The Skull Mantra is-1

by Eliot Pattison

  "She?"

  "Daughter of a flesh monkey."

  "A ragyapa?"

  "Green Bamboo Street," came the reply.

  Shan turned. The purba had disappeared.

  ***

  Twenty minutes later Shan and Sergeant Feng watched from across the rutted gravel track on the north side of town as Yeshe ventured into the book shop. A short, swarthy woman could be seen inside as he entered. As he spoke to her she pointed toward the rear of the store, then looked up and down the street before pulling the door shut.

  Yeshe darted out of the store ten minutes later, a glimmer of triumph on his face. "She's there," he announced. "That was her at the door. Says she's from Shigatse but she's not." He said that he had asked for the owner, explaining he was conducting a quick audit of working papers. When the man had begun to question his authority, Yeshe had pointed out the window. Seeing an official-looking vehicle and a soldier at the wheel, the man had quickly revealed his enterprise license and the girl's work papers. "Showed she was from Shigatse nearly a year ago. But on the way out I asked if she liked climbing the walls of the old fortress at Shigatse. She said she did, said she liked to take picnics there."

  "There's a still a fortress there?" Shan asked.

  "A fortress, in Tibet? Of course not, the Communists blew it up forty years ago!" He put his hands together as he spoke, then threw them apart, like an explosion. "No more walls."

  "So she's not from Shigatse."

  "Impossible. She lives in the back, but the owner say she leaves almost every weekend. A store clerk would never make enough to travel two hundred miles to Shigatse so often."

  "Then her family is nearby," Shan said. A family of fleshcutters. In the mountains. Where Tamdin the fleshcutter lived. "That's where she is going with the charms." He looked expectantly at Yeshe.

  Yeshe's face darkened. "No," he protested weakly.

  "Her home shouldn't be hard to find," Shan suggested. "In Lhadrung there is an active market for death."

  ***

  Tan handed him several sheets of paper clipped with a pin at the top. "I found her," he said, with the exhilaration that progress brings.

  "Her?"

  "Miss Lihua. Prosecutor Jao's secretary. On leave in Hong Kong. The Ministry of Justice tracked her to her hotel. She went to the local Ministry office and used the fax. Reports that Assistant Prosecutor Li drove her to the airport, before Jao left for dinner with the American woman. I know her. Young, very dedicated. Great memory for details. Gave me Jao's schedule. His calls on the day of his murder. She faxed it all. No one called about a meeting."

  Miss Lihua was honored to be able to assist the colonel, the first fax said. She was stricken with grief over the loss of Comrade Prosecutor Jao and felt she should return immediately. Tan had declined the offer, provided she would cooperate by fax.

  "Did she know how to find the driver?" Shan asked.

  "Told me where he lived. And said she was certain no one Jao knew had set up a meeting at the South Claw."

  "She wouldn't know," Shan said. "She wouldn't know if someone called."

  "Jao was a stiff bastard. Never took calls himself. And everything had to be planned in advance or it could not happen. Every hour was logged by Miss Lihua. He was in the office all that day, she said. He was loading the car for the airport when she left. Religious Affairs called about a committee meeting. The Justice office in Lhasa called about a late report. He had her call to confirm his flights. Nothing else that day except the dinner."

  "There are other places. Other ways to receive calls."

  "This isn't Shanghai. He didn't have a damned pocket phone. He didn't have a radio transmitter. He didn't go anywhere that day anyway. And he wouldn't have changed his plans," Tan added, "wouldn't have chanced missing the flight for his annual leave just for a message from some monk."

  "Exactly. Which is why it was someone he knew," Shan replied.

  "No. It is why he must have been ambushed on the way to the airport, then driven back to the Claw."

  "The road to the airport. It is a military road."

  "Of course."

  "So convoys drive down it into the valley. Do they travel at night?"

  Tan nodded slowly. "When supplies or personnel are picked up at the airport. Flights arrive in the late afternoon."

  "Then verify whether any military driver saw a limousine on his return drive. There aren't many limousines in Lhadrung. It would have been conspicuous."

