Joe entered the back door of his parents' house without knocking and set the pet carrier on the kitchen counter. He heard the television from the direction of the family room to his right. A cupboard door sat propped against the front of the stove, and a drill lay next to the sink. One more project forgotten before it was finished. Joe's father, Dewey, had provided a comfortable life for his wife and five children off his income as a homebuilder, but he never seemed to complete anything in his own house. Joe knew from years of experience that it would take his mother's threatening to hire someone else before the job would suddenly get done.
"Is anyone home?" Joe called, even though he'd spotted both his parents' cars in the garage.
"Is that you, Joey?" Joyce Shanahan's voice could barely be heard over the sound of tanks and gunfire. He'd interrupted one of his father's favorite pasttimes. John Wayne movies.
"Yeah, it's me." He reached into the carrier, and Sam scrambled up his arm.
Joyce walked into the kitchen, her black-and-white streaked hair pulled back from her face with a stretchy red headband. She took one look at the twelve-inch gray African parrot perched on Joe's shoulder and stopped in her tracks. Her lips disappeared into her mouth, and displeasure lowered her brows.
"I couldn't leave him at home," Joe began before she could voice her distress. "You know how he gets when he doesn't get enough attention. I made him promise to behave this time." He shrugged and glanced at his bird. "Tell her, Sam."
The parrot blinked its yellow-and-black eyes and shifted from one foot to the other. "Go ahead, make my day," Sam cried in a shrill voice.
Joe turned his gaze to his mother and smiled like a proud parent. "See, I substituted his Jerry Springer tape for Clint Eastwood."
Joyce folded her arms across the front of her Betty Boop T-shirt. She was barely five feet tall, but she had always been queen, king, and dictator of the Shanahan household. "If he starts with the potty mouth again, he has to leave."
"The grandkids taught him those swear words when they were here for Easter," he said, referring to all ten of his nieces and nephews.
"Don't you dare blame that bird's bad behavior on my grandchildren." Joyce sighed and dropped her hands to her waist. "Have you eaten dinner?"
"Yeah, I grabbed something on my way home from work."
"Don't tell me, greasy deli chicken and those horrible potato wedges." She shook her head. "I have some leftover lasagna and a nice green salad. You take some home with you."
Like a lot of families, the Shanahan women showed their love and concern through food. Usually Joe didn't mind-except when they all decided to show him at the same time. Or when they discussed his eating habits as if he were ten and living on potato chips. "That'd be great." He turned to Sam. "Grandma made you lasagna."
"Humph. Since he's likely to be the closest thing I get to a grandbaby out of you, I guess he's welcome. But you just better make sure he's cleaned up his language."
Talk of grandbabies was Joe's cue to retreat. He knew that if he didn't escape now the conversation would take an inevitable turn toward the women who seemed to enter and exit his life on a frequent basis. "Sam's reformed," he said as he slid past his mother and moved into the family room, decorated with his mother's most recent garage sale find-a pair of iron wall sconces and matching shield of armor. He found his father relaxed in his brown La-Z-Boy, remote in one hand, tall glass of iced tea in the other. A pack of cigarettes and lighter sat on a lamptable separating the chair from the matching sofa. Dewey was in his late sixties, and Joe had recently noticed something odd happening to his father's hair. It was still thick and completely white, but in the last year it had started to grow straight forward as if he were sitting with a strong wind at his back.
"They don't make movies like this anymore," Dewey said without taking his eyes from the console television. He turned down the volume before he added, "All those special effects they use these days just aren't the same as the real thing. John Wayne knew how to fight and make it look good."
As soon as Joe sat, Sam hopped off his shoulder and gripped the back of the sofa with his scaly black feet. "Don't go too far away," Joe told his bird, then reached for a cigarette. He slid the Marlboro through his fingers, but he didn't light it. He wanted Sam to breathe as little secondhand smoke as possible.
"You start smoking again?" Dewey asked, finally pulling his gaze from the Duke. "I thought you quit. What happened?"
"Norris Hillard," was all Joe said. He didn't need to elaborate. Everyone in the free world knew about the stolen Monet by now. He wanted everyone to know. He wanted the people involved to be nervous. Nervous people made mistakes. When they did, he'd be right there, ready to take them down. But he wouldn't be taking down Gabrielle Breedlove.
It wouldn't matter if she were involved up to her sweet little behind. It didn't matter if she'd cut the painting from its frame. She'd been given complete immunity-not only from the assault charges and any subsequent indictments stemming from the Hillard case but she also wouldn't be prosecuted for any of the antique thefts, either. That lawyer of hers might be young, but he was a sharp little weasel.
"Any leads?"
"A few." His father didn't ask the obvious questions, and Joe didn't offer any explanations. "I need to borrow your drill and a few of your tools." Even if he could, Joe didn't want to talk about his confidential informant. Not only did he distrust informants but his latest was as flaky as a box of Post Toasties, and that stunt with the derringer had nearly cost him another demotion. And this time, they wouldn't pussyfoot around and call it a transfer. After the nightmare that had taken place in the park that morning, he had to deliver Carter's head on a platter. He had to redeem himself. If not, he feared they'd bust him so far down into the patrol division that he'd never see the light of day. He didn't have anything against uniformed police. They were the frontline guys, and he couldn't do his job without them, but he'd worked too long, and put up with too much crap, to let a gun-toting redhead screw up his career.
"Joe, I picked up something for you last weekend," his mother informed him as she breezed through the room on her way toward the back of the house.
The last "something" his mother had "picked up" for him had been a matching pair of aluminum peacocks that were supposed to hang on the wall. At the moment they were beneath his bed next to a huge macrame owl. "Ah, geez," he groaned and tossed the unlit cigarette on the lamptable. "I wish she wouldn't do that. I hate that garage sale shit."
"Don't fight it, son, it's a sickness," his father said and returned his attention to the television. "It's a disease like alcoholism. She's powerless over her addiction."
When Joyce Shanahan returned, she carried a saddle cut in half, lengthwise. "I got this for five dollars," she bragged and set it on the floor next to Joe's foot. "They wanted ten, but I dickered them down."
"I hate that garage sale shit," Sam mimicked, then added a shrill "Braa-ck" for good measure.
Joyce's gaze moved from her son to the bird on the back of her couch. "He'd better not make a mess on my davenport."
Joe couldn't promise a thing. He pointed to the saddle. "What am I supposed to do with it? Find half a horse?"
"You hang it on the wall." The telephone rang, and she added over her shoulder as she headed toward the kitchen, "It's got some little loops on the one side."
"Better nail it to the wall studs, son," his father advised. "Or that thing's liable to pull down your drywall."
Joe stared at the saddle with its one stirrup. The space beneath his bed was about to get real crowded. His mother's laughter erupted from the other room, startling Sam. He flapped his wings, showing the red feathers beneath his tail, then he flew to the television and perched on top of a wooden birdhouse with a fake nest and plastic eggs glued at the bottom. He tilted his gray head to one side, raised his beak, and did a carbon imitation of the ringing telephone.