by Andy Straka
“So you’re sure this was a man you saw running?”
“Pretty sure, yeah. But I didn’t really get a look at his face. He was wearing, like, a baseball cap.”
“Caucasian? African-American?”
“Couldn’t really say.”
“How was he holding the bird?”
“He had something covering his hand. The bird was sitting on it, and he was holding the bird up and out, almost like you’d hold a torch.”
“Could you make out any coloring on the bird?”
She shrugged. “Not really.”
“Was the bird still or moving? Did it spread its wings?”
“No, sir. That thing was as still as a stuffed animal.”
“Maybe it was a stuffed animal.”
“No. That was it, you see? Just before they hit the alley, the bird turned its head around and looked at me. Like it was spinning on a swivel or something. I saw its eyes.”
“What kind of eyes?”
“Big yellow ones. It creeped me out.”
“What about the profile of the bird’s head when it turned. Was the back of the head tapered or squared?”
“I don’t know what you mean.”
“What shape was the bird’s head?”
She thought for a moment. “I don’t know, I was focused on those eyes.”
“Sure.”
“So hey, you think this guy’s out at night hunting with that bird?”
“Possibly,” I said.
“Some kind of weirdo. Are you going to try to catch him?”
“We might?”
“Mind if I tag along? That would be something to see.”
I thought about it for a moment. An extra set of eyes might be useful, especially at night. But I decided we better not. “Thanks,” I said. “I think we’ve got enough hands on deck at the moment.”
“Oh. Okay.”
“But I appreciate the offer.”
“Have you read the newspaper article about the missing pets?”
“Sure. Everybody’s talking about it.”
“If this man with the bird is responsible, how do you think he got the pets out of the building?”
She shrugged. “They didn’t come by me or anyone else working the security desk, unless …”
“Unless what?”
“Unless it was someone who already lives here. They could’ve smuggled them out. People come by carrying all sorts of stuff, and it’s not like we search them when they’re going out or anything.”
“Okay. That’s good. Anything else you remember that might be helpful?”
She thought for a minute then shook her head. “No, not really.” She tapped her extra-long fingernails on the table, clearly ready to end the interview. The nails seemed out of sync with the rest of her, almost as if they were the remnants of a different kind of past.
“Okay, just one more quick thing,” I said. “What’s it like working for Dominick Watisi?”
“Mr. Watisi?” Her demeanor became all business again. “Well, you know, I don’t really have any direct contact with Mr. Watisi himself. I’m the senior guard here, but my supervisor’s up at Mr. Watisi’s office in Harlem. He reports to a vice-president who reports to Mr. Watisi.”
“You’ve met the man though?”
“Sure. A couple of times.”
“How long have you been working for the company?”
“Three years.”
“Most of the people who work for the organization happy?”
“I think so. The pay’s good and the hours aren’t bad. I’m taking classes toward my bachelor’s two nights a week.”
“What do you know about the lawsuit between Grayland Tower apartment owners and Watisi?”
She hesitated for a moment. “Nothing, really. My boss says we’re not supposed to talk about it. We’re supposed to just go on with business as usual. The lawsuit is for the lawyers and newspapers to get all worked up about.”
I said nothing.
“I’ve got to get going.” She forced a tight smile.
“This guy you say you saw with the bird could be totally unrelated to Mr. Watisi, you know.”
“I don’t know,” she said. “I’m just telling you what I saw. You people are the detectives—you figure it out. I gotta go.” She pushed away from the table and stood to leave.
“Thanks for taking the time to talk with me, Jayani.”
“No problem.”
She hurried out the door of the coffee shop and disappeared up the sidewalk.
A few seconds later, Nicole appeared on the sidewalk and entered the shop.
“I thought I’d find you here.”
“Did you see Jayani go by you just now?” I asked.
“Yeah. I bumped into her. She confirmed my guess.”
“She say anything else?”
“No. She seemed in a hurry. Why?”
“Nothing. Just wondering.”
“Think she’s legit?”
“Near as I can tell.”
“She looked worried about something.”
“Maybe just her job.”
“She saw something then?”
“So it appears.”
“An owl?”
“Sounds like it.”
“Could the guy really be hunting with a bird like that at three o’clock in the morning, right here in the middle of the city?”
“Or just carrying it around for some other purpose. Maybe for show.”
“Harry Potter,” she said.
“What?”
“You know, the Harry Potter books. Harry’s got a snowy owl named Hedwig.”
“Right.”
“Except I don’t see any witches or warlocks or magic flying brooms around here,” she said looking over her shoulder.
“Well if you do, you be sure and let me know.”
“I can do better than that.”
“What do you mean?”
“Our apartment’s got a great high speed internet connection,” she said. “Wait until you see what I’ve found.”
9
Nicole hunched over her laptop in the kitchen of our temporary apartment. She’d been surfing the web, she said, for the past couple of hours, trying to find more information about Dominic Watisi and his various enterprises as well as our client Dr. Lonigan and the Grayland Tower restoration.
