I unlocked the back door and hit the lights. Everything looked normal. I made my way down the hall and collapsed into my beloved ergonomic chair. I put my Balenciaga on the desk and opened my carry-on: no tampon ivory, no rhino compact. I unlocked my hardshell case and moaned: there were all the clothes I’d chosen so carefully for my safari and could have used for bartering, but no animals or animal parts. Who had gotten them all out? Uncle Ray? Or the FBI? And how long had I been unconscious? And where was Roger?
Finally, I opened my purse, then sighed in relief. The pink Tupperware with the holes was still there. After everything I’d been through, losing Barry was the one thing I couldn’t handle. I unburped the top carefully and looked in. He was there, but not moving. Then, one of his eyes twitched. Maybe he was just traumatized. I knew exactly how he felt. I got him some water and a piece of wilted celery from the fridge and took him out to recuperate on my mouse pad. Looking at Barry made me think about Roger and I didn’t want to think about Roger.
Instead, I booted up the computer while I filed my first (and possibly last) boarding passes in case the airline didn’t give me the miles. I heard a noise in the back and whipped around. It was strange not to have a gun. I grabbed a strappy sandal from the suitcase and ducked down under the desk.
“Cyd? Cyd, are you here?” Uncle Ray stood in the doorway, his gray overcoat damp with mist and his jowls particularly jowly. His color was bad and he seemed shorter. I stood up. “Hey, kiddo. I didn’t mean to scare you. Your mom got worried. I thought you might be here.”
There he was, the one I’d run to with every skinned knee and failed test and fender bender of my life. It seemed like the most natural thing in the world to run to him with this. Instead, I threw the shoe at his head.
He ducked and it missed him by a foot. Damn. My aim was off.
“Still throwing like a girl.” He smiled. “You did good, Squid.”
“At what? Getting you arrested? Decimating the world’s rhino population? Getting my heart broken? What?”
“Surviving,” he said. “You got thrown right in the soup and here you are, in one piece. I underestimated you. You should have been in on this from the beginning. You did good.”
It would have been nice to have heard that about getting a B+ in Algebra in seventh grade or when I was learning to parallel park. The unqualified praise made me wobbly for a minute. But it didn’t change anything.
“Who the hell is Doctor Bronson?”
“An old friend.”
“An old friend? Really? Like a Bobby Barsky kind of old friend?”
He gave me one of his looks. “We all went to school together.”
“What school was that? The school of international assholes?”
“Cyd, language.” It was just like him to try to make me feel like I was six.
“And since when does JFK have an attending physician who makes animals disappear?”
He sighed. “Since I got your message.”
I honestly thought I might throw up. “So Interpol was right.”
“I don’t think Interpol is ever actually right. They’re too disorganized.”
“They weren’t too disorganized to play me. I led them right to you.”
“It’s all fine.” Uncle Ray saw my face and sighed. “Come on, we’ll talk.” He gestured toward his office.
“We don’t have time to talk. They’re probably on their way to the house right now.”
“We have all the time in the world.” He unlocked his door and moved behind the desk where it all started. I didn’t want to sit down. I could still see that parrot. I knew now it could have been Barry.
Uncle Ray got out a bottle of Jack Daniels and two glasses, then pulled out my chair. “They can’t just catch you with the merchandise. Animals come into the country all the time. They have to prove you had prior knowledge that a shipment was illegal.”
“But you did have prior knowledge.”
“It doesn’t matter. They have to prove it. And they can’t. That’s why it’s such a great model. Anybody carrying heroin can’t really plead ignorance, but if a dealer tells you an animal’s clean, you can.”
“Well, if that’s true, where are they? The animals I was carrying. Why didn’t I just breeze through Customs?”
“Because you got us a warning. Those animals were planted by Interpol. They didn’t have our paperwork. Thanks for fainting, by the way, that was really smart.”
I really was going to throw up. “Why? Why on earth are you involved in this?”
