by Robert Daley
“You get out, pliz.”
Powers heard Carol gasp, meaning she had turned and sighted the gun. She knew they were in trouble. Did she realize how much?
She said: “What’s the-” her voice broke, “matter?”
The middle-aged detective waved the barrel of the gun slightly. “Out.”
Powers reached across Carol and threw open the door. “Get out, Carol.”
She did so. He followed and stood beside her in the moonlight. She had begun to tremble. When he put his arm around her, she buried her face in his shoulder and began to sob. Bright girl. She understood the joke. She would not need the punch line explained.
The driver had brought out his own piece, an automatic of some kind. So now there were two guns trained on them. The middle-aged detective said, “You walk, pliz.”
Powers walked with his arm around Carol, who still sobbed against his chest. It was as if they were walking in a funeral. It was as if they were married, and this was the funeral of, say, their oldest son, dead in his youth. The grieving mother had broken down. It was up to the grieving father to guide her to the edge of the grave.
The grave was a big one, the biggest. They crossed the lot to the edge of it. Powers could hear water lapping against hulls, could smell the odor not of the sea but of sewage and rot and mud. A staircase down onto a rickety dock. They descended and walked out along the dock. There were junks nosed up on both sides, with lights shining through a few portholes. But there was no one in sight. Perhaps most of the squatters here had been relocated. Far out on the water the floating restaurants, three of them end to end, were lit up like Ferris wheels, like a veritable amusement park. They must be doing good business tonight, Powers thought. Across the water came the noise of voices, the muffled music - a less immediate sound to Powers than his own footsteps ringing like bells on the dock. The two police detectives, if that’s what they were, walked about four feet behind, the correct distance for work like this, the perfect distance; they must have learned that at their police academy, as Powers had learned it at his. There was no way to turn and attempt to disarm either of them, much less both at the same time. The hand was indeed quicker than the eye, and a savage punch so fast as to be almost invisible. But bullets were faster. At the end of this dock waited the mass burial ground, the world’s true bottomless pit, every corpse in it the victim of an atrocity. There waited also, he imagined, a motor launch of some kind to take them farther out to sea. The deed would be delayed, if possible, until then. An attempt was being made to kill them quietly, without attracting undue attention. That much seemed clear. Otherwise they would be dead already.
Therefore he had to make his move now, or not at all, within the next eight to ten steps at the most. The farther out on the dock they got, the less reluctant the two torpedoes would be to pull their triggers, and the end of the dock was approaching fast. Powers could dimly make it out. And he could hear, approaching across the water, the noise of an outboard motor.
From the floating restaurants searchlight beams probed the darkness. They splashed the harbor with excitement, with fun. The restaurants were big business, they advertised their presence with vivid bursts of light. They illuminated for a moment the oncoming motor launch. A sampan. One man steering from the rear. On the front platform Powers discerned what he took to be a pile of cinder blocks wired together.
Are those cinder blocks for me? he asked himself.
He was as terrified as he had ever been, but it was an intellectual kind of terror and did not incapacitate him. He was still flexing and unflexing his fingers. He was still able to think. He had known terror before. The sensation was not new to him. Keep calm, he told himself. Think it out. If you panic you are lost.
And he began to flip a new set of filing cards through his head.
If he turned and rushed them they would fire. Rushing them was out. They would have no choice. From their point of view, this thing had gone too far to turn back now. He had to confuse them. He had to give them an option of some
kind. Make them stop to think before firing.
What about Carol? If he could save himself, did he care what happened to Carol? Whose fault was this anyhow? He felt an overpowering hatred for her, and yet they had shared so much together in so short a time - and were sharing this experience now - that even as he hated her he loved her more than ever, for her flaws as much as her virtues, the way one loves a wife grown old, grown heavy, grown no longer beautiful but part of one’s life since forever. It was Carol’s fault they were here, but his fault too. They were here together. She was the one who had steered Koy toward him, but that was his fault as much as hers because he was the one who had steered her toward Koy in the first place. Was there not some way he could save her, even at the cost of his own life? But he was not married to her. Did he have to die for her anyway?
The sampan had slowed, and was drifting in toward the pilings. Four pairs of feet clapped rhythmically down on the boards, making a sound as hollow as walnuts. The end of the dock - the end of life itself - that sampan - came nearer. He knew that if this was Eleanor he would gladly give his life for her, and then it seemed to him that Eleanor and Carol were the same, his one and only wife, and that he would give his life for Carol too if necessary. He did not fully understand it, or see it clearly. It was muddled by terror, and by the need to improvise some action fast. It was all very mystical, but in loving the second woman he loved the first one more, and from now on, somehow, he must take care of both of them. He looked across at Carol and saw that she was stumbling along, sobbing. She hardly knew where she was, only that her life, her beloved life, was behind her. She would disappear tonight and no one would ever know what happened to her.
Powers had come to the end of the file cards. There was not an idea written out on any of them, nothing. His mind had become a void, and as a result fear at last took control of him. Love turned back into hate again - the impotent man blamed the woman. He did not have two wives, only one, whom he would never see again - and the void was filled with rage.
