A Death in China

by Carl Hiaasen

  To that village was he led back, bearer of two tiny corpses. Fresh bodies for Man-ling. I am your plague, don't you see? I have only to come and people die.

  Forgive me. I am sorry. This time I did my best. I tried. Now, please leave me alone. There are ghosts here who frighten me and of which I shall not speak. I want to leave.

  Someone handed him a bowl and a pair of chopsticks. Eat, they gestured. He ate.

  Face buried in the bowl, he could not see. It was better not to see.

  The dispensary was new, single story and freshly whitewashed. It contained six beds, some rudimentary medical equipment and windows that opened onto the village main street. The view was of an old movie house across the street. Weary and sagging. In passing headlights, Stratton could see where bullets had marched up the facade. The movie house was as quiet, as dingy and as terrifying as it had been the first night he saw it. They had not even painted it.

  Imagine.

  After all these years they had not even painted it. His mind had seen the building thousands of times. And always he had imagined that it was white again, that someone had come, orders had been given, workers had arrived, and paint had covered the scars. White paint.

  But his nightmare had deceived him. No paint. No clean-up, fix-up, paper-it-over. It was the wrong country for that. China. Let the scars be seen.

  The people's struggle. Stratton wondered if Bobby Ho's body still lay on the stage.

  Kangmei arrived at last and, with her, a measure of sanity.

  She hurled herself at him, burying her head in his chest. Stratton's rice bowl went flying. From the spectators came laughter, nervous and polite. Women in the New China did not embrace foreigners, in private or public.

  "Oh, Thom-as, you are so brave. So brave."

  He kissed the top of her head.

  "The children?" he asked, dreading the answer.

  "The boy is well, Thom-as. The girl… the doctors are still working."

  One for two. It could have been worse.

  "Kangmei, can we go now? We have to talk." She felt so good in his arms.

  "No, we cannot. There are very many people. Now you are everyone's rice expert.

  They want to express their thanks."

  "I just want to be alone with you."

  "The train will be here in less than one hour."

  He had forgotten.

  "An hour?" He had so much to say to her.

  The Chinese seized on Kangmei as their link to Stratton. They pushed and shoved and jostled for her attention. She yelled something in her struggle-session voice, and the crowd quieted. The semblance of a line formed.

  "They will come individually to greet you. They want to take you across to the old theater where there is more room, but I said you were too weak. Also, I have told them to say only a few words and leave you to rest. Once they have left, so can we, not before."

  "Let's get it over with." Stratton fixed a smile on his face.

  A ruddy-faced man with iron gray hair appeared, speaking forcefully.

  "This is the boy's grandfather," said Kangmei. "On behalf of his family, he extends his most grateful thanks and wishes you a speedy recovery. It is his wish that you will be guest of honor for a banquet once you are well."

  "Tell grandfather that I am pleased to have been of assistance and that I would be honored to meet his entire family-when I am recovered."

  An uncle replaced the grandfather. Then cousins and aunts, the boy's mother, fighting back tears, even neighbors. Stratton thought it would never end.

  "Kangmei, let's get out of here."

  "This is a Zhuang tradition and, for you, a great honor. We cannot offend these people."

  A few minutes later, while a portly man whose relationship to anyone seemed only dimly established spoke at length in a politician's growl, Kangmei said suddenly:

  "You are very handsome."

  "Did he say that?"

  "He says all the usual things. I say that."

  "Come with me, please, to America."

  "I cannot."

  "I love you."

  "This man is the best friend of the boy's mother's second sister and he wishes to convey to you… "

  Stratton noticed a commotion at the door. Three men came in. Peasants made way for them.

  "The leaders of the commune," Kangmei whispered.

  Stratton nodded. Their bearing alone made that clear.

  The commune president wore an impeccable white shirt outside his belt. His were the first clean fingernails Stratton had seen all day. The vice-president was a me-tooer, handsome and suave. They were both Han Chinese, their lighter skin and sharper features distinguishing them immediately in the room of Thai-like Zhuang. They came forward smiling, hands outstretched.

