Stuffed Read online

  Angie and I, oddballs that we are, have resisted the urge to spawn and replicate. We’re self-employed. Free spirits. The Brood Crew likes to imply that we care more about personal freedom than money, kids, and family. Which is true. So what’s wrong with that? We eat out whenever we want without having to get a sitter. To each his own, I say.

  I’d made reservations for Angie’s birthday at Anglers & Co., a chic seafood place on Hudson where she’d always been keen to dine. But no sooner did we sit down than her eye latched on to the dandy Atlantic salmon mounted on the wall opposite her. She scrutinized me as I innocently checked out my menu.

  “Don’t tell me—” she began.

  “Good evening, Mr. Carson.” The manager interjected, hand on my shoulder. “Everybody has said how much better the new fish looks. You were right. The old one looked—”

  “Let me guess?” Angie fanned herself with a menu. “Like it was baked over an open fire and spackled to a plank?”

  The manager spread his arms. “Just so,” he chortled. “I’ve told the waiter no check, just tip, okay? Enjoy.”

  “Garth, you’re impossible.” Angie grinned reluctantly, and immersed herself in the menu.

  “Order anything you want.” I tried to suppress a marplot’s smile. “Drinks included.”

  Then the birthday surprise. I took Angie dancing at Mud Bug Bar & Grille over on Third Avenue. It had a zydeco band that did Little Feat and Professor Longhair. It was a spacious, high-ceilinged club, decorated with discarded Mardi Gras float figures. Big barrels of peanuts sat at either end of the bar, and as the evening progressed, the floor became awash in peanut shells like some bayou roadhouse. Sunday night the place got pretty crowded, so much so that a trip to the bathroom for Angie was a fifteen-minute sojourn. It was during just such a break, while I was sitting alone at our table, cooling off with a Dixie beer after dancing, that an Asian man in yuppie duds and an effervescent mood settled into the chair next to me.

  “Hi, Garth!”

  I extended my hand slowly, no idea who this guy was. But he had a warm smile, a broad cheery manner, and looked like the kind of guy I’d like to know. Though the pro-shop togs made me wonder. So did his pencil-thin mustache, which wasn’t visible until he was up close. He smelled vaguely of cloves.

  “You don’t know me. Jim Kim is the name.”

  “Really?”

  “I saw that piece on you in the Times a while back. About taxidermy rentals.”

  “Good memory. That was over two years ago.”

  “Yeah, well, I also know a guy who rented from you once.”

  “You don’t say? Who?”

  “A guy . . .” Kim snapped his fingers. “Can’t think of the name, imagine that. Anyway, I hear you have quite a collection of taxidermy. Do you sell as well as rent?”

  A potential customer, so I figured I ought to be a little less guarded. “Yes, I do. Are you looking for something in particular?”

  Kim smirked at me. “Some people I know are looking for a white crow.”

  There was something odd in the way he said it, and I studied his face for some menace at his core but couldn’t cut through the veneer of his clubhouse bonhomie. Finally, I said, “Don’t see many of them.”

  “I hear you just got one in.”

  I sat forward. “Now, how would you know that?”

  “A guy told me.” He shrugged. “You know, that guy, can’t remember his name.”

  “Okay, so what’s this all about, Kim?” I locked onto his eyes a moment, hoping to fathom his intent in the dark recesses. Bupkes. “You’re obviously pulling my leg here.”

  Jim clapped me on the shoulder. “It’s all about the white crow, and how these people want it, and how I think you ought to give it to them.”

  “Give?”

  Kim gave his mustache a sly rub. “It might be better to give it to them rather than have them take it by force.”

  A vermicular chill wriggled up my neck and bounced around between my temples. “Just what are you trying to say? And what’s so funny?”

  “I apologize, really, but it’s hard not to see the humor in it. That’s just my nature, my morbid sense of humor. And no, Garth, I’m not threatening you. I’m just giving you some sound advice. I’m on your side in this, really. Gotta go.” He gave me a jolly salute and slid back into the crowd.

