Frogmouth

by William Marshall

  O'Yee said, "Right." O'Yee said, "Twenty-eight."

  "Mind you, it's only been a police station for about sixty years and even then, during the war, it was—"

  O'Yee, subliminally, said, "Twenty-eight." He saw Lim cringe.

  Hurley said, "Pardon?"

  O'Yee said, "Nothing."

  "You haven't actually killed someone in the cells today have you?" Hurley, sounding anxious, said, "Look, if you've killed someone there today past statistics aren't going to be of any assistance. I'm not going to be of any assistance." Hurley said, "Joke though it is, I'm still nominally a cop, an officer of the law, and if—"

  "We haven't killed anyone!"

  "Half killed them?"

  "No!"

  "Then if you're considering—"

  "There isn't anyone in the cells! What there is is in the walls—" O'Yee said, "Twenty-eight! Twenty-eight! Twenty-eight!"

  Hurley said, "Oh, God."

  "What do you mean, 'Oh, God'?"

  "Nothing! Nothing! Nothing at all!"

  "Yes, you did! You meant something! What did you mean?"

  "Nothing! I didn't mean anything!"

  O'Yee said, "I'm not crazy!"

  "No, of course not." Hurley, sounding as if he was talking to someone crazy said, "Well, I have to go now—"

  "Someone, somewhere, sometime must have been beaten to death in the cells or no man ever loved or I never wrote!" He was going crazy. O'Yee said, "Then how about beaten to a pulp? Beaten to a near pulp? Badly frightened?"

  "In nineteen twenty-eight?"

  "Why nineteen twenty-eight?"

  "You said twenty-eight. I assumed you meant—you know, twenty-eight with an apostrophe in front of the twenty, like, you know: 'twenty-eight . . ."

  "What happened here in nineteen twenty-eight?"

  Hurley said, "Nothing."

  O'Yee said, "The walls have ears." They also had a mouth. Behind Lim the wall was beginning to creak. There was static starting in the phone. There was a grinding noise. O'Yee said, "I mean, I mean that psychic events can be imprinted on walls as if they were screens for a projector and if the projector is projecting things that the wall saw—" O'Yee said, "What the hell happened here in nineteen twenty-eight?"

  "Probably a little man with a surveyor's theodolite said to another little man holding a measuring rod, 'Back three feet or so.'"

  "You mean the station wasn't even built here then?"

  "No, it was built in the nineteenth century as a police day post." Hurley said, "It was extended as a full station in about 1929 on the site of the old settlement."

  O'Yee said, "What old settlement?"

  "The leprosarium, and then it came into full twenty-four-hour operation and first appears in the police crimes returns in nineteen thirty-one." Hurley said, "Architecturally, it's an expression of the late Victorian tomb school of redbrick design that persisted well into—"

  O'Yee said in a whisper, "Leprosarium?"

  "Well, no, more the lazar house for the leprosarium a little way up the street—"

  O'Yee said, "Lazar house?"

  "Death house, you know. But it didn't last long because of the bad joss the Chinese lepers associated with it because it had been the site of the old gallows in the last part of the century."

  O'Yee said, "Gallows?"

  "It was a convenient site because, traditionally, long before the Opium Wars in the mid-eighteen-hundreds, the Chinese had used it for their execution ground and the continuum, you know, in the locals' minds of beheadings by the old regime and neck stretchings by the new—by the British . . ." Hurley said, "Well, it had a certain neatness about it."

  "Beheadings?"

  "Yeah." Hurley, becoming interested said, "There are some old photos and prints of some of them on file. If you like I could—"

  O'Yee said, "Hangings?"

  "Oh, and a few shootings in the back of the neck, but that was mainly reserved for rapists caught in the Chinatown section where the Imperial Government still had some authority—"

  "Shootings?"

  "Yes, they had a hell of a time digging up all the bodies and heads and twisted hangman's ropes when they laid the foundation for the extension and the cells." Hurley said, "No one ever asks me about history. It's really most interesting to—"

  "Hangman's ropes?"

  "Yes. Even the Japanese during the war got a bit pissed off when they were there because of all the bits and pieces that kept coming up to the surface."

  "The Japanese had the station during the war?" Lim had goggled out. He was walking up and down, then round and round making funny little gurgling noises. O'Yee said in a fury, "And what the fuck did they use it for if they didn't kill people in the cells—a goddamned preschool creche?"

  "No, a torture chamber."