He poured us each a shot of Jack. “We needed to diversify.”
I pushed mine away. “Diversify? That’s what you call it?”
“The business is in trouble. Real trouble. Has been for years. On its own, I give Redondo Travel six months.”
“No way. I do the books, we’re still in the black.”
He gave me a pitying look. I shot the bourbon.
“You think it’s easy to support you and your mother?” he said. “Aunt Helen’s cancer surgery? Private school for the twins? Jimmy’s never going to be able to hold down a real job. Where do you think all that money comes from? Commission on a few cruises and senior golf trips?”
I thought about our commission situation. I probably had been kidding myself. Not for the first time today, I felt like a complete, worthless moron.
“I was looking for a new opportunity when Bobby got in touch and said he needed a warehouse in Brooklyn.”
“Did he say for what?”
“Not at first. But after 9/11 things got tougher in Customs and he knew I had some connections, so he offered me a, well, a bigger role.”
This had been going on since before 9/11? No wonder Interpol assumed I was in on it. Christ on a bike. How much had I been involved without knowing it? Was Redondo Travel just a laundering facility for animal trafficking?
“And what does that involve, exactly? I mean when I’m not the mule? How does it work?”
“We have people in Customs. Jakarta, Africa, the United Arab Emirates, all over. Bobby was doing this in Indonesia before, so he has the connections. He handles Dar es Salaam and Cape Town and I set up the UAE.”
“How do you have connections in the UAE?”
“You booked me that tour of the best Dubai hotels. Remember?”
God. I did remember. So I had been part of it. A big part. I nodded, zombielike.
“I’d heard they were happy to turn a blind eye for a price. In this case, a couple of first-class flights. Bobby gets the packages to the Dubai Airport and there, my Customs guy redoes the waybills.“
“Redoes them how?”
“He marks the animals ‘captive bred’—they’re only illegal if they’re caught in the wild—then they come into JFK legally.” Mrs. Barksy’s FedEx package and the embassy papers and had both said ‘Captive Bred.’ Of course. “And even if we get caught, the penalties are a joke. It’s like a fifteen-hundred-dollar fine and no jail time.”
“So, if it’s so easy, then why stuff reptiles into the Andersons’ luggage?”
“That came from Bunty’s boss, Mr. Chu. The Customs guy in Dubai got greedy and top brass was looking for a way to cut out the middle man. Bunty told them about us and they had him set up Adventures Limited. He figured no one would suspect someone with a walker and as long as we put a special sticker on the luggage and had people in Baggage at both ends, it was still safe.”
“Not for the Giannis, it wasn’t.”
He threw out his hands. “They’re not in jail, are they?”
“No, but they would be if it weren’t for Roger.” God, this really was all my fault. I had participated at every stage. It didn’t matter if I didn’t know it, that just made me stupid.
“They’re fine. It put a little excitement in their lives.” He saw my face. “Cyd, I told you, we’re in trouble. There’
s a five hundred to a thousand percent markup on this stuff, even with the occasional losses. High profit, low risk. Good business.”
I could still smell the toxic paint on the birds, see the parrots with their eyes stitched. I saw the Minettis in their Sketchers, trusting me to give them a safe, happy vacation.
“Endangering our clients? Parrot sausages? Smothering baby tigers? That’s good business to you?”
“It’s mostly reptiles. Those animals are gone, anyway, Cyd, the rare ones, whether we’re in it or not. There are too many wackos who’ll pay top dollar to get them. Besides, family’s more important than a few snakes, right?”
“I’m having a really hard time telling the difference at the moment. What about all those lessons you taught me? About being honest and paying your taxes and taking things on the chin—what about that? Was that just bullshit? God, I can’t even look at you right now.” I got up.
So did he. “You’re right. That’s why I’m turning myself in. I already called the Precinct. I’m on my way now. I just came to say good-bye. Anyway, what kind of example would I be for you and the boys if I didn’t stand up like a man and take responsibility for my actions?”
