Forever and a Death

by Donald E. Westlake

  Beyond St. George, with a great bruised sunset burning its way down the sky, the chauffeur squinting and ducking his head behind his dark glasses, the farms of the Darling Downs petered out, giving way to herds of grazing sheep and cattle, none of whom paid any attention in the gathering darkness to the occasional passage of headlights out on the road. The land looked dryer here, reaching away in brown folds, like a tumbled blanket.

  At the small settlement of Bollen, they turned left again, onto a much smaller and more twisty road, climbing into dry hills. They passed Murra Murra, barely a dozen lights in the blackness, and then turned off onto an unmarked dirt road that twisted up into the dark, posting back and forth, detouring around the hillocks. They drove past groups of shaggy-coated cattle that blinked in their headlights and shuffled slowly out of their way, bumping their shoulders together as they went. They drove on for three or four miles, over rolling open country, the Daimler taking the terrain like a good powerboat on a moderate sea, and then all at once they crested a rise and a bowl of lights appeared before them, down a farther hill, like a wide low glass jar full of fireflies.

  It was a house, a ranch, what the Australians call a station, a sprawling adobe structure, two stories high, ablaze with light. Spotlights mounted high on the exterior walls flared on the road, showed a helicopter squatted with drooping rotors near the entrance, made tiny sharp black shadows among the tough grasses that covered these hills.

  “Look at that,” Pallifer said, nudging Manville, who didn’t respond, and pointing at the helicopter, as they drove on by it.

  “Your friend Mr. Curtis, he’s so excited to see you again, he flew out here already.”

  The Daimler drove past the front of the house, with its deep wooden-posted porch dotted with rough wooden benches and small tables, and followed the faint track of the road around to the side, where a tan overhead garage door in the flank of the building, near the rear, one of three such doors in a row, all the same color as the adobe of the building, was already lifting up out of the way, welcoming them.

  The Daimler drove inside, into a space already flanked by two other vehicles, under strong overhead lights. The garage door, one solid piece of metal in an electrically operated track, angled back down again and snicked shut. A minute later, all the exterior lights went out.

  10

  “Let me do the talking,” Jerry said.

  “I always do,” Luther told him.

  They’d flown up from Sydney this morning, as Jerry had promised Kim’s parents he would, but then had wasted precious time on the wrong assumption that Captain Zhang would be living on his ship. The crew members they’d approached had been no help at all, either not speaking English or pretending not to, but then a smooth young Japanese gentleman in a suit had come by, at the gangplank where Jerry and Luther were frustratingly being held, not permitted even to board the Mallory, and the gentleman had turned out to be with the company that was replacing the ship’s missing lifeboat. He it was who told them that Captain Zhang was staying at a hotel in town, the Tasman Crest—“As am I myself” —during the time the ship was forced to remain in harbor.

  The Tasman Crest was a mid-range smallish hotel near City Hall that seemed to cater to Asian businessmen almost exclusively, which was probably why their cabdriver had seemed surprised when they gave it as their destination. The young woman at the desk rang the captain’s room for them without result.

  “You could wait for him,” she offered, with a gesture toward a seating area nearby.

  “Thank you,” Jerry said, and they went over to sit on broad low chairs with thick pale green cushions and bamboo arms. A fountain was nearby, a gentle plash of water onto polished stones, an unobtrusive white noise which would make any conversation in this place something close to confidential.

  Jerry was feeling more and more frustrated. “We don’t know what he looks like, only the sound of his voice. What if he isn’t in his uniform? He could go in and out a dozen times, and we wouldn’t know.”

  “She said she called room 423,” Luther said. “And the key is in that slot, along with a message. Possibly two messages. Jerry, don’t turn around, I can see it fine from here. We just have to wait.” And when Jerry didn’t respond to that: “What are we going to do tonight?”