  I scanned the papier mâché Mardis Gras harlequins grinning down from the ceiling. Their joyeux now seemed sinistre, like they knew some dark secret I didn’t. Had Kim really just been there, or was he a specter, presage’s embodiment, like a Greek chorus? Or was he just some loopy apparition brought on by the planter’s punch and too many peanuts? You know, like Marley’s ghost brought on by a blot of mustard.

  “Hey, pumpkin.” Angie plunked down next to me in the booth. “What’s wrong?”

  I had a quick debate with myself and decided not to tell Angie about Jim Kim. I guess I thought it might put a damper on the evening, and it seemed like it would keep until the next day. Or until I could make sense of it. Sink her teeth into puzzle pie like that and we’d be up all night working it over. Remember the Times crossword? Can’t put it down until it’s done. So occasionally I have to try to steer her away from such things, if nothing else so I can get some sleep.

  “Just tired, I guess. Shall we split?”

  “Yeah, I have stuff to do tomorrow.” There are a lot of weddings in June, and Angie had to fill an order of eighty diamond solitaires and some pavé work. She does some of her own design, but her bread is buttered by piecework for art jewelers and the stray factory job.

  Normally, we would have done the twenty-minute walk home, but since it was her birthday, we grabbed a cab and were home in five minutes. The front shop door is sealed and we always enter via the adjoining apartment lobby through two locking vestibule doors. There’s a side entrance into our apartment tucked back under the stairwell opposite the basement door. When we arrived home that night we displayed our usual wariness of dark corners and potential lurking muggers. New York isn’t so openly dangerous anymore, but you still have to have your Spidey Sense about you at night. Make out someone tracking you, either from behind or from across the street, and you have to take evasive maneuvers: Walk in the street between parked cars and moving traffic, where the tracking mugger will be shy of being exposed in the headlights. Or sometimes, if you just stop and stare him down, he’ll realize the element of surprise is no longer on his side and go looking for less-suspecting prey. If I’m walking with Angie, the thing to do is for us to drift farther apart so the hunter can’t corner us together, thus frustrating his decision about which of us to target. His window of opportunity is usually pretty small, less than thirty seconds before the quarry is back in the safety of the pedestrian herd at a well-lit intersection.

  We instinctively drifted apart, checking the perimeter as we approached the door. They sometimes like to pounce while you’re preoccupied unlocking the door and collecting the mail. But the coast was clear. We entered the vestibule and stepped into the hall.

  Safe at home.

  “Hold it, hold it!” A husky, masked figure emerged from the basement door, which is usually locked. He was pointing a pistol at me, and my first thought was that it had to be fake. Then it occurred to me that a toy gun in New York is almost harder to come by than a real one.

  Angie slid behind me, and I just stammered, my heart sinking like a gazelle surrounded by lions.

  “I’ll kill you, I’ll friggin’ kill you.” Husky started waving the gun, I guess in response to the stupid grin on my face. I snorted, still grasping at the notion that this wasn’t really happening. I wonder if a cornered gazelle ever experiences denial. Then I turned and saw two more masked men. All of them wore jeans, black pea coats, and ski masks—must’ve been a sale at the army surplus store.

  All I could think to say was “What are you, nuts?”

  A hand grabbed me by my shirt collar from behind, and I hissed from the sting of fingernails scratching my
neck.

  “What’s that, pardner?” The voice behind me was raspy, vicious and yet mischievous, like a desperado robbing a stagecoach.

  “You’re crazy, we don’t . . .”

  I turned, straining against the grip on my shirt. The whites of his eyes turned red, and he smacked me in the head with a gun. Take it from me, don’t try this at home, kids—getting gun-whipped hurts like sin.

  Angie yelped louder than I did. I was bent over with blood running off my scalp and down my arm, the vision of warm red fluid dripping from my elbow making me a little woozy. Nice mouth, Garth.

  Next I got a kick in the ribs, my hair was pulled, and I fell over on the floor. There was arguing among the attackers. Even with the imp of agony dancing on my skull, I was reminded of the stagecoach robbery scene from The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance. I was James Stewart, naive lawyer from the East, confronted with the business end of Lee Marvin’s bullwhip. I seemed to recall that “Duke” Wayne didn’t come to the rescue then either.

