Peregrine

by William Bayer

  Then she thought she saw him, thought she saw the back of Carl’s head. “Wendel?” But it wasn’t a person, was the back of an executive swivel chair facing the window, as if someone had been sitting in it looking out. Suddenly she was frightened. She decided to leave. Then she heard a rustling, turned, and then she saw the bird, just four feet from where she stood. It was huge, seemed to loom there in the darkness. She could feel its tension as it raised its wings, rustled again. Its talons were digging into its perch. Its eyes were locked onto hers.

  She began to edge her way back, her eyes fastened on the falcon, afraid now, terribly afraid, her heart fluttering wildly, sweat breaking out in the pits of her arms. She only knew one thing, that she had to get out of there, get out fast, escape. And that she had to do it slowly without upsetting the bird, had to back calmly out of that room, reach the door, slam it shut, and run.

  She backed up step by step, her eyes fastened on Peregrine. She didn’t ask herself why Wendel had led her here or where he was or whether this was the bird’s permanent home. She took one step back, and then another, trying to hold her breath. Another step, and then another, moving slowly, cautiously, finding her way back by instinct, feeling the wind now coming through the window, carrying the scent of the falcon to her nose.

  And then, just as she thought she’d reached the door, her arms were pinioned behind her back. She screamed, struggled, then smelled the aroma of leather as something tight and pliant was pulled down upon her head.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN

  The police locksmith, an elderly man with a German accent, motioned Janek back. Then he adjusted his safety glasses and attacked the lock again.

  Brrrrr—the drill bit in. It was 6:30 in the morning, dawn had broken, and metal shavings were piling up on the floor. Janek was worried. Pam hadn’t come home—it was twelve hours since she’d run into Central Park. He was certain something had happened to her; he had obtained a forced-entry permit to drill through her apartment door.

  The locksmith stepped back. The door was finally open. Janek stepped inside. Her bed was made. There were clothes on it—clothes she’d worn the previous afternoon. She had come home and changed and then had gone out again. He noticed her answering machine, flicked it on, listened carefully to Wendel’s voice. “Very important. Have to see you.” So, that was why she’d rushed up to the museum.

  He checked her address book, found Wendel’s number—it had a Connecticut area code. He dialed.

  There was a yellow legal pad beside the phone. “Hawk-Eye the dealer. Wendel the breeder,” he read. The phone was still ringing. Who the hell was Hawk-Eye? Maybe that logo, the one they put behind her when she broadcast on Channel 8.

  The phone must have rung twenty times before he hung up and tried again. Still no answer. Interesting. Early in the morning—neither Wendel nor Pam at home. Message from Wendel on the machine. And this cryptic note: “Wendel the breeder” he read again, and “Rumors: Falcons ‘siphoned off.’”

  “Frank?”

  Janek turned. It was Sal, up from the street.

  “Got a radio call, Frank. They found Wendel in Central Park. Some kid found him, a bicyclist. His throat’s been cut, Frank. He’s dead, and there’s a note.”

  “Damn, damn, damn,” Janek muttered as Sal drove rapidly uptown. All he could think of was that something had happened to Pam and that it was his fault his men had lost her in the park.

  Sal let him off in front of the museum. He walked into the Ramble. The Crime-Scene people were already there with their rakes, their measuring tapes, and their barricades.

  “Who’s in charge?” A uniformed officer nodded toward a detective Janek didn’t know. Janek walked over to him. “Hear there’s a note,” he said.

  The detective handed him an envelope.

  Janek read the text through the cellophane, those block capital letters he knew so well:

  DISCARD ENTRAILS. STUFF AND EXHIBIT. LABEL “BIRD LOVER (PSEUDO).”

  PEREGRINE

  “Meat wagon’s about to leave,” said the detective. “Want to have a look?”

  Janek shook his head. “How was he killed?”

  “Throat cut three times. Fast and clean—I’d say the knife was very sharp.”

  “You checked the area?”

