Stuffed (7 page)

Our food suddenly arrived and I got busy putting ketchup on some cold, undercooked fries. Angie messed with her sticky-looking nachos.

She was dead on, of course. There was the distinct possibility that they were after the crow and stole the other stuff to cover their motives. So if, for the sake of argument, one of the thieves had been Fletcher, who were the other two guys? As much as I was completely earnest about not tangling with these characters, that grub of vengeance was squirming in my brain. I don’t think of myself as that kind of guy. Life is too short to be spent defending every little slight. But when I pictured that guy’s hand on Angie’s neck . . . well, it made me want to have some Malay cone snails at the ready. Or at the very least, see these bastards in jail.

“Garth?”

She woke me from my dark reverie. “Hmm?”

“Don’t think I’ve forgotten about Fletcher.”

And so it was that the Lincoln found its way back up to Bermuda.

Chapter 7

T
here’s something decidedly sinister about a New England village after dark. The byways are empty but awash in the light of eerie green streetlamps. Wizened old maples and sycamores shroud sidewalks in the sporadic shadows of branches swaying in the wind. Spatters of lamplight skitter like ghost crabs across picket fences and white clapboard houses, the surge of rustling leaves like waves breaking on rocks. Fix your gaze on each grizzled trunk as you pass: Is someone hiding there, sliding to the far side of the tree? Stop. Listen. Were those footsteps behind you, matching your steps? That guy in the window, reading, rocking back and forth: a zombie, normalcy’s pretense, the town in the grips of Satan’s most ominous coven?

Angie and I looked up at the bear holding a scripted
CLOSED
sign. I imagined his eyes might just glow red with Cerberus’s incarnate evil, followed by the sound of a distant calliope and chanting clowns. In case you hadn’t already guessed, my psyche is burdened with formative years devoted to
Creature Features.

“Things seem pretty damn quiet in Bermuda.” I shivered, the little hairs on my neck standing at full attention. “What say we drop in on Gunderson in the morning and ask about Fletcher then? Tonight we’d better backtrack to that roadhouse and nab a room.”

“About five miles back,” Angie sighed in agreement.

Wind whistling over the convertible top, I cranked the heat and we barreled down the country road.

“Angie, what would you think if I, you know, took a job?”

“A job?”

“Yeah, you know . . .”

She gave me a hard look. “I think you’d have to buy a real tie and mothball that pony-skin tie you have, that’s what.”

“I’m serious.”

I saw her roll her eyes in the dashboard’s lime glow.

“Garth, you say that every year. What kind of job? Let me guess. At U.S. Fish and Wildlife?”

“Pete Durban said if I ever get tired of hauling dead animals hither and yon I should give him a call.”

“Well?”

“Well, what?”

“Well, are you tired of your stupid taxidermy racket?”

“A stupid racket? What the hell’s that supposed to mean?”

Angie gave me a sneaky smile. “It means that if you still react so defensively to that wisecrack, you don’t hate your craft as much as you think. Not enough to toss it for some job you want just because it’s steady.”

The problem with being in love with a smart person is that you have to put up with them being right a lot of the time. Not that I admitted it at the time, mind you.

The motel came into view and the discussion came to a timely close. The Maple Motor Court was essentially a tavern with a crescent of tiny white cabins behind it. You checked in at the bar by the light of a Narragansett beer sign. But while the barmaid fussed over the key rack and I signed in, I sensed something amiss. Scanning the sundry plaid patrons, nothing remarkable caught my eye. Two were looking toward but not at me, the way townsfolk check out strangers. Nothing odd in that. There was a full mug at the bar stool next to them, and I heard a toilet flush. I chalked up my spookiness to
Creature Features
and one too many Hammer films, signed the register, took the key from the barmaid, and headed for Angie and the Lincoln waiting out front.

I passed into the foyer and through the second door. I glanced back into the bar. There was someone at the empty bar stool, and he was looking in my direction.

It was Bret Fletcher, who looked like the dean had just caught him in the girls’ dorm.

“Son of a—” I may not have wanted to practice my pugilism the last time I saw him, but now I wanted to take a poke at him. The more I thought about it, the more I figured he must have been one of those bastards who roughed us up.

I doubted he saw me looking back, what with the light being on his side of two separate panes of glass. I got into the Lincoln, drove us to our cabin, and told Angie I was going to step out for a beer and catch the Late Nite Show, maybe see if Aunt Jilly made the program. There was no TV in the cabin, and Angie always reads before bed.