  Shan studied the folder with the faxes as he spoke. Madame Ko had added Prosecutor Jao's itinerary, obtained directly from the airline. "Why was he scheduled for a one-day layover in Beijing? Why not fly straight through?"

  "Shopping. Family. Any number of reasons."

  Shan sat down and stared into his hands. "I must go to Lhasa."

  Tan's face soured. "There's no possible connection to Lhasa. If you think for a moment I'll drag in the outside authorities-"

  "The prosecutor had planned an unaccounted-for day in Beijing. He received an unaccounted-for message from an unknown person who lured him to be killed by another unknown wearing an unaccounted-for costume."

  "There's more than one killer?" Tan said, with a tone of warning in his voice.

  Shan ignored the question. "We have to start answering questions, not raising more. In Lhasa," Shan explained, "there is the Museum of Cultural Antiquities. We need to account for all the costumes of Tamdin."

  "Impossible. I can't protect you in Lhasa. It would be my head if you were discovered."

  "Then you go. Check the museum records."

  "Wen Li verified it. Said there are none missing. And I can't leave the district with the 404th on strike. It would be a sign of weakness." He looked up abruptly and cursed. "Listen to me. As if I'm apologizing. Nobody makes me-" The words choked in his throat.

  There were few better lenses to the soul, Shan mused, than anger.

  The colonel moved back to the window and picked up the binoculars.

  Shan could see with his naked eye that the worksite was empty. "You are right, not to think of them as separate problems," he said very quietly.

  Tan slowly lowered the glasses and turned to him.

  "The murder and the strike," Shan said. "They are about the same thing."

  "You mean the death of Jao."

  "No. Not the death of Jao. The thing that caused the death of Jao."

  As Tan stared at him the phone rang. He listened, uttered a single syllable of acknowledgment, and hung up. "Li Aidang," he announced with a frown, "is out collecting your evidence again."

  ***

  Balti, the Ministry of Justice chauffeur, lived in a battered stucco and corrugated tin building that served as a government garage. Shan and the colonel followed voices up a steep stairway above the garage to a drafty, dim loft lined with shelves of auto parts. A long slab of plywood had been erected on cinder blocks to serve as a bed. On it were pieces of soiled canvas that appeared to have once served as drop cloths in the repair shop. On an upturned crate at the end of the bed was a butter lamp and a small ceramic Buddha, badly chipped.

  Two men were at the end of the room, using hand lanterns to examine the shelves.

  "We would not want the assistant prosecutor to surpass our own diligence," Tan said under his breath. Shan half expected him to push him toward the shelves.

  One of the men in the shadows approached. It was Li. He was wearing rubber gloves and had a koujiao tied around his mouth. What was he afraid of? Buddhist contagion?

  "Brilliant!" he said to Shan, lowering the mask. "I never thought of it until Colonel Tan asked about the prosecutor's car."

  "Thought about what exactly?" asked Shan.

  "The conspiracy. This khampa. He forced the prosecutor to the South Claw. Drove him there against his will. To be murdered by Sungpo. It explains how Sungpo traveled to the Claw and back. Why the car is missing. Why Balti is missing." Li kept searching as he spoke. He examined a cardboard box near the bed. It held neatly folded
clothing. He dumped it onto the floor and picked up each piece with an extended finger as if it might be infested with vermin. He knelt and looked under the bed, producing two shoes which he carelessly tossed behind him.

  Shan bent and ran his hand under the bedding. Hidden underneath was a wrinkled, faded photograph of three men, two women, and a dog standing before a herd of yaks. His hand closed around something sharp and metallic. It was a circular piece of chrome. He held it at arm's length in confusion.

  Tan took it from him and studied it. "Jiefang," he announced. "Hood ornament." Battered Jiefang trucks, sent to Tibet after a lifetime of work elsewhere, were fixtures on the region's roads.

  Li grabbed the ornament and snapped an order to the man behind him, who produced a small clear plastic bag. Li ceremoniously dropped the chrome piece into the bag and looked at Shan with a gloating expression.

  "You should watch American movies," Li declared as he moved to the edge of the bed. "Very instructive. Integrity of the evidence is the key." Energized by the find, Li tore the bed clothing away. Finding nothing else, he overturned the plywood, then probed with his hand into the cavities of the cinder blocks. At the last one he looked up victoriously, producing a rosary of plastic beads.

