Long lifted his head. His eyes were faceted with gold. Fred smiled.
“Ignore my noises. It’s only that I’m losing my voice,” rasped Long. Suddenly his eyebrows lifted and he added, “Mr. Frisch, you are stuffed like a sausage full of little sayings.”
Fred laughed. “Surprise you to learn that I’ve read Don Quixote, too. I always thought I’d make a good Sancho Panza.” He brushed off his knees and returned to the console.
“Actually, I’m not entirely your typical North Californian, with head carved out of redwood burl. You know, ‘Nuke the Whales’ bumper sticker, doing yoga suspended in a vat of blood-temperature salts.” Fred typed as he talked, trying to establish some sort of rapport with the green box.
“I’m not even from California. But then who is? I’m a good half-Jewish boy from Shaker Heights, Ohio. I’ve been afraid to tell my friends here, but I don’t believe in reincarnation.”
Fred scowled and backed his chair away. “This isn’t working. I don’t think the bootstrap is in ROM at all. Who, this day and age, would be so clunky as to…”
His quick eye covered the desk, the table set against it, the file cabinets along the wall. Finally he noticed a box the size of a toaster covered by an embroidered cozy which read “Bless this Mess.” With a flourish he yanked off the cover, revealing a paper-tape reader with a neat row of spools built into the front.
“White ribbons! What a sight. Now we’re cookin’ with gas.” He held up to the light three of the wound tapes. He chose the smudgiest and inserted that into the machine, nudging on the power and the read switch. Immediately the strip of paper tape shot through the slit in the machine and appeared at the other side. Fred waltzed back to the chair in time to receive the message PANDEMANIC WORD PROCESSING SYSTEM FILE MANAGER AND EDITOR PROGRAM v. 1.0. Without pause words INPUT TIME AND DATE (24 HR CLOCK) AS FOLLOWS: MM,‘DD,‘YY,’.HH,‘MM.
Fred crowed his triumph, then settled down to interrogate the system. After a few minutes, he turned to find Long sprawled on the floor, asleep.
“I wish I didn’t have to wake you, friend,” he muttered. “You’ve had just as hard a time as a man can take. I think your line of work must be all nails and no shoe leather. But then, that’s the way it is for most people, I guess. Too much silly work, dull or dangerous, and not enough dough. I’m damn lucky for a punk kid.”
Fred swiveled back to the screen. “Maybe I don’t have to wake you up, yet. Le’me see if I can find the library, here…” He typed a few questions and the answers pleased him.
“I run, you know,” whispered Fred to the sleeper. “More to clear my head after work than for macho. I go from the park by Menio City Hall down along the tracks to Stanford. Down by the railroad bridge there’s a tree that Palo Alto was named for: ‘the big stick.’ Everybody around here knows about that tree, but no one stops to see it—at least I never see anybody there but me. I’m not a very type-A guy, you know? Not driven. I stop and touch the tree every time I go by, and if I’m winded I give it a big sweaty hug and lean against it a while. It’s the oldest live thing around here. Must be five hundred years.”
Another flurry of key-strikes and the screen filled with print. Fred scrolled it slowly.
“I don’t have a philosophy about it, or anything like that, but I think there’s a peace around old things. You can feel it. If you get close, you can share it.”
“To be old is not always a guarantee of peace,” answered a dry, snakeskin voice behind him. Startled, Fred spun around.
“I’m sorry. I was mostly talking to myself,” he said. Mr. Long was attempting to sit up. His face was pale and brilliant. Fred leaned over to forestall him.
“Not yet. Give me a few more minutes. But we’re in the groove, here, so you just rest. I’ll wake you if I need you.”
He returned to his work. Almost immediately he found what he had been looking for. He cuffed the console affectionately.
“Besides, I meant really old things—not old as a man can get old, but old like a tree. Hundreds of years.”
“I am a very old worm,” sighed Mayland Long, his fevered eyes gazing at the ceiling. “I have been searching for an illusive nothing called truth. Now I think I would settle for sleep, if I had the choice.”
Fred had been following with half an ear. He worried he would have to carry Long back to the car. “For a worm, I’m sure you’d be positively geriatric. But forty-five, fifty, whatever—isn’t what I’d call old. And you’re perfectly welcome to catch some zees now, Mr. Long. We’re safe, and the machine is eating out of my hand.”
He hit carriage return, and the discreet hiss of an ink jet printer sounded in the comer of the office. He rose, stretched, and cracked his knuckles.
Next to the printer stood a coffee vending machine. Fred dug into his pocket for money. He returned to Mr. Long with a steaming plastic cup in his hand.
“Here you go. Empty calories.” He proffered the cup. “Say. I don’t know what to call you. I mean, I can call you Mister Long all the livelong night, but it feels awkward, not knowing the rest. Is Long your Chinese name?”
