Tiger Trap by Eric Walters

follow the law.”
    “That was wise of you to warn him,” Martin said.
    “He thinks because you two are friends you wouldn’t arrest him. I told him it doesn’t work that way in this country.”
    “I’d hate to have to arrest anybody who’s a friend of mine — you can lose a lot of friends that way — but the law’s the law.”
    “That’s what I told him.”
    “But I don’t think you have anything to worry about,” Martin said.
    “I don’t?” Obviously, Martin didn’t know Vladimir as well as he thought he did. I could picture Vladimir doing serious damage to that guy.
    “Uh, no … I’d have heard if there was a problem — right?”
    “I guess you would have.”
    “Besides, anybody who was trying to do something illegal like buying an exotic animal for slaughter would have to be pretty stupid to complain to the police if he was roughed up.”
    “He wasn’t stupid,” I said.
    “How do you know that?” my mother asked.
    I recognized that “mother” tone in her voice. I didn’t really want to answer her question. She wouldn’t be very happy if I told her it was all part of a plan to try to figure out what the guy wanted.
    “Well?” my mother asked.
    “I spoke to him a bit.”
    “That wasn’t wise,” she said.
    “I didn’t know what he wanted until I started talking to him and then once I found out I stopped.”
    “I remember reading that people involved in the illegal sale of exotic animals can be armed and dangerous,” my mother said.
    “Any illegal activity that involves large sums of money usually leads to danger and weapons,” Martin said. “Did you know that the illegal trade in exotic animals is likely the second-largest smuggling activity after the drug trade?”
    “I didn’t know that,” my mother said.
    “It’s estimated, and of course it can only be an estimate, that it involves up to ten billion dollars a year,” Martin said.
    “Ten billion dollars!” my mother said.
    “I didn’t believe it myself at first,” Martin said, “but I did some double-checking of facts and that was the number. That figure includes the sale of animal parts for traditional medicines, things like ivory from elephants, skin from alligators, fur from big cats, pets like tropical birds, reptiles and other endangered animals and ownership of large exotics like lions, tigers and bears.”
    “Oh,
my
!” I said, quoting from
The Wizard of Oz
.
    “There must be laws against these things,” my mother, ever the lawyer, said.
    “There’s a patchwork of organizations and regulations that cover most of these things, but there’s no fully coordinated international set of laws,” Martin explained. “And while there are laws that regulate the importation or exportation of exotics in or out of the country, there’s hardly any control over those that are born and raised here.”
    “And there’s a lot of those,” Nick said. “Tigers seem to breed like bunnies.”
    “Big bunnies with claws and teeth,” Martin said. “These exotics pose a definite threat to the public.”
    “Not Mr. McCurdy’s animals,” I said, defending him.
    “Even well-run places like his could have an escape,” Martin said. “It does happen.”
    I knew what he was talking about. The summer before last Buddha had escaped. It was only by a combination of luck and skill that we were able to recapture him without anybody, including Buddha, getting hurt.
    “For example,” Martin said, “take that lion Mr. McCurdy got recently, the one that was the mascot for that motorcycle gang.”
    “Woody,” I said.
    “That’s the one. While he was well cared for, as far as I’ve been told, he was still kept in a clubhouse with no bars. He could have slipped out the front door, and there’s no telling what havoc he could have caused.”
    “He’s very gentle,” I said, now defending the lion.
    “It doesn’t matter how gentle he is,” Martin said. “Would you want him to wander into a backyard where a toddler was