IF I’VE LEARNED ANYTHING in the years I’ve worn a shield, it’s that there are two things that have an irresistible attraction for animals. One is any kind of fad, the sillier the better. The other is breaking the law. I’m Sergeant Vinnie DiFalco of the Animal Crime Squad, NYPD. My partner is a goodnatured slob named Fogarty.
I’d say the average citizen is totally unaware of our job, and those who have heard of us assume we enforce the various city ordinances that have to do with pets. Nothing could be further from the truth. We couldn’t care less about expired licenses, pooper scoopers, and cats that scream all night on the fire escape. We’re out to get the big fellows, like—But let me tell you about a typical case. You might learn something.
Now, at first, some people thought it was cute that a fox terrier would run a telephone-answering service, and in a few short weeks after this animal started his business, he had more subscribers than he could handle. So what did he offer that was so special? He answered the phone with a bark. That was it, and that was all. For the rest of it, he switched on the machine and recorded the message, if you were leaving one. Or, if you were picking up the messages that came in when you were out, he played them back for you. I mean, he wouldn’t say a word, now, would he? But you know how people are—fact is, you might say they love fads as much as any animal.
So all well and good at the beginning, but another trait of an up-and-coming critter is a tendency to go too far. Before long we began to get complaints that this fresh pooch was doing nothing but barking; in other words, didn’t bother to record the calls! Now, his ads continued to run in metro-area papers and he even started to buy radio and cable-TV spots. If he was taking money for a service he failed to provide, he was breaking the law. Speaking for myself, from the first moment I heard of this dog’s business, I figured it was only a matter of time before I’d be called in. Call me prejudiced, but I never saw a fox terrier who could keep his nose clean for long.
My plan was simplicity itself: to bust into his office by surprise and take the animal into custody with a minimum of fuss. We have one advantage that is not enjoyed by the rest of the force, and that is that a search warrant is not needed to enter premises occupied by a nonhuman tenant. In recent years PETA has lobbied for a change in the law, but it hasn’t happened yet.
The weakness of my plan was soon revealed: I could not discover the dog’s exact whereabouts. It ought to have been a simple matter to get the address from the telephone company, but I’m afraid Verizon decided at this juncture to pose as a defender of animal rights, and I was told in no uncertain terms to come up with a court order or I might as well go home and practice the harmonica.
But that experience did put me on my mettle. How to find one mutt in a city overpopulated with the fourfooted? I did have going for me the fact that mighty few dogs operated an answering service. Yet even so, it would take a pretty piece of investigatory work to corner this perpetrator. It might be tedious, but eventually had to prove effective if I went from door to door, street by street, until at some point I crossed the animal’s trail. Or again, I could save shoe leather by remaining at my desk at headquarters, dialing random phone numbers and asking the answerer if he happened to know of such a dog. Having taken on a bit of weight in recent years, I decided on the second of those tactics, but before I had begun to put it into effect, Fogarty came into the squad room, chewing on the inevitable unlighted cheroot. He had black circles around his eyes. His beefy face was haggard.
“I never got a wink all night,” he complained. “The phone kept ringing, and when I picked it up, it was a wrong number—but always a different wrong number, and the voice was different. If it was somebody out for revenge, he was a master at disguising his voice or went to the trouble of organizing coupla dozen friends. Didn’t wanna unplug, case it was finally you.”
“Huh,” I said, mostly for myself, “could there be a connection...?” To Fogarty, “You didn’t run across the bark of a dog anywhere?”
He glared at me. “You know, Vinnie, your idea of humor—”
“I’m serious, Fogarty. I’m working on that squeal about the dog who runs an answering service.”
“If you want,” Fogarty offered, “I’ll ask around.”
By this he meant among his regular informants, a motley crew of lowlifes, addicts of various kinds, and a good many phonies, perfectly respectable people who get off on being thought by the police to be petty criminals. I expected little genuine assistance from this quarter. But what harm could it do?
