THROUGH THE PEEPHOLE in the front door Verna May Magyk saw a white man with a beard, hippy-looking, and the biggest colored man she had ever seen in her life. It made her shiver and feel goosebumps up the back of her neck. She said, “Oh, my Lord,” and jumped as the chimes rang again. The porch light was on, she could see them good. As they stepped apart, looking at the house, she saw the black car parked in front. A real long one, shiny even in the dark. An undertaker’s car, that’s what it was. Teddy’s mom was relieved, though not much. She said through the door, “You have the wrong house. There’s nobody dead in here.”
Then realized she’d made a mistake as the hippy one with the beard said, “Mrs. Magyk? We’d like to talk to you for a minute. Would you open the door, please? Sounding just like the detectives that had come for Teddy.
She said, “Where’s my son?” and saw them look at one another.
“He’s fine, he’ll be home pretty soon. Could we come in and talk to you, please?”
She told them just a minute and took about that long to get the door unlocked and then unfasten the catch on the storm door. They were as polite as the others. They came in, the big colored man looking around, the man with the beard going over to Buddy’s perch and saying he understood Buddy bit one of the detectives. It made Buddy nervous; he edged away.
Teddy’s mom said he did no such thing. Buddy was a good li’l birdie boy. Arn’cha, huh? Arn’cha? She said, “Pretty bird, pretty bird,” and Buddy said, “Hello, May. Want a drink?” Wasn’t he a li’l cutie? Teddy’s mom let Buddy peck a sunflower seed from her mouth, prompting him with, “Kisser mom, kisser mom,” and holding her kimono closed so the men couldn’t look down it. “There. Did he bite me?”
“That’s a beautiful bird,” the colored man said.
Close to Buddy Teddy’s mom said, “He has to have his li’l beak shaved so he don’t hurt hisself, huh? Huh, Buddy? I’m taking him for his appointment at ten o’clock. Yes, I am.”
“Did Buddy, I mean Teddy get Buddy for you in Puerto Rico?” It was the man with the beard. He said, “I was down there one time myself.”
Teddy’s mom told him no, Buddy had been in the family twelve years; but Teddy had sent her a beautiful handcarved parrot that was supposed to have been delivered but never was.
“That’s interesting,” the man with the beard said. “I wonder what happened to it.”
Teddy’s mom didn’t think it was so interesting; she didn’t believe Teddy had even sent it. He liked to fib. Then he’d get that guilty look. He’d be mean to Buddy and there would be the look. Police questioned him about different things and there was the look again. She believed it was his guilty look that had got him sent to jail those times. All it was, he was self-conscious. She said to the big colored man looking all around the living room, “What is it he was suppose to’ve done this time?”
The big colored man said, “Who’s that, ma’am?”
“My son, Teddy.”
“Oh, they just want to talk to him is all. See what he thinks.” He said, looking around again, “My, but you got parrot things. Must be a valuable collection.”
She was a judge of character and liked the looks of this colored man. He was polite, he wore a suit and tie-which the other one did not-and he appeared to be clean. She said to him, “Do you like parrots?”
“Love ’em.” He was looking at the display of china parrots on the mantel. “I wouldn’t mind you showed me all the different parrot things you got.”
Teddy’s mom said, “Well, let’s see…”
Then the one with the beard asked if he could use the bathroom.
The overhead light was on in Teddy’s room: a young boy’s room with scarred bird’s-eye maple furniture, a single bed, slept in, unmade. A watercolor print of a parrot in a jungle setting, on the wall above the bed. But no posters, no records, hi-fi or radio, books. Vincent changed his mind: not a young boy’s room, a guest room. Teddy was here but had not moved in. Vincent went through the dresser, each drawer, feeling beneath the clothes; stepped into the closet to feel Teddy’s trousers and jackets, sweaters. He found the Colt .38 automatic in the camera case, looked at the gun in the overhead light without touching it and put the case back on the closet shelf. A new leather-bound photograph album was on the desk, its pages empty. In the drawer were envelopes of prints, several from a Fast Foto shop in San Juan. Vincent began to look at pictures of familiar places. He saw the beach at Escambron in a dozen or more shots of Iris and himself. There was his rattan cane hanging from the chair. Iris talking to him as he tried to read. Walking with her. Eating pineapple. Like pictures taken by a friend but not posed. He slipped one of the prints into his jacket and looked through another envelope quickly. Shots of San Juan landmarks, those familiar buildings, narrow streets, monuments, flower beds, trees, old ones, trees high in the clouds…
Vincent stopped.
