The Jade Figurine

by Bill Pronzini

  “A very noble goal,” I said.

  “Well, I never thought of it as being particularly noble—”

  “Noble is as noble does.”

  “I beg—I mean, I don’t think—”

  “I’m being ambiguous. Pay me no mind. But tell me, how did you happen to find this infamous little den of iniquity?”

  “The Old Cathay? Oh, someone I met on one of the city tours told me it was the place to go.”

  “A lot that someone knows.”

  Soft laughter. She touched my hand, almost shyly. “You know, for some strange reason I rather like you . . . Dan.”

  “Mutual, little girl. Which is why I offer mild advice: spend not too much time in places like the Old Cathay; dragons lurk in unsuspected corners.”

  “That sounds like an Oriental proverb.”

  “Only the voice of experience.”

  She laughed again. “As a matter of fact, I really can’t stay much longer. It’s a long taxi ride back to where I’m living, and I have to be up early in the morning. I’m going on a tour to Johore.”

  “I’ll help you find a cab.”

  “Well . . . that would be nice, I think.”

  I got on my feet and offered my arm. She took it, and we spent several minutes struggling through the packed humanity to the door. Outside, it was very dark—the streetlamps on Jalan Barat are few and far between—and the night air was cooler and fresher after the daily, late-afternoon downpour. There were few automobiles on the street, but the foot traffic either coming to or departing from the Old Cathay was relatively heavy.

  I steered Tina in a southerly direction. “There’s a taxi stand over on Betar Road,” I told her.

  She smiled. “Are you sure?”

  “Positive.”

  “Okay, then.”

  We walked down to Bencoolen Street, crossed it, and turned left on Betar Road. My head had begun to clear of the creeping effects of the Anchor Beer, and I thought that by the time I walked all the way to Punyang Street I would be dead-sober.

  We had gone a block and a half when I heard the car come into Betar Road from Jalan Barat; from the sound of it, it was traveling very fast. I turned just as Tina began, “You know, Dan—” and the car, a small English Ford, was just coming through the cross street intersection. There was the pig squeal, then, of hurriedly applied brakes, and the driver pulled the wheel hard to the left, skidding the car in at an angle to the curb ten yards in front of where Tina and I stood.

  Both front doors opened simultaneously, and two men came out in a hurry. The tropical moon had come out from behind a bank of clouds in the night sky, and in its yellow-white shine I could see their faces clearly.

  It was the two flat-eyed men who had been with Van Rijk that afternoon.

  I had time to shove Tina out of the way—and for the quick thought that Van Rijk was carrying out his threat after all—and then the driver, the one I had thought to be Eurasian, reached me. His right arm was upraised, across his body, and he brought it down in a backhand chopping motion, karate-style. Considering the amount of beer I had drunk since late afternoon, my reactions were pretty good; and I had taught karate to replacement troops in Seoul during the Korean War. I got my left arm up and blocked his descending forearm with my own. The force of his rush threw him off balance, and he was vulnerable; I jabbed the stiffened fingers of my right hand into his stomach, just below the breastbone. All the air went out of him. He stumbled backward and sat down hard on the sidewalk.

  The other one, the Malay, had gotten there by then. But when he saw the Eurasian fall he came up short, and I saw him fumble beneath his white linen jacket. I took three rapid steps and laid the hard edge of my hand across his wrist. He made a pained sound deep in his throat, and there was a metallic clatter as the gun or whatever he had been going after dropped to the pavement. I hit him twice in the face with quick jabs, turning him, and then I drove the point of my elbow into his kidneys. The blow sent him staggering blindly forward, and he collided with the side of the English Ford. He slid down along it and lay still.

  I heard the retreating slap of footsteps on the pavement and caught a glimpse of Tina running very fast on the next block; the whole thing must have scared hell out of her. Then I turned to have another look at the Eurasian. He was on his knees now, his face contorted, and there was a small automatic in his right hand; he was less than thirty feet away.

  I hesitated for a fraction of a second. But there was only one thing I could do. Karate is effective against handguns, but not at thirty feet.

  I fled.

