Good Day to Die (25 page)

“Anyway, I’d cook up whatever I’d killed and have my dinner. I guess I wasn’t all that neat about it, because after I finished, the birds would come for the crumbs I left behind. Chickadees, jun-cos, sparrows, doves. Eventually, they got to be pretty bold, especially the chickadees. The chickadees dove like black and gray bullets.
Swoooosh.
Hit the ground, snatch a crumb, and back into the trees.

“What I decided to do, for no reason better than idle curiosity, was get one of the birds to eat from my hand, so I started going to the same place every day, a small pond loaded with catfish. I’d catch, cook, and eat, then scatter crumbs around my legs and freeze in place.

“I should say something here about sitting still and how good I was at it. There’s a popular myth that has the mighty hunter moving silently through the forest in search of prey. Well, anybody who’s ever gone into a forest knows that moving silently is just about impossible. The animals hear better than you, smell better than you, and, for the most part, see better than you. Your only advantage is your brain, and if you’ve got one, you find a place where the animals go, sit your ass down, and wait for them to show up.

“But still—hunting has its own problems, biting insects being the worst of them. But there’s also cold, rain, and cramps. You’ve got learn to sit through anything, to ignore the bugs and the weather. You’ve got to put your body to sleep while your mind stays focused. It’s not as easy as it sounds, especially the last part. Your mind tends to wander and many’s the time, especially in the early days, when I woke up to find a squirrel or a rabbit staring at me from fifteen feet away. It would have been pretty embarrassing if there’d been anyone else to see it.

“What finally happened, after years of practice, was that I’d go into a kind of trance. I’d lose my body altogether, like it wasn’t even there. My mind would empty as well. I mean
really
empty. No fear, no anger, no Mom, no nothing. But at the same time, I never lost focus. I saw anything moving in my field of vision.
Anything.
And if what I saw moving was food, I killed it.

“Birds live by sight, not by hearing or smell. From up in those branches, they can see anything close enough to hunt them. They could see me, too; me and the crumbs I scattered within inches of my hands. I know they didn’t like the situation, because they kept screaming at me, especially the chickadees.
Dee-dee-dee. Chicka-dee-dee-dee.
The essential message being ‘get your ass outta there so I can have my lunch.’

“But I wasn’t about to leave, and after a while I guess they figured it out, because, one by one, they fluttered to the ground and began a very slow approach, hopping toward me, then hopping away, then hopping forward again. Finally, after two days, the first chickadee snatched the first crumb.

“I sat motionless through it all, sat there until the chickadees approached without hesitation. The rest of the small birds, the sparrows and juncos, never worked up the courage to leave the safety of the trees. Smart sparrows, dumb chickadees.

“What I did, when I was sure they’d come, was hold the crumbs in my outstretched palm. That got them nervous again, but they were still intensely curious, perching in the lower branches of a maple, turning their heads from side to side while they checked me out with tiny black eyes. Finally, one of them, the boldest, took the plunge, fluttering down to land on my palm.

“I didn’t know what I was going to do; incredible as it seems, I hadn’t thought it through. But what I
actually
did—did without deciding to do it—was close my hand, trapping the animal.”

Dead silence. I shut up and waited for Marie to ask the inevitable question. When it came, I was ready.

“Well, Means, you gonna tell me what happened? Or do I have to beg?”

“What happened, Marie, was the little bastard drilled his beak into the heel of my hand, then flew away. The wound bled for an hour.”

Another silence. Then a “hoo, hoo, hoo” from Marie, her version of laughter. I heaved my ass off the bed and began to light the small halogen bulbs around my abstract glass sculptures, the ones Marie had selected. When I was finished, I shut off the rest of the lights in the apartment and yanked down the window shades. The effect was like dismantling a rainbow, separating the colors, then re-forming and compressing them.

But I wasn’t after an effect, no matter how dramatic. What I wanted was time. Marie had accepted me at my word, but if she’d gotten a good look at my face, she’d have known better. The chickadee hadn’t punctured my hand. Or maybe it
had.
The truth was that I didn’t know. And I hadn’t known that I didn’t know until I’d gotten right to the end. Someone or something had closed down the movie, snipped off the final frames. I could literally feel the bird in my hand, feel its wings fluttering against my fingers, its heart beating wildly But I couldn’t remember what I’d done. I didn’t have a glimmer, and it scared me the way an imagined boogeyman in a deep, dark closet frightens a small, helpless child.

