Tailed (3 page)

“What's this?”

“Plane tickets. You fly to Seattle. Tonight.”

chapter 3

I
n as much as airport security forbids anybody to meet a passenger at the gate anymore, I knew the man in the trench coat, short hair, and sideburns standing there must be a cop of some sort. He smiled politely as I exited the gangway.

“Carson, yes?”

“That's me.”

“Special Agent John Bricazzi.” He gave me the once-over, jerked his head to the side, and started walking. I followed, consciously stretching the wooden muscles in my legs.

I'm convinced airline travel is some kind of endurance test of the human mind and body. Isn't this the kind of thing they used to do to chimps in preparation for space flight? You're strapped into a confined space, fed low-protein food units, dosed with stimulants in the form of the planet's most profoundly bad coffee (if it even is coffee), gassed with recirculated oxygen, and forced to endure “air shopper” magazines filled with implausible merchandise like nose massagers and walkie-talkie barbecue spatulas. And to top it off, you're often forced to watch painfully unoriginal reruns of couch comedies. Somewhere in the belly of the plane there must be a control room full of behavioral scientists watching their monitors and oscilloscopes. These stern, bald men in lab coats shake their heads and in thick Austrian accents wonder aloud: “Zese humans are astounding! I zink dat one is going to buy the edible golf bag from der
Skyshopper
magazine.”

Which is why I'd driven to Chicago in the first place, thank you very much.

A black sedan was waiting curbside when Bricazzi and I exited the terminal. We both climbed in back, me shoving my luggage in ahead of me.

The driver was a thick-necked Hispanic. He glumly locked eyes with me in the rearview mirror. “Agent Luis Stucco.”

“Do I call you guys by your last names, like on TV, or do I have to use the ‘agent' title?”

Bricazzi chuckled mechanically, like he'd heard that one before and was worse for it. Sliding an emery board out of his pocket, he began touching up his nails.

“Last names work,” replied Stucco.

“Uh huh.” Bricazzi and Stucco: all I could think of were those commercials on WPIX for New Jersey Brickface and Stucco. “You can call me Garth.”

Brickface inspected his nails for a few beats before he broke the silence.

“Luis? Let's stop for ice cream.”

“You got it, John.”

“You like ice cream, Carson?”

I sucked on my cheek a moment, then looked him in the eye. If the Feds thought they could give me the business, they had another think coming.

“There's this penguin driving across the desert on his way to Vegas,” I began, “when all of a sudden, there's a loud bang from the engine, steam pouring out from under the hood. Luckily, he's able to make it to the next town, where he pulls into a garage. The mechanic tells him he can't look at the engine until it cools down.”

“A penguin in the desert?” Stucco eyed his partner in the mirror uncertainly.

“So the mechanic tells the penguin he might as well go get some ice cream at the stand across the road while he waits. The penguin waddles across the road, hops up on a stool, and has a dish of vanilla ice cream.”

It's a lewd joke, one told to me by my friend Rodney, and it ends up with the penguin saying: “I did not! That's ice cream!”

There was a pause, then Brickface pointed his emery board at me. “If the penguin could hold the steering wheel, why couldn't he hold a spoon?”

“And what's a penguin doing in the desert?” Stucco insisted.

“A mechanic would say ‘gasket,' not ‘seal,'” Brickface growled.

I couldn't tell if they were busting my chops or what. But I felt I'd better stay the course, see how far I could push it. “This penguin was part of a Department of Agriculture experiment to raise penguins at lower latitudes for cheap labor, in order to replace migrant workers at shrimp farms. And as for the spoon, well, it wasn't so much that he couldn't hold the spoon as that he'd been traumatized as a chick by a Norwegian seal hunter who'd bludgeoned his friends with a spoon.”

There was a pause, but they couldn't hold it in this time. Stucco started first, his laugh deep and guttural like a rusty tuba, then Brickface joined in silently, his chest jumping.

“Good one, Garth.”

“Anytime, John.”

Brickface's laughter stopped abruptly, and he jabbed his emery board in my face.

“It's Special Agent Bricazzi.”

chapter 4

G
arth, your mother called again.” Angie, my soul mate, sounded annoyed. “You really have to call her.”

