Skulduggery

by Carolyn Hart

  But Dan wasn’t really listening. He was figuring out loud how to find Jimmy.

  “He’s probably hiding not far from here.” He frowned. “Hey, Ellen, all he had in that gym bag was one skull, wasn’t it?”

  “I think so.”

  “So the rest of the bones are wherever he found them, probably right here in Chinatown. Well, if Jimmy’s trying to set up a deal to sell the fossils then he’ll have to get all of them together.” He finished his tea in a gulp. “Come on. That gives me some ideas.”

  His office was in the financial district in one of the glass and chrome office buildings on Kearney. The office window framed a brightly blue square of the Bay. Now, late afternoon, a white ship steamed slowly out to sea, soon to slip beneath the Golden Gate Bridge and pass out into the Pacific swells, bound perhaps for Hawaii or Japan or Mexico.

  San Francisco, entryway to America for Asians. Gum Sahn, the incoming Chinese had called it, Land of the Golden Mountains, lured by the promise of the goldfields a hundred years ago.

  I turned back toward Dan. He sat at his desk, the telephone cradled between chin and shoulder, making call after call, trying to find some trace of Jimmy, alerting everyone to call Dan if they saw him. Dan looked at home behind his desk; he belonged, in his natural habitat, a legal pad, sharpened pencils, a dictaphone, an in box, an out box. A neat desk. A man with an orderly mind. A good lawyer, I felt confident. There is something about a good lawyer that sets him apart, a certain toughness and confidence and willingness to listen.

  But I wondered if those were the best qualities to find Peking Man.

  My eyes roamed the office. I felt comfortable. It reminded me of my father’s office, orderly rows of books, the Pacific Reporters, California Statutes, the stacks of folders crammed with letters and documents, pleadings and contracts, interrogatories and depositions. Dan lived, worked in an orderly, reasonable, practical, sophisticated world.

  I wasn’t at all sure that was the same world Jimmy lived in. There was nothing orderly in Chinatown, lives out of kilter, lives turned upside down at the mercy of the dollar.

  Anything could happen in Chinatown.

  We had moved through it, knocked on doors, walked along crowded Grant Avenue, seen grief and despair and elegance, and I didn’t think we were one step nearer those brownish mottled fossils.

  I walked slowly across the office, stood beside Dan’s desk. It was time to stop pretending we could handle it alone. Time to ask for help. Time to call the police.

  Dan was still on the telephone, his pen scrawling across the yellow legal pad.

  “You can count on me. Bill. You know I can keep my mouth shut. But this is important, damn important. It’s . . . family. Bill.” He listened, nodding, “Right . . . I understand . . . sure . . . big trouble, right . . . how much? . . . whew . . . I’ll say . . . right, this is strictly confidential . . . listen, Bill, I appreciate it . . .”

  When he hung up, he was exuberant. “Okay, Ellen, we’re getting someplace now. We really are. Bill’s on one of the Chinese newspapers and there’s not much he doesn’t know about Chinatown and everybody in it and he’s got some real stuff on Mr. Wilkie Lee. Our Mr. Lee’s in trouble, bad trouble. He’s been gambling, running it up with the big boys, and he owes eighty-five thousand dollars.”

  Eighty-five thousand dollars. Even for the owner of a high-class shop, that kind of gambling debt was way out of sight.

  Dan was saying so, too. “He probably looks rich to outsiders, but you know how it goes. He probably still owes a lot on the shop and has his money tied up in art goods. Now the gamblers are leaning on him. He’s running out of time to pay up. If Jimmy tried to sell the fossils to him, it must have seemed like an answer from heaven—if he could get them gratis.”

  “You think that’s what happened? That Jimmy tried to sell Peking Man to Mr. Lee and that he decided to try and take the bones so he could get all the money for himself?”

  “It makes sense,” Dan answered. “We know Jimmy went to the Middle Kingdom Gallery. Lee denied seeing him. Why should he do that?”

  I shrugged. People will do the damndest things. More to the point, what difference did it make what Wilkie Lee did if he didn’t have the bones?

