“When your psychic senses are fading and the gangster’s lair has the perfect defenses, how do you break in with birdseed and a rock?”
That’s my Twitter profile, and I’ve always liked how it challenges my characters to own the moves they make, and challenges me to write suspense and surprises worth reading. So today I’m going to walk through the steps of that caper sequence, along with some of the tools I used to crank the suspense up. Plus, one secret and terrible shame about the story. Ready?
As the scene begins in Shadowed, Paul Schuman has been observing the furniture shop that is the front for the sinister loan shark Arthur Quinn.
- Why a furniture shop? Because I know a few people whose attitude to filling their houses is close cousin to worse ways to run themselves into debt, so Paul could fume over hearing Quinn use his most manipulative lines during ordinary sales pitches. (At least, they’re the lines Paul thinks are Quinn’s worst; this is still early in the book, the author chuckles evilly.)
He’s looking for evidence that Quinn has gotten his hooks into Paul’s family again after years of freedom. More, he’s starting to remember hearing Quinn’s voice as part of the barely-remembered night he emerged from the hospital with the power to enhance his five senses. Most of all, the memory fragment itself (Quinn saying “I’m sure They’ll pay it all”) is echoing more and more loudly in Paul’s head every time he tries to use his ability, so the clue itself is eroding his best weapon when he needs it most. (Fading abilities are a plot I’ve loved ever since Stan Lee showed his fondness for sending Spider-Man against his ultimate enemies with his powers down.)
So that’s the “psychic senses fading.” The “lair’s perfect defenses” start with what statistics show is the ultimate protection from burglars, and also the one thing more perceptive than Paul at his best: a huge guard dog. Backed by a set of alarms and a high-quality security guard who’s never far from the room.
Now, a seven-foot brawler of a protagonist could just wade through those with a generous author, or a master spy would have a dozen tricks ready. But the people I write tend to be what I call “roguelings,” tricksters in training that are close enough to ordinary people that nothing comes easy.
So instead of grabbing a sniper rifle and a utility belt of dog repellent, our hero’s run for equipment begins with:
Then he took out the tools he needed: Two empty cardboard boxes. Heavier gloves for the cold night. And a light, folded net he’d scavenged the previous year… he knew at a glance that the net would be no help with the dog, but that wasn’t his plan.
On the way back, he paused at a pet shop. The place had no alarms, and the lock opened almost as soon as he sharpened his sense of touch. Since Quinn’s dog would be trained never to accept food from a stranger, he simply took the bag of birdseed he’d wanted, plus a spray bottle of cleaner he found in the closet. Then he threw some money on the counter and left quickly, with just the act of stealing anything from some random person leaving a bad taste in his mouth.
–That last line is a reminder of Paul’s code. He lives in hiding for fear of people forcing him to use his power for all the obvious insidious plans, but he’s also determined to scrape by without stealing one thing except evidence.
The very next line raises the stakes:
As he stepped outside again, something touched his face. Snow was falling.
Memories pressed down on him, crushing thoughts of the last two long winters of shivering nights, with fewer crowds outside to hide in, and always dreading the tracks he left in the harmless white stuff drifting down all over the streets.
Writing gives me the delightful chance to delay the first snowfall of the season until just the hour that it’ll discourage my character. Or I could have triggered it at the exact moment it would have hurt (or even helped) him most, but that’s a much bigger gun that’s harder to justify. (Buffy pulled it off in her third year, but that’s Joss Whedon…)
After a few more lines I mention Paul making “one more stop” to tease the reader, and then I skip a line and drop straight into the next scene with the start of its explanation:
The pigeons moaned. It was the only word for their frantic cooing from the cardboard box he’d crammed them into. Even winter had its uses, at least it made the birds desperate enough for food that he could net half a dozen within walking distance of Quinn’s building. And as that brick shape came in sight, Paul stopped to pour more seed into the box to quiet the birds again.
He left the cooing box halfway up the block, in the alley behind the buildings, and moved forward to Open and study his target again. Same dog, same window and alarm, and he waited until he could just make out the guard still patrolling inside.
Alright then.
That lists what’s in Paul’s bag of tricks tonight, and the quick-cutting between scenes has let me hide his thoughts on just how he’s about to use them—really, a boxful of pigeons? And I’ve summed up the situation again, and used that little line as the starting gun we’ve been waiting for.
First, he walked under the window and along the alley, back and forth, scuffing his feet around until the still-light layer of snow looked as if a whole gang had marched through it; a clumsy camouflage, but he could hope the guard wouldn’t look too closely. And with any luck, this would be finished before enough snow fell over those to make his later tracks clear.
Then, he hefted the biggest discarded bottle he’d been able to find, and flung it straight through Quinn’s window.
(Another short-ish paragraph for a game-changing moment. Rhythm matters.)