What was he talking about, turning himself in? What did he mean by good-bye? I couldn’t breathe. I grabbed the back of the chair and lowered myself into it, then poured myself another shot to keep from crying. I choked down the tears, but couldn’t stop my hand from shaking. Finally, I stared up at him. “Mrs. Barsky. Did you kill her?”
“Of course not. How could you think that?”
“Well, who did?”
“None of our people. No way. Bobby adored that woman. Leave it to the police, Cyd.” He started for the door. Right that minute, I wanted him dead, but I couldn’t bear to think of him in jail.
“But what about Mom? What about Louis and David?” And what about me?
He came around the desk. “They have you,” he said. “That’s not nothing.” He kissed me hard on the head, then put his coat back on and straightened his tie. “Someday when you have kids, you’ll understand.”
“Should I call Uncle Tony?” He was my youngest uncle and the lawyer in the family.
“He’s meeting me there. Don’t worry about Redondo Travel. I’ve made sure it’s clean. Go home and see your mother.”
And then he was gone.
I closed the office door and sat down behind Uncle Ray’s desk. Despite his “confession,” could I trust anything he had ever told me? And was the business really safe, or would it be seized by the FBI in the morning? And what about Mrs. Barsky? And Pet World? Maybe Jimmy had killed her and Uncle Ray just couldn’t face it. I couldn’t think about all of it then; I was jet-lagged and heartbroken and a little drunk. I put my head down and drifted off.
Chapter Forty-five
I woke up to voices, the smell of Estée Lauder Pleasures, and what sounded like my ergonomic chair hitting the wall, rhythmically. What the hell? I rose, my tongue thick and stale from the Jack Daniels, and looked for a weapon. As it seemed my kitten heel aim was off, I opted for one of Uncle Ray’s golf clubs and cracked the door. I could hear my brousin Jimmy’s distinctive wheezing—he’d always been asthmatic. As I crept down the hall, the familiar perfume got stronger, so I should have been prepared when I saw Jimmy on top of Agent Fisher, but it was still a shock.
“On my chair? Really?” I threw on all the lights. Jimmy’s Hugo Boss pants were on the floor, surrounded by animals flopping in zip-locks and coleslaw containers, the tiny thuds like nail files through my heart. They gave Fisher’s cloying perfume a base note of reptile house.
“You asshole!” I knocked Jimmy as hard as I could with the seven iron. He fell straight to the floor, out cold. Agent Fisher slid up her skin-tight leather pants and smiled, pulling a gun out of her jacket. Too bad Interpol had kept mine. I dropped the golf club, provoking a spider monkey chirp.
“Thanks for the help,” she said, looking down at Jimmy. “He is an asshole. Not bad in bed, but basically useless otherwise. He couldn’t even stab a parrot.”
“You’re the one who killed that poor parrot?”
She smiled, then had the nerve to rub it in with “jazz hands.” I looked around at all the animals who’d managed to survive the intercontinental journey suffocated in my luggage and down Roger’s pants. Granted, being down Roger’s pants might be okay for me, but for a monkey, not so much. Then I wondered whether Interpol was really tapping our phones, and if not, how long someone could leave a message on my cell. I wasn’t going to be shot in my own office without taking Agent “can’t wear Eileen” Fisher down with me. I sank onto my desk, shielding the phone from view.
“The parrot was your fault. You hadn’t filled the trip and your uncle needed a little nudge. Besides, the bird had mange—no one was going to pay what it was worth. I hate waste.” She started packing up boxes with one hand, keeping the gun pointed in my direction with the other. When she approached the tiny monkeys, they went berserk, howling and squealing, and I saw my chance. I leaned my hand back toward the phone. While she grabbed for them and swore, I hit the mute button on the phone, hit speed dial for my personal phone, mouthed “Cyd Redondo, Redondo Travel” to myself, then took the mute off and hit “speaker.”
