The Way of All Fish

by Martha Grimes

  “Nearly. A couple more things to check.” Arthur had whipped out a tiny flashlight and was running it over the ceiling.

  Sigourney made a disapproving sound and shut the door. They waited. They pulled off their dust masks.

  “Hell,” said Arthur, “we can’t get into the files with her around. God knows who she might send in here to certain death. It’s down to Oscar.”

  “Oscar’s backup.”

  “Yeah, C. That’s what we need right now. For Christ’s sake, you’ll get the fish back.” Arthur was back at the computer, switching it off.

  “Who knows? Look at the size of some of them.” Candy was once again standing before the aquarium.

  “There’s nothing in that tank bigger than my thumb.” He reached for the toolbox. “You want me to do it?”

  “What? No. It’s my job.” Candy opened the box and pulled out the water-filled bag in which Oscar was pumping around and looking dissatisfied; at least that’s the way Candy read him.

  Arthur said, “Hold on a minute while I get the door, see if anyone’s going to butt in.” He slid the door open a crack, looked out. “Okay, go ahead.”

  Candy lowered the bag into the water, opened it, and let that water blend with the water in the tank and Oscar with it. A bright blue fish shimmied up to Oscar, and they swam off together.

  “Hey, look at that. He’s already making friends.”

  “He’ll do swell in there. Look how clean they keep the tank. That water’s clear as crystal. Come on, let’s get our gear and get the hell out before Sigourney starts searching her PC for Biosphere.”

  They folded their ladders, closed their toolboxes, and made their way out, telling Sang-Lu that Mr. Hale would be getting a report.

  “He’s a hostage to fortune,” said Karl, inhaling what felt like the breath of a volcano, “so stop whining. Be proud of him.”

  “Fuck’s sake, Karl, Oscar don’t know he’s a hostage. What’s to be proud of? It’s a dirty deal.”

  “Play the hand you were dealt,” said Arthur, eyes closed.

  “Since when did you both get so philosophical?” said Candy.

  Karl held up one of Lena’s cigarettes by way of answer.

  Candy grunted. He was on his second cigarette, and it wasn’t having the effect he needed.

  Lena had come back into the room with a bottle of cognac. “You need something stronger than a cigarette. This is quite a unique cognac and very hard to get.” She set out some snifters.

  “How’s it mix with these?” Karl pointed to his cigarette and smiled.

  Lena returned the smile, then said, “Now. Tomorrow we go, or at least I go, to see Wally and Rod. What names. We’re short one or two people, aren’t we? Are you confident the assistant won’t recognize you? You say she was in the office for some moments.” She was addressing Arthur as she poured cognac into the snifters.

  “People never recognize me. I’m like smoke or mist. And we were dressed in all kinds of crap.” Arthur and Candy were still wearing their vests. They’d come to Lena’s straight from the Spurling Building. “Anyway, she was thinking more about radioactivity than what the two of us looked like.”

  Candy had taken first a whiff of and then a drink of Lena’s cognac. “Oh, man.”

  “It’s too bad you couldn’t get into the files and had to use poor Oscar. But I assume he was easily managed?” said Lena.

  Candy laughed. “He’d be real flattered you remembered his name.”

  “Of course I remember his name. Oscar is a key player.”

  They all drank their cognac and wondered where their heads were.

  Except Lena, who knew where hers was.

  44

  He’s trying to rationalize everything. Trying to convince himself it’s eye trouble, stuff like that,” said Paul.

  “How in the hell,” asked Clive Esterhaus, “do you make an optical illusion out of an alligator that’s pushing you into a boat?” They were gathered again in Bobby Mackenzie’s office for an update, smoking and drinking coffee, for once.

  “Well, not that,” said Paul, dusting one of Bobby’s Cuban cigars across the quarter acre of an ashtray.

  “This guy,” said Bobby, “has got a weird view of reality if he can rationalize all of those episodes, which, by the way, were pretty damned inventive.” With the hand holding his own cigar, Bobby gave Paul a thumbs-up.

  Paul said, “He just phoned me and told me he’s convinced the alligator was sick or too ancient to realize there was a human being on his back.”

  “Talk about mental,” said Karl.

