“So then what?” someone asked.
“Make the collar. It’s not supposed to be a picnic. If it was a picnic I’d have told you to bring your wives.”
There was silence. Then Stanger spoke up again, unofficial spokesman for the rest. “Jesus, Frank—this is going to be fucking impossible.”
“No it isn’t—not if you do it right. Three shifts. Five guys on her when she’s zapping around playing television star. Two’s enough when she’s home asleep. Say three when she’s just out in the neighborhood doing errands, shopping, that sort of crap. Lots of changeovers. Reshuffle all the time. Different combinations, and get your wardrobes right. I don’t want everyone in army jackets or cheap black suits like the FBI. Mix it up. Keep extra clothes in your cars. If you have to take a leak, be sure your partner knows. Something always happens when someone’s taking a leak.” They were looking at him as if he were asking them to volunteer for suicide. “This isn’t Mission Impossible. You’re experienced guys. You can do it. It’s not that goddamn hard.”
Silence again. “Do we get our own frequency?”
“Of course. I got a request in now.”
“Is Sal coordinating?”
“Sal’s working on the hood. She’s met him, anyway. I’ll be running this. If you can’t reach me, there’ll always be someone in charge on the scene. And a deputy, too, in case the scene boss is taking his piss.” A couple of them laughed, an encouraging sign. “I’m outlining the problems so you know what you’re in for. If nothing happens in a couple days we’ll probably call this off. Meanwhile there’s lots of overtime.” Smiles. “Everyone sleeps here so if I need you I can wake you up and slot you in.” Groans. “Since we don’t know what she’ll be doing, we’ll have to wing it as we go along.”
It took him another hour to get them organized, assign the shifts, work out the procedures, establish shorthand for the radio.
Pam was code-named Lark. The falconer was Hawk. Pam’s apartment was the Nest. Channel 8 offices were the Cage, and he named himself Fox. Stanger asked if he could be Rooster. Janek told him he was Hen. Everybody laughed. They were beginning to enjoy it. He wanted it to be fun, but he didn’t want it to get too complicated. Too many code names and they’d need dictionaries. The point, he kept emphasizing, was to stay close, watch her, observe everything she did, but not be seen themselves.
“If she makes you, tell me and I’ll pull you out. She’s a celebrity, so if you see someone following her, don’t start creaming in your pants. Stay cool. This is a clever guy. He got onto her roof without being heard, walked right past her door. If he’d wanted to kill her, he could have shot her through the skylight. There’s something else he wants.”
Finally, when he went home to get his shaving kit and his clothes, he felt awful about using her this way, but knew he didn’t have a choice. He was thinking like the falconer now—he took some pleasure in that. The man he was after dealt in fear. Fear attracted him. So maybe his plan was going to work.
CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO
She spent most of the night staring up at her skylight; just before dawn, she fell asleep. An hour later she woke up, looked up at the skylight, then stumbled into her kitchen, made coffee, drank it, noticed a trembling in her hands. Have to pull myself together. She showered, washed her dishes, straightened up.
She felt better when she was dressed, ready to leave for work. She checked herself in the mirror, stared into her eyes. She smiled—a television smile.
The first thing she did was go to Herb. He was in a difficult mood, distracted; he barely listened as she told him the story of the falcon silhouette. He shook his head with poorly feigned compassion. When she told him that Janek had refused to assign her bodyguards, he agreed that wasn’t very nice.
“You’ve got influence, Herb. You can call somebody. I’ve been threatened. I need protection now.”
“He really said he thought I was behind it?”
She nodded. “What about it, Herb? Do I get a bodyguard or what?”
“He really said that. He thinks I’d pull a stunt like that? What a prick. I’m going to fix that guy. I really am.”
“Couldn’t the station do something? Hire a private security guard?”
“Private guards are ex-cons. Anyway, the prick is right. A cardboard bird isn’t the falconer’s style. Doesn’t fit the pattern at all.”
