Bird Brained Read online

  Feeling cocky and young, I headed for the Pepto-pink storefront of Max’s Place. Max’s is open twenty-four hours a day, with a take-out window offering the greasiest food south of New York City. The middle-aged woman behind the counter wore a midriff top the size of an Ace bandage which threatened to burst apart.

  “Buenos días,” I chirped. “I’ll take two hits.”

  She silently nodded, having given up hope I’d ever speak more than two words of Spanish. The espresso machine hummed, spitting out a double order of black liquid, into which nearly as much sugar was mixed. The woman handed me the concoction, and I headed off for my morning ritual.

  Sea grape trees lined the boardwalk, their rubbery leaves an explosion of miniature fans, their fallen grapes squishing beneath my feet, turning the pavement purple.

  “You haven’t seen anything yet, girl. Wait till the grapes are ripe,” Tommy had once told me over a cup of his homemade brew. “The crows love to eat them, but the grapes make ’em drunk. Pretty soon the birds are flying upside down.”

  A lazy strip of clouds hovered over the horizon, as if still trying to rouse themselves into action for the day, the lick of a red glow along their edge threatening to ignite at any moment. I walked through a hula-skirt patch of pampas grass to the beach, removing my sneakers to luxuriate in the feel of warm sand between my toes, inhaling the air drenched in the scent of salt water as I listened to the surf.

  Along with the first rays of the sun came a group of senior citizens decked out for their morning swim, the women wearing shower caps over their beauty-parlor curls. They slowly walked into the water in a tightly knit group. The waves lapped at their ankles, then nibbled on their varicose veins, and before long the waves were up past their waists, with the women bobbing like colorful corks in the surf.

  One older man faithfully did his morning exercises before taking a dip. Baggy trunks hung low on his hips, and a chartreuse elastic band held back his remaining hair. Raising his hands high above his head, he slowly bent his knees and touched his toes.

  Others took their daily exercise walking up and down the beach with metal detectors in hand, their excitement building with each swing of the needle, their pockets bulging with loose change.

  Eventually Bird Man approached, scattering bags of bread crumbs. He nodded as he passed, followed by a conga line of seagulls.

  I downed the last of my inky elixir, and made my way home. Walking into my kitchen, I heard the insistent ring of the telephone, accompanied by Bonkers shrieking at the top of his lungs, “To hell with the commander!”

  I raced into the bedroom wondering if it might be Santou calling to apologize; his excuse, a temporary bout of insanity. But the ringing stopped as I reached for the receiver.

  “Down with Castro!” The bird screeched in delight at my breakneck entrance. His crown of feathers stood up as he clambered onto my shoulder, and rubbed his head against my ear.

  I tried to bury all thoughts of Santou by heading back out to the kitchen, where I prepared a colorful mix of mango, grapes, strawberries, papaya, carrots, green pepper, zucchini, and sunflower seeds. Then, spooning some of the mixture into Bonkers’s bowl, I set it on the table and watched him go to work, picking out one piece of fruit at a time.

  “It’s nice to know one of us eats well,” I observed.

  Bonkers answered by giving a lunatic giggle and hurling a piece of papaya high in the air.

  After breakfast I put Bonkers on his jungle gym, where he broke into a wild chorus of wolf whistles while hanging upside down from his swing. Furiously beating his wings, he launched himself round and round, his body spinning like an orbiting rocket.

  I took a quick shower and then left a message on Carlos’s voice mail that I wouldn’t be in the office until later that afternoon. Bonkers tried to tempt me to stay, breaking into a Spanish serenade as I headed for the door. But my dance card was filled for the morning: I planned to pay Willie Weed another visit. If he really was making weekly trips out of town, I was going to find out exactly where he was going.

  The heat had climbed to the temperature of a rotisserie grill, with my body subbing as the chicken on a skewer, by the time I turned into the dirt road that doubled as Weed’s driveway. Fallen pine needles crackled like tiny bones under my tires as I drove around the bend and entered Willy’s “Scamalot.”

  Weed’s hulking Dodge pickup sat in its accustomed place like a foreboding gatekeeper. I stood and listened for a moment, but there was no pounding of heavy metal music.

