Toucan Sam: The Kingpin Rises

The air became pink as the sun continued its descent behind the mountains. Shadows from the window panes had started as neat squares on the floor; now they cast into long rectangles that crept up the walls on the opposite side of the house. Night was falling outside, and Pedro was nowhere to be found. And his animals had not yet been fed.

Pedro was a lavish man, and his name was known better than God's throughout the town. A few times a year, he would arrive in a cloud of dust kicked up by his newest imported car. When he and his army of security guards came down off his mountain, fights seemed to break out in the bars more frequently. Policemen didn't stop them because they knew better than to patrol those nights. Doctors met in secret with women in the months following each visit, husbands pretended not to understand why, but nobody complained because the trucks full of fruit and medicine continued to pass through a town that cost them more in fuel to visit than they'd ever recoup in sales (which were discounted to an almost suspicious extent). Nobody asked questions because they already knew the answers. The trucks that weren't full of supplies...well, it was no one's business.

For all the chaos Pedro brought into town, he spent far more time in his mansion entertaining private guests. Sometimes his visitors were groups of girls from Chile and Argentina. Sometimes they were local militia leaders and sometimes they were farmers. Most of the time, they were men who wore aviator sunglasses and brightly colored dress shirts and seemed to laugh too loud on purpose, as if to demonstrate the force of their existence.

No matter who came to his home, though, Pedro made sure to show off his animals. He had panthers, an orangutan, a tiger, entire rooms full of poisonous snakes and spiders. His taste for the exotic was a major point of pride, and nothing made him as proud as the twin toucans that lived in his study and oversaw every business deal he conducted.

The animals grew restless now, however, as afternoon turned into a deep dusk. Pedro failed to come home from time to time, but he always arranged care for them. A few hours had passed since feeding time, and one could no longer tell whether the growls coming from Pedro's menagerie were rooted in hunger or ferocity.

Just as the last of the pink light faded into darkness, the door burst open with a clatter. Pedro stumbled in, crashing face down onto an expensive carpet in the middle of the cages. When he sat up, they could all see his face covered in blood and the growls turned to outright roars. Something wasn't right, and even his prized pets could realize that Pedro was in trouble.

Two men followed with rifles, and then a third with a fat cigar. As he pulled it and the cherry lit up his face, a dark smile shone through the darkness. From the floor, Pedro let out a deep groan.

"You think you can double-cross me?" the man with the cigar said, obviously not expecting a response as he walked over and kicked Pedro in the ribs. His associates circled the room, menacing the creatures with their rifles.

"Well," said the man with the cigar, apparently calming down. "I guess you realize what a mistake that was."

Pedro tried to sit up, but his right arm was badly broken and he fell flat again. One of the gunmen laughed, and Cigar Man snapped: "Did I ask you if anything was fucking funny?" Both gunmen lowered their heads a bit and faced the door to keep lookout.

Cigar Man turned back to Pedro. "Now that we're clear on who owns this town, let's get clear on some other business."

Pedro looked up at him, still struggling to sit up with one arm. Cigar Man crouched down to address this "business," and Pedro spit a mouthful of blood on his crisp, white shirt. "Fuck you," he sneered.

The cherry on the cigar lit up, illuminating a sinister grin. The man snapped his fingers at one of his men: "Juan. The tiger." The man walked across the room to a cage holding Antonio, Pedro's prized Bengal. The man snapped his fingers again and the gun cracked, leaving Pedro to wail through broken teeth.

The rest of the animals went berserk at the sound of the gunshot, but the intruders paid them no mind. Cigar Man snapped his fingers at the other guard, pointing to the fire place. "Get us a fire going; I think we're going to be here for a while."

Hours passed. Night had turned over into morning, and Pedro sat tied up in a chair. One of the men had gone out to the truck for a duffle bag of tools, and somehow the animals knew to look away while he worked on their master. Pedro's screaming reverberated into the jungle around them, and for the first time in his life, he wondered if building his mansion so high above the town was such a fine idea after all. Not that the villagers would come to save him anyway. For all they knew, the screams were from one of his guests, perhaps a businessman who'd been too forward at dinner, or a local policeman who'd asked a question he shouldn't have. It wouldn't have been the first time the townspeople had ignored the strange terrors happening above them, although it was beginning to seem as though it would be the last.

