“I’m Chan Tien-Ming.”
“Lau,” said the man with the eye-growth. He did not look up from the tiles.
Danny looked at the man with the glasses, who was distinctly unhappy with him.
“You’re wasting time.”
“Okay,” Danny declared, raising himself up from his seat, “I’ll just go tell Mr. Wang that you didn’t want to play with me. I’m sure he can find me another table.”
“Chiu,” said the man with the glasses without missing a beat.
“Bless you,” Danny replied in English as he sat back down. Jiang barked a laugh. Chiu glared at him with twice as much distaste as before. Lau didn’t react at all; Danny thought he might not understand English.
The game resumed, this time at a pace that Danny found just a little more manageable. He responded to Chiu’s dark looks by making jokes, and before long even shy Mr. Lau was chuckling at his wisecracks. But Chiu never smiled.
The first round went badly for Danny, and he lost by discarding the Four Circles tile that Chiu needed to win. This would have cost him double, if he’d been playing with his own money, and was inexcusable as far as Danny was concerned. A beginner’s mistake that he should have avoided by keeping an eye on Chiu’s discards.
As the next round began, Danny organized his tiles in a different order to make it difficult for the others to deduce his hand. He was dealt two North winds—worth hanging onto in case he came across a third one, since he was in the North seat for this round—and several Sticks that he thought he could develop into a winning hand. He glared angrily at his tiles, just to try to fool the old bastards around the table, and began trying to turn on his X-Ray Vision to read Chiu’s mind. Chiu was the one he had to look out for in this group. Danny didn’t bother trying to read the other two.
The old man proved a difficult nut to crack, and it didn’t get any easier as the game got underway. He seemed obsessed with birds and jewelry for some reason, seldom transmitting thoughts that provided any information about his hand. Kingfishers; the birds on Chiu’s mind were kingfishers. This struck Danny as odd, but he couldn’t take time to ponder it as he skated the fine line between focusing on the fast-paced game and prying into Chiu’s thoughts. On his third turn he accidentally discarded one of the Sticks he had meant to hold onto, and the reaction from Chiu’s mind was instantaneous: surprise, mixed with no small amount of pleasure, although none of it showed on the man’s face. So he knew what Danny was collecting just from observing the first couple of discards, and he had taken note of Danny’s error. Danny let Chiu’s thoughts wash over him like a soft breeze until the fragmented images began to come together, aided by the hint of emotion that Chiu was clearly feeling now that he had seen Danny’s weakness.
What Danny saw was so surprising that he almost lost his concentration. Chiu’s mind was phenomenal. He was keeping track of all three of his opponents’ hands simultaneously as well as his own, was starting to calculate his odds of drawing the tiles he needed based on what had been discarded already, and was even following the games at a couple of the nearest tables to see which of the other players he could take advantage of in the future. Chiu wasn’t yet sure what tiles Danny held, but his guesses were so close that Danny had to wonder whether Chiu might share some form of his own abilities. But Danny dismissed this thought, judging it to be too unlikely to bother with. He focused on the image of the tiles in Chiu’s mind—
“What’s the matter with you?” Chiu exclaimed suddenly, getting up out of his chair. Jiang and Lau both instinctively turned their tiles down on the tabletop to keep them hidden. Danny just blinked at Chiu in confusion.
“Nothing,” said Danny, bewildered by the outburst. “What’s the matter with you?”
“You’re staring at me.”
“I’m not staring at you.”
Chiu shook his finger in Danny’s face. “Keep your eyes off of me! If you look at me again, I’ll have Wang throw you out of here.”
A fat bouncer came strolling over, belly-folds jiggling, until he was standing as close to Chiu as his girth would allow. He looked at each player in turn, settling finally on Chiu. “Is something wrong, sir?” he said in formal Cantonese.
“This boy is being disrespectful!”
The bouncer folded his huge arms. “Please sit down and play. Mr. Wang doesn’t like shouting.”
Chiu sat down slowly, glaring so hard at Danny that it seemed his eyeglasses would crack. The fat man walked slowly back to his post by the door, swinging his arms far out to the side to clear his massive gut. The game resumed. Danny made it a point to look everywhere except at Chiu.
