by Jim Pascoe
We both laughed.
“Say, I suppose a ride would be out of the question. All I have is me and my baggage.” I gave Lawton another good kick in the ribs. I smiled when he moaned this time.
“I’m sorry, darling, but I only have one seat, and it looks like I already have some passengers tonight.”
She opened the door of her car and climbed in. I saw the two beat-up suitcases sitting in the seat next to her. Just what I’d forgotten about.
She tossed her cigarette into the night. I watched it tumble until its bright glow winked out.
“Don’t worry, I’ll let the cops come pick up you and your playmate. Anyway, you’ve made quite a killing here. You’re probably going to be a hero.”
The car’s engine purred to life.
I didn’t know who she thought she was fooling. I was sure I’d be spending a lot of time in the interrogation room tonight.
She smiled, shifted gears, and left my life in a cloud of dirt.
Case Three
A Cold-Blooded Kidnapping
“They took my girl! They took my Georgia!”
The high-pitched whining set my teeth on edge. I yanked the telephone receiver away from my head in an attempt to save my eardrums a load of pain. I was too slow.
“Just calm down, sir.” I tried my best to sound reassuring. “We’ll find her.”
I took a deep breath. The man on the other end did the same. Having just walked into the office, I was hardly ready for this call. I hadn’t even poured myself a cup of coffee, though I knew the pot in the kitchen would be almost empty now except for a thin layer of boiled-down sludge.
“Let’s start with a few details.” I spoke slowly, hoping to keep him calm. My eyes were busy assessing the new stack of papers on my desk, on top of which was a new manila folder.
“Bobby Regardie!” He shouted this as if it was some strange command.
“Excuse me?”
“My name is Bobby Regardie, and you have to help find my Georgia!”
Oh boy. I opened the folder, quickly scanning its contents. I tripped across the name Bobby Regardie. Apparently, he was some kind of animal expert at the Gesner Wild Animal Park, a sort of unofficial zoo Testacy City shared with Las Vegas.
I got back to the details: “When was the last time you saw her?”
“Just yesterday evening. She was all curled up in her favorite spot, right by the pool.”
“Uh-huh. And how do you know Georgia was kidnapped?”
“It’s obvious!” he ranted, his ire rising once again. “The lock on her door was broken, her place was all messed up, and she is not inside!”
Those last four words vibrated out of the receiver like air rushing from a leaking balloon.
According to my folder, he had first called the Always Reddy Detective Agency earlier that morning with this abduction story. Hal Reddy, the big man in charge, had assigned it to me—no doubt because it had taken me a little extra time to get into the office. That never made Hal real happy. But I had my excuses. I had been feeling a little down the past few days, so I stopped off at the haberdashery and picked myself up a new fedora—a nice tan Borsalino that looked like a million bucks.
Buying a new hat always raised my spirits a little. Talking to hysterical men knocked them right back down.
“Okay, just relax. Have there been any ransom demands?”
“No, no . . .” He was so worked up his voice trembled. “I’m so worried about her.”
“I’m sure you are, Mr. Regardie. Does she have any enemies that you know of? Anyone who’d want to see harm come to her?”
Little huffs of breath came at me from the other end of the line while my man struggled for an answer.
“I don’t think so,” he finally said. “I mean, sometimes she gets a little cranky, especially when she hasn’t eaten in a while.”
My eyes rolled up to the ceiling as I scratched behind my ear with the eraser end of a pencil. I’m no expert on females, but I’d say that line safely describes just about every one I’ve ever run across.
He continued: “But she hasn’t eaten for nearly two months. She’s bound to be very hungry . . . and very cranky. Probably really, really cranky!”
I paused, listening to the hiss of static on the telephone line, and let his last statement sink in. I once again flipped through the thin case file Hal had left for me, searching for what was now all too obvious.
“Ah, Mr. Regardie—”
“Please, call me Bobby. I’m more comfortable with that.”
