Endangered Species Read online

  I was struck once again by what a nice guy he was and how scary he looked. The scowl he habitually plastered across his face would have made someone who didn’t know him move to another part of the known universe. Maybe it was like the big dogs. Most of the really big breeds are sweethearts, because they don’t have to be mean. Everyone defers to them automatically.

  “It’s not my fault if I’m big and I’m black and I scare the shit out of everyone,” George had once bragged to me five beers into the evening. He’d been grinning at the time he said it.

  But that had been when he’d been on the police force. I wonder if he felt the same way now that he was in grad school. History grad students don’t look like he did. Maybe that’s why he was trying to lose weight and had taken to wearing blue denim work shirts and corduroy pants. Which made me think about the paper he was working on. He’d given it to me to read a couple of days ago. I’d been putting it off, “The function of popular political songs in France in the 1800s” not being what I considered an easy read, but now seemed as good a time as ever.

  “I call these songs eighteenth-century rap,” he’d said, tapping a page with his finger. “These were songs made up by the common man to protest social conditions, in the same way that rap protests today’s social ills, by today’s disenfranchised.”

  I took my coffee into the living room, along with the paper, and settled down to read it. Actually, it turned out to be more interesting than I thought. I was on the second page when Tim called to tell me that one of our suppliers had just called to say that our shipment of crickets and mealworms would be delayed by a couple of days. Which wasn’t good because we were short as it was.

  “Who do you want me to call?” he asked.

  “Call Mike,” I suggested. “See if he’ll sell us some to tide us over.”

  “Are you coming in?” Tim asked.

  “Do you need me?”

  “Nah. It looks like it’s going to be a slow day.” And he hung up.

  He was right. It did. Around twelve o’clock the weather had turned bad. The sky had gone from gray to black. The streedights had come on. It started sleeting. Last night the weather announcer had predicted we’d get a mix of sleet, freezing rain, and snow today, which would continue into the evening. Unfortunately, it looked as if he’d been right. Weather like this was not good for business. If we took in twenty dollars today we’d be lucky. People don’t come out when it gets like this, which made it a good day to see what I could do about finding Eli’s lost property.

  I finished off George’s article, penciled some questions in the margin, corrected a few typos, then went to get the envelope I’d found in Nestor’s room. The numbers turned out to be the phone numbers of a flower shop, a Kinko’s, a dry-cleaning store, two no-longer-in-services, and a Chinese restaurant down in New York City. Nobody there, naturally, had heard of a Nestor Chang or a Robert Chapman. I tried the travel agency next and got a recording telling me to leave a message and they’d get back to me as soon as possible. I looked at my watch. Two-thirty. I called the number Chapman had given me and left a message for him, after which I decided to take a ride over to Adelina’s house and see if she had come back home yet.

  According to the address Eli had given me, Adelina lived over by Thorden Park. The area had once been middle class. Not anymore. The houses looked wearier than I remembered them being, as if they’d given up the fight against the elements. Driveways buckled. Cars were parked on front lawns. Tipped, empty trash cans lolled around on their sides in front of houses. Sodden newspapers and beer cans lay on the grassy divides.

  Adelina’s house, a two-family, blue Colonial, still had Christmas decorations in the windows. I parked across the street in front of two, large, dead pine trees, stubbed out my cigarette, put the collar of my jacket up and ran for the house. The wind had picked up since I’d left work. The sleet stung my cheeks and numbed my hands. I blew on them after I rang the bell. A moment later, a woman who I assumed was Adelina’s mother opened the front door halfway and peered out at me.

  “Yes?” she said. The woman was short and stocky. Her black hair was pulled back, but at some point in the day wisps had escaped and now floated across her lined forehead and her cheeks. Her dark-brown eyes were underscored by deep circles. Her skin was pale and blotchy. Large brown freckles were splattered over her chin and nose. She looked tired and harassed. One of her hands was clutching the collar of the old quilted coat she was wearing. Evidently I’d caught her on her way out, or she’d just come in.

  I introduced myself. “My name is Robin Light.” I had to raise my voice so I could be heard over the sounds of the TV and fighting children coming from inside the house. I handed her one of my pet store cards. “I run a pet store called Noah’s Ark and I’m talking to people in the neighborhood about my store. We have some specials this week you might be interested in.”

  She furrowed her brow as she read. Her mouth silently formed each word. When she was done, she handed my card back to me. “We don’t have any pets here.”

  “You have children, don’t you?”

  She crossed her arms over her chest and stood square in the doorway, a stone blocking my path. “Yes.”

  “Young ones?”

  She nodded again. The sleet was blowing across the porch, wetting and darkening the floorboards.

  “You should consider buying them something. Animals provide wonderful educational opportunities for children. Even something as inexpensive as a hermit crab or a hamster can give them a window into a new world.”

  Adelina’s mother stifled a cough. “This isn’t a good time. You wanna talk, come back later.” Her voice was flat and impatient. It held faint traces of a Spanish accent.

  “I understand your eldest daughter is an animal lover. Maybe you can put her in charge.”