One bonus: our apartment was as nice as the finest suite at the Ritz-Carlton. The floors were covered in the plushest thickest pile carpet I’d ever sunk my toes into. The furniture was top of the line deco modern. The kitchen, like Lonigan’s, was enormous and chockfull of the latest super sized appliances and conveniences. In the bathrooms heated Mediterranean tile on the floors would keep our bare feet from ever suffering a chill as we stepped from the shower.
“So what do you have?” I asked.
She flexed her fingers and pounded the keyboard. “A lot. First of all, our client isn’t all she’s cracked up to be.”
“What are you talking about?”
“Dr. Lonigan was arrested twice in Oregon in the 1980s on suspicion of vandalism and arson.”
“Convicted?”
“No. The charges were eventually dropped.”
“Let me guess. Something to do with logging.”
“You got it. She was part of the movement that said they were trying to save the spotted owl.”
“Woman must have a thing for owls. But so what? She was probably just out of college then, right?”
“Yup. Vassar, class of ‘84.”
“So she earns her spurs in left wing activism, grows up a little, and moves back east to go to medical school and enter the real world.”
“More or less.”
“And she’s made no secret that she’s still an animal rights activist.”
“Not just that, she’s listed as a major contributor for about half a dozen different groups, most of which have to do with the environment or animals.”
“So what’s your point?”
�
�I just think we should watch ourselves with her, that’s all.”
“You think she may have more of an agenda here than she’s letting on?”
“Maybe.”
“What about Watisi?”
“His background’s a little bit harder to crack.”
“Why am I not surprised.”
“He’s been here in the United States since the early 70’s, been a citizen for more than twenty years. He’s involved in a lot of limited partnerships and various financing deals.”
“Who are some of his partners?”
“Big banks. Some Who’s Who on Wall Street. All I’ve been able to come up with so far. And he’s got his own activist credentials, in a way.”
“How so?”
“Through his church and some other organizations, he and his wife have given lots of money and been very involved in helping new immigrants settle here in America, especially African and Middle Eastern immigrants.”
“So what’s he hiding?”
“Good question.”
“You found all this out from the internet?”
She shrugged. “That and a few phone calls. And, let’s just say I might have visited a few people’s servers when they weren’t looking.” She smiled.
“I don’t want to know.”
“But I’ve got more.”
“What’s that?”
“If there really is a guy running around the park playing falconer, whether Watisi has hired him or not, we might be dealing with some kind of re-enactor.”
“What do you mean?”
“I kind of got sidetracked, but I think you’ll find it interesting.” She pulled the laptop screen to a better angle for me to read.
“That’s the problem with all this online stuff. There is so much information out there at your fingerprints, you end up spending half the day sifting through minutiae.”
“Just read, Dad,” she patiently instructed.
I did as she said. “It’s a web site about falconry.” No big deal. I’d seen plenty of sites like this before. This one wasn’t even particularly high-tech. No flash intro or streaming video of screaming falcons. Nicole was pointing me toward a section of text on the page.
FALCONRY IN AMERICA—AN UNSUAL TALE.
While a growing metropolis, New York in the 1840s and 1850s was not then the great city it is now. Most of the population still lived toward the southern end of Manhattan island. In the area just above Midtown that would eventually be seized by eminent domain to form Central Park, was a place known as Seneca Village.
It was a mixed race settlement of around two-hundred- and-seventy free blacks and whites, with three churches and a school. For a period of time, the village served as a critical junction on the Underground Railroad, helping to ferry escaped slaves pursued by bounty hunters on their journey northward into Canada and freedom.
Obadiah Robertson was a former slave, but not in America. An Ethiopian, he had served in the house of a wealthy Arab, where, owing to his skills with animals, he had been pressed into service as a falconer. There, his formidable talents training the swift hunting birds earned him an honored place and eventually, his freedom.
Robertson (his Americanized name) migrated to the United States and settled for a time in Seneca Village. He trapped and hunted with peregrine falcons, red-tailed hawks, and even owls. Before long, Robertson, who had become a devout Christian, began guiding groups of slaves up the Hudson valley, into the Catskills, and on into Canada. Short in stature, with quick, lithe movements, he was a superior guide, and he frequently traveled with one of his hawks or falcons. His hunting prowess allowed him to provide meat for the starving refugees while they were on the move, without fear of attracting attention by the use of a firearm.
“Pretty wild story,” I said.
“Keep going.”
Robertson disappeared under questionable circumstances in 1851. Some said he was murdered near Seneca Village. Others claimed that after the dissolution of Seneca Village he had taken a native American wife and gone to live with the Indians in upstate New York. For years afterward, escaping slaves on the trek North would whisper tales about the mysterious caches of rabbit and squirrel meat that would sometimes appear at their campsites, especially in the dead of winter when they were near starvation and struggling through the bitter cold. These events, it was said, were often precipitated by the distant screaming of a hawk or the hooting of an owl.
