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bench.”
    Walker was fed up. “So, Carson, sell any bear gallbladders lately?”
    “He doesn’t deal in that stuff anymore.” Angie looked at Renard. “In fact, he went undercover for you guys to break up a chop shop. Two years ago.”
    I’d have preferred this not come up. The gallbladder incident had netted me $52,700 and got Walker on my case in the first place. I didn’t want the black leather trench coat to get any inkling that my dealings weren’t completely on the up-and-up. I could get along very nicely without any more of Renard’s sly innuendos.
    “See?” Walker began, waving a finger in my direction. “They sent him in to rat out his pals.”
    I gritted my teeth. “Check it out in your files, Renard. The agent I dealt with is named Pete Durban, guy who used to have your job before he went to U.S. Fish and Wildlife. When I reported this character named Park to the New York DEC, they had me go back and buy fifty thousand dollars’ worth of endangered skins for Candid Camera. And believe me, this guy was not a pal. He ran an animal chop shop.”
    “Park?” Agent Renard raised his eyebrows at me, like his alarm clock had just now pulled him from a deep sleep. “Gallbladders. A lucrative business,” he added dryly. His sleepy indifference returned and he flipped randomly through a folder of my permits.
    “Damn right. I dealt only once in bladders, when I brokered them for a taxidermist friend out west.” I’d made a nice chunk of change during that short stint too.
    “And so: Why did you give it up?” Renard shoved the file closed and tossed me the key.
    I pointed to the bandage on the back of my head and winced.
    “’Cause of this kind of rough play. Sleazy characters. It was like doing a drug deal. Not to mention that it’s now illegal to sell gallbladders in most states.”
    “I see.” Renard buttoned his jacket. “Did you mark your stolen acquisitions in any way that—”
    “My pelts and rugs are branded on the underside, dead center, with my name and the ID number. Head mounts I brand behind the plaque, on the neck stopper. Skulls have a yellow sticker inside the skull cavity that’s a bitch to remove. The tusks have my brand on the stump, but that won’t help much once they chop them up.” It hurt just saying it. Those babies were part of my personal collection. “Dammit.”
    “Carson, it’s not like they cleaned you out.” Walker was calling me a crybaby.
    “Oh, yeah? Imagine, Detective Walker, somebody breaking into your house and stealing everything but the veggies, fruit, and condiments from your refrigerator.” I raised my arms toward the aviary of predatory birds hanging from the high ceiling, then at Fred, then waved my ice pack at the stand-up bear, the full-body albino deer, the badgers, beavers, otters, porcupines, bobcats, muskrats, weasels, martins, and polecats. “All potatoes and no meat. What’s left doesn’t add up to what was taken. This is mostly domestic, a few nice pieces, but nothing like the African skins. I still have a few cat mounts, but . . .” I smacked an armchair with a fist.
    “What about the man Garth told the officers about?” Angie sidled up next to me and gave me a squeeze, trying to calm me. She’d already reproached me for having held back my encounter with Kim until we were at the hospital. “That guy in the bar who asked Garth about the crow.”
    Walker flipped a page in his notepad. “Do you have any idea how many Kims are listed in the phone book, and how many of them might have changed their Korean first names to Jim? Forget about it. Probably a phony name anyways.”
    “A Korean?” Renard knitted his brow, a bad dream disrupting his sleep. “There was a Korean asking about the crow?”
    “Said I should give the crow to some people he knows who wanted it, before they took it from me.” I sighed. “But I dunno. These guys took a lot more than the crow.”
    “Indeed? Well, Mr. Carson, I should think you’re most