  The woman’s breath caught in her throat. “How you know about my daughter?” she demanded.

  “Adelina came into my store,” I lied. “She told me you wanted to buy something for your children. You just didn’t know what.”

  Uncertainty danced in the woman’s eyes. “Well, she’s not here now.”

  “Really? Where’d she go? Is she off on a trip somewhere?”

  The woman brushed a tendril of hair away from her eyes and frowned. “Yes, She’s traveling.” She nodded toward the inside of her house. “I got her brothers and sisters to take care of.” She began to close the door.

  “Please.” I put my hand on the door and leaned against it to keep it open. “Five minutes. That’s all I’m asking. Just five minutes.”

  She kept pushing. “I got laundry to do. I got dinner to make.”

  “If you don’t let me in,” I blustered, “I’m going to be back here with the police.”

  The door stopped moving. “You ain’t got no right ...” she protested.

  “I got all the right in the world,” I informed her. “Your daughter is involved in the theft of a large amount of money.” Not that eight thousand dollars was a large amount these days, but it was still a felony. “Now,” I continued, “my client doesn’t want to involve the police.”

  “Elazaro.” The woman spat out Eli’s name. “You work for that hijo de puta. He should be ashamed.”

  “Of what?”

  “Of causing all this trouble.”

  “That’s an interesting point of view, blaming the victim for the crime.”

  Her eyes flashed. “He said bad things.”

  I didn’t ask what. “That’s why I’m here,” I lied again. “He sent me to apologize.”

  The woman opened her mouth and closed it again.

  “I didn’t tell you the truth at first because I didn’t think you’d listen to me.” I slid my foot in the doorway, hoping she wasn’t going to slam it shut. “All Eli wants is what’s rightfully his back. He doesn’t care about anything else.”

  The woman tucked a loose strand of hair behind her ear. “I got to unpack the groceries,” she said, and she flung the door open and be
ckoned for me to follow her.

  The heat embraced me as I walked inside the small entrance hall. I unbuttoned my jacket and stepped over and around the coats, boots, hats, gloves, scarves, and book bags strewn on the floor. The living room was on my right. I glanced in. The walls were painted a light green. White curtains hung from the windows. A sofa and a love seat, both in a matching checked print, were arranged around a large, square, wood coffee table that was covered with books, papers, crayons, and toys. Two end tables held lamps and a number of pictures. Three children, two boys and a girl, ranging in ages from four to twelve, were sitting cross-legged on the carpet in front of the television set squabbling with each other while they passed a big bag of tortilla chips back and forth between them.

  The woman paused by the doorway. “I don’t want no crumbs on the floor,” she said.

  The kids nodded. Their eyes never left the TV screen. They were watching the cartoon channel. A show I’d never seen was on.

  “I mean it.” The woman’s voice rose slightly, the way it always does when someone isn’t paying attention to you.

  The youngest child, a girl, replied, “We won’t, Mommy.”

  The woman snorted and continued on into the kitchen. It was a small, bright room. The plants spilling over the window ledges and the children’s drawings and paintings on the walls contributed to its cheerful appearance. A round table over in the corner was piled with brown paper bags full of groceries.

  The woman unbuttoned her coat and slung it over the back of one of the chairs. I wanted to do the same, but something told me I wasn’t going to be here that long. I read her name off the tag pinned on her uniform.

  “Where do you work, Donna?”

  She started putting groceries away. “At the Jewish old age home. I’m an orderly there. I got the early shift.” She whirled around as a thought occurred to her. “Why you wanna know? You gonna come out there and make trouble? Make me lose my job?”

  “No. Of course not.” Her reaction made me wonder if she had a green card. I reached into one of the bags and handed her ajar of peanut butter. She took it reluctantly, as if doing so would compromise her in some way. “I just want to know about your daughter.”

  Donna put the peanut butter away. Then she opened the refrigerator and carefully placed two gallons of milk and a half-gallon of orange juice on the top shelf. “I haven’t heard from my daughter since she walked out of this house.”

  “Aren’t you worried?”

  The woman shrugged. “It’s not the first time she’s left home like this.” She stowed three boxes of macaroni and cheese in the bottom shelf of the kitchen cabinet by the refrigerator.

  I leaned against the back of one of the chairs. “You don’t strike me as the kind of mother who loses contact with her daughter,” I observed.

  Donna took two rolls of paper towels out of the bag. “My daughter and I didn’t get along so good.” Her tone was unconvincing.

  “What are you afraid of?”

  She looked off to one side. “I’m not afraid.”

  “I don’t believe you. Your daughter could be in a great deal of trouble from a man called Chapman.”

  “Chapman?” The woman went over to the table and folded up one of the brown paper grocery bags. She ran her fingers over the creases, making sure that folds in the paper were sharp. Then she started on the second one. “Who is this man Chapman?” Her air of studied innocence was about as convincing as a hooker playing a schoolgirl.

  “The suitcase that your daughter’s boyfriend stole. It’s his property.”

  Donna straightened up and folded her hands across her chest. “She has nothing to do with any of this.”