B
Y THE TIME VANESSA
Bouton showed up, some twelve hours later, my good mood had been gone for so long it seemed more abstract than one of Koocek’s I-beam sculptures. Everybody knows the one about the magician who shows the hero two doors, saying, “Behind one of these doors is a dragon. Behind the other, a treasure. You
must
choose one of the doors, because the way back is guarded by a thousand rabid psychoanalysts, all of whom are programmed to save you from yourself. A fate, my friend, worse than life itself.”

Now suppose the magician is a practical jokester (or, better yet, a rabid psychoanalyst), and the treasure is not a treasure at all but a lifetime partnership with Vanessa Bouton, while the dragon is King Thong wrapped in a pink ribbon. Suppose the dragon is the reward and the treasure is the punishment. What do you do then?

What you do, if you’re part of the NYPD, is say, “Good morning, Captain,” and let your superior officer inside. Despite the sad fact that her broad, toothy smile proclaims the even sadder fact that she’s happier than a pig in shit.

“Morning, Means. How’d you sleep?”

“Sleep? I don’t believe I’m familiar with that term.”

“Bad as that, eh?”

“And getting worse.”

But the truth was that I wasn’t tired. Not physically.

“What’s on today’s agenda, Captain? We arresting Robert Kennedy?”

“Not exactly, Means. We’ve got an appointment with a psychologist named Miriam Brock.”

It’s funny how you learn things about yourself. For instance, I knew I wasn’t a paranoid schizophrenic as soon as Bouton spoke those words. If I were, I would have killed her, myself, or the both of us. On the spot.

“Would you repeat that, Captain?”

She looked at me looking at her for a moment, her smile slowly falling away. “Miriam Brock. Teaches at Columbia. She’s been studying sexually motivated killers for more than a decade. I want to run Kennedy’s profile by her. See what she thinks before we take it any further. That a problem?”

I retrieved the article in
American Psychology
and passed it over to her. “This was included in the package of evidence Pucinski assembled for me. Did you know that?” Maybe I was a
little
paranoid, after all.

She looked it over for a minute, then giggled. “Actually, I didn’t. But it’s just as well. She’s the best there is on the subject. I studied with her when I took my master’s.” She raised her nose and sniffed the air. “Is that coffee I smell? We’ve got a couple of hours to kill. Let’s generate some paperwork on what we did yesterday.”

I led her over to the kitchen area, poured her a mug of freshly ground French Roast, then poured one for myself.

“By the way,” she said, pulling out a stack of DD5’s, “I got a letter from Lydia Singleton.”

“Who?” I wasn’t being sarcastic. The name didn’t ring a bell, and I suspected that Lydia Singleton was another psychologist.

Bouton frowned and shook her head. “She still Dolly Dope to you?”

It took me a minute to put it together. Lydia Singleton was Dolly Dope’s real name.

“What does she want now?” I asked, rather stupidly.

Bang! Bouton smacked the mug onto the tabletop. “What’s the matter with you? I’m starting to think there’s nothing under there. You hear what I’m saying? You’re like an onion, Means—all layers, no core.”

Very clever, I thought, you should have been a poet. Or a psychologist. Anything but a cop.

“What can I say, Captain?” I said. “You caught me off guard.”

“Can I read you part of her letter?”

I was tempted to remind her that “may I” was the correct way to phrase it if she was asking permission, but what I actually said was, “Sure, Captain. Read away.”

I let the doctors do an AIDS test the other day, and it came out positive. No surprise, right? But the funny part is the results didn’t get me down. Maybe I won’t have a long life—I know the odds are against it—but at least I’ll have a life. The way it was before I got here wasn’t life at all. I have hope, now, which is sort of funny. I mean, hope in what? It’s kind of confusing, so I’m playing it one day at a time. And what I want to do is thank you and Detective Means for seeing something human in a creature that couldn’t see it in herself.

Bouton dropped the letter and looked up at me. “There’s more,” she said, “but I just wanted you to hear that part of it.”

