by Stuart Gibbs
“And he didn’t even seem the slightest bit concerned that it might be dangerous. There’s got to be like fifteen laws against that.”
Summer bit her lip thoughtfully. “How do you think he has official documentation for them, though? Think he forges it?”
“I think we need to talk to Tommy Lopez,” I said.
16 REPTILE LAUNDERING
While Tran drove Summer and me home, I texted Tommy the photos of the reptiles I had taken at Snakes Alive. He called back two minutes later.
I answered him on speakerphone so Summer could hear too. “That was fast,” Summer said teasingly. “I thought you had important stuff to do.”
“This just became my number one priority,” Tommy said. “That lizard you took a photo of? It’s a Galapagos land iguana.”
“Really?” I gasped. “Aren’t those endangered?”
“Extremely endangered,” Tommy confirmed. “There might be only a few hundred of them left on earth. Zoos don’t even have them.”
“So how does Rick from Snakes Alive have one?” Summer asked.
“My question exactly,” Tommy said.
“And who’s going to buy it?” I added.
“Taco Cabana!” Summer exclaimed, so suddenly that I almost dropped the phone.
“What?” Tommy asked, sounding horrified. “Taco Cabana doesn’t serve iguana.”
“Sorry,” Summer apologized. She pointed through the windshield so I would understand what she meant. Sure enough, there was a Taco Cabana by the access road ahead. It was a chain that sold cheap fast food, and Summer loved it. “There’s one up the road and I’m starving. I didn’t want to eat at Snakes Alive. That place probably does put all the old animals in the hot dogs.” She leaned over to the front seat and asked Tran to pull off the highway.
I told Tommy, “Rick had all kinds of animals that he wouldn’t let us take photos of. Like emerald tree boas and Mangshan pit vipers. He also said he’d sold lots of cobras already and has more coming in….”
“Believe it or not, it’s legal to deal all those snakes,” Tommy said sadly, “assuming they’ve been captive-bred and not stolen from the wild.”
“How would I know if they’ve been stolen?” I asked.
“What condition were the animals in?” Tommy said. “Did they seem to be in perfect condition, or did they have scrapes or scars?”
“They had scrapes and scars,” I reported. “And the Mangshan had a kind of bent tail.”
“Then they were probably caught in the wild,” Tommy said. “A reptile that has been born and raised in captivity has been coddled. It hasn’t been forced to deal with natural elements or survival of the fittest. But reptiles in the wild get banged up. It’s part of life. And quite often, someone poaching them illegally and then smuggling them will bang them up as well.”
Tran pulled off the highway and headed for the Taco Cabana. Summer sat back next to me. “So someone hunted down all these reptiles out in the wild and then shipped them all the way across the world to Snakes Alive, just so people can have them as pets?”
Tommy said, “The illegal pet trade is a lot bigger than most people realize. After drug smuggling, it’s the biggest criminal business on earth. A person in a third world country can sometimes make more money poaching a Mangshan viper or a parrot or a pangolin than they can make in an entire year of honest work.”
“Did you just say a pangolin?” Summer asked. “Like, a scaled anteater?”
Tommy said, “They’re the most trafficked mammals in the world. We estimate that a hundred thousand might be getting poached every year. Most of them are being killed for their hides, but the pet traders are taking some too. Heck, the pet traders are taking everything: monkeys, lemurs, hedgehogs, tigers. And they’ll do almost anything to sneak them into the country. About a year ago, some idiot on a passenger plane got caught with Asian cats stuffed in his backpack and pygmy monkeys in his underwear. Unfortunately, for every idiot who gets caught, there’s at least a hundred smarter people who don’t. Most of these animals aren’t being smuggled in airplane luggage. They’re being hidden in shipping containers and things like that.”
“So why aren’t you searching all the shipping containers?” Summer asked.
“Because that would cost billions of dollars a year and no one wants to give the Fish and Wildlife Service that much money,” Tommy explained. “If we’re lucky, we can search one container out of a hundred, and it’ll be a cursory search at that.”
