The Wolfen (10 page)

Ferguson shook his head. “It’s difficult but not out of the question. And if you two are right about being followed all the way from the Bronx our specimens are quite capable of doing it.”

“So let’s sum up. We can’t get rid of our odors. We can’t neutralize their noses without getting a hell of a lot closer than we want to be. Is there any other bad news?”

“Is he always this acerbic, Miss Neff?”

“It’s Mrs. And the answer is ‘yes.’ ”

Ferguson held his eyes on her a moment, as if to ask something more. She stared right back at him. In an instant he looked away, faintly confused by the challenge. Becky did not like men to strip her with their eyes, and when they did she stripped right back. Some it turned on, some it frightened, some it angered. She really didn’t care how they reacted, although from the way Ferguson both crossed his legs and brushed his hand along his cheek it looked as if he had been turned on and frightened at the same time. He was scared of a lot of things, this scientist. His face was powerful, only the eyes giving away the inner man. Yet there was also something else about him—a sort of buried competence that Becky felt was a positive factor in his makeup. He must be very professional and very smart. Too bad, it probably meant he was giving them the best information they were going to get

“I wonder what it’s like,” Wilson said, “to have a sense of smell like that.”

Ferguson brightened. “I’ve been extremely interested in that, Lieutenant. I think I can give you something of an idea. Canine intelligence is of intense interest to me. We’ve studied dogs here at the museum.”

“And cats.”

Becky winced. The Museum of Natural History had been embroiled in a violent controversy about some experiments using live cats, which Wilson naturally brought up.

“That’s irrelevant,” Ferguson said quickly, “another department. I’m in exhibits. My work on dogs ended in 1974 when the Federal money ran out. But up to then we were making great strides. I worked very closely with Tom Rilker.” He raised his eyebrows. “Rilker’s a hell of a dog man. We were trying to breed increased sensitivity to certain odors. Drugs, weapons—bred right in, no training needed.”

“Did you succeed?”

He smiled. “A secret. Classified information, compliments of Uncle Sam. Sadly enough, I cannot even publish a paper on it.”

“You were telling us about canine intelligence.”

“Right. Well, I think dogs know a lot more about the human world than we do about theirs. The reason is that their sensory input is so different. Smell, sound—those are their primary senses. Sight is a distant third. For example, if you put on a friend’s clothes your dog won’t recognize you until you speak. Then he’ll be confused. The same way if you take a bath and walk out naked without talking your dog won’t know who, or necessarily what, you are. He’ll see a shape moving, smell the water. He might attack. Then when he hears your voice he’ll be very relieved. Dogs can’t stand the unknown, the unfamiliar. They have a tremendous amount of information pouring in through their noses and ears. Under certain circumstances it’s more than they can handle. For example, a bloodhound will get completely exhausted on a track long before he would if he was just running free. It’s psychic exhaustion. Generally the more intelligent the dog, the more all this data coming through the nose means. To a wolf, for example, it all means much more than to a dog.”

“A wolf?”

“Sure. They’re much more intelligent and more sensitive than dogs. A good bloodhound might have a nose a hundred million times more sensitive than a human nose. A wolf would be two hundred million times more sensitive. And wolves are correspondingly more intelligent, to handle the data. But even so there’s a tremendous richness of data, more than their minds can possibly assimilate.”

Wilson moved from his spot by the door and picked up the plaster paw model. “Is this closer to a wolf or a dog?”

“A wolf, I’d say. Actually it does look more like the paw of a giant wolf—except for those extended toes. The toes are really wonderful. A marvelous evolution. They are beyond canine, as I understand the genus. That’s why I keep asking you for a head. I just can’t do more with this thing unless I get more of the body. It’s too new, too extraordinary. Right now whatever made those pawprints is outside of science. That’s why I’m asking for more.”

“We can’t give you more, Doctor,” Becky said, it seemed for the hundredth time. “You know the trouble we’re in. We’d be lucky even to get a picture.”

“We wouldn’t, and live,” Wilson put in. “These things are too vicious for that.”

