Tea with the Black Dragon (v1.4)

by R. A. MacAvoy

  Long’s brown face remained impassive. He looked down at the remains of the meal. “Tomorrow morning,” he said, and sighed. “I didn’t know we had so little time.”

  “How did you think your mother’s presence would neutralize a major felony, not to mention two major felons?” His words were mild—merely curious, and he did not look at Liz Macnamara as he spoke.

  “If you knew my mother you wouldn’t ask that question. But I didn’t expect her to… neutralize the crime. I just wanted her to know all about it before I gave up and went to the police. I knew she’d stand by me. At first I was going to fly to New York and talk to her, but I had a hunch that my leaving town would put the wind up Floyd and Doug, and they’d be gone when I went to the police. That would have taken a lot of the impact out of a voluntary confession, you see. If it was found that my partners had already run out on me.” The young woman shivered. “When I called Mother last week I didn’t know what—monsters—those two were.”

  “Not monsters, Elizabeth,” he murmured. “Merely thugs.”

  “Anyway, I decided that if I were going to dump the bad news on Mother, I’d treat her as well as I could in the process. It was kind of silly, really, because my mother doesn’t care whether she sleeps on satin pillows or gunny sacks. Maybe I did it for my own sake, to salve my conscience, but I sent Mother two thousand dollars and told her to fly out first class. I made a week’s reservation at the fanciest hotel I could find. In the City, I mean, not down here. I didn’t want her too close to Floyd or Doug. I told her that I had to talk to her. I didn’t tell her I was afraid.”

  “You didn’t have to,” said Mayland Long. The gentleness of his words caught her attention and she stared at him.

  Food and drink had worked their magic on Mr. Long. His face flushed gold. His eyes glistened with lights of the same color. His left hand arced out in an involuted gesture, as though he followed threads in a tapestry only he could see. She followed his motion.

  “Your mother can read signs in the air,” he said. “The winds talk to her. She knew there was something very wrong with you and that is why she… let me help her find you.” He let his gesture hang in the air. His eyes saw memories: a blue dress, a blue eye.

  Liz Macnamara’s eyes perceived an odd and unexpected beauty in the man’s words and in the man. She blinked away the tears that terror alone had not brought forth.

  He rose with boneless grace. His eyes were narrowed. He was thinking, Liz Macnamara stared up at him. “Where did she find you?”

  “On a shelf,” he answered, preoccupied. “I owe my involvement in your trouble to that gift you sent Marth—your mother.”

  She shook her head, not comprehending how a few thousand dollars could command the man before her. “Just get Mother away from those two and I’ll work the rest of my life to pay you. I’ll give anything. Do anything.”

  He became aware she was speaking. His gold eyes searched her face, puzzled, not following her words. A huge yawn caught him unaware. He shot a glare at the bottle, and he leaned one elbow on the refrigerator door.

  “All I need,” he said, “is a dark corner. And I only need it for a few hours.”

  “You need what? Why?”

  He yawned again. “Because I’m tired. Too tired to think properly. It has taken a number of days to find you, Elizabeth, and I haven’t slept much in that time. I have work to do tonight. It is a task important to our purpose, and best accomplished after nightfall. Between then and now…”He stepped forward, resting his hand on the back other chair, “I must sleep. And since I haven’t the time to drive to my rooms in San Francisco, I am asking you to put up with me.”

  “Of course.” Liz Macnamara pushed herself away from the table. “But not in a corner. Please. Give me a minute to straighten up the bedroom.” Dropping a rumpled paper towel into the wastebasket, she left the room.

  He stared at the bed in horrified fascination. “I… I have heard of them, of course, but…”

  Elizabeth dropped a hand to the undulating mattress, as though quieting a huge beast. “It’s just a waterbed. It’s really comfortable. Not cold at all.” Seeing his expression unchanged, she half-smiled. “Don’t be afraid.” She left him, closing the door behind her.

  He was dubious but also very weary. Mr. Long undressed, folded his clothes, and gave himself to the embrace of the waves.

  Liz spent the next two hours seated at the kitchen table. Her mind raced wildly, without traction. At nine she cracked the bedroom door to wake Mr. Long. The vertical thread of light happened to fall over the form on the sheets. He was bronze, like a statue, and his skin appeared as tight to the body and as hard as the finish of a bronze statue. He lay sprawled with the dramatic indifference of a statue, also. One arm was tossed up in line with the lean torso, and the back-tilted head repeated the angle. The other arm, the left arm, was flung outward, and the fingers grasped air. There was passion in the pose: passion and a quality of abandonment quite foreign to the presence who had shared her meager dinner.

  And it was this attitude, more than the fact that the sleeper had thrown off the sheet and lay naked in the light, which impelled Liz Macnamara to close the door again and knock.

  “Thank you,” Mr. Long said, stepping out of the door fully clothed. “I’m surprised. I didn’t really expect to fall asleep on that contrivance.”

