Parrot Blues (18 page)

“Go ahead,” he said.

He watched the indigos while I went into the office, where Deborah's essence lingered like a wild and pungent perfume. I looked again at her photographs—all in Kodachrome. Her scarlet hair, her glossy red lipstick and her purple dress seemed garish and overdone when seen through the haze of one near-death experience, one real death and no sleep that I could remember. She was a presence that could be stimulating if you felt good, annoying when you didn't. Deborah was a pedal-to-the-metal, full-throttle experience. Was she really a bitch? I wondered. Was she really a redhead? I stared at her picture until it appeared to speak. “Arwk,” it said.

“Huh?” I replied.

Max
waddled out from behind the frame. “Call my lawyer,” he cackled.

“You scared me, Max.”

“Nut,” replied the bird.

I looked at the kachinas on the shelf and reread the quotations that said people are imperfect, and God is in the details. Being an imperfect person and a lawyer besides, I called home. My machine rang three times, which meant there were no messages, so I hung up. I looked through the window into the lab. As Rick was still watching the indigos, I slid open the drawer he'd put the parrot feathers in on my last visit. It was empty. I opened a few more drawers just for the heck of it, but they didn't contain any feathers either. Deborah's calendar was on the desk, and I flipped through it. There were several appointments scrawled across the pages for last week, this week and the next. The writing was large, bold and in green ink. Max, who'd gotten agitated by my snooping, began to squawk and to scold.

“Okay, okay,” I said.

In the lab the Kid was talking to Alice of the long blond hair and the long graceful body. They'd walked over to the Amazons' cage and she was showing him a piece of recording equipment. They were about the same age. He was tall, skinny and dark. She was tall, slender and blond. He'd been up most of the night, but any fool could see that they made a great-looking pair. A green-eyed monster the size of a fullback filled Deborah's office. The dark side of passion is jealousy, and jealousy is the worst emotion of all. Nothing can make a woman crazier.

Max had climbed up on top of Deborah's computer and bobbed his double-yellow head. Do parrots feel jealousy? I asked myself. Why not? They feel affection. Max studied me with his bright, curious eyes that seemed to be asking, What are you humans all about anyway?

“Damned if I know, Max,” I said.

“Maxamilian,” replied the bird.

Rick entered the office and saw in what direction I'd been looking.

“Is he your boyfriend?” he asked.

“You could say that.”

“Alice and I are going out tonight.” His eyes glowed with something other than intelligence and ambition.

“Good. Did you see her last night?”

“No. I was here with Max and the other parrots. Right, Max?”

“Arwk,” Max said.

“Deborah has a lot of appointments.” I pointed to the calendar lying open on the desk. “Have you been canceling them?”

“What else can I do?” he asked.

Maybe
the Kid felt the heat of our eyes on his back. He turned around. I nodded in the direction of the door. “We have to go,” I said to Rick. He didn't say good, but he might have been thinking it. “We found a thick-billed at Wes Brown's that we're taking to the FWS.”

“Give it to Special Agent Violet Sommers. She's in charge of the parrot division. You'll let me know if you hear anything more about Terrance or Deborah?”

“Yeah,” I said.

******

“So what were you and Alice looking at?” I asked the Kid when we were back in the pickup.

“She has a tape recorder, and they use it to talk to the parrots when they are not there. They say the same words over and over, and sometimes the parrot learns them. The indigos are very happy now they are together again, no?”

“Yes.”

“But they would be more happy if they were in Brazil.”

“I know.”

“In Brazil they call the blue macaws
Ararapretas,
black macaws, because they look dark when the sun is behind them.
Loros
talk, and they are
muy amable
and people think they are pets, but in the wild they are fierce as a falcon or a
lobo.
They will fight to the death to protect their mate. What do you think would happen if you took
Perigeo
away now?”

“I think Colloquy would bite my finger off,” I said.

“You're right,” he replied.

While we negotiated the orange barrels of downtown on our way to the FWS office, I wondered why Rick had been so quick to raise the issue of calling in the police on my earlier visit, and so slow to do it now.

