He raised his hand to the door and stopped. What in the world was he there for? To see India, of course, and to borrow the keys to the Tai June factory. But which came first? The woman or the robbery? It was a puzzle he had to sort out, for deep in his heart it remained unsolved.
Although it was obvious that when a man turned up on a lady’s doorstep, after a long absence, washed, groomed, and dressed as never before in his life, that she was entitled to take for granted what he was there for: namely, for her. And, in this instance, to assume that he was sorry for all he had done and was ready to make it up. Although the fact was that he wouldn’t be there at all, at least not at this moment, if he hadn’t had a job to do in which she was involved.
Robert Haack sighed and screwed up his courage. He knocked. Rehearsed for the thousandth time how he would start, and began to shake. Inside the house footsteps approached the door. His eyes filled up in anticipation with grateful, reconciling tears.
The door opened a crack. “Is that you, India?” he asked, peering into the opening through which he could see a fragment of a familiar blue dress. “It is I, Robert.”
She said nothing. Was she afraid of him? Or so surprised to see him there that she couldn’t say anything? Or hadn’t she made up her mind yet how to receive him?
He plunged on. “I know it’s been a long time since I’ve been to call,” he said. “It’s not that I haven’t wanted to, please understand that. It’s just that I’ve been afraid of what you’d think, after all that’s happened.” He waited, but she maintained her silence. He tried to ease the door open a little farther with his foot, but she resisted.
“Well,” he said sadly, “I’ve sure missed you. I’ve been hoping that we might have a chance to talk things over. There’s a lot to be said between us. I should have said it before. But the truth is, India, I love you.
“Please,” he begged, as he squeezed his body through the narrow opening and into the hallway, “can you ever forgive me?”
There are moments in our lives when we see ourselves through the eyes of others, when the ego’s self-deception is torn away and we know exactly how we appear. Such a moment was this for Robert Haack as he looked, stunned, into the bright, inquiring eyes not of India Thackery, his beloved, but of Gook Lang, the reformed child prostitute.
Whom he had helped to rescue some months earlier from the prison of a star house. Who had witnessed his fatal encounter with Henry McMullen, workingman. Who had gone (as he’d forgotten) to live with India, and who now stood before him with her hand covering her mouth in embarrassment, wearing a cut-down version of India’s favourite blue dress.
What lurked behind that hand and in those eyes? Was it laughter, or just incomprehension?
“Where’s India?” he demanded angrily, feeling he’d been fooled. “What are you doing wearing her clothes? What are you doing here?” He pushed past her and peered into the drawing room. It was empty.
“Answer me!” he cried, returning to the dim hallway. He grabbed hold of the girl’s wrist and twisted it.
“She is not here,” Gook Lang whispered painfully.
Robert twisted harder. “I can see that for myself, now where is she?” Gook Lang whimpered. The wrist that Robert held had been broken twice.
“She has gone out,” said the girl, in tears. “She has gone to work.” Haack let Gook Lang’s wrist drop and watched his reflection shrink to nothing in the child’s frightened eyes.
“That can’t be right,” he said in a wondering voice. “She doesn’t work on Sundays. The factory is closed. Why are you saying this?” He felt tired, he wanted to sit down and think, but he could not before he was sure he understood what the child had meant.
“I need the keys to the factory,” he said. “You just get them for me, then I’ll leave. I’m sure you know where they’re kept. You won’t need to tell your mistress.” He did not know why he felt so weak and helpless, what it was that had turned his body, inside the blue suit, into a fixture of wood. He pushed Gook Lang away from him. “Hurry up,” he said.
She turned to face him. “I cannot,” she said.
A flash of his anger returned. “You’ll do what I say or else!” he threatened.
“No,” said Lang. “I already told you, she took the keys with her, she has gone to work.”
Haack’s wooden body turned icily cold. “No, she didn’t,” he said. “She doesn’t work today.”
