Parrot Blues (14 page)

“
Deborah came on to
you
?” I asked.

“Yeah,” he shrugged. “I told her I wasn't interested.” The message his eyes were sending was “But I could be interested in you.” It's a sleazy guy who'll send that message five minutes after he threatens to kill your lover, although he didn't know the Kid was my lover. He did know he and I were Anglo and the Kid was not. I've gotten this look before from pale-eyes—you have more in common with me than him. I looked away, hoping my eyes remained noncommittal, because the message I was thinking was, Buzz off, parrot killer.

“How much time did Deborah spend here?” I asked, trying to keep my voice noncommittal.

“Couple of hours, I guess.”

Long enough for … what? I wondered.

“Who are you people anyway? What's your game?” He looked from me to the Kid.

“I'm Terrance Lewellen's lawyer.”

“That asshole's trying to blame his problems with Deborah on me?”

“Not exactly.”

“And you, bird boy?” he said to the Kid. “Who are you?”

“
Cállate,
” said the Kid. Shut up. His head was cocked; he'd been ignoring us and listening intently to something else. He could be as still as a predator when he wanted to.

“What?” asked Wes Brown.

“
Oye.
Listen.”

There was a sound coming from above us on the deck, a low, ferocious growl, the universal back-off threat. It could have been the sound of a mountain lion, a dog, a coyote. It might even have been, by the remotest of possibilities, a wolf.

“What the…” Wes Brown said.

The Kid was itching to get up on the deck, but he aimed the .45 at Brown and made him go first. I followed. The moon had risen a little higher while we'd been below. The deck had gotten a little brighter. The gusty wind had died down, and the shirt was resting after its ecstatic dance. There was no sign of a cat or a dog, but a big blue macaw was hanging upside down by its beak and swinging from the boom.

“Perigee!” I said.

“What the hell is going on here?” asked Wes Brown.

“Arwk,” said the macaw, who appeared to be in magnificent condition and have every feather in place. The tail feathers were long and silky. The plumage on his breast and neck was a smooth, deep blue, becoming lighter and greener around the head. The Kid had a few nuts in his pocket and he offered them to the macaw, who climbed off the boom onto his shoulder and gobbled them up.

With the bandanna tied around his forehead, the parrot on his shoulder, the gun in his hand and
the
mast behind him, the Kid could have been a pirate. Too bad we didn't have a gangplank to walk Wes Brown on. The prospect of deep water might have convinced him to fess up.

“
Que guapo,
” the Kid clucked to the bird.

“Pretty boy,” Perigee cackled. “Pretty boy, pretty boy, pretty boy.” The rigging groaned as it rubbed against the mast.

“He couldn't have flown here, could he?” I asked the Kid.

“No.
Mira.
His wings are cut.”

Perigee might well have been dangling up here the entire time we were talking to Brown. He cocked his head and looked at me as if he were trying to understand. The yellow circles around his bright eyes accented their intelligence and curiosity. “Pretty boy,” he croaked, then, “Arwk.”

“Did you bring him here with you?” I asked Brown.

“Me? You gotta be kidding. That's Lewellen's bird. I haven't a clue what it's doing here.”

I looked over the deck and saw the faint prints of my running shoes and the Kid's leading from the butte. The only other footprints were the half-moon-shaped heels of a cowboy boot, put there by someone who came down hard on the heel. They were all exactly the same size, they all led to and from Wes Brown's truck to the cage or the path through the brush to Cottora Canyon. Perigee might have gotten here by magic if not on Wes Brown's shoulder.

The Kid was looking at the box of parrots Brown had put on the ground next to the cage. “I want to see something,” he said. “Watch him.” He nodded toward Brown and carried the macaw back to the boom.

Perigee gripped the boom with his beak and did a somersault, watching us with his bright eyes and flapping his large blue wings. He was a high-wire act, as playful and irresistible as a child, but I couldn't let myself get charmed; I had the devious and uncharming Wes Brown to think about. I wondered if he'd be any more forthcoming now that the Kid was on the ground and he was alone with me, an Anglo and a woman. Maybe if I played the eye game I'd get some answers. It had been a long time since I'd flirted to get what I wanted. I didn't know if I was still capable of it—if I'd ever been capable of it.