“How do you know what his style is? He writes me letters. He’s got this thing about my throat.”
“He’s not after you. You’re his mouthpiece. If he did anything to you, he’d only defeat himself.”
She stared at him. “I’m just his mouthpiece?”
“Face it, Pam—that’s what you are.”
“Then why does he threaten me?”
“That’s his game, I guess.”
She was angry. “His game? You think this is all a game? That he and I just tickle each other, that that’s what we’ve been doing these past five weeks?” He didn’t answer. “You’ve been using me, haven’t you, Herb? If something happened to me you’d have a new angle, right?”
“Can it, Pam. I had a rough weekend. I don’t need this shit first thing when I come in. Thing is though”—he paused—”well, he hasn’t flown the bird in quite a while. Ever since the duel, unless you count that dive-bomb episode on Halloween. I’ve talked to Jay. He thinks the bird’s probably injured pretty bad. Otherwise he’d have flown her. Well—you see what that means? No attacks and the story runs out of gas. People are starting to get excited about football again. I got a hunch this peregrine thing has nearly crested out.”
She couldn’t believe what she was hearing. “It’s nowhere near crested. It’s still the biggest story in town.”
“Maybe.” He shook his head. “But there’s nothing new coming in. There’s a limit to how many times we can rerun the duel.”
“I’m working on something.”
“What?”
“Hawk-Eye. And something else.”
He looked at her carefully as if reappraising her worth. He sat back.
“You know, Pam, you can get too close to a story, not see the forest for the trees. There’s a real danger of that sometimes. Maybe you should take a few days off. You’ll feel better. You’ve been working like a dog.” He winked at her. “I’ll give Joel time off, too. You two can go away someplace.”
“I’m not seeing Joel anymore.”
“Sorry. Didn’t know. Why the hell doesn’t Penny tell me these things?”
She felt empty when she left his office. He’d turned away from her, begun looking at papers on his desk. As far as he was concerned, the cardboard bird was a stunt, the falconer wasn’t after her, and the story was dying anyway.
She went to her desk in the newsroom. Was she crazy, she wondered, or was everybody else?
She looked around. Peter Stone was scratching his head; Hal Hopkins was talking to someone on the phone; a couple of the writers were razzing Claudio Hernandez about his latest pair of four-hundred-dollar hand-tooled crocodile boots.
Herb was crazy, she thought.
Peregrine wasn’t the kind of story you just let peter out. It demanded a conclusion. It had to come to a head.
And there was something about the way the falconer had spoken to her, that sadness, that sorrow in his tone, something that spoke to her of agony and a need to speak, even to confess.
She fastened on that sorrow; it seemed more real to her than all his threats. She felt a sympathy for him. She had to find him, interview him. No, she thought. I can’t let this one get away.
She picked up her phone, dialed Carl Wendel at the museum. He was brusque during their exchange of greetings. “I have to talk to you,” she said.
“I’m very busy today.”
“This is important.”
“What’s it about?”
“I can’t discuss it on the phone.”
“I’m sorry, Miss Barrett, but I have a lot of work to do. I’m preparing for a conference. I’m flying to Denver Wed
nesday night.”
“How about lunch?”
“I don’t go out for lunch.”
He was trying to evade her. She knew she’d have to press him hard.
“Listen,” she said, “something very important has come up and I really have to talk to you today.”
He paused. She had him worried.
He’d have to agree to meet. “All right,” he said. “Come by at twelve-thirty. I’ll be waiting on the steps.”
He was almost gallant as he escorted her to a Chinese restaurant. They both ordered the special, pork with vegetables on rice. “Well,” he said, “what’s so important that it couldn’t wait a couple of days?”
“I know you bred the falcon.” She addressed him calmly, her voice level and direct. He put down his chopsticks. She thought she saw his eyelids tremble.
“What are you talking about?”
“No use, Dr. Wendel. I spoke to the man who stole her from your barn.”
