Carl Hiaasen & William D. Montalbano

by A Death in China

  Footsteps. Stratton’s pulse hammered. He held the gun steady. Someone was there, beside him. He turned to see.

  The pain hit Stratton high in one leg. It seared like a snakebite, racing up his thighs, burning through his lungs until it choked him. The gun dropped from his hand. Stratton spun down like a top, clawing at his leg, his throat, mashing the heels of his hands into his eyes sockets.

  Even as he lay there rasping, the galaxy exploding in his skull, he was aware of someone standing over him.

  The last thing Stratton heard was the faraway voice of the deputy minister.

  “Miss Greer, it is very good to see you again.”

  Chapter 25

  ALL THE NEXT MORNING, Dr. Neal Lambert waited.

  Harold Broom phoned at eleven. “All set,” he had said. “Be ready at noon.”

  But noon came and went and Lambert’s excitement soon dissolved into panic. He paced the halls of the museum. He told himself not to worry; people like Broom were always late. They were incapable of common courtesy.

  At six the museum closed. Lambert sank into the chair behind his polished desk and ranted out loud. Every few minutes he would dial the number that Broom had given him, only to be reminded by a very bored answering service that, no, Mr. Broom had not called in. Would he care to leave a number?

  Lambert grew despondent. Broom was a greasy twit, but would he dare sell the Chinese soldier out from under him? And was he resourceful enough to locate a new buyer on such short notice? Doubtful, Lambert assured himself.

  He wrung his hands and stood at the window of his office, gazing down the mall toward the Washington Monument. Gravely he thought of his three-hundred-thousand-dollar down payment. Then he thought of something worse: someday, years from now, walking into another museum, maybe Renner’s in Atlanta or that bastard Scavello’s in New York, and discovering his own Chinese warrior on grand display in the main room.

  No, not even Broom—his minimal reputation at stake—would stoop so low, Lambert concluded. Something else must have gone wrong. The possibilities were numbingly depressing. He picked up the telephone and tried again.

  TOM STRATTON AWOKE in the back of a taxi. He was dizzy, queasy, babbling.

  “Easy, bud,” the cabbie said. He led Stratton up the steps of the Hotel Washington and into the arms of a doorman.

  “I took a twenty off you, okay?”

  Stratton nodded foggily.

  “What happened?” the doorman asked.

  “Some broad called. Told us to go get this drunk out by the cemetery.” The cabbie glanced down at Stratton. “That’s where I found him, crawling around on all fours like a mutt.”

  Stratton groaned.

  “Better get him up to his room,” the cabbie advised, “before he urps on your nice carpet.”

  Stratton lay alone, dreaming of coffins. Slowly the pain drained from his limbs, but cotton clung to his mind. He could hear the sound of a city outside his window. A police siren. Screeching tires. A jet roaring down the Potomac. The noise crashed over him, triple amplified. His ears rang. His head felt like plaster.

  He had to get up. Hours crawled by.

  A maid rapped on the door.

  “Not now,” Stratton mumbled.

  He had to get up. Move. Open your eyes.

  The room was bright. The clock on the bedstand said eight o’clock.

  “Jesus Christ.” He had spent a full day in bed.

  He made a wobbly journey to the shower. He found a crimson dot on his leg, still tender from the hypodermic injection. He stood under the hot water for twenty minutes, letting his blood wake up.

  Sorting out the reality from the nightmare wasn’t easy. Just where did Linda Greer fit in now? She had zapped him with something—elephant tranquilizer, it felt like. Why? And where was she?

  On her own, that’s where. No Langley, no Peking. Wang Bin had become a personal project, but why? And how personal?

  Stratton was angry, restless and, above all, baffled. She had let them get away. For whatever reason, that’s what she had done. It was one truth that had survived the horrible night.

  Stratton toweled off and pulled on a pair of jeans. He called room service and ordered a big stack of pancakes, three eggs and a pitcher of black coffee.