“What do you think?” Nicole asked when I looked up from reading.
“Unbelievable.”
“I was cross-referencing property listings around the park, got into a bit of the history, and decided to plug in falconry to see what came up.”
“Amazing. Nice work.”
“Do you think this could be significant for our case?”
“So what, you want to go tell Darla and Dr. Lonigan that now we think we might be chasing a ghost?”
“Wait,” she said. “There’s even more.” Her fingers danced across the mouse pad. She clicked on the cursor and a new web page came into view. It was a small section of text, part of a larger examination of the architectural archives of Manhattan.
Obadiah Robertson, who could read and write, unlike most former slaves, supposedly kept a journal of his bird training activities and other exploits. In particular, the book apparently chronicled Robertson’s hunting adventures around Manhattan and his use of a rudimentary tunnel system under a section of what is now Central Park. Called BOOK OF THE MEWS, a reference to a facility used to house raptors, this leather-bound volume was rumored to have been part of a private collection in New York City but has never been found. If located, it would prove an invaluable primary source document for the history of New York City and Seneca Village, as well as for the ancient sport of falconry. Robertson was said to be fond of hunting with a specially trained Great Horned Owl at dusk or sometimes even after dark.
I looked up at Nicole. “So you think someone’s gotten their hands on this book?”
“Could be.”
“Might be living out some kind of historical fantasy.”
“Or even better. Maybe they’ve found one of his old tunnels and are using it to keep something hidden.”
“Have you found out anything else about this Robertson character? Does he have any living descendants, that sort of thing?”
“No. I’ve found several other references to Seneca Village. There was even a children’s book published recently. But nothing about him. And to do a complete genealogical tracing, I’d need to have a wife or a child’s name or something else to go on.”
“What about the book?”
“I searched all available online databases and came up with nothing. It’s not listed for sale anywhere. Not that I expected it to be.”
“So for now all we’ve got is an interesting story.”
“With one coincidence—the possible similarity to a falconer hunting in Central Park.” she said.
“Right.”
“And you’ve always told me you don’t like coincidences during an investigation, Dad,” she said.
10
Darla Barnes’s office was in the Richmond Hills section of Queens. Nothing special. A second floor walkup over a realtor’s office in a commercial strip of tired storefronts. We only stopped by for a few minutes on the way to her house so she could check her mail.
While I’d been talking with Jayani and looking over Nicole’s internet find, Darla had been busy on another case, taking pictures with her digital camera of a pickup basketball game on the Upper East Side. The players were impressed, she told us, must have figured her for a scout, especially one six foot eight dunking machine whose day job was stacking boxes. The Knicks wouldn’t be calling. But the insurance company the phi slamma jammer had scammed out of several thousand dollars in workman’s compensation payments just might.
“Nothing but bills,” she said, closing the door behind her as we left descending the stairs.
“Tell me about it,” I said. �
�Where’s the glamour anymore in the private eye life?”
“Honey,” she said. “Ain’t no glamour here. “Lest you plan to be paying for it.”
The sky outside had turned a gentle shade of mauve as the sun in the west ducked beneath a bank of clouds. The air smelled of fried chicken and spices. A group of Asian drummers and dancers were performing on the street a few blocks away, drawing a sizable crowd.
“How far to your house?” I asked.
“It’s close. Just a few blocks. Makes for an easier commute than back when I was working Transit, I’ll tell you that much.”
“Okay.”
“So you guys have made some progress,” she said.
“Some.” I told her about my conversation with Jayani and Nicole told her the story about Obadiah Robertson and what else Nicole found.
“Strange,” was all she said. “Where do you go from here?”
“I thought we’d try staking out one section of the park tonight,” I said. “Someplace that would be likely for a falconer after game.”
“You mean you think this guy with the owl might really be hunting with the thing, not just stealing people’s pets?”
“I don’t know. But it’s what the birds do.”
Her house turned out to be a pale blue Cape Cod cottage with a porch. At the end of the street, a cul-de-sac backed up to a reed-filled swamp next to a school playground. Three children were playing in front of the house, one boy of about ten and two little girls on bicycles. A middle-aged black man with gray eyes to match his gray beard sat on the porch shucking ears of corn into a metal bucket and keeping watch over the youngsters.
The kids looked on warily at first, probably confused at the sight of the unfamiliar vehicle. Then they caught sight of Darla as we stepped from the van.
“Mommy!”
One of the little girls hopped off her bike, dropping it on the sidewalk before running into her mother’s arms.
“Hey, Sweetness.” Darla gathered her daughter up and kissed her on the cheeks. “Marco, you come on too. There’s someone here I want you to meet.”
The other little girl waved goodbye to Sweetness like Nicole and I were the bogeyman and pedaled her bike down the sidewalk, up the driveway and into the garage of the house next door. The boy stood a ways off at first—he was busy doing something with a fishing pole—before he came over to accept a hug from his mother as well.