Timothy Hallinan - Everything but the Squeal

“What about the money from the sideline? All those producers and directors?”

“Ahhh,” Birdie said, stalling.

I waited. “Maybe you'd like me to hang up again,” I finally said.

“No. Wait. It was in a secret account, one that had nothing to do with the real business. She came in and tried to run the agency, or what was left of it, and finally I told her about the other account.”

“And you explained where it came from?”

“That too.”

“Why didn't you just take the money and say bye-bye?”

“I couldn't,” he said in a grating voice. “She was the only authorized co-signer.”

“I thought you said she didn't know about it.”

“In those days, she didn't know shit from shirt buttons. She's a fast learner. He'd given her a bunch of papers to sign, and the signature cards from the account were among them. She would have signed a declaration of independence for the state of Alabama if he'd put it in front of her.”

“So you were stuck,” I said, trying to sound sympathetic. “You couldn't get out because you couldn't get your hands on the money. How much was it?”

He hesitated. “Half a mil.” I was willing to bet it had been more.

“And how did she react when you told her about it?”

“You mean did she rend her clothes and tear her hair out? No. She didn't age before my eyes, either. She went home for two or three days and then she came back and announced we were back in business.”

“Birdie,” I said. The sun went back behind a cloud and Woofers cocked her head and looked up at the window. “She couldn't have done it without you.”

“Don't you think I know that?”

“You knew where the money was. You knew where the kids were. You knew the names of the customers. What did she know?”

“She couldn't keep track of which hand her rings were on.”

“So you were in the driver's seat.”

“Ummm,” he said. I could feel him retreat. “But she had access to the bank account.”

“What did she give you?”

He weighed the odds, so slowly that I could almost hear the mental subtraction. “I'm not sure I know what you mean.”

“The next sound you hear,” I said, “will be Woofers' last yelp.” I hung up.

It was well past lunchtime, but I wasn't hungry. I gave Woofers the cold hamburger I'd bought on the way home, by way of making up for the tug on her ear, and spent the next hour pacing and thinking things through. There was a delicate balance in play: not enough pressure, and he'd clam up. Too much, and he'd break. Broken, he'd be useless. Unless I wanted to start from scratch with Mrs. Brussels, who was a much tougher customer, Birdie was all I had.

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.