Passion is a positive obsession. Obsession is a negative passion.
—PAUL CARVEL
TORRANCE IS A HUGE SPRAWLING SUBURB just south of Los Angeles, home to generic shopping malls and an Exxon Mobil oil refinery, and close to the airport.
Newcomer pulled into Torrance Tech Park, a nondescript strip of brick office buildings, and walked toward the unobtrusive sign that announced OFFICE OF LAW ENFORCEMENT. He was “home, sweet home.”
He unlocked the front door, entered the lobby with its bulletproof window, punched in the code at the security panel, and stepped inside the honeycomb maze of the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service office.
This case is going to be a cinch, he thought as he photographed the butterflies, tagged the box, and placed it into evidence. All the CI had to do was follow through, with a little guidance from Newcomer. His mission was over. Maybe now he’d be given something more substantial to tackle.
It didn’t matter that it was late Saturday afternoon. He was anxious to report in. He picked up the phone and called his boss.
“Hey, you’re not gonna believe what just happened at the fair,” he began when Marie Palladini answered her phone.
The resident agent in charge listened to his report. She’d thought of the assignment as simply a training exercise for her latest rookie. He’d only been here a few weeks, and she liked to start new agents off easy. She remembered all too well what it was like to be a rank beginner.
Palladini had been one of the first female special agents to join the Fish and Wildlife Service (FWS) in the seventies. She’d never heard of the agency before. Or, if she had, she’d thought they were just a bunch of hunters and fishermen. It had taken an interview with the Drug Enforcement Agency to learn about it. Apparently, DEA didn’t have an opening for her, but Fish and Wildlife was looking for a few good women. Palladini had always been an environmentalist, and the thought of becoming a wildlife investigator appealed to her. What could be better than helping animals while running around and catching bad guys?
She’d joined the Service and soon found herself playing more roles than the average Hollywood starlet. She worked undercover as the Cajun girlfriend of a gator poacher and learned to fend off more than just four-legged toothy critters. Other roles included administrative assistant to an agent posing as a buyer of walrus ivory, with the Alaskan version of the Hells Angels as their target. She also portrayed a Native American and delved into the illegal sale of eagle feathers.
This was all in her first few years on the job. You name it and she did it. Palladini knew what it took to get a case done and could bring the strongest men to their knees. In turn, she was called a wolverine and accused of having brass ovaries. She considered those to be her gold stars.
Palladini hadn’t really expected anything to come of today, even though Kojima was a known violator who had been on their radar for years. Even so, cases sometimes take on a life of their own. She immediately came to a decision. Newcomer wasn’t the typical new guy. He already had plenty of real-life experience that could easily be applied to the job. She felt confident that he had enough ambition to take the case and run with it. Besides, she had her own reasons for wanting to nail Kojima, and once she got her teeth into something, she didn’t let go.
“Guess what? The two of you obviously hit it off, so we’re dropping the CI. Congratulations. You’re the new undercover guy,” she informed him.
Oh shit, Newcomer thought. This was totally unbelievable! The only thing worse would have been if she’d wanted him to play with a bunch of tarantulas.
He kept his mouth shut, but he’d always hated bugs. Even as a kid they’d freaked him out. There was something unnerving about the feeling of creepy, crawly legs skittering around on his skin. He shivered just thinking about it. Maybe it sprang from the huge spiders in his Denver basement that leapt on him as a boy. Whatever the reason, fear of insects was in his blood. He didn’t care whether or not it was rational.
On the other hand, damn! He held Palladini in high regard and would do whatever she wanted. It had taken him way too many years to become a special agent, and he still had something to prove. He wasn’t about to blow it now—bugs or not.
Newcomer had gladly left his former career behind, lock, stock, and barrel. He’d worked as a lawyer for eleven years, first in Washington State and then in his hometown of Denver, and had nearly lost his mind. Much of it had been spent prosecuting health-care fraud. He’d hated every single minute of it.
His passion wasn’t for law but rather for animals. Hell, it had started when he was just a kid. He and his two sisters would take stray cats into their home while their mom was at work. It was the only thing that got him down into the basement. Besides housing scary spiders, the cellar proved a useful way to sneak cats inside.
“Our basement was like the demilitarized zone except for hand-to-hand combat with all the spiders,” Newcomer joked. “The cellar was where we’d go as kids and do whatever we wanted.”
That was until his mother discovered the ploy. She put an end to the rescue mission once the cats reached an even dozen.
Besides animals, Newcomer’s childhood obsession was playing cops and robbers. It went way beyond the norm. The kid was a law-enforcement junkie. His idea of a good time was to sit in his mother’s 1969 station wagon, place an old battery-powered lantern on the roof, switch it on, and spend hours making siren noises. He once wrote his sister a ticket for making out with her boyfriend while parked in front of their house. It was as if he’d been born with a white hat on.