Tran pulled into line at the drive-through for Taco Cabana.
“But compared to mammals or birds,” Tommy went on, “it’s easier to smuggle reptiles. They can go for days without eating and they like to den in small spaces, so they don’t need much room. Smugglers pack them in shipping crates full of just about anything else and they sail right through customs. Although sometimes people still bring them on airplanes, in some of the craziest ways you can imagine. A couple years back, one guy actually stuffed his prosthetic leg full of Fiji iguanas.”
“That’s insane,” I said.
“And yet it worked. In fact, the guy had done it dozens of times. The only reason he got caught was that he fell asleep with the leg sticking in the aisle and the flight attendant hit it with the drink cart. The leg came off and the iguanas started running loose all over the plane. They had to make an emergency landing.”
We reached the order box for the drive-through. “Hold on,” I told Tommy, and then Summer and I ordered tacos to go.
Once we had done that, Summer said, “Here’s what I don’t understand: Rick told us that he would give me documentation that these snakes had been acquired legally. How can he do that if these animals were smuggled into the country?”
“They’ve obviously been laundered,” Tommy said.
Summer and I shared a look. Both of us knew what laundering was, more or less. It was the process of disguising something illegal so that it looked legitimate. I had generally heard of it being done with money; for example, a criminal might have a fake business to cover up the money he received from breaking the law. But I had never heard of it in this context before. “How do you launder a reptile?” I asked.
Tommy said, “The United States has pretty stringent laws about what animals can be brought in and out of the country, which is done to discourage smuggling. However, that’s not the case with a lot of other countries. For example, Germany has much looser laws. So sometimes, a smuggler might send animals to a dealer in Germany, who will make official documentation claiming that the animals were captive-bred, and then ship them into the US. If we catch something at the border with documentation like that, there’s nothing we can do, no matter how sure we are that the animal was really stolen from the wild. I’m betting your pal Rick is getting his animals from some source like that.”
“He’s not our pal,” Summer said coldly.
We pulled up to the drive-through window. Summer handed over her money and we got our tacos. Tran pulled back onto the highway as we dug into our food.
“So what do we do now?” I asked, doing my best to be understood with my mouth full of taco. “How do we bring this guy down?”
“If he really has documentation for these animals, it might be hard to make something stick,” Tommy said. “But maybe we can nail him for having that Galapagos iguana. I might be able to get a warrant based on the photo Teddy sent me. Although, to be honest, that might take a little while.”
“Even though this guy’s illegally selling an incredibly rare, endangered iguana?” Summer asked, aghast. “What if he sells it to someone today?”
“Or what if an anaconda eats it?” I asked. “Rick’s basically keeping those snakes in Tupperware. I’m surprised one hasn’t escaped yet.”
“Who says one hasn’t?” Tommy replied.
“That’d be awfully bad for business,” Summer said, and I found myself imagining several birthday parties at Snakes Alive going horribly wrong with the sudden appearance of a king cobra.
“T
he wheels of justice don’t move that fast,” Tommy explained. “There’s a huge backlog in the courts. It’s not easy to get a warrant, period—let alone quickly—especially not for something like reptile laundering. As far as the judges are concerned, it’s not a priority. No one’s life is in danger.”
“The reptiles’ lives are,” Summer said, sounding offended.
“I’m on your side here,” Tommy told her. “I wish things were different. But maybe there’s a way to move things faster. You texted me that Rick has a shipment coming in soon?”
“In the next few days,” I said.
“If we can catch the delivery in progress,” Tommy said, “then the reptiles aren’t technically in Snakes Alive, which means we don’t need a warrant to get on the premises. Maybe, if it’s a big shipment, the smuggler won’t have documentation for every animal. Something might have slipped through the cracks. And, to be honest, I wouldn’t mind nailing the smuggler in addition to Rick. I mean, you take Rick out, and our smuggler will find someone else to deal to. But if you take out the smuggler, then you’ve stopped a major pipeline of illegal animals.”
