by Andy Straka
“We’ll be all right.”
“How’s Nicole?”
I thought about the scene from the park the night before. “Proving herself more than worthy,” I said.
“But if you’re in some danger,” she said.
“Don’t worry, it’ll be okay.”
“I can get a ticket and fly up there this afternoon.”
“I don’t think that would be a good idea,” I said. “Unless you want to go to work with me too.”
“Call me first thing tomorrow?” she said.
“Will do.”
“I miss you.”
“Miss you too.”
We said good-bye and hung up.
Just in time too because down the hall outside the courtroom, a minor jostle was beginning as people began to move out through the doors. Apparently, the hearing was already over. That quick.
I saw Nicole come out, followed by a whole posse of people, Barry LaGrange and a TV news reporter among them. A cameraman and the interviewer were scrambling to get quality shots and sound bites.
I had half a mind to duck for cover. The talk with LaGrange had gone okay, but the last thing I wanted was to see my face displayed on any City news program again.
No one could have anticipated what happened next.
A small round woman with long graying hair tripped and accidentally bumped into someone in the crowd in front of her.
“Hey!”
She lost her footing and began falling forward toward the wall, directly into the back of a goateed young man who was stooping over to pick up one of the signs propped there.
“What the??”
The young man, apparently fearing he was under attack (the woman must have been with the opposition camp), swung his sign at the woman in a defensive reflex that had the same effect as tossing a piece of meat into a pit of hungry alligators.
The woman screamed. All brimstone broke loose. The man began beating her with the sign. Nicole, who was closest to the action, naturally rose to the poor woman’s defense. I knew her Tae Kwan Do classes had been stimulating and educational for her, but I hadn’t counted on seeing the results in live action in a courthouse.
Pretty soon, others had joined in the fray. Signs were swinging. Cries and shouts were ringing down the corridor. It was hard to tell which side was which. I felt obliged to join in, for no other reason than to help Nicole and protect the innocent old woman who’d been wrongly attacked.
I didn’t see Dr. Lonigan, but I did spot Barry LaGrange out of the corner of my eye, notebook still in hand, attempting to shrink for cover behind a water fountain.
By the time the court deputies with the help of the two detectives had managed to end the altercation and the shouting died down, we’d all provided some outstanding footage for that night’s telecast. Fortunately, no one was seriously injured. All declined to file charges. Not because they weren’t hopping mad, but because they were fresh from the experience of witnessing the city’s legal machinery in action, and no one was that crazy.
I could almost see the next day’s headlines and the title for LaGrange’s column being considered now:
PET PROTECTORS PUMMELED
ANIMAL INSTINCTS ERUPT
FUR FLIES OVER FELINES
Weep and take your pick.
* * * * *
Later, with Dr. Lonigan on the sidewalk outside, we sat on a bench licking our wounds.
“That had to be about the most idiotic thing I’ve ever been involved with in my life. Particularly with everything’s that’s gone on.”
“Just speculation,” I said. “But how do you know one of those crazy people in there isn’t behind this whole thing, for some reason?”
“Because many of those people I know personally. They would no more harm a cat than they would shoot Darla.”
“Look,” I said, “For better or worse, we’ve got a real situation here. We can’t have distractions like what just happened in there and reporters running around sticking their noses into everything. I don’t care if someone wants to use what you say happened to your cat to further their cause, as long as they don’t try to get in my face about it. I’m not here to defend hunting or anything else. I’m here to do a job and that job is finding out what’s going on with this guy, his bird in the park, and whoever’s shooting people.”
Amen to that.
Nicole screwed up her mouth. “Dr. Lonigan, I’m going to say this and if you want to try to fire us over it, you go right ahead.”
“Go ahead,” Lonigan said.
“I don’t exactly know how well you are connected to these animal rights people, but if you have any influence over them, you need to tell them to back off.”
Lonigan narrowed her eyes. “What do you mean?”
“Just what my dad was trying to say a couple of days ago. These people might’ve read about this guy in the park with the owl or whatever and be trying to set up this scenario to claim there is illegal hunting so they can stir up trouble. Raise some money or whatever they’re into.”
“That’s crazy. Why would anyone go to such great lengths to do that?”
“I don’t know. All I’m saying is that you need to tell your animal friends to back off of our action.”
Lonigan looked at us for a long moment. “All right,” she finally said. “I’ll make some calls.”
“Thank you.”
“What about Watisi?”
“He didn’t show this morning, obviously,” I said.
“Doesn’t that tell you something?”
“Maybe, but if I had his kind of money, and could avoid dealing with the crowd we had in there this afternoon, I think I’d choose to hire the best lawyer I could find and put him or her between me and the circus too. And now we find out he wasn’t even required to show.”
“Neither was I nor the rest of the apartment owners. But we wanted to look the judge in the face and let him know how strongly we felt about this situation.”
“What, your faulty wiring or your missing pets?”
“Our missing pets, of course. And our faulty construction too. And, well, the whole mess this situation has become.”
