Wildcase - [Rail Black 02]

by Neil Russell

  “Pretty much the same.” I also wanted to know what the LAPD told him and the San Bernardino D.A. to keep them out of it, but that might have meant reciprocating in some way, and I didn’t want to lie to the guy. So I said, “Not that it matters, but I don’t think Huston has a clue.”

  “There’s always a silver lining.”

  I thanked him and stood up.

  We walked out to the pickup, where Del was waiting. “Sure you won’t stay for some of that ham?” Wes asked.

  He didn’t mean it, of course, but it was a nice gesture. “I’ll take a rain check. Like to come back someday and watch you tune in Antarctica.”

  “Anytime.”

  As I slid into the Ram, I lowered my window. “I don’t suppose you happened to check up on Donnie or Cactus Taxi.”

  Wes looked at me. “And get in the middle of somebody else’s investigation? That would be damned unprofessional.” He paused. “But maybe one night after one too many brew-skis I called Vegas PD. Just to see. Seems Donnie Two Knives has disappeared, and nobody’s looking for him or a cab.”

  “After two months?”

  “Hard to believe, ain’t it?”

  I made a note to stay in touch with Wes Crowe. Three anything but run-of-the-mill homicides had gone down on his turf, and he’d been frozen out. I didn’t kid myself I’d just heard everything.

  * * * *

  As we rode back to town, I said to Del. “Wes mentioned church. You guys go to the same place?”

  He shook his head. “I’m a Member of the Tribe— nonpracticing with a vengeance. Ask my rabbi. Wes and Maxine belong to that big joint out west of town. Cathedral of the Testaments. Used to be a JCPenney till they built the Wal-Mart. It don’t look much like the neighborhood parishes back in Chicago, but they sure do pack ‘em in. Drive by on a Sunday, you can hear the prayin’ all the way out to the road.”

  * * * *

  11

  Reverends and Warlords

  DECEMBER 16, 1944

  PEARL RIVER-HONG KONG

  Neither Fabian nor Pags knew about the ambush of the British fleet ninety years earlier, but the gods of the Pearl must certainly have smiled as they entered the narrows where the Wellesley and the Furious had given their last full measure. Where the two Resurrection Bay speedboats now also lay, burned to the waterline, the bloated bodies of their sailors and Marines bumping against the launch as it eased its way to shore.

  Fabian lowered himself into the waist-deep water and ran the anchor up onto the sand, where he plunged it in a few feet from a dead lance corporal he remembered somebody calling Woody. Pags helped Fabian pull the launch in far enough that it no longer moved with the water, then knelt next to the Marine. He crossed himself and said the Prayer of St. Benedict. Fabian hadn’t been to church since he was a kid, but he crossed himself too and stood for a moment in silence. Not that it mattered, but whatever had happened didn’t have anything to do with tide tables and bad math.

  Fabian estimated they had roughly two hours before the receding tide expanded the beach to the point it would be difficult to refloat the launch. A few dozen yards inland, the sand ended at a jagged, foliage-encrusted cliff face that shot straight up. He squinted along the shoreline in both directions, but they could have been on an abandoned planet in a forgotten galaxy. If the same shit that had killed the first landing party hit the fan again, come morning, he and Pags were going to be just two more dead specks that the gulls wouldn’t have to work to find.

  Splitting up seemed too risky. They might never find each other again. So Fabian flipped a mental coin and went what their compass said was northeast. Not sure if he’d have the guts to use it, he brought along the flare gun and four flares, two red for signaling, and two white, which cast more light. He considered bringing Woody’s rifle too but decided that whatever was out there, a bolt-action Springfield probably wasn’t going to be much help.

  After they had gone what Fabian estimated was a mile, they’d encountered nothing but more sand, and the cliff seemed even steeper. “Well,” said Pags, “we’re dead anyway. Might as well shoot a flare and have some fun.”

