Evil Eye

by Michael Slade

  aphrodisiac, and tambotie that blinds if its sap hits the eyes or poisons if its wood is burned to cook. Inspector Zinc Chandler was a babe in the woods.

  Pain stabbed his arm.

  Twice the size of a housefly and utterly silent in flight, iridescent black wings now crossed scissorlike on his pale skin, the tsetse fly bit into Zinc like the sting of an enraged wasp. Was it true that tsetse flies swarmed from the trees in clouds to blacken your hands, face, hair, and every inch of bare skin to sting you in a mindless fury of needle-sharp bites, leaving sleeping sickness behind in your blood? Slap! Slap! Slap! Three more flies.

  Then he saw what looked like a flag strung between two trees, a pair of deep blue stripes flanking a patch of black. The tsetse fly control was the first sign of man Zinc had seen in the Delta. Flies drawn to the blue bit into the black, coated with poison.

  He pressed on.

  From the leafy canopy filtering the sun, something crashed down into the bush. The hair on his forearms as stiff as could be, Zinc thought Leopard and froze where he stood. Pop's hunting knife still packed in his bag, he searched the ground for a club of any kind, spotting a broken branch yards away. Inch for it or make a dash? he wondered, hearing a tense ripple of breath inflating nearby lungs, then a furious bark erupted, the foliage parted, and a baboon bounded by.

  Club held like Babe Ruth out to bash the Big One, Zinc made it to the hidden camp near a lazy stream. The camp was a canvas tent 10 x 10, tall enough for a man to stand, with a sleeping bag under mosquito netting. No food. No supplies. No one home.

  A bush path from the tent led to the stream, where a mokoro was beached onshore. Hewn from the trunk of a sausage tree, the dugout canoe had a rounded hull that rolled when Zinc stepped in. If he sat, it swayed wildly every time he moved. Hollowed from wood heavier than water, it would sink if tipped while floating. Bushmen pole them standing up like Venetian gondoliers, a skill requiring years to perfect, balancing them from the hip like walking a tightrope stretched across water. Mekoro leak, so they're lined with straw.

  Nothing to do but wait, Zinc sat by the stream and

  used Pop's knife to whittle the branch club into a voya-geufs paddle.

  Hours later, he heard the drone of an approaching plane, but when he hiked back to the landing strip to meet Nigel Hammond, the drone was gone with no aircraft in sight.

  Apprehension tickled.

  Bushmen don't eat crocodile meat. The poison found in crocodile brain kills in five days. Bushmen eat puff adder meat. The fat under the skin is used to cook the snake, textured like crayfish and tasting like chicken. Bushmen eat larvae from termite mounds, grains of rice like unsalted caviar. Zinc had no idea what to eat, and might as well be Adam in the Last Eden, blazing the way hit-and-miss for gourmets to follow, if he was stranded here for days . . . months . . . years!

  Puff adders like to sun themselves to sleep, and don't like tenderfeet kicking them awake, especially fools without an antivenin kit. Eyes down to watch for snakes on the path, Zinc turned to leave the runway for camp, then—the second time today—froze rigid in his tracks.

  Dust on the landing strip bore the imprint of his shoe, made earlier when he was dropped off by the Dane. He didn't see it, didn't smell it, didn't sense its presence, but over the imprint of his shoe, a lion had superimposed its paw.

  The sun went down into a sea of blood, vultures on the highest branch of the tallest tree starkly outlined against the bleeding sky, all ruffled feathers and long scraggy necks and beaks that strip antelope to the bone in half an hour. An ominous omen?

  With the dark came mosquito hordes, buzz . . . buzz . . . buzzing to drink from him. Their incessant dive-bombing drove him into the tent, and when that brought little respite, under the mosquito net.

  Flying British Airways from London to Harare, Zinc had tracked the plane's route over Africa in Highlife, the inflight magazine. Under the map of Africa was an ad for Paludrine antimalaria pills, a downer unexpected in a corporate rag. Zinc took that to mean the subject was important.

  Damn right.

  Every African he'd met slyly slipped a question in about prophylaxis, then spooked him with vampire tales about malaria. Caused by a blood parasite in anopheles spit (in Mosquitoland, females are the aggressors) it hits in waves with fever, shivering, and hallucinations at night. Some strains have slipped the yoke of modern drugs and Plasmodium falciparum is fatal if not treated at once.

