Hummingbird Salamander(74)

I built up a portrait of the husband as a good guy, a humble guy. A guy who was a little boring. Who people liked because he was a little boring. There are worse things than being a little boring. Although not many.

Where I could, I walked, despite the pain. The cold was good. Being wrapped in a greatcoat was good. The pale haze of the winter sky, the enrapturing mountains and forests peering down—all good, all so normal.

I usually stopped talking to people when I felt the compulsion to say “I’ve got a giant salamander in my room no one’s ever seen before.”

I usually stopped talking when I felt the need to start sharing anything. It happened. I may have come to realize I was a loner posing as someone normal. But I still needed to connect to people. Share with them, out of politeness. And I hadn’t made enough fictions about the private eye I was pretending to be. My background was paper thin so I wouldn’t slip up. Because it changed so often.

The doctor who had taken the bullet out of my shoulder in the back of his not-antiseptic van had said, “You’re lucky it jammed up against the muscle. You’re lucky it wasn’t higher caliber. You’re lucky you found me when you did.”

But was I?

One thing I liked to do in a case like this is talk, under some pretense, to the mark. My car was so close to being junk in a scrapyard, I clearly needed a new one. Why not visit the husband at his job? I liked the comforting risk in that. I’d resisted only because Nora had been so insistent.

It made it feel like a bad lead. Too familiar.



* * *



Hellmouth texted me again while I ate a lousy chicken sandwich in the parking lot of Turtle Fred’s. It should’ve been comfort food, but the grease smelled like the skin I’d covered myself in against the flames. The crackle and snap of the pockets of fat.

I forced most of it down, tossed the rest out of the window, phone beeping.

>>Good afternoon, Jill. Want to meet up?

Me: No. I’m booked. But I have a question.

>>I probably don’t have an answer.

Me: Langer and Vilcapampa: how did that work? Before it went sour?

The evidence circumstantial, perhaps coincidental, but …

>>The usual way. Part of it worked. They both saw themselves as humanitarians. As people who understand the way the world worked.

Me: Deluded.

>>You don’t understand Langer. He began to see himself as an anarchist. Someone changing the world order.

Me: By killing animals?

>>Just the means. One set of means. Allowed him access to a forbidden world, rogue scientists, rogue players. The ones he thought would actually make a difference.

Me: Vilcapampa?

>>Vilcapampa made his early money off drugs and smuggling live animals for the exotics trade. Never totally got free of that, really.

Me: Another reason to be vague about the past.

>>And Langer got Vilcapampa illegal big game hunts. That sort of thing. Arranged it.

Me: A real humanitarian.

>>Like the devil is a humanitarian.

Me: And where do you fall in that spectrum?

>> And it was a while before Vilcapampa’s people realized they were in too deep with Langer. With Contila.

In that lack of answer about the Devil, I knew I should see the answer. It was right there, staring from the darkness, but I just couldn’t see it. Decided to pivot.

Me: Agency?

>>Pardon?

Me: You decide.

>>Clever. Langer had agency for a time, a clear agenda. A kind of Robin Hood. Help the poor, hurt the government, corporations.

Me: And who do you work for? Vilcapampa?

I knew he didn’t. Just wanted a reaction.

>>I forget. It escapes me.

Me: And Langer and Silvina?

>>It worked the usual way. All the parts fit just fine.

It took me a moment to process that. To understand Hellmouth meant Silvina and Langer had slept together. I began to type my surprise, thought better of it. Started over.

Me: And Silvina was drawn to, what, his sexy anarcho-sociopath qualities?

>>More that love-hate thing.

Me: Physical, then.

>>Very. You should see the surveillance photos.

Me: Show me.

>>Voyeur! Kinky. But I don’t have them anymore. Just trust me.

Considered that a moment. Didn’t trust it. In what capacity would he have been privy to the intel? Felt, again, like a fed thing. Or Hellmouth had had a mole.

Me: She thought she’d turn him. Convince him. Use the Robin Hood impulse to pry him wide open.

>>Why do you care? It must bother you. Why does it bother you, Jilly?

Me: Don’t call me that … Then they split up.

>>Obviously. Silvina dumped him.

Me: Would you have slept with me?

>>Field work. Magic. Who do you work for?

So that made him uncomfortable. Good.

Me: No one.

>>Are you sure?

Me: What do you want?

>>Want or need?

Me: What is your purpose?

>>What. Is. Robot’s. Purpose.

Me: Yes.

>>

Me: Well?

>>Purpose is overrated. Along with mission statements. You know Larry died in the hospital, right? Allie’s gone missing.

Me: Was that you?

>>No, that was us. Working together.