  Fabian couldn‘t argue. He loaded, cocked, and pointed the gun upward at an eighty-degree angle. “You got insurance in case I burn something down? “

  “I’m carryin’ a couple of rubbers.”

  “Should cover us.” Fabian pulled the trigger, and the gun whooshed, sending a hot, red streak in a long arc toward the unknown. It burned its required seven seconds and fell, still glowing, until they could see it no longer. They listened. Nothing.

  “Fuckin’-A, give them a white one.”

  Fabian did but forgot to close his eyes, and the flare’s extraordinary brightness took away his night vision. Blinking to recover, he heard a shout coming from back the way they’d come. He turned and, through the spots, saw a shape. A man on horseback galloping toward them.

  “Goddamn it,” Pags said, “we went the wrong way.”

  “I thought I was riding with Mr. Lucky.”

  “Hey, I brought the cavalry, didn’t I?”

  * * * *

  The Reverend Big Jim Rackmann was a barrel-chested, ruggedly handsome man in his late thirties with a mane of prematurely white hair and a smile that exposed a forest of perfect teeth. Even though his stark white stallion was good-sized, the reverend fit him well. Fabian guessed six-four, maybe 220.

  He was dressed in worn cotton dungarees and a homemade white shirt, open to the waist, and his canvas moccasins were exactly like the ones Fabian had seen on Gary Cooper in a recent shipboard newsreel. He didn’t know why he remembered that, but he felt good that he did. Apparently, a couple of years at sea hadn’t completely dulled his cop’s attention to detail. The reverend was also carrying a carbine.

  “Missionary with a gun,” said Fabian. “Somebody call Warner Brothers.”

  Rackmann’s grin got wider. “Going quietly was Jesus’s job. If I have anything to say about it, dying for my faith will be a last resort.” He stuck out his hand. “Somebody hung Big Jim on me, but I’m easy.”

  Fabian immediately liked him. He and Pags introduced themselves, then Fabian asked, “What happened back on the beach?”

  The reverend shook his head. “Japanese gunboat. Poor souls never had a chance. My folks will make sure they’re buried.”

  “Why are you even here? You couldn’t know we’d show.”

  Rackmann gave him a smile. “Couldn’t know? Really, Ensign? Not too long ago, I had a pretty good life riding a motorcycle and writing tickets. You willing to consider there might be a reason I gave that up to thump Bibles in this no-man’s-land? “

  “You’re a cop? “ asked Fabian.

  “Past tense. California Highway Patrol. Mostly Riverside County.”

  “Nice to meet you. LAPD. Mostly politics.”

  “This is all fascinating as hell,” said Pags. “But where the hell are the pilots?“

  “It’s a little complicated. You’ll need to come with me. I brought extra horses.”

  Pags wasn’t sure he liked that. “I don’t think you get it. We’re on a short fuse.”

  Big Jim’s smile disappeared, and his eyes bored into the officer. “No, Lieutenant, you’re the one who doesn’t get it. For the last three days, I’ve been dodging guys who like to shove glass up your penis, then smash it with a rifle. So why don’t you grab a mouthful of shut up, and I’ll do my best to get us past the samurai you revved up with those flares. How’s that sound? “

  He’d made his point, Fabian and Pags fell in behind him. Fifteen minutes later, with Fabian trying to remember how to use his knees to stay tight in a saddle and Pags doing his best not to get bitten by a chestnut mare that had taken an immediate dislike to him, they turned onto a steep trail and entered the dense rainforest. Rackmann was often far ahead, scouting, but even as sure-footed as their mounts were, Fabian always felt better when he caught a glimpse of the missionary. It also occurred to him that the reverend’s choice of a white horse a
nd white clothes probably hadn’t been an accident.

  * * * *

  After the intense darkness, the glow through the trees was almost otherworldly. Then suddenly, they were surrounded by a pack of enormous, long-haired, maned dogs that snarled, sniffed and swirled around the horses. Their mounts started to shy, but the reverend’s stallion instinctively moved in front of the two mares, and they calmed.

