Peregrine Read online

  DEAR MISS PAMELA BARRETT:

  THANK YOU FOR YOUR FINE COVERAGE OF MY STOOP. I APPRECIATE YOUR ATTENTION, BUT YOU WERE MISTAKEN TO CALL ME “ROGUE.” PERHAPS ONE DAY I WILL WRITE YOU ABOUT THE MOTIVES BEHIND MY ACTS. IN THE MEANTIME I SHALL HOPE TO SEE YOU WHILE TOWERING TO THE PITCH AND WAITING ON. YOU LOOKED QUITE STUNNING FROM THE SKY TODAY. I’M SURE I’LL BE SEEING YOU AGAIN.

  PEREGRINE

  She showed the note to Joel Morris while they ate a quick sandwich at the station coffee shop. Joel dismissed it.

  “Crank stuff,” he said. “You’ll be getting a lot of that.”

  In the afternoon, when she was introduced to the bird expert, she felt an urge to smile. He actually looked like a bird expert, which was unexpected, of course, since one never expected anyone to look so obviously like what he was. His name was Carl Wendel, he was middle-aged, his neck was leathery, and his hair was steel-gray. He wore thick spectacles, an old brown sweater, looked weather-beaten and humane. Leave it to Penny Abrams to come up with an ornithologist, she thought, as she led him from the reception area to an editing room downstairs.

  The 8-mm Japanese footage of the attack was lined up for them on a viewing machine. Pam asked Dr. Wendel to try to identify the bird, then turned on the machine and ran the film.

  She found herself mesmerized by it, although she’d already seen it several times. The businessman who’d shot it had been taking an overview of the rink, zooming out from the statue of Prometheus until all the skaters could be seen. Then out of nowhere the huge bird fell into the frame. It crashed into Lenore Poletti, and when that happened, the Japanese had zoomed in again. Then there were just the two of them—Lenore and the enormous bird.

  The camera wobbled as the bird tore at her throat. When the bird flew off, the camera followed it into the sky and stayed with it until it reached the sun, at which point the film turned white.

  After the clip was finished, Wendel stared at the empty screen. He shook his head. “I can hardly believe it. Sometimes raptors do strange things. But I’ve never seen anything like that.”

  “I’ve read about eagles—”

  “Attacking men? Yes, sometimes, when they have a reason, when someone gets too close, threatens their territory, or gets too near a nest. But out of the blue like this in the middle of the city without any cause—just to attack and then stay around and kill …”

  He stared at her. “Could I look at it again?”

  She nodded, rewound the film, ran it a second time. When it was finished, she asked him if he could identify the bird.

  “That’s the other peculiar thing. The attack itself is inconceivable. The girl isn’t threatening the bird in any way. But the bird is extraordinary, too. I don’t understand this at all.”

  “Why? What’s so extraordinary?

  “Her size. She’s so big. Much too big. Of course there are bigger birds, but this is a falcon, a female peregrine. No question—the coloring, the marks, the shape of the wings—it’s most certainly a peregrine, but it’s at least a third larger than any peregrine I’ve ever seen. She’s a giant with an enormous wingspan. She’s almost as big as a small golden eagle.”

  Listening to him express so much astonishment, Pam realized she had the makings of an interview. She knew, too, that it would be a mistake to let him talk too much, that in a few minutes he’d get used to the idea that the bird was huge, and then his awe would start to fade. It was most important, she realized, to bring out that awe, catch Wendel while he was still amazed.

  She rushed him up to a taping room, explained that they’d talk before the camera and that some of what he said would be used over the attack footage when the show was broadcast that night. The interview went well. She felt her confidence rise as she conducted it, felt as she had the evening before, when she was burning with passion and knew she was coming across.

  “You say you’ve never seen such a large falcon, Dr. Wendel? So how do you account for its size?”

  “I can’t account for it. I can’t account for any of this. There’s no purpose to it. No scientific explanation. Sometimes birds attack when they’re provoked. But there’s no provocation here.”

  “Then is this some kind of monster bird?”