  A billion mosquitos and he was the only soda fountain in miles.

  Buzzzz . . . buzzzz . . . buzzzz . . .

  Bushmen say it's possible in the still of an ink-black night to hear the stars in song. What Zinc heard through the buzzing was the shrill of frogs, crickets, bats, and baboons competing with one another for center stage, and beyond that, a hungry lion's roar. The roar began with a deep-throated challenge to those who might want to hunt (him?) in the Delta tonight, rumbling down to a warning, then a rebuke. The roar died as a series of irritable grunts, one according to Bushmen for each year of the lion's life.

  Zinc counted twelve.

  Like many white boys who misspent their youth in the fifties. Zinc grew up on Tarzan and Jungle Jim. The weekend meant a drive into Rosetown with Mom for that pagan ritual: the Saturday Matinee. The local theater—The Hitching Post—was crammed with kinetic kids, here to watch classic cinema at its best, a Gene Autry movie kicking off the show, followed by a fest of Tom & Jerry cartoons, and the 1940s serial Flash Gordon's Trip to Mars, Zinc wiggling in his seat pocked with chewing gum, feet tapping a floor sticky with spilled pop, Pez dispenser in one hand, peashooter in the other, waiting on pins and needles for the second feature.

  When Johnny Weissmuller— the Tarzan—spoiled his loincloth physique with lard, a bush jacket turned him into Jungle Jim. In that darkened theater, imagination unleashed, Zinc thrilled to The Lost Tribe, Pygmy Island, Jungle Jim in the Forbidden Land, Voodoo Tiger (a tiger in Africa?), Valley of the Headhunters, Killer Ape, Cannibal Attack, and Devil Goddess, promising himself, One day Fm going there.

  Alone with the Law of the Jungle . . . and just Pop's knife.

  He'd come a long way from The Hitching Post.

  STAND FAST

  West Vancouver Saturday, March 5, 1994

  The last thing DeClercq wanted this case—or any case for that matter—to center on was race. Draw race into a case and logic went out the door, leaving behind bias and resentment to work it out. A friend of his was in L.A. at the time of the last riots, and being a good journalist, thought he should phone an eyewitness piece to his station. Close enough to see the smoke and catch the sirens, but far enough away not to nose in, he made the call and was promptly told to hold on for a cross-Canada hookup. So there he stood, in the street, public phone to his ear, holding on . . . holding on . . . until three youths cornered him. The youths were black, armed with pipes, and hate brimmed in their eyes. The journalist dropped the phone and held up his hands. He showed the youths his Canadian ID, told them he was from up North reporting a balanced story, and then—logically enough—said whatever was troubling them wasn't his doing. "You white," one youth replied, and struck him with the pipe, breaking his jaw and dropping him to the sidewalk for a stomping, which might have been fatal had a black cabbie not chased them off with a bat. Draw race into a case and logic went vamoose, so race was the last thing DeClercq wanted this to be about.

  "It's about race," he said.

  "These days everything's about race," said Chan. "Speaking of which, between you and me, the Public Complaints Commission has cleared Tarr in the ERT shooting tragedy. Expect backlash when the announcement is made on Monday."

  "Does Tarr know?"

  Eric shook his head. "I hear he's drinking heavily and may have loose lips. The race angle's volatile. The Mad Dog'll tell him on Monday."

  "Glad we live here and not somewhere waiting for a riot to blow."

  "That's for sure," said Chan.

  Sunbeams through the glass roof and walls ignited the roses R
obert hybridized. Wearing his chefs hat and apron, Katt entered the Greenhouse with breakfast on a tray. Plates of huevos rancheros, fruit, and a steaming coffeepot. "Looks good," Eric said. "This gourmet fare has a name?"

  "Katt food," Katt said. With a tip of the hat, she left the Mounties to talk.

  "Wild Katt," Eric punned.

  "Not you, too?"

  i hear Katt's mom is your date to the Red Serge Ball

  "Who's the fink?"

  "My wife." said Chan. "Conine phoned Sally to get the lowdown on what to wear."

  "You married a snitch."

  "Why the big secret?"

  "To quell speculation by whimsical romantics like you."

  "Sally booked a limousine to drive us to the boat. It's all arranged. We're picking you up. Nothing like a moonlight cruise—"

  "That's what we have to discuss. It might be wise, Eric, to cancel tonight's Ball."

