Endangered Species (9 page)

F
our hours later, the telephone rang. I had tears on my cheeks when I woke up.

It was Chapman returning my call. “You have something for me?” he said.

I groaned.

“Bad night?” he asked.

I wondered if he'd been the one responsible for what had happened last night as I struggled to sit up. “You could say that.”

“So what's going on?” His tone was impatient, his voice clipped. I could hear the sounds of a TV going in the background.

I struggled through the fog of my sleep to remember what I'd planned to say to him.

“Well?” he prompted,

My mind clicked in. “Nothing. I thought we got off to a bad start the other night. I figured we should begin over.”

“And how do we do that?” He sounded interested, but wary.

“We could meet over coffee and bagels.”

He was quiet, probably running my suggestion in his head for traps. When he didn't find any, he agreed.

I suggested a chain store in a nearby strip mall, figuring I'd get there a little early and wait for him to come in and read his license plate. He said he'd see me there in an hour and a half. It was sooner than I would have liked but doable.

I hung up the phone and rolled over. Given the night before and the lack of sleep, I felt better than I had a right to. I was still a little stiff in the shoulder and the spot in my head where I'd been hit was still tender, but the nausea, dizziness, and pain had subsided. I dragged myself into the shower and stood under it until the hot water ran out. Then I got dressed, made myself a cup of coffee, left a note for Manuel, who was still sleeping, telling him where I was going, and drove over to where I was going to meet Chapman.

The main roads were all plowed, and traffic was moving at a slow but even pace. The strip mall's parking lot was a quarter full, a normal amount for this time in the morning. I put my car four rows away from the store, between a minivan and an old Saab, and waited. The sky was a cerulean blue. It was a little over thirty degrees, with the temperature supposedly rising to forty later in the afternoon. The only reminder of yesterday's storm was a hill-shaped cloud off in the distance. If I were sports-minded I would have said it was a perfect day for cross-country skiing. I put my mind in a holding pattern and waited. I figured Chapman for being late and he was.

Fifteen minutes after our appointment was scheduled, I watched a green Jeep Cherokee drive up off Nottingham Road. The driver made his way toward one of the spots in front of the dry cleaner. He parked and got out. It was my man. After he went inside the bagel place, I noted down his license plate number and joined him.

Chapman was sitting at a table drinking his coffee and looking annoyed when I came in. Waiting wasn't part of his plan. I knew he wasn't happy that I'd flipped things around. I bought a cranberry-orange bagel and a cup of coffee and sat down next to him.

“You must have had some night,” he observed as I lowered myself into the chair. “You look like shit.”

I shrugged. Asking him if he'd been the one who'd knocked me out seemed like a waste of time “Well, you look very pretty.”

He didn't respond, taking another sip of his coffee instead. “So?” he said. “What did you have in mind?”

“Nothing, really. I just wondered why you weren't looking for Nestor yourself?”

Chapman put both hands around his cup as if to warm them and gave out with that schoolboy smile of his. “Simple. I have better things to do.”

I took a bite of my bagel. “You do a lot of this kind of activity, do you?”

He gave me an assessing look, before answering. “No. This is a part-time gig. So, have you found Nestor or not?”

“Not. But I'm working on it. Of course, he could be out of here by now. If he's down in the City, all bets are off.”

“You and your client better hope that's not the case.” Chapman looked at his watch and told me he had to go. I got the feeling he was thinking that if he couldn't make me wait, at least he could leave me sitting here.

I watched him walk out the door. Mr. All-American in his Gap jacket, turtleneck, and jeans. I think I would have liked it better if he wore leather and was decorated with jailhouse tattoos. It would be easier to remember what I was dealing with. After he left, I finished my bagel and coffee and called George. He wasn't in so I left Chapman's license plate number on his answering machine, told him everything was fine and that I'd call him later. Then I checked in at the store, and drove over to Eli's. I was interested to hear what he had to say about last night.