He sat down at his own desk and began to work the telephone, speaking to various persons, invariably greeting each with another obvious alias and a ludicrously outdated one at that. Who nowadays is known as Butch or Gertie or Slick? No matter: it was during his fifth or sixth such call that he gestured violently toward me. I raised my eyebrows. He took the phone away from his mouth for a moment and covered the instrument with a meaty fist.
“Pay dirt?” he asked, his lips forming the letter Q, of which the tip of his tongue made a little tail. “Maybe.”
“And maybe not,” I said. I didn’t want to encourage Fogarty in his sense of drama, which is always likely to turn maudlin.
“Say, Blackie,” he said into the mouthpiece, while winking significantly at me, “do you know this for a fact? ...Hey, no offense, man. It was simply a question... Yes... sure... no... well...” He began violently writing in the notebook before him.
“Gimme,” I said, with outstretched hand.
Fogarty slammed the phone down, tore the page from his book, and shoved it at me.
I ripped the paper from his hand and read silently, “Blonde at First and Seventy-second.”
“It might not be much,” Fogarty said, “but it’s a start.”
I sighed. “I know you’re just trying to help, Fogarty, but there must be thousands of blondes on the sidewalk at any given time in this town. Why would this one know anything about a dog that operated an answering service?”
He began to pout. Fogarty can sometimes be oversensitive.
“Okay, what do I have to lose?” I said, with more cockiness than I felt, and I got up, put my belt on a tighter notch, and headed uptown.
I work in an unmarked car that has seen better days, but it’s an effective cover. I expected the trip to be completely futile, but wonder of wonders, when I reached the designated corner the blonde was still there. I must say she looked too garish to be a streetwalker; it occurred to me she might well be a decoy cop, a male officer padded in the right places and dressed in women’s clothes, with a purpose to attract a robbery or rape attempt.
I left the car and sidled near her/him, displayed my shield in a cupped hand, and said, “DiFalco, Animal Crimes.”
“Get lost,” said the blonde, “and if you don’t, I’ll call a cop.”
“What do you think I am?”
“Some creep with a fake badge to shake people down with.”
“Take a look at my photo ID.” I put it under her button nose, and she squinted at it.
“Okay,” she said stoically. “So you expect a freebie.”
“You wouldn’t know of a dog who operates an answering service?”
“What if I do?” She reared back and put her hand on her hip.
“Don’t get cute with me, baby. There’s a loitering law in this town.”
“I might know of such a party,” said she. “You want to sign up for this service, is that it?”
“I’ll say this, Blondie, you’ve got as much chutzpah as anyone I ever met.”
“Listen, you got to survive.”
I gave her a bill that was tightly rolled into a cylinder the size of a cigarette. “Pick your teeth on that,” I said, hoping to give the impression it was a larger denomination than the fiver it was.
“Okay, buster,” said she. “You bought yourself some information. I don’t know the dog personally, but I’ve left a message or two with him—on his machine, that is. He never says a word.”
“It may be misrepresentation,” I said sternly. “What about you, miss: think he handles the business properly, or do you think subscribers might be getting scammed?”
She leered at me. “For God’s sake, can’t you find something better to do? There are vicious criminals all around town and you spend your time harassing businessdogs?”
Her attack drew blood. “All we’re trying to do is protect the public, young lady. It might be nice if we got some cooperation and not this incessant criticism.”
She turned contrite. “I didn’t mean to hurt your feelings, officer. You can find that pooch in apartment fifteen twenty-six, in that building right over there, with the striped canopy.” She pointed down the block.
I lost no time in going there. I took the elevator to the 15th floor, found the door marked 1526, backed up and prepared to run at it with the battering ram of my shoulder but prudently changed my mind and instead tried the knob, which turned easily. An unlocked door in Manhattan? I didn’t like the bravado it implied, but I went on in anyhow.