12

O
UR NEXT STOP
was the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service law enforcement office on Fourth Street. Parrot smuggling is a federal crime. So is dealing in endangered and protected species. Whether a species already extinct in the U.S. could be considered endangered was a question I couldn't answer. The thick-billeds weren't in trouble in New Mexico or Arizona; they were gone. I knew that the Lacey Act makes it unlawful for any person to import wildlife in violation of U.S. or foreign law and that Wes Brown's smuggling activities had to put him in violation of that act. For evidence I had the video in my fanny pack and the thick-billed parrot in the camper shell. I peered through the rear window at the thick-billed, which sat silently on its perch watching downtown Albuquerque go by.

“Do you think it's a male or a female?” I asked the Kid.

He shrugged. “You have to look inside to tell.”

We turned into the FWS office, a nondescript government building. Inside we confronted a gray-haired man at a metal desk who was acting as a receptionist and/or a guard. He eyed us and the bird with suspicion.

“I'd like to talk to Special Agent Violet Sommers,” I said.

“Your name?”

“Neil Hamel. I'm an attorney.” It goes against my basic instincts to seek out law enforcement. I was only doing it because the bird needed a home and Wes Brown needed federal attention.

The man at the desk picked up his phone and said, “A woman named Neil Hamel here to see you, Vi. She's a lawyer.” He told us to wait in the reception area, where the government hadn't been wasting any of our taxpayer money on decoration. The furniture was metal, the walls institutional green, the artwork consisted of geodetic survey maps. I studied the maps while we waited for Special Agent Sommers. Door was a tiny dot, two hundred miles from Albuquerque, sixty-two miles from the border. Which direction had Wes Brown headed? I wondered. North or south? The Kid clucked to the bird, and I could see it was going to be difficult for him to give it up.

Special Agent Violet Sommers showed up in uniform: a short-sleeved shirt, matching long pants, sensible shoes, a wide belt and a holster at her hip. Considering the automatic weapons many smugglers would be packing, using her revolver would be like aiming a slingshot at Goliath. Vi's uniform was not designed for a woman's body. What would have been soft curves in something more forgiving was hard-packed cellulite under the law enforcement suit. But it was a body she seemed comfortable with, and her
face
was open and friendly. Her brown hair was cut in wash-and-wear layers. Her eyes were the color of violets in springtime. Either she'd been named for the color of her eyes or she'd chosen contacts to match her name. She wore a delicate ring of turquoise surrounded by diamonds. My guess was that Violet, when she went home, got out of the uniform and put on a dress.

She clapped her hands when she saw us and cried, “A thick-billed. Where did you get it?”

There was only one answer to that question—from a smuggler. “We found him on Wes Brown's boat in Door.”

“Wes Brown, huh? Let's go talk in my office.”

We followed her to her office, which was Spartan but had soft touches. She had a large metal desk. There were no Kodachrome pictures of herself on the wall. Her photographs were of a towheaded boy and a golden retriever. She probably lived in the East Mountains and drove a four by four with a bumper sticker on the back that said my
CHILD IS AN HONOR STUDENT AT HIS MIDDLE SCHOOL
. On her desk I saw a paw print of a wolf encased in plaster and a plaque in cross-stitch embroidery that read
SCAT HAPPENS
.

“Do you know Wes Brown?” I asked her.

“Actually, I've never had the pleasure.” She brushed a stray curl away from her face. “Let's say I know of him.”

At least
she
hadn't fallen under his rescue-me spell. Special Agent Vi Sommers seemed far too stable to be taken in by Wes Brown's maneuvers, but when it comes to women and men you never know.

“Wes Brown uses a number of aliases,” she said. “He's been known at various times in his career as Charlie Brown, Eddie Green and Tom Jones.”

“How original,” said I.

“Isn't it? His activities are reported to be illegal whatever the names. How did you get my name?”

“From Rick Olney, Deborah Dumaine's lab assistant at UNM.”

“Deborah talked to me about Brown.”

