Escape Clause

7

Virgil got up at seven o’clock, feeling that all was right with the world, though he knew it wasn’t, never had been, and never would be. Honus was sleeping between Virgil and Frankie, yawned, and made Virgil yawn, then Virgil slapped Frankie on her lightly garbed butt and went to get cleaned up.

The new bed was a complete success. His toes no longer hung over the end, and when he needed to dig them in, he could.

Frankie squeezed into the bathroom as he was getting out of the shower, stared at herself in the fogged-up mirror for a moment, then asked, “Why do I look better when the mirror is fogged up?”

Far too experienced to attempt an answer, Virgil said instead, “I hope those tigers are okay.”

Frankie yawned, stretched, and then rubbed the fog off the mirror with a squeak-squeak sound and asked, “You coming back tonight?”

“If I can. I’m gonna take my bag, though. You’ve got to walk the dog and feed him; I don’t have time this morning.”

“All right. Sparkle and Bill are over at the Castro factory,” Frankie said. “Probably right now. They want to talk to workers going through the gate.”

“You worried?”

“Yep. Me and Sparkle don’t see eye to eye, but I don’t want her to get hurt. Bill should give her some protection. I don’t think they’d beat up anybody with a witness around… would they?”

“I don’t know that they’d beat up anybody at all,” Virgil said. “Most companies will beat you up with lawyers and PR ladies, not with goons. Not anymore.”

“Well, this is old man Castro we’re talking about. He’s a throwback to the bad old days,” Frankie said.

“You’re sure Bill will be there?”

“Yeah, he speaks good Spanish, if Sparkle needs an interpreter.”

“Tell you what-I’ll swing by there, talk with them,” Virgil said. “If the company people see me around, maybe they’ll think twice.”

–

Virgil was on the highway at eight o’clock, listening to radio news programs out of the Twin Cities. The tigers were the first item.

“… the longer the tigers are missing, the more likely the outcome is to be tragic, according to experts on zoo thefts. We’re speaking to Dr. Randolph Bern of the American Association of Zoological Gardens. Good morning, Dr. Bern…”

Virgil didn’t think too much about the media, except to exploit them when he needed to. The media was like rain: when it was falling on your head, there wasn’t much you could do about it. Unless, of course, you were a bureaucrat, in which case you ran around in circles and threw your hands in the air and prepared statements, none of which accomplished anything.

Dr. Bern told him nothing he needed to know, so he switched to a country station and listened to Terry Allen sing “Bottom of the World,” a song he didn’t hear often enough. On the way north, he detoured off Highway 169 through Le Sueur, threaded his way across town and out into the countryside, where the Castro factory poked up like a brick thumb.

Virgil turned into the dusty parking lot and saw Father Bill leaning against the hood of Sparkle’s Mini Cooper Clubman, smoking a cigar. Virgil pulled up next to him and got out.

“Virgil,” Bill said, with his square-toothed Hemingway grin. “You look different with your clothes on.”

“Bill: Where’s Sparkle?”

“She’s inside. Some factory… functionary… came out and asked her what she was doing, talking to people,” Bill said. “She told him, and they invited her inside to talk to the manager. I wasn’t invited.”

“She okay?”

“I hope so. She does tend to bite off more than she can chew,” Bill said.

Virgil looked at the factory, which resembled something he imagined a medieval madhouse might look like, dirty-white window frames scattered around a four-story dark brick wall, with massive chimneys belching steam into the summer air.

Down at the far end of the building, trucks were unloading produce across receiving docks, and the odor of hot pickle and rotten vegetables mixed with truck diesel fumes and the smell of the corn maturing in the surrounding fields: altogether, the familiar and not entirely pleasant perfume of industrial agriculture. The smoke from Bill’s cigar didn’t help.

“Hostile place,” he said.

“The people going in looked pretty tough-beat-up, tired. Lots of illegals, I think,” Bill said. “Mostly women, here at the factory. Most of them weren’t interested in talking to us. The ones that did said that everything was just fine. Sparkle thought maybe I should wear my collar out here, but I wasn’t comfortable doing that. Not without thinking about it for a while.”

