Dream of a Falling Eagle

brother. We don't want any of this to come back and bite us in the ass.'

'That's not going to happen, Detective.'

'The easiest way to handle this is not to file a report that the two of you were arrested at a crime scene shortly after a man was murdered. As far as we're concerned, you weren't there-and you haven't been here.'

'Garth and I hardly ever come to Spring Valley, and we don't even know where the police station is.'

'The report will state that an anonymous caller phoned in about the killing on nine-one-one. The caller also advised us to notify the FBI.'

'That's exactly the way it would have happened.'

'The FBIs will figure it was you and get in touch.'

'Or we'll call them when we get back to the city. Thanks, Detective.' I paused, scratched my head. 'Uh, there is one other little thing. When we were busted we were looking at a photograph placed on a voodoo altar down in Michel's basement. It could be important. Is there any way-'

'No, there isn't,' the detective replied curtly. 'You've obviously been working with the FBI. Get a copy from them.'

'You ever have occasion to work with the FBIs, Detective? If not, you're in for a very unpleasant education. They have the best crime labs and data bank in the world, but they must screen their field agents for a genetic predisposition to hating to share evidence or information. They're also hostile to private investigators in general, and us in particular, even though we're supposed to be working together.'

'I can't help you,' Beauvil said before abruptly turning and heading back into the station house.

Chapter 3

Although Garth and I had good reason to believe that everything I had told the Spring Valley police detective about the CIA's links to Haiti was gospel truth, the fact of the matter was that our hard evidence was even flimsier than I had indicated. Others, including a good number of the reasonable people who were our target audience, might fairly label the tale as being based on nothing more than rumor, gossip, and innuendo. That was the bad news. The good news was that our task was simply to prepare a report, not bring absolute proof into a court of law. We had enough evidence to mark out the beginning of a trail leading into a very dark swamp where poisonous things grew. The brutal, voodoo torture-murders of six of our potential key informers spoke for themselves. We would point the way, and then it would be up to congressional committees with subpoena powers to decide how deeply they wanted to wade into the Haitian nightmare. We were also dead certain that, for years, the CIA had been funneling its secret funds in Haiti to various right-wing organizations in the United States through a complex chain of dummy corporations that resembled a Tower of Babel. After months of work, we'd only begun to unravel that rotten skein, so the circumstantial evidence we did have would go into a separate appendix of our report, along with the rest of the rumors, gossip, and innuendo, which we'd call Suggestions for Further Inquiry.

Time does fly when you're having fun, and our time was just about up. Our report was due by the end of the month, in three weeks, so we were essentially done with our investigating. Now we had to collate the data we had compiled and shape it into usable form, then rev up the word processor and actually write the report. The document would be lengthy and, we hoped, a real attention-grabber. It was going to be a lot of work, and we had already waited too long to begin this final phase, but with luck, no distractions, and gallons of caffeine, we thought we could deliver the report before the deadline, which we had been pointedly told was a firm one.

Which was why I was down in my office on the first floor of our brownstone on West Fifty-sixth Street at five in the morning, calling up notes and numerical data on the computer and working on a first draft. Garth was still asleep up in his apartment on the third floor of the brownstone. My biggest distraction and the love of my life, Dr. Harper Rhys-Whitney, was away searching for new species of poisonous snakes in the Amazon Basin, and Garth's wife, the folksinger Mary Tree, was on a concert tour of Europe to promote her latest album. That left us free to eat junk food, sleep, and work until the job was finished. By then, Harper would be back. We planned to close up the shop for a month or two, and give my secretary, Francisco, a well-deserved paid vacation. Garth would join his wife on tour in Europe, and Harper and I would fly off to some as yet unspecified location that I hoped would be relatively snake-free. After wandering through CIA Ops insanity for well nigh six months, Garth and I needed a long rest, and a little loving to go along with it wasn't going to hurt at all.

At seven I turned on CNN to catch the early morning news, and I found the lead story very disturbing. A Supreme Court justice, Richard Weiner, had been killed in an automobile accident the night before while returning from a bar association dinner at which he had given a speech. Weiner was one of only two justices on the high court who could be described as a stalwart liberal on a court of constantly shifting alignments otherwise comprising three ultra-conservatives and four middle-of-the-roaders whose opinions, at best, were unpredictable on any given issue. From my point of view, Weiner's death was a severe blow to a country where liberal voices, especially those of people in power, were in increasingly dwindling supply. The balance, if it could be called that, of the Supreme Court was now seriously at risk. The sitting president, a moderate who occasionally suffered spasms of liberal thought and action, was fighting like hell to stay in the Oval Office, but not many people thought he could be reelected, and not a few thought his party might even dump him at their convention to be held in New York toward the end of the month. The country was burning with a kind of right-wing fever, and it was hard to find anybody, on the ubiquitous right-wing talk shows or on the stump, who seemed to think that the federal government was good for anything but building more bombers and prisons and providing care and feeding for big business and right-wing politicians. This president, of course, had plenty of time to select a nominee to fill Richard Weiner's seat, but serving up a name-any name- would be a futile gesture. The ultra-conservatives would block any nomination and bide their time until they could get their own man or woman in the presidency, and their own brand of Supreme Court justice, one virtually guaranteed to overturn, or vote to overturn, Roe v. Wade at the first opportunity. The president could nominate Thomas Jefferson, and it wouldn't make any difference; the ultra-right wing smelled blood in the water, and they wanted Genghis Khan. The news of Weiner's death was so depressing that I turned off the television.

At 8:45, Francisco, whom I hadn't even heard come in, knocked at the door, opened it, and stuck his head into my office. The Hispanic, who had worked for me now for almost a decade, was slightly built and not much taller than I was, and with his new 'look'- slicked-back hair and pencil-thin mustache-he resembled a pared-down version of Rudolph Valentino. 'Excuse me, sir. There's someone here who'd like to speak to you.'

'Who?'

Francisco must have seen the look of annoyance on my face, or heard it in my voice, because he winced slightly. 'He says his name is Thomas Dickens.'

'Francisco, I hope to hell you didn't give anybody an appointment.'

'No, sir. He doesn't have an appointment. I think he's on his way to work.'

'What does he want?'

'I don't know, sir. He said Lou Skalin recommended that he talk to you.'

'Tell him I can't do anything for him until the beginning of October, at the earliest. If his business can wait until then, give him an appointment. Otherwise, give him the names of some of our colleagues.'

'Yes, sir,' Francisco replied, and started to close the door.

'Hold it,' I said curtly, slapping my desk in exasperation and leaning back in my chair. Lou Skalin was head of the Fortune Society, a New York-based self-help organization of ex-convicts. Garth and I occasionally did pro bono work for them, and, in return, Skalin had often been an invaluable source of information on any number of matters. I liked the man, and I didn't want to offend him, even by proxy. 'Send Mr. Dickens in.'

'Yes, sir.'

I rose from my chair and started around my desk, then almost tripped over my feet in surprise when Thomas Dickens suddenly appeared in the doorway, blocking out the sun. The man was enormous, at least six feet five or six, and upwards of two hundred and fifty pounds, all bulging muscle. His nose appeared to have been broken so many times that it was now a puffy lump of cartilage and bent bone sitting like a ball of dough in the center of his face, which was covered with crude, purplish jailhouse tattoos. He was very big and very black. Except for his eyes,