by Dan Darling
“She works for John White?” I asked.
“She does their moral heavy-lifting for them, and that’s all I’m saying.” He squinted. “I just called you a traitor to your own people, and you didn’t blink.”
“The only people offended by being called names are people who’re afraid they’re true. I’m not a traitor because I’ve never been part of any group to betray.”
He pondered it. “Fair enough. But you still gotta do the right thing.”
“For me, doing the right thing is looking out for myself, a couple of humans, and a zoo full of animals. For you, doing the right thing is following me around. Whatever will get you into heaven. But don’t think you’ve got me pegged just because my childhood friend is confused and unemployed. I’m no Minuteman.”
Tony pursed his lips and stared intently at my face as I spoke. “Okay. I believe you. You seem like a straight-shooter. Hell, maybe before this is all done, you and me will be chums.”
“Only if your employer pays you to be,” I said.
“My employer is a group of people I have a lot of common ground with. I’m no mercenary. I make scratch and do good at the same time.”
We walked back to our cars. By the time we arrived, the first fat drops plopped into the matted pine needles and burst on our windshields. The air had that heavy smell that would turn the hardest man nostalgic.
Tony turned as he opened his door. “Say.”
I raised my eyebrows at him.
“How’d you know I was following you? You know, in the first place. How’d you make me?”
“The newspaper. No one reads them anymore.”
He banged his fist against his forehead and chuckled. “I thought it made me look nonchalant. That’s what the snoops do in all the old detective movies.”
“It was a dead give-away.”
He smiled, got in his car, and drove off into the rain.
I parked my truck outside my house a few minutes shy of midnight and sat there, treasuring the quiet. The rain had come and gone. Around me, the trees and rooftops dripped in a gentle and organic rhythm. The gutters shone in the moonlight. Nothing living stirred.
My back ached. I wanted to go to bed and rest my creaking limbs. Instead, I found myself holding the Captain’s business card in my hand. He’d killed my turtle. Whatever conflict I was wrapped up in was between people, and like so many conflicts, the bodies piling up were innocent. Albino rattlesnakes, whooping cranes, bullfrogs, and now my dear friend Esposita the painted box turtle. I was also innocent. I was beginning to understand that the Captain wasn’t after me just for my expertise with animals, as he claimed. He was, as were many other parties involved and for reasons unknown, chattering about me. I didn’t even like people looking in my direction, much less gabbing about me behind my back.
I looked the Captain up in the phonebook. He lived in the Heights, in a middle-class neighborhood between two major streets called Comanche and Montgomery. They ran all the way west to where I lived, only in my neighborhood we called them Griegos and Montaño. I plodded out to my truck, and half an hour later, parked along the curb outside of his address, in the cul-de-sac of a gently curling street. The surrounding houses were painted pastel green and blue―the hues of three decades ago. Their yards were the victims of do-it-yourself xeriscaping, odd patchworks of red, teal, and gray gravel punctuated by clutches of lone desert plants or an old, sickly tree. Neighborhoods like this had once been the hallmark of a thriving class of people with good middle-income jobs, healthy pensions, and leisure time to spend with their kids. Now, they were rotting away, signs that good middle class living was going the way of the whooping crane.
The Captain’s doorbell played “Oh Susanna!” It had probably been installed by the members of the Greatest Generation who sold the Captain his house. When the tune finished playing, its echo bounced around the neighborhood before scattering into nothingness. I wondered what the neighbors would think if they happened to wake up and glance out the window. It isn’t every day you see a visitor who bumps his head on your neighbor’s rain gutter.
After the third ring, footsteps thumped within the house. Someone inside flicked a switch and the porch light sprang to life one foot from my eyeballs. The door opened on a squat, dark form with chicken legs and a round middle. I knew enough about the Captain to recognize his shape.
“Get the hell inside,” the Captain said. “My neighbors are going to think they’ve woken up in Wonderland.”
