The Bird Boys

by Lisa Sandlin

  Delpha swallowed bile. “Somebody hurt?”

  “Yes, ma’am, ambulance called to the scene.” He didn’t make eye contact before jogging around to the driver’s seat and jumping in.

  The cold pooled in her stomach rose up and branched through her veins. She subtracted Tom Phelan from the world and felt her mind go blank. Delpha leaned into the passenger window and demanded of the driver, “Tell me if it’s Tom Phelan.”

  “Ma’am,” the other cop said from behind her, “b’lieve the ambulance departed. We got cars there, that’s all we know. Whatever it is, the B.P.D.’s on it.” He held open the door to the back seat.

  Cars, more than one. Delpha murmured, “Don’t do that thing with my head, OK?” She raked back her hair, slid onto the seat, and rode with both arms hugging her midriff.

  XLIV

  PHELAN WAS LOOKING back over his shoulder before driving away from the house when he heard shouting. A flash of movement then Rudy scuttled down the ramp semaphoring, hollering at Phelan for help. They ran up the ramp to the house together, Rudy wild-eyed, babbling about CPR. Yeah, he knew he’d said it’d be a blessing if Raffie’s heart gave out, but he couldn’t let him go without even trying, you had to try, you had—

  Phelan said Yeah, you had to.

  A pillow lay on the carpet in Raffie’s room. The black and white portable TV was low-volume yammering on a dresser, a rocking chair in the corner. Raffie’s head was flat against the sheet, bangs fallen back, mouth gaping. One of his eyes was open, the other closed. Phelan’s nose wrinkled at the smell.

  “Heart, right?” Rudy begged. “Right?”

  “Call 9-1-1, hurry.”

  Rudy rushed out of the room. Quickly Phelan checked Raffie’s warm neck for a pulse, got none.

  He tried anyway. Did mouth to mouth and chest compressions, three minutes, nothing. Rudy hovered behind him, muttering. Six minutes, Phelan mentally pleading with the ambulance to get here. Almost ten minutes when they heard the siren, and Rudy ran out to flag it down so the ambulance wouldn’t pass by the house with all the trees.

  Phelan knelt, took in the abraded corners of Raffie’s bluish lips, the open eye that was dilated and fixed, bloodshot. He pulled down the lower lid, saw the red specks that meant bleeds in the capillaries. Specks on the upper lid and its inner surface, too. Indicators of strain. Phelan’s face twisted. Poor Raffie—he’d suffered. Heart faltering, stopping, he’d strained mightily to breathe.

  Thundering of boots on the ramp and a three-man rescue crew took over the room, the lead guy squatting to check a pulse, to study Raffie, the fingertips of one hand. He cut his eyes to Phelan, “You did CPR?”

  “For about ten minutes,” Phelan said. He stared back. The same look was on both their faces. Then they looked over to Rudy, braced against the wall so as to be out of their way, his face molded into one of those Tragedy masks theatres use for decoration.

  The crewman fit on a pocket mask over Raffie’s nose and mouth. He repositioned the still man’s head upward and began resuscitation efforts. After five minutes, he paused and spoke to a guy in back of him, who flung at Rudy, “Use your phone, sir?” and dashed off in the direction Rudy pointed. The crewman started in again, kept it up until his partner entered the room and spoke in his ear. He listened, head bent. Then he stood up, angled toward Rudy there against the wall.

  “Sir, we can transport him to the hospital, if that’s what you want. But we talked to the doctor, and given the signs we have here, I’m afraid—”

  “OK. I can see.” Rudy stepped forward, toward the bed. “You tried,” he said. He tipped his head toward Phelan, “He tried. I get it. He’s not coming back.”

  The rescue crewman reached out as if to offer him something, but Rudy didn’t notice. He’d already begun to fumble down onto his knees beside the bed. The men glanced at each other and moved out. Phelan lingered long enough to make sure Rudy was stable here, not in any danger himself.

  The old man was hugging his body to Raffie’s, cheek to chest. “My boy,” he said. “Always my boy.” His eyes were crushed shut.

  Phelan joined the ambulance crew in the kitchen area, told them he’d stay with Rudy, see that whatever needed to be done got done. The lead man handed him a button. “Give him this,” he said. “It was in the bed. Couple mortuary guys have sticky fingers.” The parrot cackled one of its canned lines, turning them all around. The men nodded at Phelan and filed out.

  Phelan looked down into his hand. Not a button.