“Yes,” Gook Lang countered, rubbing her wrist and regarding him scornfully, “Sing Yuen sent a message for her to go there. There is a big shipment for Tai June coming in. Sing Yuen asked her to make the place ready.”
Robert Haack slumped against the wall and put his hands over his face. Jimmy’s visage, as it had appeared at their first meeting, shortly after he had kicked Haack’s dog, Charlie, swam up in vivid detail before Haack’s eyes. He saw the anger and heard Jimmy’s voice as he snarled at Robert, who had threatened him, “We’ll see, Mr. Haack. We’ll see or I’ll be hanged. I won’t forget this.” A warning if ever there was one. A promise of revenge, which he, Robert Haack, had to his folly, ignored.
Numbness crept from the tips of his fingers into his entrails. He could scarcely breathe. He straightened himself, no longer aware of Gook Lang, who stood alertly nearby, and manoeuvred himself outside.
He was like a man who had awakened from a long sleep, or like a grief-stricken man forced to appear too soon in public. He staggered down the road into the June sunset as a golden sheen of light spread over the boardwalks, the windows, the faces of the passersby. His new clothes, his brushed hair, and shiny skin held a hint of gold. The glitter and shimmer of the street was like a dream, and he was caught fast in it.
Where was India, his pounding heart asked over and over. The drumbeat of his feet on the boardwalks repeated the question.
If India was there with Jimmy and his men…if Jimmy had known she would come…if she hadn’t been able to get away…Why hadn’t she come back? He couldn’t remember if he’d asked Gook Lang what time she’d left.
He took his inert body as fast as it could be moved towards the Tai June factory, towards the chasm of his own double-dealing.
The gold faded from the buildings, and as he arrived at the factory, followed by Charlie, who had chewed through the rope that had tied her to a post outside the Metropolitan, night fell like a sudden blow.
All was still. The Tai June flag was lowered. The chimneys were smokeless, as on any other Sunday. But at the side of the factory Haack found a broken window with the bars sawn through, and from inside he could hear the groans of the tied and gagged guards as they began to come to.
The lane gate was open. Robert swung it wider, and exposed to view the gaping doors of the empty warehouse in the courtyard. The place had been ransacked. The guards had been surprised on their rounds, knocked unconscious, and blindfolded. There would be no witnesses.
While the city had gone about its Sunday business, its citizens gathered in churches or at picnics; with its policemen sleeping or playing cards; and with Sing Yuen courting Lam Fan with tea at his restaurant, Jimmy had gone efficiently about his work. Passing cartons of tins out of factory doors and windows, manhandling crates and strapping them into carts; swatting the backsides of horses and sending them and their drivers and wagons into the streets. Where they clattered away into the distance.
The stillness was oppressive. Robert Haack stumbled over broken crates and shards of glass. He looked into the windows; he walked through every room of the factory, ignoring the trussed-up guards; he paced clear to the back of the empty warehouse, where he struck a match. Within the darkness created by this small patch of light, and where the odour of opium mocked its own absence, he saw on the earth floor a swatch of blackness no bigger than his hand, which was not black at all when he looked at it closely, but red. “India,” he said. Charlie, who had followed him on his rounds, began to whine. A torn piece of India’s clothing lay nearby. Pinned to it was the brooch that Haack had given her. H
e sank to the floor, touched the dry, hard blood, and passed his hand across his eyes.
For the first time in days, his thinking cleared. Jimmy, who had taken over the scheduling when Haack became otherwise occupied, would have known that the opium was expected. He would have known that, as always, India would go in the day before to make sure that the factory was prepared for it; that the earlier shipment had been fully dealt with and was ready for export; that the incoming warehouse was empty; that the processing plant was cleaned up and ready for Monday. He had known, that is, that she wouldn’t be home when Robert Haack called. For, after all, it was Jimmy who had selected this as the day for Robert to obtain the keys.