  Chapter Four

  AN ALLEY bisected the block on the opposite side of the street, and I cut over there, using the English Ford to shield myself from the Eurasian, running crouched low in a weave. Just as I came up onto the sidewalk at the alley mouth, there was a single, flat report behind me and, an instant later, a whistling ricochet. Brick dust showered from the building wall on my right.

  Before I had taken ten steps into the alley, I knew that it was a dead-end. I had no visibility at alt—the moon had vanished into the clouds again and the sky was partially obliterated by the jutting roofs on both buildings—and if it had been a through passage to the next street I would have been able to see the lighter gray of its second mouth. I didn’t know what sort of dead-end it was; if it terminated at the rear of another building, or one of those balustraded Chinese flats, I was trapped. But it was far too late for me to turn back now.

  I ran blind, my shoes slipping treacherously on the damp, irregular cobblestone floor. My knee hit something and it gave, pitching me forward, off balance. I put out my hands to break the fall, and when the impact came skin scraped painfully from my palms and forearms on the roughness of the stones. I heard the reverberating clatter of a metal can rolling and bouncing, and the stench of garbage bit acridly into my nostrils. From a distance behind me another shot rang out; frontally and very close, there was a dull thwacking sound as the bullet imbedded itself into something wooden.

  I got my feet under me and stumbled forward. Rats chittered in the darkness, scattering, claws clicking on the stone floor. My eyes had become acclimated somewhat to the black, and I could make out the dim outlines of a board fence. It looked about eight feet high and extended the width of the alley; it looked damned fine.

  When I reached its base, I bent at the waist and jumped and my fingers closed over the rough boards at the top. I pulled myself up, scraping more skin from my palms, and swung my legs over and dropped down on the other side. Another alley, almost as dark and impenetrable as the previous one; they ran in mazelike confusion, I knew, in the centers of some of the blocks in this area.

  To my left I could see the wide, chain-locked double doors across the rear entrance to what might have been some kind of warehouse. A narrow door, decorated with Chinese characters, was set into the building to one side of them—and a low-wattage bulb burned above it, casting a pale wedge of amber-colored light on the cobblestones there. But it was sure to be locked, too, and I would make a fine target standing in that light and trying to force it.

  I looked to my right. The alley stretched into blackness like a long, slender tunnel in that direction. I couldn’t see an opening, but if I was correct about the structure on the left being a warehouse, there had to be one to admit trucks picking up and delivering. I thought that the alley would probably widen at some point farther along, and then rightangle to lead out to one of the through streets.

  There were scratching sounds from the other side of the board fence, urgent and angry. I ran down to the right, my eyes probing the floor ahead of me for obstructions. The alley seemed to stretch on endlessly in a straight line—no light, no opening, a yielding wall of darkness. I heard footfalls begin to pound behind me; the Eurasian had made it over the fence.

  I forced myself to run faster, to take a chance on the path being clear. And all at once something loomed ahead of me—huge, obscured in shadow. It was blocking the width of the alley. I pulled up s
hort, breathing stertorously, and I could hear the Eurasian coming up close on my heels now.

  The obstruction was an ancient canvas-covered truck.

  Some son of a bitch had abandoned it there for the night.

  I started around to the driver’s side—there was enough room for me to squeeze past there—and then the moon came out again, bathing the alley in ethereal light. I looked back over my shoulder, and the Eurasian was less than forty yards away. He had seen me, too, and he was bringing the automatic up in his hand.

  There wasn’t enough time now for me to make it around the side of the truck. I jumped forward, up onto the high rear tailgate, and caught onto a loose flap of canvas to maintain my balance. Flame-colored light illuminated the Eurasian briefly as he squeezed off a shot, and I heard the bullet cut into the canvas side of the truck a foot above and to one side of my head. If he had meant that as a warning shot, it had been pretty damned close.

  A second wooden fence, higher than the other one and capped with strands of rusted barbed wire, bordered the alley on that side. I leaned up and caught onto the wire. The needle-sharp barbs cut into palms, and I felt the warmth of blood; but I held on grimly, and the tailgate was high enough so that I was able to get my left foot on top of the fence, below the wire. The automatic sounded again, twice. The billowed front of my bush jacket jerked as one of the slugs ripped through it, and the other one passed just in front of my face like a hot and fetid breath. He wasn’t playing abduction games with me now; those shots had been meant to kill.

