by Maxine Kumin
“But your own mother?”
“I wanted to tell Dig—Chief Martinez first.”
“But even before you told Chief Martinez you told that other kid in a wheelchair from your school, named Joshua Blaine?”
That made me mad. “His being in a wheelchair had nothing to do with it any more than my being in a wheelchair did. The way you said it shows you have lumped us together as the two cripples.” I knew I needed to cool it because you just don’t say anything smart-alecky back to a policeman.
“Lizzie,” my mom began.
But Officer Frank broke in. “Whoa, back off now. I wasn’t lumping anybody with anybody else.”
“Josh is my friend and I admit I told him first because he’s the smartest person I know. It was his idea to Google Jesús Ernesto Blanco and find out what his background was. I swore Josh to secrecy, even under torture and in durance vile.”
Officer Frank looked perplexed, but now my mom spoke up.
“Lizzie likes to use unusual phrases. In durance vile is from Middle English. It means under harsh confinement.”
“Okay, and what did you find out about Blanco?”
So I told him everything we learned online, but I thought they must know all this by now, because they must have computers in the police station. He acted impatient and said, “Yes of course” while he went on scribbling, but I could tell that what I was telling him was brand-new news to him.
“But when you did tell Chief Martinez about the warehouse full of monkeys, what did he say?”
“He said we should go to the police.”
“And why didn’t you?”
“We were going to. But it was nine p.m. by then and I begged him to come with me the next day and see for himself. I thought telling what a kid saw might not be taken as seriously as what he saw. I figured we could go to the police right after that.”
Officer Frank seemed to accept that explanation. He nodded.
“And then just as we drove up to the warehouse the door opened and this … this same kid who had told us his name was Julio came out. I didn’t hear most of what they said to each other because I couldn’t get out of the car but I knew Digger—I mean Chief Martinez—would find out who he was and what he was doing there and that way we’d have … a bigger picture to take to … to take to the authorities.”
With that Officer Frank Franklin got up and said, “Thank you. You’ve been very helpful. Steps will be taken by the Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission to locate the tamarin monkeys. The interview is over.”
“And what about Buddy and Blossom? The bear cubs?”
“They will be confiscated immediately and relocated to a conservation site.”
So then I did a really stupid thing. I burst into tears. Not so much for the monkeys, although I know they are endangered and it was cruel and inhuman to capture them in the first place. I was crying for Buddy and Blossom. What would become of the cubs? And then Officer Brianna Longname came over and knelt down beside my chair. “I promise you that the cubs will go to an appropriate facility. Fish and Wildlife deal with this sort of problem every day and they are skilled caretakers.”
I blubbered, “So I will never see them again.”
“Maybe not,” Brianna said. “But you’ll know that you probably saved their lives. They might have been taken out and shot or they might have been taken somewhere and just let loose to forage for themselves.”
“But they can’t do that! They’ve had people caring for them from the time they were baby cubs!”
“Lizzie, I personally promise you the bears will go to a good home. I will make it my business to track them and report back to you, okay?”
I nodded and tried for a smile.
“And as far as everything you told us goes, you did a great job. Josh may be the smartest person in the class, but I bet you’re tied with him.”
That made me feel a lot better. Afterward, Mom said she thought I bore up very well and that “shedding a few tears simply authenticated your testimony.” It took me a little while to digest that.
Later that day a photographer from the Woodvale paper arrived to take our picture. I asked her, “How did you find out about us?”
She explained about the police blotter. “It isn’t like a desk blotter for ink anymore, though I think that’s where the word comes from.”