“Are you happy now?” he shouted at Carol. “I told you you were going to wind up in the South China Sea. I warned you.”
And then an idea came to Powers, and he thought he saw a way to save both of them - perhaps to save Carol anyway. He would give the torpedoes their option and himself a slim chance to survive.
“Look ahead of you,” he shouted at Carol. “That’s the South China Sea. Are you happy now?”
It stopped Carol in her tracks. She gazed at him with stricken eyes, below which tears and makeup coursed down her face. Behind them the two detectives had stopped also. She reacted even better than he hoped. She swung her handbag at him. It struck him in the side of the face, and he felt its clasp rip open his cheek. He had not put up his hands to defend himself. Instead he had lunged into Carol, and sent her flying off the dock. He had picked his spot carefully, and had driven her off the dock into the well between the prows of two junks. He saw her fall straight down into darkness, and even as he crouched and lunged again, he heard the splash. The surprised detectives had not had time to sort out what was happening, and he drove his shoulder into the middle-aged one, and sent him off the dock also, crashing down on his back onto the forecastle of the nearest junk. The other man fired even as Powers turned and ran. Crouched and running hard, Powers raced zigzagging up the dock toward shore. He was praying as he ran. He had never prayed so hard before. There were still more shots, and he prayed the detective would not think to chase him, and that the bullets would miss. He was praying that Carol had sense enough to swim between two junks, to stay hidden under the curve of two hulls. If she did, she would be safe. They could not linger long looking for her.
When he had covered about fifty yards, Powers rose upright and sprinted for the staircase. To hit anyone with a handgun at the range this had become would take an extremely lucky shot, and the detective behind him must be out of his mind with distraction. Should he help his colleague? Should he g
o after Carol? Should he go after Powers? What should he do? Shooting was an athletic event. It required absolute concentration, which the shooter was totally without; his problems had become too complicated to solve, and the target was diminishing all the time.
People had come out onto the decks of the junks. Powers had reached the staircase and had run up onto the embankment. He was ready to sprint into downtown Aberdeen if necessary, but when he looked back he saw he was not being pursued. Instead he discerned the shapes of the two detectives, who seemed to be grappling with each other at the outer end of the dock. They looked like men dancing, or perhaps kissing; and then Powers realized it was merely the second man hauling the first one from the junk back onto the dock again. A moment later he saw them run to the edge and jump down onto the sampan, and seconds after that the sampan, heading outwards, crossed the same searchlight beam as before, all three men staring back toward shore, toward Powers up on the embankment - to them an increasingly remote figure, safe, untouched, as invulnerable as a hero, as a god.
As for the hero himself, he stood now hacking and coughing, trying desperately to catch his breath. As the reaction set in fear overtook him. It was as if he had swallowed poison. He not only couldn’t breathe, his knees had turned to soup, and he could barely stand.
But when he had lost sight of the sampan in the darkness, he ran back down the stairs and out to the end of the dock. He could not be sure exactly where he had knocked Carol into the water, he could see nothing down any of those wells, and he began to call her name, but she did not answer. Was she still alive? Perhaps the detective had killed her, one shot into the top of her head. Perhaps he had killed her himself in driving her off the dock. Perhaps she had become mired in mud. Perhaps she had drowned. “Carol,” he called, and was amazed to hear his voice come out in a series of sobs. “Carol, oh Carol, Carol.”
He heard a groan, and the word “Artie,” half choked off. He ran in the direction of her voice, and leaped down onto the deck of a junk, where he hung over the railing, reaching for her face, for her slimy upraised hand. He locked his grip around her wrist, and in a single violent jerk extracted her from the water. He had heard stories in the past about mothers who could lift automobiles off kids they had accidentally run over. Such stories, he realized, must be true, for Carol weighed at least 130 pounds, yet he had yanked her out of the water and six feet into the air with one hand. They stood on the deck of the junk embracing. She was again sobbing against his chest. Her hair was plastered to her head, and from it hung seaweed and bits of garbage. Her dress sucked at her body, and her shoes were gone. But she still had her handbag. What does it take to make a woman let go of her handbag, Powers asked himself, even as he began studying the outer darkness. Could the sampan come back? Could bullets come at them over the water? Holding Carol’s hand, he ran her up the dock toward the staircase, up onto the embankment and across it. The car they had arrived in was still there, and he looked for keys in the ignition, but found none. He made a mental note of the license plate - that was his training and it could be important - and then they were in the street beyond, and running toward the lights of the town: some closed gas stations, a seedy hotel, an open pharmacy. They came to a taxi stand. Three taxis in a row. Powers yanked open the door of the first cab in line, and pushed Carol into it. He jumped in beside her and slammed the door.
During most of the ride Carol lay in his arms sobbing. But when the cab drew up in front of the hotel, where elegant doormen helped elegantly dressed people into and out of cabs, she tried to gather control of herself. “I’m a mess.”
“It’s all right, Carol.”
“I can’t go in there looking like this.”