  "A WHAT?!"

  "A torture chamber." Really, the ignorance of some people was appalling. Hurley, sighing, said, "It wasn't taken over by the Imperial Japanese Army as such, it was taken over by one semiautonomous branch of it called the Kempeitai. The Kem-peitai was the Gestapo of the East—"

  "I know who the Kempeitai were!"

  "But I don't think they actually killed anyone in there. At the end of the war during Liberation it was said that one of the Chinese secret societies caught the torturers and hacked them all to pieces, but I think that may have been outside on the grass—"

  "Outside, there isn't any grass!"

  "There was then. It was, of course, where the old typhoid pits had been in—"

  "OH, GOD!"

  "—the great epidemic of—"

  "Herk!"

  "What was that?"

  "Herk!" THEY had control again. The phone, as a sheet of lightning exploded against the window and lit up everything in the room, went "Pzzt!"

  "Herk! Herk! Herk!"

  Hurley said in alarm, "Hullo, are you still there?"

  The wall shrieked, "YAR—RAAAGGHHH!"

  All the phones went dead.

  He rose up. He ran. He flew. He had lift-off. He was up off the ground flying, turning into a blur. Auden's brain said, "My God, he can do it!" He didn't need his brain. His legs had turned into flywheels. They were flying. No, they were not sparks: it was the metal eyelets in his shoelaces—they had turned into sparks. He was glittering in the sun. Auden said, "My God, I can do it!" His feet were not touching the ground, they were hydroplaning. He had reached bow wave speed and only the minimum keel was on the surface and to the accompaniment of swelling music PT 109 was up off the water with all guns blazing shooting torpedoes as it went.

  Spencer shrieked, "You can do it!" He could. Spencer shrieked, "You can!" Spencer shrieked, "GO! GO!"

  He was going. The Tibetan, making for the hill with a fistful of money, looked back to sneer. He saw something the size of the Incredible Hulk moving at the speed of The Unbelievable Blur and he didn't sneer. Faster than a speeding bullet, more powerful than a locomotive— The Tibetan, turning, still running, did a sort of trip-skip, then a hop to recover, opened his mouth, closed it again and ran.

  Huh, huh, huh, huh! It was a tea kettle steaming up getting ready to blow the lid off. He heard the crowd start to roar. His feet didn't belong to him anymore, they belonged to posterity. He heard posterity roar: the crowd, the fans, the blurred faces in the stands on their feet shouting. Auden, running, no longer running, reaching Zen, passing enlightenment, unstoppable, unstopping, hit the first pain barrier at the fifty-yard mark.

  The first pain barrier at the fifty-yard mark was as nothing. His brain, astounded, said to the first barrier at the fifty-yard mark, "Ha, ha!" The barrier came and went. It was still there as a faint twinge in the region of the left ventricle. The left ventricle was as nothing. All the people and traffic on the street were going: they were fading, doing a dissolve. The music in his ears was swelling. The music he heard was Chariots of Fire. He was going so fast that he was traveling in slow motion. Time for important flashbacks in his life—God, he could hardly wait for the movie! Auden, talking
to his brain, said, "Flashbacks!" He hit the pain barrier at the seventy-five-yard mark and his brain said, "Aghhh!"

  "GO! GO!" It was Spencer shouting, jumping up and down clutching his stopwatch. He saw the Tibetan weave his way in and out of a crowd of people standing there watching like hurdles and then Auden, not weave at all, but cleave through them like a dreadnought. Some dreadnought. If they had had dreadnoughts like that at the battle of the Dardanelles the fleet would have been in Constantinople for breakfast.

  Seventy-five-yard pain barrier nothing. He had not even worked up a healthy sweat. Auden, traveling on winged feet, the air whistling cleanly in his ears and blowing out wax and all his inferiority, yelled to the Tibetan with no breathlessness at all, "Give me a race! Run faster! At least make a contest of it!" His brain was working overtime keeping his lungs supplied with air. His brain yelled at him, "Don't waste time with useless taunts!" So much for his brain. Useless taunts were what raised man up from the animals. Auden, as the Tibetan reached the bottom of the ninety-degree hill and turned back to glance at him with fear on his face, yelled, "Sagarmatha Hill—think you can make it?" The Tibetan went up the hill like a mountain goat.