  “Back off, man, back off!” This third intruder had an accent, a brogue of some kind. I didn’t remember Father Duffy being part of Liberty Valance’s gang.

  “I’ll wup this shit seven ways from Sunday!” Lee Marvin couldn’t have delivered the line better.

  “Christ, let’s not have another stiff!” Brogue implored. “He’s down, can’t y’ see?”

  C’mon, Duke! Where are you? If only somehow, by some miracle . . .

  I heard Angie shriek, “Stop!”

  “Shut her up!” There was the sound of Angie struggling.

  I wheeled around, fresh hormones flooding my noggin with the imperative to protect her. That’s when I felt another blow to my side, and then to my head again. Next thing I knew I was looking up, and the world was fading purple. Now the three ski-masked men, one holding Angie by the neck, stood over me.

  “What is it you want?” Angie yelped. “Garth, stay down, darn it! Anything . . .”

  “Open the door, dang it,” one of the bandits barked. “Hear?”

  Raspy put his foot on my head, pushed me back down. “Next time, fellah, you watch your mouth. Who’s crazy now, huh?”

  He had me there, all right. Only an idiot or a lunatic sasses a man with a gun, and I preferred being bonkers—at least there’s some hope for a cure. I’d pretty much resigned myself to the ugly reality that we were completely at their mercy and there wasn’t a damn thing I could do about it. Duke wasn’t going to show. A policeman wasn’t going to peer in the front door. I’m not what you’d call a religious person, but at a moment like that, you find yourself praying, the last resort of the helpless. Or in my case, the hapless. If God wanted me to go to church, sacrifice goats, proselytize on subway cars, or hand out pamphlets in Penn Station, I’d do it if he’d just get us out of this.

  I was trying to keep my eyes trained on Angie, watching to see if one of them laid a hand on her, when I saw a fourth figure—a tall, broad one—appear from around the corner. No army surplus here. He wore an oversize hooded sweatshirt, his face obscured by shadow. But I could see the glint from his eyes, two bright stars, and I could feel the intensity of his stare. My heart skipped a beat: He looked like the Grim Reaper. I didn’t suppose he’d let me have a go at playing him in chess.

  The others looked to him, as though waiting for instructions, but the Reaper said nothing.

  I heard Angie fumbling with her keys and our front door scrape open.

  “Into the basement, lady,” Raspy commanded. “Throw him in the basement too. Now.”

  Husky started pulling my hair.

  “I’ll take him!” Angie protested. “We’ll go, just don’t hurt—”

  “Shut up—”

  I heard a slap, and then felt myself sliding on my back down the stairs, my jacket cushioning the trip only slightly. A door slammed and we were left in the dark. I heard Angie crying. Maybe I passed out for a minute or two, it was hard to tell. I could smell the emulsifier that the caribou antlers were soaking in, the cedar oil we spray on the mounts to moth-proof them. Well, at least Otto had been busy while we were out. The next I knew, Angie had me cradled in her arms, and she was holding something to my head to staunch the bleeding. I could hear her sniffling, felt a tear hit my face, heard her heart pounding in her chest. My legs were still partially on the basement steps. One of my feet felt cooler than the other, and I could feel the sock down around my toes. I waved my foot in the air in a vain attempt to see what was going on with my foot.

  “Where’s my shoe?” Hapless, hopeless, and now slaphappy. “I had two.”

  “Shhh,” she said back to me. “When they’re gone . . .” Angie left it at that.

  I may have passed out again, but suddenly light flooded the basement, and in a blur I could see the stairs leading up to the doorway. Angie shifted and started to pull me away from the stairs. I think she thought it was the attackers again. But I saw my naked foot and a very distinctive silhouette creep into the open doorway.

  “Oo, my Got! Garv! Yangie! Not lookink!”

