Т Паркер - The Last Good Guy

“More people set off those scanners after getting X-rays from their doctor than from exposure in the plants I worked at,” said Burt. “You’d be surprised what they hit you with in a CT scan or dental X-rays.”

I watched the woman leave the hut and continue down a wide steep ramp leading to the Security Processing Facility building, a large structure at the north end of the station. Through the binoculars I scanned the concrete building, with its vehicle barriers set proactively out front, its steel double doors, the delay barriers topped with gleaming rolls of concertina wire, the anti-grenade-screen windows, and thousands of slender spikes sprouting from almost every surface of the roof on which a bird could land. In spite of the spikes, I noted three pigeons crowded into a bare corner of the security building.

Looming above it was a boxy sniper’s nest, perched atop four steel columns bolted to the concrete beneath. Its retractable stairs were folded up against the bottom. The nest had firing slots cut into both sides that I could see from this angle, and pods of floodlights rising on poles from the flat roof. Another uniformed SNR man, headset on and an M4 slung over his shoulder, slowly patrolled the perimeter catwalk, looking down. Gulls circled haphazardly over him, sharp-winged in the blue.

“Where did you serve, Burt?”

He lowered his binoculars and gave me one of his odd smiles. “Attached but not formal. I was too short, of course.”

“That’s funny.”

“It never hurt my success in business,” he said. “My height.”

“What business?”

“Various. Commercial fishing back in Alaska, where I was born. Beef in Kansas City. Later, Wall Street. That’s where your rent comes from each month. I worked for the PGA, too, mostly for the fun of it.”

“Law enforcement?”

“God, no.”

I didn’t want to quash Burt’s unusual candor, but I couldn’t resist. “Married, children?”

Burt lifted his field glasses to his eyes. “Roland, I value you. I value your genuine interest in me. What we did that night in the mountains made something rare of us. We have an unusual bond. Over time we might become close in a more conventional way. So I’ll tell you just one more thing, to save you time and trouble — though I suspect you’ve already wasted some time and had some trouble with me. I came to Burt Short late in life. When I rented a home from you. But there is no Burt Short in my past.”

Which tracked with all of the IvarDuggans.com, TLO, and Finders hours I’d logged, trying to snatch some truth about my new tenant from the multiverse of data rising daily into the cloud. Plenty of Burt Shorts. But scant information on my Burt Short — a recently issued California driver’s license with Apartment 5 at Rancho del los Robles as his home address, and a registration for his Cadillac Eldorado. No prior addresses, no criminal record, no known associates, no Social Security number. The more I looked, the less I found. No hits on their costly facial-recognition program, not even Burt’s picture on his CDL.

Until one small piece of luck that seemed warm to the touch: video of a man watching a table-tennis match in Atlanta in 1996. Why was I watching such a thing? Because Burt loved to play table tennis. Like I do. Because he’d once mentioned a restaurant in Atlanta that I’d been to more than once — a modern take on southern barbecue. Because I saw on my screen that the 1996 Atlanta games were listed as one of seven Olympiads since 1988 in which table tennis had been played. Because the Internet to a PI is a porchlight to a moth.

The BBC news clip of the men’s championship showed my Burt, ten rows back, in the audience. I plucked a frame of him. His image was out of focus and couldn’t be usefully enhanced. But I ran it through the facial-recognition program anyway. No match. Ran it again, same result.

I still think it was Burt. My Burt. The new Burt Short.

“I’ve known for a while that there’s no Burt Short in your past,” I said.

“Thank you for telling me now.”

“Did you watch the men’s final table tennis match in the Atlanta Olympics?” I asked. “About ten rows back?”

He lowered his binoculars again and studied me. “Ninth row. Liu Guoliang over Wang Tao.”

Two eventless hours later, a white pickup truck with a shell pulled up to the vehicle sally port. The door decal read:

“This should be fun,” Burt said. “In Finland we used Falco peregrinus . They’re popular for this kind of work.”

I looked up at the pale blue sky, misted by the Pacific. Saw gulls again circling lazily.

The guard opened the second sally gate and the truck bumped down the wide concrete road to the security building. RaptorLand Man got out. He was a husky, sun-darkened fellow, wearing cargo shorts, a shirt festooned with pockets, chukka boots with socks almost to his knees, and an Australian safari hat with the starboard flap snapped up.

He went through the first set of delay barriers, spoke into an intercom on a steel stanchion. Both barriers slid open and he walked past them and into the building.

He was out five minutes later, with what looked like a parking pass in one hand. Looked up at the sky while he waited for the barriers to open, then went back to his truck. Set the pass on the driver’s-side dash and went around to the back, where he lifted the shell gate and lowered the tailgate to expose the green raptor carrier inside.

RaptorLand Man lifted the carrier by its top handle and set it on the tailgate. He was talking to it. He looked up at the seagulls cruising low over the beach. I could see the raptor’s leash extending from a cutout at the bottom of the crate door. The crate was windowless, to keep the bird calm. Even captive-bred falcons retain their wild fears and behaviors. The man pulled a heavy-looking glove onto his left arm. It went almost to his elbow.

He held the leash in his glove, swung the door open with his right hand, and brought the hooded bird into the sunlight. It perched on his upraised forearm, curious but blinded by the hood. I recognized the rusty, black-barred breast and legs of the peregrine, a large falcon but not a large raptor — maybe twenty inches tall. Crow-sized. This was a female, much larger than the male. Its hood was Arab style, red leather with black eye patches. I wondered what her name was.

“ Falco peregrinus anatum,” said Burt. “They’re all over the West, from the Rockies to the coast. Some people call them duck hawks, but they’re not hawks at all.”

I don’t know much about falcons, but I do know that the peregrine is the fastest animal on earth. In a hunting stoop they fly more than 200 miles per hour. An alleged record speed of 242 miles per hour was reported by National Geographic . They tuck, dive, and club their prey midair with their claws clenched at those speeds, killing it or knocking it out. If the prey is small enough, the peregrine catches it, carries it to earth, and eats it. If it’s too large — peregrines kill birds much larger than themselves — they follow it down for dining. I’ve seen them hunting out on Point Loma; in a stoop, a peregrine looks like a small anvil dropped from above.

Burt and I stood next to the car for a better view. RaptorLand Man snugged a jess around each leg — down by the talons — then removed the leash. With the falcon on his raised arm, he started toward the middle of the plant, where the cooling pools were housed. Gulls circled haphazardly.

Halfway to that building, the man stopped, talked to the falcon for a moment, then unhooded her. She pivoted her head quickly, taking in this sudden new world with her shining black eyes. I wished I had eyes as strong as those. He released the jesses. The bird hunched, turned, and launched with a puff of downy feathers, wings slender and sharp. She flew low over the spent fuel casks until she almost reached the beach, then climbed and shrank into the blue.