  "Comrade president explains that he was at a regional meeting and has only just returned. He has heard of your bravery and would like… "

  The third man in the delegation was old and fat. He had a cruel saucer face that made smiling a parody. He walked with a cane. The sleeve of his jacket was pinned neatly to his right shoulder. The absence of the arm, and the limp, gave him a sinister, off-balance appearance.

  "… regrets that the comrades in Peking had not informed him of the arrival of such a distinguished guest or he would have come personally to Bright Star to welcome you," Kangmei translated. "Don't worry about that, Thom-as. After tonight no one will ever ask for your papers and he will be afraid to ask Peking why they did not tell him."

  The saucer-faced man's smile had vanished. He rocked back and forth on his cane.

  He shuffled to the left and right to measure Stratton from different angles.

  Stratton's eyes never left him.

  "… will offer a banquet of welcome and thanksgiving within the next few days and pledges full cooperation of all of the commune work brigades and production teams in your work. You have only to ask-"

  "Kuei!" The word can mean either ghost or devil. In this case, it was doubly apt.

  Screaming, the old man lunged with the cane, jabbing with it as more than a decade before he had jabbed Stratton with his truncheon.

  Time had not been kind to the old man. Stratton easily parried the blow. He wrenched away from the cane, sent it spinning to the far corner of the room, and tried to look aggrieved.

  The old man's voice cracked with fury. His eyes bulged. The muscles in his neck corded. He threw himself on Stratton, splintering the chair. They rolled to the floor, the old man striking repeatedly with the only fist Stratton had left him.

  Stratton covered up protectively. He did not fight back. It would not last long.

  It didn't. The peasants pulled the old man off and built a human fence between him and Stratton. Stratton didn't even bother getting to his feet. Instead, he scrambled over to the wall and leaned against it, waiting for what he knew must come.

  Quivering, weeping, the old man shouted in a high, reedy voice. Within seconds a hush had fallen over the dispensary waiting room.

  Kangmei translated. She needn't have bothered.

  "The old man was the head of the Public Security Bureau in Man-ling for many years-the top policeman. He knows you. He says you are an American spy who came to spy and to kill. Everybody will remember the night, he says. The night of the heroic people's victory. The old man says he saw you then. He talked to you. You killed cadres. You shot him twice, once in the leg, once in the arm." Kangmei's voice jumped an octave, almost falsetto. "He says-"

  Stratton had heard enough. He dug his nails into Kangmei's arm.

  "That's enough, Kangmei. Tell the comrade that I understand his distress, but that he is mistaken. I have never been in China before this month. I have never been in Man-ling before. I have never been in a war. I am a rice expert. Say it calmly. Make it sound true."

  When she had finished, the old policeman began again, but the president of the commune silenced him. The president's apparent perplexity mirrored expressions around the room. Whom to believe? What to do? The Zhuang, St
ratton sensed, were with him. The Han cadres would probably side with the policeman. They were vastly outnumbered, but they had what counted most: authority.

  The commune president ran a hand across his brow and seemed on the verge of speaking when a tall man appeared wiping his hands on a towel-the doctor who had bandaged Stratton. The doctor spoke quietly to one of the Zhuang near the door.

  The man's face lit up, and he began chattering loudly. In an instant, the entire room was abuzz. Stratton watched the one-armed policeman say something to a slender young man who nodded and hurriedly left the room.

  A new crop of smiles blossomed among the peasants, and fresh tears. One woman fainted. In the hubbub, Stratton had to yell to make himself heard.

  "What is going on?"

  Kangmei squeezed his hand. She was smiling and crying.

  "It's the little girl. They thought they had lost her, but now she is breathing well and seems to be out of danger."

  "Thank God." For the nameless little girl, and for Thomas Stratton.

  One of the peasants who had ridden on the truck with Stratton addressed the commune president.

  "He says your goodwill and good intentions are plain for anyone to see and, while he does not dispute Comrade Ma's word, he believes the comrade is mistaken. He says you should be allowed to return to Bright Star now with the thanks of the commune for your heroism."