I closed the file, shoved it across my desk, and creaked back in my chair. I got the feeling this case was a big joke that everyone was in on but me.
“So what you’re saying, Bobby, is that one of the animals at the park is missing.”
A snort of derision came at me. “She’s not just ‘one of the animals at the park.’” His voice took on a harsh tinge of irritation. “Georgia is our reticulated python—one of the park’s star attractions!”
“Right. A python.” Somehow this particular detail was left out of the file. Hal’s idea, no doubt. His sense of humor was known for being more than a little offbeat. Every agent in his employ fell victim to one of his jokes at one time or another.
Not that a missing snake wasn’t something to laugh about. With difficulty, I managed to hold in my guffaws. Somehow, I didn’t think Bobby Regardie would be able to see the humor.
Now that I had a better idea of what the case was really about, I asked Regardie some more pointed questions that might actually give me useful answers. Then I arranged to meet him at the zoo later that afternoon.
After I hung up, I grabbed myself the last quarter-inch of tar from the coffee pot and checked in with Hal.
“A python?” he asked, feigning ignorance only for a second before letting out a hearty laugh. He pointed his cigar at me and told me that’s what I got for not getting in early enough. I sighed. Always the same old story with Hal.
I grabbed my coat and hat from the desk and drained my coffee cup before letting Rhoda Chang, the agency’s receptionist, know that I’d probably be gone the rest of the day. Then I was out the door.
* * *
As I walked toward my car I ran into Harper “Pappy” Meriwether, one of the best ops (and certainly the oldest) working in Hal’s outfit. He whistled as he strolled down the sidewalk, the youthful spring in his step belying his age. Even though he was pushing seventy, I’d seen him take out two-hundred-pound thugs—using only his trusty cane—without breaking a sweat.
“Good morning, Ben, my boy,” he greeted, as I opened the door of my dependable Galaxie 500. “What do they have you working on this fine day?”
“A snakenapping, if you can believe that,” I answered, managing to keep a straight face.
A long playful laugh tumbled from between his thin lips. “You wouldn’t fool an old man now, wouldya?”
“No way,” I assured. “I know better than to rib you, Pappy. Somebody swiped a big snake from the Gesner Wild Animal Park.”
His blue eyes sparkled brightly in his sand-colored face. “That’s gotta be the weirdest thing I ever heard of.”
I pulled out a J. Cortès, one of the small, dry-cured cigars I liked to smoke, and gave it some flame. “I don’t pick ’em, I just solve ’em.” I exhaled a mouthful of smoke. “How about you? Anything juicy on your end?”
Pappy had been working on a high-profile murder for the past couple of weeks. A bus driver had found a dead bum on a bench at one of his stops, big needle sticking out of his arm. Someone had tried to make it look like an overdose, but to everyone at the agency, it sure looked like murder. Especially with the multiple knife wounds in his chest.
Turned out the bum was really Travis Kohen, a delivery boy for Mexican mob man Manny Flores. Travis was also the son of Testacy City’s senate-bound, crime-busting politico Kris Kohen. Daddy wanted to see justice done, so he turned to Hal’s agency. Lord knows, if you want justice done in Testacy City, you don’t go t
o the cops.
“All my leads are coming up dry the past couple of days. I got one more place to turn. After that . . .” His words trickled off into a shrug.
“Well, let me know if you need any help.”
“Thanks, I just might with this new cop in town. He’s a real hard case.”
The big news in the Testacy City underworld was the recent arrival of some homicide hotshot from Atlanta. He’d only been on the job a short while, and already the rumors were flying. Despite all the talk, I had yet to hear any solid information.
“So you’ve met him?”
“I’ve only run into him once so far,” Pappy said. “He’s one flashy dresser, that’s for sure. Goes by the name of Duke Wellington. And he let it be known he’s not fond of playing ball with us dicks.”
“Well, that figures,” I muttered. “I’d better hit the road. Good luck to ya.”