“I can't call Gabby right now.” I was whispering into the phone, huddled in the corner of a boardroom in a federal building in downtown Seattle. The long table next to me was filled with law enforcement types. My seat was between Brickface and Stucco, my briefcase holding my spot. “The meeting is about to start.”

“Oh, and some people from that fraternal order called, the ones you rented the pronghorn to last week for their meeting.”

“The Mystical Order of the Tupelca?”

“I guess. They want to rent something else, so they're coming by to look at what you have.”

“Have Otto give them the tour. How are things shaping up for your trip to Chicago this weekend for the
Couture Magazine
show?”

“All packed and ready. Gee, Garth, I sure wish you were still coming, that this Sprunty thing hadn't happened.”

“You and me both.”

“I was looking forward to spending some time with you away. Now your airline ticket is wasted.”

“Take Otto.”

“Very funny.”

“He could be your chauffeur.”

Fortune had shined on Angie's aspirations to ascend from doing jewelry piecework for name designers to creating her own line of baubles. She'd made enough of a name for herself in certain lofty fashion circles to be invited to submit some of her work to the magazine's annual show. While she was thrilled, some of her customers weren't—the last thing they wanted was more competition, and from someone they saw as labor, someone beneath them. Well, that was my take on why some of the designers had stopped giving her work. But this show was the big time. If she was favorably reviewed—maybe even had her pieces shown in the magazine's accessories issue—she could start to hang her shingle as a true designer in her own right. So we'd booked tickets to Chicago to attend the show—time for her to do some serious schmoozing and for me to be arm candy. I know, it meant that I would have driven all the way to New York and then hopped on a plane back to Chicago. Life is frequently a lousy travel agent.

“So did you look at the doggie literature?”

“Uh huh.”

“Well?”

“Golly, the miniature Great Dane looks good.” I sensed an annoyed pause on the other end. “Look, let's discuss it when I get home. Right after Nicholas's wedding we can go dog shopping, how's that?”

The words came out of my mouth, but they surprised me. And scared me. With a dog came responsibility. What if I screwed up and it died? What if I didn't like it, or worse, didn't love it? Yet this was really important to Angie, and I couldn't stall forever, could I?

I heard her peevishness deflate with an audible sigh.

“Good. When are you coming home, loverboy? I miss you.”

“Believe me, I'll come home just as soon as I can.”

“Well, you'd better be here by next week, anyway. The wedding is just around the corner. By the way, I took your tux to the cleaners. It hasn't been cleaned since that night at the Savoy.”

The night at the Savoy: that was the last time I'd attended one of Angie's jewelry do's, and the memory rendered me relieved I wouldn't be around to screw up this event for her.

“Did you really go over the information about dogs?” Her voice was bristling with glee. “I found a listing of breeders in the New York area.” There was the muffled sound of someone talking in the background. “Oh, and Otto says he misses you, too.”

I was about to say something characteristically mordant—but didn't get the chance.

“Garv! My friend!” Angie, that minx, had put Otto on the line. Prior to becoming a captain of industry in the taxidermy rental world, Otto had been our Ensign Fixit. He did a little bit of everything, from repairing broken taxidermy to helping Angie solder jewelry. An Old World craftsman, so to speak. Angie had discovered him setting up shop in the subway a while back. He was repairing watches and sewing buttons for money right there on the platform at Chambers Street. Ever since Angie bailed him out of the hoosegow for peddling without a license he'd been a devoted employee.

“Garv, I make to answer phone for beezness: ‘Alo, Garv Carson Critters, please, tell to me if help.' Eh? Eh? Very nice, I thinkink. Please, tell to me, Garv, when home you to come? Otto very much not see you. We get doggie, yes?”

“Otto, you nincompoop, put Angie back on the line, I only have a second.” Brickface and Stucco were glancing in my direction. I cupped my hand over the receiver and whispered, “I need to talk to Angie.”

“I miss Garv very much, is to cry. Very sad my heart.”

“That's nice, Otto.” Sentimental maniac. “Put Angie on the phone.”