  I pulled back on the barbed wire and kicked up with my right foot from the tailgate. I came into an erect position on top of the fence for an instant and then vaulted my body up and over, releasing the wire, just as the Eurasian cut loose for the fourth time. The slug burrowed into one of the boards near the top of the fence, and I landed on the balls of my feet on hard, graveled ground. Pain raced upward through my legs, into my crotch and hips. I lurched forward, went to one knee, and then stood up again.

  I was in some kind of yard, a storage area for what must have been an iron or junk dealer. There were piles of scrap iron, bundles of corroded steel pipe, other mounds and masses in heavy shadow which were less recognizable. I let my eyes circumscribe the yard. There had to be an entrance to the area other than through the low, slate-roofed building at the upper end, which apparently housed the store. A driveway, I thought, for trucks in and out.

  I located it at the left of the structure, narrow and badly pitted. Its far border was a high cyclone-type mesh fence, topped with more strands of barbed wire. Behind me, in the alley, I could hear the Eurasian at the truck. I ran to the driveway and followed it to the front of the building. There, a double swing gate, of the same mesh as the cyclone fence, blocked the entrance. Around the two upright supports on either half, in the middle, was a heavy chain-and-padlock; across the top were still more strands of barbed wire. I climbed one half of the gate, monkey-style; my hands were stained a sticky rust-color in the moonlight, and pain throbbed in them at each contact with the mesh.

  When I reached the top, I leaned my body against the wall of the building to which that half of the gate was attached and managed to get my legs over the barbed wire with a minimum of damage. Then I used the top support bar to climb down on the outside. Briefly, I peered through the gate. I saw nothing, but from the yard area I heard a ringing of metal and a sharp curse. The Eurasian had gotten over that fence, too.

  I went up one block on the deserted street, down one, up another, running at first and then walking rapidly. On Hempole Street I woke a young Chinese boy sleeping on the front seat of his motorized pedicab and had him take me to my flat in Chinatown.

  Once there, I put salve on my raw and bleeding hands. There was a charred hole in the side of the bush jacket, and I took it off and wadded it up and put it in with the garbage. Then I locked and barred the door and windows, opened an Anchor Beer, and sat down with it to do some thinking.

  I didn’t know what to do about Van Rijk. I considered notifying the police of what had happened tonight, but even after two clean years my reputation with them was not good. Too, Van Rijk had not been present and I had no proof that he had ordered the attempt on me; and I had no doubt that he would be willing, and able, to supply both the Eurasian and the Malay with alibis if the need arose. With all of that, I was pretty sure the police wouldn’t make much of an effort in my behalf.

  Van Rijk, as I saw it, was one of Singapore’s international profiteers, dealing in anything—legal or otherwise—if the potential return was great enough. And La Croix had managed to run afoul of him at some point during his big score. La Croix would have the score itself at the present time, and that was why Van Rijk wanted him—and why he had sent his two hirelings after me tonight; he was still convinced I knew the Frenchman’s whereabouts. But that goddam Eurasian had been trying to kill me, no mistake, and that didn’t make any sense. How could I tell Van Rijk anything if I was dead? Well, maybe he had already located La Croix—but no, if that were the case, what reason would he have for wanting me dead . . . ?

  My head began to ache dully, and after a time I said to hell with it. There was nothing I could do tonight about either Van Rijk or his two orang séwaan-séwaan—if there was anything I could do at all without meeting him on his terms; and I knew it could never come to that, not any more.

  I went into the bedroom, switched on the fan in there, stripped down, and got into bed under the mosquito netting. I thought briefly of the girl, Tina, and hoped she had gotten back to her apartment safely. There was no way I could find that out; she hadn’t mentioned its location. Well. . .

  I lay there for a long time, looking out at the moon through the bedroom window. I watched it drift higher and higher and finally disappear, leaving the stars alone and coldly bright in the patch of sky. Tropical night, lush and fragrant. The stuff of books, the stuff of dreams.

