-gold, scarlet, and military macaws, along with yellow-naped Amazons and African greys. Other charts noted purchases, births, and sales. But nowhere was there a listing of what I could have sworn I’d seen lying inside the muslin sack: a pair of hyacinth macaws.

Rare and highly protected, hyacinths are hard to mistake. They’re giant birds with distinct cobalt-blue plumage, golden eye rings, and sickle-shaped beaks that can easily sever a finger. Only 3,000 still fly free in their jungle home of Brazil, making the birds worth their weight in gold. A single hyacinth sells for a cool $12,000, while a breeding pair can easily fetch $30,000 or more.

But that wasn’t all that had been in the bag. I’d spotted bright green feathers with splashes of red at the throat: four Cuban Amazons had rounded out the booty. Found only on the island of Cuba, the birds’ numbers have dwindled thanks to hunting and habitat loss.

In 1492, Christopher Columbus took forty Cuban Amazons back to Spain as gifts for the king and queen. It appears he started a trend. These days, the birds are smuggled out of the country in suitcases, bras, and coats. As illegal as Cuban cigars, Amazons come with a hefty price tag, snagging up to $5,000 apiece. I knew that Alberto hadn’t been breeding Amazons.

The fact that he had no records of the six birds’ existence meant only one thing: they’d been smuggled into the country.

My attention became riveted back on Alberto’s bedroom. I’d consciously ignored the low whistle when it had first begun, certain my mind was playing tricks. I’m not always good in strange houses late at night, with dead bodies lying around. But the noise continued, growing progressively louder. I flashed back to the low, throaty cough with its chloroform kick and my skin instantly turned cold.

I shot a glance through the doorway, checking to make sure that Alberto’s corpse hadn’t moved, my antennae finely tuned to poltergeist alert.

There’s no such thing as ghosts!
I reminded myself.

Who was I kidding? My knees were shaking at the mere thought.

Just as mysteriously, the sound stopped. I stood and listened for a moment, cursing my overactive imagination.

Wuss!
I scolded, planting a mental swift kick.

Then the sound cranked back up, nearly shooting me right out of my skin. I could either make a run for the door and cower outside while I waited for backup, or, putting my rusty acting skills to use, pretend I was Peter Falk and
Columbo
it as best I could.

I slowly approached the bedroom, keeping an eye out for any unusual signs—say, a large corpse hurtling by. But Alberto was still in his place. I tiptoed around the body and headed toward the bed, and the sound instantly stopped.

“Hello?” I whispered, every nerve in my body on end.

“Hello!” hurtled back the reply.

A startled cry escaped me. In response came an uncanny imitation, accompanied by movement beneath the covers of the unmade bed. I warily grasped the top sheet and quickly pulled it back, unmasking the culprit below.

A large, glossy white cockatoo stared up at me, the deep pink feathers of its crest standing erect in salute. I’d heard that Alberto had a special bird he’d been close to, one that even slept with him. My money was on the avian mimic that now waddled toward me like a bad Charlie Chaplin routine. The bird teetered back and forth, balancing on short legs and oversized feet, its wings spread to keep from toppling over. Without so much as a how-de-do, it hopped onto my arm and proceeded to climb up my shoulder. By the time I remembered my earrings, it was too late.

“Stop that!” I ordered, caught in a tug of war to remove the gold hoop from its beak.

Fortunately, my feathered friend seemed to prefer conversation to chomping on jewelry. “Stop, thief! Stop!” the bird responded.

I deftly removed both earrings before he could make another swipe at them. “A little late for that, isn’t it?” I reminded him.

The bird wrapped its beak around my curls and gave a good jerk, which helped jump-start my brain. I realized that the creature that had hold of my red mop was the only eyewitness to Alberto’s murder. It had been cunning enough to escape being caught. Who knew what he might eventually decide to screech and tell?

A car door slammed, announcing the crew from Metro Dade had arrived. I spied a perch in the corner of the room and placed my secret weapon on it, telling him to sit tight. Then I headed outside to find Vern Reardon and Mervyn Tubbs walking the grounds. That was enough to tell me that the chief didn’t consider the case to be worthy of star billing.

Reardon was on the fast track to retirement, with only six months to go before he turned in his badge and gun. He’d never been one to burn up shoe leather when it came to an investigation, and he saw even less sense in doing so now. These days, Reardon spent his time daydreaming about his version of paradise: a shack on the Keys with a rod and a reel and an endless supply of cheap beer.

