One of the men was tall and wore sunglasses and a ski jacket. The other was darker and had a mark on his face. The men unrolled a long piece of cord and measured a distance from the side of the barn out into the feedlot. The woman set up a surveyor’s transit and the tall man sighted through it while the dark one made marks on the barn wall with paint. The three gathered around a clipboard, gesturing with their arms.
Logan stepped out of the woods. The swarthy one saw him first and said something Logan couldn’t hear.
“What are you folks doing out here?”
“Hello,” the woman said, smiling.
“Have you got any company identification?”
“We’re not with the company,” the taller man said.
“This is private property. You’re not allowed out here. That’s what I’m out here for, to keep people off.”
“We just wanted to take a few pictures,” the tall man said.
“There ain’t nothing to take pictures of out here,” Logan said suspiciously.
“Oh, yes, there is,” the woman said. “Me.” She licked her lips.
“We’re shooting a cover for what you might call a private kind of magazine—you know, a daring sort of magazine?”
“You talking about a nudie book?”
“We prefer to call it a naturist publication,” the tall man said. “You can’t do this sort of thing just anywhere.”
“I might get arrested,” the woman said, laughing. She was a looker all right.
“It’s too cold for that stuff,” Logan said.
“We’re going to call the picture ‘Goose Bumps.’ ”
Meanwhile, the swarthy one was unrolling a spool of wire from the tripod to the trees.
“Don’t you fool with me now. I don’t know anything about this. The office never said anything to me about letting anybody in here. You’d better go on back where you came from.”
“Do you want to make fifty dollars helping us? It will only take a half hour and we’ll be gone,” the tall man said.
Logan considered a moment. “Well, I won’t take off my clothes.”
“You won’t have to. Is there anyone else around here?”
“No. Nobody for miles.”
“We’ll manage just fine then.” The man was holding out fifty dollars. “Does my hand offend you?”
“No, no.”
“Why are you staring at it then?” The woman shifted uncomfortably beside the tall man.
“I didn’t mean to,” Logan said. He could see his reflection in the man’s sunglasses.
“You two get the big camera from the plane, and this gentleman and I will get things ready.” The swarthy man and the woman disappeared into the woods.
“What’s your name?”
“Logan.”
“All right, Mr. Logan, if you’ll get a couple of boards and put them down in the grass right here at the center of the barn wall for the lady to stand on.”
“Do what?”
“Put some boards there, right in the middle. The ground is cold and we want her feet up out of the grass where they will show. Some people like feet.”
While Logan found the boards, the tall man removed the transit and fastened a peculiar-looking curved object to the tripod. He turned and called to Logan. “No, no. One board on top of the other.” He made a frame with his hands and squinted through it. “Now stand on it and let me see if it’s right. Hold it right there. Don’t move. Here they come with the viewfinder.” The tall man disappeared into the trees.
Logan reached up to scratch his head. For an instant his brain registered the blinding flash, but he never heard the roar. Twenty darts shredded him and the blast slammed him back against the barn wall.
Lander, Fasil, and Dahlia came running through the smoke.
“Ground meat,” Fasil said. They turned the slack body over and examined the back. Rapidly, they took pictures of the barn wall. It was bowed in and looked like a giant colander. Lander went inside the barn. Hundreds of small holes in the wall admitted points of light that freckled him as his camera clicked and clicked again.
“Very successful,” Fasil said.
They dragged the body into the barn, sloshed gasoline over it and over the dry wood around it, and poured a trail of gasoline out the door for twenty yards. The fire flashed inside and lit the pools of gas with a whump they felt on their faces.
Black smoke rose from the barn as the Cessna climbed out of sight.
“How did you find that place?” Fasil asked, leaning forward from the rear seat to be heard over the engine noise.
“I was hunting dynamite last summer,” Lander said.
“Do you think the authorities will come soon?”
“I doubt it. They blast there all the time.”
16
EDDIE STILES SAT BY THE window in the New York City Aquarium snack bar worrying. From his table he could see Rachel Bauman below him and forty yards away at the rail of the penguin pen. It was not Rachel Bauman who disturbed him; it was the two men standing with her. Stiles did not like their looks at all. The one on her left looked like Man Mountain Dean. The other one was a little smaller, but worse. He had the easy, economical movements and the balance that Eddie had learned to fear. The predators in Eddie’s world had moved that way. The expensive ones. Very different from the muscle the shylocks employed, the blocky hard guys with their weight on their heels.
Eddie did not like the way this man’s eyes swept over the high places, the roof of the shark house, the fences on the dunes between the Aquarium and the Coney Island board-walk. One slow sweep and then the man quartered the grounds going over it minutely, infantry style, from close to far, and all the time wagging his finger over an interested penguin’s head.
Eddie was sorry he had chosen this place to meet. On a weekday the crowd was not big enough to give him that comfortable, anonymous feeling.
He had Dr. Bauman’s word that he would not be involved. She had never lied to him. His life, the life he was trying to build, was based on what he had learned about himself with Dr. Bauman’s help. If that was not true, then nothing was true. He drained his coffee cup and walked quickly down the stairs and around to the whale tank. He could hear the whale blowing before he reached the tank. It was a forty-foot female killer whale, elegant with her gleaming black and white markings. A show was under way. A young man stood on a platform over the water holding up a fish in the pale winter sunshine. The surface of the water bulged in a line across the pool as beneath the surface the whale came like a black locomotive. She cannoned vertically out of the water and her great length seemed to hang in the air as she took the fish in her triangular teeth.
Eddie heard the applause behind him as he went down the steps to the underground gallery with its big plate-glass windows. The room was dim and damp, lit by the sun shining down through the blue-green water of the whale tank. Eddie looked into the tank. The whale was moving over the light-dappled bottom, rolling over and over, chewing. Three families came down the stairs and joined him. They all had loud children.
“Daddy, I can’t see.”
The father hoisted the boy to his shoulders, bumping his head on the ceiling, then took him outside squalling.
“Hi, Eddie,” Rachel said.
Her two companions stood on the far side of her, away from Eddie. That was good manners, Eddie thought. Goons would have come up on either side. Cops would have, too. “Hello, Dr. Bauman.” His eyes flicked over her shoulder.
“Eddie, this is David and this is Robert.”
“Pleased to make your acquaintance.” Eddie shook their hands. The big one had a piece under his left arm, no doubt about it. Maybe the other guy had one too, but the coat fit better. This David. Enlarged knuckles on the first two fingers and the edge of his hand like a wood rasp. He didn’t get that learning to yo-yo. Dr. Bauman was a very wise and understanding woman, but there were some things she did not know about, Eddie thought. “Dr. Bauman, I’d like to talk to you a second, uh, personal if you don’t mind.”