A pregnant pause followed, right on cue. I was expected to make some sort of a comment, that was obvious enough, but I didn’t know what to say. On the one hand, I couldn’t bring myself to fake an enthusiasm I didn’t feel. On the other, I knew that a cynical remark would only prolong the agony.

“Well, you know, Captain,” I finally said, “it’s all well and good, but I can’t say I had very much to do with it.”

“You convinced Razor Stewart to let her go. Doesn’t that count for anything?”

“Actually, he was glad to be rid of her. She was costing him more in dope than she was earning on the street.” I shrugged my shoulders, hoping she’d change the subject and let me off the hook. No such luck, according to her expression, so I said, “Tell me something, Captain, how long have you been in the rehab business?”

Before she could answer I had a sudden flash of rather repulsive insight
. I
was one of Vanessa Bouton’s projects. One of those sad, sad souls to be lifted from the muck and mire. To be pitied.

“Excuse me a minute,” I said. “I have to get something.”

Bouton looked surprised, but not as surprised as she would have been if I’d surrendered to my first impulse and slammed my fist into her mouth. She started to speak, then thought better of it. Maybe she read the look on my face. Or maybe she simply couldn’t think of anything to say. Whichever it was, I managed to get out of the room without another word being spoken.

Safe inside the bedroom, the only enclosed space in my loft, I picked up the phone with the intention of calling Sergeant Pucinski. I hadn’t reported in in a couple of days, and this seemed like as good a time as any. But I couldn’t bring myself to punch out the number. There didn’t seem to be any point to it. I’d spent my whole life trying to make order out of chaos. Chaos isn’t much in the way of raw material, but if that’s all you have …

I walked into the bathroom and splashed my face with cold water. The problem—
my
problem—was that I wasn’t all that sure of what I wanted. At that moment, staring at my reflection in the mirror while I toweled off, my professional career seemed remote, something that had happened to me rather than something I’d actually done. For the life of me, I couldn’t see the difference between torturing small birds and torturing vicious pimps. If you enjoy delivering pain, you’re a sadist. It doesn’t matter if the individual on the receiving end deserves the pain.

Much calmer, I went back into the bedroom, punched out Pooch’s number and waited for him to pick up.

“Yeah?”

“Pooch? It’s Roland Means.”

“Means, whatta ya say?”

“Not much, Pooch. Look …”

“Say, Means, what’s the difference between karate and judo?”

“I don’t have time for this.”

“Don’t be mean, Mister Means.” He chortled happily. “What’s the difference between karate and judo.”

“I give up, Pooch.”

“Karate is a martial art. Judo is what you make bagels from.”

“Nice, Pooch. You ready to listen, now?”

“I’m all ears.”

I ran down our visit to the north country, including our conversation with Seaver Shannon and Kennedy’s wife, Rebecca, providing him with an unrequested alibi. Pooch took a minute before responding.

“Not bad, Means,” he finally said. “You actually got yourself a suspect. It’s more than I expected.”

“Guess I’m just an overachiever, Pooch. You have yourself a nice day.”

I hung up and rejoined a solemn Vanessa Bouton. She was leaning back in her chair, holding her coffee mug in both hands.

“That feels better,” I said as cheerfully as I could manage. “Too much coffee this morning. Too much coffee and not enough sleep. Shall we get to work?”

Two hours later, we were sitting in Miriam Brock’s Columbia University office, waiting for her to come back from a class. The place was a mess. Books and manuscripts were piled on every flat surface. The ashtrays and wastebaskets were overflowing. Her wooden desk (what I could see of it) was dusty and scarred.

“What’s the image here, Captain?” I asked innocently. “Eccentric genius? Or fuzzy academic?”

Bouton grinned amiably. “I think some of this crap was here when I was a student. I don’t know how she lives with it. But don’t jump to any conclusions. Miriam Brock spent ten years working for the FBI. She still consults on virtually every major case involving multiple homicides. Whatever you may think of civilian experts, at least be open enough to accept the fact that she’s the best there is.”

The “best there is” made her entrance a couple of minutes later. At least thirty pounds overweight, she sported an enormous bosom, several jiggling chins, and a pair of shrewd black eyes. Her smile was so warm as to be positively motherly.