Hummingbird Salamander(56)

I couldn’t see the gym from my position, just the lonely parking lot streetlamp that I used to park beneath. Rationed my double Jack and Coke, ate some bar peanuts. It smelled like piss from the bathrooms, but the reek just kept me sharp, focused.

Ronnie Simpson. Apparently, an Olympic-caliber swimmer in addition to reformed ecoterrorist. Unitopia still in my head. A kind of sourness of regret. Maybe I still had a cage around my brain that Silvina hadn’t pried open yet. Because I thought in that moment about the wasted potential. How with Vilcapampa company resources behind her, Silvina might’ve done more good. Instead, she was dead, and all I could find of her were people like Langer and Ronnie.

My work phone beeped. A text.

>>I don’t have eyes on you. You just disappeared. Where did you go?

Hellbender. Such a swell of satisfaction that he couldn’t find me. That my precautions worked. That I had no need to answer.

But maybe I shouldn’t have had the double drink. Because I didn’t put the phone down. You just disappeared. The niggling thing in the back of my head. Something about the exact moment Ronnie had jumped me and fled, what I’d been saying. I hadn’t put it together before, it hadn’t registered. I could berate myself a lifetime, all the things I missed. All the stupid things I did notice.

Stared at my work phone for a moment. Tried to think through the potential risk. But everything was nearly over, right?

I dialed the number.

Fusk answered on the first ring, surprising me, and his hello was as steeped in whisky as my reply.

“Hey, you leathery old bastard.”

“Who’s this?”

“You know. The detective who wasn’t. The one you said should stay away from Silvina. You were right.”

“You’re still alive.”

“Sort of. Hey, Fusk, I have a question.”

“You’re drunk.”

“So are you, so we’re even.”

I heard a husk of a laugh at that. Or maybe I imagined it.

Even from that distance, I could see the death-swirl of insects around the lamppost across the street.

A sigh, long, drawn out. “Ask your question?”

That made me sit up from my slouch. “Wait. Really? You’re not going to hang up?”

“What’s the point now.”

A new refrain you heard a lot. And not just in bad country-western songs in bars.

“Fusk, did you know Ronnie? Actually know her, not just know of her?”

“I told you I didn’t.”

“One mention of your name over at Unitopia and she knocked the gun out of my hand and jumped in the water and I never saw her again.”

“Oh yeah?” But something in his voice had changed.

“Yeah.”

“So what if I did?”

Silence, through which I could hear a lot of police sirens and people chanting or shouting. Protesters? Protesting what this time?

“For Silvina,” he said finally. “I didn’t know it was for her. It was all under the table, you know? Ronnie was the one who came to me. I only found out later who she worked for.”

I couldn’t sit still. Had to pace my prison, cluttered as it was with pool tables. Circumnavigate those green, rectangular islands. Swivel, repeat.

“What, exactly, did she bring you?”

“A hummingbird and a salamander. Six years ago.”

“What condition?”

“Pardon?” It must be hard to hear over the noise in the street.

“What condition were they in? Did they come in a cooler or dried out or what?”

“Both came in separate coolers. The hummingbird was in pristine condition. The salamander … I couldn’t tell if it was fresh or thawed, to be honest.”

I stopped pacing. “You mean you got the sense the hummingbird at least had been alive recently?”

“Yes.”

“What kind of salamander?”

“I dunno. Big, though. Really big. More like an iguana.”

I felt like an electric charge had gone through my body.

“Can you describe it?”

“Why does it matter?”

“Humor me, Fusk.”

“Already doing that. Well, it looked like a salamander. Blackish brown. Yellow stripes. Don’t know much about amphibians except they’re a pain to prepare.”

Racing stripes. Another thing to look up. But another thought made my head explode. The hummingbird. By then, they would’ve been extinct in the wild. Where had Silvina found a living one? Or was Fusk wrong, and it had just been brought to him well-preserved?

“But you must’ve looked at photos or done a search, right? You must have known it was probably as rare as the hummingbird?”

“Doesn’t pay to look too hard. You should know that by now.”

Wasn’t sure I believed he hadn’t known.

“And Ronnie. What did Ronnie say about the job? Anything about why they needed taxidermy made from them.”

“Not at first. I just did the job, took the money, and Ronnie came and picked them up one day. About two months later.”

“And then?” I prompted. “What happened next?”

“About a year later, Ronnie dropped by again. She’d dyed her hair, which I thought was strange, and was wearing sunglasses in the store and a big hat. That made me nervous.”