Raptor Read online

  Heinz stood up. Before I had a chance to disavow this so-called agreement, the front door opened. Two men stepped into the lobby wearing Stetsons, guns and law enforcement suits. One was Greg Porter, who had not so long ago put March in jail, the other was his deputy. Betts hadn’t slowed his pace any.

  “Prince Sahid?” Porter said. “Heinz Hoffman? I have warrants for your arrests. Conspiring to buy and sell wild birds is a felony.”

  The prince smiled, opened his palms and let the ball fall in. “Bird feathers,” he said.

  Heinz uttered a short word in an ugly language and then he said in English, “We have done nothing wrong. We have taken no birds anywhere.”

  “You ought to read them their rights,” I told Porter.

  Heinz’s lids dropped another millimeter as his flat eyes focused on me. “Did you have anything to do with this?” he asked at the same time Porter said, “Haven’t I seen you someplace before?”

  “No,” I answered and, “Yes.”

  Porter read the suspects their rights and then he and his deputy handcuffed them and escorted them to the back of his car for the drive to Fire Pond. I presumed the jailer would find suitable accommodations for their stay, and they’d find out for themselves how easy the county jail was to break out of. If that didn’t work, they could always afford to hire the very best legal representation.

  I let them get a head start as I didn’t want to be tailgating the law all the way down the highway. I hung around the lobby for a few minutes enjoying the peaceful atmosphere of Freezeout East out of season and looking through a rack of postcards: the park in spring, summer, winter, fall, the lakes, the snow-covered peaks, the bears, mountain goats, elk and birds. A young man with blond hair and a Mormon smile appeared in a doorway—the missing hotel staff.

  “What was that all about?” he asked.

  “Your guests were arrested.”

  “No shit. What for?”

  “Trafficking in wild birds. It’s a felony.”

  He shook his head. “Wow!”

  “You said it.”

  “If you’re looking for a room we don’t have any. But there’s a motel in Barton that stays open all year.” This kid’s megawatt smile was out of season, too. He should have taken it back to Utah with him when the summer was over.

  I thought fondly of my wall-to-wall efficiency at the Aspen Inn. “I’ve got a room,” I replied. “But it looks like you’re open to me. Weren’t the prince and Heinz staying here before their accommodations in the Fire Pond County Jail opened up?”

  “Are you kidding? They rented the whole place just for them.”

  Was there no respect for the value of the declining dollar?

  I picked out some postcards and paid $1.25. Then I drove back to Fire Pond under the big stars and a lopsided moon, keeping my attention focused on the road past all those white crosses that indicated others before me had not.

  9

  “TIME IS OF the essence” is one of those colorful phrases that shows there’s romance in the language, if not the spirit, of the law. My outer clock said it was Monday evening, the return trip ticket was for Thursday, and unless I solved the murder in forty-eight hours and got March out of jail, I wasn’t going to make it. I’d have to cancel the discount ticket and pay the full fare. Was the difference in fare a legitimate legal expense? Yes. Was I going to bill it to March? Maybe. There were issues to consider: Could he afford it? Would he think I was a greedy attorney? Was he a sweet person, a gentle person, a person who might not refuse to use a condom if you asked him, who might even offer? A naturalist with a remarkable lack of ego unlike certain members of my profession? Was I getting soft on a client, losing the beat of this case and my fine edge as well?

  I decided to call my partner, Brink—that always sharpened me up. It was now eight o’clock in the evening and I sat on the plaid sofa bed at the Aspen Inn. Brink would either be at home or at Bailey’s mooning over Sally, a former bartender who’d moved to California, probably to get away from him. The chances of his being in the office were minute. I found him at home watching TV.

  “You’re going to stay in Montana?” he asked me.

  “Just for a while, anyway. It’s a great opportunity. It’s been a long time since I’ve defended a murder case—law school to be exact.” It might have been interesting to argue the various legal points with my partner. Did Betts have legitimate grounds for holding March? What were the ramifications of the sting operation? What would I do when Tom Mitchell got back? But Brink likes to limit his arguments to the mundane, matters of concern to self.