Creeping along the shadow of the tavern, I peeped through the darkened kitchen window and into the barroom. All I could glimpse was the back of Bret’s red plaid coat and occasionally his arm as he gestured to his cronies in some sort of animated conversation.

A battered green pickup came rattling down the road and roared to a stop in front of the tavern, tooting its horn. Bret’s two cronies stood up abruptly and headed for the door. But before they left, they gave Bret a glare that put fresh mojo on my little neck hairs.

These two were older than Bret, and considerably more weathered. The taller, slimmer one had pretty big teeth. And a toothpick. He wore a felt cowboy hat, atypical antlers for folks around these parts. And the hat wasn’t some sort of white job with a big red feather that ho-dad ranch-hand wannabes wear. This was sweat-stained, rain-freckled, and well worn, complete with brim nicks from barbed wire and cigarette burns from smoking in the saddle. Or in the back of a pickup. Beat up as it was, it didn’t come off shabby because he obviously worked to keep the creases sharp in the crown, and the brim had a uniform curl. He wore it at a slight angle that might lead you to believe he’d swung a few pool cues in his time. When Slim gave Bret a parting smile, those giant teeth looked ready to bite.

Slim’s pal was short and stocky with a bush of red hair. Fiery eyebrows framed dark, button eyes. Hands in his pockets, he shouldered the door in Slim’s wake.

I took a few steps forward to peek around the edge of the tavern as they opened the door and climbed into the cab of the truck. I couldn’t get an eyeful of the driver.

Yep, these two could be the guys. The one who’d popped out of our basement with the gun might have been Bret. It clicked with his frenetic performance at Gunderson’s, complete with breaking voice. The guy with the raspy voice easily could have been Slim, a smoker. He certainly fit Otto’s bull’s-eye description: “Teeth big, vood in leeps.”

I watched as the old truck lurched and rattled its way down the road, a blue haze of exhaust floating in its wake.

Options presented themselves. They’d spotted me, no doubt about that, but probably felt I had no way of connecting them to the ski-masked assault in Manhattan. My return to Bermuda would be setting off alarms, though. They would figure that I may have recognized one of them somehow, and since I’d only seen Bret before, they’d deduce that I’d come up here to track him down. Or track down the white crow. The Three Amigos would have to stop me cold or blow town. And they didn’t look like they were headed for the hills in that old green pickup.

So: Did they plan to do something about me? That very night?

I waited in the shadows until Bret finished his beer, left the tavern, got into a dented Honda Civic, and whirred off down the street. Lucky nobody happened by or I might have been chased down the street as a peeping Tom. I guess angry Vermont mobs don’t lynch perverts—probably drown them in maple syrup.

Am I plum loco? My assumptions were galling. Was my secret greed for vengeance playing tricks on me, putting square pegs in round holes, making three hapless strangers into the ones who had assaulted me and Angie? I went through it again, point by point, looking for a lapse in judgment. Basically, other than Bret having been angry about the crow, what possible reason would he have for stealing it? Let me guess—it was a family heirloom? A deceased pet? A substitute security blanket, his very own pink blankey, Bret all curled up in bed with a cold bell jar, sucking his thumb?

And the bridge over the Connecticut—why drop my dead stuff there? It was over a hundred miles away from Bermuda. But at night, it was probably pretty desolate and they had little chance of being spotted.

And how did they find me in Manhattan, after all? Perhaps the business card I gave that shopkeeper Gunderson? The yellow pages? Both possible, but anybody could put my pin in the map that way.

And if they were the ones?

Well, I could roust Angie and we could pile back into the Lincoln and make for the interstate. But maybe they were waiting for us down the road, the pavement littered with carpet tacks. I’d end up stooped behind the car, gripping a car jack in the glow of the red taillights, my back to the dark forest. Then where would we be? Alone on a desolate country road, at the mercy of insane killer clowns from another planet? I’d seen that kind of thing in way too many horror pics.

I decided to stay where there were lights and phones and an innkeeper who probably had her twelve-gauge side-by-side loaded and at the ready in case the local cocktail set had one too many cosmos and decided to trash the place.

I went into the bar and asked for a second cabin, farthest from Cabin #1, which Bret’s pals had seen me sign for.

The barmaid eyed me, and I shrugged.

“We have these awful fights.”