He signaled Becky with his eyes. He wanted to get moving. Since night had fallen Wilson had kept on the move. Officially they were on an eight-to-four, but neither of them was recognizing duty hours right now. They had been cut loose from their division, their squad, their block and put on this thing alone. Nobody was marking their names on a blotter. Nobody was counting their presence or giving them calls.

They were on the case because the Chief felt there was a remote chance that something unusual was indeed happening. Not enough to really do anything about, just enough to keep the wheels turning very, very slowly. Which meant a single team, alone, digging as best they could. And being available as scapegoats—if needed.

“We ought to go,” Becky said to Ferguson. “Wë figure our best bet is to keep on the move.”

“You’re probably right.”

Wilson stared at him. “Sorry about the way we came in. No other way to reach you, the museum was closed.”

Ferguson smiled. “What if I hadn’t been here?”

“No chance. You’re really running after this. It’s got under your skin. I knew you’d be here.”

Ferguson walked with them through the dim corridors, to a side door where a single guard nodded under a small light. “I’m leaving with you,” he said. “I haven’t had a bite to eat since lunch and I don’t think I can accomplish anything just sitting and staring at that paw.”

Their feet crunched in the snow as they crossed the quiet grounds of the museum. Becky could see their car on Seventy-seventh Street where they had left it, now covered with a dusting of snow. They had perhaps twenty yards to walk up a disused driveway before they reached the safety of the car. Nothing seemed to be moving among the shadows of the trees that surrounded the museum, and there were no tracks visible in the new snow. The wind was blowing softly, adding the crackle of bare limbs to the hiss of the falling snow. The clouds hung low, reflecting the light of the city and covering everything with a green glow stronger than moonlight. Even so, the trip to the car seemed long. By the position of his hand Becky knew Wilson felt the same way: he was touching the butt of the pistol he kept holstered under his jacket.

As they reached the car Ferguson turned, saying he was going to take the Number 10 bus up Central Park West to his apartment. They let him go.

“I wonder if we should have done that,” Becky said as she started the car.

“What?”

“Let him go off on his own. We have no way of knowing how much danger he’s in. If they were watching us, they saw us with him. What would that mean to them? Kill him too, maybe? I think he’s in more danger than he knows.”

“Get moving. Put on the damn radio. Let’s listen to the traffic.”

“You handle the radio, man, you’re not doing anything else.”

He flipped it on and settled with his knee against the dash. “It’s too cold for junkies on the streets, it’ll be a quiet night.”

They listened to a rookie call and immediately cancel a signal 13 at Seventy-second and Amsterdam. But you can’t cancel an assist officer call just like that. Guys would move in on him anyway and then rib him about it later. “What made him jump, you suppose?” Wilson asked. He didn’t really expect an answer and Becky didn’t talk. Who the hell cared about some rookie and his erroneous 13. Becky headed the car east across Central Park on the Seventy-ninth Street transverse. She was heading toward a Chinese restaurant in her home neighborhood the other side of the park. She wasn’t particularly hungry, but they had to eat. And what they would do after that, how they would pass the night she had no idea. And what about the days and nights to come, what about the future?

“What the hell are they going to do about us?”

“Do, Becky? Not a damn thing. They’re just gonna leave us hanging on this here string. Hey, where’re you going—you live over here, don’t you?”

“Don’t get your hopes up, I’m not taking you to my place. We’re going to stop for a little supper. We need to eat, remember.”

“Yeah. Anyway, the brass isn’t going to do a damn thing about us. They’re too busy pushing paper and worrying—who has this division, who has that precinct, who’s moving up, who’s getting flopped. That’s their whole career, that and figuring who has the biggest hook, who is the biggest hook for that matter. You know that’s what they do. That’s about it in Commissioner country.”

“Bitter boy. I think maybe Underwood actually thinks we belong on the case. He respects us.”

“Who belongs on a closed case? Oh Jesus, Becky, this is a Szechwan restaurant—I can’t eat here.”

She double-parked the car and pulled out the key. “You can eat here. Just ask them to hold the hot sauce on your chow mein.”

“I can’t even get Goddamn chow mein in a place like this,” he sulked.

She got out of the car and he followed reluctantly. They entered the dimly lit restaurant knocking snow off their clothes. “Getting heavier?” the coat-check girl asked.