He understood, at last, that he had been deceived. Jimmy hadn’t needed the keys at all. What he’d wanted, and what he’d accomplished, was to get Robert Haack out of the way for a few crucial hours and to get India into his clutches. Robert: who had given Jimmy not only his drawings and plans, but all the information he had gathered about Tai June, and who didn’t know, in turn, very much about the actual execution of the robbery, or what was to happen after it. He didn’t know where the boat was kept. He didn’t know the names of any of the crew. He didn’t know where, or for how long, Jimmy would hide the drug, nor what his plans were for distributing it.
Pity Robert Haack. Pity the terrible combination of loss and responsibility that confronted him. Pity this man in his new suit of clothes, his freshly revealed ignorance, his dead-end thinking. He was afraid to move. He did not want what he was thinking to be true. And so he stayed where he was, with the factory cats watching him from the shelving, and his frightened dog howling, until the police finally arrived.
—
“But, Fan,” I say, sitting up on the deck of the Rose in puzzlement, “what did happen to my mother? Obviously she came to the factory while Jimmy was there, and she tried to stop him, but what did he do with her? She can’t have been killed, or else I’d not have been born. It doesn’t make sense.”
“Think, Robert Lam,” instructs my stepmother. “Robert Haack had found no body, only a small stain of blood.”
I think. “She wasn’t killed, she was kidnapped,” I say. “But why would Smiling Jimmy do that? Why not just kill her? We know that she was the only witness to the burglary—the guards who were knocked out and blindfolded could have identified no one.” I go on, working it out. “And Jimmy would never have let her testify as to his guilt. We know that he feared jail and would do almost anything to keep out of it.”
“Except reform,” says Lam Fan dryly.
“On the other hand,” I say, “he was a smuggler, not a murderer, he must have had his ethics.” I shake my head, unable to go further.
Fan nervously taps her long red fingernails on the hatch combing. “You’ve forgotten one thing,” she says.
“What’s that?”
“Jimmy hated Robert Haack because he had insulted him. Jimmy never forgave a slight.”
“Which was why he made a fool of Haack over the robbery,” I say, “I know that.”
“And?” she asks.
“India?” I say, the light dawning. “She was part of his revenge, as well?”
Lam Fan nods.
“So tell me,” I say, “what did Jimmy do with her?”
“He put her in a perfect place,” she says. “A place that no one would think of.
“Just remember,” she adds as she gets to her feet, “that Robert Haack believed, at first, that India was dead. He was so guilt-stricken over his part in the whole terrible affair that he assumed the worst. Once he realized there were other possibilities—that indeed she could have been kidnapped and hidden somewhere—he’d been taken away by the police. He did hear, though, while in jail, that Jimmy had returned to town and was looking for him. But before he had a chance to find out why, whether Jimmy wanted to torment him, or make sure he kept his mouth shut about Jimmy’s role in the robbery, Jimmy was killed. It was in a brawl in Chinatown, and it was said to do with money.”
“But Fan,” I ask her, “why on earth would Jimmy come back? Wouldn’t it have been better for him to stay out of the country? After all, he had to go to the States to get rid of the opium.”
She shrugs her shoulders. “I don’t see why,” she says. “There was no one left who could connect him to anything illegal but Robert Haack.”
I pause to think about this. There is something troubling me. Some thread or loose end, but I can’t catch hold of it.
“Also,” says she, “Robert Haack was the man on the spot in this instance—he’d been found at the scene of the crime and so was the logical suspect.”
“And Haack never said anything about Jimmy’s involvement?”
“Of course not,” said Fan. “Not while he knew that Jimmy held the key to India’s disappearance, and not while Jimmy had the power—which he did—to have Robert Haack silenced even where he was.
“He was trying to find a way to get a message to Jimmy, possibly to make an arrangement of some kind, when he heard of Jimmy’s death. He was devastated, of course.”
“Devastated?”