“Rick’s going to call me when the shipment’s coming in!” Summer exclaimed. “If you’re in the area, I can tip you off and then you can bust them!”
“Perhaps.” Tommy didn’t sound nearly as excited as Summer. “Assuming that Rick lets you know ahead of time, rather than after the fact.”
“I’ll bet I can get him to alert me beforehand,” Summer said confidently. “I’ve offered seven hundred dollars for this cobra. That has to be more than most of his other clients are paying.”
“Seven hundred?” Tommy echoed. “That’s pricey all right. Okay, see what you can do.”
“How much advance warning would you need?” I asked.
“The more, the better,” Tommy replied, then told us, “Hold on.” Someone was talking to him. He muted the phone for a few seconds, then came back on. “Sorry guys, but something has come up.”
“Ooh!” Summer said. “What’s going on? Are you busting some smugglers?”
“Nothing that exciting. But still, I’ve gotta go. Let me know the moment you hear anything from Rick!” Tommy hung up.
I tucked my phone back into my pocket and started on my second taco. At the same time, Summer was taking her phone out. She barely had glanced at it before she sighed, “Oh no.”
“What’s wrong?” I asked, mouth full.
“There’s been another zebra spanker copycat.”
I looked at her blankly. “What are you talking about?”
“You haven’t been paying any attention to the news?”
“I’ve been kind of busy lately. With trying to find a stolen tyrannosaur skull and getting attacked by an anaconda and all.”
Summer gave a mock sigh of exasperation. “You really need to go online more often.” She handed me her phone. On her Twitter feed, the very first tweet was about someone else who had tried to spank a zebra in a zoo, this time in Cleveland.
I clicked on the link and quickly read the story. The perpetrator was a twenty-year-old college student who had been inspired by the original Zebra Spanker. While his friends filmed him, he had jumped into the zebra exhibit, intending to smack a male on the butt. However, he made one serious mistake that the original spanker had never made: He approached the zebra from the rear. Before he could even spank the zebra, it reared up and kicked him in the face, resulting in the loss of sixteen of his teeth—and all of his consciousness. Since the criminal was out cold, he didn’t give Cleveland zoo security much of a chase when they came to arrest him. His friends had then posted the video on YouTube anyhow, where it already had over a million hits.
“Wow. Just when you think people can’t get any dumber.” I handed Summer her phone back, then thought of something. “Did you say there was another copycat?”
“There have been at least eight so far. The original guy sparked a whole trend. And it’s not only zebra spanking.” She consulted her phone for details. “There’s also been a rhino spanker in Omaha, an okapi smacker in Seattle, an aardvark tickler in Philadelphia, and a kangaroo puncher in Miami. Although that last one might not have been a true copycat. The guy was drunk and thought the kangaroo made a face at him. Apparently, this sort of thing happens a lot in Florida.”
“What on earth are these people thinking?”
“They’re seeing that the original guy got famous doing this, and they want to be famous too.”
“And every time we watch the videos, we feed the beast,” I said.
“Hey, it’s not our fault this is happening,” Summer said, sounding slightly offended. “It’ll run its course, just like all fads do.”
“And in the meantime, zoos all over the country will have to ramp up security and hope none of these idiots sue them because they got their teeth kicked out.” I sighed sadly and looked out the window, thinking about all the awful things people did to animals.
We were approaching the motel where the volunteers for the dinosaur dig were staying. I could see the sign for it up ahead, beyond all the fast-food joints and Ruby’s Taphouse. I must have reacted in some way, because it caught Summer’s attention.
“What are you looking at?” she asked me.
“All the people from the dig are staying up here,” I said.
“At that place?” Summer’s voice was full of disgust. “Ugh.”
“Not everyone can afford the Ritz-Carlton,” I reminded her.
