Without obsession, life is nothing.
— JOHN WATERS
IT WAS A PERFECT MORNING. There couldn’t have been a better day for the annual Bug Fair at the Natural History Museum of Los Angeles County. It was only 10 AM that May 30, 2003, but a crowd was already spilling down the museum steps and forming a long line on the walkway, waiting to get into the exhibit. The swarm of people resembled a giant wriggling millipede.
“Bugs are cool,” a mom told her son as they stood on line for the weekend event.
Who’s she kidding? U.S. Fish and Wildlife special agent Ed Newcomer thought to himself. Has she ever taken a good look at a water bug? They’re creepy, crawling, disgusting insects.
“We’re the real pests here,” a man informed his daughter reflectively.
A six-foot-tall Timmy the Terminator bug playfully swatted the girl and then handed her an insect coloring book.
If Newcomer had been the father, he’d have taken the coloring book and used it to smack the mutant bug back.
Even celebrities patiently waited in line with their youngsters in tow.
Newcomer slipped past the throng and through the front door to blend with the growing crowd inside. Twelve thousand people turned out for the event, making the weekend the museum’s two busiest days of the year. Who would have thought an exhibit of bugs and butterflies would draw so much attention?
The museum’s entire first floor was dedicated to the fair. Seventy vendors lined the African Mammal Hall and the North American Mammal wing under the watchful eyes of the stuffed resident wildlife. Every nook and cranny was crammed with insects either dead or alive and crawling. Kids squealed in a mixture of horror and delight as exhibitors placed live tarantulas in their palms and let them crawl up their arms. A bug chef beckoned to passersby to stop and sample his wares. The menu included tarantula tempura, desert hairy scorpion scallopini, and Washington waxworms delicately seasoned with sugar and shredded coconut. It was a rare treat for those brave enough to give it a try. Newcomer wasn’t among them.
He worked his way past booths touting beetles elegant as couture jewelry, their shells the color of precious gems. But the main event was the butterflies. There were morphos, blue as Paul Newman’s eyes, and birdwings, green as showers of shamrocks. Still others flaunted wings in rainbow hues of purple, sun-drenched orange, blood red, and blacks deep and dark as infinite black holes. Each was pinned and mounted like a fine work of art. Except these masterpieces had once been alive.
The museum seemed the perfect venue for such a show, since butterflies are at least forty million years old. What other species lives almost everywhere on earth but for the frigid Antarctic and the most arid of deserts? Along with their vast territory is their range in size. The smallest species is the half-inch pygmy blue butterfly, while the Queen Alexandra, with its eleven-inch wingspan, is larger than many birds.
However, size isn’t the only difference among butterflies. Their life span also varies. The spring azure appears with the first warm weather of spring and lives only a few days, whereas the mourning cloak, with its funereal dark cape of wings fluted in gold, is the longest-lived butterfly, lasting eleven months. It’s no wonder there are approximately 20,000 species of butterflies worldwide, of which 725 of them reside in North America. Even more mind-boggling is that each has its very own unique wing pattern.
Though the fair was promoted as an educational event, it was also a big moneymaker for vendors, with wads of cash changing hands. Sure, there were butterflies being sold for five and six bucks apiece. But there were others with price tags of up to fifteen thousand dollars. Newcomer was always amazed at what people would spend on dead wildlife. It seemed they’d become so detached from the natural world that they preferred their nature in a box.
He took it all in as he studied one booth after the next. He wasn’t there for the bugs, and though he got a kick out of seeing movie stars, they weren’t his prey du jour, either. He glanced down at the photo in his hand. It was a legal resident-alien driver’s license, gratis the California Department of Motor Vehicles. His prey was an Asian man who was a notorious bug collector. It was time to make the donuts and find his quarry.
A moment later he spotted his target. Or, at least, that’s what he hoped. The man didn’t look much like his driver’s license photo. But then again, who did? Newcomer’s own driver’s license made him look like a kid. Still, there could be little doubt. This had to be the guy he was after.