  His options were dismal. He could run to the State Department and lay it all out. Someone very polite would call China, and someone in Peking would reply—very tersely—that the body found in the Ming reservoir was positively Deputy Minister Wang Bin; that no clay soldiers were missing from the Xian excavation; that no visa had ever been issued to an American named Harold Broom. That’s what the Chinese would say—because they had to. They would admit nothing, because they could never permit themselves to be seen as fools.

  And that would be it.

  A better option would be confiding in old friends at the CIA. But what proof could Stratton offer? Vandalized grave plots? Hardly a red-hot trail.

  It all came back to Linda. Was she in league with Broom and Wang Bin? Or was she trying for that solo coup that would edify her career—bringing the old Chinese bastard in from the cold? He remembered their dinner talk in Peking. Yes, that was probably it.

  Either way, the lady had guts. Wang Bin was a killer, not easily induced, coerced or charmed. With some defectors it was easy. Bring them in gently. Pay them. Pump them. Pay them some more. A new name, a new passport, off you go.

  Linda was wrong if she imagined it would be that simple with the deputy minister. He was the ultimate pragmatist.

  Maybe she knew that. Maybe she was way ahead of him. I’m the one who’s fresh out of clues, Stratton thought ruefully.

  He wolfed down his breakfast and went downstairs. He bought a copy of the Post in the lobby and walked out into the sticky heat to think. There was an empty bench on the mall near the Smithsonian, and Stratton sat down. Hearty joggers and lean cyclists flew by him, a reminder that he did not yet have his strength back. The sidewalks swarmed with foreign tourists who seemed to walk twice as fast as everyone else.

  Stratton imagined himself back in Tiananmen Square, where the order and propriety that ruled Chinese history seemed also to govern those who came to celebrate it. Here in Washington, among the functional granite monuments to democracy, there was a holiday festiveness; in China, among the wildly extravagant temples, sobriety.

  To Stratton’s eye, it was not merely a culture gap, but a canyon. Chinese tourists traveled thousands of miles just to stand where the emperor’s scholars had once gathered in the Hall of Supreme Harmony. In Washington, people lined up for blocks to watch the Treasury print money. Talk about awe.

  If Americans seemed transparent, the Chinese mind was opaque. For Stratton this had become tragically obvious, first at Man-ling—a fatal grant of trust to a young boy—and now, with humiliating emphasis, at Arlington.

  Stratton would never forget Wang Bin’s face as Stratton had aimed the gun. Such magnificent defiance. Stratton would have liked him to have begged for his life, but he would have settled for one tear from the steely bastard. A tear for his own brother.

  Yet all that had shone in the deputy minister’s eyes had been an iron, immutable spirit. Stratton despised it.

  He sat on the bench, watching a group of young girls from a parochial school chase a runaway kite, their plaid skirts beating together as they ran. Their laughter trailed off after the kite string.

  Stratton opened the Post. The front section was clotted with the usual turgid political news. Stratton dismissed it and turned to the local pages to see if there was any mention of the grave robbery. There, on 10-C, a headline midway down the page grabbed his attention: ART BROKER FOUND DEAD IN BURNING AUTO.

  The article was an Associated Press report from Grafton, West Virginia:

  TWO PERSONS were found dead Monday at the scene of a single-car traffic accident on Shelby road, two miles south of Grafton.

  Police said the victims were discovered in a burning automobile after the car apparently had run of
f the highway and crashed. Grafton Police Sgt. Gilbert Beckley said that rescue workers who reached the scene were forced to wait for the fire to subside before approaching the car.

  Authorities have identified one of the victims as Harold G. Broom, an art dealer from New York. Police said Broom carried business cards listing him as an associate of the Parthenon Gallery and the Belle Meade Exhibition Center in Manhattan.

  The second victim found in the car carried no personal belongings and has not yet been identified, police said. The accident was reported by a Greyhound bus driver who passed the scene but did not stop.

  Tom Stratton stuffed the newspaper into a trash basket, bought himself a lemon ice, and jogged exultantly back to his hotel.

  GIL BECKLEY WAS NOT what Stratton expected. He was not a middle-aged hillbilly with hemorrhoids, but an athletic young cop with a Jersey accent and two junior college diplomas on the wall. If Beckley felt it was beneath him to work traffic accidents, he hid the resentment well. In fact, he seemed pleased to meet this angular, quiet man who had arrived with information about the Shelby Road fatalities.