Young Ed spent the rest of his free time watching Walt Disney wildlife documentaries on TV. As a teenager, he would get into his Jeep and roam the backcountry in search of coyotes, elk herds, and whatever else might be out there.
Naturally, his role models were a trio of kick-ass heroes. Adam-12 got to catch the bad guys, while his G.I. Joe dolls went in search of Bigfoot. Then there was Caine from the TV show Kung Fu, who walked across the old American West, lived off the land, and beat the crap out of bullies who tried to pick on him or anyone else that they viewed as weak. It seemed to Newcomer like the perfect life. In fact, it reminded him of the job that he had now.
He went to college having decided to become a Colorado state game warden. It would be the perfect blending of his two passions. He’d be able to protect animals and still have the powers of a cop.
He threw himself into the required wildlife biology courses and quickly slammed against a wall.
“It was awful. I did just terrible. I couldn’t get interested in all the minutiae you have to learn about big wildlife. I wanted to study elk in the field, not in some lab. I didn’t give a flying fart what kind of mitochondria was in their poop,” Newcomer admitted ruefully.
He sank into a deep funk until spotting a job announcement on the school bulletin board for a USFWS special agent. What in the hell is that? he wondered. Some new kind of game warden?
The job description read exactly like an advertisement for the FBI, only to protect wildlife. It was just what Newcomer wanted. The catch was the necessary requirement: a degree in either law or wildlife biology. He’d already struck out on one. That left him with little choice.
Fantasy is a great thing. Newcomer now daydreamed of becoming a lawyer like Harry Hamlin on L.A. Law, dating a babe like Susan Dey and making a million dollars. Or he could skip the big bucks, fancy office, and the Hollywood babe and work with wildlife. His world now had options.
What he didn’t realize was that being accepted as a special agent would be nearly as difficult as passing the bar exam. Newcomer applied to the Service only to be passed over twice. Yet he still couldn’t stop thinking about it. He knew he could do the job. He just had to convince everyone else.
The third try proved to be the charm. It was also just in the nick of time. He was literally four days away from the cutoff for entry as a special agent—thirty-seven years old. He managed to slip in under the wire.
Newcomer closed his law books, kissed his new bride good-bye, and spent the next eighteen weeks sweating it out at the Federal Law Enforcement Training Center in steamy Glynco, Georgia. Newly accepted entrants to the Secret Service, the ATF, the IRS, and a handful of other federal law-enforcement agencies joined him. If he’d thought playing Adam-12 as a kid was fun, this reality proved to be a blast.
The Criminal Investigator program was pretty much a rehash of what Newcomer had already learned in law school. He breezed through it without even taking notes. It was the second half of training that really revved his engine. Special Agent Basic School covered surveillance, undercover work, and how to interview a subject. Newcomer turned out to be a natural at it.
Then there were the tactics courses. Logging in at five feet six inches and 135 pounds, Newcomer could be taken for a lightweight, the type to get sand kicked in his face at Muscle Beach. That was where he surprised everyone. He took no prisoners. A martial arts expert with a sixth-degree black belt in tae kwon do, he naturally excelled in self-defense classes. His wife had earned a black belt, too. As fate had it, they met at a tae kwon do tournament. It was love at first throw-down.
Newcomer received a badge and a gun upon graduation. Beyond the usual shoot-’em-up toys, a real gun was something Newcomer never thought he would own. Though his favorite game as a kid was cops and robbers, both of his parents were Mennonites. He’d grown up in a nonviolent home.
He was also given a list of available duty stations from which to choose. He wisely let his wife make the decision. Originally a New Yorker, she veered toward the West Coast and picked California.
An attractive brunette, Allison is small and slight in build and nearly as lethal as Newcomer. She’s also equally competitive along with being bright. Allison decided to get her Ph.D. in social welfare at UCLA. The plan was that Newcomer would catch the bad guys and she’d do her best to rehabilitate them.
Newcomer couldn’t have been happier with her choice of location. California is the gateway to Central America and the hub for trade with the Pacific Rim, making Los Angeles one of the busiest ports in the United States.
LAX was where banded iguanas were smuggled into the country in fake prosthetic legs, and two Asian leopard cats had been stuffed into a backpack. Tortoises were hidden in Chinese toys, and heroin was found sewn inside shipments of koi fish. Think of something crazy, and it was probably already being done. L.A. was ground zero for the kind of work Newcomer wanted to do. There was plenty of action, and he planned to go after the big stuff. Throw a stone and you’d hit a case. It was where an agent could make a name for himself while doing the job of his dreams.