  “Nothing that exists in nature is monstrous. But there are things that happen that we don’t understand. We can’t blame the creature. It’s our ignorance. When we don’t understand something, we have to blame ourselves.”

  “You’re saying there’s no explanation. Is it possible this bird could attack again?”

  “Falcons don’t attack human beings.”

  “But you saw the film, Dr. Wendel. You know Lenore Poletti was killed.”

  Wendel stared at her and shook his head.

  After he left the station, Pam went to her desk and drafted her close: “A savage killer bird of monstrous size attacks an innocent young woman out of the sky. The city’s leading expert on raptorial birds can’t offer a theory as to why. What are we dealing with? Something gone wrong in nature, something inexplicable and grotesque? And the big question tonight: Will this monster falcon attack in the city again?”

  It seemed a little corny to her, and much too sensational. It wasn’t good journalism. She was playing on the public’s fear. Words like “inexplicable,” “grotesque,” “monster,” “savage killer bird”—she knew that was titillating stuff. But she also knew it was the sort of stuff Herb liked, so she typed it up and handed it in to Penny. Herb would go over it when he reviewed the tape. She hoped he’d tone it down.

  He didn’t. He liked it, and he wanted her to hype it up. “Mention that Hitchcock film. You know, The Birds,” he said. “Remind people of that. Talk about truth being stranger than fiction and change your question at the end. Not ‘Will this monster falcon attack in the city again?’ ‘When will this monster falcon attack again?’ Make it clear there’ll probably be another attack.”

  She was about to protest, but he went on, gazing at her with admiration and respect. “I love the tape, Pam. This practically hysterical bird guy trying to deny what we’re looking at, this powerful thing going on before our eyes. And then the way you corner him at the end. He can’t deny it, right? And the piece with the girl’s mother is great.” He broke into a falsetto: “‘The police. The mayor. What do they care? That’s the trouble. No one cares.’ Anger. Helplessness. A monster loose in New York. The foiled expert. The poor Brooklyn typist ripped to shreds. Jesus, it’s terrific. Tonight we wipe out the competition. Tonight we got this city by the balls!”

  Caught up in Herb’s enthusiasm, she stifled her doubts and did everything he said. She was a little dismayed about being so sensational, could imagine what Paul would think. But she did it anyway, and when she watched the replay after the show, she saw that it worked and she was pleased. According to Penny, a flood of calls was coming in. The public, caught up by the “killer bird,” couldn’t seem to get enough.

  After the replay, Herb came out of the control room and called everyone onto the set. Then he delivered a pep talk like a coach after a game, striding back and forth before the anchor desk while reporters and technicians clustered around.

  “We’re onto something,” he said.

  “The feedback’s terrific. We’re getting to the element out there. This bird thing tells them what we are.”

  “So—what are we?” asked Hal Hopkins, in his best world-weary voice. Others on the staff were rolling their eyes. They knew Herb’s ways, his flamboyant gestures, his rhetorical questions, and that “the element” was his code word for the slobs.

  “We’re not Channel 2. They know that. We don’t make the news more boring than it is. And we’re not Channel 4—no back stories on interior decoration. No fashion shows. No gourmet restaurant reviews. Channel 7!” He snorted with derision. “Happy-talk makes me puke. Channel 5 tries to be working press. They got the faces but they’re too slick with the moves. So—what are we? We’re a tabloid— that’s what. We talk to the secretaries and the construct
ion workers, the sanitation men and the cops. We’re real, passionate, competitive, temperamental. We got a Humphrey Bogart anchorman, a wacky weatherman, and a Bryn Mawr girl doing killer bird.” Herb scanned their faces, nodded as they laughed.

  “They’re rooting for us out there because they know we’ll kill to get a story. And they know something else.”

  He paused again. “They know we’re not ashamed. You got that—not ashamed. We’re not ashamed to dish the crap they really want to see.”