“No housing judge in his right mind is going to touch this case with a ten foot pole. It looked like the judge was looking to for an excuse to postpone. I had to take a phone call. Is that what went on in there?”
Lonigan’s voice dropped an octave. “Pretty much. That’s why I need you people or the police to come up with something more concrete we can use against Watisi.”
“All right,” I said. “You’re an oncologist, right?”
“Yes.”
“Which means you’re a specialist. You mostly get referrals from other doctors, clinics, whatever.”
“Exactly.”
“But let’s say you’re the family doctor out there. Sick kid walks into your exam room. What do you do? Start assuming right up front the kid’s got cancer?”
“Of course I wouldn’t.”
“You’d have on open mind, right? You’d start ruling out possibilities.”
“Okay, so you’re doing the same thing as an investigator. Don’t patronize me. I wasn’t born yesterday.”
“You’re right,” I said. “I’m sorry. All I’m trying to get you to see is that whoever shot Hicks and now Darla and whoever took your cat may not necessarily be the same people.”
“Yes, but they could still all be working for Dominic Watisi.”
“Have you heard anymore from the police?” I asked.
“No. Why?”
“I suspect another reason Watisi didn’t show this morning is that it would have put him more on their radar screen.”
“So you’re still after him?”
“I’m after whoever looks guilty.”
“Including your man who may be this falconer?”
“Including everyone.”
“Good,” she said. “With Darla incapacitated, you’re all I’ve got left.”
“Are we supposed to take t
hat as a vote of confidence?” Nicole asked.
“Take it for what it’s worth,” Lonigan said.
We all sat in silence.
“Doesn’t matter anyway,” I said.
“What do you mean it doesn’t matter?” Lonigan said. “I’m the one who hired Darla and she’s the one who hired you.”
I said nothing.
Nicole said: “What my dad’s trying to tell you, Dr. Lonigan, is that he’s going to find out who tried to kill Darla and me last night, whether you want to keep hiring us or not.”
“Why, because he’s some kind of cowboy with an action-hero complex?”
Nicole glanced at me and smiled. “I’ve never quite heard it put that way before, but yeah.”
21
I decided I needed to revisit the scene of the Meer shooting in daylight to see if anything struck me anew. I went alone. Nicole said she wanted to check online for more information about illegal immigrants in the city, Los Miembros, and any possible links she might find to Watisi.
Unbroken by last night’s rain, the humidity was building once more. The sun was out, a hazy smudge overhead baking the ball fields and the North Meadow. People were out running and riding bikes, as usual, many of them dripping in sweat. Sailboats skimmed along the surface of the reservoir. The heat made the water look cool and inviting.
This time when I caught sight of him, the skinny kid in the baseball cap was jogging from 106th Street, straight out of Spanish Harlem into the park. His face was set in a grimace. It was a moment or two before I remembered him, the same kid I’d watched idly from the van a couple of days before. He wore the same blue jean shorts and yellow tee he’d been wearing three days before. What was he doing over here in the park?
“Yo, my friend, what’s up?” I moved to intercept him on the grass and held out an arm to stop his progress. It was a spur of the moment decision, fueled as much by desperation as anything else.
He stopped, eyeing me with suspicion. “No friend of yours,” he said, and tried to push around me.
I held out my arm, refusing to give ground. He was a rangy kid, much stronger than he looked. It was hard to place his foreign-sounding accent, but one thing was sure. He hadn’t picked it up around New York City.
“What you want?” His eyes grew small with suspicion.
“Just hang on a second. I’d like to ask you a couple of questions, if you don’t mind.”
As he looked me up and down again, the apparent irritation in his eyes took on a cast of fear.
“Don’t worry. I’m not with immigration or the police.”
“No government?”
“No government.”
He seemed to relax a little. “What you want?” he asked again.
I began to appreciate just how thin he was. His arms were not only lean; they were tubes of skin and bone. And his forehead showed signs of temporal wasting. I found it hard to peg his age exactly.
“Just to talk,” I said.
“Who are you?”
“My name’s Frank Pavlicek. I’m from Virginia. I’m looking for some information. Hoping you can help me.”
“You paying?”
Right down to business. You had to admire the brass on the kid.
“That depends,” I said.
“You pervert?”
“No.” I shook my head, noting his clipped English.
“Good. First you pay. Then we talk.”
“All right.” I reached into my jacket pocket and pulled a ten dollar bill out of my wallet, hoping that would satisfy him.
It did. He motioned me toward a bench just inside the park across the street. The light was red down the block and traffic was stopped, so we jaywalked across to the bench.
“What you want?” He repeated the question as soon as we’d both sat down. His face was a mask, the skin on his neck and cheeks pitted by scars.
“You live around here?” I asked.
“Yes.”
“Whereabout?”
He thought it over for a moment. “Around. Up the Boulevard.”
“You mean Martin Luther King Boulevard?”
“Yes.”
“I saw you the other day over on Fred Douglas.”