He had made a pact with Allison before starting the job. Weekends would be family time and not spent doing work. But this butterfly case had come up, and he’d already broken the rule. It couldn’t be helped. She would just have to forgive him. He now slipped the informant’s tape into the recorder and listened to Kojima’s fractured English. What he heard sounded like something out of an adventure book.
Kojima bragged about working for National Geographic as a jungle guide. His task was to find and provide bugs for their films. He’d discovered a new subspecies of Dynastes beetles during one trip and had caught thirty-four pair of them. Touting his job was how Kojima smuggled pricey insects out of Bolivia.
“Officials at the airport know I work for National Geographic. That’s why they almost never check me,” Kojima boasted to the CI.
Sometimes he even hid bugs in his jacket. “They asked me once, ‘Do you have anything?’ The guy’s so stupid, he just checked my outside pockets but not the ones inside,” Kojima revealed with a laugh.
If he had checked the inside pockets, the inspector would have found a giant Hercules beetle snugly wrapped in a washcloth. Once inspectors did find a live bug inside his luggage. They let both Kojima and the beetle go free. Other Japanese dealers who got caught weren’t so lucky. They were immediately deported.
Kojima wove tales of having owned butterfly farms in Indonesia and Costa Rica and said he could get any butterfly from anywhere in the world. Listening to him was better than some of the TV shows that Newcomer used to watch.
The CI asked if Kojima ever worried about Fish and Wildlife catching up with him. Kojima replied that an agent had once come to his L.A. home but that he’d easily been outfoxed.
It was the wrong thing to say. Kojima had just unknowingly issued a challenge. Newcomer made up his mind then and there that he would be the agent to nab him.
He drove to work Monday morning and immediately reported to Palladini, filling her in on the tape.
She listened to Kojima’s tales of smuggling and his boast of having duped a federal agent. The story had made the office rounds a few years ago. Palladini knew exactly who it was that Kojima was talking about.
Throughout the 1990s Kojima regularly caught protected butterflies along the northern rim of the Grand Canyon, as well as in other U.S. national parks. Papilio indra kaibabensis and Papilio indra martini—the names sound as exotic as foreign locales or designer drinks, but they’re desirable American swallowtails that are much in demand in Japan.
Kojima was also smuggling a steady stream of butterflies from Mexico into the United States at the time. That put other collectors and dealers under the spotlight as well. They decided it was time to teach him a lesson. Fish and Wildlife special agent John Mendoza was tipped off. But that wasn’t the only reason why Kojima was turned in.
Kojima had been hammering away at California butterflies that could be legally caught and sold. The man was like a lethal Energizer Bunny. Once he started to catch them, he just couldn’t stop himself. They were little flying dollar signs, and he wasn’t about to let any of them go. He caught so many of one species that he temporarily wiped out their population. That proved to be a bad move on his part. It wasn’t just the butterfly that was hurt but other collectors, who came away empty-handed. Kojima quickly earned the reputation of being a butterfly hog.
That was the tale with the Apache fritillary, one of California’s largest and most spectacular butterflies, which resembles a stained-glass window in flight. The species has a restricted range on the Sierra’s eastern slope. Kojima went in, scoured the territory, and caught five hundred of the butterflies in only two days. Then he shipped them all off to Japan, where they sold for thirty bucks apiece. There were no more Apache fritillaries to be found for the next two years. Enough complaints were lodged that the area wound up being permanently closed to everyone. It proved to be another black mark against Kojima. Burn enough collectors, and they’re bound to turn on you.
Even so, that wasn’t a problem for Kojima. He simply moved on to new territory. He instantly gained notoriety in Payson, Arizona, where the Grant’s rhinoceros beetle, the largest bug in the United States, appears.
The beetles live in miles of protected forest surrounding the town and fly into Payson for two weeks in August each year for a raucous convention. The insects are drawn to the gas-station lights at night and literally flood the streets. People gather from all over the world to witness the event and collect as many of the bugs as they can. But nobody could compete with Kojima. He not only claimed the location as his own, he also paid locals to help him. He was so competitive that he fought with people over the beetles and even outran small children as they tried to catch them. No way would he willingly give up a single one. Kojima then mailed the bugs off to Japan to be sold as live pets, which is illegal without federal permission. Naturally, it was something Kojima never bothered to get. People called him a human vacuum cleaner. Others said that he was totally obsessed.
Enter John Mendoza, the quintessential dogged federal agent. All he needed was a trench coat and he would have been the Columbo of protecting critters. He learned of Kojima and set his sights on stopping him.
Mendoza went about the usual routine of setting up surveillances as he tried to catch Kojima collecting on federal land. He even knocked on Kojima’s door and interviewed him at home. That was followed up with a letter that clearly spelled out the law. About all that did was to give Kojima a good laugh.
Higher-ups got tired of chasing after a butterfly guy with a net. It was costing them time and money. Mendoza was ordered to shut the case down after eight months without success. That pissed him off, along with the rest of the special agents.
