Bird Brained Read online

  I waited for the Brazil flight to disembark, and soon saw my quarry, Willy Weed, limping toward me up the hall. A small-time breeder of cougars, Willy sold them to those longing to own a pet that could rip you in two. But Willy’s love for wildlife didn’t stop there. He was an equal-opportunity exploiter, selling whatever form of wildlife he could get his grimy hands on.

  I routinely caught him smuggling in one or two reptiles at a time. Willy would simply pay his pittance of a fine, promise never to do it again, then go right back to business as usual. Our most recent encounter had taken place just a month ago, when Willy had gotten off a plane only to fall to the floor of the terminal screaming in pain. It seemed that the one-and-a-half-foot boa constrictor he’d hidden inside his boxer shorts hadn’t been fed in a while. Not surprisingly, it proceeded to wrap itself tightly around the closest thing it could find.

  Willy’s ex-wife had passed on today’s tip. He had foolishly let his alimony payments slide. In return, Bambi had decided to dish out some payback—and true to her word, here he was. Willy made a unique fashion statement, wearing a long winter coat that looked like something out of a bad spaghetti western, complete with a cowboy hat slapped on top of his head. Not exactly seasonal wear for your typical flesh-melting Miami summer.

  Just then Willy caught my eye and took off, hobbling like an out-of-control Chester from an ancient episode of Gunsmoke. For a man with a limp, Willy slipped in and out of the crowd with remarkable ease. Every time I thought I had him cornered, he disappeared, until I again caught sight of his long greasy hair flying in a different direction. The crowd seemed to work like a wave, breaking apart to let Willy through and then closing ranks as soon as I came near. I called upon my old New York habit of jabbing to the left and pushing hard to the right. While it wasn’t making me any new friends, it worked.

  The cowboy hat was a recent affectation for Weed, in deference to a local sport. Willy was infamous for running down deer in the Everglades with his airboat. After that, he’d jump onto the frantic animal’s back, grab its head, and slit its throat. The event had been dubbed the Homestead Rodeo, in homage to his hometown. Weed had proudly taken to calling himself “The Swamp Cowboy.”

  I preferred to refer to him as “Swamp Thing.” If there was ever a walking, talking definition for the term “cracker,” Willy had to be it.

  It was due to such high-flying antics that Willy was saddled with a limp. He’d recently been balanced on the front of his airboat, preparing to leap for the kill, when his craft hit a rock. Weed was thrown head over heels and landed straight in the mud along with his rifle, which went off, shooting him clear through the knee.

  I caught a whiff of Willy now—the smell half wet dog, half dead snake—and turned to see him entangled within a group of tourists. He bumped up against a hefty blonde sporting a head full of Bo Derek cornrows, who turned on Willy with a snarl and pummeled him to the ground. I seized the moment, but the airport gods weren’t flying with me. As I sprinted forward, I knocked over a suitcase as I tripped on someone’s foot, and came perilously close to being run down by a luggage cart, only to lose sight of Weed. I finally caught a glimpse of his cowboy hat and made a beeline for it, but the body beneath the hat no longer belonged to Weed. In its place was a geezer who gleefully cackled, pleased with the trick. He flashed me a rack of empty gums where his teeth should have been.

  “Dat boy ain’t here,” he giggled. “He done disappeared.”

  Damn! Then I saw the sign for the men’s room. I shoved my way inside, where I was confronted by a guy making good use of the urinal.

  “Hey, babe. Something I can help you with?” he asked, turning slightly to show off his wares.

  “Police business,” I growled, keeping my eyes straight ahead. Somehow, I didn’t think that “Fish and Wildlife” would have had the desired effect.

  Presto! My bathroom Lothario quickly tucked himself in, zipped up his fly and fled.

  Whoosh! A toilet roared as it flushed. I quickly checked under the row of stalls, pounding on each one that sported a pair of feet.

  “Willy?” I called, knocking on one of the doors. “Let me in!”

