“That’s a strange kind of logic,” she replied. “I’d have thought you’d want to see the falcon killed before she kills another woman.”
“Yes, of course, but the falcon’s just the weapon. It’s the man who’s really dangerous. You don’t stop a murderer by taking away his gun. You stop him by putting him away.”
“So what do you do? Let the murderer keep his gun? That sounds pretty dense to me. If Peregrine is killed, you gain time. The falconer won’t have his weapon, it’s maybe impossible to replace a bird like that, and the training may not take a second time.”
“My point is—”
“Listen, Janek, you made some pretty nasty cracks to me the other day, so now I’m going to make a few myself. Sounds to me like you care more about solving your case than maybe saving some women’s lives. Sounds like you’re awfully interested in your career. You might want to give that some thought.”
She liked what she’d said, got him off the phone quickly after that. Both calls bothered her, though she didn’t have time to figure out why. She had to prepare her broadcast, the way she and Nakamura would frame the challenge.
As six o’clock neared, she pushed Wendel and Janek from her mind. She could feel her pulse begin to race, could sense the tension in the newsroom. Everyone was in awe of what was going on—Hal Hopkins, Claudio Hernandez, even the imperturbable Peter Stone. He was sober for once—probably, she thought, because Herb had come down on him extremely hard. Penny told her what Herb had said—she’d listened in on the intercom: “This duel is big stuff, Peter. We’re going to have to know the wind velocity and a lot of weather crap like that. I want the weather straight this week and I want you off the sauce. Any screw-ups from your department and you’re out of here on your butt.”
At airtime she was made up and ready on the sound-stage where Nakamura was installed. The set was a huge black velour curtain. No logo or Eyewitness Desk—Herb wanted the challenge to be ominous, delivered against a totally black background.
There would just be the four of them on the stage: Pam, the interpreter, Nakamura, and his bird. Honorable Kumataka had been unhooded, and for the first time Pam was able to see her eyes. They were enormous, a cold deep yellow; they matched Nakamura’s eyes, except they were even more frightening—amoral, merciless eyes.
The challenge was sensational. It had all the ingredients of high drama: the emaciated but arrogant Japanese falconer and his ferocious hawk-eagle bristling with hatred, her fierce cries of “Heee, heee, wheeoo, heee, heee” resounding as she stood on Nakamura’s wrist. In the middle of the challenge she bated, made an abortive attempt to fly. The jesses held her, she fell, and then she just hung for a few seconds upside down until Nakamura lowered his arm and helped her to regain her stance. For the rest of the interview she stood on his wrist, her eyes locked to the lens of the camera, never wavering as Pam and Nakamura talked.
“Honorable Kumataka,” said Nakamura, “has destroyed over twenty peregrine falcons. Her greatest joy is to obliterate them, remove them from her sky.”
“Why does she hate them so much?”
“Because they are cowards. They are not honorable birds.” Nakamura grinned. Clearly he anthropomorphized falcons and hawks, read an obscure Japanese system of honor into their lives. Pam knew from her talks with Jay that concepts such as cowardice and honor had no meaning to the struggle of predators. But she did not challenge Nakamura, for she knew he was holding the audience, mesmerizing them with hope: Was this strange, haughty little Japanese going to save them from further attacks? Were the women of New York going to be rescued from traumatic death by his equally strange and arrogant bird?
Afterward there were so many calls the station switchboard couldn’t handle them. Herb came out of the control room to tell her they’d made electronic history.
“But will the falconer respond?” she asked.
“Sure,” said Herb. “If he cares about our ratings.” He winked at her, then went back to finish off the show.
The wait for the response was agonizing, but she had a way to pass the time: leave word with everyone who had the vaguest connection to the bird black market that she wanted to interview Hawk-Eye. Jay had said that if she could find the dealer, she’d be that much closer to finding the falconer himself. So while waiting for the falconer to respond to Nakamura’s challenge, she worked her way through Jay’s list, leaving her name, unlisted home telephone number, and her plea for Hawk-Eye to get in touch.
She even visited some black-market people, a homing pigeon dealer in Brooklyn who sold smuggled parrots from the back of his shop, and a rare snake and reptile specialist in New Jersey (Biological Specimens, Inc.) alleged to be the man to see if you wanted to buy an unregistered owl.