I really liked her for being interested in words. “It’s a record the police have to keep of every incident or crime in their jurisdiction. Because this is a democracy, every newspaper reporter has a right to read the blotter.” So that’s how she found Digger. And the next day Digger was on the front page again, splendid in his uniform, seen conferring with Officers Frank and Brianna. And Mom and I were on the back page opposite Josh and his mom Jenna and his brother Greg, who had just gotten back from his Latin class trip to Tuscany, in Italy, and Josh’s father Will. And guess what? Josh’s father turns out to be a doctor at Dirk Isle Hospital. Mom spoke to him about Henry’s mother and he promised to look into it. And sure enough, we were in the Miami Clarion & Bugle too, but not on the front page. We were inside, on the bottom half of the second page. “Below the fold” is how they say it in the newspaper world.
I couldn’t sleep that night from thinking about Jeb Blanco who had seemed so smooth and well dressed and who turned out to be the Villain with a capital V because he was trafficking in endangered animals. And it wasn’t just the tamarins that were keeping me awake. I wondered if Jeb Blanco had something to do with the murder. Hadn’t I seen him walk out on the jetty with his briefcase? Or was it just somebody who looked like him?
You can believe that Josh and I were suddenly everybody’s best friend at Graver. Kids who snickered behind our backs in class or totally ignored us in the lunchroom now wanted to know if we could come over to their houses. Winnie Ellerman, who is the class beauty, offered me a makeup session at her house where she had an eyelash curler and eyeliner and blush-on and she could give me a manicure. “It would be lots of fun Lizzie, and I have the coolest CD collection, lots of stuff I bet you’ve never heard, like heavy metal.”
I have to admit I was slightly tempted, especially about having my eyelashes curled. “I wish I could Winnie, but I think I have to come home every day after school to be available to the police.”
“Are they going to indict you?” Herbie “Hotshot” Fayerweather asked. These were the first words he had ever spoken to me. “Because my father is a lawyer and I bet I can get him to take your case.”
“But I haven’t committed any crime! And besides I have a lawyer, he’s my mom’s boyfriend.”
I couldn’t believe I said that. But it was getting to be true.
CHAPTER 14
Well, we weren’t done with interviews because the next morning before school Officer Frank arrived with another squad car marked MIAMI POLICE. The gang of four—that’s what Mom called them afterward—knocked on the door. Actually, they knocked on the screen door because both the front and the back doors were open to air out the bacon smell from a little bit of overcooking I had performed.
Everybody trooped in and sat around the living room. Nobody wanted coffee. The situation looked dark.
Officer Frank spoke. “Lizzie, I want an honest answer. Did you tell Julio you had gone to the authorities? Is that why he left?”
I was astonished. “No! How could I? He has no phone. And I don’t drive.”
“We have information that your boyfriend’s brother took you both in his car to an undisclosed location late yesterday.”
I don’t like to admit it but I have a temper. Mom says when I was a toddler I used to throw temper tantrums in the middle of an aisle at the supermarket, and I remember from those times how everything turned into a churning sea of red. That was what was happening right now. I took three deep breaths to calm the sea before I answered.
“First of all, he’s not my boyfriend, we are merely”—here I stumbled over ‘best,’ then settled on ‘good’—“friends. Second
of all, Josh’s brother Greg drove us in his own car to the farm stand out on 131 where you can buy Breyers ice-cream sugar cones, and he treated us both. I had chocolate-chip mint and I can prove it because I dripped some on my T-shirt and it hasn’t gone through the wash yet in case you need the evidence.”
There was some chuckling at this and then Officer Frank said, “Well, your monkey worker’s gone missing and we were hoping you could provide us with a lead.”
This was really hard. I didn’t have any idea where Digger had taken him to be placed in protective custody, but I was pretty sure Digger didn’t want anyone to know Julio had come back in the car with us. I wasn’t going to volunteer anything more than a direct answer.
“I don’t have a clue,” I said. “I only know his name is Julio Blanco and his uncle Jeb—Jesús Ernesto Blanco—was holding him as a slave to take care of the tamarins and weed the garden and so on.”
Then Officer Pedro Herrera from Miami Police spoke. “And to compound the situation, Señor Blanco has vanished.”
“Vanished? But his plane is out in Henry’s cow pasture.”
