Bird Brained (38 page)

A rush of excitement pulsed through my veins. I dashed to the back of the van and wrenched open its door, only to find the floor as spotless and clean as Langer’s kitchen. If arms had ever been stashed inside, their trail was long cold.

I returned to the hall and opened closed-door number two. My astonishment couldn’t have been greater if a tiger had leapt out and bitten me on the nose. Instead of the standard concrete-slab foundation, this house had been designed with a built-in basement, its stairs leading down into darkness before me.

I’ve never been partial to dark, dank places. Call it a fear of spiders, the whisper of ghosts, a lurking premonition of death. Perhaps I’d read too many fairy tales growing up as a child. But to me, things that are underground tend to be evil. I hesitated at the top of the steps as the pull string of a light fixture dangled in front of my eyes, as tempting as any snake in the Garden of Eden.

You’re going to have to search harder. Come down if you dare
.

I turned on the dim light, and slowly descended. The steps creaked an ominous warning as I was drawn deeper down into the cave. I’d finally found the one area that Langer didn’t keep spotless. Dust, bugs, and cobwebs reigned supreme in this subterranean den. Its concrete walls and floor hinted of an underground bunker. The odor screamed of rot and of hell. I held my pump tightly clutched in both hands and continued down to the bottom of the stairs.

There were no boxes, no covered piles, no secret hideaways in sight. Only a mop, a pail, and a fire extinguisher sat in one corner. Then my eyes fell on a mound near the opposite wall, and I knew where the odor was coming from. Long green legs were strewn akimbo, bent at angles that would have defied a master contortionist, and wings sprawled in a lackluster droop. The sullied pink feathers looked like a heap of discarded refuse. Carrera needed to do a recount of his birds: Lula Belle and three other flamingos lay decomposing on the cold concrete floor.

Then I spotted the final closed door, in the very dimmest section of the basement. A pair of invisible hands thrust me across the floor, as a large palmetto bug scuttled in front of my path. It was all I could do not to scream. I did my best to ignore the fact that the walls had started to pulsate and the ceiling was beginning to lower. I knew it was my demons up to their old tricks. Cautiously opening the door, I stepped into the second half of Langer’s basement.

The room was black as night. But it was the sound that caused my heart to lurch to a stop with a sickening thud. From somewhere within the darkened confines came a dull banging against metal bars. My hand automatically felt around in search of a switch; the other held the shotgun up and ready for action. Every nerve in my body was focused on the unidentified noise, my imagination a runaway train with me as its only passenger.

Fluorescent tubes sprang to life. Their stark illumination bounced off the concrete walls to reveal a cougar’s pen which was being used as a jail cell.

I stared, unable to believe my eyes. Two bodies sat bound and gagged, struggling to free themselves from their bonds. Their outlandish outfits immediately told me who they were: none other than Lucinda and Sophie.

My mind raced with a million questions. “What are the two of you doing in there? What’s going on?” was all that I could gasp.

I got two gagged mouthfuls of hysterical gibberish in reply. My stomach turned as I spotted the bruises that blossomed on each of them. Sophie’s arms were black and blue. Her hands, bound in front, were scraped and bloody. But Lucinda had received the real beating. A purplish lump the size of a small eggplant sprouted on her temple, and her eyes were red and swollen.

“Don’t try to talk,” I told them. “Just nod to let me know if you’re all right.”

Both women eagerly signaled and then went back to kicking at the bars.

“Don’t worry! I’ll get you out pronto,” I reassured them.

I could try to blow off the padlock with my pump, but it hung too loose for a bullet to rip it clean off its hinge, and fragments could ricochet off the metal and hit me, which wouldn’t do any of us much good. I pulled out my pocket-tool and furiously went to work.

My fingers felt clumsy and stiff as I tried every tool in my kit. Still, the padlock refused to budge. What was holding this thing together, an entire tube of Krazy Glue? Sophie’s and Lucinda’s expressions had shifted from relief to concern. At my wit’s end, I remembered the fire extinguisher in the first basement: I’d use brute force and
knock
the damn thing off.

The extinguisher proved to be heavier than I had imagined, requiring two hands to lift it. Leaning my gun against the wall, I grabbed the extinguisher and ran back to the other room.