  “We’ll get to it.” He turned, yelled to his officers: “Keep those fucking joggers out of here.”

  Janek paced the clearing. Maybe Pam hadn’t made Stanger; maybe Wendel had called her from a phone booth and told her to meet him here. So she came out of the museum and seemed to be looking for a cab— maybe she was thinking to hell with it, she’d go on home. Then she changed her mind, decided to meet Wendel after all. So she ran into the park and met up with the falconer. Now maybe she’s lying around in one of these clumps of bushes. Jesus! He walked rapidly back to tell the detective to start a search.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT

  She wasn’t sure exactly when she realized Jay was with her in the room. She slipped in and out of consciousness the first two days, never coming fully awake. When she approached wakefulness, fear would seize her, she would thrash against her bonds, and terror, sheer terror at her predicament would rip at her, destroying any chance she had to think.

  Then she would feel the man’s presence, the pressure of his hands. A sharp pain in her arm, a sense that he’d stuck a needle in. And then she would subside back again into strange and frightening dreams.

  She was bound—she knew that. Her head was covered with a sort of hood tied tight around her neck. She could not see, and often she could not hear, though sometimes she could do both.

  There seemed to be openings in the hood, openings which could be closed. Thus she’d find her mouth uncovered when she gained consciousness, or her ears, or her eyes. Her legs were tied to the bottom rung of her cot. When she moved them, she could hear the tinkling of bells. Sometimes she’d feel the weight of a blanket upon her body; at other times she would find herself walking, barely awake, stumbling, held up by the man, temporarily released so she could sit and he could give her water or walk her to the bathroom. But mostly her sense of him was confined to his caresses, his light strokings of her and his whispers, those strange distant scratchy whispers by which he comforted her as he imparted his mad rhapsody of love.

  It was the voice from the telephone—she became aware of that; that same scratchy whisper she’d heard after the cardboard bird appeared above her bed. There was the same longing in the voice, the same anguish. It was the falconer, she knew, and he was caring for her, giving her liquids, blanketing her when it was cold, unclasping her bonds sometimes so she could move and relieve her stiffness, and filling her head with his dreams.

  “Pambird,” he called her. She was, he said, his mate. He told her how they were flying together, he the tiercel, she the peregrine, teasing one another, occasionally touching wings—and when he spoke to her of touching wings he touched her body, too. With a feather? She wondered, but she could not sustain an idea for long. “We are divine,” he told her. “We soar and swoop. We mount the air. The world turns beneath. The sun warms our bodies and is our light. Our wings beat in tune to the turning of the spheres. We are cosmic. We are falcons. We are truth.”

  When he spoke like this she reveled in the dreams—they became so real. She could feel the clean whoosh of air as she cut her way through it. The air had substance, was something she could beat against, could mount. He described the thermals, the warm air currents, and she could feel them—he made them come alive. They rode them together. He showed her how. And also how to turn, pivot, circle up slowly to a pitch and there to glide in great wide circles void of thought, anticipating, feeling her hunger grow and also her desire. Desire—for what? He did not tell her, only that she felt it. And when he described it, she did feel it, and she was with him, and she knew he felt it, too.

  Sometimes he dazzled her. He left her circling and became an acrobat, plunging down just inches past her at a speed so blinding she could not ke
ep him in sight. And then she’d see him a thousand feet below, climbing up again, climbing toward her, beating his way to where she circled, bringing her something in his mouth. She could do that, too, he told her. She, too, could stoop and hunt. He’d show her how. It would take time, but she would learn.

  And then the dream receded—it was as if clouds came upon them and they were no longer in a clear blue sky but lost in mist, gauzy and thick. Then the dream would be over for a time.

  Minutes passed. Or hours. Perhaps, she thought, an entire day. Then the words would start again, the gentling words filling her ears while cool water soothed her throat. He teased her. She would scratch out a nest, he said. Over there—he flew toward a cornice of a building. Or there? He led her, wing to wing, toward a windowsill high above the city that sparkled all glass and granite below.