“Heavier,” Wilson said. “Becky, this place is going to cost a fortune. It’s got a hatcheck girl. I never eat in places with hatcheck girls.” He followed her into the restaurant still complaining, but he subsided into subvocal grumbling when he received the menu. She could see the gears turning over as he calculated whether he could eat for less than two dollars.

“I’ll order for both of us since I’ve been here before,” she said, taking his menu. “I’ll get you out for five bucks.”

“Five!”

“Maybe six. I hope you’re not too hungry though, because it’ll only be one dish.”

“What?”

The waiter came. She ordered prawns in garlic sauce for Wilson and Chicken Tang for herself. At least she would enjoy what could easily be her last meal. But she stopped that line of thought—you think that way, it happens. She also ordered a drink, and Wilson got beer. “A buck for a Bud,” he muttered. “Goddamn Chinks.”

“Come on, relax. You’ll enjoy the food. Let’s talk about it.”

“What Ferguson said?”

“What he said. What ideas did it give you?”

“We could set up living quarters in Evans’s meat locker.”

“It gave me a better idea than that. It’s something I think we’ve got to do if we’re going to survive. Obviously it’s only a matter of time before our friends see their chance and move in. Sooner or later the two of us are going to join DiFalco and Houlihan. Then the department will wade into this thing all the way. But it won’t make a damn bit of difference to us.”

“Insufficient evidence, that’s what’s got the wheels gummed up. We have provided theories, hearsay, suppositions and a funny-looking piece of plaster of Paris made by Doctor Whozis.”

“So why not provide photographs. Pictures. It’s not a cadaver but it sure would improve our case.”

“How do you photograph what you never see? If there’s light enough for a picture there’s too much light. These things won’t get close to us in light Although we could use infrared equipment. Special Services could probably give us the loan of a scope. But it’s bulky stuff—hard to handle.”

“I’ve got a better idea. Narcotics has
been experimenting with computerized image intensification equipment, stuff
developed during the Vietnam war. We can get a really super picture even in
total darkness with it. Dick’s unit’s been using it experimentally.”

“What’s involved, a support truck or something?”

“Not at all. The whole thing looks like an oversize pair of binoculars. Camera’s built in. You just look through the thing and what you can see you can photograph.”

“What you can see? There’s the hole in the idea. We have to be close enough to see them.”

“Not so close. You’ve got a five-hundred-millimeter lens.”

“My God, that’s the damnedest thing I ever heard of. We could be a quarter of a mile away.”

“Like staked out on the roof of my building watching the alley, watching for them to come back.”

“Yeah, we could do that. We could get our pictures and pull out before they even started climbing the terraces.”

“There’s only one small hitch. Dick’s got to be convinced to help us. He’s got to give us the equipment, and it’s classified.”

Wilson frowned. It meant a departmental infraction, something he didn’t need. He had too many enemies to be able to afford getting things like that in his file. “Goddamn, the PD’d classify mechanical pencils if they had time. I don’t like to get into that kind of stuff, it’s not going to help me.”

“Dick owes you a favor, George.”

“Why?”

“You know perfectly well why.” She said it lightly but felt the anger nevertheless. Her staying in Detectives had depended on finding a place in a block of four men, and to do that you had to get one of those men as a partner. Wilson had taken her on and she had not been shunted off into administration like many lady cops. And Wilson had taken her on because Dick Neff had asked him to.

“He may think it was a favor, but it wasn’t.”

“Jesus. You’re going to seed, Wilson. You actually complimented my police work just then.”

He laughed, his face breaking for a few moments into a mass of merry wrinkles, then as abruptly returning to its usual glower. “You got some good points,” he said, “but I guess you’re right. Taking you on was a favor to Dick when I did it. Maybe he’ll let me collect.”

Becky excused herself and called ahead to the apartment. She wanted to be sure Dick was there; she didn’t want to end up alone with Wilson in the apartment. It wouldn’t look good, especially if Dick came home.

He was there, his voice sounding thick. She wanted to ask him what was wrong but she held back. When she told him she was bringing Wilson over his only comment was a noncommittal grunt.