The Winter Beach Read online

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  Fictionwise Publications

  www.fictionwise.com

  Copyright (C)1981 Kate Wilhelm

  First published in Redbook, 1981

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  HUGH LASATER stood with his back to the window watching Lloyd Pierson squirm. They were in Pierson's office, a room furnished with university-issue desk and book shelves, as devoid of personality as Pierson himself was. He was one of those men no one after the fact could ever identify, so neutral he could vanish in a mist, become one with a landscape, and never be seen again.

  Lloyd Pierson stopped fidgeting with his pencil and took a deep breath. “I can't do it,” he said primly, examining the pencil. “It would be unethical, and besides she would appeal. She might even have a sex discrimination case.”

  “She won't appeal. Believe me, she won't make a stink.”

  Pierson shook his head. He glanced at his watch, then confirmed what he had learned by looking at the wall clock.

  Lasater suppressed a laugh.

  “You do it, or I go over your head,” he said mildly. “It's a funny thing how people hate having this kind of decision shoved at them when it could have been handled on a lower level. You know?”

  “You have no right!” Pierson snapped. He looked at Lasater, then quickly away again. “This is insufferable.”

  “Righto. Dean McCrory, isn't it? I just happen to have his number here somewhere. I suppose your secretary would place the call for me?” He searched his notebook, then stopped, holding it open.

  “I want to talk to your supervisor, your boss, whoever that is.”

  Lasater shrugged. “Got a piece of paper? I'll write the number for you.” Pierson handed him a note pad and he jotted down a number. “That's a Washington area code. Dial it yourself, if you don't mind. You have an outside line, don't you? And his is a direct line, it'll be his private secretary who answers. Just tell him it's about the bird-of-prey business. He'll put you through.”

  “Whose private secretary?”

  “Secretary of Defense,” Lasater said, as if surprised that Pierson had not recognized the number.

  “I don't believe you.” He dialed the number.

  Lasater turned to look out the window. The campus was a collage of red brick buildings, dirty snow, and too many people of an age. God, how tired he would get of so many young people all the time with their mini-agonies and mini-crises, and mini-triumphs. Unisex reigned here; in their dark winter garments they all looked alike. The scene was like an exercise in perspective: same buildings, same snow, same vague figures repeated endlessly. He listened to Pierson parrot his message about bird of prey, and a moment later:

  “Never mind. Sorry to bother you. I won't wait. It's all right.”

  Lasater smiled at the bleak landscape, but when he turned to the room there was no trace of humor on his face. He retrieved the note paper, put it in an ashtray, and set it afire. After it was burned he crushed the ashes thoroughly, then dumped them into the waste can. He held the pad aslant and studied the next piece of paper, then slipped the pad into a pocket. He kept his amusement out of his voice when he said, “You will never use that number again, or even remember that you saw such a number. In fact, this entire visit is classified, and everything about it. Right?”

  Pierson nodded miserably. Lasater felt only contempt for him now; he had not fought hard enough for anything else. “So, you just tell her no dice on a leave of absence. You have about an hour before she'll get here; you'll think of a dozen good reasons why your department can't do without her services.” He picked up his coat and hat from the chair where he had tossed them and left without looking back.

  Lyle Taney would never know what happened, he thought with satisfaction, pausing to put his coat on at the stairs of the history department building. He went to the student union and had a malted milk shake, picked up a poetry review magazine, bought a pen, and then went to his car and waited. Most of the poetry was junk, but some of it was pretty good, better than he had expected. He reread one of the short pieces. Nice. Then he saw her getting out of her car. Lyle Taney was medium height, a bit heavy for his taste; he liked willowy women and she was curvy and dimply. Ten pounds, he estimated; she could lose ten pounds before she would start to look gaunt enough to suit him. He liked sharp cheekbones and the plane of a cheek without a suggestion of roundness. Her hair was short and almost frizzy it was so curly, dark brown with just a suggestion of gray, as if she had frosted it without enough bleach to do a thorough job. He knew so much about her that it would have given her a shock to realize anyone had recorded such information and that it could be retrieved. He knew her scars, her past illnesses, her college records, her income and expenses ... She was bouncy: he grinned at her tripping nimbly through the slush at the curb before the building. That was nice, not too many women were still bouncy at her age: thirty-seven years, four months, sixteen days.

  She vanished inside the building. He glanced at his watch and made a bet with himself. Eighteen minutes. It would take eighteen minutes. Actually it took twenty-two. When she reappeared, the bounce was gone. She marched down the stairs looking straight ahead, plowed through the slush, crossed the street without checking for traffic, daring anyone to touch her. She got to her car and yanked the door open, slid in, and drove off too fast. He liked all that. No tears. No sentimental look around at the landscape. Just good old-fashioned determination. Hugh Lasater liked to know everything about the people he used. This was data about Lyle Taney that no one would have been able to tell him. He felt that he knew her a little better now than he had that morning. He was whistling tunelessly as he turned on his key, started the rented car, and left the university grounds. She would do, he told himself contentedly. She would do just fine.