The snow from last night's storm had filled in the risers on Eli's steps, transforming the stairs to his flat into Mount Everest. I took a last puff of the cigarette I'd been smoking, flicked the butt away, and started up. By the time I'd hauled myself to the top I was wheezing. Rivulets of sweat were running down my sides.

George would have said it served me right for smoking and George would have been correct. I unzipped my jacket and brushed the snow off my pants while I caught my breath. A couple of men were digging their cars out from the piles of snow the plow had created when it came through. Directly across the street, four little kids were having a snowball fight while their mother shoveled the driveway. School had been canceled for the day. Watching them made me wish I were ten again.

At ten, I still had the knack of expectation. I was wondering when I'd lost the ability as I knocked on Eli's door. He answered a couple of minutes later wearing a tatty blue terrycloth bathrobe. It was hanging open, revealing paint-stained shorts slung low over his hips and a torn Donald Duck T-shirt that rose up, leaving a patch of white belly exposed. His hair was mussed. He yawned without covering his mouth. I could see his fillings.

“Yes?” he mumbled, peering at me through sleep-encrusted lids. He wasn't wearing his glasses. His eyes looked naked without them.

I pushed my way in, kicking the door shut behind me. “Where were you last night?” I demanded.

“W-w-why?” He stammered. “What's the matter?” He shivered and clutched his bathrobe to him. I noticed he had red marks on his skin where his face had been in contact with his pillow.

“The matter is that someone knocked me out last night while I was looking for you and I want to know why.”

I'd expected him to stutter something about “What do you mean, looking for me?” But instead he squawked, “You were at 1078?” while his fingers battened on the terry cloth the way a child holds on to his favorite blankie.

“Yes, I was. Unfortunately. Now where were you?”

“I ... I ... never got there. Why were you there?”

“Manuel called me.”

He swallowed. “Oh.”

“Are you going to answer me.”

“What did Manny tell you?”

“It doesn't matter.” Eli smelled stale, as if he needed a bath. His flesh jiggled unattractively under my hands as I pushed him into the living room. The place looked the way it had the last time I was here, except now the window blinds were up. A limb from one of the maples planted close to the house had cracked in the storm. Dangling toward the ground at a right angle, the exposed wood was a raw, white slash against the grayish-brown bark. “I want to hear what you have to say.”

Eli put his hands up. “Just a minute,” he protested. “I have to get my glasses.”

“You don't have to see to talk,” I told him.

His shoulders slumped. “I just feel better with ...”

“Frankly, I don't care what you feel. Tell me what I want to know.”

He scrunched his face up. He looked as if he were going to cry. I didn't care. He could have thrown himself on the ground and sobbed and I wouldn't have felt a tingle of sympathy for him. It probably had something to do with my getting hit on the head.

“You know,” I told him, “I'm inclined to take the money you've given me and just forget about this whole mess.”

“No. Don't do that,” he cried. Small bubbles of saliva formed at the corners of his mouth. He wiped them away with the back of one of his hands.

“Then talk to me.”

“I'm going to,” he whined. “I don't have anything to hide. It's just that you woke me up.” This was said truculently, as if I was supposed to feel sorry that I had.

“You're up now.” I watched mounds of snow falling from the cedars. They made soft, plopping noises landing. “Tell me. Did you see Nestor last night?”

“No.” Eli shuffled over to the sofa and sat down. “I didn't.” The cushions sank under his weight. I stayed standing.

“He wasn't at the house?”

“I don't know.” Eli began nervously fingering the ends of the belt on his robe. “We never got there.”

“We?”

“Sulfin and me. We never even got near the hill. We kept on getting stuck.”

At least that matched up with what Manuel had told me. “Sulfin is a friend of Nestor's, right?” I asked Eli.

He nodded. Then he smoothed his hair down. I noticed the seam of his robe was ripped under his arm.

“So, why should he be taking you to Nestor?”