While any emotion in the subject’s mind helped with the readings, anger was the most effective catalyst of all. Danny followed Chiu’s thoughts more easily now, and twice managed to avoid discarding tiles that Chiu would have wanted. He hoped that holding onto those tiles long enough would force Chiu to give up on them and try collecting something else.
When Danny drew the winning tile from the wall and declared his victory, a fury rose up in Chiu that made Danny lose his connection with the man’s thoughts. He laid down his tiles for the others to see. Four pongs, a pure hand consisting of all Sticks, self-pick, and no flowers... this was a far better hand than the one Chiu had won with in the previous round, and picking the winning tile himself meant that everyone else had to pay double.
The third round began—Danny’s seat now corresponded to the West wind—and he was dealt a much less promising hand. Instead of going for the win, he abandoned any attempt at victory in this round and played defensively against Chiu. When Chiu needed a green dragon to complete a meld, Danny held onto the green dragon until Chiu gave up and discarded one of the pair he had been holding. When Chiu waited for the Nine Sticks tile, Danny hoarded it until Chiu finally discarded his Eight. Each time this happened, Danny threw out the tile Chiu had been waiting for on the very next turn, causing new waves of anger to emanate from Chiu. When Mr. Lau picked up the winning tile from Chiu and unveiled a low-scoring hand, Danny laughed in spite of himself. Lau’s winning hand consisted merely of a pong of blue dragons and one of his own flowers; the rest of his hand was a mixture of melds that had no value. It was the kind of hand that expert players scoffed at, but it was enough to win the game for Lau and earn him a modest payment from the others.
“This is nonsense,” Chiu complained.
Lau blinked rapidly, his eye tumor glistening damply in the bright overhead lights. “What’s wrong, Chiu?” he asked tauntingly. “Someone has to lose. I thought you’ve played the game before.”
“The boy cheats.”
“Excuse me?” said Danny.
“You heard me.”
Jiang winked at Danny and said, “It’s your imagination, Chiu. Just play the game.”
Danny glanced over at the fat bouncer, who was watching their table keenly. Chiu looked over at him too.
“Ridiculous,” he muttered, but he began to wash the tiles for the next round.
Danny continued to target Chiu during the next several rounds, and after two hours the old man still had not won a single round since the first. Chiu’s face grew darker and darker as they played. After Danny’s sixth win, he turned such a deep shade of red that Danny feared the man would drop dead of a hemorrhage on the spot. Rising from his chair, Chiu shoved his tiles roughly across the table toward Danny in frustration, bellowing, “I have had enough!” He stormed out of the room past the big bouncer, who watched him go with a secret smirk. Lau and Jiang rolled their eyes at each other.
Danny gathered up his winnings—he had no idea how much, but it was a fairly big pile of cash—and had the wad of money halfway to his pocket when he felt a heavy hand on his shoulder. He turned to find himself eye-to-eye with the fat bouncer’s bulging mammaries. He had to crane his neck to look up at the man’s face.
“That belongs to Mr. Wang,” said the bouncer. He held out a meaty hand and waited.
“Mr. Wang didn’t win it,” Danny said.<
br />
“He said he’d pay for your game. That means it’s all his.”
Danny looked to the others for some support. Lau and Jiang just sat there looking uncomfortable. Neither said a word.
Seeing that there wasn’t a whole lot he could do about it, he reluctantly handed over the cash. He still had the fifty dollars from Wang in his pocket; there was no way he’d let the cretin take that too.
“Sorry,” the big man said with a shrug and a regretful grin, motioning toward the door. Several of the players paused their games to watch him go, whispering to each other and smirking. Danny found his way back upstairs, wove through the crowded restaurant, and stepped out onto Mott Street. The walk home was cold and miserable. He scowled all the way home, visions of revenge against Mr. Wang dancing in his head.