“With Jimmy dead the secret of India’s fate was lost. The police tried to implicate Haack in Jimmy’s murder—they had suspected all along a connection between the two men—but I think even they believed Robert when he wept and cried out, ‘Why would I want dead the only person in the world who could tell me what happened to the woman I love?’ ”
“You seem to know a lot about it, Fan,” I say.
“Everyone did,” she says indifferently.
“You had a personal interest, too, I suppose,” I continue. “Sing Yuen must have lost a lot of money.”
“We weren’t married then,” she says. She blushes. “He had insurance, he said.”
“You still haven’t told me where India went, and I still don’t understand,” I say as Fan turns to walk away.
“Just a minute, I’ll be right back,” she calls as she leaves the deck. How futile and sad it is, I think. My mother’s future husband left in ignorance as to my mother’s fate, yet knowing he was the cause of it.
Failure after failure piling up.
Fan returns shortly carrying a small blue book that I dimly recall having glimpsed in the depths of the lawyer’s briefcase. “What’s that, Fan?” I ask.
“It belonged to your mother,” she says. “She gave it to me, and now it is yours.”
I take the book from her hands. The numbness and tingling in my own hands returns. I fumble at the covers to open them. “Help me, Fan,” I say. “For some reason I cannot do it myself.”
She gives me a look that chills my spine. “Fan,” I moan, letting the book drop, suddenly completely helpless, “I can’t, I can’t read it.”
“Do I have to tell you again to face the truth, Robert Lam? Do I have to keep on begging you to do what’s best for yourself?”
I scoop the book towards me with cupped palms. The wind flutters the pages open at the beginning.
EIGHT
There are three channels leading from seaward into Esperanza Inlet and of these, Gillam Channel is the widest and best, and is the only one recommended. North Channel and the passage between the reefs westward of Catala Island and between that island and the mainland northward of it are sometimes used by small fishing craft with intimate local knowledge.
BRITISH COLUMBIA PILOT, VOLUME I
“Well,” says Fan, “I suppose we have our diagnosis.”
“If you’re referring to my malady,” I answer bitterly, elbowing her aside as I move from the wheel to glance at the chart table as we leave our anchorage at Volcanic Cove, “then you’re wrong. I should never have listened to you in the first place. I should never have let you come along.”
“Let me!” she says. “You practically begged me! You needed my help! You didn’t know what you were going to do! You said you were desperate.”
“I did not.”
“You did so.”
“Don’t be so childish, Fan.�
��
There is a pause while we both grimly examine the passing scenery.
“I can leave any time you want me to,” she says. “You are perfectly welcome to give up and run away and go back to your nest in the Pilot House. That’s where you belong, anyway. See if I care.” She looks impassively seaward, but I know from the tightness of her lips that she is upset. My symptoms, which have terrified me and have set me to imagining all sorts of possibilities, have not left her unmoved. Despite what she says.
“Is this what you wanted to happen, Fan? I’ve become an old man before my time. Listening to your stories has turned me into a hypochondriac. I hardly know myself anymore. I’m weak and feel helpless and I don’t like it.”
“My stories! So now it’s my fault! I’m only telling you what you’ve asked about. Don’t you ever take responsibility for yourself, Robert Lam? I didn’t make you sick. You are what you are.”
“I’m a marine pilot, Fan,” I say stiffly. “Hundreds of crewmen and passengers, millions of dollars worth of ships and goods have passed through my hands safely. I believe I’m what is called conscientious, and I am extremely responsible, in fact. I wouldn’t be licensed as a marine pilot if I weren’t.”
“Bah!” she says in disgust. “If they could only see you now!”
“Who?” I ask angrily, as the chart slips through my useless fingers to the floor. The Rose is rising and falling on the smooth ocean swells of Kyuquot Channel.
“Who?” Fan echoes, her voice rising in pitch. “Your colleagues, fellow pilots, stuffed-shirt adventurers who think they’re better than everyone else! And your fellow man, Robert Lam. All those you’ve fooled!”
To All Appearances a Lady Page 21