  “Dan, none of this helps! I mean, who cares what kind of problems Lee has? Say he tried to highjack the bones. Well, so what? We’re pretty sure he didn’t get them. Jimmy got away from those guys so we aren’t any closer to Jimmy or Peking Man!”

  “We can’t be sure,” Dan said grimly. “Because . . . nobody’s seen Jimmy.”

  So Dan was worried.

  “Let’s call the police,” I said abruptly.

  He looked surprised. “Earlier you were opposed to calling them. You said it might be more dangerous for Jimmy.”

  I turned away from the desk, paced back toward the window. Yes, I had felt that. And, to be honest, I had felt that calling the police would bring more danger to Peking Man, too. If we loosed the world after Jimmy, it might not be the police who found him and the fossils first. But now I sensed that the longer Jimmy ran free, the less likely we were to recover Peking Man.

  I swung back to face Dan. He was waiting for my answer and I could see the fear in the back of his black eyes. He didn’t give a damn about Peking Man. And he assumed, of course, that I was putting Jimmy first, too. For an instant I hated myself, hated that instinctive scholar’s protective response.

  But, my God, the fossils would mean so much to man’s history! To have them again, to be able to test and see if they were so much older than had been supposed, to study and measure and evaluate and, yes, to venerate because this was part of us, part of the magnificent natural heritage of mankind.

  On the one hand Jimmy Lee, who had a good heart, and on the other the safety and protection of a great natural treasure.

  I couldn’t look into Dan’s eyes. I turned away again, paced back to the window, answered him over my shoulder.

  “I don’t know.” I said it angrily. “I just don’t know.”

  “Hey, Ellen, don’t be upset. We’re making progress.” His chair pushed back, he moved toward me. “And look, it does help that we’ve pitched on Wilkie Lee. He won’t dare . . . hurt Jimmy now. And maybe this will give Jimmy a chance to get those damned bones sold, then everything will be all right.”

  I was gripping the edge of the window frame with one hand. My fingers ached, I held on so tightly.

  That was the problem, of course. Everything would be all wrong as far as I was concerned. Because I owed a duty to myself, to my museum, to my profession to recover and protect those fossils. If I stood by, let them be raffled off, well, if it ever came out, I would be ruined.

  “What are you going to do, Dan?” I was surprised at how evenly I asked, surprised that nothing in my voice betrayed me.

  “See what else I can find out about Wilkie Lee. Then I may lean on him a little. See if I can find out what he does know. It might be enough to give us a better idea where Jimmy found the fossils.”

  I remembered Wilkie Lee’s bony tight face. It would take a big lean to frighten him because he was already desperate.

  “From what you said to him earlier, he must think you have the bones. That’s what it sounded like.”

  “That’s all right,” Dan said confidently. “I can handle him.”

  It was nearing the end of a long day. I had walked into a lot of lives that day so perhaps it wasn’t surprising that I knew both too much and too little to guess what might happen next.

  But we should have had some inkling.

  I had warned Dan that the fellow who stirs up the beehive is likely to be stung. I had sensed that. But I didn’t think it through.

  Dan and I were overlooking two vital facts.

  We had mowed a wide swathe through Chinatown. A nearsighted gnat couldn’t have missed it. How could we possibly think we could have escaped the notice of the persons who held those bones?

  That was one fact.

  The other was our abso
lute failure to consider what Jimmy was doing.

  It was that too-human tendency to think ourselves the center of creation, to take into account only what we are doing and planning and imagining. And to forget that the rest of the world not only doesn’t give a damn but is pretty busy with its own pursuits.

  I was very much involved in my own centric thoughts. About my career, my future, my responsibility—and just how much of a bastard I was willing to be.

  If I blew the whistle, called in the cops . . .

  Dan’s voice made me jump. “Don’t you think that’s a good idea?”

  “I’m sorry. I was . . . thinking. Is what a good idea?”

  “Leaning on Wilkie Lee.”

  The light streaming through the window struck him full face. I could see the faint lines at the corners of his eyes and the creases that bracketed his mouth and would get deeper with age. His was a commanding, exciting, bold face, but just now, looking down at me, I saw an edge of uncertainty and a willingness to share that uncertainty. It takes a particular kind of toughness to ask for help. He was asking me whether that was the best way to help Jimmy.