  Chapter 4

  Even though there’s a lot of nice domestic wildlife taxidermy around and a healthy market in commercial interior decoration, I can’t deal in top-of-the-line exotics. The dinguses in demand by folks with bushels of money I’m not allowed to sell. Like lions, tigers, polar bears, and over a thousand other species listed in parts 17 and 23 of CFR 50, a rule book written by thirty-six countries through an authority known as the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species and Wild Flora and Fauna (CITES). However, this doesn’t necessarily keep me from owning them, provided I submit U.S. Fish and Wildlife form 3-200 and receive approval in the form of a permit. And it doesn’t keep me from renting or “lending” them for commercials or photo shoots. And it doesn’t necessarily keep me from buying and selling them, provided said merchandise is packing a New York State Department of Environmental Conservation form 82-19-21 certifying it was harvested legally before 1974, though taxidermy with “papers” isn’t as common as it should be. And if I want to sell an endangered or protected piece I bought in New York in Maine, I need a comparable permit from the other state. Welcome to the taxidermy paper mill.

  In order to sell endangered animals killed after 1974, even if they were road kill, you basically have to prove it’s being used for educational purposes. I have an easier time acquiring such pieces because I supply schools, museums, and tourist traps that pass for museums. But usually such institutions aren’t real moneymakers and can’t pay what the things are worth—i.e., what the black market would pay or what pieces with “paper” would get on the open market.

  The pelts of some endangered species have considerable value on the black market. Some folks ignore CITES authority and sell ivory, crocodile leather, and exotic pelts permit-free to private collectors. I’ve crossed paths with shadowy types who deal both on the fringes and in the fold of this black market, and they have a compelling incentive for continuing their crimes: money. And not just from pelts and rugs but from animal eviscerae. Asian apothecaries turn all manner of animal vestiges into costly folk medicine, and while some of it’s taken legally from bears by hunters, a lot of it is taken whenever and however. Machine-gunning hibernating bears in their dens is one popular method. Then there’s rhino horn and tiger penis, which are never in season but can be purchased just the same, though usually you’re just being sold very expensive ground arrowroot. Aside from the devastating effect this sleazy activity has on biodiversity, it’s an inexcusably rapacious crime that might just put me and PETA in the same lynch mob.

  The reason Big Bro makes it such a pain to collect endangered and protected species, even those taken before the ban on captive animals, is fairly obvious. A legal market for the stuff would encourage even more poaching, which is already alarmingly common. Now, I’m not sympathetic with those who think nothing of making animals extinct to alleviate lumbago or to sport a nifty wrap at the club social. By the same token, I take a dim view of zoos or “conservat
ion parks”—habitat penitentiaries that amount to animal jail. But I can’t help but commiserate with those who want to collect animals freed by natural death or harvested legally, a dignified end for some of Mother Nature’s most exquisite creations. Taxidermy is the ultimate form of flattery.

  Be that as it may, I was less than disposed to the assault team that ransacked my collection and smacked us around. After a chat with a couple uniformed cops, I paid a visit to the hospital for stitches to my scalp, an X-ray, and a sleepless night. The next morning found me at home, playing host to Agent Renard, a plainclothes ECO (Environmental Control Officer) from the New York State Department of Environmental Conservation. He was a balding and tawny black guy with reading glasses and the disposition of an indifferent schoolmaster. Only by virtue of the fact that I’m a longtime New Yorker, exposed to every conceivable ethnic variety, could I venture to say his clipped, lilting accent was West Indian—Haitian, perhaps.

  Also enjoying my hospitality was a New York City Police Department detective named Walker, who looked on with distaste. I knew him from our local precinct. That is to say, he had been gently harassing me for years, convinced that my entrepreneurial bent with taxidermy was somehow a crooked enterprise. Police have always just seemed to have an innate feeling that I’m up to no good, ever since I was a kid. With my younger brother, Nick, it was even worse, though in his case it was justified. And I did have a great-uncle who was a bank robber. Maybe it’s genetics—I got the felon’s pheromones but not the inclination. Walker had gotten a rotten whiff off me right from our first encounter.

  Angie sat on the couch, hunched glumly over a cup of tea, holding an ice pack to her bruised cheek. I had an ice pack of my own clamped over the back of my head where I’d been gun-whipped. But I was too agitated to sit and paced back and forth in front of Fred. Even though he’s a fairly valuable African piece, I guess the attackers figured he was too cumbersome to grab quickly. I should really have him spring-loaded, so whenever an intruder enters, Fred lurches forward and scares the bejesus out of them. I can still picture those trick-or-treaters running down the dark driveway.