Her eyebrows went up, and I went out with the key to Cabin #9. Jostling Angie from her slumber, I said the barmaid had mistakenly given us Cabin #1, the hut with the rat, and that we should move to the cabin on the far end if we didn’t cotton to bedding with scaly-tailed vermin. Angie wiped the Sandman from her eyes and swiftly gathered her belongings and relocated to the new cabin without too much protest. I left the Lincoln at Cabin #1, told Angie the Late Nite Show was about to come on, and excused myself to the bar.

Was I convinced they were really coming back for a little midnight slice n’ dice? All I could be sure of was my bristling neck hair—that and my determination to protect Angie. Of course, the logical move would have been to tell Angie what I saw and suggest we vamoose. Not that she would have gone, mind you. Knowing Angie, she would have wanted to help me set the trap.

If I sound a little like a man with suspenders and a belt, I think I have a right to add duct tape to the mix. During my stint with Pete Durban, my feel for impending danger was sharpened, as was my fear of getting caught with my pants down.

Gallbladders. I almost got killed because of bear gallbladders, if you can believe it. Therein lies a tale.

Chapter 8

I
didn’t used to get into trouble. But I can tell you how and when mortal danger entered my life, and it can be summed up in the word
Smiler.

It was a couple of years ago. A taxidermist I know in Wyoming, named Sinclair Jones, specializes in bear mounts, and over the years he’d accumulated a bunch of bear gallbladders in his freezer. Seems he wasn’t getting a very good price for them and had heard they sold for considerably more in New York’s Chinatown. Did I have any connections? Said he was looking for at least ten but hopefully as much as fifteen dollars a gram for them. A ten percent commission would be my reward. At the time I didn’t know much about the trade of bear parts. So I asked Pete Durban, my seemingly mild-mannered ecological control agent at the time, if it was legit for me to broker them.

He frowned. “On a federal level, it is for now. In New York, yes. Where are the bladders coming from?”

“Wyoming.”

“That’s legal too. Both states allow the sale of both resident and nonresident bear parts. But there are thirty-two states where it’s completely illegal. So be careful.”

“Be careful? Gallbladders?” Pete hadn’t yet lured me into any of his Wild West antics at that juncture in our relationship.

He tried to smile. “You ever seen a bear gallbladder? A North American black-bear bladder looks like a prune, weights about twenty to thirty grams. Asian bear bladders are bigger, up to sixty grams. Little ones, like from cubs, at ten grams are cheapies. But they all look like prunes of different sizes, and there’s no telling where they come from.”

“Ah. So the legal ones from black bears are mixed in with the illegal ones. . . .”

“Right.
And nobody can keep track of it, so nobody does and so a lot of the wrong people are involved. So just remember what I said.”

What he didn’t tell me was that what makes bears’ bladders so valuable is that they are the only natural source for tauroursodeoxycholic acid (UDCA), a substance more commonly known as bile. Bear bile has been used for centuries by practitioners of traditional Chinese medicine to treat everything from menstrual cramps to lymphoma. Does it work? Western medicine is much more tentative about its benefits and synthesizes an artificial form of cow bile to treat cirrhosis and dissolve gallstones. The Chinese have realized the limits of the harvesting from the wild and have actually developed farms of over seven thousand captive Asian bears raised specifically for their wonderful, lovely, scrumptious bile.
I scream, you scream, we all scream for bile!
If you don’t believe me, look it up.

In Chinatown, I had an importer named Chuck Woo who sometimes got me gazelle pelts. His shop was your classic Mott Street denizen, replete with all manner of Chinese and other imported exotica like coconut carvings, miniature fountains, freeze-dried display piranhas, fertility dolls, Indonesian skull beads, Javan shadow puppets, Turkish water pipes, Mali masks, and Mexican
Día de los Muertos
paraphernalia. He was also the largest New York importer of Ecuadorian
Jivaro
shrunken heads, hand-crafted by Jivaro Indians from goat skin with the same attention to detail as if they were the noggins of rival tribesmen.

I dropped in on Chuck shortly after my talk with Pete, and Chuck was his usual bubbly if somewhat profane self.

“Garf! You old fuckar! Come in! I haf many pelts for you, you fuckar!”

“Hiya, Chuck.” I pumped his hand, never having bothered to tell him that it wasn’t exactly kosher to go around calling people
fuckar.
I didn’t know him that well and so always figured someone close to him would get around to breaking the news. And I can see how he came to use the word so casually—from the example set by everyday American vernacular.

