Hummingbird Salamander(94)

The lantern made his face crooked, febrile. Took away the redness. I could almost imagine he was the attractive man from the bar.

“Senseless anyway. I should’ve known better. How big a hole can you put in the world to kill it dead? You can’t. Whatever Silvina wanted to do—virus, bomb, whatever. It’s already done. We did it to ourselves. We’re always doing it to ourselves. And first rule of dealing with wildlife traffickers: they do not give a fuck about anything. Except money. Except Langer. Who thought he had a soul. What love does to you. What love deforms.”

“Sociopaths have souls?”

“Don’t be cute,” he said. “Shut up and drink your rum…”

Don’t be cute.

Langer, being interrogated by someone at a federal agency. The pages Allie had given me of the transcript. Mr. Redacted had used that wording, more than once. “Don’t be cute, Langer.”

“You ran Langer,” I said. “But why? What was Contila?”

“Eh? Says who. Who says I ran Langer?”

I ignored that.

“Agency-wide or just you solo?”

Hellmouth Jack gave me a look of respect that made me shudder inside.

“Jilly! You are a detective. Sort of. Okay, let’s do this. If you can answer this riddle. Tell me: what’s bigger than a breadbox and smaller than a breadbox?”

“So not agency-wide, but not just you.”

He looked at me sideways like a crow. “You’re not supposed to solve that riddle.”

“Maybe I just understand you.”

He’d picked up his gun, like I’d insulted him. No one was supposed to understand the great Hellmouth. Then he put it down, took a swig of rum.

“Langer worked with Vilcapampa on all sorts of import-export ventures. Through Contila. I was ambitious, wanted to make my mark. I thought, ‘Why create some fake company? Why not just use Contila?’ So we did. We got dirt on the CFO and took it over and tried to embroil Vilcapampa in shadier and shadier shit, some of which involved wildlife trafficking. Wasn’t like they hadn’t done it before.”

“A sting.”

Flash of anger. “More elaborate than a sting. Less contrived. Would’ve had political consequences. I would have had quite the career.”

“Silvina met Langer because you were going after Vilcapampa Senior.”

“More that I thought Silvina could give up Vilcapampa Senior. But by the time I knew Senior kept her at arm’s length … it was too late. She’d forged her own alliances, used Contila her own way, and blew everything up. Figuratively. I had to clean house.”

“What happened on the beach, before that? That week on the beach. Langer was hurt by you. Damaged.”

The smirk to avoid anything real. “Oh, we had a fun time that week. Maybe by the end, they thought they were going to change the world. Maybe they thought we were fast friends. But it’s not my fault I’m a good actor.”

“Better for Langer if he hadn’t truly been an idealist.” In his way.

Silver tongue. The smooth exchange. Made them laugh, maybe. Some kin to grudging respect. The things they said to each other. Langer against the system. Silvina convinced she could strike a blow against her family. Hellmouth the one who could make it happen, as if his presence made it easier for Silvina to be with Langer. Or see Langer’s point of view. Like I was trying to glean Silvina from Langer, from Hellmouth.

“And sometime later Silvina needed money and went to Langer.”

Hellmouth Jack leered. “Awkward conversation, right? Since their fling had fizzled out. I was still running Langer in the ruins of Contila and covering up what I could because by then what was left of Contila was, ironically, a real criminal enterprise—the networks and all the rest. Exactly what we’d tried to stop. And, then, in time, I lost control of Langer, too.”

I could imagine why. A cascading series of failures had sidelined Hellmouth. And the interest and energy went elsewhere. Maybe Vilcapampa Enterprises had even found a way to nudge that along.

“What about the warehouse?”

“A Frankenstein monster. A nightmare. Mostly stuff we planned to sell through Contila and Langer to get to the big players, like Vilcapampa. Wound up under Vilcapampa control. It wasn’t Silvina’s. But they didn’t know what to do with it. She just knew about it, and then when she needed money, she and Ronnie disappeared it in that clever way of moving it from one abandoned Vilcapampa property to another. Thought they could use it. But it was just another albatross.”

“How did Silvina get hold of the salamander?”

“I don’t know.” Irritated. Just like that his mood shifted. The salamander bothered him.

“Take a guess?” I prodded.

But Hellmouth Jack wasn’t interested in answering any more questions. He drank more rum, stared out toward the horizon.

“Nothing like fresh mountain air! Invigorating.” He turned to look at me, much as a crow would a mouse. “So, what would you have done if you found it. Silvina’s secret? If you were up here alone?”

“I have explosives in the car.” I’d booby-trapped the trunk. Maybe Hellmouth Jack would find out the hard way.

His face lit up, eyebrows raised. “A bomb to destroy a bomb. Smart.”

“It might make more sense than you know.”