I found myself in the typical entrance hall of a contemporary apartment. A mirror hung on one wall and underneath it stood a little table on which a week’s junk mail had accumulated. I drew my service weapon and stealthily approached the closed door at the end of a characterless hallway, passing on my right a living room full of what looked like Ikea furniture arranged around a bright-blue rug in an Oriental figure. It smacked of a dog’s taste.
I put my ear against the door. Not a sound came from within. I turned the knob and hurled myself into the room.
There he was: a white fox terrier with one black patch across his face and another as back saddle. His beady eyes flickered negligently over me for a second, and then he turned back to his work.
The animal wore a headset. The left earphone was slightly askew, but the other was well seated, a pointed ear rising above it. A recording device sat on the desk before him. Even as I watched, the phone rang, the machine kicked in, and the dog barked sharply into the little mike that a U-shaped wire brought alongside but not quite to the end of his pointed snout.
I had to admit that this quick inspection found nothing that was not kosher. What could I do if I couldn’t name any obvious violations?
“Okay, bud,” I told the animal, “you might look clean as a whistle right now, but just remember we got our eye on you. We get any more complaints and—” Had I not gotten a bright idea at that point, this character might have escaped being brought to justice for years.
On an impulse, more curiosity than suspicion, I decided to listen to the kind of messages people left with the dog. I moved him aside to get access to the machine and hit the playback button. It wasn’t long before I went for the two pair of pawcuffs looped over my belt in the small of my back. These manacles permit a prisoner to walk slowly, at a mincing gait, but of course not to run.
I took the fox terrier downtown and booked him on a charge of procuring. So why did Blondie finger him? Here’s my theory: either she had switched to a rival pimp or, as I first suspected, she was working undercover for another law-enforcement agency and wanted to get rid of me before she was compromised. I suppose it doesn’t matter.
As for the dog, he was subsequently sentenced to six months in the animal correctional facility in the borough of Richmond, the other name only bureaucrats use for Staten Island. On appeal, that was reduced to three months of community service, with him wearing an electronic monitoring bracelet on his left rear foot. A slap on the paw! Don’t kid yourself, by now that pooch is back at work. But I have no regrets about doing my job. And I owe one to Fogarty.
SOME CITIZENS CONFUSE US with the ASPCA or a veterinary service, or even with the Department of Sanitation. Fogarty shows a short fuse to people who call complaining about horse droppings in their block. “Put ’em in your window boxes!” he shouts, and hurls the phone down.
We also get complaints about dog bites, bee stings, and anything connected with pigeons. And of course if somebody’s pet alligator is missing, it is routine for us to get the squeal.
But as it happens none of these things are our affair.
“Then just what is it that you do?” peevishly inquired the old lady to whom I had just tried to explain that we could not look for her missing parakeet—unless, of course, there was good reason to believe it had broken the law.
“You see, ma’am,” I said, “a lot of folks are reluctant to admit that crimes committed by animals are on the rise, while human crime rates are falling, and our squad is first to take any budget cuts. But the problem isn’t likely to go away by itself.”
The old lady blurted an obscene remark and hung up violently. Across the desk, Fogarty smirked in sympathy.
He moaned, “Oh, if they only understood!”
“That’s asking for the moon, Fogarty,” I barked. “Meanwhile we can’t lollygag around here; there’s work to be done.” I stood up, propelling my swivel chair backward with a thrust of my calves, went downstairs, and hit the street.
Prevention is, or should be, part of our job, and I try to get out there where it’s happening before it happens. By golly, I had hardly gone three blocks when I spotted him, between the cleaner’s and the deli, in the doorway of electronics shop that had just opened under a going-out-of-business banner: a big French poodle, recently clipped by the look of him, and wearing a trench coat with the belt tied, not buckled. I admit I have a bias against any animal who affects that style, even if he doesn’t accompany it with the usual wide-brimmed fedora.
I felt certain it was only a matter of moments before he made his move, and sure enough, a nice-looking, well-dressed woman, say in her early forties, came out of the cleaner’s, glanced at the dog for an instant, and then quickly averted her face. Frenchy had whipped open his coat, and you guessed it: he wasn’t wearing anything underneath.