What they didn’t know was that Kojima changed his ways after that. He went on to bigger and better things, transitioning from poaching in U.S. national parks to trafficking in endangered insects around the world. So far, Kojima was winning the war and Fish and Wildlife was batting zero. That galled Palladini to no end. Catching him had now become a matter of professional pride. She could have cared less if Kojima dealt in bears, birds, or butterflies. The species themselves made no difference. It still added up to a wildlife violation.
According to Interpol, the illegal worldwide animal trade rakes in a cool ten to fifteen billion dollars a year, and in the world of butterflies, Kojima had established himself as a kingpin. A seasoned smuggler, he’d been breaking the law, catching and selling endangered butterflies, for close to twenty years. He’d even been brazen enough to advertise his merchandise on an insect Web site in the United States. Word had it that the illegal butterfly trade alone was worth two hundred million dollars each year. That meant Kojima had been getting one hell of a piece of the pie.
“Keep up the good work,” Palladini told Newcomer as he displayed the butterflies that Kojima had given him.
Terrific, he thought, sure that he’d caught a few of his fellow agents snickering. He was right. Newcomer was soon jokingly referred to as “the butterfly cop.”
He spent the next few weeks immersed in everything about bugs and butterflies. He clicked on insect Web sites, spoke to experts, and stayed up nights trying to learn the difference between Ornithoptera paradisea, Troides helena, and Papilio hospiton. There are about twenty thousand known species of butterflies. That provided twenty thousand different ways for Newcomer to lose his mind. It made cramming for exams back in law school seem easy. But he gradually mastered some of their names and markings, along with an idea of price. Like it or not, he was earning his reputation as “the butterfly cop.”
Last, he set up a covert e-mail address for his undercover persona, Ted Nelson. All he needed was a cloak and dagger, and he would have felt like an actual spy. Newcomer was as prepared as he was going to be for now. It was finally time to contact Kojima.
As Ted Nelson, he sent Kojima an e-mail reminding him of where they’d met and of the butterflies that Kojima had given him. He had tried to identify all thirteen and was wondering if he’d gotten them right. Would Kojima mind taking a look at his list?
He remembered that Kojima responded to flattery. Perhaps playing the eager young novice would appeal to the master smuggler. Newcomer purposely misidentified more than half the butterflies, hoping to give Kojima a reason to write back. He cleverly sweetened the pie by mentioning that he’d like to add more butterflies to his new collection. He signed his name Ted Nelson and included his phone number along with a mailing address. The number was an untraceable line at work.
Kojima immediately took the bait. He called later that day believing it to be Nelson’s home number. Newcomer had already vamoosed, so Kojima left a message. He’d reviewed the list of butterflies and would gladly go over them. Ted should just give him a call.
Newcomer was over the moon as he listened to his voice mail the next morning. Man, but he was good at this! He gave himself a mental pat on the back. Everything was coming together exactly as planned. This was his very first case, and he intended to knock it out of the park.
He promptly returned the call. Kojima couldn’t have been more cordial. He congratulated Nelson on his first identification attempt. There had only been a few mistakes. Exactly what did Ted do for a living, anyway?
Newcomer was fully prepared with an answer. “My dad had a wholesale marine-supply company. I took over the business when he retired. I work mostly at home, but I’ve got to tell you that I’m bored out of my gourd.”
Kojima chuckled. Nelson had a sense of humor. He liked that in a young man.
“I’ve got a little extra money, and I’m looking for something else to do,” Newcomer added. Ted Nelson was hoping to find a good investment. “What about you, Yoshi?”
Kojima revealed that besides butterflies, he also sold Japanese antiques. “I have a very good business. Sotheby’s and Christies’ are always asking me to sell through them. You wouldn’t believe how many Japanese antiques I’ve found here in the U.S. I think a lot of soldiers must have brought antiques back home with them after World War II.”
However, Kojima had done many more things than just that. He was a true entrepreneur. He’d once owned a travel agency, but the business had gone sour after 9/11. It was then that National Geographic had approached him, asking him to be an insect “headhunter.” “My work is very much like what Harrison Ford does in his Indiana Jones movies,” Kojima joked.
Newcomer laughed in agreement. Yoshi Kojima was a lucky man.
“Maybe you should think about doing something different for a while,” Kojima suggested helpfully. A change in career might pay off. It certainly had for him. He not only enjoyed what he did but earned good money at it. He’d made ten thousand dollars during this last L.A. insect fair. Would Ted like to meet for coffee and they could talk about a possible business idea that he had?
Was Kojima kidding? This was fantastic! Newcomer bit like a fish lured with fresh bait. He couldn’t believe his luck. Kojima was actually beginning to act like his mentor. Just look at the information he’d managed to gather so far. This case was going to be even easier than he’d originally thought.