She finally wrangled the errant monkey and turned the gun back on me.
“Great, Agent Fisher. So you work for Bunty?”
“You can’t be serious. He works for me, when he’s lucky.”
“Does Gant know? Does Roger?”
“Men see what you want them to see. I mean, did Claymore see a pathetic divorcée who lives with her mother? Of course not. He just saw legs. Of course they’re short legs, but there’s no accounting for taste.”
“Taste? Really? You have the nerve to bring up taste after that hideous tunic thing?”
“I was undercover.”
“I completely knew something was off with you.”
“Please. Who’s been one step ahead the whole time?”
Fisher was right. They’d all played me completely.
She turned toward me, took out her cell phone, and dialed. “Yes, this is Agent Fisher. Just letting you know that we have apprehended most of the Brooklyn contingent. Mr. Redondo is currently in custody and I am on the trail of the missing animals.” She looked at me and winked. “I appreciate it, sir, but no thanks necessary. Just doing my job.”
There was a sad, drugged squawk. Clearly the parrot tranquilizers were wearing off. I looked at my hangdog brousin, still out cold on the floor, and at our tiny, beloved office, now defiled by leather pants. I would never be able to erase the image of Agent Fisher shoving endangered species into crates like yard sale items. The Jack Daniels started repeating on me and I just wanted to lie down, but I had to keep the FBI super bitch talking.
“But why? Why us?”
“We needed a small-time travel company on the downswing.”
“We are not on the downswing.”
She rolled her eyes. “Your cousin was already helping us at Pet World. We needed more couriers to up our odds in Africa. Seniors were perfect, they always look harmless. And Jimmy told me how desperate you were to get away, so we offered you the trip, figuring you wouldn’t look too closely. And you didn’t.”
She was right. I had trusted Uncle Ray’s word it was okay.
“Your uncle’s been very helpful. We needed someone smart on this end who had a lot of connections.” I was never going to be able to smell Pleasures again without gagging. I wasn’t sure I could ever even go back into a mall.
“Who’s we? You and Bunty?”
“The Buntys of the world are a dime a dozen. He just happened to have no scruples and a mother with a pet store. My partners are legitimate businessmen powerful enough to pay off any official who needs to be paid off and offer something in return. You understand the barter system, right?”
&nb
sp; Sadly, I did. “And you really think you’re going to get away with this? What are you going to do, kill me and Jimmy?”
Fisher pulled on some doctor’s gloves and regarded a particularly wiggly takeout container. “I don’t have to. Your uncle’s confessing. Touching, isn’t it? If you finger me, the FBI will think you’re just trying to save him. And who would believe it, anyway? I’m a decorated agent, I’ve broken open three smuggling rings in three years.” She reached into the carton and pulled out two wriggling baby snakes. I hoped they could bite through rubber. “Of course, I managed to cut myself into them, but the FBI doesn’t know that and my partners aren’t going to tell them. I’m too valuable. And Gant’s the one who brought me on. He’s not going to do anything that makes him look bad.” She started putting the animals into two pieces of rolling luggage. I started to move. She turned the gun back on me and lifted a takeout container with two golden frogs inside. They were smaller than mini malt balls.
“Actually, better safe than sorry.” Fisher opened the top and one of the frogs jumped out, a few feet from Jimmy. “These are from Madagascar. They’re twice as potent as the South American ones.”
“You killed Mrs. Barsky.”
“The frogs killed her. I was just the delivery system.”
“But why?”
“She was snooping around, asking questions. She didn’t want to carry the reptiles anymore. And besides, she was old.”
That did it. I pondered my odds. A gun usually beat a golf club, but I figured it was worth at least bruising her before I died. I reached for the seven iron. But instead of shooting, she moved to my desk and reached for the mouse pad. I had forgotten about Barry.
“Haven’t you killed enough species already?” I asked, my heart in my throat.
“Go ahead, save one.” She threw the long-suffering chameleon as hard as she could.
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