  A coin. A gold coin with two faces on it.

  He felt a blow in his chest, like a blunt ax that hooked then ripped into his stomach. He ran down the hall, stopped at the doorway to scan the Astro-turfed porch. Its single door, a screen door, wafted slightly, open to the back yard’s trees and pond. Open. The ax sensation penetrated into his navel. Burned. What had happened would have happened with Phelan and Rudy right in the other room. Him making sure the old guy relaxed because he truly hadn’t looked well after his bout with Ugo. Then talking. They were talking while Ugo was clamping the air out of this…child.

  Phelan called the station, asked for a squad car, sat down at the dinette table near the phone.

  After a while he went back into the bedroom where Rudy still lay against Raffie. When finally Rudy struggled to stand, Phelan helped and then got out of Rudy’s way as he hefted the rocking chair over and positioned it parallel to the bed. Phelan snapped off the television and waited, his insides roiling. Rudy sat forward and laid his hand on Raffie’s head, smoothing his hair tenderly. Calmly, as if Raffie could feel it. Phelan would not be the one to break that calm. Rudy rumbled that song Phelan had heard him sing before, quit. Then the runners of the chair rocked silently against the carpet. Phelan gave him a handkerchief, and Rudy swiped his cheeks. “Guess I should call…a funeral home?”

  Anticipating the police, Phelan told him there was no hurry.

  Rudy nodded like that was what he wanted to hear and took hold of his nephew’s hand.

  The skin of Raffie’s face looked tight, blanched. Bruiselike discolorations might be forming even after death, around any area on the face or body that had been pressed on before Raffie’s heart stopped beating. Phelan didn’t know much about that. Not the regular kind of damage he’d seen in the Army.

  It had been the smile, the laughing, the manner of an excited child that had made Raffie young. The man on the bed didn’t look like a boy anymore.

  XLV

  AT THE JEFFERSON, the cops flashed badges at the ticket-taker in the booth. Delpha pulled up her posture till her breastbone popped away from some other bone. Both times she had faced a man yearning to hurt her, she’d been alone. Both times, and the fight had got to a place where she was wild as he was, and it had had to go there because she was still alive.

  A teenager in a maroon usher uniform led the lady and the two cops into the auditorium of the Jefferson, a grand old theatre fallen on the end times, and then he scooted back toward the yellow-lit popcorn lobby. Delpha, confronted by a twenty-foot cowboy whose teeth clenched a stogie, let her vision become used to the dark. She surveyed the seats. Roughly about thirty customers. Three sitting alone, one at the end of a row next to the aisle. Two of those were balding, light-haired men, one a girl or a boy with long hair. The cops strode forward, but she held up her hand. Her fingertips quivered.

  They followed down the aisle a few paces behind her. She walked to the one she considered most likely, bent, kept space between her and the man in the aisle seat. Reek of sweat. Cigarette smoke, whiskey.

  “Well, hello,” she whispered to the rapt profile.

  His head angled around. Ugo stared without focus, no recognition at all. Delpha kept from bolting by concentrating on which name she should use. Not wanting to rile him, she strained to conjure up the vocal powers of Zulma Barker.

  “Ugo. How nice to run into you here.”

  His features stuttered, upper lip and nostrils contracting, a flare of blood hate in the eyes. In his lap,
his hands sprang open. The pale old face awakened.

  “My word, my…I don’t mind telling you, Miss Carroll, that I am moved by your courtesy. How kind. That you should say that to me.” Water gathered in the dark eyes peering from their curtains of skin.

  His face collapsed—lips dragged downward, brow painfully squeezed, eyes shut tight, toppling tears onto his furrowed cheeks. Shoulders curved in, chin tucked into his neck—he shriveled. His fingers flexed outward, as though to ward off dread, and in that posture he froze.

  A girl-baby in a blue smock, a pile of sand. How she’d have kicked and cried. Maybe he climbed up and sat on her, bearing down until she stopped struggling and he could begin to scoop and dig and bury her. Delpha straightened and inched back from Ugo Sparrow.

  Ugo huddled still. His open palm had stayed up, too late to ward off ruin.

  Then, by degrees, Ugo Passeri’s movements reversed themselves. His hands folded into his lap, his upper body eased. No longer weeping, he turned his head to the screen and gazed up at it. Ugo’s features became bland and open and absorbed as the colossal cowboy taunted his enemies. As the outlaws blustered. Behind the swinging saloon door, a line of black mountains. The music playing sounded like violins and sirens.