  “Get away from here, you crazy bitch,” came the reply. Unfortunately, it wasn’t Weed’s voice.

  The flush of another toilet brought my attention to the stall at the end of the row. A pair of snakeskin boots clearly screamed, “Willy.”

  “I know you’re in there, Weed. Come out now!” I ordered, ramming my shoulder hard against the metal barrier. I shoved once more against the door, then dropped to all fours. Sure enough, there was Willy, intent as a bombardier on a mission, poised to drop five eggs into the toilet. Any eggs coming out of Brazil were most likely those of parrots, which were as illegal as a smuggler could get.

  Plonk! The eggs plopped one by one into the water as I squirmed under the stall door, cursing the hired help for not cleaning more often. I reached the toilet just as it gulped all five eggs in a victorious flush.

  Willy stood smirking like a half-witted hyena. “Hey there, Porter. What’s the matter? Don’t they allow you in the ladies’ room no more?”

  His coat was lying next to the toilet, along with his T-shirt and a vest. As if the bathroom floor hadn’t been disgusting enough, I was now confronted with the sight of Willy’s naked flesh at very close quarters. A chest tattoo proudly proclaimed, 100% REDNECK. His rack of ribs gave him the appearance of a skeleton, and every inch of his skin was coated in sweat.

  Willy dunked his hands into the toilet and slapped the bona fide eau de toilet under his arms and over his chest. Then, holding his breath, he immersed his entire head in the bowl. He came up for air shaking his wet hair like a coon dog after a hard chase, and droplets of liquid grease splattered against the tile wall. Weed was the living, breathing poster boy of what not to bring home to mother.

  “Done freshening up?” I asked.

  Willy grabbed his T-shirt off the floor and rammed it over his head, where its neck caught on the cougar’s-tooth earring that dangled from his lobe. The black T-shirt was unfurled to reveal a white skull along with the motto, BAD TO THE BONE.

  I gingerly picked his wet vest up off the floor, and held it at arm’s length as I examined it. Made of spandex, it resembled a large Ace bandage except that rows of pockets had been sewn into its interior. They were just the right size for carrying eggs. Worn close to his body, the vest had functioned as a portable incubator.

  “How long have you been dealing in birds, Willy?” I wondered which endangered species had just been flushed down the toilet.

  “What you talking about, Porter?” he sneered. “I don’t see no birds in here. You see birds in here? Course, if you like, I’ll be glad to show you my cockatoo.”

  Willy flashed me a grin, exposing a gold tooth with a ruby lodged in its center. I wondered if he’d sprung for the bucks to have it implanted, or if he’d just superglued it himself. His fingers tickled the metal teeth of his fly. I’d already seen more of Weed than I ever wanted; one more inch of exposed flesh and I’d scream.

  “Save it, Willy, or you’ll spend the night in jail,” I warned.

  Weed didn’t have the funds for a trip to Brazil, which meant that he was working as a mule for someone else—someone with enough money and smarts not to get caught smuggling parrot eggs himself. Pinpricks of anticipation raced through my veins. So far, my time in Miami had been filled with too many Willy Weeds and Tony Carreras. I was itching to hit something big.

  I carefully probed each pocket of the vest, searching for a piece of eggshell. What I came up with was a minuscule dab of yolk. While it wasn’t much, I played the speck for all it was worth.

  “I don’t need the eggs, Willy. I’ve got all the necessary proof right here.” I pointed to the yolk, giving him a “gotcha” look, hoping to con him through the sheer force of my will. “You know what DNA is, Willy?”

  Weed caressed the stubble that covered his chin and washed down his throat. “Hmm. Let’s see. That mus
t stand for Dumb New York Asshole.” Willy cupped his hand to his ear. “What? No winning bell? So, where’s my Jeopardy prize?”

  “Very cute, Willy. But if it turns out that you were carrying endangered parrot eggs, you’ll be watching Jeopardy from behind bars for a long time to come.”

  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.

  Two

  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.