Chapter 13 Wisdom of the Fishes
Musical Theme; Soul of the Sea by Heart
In the morning, Will made omelets and such. He gave Poly some stuff Mama had packed for her the night before. Hank and Carol came and ate. Marie was at Alan’s house. They were going to Arizona to pick up some cars later. Will took a cup of coffee and an omelet up to Chrissie and put it on the end table. She pretended she was still asleep, as if she could fool someone of Will’s training and experience. A Zen monk, an Apache Warrior, maybe. Chrissie? No way. If you bet him he would be off guessing her systolic blood pressure by 10 Torr, you would be giving your money away. “Drink your coffee before it gets cold.”
He went back downstairs.
The phone rang. It was Mel. “Will, I have a bad one. I want you to see it. I want Chrissie to not see it. We have Jessie on the way. A car will be in your driveway in a few minutes.”
“See you when I see you.”
Will went to the bedroom and got his shoes on, and a sweat shirt. Chrissie was drinking her coffee. Will took the big Canon in its case, put the strap around his neck and pushed the camera under his sweat shirt.
“Something happened, Will.”
“Yes.”
“I want to know.”
“Mel will not let you in.”
“Who is going?”
“Me, Jessie , and half the police force.”
“Can I be in on this?”
“Up to Jessie . I won’t influence her decision.”
“It’s her case already?”
“Mel called her in. In the old days, you would have to ask if Doug was going to jump in for the glory. Today, it’s Jessie’s case. You might see me doing arraignments or motion hearings when we get that busy, but I am not going to be the glory dog.”
The car appeared downstairs. Will went down and got in.
The car took off. Nobody said anything. It came to a stop in a neighborhood with a less than attractive reputation. Will walked to the scene, and was given a Tyvek suit and shoe covers. He put on a hat designed to keep fibers in. He followed a detective in.
He pulled on a pair of gloves, and took out the big Canon. He shot his way in, photographing everything in ultra high definition. The Canon held a stack of high capacity storage cards, and could take multi megabyte shots until your shutter finger was worn raw. The crime scene was every bit as bad as Will had thought. There were bodies, parts of bodies, pools of blood, and all that. Will shot it all.
They came to the master bedroom, and the evidence techs led Will in. He shot this room carefully and thoroughly. The adults, apparently the parents, were here. They went upstairs and got two more children cut to pieces. Will shot those rooms, too. He took many awful photographs there.
The cops took him back downstairs, walking in the little trails they had carefully searched already. Outside, he took off the coverall and shoe covers and hat. He went with Mel to the station. “Will, that is about as bad as it gets.”
“Until you visit a war zone.”
“Don’t tell me about something worse than this.”
“We’ll get this guy and do it to him, 90% on that.”
“I have detectives.”
“With her consent, I am going to loan you a secretary with near total recall.”
“I’ve heard of it, but does it really exist?”
“She can memorize dictionaries.”
“As in, the whole book?”
“Right. Now you are going to have to remember that when something is subject to discovery, you have this tape recorder running. She will not be able to say she does not remember. She remembers the license number of the bus that took her to school in second grade. If the teacher took roll call, she remembers every name on the list. If she went to some kid’s house, she can draw a map to it, and a floor plan, and she can sketch the cat and show you which paws were white and which were black.”
“Can I meet her?”
Will called.
“Poquita? Will. Can you come to my house to meet the Chief of Detectives?”
“Did I do something wrong?”
“No. We want to talk about something you might want to do.”
“See you soon.”
When she came, Will and Mel were in the living room with a bottle of Jack, and they had a glass waiting for her. She put some ice in, and some whiskey. “What might I want to do?”
Mel spoke. “Work on a task force to solve the murder of six people that happened a few hours ago. I want a lead record keeper who can remember everything. You would have to expect to be woken up in the middle of the night by one investigator or another every night.”
“Hand her your wallet, Mel, and we will convince you of what you don’t yet believe.”
He did. She went over the banknotes and credit cards rapidly. She looked it all over, put it all back like it had been, and handed it back.
“Ask her about what was in there.”
“What’s my drivers’ license number?”
“1252 1563.”
“I have three bills here. Which is the oldest, and what is the serial number, date and the signer?”
“The one. It’s a 2006, F29279477R. Signed by Henry M. Raston, Jr. and Anne Escobedo Cabral.”
“Would you like to work on our task force, Poquita?”
“Show me the pix.”
“We can’t.”
“Mel, we can. Chrissie, you don’t want to look at these. This is some kind of macho chick test.”
Chrissie left. Will put his laptop on the coffee table, and uploaded the pix to a new directory. He opened the first one and turned it to Poquita. “This is going in the door. It’s going to get really awful in not so real long.”