  They would find twigs and leaves. Together they would arrange them. He would help her. She would show him what to do. As the peregrine, she would have the nesting instinct. And when they were finished, had made the nest just as she’d designed it, she would shake her little head, dissatisfied, would pull it apart with her talons and her beak, reduce it to its components and arrange them all again, and again, and still again until the nest was right and she was satisfied.

  He laughed as he told her this, and how he would court her with displays of flying, with noises and cluckings and shrieks and noddings of his head. And how his courtship would induce her to form eggs. And how he would come upon her when she was ready, would fertilize the eggs, and then how she would lay them gently…gently…lay them gently in the nest.

  But it was not all smooth fanciful flights and falcon-love. There was terror, too. And hunger, which sharpened her desire. Desire for what?

  She asked him that. And then he told her: desire to kill.

  The thought sent waves of fear coursing through her. She thrashed at her bonds until he calmed her by laying his hand upon her throat. “Not yet, Pambird. Not yet,” he said. “The killing time has not yet come. Not yet.”

  His rhapsodies became her existence, as did the dreamless sleeps that fogged her brain. And there were moments, too, when she knew she was in danger, was tied, was a captive, and that a huge bird sat watching just inches from her head. She saw the bird sometimes looming beside her. She could see it in her mind’s eye even when her hood was on. Once, when her eyes were uncovered, she saw it in the dark. Its eyes glowed, were large and sharp. It twitched, fluttered. Strange sounds threatened her from its perch.

  She could smell the bird, could hear it claw at its food, tear flesh from bone, chew and swallow, then could hear the little bones as they clattered to the floor. It was restive, hungry. And knowing it was eating made her hungry, too. She was not fed. She received only water and drugs that made her sleep. She became hungrier and hungrier, and as she did, she felt her will go slack and her fear, her desire, take greater hold.

  At first, when she thought that Jay was there, she felt much better about everything. If he was there, then things would be all right. It was him, she was sure; she could recognize his face and voice. Yes, she felt safe with Jay; he was a falconer; he could protect her from the bird. Perhaps, she thought, the bird only existed in her imagination, was a specter, a fantasy, conjured up by her in delirium.

  But then it dawned on her that she could take no comfort in the fact that Jay was there, for he was the man who whispered to her, stroked her. He was her captor. And he was making her his bird.

  It was even worse that she knew him, she realized once, when, with great effort, she was able to concentrate her thoughts. Since she knew Jay as one kind of man and he was now behaving as another, then, in fact, she did not know him—he was mad and she was his prisoner; he knew her, but she did not know him at all.

  She screamed when she realized that.

  And a moment later felt a gag forced into her mouth. But her ears were still uncovered. She tried to close them, did not want to hear. But she could feel his mouth very close, could feel his breath against her ear. “I am training you, Pambird. Taking possession. You are mine now, and soon you will hunt for me. You will fly for me. And you will kill.”

  Then dreams again, dreams of flying, feeling her wings growing stronger, her will being taken over by desire. And hunger, hunger eating away inside. Changing her. Confusing her. Making it impossible to focus on anything but the desire ….

  CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE

  Marchetti had traced the hood to a shop on Christopher Street called Thongs & Things. Perhaps not so coyly named, Janek thought, as its rivals the Marquis de Suede and the Scarlet Leather, but no less original in the manner of its merchandise: studded belts, leather jackets, vests and pants, even leather underclothes and “special items made up on demand.” Just how special and on whose demand, Janek hoped to learn. Marchetti briefed him as they drove downtown.

  “This leather crowd doesn’t like to talk, Frank. Protective of their clients because the stuff’s for kinky sex. You ought to see it. They got these jocks with needles inside—”

  Janek groaned. “Spare me, Sal,” he begged.

  “Anyway, I came on very nice like this wasn’t directed at gays. When I mentioned that a girl had been killed, they began to send me from store to store. Couple of them even phoned ahead.”

  “So what’s the deal at Thongs & Things?”