Newcomer spent the next few days buckling down to prepare for the meeting. There were still umpteen more Latin names of bugs to be learned. They ran through his head like a continuous loop of film. And he had to make sure that his cover was rock solid. He’d heard horror tales of undercover agents having wallets ripped from their hands and the contents scrutinized for ID. One perp had gone so far as to grab an agent’s cell phone and examine it. Newcomer didn’t want to take any chances. He made a checklist and kept going over it.
He already had a driver’s license in Ted Nelson’s name. He now proceeded to build a wallet in his undercover persona. But he felt there was something missing. Then he hit upon it: odds and ends to throw in the car’s backseat. A few telling details would add a nice touch of authenticity. All he needed was a little help from a commercial boat dealer.
He stopped by a shop and explained the situation. He planned to use the profession as a cover. Would the owner mind talking to him about it? The proprietor couldn’t have been more thrilled if he’d been cast in a movie.
Newcomer left armed with a pile of catalogues on boat parts, along with a teacher’s manual for the Marine Mechanics Institute. He slapped some Post-it notes in each brochure and stapled his brand-new business card on the front. Then he tossed them into his undercover vehicle, along with a few greasy rags. He even threw some junk into the glove compartment and trunk.
His meeting with Kojima was set for June 23 at a Starbucks on Venice Boulevard. Newcomer slipped out of his usual freshly pressed pants and crisp, clean shirt and into his new persona. Ted Nelson was a casual kind of guy. That called for a polo top and jeans. A small digital recorder fit neatly into his pocket. He remembered to remove his wedding ring just as he walked out the door. Lesson number four: You never want a target to know you have a family.
He was still new at all this, so Palladini decided to tag along. She waited until Newcomer went inside and met up with Kojima. Then she sauntered in and planted herself on the opposite end of the room.
“You look nice today,” Kojima said as they sat down.
He couldn’t say the same for Kojima. He looked as rumpled as a heap of old clothes that had been dumped at the laundry. Come to think of it, wasn’t he wearing the same shirt he’d had on at the fair? He wasn’t exactly a fashion plate. His fanny pack covered the elastic waistband of his shorts, and a baseball cap was slapped haphazardly on his head.
“Tell me more about your business,” Kojima said, and leaned toward him.
Newcomer elaborated on the cover that he’d already begun to weave. “As I said, H&N Enterprises belonged to my dad. He was a doctor but always loved boats. That’s why he went into the wholesale marine business after he retired. He eventually decided to get out of it and passed the business on to me. It’s funny, though. What my dad really loves are butterflies. In fact, he was jealous when he heard of the ones you gave me,” Newcomer smoothly recounted, growing comfortable. “Hey, how did National Geographic first hear about you, anyway?”
“Oh, they found me at the insect fair here in L.A.,” Kojima replied. With that, he was off and running. “I get paid seven thousand dollars for fifteen days work. Now they want me to move to Washington, D.C., so that I’ll always be available for them.”
“That’s terrific,” Newcomer replied, although it struck him as odd. For a smuggler, this guy really liked to talk about himself.
“There’s so much pressure, though!” Kojima said. “But they’ll pay me fifteen thousand a month to go to Central and South America, and give me an apartment and a car.”
Add to the list that Kojima also liked to brag. Even so, Newcomer couldn’t help but be impressed. Kojima was obviously damn good at what he did.
Over the course of the next hour, he learned that Kojima excelled at any number of things. Not only had the man owned a travel agency, but he’d also raised Siamese betta fighting fish. He had bred them with fancy half-moon tails and once been awarded the show fish world championship. Afterward, he had immediately lost interest in them and never even bothered to pick up his winning fish from the contest.
“I had a beautiful big house in Mount Olympus up in the Hollywood Hills. A two-million-dollar mansion,” Kojima boasted. “One of the bedrooms held two hundred fish tanks. It made the room so moist that the ceiling tiles started to fall. I think I had ten thousand betta fighting fish at one time.” He had gotten rid of every single one of them.
For a while, Kojima raised cockatoos and parrots and had thirty birds in his backyard greenhouse. He even taught his African gray to say dirty words in Japanese. But he soon tired of them as well, and moved on to breeding orchids. Kojima would work at things until they reached perfection, only to suddenly grow bored and quit. His passions peaked and ebbed like a roller-coaster ride. But he always succeeded at whatever he did. Friends liked to say that whenever he fell, he’d get back up with a dollar in his hand. They joked that he had Jewish blood in him.
The only thing that continually held his interest was butterflies. Like a doleful lover, he always returned to them.
