Black Heart, page 53
Afterwards, he went up on deck again, needing the salt breeze to cleanse him. He sensed movement behind him, had the good manners not to turn around.
'Thank you,' he said, 'most humbly for the food and the sanctuary.'
'You are safe,' Ping Po said, 'as long as you are with us. No one can know where you are.' He was silent for a moment, moving closer to the rail, looking out at the myriad bobbing lights. The stench of fish was strong in the air. But it was a clean smell, a natural smell. 'I saw you go into the bay. I unwound your bonds.'
Tracy understood what the old man was saying. Til be all right now,' he said. 'No cause for concern.'
'You are our good luck charm,' the old man said diplomatically. 'It would be unseemly, not to say ungracious, for us to abandon you so precipitously.'
Tracy smiled. 'I thank you again, Ping Po. But I must get back to the mainland. You cannot aid me in that.'
'On the contrary,' Ping Po said. 'We have transportation.' He tapped the junk's wooden rail. 'It is certainly safer for you to be with us than to fend for yourself on the island. I do not know what trouble you are in, nor do I wish to know. But you came fo us like a gift from the sea. Because of you our larder is full. That bounty must be repaid.'
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Tracy could have argued then. He could have told the old man that he did not wish to bring them into jeopardy; that he did not want them to lose a precious fishing day. But those were the actions of a Westerner. By doing that he could only offend this man and that he would not do. A repayment had been offered. It was his turn to be gracious; he must accept.
Antonio's apartment itself was not locked; the door had been ripped off its bolts by the police. The hallway stank of urine and rats. It was dark as death, the rain from the previous night infecting the rotting timbers like a termite's touch.
Now, returning to the scene, Thwaite felt a renewed strength flowing through him. He had been cleared of all charges in Antonio's death, given a clean bill with the department and, best of all, the enforced vacation Captain Flaherty had been threatening to hang around his neck had been rescinded. Thwaite thought he might have genuine cause to be thankful for that before the night was up.
His stomach was tight as a knot as he prowled the semidarkness of Antonio's apartment. The thought of how the pimp had made a fool of him burned in his mind. Christ, Thwaite thought, a goddamned horse distributor! And I was helping him stay in business!
He berated himself for not being more careful; his venality stuck in his throat like a cracked bone. If'Tonio had been there, Thwaite knew with a white-hot certainty, he'd kill him all over again ... and this time do it himself, not just stand by while ...
The thought of Tracy calmed him down and he took a minute to actively slow his pulse rate. This kind of emotionalism would do him no good now, he knew. He'd need all his wits about him if he were to uncover the whereabouts of 'Tonic's secret hoard.
He went to work, first in the two bedrooms then, afterwards, in the bathroom and the kitchen. Everything that was against a wall, he drew back, looking for false backs, testing the walls themselves with the butt end of his aluminium flashlight. He found nothing. And forty minutes later he found himself back
vyhere he had started, in the centre of the living room. He kicked cjisgustedly at the tatty rug, then stopped immediately. .. Con losgusanos. With the worms ...
The phrase Tonio had used came back to him like the sound Of rolling thunder. The earthen pit he had used to punish his girls. Excited now he bent down, flicked the rug back, opened the trap door. Using his flashlight as guide, he lowered himself into the musty interior. It had, as he remembered, a packed earthen floor. The walls, which were brick, rose to a height just over his head.
He played the bright beam of light over first one brick face, then another. They all appeared to be the same, roughly constructed, bare, some patches of mould here and there, blackened areas as if heat had been brought to bear on them. Thwaite had a brief image of the pit as a torture room and he shuddered inwardly.
He turned once more, the flashlight's beam running over the third wall. Had he been standing on the floor of the apartment itself, he would be facing the front door. He took a step forward, peering more closely. His eye had picked up an abstract pattern, his brain giving it meaning: a rough rectangle.
His heart beat fast as he traced the outline, seeing here and there a very slight erosion at the edges of the bricks as if beaten by the weather: or the repeated scrape of nails as the bricks were taken out and put back again.
Within fifteen minutes he had unearthed a compartment thirty inches high by forty inches wide. It was impossible at this point to tell how deep it was.
He moved the beam slowly back and forth, cursed softly. It appeared as if'Tonio was a good deal smarter than Thwaite had ever given him credit for. He was smart enough to kill your wife and child, a voice in his mind said vindictively. Shut up! he told himself. Just shut up about that and concentrate!
What the illumination showed him were stacks of clear plastic bags. He took one out, hefted it, judging it to be approximately a half-kilo in weight. He took out a pocket knife, made a neat icision in the plastic wrap, took up some of the white powder on the pad of his finger, tasted it.
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Good Christ Almighty! he thought. This's the same high, grade uncut shit that we had analysed in Chicago. Quickly hi put the marked bag aside, began to dig through the piles. The seemed to go on for a depth of more than three feet. He did 'u rapid calculation. He had counted fifty bags alone in the first tier. There looked to be at least twelve tiers. That made ...
