The Falconer’s Tale. Gordon Kent

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СКАЧАТЬ 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.”

      Hackbutt didn’t get it. He looked as if he didn’t get it and he said so. Piat, his own arms folded now because he was cold, the early sun behind clouds that were piling over the whole sky, said, “You’re an authority on falconry. No, you are, Dig, don’t deny it. But you also love the birds. That love comes through in everything—when you handle them, when you talk about them. It’s great—it’s nice, it’s a good quality. It’s what makes you right for this project and it’s what would make the project easy for you. See—” He looked up where the sun should have been and saw only a bright smudge behind deepening gray. “The means to make contact with a certain guy is through falconry. He’s like you—he lives for the birds”. Piat hoped it was true. He could push invention only so far.

      “He flies them.”

      “Exactly.”

      “Is he an Arab?”

      That caught Piat off guard. It was an obvious leap—It was the guess on which he was building the tale—but not one he’d expected Hackbutt to make. “You’re getting ahead of me, man. What’s the rule—we find out when we need to know?”

      “Sorry.”

      “No, no—” He put his hand on Hackbutt’s arm and then let go. “It would be meeting this individual and talking birds with him, letting him get to know you a little. Then, if that goes well, then the powers that be maybe would make a bird available to you to give him or something. Then—”

      “What kind of bird?”

      “Well, I don’t know birds, Dig—”

      “Do I get to pick the bird? There are some fantastic birds out there, Jack, I’d give my left nut just to handle one of them! Is that the way it would work?”

      “That’s the way it could work, I guess. You’re the expert here, after all. Sure, I’d think you could maybe write your own ticket about that.” Would Partlow buy it? Did it matter?

      Hackbutt was hot-eyed. “There are some incredible birds out there! But Jeez, man, they cost thousands—I mean, big five figures!”

      Piat knew he was overstepping his bounds. Still, what the hell. “The US is the richest country in the world, Dig.”

      Hackbutt looked away, his mouth working. Was he calculating figures? Almost without voice, he muttered, “Wow,” and picked up the bucket. He unlatched a gate and then turned back. “I don’t want to seem mercenary, Jack, but—Irene’s installation, and everything—what kind of money are we talking? For me?”

      On firmer ground, Piat said, “Fifty thou?”

      Hackbutt’s lips moved: fifty.

      “If you score.”

      “God, I’d love to do that for Renie. God, that’d be great.”

      They went down the pens, feeding and handling birds, Piat lying back, letting Hackbutt think it over. They were heading for the farther pens where the older, trained birds were, and Hackbutt said as if out of nowhere, “Let’s trot it past Irene. I think it’s a fantastic opportunity. Incredible.” He beamed at Piat.

      A woman after her bath was always attractive to Piat. There was something about the skin, which seemed whiter, cooler, enormously tactile. If you added to this the baking of fresh bread, the appeal was overwhelming. He wanted to put her on the rug and go to it. Unfortunately, her husband was standing next to him.

      Irene smiled at him as if they had a secret. “Almost done,” she said. She was back in the day’s long-skirted dress, without jewelry, little makeup that he could see on her broad face. She was a fairly tall woman, not Rubenesque or heavy but strong. Vegetarianism hadn’t made her thin the way it had Hackbutt. “Surprised?’ she said.

      “The bread? I guess I am. I didn’t figure you to cook.” Piat was surprised.

      “I’m a damned good cook. I do great country ham and shit like that, or I used to.”

      “Bread smells fantastic.” He was laying it on too thick, but the smell of the bread—he pushed his mind back into the role of case officer.

      “Baking bread is an art.” She opened the oven, looked in, poked something. “Did you boys talk?”

      “We did. Now you two need to talk.” СКАЧАТЬ