“Didn’t know that,” Virgil said. “Do your medicines work?”
“Like Western medicine, they work some of the time. Some of the time, they don’t,” Peck said. “But they do no harm.”
“Hmm,” Virgil said. Then, “I don’t mean to offend you, but I have to ask a few questions. We’re asking these of everyone we speak to. Could you tell me where you were two nights ago?”
“Well… here,” Peck said, waving toward a wall-mounted television. “Two nights ago, let me see, I was working here until midnight or so and watching some television-The Freshman was on, an old movie, but it always makes me laugh. Marlon Brando reprising The Godfather as a comedy. Anyway, I was making a few notes from a book, a catalog really, called Life in the Bengal, about primitive medicine in India, as it was preserved into the 1890s.”
Virgil would check the movie time later. “Nobody here with you? No visitors?”
“No… I did see my neighbor when I was pushing the garbage out to the curb. That’s Maxwell Broom, next house down the street. That was late, probably ten o’clock.”
“I’ve been told that a fully processed tiger would be worth quite a lot in terms of medicine, and again, not to be offensive, I understand that you ran into some financial difficulty recently.”
“Been doing some research on me, huh? Well, it wasn’t a difficulty, it was a goddamned disaster,” Peck said. “Started out simple, made a little money with an iPhone app aimed at people who are hard of hearing. Most ringtones are high-pitched, see, and people suffering hearing loss can’t hear them, even when they’re loud. I had an idea: ringtones based on lower-frequency sounds. I hired a coder, put together the ringtones based on lower-frequency tones, bought advertisements in AARP Magazine, which were quite expensive, and made some money. Then this coder started pressing me with this idea for an emoji-type figure. He said it would go viral and make us millionaires…”
“Nipples,” Virgil said.
“Don’t even say the word to me,” Peck said. “I must have been out of my mind. But: the Star Tribune article was wrong. I assume that’s where you got your information? I didn’t declare bankruptcy, the company did. I was the nominal head of the company.”
“Said they took your car.”
“They got it wrong. That was the company van,” Peck said. “Don’t ask me why we had one; my accountant suggested it. A tax thing. Anyway, I did have to sell it to pay off creditors, along with a couple computers and some office equipment. The company’s remaining assets, is what it was. I don’t deny that I was hurt, but… I still have considerable personal assets.”
Peck was up-front and calm, yet his left leg bounced against his toes for the whole time of the interview. Nervousness, Virgil thought, brought rigidly under control in his voice and face, but tipped off by the leg. Not necessarily an indictment: most people were nervous when being interviewed by a cop.
Virgil asked him, “If you had to throw out three names-you know, if somebody put a gun to your head-who’d you say, in the traditional medicine market, might do this?”
Peck frowned, and after a moment’s thought and a couple of facial scratches, said, “Well… nobody. Nobody here in this area. Most of these people involved in traditional medicine, to be honest, are somewhat timid. Backwoods people, the ones who actually produce the basic flora and fauna. They’re not the kind to be sneaking around stealing tigers. They tend to be reclusive, rather than aggressive. And I’d say… poor. They usually don’t have a lot of resources. I couldn’t see them organizing anything like this raid on the zoo.”
“So…”
“I think you’re looking in the wrong direction. You want somebody who’s more confrontational, somebody who’s not afraid to go to jail. Somebody with money and lawyers. I’m thinking the anti-zoo people or animal rights people. People who lie down in front of bulldozers. Not some lady who goes mushroom hunting.”
Virgil’s phone buzzed, and he looked at the screen. Bea Sawyer, the crime-scene specialist.
He said, “I’ve got to take this.”
Peck said, “Sure, walk into the kitchen, if you want some privacy.”
–
Virgil walked into the compact kitchen and, on the way, punched up the call.
“Virgil, this is Bea. Hey, we got a hit on those prints we took off the lightbulb, believe it or not. The feds say they’re from a small-time crook named Hamlet Simonian: three convictions for burglary and one for hijacking a Best Buy truck.”
Virgil was astonished. “Convictions here? Do we have an address?”
“No, not here,” Sawyer said. “He was busted in Brooklyn, New York; Camden, New Jersey; and Glendale, California, on the burglaries, and Phoenix, Arizona, on the Best Buy truck. He’s never done any serious time and has apparently either been clean or clever for a few years now, but we’ve got lots of mug shots.”
“Bea, let me call you back in a minute. One minute.”
“I’ll be here.”
Virgil checked through his list of contacts, found the name of the people who owned the house where the tigers had been taken: the Schmidts. He poked in the number he had, and Don Schmidt answered.
Virgiclass="underline" “You know anybody named Hamlet Simonian?”
Schmidt: “Never heard of him.”
“He wouldn’t have installed a lightbulb in your garage door opener?”
“I don’t think so. Let me ask Marge.” A minute later, a woman came on the line: “No. I do that. I haven’t done it for a couple years, at least. It was still working the last time we were there.”
Virgiclass="underline" “Thank you.”
He called Sawyer back and said, “We got one of them. Good job. You gotta get down to the office and start cranking out mug shots for the newspapers and TV stations. I want to get this on the ten o’clock news.”
“I’m there now, I’ll get it started.”
–
Virgil walked back to the living room and said, “Something’s come up, I’ve got to go. I’d like to talk to you some more, though.”
“Well, I’m working,” Peck said. “I’m usually most available after my morning writing session, after lunch.”
“I’ll stay in touch,” Virgil said.
–
Out in his truck, Virgil called Duncan: “Jon, we got a name on the tiger theft. A Hamlet Simonian. I’m going back to the BCA to look at his file. We’ve got mug shots. If you could… I’d like you to get in touch with the TV stations and get this guy’s face on the air.”
“Yes! Virgie, goddamn it, you’re rolling,” Duncan said.
“Bea Sawyer’s putting the mug shots together; she’ll tell you about finding them. You need to get the TV people to put up the pictures and our phone number, in case somebody knows where this guy is living.”
“Yeah, yeah, I got that. See you at the office.”
–
Winston Peck VI had handled the interview with Virgil with the aid of a double dose of Xanax, which was now leaving him feeling tired. He was stressed, scared, freaked out, but chemically calm.
He sat staring at the television for two hours, some baseball game, he was never sure which one, when Hayk Simonian called and said, “You better turn on the TV.”
“It’s on.”
“Did you see it?”
“What? I’m watching a ball game.” Maybe too much Xanax: he was having a hard time focusing.
“A teaser ad for Channel Three news. They have Hamlet’s picture; they say he stole the tigers.”
“What?”
“I don’t know how they got it, but he’s gonna have to run for it. If he can make it out to Dad’s place in Glendale, they can fix him up with a fake ID. He’s gonna need some cash. You got cash?”
“I could give him a couple of thousand, maybe,” Peck said. “How did this happen? How did they find him?”