“Coming closer. Screaming steady-like.”

Screaming? Then his eyes got very wide. “Police siren.”

“Local cops? Crikey, that’s bloody wonderful.”

“Not if they see us.” He was thinking rapidly. “If they do they’ll want to haul us all in as material witnesses, and that only if they’ve a lead on these guys as dealers. If not, they’ll probably just let ’em go. Maybe the truck has a taillight out or something. We’re sure not speeding. No, we’ve got to get out of here fast.”

The siren was clearly audible now. The truck slowed, pulled over onto the shoulder. “Be quiet. I want to listen.” He climbed onto a desk and leaned close to one of the cracks in the roof. He could just hear one of the patrolmen ask Cruz for his license. Then the words, “Open it up” and Cruz replying politely but tensely, which was to be expected.

“Hey, what’s wrong, officer? We haven’t done anything. You said we weren’t speeding, and there’s nothing the matter with our truck.”

“It’s not that, buddy,” Jon-Tom heard the cop reply. “Routine inspection. We’re looking for undocumented aliens.”

Jon-Tom hadn’t thought of that possibility. He wondered how someone checking on the presence of undocumented aliens would react to the sight of two giant otters and a five-foot-tall raccoon. Probably not what the patrolman had in mind. No immigration law would allow for Mudge and Weegee.

And just like that the old Genesis song popped into his head. He immediately launched into the first stanza, not caring if Cruz or the cops or anyone else overheard. Mudge and the others packed themselves tightly around him as he sang, wishing Phil Collins was there to back him up with voice and drums.

“Hey, eets no fun, bein’ an illegal ayleeun

“Come on, pancho, open it up.” The patrolman stood impatiently next to the back of the truck. Cruz was fiddling with the lock, taking his time and wondering how he was going to explain the presence of a kidnap victim. They could always insist he was just some crazy hitchhiker they’d picked up. Maybe he’d just take his animals and split, glad to get away.

“Really, officer, I don’t know what kind of shape our stuff is in back here. My poor Consuela and I packed for days and days. If everything has shifted it’s all going to fall out.”

“We’ll help you pick it back up.” The patrolman sounded tired. He also had the build of an ex-linebacker and was in no mood to coddle suspicious characters at two in the morning. Cruz knew he’d stalled about as long as he could. “Open it, or we can open it at the station.”

“Oh no, no need of that, officer. It’s just that this lock here, it’s kind of rusty.” He took a deep breath and rolled up the door. “See, nothing but furniture and one. . .” he broke off. There was nothing in the back of the truck but furniture. There were no giant otters, no oversized raccoon, and no lanky, bigmouthed young Anglo. They had gone.

The cop turned his flashlight on the furniture. Something was moving in the middle of the household goods. The light picked out the shape of a large colorful parrot with bound wings and beak. It struggled mightily to squawk a protest but was too tightly tied.

“That’s no way to move a household pet,” the patrolman declared disapprovingly.

Cruz stammered a reply. “I know, man, but Consuela wouldn’t listen to me and. …”

“Never mind. I’m not looking for birds. If you guys were smuggling endangered species you’d sure as hell have a load of more than one.” He leaned back and yelled toward the cruiser parked in front of the truck. “Skip that call in, Jay. These guys are clean.” By way of apology he offered Cruz a reluctant, professional smile. “Sorry to hold you up, buddy.”

“Hey, no sweat, mon. We all got to do our jobs.” Cruz waited until the big patrolman had climbed back into his cruiser and driven off into the warm Texas night. Then he shouted for his partner.

“Manco, get back here, mon!” When his companion arrived he saw on his boss’s face a mixture of confusion and glee. “The kid and most of his animals got away, but the cops didn’t find the coke.”

Manco peered into the truck. “You sure? Somebody’s been into that trunk.”

“Whaaat?” Cruz jumped into the back of the truck. He ignored the struggling, sputtering parrot. “Oh, mierda.” The two of them started pawing through the furniture, tossing pieces out the back of the truck, not caring if they broke on the unyielding pavement.

Two hours later they sat staring out the back of the truck, forced to admit defeat.

“I don’t understand,” Cruz was muttering disconsolately. “How the hell did they get out of the truck? It was still locked when that cop and I opened it up. How did that skinny bastard get out?”

“Maybe the animals chewed their way out?”

“I didn’t see no hole in the roof.”

