The Bird Boys Read online

  “Listen, before I tell you what I want, you should know one thing I don’t care for your secretary to hear. Don’t want to say this in front of her and her get all shocked or righteous or anything.”

  “I wouldn’t worry about that, Mrs. Sweeney.”

  “Cheryl, and hear me out first. Me and Frank have a deal. We can both go outside the marriage if we feel like it. Just can’t see that person more than once. Number one is each other. You think that makes me a slut, you say right now and I’ll leave because that is not how I look at it.”

  She dropped a space for his response, staring him in the eyes. Hers were hazel, edging green, sharp enough to score quartz.

  “No such opinion.”

  “OK then. Frank’s so good-looking, women can’t see the ring on his finger. Harping on cleave-only-to-me won’t get me anywhere. I let him have his. I go a round with some other man, Frank gets roaring jealous. And that keeps both of us interested, and me from going crazy.”

  “Got it,” Phelan said lightly. “How can I help you, Cheryl?”

  Her elbows lifted out as she brought her chest back. Faint wet pop of a seal broken, an aggrieved cry, a foot kicking. Cheryl shifted the baby to the other side, hands under the shirt, started in with her story.

  The baby clamored over her.

  “Crap. Dried up. I been weaning him, wait a minute.”

  Phelan gazed helplessly out the window to the street and the New Rosemont Hotel.

  She brought out the baby from under the shirt, dug in her fringed purse, uncapped a half-size bottle with milk in it, and popped it in his mouth.

  “Now then. Here it is,” she said.

  Last six months, Frank had had a new job. At first it kept him away three weeks or so, then back, then after a while, off again. Then the weeks-long shift changed to a once-every-now-and-then night shift: he left around ten and stayed away all night and some of the next day. He’d just got in today around noon. Still drunk but wearing different clothes than he left in—so that meant a shower somewhere. He smelled like beer, tried to bribe her quiet with a cooler of shrimp on ice. Sleeping now—and she wanted to get home before he woke up. No, he was not working a trawler. Nope, not on the rigs, either. He’d tell her that. Yes, he had money, a lot of money, and Frank wasn’t stingy. She was driving a new Ford Mustang Mach 1. She wanted to get dressed up, she had a sparkly dress. They went to concerts and paid her mother to watch the baby—Steppenwolf and Willie Nelson.

  “But what?” Phelan said.

  “Won’t tell me what he’s doing. Will not tell. Wherever he’s doing it, there was a woman there, at least in the beginning. I smelled her on the one good shirt he took with him. Like a mix of green apples and bait.”

  Phelan sat back. “And you wanna know who she was?”

  “Not really. What I wanna know is if he’s breaking the law, which wouldn’t you say he probably is?”

  Phelan would say You betcha, but not just yet. He shrugged.

  “What’s his regular job? Before this new one?”

  “Upholsterer. His mama and aunt have a business, Spindletop Upholstery, do loads of commercial work. Frank’s good at it, just believes a sewing machine isn’t manly enough.” Her eyes rolled to the top of their sockets.

  A door opened and closed. Cheryl set down the baby bottle, accepted the Coke bottle from Delpha, and took a gulp. “He’s breaking the law, you make him stop, Tom. I’ll call you when he’s going out again. Listen, I know your uncle’s the police chief. You lay that on Frank. Twist his arm, blackmail him. Whatever you got to do to get his attention, I don’t care.”

  “Any illegal activity, I have to report. You understand that, right?”

  “Well, I guess I see that. What I’m asking is get Frank out of it before he’s caught. I want my husband not in jail. Married to me, even if the bonds’re a little loose.”

  She tipped back her head and chugged the Coke, graceful throat working, set the bottle on Phelan’s desk, and drew the purse over again. Rummaged one-handed. Plunked a wallet on the desk, stifling a burp. “Take out some hundreds.”

  “Wait. Gotta fix some terms here, Cheryl. About intimidation, you know that old horse saying. Your mother’s cousin Caroleen wanted me to shake her son out of a frying pan, you know how that went.”

  “Yeah. But Caroleen wanted you to find him and what he was doing, and you did. You found him that same day. What horse saying?”

  “Lead a horse to water. Your husband’s a grown man. I can pour him out a shot of You’re-Screwing-Up, but I can’t make him drink it. I’m a private investigator, not a bouncer or a preacher.”