I closed in on him, but the wily devil saw me coming, and his legs proved a lot more nimble than mine. Suffice it to say he was gone before I reached his doorway. But I’ll know him when I see him next time.
Well, a day that had started off so briskly then settled down to three-four hours of inconsequence. I left a lot of shoe leather on city sidewalks. I ate a frank, hold the sauerkraut, coffee with everything. The acid in the last-named got to me, or maybe the milk was sour, and I went into a discount drugstore to look for relief. Having to make a choice among the various antacids made my indigestion worse. While I was studying the shelves, along came a big husky pelican, who apparently suffered from the same complaint as mine, for he too began to examine the medications for heartburn.
But from that point on, our styles showed a wide divergence. While I continued to deliberate, the bird opened his deep-pouched beak and began to fill it with an example of each pill or potion offered for sale. These products are far from inexpensive; he was obviously a well-to-do fowl. I’ll admit to feeling some bitterness. I have to watch my pennies, while some damned bird can waddle in and buy anything he wants!
I had enough of this and started to leave. But he stepped back, as if to get a wider perspective on the shelves, and in an effort to avoid running into him, I swerved and, losing my balance, took a tumble. I’ll say this for him: he was decent enough about offering to help me up. He extended a wing tip, but I declined with thanks and, thoroughly embarrassed by then, got out of that store as quickly as I could.
Scarcely had I reached the next corner when behind me I heard that cry which, veteran though I am, never fails to thrill me to the core. I think that, underneath it all, my principal motive for originally joining the force might well have been to hear a voice, seething with fear and outrage, cry, “Help, police!”
I ran back to the store. A pudgy man, wearing a smiley-face button that probably marked him as manager, was pointing into the sky.
I looked up. A pelican was flying heavily up the side of a nearby office building. There was some question as to whether or not he could clear its roof, though the structure was a modest one of only a dozen floors.
“They’re not the most graceful of birds,” I said. “Furthermore, if he’s the one I think he is, he’s weighed down by a beakful of Tums, Maalox, and Pepto-Bismol bottles.”
“None of them paid for,” said the stout man. “He’s a shoplifter. And where are the cops when you need them?”
“Say no more,” I said. “Sergeant Vinnie DiFalco, Animal Crime Squad, at your service.”
“I’d like some ID.”
I considered this an insulting demand, but when I went for my shield I couldn’t find it! That pelican was also a pickpocket! But apparently he was not a violent criminal, for my weapon was still holstered at the left side of my belt.
I drew it now and pointed it up at the bird, who was really laboring with his wings in an all-out effort to gain the roof and get out of sight. I couldn’t help feeling a certain sympathy for him, but there’s no room for sentimentality in my job. I squinted, took careful aim, and squeezed the trigger. I missed him altogether and everything else as well. I’ve always wondered where such bullets end up—maybe as the work of a mysterious sniper in Queens.
Before the week was out the pelican had hit ten more stores in various parts of town, and the city was on the verge of mass hysteria. The mayor was burned in effigy, the police commissioner resigned in disgrace, and had I not been the only officer who could recognize the wanted bird, I wouldn’t have kept my own job.
The creature had refined his technique. He would march into any retail establishment that took his fancy, that shield of mine dangling from his beak, and be taken everywhere as a legitimate cop. But, like any human, the bird had a weakness. It wasn’t booze, broads, the ponies, or dope. By all counts, this pelican was an absolute abstainer when it came to any of the usual vices. He didn’t even smoke. But the son of a gun had a sweet tooth he simply could not control. If he robbed any store that had a candy counter, you could be sure in making his exit he would always spare a moment to stop and help himself to a couple of pounds of chocolates with that great big scoop of a beak.
“He’s got a childish streak, Vin,” said Fogarty.
“Okay,” I said, “but what gets me is how he can get away with posing as a police officer. When’s a thing with feathers and a beak like that a sergeant of detectives? Do these people believe everything they read on a badge?”