The biggest clue into Mervyn Tubbs’s character was that he considered Vern the paragon of what a cop should be.

Alberto must never have given a dime toward any local Metro Dade funds. Otherwise, a different duo would have certainly been assigned.

Vern was checking around the place with about as much interest as ticks on a yard dog. “You’re looking in the wrong area, Vern. Try over here,” I advised, pointing out the gaping hole in the security fence.

Vern did a slo-mo take, first staring at the breach before raising his flashlight to shine it on me. “Hey, there, Porter. I had a funny feeling you’d be around.”

Hmm. I wondered if that was because I’d discovered the body, and called it in. “You might want to check the telephone pole just in front of the gate. The wire’s been cut,” I added.

But Vern wasn’t about to be rushed. “Slow down, Porter. It ain’t like Alberto’s going nowhere.”

He ran a hand across the salt-and-pepper hair he cut to resemble a Fuller brush, and lifted his chin as if he were about to bay at the moon. Instead, he pulled a couple of Twix bars out of his pocket and threw one in my direction. I reached out and caught it, calling it dinner. “What are you doing here, anyway?” he asked.

I went for the easy explanation in between bites of chocolate and caramel. “Whoever killed Alberto made off with his birds.”

Vern stuffed the entire bar into his mouth and began taking slow, deliberate chomps. “Pwob da cube gan,” he responded, cookie crumbs flying like projectiles in every direction.

“What’s that?” I tried to sidestep the airborne debris.

“He said it was probably the Cuban gang,” Mervyn interpreted.

Weighing a good 300 pounds, Tubbs took small, delicate bites out of a king-size Hershey bar, hoping to make it last the whole night. I often wondered how Mervyn managed to stay on the force, certain that one good chase after a perp would do him in.

“You go take a look at that phone wire, Mervyn,” Reardon directed. “I’m gonna check out the house with Annie Oakley here.”

“Yeah, John Wayne and I have got it covered,” I added, flashing a grin.

Tubbs frantically shook his head, his eyes bulging wide. He’d once let it slip that Wayne was Reardon’s idol. Ever since, that’s what Vern had been dubbed by the younger cops.

“What’s that you said?” Vern glared.

Apparently, Tubbs had forgotten to mention just how sensitive Vern was about being ribbed. Great. What I didn’t need tonight was any enemies on the police force.

I scrambled for cover. “You know—Annie Oakley—Westerns—John Wayne. It’s free association.”

Vern gave me a suspicious glance before he turned around and walked off in perfect John Wayne fashion, his hand hovering above his revolver. I followed my Metro Dade gunslinger inside the house.

Reardon sneezed as a cloud of feathers rose up to greet him. “Yep. Seems the Cubans got all the birds. Must have been one hell of a haul.” He reached inside his nose and pulled out a small pinfeather.

“I’m not so sure it was the Cuban gang,” I ventured. “This isn’t their usual MO.”

“MO, huh?” Reardon kicked at a pile of down. “That’s a good one. Where’d you pick that up, Porter? From watching
Miami Vice
?”

I didn’t bother to inform him that
Miami Vice
had gone off the air ages ago. “That gang is into stealing birds. They’re not looking to do hard time. I don’t believe they’d raise the stakes by killing someone.”

Vern reached up and tugged at the phantom brim of an invisible cowboy hat, in silent tribute to the Duke. “There ya go. That just shows me how much you don’t know. Hell, those Cubans are a vicious bunch that are capable of doing most anything. They’ve changed the goddamn face of Miami almost overnight.”

He was right about that. Now there was good food and music in town.

I led the way through the rubble to Dominguez’s bedroom, where Vern shook his head as he scanned the body, his tongue clucking like a manic hen. “Now, there’s a real Cuban rubout if ever I saw one.”

He had me on that one. “What exactly makes this a Cuban rubout?” I wondered if I’d missed some vital clue, like a runaway plate of rice and beans, or a poster of Che Guevara that had been left behind.

“It just is.” Vern scowled, refusing to give away any trade secrets. “I got a sixth sense when it comes to these things.” He knelt down by Alberto’s mangled form. “See how those boys have gone and knifed the hell out of one of their own? There aren’t too many Caucasians would do something this vicious.”