“People look scared at all?” Virgil asked.

“No, no. They looked tired, more than anything.”

“Huh.” They stood and looked at the factory for another minute, then Virgil gave Bill a business card with his private cell number on it, and said, “If there’s any kind of trouble, call me.”

“I will. I’ve got to be to work by four o’clock, so I’ve got to be out of here before the first shift ends. I think Sparkle will be coming back alone this afternoon,” Bill said. He blew smoke, then added, “I don’t think there’ll be any trouble here, at the plant. If they give her any trouble, it’ll be away from here.”

“Well, let me know,” Virgil said. He handed Bill a second card. “Give one to Sparkle.”

–

Virgil stopped at the zoo, talked to Landseer for a few minutes to see if anything interesting had come in-e-mails with tips, ransom notes, abject confessions. Nothing had.

“I’m frightened and quite depressed,” she said. “I think the tigers may be gone forever.”

“If it goes a week, I’d agree. If we can get a hint, a crack, anything, soon, then we might be able to save them. If this is an insider job or if an insider provided keys to the tiger areas, then we need to find and locate that guy,” Virgil told her. “I know that managers don’t like to do anything that would suggest to employees that you suspect them of wrongdoing…”

“I won’t do that, not without specific evidence,” she said.

“… but what I’d like you to do is to come up with a list of people you think would be most likely to be involved,” Virgil said. “You don’t have to write anything down, do it in your head. Maybe talk it over with somebody else you trust. Then we’ll call them together, and mix in a bunch of people you’re sure are not involved… in other words, make it a big meeting. I’ll give a talk about the investigation and see if we can generate some tips.”

“In other words, you want me to put the finger on a specific group of people, but disguise it so it looks like we’re talking to everybody,” Landseer said.

“Exactly right,” Virgil said. “That way, nobody feels oppressed or anything, but at the same time, we whisper in the ear of the guilty party… or somebody who knows who the guilty party is.”

“Ethically, I’m not sure how that differs from me giving you a list of people to harass,” Landseer said.

“Ethically, there might not be any theoretical difference, but nobody gets their feelings hurt and nobody sues you. There are some practicalities involved.”

Landseer thought it over for a few seconds, then said, “I want the tigers back.”

Virgil nearly bit his tongue off as he was about to blurt, “Atta girl,” but managed to abort the reaction and said instead, piously, “I think we all do. Our ethical positions have to take into consideration the impact our decisions will have on the tigers, with whose care we are entrusted.”

“You’re a very capable bullshitter,” Landseer said.

“Thank you.”

“When do you want to do it?” she asked.

“Soon as possible,” Virgil said.

“Lunchtime. Twelve noon.”

–

Virgil continued on to BCA headquarters in St. Paul, where he spent some time with the crime-scene crew, looking at what they’d gotten. The blood spot on the floor turned out to be human blood, and fresh.

“There wasn’t much. It was a superficial layer on the concrete, not soaked in,” Bea Sawyer told him. “It looked like somebody might have cut himself and a drop of blood hit the concrete. I’m thinking it could have happened when they were handling the tigers, all those teeth and claws.”

“Think they’d need treatment?”

She shrugged. “We’re only seeing one drop. He might’ve bled all over a tiger or wrapped the cut with a hanky or something, so there might be a lot of blood that we’re not seeing. Or it could be one drop. Not enough information to tell. We’ve got it in line for DNA processing, but you know what the line’s like.”

“Yeah.” The DNA-processing line was short enough that they’d have evidence for a trial, but long enough that it wouldn’t do much for solving the case, even if they eventually got a hit from the DNA database. “Why would you think anyone would wrap a cut with a hanky?”

“Well… to stop the bleeding.”

“But why with a hanky? Who do you know carries a hanky?” Virgil asked.

“It’s just an expression, Virgil,” Sawyer said.

“You know who wraps wounds with a hanky?” Virgil asked. “People on TV. Somebody gets cut on TV, they’ve got a hanky. In real life, no hanky. You need a different expression: wrapping the wound with toilet paper. Or Dunkin’ Donuts napkins. Something more intelligent than a hanky.”