  He glanced behind him at the digital clock, which shone its red numbers silently beside the bed. He felt in his pocket for keys. “Please do me one more favor. I need addresses for both Rasmussen and Threve.”

  Her first attempt at a reply choked her. “Do you need to see them? Tonight?”

  “I do. But it is not necessary for either of the gentlemen to see me. I want someone to lead me to your mother. Miss Macnamara. It has to be tonight.”

  She took a step forwards. “I’ll come too.”

  Long frowned. “It has taken me three days to find you, Elizabeth. If I lose you again…”

  “You won’t. I want to go with you. I can’t take sitting here alone.” She was two inches taller than Long. Her frosty eyes bore a challenge. “Why should you go out and I stay here?”

  “I think it likely Rasmussen or Threve will call to check up on you tonight. If you are not home they may think you have abandoned your mother and run off. Or they may believe you are out to work them mischief, as indeed you would be. Either way I think they will react by killing their hostage.”

  Liz’s teeth ground together, but she made no answer. Instead she blundered about in a desk drawer for paper and pencil.

  As she wrote she was speaking. “There. Rasmussen lives in Santa Clara. Big house: he used to be married. Threve has an apartment. I drew maps.”

  He took the paper and looked at it for twenty seconds. Then he put it down. “Burn this,” he dictated. “And close your address book. Under no circumstances must your colleagues find out you’ve seen me.”

  Liz Macnamara was staring at Long’s shirt. Her eyes held sudden doubt. “You’re going burgling like that?”

  His left eyebrow rose. “What exactly do you mean, Elizabeth, ‘like that?’ “

  “That shirt almost glows in the dark.”

  Inspiration hit Liz Macnamara. Inspiration and the memory of a very thin dark body on the bed. “Wait here,” she commanded. “Don’t go away.”

  She returned in two minutes, to find Mr. Long sitting obediently where she had left him. Instead of jeans she was wearing a mint green satin dressing gown. Green was a color that suited her very well.

  She carried a bundle. “Here,” she announced. “These are… more appropriate, I think. The sweatshirt is gray, and blue jeans don’t stand out in the dark.”

  He rose and said “No.” He said it with great authority.

  “Yes. It’s my mother,” she replied.

  His face was unyielding.

  “What if you have to climb a fence? What if you have to run? If Threve or Rasmussen catch up with you and shoot you, or hit you on the head or someth
ing—well that’s a pretty high price for both of us to pay for your vanity.”

  “Vanity?” echoed Long. His eyes flashed yellow.

  “Vanity,” she insisted, as the clothes slipped from her arms and tumbled to the floor. “Please. For my mother’s sake.”

  Mayland Long folded before the urgency in her voice. “You are so much like your mother,” he sighed, stooping to retrieve the outfit. “And I… I am not at all what I was at the beginning of the week.

  “They will not fit,” he predicted, as he vanished again into the bedroom.

  “They do fit,” she crowed in triumph.

  “I admit it,” replied Long. He was a very different seeming man, in faded jeans and a sweatshirt.

  He did not look so old, since age generally follows on tailoring. He did not look so terribly well bred, since class follows the same rules. Most obviously, he did not look half as self-satisfied as he had before.

  His left hand pulled at his right sleeve, which was too short for his arms.

  “I think you look fine!” she stated, surveying all she had done to Mr. Long. “And now there’s nothing white about you.

  “Oh! I’m sorry.”

  He laughed. His teeth denied her words. “What would you have done had I had the coloring of Mr. Rasmussen? Or your own fairness,” he added, his gaze halted on the young woman’s face.

  “Shoe polish,” she replied, smiling for the first time since he had met her.

  He transferred his wallet to his jeans pocket. “Ah! While I remember, Elizabeth.”

  “Liz.”

  “Liz. Yes. You are supposed to surrender that letter tomorrow. Don’t. Create a copy and give Rasmussen that.”

  “That can’t work. I thought of it already Rasmussen knows I wrote the letter on an 8080 text processor at RasTech. I can’t get back to copy it without being seen.”

  He was stopped by this, and stood motionless for half a minute. “Then I have to return by dawn tomorrow. If I haven’t found your mother yet, I’ll have a copy of that letter for you to surrender.”

  “How will you do that?”

  “I’ll print one,” he replied confidently.

  “You… know how to use the system?”

  His gesture was reassuring. “That’s no problem. But if dawn comes and I fail to show…”

  “No!” she cried out. Then she spoke more reasonably. “What do I do if you fail to show?”

  “Go to the police.”

  “But they’ll kill her! Threve said if the police showed up anywhere around…” She put her hand to her mouth and bit down, so that she would not start shaking again.

  Mayland Long stepped closer. One hand against her yellow hair pulled her head gently to his shoulder. He could feel her body tremble. Slowly and clearly he whispered in her ear. “Elizabeth, these men intend to kill your mother. Only if there is no one left alive who knows, can they escape suspicion.”

  The trembling died away. She mumbled something that was lost into the fabric of Long’s shirt.