  The fork with huevos rancheros stopped halfway to Chan's mouth. The fork returned to his plate. "Why do I feel indigestion coming on? More secrets you're keeping from me?"

  " 'You keep race at bay your way, I'll keep it back in mine.' Those were your words when we disagreed over Kidd seizing Nick's Red Serge. 'Nick's case isn't about race,' I said. Then you said, like you said just now, 'These days everything's about race.' I fear you were right and I was blind. And by denyine the issue. I cost Bill his life."

  Chan sat back. "Out with it," he said.

  "The Craven family history is draped in Red Serge. John Craven fought the French on the Plains of Abraham, and fired on American Colonists in the Boston Massacre. William Craven faced Napoleon. Rex Craven won the Victoria Cross defending Rorke's Drift, where he collected relics for a trophy box. Both Ted and Nick Craven stand for the family tradition this century."

  Lifting a file from the floor beside the La-Z-Boy, De-Clercq opened it in his lap. "This picture of the box appeared in the London Times in January 1956." From the file he handed Chan the UBC copy. "An agent for African interests saw the photo and wrote to Ted as heir to the trophy box, saying he'd be in Canada the first week of March, and would drop by to discuss purchasing the Zulu bones." He passed Chan the photofax from Scotland Yard of the black and white at Great Zimbabwe ruins. "That's when Nigel Hammond"—he indicated the handsome black—"knocked on the door while Ted was away on a manhunt up North."

  Chan studied the African.

  "Nine months later, Dora gave birth to twins. What happened that night, I'm convinced, is the key to solving not only Dora's murder, but Jack MacDougall's and Bill Tipple's as well."

  He handed Chan a copy of the white-and-black twins from Colin Wood's text. "Three people were present for the double birth: Dora, Ted, and Eleanor, Ted's younger sister. Sometime that evening Ted took a bullet to the head from his service revolver. No record survives from the inquest, but Medicine Hat Detachment finally found its closed file."

  He passed Chan the rest of the folder.

  "Ted was a bully and a bad cop. His service record has black marks and he was disciplined twice. Medicine Hat uncovered sexual abuse of Eleanor. Not only incest with her brother, but Ted once wagered his sister in a poker game. Ted's father—a Member-turned-rancher and a bully, too—was convinced the girl wasn't his, so he turned a blind eye to her complaints. Eleanor was sent away to Sacred Heart, and Ted remained the apple of his proud father's eye.

  "Dora married Ted when she was sixteen. Later that year, her parents died in a car crash, and she was an

  only child. Ted was her savior, but soon he beat her instead. Dora and Eleanor, both abused, had much in common. Eleanor was training as a midwife in Medicine Hat, so Dora went to stay with her for the twin births. Ted arrived from Lethbridge for the blessed events. Out came his son Nick, white as the falling snow, then out came Hammond's child, black as the night beyond. So how would Ted react to a shock like that? Sulk away with a bottle and shoot himself?"

  "He went berserk?" said Chan.

  "Dora was bruised. A note in the inquest file."

  "Forcing one of the girls to shoot him in self-defense?"

  "Here we have two farm girls still in their teens, with a black baby and a dead Mountie on the floor. It's the 1950s, on the Canadian prairies, where everything's white except Indians and Amos and Andy on TV. And where a murder charge ends with a noose.

  "Only the two of them knew about the twins. So the white stayed with Dora and the black went with Eleanor to be placed through Sacred Heart where she was sent as a girl. The Hammond twin was shipped somewhere unknown, and both conspirators swore a single birth was followed by suicide. When the investigation exposed Ted for what he was, the suicide verdict kept the Force untarnished in court. Dora brought Nick here and thirty-some years passed."

  Chan had programmed the Headhunter hunt in 1982. Chan developed the Violent Crimes Analysis Section, and Chan introduced Criminal Profiling from Crime Scene Analysis to the Force. There was no need for DeClercq to suggest placement abuse warped a psycho killer.

  "For years the Hammond twin had fantasized about revenge. On the December seventh birthday shared with Nick, the psycho rapped on Dora's door and was let in. That's when she made the fatal mistake of producing the trophy box—"

  "And the black twin's psychosis coalesced with the African fetish," said Chan.

