Dream of a Falling Eagle

has ever produced. You and your liberal pals have cooked up some half-baked scheme to make him look bad just because he's written and published some poetry. You found out he used a pen name, and so you went out and found some black ex-convict to say he actually wrote them, and that Bill copied his work. Then you phonied up some old poetry magazines to back you up. You're planning to try to embarrass him and damage his reputation with this story.'

'Your good friend Bill told you this?'

'He didn't have to. I'm not as naive as some people in this country, and I know what you're up to. I don't care what proof you say you have; I know this Thomas Dickens didn't write those poems of Bill's.'

'And just what makes you so sure of that, Mr. Mackintosh?'

'Anybody with a lick of sense knows niggers can't write good poetry.'

Ah. There went the last traces of my sympathy for the aged movie star with the bad toupee, and I wondered how much different his views could have been even before plaque had begun seizing up his brain cells. His statement left me not quite speechless. I sighed, shook my head, and said, 'You are a clever old fox to figure that out.'

'This man's a hero, Frederickson. The country is just starting to get on the right track after you liberals damn near destroyed it. The country needs his leadership, and friends of his are not going to stand idly by while people like you try to sully his name.'

'You talk like he's going to run for president. Wouldn't that be a hoot.'

'Two hundred thousand dollars, Frederickson. That's the absolute limit of what a group of people I represent are prepared to offer you to make this business go away. In return, you and your nigger partner will declare in writing that this slander about Bill copying the poems isn't true, and you pledge not to try to smear Bill, whether or not he decides to campaign for the presidency. Have we got a deal? You write up the letter, and I'll cut you a check right now.'

'Don't you think I should consult with my partner in crime?'

'What nigger garbageman is going to turn down a hundred grand? You can probably give him ten or fifteen, and he'll be happy as a pig in shit. You can keep the rest for yourself.'

Try as hard as I might, I just couldn't work up any kind of real mad at Taylor Mackintosh; the famous movie star was now just a deranged old man who had lived long enough to make a total fool out of himself. What I found profoundly puzzling was the question of why William P. Kranes would confide in such a man, one who could prove profoundly embarrassing to Kranes as well as to himself. If Kranes didn't trust me and wanted to risk blowing himself out of the water by using somebody like Mackintosh as a front man, that was his business, but I wasn't going to be any part of it. And I was going to continue to try to shield my satisfied client, who had never even asked if Jefferson Kelly was the plagiarist's real name, and who had indeed refused the 'honorarium,' which had been returned to Kranes by certified check, along with my bill.

'Look, Mr. Mackintosh,' I said quietly. 'You've wandered onto the wrong movie set here. The script you think you're following just doesn't exist. There's no plot to embarrass or smear anyone. The problem you're referring to, if there ever was such a problem, has been successfully resolved.'

'You expect me to believe that? Do I look like a fool?'

'I don't give turkey shit what you believe,' I replied, my patience beginning to wear a bit thin, 'and what you look like is between you and your mirror. For the life of me, I can't understand why your good friend Bill discussed this with you-he must be even stupider than I thought. But I will guarantee you this: he will not want you discussing this with anyone else, and he won't be your good friend much longer if you do. You should just forget the whole thing. That's the only free advice I'm giving out today.'

'How much money do you want, dwarf?!'

'Cut!' I snapped, leaping up from my chair and jabbing a finger in the direction of the door as I stifled an impulse to burst out laughing. 'Get the fuck out of my office before I throw you out! You used the D word!'

His head snapped back and he retreated a step, obviously startled. I made a shuffling motion as if I was coming around from behind my desk, and he scurried backward, almost tripping over his feet. When he had reached the open door, he turned back, his seamed, leathery face twisted into an ugly mask of rage. 'I can destroy you, dwarf!'

'There's the D word again! Get!'

He got. I instructed Francisco not to even tell me the next time somebody showed up wanting an audience, and I went back to work.

I worked through the lunch hour, then skipped downtown to pick up our Freedom of Information documents, which had finally arrived. About 80 percent of every single page was blacked out, which we had anticipated, and which was fine with me. Garth and I didn't have time to fully analyze the information anyway, and all those blacked-out pages were going to look good in an appendix; Congress could decide for itself how badly it wanted to find out what was hidden beneath all that inky darkness. I grabbed a hot dog and coffee from a Sabrett vendor, and had just finished eating when my beeper went off. It was Garth. I walked to a pay phone at the corner and called the office. Garth answered. 'Yo.'

'Mongo,' Garth said in a soft voice that was tinged with sadness. 'Meet me at the southwest corner of the Sheep Meadow.'

'What's up?'

'Moby's dead. Somebody blinded him, sliced off his tongue, and cut out his heart. Henry called me. The police found your card in his pocket, and they want to talk to us.'

Garth and I stood in silence at the edge of a copse of trees in Central Park, just inside a drooping band of yellow police tape, staring at the mutilated body of Moby Dickens. There was no blood on the grass, which, considering all the brutal surgery that had been performed on him, meant he had been slaughtered elsewhere and his body dumped here, where it was certain to be discovered at dawn by some birder, walker, or jogger. Moby Dickens wasn't Haitian, probably didn't know much of anything about Haiti, and couldn't have cared less about the CIA. His murder was apparently intended to send a personal message. To us.

'Jesus, Garth,' I said, my voice cracking as tears rolled down my cheeks. 'I gave him up. I did exactly what he didn't want anybody to do, which was to identify and describe him. I gave up his name, race, and occupation. I betrayed a client, and I might as well have painted a target on his back.'

'You didn't kill him, Mongo,' Garth said, putting an arm around my shoulders and drawing me closer to him.

'Oh yes, I did,' I sobbed.

'What you did was a judgment call. You told Kranes about him in order to drive home a point. I'd have done exactly the same thing if I'd gone down there.'

'Garth, I'm going to find and kill the sons of bitches who did this.'

'What's going on, guys?'

I quickly wiped my eyes and put on a pair of sunglasses I'd brought with me before I turned to Henry Stamp, the NYPD detective who'd called Garth. Stamp was a stubby man with a wrinkled face and expressive green eyes that had remained burnished with kindness despite twenty-five years with the police, and all the things he had seen during that time. He was a good man, and both Garth and I liked him very much.

'His name is Thomas Dickens,' I said to the detective in a voice that still cracked slightly. I cleared my throat. 'He's a poet.'

Henry Stamp turned to look at the naked, mutilated, heavily tattooed body lying on the grass at the edge of the trees. 'A poet,' he repeated in a flat tone.

'He also worked for the Sanitation Department. He's got an apartment down in the East Village.'

'We know his name and address, Mongo. It was in his wallet, along with seventy-three bucks in cash. Your business card was in his pocket, and we were hoping you could shed some light. Obviously, robbery wasn't the motive. Somebody really took their time and did a number on this guy, then dumped him here. We're still looking, but we haven't found his heart. Whoever took it out must have left it where they killed him.'

'They took it with them.'

'How do you know that?'

'We've seen this kind of killing before. This is the seventh victim of a kind of voodoo hit squad that's been