  Not how to rescue Peking Man.

  I owed him an honest answer. I owed him that at least.

  “Yes,” I managed, “yes, I think that is the best protection for Jimmy.”

  If we let well enough alone, if we alerted the police, set them to watch Wilkie Lee and the tough young men in his employ, they might capture Jimmy—and we might catch all of them and Peking Man, too.

  But there was danger in that. Wilkie Lee’s young men had knives and would, I didn’t doubt, use them. The safest thing for Jimmy would be for Wilkie Lee’s toughs to be drawn off, decoyed by Dan, while Jimmy made his move and, somehow, sold Peking Man.

  Encouraged, Dan turned back to his desk.

  I had followed Dan all day. He had looked for Jimmy and I had looked for the faint trail of Peking Man. I didn’t know, standing there in Dan’s office, what I would have done had I found the fossils.

  And I didn’t know, standing there, watching him, seeing him look up and the quick smile in his eyes when he saw me watching, what I was going to do next.

  FOURTEEN

  Dan took me home to my apartment. We would go back to see Wilkie Lee in the morning, do a little leaning. Meanwhile, he would scout around, see if he could pick up anything more about Lee.

  I didn’t ask Dan to come in. He waited for a moment in the doorway then he thanked me and turned to go.

  I wanted to call him back. I watched him walk away, watched him turn at the end of the hall and start down the stairs.

  I didn’t call him back.

  Instead, I stepped inside, closed my door and leaned wearily against it. My apartment seemed strange. I felt that I had been gone a long, long time. I glanced at the clock. Just short of six. Was it only the night before that I had cleaned shrimp and rolled out cracker crumbs?

  Almost six. Soon it would be twenty-four hours since I had held that incredible skull in shaking hands. Every second that passed, every minute and hour that I delayed, made it more likely that Peking Man would be bartered away like a sack of potatoes. And to what eventual end?

  I pushed away from the door, began to walk slowly across the room to my desk . . . and my telephone. It is so easy to dial a telephone. I could dial seven numbers and talk to the police. Or the FBI. A few numbers more and I could reach Chicago or New York, alert the world to the reemergence of Peking Man.

  But, once I dialed, once I spoke, there would be no turning back. Jimmy Lee would be in grave danger. Then it would not be only the police and scientists searching for him. The predators would be out, too, the wolf-like, soft padded, clever and deadly predators.

  I reached down, touched the cold plastic of the receiver. My hand moved away, straightened the onyx pen set that Richard had given me . . .

  Richard! My God, he was coming to dinner! Tonight! I had forgotten, forgotten completely.

  I did not want Richard to come to dinner.

  All right, Ellen, you’re a big girl, I told myself. You can speak up, communicate. Why the hell don’t you call, tell him not to come?

  I looked at the small clock on my desk. Richard would be here in fifty-five minutes. I couldn’t call now, at this late hour, and tell him I didn’t want him to come to dinner. I couldn’t make an excuse two nights in a row.

  Fifty-five minutes. No time then to call anyone about Peking Man, no time for anything if I were to be ready in time. I needed a shower, fresh clothes, and, Lord loves us, a magician’s wand in the kitchen. No casserole, of course. Instead, I’d make a lemon sauce for the broccoli and serve the avocados open with a splash of dressing. The crackers were already rolled out and the shrimp cleaned so that would be easy.

  I needed to hurry, to get started, but still I stood by my desk. I should call Richard and tell him not to come.

  What kind of game was I playing?

  Self-encounters never happen conveniently. But, sometimes, you have to stop, pin yourself down, brush past presence and convention, divine the reason, not the rationalization.

  It wasn’t southern courtesy that kept me from cancelling our dinner. There are so many soft-voiced ways to renege. It wasn’t a commitment to Richard. If it were Richard’s welfare that moved me, indeed, perhaps I should cancel our dinner.

  I jerked around, hurried across the room, but I carried that cold still search for truth within me. In my narrow bedroom, I paused beside my dresser and reached down to touch lightly the fragile hand painted antique china powder box that Richard had given me for Christmas.