He turned the desk lamp on, hunched over to look at a print. Then another one. The two almost identical. The same figure in both pictures in the same pose. It was the background that was familiar. Remembered from another time, a different person in the picture. But a background that would never change. Vincent could see it with his eyes open or closed.
It was light out by the time Teddy got home. He waved to the unmarked light-tan Fairmont pulling away. Assholes. His mom was still up, waiting to tell him about the hippy and the huge colored man who’d been here while he was gone. Sure, Mom. What’d they take, the refrigerator or just the TV? She said they didn’t take nothing; this was a very nice colored man, a great big one, his head almost touched the ceiling. Teddy said that’s how they grew them these days; the big ones played basketball and the skinny ones became millionaires selling you paper towels in the men’s rooms. Teddy’s mom kept going on about the colored man, how he was polite and clean. Sure, Mom. Her old arteries controlling her mind. Weird. A lack of blood in her head bringing colored guys into the house to steal things.
“They must a taken something.”
“Well, they didn’t. Police don’t rob you. Don’t you know nothing?”
“You’re saying they’re cops?” This was a new one. “They show you their I.D.?”
“They said you’d be home soon, the others just wanted to talk to you.”
“Get my opinion on world affairs. They look around the house?”
His mom said she kept an eye on the colored man because you never know. But they were both polite. Even the hippy one with the beard, “He asked could he use the bathroom and said please.”
Teddy said, “Je-sus Christ,” and ran into his bedroom.
His gun was still in the camera case. Whew, that was a relief. He’d better either hide it good or get rid of it. Then thought, why? He’d shot at the cop with it, but so what? He’d only actually killed one person with it and they couldn’t do nothing about that here. Except cops were sneaky and he could get two years just for having the thing in his possession. Teddy looked in his drawers; his clothes seemed in order. He went over to the desk. If the one with the beard was the cop Vincent, who was the big jig his mom thought was so polite? Man, they were sneaky.
He had marked the print envelopes and put them in numerical order in the drawer to trap his mom, be able to tell if she looked through his things.
Well, they weren’t in order now. He began to feel a little tense looking through the Escambron beach shots. They seemed all here. Then counted the ones of the cop and Iris. He believed there were twenty of them… But there weren’t. He counted them twice and got nineteen each time. Well, nineteen or twenty, he’d better get rid of them-anything that linked him to Iris-just to be on the safe side. Teddy went through the rest of the envelopes looking at his postcard shots of sunny Puerto Rico… There was the liquor store in the Carmen Apartments. That couldn’t screw him up, could it? Naw. What else. More postcard stuff… Wait a minute. He went through every print in one of the envelopes, expecting the shot he was looking for to come up next. Two, there were two he was looking for. He went through all the envelopes, just to make sure. But the two prints were missing. Both of them. Jesus Christ. Unless he had thrown them away himself. Now he couldn’t remember; it seemed so long ago he was down there.
But those pictures wouldn’t mean anything to the cop. How could they?
At 8 A.M. Vincent called the Bureau of Criminal Affairs in Hato Rey, Puerto Rico, asked for Lorendo Paz and waited, hearing voices in Spanish.
