Short Round took off across the roofs. Sloping, tiled, gabled—this was the most fun yet; he slid, scooted, swung around chimneys like a monkey in the trees. Rooftops were Short Round’s specialty.
His pursuer lost distance, but not sight. Short Round came to the edge of the last roof: sheer drop, four stories. The Belgian closed the gap. Short Round scurried up the slope, over the peak, down the other side. Same drop-off.
Except a few feet below, coming out the top window of the building, was a clothesline, stringing across the alley to the window of the building on the other side.
Just like Robin Hood! Wow! Holy smoke! Short Round hopped down to the clothesline, dangled there a second, then brachiated along a string of flapping silk pajamas to the window across the way while his pursuer swore in Flemish from the roof ledge behind him.
Short Round dove in the window, turned, gave the fuming man a million-dollar smile in payment for his passport, and called out to him. “Very funny! Very funny big joke.”
The man was not amused. People had no sense of humor anymore. Short Round apologized for the disturbance to the incredulous family he’d just barged in on. Then with propriety that seemed incongruous, considering his flying entrance, he bowed, and left by the front door.
Out on the street, shadows were growing long. Fish vendors were packing up, their wares beginning to smell; night people hadn’t yet begun to stir. This was Short Round’s favorite time. It was the hour of the doves.
Every day around now, hundreds of doves would accumulate in the courtyard of the monastery near the Gung Ho Bar. They made the most wondrous aggregate cooing, like the murmurings of a thousand satisfied Persian cats. It was a sound Short Round associated with being rocked by his mother, though he couldn’t remember why. He hadn’t had any family for many years.
Except Dr. Jones, of course. Dr. Jones was his family now.
Short Round suspected Indy was actually a reincarnation of the lower god Chao-pao, He-Who-Discovers-Treasures. But Short Round himself claimed Chao-pao as an ancestor, so he and Indy were closely related in any case.
He walked out of the Place of Doves, over to the Gung Ho Bar. This was where he and Indy had first met. He entered the bar. In the back booth, sipping a cup of ginseng tea, Indy was now seated, waiting. Short Round ran up to him with a big grin, took the seat opposite.
“Indy, I get passport for Wu Han!” he whispered excitedly. He handed over the Belgian’s passport.
Indy looked it over, raised his eyebrows. “Shorty, where’d you get this? I thought I told you not to steal anymore.”
“No steal,” the boy protested. “Man give me. He not need anymore.”
Short Round looked so ingenuous, so hurt, Indy almost believed him. In any case, he pocketed the documents for Wu Han.
Short Round beamed. That was one of the reasons he loved Indy. He and Indy, they were birds of a feather: they both had a knack for transferring the ownership of lost items, finding new homes for valuables that had resided in one place too long.
Indy was going to find a new home for Short Round, for example. He was going to take Short Round to America.
Indy squinted at him now. “Okay, kid, you sure I can count on you for the plane tickets?” He gave the boy money to purchase their tickets.
“Easy like pie, Indy. I just get my Uncle Wong’s car; then I talk to ticket man; then I wait for you at club.”
“Right out front.” Indy nodded. “An hour before dawn. You got a watch?”
“Sure okay.”
“Well, you make sure to tell your uncle thanks for the use of his car again.”
“Oh, he don’t mind. We leave for America soon?”
“Yeah, pretty soon. Delhi, first. Now get going; I’ve got to meet a man about a box.”
Short Round left the bar; Indy stayed. Short Round ran six blocks to the house of a German diplomat he knew superficially—knew not at all, actually, except he’d shined the man’s shoes at one of the classier brothels the week before, and there had overheard the honorable consul tell the madame that he was leaving town for a fortnight to visit relatives in Alsace.
When Short Round got to the house, he walked around back. He crawled into the garage through the small cat-door that was cut in the bottom panel of the side entrance. Inside the garage, he spent about ten minutes playing with the young cat, dragging a little woolen mouse on a string back and forth in front of it, until it pounced. When the excited kitten finally retreated, with its prize, to a hidden corner under the stairs, Short Round opened the garage doors wide. Then he hot-wired the car.
