The Bird Boys

by Lisa Sandlin

  “Reporting, sir.” Ben saluted and handed over a black portfolio. Straightened up to his full height.

  Had he grown?

  Phelan waved Delpha forward. “Delpha Wade, Ben the photographer,” he said, and the two exchanged faint hellos.

  Phelan unlatched the portfolio. Instantly, Ben was at his elbow. “OK, here’s several batches. You get the most people on weekends. Obviously.”

  Phelan didn’t look up. “You went every day, didn’t you?”

  “Uh. Yeah. Made the rounds, hope you’re paying gas. Date and site on the back.”

  Phelan laid the case on Delpha’s desk, which she occupied again. He lifted the stack of stiff eight by ten black and white prints, edges curling a little, shuffled through them. Tall stack. Birds. Kid hadn’t been able to resist, and damn if he didn’t have an eye: a flock of flappers, wheeling toward a tree, a messy pelican taking a bath, shaking a million diamonds from its outstretched wings. The Gull Air Force, two serious wingmen flat-out over the water.

  Bird-watchers. A woman in a scarf with binoculars, up on the observation stand. A stocky ranger, gesturing into the distance, over the marshy land toward the bay. Kid with a stick and a hopeful what can I kill? expression. A man with a camera mounted onto a tripod, whose bucket-like hat had a down-folded brim. A teenage boy closer to the watery ditch had somehow managed to stick out his tongue and grin at the same time. At the camera.

  “Way to keep a low profile, Ben.”

  Ben’s face flattened a little but shaped up again once he interpreted the sarcastic pucker of Phelan’s lips. “Can’t keep a low profile with a guy,” Ben tapped the teenager with the impishly protruding tongue, then tapped his temple, “who hugs you.”

  “Guess not.” Phelan studied the teenager, then passed on to a girl in short shorts glaring resentfully into the camera while an older woman loomed over her shoulder working wide-open jaws. Phelan fanned the rest of them, went back to the girl.

  “Nice one. Funny.”

  “Cute when she smiled.”

  “Aren’t they? OK, wait a second…” Phelan jogged into his office and pulled out a mustard yellow packet from his top drawer. Came back and fanned out the photos of Bell he’d snapped from his landlord the dentist’s window. Then he chose Ben’s photos with grown men in them, plopped them above his small snapshots. Maybe a man who looked like Xavier Bell was one of these birdwatchers.

  “Anybody look alike to you?”

  Ben came over and interleaved them, one of his, one of Phelan’s, side by side. Adjusting their edges minutely, he said, “Wow, I see why you hired me. I could blow any of these up but they’ll be fuzzy.” He leaned forward, squinting. “Maybe that guy.” He tapped the man in the bucket hat. “But I don’t know. Nobody really jumps out.”

  Then, by degrees, Ben’s compressed features began to relax. He pecked his finger at Phelan a couple times before he found his voice.

  “Wait a minute. Yeah, wait, lemme take the negatives of these.” He peered into the packet to make sure the negatives were there. “I’ll blow them up and measure.”

  “Measure what?”

  “Nose, ears. I read a whole article on it once. In old-timey France, they measured prisoners to keep track of them. There’s a name for it. After the guy that thought it up.”

  Phelan waited, but Ben didn’t come up with it.

  “Well, so photographers do this. Not cops?”

  Ben looked like he was trying to remember, or he was deliberating or debating himself or stalling. One of his eyes was squeezed almost shut. Then he stretched out his chin and raked his hair off his forehead, though it wasn’t long enough to cover his forehead.

  “Yeah,” he said, “yeah, photographers…Yeah, we can do that.” Offhand. Very offhand. But he stacked his own photos back in the portfolio, tossed in Phelan’s mustard packet, snapped the portfolio’s latch and disappeared.

  Leaving a contrail behind him.

  XIX

  ONCE WHEN HE was twelve and a half and mad at the world, Phelan’d swiped his mother’s keys and gunned down to the port where he took off his shoes and jeans, tied the pants around his neck, and waded out into the turning basin. He was a pretty strong swimmer and the ships were close, though the soaked denim immediately changed into an iron collar dragging at him. Still he pulled out, stroke by stroke, until he’d reached a hull. He treaded water and hollered up at the skyscraper. Nobody to holler at, but he kept on until his chilled elbows refused to bend properly and his tiring arms pushed at the heavy water like balsa oars. A dark head peered down from the deck, stories away.