  I kicked a rusty motor-oil can out of the way, the echo shattering the sinister silence. The sudden noise awakened a few gaunt vultures that were stiffly standing on the ground; their scrawny, bald heads turned and glared menacingly at me.

  I pushed Weed’s door open and the stench raced out, sending me backward. Taking a few deep breaths, I steeled myself and stuck my head inside, where I was prepared to find Willy lying dead on the floor, his body an Everglades version of Limburger cheese.

  The beer bottles and cardboard boxes had multiplied. The once-fossilized remains of pizza were now alive with transparent squiggles of maggots, squirming like animated shredded cheese. There was nothing resembling a mutation of Willy. Only Big Mama lay curled in the corner, kept company by a growing swarm of giant black bugs.

  I stepped outside and shut the door, not in the mood to battle the army of Florida roaches. Instead I stopped in front of a cage, where a cougar pulled back its lips and hissed, causing shivers to Rollerblade down my spine. I studied the cat’s fangs, which were ready and waiting to tear me apart, and decided that Hal Cooper had been right. Upper and lower canines like these would have ripped Alberto’s throat clear out of his body.

  The rest of Weed’s menagerie stared idly off into space, all with the same glazed look in their eyes. Even the vultures had begun to succumb, their heads drooping like wilted flowers onto their feathered chests. I glanced around at the broken-down trailers, knowing Weed would never invite me to inspect what they held inside—which meant this was the perfect time for me to explore.

  I marched over to the closest door, found it was locked, and shoved my shoulder against it, but the damn thing wouldn’t budge. Having little choice, I moved on to the next four-wheeled treasure chest down the line.

  This trailer stood out because of the layers of plywood piled precariously on its roof. I grabbed on to a sticky handle, which turned under my touch. The interior was bathed in darkness. I felt along the wall until I found the toggle switch and flicked it up, flooding the trailer with light.

  A scream lodged tight as a fist in my throat. Wall-to-wall aquariums came alive with hundreds of pissed-off snakes, hissing and spitting, tails rattling and tongues flicking, all determined to get out and nail me. I’d heard of “hot rooms” filled with venomous snakes, but I’d never seen one before now. I waited until my pulse stopped ricocheting before I examined Weed’s deadly collection.

  Gaboon vipers with two-inch fangs lay camouflaged, their patterned bodies of buff, russet, and black perfectly blending in with their bed of leaves. Eyelash vipers stood out like splashy harlequins, brazenly flaunting brilliant hues of bright green, terra-cotta, and gold. A five-foot puff adder huffed and puffed, inflating its body in warning. The turquoise skins of a pair of African boomslangs barely masked the fangs which lay slyly situated below their eyes.

  I passed by rattlesnakes, Australian taipans, and South American bushmasters, then sixteen-foot king cobras that slammed against their glass walls in repeated attempts at a jail break.

  But the black mamba made my blood run cold. The snake stared out at me, its fourteen feet of pure muscle solid as a piece of coiled steel, with a mouth curved up in a humorless grin on a head appropriately shaped like a coffin. Legend had it that mambas were fast enough to tag a bird in flight or overtake a man on horseback, while slim enough to slither under doors, and agile enough to glide up trees. The mamba has even been said to drop down chimneys and wipe out entire families.

 
What I knew for a fact was that mambas were extremely aggressive, biting their prey not once, but over and over again. The snake was cold-blooded death incarnate. It continued to stare at me, knowing there was no hurry.

  I was unaware of how much time had passed, when something began to slither up my leg. I didn’t dare move. All I could hope was that whatever it was, would go away. My pounding heart told me to run as fast as I could, but my attacker gathered speed, zooming up my thigh and onto my back, my shoulder, and then my neck, quickly nicking me on the ear. I screamed in terror, whipped around, and slugged Willy Weed smack in the kisser.

  “Goddammit, bitch! What the hell are you tryin’ to do? Send me back to the friggin’ hospital?” Willy squealed, his hand held tightly over his nose.

  “Don’t ever sneak up on me like that again!” I snarled. I was tempted to toss him to the mamba, saving myself and the reptile world any number of headaches.

  “Sneak up on you? Sheeet, Porter; you’re the one that just broke into my goddamn trailer!” Willy shot back. “Your problem is that you got no sense of humor, you know that? Hell, you don’t find me whalin’ on you just cause I got a bum foot which is partly your fault.”