  "The limousine. It's obvious." Li dangled the beads in front of Shan. "He was given Prosecutor Jao's Red Flag limousine as his reward for abetting the murder." He dropped the beads into another bag.

  Yeshe awkwardly moved to the shelves of auto parts and began to absently move the cartons. A tattered postcard fell on the floor as he did so, an image of the Dalai Lama taken decades earlier.

  "Excellent!" Li exclaimed, snatching the photo and patting Yeshe on the back. "You are learning, Comrade."

  Yeshe stared blankly at Li. "It is permitted to own such pictures now," he said, "as long as they are not displayed publicly." Not quite an argument, but still there was objection in Yeshe's voice, a tone which surprised Shan and perhaps surprised Yeshe even more.

  Li seemed not to notice. He waved the photo like a flag. "No, but look how old it is. It was illegal when it was taken. This is how we build cases, Comrade." An assistant held out another plastic bag, into which Li dropped the postcard.

  Shan moved to the window at the other end of the room and rubbed his fingers through its grime. Outside he could see their vehicles. Someone was smoking a cigarette with Sergeant Feng. He rubbed the glass clean. It was Lieutenant Chang. Reflexively, Shan stepped backward. Something brushed against his foot as he did so. It was one of the shoes. He picked it up and ran his finger around its edge. It was of cheap vinyl and covered with dust. It was new, probably never worn, but still covered with dust. He picked up the second shoe. It was not a match. Like the first it seemed unworn, and like the first it was for the left foot. Shan returned to the ruins of the bed and searched. There were no other shoes.

  "And this was a man who had been cleared by Public Security." Li was holding up the little Buddha.

  "A little man with a fat belly is not illegal," Tan observed icily.

  Li gave Tan a condescending look. "Comrade Colonel. You have little experience with the criminal mind." He punctuated his comment with a satisfied smile, then extended his arm and dropped the Buddha into another bag held out by one of his assistants.

  A small crowd had gathered outside the garage. They scurried like frightened animals when Tan appeared, vanishing down an alley. Only a child remained, a tiny figure of three or four wrapped in a black yak hair robe tied with twine. The child, whose sex was not obvious, stood looking at Tan with intense curiosity.

  "I have to find Balti," Shan said to Tan. "If he has disappeared it is because of that night."

  "You heard Li. He is probably in Sichuan by now."

  "You saw his clothes upstairs. His entire wardrobe, in that box. He didn't pack it. He wasn't planning to leave. Besides, how far do you think the man who lived in that loft would get, without travel papers, in illegal possession of a government car?"

  "So he sold the car." Tan took a step toward the child.

  "That is only one of the possibilities. He could have been part of the crime. Or he could have been killed. Or he could have fled in terror and is in hiding."

  The child looked at Tan and laughed.

  "From fear of your demon," Tan said.

  "Or fear of reprisal. From someone he recognized that night," Shan said.

  Tan paused, considering Shan's suggestion. "Either way, he's gone. Nothing you can do."

  "I can talk to the neighbors. My guess is he lived here a long time. He was part of the neighborhood."

  "Neighborhood?" Tan looked around at the piles of empty oil barrels, heaps of scrap metal, and dilapidated sheds that surrounded the garage.

  "People live here," Shan said.

  "Fine. Let's interrogate them. I want to see my investigator at work."

  Someone called from the alleyway. The child did not respond.

  Tan extended his hand toward the child. Suddenly three men appeared, square-built herdsmen holding poles in front of them as if to do battle. Instantly Sergeant Feng and Tan's driver were at the colonel's side, their hands on their weapons.

  A short, stout woman ran between the men, crying out in alarm. She grabbed the child and shouted at the men, who slowly retreated.

  A hardness settled over Tan's countenance. He lit a cigarette in silence, studying the alleyway. "All right. You do it. I'll send patrols back to the foot of the South Claw. Let's eliminate the most likely explanation first. We'll search for his body. They already looked below the cliff face when they searched for the head. But the driver's body could be anywhere. In the Dragon Throat gorge, maybe."