Cruz dropped his head into his hands. “What are we going to tell them in Vegas?” He was running his long fingers through his straight black hair. “That a college kid and some trained animals made off with forty kilos of coke from the back of a locked truck?”

Manco looked wistful. “I got relateeves een Cheeleh I ain’t seen seence I was a keed.”

“Terrific. Except we ain’t got no money for airline tickets and I forgot to renew my Visa. How about you?”

“Just a few bucks for expeenses. But thee man doesn’t know when we’re supposed to show. We’ve got a chance to get away.”

“Without money?”

Manco gestured into the truck. “We steel got that beeg talking parrot. We can sleep eento Vegas and sell eet for plenty, then go straight to the airport.”

Cruz perked up slightly, turned to gaze at the bird in question. It stared back at him with an alarmingly intelligent eye. “What if we can’t get it to talk? We aren’t animal trainers like that kid.”

“Hell, it’ll talk. I know a leetle about birds like that. Give them some food, you can’t shut them up. Thees one ought to be worth a fortune.”

“It sure as hell can say more than polly wanna cracker. Maybe we get out of this yet.” He slapped his compadre on the back. “All right, Manco. We go to Vegas, dump the furniture at some pawn shop and sell the bird. Then we take the first Aeromexico south. I’ve always wanted to see South America.”

“That’s thee spireet, mon.” They rolled down the back door and ran back to the front of the truck, ignoring the spitting and struggling of the big green parrot who represented their ticket to safety.

X

IT WAS A beautiful beach, the kind of pure white sand beach that exists only in travel posters and, oddly enough, in the middle of New Mexico. Gypsum sand, powdery and canescent as sugar. It climbed unmatted ten feet from the water’s edge before the first palm trees appeared. Beyond the beach the water was as transparent as the lens of an eagle’s eye. It lay like glass over submerged beach until finally giving way to deeper water and the distant spray of surf on a barrier reef.

Jon-Tom looked down at himself. He was intact and unharmed. Mudge and Weegee embraced nearby while Cautious had squatted to inspect an empty shell. Eventually the two otters separated.

“Where the ’ell are we, mate?”

He was staring up the beach. “Far south of where we escaped from the pirates, I’m guessing. Of course, we could be on the other side of the world, but I’d say we’ve moved about as far as we moved in the back of that truck. Time of day’s different, too. Tonight we can check the stars.”

“I wouldn’t worry about no remaining pirates.” Cautious tossed the shell aside. “They won’t stop running ’til they get back to their boat, you bet. I don’t think it much matter anymore. Kamaulk was brains and Sasheem the muscle. Others pretty well lost without those two.”

“Then ’tis about time we ’ad a rest.” Mudge was stripping off his shorts and vest. Weegee matched him item for item, throwing her shoes at him and beating him into the water. Jon-Tom watched as they swam and dove with the agility of a pair of furry porpoises. Mudge rolled over onto his back with a sinuous motion no human could hope to match and shouted back toward shore.

“Come on in, mate. The water’s swell. Fresh is better, but this ain’t bad.”

Jon-Tom hesitated. He’d been skinny dipping with Mudge before, but Weegee acted almost human. Cautious was already trotting down to the water. Now the raccoon looked back.

“I understand. You humans, you shy because you ain’t got no fur hardly.” Then he plunged into the shallow lagoon.

Hell, Jon-Tom thought. It took him a few minutes to strip. The water was warm and refreshing, wiping away the sweat and dirt of the past several days, washing away the memory of the pirates and the tribefolk who’d captured them, relieving some of the stress that had built up during their trek south.

“Odds are that he sinks,” said Weegee, watching the human’s clumsy attempts to emulate the otters’ agility in the water.

“Not ’im, luv.” Mudge lay on his back, floating, letting the sun warm him. “’E does all right for a ’uman, the way ’is arms an’ legs are arranged notwithstandin’.”

They spent the whole day cavorting in the lagoon. The palm forest was full of tropical fruits and when they desired something more substantial, it took the otters only minutes to produce armfuls of edible shellfish. One particularly tasty mollusc was available in such quantities it threatened to permanently expand Jon-Tom’s waistline. Mudge called it a seckle. It was flat on the bottom and full of blue spines on top and when toasted tasted just like abalone. Cut and polished, the shell would make beautiful jewelry. That led him to thoughts of Talea, and home, and induced a melancholy the otters understood and did not comment upon.