  The lower portion of Willy’s right leg was encased in a dingy white cast, covered with pen-and-ink drawings that a horny high school boy might have made. Disembodied women’s breasts, topped with perky nipples, floated like airborne Dixie cups, intermingling with a crude assortment of flying penises. The theme tied in nicely with the grimy yellow T-shirt that begged, JUST DO ME. No one could ever accuse Weed of being subtle.

  “I didn’t think a fed like you’d get all riled up and scared over some lil ol’ snake. Why, a bite from a mamba like that one won’t kill ya; it’ll just make you feel warm and tingly all over.”

  “Is that before or after they nail you inside the coffin?” I wasn’t in the mood for jokes.

  “You don’t trust what I’m telling you, Porter? Or don’t you think I’ve ever been bit?” Willy snorted, his manhood on the line. “How else would I have gotten into the Cobra Club? Huh? You tell me that, why doncha?”

  The Cobra Club had been formed by a group of local yokels whose members had mucho machismo and the combined IQ of a road-killed squirrel. In order to become a member, you first had to endure the bite of a cobra. Next, you had to survive.

  “Hell! I seen a guy didn’t even go to a doctor afterwards. His buddies fixed him up just fine. They dragged him over to a pickup, hooked up some battery cables, and gave him a coupla electroshock jolts,” Willy bragged.

  “Uh, that didn’t exactly work too well, Willy. Timmy Tom’s arm blew up so bad, it looked like it was inflated by an air pump,” said a voice from behind Weed. “I thought it would explode for sure before we got him to the hospital.” Weed’s compatriot was grinning like a hyena. I estimated him to be about five feet two, until I glanced down and saw that he wore a pair of elevated boots. His hair was shorn into a buzz cut, and he wore a white T-shirt stating, JESUS LOVES ME. I wondered what a born-again was doing hanging around with Weed, until I caught sight of his tattooed bicep. Porky the Pig was a hellacious red, carried a pitchfork, and had sprouted a pair of pointy horns. The logo beneath it declared, I’M A LITTLE DEVIL!

  Willy’s diminutive friend punched Weed hard in the arm. “Hey! Aren’t you gonna introduce me to this bodacious-looking woman here?” He flashed a smile, boasting a set of canines that Dracula would have loved.

  “Yeah, yeah. This crazy redheaded mama is Rachel Porter, one of those nasty Fish and Wildlife employees.” Willy threw an arm around his friend’s shoulders. “And this here is Buzz Tregler, a real good bud of mine.”

  Buzz reached up and tousled Willy’s greasy mop of hair. Weed reciprocated by knuckle balling the top of Tregler’s head.

  “Hey, Porter! You’re here just in time to witness one of those real, live nature phenomenas I bet you’re so fond of,” Weed said with a leer.

  “Don’t tell me. You’re going to shed your cocoon and transform into a human being?” Buzz and Willy made the extras from Deliverance look like MIT graduates.

  Buzz doubled over in laughter, and slapped a thigh. “That’s a good one, mama. Hey, she got you there, Willy!”

  Weed flashed his friend an unamused glare and then reached into a sack, producing a small gray mouse that he held upside down by the tail. The rodent clawed the air in a vain attempt to break loose as Willy brought it toward my face and swung the critter from side to side like a hypnotist’s watch.

  “Keep your eye on the mousie!” he said in a singsong voice.

  The mouse’s whiskers twitched nervously, trying to figure out what I already knew was coming next.

  Willy half-limped, half-clunked over to a glass terrarium housing a juvenile diamondback rattler, and held the mouse so that it could view its fate.

  “See that big old snake in there? That’s gonna be your new roommate!” Weed removed the lid and dropped the small rodent inside.

  The mouse hit the ground running. It frantically darted back and forth, searching for any means of escape as it stood on its short hind legs and desperately tried to scale the glass walls. I could all but smell the rodent’s fear, its tiny heart beating almost straight through its chest, the pounding of its panic loud in my ears.

  Eventually the mouse rolled itself up into a tight ball and cowered in a corner, too exhausted to do anything but emit small squeals of fear. But the snake barely paid the tiny creature any mind.

  Willy snickered and directed my attention to a different aquarium, where I spotted a mouse that dozed snuggled up against a pygmy rattler’s side.