  They’d decided to spend tonight in Brisbane, staying at a Sheraton because Planetwatch got a group discount, so now Jerry permitted Luther to distract him with a discussion of how they’d spend their evening. There were good seafood restaurants here, and good jazz clubs, and other clubs that might be of interest. They wouldn’t be bored.

  “Ah,” Luther said, and got to his feet.

  As did Jerry. Turning, he saw the girl at the counter just handing the key and the message or messages to a man who was indeed not in uniform but in a rather shabby brown suit. The man had a gloomy and defeated air about him.

  It was as they crossed the lobby toward the man, who must be Captain Zhang, that Jerry said, “Let me do the talking,” and Luther gave his agreement. Meanwhile, the man had turned away from the desk, moving toward the elevators on the farther side of the lobby, and Jerry had to trot to try to catch up.

  Though the girl at the desk solved that problem, calling, “Captain Zhang. You have visitors.”

  The captain turned around, still holding his key and messages, looking more frightened than curious, and very wary when he saw two men he didn’t know approaching him.

  Jerry stopped in front of him. “Captain Zhang?”

  “Yes?”

  “I’m Jerry Diedrich from Planetwatch. We talked the other day, by radio.”

  Now the captain looked like a frightened rabbit, backing away, eyes slipping to the sides, looking for a hole to hide in. “No no,” he said. “You must talk to the company, Mr. Curtis—”

  Jerry pursued him, saying, “When Kim Baldur’s parents came to see you, you didn’t speak English.”

  “I could not talk to them,” the captain said. He was almost running backward, unwilling to turn away from them but wanting desperately to escape. “I cannot talk to you. Mr. Curtis has lawyers, you must see them. Please, not me.” He was at the elevators now, and one was just opening, releasing three businessmen with briefcases, deep in discussion. The captain ducked around them into the elevator, and Jerry and Luther went in after him.

  The captain stared at them in horror. “You can’t follow me!”

  Luther said, “Of course we can,” and leaned forward to press button number 4. “You’re in 423,” he said.

  The door closed; they started to rise. The captain tried to be stern, not very effectively. “I have nothing to say to you,” he insisted. “I wrote a report for the authorities, that’s all—”

  “You signed a report,” Luther corrected. “Some of Curtis’s lawyers wrote it.”

  The elevator door opened, and the captain could be seen to be torn between horrible choices. He didn’t want to stay in here with these two people, but he didn’t want to let them approach any nearer to his room either.

  Luther held the door, and spoke in an almost kindly way. “Your floor, sir.”

  The captain stepped out, jittering, and they went out with him. But then he refused to go any farther. He stood where he was in the hall, in front of the elevators, sullen but unmovable. “I have nothing to tell you,” he said. He wouldn’t look at them either, but kept frowning at some invisible spot at waist height between them. “I did my report. I was very upset by what happened. I thought I would lose my job. I need my job, I have a family, I have daughters, I thought we were all destroyed. I felt…I felt very bad for that girl, so young and pretty and…it was not my fault. I would never hurt another person, you must believe me. I would never hurt anyone. It’s not my fault.”

  Jerry said, “What about her parents? You pretended you couldn’t speak English. What about them?”

  “I felt so— I couldn’t talk with those people, such sad people, I have daughters, I have daughters, what could I say to those people
? How everybody looked for her and nobody found her, and if they found her she’d only be dead. They know that, I can’t say that. How could I talk to those people? I pretended, because I felt such badness for them.” He shook his head. “And I cannot talk to you. If you follow me to my room, I will call the desk and have them send people to take you away, arrest you. You must leave me alone.”

  He turned away, scurrying off down the wide pale corridor. Jerry would have followed, but Luther grabbed his arm, holding him back. Jerry looked at him, surprised, and Luther shook his head, then turned to push the down button for the elevator.

  Jerry watched the captain pause at a door some way down the hall. He never looked back. He fumbled with the key in the door, dropped his messages, scooped them up, hurried inside. The door slammed, as the elevator arrived.