Hisayoshi Kojima stood surrounded by a group of admirers, each tightly gripping his own beautifully polished wooden box—the sign of serious insect collectors. He watched as the men jockeyed for position, hoping to catch Kojima’s eye and snag much-sought-after treasures. Kojima smiled with all the esteem of a rock star enjoying the limelight as a steady stream of U.S. currency flew into his fanny pack. The insect dealer was taking in more money than any other vendor. This guy was definitely the Bruce Springsteen of the Bug Fair.
Newcomer had heard that Kojima saw himself as the Indiana Jones of insects. That was all right. Newcomer liked to imagine himself as Brad Pitt. A man could dream, couldn’t he? However, the stocky Japanese national was fifty-three years old, five feet seven inches tall, and had a pudgy face defined by bushy black eyebrows. His thinning dark hair looked as though it had never seen a comb. His complexion was pale as vanilla pudding, and his skin looked as soft as that of the Pillsbury Dough Boy.
He found it hard to believe that Kojima was a daring adventurer, judging by the look of him. That should give any little boy hope. But it wasn’t the only way in which Kojima was routinely described. The man with the fanny pack, loose khaki pants, and stained polo shirt was widely regarded in collecting circles as the world’s most wanted butterfly smuggler.
This wasn’t how Newcomer had planned to kick-start his new career. For God’s sakes, he’d become an agent in order to tangle with real bad guys, not some nerd who liked to play with bugs. Newcomer had dreamt of beginning with something much sexier. Going after elephant-ivory dealers or tracking down gorilla poachers would have fit the bill. Give him a case that involved smuggled polar bear hides, an illegal shipment of parrots, or illicit tiger bones to solve, and he would have been happy. Was that too much to ask for? How else was he going to make an impact and draw attention? The powers that be at Fish and Wildlife liked big splashy cases.
Instead, his boss had handed him a freaking butterfly dealer. It wasn’t that insects and butterflies were at the bottom of his list. They’d never made it that far. No way were bugs even on his radar.
Newcomer was well aware that he was low man on the totem pole. No one else in the office had wanted the case, and with good reason. The learning curve alone was a killer. Butterflies are all identified by their Latin names. Tackle a case like this, and you were expected to learn them. He’d never been that great a student to begin with, but when you’re a rookie, you take whatever you get.
Newcomer’s initial hunch about Kojima proved to be correct as another person now sidled over to the booth. It was the man who had called Fish and Wildlife a few days ago. He’d complained that Kojima was illegally catching endangered butterflies and beetles from around the world and smuggling them into the United States. Word had it that he’d just returned from a collecting trip in Bolivia and Costa Rica. He planned to offer his newly acquired booty at the fair. Kojima was selling stuff that no reputable dealer could get his hands on.
Newcomer’s assigned task was to babysit the whistleblower, who just happened to be another insect dealer. The guy had agreed to help by turning confidential informant, or CI. It was common practice in the cutthroat and low-down dirty world of the wildlife trade. Clearly, the CI had his own agenda. He probably hoped to push Kojima out of business and level the playing field for himself.
It all came down to tit for tat. Fish and Wildlife had recently penalized this same CI for failing to maintain the proper import permits. The guy had become so pissed that he’d decided to turn the heat on someone else. That was how Fish and Wildlife usually got its best tips.
As far as he knew, most insect dealers tried to follow the rules by filing the proper paperwork and coughing up the import fees. But that wasn’t the case with Kojima. Not only did he not play by the government’s rules, he proceeded to undercut dealers left and right on even the most common, legal butterflies. The fact that Yoshi constantly got away with it made dealers furious.
Kojima was known to be a one-man demolition derby when it came to collecting. The guy was a genuine environmental nightmare. He managed to acquire endangered butterflies that not even museums or university collections could obtain. His phenomenal merchandise and prices made him the darling at all the insect fairs. Kojima sold out every time. Naturally, he was as popular with other dealers as a hooker at a DAR tea party.
No one could understand why the Service hadn’t yet nailed him. Rumor had it that once Fish and Wildlife had you in its sights, it would take you down, destroy your career, and virtually ruin your life. Tales abounded of jackbooted agents thuggishly kicking in doors and throwing dealers on the floor as their wives and children watched in horror. The nightmare stories grew like an out-of-control game of telephone.