An alarm shrilled and the dog exploded into barking, both sounds ringing down the streets through the window’s broken pane. The dog fell silent again, almost at once… too well-trained to keep going when nothing more was happening.
When the alarm cut off and Paul could hear the guard moving inside again, he darted up the block with the box of pigeons. Then he waited in the cold until the guard had made his sweep around the building and settled back inside. I thought some of those wires were in case someone broke the window. But that’s all I need for now.
He poured another helping of seed into his cardboard pigeon-coop and began easing the four-way overlap of the top flaps open. With all the care he could manage, he parted them just enough to reach both hands in—wishing he could use his thicker winter gloves when they pecked at him—and pulled out one struggling bird before closing the top again. He placed that pigeon in his second, smaller box, and carried it under his arm to the fire escape and up.
The dog stood right under the window, a brown and black brute that looked like a Doberman but seemed a bit heavier than most. It growled but didn’t bark yet, and for a moment Paul wondered if his plan would work.
Then he raised the box up to the high window-pane he’d smashed, and popped the pigeon through the hole.
The dog went mad. The bird beat its wings to catch itself in the air and fluttered around the room with the dog chasing it and barking in a frenzy. The animals hopped from one desk to another as the pigeon circled but couldn’t turn tightly enough to stay airborne within the walls…
Paul slid back down to the alley and ducked around the corner. He strained his hearing to focus past the barking and the echo of his memory, praying that the trick would work.
Not that he had any trouble hearing the guard’s “What in hell…?” Paul could imagine him watching as the dog and bird chased around the room. A moment later, the barking ceased and Paul caught one wild flutter of the pigeon. It was outside again, having finally squeezed back out the broken window.
Paul followed the guard’s cursing all the way to the window and heard it grow louder still the longer he stood there. When he stomped away again, Paul could only wait in the cold, and found himself envying the other pigeons that could huddle together in his box for warmth. But the guard didn’t come back to cover the window; the top pane he’d smashed would be difficult to block, as Paul had hoped.
Carefully, Paul pulled out another bird from the box, trying not to think of the one slip of his hand that might let the struggling flock burst free and ruin his whole night’s work. Again, he sent the bird inside and then dropped back out of view as the dog’s barking split the night. When he heard the guard enter again, he grinned wickedly; since the window was broken, was it so odd that birds would try to get to the warm room inside?
Can you guess what “the trick” is yet? I’ve spelled out the situation and Paul’s steps toward the answer, and some readers might be putting the pieces together.
But Paul and his plan have also been initiating the action for the last couple of pages, with everyone else only reacting. So:
Then he heard a loud metallic cough sound, a “Damn!” and then one more cough, and then the dog hushed. As the footsteps moved away, Paul realized what the guard had done.
He’d shot the pigeon. He’d blown it apart so they could get back to work, and he’d done it using an illegal silencer and an ominously good aim.
Paul crouched down in the dark, chilled through with a cold deeper than the winter. He’d always maneuvered far away from armed guards, targeting secrets or at least strategies that kept him away from real physical danger. He chose his own cases, sometimes selecting unsavory types—but he’d never dared go up against a real criminal like this loan shark. Arthur Quinn seemed more dangerous by the hour.
Quinn’s They’ll pay it all echoed louder than ever in his mind, and Paul wondered how many ways Quinn made his enemies “pay.”
Again, my heroes aren’t bulletproof. If one of them is going to take on an armed guard, he has to be all too aware of what he’s getting into.
Paul shook his head, trying to clear it. Dangerous or not, Quinn’s words were all he knew about that night and whatever memory was blocking his power. And if Quinn was part of that night, maybe I’ve always had to stop him.
The next pigeon seemed to tremble a bit more than the others when he pulled it from the box. Paul tried to hold onto his city-bred contempt for the “winged rats,” how there were always more of them and more pigeon droppings everywhere they flocked. But the more the bird thrashed in his hands, the harder it was to keep his touch from Opening to feel its panicked heartbeat.
This pigeon was luckier than the last; the guard shot once, then swore and walked away, letting the dog chase it out the window again.
For the pigeon after that, the guard didn’t come at all. Finally.
And that’s how Paul deals with a guard dog he simply can’t shut up: he makes it bark so much it’s ignored.
- That kind of security judo is a common trick in classic storytelling. My favorite example is from Watership Down: a rabbit hero swims past a raveonous fish by floating a dummy rabbit in the river until the pike ignores it, and then him.
But just because the guard’s less eager doesn’t get rid of the dog.
Carefully watching the alley’s corners and windows for observers, Paul took his last bird and other tools up the fire escape. The dog stood just behind the glass with its teeth bared, waiting.
But this time, Paul peered at the window, looking from the hole at the top on down to the latch and then to the tiny, hidden sensor along the jamb inside. Even while Opening sight, he could barely make out its wires there along the side of the frame, against its mate on the window itself. He unwrapped a sliver of metal from his pocket, his gloved fingers careful of the sharp edge on one side.