  Paul continued, “He’s been reading up on alligator behavior on the Internet.”

  “What the fuck?” said Candy. “This guy thinks he’s going to find the answer on Discovery about what happened in the Everglades?”

  “What about the burning bush?” asked Karl, trying to blow a smoke ring but ending up with smoke fuzzing his face. “How in hell could he rationalize his way out of that?”

  “His ophthalmologist,” said Paul. “Dr. See—I didn’t make up that name—Dr. See told him that the retina, or some layer of it, was rife with deposits. I can’t remember, except it seemed to be the same thing that happens with macular degeneration.”

  “Oh, please,” said Bobby. “Tell me another. Have you ever heard anyone suffering from macular degeneration walk into an eye doctor’s office and say, ‘I think I’m getting AMD. I saw an alligator’?”

  Candy pumped his fist in the air. “But that’s an extra, man. Now old Bass has to worry maybe he’s going blind.”

  “He’s caught between a rock and a hard place. It’s either accepting he’s had a heavenly vision or tapping along the pavement with a white cane,” said Clive, pouring himself another cup of coffee, adding cream.

  “What about the Wilkie Collins Redux?” This was Bobby’s personal favorite. “I always knew Bunny had the makings of a Sarah Bernhardt. I wish I’d been there.”

  Paul smiled. “Yeah. It was some show.” As if reminding himself of the view from the office, he wandered over to the enormous window.

  “So your overall plan is to have him checking in to Bellevue, but he’s balking?” asked Clive.

  “No. Hess is already crazy; if we got him installed in a psychiatric facility, he’d be rationalizing that, too. He’d be revamping reality and get out in no time. Nope. This guy needs a whole new way of life.” Paul looked around at them. “Oh, don’t think he’s really convinced himself none of this happened. His mind is like a pinball machine: balls rolling around, falling here, there, Bass in control only insofar as he can pull back the plunger and pray.”

  “So,” said Karl, finally managing a perfect smoke ring, “what you do with a pinball machine is, you tilt it without making the lights go out.”

  “That metaphor works,” said Bobby. “Meaning he needs a good scare.”

  “What? You think the guy hasn’t already had one? That scene in the junkyard, that’d be enough to put my lights out, buddy.”

  Bobby chortled. He picked up his coffee cup, regarded it as if it were an unfamiliar beverage, and set it down again. “That girl is wasted in this office. She should get a promotion, except I don’t know what to promote her to. Why should she spend her precious time taking down what Jack Sprague and those others blather on about. It’s like listening to a fucking knitting contest. That’s what it’s like up there, knitting needles going on, rat tat tat.” He did an awfully good imitation of clattering needles. They all laughed, especially Paul, who then said, “Bobby, you’re rarely wrong, but in the case of Bunny—”

  “I’m never wrong.” Which was supposed to come off as a joke.

  “In the case of Bunny Fogg, you don’t get it. You think she wants to be something else? You think she hates having to listen to Jackson Sprague? She thinks it’s fun; she likes hearing their meaningless legal banter. And what would you promote her to? Assistant, associate editor? Oh, that’s always fun. Editor? Ask Clive. The only job around here that’s not a
downer is yours.”

  “Oh, I dunno,” said Bobby. “Don’t forget the Good-bye Boys. They’ve got an even sweeter deal. They’re never here.”

  45

  Karl, Lena bint Musah, and Danny Zito walked through the glass and marble lobby of the Spurling Building at ten A.M. the next morning. They went up fifteen floors in the time it would take to zip a body bag and made a smooth exit as the doors whispered open.

  Danny was in all black—merino wool jacket, Lauren turtleneck, Boss jeans. In garb very hot for a sunny September day, Danny looked very cool.

  Lena was wearing a high-collared black silk dress.

  Karl wore a pin-striped suit, pale blue shirt, and abstract-art tie.

  To any eye, they were an impressive trio. They were intimidating, chief intimidator being Danny, who, when Sigourney fake-smiled and asked them to “wait here,” raised his eyebrows, did not take a seat, suggesting that “wait” was in a language foreign to him. Quickly, Sigourney opened the door to Mr. Hale’s office, slipped in and out again.