  “Take the money, Tom. I can make him drink it.”

  With that proclamation ringing in the warm air of Phelan’s office, the AC belched a delicate aroma of fire and died.

  Cheryl flicked her eyes over to it and back to Phelan.

  “Well, gotta run,” she said, seizing his hand to shake it.

  While they waited for the whizzing molecules in Cheryl Sweeney’s wake to settle, Phelan went downstairs and reported to Milton-the-dentist’s receptionist that his AC needed a new compressor. If she could make a call, that’d be ace.

  Then he leaned against his office doorjamb, wiggled his shoulders a little to massage a hurting spot between them, and lit a cigarette. He suggested to Delpha that they hold off on Cheryl for the moment and update each other on Xavier Bell.

  Because he had this to say: of all the homeowners he’d met on his long Friday, he was pretty sure none of them was Rodney. Several of the men were old enough, but definitely not Rodney. He had two left to see. How about her?

  “Finished the babies.”

  His eyebrows rose. “Wonder Woman.”

  Delpha smiled. “Always did like her magic lasso. Bell called Friday night.”

  “What?”

  “Yeah, I stayed late, and when the phone rang I answered it.”

  Phelan’s head fell forward, and he scrubbed a hand over his face.

  “I know, I know. I won’t do that again, OK? Just got kinda carried away with the babies. Couldn’t stop till I finished, then, well…I was here. I locked the door.”

  “At the very least,” Phelan muttered.

  She shared Bell’s message, emphasizing the more interesting part about Rodney’s friend.

  Phelan wheeled, went to his desk, came back with some stapled carbons of homeowners’ addresses and an ashtray, tapped ash into it. Eyes on the paper, he sat down on the edge of an aqua chair, sank, and grimaced.

  His finger traced the names as he read and thought. Finally, he looked up. “Still fairly convinced I didn’t find Rodney. Friend or not.” He wiped sweat from his upper lip. “I need to get a map from the car and start on some Cheryl-related calls. Then let’s rendezvous again, OK?”

  “One more thing.”

  “What?”

  Delpha told him about her Saturday and the page labeled Merchants.

  Her tone caused Phelan to cast an eye backward. Delpha was smiling in a pointed way. Woman knew something. He took hold of the typed list Merchants that she must have been banging out while he and Cheryl had their interview. Decades of names of the people who had run the right kind of shop in New Orleans.

  “Son of a bitch,” he murmured. He walked the paper over to Delpha’s desk and back, reading it again. Xavier Bell’s name had still not appeared on it.

  “Son. Of a bitch. What is he up to? Would you get me his phone number?”

  Delpha provided it, and Phelan called, let the phone ring a dozen times. He set down the receiver. “Goddamnit, why? Now we don’t know either brother’s real name.”

  “Asked myself that.”

  “What was your answer?”

  “We still got his money. We’ll find out.” Her face was neutral, looking at him.

  “You wanna quit?”

  “Noooo. I’m continuing this game pissed. And it’s hotter’n fire in here.” Phelan went over and wrestled with the secretary office’s window. Pulled out a
pocket knife, chipped at the paint seal till he got the window raised. Sultry September opened its square mouth and breathed.

  XXIV

  YOU FUCKING LIAR, Phelan cursed Xavier Bell as he went downstairs to his car, snagged a regional map from the trunk, and You mealy-mouth sunglass-wearing lying old con-man trudged back up. He added six or eight variations until he was chill enough to switch his brain over to Cheryl Sweeney’s request. Wasn’t easy. He was still simmering, and so was the office.

  OK. The shrimp her husband had brought her said “boat,” but the guy could’ve bought shrimp at the grocery store. Best bet, though, was that the case would involve watery, out-of-the-way channels that could accommodate a boat. In addition to the geography of the operation, Phelan’d need to go kick the can, bullshit with people, see what he picked up. He called the Marine Safety Unit’s office and asked a chipper lady if they had a publicly available map of local waterways.

  They did, but it didn’t have every little podunk bayou and stream on it. Texas Parks and Wildlife had those. Whyn’t he call a game warden down at the Sheriff’s office.

  “Yeah? How podunk do they get?”

  “They’re Wildlife, son. We’re Law Enforcement. Our boats don’t run in holes and ditches.”