“You want Dutch water, you big fuckar? Yes, let us make Dutch water!” A bottle of Johnnie Walker Red appeared in one hand, two tumblers in the other. I don’t like scotch, but found a glass in my hand just the same. Never could figure out whether he was an alcoholic just looking for an excuse to dip his bill or whether this was some kind of custom. But whenever I visited him, I always had to gird myself for some “Dutch water,” his peculiar name for scotch. I kept swirling it, hoping to make the vile amber liquid evaporate faster.

So after he showed me some pelts and I dumped the scotch in a potted plant, I finally got around to my question.

“Chuck, my friend, you have the very best pelts. I only buy from you, the best.” He beamed and I continued. “But I don’t have any buyers for pelts today. I come to you, my friend, because I have something to sell.”

His eyes went shifty on me. I don’t think he knew quite how to make the transition from friendly seller to shrewd buyer. They were two distinctly different people, one accommodating and the other a son of a bitch.

“Chuck, a friend has some bear gallbladders, and he wants to sell them.”

He was motionless.

“I understand there are people in Chinatown who will buy them. Do you know someone who buys bear gallbladders?”

A word or two of Chinese fell absently from his lips before he said, “Garf, I am fuzzled by your inquiry. I will see if anybody wants these worthless items and can make them go away for you.” He took my glass. “Come back, my friend, in an hour.”

When I came back, the
CLOSED
sign was in the door. As I turned away, the door suddenly opened.

“Garf, come in, bastard!”

I edged past the smiling Chuck and found myself in front of two frowning Chinese men in shiny Hong Kong suits. I tensed reflexively when I heard Chuck throw the bolt on the front door. My neck hairs didn’t stand up—they didn’t know any better yet.

One of the suits tried to smile, but clearly he was out of practice. “We can help you dispose of the bladders.” He had a pinky ring, gold cuff links, sideburns, and a pompadour. His glasses were tinted and had oversize black frames that put Philip Johnson to shame. I don’t know shoes, but his loafers looked expensive and had a gold clasp. Yeah, this guy was the one in charge, all right. His pal was the heavy.

“Are you a buyer or broker?”

“Buyer.” Smiler took a step forward. “We must see the product. Do you have it?”

“I have this one.” I pulled a Styrofoam box from my shoulder bag and opened it. Wisps of fog cleared to reveal what looked for all the world like a small dog doo nestled in dry ice. Not exactly the unveiling of the
Mona Lisa
. “I can get more in a few days.”

Smiler held out a hand, and I intuitively began to sweat. I had a sense he wouldn’t give it back, so instead of handing it over, I stepped closer so he could see it more closely. He produced a mini flashlight and a jeweler’s loupe and set upon a close examination.

I heard a metallic snap and saw his compadre holding a switchblade. I froze.

Smiler took the knife and poked the turd until he got a small sample from one end. He deposited the sample into a plastic vial.

“If it is as it seems,” Smiler began, trading glances with Chuck and his compadre, “and of consistent quality and size, we will pay you ten dollars a gram. That is our top price.”

“Twenty-five for those over thirty grams. Fifteen for those over twenty grams.” Who the hell said that? Yikes! It was me. A dealer’s reflex, even though the ten a gram met my supplier’s asking price.

“These are only American bladders.” Smiler tried smiling again but failed miserably. “I said, top price.”

I snapped the foam box shut and tucked the turd back into my bag. Dealing is dealing, the world over, whether it’s for a moose head, Chiclets, or gallbladders: You never accept the first offer. These guys were crafty, and they were lowballing me—just as I would if I were they.

“Nice meeting you.” I smiled, but sweat was drenching my back. I turned to go and Chuck stepped into my path.

“Garf, how many do you haf?”

I glanced back at the two suits. “Sixty-eight. Including this one. All plump and greasy. No dinks in the lot.
And they’re all over thirty grams.”

The three Chinese exchanged glances.

“Look,” I said amiably, “I know you men may be strapped for cash. It’s okay, really. I’ll find someone who will pay the twenty-five, who won’t be inconvenienced by this transaction.”

Smiler almost rolled his eyes. Instead, he slowly unwrapped a stick of Fruit Stripe gum, slid it into his mouth, and chewed for a moment. “Bring all sixty-eight back here on Saturday. We will pay you your twenty-five. But only for those over thirty grams.”