  The stuff of dreams . . .

  Chapter Five

  The Penang jungle lies below us like a surrealistic basrelief map done in varying shades of black, and the sky is a smooth black canopy studded with pinpoints of coruscating light. On the seat beside me in the cockpit of the DC-3, Pete sits nervously rubbing his hands back and forth on his whipcord trousers. Neither of us has spoken in a long while, and the only sound is the steady, almost soporific drone of the Pratt & Whitney engines, port and starboard. We are flying low—five hundred feet now, by the altimeter —and all the running lights are off.

  I glance at my watch. It is twenty-three minutes past midnight. My eyes move to the instrument panel and the magnetic compass there. On course. I peer through the windshield at the ebon jungle below.

  Pete turns to look at me; his face is pinched in the flickering red light from the instrument panel. “How much farther?” he asks, and in his voice there is a touch of fear. Stage fright, I think, and I smile. “It won’t be long now, kid. Listen, relax, will you?”

  “I don’t know, Dan. I’m not cut out for this kind of thing.”

  I laugh a little to myself. I have made similar runs, longer ones, a dozen times. Nothing to them, nothing at all. But it’s his first time. I remember mine, a short push into Sumatra, near Palembang, with the old Belgian grinning beside me: dry throat, hands that shook just slightly on the stick coming in, stomach churning, asshole twitching. I laugh again, silently. He’ll be all right. Once we get down and he sees the money—twelve thousand Singapore dollars this wop, this Spindello, will have for the contraband silk we’re carrying—he’ ll be just fine.

  I check my watch again. Twelve twenty-eight. Air speed indicator: one hundred, holding steady. The needle has not moved since I cut to half throttle as we passed over the tin smelters in Wellesley Province. Two more minutes, give or take. Spindello has promised to have signal fires lighting the strip. Nothing to it, nothing at all.

  Compass reading: a few degrees off course, now. Soft left rudder. Okay. I watch the altimeter, easing forward on the yoke: three hundred feet, two
hundred.

  Twelve-thirty.

  Below us, dead ahead in the blackness of the jungle, I see the orange-yellow flames of the signal fires. But there are only two of them, one on either side. I can only make out a small section of the strip; the rest is shrouded. Where have they built the two? At the head? In the middle? Where?

  Pete leans forward on the seat, staring through the windshield. “I thought they were supposed to fire the length of the runway.”

  “Take it easy, kid.”

  “I don’t like it.”

  “Cinch your belt. We’re on our way.”

  I take her down, one eye on the altimeter. One hundred feet. I line up with the fires, cutting the power back. Landing gear down, flaps down. I hit the switch for the landing lights, and twin cones snap on, picking up the strip. I can see it clearly now, for the first time.

  “Dan!”

  It is short, much too short, and honeycombed with small holes and jagged cracks. God damn you, Spindello, God damn you to hell, you said it was in good condition, you said it was smooth and in very good condition . . .

  “Dan, pull out!”

  “Shut up!”

  “You can’t land on that! This crate won’t stand up!”

  “Shut up, shut up!”

  It is my decision, and I know I have to take her down. We’re not carrying much of a payload in terms of weight, we’ll make it all right. And we can’t fly the silk back to Singapore, too dangerous, and the money, twelve thousand Singapore dollars . . .

  “Pull out, Dan, pull out!”

  “No! Can’t you shut up?”

  “You’ll kill us both!”

  “I can make it, hold on!”

  I ease back on the yoke, chopping the throttles. The strip rushes up, the wheels touch, bounce, touch again. We’re almost down! I fight off the urge to work the brake pedals; wait, wait until she settles . . . There! Now get set: brakes, reverse power—

  We hit something: a hole, a crevice. The Dakota begins to roll, yawing from side to side. I can’t hold it! Oh God, oh Jesus! The world tilts, crazily, unbelievably. Lights spin in kaleidoscopic brilliance. Suddenly there is an impact, a shattering bursting impact, and Pete screams, he screams, dear God sweet Mother I hear him scream, and then the stench of high octane fuel erupts in my nostrils and I feel myself being lifted, propelled forward . . .