Murray Brodsky, the pigeon dealer, denied he’d heard of Hawk-Eye. She didn’t believe him. Jarvis, the snake and reptile guy, acknowledged knowing him and even offered the information that he’d heard Hawk-Eye was lying low.
“Why would he be doing that?” she asked.
“Beats me,” said Jarvis. “Unless it’s got something to do with that falcon killing people in New York.”
“That’s what I want to talk to him about,” she said.
“Yeah,” Jarvis said. “That’s what I thought.”
As for the challenge, there was wagering at the station. Claudio Hernandez didn’t think the falconer would accept. Too much risk, he said.
Hal Hopkins offered even money that not only would the falconer accept but that Peregrine would win. Lots of hoax letters and crank telephone calls came in, but still, after twenty-four hours, there was no sign of that distinctive block lettering. Pam began to wonder if her taunting challenge and Nakamura’s arrogance would draw the falconer out, or whether he’d retire, never to communicate again, so that the Peregrine story would forever remain unsolved.
The thought distressed her. The story demanded a resolution. Its momentum was enormous, the rhythm of its unfolding had taken hold, and now she found herself wishing fervently for something to happen—for the falconer to write, or even to strike again. She recognized that by wishing such a thing she’d fallen victim to her own broadcasts. It was as if now she needed the peregrine for sustenance; as if, like the rest of the city, she, too, was in thrall to its terror.
At the end of the first day, she went to visit Nakamura.
“He will accept. He must accept,” said the Japanese. “It would be dishonorable for him to allow me to come so far and then refuse.”
“Then why hasn’t he written?”
“A delaying tactic. He wants to unnerve me. A trick. But neither I nor Honorable Kumataka will be taken in. Frustration and anxiety have no place in our lives. The notion that we can be unnerved and angered shows a supreme ignorance of the nature of the hawk-eagle and of the man who has spent his life training the species to attack and kill peregrines. In fact, the longer he keeps us in suspense, the more enthusiastic and dangerous we shall be. This falconer understands nothing. He is a fool.”
When Herb heard what Nakamura had said, he had Pam tape it for broadcast that night. “I love the banter, the insults. ‘Supreme ignorance’; ‘cowardice’; ‘a fool.’ If that doesn’t draw him out, then nothing will. We’ll just taunt the hell out of him, Pam, until the bastard has to show.”
When Pam had just about given up, the reply finally came. And though it was delivered the morning of the third day, it was postmarked the evening of the original challenge, a fact that caused Herb to issue an edict: “I want the roughest, toughest investigative series on the U.S. Postal Service this town has ever seen.”
He read the falconer’s letter aloud in his office to Pam, Penny, and Jay Hollander—”the Nakamura management team,” as he called them now.
DEAREST PAM: DISAPPOINTED BY THE CRUDE WAY YOU TRY TO AROUSE MY ANGER. YOU MUST KNOW A BIRD SUCH AS I CAN NEVER BE TOUCHED BY WORDS. IT’S YOUR GESTURES, DEAREST, YOUR GLEAMING EYES, DEWY FLESH, PHYSICAL SELF IN ITS MOIST IMPASSIONED STATE THAT ATTRACTS ME, AND NOT, I�
��M AFRAID, YOUR MACHINATIONS OR YOUR BRAIN. IT’S YOUR THROAT, YOUR SOFT SOFT THROAT I WANT, TO CARESS WITH MY TALONS, SO SHARP AND KEEN THAT YOUR SLIGHTEST MOVEMENT TO BREAK MY GRASP WILL CAUSE THEM TO GASH YOUR FLESH. OH, PAM, WE SHALL FLY TOGETHER, SHALL ROLL TOGETHER ONE DAY BENEATH THE SUN. WE’LL SOAR AND SWOOP, EXPLODE UP UPON THE WARM AIR CURRENTS ABOVE THIS VULGAR CITY TO WHOSE COARSE TASTES YOU CATER SO VERY WELL.
I RECOGNIZE, DEAREST, THAT YOUR MOST RECENT TAUNTS ARE BUT A TRICK TO DRAW ME OUT. NEVERTHELESS, I ACCEPT, IF ONLY TO PROVE THAT I CAN BE VANQUISHED BY NEITHER MAN NOR BEAST. SO—LET THE BARBARIAN HAWKMASTER AND HIS VERMINOUS CREATURE STAND BY FRIDAY AT DAWN UPON THE GREAT LAWN IN CENTRAL PARK. I SHALL APPEAR FOR COMBAT WHEN IT SUITS ME. AND THEN I SHALL KILL. EREGRINE
“Jesus! What a psycho!” said Herb. “‘Gleaming eyes, dewy flesh, moist impassioned state!’” He looked over at Pam. “Likes you, doesn’t he?” He broke the tension with that, and then they set to work.
“He wants Nakamura there at dawn,” said Herb. “Okay. Hardly anyone’s up by then. But then he says ‘stand by’ and ‘I shall appear for combat when it suits me.’ Now that could be a problem. How the hell are we going to keep the crowds away?”
“I know the Great Lawn,” said Penny. “It’s a big circle of baseball diamonds and stuff near Belvedere Lake. The Central Park reservoir is to the north, Delacorte Theater is just to the south, and there’s this overlook place called Belvedere Castle where the weather bureau used to keep equipment until it was vandalized about fifteen times.”
“Maybe that’s why Pete Stone can never get a reading. Okay, Penny, so what’s the point?”
“We keep Nakamura and Kumataka hidden in a truck near Delacorte Theater. There’re trucks coming in and out of there fairly often, so if we disguised our trucks I doubt we’d be noticed at all. And we could stake out our cameras up on the overlook—make it look like we’re shooting a commercial. There’re film crews in the park all the time. Nobody pays attention to them anymore.”
Herb liked Penny’s plan, told her to set it up. The idea was, first, not to spook off the falconer, and, second, not to attract a crowd, which in turn would attract the other stations. Nakamura and Honorable Kumataka would remain hidden until Peregrine appeared.
Channel 8 would hire some models and make it look like they were shooting a fashion commercial. “Not too pretty, either,” Herb reminded Penny. “Remember—we don’t want a crowd.”
It was still dark the next morning when they all assembled in Central Park. It was chilly, too—Pam kept her hands in her pockets to keep them warm. The camera crews found their positions, practiced dry runs with their telephotos. Vans were positioned so that rear doors could be flung open when it was time to shoot. Walkie-talkies were issued. A command trailer was parked inconspicuously near Delacorte Theater. Penny Abrams had arranged for New York Shakespeare Festival trucks, so the fact that this was a Channel 8 operation would not be known.
Peter Stone was in charge of the “weather van,” stuffed with meteorological equipment which, Penny told Pam, Peter didn’t seem to know how to read. Pam saw him walking around wetting his finger and sticking it up into the predawn air. She couldn’t believe this man could function as a credible weather expert on New York television, but there he was, totally sober, cheerfully saying good-morning and assuring everyone it would be a perfect bird-dueling day.
They were all edgy except for Nakamura, who retained his calm in what Penny called “the hawking truck.”
When the first rays of sunlight broke across Fifth Avenue, Pam went to visit him with Herb. Honorable Kumataka was placid, apparently inspired by her master’s tranquility. This worried Herb. “They’re practically asleep,” he told Pam. “They better wake up. They better get cracking when it’s time to fight.”
“The Japanese are like that,” Jay explained, when they ran into him a little later on. “Swordsmen, judo experts—they always go into a trance before combat. Then, suddenly, there’s this explosion of energy. It’s the classic samurai style.”
When the sun had been up half an hour and the dawn had truly come, Pam went back to take another peak at Nakamura. She found him engrossed with Kumataka, caressing the bird, mumbling to her in Japanese. Pam reported this to Herb; it seemed to cheer him up. “Must be psyching her up,” he muttered. “At least they’re awake.” Then he went out to inspect the camera positions and give encouragement to the crews.
Joggers began to appear. It was hard for Pam to forget that Peregrine had killed one ten days before, but these early-morning athletes didn’t give the trucks and camera crews a second glance. Penny Abrams had been right. Unless there was a movie star around, no one bothered to linger or even to inquire about what was going on.
At eight o’clock, Jay briefed Pam and Herb about how he expected the duel to go. “A peregrine,” he explained, “likes to come in high, dominate the airspace, circle at an almost motionless glide while waiting for an opportunity to develop below. In the wild, a hawk-eagle usually sits in the branches of a tree watching the ground for animals and the sky for birds. If it’s a bird she’s after, she’ll study it for a while, then fly up and force the quarry higher and higher into the sky. When the hawk-eagle calculates the quarry is so high it won’t be able to make a successful flight to cover, then she’ll begin her pursuit. So the styles are completely different—the falcon coming in high, controlling the air; the hawk-eagle moving up to block a break to the ground. And once the flight begins, you’ll see other differences in tactics and pursuit strategies—they each have their own version of the strike-and-pass and pass-circle-and-return.