  What he was saying, of course, was that Channel 8 was the crappiest station in town, a fact that everyone who worked there already knew. But for all his tough-guy cynicism, Herb did have his qualities—he was loyal to his staff, and when he decided on an angle, he stuck with it. His angle on the falcon was to play it for everything it was worth, take advantage of the fact that Pam had gotten the Japanese footage, and come up with as many excuses as possible to play that footage again. Pam had come in with the story, so now it belonged to her; she’d be featured so long as it stayed alive.

  When she got home that night, she found the note she’d stuffed into her pocket after Joel had dismissed it over lunch. She reread it. An interesting coincidence—the bird had turned out to be a peregrine falcon and the crank note was signed “Peregrine.” But, of course, anyone who knew about birds could have identified the falcon when the Japanese footage was shown the night before. Carl Wendel had said there could be no mistake about the markings; it was just too big for a peregrine.

  CHAPTER FOUR

  The great bird was restless—the falconer could tell. She was hungry, and her hunger was working inside, evoking primitive instincts—her need to fly and swoop and kill. The way she was behaving on her perch, the rustling of her feathers, the movement of her head—her impatience showed, her tension was palpable. The falconer was pleased. He knew what was happening, how her hunger absorbed her, sharpened the imprint of her training, was felt now in every feather and joint and most particularly in her talons and her eyes.

  He had created a unique sort of falcon—a cosmopolitan falcon, a falcon of the cities, living above a great reservoir of prey. To her, the sheer sides of concrete buildings were like the cliffs she’d have gravitated to had she been living in the wild. And he had created something more: a new kind of falconry. He had trained his peregrine to stylize her hunting, ignore her natural prey species, go after human beings in exchange for food.

  She was to country falcons as modern urban man was to the caveman—her predatory instinct was just as strong, but now, instead of killing to eat, she worked in order to be fed.

  The falconer studied her. He was fascinated by her greed and pain, the pangs that honed her instincts, made her perform as his perfect instrument, in accordance with his design. Her pangs were different from those he felt, and that was the fascination of his work—that both of them, bird and man, hungered for different things. The falcon wanted food; the man wanted something else. Their hungers were different but equal in intensity.

  Together they helped each other: The bird killed for the man, and in return he fed her quails.

  The falconer turned back to the peregrine. He knew that if she were starved too long she would become too weak, wouldn’t fly high enough and wait-on at the proper height, and then, when she did attack, there would be less power in her stoop. He pushed aside her feathers, ran his fingers along her breast, felt the nodules of fat beneath the skin. She hunted on this fat, used enormous amounts of it for energy when she flew. The falconer could tell from feeling her flesh that she was near to hunting weight.

  That was the key to falconry: to sharpen the bird’s desire, focus her attention through hunger, but not to weaken her too much. There was an optimum weight for hunting. The falconer looked into the peregrine’s eyes. He noted her restless hunger, then he hooded her. He would know when it was time to send her out again.

  CHAPTER FIVE

  In the morning, when Pam Barrett walked into Channel 8, the receptionist handed her a stack of message slips.

  Carl Wendel had called three times since seven. She was to phone him the moment she came in.

  She was hesitant about returning his call. She supposed he’d seen their interview the night before and had felt that he’d been used. She could imagine his complaint, that the tape had been cut and that he’d looked foolish on the air. Maybe he’d threaten legal action— people did that all the time. She was sitting at her desk in the newsroom preparing to meet his anger when he called again.

  He wasn’t angry, but he sounded frantic—far more upset than the day before. “Could I look at the film again?” he pleaded. “It’s extremely important. Please.”

  “You mean the tape we made?”

  “No. The film of the attack.”

  “Sure,” she said. “I guess so. Tell me—is something wrong?”

  He hesitated. “I’ve been thinking about it all night. I looked at it a couple of times with you, then last night at six, and again at eleven o’clock. The last time I thought I saw something— something I missed yesterday. But I’m not sure. It’s hard to tell on TV. The film is so much clearer, especially on your machine. This could be quite important, Miss Barrett. I’d like to come over right away.”