  As they rode down, Jerry said, “Why did you stop me? If we just kept at him—”

  “No,” Luther said. “He’s covering up, he’s hiding something, and it scares him so much he won’t talk. He really won’t talk, Jerry, he’s too scared. So all we know is, there’s something hidden. We’ll have to find out what it is some other way.”

  The elevator door opened at lobby level, and as they stepped outside Luther said, “The first question, of course, is how did he know she was pretty?”

  Jerry thudded to a stop, as though he’d walked into an invisible wall. He spun around for the elevators, crying, “We have to—”

  “No, Jerry,” Luther said, holding him by the arm again. “We’ll find out, but we’ll find out someplace else. And it is possible, of course, that Kim’s parents showed him a photo of her, though unlikely.”

  “Why would they do that?”

  “Exactly. But we know he pretended not to speak English with them because he was afraid of making exactly that kind of slip. So what we now know for sure, there’s more to the story. Come on, we’ll go back to the hotel and decide what to do next.”

  Jerry was dissatisfied, but he let Luther lead him. They took a cab across to their own hotel, with its larger and more impersonal lobby, and as they were crossing it a voice called, “Jerry! Jerry!”

  Jerry turned, and saw coming toward him, hurrying toward him, face grimacing with strain, the ghost of Kim Baldur. His eyes rolled back in his head, and he fainted.

  11

  Trembling, Zhang Yung-tsien dropped his two messages onto the floor, while trying to unlock the door to his room.

  He was so nervous, so afraid those two strange men would rush up behind him and push him into the room, trap him there, force him somehow to tell them what they wanted to know, that he fumbled with the two flimsy slips of paper on the floor, and lost his balance, and would have toppled forward into his room if his shoulder hadn’t hit the doorjamb.

  His fingers felt like fat sausages, but he clutched at the crinkled slips of paper, and straightened, and lunged into the room, the door automatically closing behind him. He fell back against the door, eyes closed, the key and messages held tight in the hands crossed over his chest. His breath was loud in his ears.

  They did not pursue. No knock on the door, no shouts in the hall. They’ve given up.

  Zhang opened his eyes, and there was the room, his home ashore until Mallory should be ready to leave port. It was a small room, but very neat, the colors pale without sentimentality, not like the pastel palette of the Americans. The room’s creators were Japanese, not Chinese, but still he had felt more at home here than in the American-made world he had so much to inhabit.

  One of his messages, from his wife, Yanling, was in Chinese, the ideograms neatly penned. The other, yet another question from the insurance company adjuster, was written in English, the letters just as neat. He had trouble focusing on either, and held one in each hand, looking back and forth from one to the other, then finally giving up and placing them side by side on the dresser.

  He was having trouble with his breath, he couldn’t seem to inhale. The air in the room felt cold and lifeless, and it was hard to gain nourishment from it. He crossed to the window to open it wide, and immediately the warm moist air from outside flowed in to conquer the air-conditioning. He could feel it as a soft caress against his skin.

  What was he going to do? What could he do? The people kept coming to ask questions, and he was so afraid, so confused, that he never knew how to answer, what to tell them, what to try to conceal.

  The girl was alive. Could he have told her parents that? But then so many more questions would have come from them, questions he was terrified to answer. What had happened on the ship? What had been intended, and by whom? And what was Captain Zhang’s role in it all?

  The girl was alive, or she’d been alive when she’d left the ship with that engineer. But was she still alive, were either of them still alive, or had some other of Curtis’s men caught up with them? Should he say the girl was alive, if he didn’t know?

  But what if she were still alive, and finally came forward, and told everything that had happened on the ship? Then people would know he had lied, and they would demand to know why.

  He had never wanted to be involved in this. He was good at his work, and that was all he’d wanted. He wasn’t supposed to have these burdens.

  He sat on the side of the bed. Next to the telephone were a ballpoint pen and a notepad, the name of the hotel at its top in Japanese and English. Zhang picked up pen and pad and wrote, under the letterhead, “Yanling.”