“Right, I’ll put it on top of my lists of things to do,” Sawyer said. “Get new expression.”

“It’s like people getting hit with lead pipes,” Virgil continued. “Who gets hit with lead pipes? They haven’t made them for a hundred years. There aren’t any lead pipes around, except maybe in water mains, and water mains are way too big to hit anyone with. Copper pipes, steel pipes, iron pipes, plastic pipes-no lead pipes. Nobody gets hit with lead pipes.”

“I’ll write that in my book of Virgil Flowers tips,” Sawyer said, exasperated. “Now get out of my hair.”

–

Sandy, the researcher, saw him in the hallway, said she’d called several van-rental places, and there’d been a lot of vans out during the period that covered the thefts. Not all had been returned, but of those that had, nobody noticed any blood, tiger hair, or anything else unusual, and some of the vans had already been re-rented. She was compiling a list of names of the renters.

“The problem is, if they drove here from California or Washington, they might have rented the vans out there,” she told Virgil.

“Why would they be from California or Washington?”

“Because of where you find the traditional medicine shippers dealing with China. Those tigers could be in Salt Lake by now, if they’re on the back of a tractor-trailer.”

“Could you get me the names of these shippers?” Virgil asked.

–

Davenport called. He had a phone number for Toby Strait, his contact in the animal parts underworld. “His girlfriend said he’s hiding out from an animal rights activist who shot him last year.”

“I heard something about that… didn’t remember his name, though. The girlfriend didn’t have a phone number for him?”

“She says not, though she’s probably lying,” Davenport said. “She also told me that he’s moving away from black bear gallbladders and is focusing more on reticulated python skins. She says he can generate more volume with snakeskins with less personnel trouble.”

“Pythons? Where does he get them?”

“Mostly from former dairy farmers who’ve got heated barns,” Davenport said. “They feed them, grow them, kill them, and skin them. He deals the hides to Italy.”

“Minnesota dairy farmers are raising snakes? Sounds nasty,” Virgil said.

“It is nasty. Strait’s not a nice guy. And he’s a little fucked up right now. That animal rights woman shot him through both legs and he’s hobbling around. They let her out on bond and he thinks she’s looking to solve both her problems. If she shoots him through the heart next time, she gets rid of an animal abuser and the primary witness for the first shooting.”

“You think she’s really doing that? Hunting him down?”

“Wouldn’t be surprised,” Davenport said. “Her name’s Maxine Knowles and she lives somewhere up by Monticello. You better find him quick. You know, before she does.”

–

Sandy came back: “Got a name for you. Biggest shipper out of the U.S. Name is Ho, and he works out of Seattle.”

Virgil found an empty conference room that was quiet and private and called Ho. The call was answered by a woman with a soft, high-pitched voice that sounded like a child’s. She had a musical Asian accent. “Can I tell Mr. Ho who’s calling?”

Virgil identified himself, and she said, “One moment, please. I will see if Mr. Ho is in his office.”

Ho was in his office, all right, Virgil thought, as he sat listening to an orchestra version of the Beatles’ “Eleanor Rigby,” but was trying to concoct a reasonable lie about being somewhere else, out of touch.

To Virgil’s mild surprise, Ho came up. His voice carried no trace of any accent except maybe UCLA computer science. “This is Ho. We know nothing about it. I wouldn’t touch a tiger with a ten-foot pole. Or even a ten-foot Ukrainian.”

“Who would?”

“I don’t know. What kind of numb-nuts would kidnap a couple of endangered-list tigers? You gotta know that the cops’ll be hunting you down like you were a rabid skunk. I’d suggest you go look for lunatics and don’t call Ho.”

“Mr. Ho, uh… what’s your first name?”

“Dick.”

“Dick… really? Okay, I understand that tiger parts are used in traditional Chinese medicine.”

“That’s correct-but they don’t get the tiger parts from me. Or from anywhere in the States. Most of what’s sold in the States as tiger product comes from something else-God only knows what. Maybe alley cats. Anyway, it’s all fake. If the feds catch you shipping tiger parts into the States, you’re looking at three to five in Victorville. If you were shipping them out, and they were stolen from a zoo, you’d probably get the needle.”