“Do you know Deborah well?”

“Not really. We get together every now and then and talk birds.”

“Do you know she's missing and is presumed kidnapped?” I wanted to ask. “Do you have any idea where she could be? Is she alive or dead?” But those questions had fallen into the quicksand of attorney/client privilege and gotten mired in the muck. The next question was, if she knew that much about Wes Brown, why hadn't she nailed him by now? But she answered that one before I had a chance to ask.

“I've been wanting to go after him, but it's been a matter of priorities and resources. Usually, when we catch one smuggler he rolls over on another to cut himself a deal. We catch a lot of them
through
snitches. No one has given us the goods on Brown yet.”

I pulled out my video. “This is a tape of Brown purchasing parrots from Mexican smugglers in Cotorra Canyon.”

“All right!” Vi said.

“I want to keep the original. Can you make me a copy?” I didn't have the equipment myself. I don't even have a VCR. That's how far off the information highway I am.

“Can do,” she said. She left the office briefly, taking the tape, which I had labeled Cotorra Canyon, to be copied.

“How'd you get the video?” she asked when she came back.

“I filmed it.” That was about as much as I was able to say.

“How did you find out about Wes Brown?”

“I can't answer that.”

“Can you testify if the case goes to trial?”

“Probably not. I was in Door on business for a client. I may have to plead attorney/client privilege.”

“How about you?” she asked the Kid.

“Sure,” he said. “He's a bird killer. I'd like to see him go to prison for life for that.”

Even with the evidence we had, Wes Brown wouldn't go to prison for life. He might not go to prison at all unless I could nail him for a different crime. The penalty for violating the Lacey Act could well be a fine that he'd pay with dirty money. Judges take crimes against property and people more seriously than crimes against wildlife. Of course, Wes Brown might have committed crimes against people too. If he'd killed my client and/or Deborah Dumaine, that could put him in prison for life.

Violet watched the sorry thick-billed pick at its feathers. “A lot of them come across the border like that,” she said, “but often we can bring them around.”

“What happens to the bird now?” the Kid asked.

“We've been turning the thick-billeds we get over to the Phoenix Zoo. The ones that are healthy go into the reintroduction effort. The thick-billeds that come from Mexico are tough and do much better than the ones that have been in captivity in this country. The ones that have been pets have forgotten how to act in the wild and the goshawks pick them off. Flocking is their only defense. It's hard for a goshawk to pick one out of the flock. Also, a flock has a lot of eyes, and they warn each other.”

“Are goshawks endangered?”

“Level two sensitive.”

“Brown's been killing them too. We saw a pile of dead hawks in Cotorra Canyon and found hawk feathers in the boat.” I was going to get Brown for every offense I could.

“
We'll look into it,” Vi said.

“There is an up-close look at the other smuggled birds on that tape,” I said. “There are three yellow-headed Amazons and one blue-fronted Amazon. Right?” I asked the Kid.

“Right,” he said.

“I saw some of Brown's records while we were on the boat. He's been selling to the Birds of Paradise Pet Shop.”

“Damn them,” Vi said. “I can understand why some poor person south of the border would trap and sell a bird to feed a family. But nobody would be doing it if there weren't a market here, and that's what I don't understand—why someplace like Birds of Paradise would deal in illegal birds. Why people will either knowingly buy smuggled and endangered birds or try very hard not to know the birds have been smuggled. We have a long and porous border. If we can't keep people out, how are we going to keep out parrots? People will pay one hundred thousand dollars for a rare parrot, and that's what's driving them into extinction. The rare and endangered will always be procured by someone. What's extinct is gone forever. One thousand species of birds are threatened with extinction, and two-thirds of them are on the decline. Pretty depressing, isn't it? Then you've got people like Brown speeding the process along.”

“Does captive breeding help?” I asked.

“The nature of the third world economy is that a wild bird there is always going to be cheaper than a hand-raised bird here. Breeding in the country of origin helps. So does involving the local population in the conservation effort. There have been some successes in that area.”