  “Possibly.” I sighed. “But she has to do with Nestor, and Nestor is in big trouble.”

  Donna’s jaw muscles tightened at Nestor’s name. She didn’t like him much. I asked her why, hoping her answer might give me a way in.

  She turned and began stowing cans of tomatoes in one of the upper kitchen cabinets. “It’s not me. It’s my husband. He doesn’t like that he is Chinese.”

  Somehow I’d expected a different answer. “What’s wrong with the Chinese?”

  “My husband says they eat cats and rats. He says they are dirty.”

  “You believe that?” It amazes me how frequently I hear comments like that, often from people who should know better.

  She shrugged again.

  “What do you think of Nestor?”

  “I think he thinks he is smarter than anyone else.”

  “Did you tell your daughter that?”

  Donna slammed the cabinet door shut. “She won’t listen to anything I have to say about him.”

  My way in was turning into a dead end. I gave it one last shot. “You want your daughter to go to jail for him?” I asked, adding to the sum of lies already told.

  Donna favored me with an impassive look.

  I put one of my cards on the table next to the remaining bag of groceries. “Could you at least tell her to call me?”

  “How can I tell her, if I don’t know where she is?”

  I took Donna’s hand in mine. “Do her a favor and do what I ask.”

  “Favor?” Donna removed her hand. “That’s funny. Why should I? You get money for finding her, yes?”

  “Yes,” I agreed reluctantly.

  “So you are just like everyone else.”

  “No, I’m not. Believe me, Adelina will be a lot better off with me than with Chapman. Or the police.”

  Donna snorted derisively. “I have nothing more to say to you.”

  Strike three.

  The phone started ringing. She walked over and picked it up. I left while she was talking about what she should bring for Teacher’s Appreciation Day at one of her children’s schools. There didn’t seem to be much point in staying. On the way out, on impulse, I stopped in the living room. The kids were still watching TV. I stepped in front of it.

  “Hey,” the oldest one, a boy, yelped.

  “I’ll move in a second,” I assured him, taking care to speak in a low voice. Their mother would kill me if she knew I was talking to them. Of that, I had no doubt. “Any of you heard from your sister?” I asked.

  Okay. I knew it was a tacky thing to do. I’m in a tacky business.

  “My mommy said she went to visit someone,” the youngest of the three volunteered. She had chubby cheeks. Her long black hair was braided into two pigtails. Two large red bows covered the rubber bands. Like her sister and brother, she was wearing a parochial school uniform.

  I felt like a creep for using her. I knelt next to her anyway. I heard crackling. I looked down and saw I’d knelt on the tortilla chips. The little girl covered her mouth with her hand and giggled.

  “Did your mommy say who?” I asked as I moved the bag to one side.

  The little girl shook her head and popped one of her fingers in her mouth.

  “My mom didn’t tell us,” the oldest boy said. “We don’t know.”

  “That’s right,” the older girl agreed. She had her mother’s eyes, but they were still soft. She hadn’t inherited their suspicion yet.

  “Addie used to read me stories,” the little girl said wistfully. “All the time. Sometimes she even let me sleep in her bed with her.”

  “Is your father around?” I asked.

  The boy shook his head. “He’s back in DR. The Dominican Republic,” he added when he noticed the blank look on my face. “Visiting our abuelita. Now you going to let us see our show or what?”

  I got up. This wasn’t going to get me anyplace. It was time to go. The kids went back to watching TV. On the way out, a grouping of pictures on a table over by the far end of the sofa caught my eye. I walked over and studied them. They were family photos. Mother and father at the beach with baby. Mother and father in front of a palm tree with two babies. Mother and grandmother with three children. I picked up the most recent photograph.

  It showed the three youngest children, plus a girl that I took to be
Adelina, standing in front of the house I was now in. Adelina’s resemblance to her mother was unmistakable. She had the same long black hair, dark eyes, and perfectly oval-shaped face, but she looked confident, ready to take on whatever was going to come. She hadn’t been beaten down by life yet, a fact her clothes, a black leather jacket, a tight sweater, and jeans that she must have needed Vaseline to get into, proclaimed.

  I glanced at the children. For all the attention they were paying to me I could have been invisible. I slipped the photograph, frame and all, in my jacket pocket and turned to go.

  Donna was standing in the doorway, watching me.

  The bright red patches on her cheeks and the way her hands were balled up into fists told me she’d seen what I’d done.

  I tried to think of some way I could talk my way out of the mess I’d just made for myself.

  I couldn’t.

  There didn’t seem to be any way around it.

  “Here,” I said, holding the picture out.

  Chapter 6

  The kids took one look at their mother and scattered. Donna didn’t notice. All her attention was focused on me.

  “You ...” Donna spluttered. “You ...” Her English failed her and she lapsed into a string of Spanish curses as she barreled toward me.

  Half of what she was saying I understood and half I didn’t. Judging by the half I did understand, I didn’t want a translation of the rest.

  Before I had a chance to do or say anything, Donna ripped the picture of her daughter out of my hand and slapped me across the face. The blow stung. For a little lady she packed a lot of force.