  “Thank you, ma’am. The one you got’ll be fine.” He’d run over there in a minute, but next he dialed his friend Joe Ford the parole officer and asked him if he’d say he had his finger on the pulse of the crime community.

  “Might say that to you. Nobody intelligent would believe me.”

  Phelan described Cheryl’s husband’s job behavior. Did Joe have any guys on his roster who’d been employed in a similar manner?

  “Shit, yeah,” Joe said, “hijackers, transporters, petty merchants. But not pirates. Not in my file cabinet. Yet.”

  “Pirates.”

  “Smugglers, dope-runners, whatever. My clients are getting out, not going in, and they’re landlubbers. They sold outa apartments, on the streets. ‘Round the racetracks, bars. That who you’re looking for?”

  “Maybe. Not sure.”

  “Even had some college action, kinda rinky-dink, far as I can tell. I had a higher-dollar guy when I first started here, jocks’ agent, did seven years for marijuana. But if you’re looking for good buddies of your guy and he’s a sea-faring man, can’t help you.”

  Phelan set down the receiver. The Cheryl case rolled out in front of him. Possibly labor-intensive.

  He called the telephone number on Bell’s contract, listened to it ring fifteen times, damn him. Phelan’s blood pressure hopped a notch as he hung up.

  If Rodney was dangerous, what was his friend like? Phelan picked up the list and reviewed each homebuyer for the third time. One of the younger guys could have been Rodney’s friend, and old Rodney hiding behind the door.

  When he’d come back up from his cursing mission, Delpha met him at the door, hand out for the list of homebuyers he’d seen last Friday. Digging it from a pocket, he gave it to her. Did he write notes on it? Yeah, he did. See. He’d jotted the reasons he crossed off each name. He wiped his hairline with the back of his hand and went off to spread out a map of wavy blue fingers that designated waterways.

  The night Bell had called, when she’d spun around in the headlights of a motorcycle and run back to the office, Delpha’d got chills reading Mrs. Guidry’s list. Two names Mrs. Guidry remembered, Smith and Hebert, these were also on her Homebuyers—and now Merchants lists. Her net was working, seining out names. Mrs. Guidry had recalled three more shopkeepers: Sparrow, forgot Christian name, soldier son; Athene, Georges, chased married ladies, cold-shouldered single ones; and Solomon Wertman, passed a few years after the war, nice kids that moved west, Beaumont or Houston.

  These names were confirmed by Merchants as well.

  But now…no no no. As she read Phelan’s Homebuyer notes, she crumpled bitterly into her chair. Mitchell Smith, a black man in his thirties, could not be Rodney. Barton Hebert, late thirties, white, bereaved, was not Rodney, either. Sweat dribbled to her waist.

  After a while, she lifted up again. She blotted under her chin with Kleenex as she scribbled over names Phelan had already crossed off. She lined up the piles of paper on her desk. All right, here they were, the uncrossed-off names, ones that had appeared on at least two lists.

  1. Wertman

  2. Sparrow

  3. Davies

  4. Anderson

  She swept her hair back from her sticky face, brushed off the stacks of papers for no reason at all. Then she reread aloud the notation beside Solomon Wertman on Mrs. Guidry’s list: “Passed a few years after the war, nice kids that moved west, Beaumont or Houston.”

  Delpha slid over her own book of Beaumont Yellow Pages, expecting nothing, and traced her finger through different columns of bold print. Antiques, Firearms, Gold, Coins. How had she not done this before? Probably because she was hell-or-high-water bent on arriving at this shortlist of final names. Now her finger was pressed directly on one Yellow Page name lest the print wriggle off the page.

  Wertman.

  Not Solomon, as on Mrs. Guidry’s list, but Herschel and Ruth. Not a common surname. Disappeared from New Orleans records in 1955. Xavier Bell claimed he had worked longer than that. Yeah, and why would they believe what he said?

  She touched her stomach: a new sizzle had begun.

  Would there be anything like finding something she’d gone cross-eyed looking for? Be every bit as fine as locating the size of Orleans Parish—or calculating costs on a tenderloin dinner. Provided she could ever pinpoint the right man.

  The door knocked. Delpha set down her pen and went to answer it, Phelan striding in from his office. “You don’t have to,” she said under her breath as she passed him.