“Heck, Vinnie,” said Fogarty, “I can’t fault you in your low opinion of the average civilian’s intelligence, but we can’t use that as an excuse to let this bird keep making a fool of us. He ain’t supernatural, is he? Listen, why can’t we dose all the candies in the parts of town that he usually hits with knockout drops? Then when he—”
“Fogarty, Fogarty,” I chided. “What about all the innocent folks who’ll also be eating the stuff, the poor kids?”
“A harmless drug, Vin!” he insisted. “Sleeping-pill formula, you know? So they nap a little. What’s the damage?”
“I won’t dignify that with a detailed answer,” said I. “You can figure it out. But the basic idea’s not all bad...” I was thinking, but at the moment all I could come up with was, “A bird has no teeth, you know.”
Fogarty shrugged his round shoulders. “And a fish can’t shake hands. So what?”
Before I ever could have answered that question, the pelican suddenly and for no apparent reason did what has always been considered unlikely for a professional criminal: he changed his M.O. I don’t mean with a minor trick or two. He transformed his entire act from start to finish. He was no longer a shoplifter. Now he would approach the nearest salesperson to the cash register and show a note that read:
10, countem, 10 sticks of dynamyte is wyrd to my boddy
Give me all the mony else I will blo us all upp.
Despite its eccentric spelling, the note was hand-printed impeccably. By whom? Did it matter?
“You know, Fogarty,” I said, watching my partner open his hot hero sandwich and suspiciously inspect its contents. “Maybe we should just tell people to call his bluff. ‘Okay, bud, set off your so-called dynamite.’ I think he’d end up with egg on his face. Where would a bird get high explosives, plus a detonating system compact enough to be carried on his person? He’s short on pockets, you know.”
Fogarty grimaced at his sandwich but finally closed the top lid and took a big bite. I had to wait until it was thoroughly masticated and swallowed. At last he said, “But could we afford a mistake?”
“Thanks, Fogarty,” I said. “I needed that reminder. Can’t ever forget we’re here to protect as well as serve.”
Fact is, we never did collar that pelican. But the one-bird crime wave ended soon after his adoption of the new modus operandi. He really did get hold of some dynamite sticks, don’t ask me how, because within another day or so he suddenly blew up while crossing a downtown street. Luckily, traffic was thin at that hour. No human beings were hurt, and aside from a lot of broken plate glass and an excavation in the middle of the street, no damage was reported. They say feathers continued to float down for a quarter hour after the blast.
He was an enterprising bird, and despite Fogarty’s sneers I frankly admit to having a certain admiration for such a worthy adversary.
SO FAR AS I know, the only call there ever was for snakes in the world of entertainment was to accompany exotic dancers, and that’s a thing of the past. But even then, the kind of reptile used was one of the big devils, python or boa constrictor, whereas the snake I’m talking about was a little garter type. Hell, he couldn’t have made more than a foot and a half in length if he stretched, so to speak, on tiptoe, and in girth your ordinary frankfurter might be thicker. But it could be truthfully said that the little guy was all heart.
I got to know the serpent in question through a squeal that came in from the stage-door man at a Broadway theater. Contrary to what you might think, this bald-headed, white-fringed coot was called not Pop but Wayne.
It seems that the ingénue of the musical comedy then in performance claimed she was being harassed by a snake. Wayne was right to call us in. If this charge could be substantiated, the reptile would be guilty of an aggravated misdemeanor or a felony, depending on the length of his body and whether he carried a deadly weapon. Nevertheless, at first the old doorman had failed to take the young woman seriously. One, how would a snake get into a dressing room in a theater in the middle of town? Unless of course it had been the partner of one of the aforementioned exotic dancers, none of whom had ever been known to perform on this stage. The second reason had to do with the notorious nearsightedness of the actress. In fact, coming to complain about the snake, the girl had fallen over Wayne as he sat near the door in his classic camp chair, reading a tabloid and, naturally, wearing a battered old felt hat on the back of his head and exposed suspenders on his shoulders.