'Jesus Christ,' he breathed. At least three hundred kilos of the shit. When cut, that would be a flood. That made the late unlamented Antonio Mogales the largest wholesaler on the East Coast. It was no good thinking that if Thwaite had put him away - as he damn well should have long ago - another would've come to take his place. The fact is, Thwaite thought now, I helped him. He wanted police protection and I gave it to him. Jesus, but that makes me one of time's great fools.
The question was: 'What to do about it now? It was clear to him that whoever had killed Senator Burke might - make that a bit more definite be involved in all this traffic. Maybe he was the importer and that of course meant he was very high up indeed. There was more to Burke's death, Thwaite was certain of it. The discovery of the senator's blackmail files proved it. But the clincher was the ground ashes they had found in his fireplace. He had had no foreknowledge of his imminent demise otherwise he would have activated a piece of his evidence in his files
- that was one reason for the amassed secrets in the first place.
Therefore, Thwaite was now more certain than ever that Burke's murderer and not Burke himself had burned the incriminating evidence.
Yet he had overlooked one very vital piece: theXheroin in the locker with 'Tonio's name and address on it. Because of how supremely careful Burke had been with it, Thwaite understood the level of its import. It had been his doomsday fallback. That it had done him no good in the end, chilled Thwaite. It said much about the nature of Burke's - and by extension Thwaite's own adversaries.
Thwaite stared at the bags of white death and he felt a hideous kind of nausea overtaking him with the speed and force of an express train. The result of all his feverish labours over the last several days lay before him like the bleached skull of a child.
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revealed by his own clever police work And this was what faced through him now, soaking him in acrid sweat that j,e had helped "Tomo stay in business - a business Thwaite had thought was a relatively harmless stable of whores - but vvhich, at its core, was founded on this infinitely more lucrative trade
God in heaven, he thought now, tears of rage and remorse running hotly down his face, if there is a God, cruel and uncaring Oh no, no, no1 I couldn't be a party to this' / couldn't* This kind of nightmare is just not possible'
He was shaking now so that he could barely stand, sinking down into this obscene treasure trove
Then, abruptly, spasmodically, he was vomiting up the plasticized breakfast they had served him on the shuttle in from Chicago, spewing it all out onto the cache like a fountain of vitriol
He had time to think while he was recovering as slowly the terrible emotions ebbed and flowed through him He knew that in the morning he'd be downtown, getting his own unit together to handle this entire affair
Of course Toad Tinelli, Narc's almost infamous Captain, could present a problem No commander, least of all the Toad, liked poaching on his own preserve And Thwaite was, after all, Homicide Thwaite knew that Flaherty could be counted on only up to a certain point The moment the Toad began to croak, he knew, Flaherty would run for cover
That meant Thwaite would have to take care of it on his own It was no good being up front with the Toad and he sighed, knowing what he would have to do to pull this group together When in Rome, he thought sourly
This shit was all he had to negotiate with but presenting that kind of bargain to the Toad was dangerous He was sure to threaten Thwaite with dismissal from the Force But Thwaite was used to threats and, further, he knew the Toad well He knew that his weakness was his unending desire to make that next big score
The lure of this load - an all time high even by the Toad's standards - would be too luscious for the Toad to ignore, he'd
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do anything to ensure its successful completion. He'd even giv,> over partial control to Thwaite. He'd have no choice.
Satisfied, Thwaite stooped to return the slit plastic bag to it; proper place. With the thing sagging limply in his hands, h stiffened, saw what he had failed to see before. It was stuck intt one lower corner of the cache, between a bag and the inner wal
He reached out a hand, picked it from its hiding place: a sma roll of soft blotched paper, short lengths of bamboo at each eno It was bound in red ribbon.
He undid the ribbon, allowed gravity to unspool the paper partially. And saw that it was covered with the angular sticklike characters that were unmistakably Chinese.
He stared at the face of the paper for a long time, not even daring to breathe. He knew he was running away from it still Just as his jumping on the first plane to Chicago had a meaning for him other than the strictly business one. It had put him away from New York, away from Melody.
He knew what he was looking at was Chinese, strictly because of Melody. He had leafed through some Chinese books on her shelves one day and, coming up behind him, she had begun to read softly in his ear as a mother does to her child drifting off to sleep, tracing the characters on the page with the tip of her finger so that he could follow her.
And he understood at last why he was sweating now. His plans had been abruptly changed by the discovery of this scroll He could tell no one yet about what he had discovered, not until he knew what this paper contained. To take it to someone at the precinct could be a fatal mistake. What if the location of the , shipment was contained within it or some other piece of vital information that might conceivably help him in his confrontation with the Toad? He could not take the chance. And that meant only one thing.
He'd have to go see Melody.