  * * * *

  Lyle put on coffee and paced while she waited for it. On the table her book looked fragile suddenly, too nebulous to support her entire weight, and that was what it had to do. The book had a flying hawk on the cover; sunlight made the rufous tail look almost scarlet. The book was about hawks, about the word hawk, about hawk-like people. It was not natural history, or ornithology, or anything in particular, but it had caught on, and it was having a moderate success. A fluke, of course, such a long shot it could never happen again. She was not a writer, and she really knew nothing about birds in general and hawks in particular, except what she had researched and observed over the five years it had taken her to do the book. The book was so far removed from her own field of history that it was not even counted as a publication by her department.

  Her former department, she corrected herself, and poured coffee, then sat down at the table with it and stared at the book, and went over the luncheon one more time.

  Bobby Conyers, her editor for the hawk book, and Mal Levinson from the magazine Birds had insisted that a follow-up book on eagles would be equally successful.

  “Consider it, Lyle,” Mal had said earnestly, on first-name basis instantly. “We want the article. I know ten thousand isn't a fortune, but we'll pick up your expenses, and it'll add up. And Bobby can guarantee fifteen thousand up front for the book. Don't say no before you think about it.”

  “But I don't know anything at all about eagles, nothing. And Oregon? Why there? There are eagles
in other places, surely.”

  Mal pointed to the clipping he had brought with him: a letter to the editor of a rival magazine, it mentioned the bald eagles seen along a stretch of Oregon beach for two years in a row, suggesting they were nesting in the vicinity.

  “That part of Oregon looks like the forest primeval,” he said. “And eagles, bald eagles, are on the endangered list. That may be the last nesting site on the west coast. It'll make a terrific article and book. Believe us, we both agree, it'll be even better than Hawks. I'd like to call it Bird of Prey.”

  Bobby was nodding. “I agree, Lyle. It'll go.” She sipped her coffee, her gaze still on the book. In her briefcase were contracts, a map of Oregon, another one of that section of coast, and a Xerox copy of an article on eagles that Mal had dug out of back issues of his magazine.

  “What if I can't find the nest?” she had asked, and with the question she had realized she was going to do it.

  “It's pretty hard to hide an eagle's nest,” Mal had said, grinning, knowing she had been persuaded. He began to talk about eagles then, and for the rest of the hour they spent together, it had been as if they all knew she would go to Oregon, search the jagged hills for the nest, set up a photography blind, start digging for facts, tidbits, myths, whatever else took her fancy to make up a full-length book.

  And she did want to do it, she told herself again firmly, and tried not to think of what it would mean if the book failed, if she could not find the nest, if the eagles were not nesting there this year, if ... if ... if ... She would have to face Pierson and ask for her job back, or go somewhere else and start over. She thought briefly of filing a claim of discrimination against Pierson and the university, but she put it out of mind again. Not her style. No one had forced her to quit, and no one guaranteed a leave of absence for a job unrelated to her field. Pierson had pointed this out to her in his most reasonable tone, the voice that always made her want to hit him with a wet fish. The fleeting thought about the statistics of women her age getting work in their own fields went unheeded as she began to think seriously about the difficulties of finding an eagle's nest in the wooded, steep hills of the coast range of Oregon.

  Presently she put the book on a chair and spread out the coastal map and began to study it. The nest would be within a mile or two of the water, and the exact places where the bird had been seen were clearly marked. An area roughly five to eight miles by two miles. It would be possible, with luck, and if the bird watcher had been right, and if the eagles came back this year...

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  Lyle sat on the side of her bed talking on the phone. During the past week she had packed up most of the things she would take with her, and had moved into her study those things she did not want her subleasers to use. She would lock that door and keep the key. Almost magically the problems had been erased before her eyes. She was listening to her friend Jackie plead for her to reconsider her decision, and her mind was roaming over the things yet to be done. A cashier's check to open an account with in the village of Salmon Key, and more film and developer paper...

  “Jackie, it's not as if I were a child who never left home before,” she said, trying to keep the edge off her voice. “And I tell you I am sick and tired of teaching. I hadn't realized how tired of it I was until I quit. My God! Those term papers!”

  She was grateful a moment later when the doorbell cut the phone call short. “Lunch? Sure. I'll be there,” she said and hung up, and then went to open the door.

  The man was close to six feet, but stooped; he had a big face. She seldom had seen features spread out quite as much as his were: wide-spaced eyes with heavy long lashes and thick sable-brown brows, a nose that would dominate a smaller face, and a mouth that would fit on a jack-o'-lantern. The mouth widened even more when he smiled.

  “Mrs. Taney? Could I have a few minutes to talk to you? My name is Hugh Lasater, from the Drug Enforcement Administration.” He handed her his identification and she started to open the door; he held it to the few inches the chain allowed.

  “Ma'am, if you don't mind. You study the I.D. and the picture, compare it to my pan, and then if it seems okay, you open the door.” He had a pained expression as he said this.

  She did as he directed, then admitted him, thinking he must be looking for an informant or something. She thought of the half dozen vacant-eyed students in her classes; the thought was swiftly followed by relief that it no longer concerned her.