  “This is my own form of psychological warfare, Porter. The trick is to put a mouse in with a snake that’s already been fed. That’s how the fun begins.”

  One of Willy’s hands edged toward my thigh, and I gave the offending paw a hard smack.

  “Ouch!” he yelped.

  “You were saying?” I asked with an icy stare.

  He broke into a shit-eating grin. “Well, the kicker is that after a few days, that rodent will start feeling all safe and cozy. Then, just when mousie’s pretty damn sure nothing bad is ever going to happen, WHAP! The snake gets hungry and moves in for the kill.”

  Willy jiggled in place as if his bladder were about to burst. “It’s great, I’m telling ya! The snake is slowly swallowing the little bastard, while the sucker’s itsy-bitsy brain is working overtime, trying to figure out just what in the hell went wrong.

  “But that’s the way life is, Porter. You let your guard down for just one little ol’ minute, and KERPOWEE! The next thing you know, you’re nothing but a hunk of dead, smelly, old meat.”

  I looked at him in disgust. “Thanks for the lesson on what makes scum like you tick, Willy.”

  “Hey, Porter—you’re the one snooping in here. What am I supposed to think, except maybe you’ve got yourself an itch for one of my great big ol’ snakes.” Willy swiveled his hips and giggled.

  “The only thing I’ve got an itch for, Willy, is to take a look at your passport,” I informed him coldly, hoping he wouldn’t question my authority.

  “What the hell you wanna go and do that for?” Weed bristled, suspicion edging into his voice.

  “I hear you’re out of town at least once a week. I’m curious to see if you’re going to Club Med.”

  “Goddamn! It was that bitch Bambi told you that, wasn’t it? What the hell else does that woman want from me? She’s taken almost every lousy thing I own!”

  Oh, I don’t know. “Lousy” seemed to describe his entire estate. “Listen, Willy. If you’ve got nothing to hide, you shouldn’t have any problem showing me where you’ve been going. Or would you prefer I place a call to a friend of mine with the IRS, and fill him in on the true nature of your nonprofit foundation?”

  Willy stood defiantly in front of me, his hands opening and closing in tight fists. Taking a deep breath, he shook his head, the shiver traveling down his body as he flicked out his wrists
. If I hadn’t known better, I would have sworn I was viewing an exorcism.

  “Getting rid of all the evil spirits, Willy?” I inquired.

  “Yeah. I’m studying with Swami Gottagetmesomebootie,” Weed smartly replied. “You wait here and I’ll go get my passport.” He turned to Tregler. “You watch her for me, Buzz. Make sure she don’t do nothing funny.”

  After Willy left the trailer, I asked Tregler, “Do you mind if I step outside and join you?”

  Buzz looked pleased at the suggestion. “Heck, I think that’d be just fine,” he said, giving his shirt an extra tuck inside his jeans. “Don’t get put off by old Willy. He’s really not such a bad guy.”

  “I guess that all depends on your definition of ‘bad,’” I replied.

  Buzz leaned in toward me, his chin only the height of my chest. “Truth be told, the problem is he’s got little-pee-pee syndrome,” Tregler confided.

  “Little-pee-pee syndrome?” I repeated.

  “Yeah, you know—he’s got some kinda complex cause his weenie is so small.” Buzz hitched his thumbs in his pants. “Hey! I bet you didn’t know that I work for the government, just like you,” he divulged with a wink.

  I doubted that, unless there was a branch for the seriously demented.

  “That means we got a lot in common. Maybe you and me ought to plan on getting together.”

  Only if I was looking to do some serious research on sex deviation. “I’m all booked up for the next couple of months,” I informed him.

  Tregler wasn’t about to be put off that easily. He sidled up to me and grinned. “You don’t have to be afraid of my stinger, mama. Cause this Buzz is for you.”

  I was considering squashing him then and there, when Weed limped back into view. I knew it was a bad day if I looked upon Willy as my salvation.

  “Here you go, Porter.” Willy threw me his passport. “Have yourself a blast.”

  I thumbed through the document. Except for an excursion to Puerto Rico, it appeared to have been barely used at all. I tossed the passport back to Willy, disappointed. Still, having the inside track on Weed’s little-pee-pee syndrome made me feel ever so much better.