Her Winning Ways by J.M. Bronston (22)

 

The taxi crawled through the morning rush hour traffic and Annie was a mass of impatience and frustration by the time it pulled up in front of the library. She handed the driver a ten-dollar bill, waved off the two singles he was counting out in change, stepped out onto Fifth Avenue—and was stopped short, momentarily transfixed by the massive edifice that confronted her.

The place was enormous, with a broad expanse of stone steps rising up to the entrance doors. And all was guarded by those two famous lions, Patience and Fortitude, who were just like their pictures, as supercilious as she’d imagined them, so terribly above it all. Here they were, the real thing (with a pigeon perched on Fortitude’s head), looking down at the passing scene as though through a monocle. And the passing scene was looking right back, with smiles and nods of greeting and cameras flashing. She was torn between getting out her own cell phone to grab a photo, and her eagerness to begin her research.

“These lions are made of stone,” she reminded herself. “They’ll wait.” And she ran up the broad steps—all thirty-plus of them.

Alas! The library didn’t open until ten a.m.! And it was now barely nine o’clock.

What to do now?

And maybe savor the moment.

She’d have to kill an hour, maybe take a walk around the block, find a place to get some breakfast—the gulp of coffee an hour ago would hardly be enough for the full day that lay ahead of her—reread the article in the paper and think things through.

She went back down the steps, more slowly now, took one last look back at the library’s imposing façade, walked down toward the corner to take a long shot of Patience and Fortitude with her phone’s camera, bought some coffee, a croissant, and a banana from a street cart at the corner and brought them back to the steps where she sat for the remains of the hour and studied the steady flow of traffic and of people.

And now that she had killed an hour, it was time to get to work.

She ran up the steps again and passed through the great iron doors. The grandeur of the ornate, beaux-arts rotunda, and the wide marble stairs at either side that wound up to higher floors, the great arched passageways and, on the distant ceiling, too high above her to be seen clearly, the mural of Prometheus—it all demanded at least a moment’s recognition and an appreciation that, though the rotunda was busy with people moving about, the enormous space that rose up above them seemed to absorb their sound. The result was a quiet that was utterly appropriate to one of the world’s great libraries.

She paused. She took it all in, made a promise to herself to come back someday and visit properly, and then went to the information desk and made some inquiries. She was directed to the appropriate rooms, to her left down a long hall, and others upstairs. And after several hours digging through microfiche and well-chosen archival material, she had a cache of some interesting data, about Buljornia, its people, its culture, its history—and particularly the history of its present protest.

It would be up to Bart to work out how useful it would all be.

It was midafternoon when she walked out of the library; the wind had shifted. A few clouds had drifted over Fifth Avenue’s skyscrapers. Scattered randomly along the steps, people relaxed, unmindful of the weather, and she picked her way among them as they took pictures, read their books, ate their late lunches out of plastic containers and paper bags and snacked on the hot dogs and pizza slices and ice creams they’d bought from the vendors along the sidewalk’s edge in front of the library. It reminded her of Central Park. The pace was leisurely. A group of street performers was doing its ragged thing, and the folks sitting on the steps cheered and applauded. A couple of youngsters were drawn into their show, pulled at random out of the audience, making them a part of the performance, all so good natured, so easily enjoyed. Off to one side, there were small tables set out for the public’s use, and she found one far enough away from the show’s spectators to give her a little privacy.

She’d had her phone off while she was working in the library, but now, as soon as she reset it, she saw a text message from Bart.

She called immediately—and he answered immediately. She heard the stress in his voice as he answered.

“Annie. Where have you been?”

“I’m at the library. Want to get away?”

“The library? When all hell is breaking loose? What are you doing at the library?”

“I’ll tell you when I see you.”

“Okay. Okay.” He sounded impatient. “Go to the outdoor cafe in the park right behind the library. I’ll meet you there. Fifteen minutes.”

When he arrived, she was already waiting at a table under an enormous patio umbrella. He looked as though he’d been caught in a threshing machine. Obviously he’d had no sleep, his hair was wild, and he was still in the blazer and jeans he’d been wearing when he left her last night, which seemed to have been in a fight with an angry rhinoceros. He fell into a chair, propped his elbows on the table, and buried his head in his hands.

“Oh, God, Annie. When I get those guys—” A waiter materialized next to him. “Get me some coffee,” Bart said, without looking up.

Annie smiled at the waiter. “He’ll have a turkey burger with sweet potato fries, please. He’s had a hard night.”

“Boy, you didn’t have to tell me,” the waiter said. “I think he needs a margarita.”

