Stuffed by Brian M. Wiprud Read Free Book Online

fortunate that you two weren’t more severely injured.” Renard fitted a blue plaid porkpie hat on his shiny head. It had what looked like a red salmon fly in the hatband and was the kind of thing Perry Como would have worn. “You do realize they could have killed one or both of you, on purpose or by accident? Doesn’t seem worth it.”
    I rearranged the ice pack on my head and squeezed Angie’s hand.
    “You’re right about that,” she sniffed.
    “I’ll put the list on the wire.” Renard opened the door. “By the way . . .”
    I knew the sound of that opener. It’s the “one last, small question” ploy detectives use just as they’re going out the door, when the suspect’s guard is down. His spin on it was to yawn first, like he was just turning in for the night and was about to remind me to set my alarm. I found myself wondering what kind of pajamas he wore. Stripes, plaid, or polka dots?
    “Any idea why they took the white crow? Why the Korean warned you?”
    “Nope.” I was too disgusted to even think about it.
    “I see. Where did you ever find a white crow?”
    “Bermuda, Vermont. That important?”
    “I’ll be in touch.” Renard ducked out the door.
    “By the way, Carson,” Walker grinned, “I don’t suppose you noticed how the parking regulations keep changing in front of your building?”
    I gave him a smarmy squint. “Teenagers: such a handful.”
    Walker slammed the door behind him.
    Angie and I sniffled back tears and sat for a while without speaking, as we finished our beers.
    The apartment suddenly seemed unbearably quiet. No solace in this sound of silence, just the victim’s mute and relentless echo of frustration. I’d never been the victim of violence before, not like this, and it made me angrier than I think I’ve ever been, mostly with myself for failing. Failing to protect Angie, failing to capitulate, failing to anticipate. I didn’t ask Angie whether she felt the same. But I know we both had that nasty lump of humiliation in our throats, which in combination with my anger had me ruminating on all sorts of fantasies where I locate the bastards and hack them to pieces with the sawfish bill on the wall over the sink. And naturally, I felt somewhat emasculated. It was the first time either of us had been “mugged” in all our years in New York, something that only happened to other, less savvy people. I guess we should have felt lucky. That’s what our friends told us. Then again, none of them had been gun-whipped, kicked in the head, had their partner smacked around, and then been thrown down a flight of stairs and locked in a dark basement. But mostly I think we couldn’t get over coming so close to losing each other, all for a mere sixty thousand dollars of dead animals.
    Had my prayers in that dire moment been answered?
    Please, God. Don’t ask me to hand out pamphlets in Penn Station. Goat sacrifices, you say? We’ll talk.

Chapter 5

    A s if the attack by burglars wasn’t bad enough, the morning-after cat-and-mouse with the fuzz left Angie and me feeling at loose ends. We sat around staring at the vacant spots on the wall, a bad taste in our mouths. We slept fitfully for a few hours, then went out to a coffee shop and found we had nothing to say, except to rehash our unfortunate episode, upon which we were clearly tired of dwelling. We gave up. Angie hopped the subway to catch up with fellow goldsmithies uptown.
    I had work to do. There was an Elks’ convention in town, and I was supposed to get back to them about supplying an elk head for above the podium. At a film studio in Astoria, they were shooting a Freezy Cone commercial and wanted some stuffed penguins to fill in the background behind some live ones. I had to get my six Magellanic penguins over to them by eleven-thirty that morning, if for no other reason than I wanted to talk to the live-penguin wrangler to make sure he’d keep his birds away from mine. Live ones will viciously attack the taxidermy