The Falconer's Tale (4 page)

When Piat wheeled the rented Renault into the grass in front
of Hackbutt's house next day, he was better prepared. During
an evening much clarified by the Johnnie Walker he'd bought
for Hackbutt, he'd scolded himself for poor preparation and
overall laziness; then, the personnel work done, he had
decided what he must do. It all came down to two things:
learn to like Irene Girouard, because she ran Edgar Hackbutt;
and accept the new Hackbutt, consigning the old one to
history.

Now, as he got out of the car, he grinned as Irene appeared
in the doorway. She was in another long dress, blue denim,
fairly waistless. Piat was wearing a black polo shirt and a
sweater and a pair of khakis. He waved. She waved. He took
a plastic sack from the car and loped up to the door. “I'm
going to try this again,” he said, holding out the bag.

“For little ol' me?”

“For both of little ol' you.” She hesitated, holding the storm
door open for him. He had to go past her, face to face. Going
by, he bent his head and kissed her, quickly, lightly. “Good
to see you again.”

“Edgar's with his birds.”

“Good chance for me to talk to him?”
Make it a question
,
he told himself;
get on her good side
. When she didn't answer,
he said, “What's your dog's name?”
People like you ought to
like their dogs, right?

“No idea,” she said. “He kept hanging around when we
moved in.” She was taking things out of the sack. “Greek
honey—well!” He'd found the gourmet shelves at the Island
Bakery in Tobermory. “Oh—!” She had something clutched
between her breasts. “Porcini cream!”

“Organic.”

She gave him an odd smile. “You're a quick learner.” She
pulled out other things—balsamic vinegar, olive oil crushed
with blood oranges, a set of hemp place mats. She was
pleased, maybe only with the effort and not the things themselves,
but she was pleased. “Sure, why don't you go talk to
Edgar. I'll get naked.”

And if that wasn't a peace offering, what is?
She made sex so
overt, however, he was suspicious. He thought that maybe
she was performing her sexuality, not being it. Maybe for
her it was like a language she'd learned on paper but couldn't
get fluent in. If so, if they actually got to it, there would be
a lot of drama—costumes like crotchless panties, oils and
perfumes, sound effects like yum-yums to go with the obligatory
blow job and glad cries for orgasm, real or simulated,
probably the latter. And afterward, the reviews: You were so
good. Was it good for you? Was I good? But maybe it wouldn't
be like that at all. But either way, he already wanted to know.

He was only going to be with them for a few days, and
then he'd be on his way, so it wouldn't be endangering his
own operation if he took what she seemed to be offering.

He went out the rear door and stumbled because of the
unexpected step down. Nobody cut the lawn at Hackbutt's,
but a path was worn between coarse grass and a bed of
nettles, which Piat knew from Greece and managed to avoid.
He tried to remember how to get to the bird pens; giving up,
he shouted, “Digger! Digger!”

Hackbutt appeared, much closer than expected. “Jack! You
did come back!” His hands were covered with red goo. “How
nice. I won't shake hands.” Part of the nettle bed was between
them. “I'm cutting up some pigeons.”

Piat steered around the nettles and joined Hackbutt in the
remains of an outbuilding. There was bad smell and a lot of
feathers. “Where do you get the pigeons?”

“A kid shoots them for me with an air gun.”

“That doesn't sound so vegan.”

Hackbutt shrugged. “Raptors aren't vegans.” He had a
bucket on the ground half full of pieces of pigeon, partly
plucked, bloody. On a rough table that had started life as
something else, he was chopping a dead bird with a cleaver.

“Can't they do that for themselves?”

“Sure. They love to do it themselves. But you got to train
them
not
to do it, so they'll bring you game birds if you fly
them at them.” He whacked off a wing. “Falconry's a sport.
Like shooting. There's a quarry—in the old days, the object
was to bring in game to eat. See, it's hard to get a carnivore
to bring meat to you instead of eating it itself. Like using a
tiger for a retriever.” He whacked off the other wing. “You
see Irene?”

“She was off to take her bath. I brought you some sort of
veggie stuff. She seemed pleased.”

