Black Heart, page 56
'I think I've judged the mood of the country correctly. They're still wary of the Republicans after Reagan but there's n° real confidence in this Democratic administration. Not after what happened in West Germany and Egypt.' He watched the amplight play off his son's beautiful dark features making him
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look like a sculpture in a museum. 'Still they need to be convinced and, as should be expected after Sullivan's subcommittee gets through reaming out State, they'll be fed up with words I think Gottschalk's gone as far as he can go with the normal amount of fat-frying we've been providing him with. He's gcr the nomination but now what, eh? This's far too big to pin ou hopes on probabilities.
'No,' he said easily, 'the day after tomorrow we'll ham Atherton Gottschalk the presidency, won't we, Khieu?'
Khieu stood up. It was a long time before he spoke. He had turned so that from his vantage point across the room Macomber could not see into his eyes. 'Indeed,' Khieu said finally, 'we will.' He ran long fingers through his thick black hair. 'Do you need me now, Father?'
'No, I don't think so.' Even now Macomber was straining all his senses in a supreme effort to find out what was on his son's
mind.
'I need some air,' Khieu said in almost a whisper. Til be out
for a while.'
'Take your time,' Macomber said carefully, watching hir out the door. Then he returned to his desk and, pressing a stuo, reactivated the inner program so that the same data that had been on the monitor when Khieu had come into the study reappeared. But sitting immobile, lost in thought, he did not see the program. What has happened to Khieu he thought. Is it major or minor? And, most importantly of all, can I trust him
now?
He closed his eyes and in the inner darkness arranged all his options like the cards in a poker hand. He went from one to the next, assessing the strong and weak points of each. Then he selected the best one.
Immediately he picked up the phone, dialled a number. 'Eliott?' he said warmly. 'How are you? ... Good. Have you been given everything you need at Metronics? ... Splendid.' He waited just the right amount of time. 'I think it's time we had lunch together. A real business lunch. Would you like that? Ah, I thought you would. How about Lutece.' He chuckled. 'Yes. my table. All right, we'll go together from the office ... NO
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tomorrow's no good,' he lied. 'But the day after's clear. Yes, that's right, the Thirty-first.'
Macomber replaced the phone softly, thinking, Perhaps Eliott can accomplish what I cannot.
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When Thwaite heard the raspy squeal of the police lock being withdrawn his stomach lurched sickeningly. It seemed so long since he had seen her, so long: another lifetime. He thought wildly that he would not even recognize her, that someone would come to the slowly opening door and he would say to himself, Now who the hell is that?
He saw the wing of long black hair, lustrous and curly through the slice of the door, then her pale face and the large dark eyes staring at him. As if in a dream he saw her eyes opening wide, heard her gasp, 'Oh, my God!'
The look on her face as he came inside tore at his heart, 'Doug, I never expected -'
'I've a favour to ask of you.' Better to get it over with and get out, he thought.
Her head was to one side as she gave him a puzzled look. 'You know you don't have to ask. It's part of our d '
'That's over with,' he said quickly. Even talking about it left a vile taste in his mouth. 'Whatever we had before is dead.'
He saw the shock forming behind her eyes and only then did he understand the dual nature of his remark. Did I really mean that? he asked himself.
'I see.' Nothing showed on her face but he saw that she was pale beneath her minimum of makeup.
'I don't understand,' he said innocently. 'I thought you'd be happy. It means you're free.'
'Free enough to refuse you your favour?' she said archly.
'If that's your wish.'
'It is.' She turned away from him. Her arms were stiff and he saw a muscle jumping near her wrist.
'Then -' Unaccountably his throat seized up and he had to wait a moment, begin all over again. 'Then this's the last time you'll see me.'
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Her head went down just as if he struck her a physical blow. He thought she said something then but he could not be sure. He took a step towards her. 'What did you say?'
When she spoke again it was very slowly and he knew she was keeping,her emotions in check. That's entirely up to you.' He felt exasperated, as if he were in a situation whose nature he did not comprehend. 'What d'you want me to say to that?' She whirled on him then and he saw the high colour in her cheeks, the diamond tears quivering at the corners of her flashing eyes. 'I don't for the love of God care as long as it's the truth!' 'You want the truth?' Thwaite said. 'All right. Here it is. I was having an affair with you - with a whore - while I was married. I ignored my wife, didn't spend nearly enough time with my kid and now they're both gone in a flash of fire and smoke and I have nothing. Nothing, d'you understand that?' He was shaking her, he realized only dimly, his strong fingers digging into the flesh of her arms. Their faces were very close; he could feel the heat from her body filling the space between them; he ignored that, spilling it all out, everything he had been bottling up since he had stared dry-eyed at the caskets and could find nothing of them left inside himself.
'And the truth is that every time I think of you, every time I look at you, every time I speak to you I'm reminded of what I've done and I can't stand that!'
Take your hands off me,' Melody said coolly and calmly and he did that, taking an involuntary step back. 'I thought about you all these long days and nights; I thought I loved you.' She laughed harshly. That's right! And I was sure of it the moment I saw you again, standing outside my door. But I thought, I know what he's just gone through. This isn't the time.' Her eyes Hashed. 'But I see I was wrong, Doug. Just as you're wrong when you say you're left with nothing because you're filled up, all right. Filled up with self-pity. You're disgusting like this. I don't want any part of you or your favours!'