“No, that’s okay,” Annie said. “Just the food and some coffee, thanks.”

The waiter smiled at her. “Whatever. And for you?”

She glanced at the menu. “The same for me. And a fruit salad, too.”

“You got it, luv,” he said. And he was off with the order.

Annie opened her bag and put some papers on the table between them.

“Maybe some of this will help. I’ve been doing some research here at the library.”

Bart looked up between his spread fingers. With a gesture, he dismissed her papers.

“Our guys know what they’re doing, Annie. They’ve got the best resources. Canines, trackers, high-tech electronics. All units are on it.” He sat up, put his head back, rubbed his eyes. “We figure by now they’ve gotten Lindy out of Manhattan, probably up to Westchester or out on the Island, like Great Neck or someplace.”

“The paper said they left one of their protest leaflets.”

“We’ve got our guys processing that now—for prints, for whatever it can tell us. They’re certain it was that Buljornia bunch. Crazy sons of bitches! If they hurt that horse, if they do him any harm—”

“I don’t think they will, Bart.” He looked at her as though she’d interrupted his train of thought with some trivial notion. “I’ve been doing some research on their history. On their culture.”

He peered at her in wonder.

“On their culture? Excuse me, Annie, but are you nuts? Their culture? Who cares about these guys’ culture? They stole Lindy, for God’s sake. They’re criminals. They took my dad’s horse!”

Annie understood his stress and she forgave the rudeness.

“I think my research may be helpful. Don’t discount it till you’ve seen it.”

“Annie, I’m sure you’re a great librarian and all that, but why are you messing with stuff you don’t know anything about? This is police business. Just leave it to the guys who know what they’re doing.” He ran his hands through his hair, as though trying to settle the turmoil inside his head. “They even sent me away. I’m getting in everyone’s way.”

“Bart, I’m cutting you a lot of slack here, because you’re exhausted and suffering. But the stuff you need is exactly the stuff I do know about. My stuff is information. That’s my work. And information is what you need now. So have your food.” The waiter had just put it down in front of him. “Be quiet for a minute, and listen to me without automatically discounting what I tell you.”

Bart looked at the soup as though it had mysteriously materialized out of thin air. He looked at Annie as though she, too, had appeared out of nowhere.

“I’m sorry, Annie. I’m a wreck and I don’t mean to be rude.”

“I know.” She set her soup to the side, not the least bit interested in it. She opened the pack of papers she’d put together.

“Now, here’s what you need to know about Buljornia and about those guys.” She leaned toward him across the table, to be sure she had his attention. “About Buljornia, first of all. Right now, it’s a tiny breakaway state with a very sad history. Ever since the fifteenth century, it’s been under the control of one Eastern European nation or another, with a long history of wars raging all around so it was always under the control of one country after another. For the last couple of generations a segment of the population has been trying to establish Buljornia as an autonomous state, to become a sovereign state all on its own. And that’s your guys. Nobody has paid much attention to them and they’ve mostly been treated as a joke by the great nations.

“However, Buljornia was once a great nation itself, back in ancient times. I’m talking about thousands of years ago. I won’t bore you with the details, but much of what we call civilization started in Buljornia, and that’s the argument these protesters make. It’s a lost cause, I suppose but that’s not our concern. There’s plenty of scholarly material about them, if you’re ever interested.”

Bart waved a hand in dismissal.

“Not interested,” he said.

“You don’t need to be. But now here’s what you do need to be interested in. The Buljornian culture that you’re dismissing so casually is rooted in their history as—now get this—the ‘horse people.’”

That got Bart’s attention.

“Yes,” Annie said. “Some horse cultures go back as much as six thousand years, and stretch all the way from Eastern Europe, Ukraine, through the Caucasus and across Siberia and Mongolia. Their people are nomadic and their lives are—or were—totally built around their horses! Their philosophy, their religion, their technology, all was built around their horses. They lived in the saddle. They drank their mares’ milk, they ate the flesh of their horses, they wore their horses’ hides and made their tents from their horses’ skins. When they died, their horses were buried with them. They were apparently the first humans to get up on a horse and use the horse for transportation, bareback, at first—note that, Bart, bareback!—and they were the first to create saddles. They practically lived in their saddles. They played games on their horses. And most famously of all, they used their horses as instruments of warfare. They were the first cavalry in the history of warfare. On horseback, they conquered vast territories. The chariot warfare of the ancient Romans and Greeks was no match for them.” She paused to let that sink in. “The point is, these people who took Lindy—they know horses.”

“But that was all long ago.”