So why was Kojima allowed to run amok? other insect dealers wondered.
It was time to take the guy down.
Newcomer had bitten the bullet and done his homework a few days prior to the fair. What do you know? Kojima had his own Web site, like any other good smuggler. Splashed across its pages were colorful displays of beetles and butterflies just as if they were a wide variety of designer shoes. Even better, PayPal and credit cards were accepted.
Unbelievable. This guy really has it together, Newcomer realized.
Kojima was certainly no dummy. He wisely didn’t list prices. But the real showstopper was the mascot that fluttered just below the Web site’s banner. This thing had to be the Angelina Jolie of the butterfly world. It was big, beautiful, and splashy. Newcomer didn’t care about bugs, and even he found himself attracted to it. The wings were an iridescent bluish green dabbed with flecks of gold, as enchanting as Joseph’s amazing Technicolor dreamcoat, and the butterfly was as big as a bird. Newcomer knew it had to be expensive. What was this butterfly anyway, and why didn’t Kojima have the species name listed?
Newcomer Googled the butterfly’s description, and voilà! He had his answer.
Son of a bitch! No wonder Kojima hadn’t bothered to mark down the name. Any amateur collector would have known what it was. Even he had heard of it. Queen Alexandra’s Birdwing was the largest and one of the most endangered butterflies in the world. It was like slapping the panda icon on a conservation site, except Kojima was probably selling the damn thing! The butterfly had to be worth a fortune.
Newcomer watched as the CI approached and initiated a conversation with Kojima. It was clear that the two men knew each other. The CI wore a hidden recorder and had been well versed on what questions to ask. If all went well, Kojima would eventually take the informant into his confidence.
Everything was going according to plan. But the day was long, the CI, also working as a vendor, had returned to his own booth, and Newcomer was becoming bored. How many frigging bugs could one look at without beginning to feel itchy and have the urge to scratch? He decided to stroll over to Kojima’s stall and see for himself what all the fuss was about.
One look was all it took. He had to hand it to the guy. Kojima’s butterflies were the finest at the fair. His merchandise looked absolutely flawless. Many of his specimens were so gorgeous they took one’s breath away. Newcomer listened to the conversation and then decided he might as well ask a few questions of his own. What the heck? Playing the wide-eyed novice should be a breeze. As luck would have it, he didn’t know squat about butterflies. Anything he learned was bound to be a bonus. Besides, he was curious about the man and hoped to get some insight into him.
“What kind of butterfly is that?” he asked during a lull, pointing to a birdwing that was as colorful as a Chagall painting. The wings were neon green, and the abdomen appeared to be freshly dipped in bright yellow pollen.
Kojima glanced at the trim, sandy-haired young man standing beside him. Dressed casually in jeans, a work shirt, and baseball cap, Newcomer looked like your typical Southern California beach boy. A light mustache brushed his upper lip, giving him the air of a kid trying to look older. Everything about him was neat and orderly, but for a cowlick that refused to behave. There was something endearing, yet comical, about it, and Yoshi Kojima found himself intrigued. All in all, this was a nice-looking boy.
“That’s Ornithoptera goliath. It’s very beautiful. You like butterflies?” Kojima inquired in a soft, heavily accented voice.
Newcomer flashed an easygoing smile that made him look even younger than his thirty-seven years.
“I like them. I just don’t know much about them,” he admitted, purposely conveying an “aw-shucks” attitude.
Kojima liked people with an open heart. This boy seemed to be one of them. “I’m Yoshi.”
“Ted,” Newcomer responded on the fly. Whew! Thank God he’d picked an undercover name during training. That had just saved his butt. “You have some cool-looking butterflies. I’d love to buy a few, but I don’t have much money for this sort of thing right now.”
“That’s all right. You don’t need to spend a lot,” Kojima attested. Talking about butterflies was one of his favorite things, and he never tired of it. “You have a collection?”
“Not yet. I’d like to do it as a hobby, and you seem to have the best stuff here,” Newcomer told him.
“Yes. Mine are drop-dead gorgeous,” Kojima agreed without a trace of modesty. He could have gone on for hours about them, but someone else grabbed his attention and he caught the whiff of money.