I see how it is now,' he said, nodding. His mind was like ice n°w and he saw what he must do. 'All right. Just as I said, we are quits. You don't want to do me the favour, well, okay. But
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there was a quid pro quo. I got some information for your old pimp friends. I mean,' he said nastily, 'that was what you wanted in the beginning. Keep the old pals out of trouble with a little inside info from me. Well, you better tell them that there's a bust due to come down, day after tomorrow. A big one. They got everyone pinpointed. Two, three people you know and love. Now you got it all; what you do with it and the rest of your life's strictly your concern.'
He left her there, staring at him and was glad to be out of that apartment.
Melody went into her bedroom the moment Thwaite had left, tossing off her slipper and donning shoes. She was weeping and avoiding looking at herself in the mirror. She wished she could just pick up the phone and call her friends but they had enjoined her from ever doing that. Phone taps, legal and illegal, they told her, were constantly floating around.
She picked up her handbag, made sure she had her keys and enough money, anything to keep her thoughts away from Thwaite. The tears would not die. She wanted with all her heart to be able to hate him but she could not.
She popped a Kleenex out of its box, dabbed at her eyes. Christ, she thought. All I need is for them to see me like this. Let's, for God's sake, not get sentimental. You have a job to do.
Thwaite picked her up as she was crossing Broadway to hail a cab. He was being very careful. He knew how smart she was, saw her look carefully around before she ducked into the taxi. Sure, he thought, she's smart. But I'm a lot smarter.
There was no way she could make him, slouched as he was in his car, sunlight streaking his windscreen. The ignition was already on. All he had to do was step on the gas.
She took him downtown which was somewhat of a surprise. He had had in mind some posh Park Avenue penthouse. But the tenement the cab dropped her off at was a far cry from the opulence of that twenty-four carat avenue.
Coenties Slip had a history all its own, filled with fishermen and whalers at the turn of the century. Herman Melville had
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walked these same slick cobblestones, drank his cold beers at the atlCjent seafarers bar on the corner, its wood dark and gleaming with age, rubbed smooth by hands calloused by prickly rope and the salt wind.
The buildings here were much as they had been a hundred years ago, now slightly ramshackle, leaning a bit as if with the weight of years. Thwaite got out of his car, walked across the broad street, smelling the salt tang, the oily stench of fish flesh and blood from the wholesalers lining South Street a half-block
away.
He entered the building he had seen Melody walk into. He had waited five long minutes sitting behind the wheel of his car, tapping his fingers on the top of the padded dash.
He drew his gun the moment he stepped across the threshold. The hallway appeared clean enough. A cat stared at him from out of the shadows, its yellow panther eyes quick with an incomprehensible intelligence.
He went past it, his .38 at the ready. It was not going to be easy, he saw. He counted no less than six doors on the first floor. He had counted storeys during his wait in the car, knew there were five. Thirty apartments and Melody in one of them.
It would, of course, have been easy if he had been able to follow her right in, observe into which apartment she had gone. But one look at the building had convinced him of the impossibility of that. No elevator and one staircase. How could she fail to hear him under those circumstances.
His only choice now was to wait until she came out. Halfway up the stairs he paused to think. If he were holing up in a dump like this his first concern would be security. And here, security meant a quick escape. That meant the ground floor, out the back way or the top floor, across the maze of roofs. Any floor in between was a certain trap.
He went back downstairs to the ground floor, searched around. The rest of the hallway proved to him that if there had ever been a rear exit, it had been boarded up and painted over m the ensuing years.
That left the top floor. He went silently up the staircase, his ears alert for any sound. He was midway between the fourth and
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hadn't been for them, I wouldn't've had an education. We had
no money.'
'And in return what did they want, huh? Don't tell me they invested all that money in you out of the goodness of their
hearts.'
'Yes,' she said defiantly. 'They did!'
'You're a goddamn liar!'
She cocked the pistol, the hammer going back with a pronounced click. 'You'll never know now, will you?'
Thwaite, staring at the muzzle of the pistol, felt something hard and unpleasant go out of him and he said, 'I don't want
to die, Melody.'
She wavered. 'I ought to kill you, you bastard, fucking up my mind, fucking up my whole life ... just you.'
It was he who cried first now. He slipped down onto his knees in front of her. 'The sonovabitch who killed my family was into this same kind of shit, Melody.' He threw the packet of heroin from them. 'A goddamn wholesaler. And I kept him in business. I thought he was just another pimp, you see?' His face was red now. 'Just like Lovely Leonard, Joe the Wasp and all the rest on my graft list. Only he wasn't like them at all. He was just like your friends, peddling this unholy death to kids! D'you know what I've felt like all this time since I found out?'
The gun was no longer with her. Her open hands had come out, sliding over his shoulders so that when he leaned forward into her she cradled his head, kissing him, caressing him, whispering, 'Oh, Doug, now I'm really broken from my past. There's nothing of it left and I'm very frightened because I don't know what's in store.'