Linda was in bed. DeLeon had left with LaDonna rubbing her eyes, to take her home, get in a few hours sleep and come back. Vincent waited with a silver coffee pot and two photographs on the desk next to him, sunlight in the window, the remains of drinks the morning after on the glass table. He stubbed out the cigarette he had lit as he placed the call. He’d quit again, soon. He needed to sit in the sun and read. He would like to sit in the sun with Linda and read, but that was a hard one to picture, Linda on Condado Beach doing nothing…
Lorendo said, “Vincent!” and began asking questions about Iris. Vincent told him to wait, he wasn’t asking the right ones.
“You had an investigation going,” Vincent said, “the body you found in the rain forest, El Yunque…”
“Yes, the taxi driver, Isidro Manosduros. The man left a family.”
“How’re you doing?”
“We identified him, that’s all. Four days we believe he drove the same man around, an American. But we don’t know his name, who he is. Isidro was an independent, he didn’t keep a record.”
“You know what he looks like, the American?”
“Only what Isidro’s wife told us. A rich one, of course. They’re all rich to some people. Not young, but not an old man. Staying in a hotel, but she doesn’t remember which one. Isidro told her this guy was a prize, very generous, bought presents for his mother. But he was strange, too. She said she told Isidro to be careful of him.”
“She did? Why?”
“Who knows? She’s from Loíza. One thing, yes, Isidro told her the American has a tattoo on his arm, up by the shoulder.”
“Does it say Mr. Magic?”
There was a silence before Lorendo said with awe, “Oh, Vincent, I don’t believe it. How do you know this? Please, tell me.”
“Wait. What’s Isidro look like? Is he dark?”
“Very dark, black. Thin, medium size, heavy bones. Not very good teeth. A little gray in his hair. Vincent-”
“I’ve got a picture of him,” Vincent said, “taken up in the rain forest, I think right above where you found him. He’s standing at the edge of a cliff, where you look out at the view.”
“On El Yunque, you’re sure.”
“Positive.”
“You visit there, you know the place.”
“No, I didn’t make it. I told you, I don’t know if you remember, I wanted to see Roosevelt Roads, where my dad was stationed during the war…”
“Yes, I remember.”
“And I wanted to see El Yunque. My dad had his picture taken there, a long time ago.”
“Vincent-”
“Wait. I don’t have the picture with me but I can see it, almost every detail. I used to study it when I was little. This was my dad and I’d never really met him. Salty young guy in a sailor suit, up on the mountain. You see the ground, some trees but there’s hardly anything behind him but clouds. Mountains way off.”
“Yes, rain clouds. It rains every day there.”
“The picture I have of a Puerto Rican with very dark skin, smiling but not really smiling, was taken in exactly the same place.”
“Send it to me, quick as you can.”
“It’s Isidro,” Vincent said. “There’s not a doubt in my mind.”
“Okay, now the guy that took the picture-”
“Teddy Magyk. He lives about five miles from here.”
“Ahhh, Magic. It’s his name.”
“You don’t remember him.”
“No. I should?”
“We had him,” Vincent said. “The ex-con I wanted to scare and you said take him out on the Loíza ferry.”
“Yes, yes, Teddy. I remember, sure.”
“I might not’ve mentioned his last name. At the time it didn’t mean anything.”
“Okay, listen,” Lorendo said. “I have to do something about him quickly… Wait. How did you get the picture of Isidro?”
“I stole it.”
“Oh, I believe that, Vincent. Listen, I want to hear it, but don’t tell me now. I have to get the machinery moving. First, I have to request Atlantic City to pick him up as a fleeing felon. What do you think? Do it that way, uh? Before he leaves and we can’t find him. Then I get the extradition performed and I come and get him.”
“That could take you a couple of weeks,” Vincent said, “if you’re lucky. Get the court down there and the one up here to agree. Meanwhile he’s got a lawyer dragging his feet. It’ll take you months. Even then you won’t be sure of getting him.”
“I don’t know-but send me the picture, all right?”
“I’ve got an idea might be better,” Vincent said. “Why don’t I fly down with the picture?”
“Yes, wonderful.”
“And bring Teddy along with it.”