  She went downstairs, found a free editing room, pulled out the film, threaded it up. This particular piece of film had become extremely valuable over the past two days. Requests had come in to the station from magazines and tabloids all over the world. They wanted reprint rights to stills blown up from the frames. The Japanese businessman who’d shot it had given Pam a release, but Herb had mailed him a check for five thousand dollars; he didn’t want the man claiming he’d been swindled now that his film was in demand.

  Wendel looked as if he hadn’t slept.

  His face was worried, and there were circles under his eyes. He greeted her, took a stool before the editing table, and fastened his gaze upon the screen.

  She started up the film, but after a minute he asked her to stop. He examined the picture carefully. Then he shook his head.

  “Would you mind if I ran it myself so I could stop it when I want?”

  She nodded, showed him how to use the machine—adjust the speed, put the film in reverse, stop it when he wanted to freeze a frame. Then she stood by his side as he stopped and started several times. She became impatient— he’d go forward, then back several frames, then he’d hold on a frame and study it, then go forward and back again. She couldn’t see anything new, and she didn’t understand the point.

  She was trying to think up an excuse to get rid of him when, finally, after studying a particular frame for a while, he pointed to a portion of it and exhorted her to look.

  “I’m looking,” she said. “What am I looking for?”

  “Notice the legs, the falcon’s legs.”

  Wendel pointed at some wiggly lines below the feet.

  “Isn’t that in the background?”

  “That’s what I thought, too, the first few times. But watch now. Watch them move.” He ran the film slowly a few more frames; the lines did seem to move with the bird. “You see? They’re attached to the falcon. Those are jesses attached to her legs.”

  “Jesses?”

  “Leather thongs. Now watch them again.” He ran the machine, and this time she saw what he meant: There were strings of some sort, two of them, one attached to each leg. They were quite visible now that she knew where to look. They fluttered in the air, rose and fell.

  “What are jesses?”

  “Falconers attach them to the legs of their hunting birds, where they serve the same function as a collar on a dog. When the bird returns, the falconer attaches them to his glove.” Wendel turned to her. “I thought I saw them last night, but I wasn’t sure. The bird’s moving rapidly, and they don’t show up that well. But when she’s against the ice you can make them out, and just before she hits the girl you can see them dangling down.”

  She sat on an editing stool. She knew this was important, that the pe
regrine story had just taken an amazing turn.

  “What this bird is doing here is completely out of character. But if she’s a falconry bird, and the jesses tell me that she is, then anything is possible, because she wouldn’t be doing it on her own.”

  “Now let me get this straight,” she said. “You’re saying this is falconry?”

  “Falconry.” He savored the word with distaste. “I’ve always hated it or anything like it, anything that involves manipulation of wildlife. Falconry involves taking a bird that’s wild, depriving it, then playing on its desperation. Falconers starve these magnificent predatory birds, manipulate their hunger, and imprint their training. They claim it’s beautiful and that the birds are better off with them. They call it a sport. I say it’s entertainment, selfish and extremely cruel. Then there’s another thing ….”

  Wendel’s voice began to rise.

  “Peregrines are rare. Insecticides have gotten into their food chain, and this has affected their ability to reproduce. The chemicals in DDT have made their eggs so thin that they break in the nest, and as a result the species is nearly extinct. But still the falconers want them because peregrines are the most glamorous hunting birds. So they go out and capture the few that are left, leash them up and put a hood on them and turn them into ‘sporting birds.’ There’re only a few thousand of these people, but that’s too many for me. Because of them, nests are raided and the raptor black market exists. A peregrine flying free and wild is a benign creature that only kills what it can eat. But when a falconer gets hold of one, he twists her instincts, and then when she gets loose, as this one has, she’s helpless because she’s not used to killing the prey species she needs to kill to stay alive. So we find this peregrine attacking this skater for absolutely no reason at all. That’s not natural, you see. She’s here in the city where she doesn’t belong, doing things she’s not supposed to do.”

  His anger and his concern for endangered peregrines was evident.

  Pam found herself moved by his outburst and chilled by its implications.