  Phelan looked at his secretary then at the big, soaked handyman with the steel toolbox.

  “Calvin,” he said. “AC conked out.”

  Calvin tamped his whiskery upper lip and neck, stuffed a red rag back in his pocket, and stepped in, surrounded by a bold scent of vintage perspiration. He turned his head and nodded at Delpha. “Ma’am.”

  She opened the door wider, and Phelan followed the handyman’s wake into his office.

  “Hep me move your desk, Tom. Need some room to work.”

  “And we’re gonna give it to you.” Phelan took hold of the desk’s far end, and they walked it back to the wall.

  “Delpha, I got to go stir the bushes. I’m thinking you could run down the last two homebuyers. That OK? Good. Calvin, we’re outa here. Just close the door when you go. It’ll lock.”

  “Hell, I know that. I installed that lockset.”

  Phelan tipped his finger to Calvin, who had set down the toolbox and was pretending not to be looking toward Delpha.

  “But what about the phone?” she asked. Like it was a child they shouldn’t leave alone.

  Want us bad enough, they call back. That’s what Phelan thought—that’s what he wanted to think anyway—his business in demand, this business in demand—then he thought better. Might jinx it. From the day he’d had the door painted with his name, he’d eaten plenty of pintos. He shrugged at her question about the phone, tilted his head toward the door. Delpha swabbed her forehead with a Kleenex and got her purse.

  “Whew,” he said on the stairs, out of Calvin-range, waving his hand in front of his wrinkled-up nose. “Forgiveness is the fragrance of a violet on the heel of the one who crushed it.”

  Delpha turned sharply to him. “Who said that?”

  “Dear Abby.”

  They split up in the parking lot.

  XXV

  GOING ON DETAILS mentioned by Cheryl Sweeney, Phelan dedicated the afternoon to tourism. He viewed back roads bordered by reeds and seeping water, an eye out for a spot a boat might pull in, site near a highway. Some dock-like construction or posts to tie up to or even a shack or a trailer that’d hold supplies—and plenty of tire tracks.

  He roved the shores with a large cooler in the back seat.
Stopped at fish markets, food stands, fresh-catch tents near the water where pelicans lurked like hopeful hoodlums and men with few teeth and bloody hands chopped and gutted with expertise. Phelan sweated in the eighty-eight degree sunshine, blotted his forehead and let the breeze cool it. He feasted his eyes on the plenty.

  Mind-blowing plenty: fresh oysters in their rocky shells, blue live crabs and red cooked ones, mountains of beady-eyed crawdads, wide-mouthed catfish with their feelerlike mustaches, speckledy red-fish, red snappers that were sunset pink. Piles of ice and staring eyes and the glistening masterwork that was scales.

  Everybody stocked filé gumbo mix. Even fairly small outfits stocked a shelf of breadcrumbs, marinades, hot sauces, cocktail sauces. One big market featured a still life platter pretty as any bouquet: dollops of oysters, dollops of shells, disk of salmon topped by a fat little snapper, trailing stems of bright orange crab legs.

  But the star, what Phelan had come for, was shrimp: brown Gulf shrimp, jumbo Gulf shrimp, super jumbo Gulf shrimp, colossal Gulf shrimp. That was what Frank Sweeney had smelled like the last time he came home. Shrimp were connected to shrimp boats, which were connected to bodies of water, which connected land masses. If you didn’t yaw off into Cuba, it was a straight shot across the Gulf of Mexico and Caribbean Sea to Colombia. That was how Phelan had parsed the matter of Frank Sweeney. When he himself had come off an offshore rig, he did not smell like shrimp, he smelled like whatever he’d scrubbed with—Lava soap or Gent-L-Kleen. Besides, Cheryl had said her husband wasn’t working a rig.

  Phelan bantered wherever somebody would take the time to talk. Prompted people by bringing up boats, loads, making money. Listened. Bought shrimp. The cooler stacked up.

  Late in the afternoon, after some possibles—eye contact held too long or evaded altogether, a sour remark about some people being richer than Croesus—he’d stopped at an isolated roadside tent near High Island. The tent was set up on a road with a peeling sign that featured a flying red horse. Could have been less quick-draw with his wallet at the beginning of this trip—saved himself some bucks. Now he’d have to buy more shrimp.