It was a cream-colored 1934 Duesenberg Auburn convertible, an easy ride to wire. Easy or not, he’d already taken this one for a spin with Indy several times this week. Now he hunkered down under the dash, crossing leads until the connection sparked and the engine roared into life. It made Short Round feel like the boy in the fairy tale who lived in the belly of a dragon: he closed his eyes, listened to the pistons rumbling, smelled the smoke of the electrical short-circuit, felt the dark enclosure wrap over him in the shape of a fire-hardened dragon-stomach . . .
Scaring himself, he squirmed up to the seat, put the car in reverse, backed out of the garage, let the car idle, closed the garage doors again, turned down the circular drive, and headed for the open road.
He could barely see above the steering wheel or reach the pedals, but barely was all he needed. The city streets became residential, then quickly rural, in the fading afternoon light. This was Short Round’s second favorite time of day: when the sun burned orange as a red coal, just before the earth gobbled it up again for the night.
By early evening he was standing in a small British airport office, negotiating for three tickets with a small British airport official named Weber.
“I hardly think I could make room for someone of your stature,” the officious Briton began.
Short Round gave him most of Indiana’s money. “Not for me. For Dr. Jones, the famous professor. This very important government case. I his assistant.”
Weber still looked skeptical, but took the money. “Well, I’ll see what I can do.”
“You do good, Dr. Jones put you in his book. Maybe you get a medal.” He winked.
Weber seemed taken aback by this strange little manipulator. “I’ll do what I can, but I’m not certain I can get three seats on the same plane with such short notice.”
Short Round winked again, and slipped Weber the last of Indy’s wad of bills as a bribe. He also let Weber see the dagger half-hidden in his belt. Weber felt distinctly disconcerted accepting a payoff from a twelve-year old gangster; nonetheless, he took the money.
“Yes, I’m sure the accommodations can be arranged.” He smiled. He wondered when the London Office was going to transfer him back to civilization.
Short Round bowed to Weber most graciously, then shook the man’s hand, then saluted smartly, his fingertips to the visor of his baseball cap. Then he ran back to the Duesenberg and drove back to town.
He left the car parked in the warehouse of a friend who owed him a favor. Night was just opening its eyes. Short Round thought of the daytime as a sleeping rascal who awoke, each night, with a great hunger. Short Round’s third favorite time was all night.
He ambled down to the docks. A boy had to be careful here—boys were much in demand, for forced sea duty, or other disreputable occupations—but it was a good place for a wily boy to get a free supper. And, like the night, Short Round was getting hungry.
He scavenged a small, flat plank from the garbage behind one of the bars, and took it down to where the oily water lapped right up against the quais. He squatted there in the shadows, his feet submerged, waiting. After five minutes passed quietly—during which time he prayed to Naga, the Dragon-King, who inhabited and guarded this sea—he suddenly slapped the board against the surface of the water, hard, several times.
In a second, a juicy moonfish rose, belly-up, to the shallow, stunned by Short Round’s concussions. He grabbed the
fish by the tail, yanked it out of the water, smacked it against the piling. Then, crouching in the sand a few feet away, he slit it open with his dagger, and feasted on the tender yellow meat. He wondered if they had moonfish in America.
Thinking of America made him think of movies. It was hours before he had to meet Indy yet, so he decided to wander down to the Tai-Phung Theater, to see if anything new was playing. The Tai-Phung showed mostly American films, mostly for the international crowd that populated the banking or diplomatic sections of the city. The Tai-Phung is where Short Round learned most of his English.
He couldn’t read the marquee when he got there—he couldn’t read at all, hardly, except for the little bits Indy was teaching him—but the letters looked different from the markings that had been there last time he’d looked, so he decided to go check it out.
He crawled in the high bathroom window at the back of the building by standing on two garbage cans outside. Once in, he lowered himself down to the toilet tank, then to the floor. He offered to shine the shoes of the man sitting, a bit shocked, on the pot, but the man politely refused. Short Round scooted under the door of the stall, and out into the theater.