He stared harder at the tiny switch, struggling to push back the shadows that pooled around the wires. From the design, they should be about there and there, and he’d done this many times before. But this time…
He Opened to listen again for the guard, took a deep breath, and strained past the thunder of I’m sure they’ll pay it all.
They won’t pay.
Paul started, looking around the alley below. But nothing had stirred except the drifting snow; the thought was another memory. They won’t pay, Quinn had said that night. Paul knew it now. They won’t pay.
But he must have said “They’ll pay!” Which one was it?
With Paul right there at the window, his echoing memory’s brought up a whole new level of static to interfere with his power. Of course that’s the moment to escalate it… well, one of the moments.
He gritted his teeth. Gripping the metal piece as firmly as he could through the glove, he Opened to the shape in the shadows along the window, fighting to ignore the two memories so he could just see the wires, know the distance…
In one move, he reached down through the broken pane to stab the metal’s edge into the wood below, pressing its length between the sensors at just the proper angle. Nothing snapped, no alarm blared… and he yanked his hand back up as the dog snapped at him.
The metal stayed in place. He tried to Open his hearing to follow if the electrical path had changed, but all he heard were Quinn’s words and the dog’s thwarted growls.
Time to find out.
The dog watched his every motion now, so he took the last pigeon from his box and slid it through the hole. The dog barked as the bird fluttered by, but this time, it turned right back to the window as Paul reached in again to flip the latch.
He pulled his hand back in time, but the dog kept barking, and Paul could only hope the guard was still sick of false alarms. And that the other alarm here…
The window slid up, just three inches for now. No bells rang, but the dog snarled and snapped just beyond that gap.
And Paul raised the pet store’s spray bottle and squirted cleaning fluid into its face.
Is it cheating that I haven’t mentioned that spray bottle in five pages? I don’t think so, since Paul made a specific stop to get just it and the birdseed, and most of the time since has been building up the question of what he’ll do with them all.
Now, the action is on.
The dog yelped and pulled back, giving Paul a moment to fling the window up. As the dog started toward him again, he gave it another spray, then caught up the bird net and flung it over the beast.
Paul grabbed the bottle again and leaped through, into the room.
A few desks and cabinets stretched around him in the dim light. He turned back to see the dog already shaking off the thin net, as expected. He stepped back and pumped the spray as the dog charged—but it squirted once and then the trigger clicked in without pumping any liquid. He back-pedaled and pumped more slowly, but now the spray only made the dog flinch back a moment.
The inner door’s this way—Paul took a step, and his hip bashed the edge of a desk. The dog lunged.
He spun around the desk and threw himself at the door. For one frozen moment, he wondered if he’d ever heard the guard open it. What if it’s locked? Then he seized the handle and wrenched it open, which sent a spasm through his injured arm.
As he stepped through, the dog came up behind him. Paul ducked sideways and gave the spray bottle trigger one hard squeeze. The spray drove the dog back only a step, and Paul pumped wildly, felt the trigger catch on nothing—He smashed the bottle into the animal’s head, knocked the dog away, then leapt back out through the door and slammed it shut.
Gasping for breath, he listened to the dog’s muted barking for a moment. The spray bottle had split open in his hand, and he set its remains quietly on the floor.
Paul looked past the desks to the office’s little file cabinet and then marched back to slide the window shut and gather up the net. That left him in the space between the alarms, with the dog trapped, and the guard tired of checking out all these noises.
So Paul has risked life and limb, wrestled with his own mind as well as the dog, and faced that awkward moment where the spray bottle clicks on empty—something many of us have actually felt with our own hands (hopefully in safer conditions). And the last line just summed up how everything’s worked out in the end.
Right?
Wrong.
“Alright, what now?” the guard growled, as the outer door’s lock clicked open. Paul dropped flat, behind a desk just as the light came on.
He heard the guard march in as the dog in the side room kept barking and scrabbling at the door. He tried to Open his hearing to track the guard better, but then broke off as the memories of Quinn’s voice almost deafened him. Somewhere up near the ceiling, he heard the pigeon still fluttering around.
The guard stomped down to the inner door and paused in front of it, listening to the dog trapped behind it. “How did you pull that off, boy?”
Oh God, when he lets the dog out— Paul peeked over the desk at the path around the furniture to the outer door. He’d only have a moment while the guard was distracted—
He heard the pigeon flap toward his hiding place, saw the guard start to turn his way and ducked down again by reflex. The bird landed right on the desk, and Paul held his breath, but he couldn’t hear the guard move. Please, please…
“Yes, sir?”
