George Chesbro - Dream of a Falling Eagle

Garth entered the office in late afternoon. He was carrying a large manila envelope which he was in the process of opening. "Just arrived by messenger," he said, tearing open the envelope. "Figured we'd check it out together."

I watched as he spread the edges of the envelope and peered inside. "Well?"

His answer was to take out the contents and hand them to me. They were two enlarged copies of photographs. One was a duplicate of the head-and-shoulders shot of the triangular-faced man with the piercing eyes that had been displayed on the altar in the basement of General Vilair Michel's house, and the other was a wide-angle shot of the altar itself, as it had appeared when we'd first discovered it. A note clipped to one of the photos read:

Good hunting. Hope you nail the bastards.

Carl Beauvil

"Voila, " I said, glancing back up at Garth.

"Yeah," Garth replied with a shrug. "Nice of Beauvil to come through for us like this, but we probably should have told him that our curiosity was a lot bigger than our capacity to try to do anything with this stuff. We've got no time to try to track down this guy. We've got all we can do to organize and tie together the information we've already got."

"You're right," I said, reluctantly tossing the photographs onto my desk.

"Let's go get something to eat."

"I figured I'd have Francisco call out for a pizza before he goes home."

Garth shook his head, then grabbed the front of my shirt and pulled me up out of my chair. "Come on. I'll buy you a steak. We both need a break. There's nothing our company friends would like better than for one or the both of us to keel over from exhaustion and malnutrition before we can finish this thing."

"In that case, I'll take you up on your offer of a steak. But only for medicinal purposes."

Over drinks and dinner we discussed literary strategy, the actual form of our report, and the order of its contents. I wanted to start off with what I considered the good stuff, offering up front a lurid account of the voodoo-style ritual murders that had thwarted our interrogation of six key witnesses to CIA-sponsored atrocities in Haiti and elsewhere. Garth was against that approach, pointing out that we could prove no link whatsoever between the voodoo hit squad and the CIA, and arguing that such an approach would only give the CIA's allies an opportunity to start shouting "preposterous" and "sensationalism" at the outset, charging that we were not serious people if we were willing to make such unsubstantiated charges, and therefore nothing we had to say could be trusted. Calling the meeting to order with entrails, he argued, would only serve to undermine the scant and precious hard proof we did have.

My resistance was feeble, because I knew all along he was right. We agreed we would start with a brief and dry introduction, vaguely outlining what we hoped to show, then immediately offer up our hard data, progressively working our way through the anecdotal portions of our investigation results where the leads were tantalizing but the evidence as yet unsubstantiated, awaiting the attention of congressional committees with subpoena powers, and then give them a boffo ending, serving up the blood and gore in an appendix, nicely bracketed by financial charts and tables listing all the suspected dummy corporations that were bastard children of the CIA.

When we arrived back at the brownstone I was startled to see a very well-known figure sitting on our stoop, casually smoking a cigarette. Lucas Tremayne was the Academy Award-winning writer and director of one of the highest-grossing films of the past decade, and a very high-profile social activist. The lean, handsome man with the graying crew cut was anything but a Hollywood type. He was rarely seen in public, and when he was it was usually because he was lending his celebrity to promote one of his favorite causes, such as increased funding for AIDS research, or some charity event. In the news clips and photos I had seen of him, he was usually dressed as he was now, in faded jeans, soft leather boots, denim shirt, and Mets baseball cap.

Garth appeared slightly unsettled but not surprised at the film director's presence. "Hello, Lucas," my brother said as the man ground out his cigarette and stood up.

"Good to see you, Garth," Tremayne said, stepping down onto the sidewalk and shaking my brother's hand. "Now I know where you've been hiding out for the past few months."

"Lucas Tremayne, this is my brother, Mongo."

"A pleasure," the director said, extending his hand and removing his cap. In the glow from the streetlight I could see that his gray eyes almost perfectly matched his hair, and his smile was easy and friendly. "I've heard a great deal about you."

"Likewise, and likewise."

Garth said, "Lucas is a friend and neighbor."

Lucas Tremayne released my hand, then turned to my brother. When he spoke again, there was a slightly accusatory tone to his voice. "I haven't seen you around Cairn in a while."

Garth shrugged. "Yeah, well, Mary's been off on an extended tour promoting her new album, so I've been staying here at the brownstone to save myself the commute."

"I've been keeping an eye on your house."

"I appreciate that, Lucas."

"I also notice that the Cairn police have been patrolling past there pretty often. I guess they know the house is empty most of the time."

Garth merely shrugged again. He seemed increasingly uncomfortable, as if he knew Tremayne was leading up to something he didn't want to talk about.

"Garth, can I have a few words with you?"

"Of course," my brother said, motioning for Tremayne to precede us up the steps. "Come on up to my apartment and we'll have a drink."

I walked up the stairs after the two men, and when we reached the door to Garth's apartment on the third-floor landing I paused and held out my hand to the film director. "I'll say good night, folks. Lucas, keep up the good work."

"Mongo, I'd like to talk to you too."

"Sure," I said, and followed him in as Garth held the door open.

We went into the living room. Tremayne and I sat at opposite ends of the sofa while Garth made drinks at the bar and brought them to us. Tremayne set his aside untouched. "I was talking to Carl Beauvil this afternoon, Garth," he said quietly. The vaguely accusatory tone had returned to his voice. "We were together at a fund-raising event for Haitian refugees. He told me what happened in Spring Valley, and he told me what the two of you are up to."

Garth grunted. "That detective certainly is a talkative chap. The last thing he mentioned to us was that we shouldn't even admit to ever being in Spring Valley, much less discuss what happened while we were there."

"Carl is Haitian, you know," Tremayne said, turning to me and fixing me with his gray eyes. His expression was now somber.

"I'd assumed as much."

"He and I go back a ways, ever since I moved to Cairn with my family a few years ago. We've worked together closely on a number of projects. He trusts me, which is why he told me what he did. He knows what he said would be held in confidence. He didn't know your brother and I are friends. What you told him disturbed him a great deal."

Garth turned in his chair to look at me. "Lucas is extremely active in the Haitian community on behalf of refugees, Mongo. He lends his name and prestige to their cause. He's also a noted collector of Haitian art."

"I see," I said in a neutral tone. I was beginning to understand why the film director's sudden appearance on our stoop had made my brother uncomfortable.

Tremayne cleared his throat, leaned forward with his elbows on his knees, and clasped his hands together. "Garth, Carl tells me you and Mongo have been working on this Haiti investigation for months. I can't believe you didn't mention it to me."