As he led her across the lobby, heads turned. Carol herself stared only at the floor. Powers had never before seen her so embarrassed. They rode the elevator up. But once in her suite her momentary self-control vanished once more and she began violently to tremble.
Powers held her. “You’re safe now, Puss,” he said to her. It had slipped out - his pet name for Eleanor; he did not know why.
“Stay with me tonight, Artie. Oh, please stay with me.
But Powers had work to do, and could not stay.
He took her into the bathroom and undressed her. The muddy dress, the muddy underwear, fell to the tile. Her body was muddy too, her hands, her hair. He stood her under the shower. The hot water streamed down.
“You can’t leave me alone, Artie.”
“You’ll be all right, Carol.” He had to phone Sir David, report this, get the investigation started.
“Stay with me.”
If it were Eleanor as hysterical as this would he stay? Probably. But he was married to Eleanor. He was not married to Carol, and duty came first.
She began to cry. “Stay with me,” she sobbed. “Don’t leave me alone. Oh, please stay with me.”
“I can’t,” Powers said.
She stood under the spray with her eyes closed, her arms hanging limply at her sides, sobbing. He pulled the shower curtain shut on her, hurried out to the sitting room and made his call. Sir David said he would get to his office as quickly as he could; Powers should wait for him there. It would take him a few minutes.
Powers went back into the bathroom, and peered around the shower curtain. Carol was quietly crying. Her eyes, when they met his, seemed to plead with him to stay, but she said nothing. Reaching into the spray of water, he took her hand, drew her out of the tub and led her naked and dripping across the rug toward the door.
“When I go out, lock the door, and put the chain on. Don’t open for anybody but me. You’ll be all right.” He was trying to think of a way to reassure her and so decided to translate his thoughts into the idiom she best understood. “Nobody will be interested in you anymore tonight. You see, you’re not the star here, I am.”
But as he reached for the doorknob she clung to him, her arms around his neck, and only by disengaging her hands was he able to step back. “You’ll be all right,” he said again.
Then he was in the hall waiting for the elevator and looking down at the sopping wet front of his suit. His fear had entirely passed, and had been replaced by an emotion that was far stronger, that was perhaps the headiest emotion ever given man to enjoy. He had saved Carol, and saved himself, considerable trophies both, but the emotion was not pride. He felt like a man who could turn over cars with his bare hands, or drive his fist through stone, but the emotion was not related to virility. It was one he had experienced twice before, both times after surviving shootouts. After killing the stick-up man in the store, and the sniper in Central Park, he had known exactly this same exultation, this desire to shout at the top of his lungs: hey, I’m not dead. I didn’t get killed. Look at me, look. I’M STILL ALIVE.
“THEY WERE cops,” said Powers.
He sat with other men around Sir David’s desk: Police Commissioner Worthington was there, together with two deputy commissioners; Sir David had been joined by his chief of operations. It was nearly two in the morning. Everyone in the room looked somewhat discomforted, somewhat disheveled. Most had been awakened out of sound sleep, and their clothes looked as if they had come out of a bin that had been rummaged through.
“The credentials could have been forged,” said Commissioner Worthington. “How can you be sure?”
Powers stared him down. The man was angry, for his men were being accused without proof, but Powers was angry too. “Their credentials had nothing to do with it. They looked like cops. They behaved like cops. Chinese cops, but cops. It’s something a cop can feel.”
“Rubbish,” said Worthington. “The accusation is unfounded.”
“You’re a cop,” said Powers. “You know very well what I’m talking about. They were cops.”
A half-smile came onto Sir David’s face. Sitting behind his desk, he suddenly leaned forward and knocked the dottle of his pipe into an antelope’s hoof. “Well, it takes one to know one,” he said. But when Commissioner Worthington glared at him, the
half-smile disappeared. “You brought us a real headache,” he said to Powers. “A real headache.”
“How many cops in the Hong Kong police department?” demanded Powers.
Commissioner Worthington muttered, “About twenty-two thousand.”
“And photos of all of them on file.”
“Right,” said Worthington.
Sir David said, “Twenty-two thousand photos.”
“I feel sorry for me,” said Powers. “But they tried to kill me, and this case has become entirely personal. Where are the photos? How soon can I start?”
He was brought down to an office opposite the personnel section and two of Sir David’s officers were assigned to cart stacks of dossiers in and out of the room. Powers sat in shirtsleeves, his tie loose, opening each dossier, glancing at the photo stapled to the inside cover, then closing it and going on to the next.
The trouble with The Chinese was that they did all look alike - at least in photos. There were no redheads or blonds, no one with wavy or curly or kinky hair, or with blue eyes or freckles, or with Nordic as opposed to Mediterranean complexions. There were no aquiline or hooked noses - all noses were more or less flat. Powers wished Carol were there to help him. Women had a better eye for faces than men did, usually. In the morning she would be in good enough shape to work beside him, he believed. It would cut the workload in two, and she could confirm or reject any choices he made in the meantime.
When he had been working an hour, Sir David came into the room. “How’s it coming?”