“MacArthur Industries.” I spoke in a level tone now. She was right about the sound quality in the stadium; you could hear a peanut vendor’s cry above the cheers from a grand slam. “The name kept needling me, just not enough to make the connection. You once said you used it to check into hotels because General MacArthur was the first American to leave Korea.”
“It was a beautiful country before he came, he and his gum-chewing G.I. hordes; steeped in ancient tradition and unpolluted by Western decadence. He left it a shabby little border town filled with pidgin English and cheap trinkets manufactured by our enemies in Japan. ‘Police Action.’” Her tone smirked. “Just who appointed the Pentagon to direct traffic everywhere in the world?”
“Yeah. There was that business of North Korea burning down whole villages in South Korea and conscripting the surviving boys to serve in the Communist army, but what the hell.”
“Worse was happening in Argentina and Jerusalem, and in your own South. I don’t question your government’s tendency to butt in anywhere it chooses so much as the arbitrary nature of its choices.”
“It’s your government, too. Last I heard you were still a citizen, subject to our laws.”
“For the moment. Revocation and deportation are under discussion, and may have already taken place in absentia. If I were returned to Korea under my own name, I would be executed in a week. Certain of my activities in Asia are in violation of the laws in North and South. Obviously, I am not here legally. I stand before you a woman without a country.”
“You’re exaggerating. I’m pretty sure you’re not wanted in Antarctica.”
“‘Wanted.’ The only one-word oxymoron in the limited English language. The people who apply it to me would be contented if I would simply go away.”
“I’m with them, just as soon as I get what I came for.”
“And yet you came empty-handed. Were my instructions not clear?”
“The boxes are in a safe place. Just when did you know you’d be dealing with me?”
“After the death of Johnny Toledo. Once you’d entered the picture, connecting you with Reuben Crossgrain was simple conjecture. I know you’ve been playing man-in-the-middle with the police and the federal government. You’d be surprised, or perhaps not, to learn just how much cooperation one can buy if she can afford the market rate. You Americans are so self-destructively cynical that it’s difficult to bring you to shock or outrage. Rome fell under similar circumstances.”
“Took it five hundred years.”
“Things move so much faster now. Do you imagine it’s revenge I’m after?”
“It occurred to me. I cost you some change a couple of years back.”
“Money is a disposable commodity, and an unlimitedly renewable resource, like people. You learn these things in the sex trade. Your sorry life is the best revenge I could expect, if I cared about such things. We’re both here to complete a simple transaction.”
“Alone?”
“I am alone always. If you mean am I unaccompanied, no.” She lifted her voice an octave, in a language I will never understand.
Suddenly I knew I wasn’t alone either. The shadows to my left gathered into a solid mass, dressed all in dark fabrics so that the pallid face seemed to float, a disembodied head. It was an old spiritualists’ trick, but in those surroundings and in the presence of that diminutive ogre in the infield it made me jump just the same.
“Shau Win Chang.” That eerily aethnic contralto isolated the three syllables in such a way that I recognized it as a formal introduction. I insist on nothing less when it comes to people who murder people with their limbs alone.
TWENTY-SIX
“Disarm him. Inspect him for wires.”
He stood silent following the quiet command, his arms down at his sides, watching me with eyes shaped like inverted commas. The cuts in his eyebrows looked like marks on a tally sheet—or notches on an old-time gunfighter’s six-gun. Chang’s calm seemed ancient, but then all I had to compare it with was the rictus he’d worn in his photograph, snapped in a moment of violent action. In his dark, close-fitting clothes he was built straight up and down, like a pipe cleaner. I wondered again about the stiff artificial sheen of his features, like new skin showing where a severe sunburn had peeled away.
As I reached for the revolver behind my back, he shifted his weight onto one foot. I’d seen the other foot raised and what it had done to Johnny Toledo. I held the gun out by the barrel. “Your picture doesn’t do you justice.”