“Oh, that's good.” He swept the edge of the cleaver across
the blood on the table, then held the bucket under the edge
so he could push the blood into it. “Irene's a wonderful gal,
Jack. I want you two to like each other.” He wiped his hands
on a rag. “She changed my life. They talk about people re
inventing themselves—she reinvented me. Really. I'm still not
much, I know that, but I'm a hell of a lot more than I was.”

“You were always a good guy. And a good agent.”

Hackbutt looked pleased and said, “Well—” but didn't really
rise to it. In the old days, he would have been like a cat,
doing everything but arching his back. He picked up the
bucket and pushed past Piat. “The birds are a full-time job.
It's fun, and I love my birds, but, Jeez, man, it's your life!”

He went along the pens, talking to birds he told Piat
were immature, making noises to them, tossing pieces of
pigeon to them. He strapped a guard over his left arm and
enticed a young falcon to perch on it by holding up a
pigeon neck with the head still attached, and then he gave
it to the bird.

One of the cages was twice the size of the others. So was
the occupant. Alone of the birds, the giant received a whole
pigeon. Piat watched as the big bird held the head down
with both feet and tore out pieces of meat from the neck,
plucking as it went, feathers drifting down and now and then
getting stuck to its beak.

“I thought you had to teach them not to rip the prey to
shreds?” Piat asked.

“She's different. Jeez, Jack, can't you see how big she is?
Bella's a sea eagle, Jack. I'm in a program for them. We get
the chicks—long story there—and raise 'em by hand, then
release 'em in the wild. Helps rebuild the population. They're
nearly extinct. Isn't Bella great?” Hackbutt smiled like a parent
with a bright toddler. “I love my birds!”

“You told Irene I'd want something,” Piat said.

Hackbutt was picking up another piece of meat with a
gloved hand. “Well—yeah, I apologize, Jack. I just meant—”

“You were being honest. And you were right. I want something.”

Hackbutt looked at him and then turned so that Piat could
see the bird better. He should have said something like
What?
,
and in the old days he would have, but now he kept his
mouth shut.

“How much did you tell Irene about what you used to
do?”

“Nothing! Honest to God, Jack, nothing. I signed that paper,
didn't I? I swore I'd never say anything and I didn't.”

“What did you tell her I do?” He put it in the present tense
because he wasn't going to tell Hackbutt that he was long
out of the CIA and in fact a kind of renegade.

“Nothing.”

“She must have asked.”

“Oh, she said something like, ‘Does he work for the government?'”

Irene was a lot smarter than that, Piat thought, although
maybe she was one of those people who paid no attention
to the worlds of war and politics and tricky shit. Still, she'd
have heard of the CIA. “What did you say?”

“Oh, I just said, ‘Sort of.'” The sea eagle had finished the
pigeon and now snatched the next one from the glove and
put it under one foot, then tried to disentangle the other
foot from the remains of the head. It looked like a swimmer
trying to shake water out of its ear. The mangled head fell
to the ground and the bird started on the new prey.

“Tell you what, Digger.” Digger had been an early code
name, from the Digger O'Dell of an old comedy program; it
had become a nickname when Hackbutt had become more
than an incidental source. “I know that anything I ask you
to undertake, Irene's got to know about—right? I see that.
I acknowledge that's the nature of your relationship. It isn't
usual, but we go back and—you two are bonded, right?” He
was talking bullshit, but this was his spiel.

“Bonds of steel,” Hackbutt said. “I heard that someplace.
It says it all. It's love. It amazes me, but she loves me.
Me
.
Thanks for understanding, Jack.”

“I do understand, Digger, and I respect it, and I respect
you as a man. That's why I'll shut up right now if you want
me to. I
do
want something; I want to offer you something,
but I'll keep it to myself and we'll have a visit and we'll part
friends and that'll be that, if you want.” It was like ice-skating
where you know that the farther you go, the thinner the ice
gets: had he now gone too far?