He sat in an aisle seat, near the exit, for quick departure if that should be necessary. He slumped down so the ushers who knew him by face wouldn’t spot him right away. He popped a lump of bubble gum in his mouth. He settled back to watch the movie.
It was a nifty show. This private eye named Nick kept making very funny big jokes to his wife, Nora, very pretty lady. They had a silly dog, too, named Asta. Nick was drinking another martini at a big party where the bad guys were lurking, when a fancy couple sat down right in front of Short Round, blocking his view.
He was about to move to another seat when he noticed the woman put her purse down in the space between the two chairs. This looked too easy to pass up. Short Round waited ten minutes—until they got absorbed in the film—then reached forward and slid the pocketbook back to his lap.
It was a silver lamé evening bag with a mother-of-pearl clasp. Short Round clicked it open, quickly rummaged through it. Wow! What great luck! There was a jeweled makeup compact with a small watch set into its back. Just what he needed to check the time for his meeting with Indy—when the little hand was on the four, and the big hand on the twelve. (Indy was teaching him numbers, too. Numbers were easier.)
This was a very good omen: it portended well for the rest of the night. Short Round gave a brief prayer of thanks to Chao-pao, his patron deity, He-Who-Discovers-Treasures. Then he stood, began panting loudly, and fell in the aisle, draping his arm over the woman’s chair.
“My word!” she gasped.
“Lady, big man just steal your purse!” Short Round panted, dropping the purse at her feet. “I catch him and take back for you. He hit me, but I get away. Here your purse.” He nudged it toward her with his knee, then he collapsed.
“You poor child!” she said, quickly looking in the wallet at the bottom of the handbag. All the money was still there.
“Shhh!” said her companion, trying to ignore the distraction, feeling it was always the wisest course to disregard the overtures of these street urchins.
The woman arched an eyebrow at her escort. Short Round whimpered in apparent pain. The woman gave Short Round two dollars. “There you are, you sweet thing,” she spoke as if she were confiding. “That’s for being so brave and honest.”
“Thanks, lady,” said Short Round. He stuffed the bills in his pants, jumped up, ran out the door. The lady, briefly startled, went back to her movie.
Outside, the night was flexing. Paper lanterns, incense, jugglers, hookers, hawkers. Short Round, feeling a lot like Nick Charles, approached a streetwalker who had one slit up the side of her dress, another up the side of her smile.
“Hey, sugar, got a cigarette?” He winked at her.
She was about to retort, had a second thought, reached into her bag, pulled out a stick of gum, and flipped it to him.
“Oh, boy!” he exclaimed, pocketing the prize. “Thanks, lady!” He ran off, ready for anything. What a night!
For a dollar he bought a top that played music and flashed lights as it spun. Three boys went after him for it, though. He had to hit one of them over the head with the toy as he was climbing over a fence to get away. End of chase; end of toy.
He was left holding the broken top handle. This he threw as far as he could, back down the alley he’d been chased, and that was pretty far. Someday he’d be as good a pitcher as the great Lefty Grove: Short Round, too, was a southpaw.
His other dollar he gave to an old woman who sat, begging, on a doorstep. It upset him to see old beggers, especially grandmothers. Family was more important than anything, of course. His own grandmother was gone, but what if she were begging on a stoop somewhere. It was important to remember this.
The old woman bowed to Short Round; he thanked her for allowing him to honor her.
It began to rain, a fine rain. Short Round hurried back to the warehouse in which he’d parked the Duesenberg. Several men sat in a circle near the far wall. One of them was casting the I Ching.
Short Round watched him for an hour. The man threw the yarrow stalks for each person there, but when Short Round asked for his own path to be read, the man refused.
Short Round took a nap behind some bales of tea for a while, put to sleep by the cheery mumblings of a band of sailors throwing dice in a nearby alcove. Dice, I Ching: same thing. When he awoke, he saw a young couple kissing beside another stack of bales against the wall. He watched them for a few minutes. They seemed very happy. He wondered if they had any children.