He nodded his head and started walking. Then he stopped and looked over his shoulder. “Hey, Benjamin . . .”
“Yeah?”
“Take it easy on those smokes. Those things’ll kill ya.”
I took one last puff, then dropped the stub on the pavement and ground it under my heel. “Sure thing, Pappy.”
Pappy nodded again, then resumed his whistling and began mounting the steps to the Always Reddy office.
I climbed into my car and headed for the highway.
* * *
A little past noon, I blew by the Thanks for Visiting Testacy City: Come Again Soon billboard. The sun streamed down as if it had something to prove, making the road ahead of me shimmer like a lazy river. Waves of heat washed over my car, baking me inside. It was going to be a hot ride.
The Gesner Wild Animal Park rested smack dab in the middle of the desert between Las Vegas and Testacy City, about an hour’s drive southwest. It was the pet project of a group of desert-loving zoologists who felt the American Southwest needed some sort of wildlife preserve to protect its vanishing resources. But, typical of how things work in Testacy City, local politics corrupted what had started as a noble cause. By the time the whole thing was built, it had turned into a large, fully stocked zoo, complete with lions, tigers, kangaroos, exotic birds, otters, and even a single polar bear, the poor bastard.
Maintaining each animal’s natural habitat proved to be an expensive endeavor, and since the park was funded jointly by taxpaying citizens of Vegas and Testacy City, the result had a lot of people not fond of its existence.
There was even one renegade group that existed solely to protest the park, something to do with animal rights. Stealing a giant snake would certainly fit their agenda, so they immediately made the suspect list.
After making my way through the serpentine pathways of the park’s private roads, I pulled into the K section of the parking lot, right beneath a blue sign painted with a white koala.
I caught the Tiger Tram, a little safari-style wagon train all done up in orange and black that promised to take me to the front gate. The scenic drive could have been a lot faster for my purposes.
After arriving at the entrance and waiting in line behind a group of screaming kids, I finally stepped up to the ticket booth. A young woman with bored eyes but an otherwise pretty face stood on the other side.
She was about to charge me admission when I explained, “I’m here to see Bobby Regardie.”
She just stared at me.
“I’m Ben Drake.” I slid a business card to her through the little opening in the cage they kept her in. “He’s expecting me.”
She looked down at the card and her eyes grew large.
“So you’re a detective, for real?”
“That’s what they tell me.”
“You must be here about Georgia!” she bubbled with bubble-gum enthusiasm.
“Hey,” I grinned, “maybe you should try some detective work yourself.”
Her smile melted into a scowl as she picked up the phone that hung on the wall next to her. She slouched into the receiver and muttered a few monotone syllables before turning those bored eyes back my way.
“He’ll be out in a minute. Just wait over there.” She pointed toward a little bungalow-type building that held the gift shop, stroller rental, and restrooms.
She handed me a little sticker that read Park Pal and featured a panda in a typical panda pose. She told me to wear it while I was in the park, so I slapped it on my lapel.
I thanked her and strolled over to a carved stone bench with a nice view of the flamingo pen, started in on a cigar, and waited for Bobby Regardie.
* * *
I’d never been to the park before. My wife and I had often talked about visiting when the time came for us to have kids. But the drunk driver that killed her assured I’d never live out that fantasy. I sort of forgot about the park after that. Oddly, I found it had a calming effect on me, despite all the people milling about on this warm spring day. It seemed like a good place to get some thinking done.
A voice interrupted my reverie: “You must be Ben Drake.”
I looked up, shading my eyes against the intensity of the afternoon sun. Standing above me was a tall, thin man wearing what I took to be the park’s uniform: a bluish-green jumpsuit affair with a lot of pockets. I stood up, dusting off my trousers.
“That’s right. I take it you’re Bobby?”
He tapped the patch above his left breast pocket with a long, slender finger, emphasizing the Bobby stitched there in gold-colored thread. “That’s what the sign says,” he chortled.
What a cornball.