“Okay,” said I. “Just when and why did you correct your first impression, uh, Wayne? Sorry, I keep wanting to call you Pop.”
We exchanged stares for a moment; then he went on. “Fact is, there really was a snake, all right. Not twenty-four hours went by before I seen him with my own two eyes. I went to the water cooler is when it was, just after the first-act intermission and at the Wednesday matinee, house full of ladies on theater parties—gee, I tell you, Falconi, I never get tired of that suspense just before the curtain goes up, when all the world is waiting for that moment of magic—”
“All right, hold the schmaltz and get to the details. And my name’s DiFalco, Pop.”
He shrugged and measured off a foot, foot and a half, with two hands on edge. “Little bugger he was, there on the floor underneath the water cooler. Now, the impulse of a lot of people is when they see a snake to run get something to smash him with. But as it happens, I’m a farm boy, born and raised upstate. I tell you, Falkowitz, you don’t know what milk tastes like until you drink it warm right after the cow gave it, maybe with a thick slice of warm homemade bread and—”
“Mouth’s watering, Pop, but go on about the reptile in question.”
“So what I mean is, you been around a farm, you never kill a snake. And this theater’s full of mice that been around since it was built at the beginning of the last century.”
“Say,” I asked, “this actress, is she a good-looker?”
He made his mouth sag and punched the air with an elbow. “There’s all kinda tastes. For my money she’s a bit skinny, but I could be wrong.”
“Like ’em zaftig, do you, Wayne?” I eyed him narrowly. In how many old movies was the doorman a sex maniac? I made a mental note to have Fogarty run a make on him when I got back to headquarters. “But go on about the snake. So you didn’t do him any harm?”
“Far from it, I don’t mind saying it gets pretty lonely back here when the performance is finished and you’re waiting for the last few cast members to wipe off their makeup and leave.”
“That’s a notoriously melancholy time,” I said.
He grinned at me, showing ill-fitting dental plates. “Got a showbiz background, Falkland?”
“Pop, my job has put my foot in many doorways. Don’t try to make too much of it.” I didn’t like the way he immediately tried to get familiar. I’m nobody’s buddy when I’m on a case.
My rebuff served the purpose of getting him back to the subject. “Fact is, far from doing damage to the little fella. I picked him up on a broomstick and carried him back to a private corner I’ve made for myself in the property room. I got a hotplate there and some powdered coffee, and I keep a little can of evaporated milk. I poured some in a jar lid and set it down for the snake. I tell you, he lapped it up like he was famished, and did the same till the whole can was empty. Poor little devil obviously hadn’t ate in a long time.”
“Okay, so you’ve brought me close to tears,” I said in the raspy voice I assume when dealing with certain members of the public. A cop is trusted more when he seems hard-bitten. “But if this reptile just became a pet of yours, you wouldn’t have called the department, or am I missing something?”
He had been smiling, but now his old face fell. “I’m getting to that. First thing that happened, after Bobby had been with me only a day or so—I named him Bobby, after the son I never had.”
This seemed warped to me, but I’m not paid to be judgmental about the tastes of civilians I come across in an investigation. I nodded in silence. But he wouldn’t let well enough alone.
“I guess that seems warped to you?” he asked.
“Frankly, it does,” I answered. “It’s a snake, after all.”
“To hell with you,” said he. “It’s my life.” Suddenly, tears welled in his eyes and he took a balled handkerchief from a back pocket and daubed at his face.
“Turned on you, did he?” I asked, not without sympathy. “Well, console yourself with this thought: that then he was behaving like a real son. I did it to my own dad. As an old bunco artist it broke his heart to see a boy of his become a cop.”
Wayne stopped sniffling and showed an almost cruel expression. “No,” said he, “it wasn’t that way at all. But if you’ll just let me tell my story... In a day or so, Bobby was helping himself to the canned milk. Next he found some doughnuts I had brung along, and darn if he didn’t wriggle through one and make it like a hula hoop, you know.”