Hackbutt, finishing with the bird, was offering it its regular
perch; it seemed to want to stay on his arm, but he urged
it, moving his arm, nudging the perch, and the bird moved
over. Hackbutt picked up the bucket. Down the ragged line
of pens, Piat could hear birds stirring as they smelled the
blood. Hackbutt said, “I told myself I wouldn't do any more
of that stuff. Not that I'm ashamed of it! But—” He came
out of the pen and latched the makeshift gate. “I'm a coward,
Jack. It scares me, what could have happened some of those
times.”

Piat had watched him handle the sea eagle, the bird's
vicious beak four inches from his eyes.
You used to be a coward
,
Piat thought.

“This wouldn't be like that.” Piat shook his head. The old
Hackbutt had merely provided information. He had been that
kind of agent—records of meetings, oil contracts, stuff he
heard at the bar from other geologists in Macao and Taipei—
actually not running much risk but always sweaty about it.
“This wouldn't be dangerous. But I don't want to push it on
you, Digger.” They walked along the pens. Hackbutt stopped
at the next gate. “It's just that you're the only man who
could do it. Correction: the
best
man to do it.”

“I don't want to go back to Southeast, Jack.”

“This wouldn't be in Southeast,” Piat lied watching him
feed another bird. The older ones, Hackbutt had said, would
be flown before they were fed; Piat could see him having to
spend all day trying to get Hackbutt to say yes. Still, he made
himself go slow. When Hackbutt had focused on the bird for
ten minutes and nothing more had been said, Piat murmured,
as if it had just come to him, “Doing a big art installation
must be expensive.”

“You better believe it. But worth it.” This bird was restless
and maybe dangerous; it flapped its wings while on his arm,
and its beak flashed too close to Hackbutt's face, Piat thought.
“Irene's going to be a household name. She has her own
website. But that costs money, yes it does. Just moving an
installation around from gallery to gallery costs a lot. Just the
insurance! Plus we've got ideas for a coffee-table book of Irene's
art, and she's into video now, maybe a DVD of the making of
The Body Electric
. She shot a lot of video of me boiling up a
dead sheep I found. There're these great shots of the bones
sort of emerging out of the flesh—sort of stop-action.”

“The galleries pay for that?”

“You kidding?” Hackbutt laughed. He was wrestling the
bird back to its perch. “Don't make me laugh.”

“So where's the money come from? Irene's mother?”

“That's a sore subject.” Hackbutt trudged along with his
pail. “Between you and me, they had a big fight. Her mother
doesn't understand about Irene's art. She hates feminists. We
have to do everything ourselves. Irene's a free spirit.”

“The project I have in mind might be able to help with
that.” Piat caught Hackbutt's head move out of the corner
of his eye, and he said quickly, “Maybe you could support
Irene's art and she wouldn't have to go crawling to her
mother.”

Hackbutt put the bucket down and folded his arms over
his skinny chest. “You better tell me about that.”

“I don't want to tempt you to do something you don't
want to do, Digger.”

“It's legit?”

“Oh, shit yes, well, if that's what's bothering you— Yeah,
this is top-drawer, Dig. Have I ever bullshitted you? You
know I was into some shitty stuff in Southeast; so were you,
smuggling those parrots—”

“Irene doesn't know about that!”

“I'm just saying, this isn't anything like that. This is US
policy. The most important kind.” He lowered his voice as if
he were going to pronounce the secret name of Yahweh.
“Anti-terrorism.”

“I told you, I haven't got the guts for that stuff.”

“Not that kind of ‘antiterrorism'. This is sort of social. It's
a matter of contact. And maybe recruitment. You remember
how that goes. Shmoozing. If anything starts to go down,
the whole thing'll be moved to other people.”

“I'm not very social, Jack.”

Piat knew that, and he was looking at Hackbutt's wild hair
and his scraggy beard and his bloodstained clothes and
thinking that anything social was going to take a total
makeover. But that wasn't his problem “You'd be fine.”

“Why me?”

It was the moment he had been aiming toward. It was
either going to make everything else a piece of cake, or it
was going to end it with the finality of the cleaver. He leaned
closer and almost whispered, “The birds.”