Poquita looked through the pictures calmly. When she got to the end, she closed the file. “I’m in under one condition, Mel. I put the handcuffs on him.”
“Poquita, you can’t expect him to let you do that.”
“Will, payback is a mother fucker. I want to pay this son of a bitch back.”
Mel spoke. “We don’t know the conditions we take him in under. If it’s a SWAT team, we will dress you in black, with a bulletproof vest, no guns, and you can cuff him.”
“I accept.”
“Mel!”
“You will train with Carlos Medina, our SWAT team leader. You will do things his way, but you can have the assignment.”
* * *
She met the Swat team that afternoon. They were Carlos Medina, the leader, a grungy looking Hispanic man about 5’10-190. His exec, Bridget McDaniel, 5’ 6-125, Derrick Moore, 6’ 8- 325, Robert Polk, 5’ 11-185, Tommy Jason 6 ‘1-210, and Mike Sage, 6’ 2-225.
They went in the gym, and practiced cuffing people. Poquita found she could handle Derrick if she didn’t let him up. The other guys were about the same. One officer to keep them down and one to cuff them, they were pretty easily done. Bridget was something else. Two officers would have her down, and she would break their grips, squirm out of the holds like a weasel, and grab someone’s gun. She mocked biting on the arms, striking the throat, knees in the groin, and other things that would have hurt.
They finished, and showered. When she came out, she had coffee with Carlos.
“I think you are ready for this job, but we will work out every week until we find this guy. If we have to deal with anything like Bridget, we will shoot. The big guy, Derrick is our best shooter. Give him a clear field of fire, he will solve your problem.”
A secretary came and took Poquita to a task force meeting. She listened as people explained forensics, what was going to the lab, who was searching databases for similar crimes, and all that. When the meeting was done, she read all the files, and looked at the pictures. She would know the date and time of each one, and be able to tell people that the blood splatter on the East wall of the living room was Will’s frame 121. Her memory of the content of a picture was no better than the other members’. If there is such a thing as a photographic memory, she did not have it, but Will’s camera did. Though she was reasonably intelligent, the impression people had of her being a genius was quite wrong. They had thought she was good in math when she was in elementary school, because they didn’t understand that she was looking up the answers in her memory, and did not know how to solve the problems. She might know that 444-332=112, but she would not know what 444-333 was, because she had never done that on a calculator.
She went to Mel’s office. “Mel, I’ve read it all. I think I might as well continue to work at the DA office unless and until you start wanting me here all the time. I don’t want to draw a paycheck for sitting around.”
“I think, yes. You gave us the fax number that goes to a computer, so no paper wasted. We send stuff there, or we bring it by, or we ask you to come over here. Pete Summers will probably want to meet mid morning. He has a lot of guys out tonight to look for something, so maybe we know a little bit by tomorrow.”
* * *
She went back to the DA office and got there at nearly 5pm. Will was pretty cool about her training with the SWAT team. They sat next to his tanks, drinking coffee, and watched the fishes.
“I guess if you want to go in on this, it’s not for me to say.”
“Well, I do work here.”
“That isn’t the point. I wanted to make judgments for you that nobody would make for me. You cuff that guy, if you want. I’m out of that whole thing. It’s not my business. I just hope you don’t get hurt.”
“Let’s not worry about that. We take everyone to the Asia Palace tonight.”
“We can do that.”
She got on the phone and found Marie and Alan, who would come, and then Hank and Carol, and of course Chrissie. They were all about to head down, and got a call from Quint, who wanted to bring the Arowana. Poquita called around and got everyone to give her an extra half hour. Chrissie called Asia Palace and got Mama to hold a table.
Quint came in a few minutes with an animated bucket. They went to the large community tank. Will took the lid off it.
“He’s pretty frisky, Will. As soon as we get him in, we want that lid on.”
“The water will overflow if you just dump him in.”
Quint put on some gloves and wetted them in the tank. “I intend to let him slip in himself. If he hits the deck, let me get him with the gloves. Less likely he gets a spot and fungus.”
“Poquita, can you get in back there, and prevent him from going over the rail there if possible?”
“Sure.”
“Everyone ready?”
“Yeah, Quint.”
He held the bucket so that it almost poured into the aquarium, and the Arowana slipped out and went to the bottom. Will put on the lid and clipped it down.
Quint relaxed. “Now, pretty lady, I understand you are the one who takes care of the fishes, so here is what you open to feed this tank. Turn it like this, and it opens, and then just push it down and listen for it to snap, and he can’t jump. When I clean the gravel, we will worry, but that’s once every three months or so. I will probably want you to hold the lid over while I work. You block him if he tries to jump. You try to just leave space for my hand. I get nipped by piranha, spined by catfish and lionfish, so you can shove the lid down hard on my arm to keep the fish in.”