Her warmth suffused him and he saw that she had been right about him. Wallowing in self-pity was no place for him to be. As for what he felt for her, he did not want to think beyond today, did not want to think beyond the comfort she and only she could give him now.
It took them a long time to get back to her apartment and even longer before they were willing to break apart the peace that engulfed them.
At last, he placed the bound scroll in her hands. She sat up
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jj, bed and undid the red silk string. 'This the favour you wanted ff0m me7'
Thwaite nodded. Td like you to translate it for me.'
She opened the scroll, did not ask why he hadn't taken it directly to the precinct for translation; she was far too savvy for (hat. Her large eyes moved up and down the columns of characters
'Jesus!' she said, after a time. 'Did you really find 350 kilos of uncut heroin.'
'It's real, all right.' He sat up next to her, admiring the play of light along her pale flesh. 'What else does it
say?'
She looked at him 'You ever hear of something called the Mauntious Company?'
Thwaite shook his head. 'No, should I?'
'It's the company that ordered the consignment.' She glanced down at the scroll again. 'Doug, this looks like one of many Is it possible that so much horse could be imported without being detected''
'This batch certainly was.' He pointed to the scroll. 'You got an address for this Mauntious place?'
'Yes'
'Well, then Let's go '
Golden Dragon had his offices in a part of one of Hong Kong's three thousand toy factories An odd place for afeng shut man to hang his hat, as it were, but it was said that the factory was owned by Golden Dragon's brother.
In any event, it was the place where Tracy went now. Because he was ifeng shui man, Golden Dragon was one of the most powerful men in the Colony Not zllfeng shui men were thus blessed, he was enamoured of saying He was the best.
People put up with him because it was true. He was a geomancer, purportedly able to read the fate of men from the twists of the wind, the winding currents of streams, the colour of the daylight. Too, he was in intimate communion with the myriad spmts, ghosts and demons said by the Chinese to inhabit the world So it was to him that the Chinese went before embarking
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on any serious endeavour whether it be in the business field Q the area of matrimony.
The factory shifts had long gone for the night but the placc was open, half-lit as if with a pathway of lemon light. Soun
for his visit.
He passed bins of toy parts: dolls heads in clear plastic bags so that no dust or oils could mar the perfect nylon waves of their hairdos; muscled arms of warriors awaiting assembly; thousands of plastic motorcycles; curved train tracks; and, most bizarrely of all, wigless dolls' heads with perfect features, their nylon lashes six inches long, waiting for the assembly-line blade to shear them down.
Golden Dragon's office was in the back, in the left-hand corner which he had determined was the most propitious spot to attract the good spirits and repel the evil ones. It was all red and gold and long before Tracy arrived at its doorway, he scented pungent incense burning with exotic languor.
There was a young Chinese woman in with Golden Dragon and Tracy was obliged to wait until she left.
Illumination was soft and wavering, provided by a pair of brass-based lamps and perhaps a dozen long red candles surrounding a small shrine piled with offerings of fresh fruit and rice. The walls to Golden Dragon's right were covered with enormous silk screens of the Buddha and, to his left, a gold and emerald green dragon chasing its tail. In front of him and across the room, stood a pottery jar glazed in a deep brownish-red. It was two-and-a-half feet deep with a domed top. It stood on mossed stones arranged as if in nature, and slips of paper, 'spirit money', decorated its lid.
This was, Tracy knew, a Golden Pagoda, a Grandfathers Bones Jar. It was the traditional vessel, the religious yet supremely pragmatic Chinese used to house the polished bones of their ancestors. Because space was so at a premium in the Colony and because tradition dictated that the revered ancestors must be treated in the proper manner, the Chinese had reached a
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perfectly understandable compromise. A permanent grave was beyond their means so they rented one for a period of six years after which they had the bones exhumed, polished and placed jn their proper order in a Golden Pagoda. Often they consulted zfeng shui man to determine the proper placement of the jar within the home or on a nearby hillside.
In this particular Grandfather's Bones Jar no doubt lay Golden Dragon's ancestor.
'Kuttg Hey Fat Choy,' the feng shui man said. Rejoice and grow rich. His hands moved. 'We are closed for the day and in any case we require appointments.'
Tracy turned towards the Golden Pagoda, bowed towards it. Then he faced the feng shui. man, said, 'Kung Hei Fat Fuk.' Congratulations, I see you have prospered.
'Indeed.'
'I have travelled a very long way in order to see you,' Tracy continued in Cantonese.
'How long?'
'All my life.'
Golden Dragon cocked his head. 'Approach us.'
He was a thin man, far taller than the typical Chinese with a drawn-out skull, polished at its very top. He had sharp eyes, a wide mouth and a receding chin. He wore a black quilted Mandarin jacket with gold and green dragons embroidered across the breasts. His only affectation was a pair of tiny gold pince-nez sitting on the bridge of his blunt nose.
'You know much about our customs.' His voice held a kind of mesmerizing quality. 'What is your name?' he said. Tracy told him. 'And your birth date?' Tracy told him that, too.