“Oh yeah?” I scowled but actually I thought it was pretty cute.
“I got to admit,” he said, “I thought it was pretty cute, even though he usually ruined the doughnut by getting it going so fast it would shoot right over his head, bang against the wall, and break apart. I guess I showed him I thought it was real clever, because the next thing I knew, he began to make the trick more fancy. He’d switch on the little radio I got back there, get some music to accompany the hula hoop act. You know what happened next, doncha?”
“What I do know is that snakes are deaf.”
“Yeah,” Wayne came right back, “but I ain’t.”
He had me there, but I couldn’t admit it. “Say,” I said to divert him, “isn’t there a show tonight?” Have I mentioned that we were standing under the light of one bare bulb?
“Don’t you know we’re always dark on Sundays?”
I don’t know why they call Broadway glamorous. The theater was cold backstage and awfully shabby. I shivered inside my bulletproof vest.
Wayne must have noticed my chill, for at this point he pulled a flat bottle from the back pocket of his rumpled old gray pants. “Take a pull on this, sonny.”
I wiped off the mouth of the bottle with a twist of my palm and took a swig. I couldn’t identify what it was, but it was filthy stuff.
The old man reclaimed the bottle and swallowed a good quarter of its remaining contents in one breath. Then he said, “I admit I got a taste for the juice. That’s why my own career went noplace. I was a pretty fair hoofer in my day—when I could stand up.”
Belatedly I realized that he had been about two-thirds drunk when I began to talk to him. “Okay,” I nevertheless persisted. “So the snake developed an act using doughnuts like a hula hoop?”
Wayne nodded. “But they was brittle, so we switched to bagels. But along about now he finds a bottle I had put aside for a rainy day, gets the cap off somehow, and has a taste. Well sir, he don’t mind if he takes another, and before long you got a little reptile lush.”
I made a joke. “A snake who sees snakes, huh?”
But Wayne made a face. “He’d get real surly when he had a skinful, I tell you. There wasn’t no living with him at such times. Trouble was, though Bobby did get better and better at his act, I didn’t dare ask nobody to come to my little hideaway to see him perform.” He took another blast from the bottle, but thank God didn’t offer me a second. “They’d think I was having the deetees!”
“And they’d be right, you old wino,” I said in disgust. “Get me over here on a Sunday afternoon to tell a drunken lie about a dancing snake. I ought to work you over.” Part of this, anyway, was for the purpose of provoking him. Long experience with animals had prepared me to believe they are capable of anything, and I am personally convinced that a number of cold-case files could be closed if we found the animals involved.
In answer, Wayne took a battered wallet from his hip pocket. He found a snapshot inside and handed it to me. The photo was blurred to start with and had acquired a yellowed patina, but its subject was discernible: a snake, standing on its tail. About halfway along its length was a blurry object that could have been a whirling bagel or doughnut.
“All right,” I said, “but don’t think that’s conclusive proof. It could be faked. There’s a funny smell to this whole business, if you ask me. If this snake exists, where is he now? More importantly, what’s the crime?”
Wayne resumed his narrative. “Unless he got his chance, I could see Bobby was going to drink himself to death. So I went to the producer of the show and told him about the little snake, crazy as it seemed, and lo and behold Mr. Armbruster not only listened to me but when I was done, he says, ‘Come on, let’s audition him!’ So before he changed his mind, I went to get Bobby.” He stopped, lifted the bottle, and drained it dry. Then, “That was yesterday afternoon.”
“So?”
“So Bobby was gone, along with a number of my valuables, which I kept tucked away back there in places only a snake could of got into: the diamond ring I stole back from a fiancée who dumped me forty years ago, a silver-handled ebony cane—”
“Yeah, yeah,” I growled, “and your billfold containing a couple grand in hundreds. Wayne, if you ever had a ring it went to the pawn-brokers right after you stole it from the girl—which frankly I don’t buy, having tried that once myself and got scratched real bad for my pains, but I tell you, it takes a mighty special lady to become a cop’s wife; Fogarty’s never been able to hold onto one, either—” I was running off at the mouth. I checked myself, and finished up, “Same thing happened with your so-called silver-headed cane. The truth is that the combination of the rotgut you swallow and your loneliness in this empty theater resulted in the snake-and-bull story you made me listen to.”