  As Tan sped off, Shan directed Sergeant Feng to move the truck into the shadow of the garage, then sat with Yeshe on rusty barrels in the repair yard.

  "Did you tell Li I was coming here?" Shan asked Yeshe as the neighborhood slowly returned to life. "Someone did. Just like with Jao's house."

  "I told you before, if they asked, how could I refuse the Ministry of Justice?"

  "Did they ask?"

  Yeshe did not reply.

  "A marker was on the rock in Sungpo's cave where Jao's wallet was found. Someone planted it there so the arresting team would find it."

  Yeshe's face clouded. "Why do you tell me this?"

  "Because you have to decide what it is you want to be. Priests react to prison in many ways. Some will always be priests. Others will always be prisoners."

  Yeshe turned with a bitter glare. "So you say I'm a nonbeliever if I answer questions from the Ministry of Justice."

  "Not at all. I am saying that for those with doubts, their actions begin to define their beliefs. I'm saying accept that you will always be a prisoner of men like Warden Zhong or decide not to accept it."

  Yeshe stood and threw a pebble against the wall, then took a step away from Shan.

  An old woman appeared, cast them a spiteful glance, then opened a blanket at the edge of the street and began arranging the pile of matchboxes, chopsticks, and rolled candy which were her only wares. She pulled a worn photograph from inside her dress and held it to her forehead, then set it in front of her on the blanket. It was a photo of the Dalai Lama. Three boys began a game of tossing pebbles into a discarded tire. A window in the tenement across from the garage opened and a bamboo pole bearing laundry appeared, hanging like a stick of prayer flags over the street.

  Shan watched for five minutes, then selected a roll of candy from the woman, asking Yeshe to pay for it. "I am sorry for the disturbance," he said to her. "The man who lived here is missing."

  "Damned fool of a boy," she cackled.

  "You know Balti?"

  "Go for prayer, I told him. Remember who you are, I told him."

  "Was he in need of prayer?" Shan asked.

  "Tell him," she said, turning to Yeshe. "Tell him only the dead don't need prayer. Except my dead husband," she sighed. "He was an informer, my husband. Pray for him. He became a rodent. He comes at nigh
t and I feed him bits of grain. The old fool."

  One of the herdsmen, still holding his staff, approached her and muttered under his breath.

  "Be quiet, you!" the widow spat. "When you're so rich none of us need work, you can tell me who to speak to."

  She produced five cigarettes wrapped in tissue paper and arranged them on her blanket, then studied Yeshe. "Are you the one?"

  "The one?" Yeshe asked awkwardly.

  "I left a prayer in the temple. For the devils to be driven off. Someone will come. It can be done. There were priests in the old days who could do it. With one sound they could do it. If you make a groan that vibrates into the next world, you can fix everything."

  Yeshe looked in confusion at the woman. "Why would you think it could be me?"

  "Because you came. The only believer who came."

  Yeshe glanced uneasily at Shan. "Do you know where the khampa is?" he asked the woman.

  "He always said they would take him. He paid us to watch out. The nights when he brought it home, we would watch the stairs, my husband and me. Sleep all day so we could watch at night."

  "Brought what with him?" asked Yeshe.

  "The case. The little suitcase. For papers. He would keep it some nights for his boss. Big secrets. First he's proud to have it. Later he's scared. Even with the place he made, he would be scared."

  "What kind of papers? Did you see them?" Yeshe asked.

  "Of course not. I don't work for the government, do I? Dangerous secrets. Words of power. Government secrets."

  "He made a place, you said," Shan interjected. "You mean a hiding place?"

  She paid him no attention. She seemed interested only in Yeshe now, as if she saw in him something no one else, including Yeshe himself, could see.

  "Who would take him? What was he scared of?" Yeshe pressed on. "Prosecutor Jao?"

  "Not Jao. Jao was good to him. Gave him extra ration cards sometimes. Let him wear his clothes sometimes."

  "Then who?"

  She wrinkled her brow and studied Yeshe. "Your powers are not destroyed," she said. "You think they are. But they are just hidden."