  “What can I do for you, Mr. Lasater?” She motioned to a chair in a halfhearted way, hoping he would not accept the quasi-invitation.

  “No one's here with you?”

  She shook her head.

  “Good.” He took off his coat and hat and put them down on the sofa, then sank down into the chair she had indicated. “You almost ready to go?”

  She started, but then, glancing about the apartment, decided anyone with an eye could tell she was going somewhere. “Yes. Next week I'm going on a trip.”

  “I know. Oregon. Salmon Key. The Donleavy house on Little Salmon Creek.”

  This time when she reacted with surprise, the chill was like a lump of ice deep within her. “What do you want, Mr. Lasater?”

  “How'd you learn that trick?” he asked with genuine curiosity. “You never had any intelligence training.”

  “I don't know what you're talking about. If you'll just state your business. As you can see, I'm quite busy.”

  “It's a dandy thing to know. You just step back a little and watch from safety, in a manner of speaking. Useful. Damned offputting to anyone not familiar with it. And you're damned good at it.”

  She waited. He knew, she thought, that inside she was frozen: her way of handling anger, fear, indignation? Later she would analyze the different emotions. And Hugh Lasater, she realized, was also back a little, watching, calculating, appraising her all the way.

  “Okay, I'll play it straight,” he said then. “No games, no appeal to loyalty, or your sense of justice, or anything else. We, my department and I, request your help in a delicate matter. We want you to get fingerprints from a suspect for us.”

  She laughed in relief. “You aren't serious.”

  “Oh yes, deadly serious. The Donleavy house is just a hop away from another place that sits on the next cliff overlooking the ocean. And in that other house is a man we're after quite seriously. But we have to make certain. We can't tip him that we're on to him. We need someone so innocent, so unlikely that he'll never give her a second thought. You pass him a picture to look at; he gives it back and you put it away carefully in an envelope we provide. Finis. That's all we want. If he's our man, we put a tail on him and let him lead us to others even more important and nab them all. They're smuggling in two-thirds of all the coke and hash and opium being used in the States today.”

  He knew he had scored because her face became so expressionless that it might have been carved from wax. It was the color of something that had died a long time ago.

  “That's contemptible,” she said in a low voice.

  “I'm sorry,” he replied. “I truly am. But we are quite desperate.”

  She shook her head. “Please go,” she said in a low voice. In a flash the lump of ice had spread; her frozen body was a thing apart. She had learned to do this in analysis, to step out of the picture to observe herself doing crazy things—groping for pills in an alcoholic fog, driving eighty miles an hour after an evening in a bar ... It was a good trick, he was right. It had allowed her to survive then; it would get her through the next few minutes until he left.

  “Mrs. Taney, your kid wasn't the only one, and every day there are more statistics to add to the mess. And they'll keep on being added day after day. Help us put a stop to it.”

  “You have enough agents. You don't need to drag in someone from outside.”

  “I told you, it has to be someone totally innocent, someone there with a reason beyond doubting. You'll get your pictures and your story, that's legitimate enough. The contracts are good. No one w
ill ever know you helped us.” He stood up and went to his overcoat and took a large insulated envelope from the inside pocket. “Mrs. Taney, we live in the best of times and the worst of times. We want to squash that ring of genteel importers. People like that are making these the worst of times. It's a dirty business; okay, I grant you that. But Mike's death was dirtier. Twelve years old, overdosed. That's pretty damned filthy.” He put the envelope down on the end table by the sofa. “Let them make the first move. Don't try to force yourself on them in any way. There's Saul Werther, about sixty-two or three, cultured, kindly, probably lonesome as hell by now. And a kid he has with him, cook, driver, handyman, bodyguard, who knows? Twenty-one at the most, Chicano. They'll want to know who you are and why you're there. No secret about you, the magazine story, the eagles, it's all legitimate as hell. They'll buy it. You like music, so does Werther. You'll get the chance. Just wait for it and then take advantage of it. Don't make a big deal of not messing up his prints if he handles a picture, a glass, whatever. Don't handle it unnecessarily either. There's some wrapping in the envelope; put it around the object loosely first, then pop it in the envelope and put it away. We'll be in touch.”

  Now he put the coat on. At the door he looked back at her. “You'll do fine, Lyle. You really will. And maybe you'll be able to accept that you're getting back at them just a little bit. It might even help.”

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  Brilliant green moss covered the tree trunks; ferns grew in every cranny, on the lower dead limbs, on the moss, every inch of space between the trees. Nowhere was any ground visible, or any rock; all was hidden by the mosses and ferns. Evergreen bushes made impenetrable thickets in spots where the trees had been cut in the past, or a fire had raged. Logging had stopped years ago and now the trees were marching again, overtaking the shrubs, defeating them, reclaiming the steep hills. Raindrops glistened on every surface, shimmered on the tips of the emerald fronds; the air was blurred with mist. The rain made no sound, was absorbed by the mosses, transferred to the ground below efficiently, silently.