Cigar Man had long since rolled up his sleeves, sweat ruining his once-slick hair. "I'm gonna ask you one more time, my friend. What were the feds doing on my boat last month?"

Pedro had once commanded respect from all of those who knew him, and if not respect, then fear. He'd made many friends and, clearly, just as many enemies. When he walked into rooms, the air pressure seemed to change. The man tied to the wooden chair in the middle of the cages was not that man, however. This man was small and weak and broken.

"I told you I don't know nothing about that. I don't know nothing about your boat," he moaned. The animals looked on as if they could tell this was the end.

Cigar Man turned back to the duffle bag and pulled out a screwdriver. "I don't like doing this, man. I really, really don't--" but before he could finish, a crash.

One of Pedro's toucans had flown from its perch, swooping at the man with the cigar, diving and clawing and biting at his face. Squawks filled the room and the rest of the animals found new energy, roaring and raising calamity, as if to cheer him on. A man with a rifle fired to try and shoot it out of the air, but missed badly. The other took a shot that whined off a brass lamp, striking his partner, who fell quickly and stopped moving. The two remaining men swatted and hollered, but the toucan continued to fly.

"Thank God the breeder hasn't come yet," Pedro thought. He normally kept the toucans' wings clipped to prevent them from flying about, but it had been far too long. He worked at the ropes on his hands amid the chaos.

Bang. Another shot rang out and the toucan fell out of the air, landing with an unceremonious thud on a table.

Cigar Man ran a hand through his hair, pulling back a small streak of blood the bird had drawn. He began to laugh menacingly. "You and your beasts are going to pay for that," he said, starting in on his captive again.

But in all the ruckus, Pedro had slipped his bonds. As soon as the man with the cigar got close enough, he lunged with the last of his energy, toppling them both over onto the carpet, rolling.

The scuffle did not last long. Aside from the massive amound of blood he'd lost, Pedro had the fight plucked out of him with pliers in the hours leading up to this moment. He held the upper hand for a split second, before the man with the cigar pulled a long knife from his belt and stuck it between Pedro's ribs.

Murmurs had been echoing through the room all night, the animals keenly aware of the wickedness taking place before them, unable to act. But when Pedro fell this time, all was silent.

Cigar Man stood up and dusted himself off. Pedro lay in a heap, his final moments to be spent in agony. "This is what happens to snakes," the man said to him, voice full of contempt. "They get their heads chopped off." He motioned around at Pedro's animals and started to laugh.

"Well... I suppose it's not just snakes."

Pedro lay helpless as the remaining guard walked from cage to cage, firing into each one, exterminating his beloved pets. They were more than simply tokens of his wealth, though. Pedro hadn't been born into the house on the mountain. He remembered running barefoot through the slums as a child, flash forward to the first time one of the older boys showed him the powder that had dictated the next twenty five years of his life. Each of his animals represented a step he'd taken along the way, and watching them be snuffed out one by one felt like watching his life play back in reverse, waiting for the final (or first?) act to finish so he could die.

Maybe it was better this way; Pedro was not unaware of his brutal reputation. Frankly, it was well-deserved. He'd hurt a lot of people to get here, and only as he lay bleeding out did he think that perhaps he could have chosen another path.

As the guard approached the last remaining animal, Pedro's second toucan, Cigar Man stopped him. "Wait. I'd like to finish this one myself," he said with a sneer. Pedro couldn't bear to watch.

The man sauntered up to the elaborate gold perch, one of a pair on either side of the fireplace. The toucan turned its head as if curious about what would happen next. Cigar Man pulled out a revolver from his waistband and pointed it at the bird.

"Check the safe!" squawked the bird. "Check the safe! In the foyer!"

Cigar Man lowered his gun and grinned. "This one can talk," he chuckled.

"Check the safe! In the foyer!" the toucan continued to squawk. He repeated it over and over, each time more urgent than the last.

"Must have learned to snitch from his owner," jeered the gunman from across the room. Both men laughed coldly.

Cigar Man kept the gun at his side, pondering for a moment. He looked at the toucan, a bit incredulous he was about to ask an exotic bird for help, then shook it off. "Okay then, pretty bird, where are the keys?" He gestured toward his associate as if to say get a load of this, not wanting to look foolish for speaking to an animal. Their work was done that night, but if Pedro kept some loot lying around, better for them to take it than to leave it for the inevitable police raid that would come in the following days.