From the doorway, Short Round heard the static of an old radio. He walked over. The small box sat on the ground plugged into the wall; beside it a drunk American sailor crouched, tuning it to an almost inaudible station that replayed smuggled American recordings. Breaking up over the air waves now was another adventure of The Shadow, who knew what evil lurked in the hearts of men, and who could cloud men’s minds. Shorty loved this program; he listened whenever he could. The sailor kicked him away, though. This was apparently a private show.
Anyway, it seemed like it was getting late. He looked at the watch he’d found: time to go. He started up the car and eased it out into traffic. The rain had stopped.
He got to the club right when he was supposed to. No Indy, though. The doorman tried to make him move the car away from the front door, but he gave the doorman the jeweled compact-timepiece, so the doorman said he could stay there for a bit, if he didn’t cause any trouble.
Then Indy dropped in. With the lady.
“Wow! Holy smoke! Crash landing!” said Short Round.
“Step on it, Short Round!” said Indy.
Tires squealing, they tore off into the Shanghai night.
Willie couldn’t believe it. “For crying out loud, a kid’s driving the car?!”
“Relax, I’ve been giving him lessons,” Indy said nonchalantly.
“Oh, that makes me feel a lot safer,” she nodded.
As Short Round swerved around the next corner, Willie was thrown against Indiana. Without losing a beat, he put his hand down the front of her dress.
Willie became indignant. “Listen, we just met, for crissake.” Some men . . .
“Don’t get your hopes up. Where’s the antidote?” It was hard feeling around in there; his fingertips were numb with poison. Too bad.
He rubbed the glass vial with his palm, rolled it into his fingers, pulled it from her bra, screwed off the lid, tipped it to his lips, and swallowed. “Ech.”
“You don’t look very good.”
“Poison never agrees with me.” He wiped his mouth on his sleeve. “Short Round, pull a right and head for the Wang Poo bridge.”
“Check! Gotcha!” the kid shouted back. When he drove fast, he tried to look just like James Cagney.
Indy peered out the back window and noticed a large black sedan in pursuit. “Looks like we got company.”
&n
bsp; Willie was suddenly depressed. If Lao caught her now, he’d really be hacked off. The club was a shambles, she’d lost the diamond, the kid was going to crash the car any minute, she had two broken nails . . . that was it. The last straw. She could cope with all the rest, but how was a girl supposed to get a job singing when she looked like—
She looked at herself in the reflection of the side window. Even worse than she thought. Tears began to well up in her eyes; tears of anger. “Look at what you’ve done to me,” she seethed. “My lipstick is smeared, I broke two nails, there’s a run in my stocking.”
Gunfire shattered the rear window, spraying them with glass. Indy and Willie crouched low; Short Round was already too low in his seat to be visible from behind.
“Somehow I think you’ve got bigger problems,” muttered Indiana, reaching for his shoulder bag. He pulled out a pistol, began firing back through the broken window. “There, Shorty!” he barked. “Through the tunnel!”
They screeched through the darkened tunnel. The pursuit car stayed right with them, its headlights burning like spectral eyes.
“What’re we going to do?” cried Willie. “Where’re we going?” The magnitude of the calamity was just setting in.
“The airport,” Indy snapped. “No, look out, Short Round! Left, left!” He reached over the front seat, put a hand on the wheel, helped Short Round navigate. Then, more softly: “You’re doin’ all right, kid.”
Willie sank lower.
The Duesenberg emerged on a crowded square: ten thousand merchants, beggars, hookers, sailors, thieves, buyers, and coolies with rickshaws wandered gaily amidst the jumble of bright paper lanterns, calligraphed banners, storefronts, and produce stands. They all scattered when the Duesenberg came roaring by.
Some of them scattered back over the street in the Duesenberg’s wake—enough to totally clog the thoroughfare by the time the black sedan came barreling in. It crashed headlong into a vegetable stand, then swerved and skidded against the curb, finally coming to a halt in a swarm of peddlers.
The Adventures Of Indiana Jones Page 20