He hesitated, a crease disturbing the balloonlike smoothness of his forehead. It flattened out as from an effort. Something glittered in one eye. He knew what I’d been talking about. He took the .38 and groped inside my coat with his free hand, all the way down to my groin.
“Now his wireless.”
I thought about saying I didn’t have one, but I knew nothing about her sources. I had a hunch Chang was short-tempered for all his training. He took the cell from my hand.
“Destroy it.”
He bent to place it on the step he was standing on and raised his heel. I kicked at his head.
I’d made better decisions. He ducked my foot almost in slow motion, a sharp contrast to the blow that struck me full in the chest. I didn’t see it coming, and it came so fast I wasn’t sure if it came from a fist or a foot. I have the impression my heart stopped. I spun, vaguely aware that if I didn’t I would fall head first and backward down the steps onto the concrete floor at the base. I barked my ribs on the iron railing, closed my hand around it, and waited an agonizing moment for my lungs to reinflate. They filled with a long hoarse draft and a thin splinter of pure pain that felt as if my breastbone had torn loose of the shallow layer of flesh that covered it.
“That was imbecilic, even for you,” Charlotte Sing said.
“I regretted it right away.” I doubt she heard me. It came out in a hollow whisper. I’d already taken a steering column in the same spot.
Chang’s long hair had spilled over one eye. He swept it back with a flirt of his head, lifted his foot again, and brought it down hard on my cell. It flew into four pieces. He swung open the cylinder of my revolver, tipped the cartridges out onto his palm, and tossed them over his shoulder. They rattled down the risers toward the backstop. He flipped the cylinder back into place and stuck the weapon out at me. I took it and returned it to its clip. He watched me with an expression of contempt.
I found my voice then. “Does he speak? I’m pretty sure he doesn’t roll over and play dead.”
“His English is spotty. He hasn’t been here long, and he prefers not to appear foolish; a vanity you don’t share. I take it you know something of the Society of the Paper Dog.”
“Everything but the face job.”
“A precaution, in his particular division. Every step is taken to prevent the authorities from tracing them back to their families in the event of capture. Shau Win Chang is not his birth name, of course.”
“I didn’t think it suited him.”
“The surgery is conducted without anesthesia, which is the final test before each man is allowed out into the world. Some don’t survive.”
Chang’s posture straightened a half inch; it hadn’t been anything like a stoop to begin with. He’d followed that part of the conversation.
“Now that we’re caught up,” I said.
She said something in Chinese. Chang backed down a step toward the infield and to the side. I started down that way. The hairs lifted on the back of my neck as he followed.
At the bottom, he touched my arm, steering me to the right. We circled a third of the way around the playing surface and entered a tunnel leading to the home team locker room. The floor sloped down into ocean-floor blackness. Here the mildew stench that stalked the building acquired a texture of its own: Athlete’s-foot spores mingled with shower mold and the residue in toilets and urinals left unscrubbed after the final game, years now in the past. The acrid sweat of a million trips around the bases was sunk deep in
the block walls. I put a palm against one for guidance and the rough damp surface chilled me to the base of my spine. Chang followed, directed by some GPS all his own.
The darkness was complete, but as I continued, groping my way with my feet and holding a hand out in front of me to keep from colliding with any of the variety of hard elements that went into the stadium’s construction, I grew aware of a source of light ahead. It spared me from banging a shin against a long bench bolted to the floor, an oblong impression in the dim glow. The steel lockers that had stood on either side were gone, pried loose by thieves or sold legitimately at auction to sports buffs. The garage sale was winding down; there was little left to do but knock over the rest, and that, too, would be peddled off piece by piece, inert chunks of masonry holding down stacks of paper in someone’s office.
The light grew less dim. I followed it through a rectangular arch into a small square room, concrete on two sides, with a partition separating it from the locker room with large square openings in it where there had been glass panes. The door had been taken down. I hoped it had brought a fair market price. Managers from George Stallings to Sparky Anderson had closed it to inform five generations of players that they’d been cut from the lineup.