  Delpha lifted her hand. It was steady now. Officers tramped down the aisle.

  After giving all the information she had, and getting nothing specific in return, Delpha walked through the warm night and climbed the stairs to Phelan Investigations. No one there. She taped a note on the door that she hoped, very much, would be read soon and headed to the Rosemont.

  She stood in the kitchen dark, rubbed her eyelids with her index fingers. Felt like grains of sand in her eyes.

  Nine forty, Delpha saw by the clock, when she snapped on one of the yellow overhead lights, not both, opened the back door to the insects’ song. Made sure the screen was tightlatched. Slowly, she scraped crusted dishes and silverware, loaded the tubs, started the first one through the Hobart. She switched on the radio and the pull-chain for the fluorescent light over the sink where the pots were soaking. Some man on the radio hollered, growled and hollered, bully bass line, flirty piano. Once the pots had been scrubbed, dried, and clanged back on their shelf, she did the cast-iron skillet, using salt to scour away the ring of hardened drippings. Then she wiped the skillet dry. She dried the stack of plates. Al Green was crooning Call me.

  What time was it now?

  11:17.

  Delpha chipped a speck off a hot fork, then she put up the plates and silverware, the serving pieces. Laid the big serving utensils in their drawer. Piled up the damn ramekins in their haphazard towers. Got a clean rag and washed the counters. Fetched the broom. Swept. She emptied the dustpan in the large kitchen garbage can and pushed it over by the door for Oscar to take out tomorrow.

  Almost midnight. Bob Dylan was singing about knocking and heaven. The song put her in mind of Serafin—maybe he’d show up back here soon, his mama up in heaven like one of the stars.

  She rolled out the mop bucket. Squeezed out the mop and stroked it across the greasy green and black linoleum. Under the kick spaces, in front of the stove. Contorted herself to get the mop beneath the chopping table. When she reached the doors to the lobby, she propped them open so she could wash right up to the threshold.

  She stuck the mop in the bucket. Brought up the skirt of her apron, tamped her face and neck, dropped it.

  Gladness splashed through her.

  Tom Phelan was crossing the Rosemont lobby. One lone viewer turned from the TV to track him. Delpha watched him all the way to the kitchen door. The burdensome way he carried himself, the weight in his eyes—by the time he reached her, she knew one thing he was going to tell her.

  “Rudy or Raffie?”

  “Raffie.” Phelan’s head moved infinitesimally sideways and back. “Cops think Ugo put a pillow over his face.”

  Delpha’s hand flew to her mouth. “Why? And how did he—?”

  “Let’s take a load off.” They sat down in a couple of the blue velour chairs, Phelan stretching out his legs with a groan, his head falling back. “Why,” he said.

  He described the old secret spilled, the mother’s will, the mother’s words to Ugo, the whole scene. Him and Rudy talking, believing the feud was settled, or getting there. Talking, while Ugo had slipped around the house through the trees, across the porch and into Raffie’s room. Phelan’d heard some noise, but put that down to Raffie stirring around after his nap. So he shook hands with Rudy, relieved to be done with the Sparrow brothers. Then, Rudy, running through the trees, yelling that Raffie’d had a heart attack.

  But he hadn’t. Not a natural one.

  Delpha’s eyes hadn’t left him.

  “Why,” Phelan said, and counted on his fingers. With Raffie dead, Ugo, as next-of-kin, would inherit everything, leaving Rudy high and dry. Revenge on Rudy—that motive was up there. Ugo was furious with how his reunion had turned out.

  “Wanted Rudy to tell him everthing was all right,” Delpha said, “even the old murder. Even that, that’s what I think. How’s Rudy doing?”

  “In the hospital. Couldn’t hold it together after…after he understood what’d happened.”

  Phelan wrenched himself upright in the blue chair and leaned forward elbows on his knees, staring down on his laced hands. “Shoulda broke it up sooner, Delpha. Thrown Ugo out, made Rudy lock the house and call the cops.”

  “And tell the cops what? Two brothers had a fight? You didn’t know Ugo’d do what he did.”

  “No. Shoulda known he was capable of it, though. Did know that, didn’t I?”

  “This ain’t your fault, Tom.”

  “Hard not to see it that way.”

  “Was it my fault Deeterman came in the office to get that book?”

  “Course not.”

  “Well then.” Roughly she broke apart his laced hands so she could squeeze one of them. “Rudy didn’t think of calling the cops either, and he knew his brother a lot better than you—than we did. You wasn’t there at all, he coulda killed ‘em both.”