  “They say they made two hoods. They’re going to tell us about them.” He looked at Janek. “What’s the matter, Frank?”

  “Two. Jesus.” The first had been left on Sasha West; maybe the second was being used on Pam.

  It was a narrow shop; they had to ring a buzzer to get in. The expensive leather clothing was chained to the racks; shoplifters everywhere, he thought. He saw boots with spurs, a counter offering insignia, noticed a set of colonel’s eagles, swastikas and SS hardware, too. The usual whip department, and a display of black motorcycle caps. The place smelled of leather—pungent, musky, almost seductive. They passed the counters, went to the office in the back.

  Les Danforth, the owner, looked about thirty-five, a slight man with close-cropped blond hair beginning to bald on top. He was polite, formal, a little frosty. “Always happy to help the police. You say one of our hoods was found at a murder scene?”

  Marchetti passed him the photographs. Danforth nodded. “Yeah, we made it. I remember it pretty well. Special order. Guy phoned, said he’d mail me some drawings. A few days later he phoned back for the price. Then he sent in a deposit and we made them up.”

  The hoods had cost two hundred dollars apiece, plus forty extra for the plumes. Danforth got out his order book, looked up the name: Fred Hohenstaufen, 1 Fifth Avenue. Deposit paid by cashier’s check and balance in cash. “We don’t take personal checks,” he explained.

  “You remember him?”

  Danforth shook his head. “Never met the man. Left the package for him at the desk. One of my boys gave it to him. This was eight months ago. No one would remember now.” He paused. “People pick up stuff all the time. So long as they pay, we don’t get involved.”

  Janek asked about the drawings.

  Danforth said they’d been returned with the hoods. He’d only remembered them because of the plumes, an unusual touch. One of the hoods, he said, just covered the upper face, the eyes and ears. The other had a special snap-on attachment so the mouth could be covered, too. “But not the nose,” he said. “We won’t make a mask that covers the nose. A person’s got to breathe. These were good masks. Good work. Special soft leather lining so as not to bruise the skin.”

  “Very considerate,” Marchetti said.

  Outside, on Christopher, Marchetti offered to run down the address.

  “Forget it, Sal. Name’s phony.”

  “Yeah, probably. But how do we know until I check?”

  “This guy doesn’t leave traces, and the name Fred Hohenstaufen rings a bell. Those books I have on falconry— that name comes up all the time. Frederick II of Hohenstaufen, Holy Roman Emperor, maybe the greate
st falconer who ever lived.”

  So—another dead end, along with the search of penthouse and terrace apartments, the check on licensed falconers, the inquisition of Sasha West’s call-girl friends, the cardboard falcon on Pam Barrett’s roof. Not one fingerprint. Nothing at all, except maybe Wendel, and what was that all about?

  Why had he called Pam? Why had she sat in his office for an hour?

  And why had she run into Central Park at night, near the Ramble of all places, just where Wendel’s body had been found?

  CHAPTER THIRTY

  Hollander watched Pam, sleeping now, her eyes and ears covered by her hood, her hands bound upon her stomach, her feet tied securely to the cot. The cuffs on her ankles and wrists were firm but not so tight as to cut off circulation or cause her limbs to numb. She breathed slowly; her chest rose and fell with an even cadence. She looked calm in sleep, and Hollander was pleased. He covered her body with his cape, the one stitched with the feather design.

  He fed her little, occasional bits of washed meat, and liquids, grapefruit juice and water. He wanted her hungry, not starved but hungry, down to hunting weight. Of course Pambird was not a real falcon—he was always aware that she was not. And he knew that hunger would not work on her the same way it did upon a bird. But still, he thought, the principle was the same: hunger incites desperation, and that was the way he wanted her, desperate, on edge, honed down. Not weak—she would need strength for what he had in mind.

  The hunger would make her smarter, quicker. Her reflexes would be taut and coiled. And he knew that the pressure he was exerting, the terror, the training, would work. He was distorting her, driving her to extreme forms of thought. When the time came, she would do for him what she would normally refuse.