“Then I’m pleased to meet you.”
Shaking hands revealed a cornball with a firm grip.
“I could tell you were Ben Drake by your hat,” he explained. “Not many folks come here wearing such a nice-looking hat.”
“Good observation there, Bobby.”
“I pay attention to what’s going on in my park, don’tcha know.”
“Well then, let’s go see where you kept this boa constrictor of yours.”
“Well, y’see, Mr. Drake . . .” He reached up and took off his park-issued cap and rubbed his free hand through his tousled curly brown hair. He snapped the cap back on.
“Now, we gotta get something straight. She’s not a boa. No sir. She’s a python.”
“Right, right. Of course.”
I asked myself what the hell the difference was, and, almost like he heard me, Bobby launched into what would be the first lesson of the day—the differences between pythons and boa constrictors. He spoke fast, his long fingers dancing wildly in the air as he told me about the animal kingdom.
“Boa constrictors are members of the family boidae, which includes anacondas, but pythons are members of a different family altogether: pythonidae. Boas are ovoviviparous, but pythons are oviparous. There are also anatomical differences, mainly in the skeletal system; although, males of both species have what you call an anal spur which—”
“Okay, Bobby,” I interrupted, my hands in the air, surrendering. “My apologies. I won’t make that mistake again.”
“I’m just, you know, making sure you know what’s what, Mr. Drake.”
“I think I got it. Let’s get a look at where you keep Georgia.”
“Sure thing, Mr. Drake. Just follow me.”
I snuffed out my cigar in the metal ashtray half hidden behind some gladiolas. Something told me that Bobby wouldn’t let me smoke around his animals.
“A lot of the guys here drive around in the golf carts, but I like to walk around. Gives me a chance to be close to the animals,” Bobby explained. “You don’t mind walking, do you, Mr. Drake?”
“Not at all,” I lied. “Lead the way.”
We began our jaunt to the reptile house. He shot off across the park, his long legs keeping him moving at a good clip. I almost had to run to keep up with him. Thankfully, Regardie would stop every so often to relate some arcane animal fact. One thing was for sure, Bobby knew animals.
After trekking through the park, we c
ame upon a strange-looking structure consisting of a group of interlocking hexagonal buildings that Bobby identified as the reptile house. As we entered, I found its odd shape gave it a mazelike feel. The snakes and other reptiles lounged in cages replicating what I guessed would be their native habitats. A sheet of Plexiglas kept them separated from the pointing fingers of curious park patrons. A series of wooden slats had been built around the entire place, effectively diffusing the direct sunlight and allowing the park to more easily control the climate of each reptile’s home.
“Here’s where Georgia stays.” Bobby stopped in front of an empty cage, easily the largest in the reptile house. It even outsized some of the shotgun apartments on Testacy City’s south side.
A continuous stream of water trickled down the rock wall at the back of the cage, flowing steadily into a nice shallow pool. A few thick logs, along with a number of heat lamps in the ceiling, rounded out the habitat.
I whistled, “That’s a big cage.”
“Georgia is a big snake.”
“How big?”
“Well, she’s still growing. But last time we measured her she checked in at about sixteen feet long and 250 pounds.”
“So then it’s safe to say this was the work of more than one person.”
“More than one person? Re-he-hur-hur-hur!” His whole upper body arched back as he let loose the strangest bit of laughter to ever come my way. I took a step back. He continued.
“Of course it’s ‘safe to say’ this was the work of more than one person. When we bring her out for exercise—snakes need exercise too, don’tcha know,” he chided in that annoying tone of his, “when we bring her out, it usually takes six or seven of us to carry her.”
“Hmmm,” I nodded. “Can I get a look at the other side of this cage?”
“Righty-right. Just follow me.”
Regardie walked over to a door painted the same mud-brown as the rest of the reptile house and pulled a big ring of keys out of his pocket. He unlocked the door and held it open for me.
I checked the lock on the door as I went in. No sign of foul play.