Lawrence Block: The Topless Tulip Caper

“A homicide,” he said.

I didn’t make the distinction between murder and homicide. “She says only Leo Haig can help her,” I went on. “She hasn’t been to the police. She needs a private detective, and you’re the only man on earth who can possibly do the job for her.”

“She honestly said that?”

“Her very words.”

“Remarkable.”

“She’s in the office. I told her I was sure you would want to talk to her yourself.”

“Of course I want to talk to her.” He was on his way to the stairs and even though his legs are about half the length of mine I had to hustle to catch up with him.

“One thing you ought to know before you talk to her,” I said.

“Oh?”

“About the victims.”

He was positively beaming. “Victims? Plural? More than one victim?”

“Over a hundred of them.”

He stared, and his face showed a struggle between delight and disbelief. He really wanted it to be a murder case with a hundred victims, and at the same time he was beginning to read the whole number as a put-on.

“One thing you ought to know,” I said. “The victims aren’t people. They’re fish.”

He said, “Miss Willing? I’m Leo Haig. I believe you’ve already met my assistant, Mr. Harrison.”

“Yes, I have.”

“I understand some fishes of yours were murdered. Could you give me some specific information on the crime?”

I had to hand it to him. I don’t know what kind of reaction I’d been hoping for but it wasn’t what I got. I had sent him up in a pretty rotten way, when you stop to think of it, and he was returning the favor by treating Tulip Willing and her massacred fish like the crime of the century. Instead of telling me to get rid of her, either by showing her the door or calling the men in the white coats, he was going to take his time getting her whole story, and I was going to have to write it all down in my notebook. I made it game, set and match to him.

So I sat there with my notebook on my side of the desk, and Haig sat on his side of the desk and played with a pipe, and Tulip Willing sat in the chair I’d put her in originally. I sensed that the three of us were going to waste an hour or so of each other’s time. I didn’t really mind. I hadn’t been doing anything that sensational with my time in the first place, and I couldn’t think of anyone I’d rather waste it with. (Than Tulip, I mean. Wasting time with Haig is something I do almost every day of my life. It’s enjoyable, but there’s nothing all that exotic about it.)

“There are many ways an entire tank of fishes can be destroyed at once,” he was saying. He has this professorial air that he likes to use. “Certain diseases strike with the rapidity and force of the Black Death, wiping out a whole fish population overnight. Air pollution, paint fumes, these can cause annihilation on an extraordinary scale.”

“Mr. Haig—”

“Occasionally equipment malfunctions. A thermostat may go haywire, boiling the inhabitants of an aquarium. On the other hand, a heater may burn out and the resulting drop in temperature may prove fatal, although this is more likely to be a gradual matter. In other situations—”

“Mr. Haig, I’m not an idiot.”

“I didn’t mean to imply that you were.”

“I’m familiar with the ways fishes can die. Naturally you would assume that the death was accidental. I made the same assumption myself. I ruled out the possibilities of natural and accidental death.”

“Indeed.”

“The fish were poisoned.”

He took his pipe apart. He’s given up smoking them because they burn his tongue, but he likes to fiddle with them. He bought the pipes originally because he thought they might be a good character tag and he knows that great detectives have to have charming idiosyncracies. He keeps trying on idiosyncracies looking for one that will fit. I’ve wanted to tell him that he’s odd enough all by himself, but I can’t think of an acceptable way to phrase it.

I waited for him to ask how she knew the fish were poisoned. Instead he said, “What sort of fish? A community tank, I suppose? Mollies and swordtails and the like?”

“No. I don’t have a community tank. These were Scats.”

“Ah. Scatophagus argus.”

“These were Scatophagus tetracanthus , actually.”

“Indeed.” He seemed impressed. He thinks everybody should know the Latin name of everything, and I get a lecture to that effect on the average of once every three days. “The tetracanthus are imported less often. And most retailers sell them as argus because few hobbyists know the difference. These were definitely tetracanthus , you say?”

“Yes.”

“How many did you have?”

“One hundred twenty-three.”

“Indeed. You must be rather fond of the species. You must also have had an extremely large tank.”

“It’s a twenty-nine gallon tank.”

He frowned. “Good heavens!’ he said. “You must have stacked them like cordwood.”

“All but two were fry. They had plenty of room.”

“Fry?” His eyebrows went up, first at the word she used, then at the implications. Most people who keep fish, and certainly most people who look anything like Tulip Willing, call baby fish baby fish. She called them fry. Then, when the whole idea sank in, he leaned forward and waggled a finger at her. “Impossible,” he said.

“What’s impossible?”

“Neither of the Scatophagus species has ever spawned in captivity.”

“I spawned them. And it’s been done before.”

“By Rachow, yes. But he had an accident and lost the lot, and he was never able to repeat the procedure. Nor has anyone else had any success.”

“I had success,” she said.

“Impossible,” he said again. “No one but Rachow ever induced the little devils to spawn. And he was working with argus , not tetracanthus.” He paused abruptly and his eyes crawled upward and examined the ceiling. “Wait just one moment,” he said. “Just one moment.”

I looked at Tulip and watched her wait one moment. There was the hint of a private smile on her lips.

“There was a spawning,” he said finally. “Not of argus . Of tetracanthus . It was reported in Copeia a year ago. The fish spawned but a fungus destroyed the spawn before they hatched. The author was—let me think. Wolinski. T. J. Wolinski. He’s done other articles for aquarist publications.”

“Not he,” Tulip said.

“Pardon me?”

She was really smiling now. “Not he,” she repeated. “She. Me, actually. They spawned a second time and I used a fungicide and it worked. I got a seventy percent hatch. One hundred twenty-one fry, and they were doing beautifully. I left the parent fish with them.”

“Your name is Willing. Tulip Willing.”

“That’s a stage name.”

“And your real name is—”

“Thelma Wolinski.”

Haig was on his feet, his jaw set firmly beneath the neat little beard. “T. J. Wolinski,” he said, with something verging on reverence. “T. J. Wolinski. Extraordinary. And some creature poisoned your scats? Good heavens. You’ll pardon me, I hope, for treating you like a witling. I never would have guessed—well, that’s by the way. Some villain poisoned your fishes, did he? Well, we shall get to the bottom of this. And I shall have his head, madam. Rest assured of that. I shall have his head.”

So the whole thing was out of control. It was my fault, and although there was a certain amount of thrill in the idea of being on a case, I can’t say I was anywhere near as thrilled as Haig was.

Well, I’d asked for it. I’d been baiting him, never figuring he’d bite, and now he was hooked right through the gills.