Khieu was praying but the well of his soul was empty; he could not connect with the Void. He felt betrayed but by whom he could not say. He beat his bare thighs with fists of iron, bringing bruises, he lit incense and a multitude of candles, praying to the
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vltiheanakhan of his mother, who must protect him from harm He foreswore meat as any good Buddhist should and promised (jer to abstain from any kind of sexual activity if only she could explain to him what was happening inside him
At Pan Pacifica, he buried his mind in the mass of paperwork confronting him, the conglomerate misery of the constant flow Of immigrants arriving from the eternal war in Cambodia He listened to each of their separate tales of terror with the kind of supra-normal attention one often finds in dreams, able to grasp the repetitions of violence, burning and horror as if he were constructing a vast tapestry out of the cloth of their words
It was as if their personal histories had come to affect him in a new and entirely different way He saw the crimson of open wounds, the grey of smoke, the orange of fire, the yellow-white of pulsating disease But most of all he felt engulfed by the black of deceit The French had deceived the Khmer, the Communists had deceived the Khmer, the Americans had deceived the Khmer, the Vietnamese had deceived the Khmer and, finally, the Khmer had deceived themselves
He had once thought that working at Pan Pacifica would bring him closer to his beloved land Now he was aware that it had had the opposite effect He felt distanced from Kampuchea because he could no longer rationally put the war in its proper place It had gone beyond devastation That was awful enough Now he saw it as a way of life
He floated through the day as if he were the spirit and not his mother He spoke to her, prayed to her silently but she did not answer At home he prayed again but found no solace
And he began to doubt the power of the Way The concepts espoused by the Buddha seemed to become insubstantial before his eyes Perhaps his father was correct Reality had no place in it for religion It was a refuge for people frightened of life Isn't that how he had put it? For the first time, Khieu understood what his father meant and he was frightened by the knowledge
But not nearly as frightened as he was of Lauren She stalked his thoughts like a tigress When he worked out, which was twice daily, his body would sheen with sweat, his muscles jumping responsively And his loins would ache An erection
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would form that was so hard, it was painful. Shamed, he woulc; work all the harder and it would begin to tremble. His mine burned with images of Lauren and he would stare down a; himself, seeing her with hair unbound, sweeping across one coo cheek, her eyes coating him with expressive emotion.
He would feel an extreme breath of pleasure ringing the tip of his erection. He would gasp and try to maintain his concentration on his movements but she would not leave him alone. It was as if she had reached out to gently enfold his penis. She would not let go, maintaining the pressure until he was in agony of desire.
Yet he would not touch himself nor visit any of the females with whom he had liaisons. It was as if she had bound him securely to her, as if she were his only release and, after a time, Khieu became convinced that whatever it was he felt for her it could not merely be lust for all of his body and mind was involved - was his salvation.
And for the first time in his life he felt terrified of what he knew he had to do. As he became more and more obsessed with her, he suspected that by destroying Lauren, he would be taking his own life. For if a man must kill that which is his only salvation then surely he is doomed for all time.
Again Khieu was appalled by his lack of faith. If, as he had been taught from birth, his salvation lay along the Path of the Amida Buddha, then he had nothing at all to fear. That his faith had been eroded was clear now; America had altered him. And fear at the chaos of the unknown had crept in, infecting him. He trembled in impotent fury, keeping his hands away from his unassuaged penis. It would defile Lauren and himselfifhe came now
And at last he made a decision to see for himself. To touch her now, to be near her once again would be enough to know whether what he felt for her was real and whether he could bring himself to kill her.
Lauren spent the first twenty minutes in the cab out to Kenned) Airport oblivious to the world outside. She felt as if being at thi top of her form - being back, more or less, where she had beer before hurting her hip was not enough.
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There was great excitement of course at the renewed strength she felt flowing through her like a powerful current when she peeled off her leg-warmers and spun away from the barre. The feeling that had plagued her at first that at the first hard contact Of a particularly difficult jump her leg would betray her and she would be injured all over again had passed and now, in many ways, she felt stronger than ever.
She had always thought that that would have been enough to fill her up and, until now, it had. It was not that she no longer loved dancing; she could not imagine a time when that would happen. But she was beginning to recognize that dancing could not be her entire life anymore. When you are nineteen, the fire dancing ballet built inside you was so all-consuming, it was easy not to think of anything else.
Like a thoroughbred, she had been trained for one thing with the exclusion of all else. But Tracy had changed all that. It occurred to Lauren now that there was more to life than dancing. She stared sightlessly out the window of the speeding taxi and wondered what it was Tracy was doing in Hong Kong.
The truth of the matter was she wanted to be there with him. She wished desperately now that she had not brought up the subject of her brother's death with him. What had been the point? It was long gone now and nothing Tracy could say would bring Bobby back.
She concentrated, conjuring up Tracy's face again, the glint of the sun like spun gold off the wave tops behind him. A light salt breeze had feathered his hair, bright light throwing his face into prominence, showing her the hurt there. She understood now the burden of guilt he carried around with him. Certainly he felt that Bobby's death had been his fault, something that she had accused him of.
Stupid. He had told her the whole story but she had not been listening, hearing instead Bobby's call of pain. Only later when she had recognized the bitter taste of cold ashes in her mouth, felt as the source of it the pain of emptiness inside her, that she remembered what he had said.
That was why she had gone to Louis Richter's. If she could n°t be close to Tracy then being with his father made her feel
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better. Briefly then the cloud that was Kim passed like a cold shade through her thoughts. A beautiful man, on the outside. But the brief glimpse she had got into those eyes had frightened her inexplicably. Thinking of him now made her shiver.