Mr. Long sat up and reached for the cup. His hand shook as he took it. After the first sip he blinked in surprise. “What is this?”
“Cocoa.”
“Ah.” Long held it in both hands. “My—Chinese name is simply Oolong. I use a first name, which is a Latin translation on the original. Or it was; it’s been corrupted through the years.” He coughed, and chocolate splashed on the rug. Fred steadied the cup with one hand.
“Translation. That’s interesting. What does the name mean, then?”
Mayland Long smiled at Fred. “I hesitate to tell you, after our conversation in the car. Oolong has two meanings. It means a kind of tea, and it means black dragon. But I assure you, Fred; I did not name myself.”
Fred hit his forehead once again. “I gotta big mouth. Forget what I said in the car. I don’t know beans about China. Drink.”
Fred tore off the listing and began to read. His interest grew. Long stood, using the wall for support. “What is that?”
“The letter.”
The dark man walked slowly over, his brow furrowed… “I don’t remember dictating it. Have I been so ill…”
“It was on disk,” replied Fred Frisch. “She left it sitting in the secretary’s library and no one thought to look. Not even the secretary.” He handed the scroll of paper to the other, commenting, “It’s fascinating. She names dates, places and amounts of withdrawal. She’s got an orderly mind.”
Long read. He nodded in agreement.
“Liz and I were in all the same classes when we were frosh. I had this huge crush on her,” Fred blurted.
Mr. Long looked up from the page he was reading. “I see. She didn’t return the sentiment?”
“Naw. She was after bigger fish.”
“She told you so?”
Fred scratched his head. He blushed. “I never told her about it. No use.”
Long regarded him intently. “So that’s why you agreed to help me.”
The blond youth returned the stare. “No. No, I don’t think that’s why. I—I think I mean don’t you think I’d do it just because…”He broke off and began the ritual of powering down the equipment.
May land Long finished the letter in silence.
The guard patted each of Frisch’s pockets before standing aside. Then he approached Long, who stared down at the fat man from infinite heights. “Yo no tengo nada,” he said.
For five seconds they locked eyes. “Lo creo,” muttered the guard finally, and he ambled back to his desk and to romance.
The sky had returned crystalline while Frisch was working. A late night wind struck their faces and made streamers of their steaming breaths. Mr. Long inhaled deeply.
“I feel tremendously better, Fred. The cocoa was a saving grace.”
Fred Frisch strode ahead and reached the Citroen before Long. He stood with legs braced in front of the driver’s door. “Let me drive.�
�
Mr. Long shook his head. “This car is very complex.”
Frisch stood firm. “Remember me? I’m the quick study.”
“Don’t you trust my driving?” Long’s voice was lightly ironical.
Frisch’s answer was not. “No. You’re sick, and there’s enough danger in this whole business without me worrying about going into the median strip or ending my life plowing into the front grill of someone else’s Volkswagen.”
Long extended the keys to Frisch. “You’re right, of course.” He walked around the car.
Fred Frisch felt obscurely guilty as he studied the instrument board. The automatic hydraulic suspension levitated the body of the car as the engine caught; Fred had heard about the strange Citroen suspension, but this was his first experience driving it. At least the controls appeared familiar. He played out the clutch gently, experimenting.
Mr. Long loosened his grip on the dash. “You are a quick study,” he commented. “I expected rather a rougher start.”
Frisch shrugged. “Where do we go now?” he asked.
“We?”
“Of course we. You don’t think I can go back to sleep after all this, do you Mister Dragon?”
Long’s smile grew and deepened into laughter. “Fred! Have you such an appetite for adventure? But I forget— I’m talking to a young man. Let’s return to your apartment, for now. I must make a telephone call.”
“To call who?”
“I will tell you when we get there.”
Fred looked at the clock. “It’s just after four. You say Liz is safe until the banks open?”
“I hope so. Until Rasmussen and Threve believe they have the incriminating letter, they dare not kill the daughter.”
“But what about… Mrs. Macnamara?”
Mr. Long’s answer was slow in coming. “She is in terrible danger. The only reason they have for keeping her alive is that she can be used to pressure the daughter. If they believe this is not necessary, or if Martha refuses—has refused—to be so used, then they can be expected to kill her. And after they are done with her, they must kill her. She is a curious, sharp woman who has probably seen at least one of them face to face. How can they let her live?”
Fred’s face clouded over, remembering the blue dress and the graying hair, and how the little voice-operated race car made circles on the floor. It was the sort of happening he fostered in his shop. That’s what the shop was for: friendly computers. Friendly people.
“Can’t the police help?” he asked.
“How? Tell me how, Fred, and I will show up on the precinct house doorstep with you. I cannot find Rasmussen or Threve…”
“Threve I never heard of. What does he look like?”