“The feds are hiring wets now?” Brown asked, looking at the Kid. A smuggler would suspect everyone of being a fed, but so would a kidnapper.

“He's not a wetback,” I said.

“Is he a fed?”

“No.”

“Then what are you two doing here?”

Meeting his eyes by moonlight was comparable to meeting them underwater; they lacked clarity.
Still,
I had to do it now if I was ever going to. The minicam couldn't do that for me. I swam into the fathoms, and I saw that Wes Brown was drowning. Water is a conductor, and the message it sent was that this man was full of confusion and pain. Misery leads to criminal activity, but was he miserable enough to commit a kidnapping? Smuggling is common, and bird smugglers are more likely to get a fine than a sentence. But kidnapping is the deep water of crime and it was possible that he'd gotten in over his head. It could be that something had gone way wrong, that Deborah Dumaine was dead and he couldn't see the way out. If Deborah was dead, there wasn't any way out, but the truth would cut him a better deal.

“You catch the rabbit?” I asked, trying to develop a rapport.

“I thought I had.” He shrugged.

“What happened? You get caught?”

“Yeah.”

“For drugs?”

“Right.”

“Did you do time?”

“No. I plea-bargained and got a suspended sentence and a fine. They took everything I had but this.” He kicked the cabin of the boat.

He'd been willing enough to tell me about the drug smuggling. Maybe because I was a woman and women existed only as insubstantial shadows to him. I attempted to move on to the next crime. “Tell me the truth about Deborah,” I said, “it'll be a lot easier on you.”

“Huh?” he said, branding himself indelibly as a So-Cal cowboy. A real cowboy would say ma'am.

“It could keep a bad situation from getting a whole lot worse.”

“Right,” he said with a short and bitter laugh.

“Tell me where she is.”

“I told you I haven't a clue.”

“Where's your partner?”

“What partner?”

“You'll be in big trouble if anything happens to Deborah.”

“You got the wrong guy. I'm not responsible for Deborah Dumaine.” He blinked his eyes and shifted his weight.

There were a number of options. The Kid and I could have beaten the truth out of him, but that was a felony. I could have bribed him, but the money belonged to Terrance Lewellen. I could have made a citizen's arrest, but that would conflict with my responsibilities to my client and there was no guarantee that Deborah would be better off if Wes Brown was removed from Door—if she was in Door. He could
be
her only source of food and water. It was a quagmire. I was ready to turn it over to the feds, but I couldn't do that either without consulting my client.

“Chiquita,” the Kid called from the ground. “Come here. I want to show you something.
Watchate,
” he pointed the .45 at Brown, “stay where you are. Put your hands on the
mastil.
” Brown swore out loud. Under his breath he called the Kid a fucking wet, but he followed orders.

I climbed down the ladder and circled the pickup, recording Brown's license plate number with the minicam. I looked into the cab of the truck, checked the glove compartment and under the seat and found no weapons hidden there. I walked over to the Kid and the cage. He showed me the parrots in the wooden box and I taped them too, making the feds' case for them. The parrots were a sad and sorry lot; they'd had a long, cruel journey.

“Those are yellow-headed
Amazonas
from Mexico,” the Kid said. “But this one is a blue-fronted
Amazona
from Argentina. Beautiful, no?”

“Yes,” I said.

“What do you want to do with him and the birds? You want to take them to Albuquerque?”

“No,” I said. “That would be tampering with evidence. I want to call in the feds and let them do it, but I have to talk to my client first.”

“Something could happen to these birds if we leave them here. That guy could hurt or kill them.” He nodded toward Brown, who glared at us from the mast.