I bent through his doorway and managed not to hit my head on anything. I hated visiting other people’s houses, for the simple reason that I hadn’t memorized when to duck.
“Christ,” he said. “It’s past midnight.”
“What can I say? I’ve been staying up nights thinking about you.”
“That’s sweet.” He took two mugs down from a peg rack on a floral-papered kitchen wall. “Coffee?”
“Sure.”
He doled a couple spoons of instant crystals in each mug, filled them with water from the tap, and put them in the microwave. While he was busy, I scanned the small foyer for shoes with suspicious looking laces. There were none in sight, and he wore slippers.
“Classy.”
“Nothing but the best for men who show up uninvited in the middle of the night. My wife would have come out and cooked you a meatloaf, but she’s too busy cowering under the sheets with an automatic in her nightgown pocket.”
“I hope she’s got the safety on.”
The microwave dinged. The Captain handed me a mug. The coffee tasted like the inside of my mouth after a long sleep.
“So to what do I owe?”
“I’ve been thinking about your offer,” I said.
“Oh yeah?”
“Yeah.” I sipped the coffee.
“Reconsidering?” he asked.
“I wouldn’t use that word. I’ve been mulling it over.”
“Good.” He nodded. “I hope you’re mulling in the right direction. If you need help, we can talk incentives.”
“Like giving my friend a job?”
“Rex is a great volunteer. He’d make an okay paid escort. But, without you signing up with him?” He shrugged.
“Let’s talk other incentives.”
“Name ’em,” he said. “Good paycheck. I can tell you that.”
“I’m thinking information.”
His gaze wandered the room. “Sure. You want to hear about the Minutemen? It’s a long, rich history. Starts about 250 years ago.”
“I want to find someone.”
“Like a girlfriend? I can set up you with my niece. She’s a bookworm, like you, and not too hard on the eyes.”
“I’m overstocked with girlfriends right now, actually.” It wasn’t even a lie, exactly. “I’m up to my neck in them.”
“Good for you. May they never meet.”
I clinked his glass. It was tough―misogyny didn’t come to me naturally. I had to put on a show. “No, I’m looking for that scientist friend of mine. He’s still missing.”
The Captain relaxed his eyebrows. His retinas drooped. “Too bad.”
“He’s been gone for two weeks or so. Skinny, coke bottle glasses, bald. Talks like a tweed-wearing English professor. Name’s Simon Marchette.”
“I remember you mentioning such a fellow the other day. Sounds like you need to talk to the cops.”
“I’m worried about him because I think he might have mental issues.”
The Captain’s eyes sharpened. “That’s sad news.”
“You see, I think that he may be guilty of murder,” I said.
The Captain’s head jerked back on his neck just a hair.
“―ing a turtle.” I tacked it on to gauge his reaction.
His whole body relaxed. His shoulders fell forward, his chin went down, and he rambled across the room to a cabinet above the kitchen sink. He pulled a half-full bottle of scotch down, sloshed some into his coffee and held it out toward me. I let him pour a finger into my mug.
He took a big sip and made a sympathetic smile out of his mouth. “This a zoo turtle, I assume?”
“Remember that one I told you about? My favorite?”
He wrinkled his forehead. “I seem to recall something like that. A colored turtle, was it?”
“Painted,” I said through my teeth.
He snapped his fingers. “Gotcha. Very old. Unique.”
I nodded.
“I’m sorry for your loss. Why do you say it was murdered?”
“Certain details. It gets a little technical for the layperson. But the details are irrefutable. The turtle was killed. And I assume only a disturbed mind would break into a zoo and kill an animal.”
“You want my take? It sounds personal. That scientist―he wasn’t after the turtle. He was after you. ‘Watch it,’ is what that turtle says to me. Objective third party, you understand. He kills your favorite turtle. You’ve got a nut after you. I’d tell the cops―of course, they’re probably too busy dealing with human murders.”
I took a mouthful from my mug and let the whisky burn me before I swallowed.