“Like Satan himself, I gather. Elizabeth fears him more than she does Rasmussen. Other than that, I know only that he is rather short and dresses loudly. “I believe he drives a black Lincoln. At least I suspect such a car was involved with the kidnapping, and I didn’t see it parked at RasTech. With no more information than this, can the police find Martha Macnamara? That is, can they find her in time? I am sure they would eventually turn up the body.”
Frisch shuddered. “Jeez! Do you get hardened to things like this?”
“Do I?” inquired Long. “The longer one lives, the more one sees, it is true, but I don’t feel hardened. Quite the contrary, in my youth I was far more… brutal.”
“Then you’re in the wrong line of work,” insisted Fred. “No offense. I think a guy who could thrive in such a slimy world, with fraud and criminals, always a bit to the windward of the law… he’d have to be kind of a snake.”
Long leaned over curiously. “What are you talking about, Fred. Which world is this?”
“I mean the world of the private investigator. Or police investigator. Any detective.”
“Ah.” Mr. Long digested this, and began again to laugh, ignoring the lancing pain in his shoulder, “You believe I’m a private detective.”
“You’re not?” Fred’s eyes darted wildly from the road to the smiling, tired face beside him. “Then what—who are you? How’d you get involved in this?”
Mr. Long sighed. “Starting with what I am: my field was languages, but I am now retired. Who is equally easy to explain. I am a friend of Martha Macnamara’s. How? Easiest of all. I promised her I would find her daughter. So you see. You have been aiding a bumbling amateur to trespass and steal documents. Have you second thoughts?”
Fred was staunch. “Jeez, no. I’m glad. I mean, there’s something seamy about carrying the banner for money. But, Martha. Mrs. Macnamara. I’m really sorry. She seemed like a fine lady.”
“No eulogies yet, please,” growled Long. “I don’t believe her to be dead. Allow me that.”
The car glided to a stop in front of Frisch’s duplex. He left it double parked. Both men got out.
Fred felt the keys of the car being pried from his hand. Half-embarrassed at his earlier show of force, he let them go and fumbled for his door key.
With the front door open, he turned to perceive that Mr. Long was not with him, but was unlocking the Citroen from the driver’s side. Fred sprinted across the lawn.
“What’re you doing?” he protested. “Trying to chuck me?”
“Yes, Fred. That is exactly it,” Long admitted, gently fending the young man off. “I had hoped you would not be so quick.”
“You can’t do it. I won’t let you go alone!”
Long placed his right hand on Frisch’s shoulder. It was an affectionate, avuncular gesture and Frisch found he could not move at all. “You can hardly stop me, Fred.”
Fred fought against Long’s grip. Defeated, he tried words again. “If you leave me behind, I’ll call the police.”
The dark man turned his face away and the hand slipped off. “I can’t prevent that,” he admitted. “Not without harming or detaining you. And I won’t do that.” He slid into the seat.
Fred wedged himself between the door and frame. “But you need me. There are two baddies, and you have only one arm.”
“Acrobatics may not be necessary,” repeated Mr. Long.
“But they may. I may make a little bit of difference. Maybe the difference between saving a life and… and not. I may be very important.” The young blond clutched at the door. His pale hair gleamed under the streetlight.
“You are very important, Fred,” whispered Mayland Long. “And that is why I will not take you any further into this.”
With a slow, irresistible pressure, he forced Frisch out into the street.
Chapter 14
Martha Macnamara’s universe was compassed by the groan and creak of wood, and by the chill of wet air. Had she been able to think, her very sickness might have convinced her she was still alive. She was denied that comfort, being barely conscious, and her thoughts were bound up with a rhythmic rise and sinking. The beat was molto lento, and she should be doing something in time with it. What?
That question gnawed at her. She tried breathing in time with the measure—no go. You can’t force your breathing, she reminded herself. What then—sing? She couldn’t remember a song as ponderous as the rhythm the world now kept, and she couldn’t find her mouth anyway.
Neither could she find her hands, so she couldn’t play the fiddle.
The staccato beat of footsteps superimposed itself over the slow rocking. She attended to the footsteps. Good.
Percussion rounded out the work nicely. Someone was taking care of things. Martha was content.
He was driving on the reserve tank. That was unfortunate, but not to be helped, at this hour of the morning. Perhaps he could siphon gas from Elizabeth Macnamara’s car.
As he had told Fred, he was feeling much better. This hideous night was falling behind him.
Something else, too, was falling behind: a danger or misery he could feel but to which he could put no name.
Perhaps it was despair.
He had partially fulfilled his promises, but promises were no longer the on
ly things keeping him alive.
He felt the pressure of the sun’s approach, as it ate up the night to the east. In two hours it would rise over California. The sun had always been a great source of comfort to him.
Yet he owed his increase in strength not to the slow roll of time, but to the spontaneous kindness of Fred Frisch. Except for the young engineer, he would probably not have survived. He felt the wonder of that charity shimmering within his mind.
Tea with the Black Dragon (v1.4) Page 14