“Works for me,” I said, as Chuck opened the door. I left, trying not to walk faster than normal. There it was, fifty thousand smackaroos doing the hula in my brain, all for a couple hours’ work. Who could resist?

Two afternoons later, I was at a corner table at the Red Dragon dim sum palace. If you’ve never been to one of these places, they’re refreshingly different from Bob’s Family Restaurant. I imagine it’s like attending a Chinese wedding banquet. This one was decked out in gold wallpaper and adorned with scroll paintings of red dragons and paper lanterns strung from one end of the ceiling to the other. Dim sum is usually enjoyed in the afternoon, and this place was bustling. Just the same, nobody seemed to pay any attention as Smiler weighed his bladders and I counted my cash. After about forty minutes, I was closing a picnic basket chockablock with wads of twenties thick as egg rolls. Smiler and his heavy hefted their coolers of frozen dog poo and slipped out a nearby fire exit. Done deal. Hula hula!

Now, in my line of work, I often withdraw and deposit fairly large sums of cash, and the bank officers know me and the peculiarities of my business. In fact, I give a five percent discount to anybody paying cash. Sound stupid dealing with so much cash? Well, what’s stupider are bounced checks. What’s stupider is paying a vig to MasterCard. What’s stupider is “invoicing” where they pay you a year or two after the sale, or hiring collection agencies to try to strangle your money out of someone, or never getting paid at all. But I know that deposits over $10K are scrutinized by the FBI. So I guess I was overly insouciant when I waltzed into my friendly neighborhood bank with $52,700 in a wicker picnic basket. Maybe if I’d brought it in a Halliburton attaché I wouldn’t have been scrutinized.

They were polite, too polite. I should have guessed they were stalling until the cops arrived. This, of course, is where I met my pal Walker, and where we grew so fond of each other. Even though I didn’t know Pete Durban that well at the time, I felt he knew I was basically on the up-and-up, so I gave him a call and was gratified when he came right down to the bank to vouch for me.

But then he asked to speak to me in private. He showed me a fuzzy telephoto picture of two Asian men walking on a Chinatown street.

“Know these two guys?”

It was Smiler and Compadre. “You must know I do.”

He smiled. “When you called me about the bladders, I figured you might be dealing with them. We’ve had them under surveillance for some time—slippery characters. This one is named Park.” He pointed to Smiler. “He’s the head honcho. We want him. Garth, the department will vouch for you on this business with the cash, but we want a favor.”

I shrugged. “Sure, Pete.”

“Great.” He slapped me on the knee and stood up.

“Uh, Pete? What’s the favor?”

“How about I come over to your place tonight and explain it over some of Angie’s goulash soup?”

“How do you know about—”

He grinned. “We have our sources.”

A week later I found myself in the back of a dark police van at 1:00
A.M.
on a lonely industrial stretch of Peck Slip, a wharfside street in lower Manhattan. Microphones had been threaded into my jacket lapels and a camera was lodged in my belt buckle. Angie was there with Pete, several technicians, and a bunch of flickering, humming, and blinking surveillance gear. I was sweating up a storm. All I needed was a soil sampler and parachute and NASA could have shot me into space for a Mars landing. One day I’m just minding my own business, paying bills, making a living, doing the day-to-day, and the next I’m being made into an underworld probe.

“A favor,” I muttered, wiping my brow with a bandanna.

Pete patted me on the shoulder, but I was looking at Angie. “It’s nothing to worry about, Garth.”

“Oh, really?” I squinted. “Then how come you have a bulletproof vest on?”

“Purely routine. Like flossing.”

“Like flossing?” I snorted. “With bullets?”

Angie put a hand on my arm. “They’ve got police all around, Garth, and we’ll be listening the whole time, isn’t that right?”

“Right,” Pete chimed in.

“Wait a second,” I said, shaking Angie by the shoulders. “Aren’t you supposed to be the one who says
Garth, this is too dangerous. Please, I’m too young to be a widow.
And then I say,
Angie, someone has to stop these villains.”

“If it uncovers a chop shop, someone does have to stop them. And you already dealt with them once, so they’ll trust you. Pete wouldn’t have asked you if it were really dangerous.”

I sighed heavily, my chest tight with anxiety and microphones. “Angie, I really wish you hadn’t come along.” Pete got a stern glance from me. “I have a bad feeling about all this.”