The Captain snapped his fingers. “Tell you what. You sign up with us for one weekend―just try it out. We pay you a very healthy consideration. We also put a man on your Reptile House. He watches out for this scientist. We put a man on your house.” The Captain shrugged. “You’re safe, your animals are safe. It’s a win-win.”
I’d gotten all the answer I needed out of him. I held up the mug. “That was some delicious beverage.”
“It’ll make a man out of you.”
I wasn’t a fan of men. They killed turtles. I poured the rest of my drink down my throat and set the mug in the Captain’s sink. I could feel the hair growing inside of my esophagus all the way down to my tailbone.
“I’m telling you,” the Captain said. “You come work for my employer. You’re looked after―and we can drink one of these together every night.”
I smiled at him for a few seconds longer than either of us felt comfortable with. Then I walked out of his house. He followed me to the doorway and stood watching me walk to my car. As I put my key in the lock, he yelled after me. “Is that a no?”
I stopped what I was doing and gave him a good hard stare. I’d learned how from watching the African wild dogs at the zoo intimidate each other.
He walked down his driveway in his slippers. “That’s a bad answer. Looks like I’ll have to find some better incentives.”
“I can help you brainstorm if you come up short.”
He stood on the asphalt in front of my truck and hollered at me. “I get it. You’re not the kind who goes for money. You’re one of those high and mighty types. You think you’re incorruptible. You think you’re a loner. I’ll tell you something: you’re neither. You’ve never been tested, John Stick. You’ve lived a clean, quiet life because you’ve never seen the outside of the shoebox you live in. You’re like one of your zoo animals. You keep your cage nice and tidy. My type is the type that breaks open cages. I set animals loose. They don’t like it at first. But if they don’t want to come out, you just have to turn the cage upside down and give it a shake. Sometimes, you have to douse the cage with gas and throw a match. The animal makes a real fuss at first. Then it runs wild and free and is loyal for life.”
The porches of neighboring houses lit up. Dogs yowled and barked. Behind every portal, some normal lurked, peering out through the peephole of their shabby American dream.
“Go back inside, Captain. You’ll catch your death out here without your socks.”
He stayed put long enough to show me that he wasn’t following orders and then turned around and walked up his driveway. As I got into my car, he tossed a final malevolent look over his shoulder.
There is something about having an enemy. It makes you feel alive. I felt so alive that I drove with the windows down. Some stray raindrops hit me in the face. The wind slapped me around a little. I needed it. I felt like I was waking up.
lbuquerque sat in a heavy stasis the next morning. The wind had stolen off to a hideout beyond the horizon, and the sun shined so brightly that every detail of the world looked freshly carved from whatever template God had used to create it. As I walked from my apartment to my truck, I felt like a turtle in a terrarium that looked pretty on the surface but had gone far afoul of its original design.
I sat in my truck when I should have been turning the key and driving to work. I stared at my hand as it gripped the steering wheel. Yesterday, my new friends had perched on that same hand. They were the relatives of Esposita the turtle’s killer. Usually when I met a species I’d never seen before, I wanted to put them in a cage and feed them vittles for the rest of their lives. I treated them the way I treated myself. Thinking about these new wasps―these mystery beings that were either a leap in evolution or a medical lab abomination, buzzing free through the lush eastern forests of the Sandía Mountains―a smile spread across my face.
I drove to work. I had a turtle terrarium to clean.
My back-corridor way to the Reptile House took me past the staff lounge. An unusual amount of hubbub bubbled out the open door. I ignored it, but found Abbey lurking in the portal to her bat cave, waiting for me.
“Did you hear?” Abbey’s green eyes were open wide, like a kid who’s just seen Santa. Her long eyelashes were moist and rumpled. The light flew through them in pretty prisms.
“I did not.”
“The Tasmanian devils are pregnant.”
“Good for them. And us. Everybody loves zoo-babies.”
“You don’t understand. The tazzies are female.”