  There had been some anxiety expressed that Danny might be recognized as the author of Fallguy, an exposé of the Bransoni family that had sent him into the Witness Protection Program. Danny had scoffed when Karl brought up the fact that Danny’s face had been plastered on the back cover of fifty thousand books.

  “You don’t think these suckers read, do you? Anyway, I look like a couple hundred other guys.” Which sounded extremely modest and self-effacing until he rattled off who some of the couple hundred were: Al Pacino, Robert De Niro, Joe Mantegna, and on and on, until he got around to Steve McQueen and Candy had to stop him. McQueen had been tall and blond and blue-eyed; Danny was short and dark, with eyes like marbles.

  “I’m a chameleon, a man of many faces.”

  “One of which is a chameleon.”

  Danny had haggled over that all the way across midtown, which was such a sea of yellow cabs that they could have been driving through Wordsworth’s daffodils.

  Wally and Rod jumped up when the three walked in, ignoring Sigourney’s announcement. They were into chairs before she finished struggling with the name bint Musah.

  Danny molded himself to the white Philippe Starck chair. For purposes of this visit, his name was Zeller.

  “Mr. Zeller,” Wally said, “may I ask—”

  “You may,” said Danny, lighting up a Marlboro and dropping his lighter back into his jacket pocket.

  “—what your role is here?” Wally smiled. Or smirked.

  Danny blew smoke out of his nostrils. “Bluefin Alliance.” He blew more smoke, as if his head were full of it.

  Wally and Rod regarded each other with something other than admiration for their Armani suits. They looked scared.

  Rod said after much throat-clearing, “That’s the organization that, uh, oversees the import of exotic fish?”

  Danny stubbed out his cigarette and smiled. “Especially the sort that makes the government nervous.” From somewhere he’d taken a toothpick, stuck it in the corner of his mouth.

  “So, may we ask—”

  “We protect the interests of our colleagues, such as Ms. bint Musah.”

  “Ms. bint Musah feels she’s being harassed by the U.S. government,” said Wally knowingly. “We need to be apprised of the extent of her involvement in the importation and distribution of illegal species.”

  Danny took the toothpick out of his mouth. “Who said illegal?”

  “You did, didn’t—”

  Suddenly, there was a commotion in the outer office, raised voices coming nearer and nearer to Wally Hale’s office, the door of which opened with a thrust. Although Sigourney (to give her credit) was attempting to block their entrance, a man and a woman shouldered past her, he tall, blond, and dressed in gabardine that had never seen the inside of Façonnable; she, of medium height, fiery hair, dressed in a hot-pink suit and wearing heels so high and thin, they could have impaled a squirrel.

  “Wallace Hale?” said Arthur Mordred.

  “Roderick Reeves?” said Blaze Pascal.

  They spoke simultaneously as they whipped out their government identification.

  “U.S. Fish and Wildlife, sir.” Arthur spoke softly but assuredly. He pushed back the horn-rimmed glasses he’d bought at CVS.

  Danny slid down in his chair. “Not you two.”

  Arthur’s smile was not friendly. “Yes, we two. How have you been, Mr. Zeller?”

  Danny didn’t reply.

  Wally and Rod had stood and were crowding each other toward the corner where the window met the wood filing cabinets.

  “What is this?” said Wally, showing some spunk. “How dare you burst into my office? Where’s your authority?” He looked at Rod.

  Rod picked up some of Wally’s leftover spunk. “You can’t barge into these offices!”

  Arthur shot out his arm, his hand holding the ID. “The U.S. government, gentlemen. That’s my authority.”

  Karl shot from his chair. “Mr. Hale here is within his legal rights to call security.”

  Arthur faced him nearly nose to nose. “You don’t know zilch about what’s going on here, buddy. So stow it!” He turned to Blaze Pascal, who had retrieved a net with a collapsible handle from her voluminous bag. She had also taken from it a clear plastic box.

  “You’re in possession of a peppermint angelfish, Mr. Hale. Where are the papers?”

  “Papers? What papers? What fish? What are you talking about?” He nodded toward the aquarium. “I don’t know anything about that. Someone else takes care of it.”

  “Then bring in the someone else.”