12
Tomato Soup
February 1968
Sitting in his office, only slightly too warm for comfort today, Ed yawned and tried to rub the gritty feeling out of his eyes. The sleepless nights and the chemicals had been taking their toll. The gnome came to visit him almost every night, now. Sometimes he could hear it muttering in his head even during the day.
Outside Parker Center, it was quite chilly by Southern California standards. Through the tiny, smudged window he looked down at people huddling in thick winter coats against the frigid 45-degree air.
A stack of work assignments from Bruce sat on the corner of his desk, tucked under the coffee cup he hadn’t rinsed out yesterday. There was enough work in that stack to take Ed through the rest of the day and half of Saturday, and Dallman would expect it all to be finished in the next eight hours. But his regular work would have to wait for a few more minutes. He had something else to take care of first.
He left his office and walked past the elevators, which were unreliable and prone to leaving people stranded between floors for hours, and took the stairs down to the basement. Ballistics testing was done down there, where the noise of the guns being fired into the water tank could be absorbed by several feet of concrete.
Bernard Rosenthal, the old officer who had headed up Ballistics probably since before Ed was born, sat at an old metal desk in the lab, looking into a comparison microscope and painstakingly sketching tool marks on a page in a notebook. There was an oscillating fan on top of a filing cabinet next to the desk, and Rosenthal’s wispy white hair fluttered gently in the breeze every time the fan rotated in his direction.
“Same model,” Rosenthal said to Ed without turning around.
“Pardon?”
“You can tell if two bullets were fired from the same model of gun because the tool marks are similar,” Rosenthal said, still gazing into the dual eyepieces of the scope. “Helps you draw some conclusions even if they couldn’t recover the weapon.” He pulled away from the scope, put on his thick glasses, then took a handkerchief out of his pocket and spat on it. “Dirt,” he explained, and he wiped the left eyepiece of the microscope with the freshly moistened handkerchief. “Carl always rubs his greasy eyelashes all over it. Disgusting. How are you, Ed?”
“Fine,” Ed lied.
“Saw a Greyhound bus broken down at the side of the road this morning,” Rosenthal said, making some notes below the drawing in his book. “One of those big Scenicruisers. You should’ve seen the smoke coming out of that thing. Thick, black smoke. Must’ve been on fire.” He looked at Ed as if expecting a reply. His glasses magnified his eyes grotesquely.
“Huh,” said Ed. He said this not in reply to Rosenthal, but because he was startled by the voice of the gnome, which had suddenly started chanting “Scenicruiser, Scenicruiser” in the back of his head. Rosenthal took Ed’s grunt as a meaningful comment and went on.
“There were about thirty people sitting on the guard rail, looking at the bus. They were all the passengers, you see. You’da thought they were watching a baseball game. I didn’t see the driver, though. Maybe he was going down with his ship.”
Ed made a polite sound that was halfway between a chuckle and a cough. The gnome stopped chanting to laugh at him.
“You don’t look fine,” Rosenthal noted, giving Ed a stern look over the top of his glasses. “Got the flu or something? Your eyes are all bloodshot.”
“I feel okay,” said Ed.
“If you’re getting sick, tomato soup is the thing. They always say chicken soup is good for a cold, but I swear by tomato soup.”
“You don’t say.”
There were two bullets on the stage of the microscope; Rosenthal picked up the left one with a forceps and dropped it into an evidence envelope. “Campbell’s is best,” he said. “Or I guess homemade soup would be better, but you don’t want to go making your own tomato soup!” He laughed.
The mere thought of tomato soup was making Ed feel queasy. He decided he’d better shift to another topic before it got worse. “I have a message for you.”
“It’s a little salty, of course,” Rosenthal went on, “but a little salt never killed anybody.”
“I have a message,” Ed said again, louder.
“I heard you the first time,” Rosenthal grumbled, holding out his hand. Ed pulled one of two sealed notes out of his pocket and handed it to him. Kajdas never shared the contents of his notes with Ed, and Ed never asked. He wasn’t sure whether Kajdas’ people within LAPD even knew who they were working for; as far as Ed could tell, all of Tom’s communication with them seemed to be conducted through Ed himself. Ed figured Kajdas trusted him more than the others, since he held the power to end Ed’s career—possibly even life as he knew it—in the blink of an eye.
