Everything but the Squeal

At three I called him back. “Talk or listen,” I said. “You won't like what you hear if you decide to listen.”

“She gave me twenty-five percent,” he said, “and she took over the books. So how do I know what's really twenty-five percent? And she made me responsible for obedience school.”

And you enjoyed it, too, I thought. But what I said was, “It doesn't sound like enough.”

“Fifty percent wouldn't have been enough.”

“So why did you accept?”

“She had these big ideas,” he said. “Go interstate. Find a new distribution system. Stop dealing in Hollywood, where you might get busted, and expand your horizons. That was her phrase, expand your horizons. Get the kids here and send them there.”

“The Cap’n’s,” I said.

“This was a year later,” he said. “Like I said, she's a fast learner. The chain was going bust, and she bought six franchises. They were happy to get rid of them. They sold them for the cost of the structures and real estate only, and agreed to keep them supplied with that vile chicken.”

“The chicken orders are part of the data base,” I said.

“Sure they are. It's a smokescreen in case anyone ever plugs into it by mistake. They call the orders to us and we dump it into the computer. All she had to do was staff the joints and buy a few trucks. By then she could have bought a whole fleet of trucks.”

“So who do the customers call?”

“They call the local Cap’n’s.”

“And who do the stooges at the Cap'n's call?”

“That's cute,” he said in a tone that made me sure it had been his idea. “They call a local number, and there's a call-forwarding mechanism that plugs it into one of our lines.”

“Which line?”

He hesitated.

“Counting down,” I said. “Five, four, three-”

“Oh-six-four-five,” he said. “Same prefix, same everything, except no one ever answers it except the computer. If someone dials a wrong number, they just get this whine as the modem connects.”

“Smart,” I said. “So no one knows the real number.”

“You do,” he said. “You do now.”

“And you weren't getting enough of what she was making.”

“Gornischt,” he said, “I was getting gornischt.”

“You were getting ripped off. So you decided to talk to the kids while you were putting them through obedience school and find out everything you could about them. I'll bet you made them eager to tell you. I'll bet they were very talkative. And then you used what you'd learned to send ransom notes to their parents.”

“Off base,” he said. “Way off base.”

“The notes were her idea?”

“Of course they were. You don't think that I could think of anything like that.” Somewhere in his heart of hearts, Birdie still thought he was a nice guy. So does everyone. Emil Kemper, probably the most horrible of the recent rash of serial killers-a man who stored severed heads in his closet and cooked and ate intimate portions of his victims' anatomies-had described himself to the police as “too sensitive.”

“So she pocketed the ransoms?” I asked, not believing a word of it. With what Mrs. Brussels was putting away, it didn't make any sense.

“Every penny,” Birdie said virtuously. If I could have reached through the phone and torn out the little liar's larynx, I would have done it, except for one thing. I still didn't know where the kids were.

“Fine, Birdie,” I said. “I've got it. Mister started the whole thing going, he died, she came in and refined it, and you're getting cheated. If anyone is relatively innocent, you're it.”

“Amen,” he said.

“And I've still got Woofers.” He didn't say anything. “Here's the trade. You tell me where the babies are, and I'll give Woofers back to you. Deal?”

“And you'll protect me.”

“Look at it from my perspective,” I said, recalling something he'd said earlier. “If I don't protect you-if I turn you over to the cops, for example-how do I get my money?”

“You don't,” he said quickly. “You're planning to get it from their parents. Without me, you can't do it.”

“So where are they?”

“Which one are you looking for? The new one? Aimee?”

“That doesn't matter. Where are they?”

“Here,” he said, “in Los Angeles.”

“Birdie, that doesn't qualify as a bulletin.”

“Oh, golly,” he said hastily. “She's coming. Mrs., I mean. I heard her car. Come to my house tonight at seven. Bring Woofers. I'll take you to them. You're going to need a guide anyway.”

I weighed my options as rapidly as possible. “This conversation is on tape,” I said. “If anything happens to me tonight, the tape goes to the police. Got it?”

“Just be there,” he said. “Good Lord,” he added, “don't you trust me?” He hung up.

Woofers started to whimper when we were still two blocks away. When we turned onto Birdie's street she began to claw at the window, her tail wagging back and forth like a metronome gone mad.

“Slow down,” I said. “You'll see the little bedbug soon enough.” She ignored me completely, bouncing up and down onto her rear paws and scrabbling with her nails at the nearest solid surface. I guess my mother was right: there's someone to love everybody.

Janet Drive was as deserted as an abandoned landing strip. The clouds had broken, giving the moon a chance to caw triumphantly at the earth until the clouds gathered again to seal off its light. In the meantime, the houses were lighted with a cold, chalky glow. When I'd been a kid and my family had lived for a year on the east coast, I'd filled a jar full of fireflies and read by their light under the covers so my parents wouldn't know that I was still awake. Janet Drive was bathed in the same icy, slightly greenish light.

I pulled Alice up to the curb opposite Birdie's house and snapped open the glove compartment. The little.32 I'd brandished in the house near the airport slipped into my hand as though a surgeon had reconstructed my joints just to fit around the handle. It didn't make me feel much braver, but it was better than nothing. Woofers was standing on my lap and emitting little breathless yelps. I looked both ways and grabbed her collar before I opened the door, possessed by images of a two-ton semi squashing her into the pavement.

“You go when I tell you to,” I said. “Yorkshire terrier or not, I've grown to like you.”

All the lights in Birdie's house were gleaming in welcome. For all I knew, he might have laid out a platter full of French bread and Brie to welcome his child home. He might also have been waiting with a Thompson submachine gun. When I was sure that the street was empty I opened the door and clambered out, Woofers straining eagerly. She was making a peculiar gasping sound. After I realized that she was in danger of strangling against her collar, I let her go. She made it across the street in Olympic time and paused at the end of the lawn, looking back at me.

“Beauty before age,” I grumbled. “Just keep your mouth shut.” One of the many things I didn't need was a howl of canine enthusiasm alerting whoever might be in the house that the detective had arrived.

“Stay,” I whispered, crossing the street. Miracle of miracles, she stayed. I gave the little gun an experimental heft, and then, having managed to cross Janet Drive without being run down by a speeding bus, I reached down and took hold of Woofers' collar again.

“We're in this together,” I told her. She looked up at me wisely, but her manic tail was a dead giveaway. The kid was not in control.

Walking bent over, one hand on the collar and the other on the gun, I negotiated the lawn. I looked like Rip Van Winkle before the kinks wore off. No one shot at me from the house before I reached the front door. No large men in chicken outfits bled through the bougainvillea to cut me into fingers, whatever they were.

The front door was ajar.

“Go,” I said, letting go of Woofers' collar.

She went. She shouldered her way through the door with more strength than it was possible for her to possess, and I snapped a bullet into position in the gun and prepared to follow. I had my foot against the door when