Bird Brained (3 page)

Weed wasn’t intimidated by the threat—but then, there was no reason to be. The majority of wildlife crimes are hard to prove, which explains why endangered critters have exploded into the latest rage in the criminal world. Trade in illegal wildlife is nearly as lucrative as dealing in drugs. But that’s where the similarity ends. Get caught with a kilo of coke and it’s off to jail you go. Get caught with a hot bird and you get a slap on the wrist and a $500 fine, at worst.

Weed held his wrists out toward me. “Go ahead, Porter. Cuff me. Take me to the big house, why doncha?” He laughed maniacally.

I tried my best to act like I had some leverage. “Listen, Willy. I know you’re working for someone, so why take the fall? Just tell me who it is and it’ll be as if I never caught you.”

“That’s a good one, Porter,” Willy said. “Right now all I’d need is a
half
-assed lawyer to prove that you haven’t got me. I believe what I have here is a win-win situation.” A smirk plastered itself across his face.

But I refused to give in. “I hear you haven’t been to see Bambi in a while. What say we take a trip over to her place right now and let the two of you have an intimate little tête-à-tête?”

Willy’s smirk instantly vanished. According to a police report, his last visit home hadn’t been exceptionally cozy. What had begun as a dispute over alimony payments had ended up with Willy on the floor and Bambi straddling him, threatening to “Bobbittize” him, adding substance to her vow by waving a large, sharp butcher’s knife in her right hand. Fortunately for Willy, his screams had alerted a neighbor who had called the police.

His hands strayed toward his groin now. “For chrissakes, all right! If I puke up the information, you promise to keep that bitch away from me?”

“Sure, Willy.” I’d already given Bambi the name of a lawyer who had a reputation as a homicidal psychopath armed with a law degree. With two kids, a stack of bills, and a mortgage, Bambi needed all the help she could get.

“So, who were you supposed to deliver the eggs to, Willy?”

“Alberto Dominguez,” he hissed from between clenched teeth.

The name caught me by surprise. “Is that also who hired you?” I pressed.

“For chrissakes, lady,” swore a gruff voice from the neighboring stall. “You wanna tell me where a guy has to go in order to crap in peace around here?”

“Try the ladies’ room,” I snapped. “All right, Willy. Give it up.”

Weed’s eyes were hard. “I don’t know who I was hired by.”

I shook my head. “How could you have no idea who’s paying you to do the job? You’ll have to do better than that.”

“Yeah? Well, how is it that you were hired by Fish and Wildlife to slow down the trade, but have yet to make a good case?” Willy retorted.

The guy was beginning to get on my nerves.

Weed sneered at me. “Fuck you, Porter. I’ve told you what I know. I’m outta here.”

“Whatever you say, Willy. Want to pick up some flowers for Bambi here, or should we stop on the way to her place?” I reminded him.

A vein began to throb in Willy’s forehead like a metronome keeping time to a silent beat. “I ain’t going to Bambi’s,” he sulked.

I rattled the handcuffs clipped to my belt suggestively.

Willy scratched under both armpits. “Listen, Porter. All I know is I got a call from some guy telling me there’d be a plane ticket in my name at the Avianca counter. The only other information I cared about was who’d be shelling out the bucks once the job was done.”

Weed’s hands left his armpits to ferociously scratch at his back and his sides. I took a step away.

“And that was?” I began to feel itchy myself as I watched Willy rub his back against the tile wall.

“Dominguez.” Willy’s fingertips were now on a search and destroy mission along the top of his head. “Cash on delivery.”

I figured there was a good chance that Weed was leaving out some vital information, but I also knew that was all I’d get from him for now. I let myself out of the stall before Willy’s vermin could spread.

I squeezed my Ford back onto the Dolphin Expressway and headed south for the Palmetto. My pulse was racing faster than the speedometer on my car, which was stuck at an infuriating thirty-five miles per hour.

Alberto Dominguez. Damn him! Alberto was supposed to be one of my main informants. A local bird breeder whom I’d nailed a few months ago by chance, he had disembarked at Miami International carrying more than just his luggage: He also had a parrot stuffed inside each pocket of his coat.