  “That means I have to go on handling your cases.”

  “What cases?” I’d only been away a week, but I was already having trouble remembering. It seemed to me there was a divorce in there, a real estate closing, possibly a DWI.

  “Well, the Larrows are arguing about health insurance, Toni Arrowsmith didn’t get her mortgage and, let’s see, what else? I’m not in the office, you know, I don’t have all your information at my fingertips.”

  It wasn’t the first time I’d wondered what rotten thing I had done in a past life to deserve him. “Brink, you can cope. I know you can. I’m taking on the federal government here. Just think of all the new business that will bring in when I win.”

  “Well,” he sniffed.

  “I have to go. There’s someone at the door. I’ll call in a few days.”

  No one was at the door, but it seemed counterproductive to pay long distance to argue with Brink. Now that business affairs had been taken care of, there was the inner clock where timing was of the essence—the Kid. If I mailed the postcard tomorrow, he probably wouldn’t get it by Thursday when I was due back, not unless I sent it Express Mail. We’re the ones who keep Express Mail and Fed Ex in business anyway—procrastinating lawyers. I could call, but he probably wouldn’t be home and whoever answered the phone might not speak English. Besides, some things are best said on paper. With the written word you can say precisely what you wish, no one will interrupt you, no one will answer back, and you can revise until you get it right. That’s what lawyers are good at—revision.

  I took out my first postcard, a picture of a mama grizzly and her young sampling the flowers in an alpine meadow. “Kid, I’m going to be later than I expected. Something has come up, an important case that I am working on. Miss you. See you soon. Love, Neil.”

  It wasn’t exactly right. I picked up the next one, two mountain goats balancing on a tightrope-size alpine ledge. “I won’t be back on Thursday. I’m working on an important case here. Hopefully, it won’t be too long. I’ll be in touch. Best wishes, Neil.”

  That wasn’t it either. I took a blue-green, crystal-clear mountain lake surrounded by snowy peaks. “Kid, the opportunity has come along to work on a really important murder case, so I won’t be back Thursday. Shouldn’t take too long. See you soon. Neil.”

  I was beginning to wish I had a word processor. There was one more mountain goat card. I liked the symbolic significance of that and tried again: “Kid, I won’t be back on Thursday as the opportunity has come along to work on an important case. It shouldn’t be too long. Montana is beautiful. See you soon. Love, Neil.”

  To put love in or not, that was the tough question. It was a lot easier to use words of endearment in Spanish. If I sent it in an Express Mail envelope at least it wouldn’t be read by his partner at the shop.

  That accomplished and with a postcard to spare I turned on the oven, got out the Cuervo Gold, went to the refrigerator where there was a plastic ice tray that someone had forgotten to fill. The ice machine was located in an alcove in the stairwell but it was tough getting there because the hallway was squished full of plump-armed women in pastel evening gowns. The Rebekahs, I figured, as I’d seen them welcomed with the movable letters on the sign outside the Aspen Inn along with their counterparts, the International Order of Odd Fellows, known to some as the 100 Fs. The ladies wore polyester pink, aqua and lavender gowns with one bare shoulder or a
modest slice of cleavage. Their hair was curly white or blue-gray. Most of them wore glasses, talked and smiled a lot. As I squeezed my way through, I wondered if it was necessary to have an Odd Fellow to be a Rebekah. It could be a species that mated and nested for life.

  I got to the ice machine under the stairs, dipped in the dipper. A woman stood next to me playing the keno machine that appears in out-of-the-way niches in this state. She had a thin, weathered face that could be described with an h word: hawk, hatchet, hard. A cigarette dangled from her lip and she wore skin-tight jeans with high-heeled boots. A woman maybe who had traveled hard, lived in other people’s abandoned nests and mated only for the season.

  “Jesus Christ,” she said, “can’t win for losing no more. You play these shit fuckers?”

  “Not yet.”