  “Hold your cheeseburgers high,” laughed Rackmann.

  “What the hell is this?” said Pags, as one of the dogs stood on his hind legs and put his front paws on his saddle.

  “Just looking you over,” said the reverend. “But I’d advise against petting.”

  Fabian counted twenty-two dogs. “Had a collie once, and I thought he was big.”

  “Tibetan Mastiffs. Largest anywhere, and just for good measure, unpredictable. Keep your hands in full view and don’t make eye contact.”

  Moments later, they broke free of the rain forest, and the officers were riveted by a deep cut in the limestone mountain. The glow had become brighter and now bathed over them like an early dawn, except that it wasn’t yet midnight. They followed the dogs through a narrow pass the width of a subway tunnel. Once inside, the cut widened to few hundred feet, and on all sides jagged escarpment rose out of sight, walling out everyone and everything.

  They had entered a hidden city. Having no option but to grow vertically, structures hung from the rock as far up as Fabian could see. It wasn’t quite Shangri-La, but the homes were neatly painted in bright colors, and cobblestone streets clicked under the horses’ hooves.

  “Welcome to Hu-Wei,” said Big Jim. “Empire of the Fearsome Tiger.”

  Silent women and children now appeared in doorways, watching the procession with expressionless faces. Fabian smiled, but it was not returned. “They don’t seem very happy to see us.”

  “Hu-Meng—the Tiger People. Until I arrived, no outsider had ever set foot in here. Most had never seen a white man. Since before Christ was born, they have remained hidden from the rest of world, mostly because they are the most dangerous tribe in China. They’ve never been conquered— not even by the Khan boys.”

  “No offense,” said Pags, seeing a scrum of pigs tearing at the carcass of something unrecognizable, “but a million bucks and Madison Avenue couldn’t sell me on this place as an empire. As for not being conquered, who the hell’d want it? “

  He still wasn’t making points with the reverend. “In Asia, Lieutenant, power flows in many directions. Until this war began, these people held sway over the key trade routes from Russia and India. Every time an invader tried to exterminate them, they only succeeded in hardening their influence. These homes all contain riches their countrymen would not even know to dream about.”

  “Pardon my French, Parson, but are you trying to tell me some bullshit mountain tribe controls what happens to half a billion Chinese?”

  “No, but they control the trade in tigers, and the elite of China and Japan believe supremacy in battle and virility in the bedroom can be ensured by consuming their organs and sleeping under their skins. They also grind the bones into powder and add them to food or steep them in alcohol. Tiger tonic. Supposed to cure anything. Those who can afford it will pay fortunes. But to be sure they’re not getting goat parts stuffed into an old carcass, they accept only live animals; then their shamans do the harvesting and preparation themselves. China has some tigers left, but they’re a relatively small breed and, because of competition for land, mostly undernourished. Russian and Indian animals are much larger, and therefore much more desirable. For kings with armies, riches can be acquired anywhere. Tigers you get from the Hu-Meng.”

  “What a fucked-up place.”

  “And the dogs? “ asked Fabian.

  “Imagine you must transport cargo worth a thousand times more than gold the distance between San Francisco and New York with no paved roads and cutthroats around every bend. Fifty hardened men with ten dogs are worth a battalion of soldiers. They can move in any direction, attack when least expected and live off the land. And they can round up locals to do the heavy lifting. During the Opium Wars, the Hu-Meng stopped the entire British fleet in its tracks and slaughtered the best armed, most experienced fighters of their day. Quite gruesomely too, legend has it.”

  “So why the soft spot for missionaries?“ asked Fabian.

  “We’ve got no stake in the country’s politics. So in return for not proselytizing the tribe and acting as go-betweens with outside parties, they permit us to minister to the villages. Now Zhang wishes to ask a return courtesy.”