  Rod punched the intercom, told the girl to send in Sigourney. “Now!”

  Wally said, “So what’s this peppermint, anyway?”

  “Peppermint angelfish, Mr. Hale. The ones in captivity you could count on the fingers of one hand. You have to get FWS permission to own one. You, we were told, own one. And we have authority to seize it.”

  Sigourney came through the door, looking out of character, with stray locks of hair around her ears and streaked mascara.

  “Who maintains the fish tank?” said Wally.

  “Fish? Fish tank? Why?”

  “Never mind why. Who supplies the fish?”

  “No one in the office. It’s a professional firm. The work is leased—”

  “Get the name.”

  Sigourney nodded, looked over the room’s occupants, shook her head, and left on wobbly heels.

  Blaze had netted Oscar and was transferring him to his fish hotel. “Got him,” she said to Arthur.

  “We’re confiscating the fish, Mr. Hale. We’ll be back with a warrant to search your office.”

  Wally’s voice had gone up a treble note. “I know nothing about this operation.”

  “Right. You’ve got Lena bin Musah—”

  “Bint,” corrected Lena, spearing a black grape from a large platter of fruit on the table with the knife in her brooch.

  “You’ve got Ms. bint Musah and Danny Zeller sitting right across from you, and you’re saying you know nothing? Tell me another.”

  Jesus, thought Karl. “Tell me another!” “Stow it!” Who was writing Arthur’s dialogue?

  As quickly and obtrusively as they’d arrived, the two of them left.

  Or, rather, the three of them, if one counted Oscar.

  Wally and Rod seemed completely dazed by the little play that had just unfolded. Danny Zito, however, all but jumped from his chair to go and gaze at the aquarium’s contents. “Where in hell did you get a peppermint angelfish? Who’s your supplier? It’s not Bluefin.” Danny straightened up to give them a threatening look.

  “We don’t have a fucking supplier.”

  Danny looked at Lena. “It ain’t her, is it?”

  Wally hit the intercom. “Sigourney? Have those people gone? How did they get past the front desk?”

  The voice of Sigourney was anything but composed. “Government agents, what were we—”

  “Why didn’t you
call security? They had no warrant! They seized our property—and where in bloody hell is the company that put these goddamned tanks in?”

  Sigourney sounded wounded and weepy. “I’ve been trying—”

  Wally swore for five seconds, shut her off, turned to Rod. “We’ll sue.”

  Lena sighed. She drew out her silver case, plucked a cigarette from it, said, “I told you, didn’t I? Now, however”—she leaned toward the lighter in Karl’s hand, then back—“now we might be of help.”

  Rod muscled in. “Help? What are you talking about?”

  Lena looked at Karl, who said, “We can make it disappear.”

  “Or make them disappear.” This contribution came from Danny Zito, who seemed enthralled by the fish.

  Wally and Rod stared at them and then at each other.

  “Don’t get carried away, Mr. Zeller.” Lena eyed him through tendrils of smoke as she exhaled.

  Karl said, leaning forward, “Look, it’s a bullshit charge, but they’ll make it stick. Probably just a fine, but—”

  “A big, big one. And jail time.” Danny was back and happy to make a bad situation worse. “You don’t know what this world is like, Wally. That little fish they just took outta here? That pep angel we could get forty K for. We got clients”—Danny eased himself to the edge of his chair, closing in on Wally’s desk—“clients got tanks like that”—he jerked his thumb over his shoulder toward the office aquarium—“in their living rooms, but that’s just a blind. That ain’t where the action is, no, the real fish, the fortune in fish, they don’t display them in public. What? They’d be nuts. No. Their green arowans, their Clippertons. This is big business, Wally. A lot of this fishing for exotics is in the Philippines because they got next to no regulations there. Aquarium fishermen shooting up the corals with cyanide. Huge business. And these collectors, these people, they got rooms built underground like fucking bomb shelters. Walking into one of those rooms, it’s like scuba diving in the Indian Ocean. You can’t imagine what they got. Except protection.” Danny smiled a sharklike smile.

  “That’s what the Bluefin Alliance is all about. Not only do we furnish fish like this, we protect our clients. You can’t believe what is underground here in the so-called City of Light.”