“No wonder there’s a riot in the break room. Pregnant females. It’s preposterous.”
She smacked her palms on the inner sides of the doorframe. “There are no males! All three females are pregnant, and the zoo houses no males! Remember how Zappy died last year?”
“False pregnancies. Happens all the time.”
Abbey slapped her forehead with the palm of her hand. “Duh! Why didn’t anybody else think of that?”
“Alright. Take it easy.”
“Of course, everybody thought that,” she said, “until this morning when we gave one of them an ultrasound. There are twenty-three little embryos in her. She’s pregnant. They’re checking the other two now.”
“Did we mess up the gender on one of the others?”
Abbey rolled her eyes.
“One of them could be a hermaphrodite. Humans can go through their whole lives with organs of both sexes. It’s not that uncommon.”
“Stop raining on my parade!” Abbey yelled. “I want to believe in miracles.”
“Believe!” I said. “Don’t let me stop you.”
“I’m sure,” she said, “that they’ll figure out the rational scientific explanation for it and then the world can go back to being normal and boring. But today it’s magical.”
“Maybe Jesus is coming back as several score of marsupial embryos, and the Rio Grande Zoo Australia Exhibit has been chosen to house three furry, bad-tempered Marys.”
“Thank you.” Abbey stopped gripping the doorframe and folded her arms across her chest. “Did you ever find Simon?”
I shook my head.
“Any leads on Esposita’s killer?”
“Maybe,” I said. “It’s complicated.”
Abbey smiled and infectious glee poured out of her. She had one of those faces. Maybe it had to do with all those wonderful freckles. “Miracles, John!” she yelled as I walked away. “They do happen!”
I did my rounds. Everyone seemed in good health. I fed the creatures that needed to be fed. I cleaned some terrariums. It occupied my morning peacefully until I came to the task I’d been putting off. No animal needed to be transferred to another cage or shooed into a corner while I did my work. There was just a sad circular imprint in the wood chips marking where a red and blue-swirled shell with white flecks had come to rest. I thought about leaving it that way as a means to honor and remember. Then I realized I
hadn’t lost a child in a tragic playground accident. I emptied the cage, scrubbed it down, and set it on a shelf with dozens of other empty terrariums.
As I bent into the day’s paperwork, my mind hovered over Esposita’s death. The Captain had obviously been involved, whether he’d done the deed personally or delegated it to some sneaky underling. It was meant to put pressure on me to come work for him. At first, the Captain’s motive for recruiting me had been a mystery. I could still only guess, but it seemed he wanted to hire me because the wasps―how did Tony put it? They liked me. They hadn’t landed on me to sting me or feed from me. They’d landed on me to rest. They’d been enjoying me, like old men in a smoking lounge. Tony had said his mysterious chatter told him the “beasties” liked me, which meant that the other parties involved already knew it. The trouble was I had no idea how they knew it. I’d never been in the presence of one of the wasps before yesterday. No one could have observed their behavior around me.
I needed to find Simon Marchette. He had answers.
After deciding to put some effort into it, I realized I had no idea how to find a missing person. Looking him up in the phone book and calling his home phone yielded a fun conversation with a voicemail system. Googling him revealed a little about where he’d gone to school and where he’d published articles on the medical potential of funnel web spider venom a dozen or so years ago. An online bio told me he was from Las Cruces originally and that he’d interned with a lab that mapped scorpion genomes in the late 1990s. After 1998, all references to his work disappeared. It was as if he’d given up a promising career and vanished.
I found few pictures of Marchette. Most were head-and-shoulders shots posted with articles he’d written. One showed him in front of a classroom giving a lecture somewhere. That man was the same person I knew, only younger. His head sprouted a fringe of corn colored hair. He wore a white button up tucked into khakis. He held a piece of chalk in one hand and gripped the other to his stomach as he doubled over with laughter. All the kids at their desks laughed, too. The picture made me miss him.