"Keys in the dresser! Keys in the dresser!" the bird cried out.

Cigar Man and the guard looked at one another for a brief moment, before shrugging. It was worth a shot. The guard walked to an elaborate mahogany bureau in the corner, peeked in the top drawer and exclaimed, "Hey! The bird ain't lying." He pulled out a set of silver keys.

Until now, the men had lost all interest in Pedro, who lay in a bloody pile, sputtering. "How's it feel to get ratted out by a bird?" the guard spat in his direction, before both he and the man with the cigar began to laugh in unison. "Now where did he say that safe was?"

"Follow your nose! Follow your nose!"

The two men looked at each other quizzically.

"Follow your nose! Follow your nose!" the toucan continued to squawk.

"He said it was in the foyer, you idiot," said the man with the cigar. "Let's go see if we can't get out of here with more than the blood on our hands to show for it." They left the room through the door they'd broken down some hours earlier.

As soon as they were gone, the toucan flew down from its perch and waddled over to Pedro, who was fading out of consciousness quickly. It rubbed its beak against his hand, as if begging him to wake up again. Pedro looked into its tiny black eyes. "That's right...you haven't been fed tonight, have you?" he whispered hoarsely. For all of the evil in Pedro's heart, there was nothing but love for his animals, even as he lay dying.

A great explosion erupted from the foyer, shaking the house to its foundation. The crystal chandelier above Pedro and his toucan clinked against itself, threatening to fall and crush them both. The hearth was nearly blown out with the gust of air forced through the door. The smell of blood from all the dead animals had begun to fill the room before, but now there was only dynamite and smoke.

The toucan looked toward the door, as if expecting the man with the cigar and his guard to walk through at any moment. Pedro knew they wouldn't, and he smiled at his bird, stroking his massive beak with a fragile hand. He'd loaded that safe with explosives months ago, knowing he might need it in a situation like this, although he'd always imagined he would be the ones to lead the robbers into the trap.

He stroked the toucan's beak, before it grew tired of this and began to peck at him. "Follow your nose!" it squawked.

Pedro reached into his shirt pocket and pulled out a handful of colorful grains. He always kept a bit on him when he was home - he was proud of his pets, and perhaps even more so of the fact that he fed each of them by hand.

The toucan pecked the grains from his bloody palm. It was a special blend he'd had made by a farmer in town, the same farmer who kept quiet when Pedro demanded rights to a certain part of his property to grow a certain variety of leaf. They were round with holes in the middle, and came in a rainbow of colors. Pedro was a lavish man, and he enjoyed the idea of feeding his animals only the best. And because he favored the toucans, he had spared no expense in obtaining these mysterious multicolored rings for them. The farmer had called them "loop grain."

This wasn't such a bad way to go, Pedro supposed, the toucan continuing to feed from his hand. Just him and his bird.

The smoke in the room was getting thicker now, and he realized the blast from the safe had ignited something in the foyer. No matter. He would bleed out before the fire reached him, and the bird would fly free once it finished its loop grains.

The toucan nudged him for more, but Pedro looked into its beady eyes apologetically. He'd only had that one handful to give. Somehow the toucan understood, and its nudged turned gentler, almost comforting. The fire intensified around them.

A beam crashed down somewhere in the front of the house, and they both knew it was time to go. Pedro had grown weak, and could feel himself struggling to remain conscious. The toucan sensed it too. He reached up once more to stroke the bird's beak. A wave of emotion rushed over him - gratitude, nostalgia, and just a bit of sorrow at the knowledge he'd be dead in minutes.

The toucan stepped back a bit, and Pedro touched his beak once more. "Thank you, Sam," he said, and he closed his eyes forever.

Sam knew he would be in danger if he didn't get out, so he took quick flight through the open door, dodging embers that had begun to float through the air. He was sorry to see his master die, but was also proud that he was able to give him an ounce of dignity and comfort before he passed.

As he hit the warm night air, the house behind him began to collapse. He looked behind to watch the roof cave in on itself, burying the crimes that had been committed there not only that night, but over the past twenty years. He was sad to see it go, but only for a moment.

Right now, Sam had more pressing matters to attend to. The handful of loop grains were enough to satisfy him for now, but his master was right: the animals had not been fed. He flew over the dark jungle, hungry, and looking for more.