“He's more likely to sell them,” I said. “I've got the name of his contact in Albuquerque. I'll call Terrance as soon as we get back to the pickup. Why don't we tie Brown up for a few hours anyway? If I can convince Terrance, we can call the feds and get them in here.”

“Okay. Let's go. You want to take
Perigeo.
Right?”

“Right,” I said.

“I want to take the thick-billed.”

“Brown won't like it.”

The Kid shrugged. There were times when a weapon was more effective than a watch. We tied Brown to the mast with some knots the Kid had learned in his travels. A partner might well show up and untie him. Brown was a sailor; he'd know something about knots and might untie himself eventually. The rope was at best a temporary measure to get us over the butte and to the phone without Brown's interference. One of us might have stayed here and guarded him, but neither of us wanted to do it. There were too many unknowns out there in the desert, and no telling when and if help would come. No telling what my client's next direction would be, and I was obligated to follow my client's directions.

“Tell us where Deborah is and we might let you go,” was my parting shot to Brown.

“I haven't a clue,” was his parting answer.

The
Kid put the parrots in the cage, took the tape off their beaks and gave them some food and water before we left. We began a tedious sideways trudge up the butte, slipping and sliding. Brown started yelling and swearing when we were about halfway up after it was too much trouble to go back down and beat the crap out of him.

“You wet bastard,” he yelled at the Kid, followed by “cunt” for me.

“
A la verga,
” said the Kid.

“Prick,” said I.

That's the kind of guy Brown was, a smuggler who'd turn on you whether you crossed him or whether you didn't.

9

O
UR SHADOWS STRETCHED
west as we crossed the butte. My thoughts were on the treachery of some men and what I would say to my client when I reached him on his C phone. When the Apaches wanted to communicate, they lit a fire and fanned the flame. A warrior on another butte would see the puffs of smoke and pass the message on. The whole vast Apache territory could be alerted in a matter of minutes. It was almost as fast and a lot more interesting than a fax machine. Through their system of smoke signals, the Apaches were able to keep tabs on where the cavalry had been, how many there were and where they were going. For hundreds of years they stayed one step ahead. We're the air people, our thoughts ride the airwaves; the Apaches were people of earth and fire.

When we reached the north side of the butte, we climbed down the rock stairs very carefully and walked through the sandy white arroyo. Maybe we were a step ahead, maybe not. The C phone waited in the pickup for me to call my client.

While I did, the Kid attended to the parrots. Perigee squawked happily when he saw his toys. If he was having any return-to-the-cage anxieties, he didn't reveal them. He was not an anxious bird. The contrast between him and the thick-billed was pronounced. The thick-billed seemed scarred by something, the memory of the border crossing, maybe, or life with Wes Brown.

I called my client and listened to his phone go through the answering machine dance, ringing two, three, four, five times. Come on, Terrance, I thought. Answer the goddamn phone. It was hard to believe he could be sleeping in Albuquerque while I was in the desert negotiating the release of his wife and his bird with his two hundred thousand dollars. “Lewellen here,” the machine came on. “You know what to do.”

“Pick up the phone, Terrance,” I said when the machine beeped. “It's Neil.”

As I suspected, he was screening his calls, but who else was he expecting in the middle of the night? “You get the bird?” he asked me.

“Yeah. We found him on the deck of Wes Brown's boat.”

“Yahoo. How's he look?”

“Wonderful. He's happy and healthy. He's in his cage now, playing with his toys. There's no sign of Deborah.”

“Did you give Brown the money?”

“He didn't ask. He says he knows nothing about Deborah and he doesn't know how Perigee
ended
up on his deck.”

“He's a liar. He won't take the money from you because you can identify him.”

“We're not far from the border. Two hundred thousand dollars could take him somewhere and he'd never have to come back. It won't make any difference whether I can identify him or not once he gets to Mexico.” Would the feds care enough to go looking for him? That could depend on how much he owed them.

“He'll want to come back. He likes it in Door; he's too screwed up to live anyplace else. His partner will show up with Deborah and take the money. Brown'll think there's no way of proving he was involved.”