  He had watched as I opened the gaily-wrapped package and my soft oh of pleasure had delighted him. I had looked up and his blue eyes were warm and smiling—and we were, at that moment, very close.

  Tonight I didn’t want him to come for dinner.

  I undressed hurriedly, plunged into a shower, soaped, washed. As I stepped out onto the mat and began to towel, I thought, it’s only fatigue, that’s all it is.

  If you love someone, you don’t push him away when you are tired. That’s the time to reach out . . .

  I saw Dan’s face suddenly, the sharp angles of his cheeks, his mouth, his smooth honey dark skin, his vivid black eyes.

  Five minutes to dress, lemon slacks, a white silk blouse, lemon scarf, white sandals, then into the kitchen.

  I yanked the cracker crumbs and shrimp out of the refrigerator, lifted two eggs from the rack. As I worked, everything began to slip into better focus. I liked Richard. I had been, these past few months, near to loving Richard.

  It would be idiotic to let a twenty-four hour escapade, a brief violent plunge into an alien world, destroy something that had grown and built slowly, steadily, comfortably.

  I dropped another shrimp into the egg batter then plucked it, dripping, to roll in cracker crumbs.

  I would tell Richard about Peking Man . . . But could I? He would be appalled that I hadn’t notified the authorities! He would never understand my hesitation.

  But, if I couldn’t tell Richard about Peking Man, couldn’t go to him for help in making that decision, then we didn’t have, between us, the kind of honesty that love demands.

  With Richard or without, I must decide. Delaying was only another kind of decision—and a weak-willed one. Right now, this instant, before Richard came, I must decide whether to call the police, set in motion the public search for Peking Man, or whether to run with Jimmy, to keep quiet and let him sell to anyone he chose a treasure that by rights belonged to the world.

  I turned in the hot water, rinsed my hands and was drying them when a knock sounded at my front door.

  Startled, I looked at the kitchen clock. Six-fifty. Of all nights for Richard to be early! I hurried to the door, damning Richard and totting up what still needed to be done. Well, I would put him to work. He could set the table while I made the sauce for the broccoli.

  I even managed a smile as I began to open the door. Then my smile turned to a gasp of p
ain as the door slammed viciously into me, jolting my arm and shoulder, knocking me backward and off-balance.

  Those old-young frightening faces, empty of expression, neither angry nor excited nor even very interested. Vacuous and stolid and utterly dangerous, they moved together, the shorter one shutting the door behind them, the thin wiry one reaching out to grab me.

  I bounced off one end of the couch and managed to elude him, lunging frantically to my right.

  Why me? My God, I’m afraid, afraid. Those hands, I didn’t want those hands to touch me. I tried to scream but it was the hissing gasp of a frightened rabbit.

  The wiry one caught me at the door to the kitchen. His arms closed around me and I hated the feel of his body against my back and the brutal pressure of his hands on my arms.

  I struggled and squirmed and tried to kick but he only held me tighter.

  It all happened so quickly and in silence, our quick panting breaths and the scuff of our shoes against the wooden floor the only sounds of my struggle.

  The solid knock on the door arrested time and movement as sharply as a camera freezes, stills forever, its subject.

  My head twisted toward the door and my temple was taut against my captor’s chin. I could smell his breath, sour, tobacco-bitter, and feel the hard bristles on his cheek.

  The knock sounded again.

  The stocky young man, the one I had whanged with a claw hammer the night before, still stood near the door. There was danger in the way he stood, leaning forward just a little, ready to spring, violent, savage. His hands darted inside his jacket and out again and the knife was an extension of his hand, a predator’s natural weapon.

  The knock came again, hesitant now.

  Oh Richard, what did you think, standing in that familiar hallway? A gentleman always, what could you possibly think? I’d broken our date last night. If you called me today, there was no answer. What could you think but that I’d forgotten?

  “Ellen?”

  His voice came faintly through the sturdy door. He wouldn’t shout, of course. Not Richard.

  If I screamed, if I managed one short desperate high-pitched scream . . .