Kojima’s personal life had been tumultuous. He had been estranged from his American wife for years. He quipped that he’d kicked his wife out of the house after she cheated him of money. She’d been pregnant with their child at the time. His son, Ken, was now twenty-three years old, and Kojima was still close to his father-in-law, who was very rich and had a couple of homes in Southern California. Kojima lived in Kyoto with his mother these days but kept a small apartment in L.A.
“It’s so easy to breed fish, and beetles, and birds. I collect beetles as a hobby and then sell them to the world market. The Japanese will pay a lot of money for them,” he divulged freely.
If Kojima had been dropping bread crumbs, Newcomer would have gobbled them all up by now. He hung on Kojima’s every word.
Kojima could teach Ted to mount if he was interested. It was simple. In fact, Kojima would give him some equipment that he’d planned to throw away. He had hundreds of butterflies that needed mounting. Why, he’d even be happy to help Ted learn to breed and sell bugs.
“Do you think you would like to sell butterflies?” he asked.
Yes! Newcomer screamed in his brain. “Absolutely! I hate the boat business. I want to do what you’re doing, Yoshi. You know, be an insect dealer,” he replied. This meeting couldn’t have been going better if it were a dream.
“You can come with me to Costa Rica or Honduras sometime. I’m going next week,” Kojima offered, as if it was an everyday occurrence.
Kojima was a real jet-setter. Hell, he probably even traveled on free air miles.
“Oh, yeah? What will you be doing there?” Newcomer asked, aware of the tape recorder chugging away in his pocket.
“I collect silver and gold scarab beetles. Very large ones come from those countries.” Kojima couldn’t have been happier if he was discussing gems. In fact, these were far better.
“Can you bring them into the U.S.?” Newcomer asked, wanting to get his response on tape.
Kojima gave a noncommittal shrug. “Not through Mexico. If there’s a problem, you could go to jail. I take them first to Japan and then bring them here. U.S. Customs is not catching Japanese. We’re not so much problem people. They never ask what I bring in. They’re always on the lookout for Mexicans,” he said with a laugh.
Kojima had every angle figured out. Newcomer was already itching to bring him down.
Kojima next entertained him with tales of close calls. He’d had “big trouble” in Mexico just two months earlier when officials discovered two hundred live beetles in his bag. They questioned his stay of only a day. Kojima explained it away with two magic words—National Geographic.
“They called the top guy there and talked on the phone for two hours. They finally let me go.” Kojima flashed a conspiratorial grin.
In addition, he took all two hundred beetles with him.
Another time, a Bolivian official spotted a beetle’s sharp horn sticking out of his camera bag. Kojima deftly said it was a butterfly, slipped him a hundred bucks, and skedaddled. Interest in his bag continued when he placed it in the plane’s overhead compartment.
“The bugs smelled like pee-pee. Everyone kept looking around wanting to know where the stink was coming from!” Kojima said in amusement, still getting a kick out of that one.
His adventures didn’t end there. A beetle once escaped from his bag and began to fly around the plane. It looked like a mechanical wind-up toy with wings that were furiously flapping. Kojima quickly reached up and grabbed it in midair, his fingers working as swiftly and precisely as those of a Shaolin monk. He made sure to tuck those babies in better from then on. And to be much more clever in the future.
Exportation of wild beetles and butterflies is illegal in Costa Rica, and officials are rigorous in their inspections. Kojima solved that problem by bribing a local museum staffer. The staffer still packs Kojima’s merchandise and sends it under the auspices of the museum.
“I can help you get bugs on our South American trip. Then we can take them back to Japan together. Don’t worry. It won’t be a problem. They don’t show up on X-ray,” Kojima assured him. “Besides, it’s not drugs. So who cares?”
Newcomer nearly laughed out loud. Wait until Kojima discovered exactly who he was dealing with.
Kojima became more animated by the minute as he continued to outline his plan. “I can teach you how to sell. Maybe you can be my agent here in the States,” he proposed.
Bingo! That suggestion caught Newcomer’s ear. “Oh, yeah? Just how would that work, and what kind of money would I make?”
Kojima smiled. He knew that he’d just caught Ted Nelson hook, line, and sinker. He explained that he had a number of Internet auction sites in Japan. Did Ted know how to use eBay?
“Yep. I sure do,” Newcomer said.
Kojima’s eyes lit up in delight. “Then we can really make money together. My friend is making seven thousand dollars a month! He buys butterflies from me and then sells them on eBay. Sometimes a five-cent butterfly will go for as much as a hundred dollars.”
Son of a gun. No wonder the butterfly business was booming. These guys were actually making real money.
Kojima nearly burst with excitement as his scheme unfolded. “I’ll bring you lots of things, and you can post them for me on eBay. You can set up an account, and I’ll sell my material there. Even with a fifty-fifty split, we’ll do very well.”