“I move around.”
“You come into the park a lot?”
He shrugged. “Sometimes.”
“How old are you?” I asked.
“Fifteen,” he replied.
“You off school for the summer?”
His eyes darted around as if the question had come from another planet. “Yeah,” he said, obviously lying.
He was probably an undocumented alien, maybe from somewhere in the Caribbean or possibly even Africa. From the wariness in his eyes, I guessed he was a recent arrival and probably holed up with his parents somewhere. They were working under the radar, maybe even housed by their employer, getting the lay of the land. They might attempt to enroll their son in school in the fall—they might not. I might have been missing some of the details, but I was pretty sure I had the outline right. I decided to skip asking about the parents for now. He might be more inclined to give me what I was after if I stuck to safer subjects.
“I’m looking for someone, someone in the park,” I said.
“Yeah? Who?”
“A man who’s been seen around here a few times after dark. Not much bigger than you actually.”
“A white man like you?”
“No. I think he’s dark-skinned.”
“Lots of people around like that.”
“Sure, but this one’s different. He’s probably carrying a bird.”
The kid blinked. I’d struck some kind of a chord.
“What do you mean, a bird?”
“A bird. You know. Like the ones that fly in the sky. Like the ones in the park.”
“And he’s carrying it?” He was ducking and weaving now, but I could tell he knew something.
“Right.”
He cupped his hand as if he were holding out an offering. “You mean a little bird.”
“No. I’m talking about a big bird, like a hawk or an owl. You wear a special glove or hand piece to protect yourself from the talons and you carry the bird on the back of your fist.”
His face took on a cloudy expression. “I don’t know what you mean.”
I decided to humor him. I had a picture in my wallet of me with my first hawk, Armistead, perched on my glove. I pulled it out and passed it over to him. “That’s what I mean.”
He stared at the picture. “This you?” he asked.
“Yes.”
“With a hawk.”
“Yes.”
His eyes searched my face then went back to the picture.
“You ever seen an owl up close?” I asked.
He hesitated. “Sure. At the zoo.”
“Have you ever seen anyone in the park, someone like yourself, carrying an owl, a big bird just like this?”
“Just walking around?” He shook his head. “No. Nothing like that.”
“You sure?”
“I’m sure, man.” He handed the picture back to me.
“What about the shooting in the park the other night that killed the two gangbangers?”
His eyes were a blank expanse. “What about it?”
“You see anything?”
“Nope.”
“Hear anything?”
He slowly shook his head. “That all you wanted to ask me?”
“What about the two that were killed—Los Miembros, right?”
“That’s what I heard.”
“You hear any more about them?”
“Like what?”
“Like were they selling smack, were they murdered over drugs?”
“I don’t think so,” he said.
“You don’t. Why not?”
“I don’t know, man. I just heard they were into other stuff. Okay?”
“What’s your name?”
He looked up and down the street, as if scanning the pavement for approaching t
rouble. “No name, man. Not unless you willing to pay more.”
This fifteen-year-old understood inflation. Reluctantly I peeled another ten from my wallet and forked it over. He tucked it into his pocket with the first one.
“Okay, so what is it?” I asked.
“My name’s Sammy.”
“Sammy. You got a last name?”
“Sammy Yel Bak.” He spelled it out for me.
I took out a pen and wrote it down. I also wrote my name and cell phone number on the back of the photo and gave it to him. “Well, Sammy, here you go,” I said. “You remember anything, you call me. All right?”
“What you looking for?”
“I just want to talk with anyone who knows about a man with an owl or about the shooting,” I said.
“Okay.” He started to get up from the bench.
“I’m just trying to find out what’s going on, Sammy. Remember, I’m not with the police or anything.”
“Okay.”
“You have any brothers or sisters, Sammy?” I figured siblings might be a safer topic than parents.
His gaze shifted away from me toward the park. “No, sir. Not anymore. I got to go.”
“Sure.”
He pushed my photo into his shorts pocket and stood up.
“One more question. How come both times when I’ve seen you, you’ve been running?” I asked.
He shrugged. “Got places to be,” he said and slipped away down a brick walkway between two rows of bushes.
I spent a few more hours poking around the North end of the park, looking for any footprints, droppings, bits of feather or bones, or any signs our mysterious falconer might have left of his activity. I found nothing.
The drawn-out face of Sammy Yel Bak seemed to haunt my every thought, gnawing at me like a bad dream that wouldn’t go away. I’d seen that kind of face before in pictures. It was a face that carried the look of real war.
Maybe we were looking for a ghost after all.
22
The security control room at Grayland Tower was located in the basement directly below the reception desk in the main lobby. The bank of video monitors watched by the guards was connected to a computer server and a small network running software that processed images from the building’s fifty or more security cameras and monitored the structure’s environmental controls, burglar alarm systems, broadband computer hubs, and other vital functions. The security cameras worked on a relay system, monitoring different sections of the building’s twenty-seven stories at specific intervals.