  “I didn’t hear that,” he whispered, suddenly conscious of her hair against his face and her warm, moist breath on his neck.

  Liz Macnamara took one step back and stood alone. “I said I know. They intend to kill mother as soon as they can kill me. And they’ll do that as soon as they have the letter. I’m not even sure she’s alive now. I asked to hear her voice and Floyd said later.”

  “She’s alive,” said Long. “I’m sure of it.”

  She didn’t ask him to explain his certainty. “But what shall I do till you come back? To help, I mean.”

  He smiled. “Sleep, if you can. If not, then drink Scotch. Or pray. Survive in your own way; I can’t know what’s best for you, Elizabeth.

  “ ‘Til morning,” he concluded, bowing slightly. He flicked off the light and pulled wide the courtyard window. Cold mist from the fountain blew in with the breeze. There was no sound from the gulls asleep in the grass.

  Chapter 8

  Martha Macnamara awoke with a miserable aching nose. It felt as though it had been stuffed for two weeks straight. Her hands were cramped; she must have been lying on them. There was something else bothering her as well; it took her a few confused minutes to figure out what that was.

  “Oh!” she cried out. “I have to go to the bathroom.” She opened her eyes, and the results were so unpleasant she closed them again. The ceiling had looked so ugly, and it swept by with unsettling speed. The spinning ceiling was mere dizziness, of course, like the time she had had her wisdom teeth pulled. And the ugliness must be a result of nausea; dizziness and nausea always went together.

  But why was she nauseated? Why dizzy? And why couldn’t she place that ceiling she had glimpsed, with its acoustic tile and round fluorescent lights?

  Where was she? Where should she be?

  Not at home; her own ceiling was plastered, with a crack through it like a lightning bolt, and the fixtures wore white paper lanterns. Besides, Martha knew she was not at home; she was staying at the James Herald Hotel. Which did not look anything like this. Those ceilings were arched, and the picture moldings were impressively Corinthian.

  She felt so awful that maybe she was in a hospital. Yes. She had passed out on the street. Someone in a black car had spoken her name…

  And now she just had to go to the bathroom, dizzy or not. She pulled her eyes open.

  How very odd. She was stretched out flat on a table. Brightly colored lengths of wire were wrapped around her wrists, tying them together in front of her.

  “Out that door and to the left,” said a voice. She searched for the speaker.

  He sat sprawled in a white director’s chair, amidst a clutter of magazines. He was a small man whose dark hair was carefully slicked back and curled about the ears. He wore a wine-red shirt which hung open, revealing a gold medallion. His belt was wide and black, his trousers white. His voice matched his appearance perfectly.

  Martha tried to sit up; it was a hopeless effort.

  “I can’t do anything without my hands.”

  He stared insolently and flung another magazine to the floor. He lounged across the barren room toward her. In his hands were black steel dikes, he snipped through the skinny windings on her wrists.

  “Try to run and I’ll break your leg,” he said, as she slipped off the wooden table. “There’s nowhere to go, anyway.”

  He was quite correct. The tall, barnlike room had no windows and only two doors. One of the two was green metal. It had a key lock and a hole beneath where the doorknob had once been. The other door stood open, and as Martha passed through it, leaning on the doorsill for support in her vertigo, she saw that it led through a short hall to two other doors. One of them was identical to the door in the large room, except that it had a knob on it. The other door was wood.

  She turned the knob on the green door. It was locked. “Other door,” came the voice behind her. It was a nasty voice, the sort of voice which might make a child cry, hearing it say “other door” in that sneering fashion. It was the sort of voice that would want to. Martha turned and passed through the wooden door.

  “You are very mistaken in this,” repeated Martha. “No one I know has more than four hundred dollars in the bank.”

  “The less I hafta say, the better off you’ll be,” grumbled her captor, as he rummaged around on the floor. He had leafed through all his magazines while his prisoner was unconscious, not reading them, but reading the captions on all the pictures and spoiling the interest of them, and so now had nothing to read.

  “You’ve said that twice in the last hour, and you must know by now it doesn’t shut me up.”

  He raised his eyes. “Less you say, happier I’ll be,” he added.

  Mrs. Macnamara sat only a few feet from his chair. A small pile of discarded magazines kept her from the chill of the floor. Her feet were folded on her thighs in the full lotus posture. She had spent a large part of the day in this position, and now daylight was fading from the crack beneath the green
door. Had it been just one day since the trip to the Valley and the lunch in the tea shop with Mayland Long?

  She remembered the car, and how a man had leaned out, smiling, and taken her hand. She remembered the open door. The yank on her arm. The hankie with its operating-room stink.

  That was how she got her nose burned, she decided. Ether, or chloroform, or whatever.

  Had no one seen this? Where was Mayland? He’d been right beside her. He just found that flower, and given it to her. So very romantic, but silly, too, in his dignified, almost pedantic manner. Had they snatched him too? Had they killed him? The thought was unbearable.