  She sized me up, wondering maybe if it was too late to start or too early. “Name’s Gloria,” she said.

  “Neil.”

  She didn’t even suggest my name belonged on a man. I liked her already for that. “You got time yet.” She plugged in her quarter.

  “It’s of the essence,” I said.

  The Rebekahs had gone into a conference room and shut the door behind them. The hallway was empty, but the air seemed disturbed. There was an echo of coos, the smell of cheap perfume. I walked through it and stopped in the bar to see if I could pick up a few limes for my drink.

  Cortland James happened to be sitting in a booth nursing a beer. “Good evening,” he said.

  “Hi,” I replied. As I had a few minutes to kill while the bartender got my limes together, I joined him.

  “How’s the criminal investigation going?” he asked me.

  “Coming along.”

  “I’ll buy you a drink if you’d like. I’d be interested in hearing your theories.”

  “Some other time, maybe, I’m pretty tired right now.” The bartender hadn’t come back yet, so to make conversation I said, “You like that beer?” He was drinking some bland American brand.

  “It’s cheap,” he replied. “In my family that’s enough to recommend it.”

  Being bland probably didn’t hurt either. He brushed his bangs back from his forehead, a boyish gesture that might be considered endearing by some. It made me wonder what his nickname had been: Corie, Cortie, Cortlie?

  “I didn’t think anybody drank American beer anymore. Even in Montana they probably sell Dos Equis, if they don’t have Tecate,” I said.

  “Tecate. That’s the one they drink with the lime and salt, right?”

  “Yup.”

  “You have interesting drinking habits. Did you pick them up in Mexico?”

  “Sort of. Did you get into aguardiente when you were in Guatemala? You can’t get drunk much cheaper than aguardiente. That ought to appeal to your family.” Aguardiente was rotgut that some people drank out of a plastic bag with a straw, clear as gin unless it was tinted pink or blue or gold. You could probably get blind drunk on it for less than a quarter.

  Cortland was amused. “I skipped the aguardiente, but I did drink Tecate in Mexico. They always said that they put the lime and salt on the can to disguise the rotten taste.”

  He waited for me to ask him what he was doing in Mexico, but I didn’t, so he told me anyway. “I was in Nuevo Leon looking for the aplomado falcon. It’s a lovely bird, very rare in the United States, but they still exist in Mexico. I was fortunate enough to find one.”

  The golden lights that came on in his pale eyes when he talked about the falcon were a rogue element in his bored face. He leaned forward enthusiastically, pulling back the sleeves of his Shetland sweater and revealing the frayed cuff of an Oxford cloth shirt. The collar, I happened to notice, was frayed, too. Maybe Cortland, like the Great Gatsby, had a cabinet full of shirts, only his collection was valued not for its beauty or silky fabrics but for the signs of wear and tear. Instead of picking the most elegant shirt for a particular occasion, he’d pick the shabbiest. Is this an occasion for a ripped sleeve or a frayed cuff? As the Kid asked me once, why do people in this country dress like they’re poor?

  “Your shirt is torn,” I said.

  “Really,” he looked down at the cuff. “That puts me in good company; so, I might add, are your jeans.”

  He had me on that one. My Levi’s were a little tattered around the edges. They’d been to Mexico, too, but at least real people wore Levi’s, or they used to before the price went up to thirty dollars a pair. The bartender showed up with my limes.

  “You’re positive I can’t interest you in a drink?” Cortland said.

  “Some other time, maybe.” I picked up the limes and prepared to go back to my room. That’s the kind of drinker I’d become.

  “I hope so.” He smiled. His expression had something other than birders’ camaraderie in it, but I couldn’t say what. If it was a pass, it was pretty half-hearted, but, except for exotic birds, half-hearted seemed to be Cortland James’s style. Maybe it went with the territory. There’s a mixture of arrogance and self-loathing that seems to be endemic at certain Eastern schools. Guys like that can’t even make a pass with conviction.

  “Good-bye,” I said.