Damn! Was he imagining this, or was Kojima really asking him to be his business partner?
“Why don’t you just do it yourself?” Newcomer asked, wondering where all this generosity was coming from.
“I can do so many things, but eBay I cannot figure out. It must be a problem with my English,” Kojima replied innocently. “Besides, Fish and Wildlife are looking for me. Only they cannot catch.”
Once again, Newcomer was taken aback. Kojima was actually bragging about being a smuggler.
“Why not?” he asked, having pondered that question himself.
“Because there’s no evidence,” Kojima disclosed. “My L.A. address is not in my name. I also have two passports. One is Japanese and the other is American. That one has a completely different identity.”
Newcomer’s adrenaline began to thrum. Kojima was brilliant! He could actually write a book about this stuff. “You’re kidding! What name do you use?”
Kojima’s smile was as sly as the Cheshire cat’s. “It’s a secret. No one knows my American name yet.”
Maybe not, Yoshi. But I’ll bet you two to one that I find out, Newcomer thought.
“But won’t I get in trouble if I post butterflies for you on eBay?” Newcomer asked, continuing to play the naïve protégé.
“Don’t worry. They can’t catch you,” Kojima assured him. “The account won’t be in my name.”
Unbelievable! Kojima spun more webs than a spider. It was hard to keep up with this guy.
“I don’t get it, Yoshi. If bugs are no big deal, then why are the cops after you?” Newcomer pressed. Come on, Yoshi. Give it to me blow by blow. Spill your guts for the recorder.
“Oh, those guys are crazy. They have all these stupid rules and regulations. But nobody really cares,” Kojima scoffed.
He then laid out his master plan. “We’ll start by selling common butterflies. I have very nice ones. Everything will be perfectly legal at first. That will give us time to figure out who the good customers are and which of them are interested in protected CITES material. Then we can start to sell it to them.” He politely folded his hands in his lap as if he had studied etiquette with Emily Post.
CITES, the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species of Wild Fauna and Flora, is an international agreement that’s been ratified by 175 nations. Created in 1973, it aims to regulate the commercial trade of plants and animals that are bought and sold around the world. Consumer demand for these species is so high that things could easily get out of whack and lead to their uncontrolled exploitation. It is at CITES meetings, held every two years, that member nations decide which species have become sufficiently threatened to require protection and which have adequately recovered to be consumed once again by international trade.
Within CITES, two opposing camps wage a voracious battle. The use-it-or-lose-it camp—led by sustainable-use countries such as Japan, Zimbabwe, and Norway—argue that all wildlife has a monetary value and should be used as a resource. The other camp—championed by the United States and environmental groups—worries that CITES is far more interested in trade than in saving species and fights for whatever trade restrictions it can.
The convention relies on a rating system based on what’s known as appendices. These determine the level of protection that individual species receive.
Appendix I bans all commercial trade in species such as rhinos, mountain gorillas, giant pandas, Asian elephants, tigers, snow leopards, and blue whales, along with all other plants and wildlife threatened with extinction. That means their illegal sale can bring big bucks. As a result, there are rumors of vaults stockpiled with illegal rhino horns and elephant tusks in anticipation that these species will one day disappear forever.
Appendix II covers those species that are not endangered but considered potentially vulnerable. Trade in them is regulated to assure their continued sustainability. Some species protected under this appendix include the American black bear, Hartmann’s mountain zebra, gray parrots, toco toucans, green iguanas, and southern fur seals.
Permits are required for their import and export in and out of most countries. It’s a system that depends on international cooperation in order to succeed. However, each nation has its own enforcement laws, along with penalties for violating them, which are not upheld in many cases.
The politics of saving species has become a down-and-dirty game in which animals are the ultimate pawns. CITES is indeed a trade treaty in which enterprises as diverse as the ornamental-fish industry, Ringling Bros. and Barnum & Bailey Circus, and environmental groups all have a stake.
More than thirty thousand species are covered under the treaty, making implementation quite a task. The list includes twelve butterflies, with proposals to protect more currently under way. An additional nineteen butterflies are protected under the Endangered Species Act.
Think of CITES as a worldwide emergency room for wildlife.
However, in reality, the treaty is a bureaucratic nightmare of paperwork, with enough holes to blast the space shuttle through.
Kojima apparently knew every single one and shrewdly took advantage of them.
“Most dealers only care about money and not helping people. But I’m not that way. I like to help those in the insect business, and you’re a nice boy,” Kojima said to his new protégé, beguiling him. “Why don’t you set up an eBay account, and we’ll begin to work together. You can handle the orders, and I’ll supply the merchandise.”
Had Newcomer been anyone else, he would have been blown away. He eagerly agreed to begin immediately.
Kojima stood up and adjusted his fanny pack. “Come with me. There’s something I want to give you.”