“Not anymore. We seized it right after your last conversation with the Woodvale force.”
“How do you seize a plane?”
He answered, “It has been impounded and flown to an airstrip under our control.”
At that point Digger arrived a little out of breath. “¡Hola! I was taking my morning constitutional to the jetty and just as I turned around I noticed your squad cars out front.”
I was so glad to see him I almost cried but I managed not to and settled down.
Nobody responded after he said hola, so Digger introduced himself to the officers he hadn’t met yet. “Chief Diego Martinez, retired.” After Officer Frank got up and shook his hand, the others got up like dogs in a dog-training class and shook hands all around, and Mom fetched a chair from the porch and we went on from there.
Digger said, “Julio Blanco is seventeen years old. He is, or was, a fugitive from justice. He was sent to the Big Mangrove detention facility only because there was no family member to release him to on probation. He is an orphan. His uncle was out of the country and could not be reached. After six months the boy ran away because he feared for his life.”
“Feared for his life? From a staff member? I find that hard to believe.”
“No, no. He was well treated there, he liked the work, which as you know has to do with saving the mangrove trees from encroachment.”
“What was he afraid of?”
“Apparently he had served as a lookout in a home burglary. It was the classic kid crime—break in, grab what you can—but the homeowner reappeared before they were done, so they ran.”
“Did he have a record?”
“No, he was clean. But he’d dropped out of school and was living on the street. The two perpetrators were caught by an alert traffic cop as they ducked past him.”
“So then he agreed to identify the two perps?”
“Yes. They had prior arrests for breakins, so they were going away. But other members of the gang are at large and he fears he has been fingered.”
“So he was a gang member?”
“No. He wanted to join, and serving as lookout was to be his ticket in.”
“Does this gang have a name?”
“They call themselves Los Pícaros. Ruffians, or rogues.”
“Go on.”
“By that time Señor Blanco had returned. Julio was the only child of his dead brother and sister-in-law, who were killed in a car crash a year earlier. He gave Julio a place to stay and enough money for groceries. In return he was to tend the gardens and fields and feed the birds—it seems that Blanco was dealing in exotic birds before the tamarins.”
“What kinds of birds?”
“Tropical exotics. Parrots and macaws. Umbrella birds. He’d fly off with two or three at a time in boxes but Julio never knew the destinations.”
There was a long silence while the officers digested this information. Then Digger continued. “Julio was clearly Blanco’s prisoner. He had no transportation. Blanco told him several times that he was shielding him from the authorities at Big Mangrove, and more important, he was keeping him safe from Los Pícaros. He hinted that he could contact the gang at any moment, so Julio wasn’t tempted to leave. Also by then he had developed a deep feeling for the little monkeys who were in his care alone. He installed big tree limbs for them to climb, and baskets to serve as sleeping nests. ‘They became my family,’ he told me.”
“And what about Blanco, where is he from?”
“He is originally from Miami. Julio said he didn’t know where he was living now, only that he came and went by plane. Once he had disposed of the tropical birds he went away for a long while.”
“Did he know where he’d gone?”
“Julio couldn’t be sure, but he thought Central or South America. When Blanco returned he had the tamarin monkeys and a stack of cages and Julio helped his two accomplices unload the plane and put the cages together. The monkeys had been transported in burlap bags and were badly dehydrated. Julio immediately supplied them with water.”
Officer Frank turned aside to confer with the others. “We need to research these … What did you call them, tamar-minds?”
“Tamarins,” Digger said. “Golden lion tamarins, they’re rare and endangered. Efforts are being made to save them through captive breeding.”
I was impressed. Digger had done some homework.
He went on. “Apparently the shack Julio was living in had once been a storage facility for citrus equipment. That is where he found the wicker baskets, so he went out and cut some gumbo-limbo tree limbs to put in the cages and then he tied the baskets up high for nests.”