Alberto had dosed the birds with a shot of tequila before boarding the plane in Mexico City, and all went as planned while the parrots lay in a deep, dreamless sleep. But as luck would have it, he crossed my path just as the parrots awoke, nursing a hangover and pissed off as hell. Alberto’s pockets suddenly sprang to life, screeching and flapping. I’d threatened to make his life everlasting misery unless he consented to turn informant. Alberto quickly agreed.

Like much else in this world, a former TV show had contributed to the sudden surge in exotic birds. Robert Blake’s career had tanked after the series
BARETTA
, but his costar, a wisecracking cockatoo mouthing mucho macho attitude, inspired a demand for parrots and macaws that skyrocketed straight through the roof.

That’s when the carnage began.

Peasants were paid to snatch chicks from their nests inside hollow limbs. Soon, 200-year-old trees were being chopped, hacked, and chainsawed to get to the nestlings, but eight out of ten babies never survived the process. Of those that did, another 90 percent ended up dying in transit. And since the adult parrots had been left without nests to breed in, the bird population plummeted. In the grand American tradition of supply and demand, prices soared, making parrots and macaws the most sought after of all endangered species. Then in 1992 Uncle Sam stepped in, outlawing the importation of all wild-caught birds. And bingo! A booming legit business was born. The domestic breeding of parrots and macaws quickly became a multimillion-dollar industry, with the land of citrus and sun its hub.

That’s where Alberto came in. Bird breeders in southern Florida had recently become the newest target for thieves. At large breeding compounds, up to $250,000 worth of birds could be snatched in a single heist. Word had it that the thefts were the work of a Cuban gang with a pipeline into the black market. I’d given Alberto the mission of discovering the mastermind behind the plot. What I hadn’t counted on was being double-crossed.

I turned off the Palmetto and onto Dixie Highway. Wall-to-wall strip malls guided my way. I sped past condos which melted into trailer parks which in turn bumped up against used-car lots, their banners screeching of bargains. Fast-food bodegas beckoned for me to pull in and stop, but I was too angry at Alberto to give fried plantains more than a fleeting thought. An infinite series of traffic lights further added to my bad mood. By the time I swerved onto Southwest 248th Street, I could have propelled the Tempo on my head of steam.

I headed toward the Redlands as row after row of tall, ghostly palms appeared and then vanished, momentarily illuminated by a sly moon playing hide-and-seek behind a bank of foreboding clouds. I pressed down hard on the gas pedal, speeding up to match the pounding of my pulse as the night streaked by.

As the moon darted out once more, Dominguez’s compound came into view, its front wall of concrete crowned with gleaming barbed wire. An electrified fence added further protection, stretching back to cover the rear. Alberto’s house and aviary lay nestled inside. Dominguez had sworn to me on his mother’s grave that all of his 250 feathered occupants were completely legal, born and bred within these compound walls. Now I questioned that.

I pulled up and pushed against the car door, which creaked and groaned in protest, refusing to open more than halfway. This had become a battle of wills, which so far, the Ford was winning. I shimmied out of the car and walked up to the gate, looking around. The block was deserted except for a utility van parked down the street, though no workmen were in sight. A flurry of thunderstorms had rolled through the other night, keeping the power company busier than usual.

I pressed the bell and waited, the gathering silence as heavy as the humidity. Either Alberto wasn’t home, or Weed had already called and warned him of my impending visit. I leaned against the security gate as I considered the best way to sneak in. Fortunately, I didn’t have to battle barbed wire; the gate swung open beneath my weight.

I squeezed back inside my car and drove up to the house, not daring to step outside without first calling to Cariba, the compound’s trained killer dog. Surprisingly, no warning snarls or gnashing teeth came hurtling my way. I cautiously left the Ford, on guard for a sneak attack as I walked up to the front door. On previous visits, the buzzer could scarcely be heard above the raucous squawks and screeches of hundreds of birds. This time the bell rang crystal clear. I was beginning to suspect Alberto had packed up his parrots and hotfooted it out of town.

I gathered my courage and headed toward the back of the compound. If Cariba was going to attack, I figured she would have done so by now. I passed by Alberto’s black Ferrari, snoozing in his open-shed garage. And then I saw a large, gaping hole cut in the fence, breaching the compound’s security. The ominous silence grew heavier as it drew in tightly around me.

The back door opened at my touch, as if I’d been expected. Alberto kept all his birds inside the house, taking every precaution to guard against robbery. On a good day, bird shit and feathers lightly coated the floor. Apparently, this had been a bad one.