“Nestor owes him some money. He wants it back.”

“Is that what he told you?”

Eli nodded again.

“And you believe him?”

“Why shouldn't I?” Eli demanded. “Nestor owes everyone money. He's bad that way. He never pays unless you lean on him.”

“All right.” I folded my arms over my chest. My head was starting to ache again. I probably should have stayed in bed and rested. Unfortunately that wasn't an option at the moment. “Go on,” I ordered.

Eli pulled at a loose thread in his bathrobe. “There's nothing more to say. We kept on getting stuck. Finally Sulfin turned around and took me home.”

“How'd you get through?” I asked, thinking about how George and I had almost gotten stuck on Westcott last night.

“Broad was clear. We went up that way.”

“What time did you get in?”

“I don't know. Late,” he added. “I didn't look.”

“I called around five. You didn't pick up.”

“I must have been sleeping. When I'm sleeping I don't hear anything.”

“That's what Manuel said.” I wondered if that were true or if Manuel was just protecting his cousin's ass as I watched Eli rub his left eye with the knuckles of his left hand. The white looked pink when he stopped. It was too bad George and I couldn't have gotten through the street last night, I reflected. It would have cleared a lot of things up. I studied Eli before going on. He looked miserable slumped on the sofa, a quivering mass of flesh spilling out of his robe.

“Who are the Myers?”

“Myra's parents.”

“The skinny girl who works at Animals Galore?” I thought about what I'd seen in the third bedroom of her house. “She keep any reptiles?”

“A few.” And he asked if he could get his glasses.

“Why were Nestor and Adelina going up there?” I inquired when he came back in the room.

Eli shrugged. He was holding his glasses in his hand and was fiddling with the safety pin that held the earpiece onto the frame with the other. The little gold wire was almost lost in the white, fleshy mound of his fingertips. “Maybe they had to water the plants or something like that.”

“No doubt. It's something everyone does in the middle of a blizzard.”

Eli didn't reply. He kept working on his glasses. “You didn't happen to see the suitcase when you were up there, did you?” he asked, trying for casual, but Eli was casual the way an elephant was.

“No, but then I wasn't looking for it.”

“Why not?” Eli's voice quavered.

“Because I was looking for you.” I went into the kitchen to get a glass of water. As I reached for a glass, I brushed against the stove. It was warm. “Hey,” I said. “Did you know your oven is on?”

Eli came in and turned it off. “I was heating up some pizza last night. I must have forgotten to turn it off.”

“You'd better be careful. You don't want to start a fire.”

Eli rubbed his lips with the back of his hand. “Nothing is going right for me these days,” he grumbled.

I didn't say anything. Eli was back sitting on the sofa, trying to readjust his frames when I left. They were never going to fit together perfectly, but maybe Eli didn't care. I drove over to the store next. Zsa Zsa came running out to greet me, yipping in a delirium of joy. I crouched down to pet her. She put her paws on my knees and licked my face. Her breath was hot. Her tongue was warm and rough. She pressed her teeth lightly against my skin, raking it occasionally, which was her way of telling me she loved me, but not to leave her again or dire consequences might ensue.

Tim seemed amused by her display. “From the way she's carrying on, you'd think she'd spent the evening pining away for you. She slept on my bed and had steak for dinner.”

“You're saying she can be bought?”

He snorted and ran a hand over his bald scalp. It gleamed. He shaved it every four days, which seemed to me to be a lot more work than having hair. “Come on. Admit it. She's a biscuit slut.”

“I'm not admitting anything of the kind.” Loyalty wouldn't let me, even if it was true. I petted Zsa Zsa for another five minutes before getting up. Then I took off my coat and checked yesterday's receipts. I'd been right. They were abysmal. “Does the name Myra Myers mean anything to you?” I asked Tim when I was through.

“Aside from the fact that someone in her family had an obvious, unfortunate fondness of alliteration, no. Should it?”