There was a strong smell of kerosene, and the hissing and popping of a badly trimmed wick inside the smudged glass chimney of a lantern burning on the floor. The office had been gutted of fixtures and furniture. A white resin patio chair had been brought in, presumably to tie its occupant to and prevent her escape.
“Please.”
Her voice was hoarse, and I wondered if she’d gotten the same treatment from Chang that I had. Ouida wore a light printed blouse soaked through at the armpits and a gray tailored skirt that looked as if it belonged to a suit. She was in stocking feet with runners. Plastic zip ties, the kind electricians use to corral bundles of wire, fastened her ankles to the legs of her chair and her arms were drawn behind the back and probably bound the same way. Her mascara had bled down her cheeks and her bright red hair looked more unnatural than it did in Eugenia Pappas’ house. In that bleak place, any dash of color might have come from outer space.
“She’s been fed and watered. Toilet facilities have been arranged, and exercise to aid circulation. The setting is ideal. There was no need to gag her after she was brought here. Who is to hear her cries for help?”
Charlotte Sing stood with her back to a solid wall, arms crossed. In the unsteady light she looked even younger than usual; her small stature and fine features might have belonged to a teenage gymnast.
“‘Fed and watered,’” I said. “She’s a human being, not a geranium. Who’s been looking after her?”
“Chang and myself. I’ve learned from experience to pare my staff down to small departments, each assigned to one responsibility.”
“He wasn’t trained as a babysitter. How’s he feel about it?”
“I don’t poll my subordinates on the subject of their opinions. Where are my boxes?” She lifted her gaze from the captive. Her eyes were as nearly black as any I’d seen. Nocturnal animals in photographs were as close as it got; but their eyes were almost all pupil. I couldn’t tell where her irises left off and the pupils began. It was like staring down two deep shafts you knew weren’t empty at the bottom.
I looked away and smiled at Ouida, as much to cover my retreat as to reassure her. “Eugenia’s worried. She gave me a fat bonus to bring you back in good health.”
“Did she say why?” The rawness of her voice was painful. I decided she’d broken it shouting for help. There were no marks visible and she didn’t seem to be in shock.
“She wants to use you as a bargaining chip with God.”
After a long moment she nodded, with ironic twists at the corners of her lips. “Thank you for being honest. She’s told me her grand plan for salvation.”
I returned my attention to Madam Sing. “They’re in my car. You can have them. They’re too rich for my blood.”
“I’ll take that as a compliment. I knew you’d open them and look inside. The poppies that produced the alkaloid to make the original opium are mutations, genetically enhanced. The standard plant requires at least twelve hours of sunlight per day to produce blossoms; the altered variety needs only six. This means it can be grown in temperate climates, not just the tropics.”
“My mother used to grow them in Michigan in the summer,” I said. “To look at, not to stick in her veins.”
“Had she access to these plants, she could have seen them bloom from May to November. In addition to a protracted season, the plants themselves are half again as fertile. My enforced retirement has made me quite the gardener.” Satirical humor sounded mechanical in those lathed tones. “The heroin that’s caused the local authorities so much work is not even the pure form. Without adulteration, a grain would produce euphoria; two would result in death. A single kilogram in its original form would slay every addict in North America.”
“When did you start working for the DEA?”
“Obviously, the quality of the shipment that reached Detroit was reduced. It would be counterproductive to destroy the market in one fell swoop.”
“So it’s a fund-raiser. I heard your assets were seized or frozen.” I shook my head. “I have to say I’m disappointed. The Charlotte Sing I knew wasn’t in it for the money.”
“Obtaining wealth is a talent. If you work at it, you can turn it into a skill. I can raise a quarter billion dollars’ credit in twenty-four hours on my reputation alone; not in the legitimate commodities market, of course, but the dollar goes just as far. Farther, some places. What’s become of America’s image in the world community is a scandal.”