  Fabian wasn’t sure what favor he was in a position to grant. “And Zhang, I presume, is the warlord.”

  “His bloodline runs as far back as the Tiger People themselves, but he’s lurching toward a date with extinction, and he knows it. When this war is over, the Americans will go home, and without them, Chiang Kai-shek cannot survive. China will fall to Mao, and his first priority will be to exterminate the warlords. The Hu-Meng bear the distinction of being at the top of that hit list.”

  “So if no one else has been able to do it, how can Mao?“

  “By declaring war on the tigers. Superstitions and traditions mean nothing to the Communists. Their soldiers have already raided the Hu-Meng pits and dealt their remaining tigers to the Japanese in exchange for guns. The rest will be hunted to extinction. Once that happens, those who trade in them will become just one more ragged group of hungry peasants, easily tracked, easily killed.”

  “A pox on both their houses,” said Pags. “Where are the men of this burg?”

  “Most are fighting with the Nationalists. The rest, Zhang’s guard, are waiting at the temple.”

  Fabian eyed him. “You’ve got the I’m-just-a-humble-missionary spiel down pretty good, Reverend, but you’re into politics right up to that big toothy smile of yours. No offense, of course.”

  “None taken,” Big Jim said, and rode on.

  Still escorted by the mastiffs, they threaded their way through a tight maze of alleyways, where their legs sometimes brushed the buildings, until they broke onto a circular plaza outlined with eight buildings extravagantly inlaid with coral and jade. Even the protruding ends of the roof beams had been intricately carved into animal heads and birds inflight.

  But the architecture was quickly overshadowed by the fifteen, shirtless Japanese soldiers, bound to tall wooden posts, their arms jerked upward behind them. Adding to their suffering, a sharpened piece of bamboo had been thrust through each man’s waist, left to right—a wound designed not to kill but to inflict terrible pain. The prisoners moaned and cried out, but the men guarding them were unmoved.

  Near the largest building sat three olive drab vehicles. A troop transport, a Nissan staff car, and a Japanese ambulance. Fabian tried to imagine how they had gotten them up the mountain.

  Rackmann dismounted, and the officers followed him into the most impressive and spacious of the buildings. The interior was candlelit, the air thick and stale, and Fabian stopped to let his eyes adjust. Ahead of him a richly carpeted aisle was flanked by two five-foot-tall, magnificent jade tigers, and beyond, a circle of men surrounded a pair of Japanese Army doctors bent over a low, intricately constructed bed—also of jade. The physicians were speaking anxiously to one another and did not look up.

  When Fabian and Pags got close enough, they saw a woman lying on a silk-covered mattress overlain with tiger pelts. She was cradling two tiny infants, at most, a few days old. Even allowing for the poor light, the children looked pale, and their breathing was labored and wheezing.

  A large man, dressed in flowing red silk and wearing considerable gold, stepped forward and embraced the reverend. They exchanged a few sentences in quick dialect, then Big Jim turned to the officers, “Zhang says you honor him with your presence, and he apologizes for not offering better hospitality.”

  Fabian and Pags extended their hands. Zhang shook them while Rackmann continued, “The woman on the bed is Ai, Zhang’s
wife. Four days ago, she gave birth to two sons and a daughter. Among the Hu-Meng, multiple male births are considered providential. But one boy is already dead, and if neither survives, the family will be thought to have been visited with a curse.”

  Fabian understood perfectly, “Not good. It might give people ideas.”

  Big Jim nodded. “The Japanese medical unit was kidnapped and brought here as a last resort, but these doctors are powerless and will soon join their friends outside.”

  “And Zhang’s daughter?“ asked Fabian.

  “She is of no interest to anyone. This is not a culture that is kind to girls.”

  “Fuckin’ barbarians,” spit Pags. “If we weren’t responsible for those goddamn pilots, I’d shoot this motherfucker right between his beady eyes.”

  “How does all this suffering square with a man of God? “ Fabian asked.