I wiped my hands on my pants, then raised the extinguisher above my head, directly over the lock. The two women picked that moment to break into noisy chatter.

“I’m moving as fast as I can!” I said in exasperation.

Sophie’s garbled rant rose another two notches, and her eyebrows furiously fluttered up and down.

“I’ll have you out in a minute,” I replied, my voice rising to match their own.

I brought the canister down with a grunt, giving the lock a hard whack. The next instant the lights were doused, and the room was bathed in deathly black. Worse, the door abruptly slammed shut, its echo reverberating loudly.

I tried to breathe, but my body was running on 100 percent adrenaline in place of oxygen.

You’re not alone
.

A low cough issued from somewhere near the basement door. Déjà vu reared its head, taking me to the night I’d stumbled upon Alberto’s slashed and bloodied body.

My hand inched into my pants pocket, grabbed hold of the flashlight, and flicked it on. A pair of amber eyes shone in my direction, their glare clearly warning of danger. My hand shook and the light dipped a few inches, revealing a teardrop-shaped patch of white fur. My opponent was 140 pounds of pure, solid muscle with a hair-trigger temper.

As Fidel growled, I remembered that I’d left my pump leaning against the wall in the first basement. I was facing the cougar in the dark, unarmed.

I had no place to run, no place to hide. I couldn’t even join Lucinda and Sophie in the safety of their cage. Fidel had every advantage over me, including the fact that he could see better in the dark. He opened his jaws wide in a petrifying howl, revealing viciously sharp upper incisors—but no bottom canines. Terror roared through me like a hurricane. In a horrifying flash, I realized
Fidel
had killed Alberto! The odd punctures on his throat, the savage gashes on his chest—they were the marks of a cougar whose only weapon was a pair of deadly upper incisors. And I was to be his next victim.

Fidel slunk toward me, forcing me back against the cage until there was no farther I could go. I quickly grabbed the fire extinguisher, aimed it at the cat, and sharply pressed down on the handle.

Whooosssh!
A blast of CO2 spurted out of the can, its thick foam billowing across the floor. Fidel jumped back and the women gave a muffled cheer. Then he stalked slowly to the side, aiming to circle behind me, and their cheers turned to unhappy groans. Fidel was already back in action, and this time he was p.o.’d.

Cougars are notorious for lunging from behind, sinking their canines into a prey’s skull or grabbing their victims by the neck. A sharp jerking motion would break their quarry’s spine; a suffocating clench on the throat would quickly bring death.

I nervously pressed down on the extinguisher’s handle before it was necessary, sending another wave jettisoning through the air. Again, the cougar became spooked and pulled back.

My heart hammered like a death march as Fidel impatiently paced back and forth, his brain methodically tackling the problem. A second later, my heart sank to the floor. The cougar warily lifted his front paw, sniffed at the air, and gingerly lowered his foot into the marshmallow fluff.

A moment later, Fidel’s glowering headlights focused accusingly on me, slashing straight into my heart. He’d unmasked my trick. He was ready to call my bluff.

My right hand headed up for the comfort of my Saint Christopher medal. All I could do now was pray.

As my fingers brushed against my shirt pocket, I felt something hard in it. My pulse doubled its beat and I reached inside.

Fidel laid his ears back along his head and snarled, his long tail flicking back and forth. Then he lowered his chin and tucked his body into a crouch—a green light that he was ready to attack.

I pulled out the small can of pepper spray Santou had given me. The next instant, Fidel raced through the foam and sprang up into the air, his body heading straight for me.

It’s amazing how long a second can last. Everything stopped. Time, space, the very movement of the planets. All but that long, lean figure suspended in flight with jaws open, paws thrust forward, nothing on its mind but death. As I tracked his leap in the beam of my light I aimed the container dead-on for his face, and pressed down hard to release a steady, debilitating plume of invisible vapor.

The cougar screamed in anger and pain as the juice worked its way down his throat and into his eyes. One of his clawless paws furiously thrashed in midair, knocking me back hard against the cage. I’d breathed in enough of the pepper spray that my lungs felt on fire. But not as much as Fidel, who fell to the ground in a helpless rage. The cougar rolled around, trying to rid himself of the blistering red pepper juice, howling wildly.