  "Like Pandora's box in the Greek myth, Zulu shades were released to seek revenge. The twin became a zombie of reprisal for them, and because the Force is the

  last vestige of the British Colonial Army, our Red Serge is a stand-in for the defenders of Rorke's Drift. The twin was rejected because it wasn't Ted's offspring, and all its mother love went to Nick instead, so our Red Serge is also a symbol for family revenge. Not only does the killer get even with Dora, Ted, and Nick, but conquest is symbolically wreaked on all Imperial Redcoats in the Craven family past, whose racist Colonial 'White Man's Burden' enslaved the soul of Africa: its black family's past."

  "Why didn't you tell me this before?" said Chan.

  "It's too politically incorrect for a 'sensitive' soul like you."

  Chan glowered.

  "That's a joke, Eric. Only with Tipple's death did I have proof the killings are all tied to the box. Even that's stretching it, since we can't see if a zigzag is on the club. Zinc's in Africa closing in on Hammond in Botswana. My hope was through the father we'd have the twin by now. Meanwhile, the Ball is tonight and there's a Red Serge psycho loose."

  "You know who it is!"

  "I don't have proof."

  "Suspicion will do."

  "Nick picked his Red Serge up from the cleaners, and swears his mother's blood didn't stain the tunic while he wore it. That means the cuff was blooded after it was seized. Kidd gave Nick's tunic to Dermott Toop, who had a sample of Dora's blood from the autopsy in the Lab."

  "Toop framed Nick?"

  "Either him or Kidd. Kidd was around Dora's blood at the murder scene. Fraternal twins can be either sex. Toop and Kidd have tickets to the Ball tonight. Killing Tipple was so blatant I fear the zombie's psychosis is out of control. If the twin's a Red Serge psycho, Nick and hundreds of other Members will be in danger on the cruise ship."

  "Would you cancel?"

  "It's your call, Eric."

  "For over a hundred and twenty years, the Mounted Police have stood fast. The Force will not retreat with me the one holding the line."

  ALL ABOARD

  Vancouver Harbor

  At Canada Place Berth Two, the cruise ship Good Luck City was ready to sail. "Good Luck City" is Hong Kong's name for Vancouver, as more Colony astronauts live here than anywhere else. An astronaut's a business immigrant who purchased Canadian citizenship for himself and his family, but still commutes to Hong Kong to wheel, deal, and avoid Canadian taxes. The Good Luck City was owned by a Colony billionaire gradually relocating his ships before China got Hong Kong in 1997. Last May, the Force had saved his son from kidnapping for ransom by Triad thugs, so providing the boat and catering the Ball was his way of showing g
ratitude. Tonight the ship would sail north up Georgia Strait, rounding Vancouver Island to cruise the Pacific south, returning by Juan de Fuca Strait to dock tomorrow morning.

  Five hundred forty feet in length and 18,000 gross tons, twin screws powered by four seven-cylinder Bur-meister & Wain-Hitachi geared diesels. the Good Luck City pampered 740 passengers and 300 crew. The Marco Polo Ballroom fronted the Silk Road Deck, its walls and dance floor gilded gold under crystal chandeliers. The tables for eight were set with white linen, red flowers, gilt cutlery, and gold candelabras. The stage displayed the instruments of the RCMP Band: not the hearty oom-pah-pah of military brass, but the let's-dance-lure of electric guitars, two keyboards, wind and brass, percussion, and a marimba. Mounted behind the CO's chair was a massive horned buffalo head flanked by RCMP flags and red-and-blue banners. Each banner bore the Force crest above a mounted Member. Stored in the ship's walk-in freezer to keep it from melting was an ice sculpture of a Horseman with a lance.

  Everyone hoped the party would be a blast.

  West Vancouver

  "How do I look?" asked DeClercq, modeling his mess kit: a waist jacket of Red Serge over a ruffled white shirt with black bow tie, blue trousers and black half-Wellington boots with box spurs, gold crowns representing his rank on the epaulets, gold regimental crests sparkling on his lapels.

  "Dashing," said Katt. "You'll wow Mom. She'll fall in love. You two will get married. And I'll live happily ever after with my new family."

  "Too many trashy romances. Broaden your reading a bit. Take good care of Napoleon. Don't feed him Cheez-ies tonight."

  Katt waved TV Guide in the air. "Dog and me are gonna watch White Zombie on the tube."

  "Dog and I . . ." corrected DeClercq.