  “Hey,” Phelan yelled. “Take me on!”

  A sailor with one eyebrow shouted down at him in some gargley language. Phelan pointed up toward the deck. Another head appeared beside his, and they both yelled at him a while. One held up a palm and pumped his fist into it and they laughed. Then both heads whisked out of sight. Phelan was dumb enough to think maybe they were fetching a rope ladder to toss down to him. But a bald head imprinted with a stern face craned over the side, and the original two scuttled back, frantically flicking their hands at the boy in the water.

  Cold, water-logged, swallowing oily river, Phelan chopped back considerably slower than he’d plunged toward the ship. Some essential core of dignity and ridiculousness forbade him to jettison the concrete jeans. He was bull-horned before he made shore. Phelan got his wish, hauled up into a boat. Only not a floating city sailing away to a foreign land, but a dinky speedboat manned by water police. Language he understood well was barked into his face. Phone calls were made while Phelan dripped on a linoleum floor. Barefoot. But not bare-assed.

  E.E. wasn’t chief then, just Detective Guidry, but he brought with him into the cramped port office a Napoleonic professional courtesy and a merry stir that lured people to him, including a couple jokes about the law firm of Boudreaux, Boudreaux, Boudreaux, and Boudreaux. Phelan had been shucked out of that fix like a Gulf oyster from its shell.

  Being crossways with E.E. had been the shits. But he didn’t regret the lawyer for Delpha.

  He was working his second shift on the homebuyers. Supper was a good time to call. He asked directions or offered a phone book or pretended he thought his friend Carl lived at the address. So far, he’d seen seven more homeowners, all white, and missed three, including a Barton Hebert, who didn’t answer the doorbell. Of the seven, five were thirties-forties-fifities, not old enough to be Rodney. One was old enough but in a wheelchair, his door answered by a daughter with a tower of Jehovah Witness hair that could have homed a gopher. The next—Phelan had to track the Beegees Don’t ask me whyyyyyyyy I love you and that’s all I can say around to the back yard to locate the owner—was in his early twenties. Guy was at least five years younger than Phelan’s twenty-nine, and he had a beer in his fist, a smoking barbecue grill, and friends lounging all over patio furniture.

  Fortunate son.

  At seven-forty, Phelan pulled up to the curb of 7937 S. Sarah Street, the house a Mitchell Smith had bought in July. Tidy ranch, its white window-trim half-painted over a beef jerky color. This was a modest neighborhood, couple potholes in the street. Chevy in the driveway. He touched his hand to the hood as he passed it. Cool. He knocked.

  The door opened. The black man standing behind the screen wore khakis, a short-sleeved white shirt with sweat stains, striped tie loosened at the neck and a pocket protector that held two pens. Average height, late thirties. A cooking smell wafted out—fish.

  “Mr. Michael Smith?”

  “Mitchell. What can I do for you?”

  “Mitchell,” Phelan corrected himself and held up a phone book. Bunch more in the back seat. “I’m from the phone company. We ’pologize for being so late to get this to you, but here you go.”

  The man opened the screen door. “I got one. They left one when they put the phone in. But I’ll take this one for my grandmother. Y’all hadn’t brought her a new one.” One of his eyes became narrower. “Hadn’t brought one to nobody on he
r whole street, and they called y’all, too.”

  Phelan handed over the floppy book. “What street is that?” He was shaking his head, lips pursed as Mitchell Smith gave him the name.

  “I’ll report that. My supervisor, he’s always getting names or streets mixed up. But his brother-in-law’s district manager.” Phelan quirked his eyebrows and pulled his lips to the side.

  Mitchell Smith’s eyes equalized. “I hear you,” he said.

  Phelan doubled back around to an address six blocks away to see if Barton Hebert was home and found a different scene. Now there were a lot of cars out front. Mr. Hebert was home. Late-thirties, rumpled black suit, reddened eyes, a haunted third-grader clamped to his hip. Black-dressed people behind him sitting and standing with plates of food in his living room.