“Quint, do you want us to feed these fishes with guppies?”
“Yes, but you might save money using some anchovies. Get the frozen, or live if you can, put them in only as they are eaten. You can leave the guppies, or if you can find feeder goldfish, in the tank until your big fishes get ready for them. The salt water fishes must be eaten or removed, or they will foul the water.”
Poquita frowned. “What about my cichlids?”
“Brine shrimp, make sure you do not feed more than they eat in a few minutes, and the tubifex, which I always have.”
“Can we get the guppies or something like that smaller?”
“I sometimes get the red manure worms, and I can let them cast and supply them to you for your cichlids, but not all the time. I have a 10,000 gallon above ground swimming pool in my basement. That’s where the guppies come from. I have pools for the tubifex, but I just buy and sell them. Well, they multiply, too, but. To sell small guppies, I would have to net up a bunch, then put them in a coarser net and let the little ones get out into a bucket or something. I usually use the coarser net and take the big ones to sell.”
“Selling the little ones would work against your business.”
“Yes, hon, it would, because I usually sell by the pound. And if I sold off little ones, then there would be no big ones next couple of months, and I wholesale them. All I could do is float around in my pool.”
“You float around in your pool?”
“Yeah. I take a shower and then float in the pool and the guppies nibble on dead skin and whatever.”
“Sounds fun. Can I do it?”
“Uh, well, the thing is, you can’t wear a swimsuit or they would get caught in it. So it might not work out. Well, anyway, I’m done, so you guys can get to dinner. I thank you for the business, and I am still looking for a few more large community fishes.”
Poquita stopped him. “Quint, why don’t you come and eat dinner with us at Asia Palace?”
“I, uh…”
Will spoke up. “Please do.”
“Well, it sounds like fun.”
They went there, and the gang already had the big table in the back room. They sat down at it. They got a bottle of Jack, and some Tsingtaos.
Poquita talked about tropical fishes with Quint. She seemed to know a lot, because she had read a couple of books from the library in anticipation of getting the fishes. She threw around a few Latin names, and sounded like she knew a lot, although she said she did not. Quint talked about feeding breeder fish and fattening them up, breeding temperatures, lighting and water quality. Yes, there were a few more aquaria in the basement aside from the pool. A few 29 gallon tanks with angelfish pairs in them, some fives for the fry, and, well, now that you mention it, several dozen concrete vaults made for putting over coffins, turned the other side up, and full of water and life. There was a little side room that was Quint’s refuge from the world, the walls papered with 55 gallon tanks. These were full of an inventory Quint never seemed to get sold.
Will started a conversation about legal stuff, which Hank and Carol were interested in. Chrissie threw in a few interesting comments. At the end of the table, the legal stuff didn’t seem so interesting. Conversation turned to fish tanks, tropical fishes, and filter equipment.
The dinners went down pretty well. There were no reluctant appetites this night. When everyone was done, and the scraps saved for Poly, it turned out that Will might take his roommates to the house, but Poquita needed to see the fishes, so she would see him at the office in the morning.
They all left. Quint took Poquita to his house and down into the basement. She ran her hand in the guppy pond. “I’d like to lay around in this for a while.”
“Well, if you had a swimsuit, they might get caught in it, so I, uh, I don’t see that you can do that.”
“What if you look the other way, and I will take a shower with that hose, and then I will get in and look the other way while you do, and you get in?”
“I guess that would be all right.”
They carried out the procedure, and ended up floating in the guppy tank.
“I never have had anyone float in the guppy tank before.”
“The guppies don’t seem to mind.”
She floated over near him. “They breed in this tank, don’t they?”
“Oh, yeah, thousands of them a day I suppose.”
“That might be making me want to breed.”
“If you were a guppy, it would be one thing.”
“But it’s another.”
She swam over, and got over him. Sure enough, as the reader may already have known, you do not need to be a fish to breed in water. They got out and dried off with the poor collection of towels an aquarist is likely to have. They got dressed and went in the side room. Since the whole basement was heated to 78 F, it was not too chilly, really. They looked at the fishes in the smaller aquaria. There was a row of 29s end on, with pairs of angelfish in them. These tanks had slates leaning against their sides for the fishes to spawn on. Higher up were some 5s for the eggs to hatch in, and some had. There were 55s full of guppies, mollies, and swordtails. One had thousands of tiny cardinal tetras. Another was full of little glass catfish. The next looked like there were worms on the bottom, and she suddenly realized what they were. Baby spiny eels. There were tanks of dime sized Oscars and others with angelfish in various sizes. A tank of green severums still dime sized.
