Parrot Blues (2 page)

It was comparable to pulling out dental tape and flossing in public, satisfying to the person doing it, repulsive to anyone else. “Is that really necessary?” I wanted to ask, but I didn't because Terrance Lewellen was watching me with cat-at-the-mouse-hole eyes, waiting for a reaction. He exuded a vibe having to do with power, success or plain old testosterone that made him hard to ignore. He was the kind of short man who usually has a tall, good-looking woman on his arm (with the spike heels Deborah wore, she was bound to be taller), and the reason wasn't entirely money. He was coarse, but he was smart. He appreciated beauty, and beauty likes to be appreciated. I picked up the indigo feather and ran my fingers
down
the barbs, thinking that if Terrance Lewellen were a bird he'd be a bantam cock. “Let me get this straight,” I said. “You have a
pair
of indigo macaws?”

Terrance stuck the cap on and put the bottle back in his briefcase. “Yes.”

“But Wes Brown only took one?”

“Right.”

“Were they both in the lab?”

“Yes. When I developed a parrot allergy I had to move the indigos out of the house and into the lab. Wes Brown knows parrots. He knows macaws mate for life and that Colloquy will be one sad parrot without Perigee. She's already moping and pulling her feathers out. Wes is going to use that knowledge to extort money from me. I got this in the mail today.”

He opened his briefcase again, took out a stamped envelope and handed it to me. Inside was the Relationships section of the Sunday
Journal.
In the Male to Female Relationships column, between “no Democrats or psychos. Harley-Davidson a plus” and “Love the Lord,” he'd marked this: “Lonely indigo desperately needs mate. #12441.”

I looked at the postmark on the envelope. Tuesday. “When did you record the abduction?”

“Monday evening.”

Today was Wednesday, the message had appeared in Sunday's paper. “That's pretty good timing,” I said. “The ad appeared the day before the crime; it was mailed to you the day after.”

“Time is of the essence in crime,” Terrance said, watching me and appropriating one of those phrases that seem to float around a lawyer's office. Maybe he pulled it out of the air or maybe he read my mind, because it's what I was thinking but hadn't said. Terrance made a point of saying the things other people wouldn't. “I got the ad today,” he continued. “If the abduction hadn't worked, I never would have seen it and who else would have known what it meant? I don't read those ads. Do you?”

“Nope.”

“To answer, you call 1-900-622-9408 and listen to the person's recorded message. Go ahead. Call it; tell me what you think.”

I dialed the number and got a generic female operator's voice asking me to push the number one if I had a Touch-Tone phone. I did as I was told, pushed all the required numbers and eventually heard, “I'm so lonely without my mate. Bring me home soon, please” in a voice of quivering emotion and ambiguous sexuality. It could have been a husky-voiced woman's or a high-pitched man's. It could have been an Amazon parrot or an indigo macaw. It wasn't Wes Brown's voice, although it did stretch out the o's in “so” and “lonely.”

“Was that Perigee?” I asked.

“No. It was Wes Brown.”

“
Except for the drawl, it doesn't sound like him.”

“He used the Scrunch, a digital voice changer. It has eight positions, ranging from deep male to high female. It can make a man sound like a woman, a woman sound like a man and a human being sound like a parrot.” In the world of high-tech gamesmanship, Terrance Lewellen knew all the equipment.

“He hasn't asked for money yet.”

“He will.”

“If he does, he's going to cross the line between abduction and kidnapping.” Neither was a crime I'd likely ever see again in my world of real estate and divorce. I didn't have the typical corporate attorney's client list of businessmen, crooks and businessmen/crooks. This case was getting more interesting by the minute. The inclusion of an endangered species made it almost irresistible. Still, I gave Terrance Lewellen a cautious lawyer's advice even though caution has never been my style and wouldn't turn out to be his either. “After twenty-four hours the FBI can step in. You ought to take this to them.”

“The Fan Belt Inspectors, the Fucking Big Idiots?” Terrance's gray-green eyes had a feral yellow gleam near the center. He flicked an ash in my ashtray. “They'll screw it up.”