Then one of the Miami officers had a bright idea. “Did you discover any connection to drugs involving this fugitive?”
“I beg your pardon?” Digger drew himself up. “Of course if I had I would have reported it. Like you, I am an officer of the law.”
They didn’t ask Digger if he had any idea where Julio had gone. I had been holding my breath waiting to hear what he would say, but I was spared.
Right then the memory of those two men on the jetty came back. If only it hadn’t been so dark, if only I’d been watching a little earlier. But I just kept quiet.
The reason I didn’t speak up was I still wasn’t positive the man was Blanco. After all, look at all the other times that people thought he was somebody else. Suppose I was wrong? Then I would have fingered the wrong man. To finger, a transitive verb meaning to inform on.
That concluded the interview. After the squad cars had driven off Mom made some coffee for Digger and herself and I had another glass of orange juice while we all calmed down.
Finally Mom drove me to school and explained why I was late. In English class I slipped a note to Josh. Cops again. Looking for Julio. At lunch we were once again the most popular kids in the class.
“You mean the cops came all the way from Miami to grill you?” Herbie asked. And Winnie Ellerman repeated her invitation to do a complete makeover of my face next Saturday. But I couldn’t tell them anything.
I shook my head and said, “I’m not allowed to divulge any information.”
Seeing Jeb Blanco on the jetty was weighing on my conscience. I didn’t mention it when Officer Frank Franklin was grilling me because not being super sure—sort of not trusting my own eyes—kept holding me back. Still, why in the world hadn’t I told Digger? When Mom came to collect me I asked if we could stop at Teresa and Digger’s. Aurelia was there fussing over Teresa, who had a bad cold.
“Don’t come in, don’t come in! I’m full of germs!”
“I just need to talk to Digger, abuelita. I’m sorry about your cold. Can he come out?”
Digger materialized eating a raw carrot. “Is Teresa very sick?” I asked him.
“No, it’s just a nasty cold. You know, the kind with a stuffy nose and runny eyes. Not dangerous but not fun.”
“What are you eating?”
He waggled the carrot at me. “This is all I’m allowed between meals,” he complained. “I’ve already eaten two. Want a bite?”
I nodded and he broke me off a piece from the unchewed-on end. But before I put it in my mouth I took a deep breath and said all in a rush, “Digger, I have something to tell you I didn’t tell the Miami policeman, I don’t know why. But you remember when he asked you if Julio had been involved with drugs and you said, ‘Like you I am an officer of the law?’ ”
“I remember it well, chica.”
“Well, I think I saw Jeb Blanco or somebody who looks like Jeb Blanco again out on the jetty.”
“When was this?”
“I think it was Monday night. I was sitting on the back porch with my binoculars looking at the last sandpipers before they went away for the night. I keep a little chart of how late they stay. They stay later in good weather than they do in the rain, but that’s not the point—only that’s how I came to see two men out on the jetty in the almost-dark. They were talking and waving their hands as if they were having an argument. I was playing with Tigger. You know how you trail her little toy mouse along the floor and she’ll pounce on it and so on. The sandpipers had already gone. I got a glimpse of one of the men. I caught the glint of light off his glasses. I’m almost positive it was Jeb Blanco.”
“Ay, mi vida, this is very big news.”
“What will happen now? Will I get arrested because I didn’t tell them earlier?”
“No, because it was a detail you only remembered on this day, chica, you understand?”
I nodded but it wasn’t exactly true.
“I will take care of it, chica.”
CHAPTER 15
The next day was Saturday and I spent most of it at Josh’s. Mom had gone out with Aurelia and Teresa for the day, to look at wedding dresses. Aurelia and Tom the Lion were actually going to do it! Get married, and I would be invited to the wedding. So today I’d been invited to stay with the Blaines. Josh and I did our algebra homework first. Mr. Hammersmith or The Hammer, as he is known behind his back, always gives us some real brainteasers over the weekends. They’re optional for extra credit. Like this one: