Peregrine

by William Bayer

  She looked at him. “I guess you think I’m pretty shallow.”

  “I don’t know. Is it shallow to want to stay on top? The trouble with you is you take it all too seriously. It’s just a game, Pam. Success, ambition, the power plays, the worries about who’s been using whom. It doesn’t mean anything. You either play or else you drop out, move to Aspen or Martha’s Vineyard and forget the New York shit. The worst thing is to stay here, play the game, and lose. That’s my problem. I hate the media trip and the achievement society, and all its attendant crap, but still I can’t resist it, so I stick around, sort of duck-paddle around the edges, and—well, look at me. Mister Not-Quite. Mister Now-You-See-Him-Now-You-Don’t. I got to give you credit. You knew what you wanted and you swam out there and got it. Now instead of acting hurt you ought to be negotiating with a network and laughing your way to a bank.”

  He smiled at her. She smiled back.

  Then she took hold of his hand. “Make love to me, Paul.”

  “Sure.” He took her to bed without another word.

  They made love violently, the way she remembered it had always been with him, with her twisting and squirming and him holding her down, grasping her hair, pinioning her shoulders, seizing her ear between his teeth. He thrust at her so hard she felt he was pulverizing her thoughts. That was what she wanted—to make love so violently that she could forget the tormenting obsession of the falconer and the bird.

  “So,” he said to her afterward as they lay on his bed and the late afternoon sun broken by his venetian blinds coated their sweating bodies, striped their flesh. “So—who’s been using whom this afternoon?”

  “We’ve been using each other. Everyone uses everyone,” she said.

  “That’s it, Pammer. Now you got it right.”

  He borrowed back his robe and went down to the basement to fetch her clothes. When he came back, he lay down again and watched her as she dressed.

  “Want to move in for a couple days? You might feel safer here.”

  She shook her head. Though she was wary about sleeping alone in her apartment, she didn’t want to stay with Paul. She knew that if she did, he’d start to needle her, and she knew she couldn’t deal with that. Her mind was back on the falconer anyway. The sex had only blinded her for a few moments. Now the obsession was back, something she couldn’t escape.

  “There’s despair in that man,” she told him, buttoning up her shirt. “I could hear it in his voice. He knows he’s gone too far. Now he says he wants to fly away. I have this feeling he wasn’t really threatening me. He needs me somehow—that’s what he was trying to say. And he told me I need him, too.”

  “Doesn’t that frighten you?”

  “Sure. But if I could talk to him again, interview him, find out what this is all about, I think it would be worth the risk. So—thanks for inviting me. I appreciate that a lot. But I want to go home. Maybe he’ll call again. I can just imagine the phone ringing and ringing. I’d never forgive myself if he called and I wasn’t there.”

  “You are obsessed. Tell me something—why does it have to be you?”

  “I don’t know. I was there at the beginning. Now I want to be there at the end.”

  When she was dressed, she paused a moment by his door. He was still lying naked, his hands behind his head.

  “What happened with us?” she asked. “The sex was so good. Why didn’t we make it, Paul?”

  He shrugged. “I guess we didn’t really like each other enough.” He paused. “That’s what it’s all about, you know.”

  She nodded, left, leaned against the corner of the elevator as she rode it down. The storm was over; it was drizzling now. The rush hour hadn’t started, though it was getting dark.

  She stood out in front of Paul’s building, hailed a cab. When she got home, she peered around before she opened the street door of the house.

  After she unlocked it, she looked behind again before she let herself inside. The stairwell was empty, but she climbed stealthily in case the falconer was pressed against a wall.

  Ridiculous, she told herself. Have to keep my nerve. But she felt great relief when she reached her door, let herself in, bolted it shut. She’d made it home unscathed.

  She fixed herself a drink, went through her mail, then took off her clothes and showered. She thought about sex with Paul, how good it had seemed and yet how unsatisfied she was feeling now. The usual trouble was that he turned their sex into a comedy—though this afternoon he hadn’t, had taken her seriously for once. Still—something had been lacking. What was it? A sense of yielding, relinquishing, giving herself over to power. Why did she want that, anyway? It was against her feminist principles. But there were times when she wanted to be free of responsibility.

  The falconer had told her he would “train” her, harness her wildness.

  There was something she liked about that and also something that frightened her. Maybe, she thought, she didn’t know what she wanted because she still didn’t know exactly who she was.

  When she came out of the bathroom, she rewound her answering machine. Carl Wendel had called:

  “Very important. Have to see you. I’ll be working late tonight at the museum. I’ll leave your name at the lab entrance. They’ll let you in even if we’re closed.”

  He remembers, she thought. He remembers someone he told. She was enormously excited, so glad she hadn’t stayed at Paul’s. She dialed Wendel’s number. He didn’t answer. Maybe, she thought, the museum switchboard was shut. She decided to go over there, dressed quickly, found a cab, rode the rain-slick streets uptown. She was close, could feel it—she was tingling with anticipation. The story was moving again. Things were linking up.

  She found the lab entrance near the back of the building. The guard, a black man in a uniform, told her Dr. Wendel had just stepped out. But he had left word that if she came he’d appreciate it if she would go up to his office and wait. She should make herself at home; he’d be back as soon as he could.

  He probably went out to eat, she thought. She’d missed him by just a minute or so. She nodded to the guard, found her way up to the ornithology department, then walked down a long corridor lined with bird skeletons displayed on wooden stands.

  She felt a little unnerved in his office. A group of stuffed owls on a table seemed to glare at her while she sat. She stared at them and then around at all the books and papers and ornithological magazines, and at his desk where a lamp was burning, the only lamp in the room, which lit the cluttered surface of the desk but left the corners shadowy and dark.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE

  It was dark when Hollander left his house, started across Central Park. He skirted the boat pond, passed the Alice in Wonderland statue. Then he cut across the East Drive and entered the maze of trees and shrubs and narrow paths known as the Ramble, a portion of the park beloved by birders, a place they congregated on sultry summer days.

  But it was autumn now, early November. The trees had turned; some had already lost their leaves. It was a chilly night, cold and damp; he could see the steam of his breath as he passed the lamps situated among the trees, low old-fashioned wrought-iron lamps that cast circles of yellow light upon the paths.

  He spotted Wendel waiting for him on a broken bench. He was huddled in a thick brown sweater, his arms grasped around his body like a freezing refugee. Hollander approached him with a steady step. It was important to be assertive; he could take Wendel anytime.

  “Well, hello, Carl,” he said warmly, affably, taking a seat at the opposite end of the bench. “Just where you said you’d be, and all alone, too.” He met Wendel’s eyes, frightened, he thought, and crazed. “So—here we are, just the two of us, all alone like you said you wanted us to be, sitting here in the dark on this cold, wet night.” Wendel was wary, was following his every move.

  “Okay, Carl, what’s so important that I had to troop over here in this unpleasant weather—what’s the deal, huh?”

  “I want the bird,” Wendel whispered
.

  “Well …” Hollander laughed. “All the world wants the bird.”

  “I know you have her.”

  “You don’t know any such thing,” he said heartily. “What makes you say a crazy thing like that?”

  “I told you I was breeding for size. I told you I had a female.”

  “Did you? I don’t remember.”

  “You’re the only one I told. It was when you wrote me your check in March.”

  “I’ve given you a lot of money over the years, Carl. I can’t remember every occasion now.”

  “When I told you about the experiments, you doubled the amount.”

  “Hmmm. It’s beginning to come back. So—you were the breeder. That’s very interesting. Who’d you sell her to? Or did she flyaway?”

  “You had her stolen. I know that now. I should have figured you from the start.”

  He gazed at Wendel, a half-smile playing on his lips. “Tell me what you want, Carl,” he said. “It’s too cold tonight to beat around the bush.”

  “I want her back.”

  “Why?” he asked patiently, as if speaking to a stubborn child.

  “Hack her back to nature. Set her free. Erase all that madness you’ve put into her brain.”

  “But you know that’s not true, Carl. You know you’re not going to hack her back. You’re going to do to her just what you planned to do from the start, just what you did to all the other ones you hoarded. And to the owls, too, Carl. Let’s not forget the owls.”

  “It doesn’t make any difference to you. You’ve had your fun and games. It’s my turn now. She was mine and now I want her back.”

  “I’m not going to give her back.”

  “You have to give her back.”

  “Why do I have to?”

  Wendel glared at him. “If you don’t, I’ll turn you in.”

  “You’d do that anyway if you thought you could get away with it. But I don’t think you will, Carl. You’ve got too much to lose.”

  “You’ll lose more.”

  “Maybe. But you’ll lose plenty when the whole story comes out. You’ll lose everything, Carl. Your reputation, your precious reputation most of all. I’ll tell what I know about your so-called foundation, and then you’ll be in a lot of trouble. You’ll be a ruined man.”

  “So will you.”

  “But I’m already ruined.”

  Wendel turned away. “I should have known it was you. You always hated Spizaetus nipalensis. Nakamura was the tip-off. I should have seen it then.”

  “Sure you should have seen it. But it wouldn’t have done you any good.” He paused, softened his tone. “By the way—how did you find out?”

  “Pam Barrett. She talked to Hawk-Eye. He blabbed. He told her everything.”

  “But he doesn’t know I was the buyer.”

  “Neither does she know—yet.”

  Wendel tried to meet his eyes head-on.

  “I’m not kidding around, Jay. I want her back tonight.”

  “You know something—I may be crazy. But I’m not crazy like you. That old owl did something to your brain.”

  “Goddamn you, Jay, I want the bird.”

  “I funded you. We had a deal.”

  “I created her!”

  “You got greedy, Carl. And now you’re acting like a fool.”

  Wendel’s face contorted with fury. “I’ll tell Pam Barrett,” he screamed. “You’re the killer. I’ll tell her. She’s sitting in my office right now. I’ll call her up and tell her and then we’ll see if I don’t get the bird.”

  Hollander waited until the outburst was finished. “All right, let’s calm down, Carl,” he said. “Now that we’ve got it all out of our systems, let’s try and be rational about this thing.”

  Wendel made an effort to control himself, a sign he was willing to pull back. “We’re going to have to work something out, something satisfactory to us both. That’s what people do in a situation like this. They talk the problem through and compromise ….”

  CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR

  Pam sat in Wendel’s office for an hour scanning ornithology magazines and looking at books containing engravings of raptor birds. But when he still didn’t show up, she became impatient and began to examine the room. She started with the papers on his desk, a mound of letters, articles, clippings, and sheets covered with doodles of birds’ wings and heads. The top page contained some cryptic notes, as if Wendel had been trying to puzzle something out.

  She shrugged, went back to her chair, glancing into the eyes of the stuffed owls. Did they blink? Impossible. The owls were dead. Their eye sockets were filled with glass. But they did seem to have the uncanny ability to follow her as she moved around the room. She tried it, strode to a corner— all the owls’ eyes followed her there. Then she strode back toward the desk and suddenly looked at the owls. They did seem to be watching her. It was a very spooky effect.

  There was a door in the room marked “Private Lab,” She tried it, found it locked. She began to wonder then if she ought to go back home; she could leave word for Carl with the guard. She was actually on her feet ready to leave when Wendel’s phone began to ring. She picked it up.

  “Miss Barrett?” It was Wendel—at last.

  “Good thing you called. I was just about to leave.”

  “I know. I’m sorry. Something important came up.”

  “Are you coming back?”

  “No. I wonder if you can meet me someplace else.”

  “Look,” she said. “I’ve been sitting here an hour. What the hell’s going on?”