  Auden the Magnificent, laughing gaily, was a second behind him like an enraged yeti. By God, Errol Flynn had had it right in moments of triumph. Auden the old swashbuckler, wishing only that there was a dewy-eyed girl to fall into his arms panting at the top of the hill when he triumphed, when he ascended, when he charged, when he came through, yelled, "Ha, ha, ha, ha." It was the old sword-fighting with the Sheriff of Nottingham laugh. Auden, his brain still protesting—Auden yelled to his brain, "Shut up!"—yelled with a flick of his head, "Hee, hee—ho! Ho!"

  He reached the eighth step and his legs gave up. The ninth step and his legs came back, the tenth and the legs gave out. Willpower. The conquest of the flesh. Auden, accelerating, forgetting it was a hill, deep in psychic running, running for nothing, but running, running through, yelled, "You're done! You can't make it!"

  The Tibetan yelled back, "Slob! European slob!" He was scampering up the hill, but not in a straight line.

  Auden shrieked, "Tactics! There's more to success than brute force!" He was gasping. It was his brain complaining again. Auden, turning red, sucking in air wherever he could find a bit, yelled, "Never underestimate a European!" The Tibetan still had the cash clutched in his hand. Venality, it was always your undoing. It was the sport of the thing, the amateur triumph. Even as they begged him, Auden the Fleet would never turn professional: it was something deeper than mere cash—it was the triumph of the will. He heard the crowds at Nuremberg roar. He heard the people on the street looking up, gasp, he heard—

  He heard Spencer shout, "Phil! Phil! I've got Wang's pension on you at twelve hundred to one!"

  He was gaining on the Tibetan, inches away. He put out his giant, great glistening hand to grab him by the scruff of the neck. He looked down. He looked back. He was halfway up the sheer face of a mountain. Auden's brain said, "Shit—!" Auden said, "Shut up!" The Tibetan, in terror, said—

  The Tibetan said, "Ow-wah!" and staggered. A tenth of an inch—a single lousy, miserable tenth of an inch from him—Auden saw his hand fly up and the money cascade into the air. He saw the Tibetan turn and look shocked. The Tibetan said— Coming a second after, Auden heard the sound. It was a popping sound. It echoed. The Tibetan said, "I've been shot!" He looked hurt. Auden, wavering, going down a few steps with the momentum, said, shaking his head as the man looked at him, "No . . . No, it wasn't me . . ."

  He saw Spencer looking up with something in his hand. Auden shrieked, "You shot him!"

  "I didn't!"

  "You did!" Auden, only mouthing the words, mouthing with no air left, his legs all stilled and stopped and hurting like hell, shrieked, "You shot him!"

  There were people running up the steps. They were after the falling money.

  Auden, aghast, shrieked, "You— That wasn't fair!" Spencer yelled, "I didn't!" What he had in his hand was his stopwatch. Spencer yelled, "I didn't!"

  "That wasn't sporting!" He never thought he'd live to hear himself say it. Auden, hopping up and down on the spot like a grasshopper with hemorrhoids, yelled with the minuscule amount of air his brain, getting even, allowed him, "YOU SHOT HIM!"

  "HE'S GETTING AWAY!"

  "YOU SHOT HIM!"

  "I—" The Tibetan had reached the top of the hill, hobbling a little. Then he was gone. Spencer, shaking his head yelled, "IT WASN'T ME!"

  Wasn't it?

  No, it wasn't.

  Spencer, ever mercenary, yelled, "GET THE MONEY!"

  Auden reached down to get the money.

  And something odd happened. Someone, somewhere, somehow . . .

  . . . shot him too.

  The door to the Detectives' Room flew open. Framed in the doorway, a vision of mirrors, trigrams, amulets, charms, lo pans and determination, was not the Assistant Feng Shui Man, but the ultimate, the great, the Master Feng Shui Man. They were playing in the big league.

  The Master Feng Shui Man, the Clint Eastwood of the spirit world, said, "Huh." God, he was magnificent. He glittered, he glowed, he shimmered. A vision of light from his mirror-spangled singlet to his mirror-spangled shorts and polished knees, he turned slowly in the doorway cascading light and hope and determination. His lo pan was no second-rate piece of baked clay: it was gold, carried low in a tooled leather holster.

  Constable Lim said in a whisper, "Wow . . ."

  "Huh." Tight-lipped, hard-faced, taciturn, the Master Feng Shui Man, narrowing his already very narrow eyes, said in a rasp to the wall, in some secret magic language, "Go ahead. Make my day." (It had to be that. What else could it have been?)

