Jeff Rovin - Vespers

“Or devoting your life to bats.”

“That too. But if you make a deal that gets you the vindication but costs you self-respect, it’s worse than a wash. You never know if you could have done it without the deal. Or if failing on your own would have been better.”

“Lowery,” Gentry said.

Joyce nodded. She felt tears behind her eyes.

“I’m sorry I started this,” Gentry said, “You don’t have to-”

“I want to.” She laughed and wept. “Hey, I’m crazy. Resentful one second, blubbering my heart out the next. But you did something not too many people do. You changed what you wanted to suit me. And then you trusted me with something very private. That gets to a girl faster than showing her your guano. Which, by the way, you never did.”

Gentry smiled.

“Yeah,” she sighed. “Professor Lowery. He was my mentor and he was my first lover.”

Gentry’s smile lost some of its glow.

“I fell for him big-time,” she went on. “He was curator of the museum back then, curator emeritus now. Loves research. Controlled experiments. I thought, when we started our affair, that he was trying to help me reach my potential. And part of him was. Then I started to suspect he was trying to work some kind of “thing” through me. Like Eliza Doolittle. Take an unlikely student-a moody, introspective kid not from a rich or proper family and make her the top figure in her field. Give her the tools, the tutoring, the experiences no one else has. Take her around the world and make sure her papers are published in all the right journals, even if you don’t agree with them.” She snickered. “We had a big argument over the question of whether bats have rudimentary emotions. But he got behind my paper anyway.”

“Because it wasn’t about science,” Gentry said. “None of this was.”

“No. You’re right. It was about ego. Make her a successful woman in a man’s profession and it’s your legacy.Your legacy, not hers. I went with the flow because I wanted to get where the river was going. And I was afraid to tell this towering figure, ‘Wait a second.’ But when you get there and look back, you realize that even though you know your stuff and may in fact be the best, you don’tfeel like it. So I’m a big shot in the bat world. A successful woman.The bat lady. But inside I’m Lowery’s girl. And the worst part of it is, I still kowtow. Which I guess you saw.”

“Yeah,” Gentry said. “The ‘Nannie’ was kind of a giveaway. But it’s not too late, you know.”

“To tell him off?”

“Not in a rude way,” Gentry said. “But you don’t have to be so deferential either. I think that hurts you. It’s also better than getting mad at everyone else you think might be trying to control you.”

“I don’t know if that’d solve things, Robert. Besides, part of the problem-the biggest part-is that I still care about Professor Lowery. I don’t love him and I’m not sure I ever did. But I don’t want to hurt him.”

They were quiet for a moment. Then Gentry shrugged a shoulder. “Well, this was none of my business to begin with. And I do want to thank you.”

“For what?”

“Trusting me,” he said.

“You’re welcome,” she said. “Now I think we’ve had enough soul baring. How about some music?”

She selected a tape at random and slugged it into the cassette player.

Two hours later, with the sun setting along the Catskills, with their life stories having been told, with the Association and Simon and Garfunkel and Gary Puckett and the Union Gap having turned through the player, Gentry and Joyce arrived in New Paltz.

Dr. Lipman’s practice was located in a series of rooms in the back of his country home.

The three-story stone house was more than one hundred years old, situated near the Walkill River on seven thickly treed acres. The pediatrician had just begun examining his last patient when Joyce and Gentry pulled up the long, sloping gravel driveway. A young male receptionist invited them to sit in the waiting room, but they chose to go outside, behind the house. The quiet there was nearly absolute. The canopy of leaves was thick and the rolling grounds were dark. The river moved quietly around a bend, the surface rippling with the last glow of the dying sun. It was like a fairy tale forest, Joyce thought. And unlike the night before-she was happy to note-there were insects and unobtrusive bats.

“It’s weird how the bats are behaving themselves,” Gentry said.

“Very.”

“It reminds me of kids who used to get strung out. As long as they had their fix they were fine.”

“I’d guess any addictive substance is like that,” Joyce said. “Nicotine, alcohol.”

Gentry picked up a stick and started peeling away the bark. “We could have a very serious problem on our hands, couldn’t we?”

She nodded.

“How do you exterminate bats?”

“I’ve never had to do it,” she said, “but I’d say poison or gas. The problem with the New York subways is that there are probably so many outlets, so many places the bats could sneak out. And it’s not like rats where you can put out poison pellets. If these bats are all insectivorous, you’d have to poison the bugs first. I don’t even know if that’s possible. Then there’s our giant bat. If it exists, it would probably be very fast and powerful.”

“It’s powerful, all right,” Gentry said.

She gave him a look.

“Remember those hatch marks on the grate at Grand Central?” he said. “If there’s a big bat, it may have left hanging upside down.”

“Bats do that.”

“Yeah, but like you said, holding up that much weight would take a lot of muscle.”

“It would,” Joyce agreed, “though it also could have been crawling along the roof using its feet and first fingers. Those are the ones located at the top of each wing. Which makes sense,” she added. “The bat would have fed, crawled back into the tunnel, and left the guano mound after that. It’s digestive system would have been stimulated after flying and eating.”

When they heard a car pull away they walked back to the office. When they entered, Dr. Lipman was talking to his receptionist.

“Be with you two in a minute,” he said pleasantly.

Andy Lipman looked as though he was in his early sixties. He was chunky and stood about five-foot-seven. He had a round face, a wide mouth, and lively eyes beneath thick brown eyebrows. His skin was dark from the sun, and he was bald save for a ring of short, light-brown hair. He had on a red bow tie, a white shirt, and jeans that were a little snug in the waist.

Lipman thanked the receptionist, told him to go home, then walked across the waiting room. He offered his hand.

“When you called,” he said to Joyce, “I didn’t realize you were Dr. Joyce of the Bronx Zoo. I took the liberty of having Warren look you up on the Net. You’ve published a great deal.”

“Yes, sir.”

“I always talk to my kids when they come in here,” he said. “Ask them what they’ve been doing. A couple of them have come in talking about the tours they had with the ‘bat lady.’ ”

“That’s me,” she said.

Lipman’s eyes shifted to Gentry.

“Detective Robert Gentry,” he said, “NYPD.”

“Pleased to meet you. And also curious.” He motioned toward a well-worn couch. “Sit down. Tell me what I can do for you.”

Joyce sat. Gentry remained standing. Lipman slipped into an armchair at a right angle to the sofa.

“Doctor,” said Joyce, “did you hear about the bat attack last night at the Little League game?”

“I did.”

“There have been several incidents like that over the past few days,” Joyce said. “The first was in New Paltz several days ago. The latest was this morning in New York-deadlier than all the others, I’m afraid.”