  There was a pause, and then she heard repentance in his voice. “I’m really sorry. I’ve been working on our problem and now I think I have it solved. If you’d just meet me now at the Chrysler Building I promise you we’ll clear the matter up.”

  “The Chrysler Building?”

  “Yes. The seventy-seventh floor.” He gave her an office number, said the building was open until seven, so she wouldn’t have to sign in. “Trust me, please,” he begged. “You’ll have a terrific story if you do.”

  “Well, all right,” she said. “I’ll come. But it better be worth it, and you’d better be there, too, because this time I’m not going to wait.”

  She set down the phone, then snatched it up again—she wanted him to meet her in the lobby. But it was too late; he’d hung up. All right, she thought. The seventy-seventh floor.

  She wound her way back down to the door of the museum, nodded to the guard, stepped onto the street. It was drizzling again. As she started walking toward Central Park West she noticed a man standing in a darkened doorway across the way.

  Suddenly she was worried. The man seemed to be following her. He was moving parallel to her on the other side, and there was something odd about the way he held his head, as if he didn’t want her to see his face. When she reached the avenue she panicked.

  She dashed across it, then took the access road that led into the park. An empty cab was coming up the West Drive. She ran out, flagged it down. As she sped downtown on the black slick road she turned, stared out the rear windshield, but didn’t see anyone behind.

  She’d probably been imagining things. The past twenty-four hours had worn her down. She sat back in the seat, excited now, looking forward to meeting Wendel and hearing the “terrific story” he’d promised that she’d get.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE

  “Goddammit,” said Janek. “You lost her? I bet you were taking a fucking piss.”

  He only half listened to Stanger’s explanation, covered the mouthpiece of the phone. “Sal, get a team down to Eleventh Street. Maybe she’s heading home.”

  “You think she made you? Sure she made you. Why the hell else would she run into the park after dark?” Then he stopped—no point in being angry.

  They’d lost her; the important thing was to catch up with her again. “No— don’t stick around there. She’s not coming back. She waited an hour, he didn’t show, so she got sick of it and left.”

&
nbsp; He hung up, then cursed himself.

  He’d been too smart. His plan was good unless she panicked, which was obviously what she’d done. She’d seen Stanger, mistaken him for the falconer, become terrorized, and fled. He hoped now she was on her way home and that she showed up there pretty soon. If she went to a restaurant or to Paul Barrett’s it might be hours before he found her again.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX

  The Chrysler lobby was nearly deserted—just a few people coming out as Pam came in. The night security force was setting up a lectern to hold the sign-in chart. The lobby glistened with marble and steel, an Art Deco masterpiece, she’d read; she marveled that she hadn’t been in it before. She checked her watch. 6:55. No time now to look around.

  She went to the elevator bank, got in a car, rode up to the fifty-seventh floor.

  Wendel had told her to change there for the tower elevator that would take her to the seventy-fourth, at which point she’d have to take the stairs. Though the main portion of the building was square, the tower, she knew, consisted of a multi-arched stainless-steel dome. Above that was a spire more than a hundred feet tall, making Chrysler one of the great landmark buildings in New York.

  There was no one else in the tower elevator as she rode up to seventy-four.

  She felt uneasy as she got off, saw a sign indicating the stairs. She climbed three flights, then saw the office door.

  It was frosted glass, dimly lit from inside. E. E. CORP. was neatly lettered on it in black. She knocked, called out Wendel’s name, then turned the knob and stepped inside.

  She found herself in a fairly standard reception space—secretary’s desk with covered typewriter, couple of metal office chairs, an innocuous airline calendar on the wall. Damn, she thought. He isn’t here. Then she thought she heard a noise.

  She called out again. “Dr. Wendel?”

  No answer. She stood still and listened, thought she heard something, a rustling, footsteps, perhaps; she began to feel unnerved. She moved across the reception area and paused before the door in back. When she heard the noise a third time, she placed her hand on the knob, turned it, pushed the door open, and listened again. The back room was dark but a strange triangular window was open; she could feel a blast of wind.