  Phelan pushed it, five more addresses. Chris Johnson was a tight-faced woman in her forties with fighting kids. Jim Anderson had so many trees in his yard Phelan could’ve used a machete to reach the front door. Which nobody answered. The last three didn’t appreciate being peeled away from TV shows and symphony music swelling from a record player. Two the wrong age, the third the wrong race—seventy-ish but Filipino or Hawaiian or something. With female company. Annoyed.

  Phelan was annoyed himself. He excused himself back to the Chevelle.

  XX

  AS REQUESTED, DELPHA had gotten up and turned the lock on the door to Phelan Investigations. Then squared up the stack of Xeroxes, took her pencil, and repositioned her green plastic ruler. She breathed a large, clean breath, settled into her chair.

  She inched down the smeary page of births, ever alert to 1898 and 1900. Easier if the list named only City of New Orleans’ babies. But this was the whole of Orleans Parish.

  She sat up, her brow contracting. Then dialed the library, asked for Angela and when she came on, said, “Hello, this is Delpha Wade. Am I speakin’ to the reference librarian?”

  Happy squeal. “Sure are. What question can Tyrrell Public Library’s reference department help you with this evening?”

  “Wanna know how big Orleans Parish in Louisiana is.”

  “Buzz you right back.”

  Marie, Maria, Mary, Mariette, Miriam, Marianne. Glad she wasn’t hunting for girls. The boys’ names were more varied…the phone rang.

  “Hey, Delpha. Orleans Parish covers three hundred and fifty miles.”

  “And didn’t even get out of my chair. Thank you, Reference Librarian. You gettin’ lots of stuff to find out?”

  “I tell you. Just had a question today about birds that roost on your gutters so either you get stuck with them chirping all the time or you murder ‘em. I can tell you how to do that, by the way.”

  “All this power’s going to your head, Angela.”

  “Isn’t it great? My head’s like the Goodyear blimp. Bye now.”

  Delpha marked her place. She took off the black flats and tucked a leg into her chair. Quiet in the office, inside these fresh white walls, minus Phelan’s simmering energy. The occasional siren, honk from the street a floor below.

  Back in early April she was just out of prison, and the businesspeople at the other end of the job ads had whisked the door shut on her eleven or twelve times, one after the other. Six weeks later, when she had the interview with Mr. Phelan, she’d have agreed to type the Houston phone book and hum Froggie Went A-Courting as she typed, so long as she got a job. Delpha was reminded again of how things moved along. Even her. It was just, now that she had work, she wanted more.

  She determined that was not advancement exactly. Not in the way Angela meant it. Angela had ruling on her mind. Maybe Delpha was a little more like Oscar. Oscar was thinking Boss, but he was also thinking pork loin, shrimp remoulade, apricot bread pudding.

  Delpha didn’t care about Boss. She was pretty sure she wanted her work to have an end that made her feel satisfied. That was it. She wanted to feel curious about what she did, interested while she did it—if interest and jobs could go together. They had for Fayann Mackie.

  At nine o’clock she was starving, but she had them all. All those turn-of-the-century baby brothers. That’s what she’d label this list: Brothers, when she typed it up.

  And…there was something she hadn’t done. One thing, filed back in her mind. Something.

  Well, tomorrow. Now she was going back to the hotel. Heat up a plate of pork tenderloin. Good that she was doing Oscar this dishwashing favor—or she’d be out of luck. No special dinners on his watch. Somebody might could sneak into the pantry, heist a jar of dill pickles, mess up Oscar Hardy’s food costs. Which would mess with Oscar Hardy’s Do-It-Yourself chef education course.

  That tenderloin—saliva filled her mouth. She gathered her purse and the empty Coca-Cola bottle, locked up, hurried down the stairs, looked both ways before she crossed. In the middle of the street she remembered. Delpha spun in the headlight of a motorcycle and ran back up the stairs.

  The phone rang as she was pulling open her top drawer. She hesitated then picked it up. “Phelan Investigations.”

  “My word, aren’t you keeping late hours, Miss Wade.”

  She stood up, glanced toward the window. “Just leaving, Mr. Bell. Can I do something for you?”

  “Is Mr. Phelan making p-progress on my case?”

  “He is. We’re checking out every single man who bought a house in the last eighteen months or so. Mr. Phelan is…has been out doing that today. Anything else you’d like to add, that might help us find your brother?”