At that juncture, a silver-haired man with a commanding stride entered the conference room. Those assembled sat a little straighter and adjusted the folders before them, like ball players watching their p's and q's. I didn't need anybody to tell me this was the Head Coach, the Special Agent-in-Charge.

On the phone, Otto broke into song, a high, wavering tune that, if I'm not mistaken, was the old Mary Hopkins version of the gypsy folk ditty “Those Were the Days.”

“Te
ó?I?? ?H?M? MO?
?pyr!”

“Otto…” A screen was pulled down at the front of the room.

“M?
I
?y
M
a??, ?
TO OH
?
H?KO
??a He óy?y
T
?aka
H
??
B
a
T
?!”

“Otto…” A few other suits straggled into the boardroom and took their seats.

“M?
I
?e?? ó?
I
?
T
a
H
?e
B
a?? ó?
I H
a
B
ce??a ? ?e
H
?!”

“Otto, if you don't shut up and put Angie on the line, I'm going to strangle you right through the phone!”

I turned.

All eyes were on me, including Head Coach's steely gaze and furrowed brow.

“Nice to sing, yes? Very old gypsy song to say—”

My voice dropped to a whisper again. “Tell Angie I'll call back later.”

“Garv, please to call your mommie, eetz not lookink. We get doggie, yes?”

I gently returned the phone to its base and claimed my seat next to Bricazzi, who was working on his manicure. My face must have been red, because it felt like I'd left it on the radiator for an hour.

“Let's begin,” Head Coach intoned wearily. Time for the game films. The lights went out and the screen lit up with an image of Sprunty sprawled behind the bar in his trophy room, his guts like spaghetti around a bear paw fork.

I put my hand to my forehead like I had an itch. My sudden interest in palm reading had to do with not reliving the horrific surprise of discovering Sprunty's mutilated body. That and the realization that my two-year hiatus from trouble was at an end. Well, at least this was just a
brush
with trouble. I was merely there to consult and then go home.

“Six days ago, Sprunty G. Fulmore, running back for the Chicago Bears, was found murdered in his suburban Chicago home by an insurance appraiser. Cause of death? Mauled by the arm of a stuffed black bear, one of his trophies. He had no live-in house staff, and we've spoken with everybody from the pool boy to the housekeeper. No witnesses. That we know of.” Head Coach hit a button on the laptop, and another picture popped on the screen.

I peeked. This image was far less gruesome. It was Titan Harris III, his toupee askew, looking passed out drunk, slumped next to a wall. Not too far different from when I'd seen him. He drank almost a whole bottle of Johnnie Walker Blue while regaling me with the tale of his hunt for a Gobi yak. He fell asleep on the couch just as he was about to pull the trigger.

Next to him was a big white ram's head, leaning forward, its nose to the floor like it was staring at a passing ant. These sheep are monsters, very grumpy creatures, all white, with curled, stalwart horns like twenty-pound fists on the sides of their heads. And Titan's trophy would have been very heavy. I remembered it as being one of those older mounts, in which the excelsior manikin inside would have been smoothed over with plaster.

“Three weeks earlier, in Houston, Texas, Titan Harris III, oil rig manufacturer, was found dead. It appeared that he had been killed accidentally when a bighorn sheep head fell from the wall. Blunt trauma.”

I felt someone's gaze on me, and I glanced across the table at a woman with short sandy hair, sun-flecked skin, and penetrating black eyes that were staring a hole through me. She looked to be the oldest person in the room, in her mid sixties, and though seated, perhaps also the shortest person in the room. In stature and demeanor she was what I'd call compact. A taut jaw and nervous fumbling with her pen made her seem highly caffeinated.

But something about her was different from the rest of the team. Could it have been her blue U.S. Air Force uniform? And if I wasn't mistaken, the little silver cluster of leaves on her jacket was that of a lieutenant colonel. On the opposite lapel was a medical caduceus pin. Well, it was nice to know they were pulling out all the stops to find the killer by enlisting the help of our armed forces—if all else failed, maybe a little selective carpet bombing would do the trick. But an Air Force
doctor
?