  “Never know, will we.”

  “Never will.” Delpha released his hand and assumed a brisker tone. “What about all the birds?”

  Phelan wished she still had hold of his hand, wished they could sit that way for a day or two. He turned his head finally, looked at her. “Humane Society. They were sending out two ladies with a bunch of cages, but I didn’t stay for it. Went and milled around the hospital. And the station.”

  “Humane Society take the big bird?”

  “Perry.”

  “Perry?”

  “That’s his name. Sixty-seven years old. Rudy’s longtime companion. Lawyer’ll pick him up.”

  Delpha’s eyebrows rose. “Whose lawyer?”

  “They located the family lawyer in New Orleans. Guy named Sebastian Rush. You don’t know about him, but…guy’s not a feeb. He’ll handle the funeral. Also arrange a lawyer for Ugo, but bail—man, I wouldn’t count on bail.”

  He took in a deep breath, let it out, glanced at his watch. “It’s Saturday.”

  Phelan told her to take Monday off. Rest up. He knew Delpha’d worked extra hours that hadn’t appeared on her timecard. He smiled. Damn if Mr. Hank Aaron wasn’t playing tonight. Going for Number 713.

  Delpha saw that it wasn’t his pretty smile.

  XLVI

  “GOT ONE OF these for you.” Phelan came in Tuesday with a white bakery bag from Rao’s in one hand and the last bite of his breakfast in the other. Noticed that Delpha was occupied. He tossed the bite in his mouth, murmured ummm, and used the napkin in the bag to wipe the icing from his fingers. After which he studied why Delpha might have her desk chair situated by the secretary window and its blinds pulled up.

  On the wide back of an aquamarine puffy-chair was balanced the office first-aid kit, its lid lifted. Phelan peered closer. Plastic bottle of alcohol sitting on the windowsill. Two teeny silver balls and a needle on a paper towel in her lap, and she
was holding a compact, its small mirror angled at her face.

  Phelan walked over and took a gander downward, finally identified the silver items as really plain ball and post earrings. Next, he considered the mirror and the first-aid kit.

  “Stickin’ holes in your ears, right?”

  “My room faces the alley. Light’s better here.”

  “Need some help?”

  The compact lowered, she glanced his way, raised it again. “Believe I can get it.”

  “Pfft. With that set-up? Can’t stick and hold the mirror at the same time. Wait a sec.”

  In his office, he rummaged in the desk drawer. Stashed a pen between his teeth and rolled his wonky office chair into the outer office, sat in the chair, and butted its wheels against hers.

  He set down the felt-tip pen and a plastic lighter. Unspooled a length of gauze from the first-aid kit and cut it with the doll-size scissors. After uncapping the plastic bottle of isopropyl, Phelan poured the alcohol over the gauze strip and swabbed his hands. He discarded the gauze onto the floor, spooled out and cut off some more strips, draping them over the aquamarine chair-back. Looked practiced at it.

  He guided her forward, ever so gently, by her ear lobes until his face was close to hers. If he’d prodded her shoulder or an arm, she’d have stiffened. Ears—that was unexpected, she let him do it. There were uncustomary things going on behind his eyes. He lightly stroked alcohol-soaked gauze over one ear, then the other, then a crescent portion of her neck beneath. Her skin chilled and tingled.

  Sitting back, he looked down at his hands in his lap. “You sure you got this covered, I’ll bug off.”

  She didn’t answer.

  “I can see your ears better, but…seems to me like you might have to trust me to do this.”

  The muscles around Delpha’s eyes contracted.

  “Can you?” He kept his head down, scrubbed his knuckle creases with the wet gauze.

  She became still. Gazing at the top of his head, at the dark parted hair falling forward, the cleaned hands—nine fingers—the way he sat square, elbows on his knees, shirt sleeves rolled. An old, silvery gouge behind the hair on one forearm, and the edge of some kind of tattoo on the other. Pictures seen through a fever-haze surfaced: Phelan in a chair by the hospital windows, head down like this; slouched back dead to the world; leaning forward, lips on his laced knuckles, staring doubtfully toward her in the bed. Clear pictures: him wrestling an office key off his key chain on the day he hired her, fresh off his first case and missing a shoe. Miles Blankenship striding into the police station bright as a valley sunrise. Phelan handing her a white blouse with the tags on it, not entirely turning away as she put it on in the car.