Rosenthal tucked the envelope into his pocket and turned back to his microscope. After a moment, he turned back to Ed with a frown. “You need something?”
“What? No, I was just leaving.”
“Go get yourself some soup, son. I’ve got work to do.”
Ed needed to go find the next person on his list, a detective named D’Agnenica, but he hesitated. “Why are you doing it, Bernard?” he asked.
Rosenthal’s frown deepened. “Why am I doing what?”
“This.” Ed held up the other envelope, the one for D’Agnenica. “Helping them.”
“Why are you doing it?”
“I don’t have a choice. I was forced into it.”
Rosenthal squinted at him. “You were forced into it.”
Ed nodded, feeling like one of the specimens under the microscope.
“You always have a choice, son. Don’t pretend otherwise. Don’t try and blame somebody else.”
Ed shifted his feet uncomfortably. “I didn’t mean―”
“Yes,” said Rosenthal. “Yes, you did. You accepted a job, you’re being paid for it, so don’t go complaining now that it’s a job you don’t want to do. And don’t ask me any more questions.”
“Okay,” Ed said meekly.
“Now go on.” Rosenthal turned back to his work. Ed, chastened, slinked out the door to deliver the other note.
13
Mrs. Findlay’s Crazy Neighbor
The humming noise had started again. The gnome was coming—and for the first time that he could remember, Ed was looking forward to seeing it.
A Beatles record was playing softly on his stereo. He sat on the sofa listening to a song inspired by the Tibetan Book of the Dead, and waited for the gnome to appear.
A part of him was sure this would never work. If the thing could read his mind, then it already knew what he was planning. But he was out of ideas.
From the bathroom came the sound of tiny ceramic feet on the tiles. It was here. He heard it scuttle across the hall carpet, muttering to itself.
Ed picked up Willie James’ Ruger, which still had three bullets in it, and pointed it at the corner where the thing would appear. Slowly, quietly, he cocked the weapon, lined up the sight, and waited.
At last it appeared, its red eye gleaming. That eye found Ed and fixed him with a furious glare.
Ed pulled the trigger. The high-pitched pop of the gunshot
was deafening in his tiny apartment. His ears rang and his eyes watered from the twin sulfurous smells of both gunshot and gnome.
The gnome didn’t fall. It started walking toward him. Ed pulled the trigger again, and again, swearing at it, sure that his aim was perfect—it was only ten feet away—but the gnome didn’t react in any way except to keep walking toward him, its maniacal grin growing larger all the time. The gun was empty. Ed stopped his shouting. He could see the spot where the bullets had hit the wall behind the gnome, just above the baseboard.
“Kill me!” the gnome cried. It was coming around the coffee table now. Ed got up and edged toward the front door.
“Kill me!” it said again.
Ed backed up until he felt the doorknob against the small of his back. He slowly reached behind his back to turn it.
Someone began banging on the other side of the door, causing Ed to cry out in alarm. He heard Mrs. Findlay’s voice, muffled by the door and the ringing in his ears. “Edwin! What in God’s name are you doing in there?” There was a long pause. “Did you kill yourself? Open this door!”
The gnome was still approaching. It was no longer smiling, and Ed thought it looked like it meant to do him harm.
“You’d better be dead in there,” Mrs. Findlay called through the door, “or you’ll wish you were! Open up!”
He tucked the gun into the back of his jeans and opened the door a crack. Cool air flowed in from outside, drying the sweat on his face. “Hi, Mrs. Findlay,” he said in as reasonable tone as he could muster.
The old woman was trembling with fear or anger, possibly both. “Edwin, what was that noise?” she demanded.
“I heard it too,” said Ed. “I think it came from outside.”
“No,” she said, shaking her head stubbornly. “It came from here. I could hear it through the wall.” She peeked past him into the apartment, apparently not seeing the angry gnome in the living room. “It sounded like gunfire.”
Ed shrugged. “I really think it was outside.”
Forest of the Mind (The Book of Terwilliger 1) Page 11