A phone call, now? Paul strained to hear the voice on the other end, but heard only they’ll pay it all, they won’t pay, they’ll pay…
“Thor got into the back room, sir. Someone broke a window here, and he’s been chasing the birds that keep flying in…”
(I almost named the dog Buttercup instead of Thor, just to avoid the obvious. But laughs are a gamble when the scene’s this high-strung.)
The guard’s voice stopped so suddenly that Paul knew his boss had cut him off. Paul tensed, waiting.
At last, he said, “Understood,” and walked away from the door. The dog kept growling behind it, but he said, “Sorry, boy, that’s enough excitement for you.”
Then Paul heard a faint beep and looked out to see the guard pushing a combination on the alarm control panel. Paul threw his thoughts toward seeing that keyboard, but the mocking memories choked off his concentration.
The guard turned away and Paul remained crouched down until he heard him finally walk out and shut the door. Gone. I’m safe.
Safe? No, Quinn must have told the guard to leave ‘Thor’ in the back room…
Paul struggled to fit the pieces together. So now Quinn knew about this latest disturbance himself, but the guard hadn’t told him about the others? Of course, their alarm system must have left the inside of this main room clear for the dog to patrol but kept a silent alarm in the back room. That was what Paul had triggered by knocking the dog in there, and what the guard had shut off now… and that alarm was the only one that signaled Quinn personally.
So now Quinn is awake—maybe even on his way here, if he’s suspicious enough. And I just shut the dog in with the only things Quinn made sure to monitor himself!
All that work, and it was all to put Paul on the wrong side of the door.
Paul scowled at the net he’d gathered up; it had barely slowed the dog down before. He glanced around, looking for something else to use. Maybe a chair, to fend the beast off or hit it… no, if he missed once, the dog would drag him down. But what if Quinn was on his way, and time was running out? This might be his last chance to learn what was haunting his power…
Paul yanked off his coat and moved to the door. He spread the coat out in both hands and crouched down, feeling for a moment like a baseball catcher with some flimsy, two-handed mitt. The dog barked louder, scrabbling right at the door.
Twisting the knob, Paul kicked the door open and turned that step into a crouching lunge forward, springing to meet the dog and wrapping the coat around it. They crashed to the floor together, his arms clutching Thor in a bear hug.
The brute writhed in his grip; he felt its jaws straining to rip free from the few layers of cloth that kept them from his captor’s chest and throat. Paul crushed the coat around it, desperate to keep the dog from getting leverage. With all his weight, he pressed the dog to the floor.
His injured arm burned and the dog’s nails ripped at his thighs as the jaws fought to get their grip. Paul could only hold on, thinking Tighter, I’m still twice your size, dog, and I need this…
If I can push my hero to the point that after all his tricks there’s only brute strength and willpower left, the scene’s usually on the right track.
After an eternity, the dog’s thrashing stilled. Paul hung on a little longer, his muscles aching, his heartbeat settling as one fear faded to another.
His hands fumbled around the dog’s sides and he Opened to feel for its breathing, but felt only the flood of Quinn memories now. As he let the power fade, he caught a weak stirring within the dog. It was alive.
Relieved, Paul staggered to his feet and dragged the limp body outside the room, then closed the door to leave himself in the dark. For one long moment, he felt every tremble in his gasping body. Sweat soaked through him and his new injuries flared with pain that was almost worse than the throbbing of his abused arm.
He felt weakly along the wall until he could work a light switch and then looked around.
The room was tiny. A few posters lined the walls. Instead of a desk, it had a small, empty table, set between a well-padded chair and a TV set. Nothing else.
That’s the end of the chapter.
Of course the scene isn’t quite over. The next few pages explore whether the room’s really empty, and Paul faces his other challenge, fighting through the memories that have tangled up his power until he can manage to scan the room properly.
So those are the pivotal pages of “the birdseed scene.” Slow, careful buildup of Paul’s plan, and looking for everything from the weather to the building layout to his past’s rising aches in his head to keep changing the game for him.
Looking back at the scene a book or two later, I still think it holds up well. It’s been my favorite for live readings and chapter samples, ever since Shadowed was first written.
Knocking Thor around that way still bothers me a bit; the dog was only doing what he was trained to do. (And I haven’t forgotten that pigeon, just trying to find food in the winter and getting shot for its trouble.) But I’ve always hated to flinch from what I think the story has led me to—and I never put the dog through anything my human doesn’t get, and worse. Besides, in The High Road it tends to be the people that lose out and the birds… well, that would be telling.
Lastly, I did promise a “terrible and secret shame” about this story. It’s simple: if you look back at the scene and its Twitter tagline, Paul only used the first half of the promised “birdseed and a rock.” In the first drafts he did put a rock through the window to start his raid, but during revisions it turned out that “the heaviest bottle he could find” was easier to pick up on a city street. And yet my profile still uses the simpler word.
Oops.
It turns out that, all along, Paul had to do it without a rock.
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