  Stratton introduced himself and said, “I read about the accident this morning in the Post.”

  “That was the official version,” Beckley said.

  “What do you mean?”

  “The two people in that car didn’t die in any wreck. They were shot. Classic murder-suicide, I’d say.”

  Stratton was dazed.

  “When you called, you said you knew something about the passengers,” Beckley prodded. “Can you help us out?”

  Mentally Stratton dusted off his story.

  “Harold Broom was doing business with a good friend of mine. They’d been traveling together for the last week or so.”

  “Had you seem them recently?”

  “Yes,” Stratton said. “Day before yesterday. In Washington. They rented a car.”

  “So you think the other victim could be your friend?”

  “I’m afraid so,” Stratton said. “That’s why I drove straight over here after I saw the story in the paper.”

  “We appreciate it,” Beckley said. From a bottom drawer in the gray metal desk the policeman withdrew a stiff brown envelope. “How’s your stomach, Mr. Stratton?”

  Stratton took the envelope. His hands trembled. He scratched at the gummed flap.

  He wasn’t acting anymore.

  “What was your friend’s name?” Beckley inquired.

  Stratton pretended not to hear. Be there, he said silently.

  He slipped the photographs from the envelope. They were black-and-whites, the usual eight-by-tens. The top picture captured what was left of Harold Broom after he had been dragged from the smoldering car. His clothes dangled like charred tinsel. His chest and face were scorched; the flesh on the upper torso was scabrous. The face was raw, frozen in a death scream. The eyelids had burned away completely, leaving only a viscous white jelly in the sockets. Broom’s outreached arms had constricted into the common rigor mortis of burn victims—elbows sharply bent, fists clenched in front of the face, as if raising a pair of binoculars.

  Tom Stratton took a deep breath. He felt clammy.

  The next two pictures, taken from different angles, were also of Broom.

  “The next one,” Beckley said, watching closely. “That’s the one you’re interested in.”

  Stratton looked at the photograph and nearly gagged. Through the din of his own heart pounding he barely heard Beckley shouting for someone to bring a glass of water.

  The pictures slipped from Stratton’s hand and drifted to the floor. … Broom lying by the road, Broom face-front, Broom from the waist up …

  And Linda Greer.

  Stratton covered his eyes and moaned. His face burned.

  Beckley stood at Stratton’s side, a hand on his shoulder. “I’m very sorry,” the cop said. “Have some water. You’ll feel better.”

  Stratton scooped the photographs from the floor, and, without looking, handed them to Beckley.

  “Mr. Stratton, can I ask your friend’s name?”

  “That wasn’t him,” Stratton croaked.

  “Him?” Beckley was bewildered. “But just now—”

  “My friend is a Chinese man. Wang is his name.”

  “Judging by your reaction to the photo, I thought for sure that the girl was the one—”

  “No. And I’m sorry I frightened you.”

  “Well, it was a pretty goddamn frightening picture,” Beckley said. “I’m sorry you had to see it. Still, it’s better to know one way or another. Did you recognize the girl?”

  “Never saw her before.” Stratton drank some water. “You say it was murder?”

  “Lover’s quarrel, the way I figure it. The girl was a one-nighter, a fiancée, a hooker—we’ll nail it down eventually. She got it first, back of the skull, two rounds. Then Broom aced himself, one in the right temple. The gun was a cheap thirty-eight. We found it on the front seat between them.”

  Beckley reached into the same drawer that held the photograph. He slid a piece of notebook paper across the desk toward Stratton. “We found this in a briefcase that was tossed in some bushes near the car.”

  The suicide note had been written meticulously in black ink, each letter capitalized:

  “DARLING! I AM SORRY, I COULD NOT ALLOW YOU TO LEAVE ME. THIS WAY IS BEST.”

  One glance and Stratton knew who had written it. I could not allow you to leave me. Much too clumsy for a fop like Harold Broom.

  “What about the fire?” Stratton asked.