With Lucinda and Sophie safe in the cage, now I could get to a phone and get help.

Then the door flew open and the lights flashed back on, to reveal Langer with a .40mm Beretta grasped in his hand. A chuckle worked its way around the cigar in his mouth.

“Well, what do you know? Three birds with one stone.” He glanced down to where Fidel was madly rolling, his paws frantically working to clear the spray from his eyes, his coat matted with white streaks of foam. Langer leaned down and swiftly looped a leash around the animal’s neck, lashing Fidel to the basement door.

“Pepper spray, huh? Very clever, Porter—if you were Cuban, I’d have recruited you by now. But you and your friends have become annoyances that need to be done away with.”

“What do Sophie and Lucinda have to do with all of this? You didn’t need to lock up two old women just to lure me over here,” I told him. “All you had to do was call.”

The muffled screams from behind told me Lucinda and Sophie would never forgive me for that remark.

Langer gazed at me in amazement before removing the cigar from his mouth, his chuckle turning into a belly laugh. “My God! You really are unaware of what’s been going on under your own nose, aren’t you?”

“What the hell are you talking about, Langer?” If the man was going to insult me, he should at least have the decency to explain himself.

“For chrissakes, Porter. These two crazy old broads have been amusing themselves by blowing up branches of my Electric Doggy Fence Company all over the South,” he retorted. “I finally tracked them down right before they were about to hit my warehouse in Miami.
They’re
the ones that I lured here. You’re just an added bonus.”

I turned and stared at Lucinda and Sophie, stupefied. But I should have known that Columbia, South Carolina, and Tallahassee, Florida, were unlikely spots for lesbian rallies.

“
That’s
where those little flags are from?” I asked, remembering the
ED
on one of the cloth triangles.

“You mean they even stole my property markers while they were at it?” Langer boomed.

I still couldn’t see Sophie and Lucinda as mad bombers.

The container of pepper spray lay like a lethal bullet in my hand. Langer had yet to ask me for it, probably figuring he could shoot me faster than I’d be able to mist him. He was right. I stepped forward and pressed against the cage, keeping my back to Langer.

“I thought the two of you were against violence!” I blurted at the trussed-up women.

Sophie managed a shrug as I dropped the tiny spray can into her cupped hands. I had no idea what I intended to do, but sometimes strategy works best that way. I turned to face Langer and his gun.

“Then
you
were the one who killed Alberto,” I said, my mind racing to formulate a plan.

“No. Fidel did the killing,” Langer snickered. “I just set the events in motion.”

“But why? Dominguez was your linchpin. Wasn’t it the bird smuggling that was giving you the money to buy arms?”

“Congratulations,” Langer said condescendingly. “So you actually had begun to figure it out.”

“That doesn’t answer why you killed him,” I retorted.

Langer studied me. “You don’t have any idea what this is really all about, do you?”

“I’ll go for murder and dealing in contraband,” I countered.

Langer bristled. “What I’m involved in is a moral mission. We’ve been at war with Cuba for over thirty years. I’m doing what our government doesn’t have the guts for any longer, which is to help freedom fighters win back their homeland.” Langer’s lip curled up in distaste. “Alberto Dominguez went against the rules when he started smuggling cigars in along with birds. That was helping the enemy. Besides, it’s against the law. What he did was morally perverse.”

I just stared. This lunatic actually considered himself a genuine, all-American, gung-ho patriot. “Didn’t anybody ever tell you that smuggling endangered birds is as much against the law as bringing in Cuban cigars?” I asked.

Langer dismissed my remark with a half laugh, half bark. “That’s a crock. That ‘save the animals’ law was cooked up by a bunch of left-wing, feeble-minded, pro-Castro commies.”

“Gee, thanks for reminding me,” I snapped. “I almost forgot that the Endangered Species Act was created and passed during the Nixon administration.”

Langer cocked his Beretta. Someday I’d learn to keep my mouth shut.

“Then there’s Willy Weed. You were responsible for his death as well, weren’t you?” I needed to stall Langer until I came up with a plan.

A toxic smirk spread across his face. “There you go, blaming me again.”