I kept my nose pressed to the window as we passed the motel. Since it was a warm day, Caitlyn and her friend Madison were sitting on deck chairs by the pool, wearing bikinis and working on their suntans. The only other person at the pool was Caitlyn’s mother, who was reading under the shade of the lone patio umbrella. I could see them easily since the pool was right next to the access road, and Caitlyn was recognizable by the medical patch she had on her abdomen, covering her tyrannosaur bite. “The girls are still there!” I said, then turned to Summer. “Any chance we could stop to talk to them?”
“You want to stop to talk to some cute teenage girls in bikinis, and you think I’m going to be okay with that?” Summer asked, although I could tell she was only teasing.
“I just want to ask them some questions about Minerva,” I said. “Well, really, I want to ask their mother some things.”
“I thought your parents didn’t want you investigating this any further.”
“My mother told me not to chase after any more bad guys. All I want to do now is talk to some people by a swimming pool out in plain sight of every car on the highway. How much trouble could we possibly get in?”
Summer grinned. “I wouldn’t mind talking to them too. Tran, take the next exit. We’re making an unscheduled stop.”
17 THE DIGGERS
Since the access roads only ran in one direction along the highway, we had to make a big loop to get back around to the motel, passing five fast-food restaurants, three gas stations, two convenience stores, an auto dealership, a go-kart track, and the future sites of four more businesses that were under construction.
Once again there were only a few cars in the motel parking lot. There wasn’t much to do there during the day except use the pool, and the pool didn’t seem that great. It hadn’t been cleaned after the previous days’ storms; dead leaves floated on the top and were piled in sunken clumps on the bottom. The roar of the cars passing on the highway was loud and constant. Caitlyn’s mother looked as though she was there under duress.
She and the girls eyed our car suspiciously as we parked beside the pool.
Summer started to get out of the car, then changed her mind. She took off her baseball cap and shook out her hair.
“You want them to recognize you?” I asked.
“It’s probably gonna happen anyway,” Summer said with resignation. “Might as well take advantage of it. It’s served us well so far.” She pasted a smile on her face and stepped into the motel parking lot.
Caitlyn and Madison
didn’t seem very pleased to see me again, but they were downright thrilled to see Summer. They sat up in their patio chairs as she approached.
“No way,” Caitlyn said. “You’re Summer McCracken!”
“Hey,” Summer replied. “I was out at the dig with you two yesterday morning.”
The girls’ jaws both dropped in shock.
“You were the one out on the rocks!” Madison exclaimed. “The one Dr. Chen had a cow about! We totally didn’t recognize you!”
“That was the point,” Summer admitted.
“I’m Madison,” Madison said. “And this is Caitlyn.”
“I’m Caitlyn’s mom,” Caitlyn’s mom said. She seemed kind of starstruck by Summer too. “Call me Julie.”
“Hi, Julie,” Summer said brightly. “I know you’ve all met Teddy here.”
I asked Caitlyn, “How’s your bite doing?”
Caitlyn reddened, like she was embarrassed I had brought this up in front of Summer. “I had to get a few stitches, and the doctor says I can’t swim for a day. Which stinks because it’s hot.”
“So hot I might actually go into that pool,” Madison said. “Even though there’s stuff growing in it.”
“We weren’t sure what we were supposed to be doing today,” Julie said, by way of explanation. There was a hint of frustration in her voice. “The original plan for this week was that we were going to be working on the dig every day. But now everything’s been thrown out of whack. Dr. Chen told us she would get back to us this morning about what we’re supposed to do, but… we still haven’t heard from her. Which is why we’re just sitting here. If I’d known we were going to have the whole day free, we would have gone to FunJungle.”
“What’s it like, owning that place?” Madison asked Summer excitedly.
“I don’t own FunJungle,” Summer replied. “My father does.”
“But, like, it’ll still be yours someday, right?” Madison pressed. “So, can you do anything you want there? Like ride the elephants?”
“I don’t ride the elephants,” Summer told her. “They’re zoo animals, not my pets.”