“Our dollar’s not doing so well, either. I thought you might have given up on destroying our culture with undocumented immigrants. We slurp them up like Pepsi, even built a statue to advertise it.”
“I disagree, but I never till the same field twice. Insanity is defined as the expectation of achieving a different result from a tactic that failed the first time.”
“This one failed big. You or one of your people let the heroin out of the bag in a part of America that destroyed itself without your help a long time ago.”
She showed something then; smugness, or surprise—disappointment? Had I stumbled too easily into a hole she’d dug? She liked me a little despite herself or I wouldn’t have survived our last meeting. Maybe she expected better of me. Oh, she was insane. But then I decided I’d tried to get too much out of a change of expression in bad light.
“I don’t reward mistakes,” she said, “but my policy is to let everyone have at least one. Failure is education.” She slid a slender hand into a side pocket in her coat and drew out a clasp knife with a red lacquer handle. “Will you do the honors? Taking her with you will spare you an extra trip after you lead Chang to those boxes.”
I hesitated, then took the knife from her cool palm, pried loose the blade, and went behind Ouida’s chair to saw through the ties on her wrists. I couldn’t believe it was as easy as all that. One of these days I’m going to have to learn to trust my instincts.
When I freed her ankles, Chang snatched the knife from my hand, nicking my palm, and gave it to his boss, who folded and returned it to her pocket. I rose and helped Ouida to her feet. She swayed; I caught and held her while the circulation returned to her hands and feet. She was warm and soft, but steel-reinforced at the center. She’d survive—depending on what else was in store. Her breath caught in tearless sobs.
“I have something else to show you before you go.”
I looked at Sing. “I didn’t come for the tour.”
“No extra charge.” Her speech was a crazy mix of Oxford English and carnival barker. She spoke rapidly to Chang, who bent and lifted the hissing lantern from the floor. That shift from warrior to redcap must have been a severe test of his discipline. I wondered if I could profit from that.
We followed him through the door and deeper into the building, Ouida leaning on
me, Sing behind us. I squeezed her hand. It was cold, but no limp fish. At that point I was grasping at anything.
Greasy orange light slung shadows into shapes that crawled along walls of block and poured concrete. The air was clammy cold, with the stale smell of an unventilated bunker.
In the curve of the wall someone, a player or other club employee, had sprayed an exuberant “1968” in numerals three feet high, faded now like its spirit. That was the year after the great riot, the Tigers’ first championship in twenty-three years. The victory had been interpreted as a sign of hope in a season of despair; in those days, any bright omen at all was solid currency. No one could have predicted that forty years later the despair would still be in place. It wasn’t the building’s fault. They’re only as good as the people who stream through them.
Another doorless opening led into the equipment room, where Chang waited with the lantern hanging down at his side. It meant nothing to him, that room of golden fleeces and enchanted swords. He’d known places more ancient and far more fabled and been conditioned to disregard them as dead fossils. To him the ceramic army was so much superstition to be pulverized for standing room for those of flesh and blood. I hated him then nonobjectively, like a stubborn nail that wouldn’t drive. There may have been a normal upbringing there, on the other side of the face job and desensitizing, but to me he was just an arrangement of pulleys and gears that made my hands thirsty for a monkey wrench to throw into the middle of it. A gasp from Ouida told me I’d gripped her arm to the point of bruising. I relaxed my grip.
The space we were in was three times the size of the manager’s office. Although the bats and gloves and helmets and shinguards and catchers’ gear were gone, the racks and steel utility shelves remained, the shelves standing in parallel rows like library stacks. They were nothing without the postgame chatter, the sports clichés and split infinitives and smell of ferment from spilled champagne when a pennant went down. A building is just mortar and reinforcing rods without human input. It was long past time to put it out of its pain. I’d push the plunger myself if they’d let me.
Loren D. Estleman - Amos Walker 21 - Infernal Angels Page 17