  I went back to my room, fixed my drink and just as I was getting comfortable with it there was a knock at the door. “Yeah,” I opened it up. Avery was standing in the hallway, his eyes aglow as if he’d spent another night in the wilderness. He executed a happy little two-step when he saw me. “What a day we had,” he said, “what a day.”

  Now that I was set up for entertaining, I invited him in and offered him a drink which he declined—he had a natural high. “Did you go back to Freezeout?” I asked.

  “Sure did and we got a great look at the gyr. She’s a beauty. We saw her take a duck. She flies—zoom—fast and straight like that.” He made a dive-bombing motion with his hand. “I’d love to take you back there. I bet you never even got to see her the first time.”

  “You’re right about that.”

  “Let’s go before you leave. When are you leaving?”

  “Not till I get March out of jail I hope. I’m canceling my return discount fare. I called my office to tell them they can manage without me. How about you?”

  “Discount fares don’t mean a thing at my age. I might as well waste what’s left before my children do. Besides, I wouldn’t want to leave while March was still in prison. Have there been any breakthroughs?” He sat down lightly on the arm of the sofa bed.

  “There’s been a development. I don’t know whether I’d call it a breakthrough.”

  “Anything you can talk about?” He jumped back up.

  I thought about it. Betts’s sting operation would probably be all over the news tomorrow, so what difference would it make if I told Avery tonight? It would give me a bit of an edge with Betts to keep my silence, though, if only in my own mind. “You’ll hear about it soon enough. What have you come up with? Anything?”

  “Only that Pedersen was sleazy and dishonest and that nobody seemed to care whether he lived or died.”

  “Did you happen to hike up to the aerie while you were out there?” I asked, thinking about the black line that leads out of the rug.

  “John King wanted to, but Cortland talked him out of it.”

  “He would.”

  “Cortland comes from a very prominent family. Did you know that? His grandfather was a U.S. senator. His father is one of the most respected conservationists in the world, a tall, distinguished-looking gentleman. It’s a family that has quite a standard to maintain. I guess it’s made Cortland a bit of a stuffed shirt.”

  Prick might be more accurate.

  “Cortland used to be a ne’er-do-well. No one ever thought he would amount to much, traveling all over the world looking at birds as if he hadn’t quite found his niche in life.”

  One of those hobbies that the rich and bland went in for. “He can afford it and it seems to be something he cares about. Isn’t that enough?” I asked.

  “For most people it would be more
than enough, but in a family like that one is expected to do good works so his father made him the head of the Conservation Committee.”

  “Nice of Daddy to start him at the top.”

  “He was right about the aerie. You shouldn’t walk up to a bird’s nest because one predator will smell and follow another predator’s tracks. If the first predator doesn’t succeed, the next one probably will.”

  “There’s something I’m curious about, Avery. You’ve worked with falconers. What do you think of them?”

  “It’s a desire to connect with another species, with wild bloods, with nature. A songbird can be bought with a handful of sunflower seed, but even a trained hawk will always retain its fascinatingly remote essence. They are alien and they are stubborn. For myself I’m happy just to watch. When the Falcon Fund first reintroduced peregrines in Kentucky we had a pair that nested on Rolling Rock. Peregrines had always nested there before the DDT tragedy; it’s a perfect site, a high cliff with a lake below. Both of these falcons had been released elsewhere, but came there to nest. They had two young; unfortunately, before the young had fully fledged, the female was injured. She was found about ten miles from the nest with a damaged wing, and a farmer brought her in to us. We were able to heal the wing, but it took six weeks. In the meantime the male was making a valiant effort to feed the hungry young but then another female flew in. She wasn’t banded and we have no idea where she came from or how she found the male, except that the vegetation is lusher around the aeries, because it has been nitrogen-enriched by the excrement. She was very large and powerful so we named her Diana, the huntress. Di drove the fledglings from the nest and she wouldn’t let the male feed them anymore either. Although she didn’t attack them directly, they probably weren’t mature enough to survive on their own. We lost track of them, anyway.”