Newcomer followed him out to the parking lot.
“Which one is yours?” Kojima abruptly asked, and began to scan the vehicles.
Now what’s he up to? Newcomer thought. He pointed to a white Chevy Tahoe. “That’s mine right over there.”
“Oh, what a nice car,” Kojima replied. He scuttled toward it. Bending low, he emitted a grunt and scrupulously studied the license plate. Then he began to carefully inspect the grille.
Son of a gun! This bastard isn’t as trusting as he pretends to be, Newcomer realized, his pulse beginning to race like a V-8 engine. He knew what Kojima was up to. He was looking for hidden emergency lights. What the hell had set him off?
Small beads of sweat formed on the back of Newcomer’s neck, and his fingernails nervously dug into his palms. Calm down! Maybe he’s paranoid enough to do this with everyone. But Newcomer was having a tough time convincing himself of that as he worked hard to control his breathing. This felt like every damn movie he’d seen where the good guy was about to be discovered.
Play it cool! He’s not going to find anything. The Tahoe is clean. But Kojima’s mind game was definitely getting to him.
“Such a beautiful car,” Kojima murmured, continuing to examine every single inch.
Jesus Christ. He’s doing everything but kicking the damn tires, Newcomer silently griped while watching him closely as a hawk.
There was only one reason for Kojima to be doing this. He’s scoping me out to see if I’m an agent. What did I do to tip him off? Newcomer racked his brain. And what could he do to rectify it now? Then he remembered a lesson he’d learned at special agent basic training back in Glynco: Ignore unusual behavior, and that’s a very good clue that you might be an undercover agent.
He didn’t waste another moment. “Hey, what are you doing, Yoshi?” he asked, having decided to play dumb. “Are you thinking of buying a Tahoe?”
“Oh, I just have to check and make sure you’re not a Fish and Wild guy,” Kojima replied casually, then turned his attention to the vehicle’s interior.
Goddamn it! Kojima was now searching the Tahoe for a police radio. A string of doubts began to eat at him. Could there be anything inside that might give him away? Newcomer hadn’t expected such a thorough examination. He had to act fast and take charge of the situation. “What? You’ve got to be kidding me. You’re crazy, man. This is total bullshit,” Newcomer said with a shake of his head and began to walk away.
Kojima turned to him with a smile. The boy had passed the test. There was nothing to worry about. Besides, Ted Nelson looked more like a choirboy than a law-enforcement agent. “Everything’s okay. Let’s go over to my car.”
That was too close for comfort, Newcomer thought, tensely plucking at his shirt. Sweat had begun to make it stick to his chest.
He trailed Kojima to a large Toyota pickup with enough dents on it to have been in a stock-car race. Either Kojima had bought it that way or he was one hell of a lousy driver.
Kojima began pulling a number of mounting racks out of the back. “These are a gift for you,” he said. Newcomer unlocked his vehicle and Kojima placed them inside. “I’ll show you how to mount butterflies next time. I can also give you a few to practice on.”
That seemed a good guarantee that there’d be a second meeting.
“One more thing,” Kojima said. “This is for your father.” He handed Newcomer a framed and mounted butterfly. “Now he has one, too. It’s so he doesn’t have to be jealous of you.”
What a nice guy, Newcomer thought, momentarily touched by the gesture. Then he took a closer look at the merchandise. It was a common butterfly that Kojima probably wanted to get rid of.
“We’ll talk soon,” Kojima promised, and drove off.
Newcomer watched as the red pickup disappeared in a sea of traffic.
Yep. I was right. This case is going to be a piece of cake.
Even so, he was still astounded at the way it was unfolding. On the other hand, it was beginning to make sense.
Kojima was on the hunt for someone with little knowledge of butterflies but interest in the trade, who also happened to know how to use eBay. As Ted Nelson, Newcomer perfectly fit the bill. Kojima had stated that there were two clear-cut requirements for his partner in crime. The first was that his eBay associate have a U.S. address. The second was that he didn’t have a history in the bug trade. Newcomer’s cover neatly met both prerequisites. What a crafty guy, Ed realized, and laughed to himself.
There’d be no reason for Ted Nelson to immediately attract Fish and Wildlife’s attention. After all, he was brand new at this. At least a year would go by before someone like Ted probably landed on their radar. That gave Kojima plenty of time to gather a new base of customers. He could do a lot of business on eBay until then. In the meantime, Nelson would be cooking his own goose, compliments of Kojima.
“So, how’d it go?” Palladini asked, having appeared by his side.
Newcomer didn’t have to think twice. “We’re going to get this guy by the end of the summer.”
“That’s great,” Palladini replied, impressed by her new agent’s confidence.
“One more thing,” Newcomer said. “Kojima’s setting me up. He plans to make me his fall guy.”