  Constable Lim said in a gasp, "Whoosh!"

  The wall said, "AARRGGHH! Wah! HAAAA!" The entire wall, lit up by a sheet of lightning at the window, vibrating, said in a sound that pealed like the clappers of doom, "BOOOOMM!"

  O'Yee shrieked to the Master Feng Shui Man as the door flew open again, this time, the Master Feng Shui Man not coming in, but going out, "Herk! Herk! Herk!" It wasn't the phones. It wasn't a Heavy Breather. It was him.

  O'Yee, finally, desperately, as his last word on the subject, said, shaking all over, "—Herk!"

  Auden, grabbing for the falling money, losing it, sending it up again into the air in a cascade as the crowds toiled up the hill with their hands outstretched and their eyes full of pillage, yelled down to Spencer, "Ow-wah!"

  He saw the bullet lying on the step near his foot. It was a .177 round ball from an air rifle. He saw the hungry hordes coming for the money. He saw—

  He saw—

  He saw . . .

  Phillip John Auden in today's extraordinary race from Marathon to Mount Olympus, in the Errol Flynn-John Wayne Self-Respect Stakes at 8:45 A.M. also ran . . .

  All that was left were just the last few final syllables before the movie ran out, the lights came up, and all the people staring goggle-eyed at the flickering images of heat and dust, drama and passion went home. He rubbed at his arse.

  Auden, still rubbing, said softly, "Aw . . ."

  "Aw, Gee . . . !"

  If he could have, he would have sat down on the step and wept with disappointment.

  4

  There had been no sexual assault. They had merely been killed. In the emptied-out kiosk, the government vet, Dr. Hoosier, closing the sternum-to-groin autopsy incision on the dog with number eight thread, said softly to Constable Lee watching him, " 'Thou met'st with things dying . . . I with things new-born.'" It was from Shakespeare's The Winter's Tale. He had seen it the last time he was at home in Toronto.

  The dead creatures were everywhere in the room. The counter flap was open, but it did not dispel the smell.

  The man obviously did not understand English. He looked down at Hoosier working on the ground with his instruments and had no expression on his face at all.

  The man Feiffer had had the same look. There was only the faintest tightening of the
muscles at the corner of Lee's mouth.

  Hoosier, finishing the suturing and sliding the dog to one side to gut one of the peacocks, said quietly, " I am a feather for each wind that blows.'" That was also from The Winter's Tale.

  He saw Lee redden a little.

  Hoosier asked, looking up, "Do you speak English, Constable?"

  He did. He wore a flash on the shoulder of his khaki uniform to show he had passed a course and spoke it fluently.

  Lee said, "No." He looked down at all the dead things on the floor.

  He stood watching, unchanging, unmoving, with no expression on his face at all.

  He was the modern equivalent of Nam-mo-lo, the sorcerer ancient Chinese fishermen employed to keep their boats safe from evil spirits and influences. He was the Double Flag Man, the fishing junks' registration documents issuer. He provided the Communist flags and registration papers the Hong Kong junks used in Communist Chinese territorial waters and the Hong Kong flags and documents they used when they left them. He provided the Hong Kong flags and documents the Communists flew in Hong Kong waters and the Communist flags they flew when they went back home with their catch. He kept everyone's hold full. Somewhere, to someone he was probably liable for taxes. No one ever asked. He was some sort of Communist the Hong Kong fishermen could deal with on a friendly basis and, to the Communists, probably, equally some sort of not-too-bad capitalist. He was a commission agent, a shroff, a compradore. He had been in prison in China for displaying revisionist tendencies and, in Hong Kong during the Cultural Revolution riots, he had been in prison as a dangerous radical. In Hong Kong, in Stanley Prison, he had kept birds. In the Hong Kong-China Dockyards off Beach Road, George Su, dressed in singlet and shorts, grimy, fiftyish, peasant-faced and with manicured fingernails and soft hands, said from his desk without looking up, "It's a primary plume from the left wing of a large woodland bird. Technically the feather is called a remex. The color—the look of a burned and blackened tree—means it's from a hot, woodland area of the world." All he had for his office in the dockyard was his desk. It looked like the sort of government-issue desk you saw in prison cells. It probably was. George Su, turning the feather over in his hand and glancing across past the rows of moored junks and sampans in the dock area toward the sea, asked Feiffer in Tanka, the language of the boat people, "What I heard about Yat's—is it true?"