“They can find out who placed the ad a lot more effectively than you or I.”

“I know who placed it—Wes Brown—and I know how to handle him.” If he had other reasons for not wanting to involve law enforcement, he didn't reveal them.

“Who does your corporate business?” I asked.

“Buddy Baxter at Baxter, Johnson.”

“Why didn't you go to him with this?”

“I heard you had experience with endangered species. Is that right?”

“Right.”

“Baxter doesn't know an endangered species from a sparrow. I want Perigee back. Wes Brown knows what he's worth on the black market. I'll pay him that much, but not a penny more.”

“And your wife?” I asked. “How much are you willing to pay for her?”

“Zip, nada,” he said. “Not one skinny dime. Deborah and I are getting divorced. She moved out of the house, and she's not my responsibility anymore. Brown is going to be rip shit when he finds
that
out.”

“Why were you taping Deborah anyway? You weren't trying to catch her in an affair, were you?”

“Deborah? Naah. She's going through the change. She hasn't been interested in sex for years. All she cares about are parrots.”

“Women don't just dry up and sit on the shelf once they hit the … change … you know.”

“Oh, yeah, now they've got estrogen, right? Well, Deborah wouldn't take it; she said it wasn't natural. After the oil business cratered, I moved into corporate takeovers and venture capital. There's a
little
company in Texas that I'm backing. You heard about the nicotine patch?” He looked at the cigarette I was still smoking. “Maybe not. Well, this company makes a testosterone patch. Think what that's going to do for aging baby boomers. It's a great place to put your money.
The
investment for the nineties.”

I didn't have any money, and if I did I wouldn't be putting it into testosterone. If you ask me, what the world needs is not more testosterone, but better distribution of what's already out there. That thought led to my next question, the one I'd been wanting to ask, being of a suspicious mind when it comes to male/female relationships. “You're sure Deborah wasn't having an affair with Wes Brown?” There was a certain intensity in their exchange that could have been the result of sexual repulsion or its flip side—attraction.

“Positive. I've been taping her, remember, and I know Deborah wasn't having an affair with anybody. Besides, Wes Brown is dumber than dirt. The guy isn't even a successful smuggler. Deborah's far too smart for him. He'd bore the hell out of her.”

“Then why
were
you taping her?”

“Because when you're getting a divorce you need the best hand you can get. I've been through this before—twice—and I know to cover my butt. Deborah signed a prenup, which entitled her to take out of the marriage exactly what she came into it with—nothing. Now she's trying to welsh out of it. I wanted to know what she was saying to her accountant and her lawyer. I wired her apartment, too. That was a voice-activated system, and she's never home anyway. I didn't get anything worthwhile there.”

“You must have gotten a ton from the lab,” I said, thinking of all the voices I'd heard in a couple of minutes of cassette.

“I did. I had one of my security men install a spike mike in the wall, hook it up to the Marantz. I got everything that went on; most of it was parrot talk. My security man sorted through it.”

“You are aware that bugging is a federal crime.” Along with kidnapping and dealing in endangered species. Smuggling, too.

“Right, and when was the last time you heard of anybody getting prosecuted for it? The FBI is more interested in tracking figure skaters than in harassing a man for listening to his wife. Leave a message on the Relationships machine, will you? Tell Brown you're my lawyer and offer him a hundred thousand.”

The opaque eyes watched and waited. Cigar smoke drifted toward the ceiling. Just how badly did I want this case anyway? Badly enough to say, “No.”

“Why not?”

“Brown hasn't revealed his hand yet. You're not even sure he wants money. If he does, and you let him speak first, you'll get a better deal.” Don't show your cards is one of the first rules of negotiation. Terrance knew that better than I. He leaned back; his corporate raider's eyes sparked. If this had been a
test
of how well I'd represent
his
interests, I'd passed. But there were other interests involved. “Do you think Perigee and your wife are in danger?”

“Not yet. I'm sure Brown has them hidden away in Door.”

“The ghost town near the border?”