  There was a silence.

  “There are things…I neglected to tell Mr. Phelan. You sh-shouldn’t withhold from allies, should you?” He was stumbling over some words, drawing out others.

  Crisply, Delpha said, “Not if you want your allies to do their job.”

  “Of course. It was wrong of me.”

  Delpha gave a large nod, saying nothing.

  “All right, I told you I wasn’t angry at Rodney for getting an allowance while I went to the store every day. That wasn’t true. I was angry. But you should know, Miss Wade, I suppose this is what I want to say, I would call Rodney in the years I could still find him, and when I heard my brother’s voice, the anger vanished. I so wish he had felt the same. Oh, I w-wish he had. Once, I stood there with the hall phone in my hand, choked up, and I caught sight of a man’s face in the mirror by the hat rack, and I thought, That poor man is b-broken, that’s his problem. That man was me, Miss Wade.” Surprise lingered in his voice. He waited, maybe for some exclamation from Delpha.

  “I’m real sorry, Mr. Bell. That must have upset you. But—”

  “That’s not all.”

  “Excuse me, go ahead.”

  “Rodney will have a friend with him.”

  After a while Delpha said, “A friend.”

  “A younger friend.”

  “Boyfriend?”

  “Friend. Are you…you’re not all alone up there?”

  She did not turn her head to glimpse into Phelan’s office where a man had tried to kill her. She didn’t have to. She could feel the shadow of his bulk. Which, according to Aileen’s description, was something more like the rim of a cave. Delpha pitched her mind away from either shape, then pitched her voice: as if inquiring about an admirable accomplishment, asked, “Now how did you know we’d be here this late, Mr. Bell?”

  “Why, I…I…just passing by a while back and saw the light on up there.”

  Delpha’s head jerked toward the door. Had she locked it? “And you’re home now, Mr. Bell?” His contract listed an address on Calder where he was staying. Not all that far from here.

  No, she had not locked it.

  A belch, muffled. “I bl’ieve you told me you had not seen ‘The Thirty-Nine Steps’? The Hitchcock film? It m-made his reputation. You might be interested to know that its villain is missing half his pinkie finger.” A chuckle. “Your boss is missing a middle one. I saw that right away. And the similarity between you and Miss Madeleine Carroll. Well. Don’t you think it strange I didn�
�t recognize my own face in the mirror? Uncanny.”

  Uncanny? She’d call his behavior feeble-minded. Some kind of sleep-walking. She pressed her growling stomach. “It’s strange. I’m afraid I need to—”

  A clinkety sound, followed by a crash, a piercing exclamation, and a crack as the receiver hit the floor. She could hear him at a distance. The slightly drunken drawl disappeared into a string of curses edged with piteous shrillness, as if he were on the verge of tears.

  “The whole damn pitcher…”

  “Are you all right, Mr. Bell? Mr. Bell?”

  Dial tone.

  Slowly she hung up, understanding their client was feeling sorry for himself. He’d stated his aim as a reunion with Rodney, but he must crave sympathy, too. Consolation? A bond? Well, that result wasn’t the responsibility of Phelan Investigations. Delpha herself had discovered, by means of a few nasty lessons, that self-pity got in her way.

  She went straight to the door and locked it. Making a mental note to buy an extra-extra-long cord for her phone, one that could be coiled out of sight under her desk, but that would allow her to reach the door, should it be necessary to hold onto the receiver and throw the lock at the same time.

  Then she returned to her desk’s top drawer.

  It was there right where she put it. The piece of notepaper from a police desk pad that Phelan had brought back. The New Orleans people his uncle’s mother remembered—French Quarter shopkeepers Mrs. Estelle Guidry had known, ones with merchandise like the shop Xavier Bell had described: swords, antiques, art, coins, pistols, jewelry. A dart of excitement hit Delpha. Look at this! The names Smith and Hebert were on Mrs. Guidry’s shopkeeper list. They were also on Homeowners. And Mrs. Guidry had recalled three additional names.

  She tucked this notepaper back into the drawer. It would have to wait. She had an urgent date with Oscar Hardy’s cooking. She scooped up the Coke bottle and her purse, unlocked the door, locked it back, and ran across the street.