“What man? Nonsense.” He looked at his watch. “You’re wasting my time, Miss Barrett. I think I’d better go.”
She reached across the table, grasped his wrist. She was surprised by her gesture—she didn’t usually touch people, but intuition told her she’d have to assert herself, that she mustn’t let him leave.
“I haven’t told anybody yet,” she said. “But if you get up now, I’m going to the police.”
He stared at her. He was frightened.
“Who stole her?” he blurted out.
“A middleman. The dealer you turned down. He sold her to the falconer for fifty thousand dollars.”
“How do I know you’re telling the truth?”
“You didn’t tell me the truth, did you? You knew she was your bird all the time. You recognized her the first time you looked at the film, didn’t you?” He was staring at his plate.
“Didn’t you, Dr. Wendel? You recognized her right away.”
He nodded.
“And you didn’t tell me because you were scared. You didn’t want the bird traced back to you.” He looked up at her. “How did you do it?”
“What?”
“Breed a bird that large.”
He searched her face, then he looked down again. When he finally spoke she could sense his tension—he was trying hard to control his voice.
“I’ve been breeding for certain qualities for some time. Size. Color. Speed. Things like that.”
“Why?”
“It’s an experiment, to see if I can emphasize certain traits.”
“So you haven’t been breeding to replenish the species and create breeding pairs in the wild. You’ve been breeding freaks, haven’t you— freaks you could sell?”
He shook his head, looked furious.
“I’ve never sold a single bird.”
“Then what have you been doing with them?”
“They’re for my work.” She’d never seen him so upset.
“Scientific work?” He nodded. There was something there, something she could feel, a place he wouldn’t let her pry. She saw that and decided to let it go. “Who else knows about these experiments?” she asked.
“No one else.”
“You haven’t published anything?”
He shook his head again.
“What about your backers?”
“No one knows.”
“Not possible. The man who stole her was tipped off by the falconer. He knew you had her in your barn. Somebody told him. So somebody must have known.”
“There’s a boy who helps me, but he doesn’t know anything.”
“Maybe he does. Maybe he told somebody else. Did you talk to him when the bird was stolen? You must have realized that the person who broke in had a key.”
“Of course I talked to him. He was at school. I checked his story. He wouldn’t steal her anyway. I just thought it was that dealer, Hawk-Eye. That he took her and sold her overseas.”
“Why didn’t you go to the police?”
He shrugged. “What would have been the use?”
“You recognized her when you saw her in the film?”
“Yes.”
“Why didn’t you report it then?”
“I couldn’t report it. My experiments would be misunderstood. I have enemies. The falconers hate me. I’ve been attacking them for years. They’d fasten on this and jump all over me. I’d be a pariah. They’d shut me down.”
“All right,” she said. “I believe you. But understand—your bird wasn’t stolen on a whim. She was ordered stolen by someone who knew you had her, knew you’d bred her, and that she was big. Now you have to think very hard about that. Who did you tell? You might have mentioned it casually, boasted that you’d created a mutation. You have to think, Dr. Wendel, think very very hard, because we have to find that bird and rescue her and get her back to you. I know that’s what you want.”
“Yes ….” His eyes lit up. “I want her. I can deprogram her. Believe me, that’s all I want now. Just to get her back. Maybe—”
“What?”
“I don’t know.”
“You were going to say something. What?”
He looked down. “Maybe I did tell somebody. I’ll have to go back to my office and think.” He paused. “You won’t tell anybody?”
“I’m not making any promises.”
“Please, Miss Barrett—”
“We’ll see. You come up with some names and I’ll protect you as a source. But come up with something, Dr. Wendel, and before you go away to Denver, too.”
“You’re pressuring me.”
She glared at him. “Damn right I’m pressuring you. You lied to me before. You have to make up for that. I’m not fooling—I want this story. I want it, and I intend to get it, with your help or not. Help me and I’ll protect you. But if you lie to me again or withhold information, I promise I’ll turn you in.”