“No. These are still a nomadic people. That’s why they’ve not yet become successful as a settled culture. They still keep and ride and value their horses. Think about this, Bart. The report in the paper said Lindy was ridden bareback out of the stable. Have you ever ridden bareback?”

“Well, yeah. Back on my granddad’s ranch. When I was a kid.”

“So you know it’s not easy. Takes training and practice. And experience. Especially at a gallop. And even more so if you’re stealing the horse—and maybe you’re being chased. By the whole damn NYPD!”

She hadn’t touched her food, and suddenly Annie realized she was hungry. It had been hours since she’d eaten. She looked at her lunch and decided it was time. She took a bite of the now-cold slider.

“So here’s what I think,” she said, through a mouthful of turkey. “First of all, these people respect horses. And they know better than to run him to the ground for thirty or forty miles. What good would he be as a hostage if they’ve wrecked him?”

She took another bite.

“What’s more, if those people were going to take a horse, and hold him for ransom, or for any other reason, I’d bet anything they wouldn’t take just any horse. Not these people. It would be contrary to their culture. They would naturally choose to take a special horse. Here’s the thing. They wouldn’t have known Lindy from any other horse, but something must have made them decide he was the one to take.”

“Okay. Why Lindy?”

“Right. Why Lindy? They must have seen that TV report, the day of the protest. He was named. His history was described. They learned that he was beloved and brave and had been ridden by a warrior and the warrior’s son. Just their kind of horse. Now, here’s what I’m thinking: the protests had just started that day, on Sunday. The chances are good that they were new to the city, arrived here specifically to make their cause public, at the United Nations and before the cameras. My guess is they are holed up somewhere not far from here. My guess is they wouldn’t have taken Lindy far from the stables. After all, you can’t go riding a horse around New York City just like that, especially if you’re riding bareback, without being noticed. The only horses on the streets here are either dragging a hansom cab behind them or they’ve got a cop up on top. Do you think they would have ridden Lindy from here to Westchester or to Great Neck without leaving a trail of cell phone photos a mile wide? Thousands of people would have been taking pictures.”

She finished off the sliders and started on the fruit.

“No,” she said. “Lindy is somewhere close by. And I think you and I can find him.”

“You really are nuts, Annie. Do you think you can do police work better than the NYPD? You haven’t the resources. You haven’t the training.” He put his hand out and rested it on her arm. “And it could be dangerous. Do you think I’d let you be in danger? You said it yourself. These are a violent people.”

“I said the horsemen of ancient times were violent. These people today are clumsy oafs. I’m not in any danger from them.”

“You don’t know what you’re doing. I’m not letting you go out chasing criminals.”

“Oh, Bart. Don’t be silly. I’ll be careful.”

They sat silently for a while, squared off against each other.

The clouds had thickened and a new wind was slapping at the umbrella above them. The temperature was dropping and the London plane trees in the park were showing the bright undersides of their leaves, a sign of the storm coming. Papers and plastic bags were beginning to fly about, and people were gathering their papers and belongings and heading for shelter.

Bart looked around, suddenly aware of the world around them.

“It’s going to rain,” he said. “Let’s get you back to your hotel.”

She looked up. Of course. In Laramie, you’d have seen the approaching weather across the valley an hour before it arrived. Here, the front appeared over the nearest skyscraper before you had a chance to prepare for it, and this storm was already declaring its arrival.

They made it back to the hotel in five minutes, minutes ahead of the downpour and in two more minutes, they were opening the door to room number 4420.

“I’ll just get a jacket,” Annie said. She went into the bedroom.

Bart headed for the sofa.

“Take your time,” he said. “This won’t blow over for a while.”

In the bedroom, she stripped off the T-shirt and put on her favorite shirt, a long-sleeved pink and yellow paisley print from Lands End. She added her rodeo belt and her silver-and-turquoise earrings. She dabbed on some fresh lipstick. She pulled the elastic off her ponytail, and she brushed out her hair, and again enjoyed seeing in the mirror the humidity’s lovely effect and wished she could take it back to Laramie with her.

She got a denim jacket out of the closet.

She went back into the living room, where she found Bart sound asleep, sitting up.

She stood over him for a full minute. He never moved.

With a smile, she thought, For this I put on my prettiest blouse?

Her next thought was, Poor guy. He’s exhausted.

She pushed at his chest lightly, with one finger, and he went right over, facedown, like a fallen tree. She hoisted his legs onto the sofa where he settled in comfortably and nestled into the cushions, still deeply asleep.

She smiled again. She scribbled something on a piece of note paper. She slipped on the jacket. And she left him there.