It was as if a down comforter had been sliced open, its contents tossed wildly about the room. Feathers clung to my sneakers as I passed cage after cage, each standing as empty as a desecrated coffin. The trail of scattered plumage looked like a fan dance gone berserk. I followed it into the breeding room. Normally filled with the raucous cries of mating, now not even the ghost of a peep could be heard. Phantom wings next herded me into the nursery, where not a single hatchling was to be found.

A tiny feather worked its way up inside my nose to tickle my nostrils, the torment continuing until I sneezed, stirring up a storm of down which gently settled on my shirt and in my hair. I stared in disbelief around me. Every single bird had disappeared, down to the eggs that usually lay fast asleep, safe in their incubators. Like breadcrumbs, the feathers continued their trail, luring me still deeper inside the house.

Room after room merged, all one jumbled mess of furniture that had been slashed and torn. Piles of papers lay scattered, occasionally caught up in a medley of stuffing and springs.

I was of two minds. I was eager to corner Alberto and tear into him for his dealings with Willy Weed. But if he hadn’t flown the coop, I was afraid of what I might find.

I received my answer as I stood rooted at the bedroom doorway. Alberto lay on his back, his limbs flung against the hard wooden floor, his face a Kabuki mask of red streaks and long, jagged gashes. The pattern of rough slices continued down his throat and ripped through his chest, where strips of his shirt clung in long, lifeless tatters. Alberto’s once ruddy complexion was now ghostly white, as if the blood had been drained from his flesh. The majority of it had been, and was now splattered against the walls.

I took a deep breath, struggling to regain my equilibrium, which was spinning faster than a carnival ride. I leaned my hand against the entry to steady myself, only to pull away, my palm suddenly sticky and wet. The room began to close in, cutting off my supply of air. I realized that the blood was still fresh. Pinpricks of moisture broke out over my face and neck, erupted on my chest, and slithered down my back. I rummaged for a tissue in my purse, but as hard as I wiped, Alberto’s blood clung stubbornly to my skin, then sank beneath flesh and bone, pounding in rhythm with my own.

Get a grip! You’ve done this before!

But confronting death still wasn’t easy. Alberto had died with his mouth and eyes open wide in terror, emitting a silent scream that swept around the room. Dots of moisture froze in place on my flesh, tiny ice sculptures held prisoner thanks to the magic of air-conditioning. A wave of nausea engulfed me.

I concentrated on taking slow, steady breaths until the room began to recede, reverting to its normal scale. It was then that a torn swatch of fabric caught my eye. As I walked over and picked it up, Alberto’s eyes followed me like those in a dime-store painting of Jesus; refusing to let go, insisting I unlock their secret. The scrap was a piece of his shirt, wet and slimy to the touch.

I quickly stood up and went in search of a phone. It wasn’t until I walked back through the clutter of the living room that I noticed the large muslin sack that sat on the floor. I bent over the bag, my fingers working to loosen the drawstring that held the top closed. The fabric rustled against my skin, chiding my clumsiness even as it urged me to move faster. Finally the knot came undone.

Inside lay six colorful parrots in a drugged sleep, unaware of what had taken place around them. But there was no time to register much else—I suddenly knew I wasn’t alone. Nothing definite had tipped me off to the threat; just a tightening of my stomach, the moisture turning clammy again on my flesh. As the hair rose on the back of my neck, I heard a sound—a low, throaty cough that came from directly behind me.

I dipped into my purse for my gun, but I didn’t move fast enough. An arm swung from behind, clamping around my neck. I struggled to wedge my fingers under it but the harder I fought, the tighter the arm pressed down on my windpipe, cutting off the air until I was gasping for breath. My heart kicked into high gear, sprouting hundreds of wings that beat all at once, but there was nowhere for me to fly.

The grip constricted still tighter and my mind began to shut down. I made a last ditch effort, frantically ramming my elbow back as hard as I could. A throb of pain shot through my forearm, sending sparks of electricity skittering into my fingers as my attacker let loose a low grunt. Then a hand whipped round in front of my face, a handkerchief in its grip. I took one last gasp as a familiar odor raced straight for my brain, the cloth molding itself to my nose and mouth as I fell into the gaping darkness that stretched out before me.