Newcomer took his cue. He wandered around for a while but was soon drawn back to Kojima’s booth. Newcomer was one in a long line of suitors. Collectors were hanging around Kojima like bees drawn to honey. Newcomer patiently waited and then jumped in when he had the chance.
“Wow! That’s a neat bug,” he said, pointing to a golden scarab beetle.
“You know anything about them?” Kojima asked bemusedly.
It was funny. He’d expected Kojima to be guarded, but the guy was easy to talk to. That’s always a good thing in a smuggler, Newcomer thought ironically, and laughed to himself. “Nope. Absolutely nothing,” Newcomer acknowledged with a grin. “But I’d like to learn, and you clearly know more than any other dealer here.”
The boy was smart. “What’s your name again?” Kojima asked, his curiosity having been piqued.
Ooh, yeah. Remember that Kojima responds to flattery. Newcomer made a mental note of it. “Ted Nelson,” he said.
“Okay, Ted. Here’s your first lesson.” Kojima patiently proceeded to point out different beetles and butterflies, telling him a bit about each and where they were from, along with their price. One never knew. The boy might turn out to be a good customer.
“You see these?” Kojima fanned his hand over a group of beetles. “They look like jewels, right?”
Newcomer squinted and did his best to ignore their spindly little legs. When they were seen in the right light, Kojima’s description couldn’t have been more apt. There were bugs in every color of an artist’s palette. Some of them looked nearly psychedelic. They could have been conjured by Timothy Leary during one of his acid trips. Still others were as hypnotically metallic as shiny new cars. Their shells reflected the light in tones of deep bronze, plated gold, and highly buffed chrome, as if they’d been dipped in multiple layers of lacquer. Then there were those that resembled gaudy pieces of costume jewelry. If you forgot they were bugs, they were really pretty cool.
“I collect them in Central and South America,” Kojima disclosed.
“What about this one?” Ed asked, and pointed to a dead large horned beetle.
The thing could have been the star of its own science-fiction movie. It was the color of rich, deep cocoa, with a head the shade of bittersweet chocolate. But the main attraction were its two long, sharp horns, each shaped like a sleek lobster claw. A closer look revealed thick hairs lining the upper horn that were stiff as bristles on a brush.
“Oh, that’s Dynastes hercules. It’s the largest of the rhinoceros beetles,” Kojima replied.
No kidding. The thing was humongous.
Kojima explained that some rhinoceros males reach 7.15 inches in length, with horns that can grow even longer than their bodies. They use them to fight for females and battle other males over territory. The Hercules beetle is the strongest creature on earth for its size, Kojima explained, and can carry 850 times its own body weight.
Newcomer thought about that for a moment. Was he kidding? That had to be the equivalent of a 180-pound man lifting a 60-ton M1 Abrams battle tank over his head. Newcomer looked at the bug again, with newfound respect. Rhino beetles were basically the super-pumped- up, steroid-enhanced Arnold Schwarzenegger version of insects.
“It’s from South America, too. I sell live ones in Japan for ten thousand dollars apiece,” Kojima bragged.
Newcomer whistled under his breath. Kojima was one sharp dude. “That’s a lot of money for a bug. What’s that thing like when it’s alive?” he asked with genuine interest.
Kojima’s eyes nearly twinkled with excitement. He waited until no one was around. Then he reached back and grabbed a small plastic cage covered with newspapers. He motioned for Newcomer to join him.
What’s he up to now? Newcomer wondered.
He had his answer as Kojima removed an enormous horned beetle from inside the pen.
“Wow! That thing’s unbelievable!” Newcomer blurted in surprise.
It was the same size as the other beetle but with a shorter horn. Oh, yeah, one other thing: It was alive and squirming.
Kojima nodded in delight. “This type of Dynastes can only be found in Bolivia. I collected thirty of these just a few weeks ago. I already sold them all in Japan for ten thousand dollars each. Only this one I brought here to the U.S.”
Newcomer tried to imagine Kojima running around in the jungle wearing a pith helmet and carrying a net. He couldn’t.