“It’s getting late. We’d better get some sleep.”
They went to bed.
In the morning, Poquita got to look at the water system. Quint showed her how new water came into a 3,000 gallon tank, through an aerator. That tank had daphnia in it. “Water fleas” which eat microorganisms and provide food for fishes, especially small ones. From there, the water went into a system of distribution pipes that allowed tanks to be filled easily. The gravel cleaners drained into the waste line, along with a continuous small stream that ran from the guppy tank unless the level fell too low. The guppy tank was automatically filled from the new water tank.
The ejector pump took all the waste water out to the pond in back. They went out to look at it. Poquita had to hold on to him to keep her balance, because her heels sank in some times.
“If you come back, you should bring some athletic shoes, overalls, sweatshirt, stuff like that. This is a nice outfit, but this place is pretty messy and dirty.”
“I’m coming back.”
“Good. This is the pond.”
Poquita saw that it was about 30x50 feet, and 4 feet or so deep. The ejector pump was spewing out water with a lot of air in it. Bluegill were teeming around it.
“Do you swim in this pond?”
“You could, but it’s like swimming in a creek. You might get an ear infection, and there are lots of dead branches and stuff on the bottom.”
“What are the lanterns for?”
“Bug lights. If the light cell says it’s dark, and the thermostat says it’s not cold, they come on and kill thousands of bugs a night. Mostly moths, which are not all that pesky, but. They work much better over water, because half the bugs will get back up and fly away from one over land. Over water, they hit the surface and the bluegill eat them.”
“That sounds neat.”
“Come over on a warm evening, we can sit out here and watch. You can’t hardly see the fishes, but you know they’re there.”
“I’d like to stay, but I need to get to work.”
They went back, Poquita holding on to Quint all the way. She drove off to the office.
Quint shoveled a bunch of gravel into a stationary cement mixer, and turned it on. He added water until it overflowed a bit into his pond. He left it running, and went to the wholesaler in his truck, and got twelve 55 gallon tanks, under gravel filters, power heads, heaters, thermometers, fish food, power strips, and a lot of little things like nets and scrapers, and so. He stopped at the fabrication shop and picked up two racks, 2 wide, 3 high, for 55 gallon tanks. He took it all to the job, an architect’s office. He turned in a copy of each invoice to the receptionist, who was very exited about the tanks. He hand trucked everything up, and bolted the two racks together. He wiped the insides of the tanks clean. He put in all the under gravel filters heaters and power heads. He hooked up the water hose from the bathroom and filled the tanks about 2/3 full. “Sally, I am going to get the conditioning fishes, some koi. They will get the environment stable for the fishes we are going to have here next week. Remind the janitors if you see them, that we only want to use damp cloths on the tanks. No spray on cleaners. They might kill fishes.”
He went downstairs with as much cardboard junk as he could take in one trip. He went to the house, and ran more water into the cement mixer. When it came out clear, he stopped the water and filled a bunch of buckets which he put in the truck. He went out by the pond, and got several buckets of bait grade koi. Back at the architect office, He ran the whole setup, and saw all the heaters and power heads come on. He poured gravel into each tank and smoothed it out. He put a few koi in each tank, and then distributed the rest so he had none left. He put the covers with their lights over the tanks. He filled them all to their normal levels. He fitted the black anodized aluminum doors.
“Sally, if some of these fishes die, the net is down here. Just net them and flush them. These are bait fish. They are not worth much at all.”
“They’re pretty.”
“You will have to see some of the ones they were breeding for when these got rejected. If you want to get into for real koi, though, you need a lot of money.”
“Like a fish might be worth $100?”
“Try $25,000.”
“Oh my gosh!”
“These are worth like 50¢”
“What’s the difference?”
“The colors, the way they are marked. Stuff like that.”
The architects, Greg and Harold, came in.
“We’re looking good, Quint. These are the conditioning fish?”
“Right. They get one spoon per tank of the food in there. They don’t need to be fed on the weekend. If you want to feed them an extra time on Monday, you can. But they should eat it in a few minutes.”
Greg turned to Harold. “We buy fishes for a dollar each, they wholesale for 50¢. Then they grow, and become $3 fishes, we get a dollar and a half. So we can actually make money on that. Of course we will spend it all on tank cleaning and all. But we get these fishes for not very much.”
“I would like to see what we can get.”
“I can show you what I have. ‘We will need more than that.’”
“I know you don’t have large Cardinal Tetras, and I do want a school of them. But we should see what you do have, and start planning the tanks.”
They went to look at fishes.