“Their psychologies are different, too. The peregrine is composed, subtle, elegant. She seems to float in the air, oblivious to everything, then suddenly there’s this incredible burst of speed and then the stoop. The hawk-eagle, on the other hand, is absolutely bloodthirsty. She attacks in a furious rage, out of love for killing whether she’s hungry or not. When she’s aroused, she’ll go into an extreme emotional state which we call ‘yarak.’ You’ll see that with Kumataka—she’ll be literally bristling to kill or else Nakamura won’t let her fly. And remember, the two species can’t abide one another. Put them in the same airspace and sparks begin to fly. Their respective falconers hate each other, too. The falconer with the peregrine thinks of himself as a nobleman and considers the hawk-owning falconer a kind of scum. And the hawk-owning falconer despises the falcon-owning falconer for his pretensions and noble airs. But don’t let this social caste thing fool you. Hawk-eagles are terribly ferocious birds. They go after foxes in Japan with an extraordinary technique. They swoop down and literally grab the fox by the buttocks, and then, when the fox turns to bite, the hawk-eagle grabs its jaws with one of its feet and forces them shut. If she can do that, the fox can’t use his teeth, and then, though there’ll be a tremendous fight, the bird will always win.”
The first few hours passed quickly, but around ten o’clock Pam felt an emotional sag. Herb was about to leave (he had to get back to the station and put together that evening’s show) when Penny Abrams reported that Frank Janek was in the park, and apparently knew what was going on.
Herb went right up to him.
“Good morning, Lieutenant. Heard you were poking around. You got a spy in our organization, or are you just here on a hunch?”
Janek laughed. “I won’t tip off your competition. I know that’s what you’re worried about.”
“Can we help you?”
“No.” Janek looked at Pam, nodded good-morning to her. “Just wanted to be around in case the peregrine shows up. Because if she does show, then the falconer will be around here someplace, too.”
Herb looked surprised. “Who told you that?”
“My falconry expert.”
Herb glanced at Pam and Penny. He was disturbed. Pam stepped forward.
“Yes, Jay said something about that, but he also said the falconer could be anywhere, not just in the park but in a building on Fifth Avenue or Central Park West, or
on a roof around here, anyplace within a mile—like about three million other people, I suppose.”
Herb nodded, satisfied that he wasn’t being two-timed by Hollander or scooped by the police. He shook hands curtly with Janek and departed for Channel 8.
Penny Abrams had arranged lunch with a catering service that specialized in feeding location film crews. But she warned everyone not to let their guard down and to be sure and eat in shifts.
“Remember,” she said, “Peregrine likes to strike at noon. So stay alert. She could appear anytime.”
The afternoon passed slowly. Pam stayed in the command truck. She was famous now, instantly recognizable. Penny told her she’d have to stay out of sight or she’d give the game away.
Herb came by several times. He had most of his crews tied up in the park and was putting together the six o’clock out of feature stories he kept around to use on slow news days.
There weren’t any major newsbreaks; the evening show would barely get by, he said. But he also said that that didn’t matter if the duel actually took place, because if that happened and they got some film of it, they’d earn themselves the highest rating of any local news show in New York.
Jay wandered around the park. He even left for a while to get his mail since his house was just a few minutes away. Penny made a point of trying to keep up everyone’s morale—Pam found herself liking Penny more and more. She had emerged during the peregrine story as a superb organizer and a baffle for Herb. Herb was the general who commanded the division; Penny was the sergeant-major who kept it together and made it work.
Pam felt her own morale begin to droop as the afternoon rush hour began.
After-work joggers started to appear, and though she’d been waiting twelve hours, it seemed more like a week. She remembered what Nakamura had said about delaying tactics, the falconer trying to anger and frustrate his opponent by forcing him to wait. He was probably waiting now, she thought, until everyone was tired and eager to go home, so she resolved not to let fatigue get the better of her. She wanted to be sharp when Peregrine arrived.
Peregrine Page 14