Kojima moved forward to place the beetle in Newcomer’s hand; Newcomer instinctively flinched. Was Kojima out of his mind? No way in hell was he going to touch that thing.
“Is that legal?” he quickly dodged, hoping to cover his reaction.
Newcomer already knew the answer. Bringing live insects into the country without a permit was totally verboten.
Kojima shrugged, as if the law was a minor inconvenience. “It’s illegal. But ninety-nine percent is safe. Sometimes we pay under the table.”
There it was—the tiniest smirk. Newcomer picked up on it like a trained bloodhound. Kojima loved getting away with it. This guy wore what he did like a badge of honor.
Someone approached and Kojima swiftly put the beetle away.
“You come back at the end of the day. Maybe I have some extra butterflies I can give you,” Kojima kindly suggested, then turned toward his customer.
That sounded like a good deal. Besides, Newcomer had nothing to lose. He slowly made his way over to the informant’s booth.
The CI finished up some business and then slipped him a white plastic grocery bag. Inside were the recorder, a microphone, and a minidisc. “I got what I could on tape. What do I do next?” he asked, glancing around nervously.
Newcomer watched in amusement. Didn’t these guys ever go to the movies and know how to act inconspicuous?
“Just let me know if Kojima contacts you, and I’ll be in touch,” Newcomer instructed.
He took another leisurely stroll around the museum floor, stopping at a few more booths. Try as he might, it was hard not to admire the exhibits, regardless of the fact that everything was dead.
Some butterflies were bedecked with gaudy silver spangles as if in a nod to Beyoncé and Cher, while others had full regalia of blue fireworks on their wings. Then there were those that resembled winged angels in long flowing ball gowns. If alive, they might have been miniature pieces of Tiffany glass in swirling tapestries of color. But these butterflies lay perfectly still, tiny corpses in a glass-covered morgue, each with its very own toe tag. The label provided detailed information regarding the species, along with when and where it had been collected—the necessary data that every serious butterfly collector demanded.
Newcomer was engrossed in studying the merchandise when he felt a sudden tap on his shoulder.
Whirling around, he was startled to find Kojima standing behind him. He froze for a split second. Holy crap! It’s him. Kojima must have somehow found out who I am, he thought, panicking. Terrific. Now the case would be bing, bam, boom, over. That ought to make a hell of an impression on his new boss.
Except that Kojima stood holding a plain cardboard box in his hands.
“Here are some butterflies for you,” he said with a smile, and offered the gift as if it were a box of Godiva chocolates.
Newcomer was momentarily stunned by the gesture.
“Wow, this is incredibly nice of you, Yoshi,” he said. He took the box and opened the lid. Inside were thirteen dead butterflies, each one a perfectly mounted gem.
“It’s nothing,” Kojima told him. “Just common butterflies. They’re not valuable but are good to start your collection.”
Their worth wasn’t what mattered. It was the fact they came from Kojima that made them as precious as gold. Newcomer would never have dreamt he’d make this kind of connection with the man. “Are you kidding? This is terrific. Please, let me pay you for them,” Newcomer said.
“No, no. These are for you. They’re free,” Kojima said.
“Th . . . thanks, Yoshi,” Newcomer stammered, still feeling somewhat dumbfounded. Snap out of it, he ordered himself. For chrissake, take advantage of the moment! “Is there a way I can get in touch with you?”
Kojima took a second to size him up. No alarm bells went off, and he prided himself on being a good judge of character. Ted Nelson looked genuinely eager to learn, and he was always willing to help those who were truly interested in bugs. Kojima pulled out a black Magic Marker and wrote his e-mail address on the box.
“Thanks again. This is really terrific of you,” Newcomer said, gripping the box of butterflies. Wanting to leave before Kojima could change his mind, he made a mad dash for his car.
Catching his breath, he was on a high, unable to believe his luck. It turned out this little interlude with bugs hadn’t been so bad after all. He could hardly wait for his next assignment.
He barely bothered to notice the endless line of traffic snaking by as he turned onto Interstate 110. To his mind’s eye, each vehicle was as bright and shiny as a tropical butterfly. The traffic remained bumper-to-bumper all the way to his office.