  What would he say next? What would he tell his wife? There was insurance; they would be taken care of. This way, there would be no shame and no disaster. But how could he tell her all that, on a scrap of paper in a hotel room, under a name in Japanese and English?

  “I love you,” he wrote, and put the pad and pen back next to the telephone, and got to his feet.

  It all started because of the girl, the diver. If she had not launched herself into the sea, nothing bad would have happened.

  Zhang reached the window, and bent forward. Without pausing, he put both hands on the windowsill and launched himself headfirst into the air.

  12

  “I’m really sorry, Jerry,” Kim said yet again, and yet again he gave her his rattled martyr look and said, “It’s all right, Kim, it really is.”

  When she’d first seen him collapse like that, downstairs in the lobby, she’d thought he’d been shot, that one of Richard Curtis’s killers had found her and fired at her and missed and killed Jerry. But then Luther dropped to his knees beside him, and called, “Jerry! Jerry!” and Jerry’s eyes fluttered, and Kim realized he’d only fainted.

  Not only; she wouldn’t dare say he’d only fainted. Jerry was taking it all very seriously. And it’s true he’d hit the floor hard, falling sideways, bruising his left hip and raising a shiny bump on his head, above his left ear, just in front of the hairline. Luther kept putting fresh wet, cold washcloths on it, from the bathroom sink, so it wasn’t getting any worse, but it wasn’t getting any better either.

  As Luther and Kim together had helped the quivering Jerry back to his feet, he’d looked at her with still-frightened eyes and said, “You aren’t a ghost. You’re real.”

  “I’m real, Jerry,” she promised him, and for the first of many times she said, “I’m really sorry,” and he assured her it was all right, and she and Luther helped him to rise and walk to the elevator. They went up in it together and into their room, which was a surprising mess, clothing and luggage and personal effects strewn just everywhere, the bed rumpled and unmade.

  Kim helped Luther straighten the top cover so Jerry could lie down. Luther went away for the first of the wet washcloths, and Kim told her story.

  Parts of it she had to tell more than once, particularly the suggestion that George Manville, Richard Curtis’s chief engineer on the Kanowit Island project, creator of the shock wave that had reconfigured the island and threatened the delicate coral of the barrier reef and almost killed Kim herself, wasn’t a villain after all. Not a bad man, but a good one.

  “
He saved my life,” she told them more than once, and described how astonishingly Manville had shot the killer, and how brilliantly he’d arranged their escape from the ship, and how, through some friend of his in Houston, he’d even made contact with a lawyer here in Brisbane who was going to help them all, but how now it was all messed up.

  “I don’t know where he is,” she said. “I don’t know what happened to him.”

  “Got on with his life, I suppose,” Jerry said. He still didn’t get it.

  But Luther did, by now. He said, “You’re sure it was just coincidence, them seeing you there. The people who chased you.”

  “Yes, of course, it had to be,” she said. “Only George knew where I was, and if he was going to turn me over to those people he could have done it a long time ago. In fact, he never had to save me in the first place.”

  Luther said, “Would they have known you were waiting for Manville?”

  “Probably. They knew I’d got off the ship with him, they probably figured we were hiding out together.”

  “So,” Luther said, “they might have gone back to where they saw you, deciding that you had been waiting to meet up with Manville again.”

  “That’s what I’m worried about,” she agreed. “I got so lost, running away from them, it took me forever to find the Mall again, and of course by then he wasn’t there.”

  Luther said, “So either he was captured by them or he escaped the way you did.”

  “I went to the parking lot where we left the car,” she said. “George rented this little red car, and it was still there. I called the lawyer’s office, but it was almost five o’clock by then, and everybody was gone. He wasn’t at the Mall, and he didn’t pick up his car. So that’s when I tried to call you two, at the Planetwatch office down in Sydney, and the people there said you were up here, and which hotel, so I just waited in the lobby. And I’m really sorry, Jerry.”