“Right, that's where he lives. It's a tough place to get in and out of. Brown'll feel safe there. He knows how to take care of parrots, and he knows Perigee is worth more to me in good shape. When it comes to macaws, a pair is worth more than the sum of two individuals; they're picky about who they'll mate with. As for Deborah, she can take care of herself. All right, call Relationships back and leave a message. Tell Brown to return what he took. The next move is up to him.” Having finished his instructions, he put his Marantz in his briefcase and stood up. “How'd you like to see an indigo macaw?”

How'd I like to see a Mexican gray wolf again or an Arctic gyrfalcon? “When?” I said.

“Tomorrow at ten. Meet me outside the lab.”

As his cowboy boots clunked across my waiting room floor, I thought that an oil man's ostrich didn't sound any different than a cowboy's cowhide. “Adios,” I heard Terrance say to my secretary, Anna.

“See ya,” she replied.

Through the security bars on my window I watched Terrance climb into the sleek black Jaguar he'd parked in our driveway and throw his briefcase onto the passenger's seat. “Jag,” his vanity plates read. He pulled out of the driveway, and I dialed the Relationships number. I listened again to the ambisexuous, digitally altered, miserable voice and then I recorded it on my microcassette recorder, figuring that a voice that is already on tape doesn't need permission to be retaped. “I'm so lonely without my mate,” the voice cried. “Bring me home soon, please.”

“This is Neil Hamel, Terrance Lewellen's lawyer,” I replied in a crisp female attorney's voice. “Return everything you've taken immediately.” I left my phone number, although I didn't expect to be called back; a phone call was too traceable. The Relationships line was where these negotiations were going to be conducted.

Since Relationships was already in my hand, I made a quick survey of what was hot in today's market and glimpsed a microcosm of Albuquerque society: bikers, cowboys, Christians, newcomers; whites, blacks, Native Americans, Spanish; heterosexual, homosexual, bi. I wandered out into my reception area with the Relationships section still in my hand. A red rose was sitting in a vase on Anna's desk. She was fluffing her mane and reading today's
Tribune.

“You looking for a new guy?” she asked when she saw what I'd been reading.

“Not me. Someone abducted Terrance Lewellen's wife and is communicating with him through the Relationships ads.”

“
Let me see.” She read the ad. “His wife's name is Indigo?”

“No. That's a parrot that got taken too, an indigo macaw. It means more to him than his wife.”

She began skimming the Males to Females section. “Look at this one. ‘Motorhead, racer for loud engines and wild rides.' Sounds like my type.”

“You already have a boyfriend.” Known to me as Stevie, the stereo king.

“A boyfriend,” Anna replied, “not a husband. Should I call motorhead?” Without waiting for my answer, she punched in all the numbers, listened for a few minutes and then hung up. “Dumb,” she said. “Macho.”

“What did you expect from a motorhead?”

“Okay, how about
this
one? ‘SWM. Caring, liberal, kind, likes fine dining and travel. Looking for intelligent, romantic woman to share life with.'”

“I don't know about the fine dining part,” I said. Anna's idea of fine food was a Lotta Burger with green chile.

“Let's call him.” She listened briefly and turned the phone over to me. “I'm a sensitive, romantic guy,” he said between long pauses. “It's hard for me to talk on these machines. Maybe it's hard for you too. If you want to just leave your number, that's okay. I'll call you back. I promise.”

“Yuck. Too sensitive,” said Anna and kept on looking.

“How about this? ‘SWM. Mountain man. Likes rock climbing, caving, animals, camping, outdoors. ISO…' what does that mean?”

“International sex object?”

“I'm seeking only?”

“In search of,” said my partner Brink, who had wandered out of his office and was leaning over Anna's shoulder, reading. He'd obviously had more experience with newspaper Relationships (but less of the other kind) than Anna or I. When Anna wanted to meet men, she parked her car in the breakdown lane and put up the hood.

“‘In search of,'” Anna continued, “‘an independent woman to explore New Mexico with.' Sounds like your type,” she said to me.

“I'm not looking,” I replied, but she dialed the number anyway and handed the phone over to me even faster than she had the last time.