Everybody else was gawking at the gore on the screen, but she seemed to find me worthier of study. No doubt I cut quite the dashing figure, as always, but her interest seemed purely clinical, like she wanted a sample of me in a petri dish. So as with people who stare at me in the subway, I launched a defensive maneuver meant to break her gaze. I locked eyes with her and turned my head sideways, as if hearing my master's voice. My patented “Nipper the RCA dog” look.

She tore her eyes away, reluctantly, and I focused back on the screen.

The next slide was a close-up of Titan's half opened hand, the pale tail of a gecko curled around his diamond pinky ring.

Head Coach continued his game analysis.

“It was noted that Titan had a dead lizard in his hand. While somewhat curious, this was not deemed significant during the initial investigation. The lizard in question was misidentified as a Mediterranean gecko, which is common in Texas. In addition, the hook that held the ram's head on the wall was bent, leading local police to classify Titan's death as accidental. But our forensics team later determined that the blow to Harris's head occurred in the center of the room, away from the wall. So the ram's head must have been removed from the wall before being dropped on his head.”

Next slide: a close-up of Sprunty's mouth, the front half of a waxy-looking gecko in one side. I studied my palm again.

“Fulmore's body was discovered with a dead lizard in his mouth. The same variety of lizard found in Titan's hand. The killings appear to be without a sexual dimension. But the mutilation of Fulmore, the commonality of weapon and victim, and the calling-card ritual lead us to believe there's a serial killer at work. Those present in this room are specialists in disciplines that can contribute to the agency's efforts to compile information that could be instrumental in profiling the perpetrator. No party has taken responsibility for these murders, which suggests that the deaths are not the handiwork of an ideologue or domestic terrorist group. As of now, we know of no threats to these men from animal rights groups. Obviously, our agents have been interviewing friends, family, and associates of these two men to find a commonality. Let's establish a timeline of the murders. I'll start with Agent Stucco.”

Agent Stucco stood, hiking up his pants and poking at the laptop on the table in front of him.

A split-screen slide of the red bra and red slip lit up the front of the room. Beat the hell outta seeing Sprunty's guts.

“Other evidence at the Fulmore crime scene included these red female undergarments: a bra and a slip. No panties.” Stucco's delivery was flat and emotionless, but he paused to eye his audience. “We interviewed a female acquaintance of Mr. Fulmore's, one Honey Espanoza, and determined that she had been at the Fulmore residence earlier in the evening, at approximately 5:30
P.M
., and had left in a hurry to make a flight. The undergarments belonged to Miss Espanoza. We have confirmed her location at the time of the murder as in transit to Miami. She saw nothing unusual before she left, and only knew that Mr. Fulmore was expecting someone from the insurance company of Wilberforce/Peete later that evening for an appraisal. Mr. Fulmore was poolside, alone, when she last saw him.”

Stucco sat and Bricazzi stood to take his place by the laptop. “Here's what we know about the lizard,
Hemidactylus vuka,
commonly known as a vuka night gecko, native to the extreme southwestern United States and northern Mexico. Often mistaken for
Hemidactylus turcicus,
or Mediterranean house gecko, which has a similar appearance. I'll spare you the complete taxonomic description, which is in your folders. These geckos are brown, with darker chevrons along their back. Could we have the next image?”

A close-up of a gecko popped onto the screen. It appeared to be sitting on the wall of a thatched hut, and was facing down. It sort of looked to me like a miniature alligator, its eye golden with a slit down the center. There's something about that seemingly mechanical reptilian eye, combined with the secretive curl to their lips, that affixes geckos with a decidedly sinister agenda.

“But by night,” Bricazzi continued, “many gecko species turn pale; like anoles and many small lizards, they have specialized pigment cells in their skin called melanophores that allow them to change color, presumably as camouflage. But in death they turn dark again. We considered the possibility that these were albino geckos, but technically they aren't. Peculiar to the vuka night gecko is a rather unusual recessive gene that renders whole populations of them white every hundred years or so. We have no independent pictures of these white-phase geckos as this hasn't happened since just after the turn of the twentieth century. But herpetologists have confirmed that this white phase is occurring now. Native Americans of the Southwest felt that the white geckos held special spiritual significance. We're looking into the possible religious or symbolic nature of these geckos as a possible factor in the motive for the killings.”