“Which would maybe be one reason to kidnap a tiger in the States and keep it here?”

“Might be a reason, but it’s not a sane one. It’s crazy,” Ho said.

“But that’s what happened here. Since you deal in traditional medicine… are there people in Minnesota that would be knowledgeable in the area of traditional medicine? That you know and work with? That I could talk to?”

“Yes.” Long pause. “You didn’t hear this from me.”

“Okay.”

“Let me get my list up.” Virgil heard the rattle of a keyboard, then Ho came back: “Talk to four people. Dr. Winston Peck, MD, in St. Paul; India Healer Sandra S. A. Gupti-Mack in Minneapolis; Carolyn C. Monty-McCall, PhD, in Apple Valley; and Toby Strait of Owatonna. I can get you those addresses and phone numbers…”

“A couple people have mentioned Toby Strait,” Virgil said. “You think…?”

“No. Not Toby himself. Don’t tell anyone I told you this, but Toby looks at animals the way most people would look at a turnip or a cabbage. Killing doesn’t bother him. But he’s not a reckless businessman. If somebody offered him a couple of tigers, he’d do the calculation, and then he’d step back. He wouldn’t have any moral problem with killing a couple of rare tigers, but he’d see the practical problems. He’d know that if he got caught, he’d get no mercy from anyone.”

“All right. Give me those addresses and phone numbers, if you could.”

Ho produced them, and Virgil said, “Thank you,” as he wrote them down, then Ho asked, “Say, where’d you get my name?”

“Internet,” Virgil said.

“Of course. Why’d I even ask?”

–

The noon meeting at the zoo was crowded with employees, many of them in blue employee uniform shirts, with a necktie here and there. A rumbling conversation continued even after Landseer rapped on a microphone with a steel ballpoint, and finally a guy stood up and shouted, “Everybody shut up.”

Landseer said, “Thank you, Ed,” to the man, who sat down again as the talk died, and Landseer said simply, “I called this meeting so that the state agent can talk to you about the theft of the tigers. His name is Virgil Flowers and he has an exceptional record of solving major crimes, so we have high hopes he’ll get our tigers back. Agent Flowers…”

–

Virgil got up and gave his talk, and said in part, “I’m sure you’ve all heard some of the details of the way the tigers were taken out of here, probably on a dolly of some sort, maybe like the flat ones that furniture movers use. You’ve probably heard that the catnappers cut holes in the fence to get into the holding areas, or whatever you call them. You may not have heard that they didn’t cut through the lock on the gate. The lock is a good one, and we don’t believe it was picked. The thieves had a key, and the key had to come from inside the zoo. They either stole it, or somebody gave the key to the thieves. We’re hoping somebody here in the room will know of a way the key could have been stolen, might have seen some unauthorized person in the gear closet where the keys are kept, or might have heard of some unauthorized use of the keys by somebody here in the zoo. We’re not asking you to rat out a friend-we’re asking you to help us trace the key to whoever has the tigers. We need to do this quickly. Some people think the tigers may have been stolen for use in traditional Chinese medicine, which would mean killing them.”

A man asked, “Why do you think it’s Chinese medicine? Seems to me more likely that it might be anti-zoo activists.”

Virgil said, “We’re looking at those people, but there’re not many of them, and whatever they say in their literature, they don’t have a record of doing things like this. They’re more likely to chain themselves to the entry gate. We think somebody did this purely for the payday. The only way there’ll be a big payday is if the animals are processed for medicine.”

There were a few more questions and some grumbling and Virgil finished by asking for tips at the BCA website: “There’s a click-on link at the top of the page that says, ‘Select a popular function.’ If you click on that, you’ll find a link called ‘Provide a tip.’ You can do it anonymously. Mention my name or the tigers. At this point, we’d appreciate any help we can get.”

Landseer took the microphone back and said, “We need to get this done in a hurry, people. If you know anything at all, or even suspect something, please, please call Agent Flowers or leave a tip.”

–

When everybody had shuffled out of the meeting room, Landseer asked, “What do you think?”

“Hard to tell. Not a lot of enthusiasm, but all I need is one guy who saw something,” Virgil said.