He understood. He snatched up the lunch check, paid the cashier, and left.
After he’d gone, she sat at the table sipping Chinese tea and thinking about what she’d done. She’d really put the screws to him, and she didn’t feel too bad about that. In fact she felt good, almost as good as she’d felt those early days of the story when she’d gone on the air live at the Eyewitness Desk and had drawn on resources she hadn’t known she possessed. Wendel would cooperate now, she thought—he didn’t have much choice.
She left the restaurant and began to walk with no particular destination in mind. Soon the confidence she’d felt when she’d been grilling Wendel, the steeliness in her voice that had merely reflected her strength of will—all that began to fade, until she found herself feeling weak and scared. She kept turning—was she being followed? Was the falconer following her? Had he seen her lunching with Wendel, realized she was getting close? She just wanted to talk with him, get an interview, understand. Perhaps he feared her, didn’t want her to know.
What if he tried to kill her in order to shut her up?
The Upper West Side depressed her.
She walked back toward the museum, then entered Central Park. She felt as if her life were in pieces. She couldn’t explain her mood. I’m living too close to the edge, she thought. Working too hard, feeling too much, not getting enough sleep.
She looked up. Clouds were gathering for a storm. The sky was turning dark, though it was only two o’clock. She heard a noise, turned, saw three horses rushing down a bridle path, their saddles empty, their stirrups swinging as they galloped, their eyes crazed, their nostrils flaring, foam beginning to gather along their jaws.
Somewhere in the park three equestrians had been thrown, were probably still writhing on the ground.
She heard another noise, turned, saw an old man sitting against a tree. He was leering at her. He was masturbating. This is crazy. She hurried east to cross the park.
The storm broke before she reached Fifth Avenue. She got soaked, took refuge in a bus shelter, then, without knowing why, she dashed to a phone booth and dialed Paul.
“You’re
in,” she said.
“Brilliant deduction.”
“Busy?”
“Sort of. Working on a piece.”
“What’s it about?”
“A review. The Helmut Newton show. Thought of taking you with me to the opening. Then something else came up.”
“Somebody else, you mean.”
“Yeah.”
“Well, I just called to see if you were free.”
There was a pause. “Want to come over and knock one off?”
She laughed. “That’s what I was thinking.”
“Great idea. Come on over.” He giggled. “Maybe I’ll tie you up.”
No you won’t, she thought.
She was lucky, found a cab despite the rain, rode it down to Chelsea, where he lived. His apartment was ultra-antiseptic—pure white walls, a few photographs simply framed, bare bleached oak floors, a white Parson’s dinner table, his books stored away in cabinets. When they’d split up, they’d quarreled over who would keep their apartment, and, unable to resolve the issue, they’d both agreed to move. She found her sky-lit studio on West Eleventh and furnished it with soft plush furniture, while he took the high-tech route, everything pristine and white—which, he liked to explain, helped to balance all the chaos in his brain.
He welcomed her nicely, was solicitous about her being wet, gave her a towel, loaned her a bathrobe, and, when she’d changed, took her clothes down to the basement to be dried. When he came back up, he insisted she sit in his Le Corbusier chaise, then pulled up a stool for himself after mixing her a drink. She told him what had happened, the cardboard bird on her skylight, the falconer’s telephone call, the anger she felt at Herb.
“They’ve all been using me,” she said. “The falconer. Herb. Janek, too. There’s something about him I can’t figure out. He pretends to be sympathetic, but he won’t protect me. Herb, as usual, doesn’t give a shit.”
“But if they’ve been using you, Pam, then you’ve been using them.”
“Yeah, well, maybe I have.”
“But so what—right? So what if you’ve been the falconer’s mouthpiece? You got the story in return. The same with Herb. Sure he uses you. You’re his employee. What the hell do you expect? But you’ve gotten to be a big star, so it’s been a two-way street. That’s what you wanted, wasn’t it? I don’t see that you’ve got complaints.”
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