  “An accident. Here’s what I figure: Broom pulls off the highway in a passion. Takes out his gun, plugs the girl, writes his farewell note, then checks himself out. Bang. Leaves the engine running and the goddamn catalytic converter overheats. Catches fire. The whole things goes up in blazes. That’s Detroit for you.”

  Stratton said, “I’d better go now.”

  “You knew this Broom character?”

  “I met him only once or twice.”

  “A real asshole, right?”

  Stratton shrugged. “I couldn’t say.” Suddenly he was in the line of Beckley’s fire: time to go.

  “What about your friend, the Chinaman?”

  “I … I guess he’s all right.”

  “I’d really like to talk to him,” Beckley said, “your friend, the Chinaman. I’d like to keep it nice and friendly, too. Subpoenas are such a pain in the ass.”

  “I understand,” Stratton said. “When I talk to him, I’ll be sure to have him call you.”

  “Right away.” Beckley tugged at his chin. “And you’ve got no idea about the dead girl?”

  “No,” Stratton replied. “I’m sorry.”

  I am sorry.

  Beckley led him back through a maze of dingy halls in the police station. As he reached the front desk, Beckley realized he was walking alone. He backtracked and found Stratton at the door to the property room. Staring.

  “It was in the car,” Beckley explained. “Wrapped up in the trunk. Didn’t even get singed.”

  Rigidly Stratton approached the Chinese soldier who stood noble and poised, an unlikely centerpiece amid the flotsam of crime—pistols, blackjacks, bags of grass and pills, helmets, stereo speakers, radios, jewelry, shotguns, crowbars. Each item, Stratton noted, was carefully marked.

  The ancient Chinese warrior, too, wore a blue tag around its neck, an incongruous paper medallion.

  “What do you think?” Beckley said.

  Stratton was overwhelmed. He couldn’t take his eyes off the imperial soldier.

  “Well, I’ll tell you what I think,” the cop said after a few moments. “I think it’s the damnedest-looking lawn jockey I ever saw.”

  Chapter 26

  STRATTON SPENT THE NIGHT in Wheeling. He slept turbulently, racked by old dreams and new grief.

  First David, and now Linda.

  He tried to convince himself that it wasn’t his fault. They had argued under the oaks at Arlington: Stratton for vengea
nce, Linda for patience. Wang Bin was worth more alive than dead, she had said. “He’s an encyclopedia, Tom. Do you know what he could do for us?”

  “Do you know,” Stratton had countered, “what he’s already done?”

  But she had been determined, and Stratton had underestimated her.

  Now she was dead, and Wang Bin was dust in the wind, a clever phantom. Stratton was sure he’d already grabbed the money, and with the money came boundless freedom—comfort, respectability, anonymity. That’s the way it worked in America. That’s what the deputy minister had counted on. In his mind’s eye, Stratton pictured the cagey old fellow in his new life—where? San Francisco, maybe, or even New York; an investor, perhaps, or the owner of a small neighborhood business. Maybe something more ambitious: his own museum.

  Stratton was desolate in his failure. Without clues, without even a scent of the trail, he had nowhere to go.

  Nowhere but home, back to doing what he should have been doing all along. And before that, a detour. A couple of hours was all he needed, a moment really. A chance to say goodbye to the man who had meant so much to him, and whose murder he had been unable to prevent. A taste of better times, something enduring and warm for a lifetime of cold dreams.

  Stratton got an early start and reached Pittsville by noon. The moment he passed the city limit sign he pulled his foot from the accelerator, a vestigial reflex from his days as a student. Speed trap or not, the town was still gorgeous.

  It was green and cool and hilly, a sleepy old friend. Stratton wished he had never left.

  He stopped for lunch at the village sundry, not far from St. Edward’s campus. The counter lady, a grand old bird with snowy hair and antique glasses, remembered him instantly and lectured him on his lousy eating habits. Stratton cheered up.

  The campus had changed little, and why should it have? The enrollment stayed constant, the endowments generous but not extravagant. Ivy still climbed the red-brick bell tower, and the bells still rang off key. The narrow roads were as pocked as ever, and the college gymnasium—now called an Amphidome—still looked like a B-52 hangar.