He lowered his rheumy old eyes and with a sad nod seemed to admit what I was charging him with. “Gonna run me in, Sarge?”
I glared at him for a long moment, then said, “No, Wayne, in view of your age, I’m letting you off with a warning. My game is animal crimes, not geriatrics.”
But he was looking past me. I turned, and there was the little snake, on the floor not two yards away. His body was encircled by a diamond ring just behind his head, and in a loop of tail he clasped the ebony cane with the silver hand, drawing it along in his wake.
“Bobby!” cried the old stage-door man.
As if in answer, the reptile somehow raised the cane to the vertical and wound himself around it, balancing it erect on its tip!
“By Godfrey, Wayne,” I admitted, “that’s quite a feat in my book. I’m impressed.”
“So am I,” said he. “The little guy must of learned that one in secret. So that’s what he’s been doing for the past day. I feel lousy about calling you, Sergeant.”
“Don’t be,” I said with enthusiasm. “I wouldn’t have missed this for the world. Let’s give him the big hand he deserves.”
So the two of us gave Bobby an ovation that would have done credit to a whole audience, and you can be sure he took more than one bow. Then Wayne produced a stale bagel and the snake performed his hula-hoop stunt.
“He’s even better than you said,” I told Wayne, who had broken out another pint. Maybe it was my heightened mood, but this stuff was a great improvement over the first version. I took a blast, and then Wayne wet his own whistle.
“What do you think?” he asked, nodding toward Bobby. “Hasn’t he earned one?”
I certainly agreed to that.
Well, the bottle went around the three of us, and it wasn’t long before there was none left, so I went out and up the street to see a guy who owed me a favor, and brought back a treat of my own, and so we killed that Sunday afternoon.
Next day I had a thick tongue and a head full of ache, and Fogarty is always in a foul mood on a Monday morning, after the bitching he takes from his ex when he returns the kids from his Sunday custody. Nevertheless, I told him my story.
When I finished he simply stared at me, silently and without expression.
“Mark my words,” I added, “Bobby will make it big one of these days. Just don’t forget you heard it here first.”
“I’ll remember,” Fogarty said dully.
“You’re being sarcastic, ain’t you?”
“Not me.”
But he was, I knew he was. He’s that contrary type who, if they really agree with you, won’t show it, but always say yes when they’re sure you have made a fool of yourself.
I produced that blurred picture of Bobby in action, which I had begged off Wayne.
“Looks like a cute pet,” said my partner, with phony solemnity, then going into the smartass mode, “But where would an old rummy get a diamond ring and a silver-headed cane?”
I sighed, making my head throb. “Don’t try to take away the magic, Fogarty! This is the enchanted world of show business. Performing animals are a breed apart. They should be granted a little more latitude than your plow horse or milch cow.”
His eyelids became heavy. “So what about the original charge?”
“Huh?”
“That this serpent was allegedly harassing some actress.”
A tiny man was running back and forth inside my cranium, banging on the walls with a baseball bat. But I couldn’t claim this was my virgin hangover. Maybe I had been hitting the sauce a little too much lately. Was that what Fogarty was trying to tell me?
But you get to thinking negative in my line of work and you’re on your way out.
“Ever hear of a bum rap, Fogarty?” I shot a finger toward his big red nose. “Let’s face it, you’re jealous. When was the last time you discovered a headliner of the future?”
“Sure you did, Vinnie. Sure you did,” said my partner.
The trouble with Fogarty is that he came to me off the special task force against muggers. He spent too many nights wandering through the park as a decoy, wearing a dress, a wig, and a sock-stuffed bra. Say what you want, that kind of thing makes its mark on a man.