  Kangmei finished her translation amid an assenting chorus from the Zhuang peasants. The commune president chose not-or dared not-to affront the majority.

  He nodded slowly and Stratton could almost see him thinking: to hold Stratton on the unsupported word of an overwrought old man would anger the peasants. To release him cost nothing. Tomorrow they could always bring him back in. Stratton sensed that the man was the kind of political bureaucrat who would most of all prefer to make no decision at all. If Stratton were to disappear from the face of the earth, so much the better.

  Favoring his leg, Stratton used the wall as a crutch to gain his feet. Kangmei stood at his side.

  "Say something graceful and let's go."

  Before she could speak, the old policeman fired a fresh stacatto burst.

  "He says he knows how people are tired of the memories and the obsessions of an old man who will not forget. But he begs for patience. There is another witness, he says, one who will say positively that you're a murderer and a spy. The witness will come soon."

  The commune president sighed resignedly. He would humor a trusted old colleague.

  The president spoke briefly and courteously to Kangmei.

  "He asks if you would please remain for another few minutes, even though you are tired, so that this matter may be finally resolved without further affecting our friendship."

  Stratton shrugged. It was a sugar-coated command, but the worst was over.

  Mentally, he ticked off the witnesses who had seen his face that other night in Man-ling. Besides the policeman, only the commissar, the professor and the student. All dead. The policeman should have been, too. There had been no other witnesses.

  They left Stratton and Kangmei alone then, side by side on wooden chairs in a corner of the room.

  "The train will be leaving soon," said Stratton.

  "There is still a little time. Would you like some tea?"

  "Yes, please."

  She was back in a minute with gossip and two steaming mugs.

  "The witness is a schoolteacher, a young man who is very bright, but is of poor family background."

  "What does that mean?"

  "His father, or perhaps his grandfather, was a landlord or a capitalist. That means he cannot go to the university or join the army or belong to the Party. So he is a schoolteacher."

  A lovely system, Stratton mused. Convict a man for his ancestors' crimes. For how many generations? He sipped his tea and watched shadows from an overhead lamp play across Kangmei's lovely features.

  And then Stratton knew who the witness would be. His cup fell, set free by stricken fingers.

  "Thom-as, your tea!" Kangmei exclaimed in alarm. "You are shaking. What is wrong? Shall I get the doctor?"

  "No, no," he said. And thought for the second time that night of Bobby Ho.

  The young man entered the room with quiet poise. The policeman limped over and spoke urgently with him, gesturing at Stratton, the hatred unmasked. The president said something to the young man and so did one of the peasants.

  Lobbying, Stratton supposed.

  The young man dragged up a chair and sat directly in front of Stratton-mute reviewer of a one-man play. They stared at one another across three feet and eleven years.

  The rag boy had added weight to the skin and bones, but not much. The face had filled, but still it spoke of suffering. The body had remained as insubstantial as it had looked the night Bobby Ho's quixotic, absurd, fatal gesture had spared one life and cost many more. The inborn pride had not changed, or the cold, calculating intelligence in the masked obsidian eyes.

  Stratton knew he was finished.

  There was eloquence in the poker gaze of the grown-up rag boy. His identification was as certain as Stratton's. He, too, like the tormented old policeman, like Stratton, still dwelt in the debris of horror.

  Did he also weep, alone at night, for friends so brave? Did he dream terrible dreams of acrid tracers and bullet-stitched buildings that should have been white? Did he still gnaw at desolation? And what had he suffered for a peasant woman and her unborn child? He hadn't felt the knife go through her neck.

  Stratton waited for the denouement. Captain Black riffled methodically through escape scenarios. The dice roll, man. Nobody lives forever.

  But at least make him work for it.

  You bastard. Stratton stared at the rag boy. You chicken-shit son of a bitch. We let you go. I could have ended your pitiful knitting-needle existence with a nod, but instead I let you go. In return you killed my friends.

  "It was the kid… Sorry, Tom… "

  Stratton plumbed the Chinese, seeking the man behind the intelligent eyes. He found nothing. And then he made a decision. We both of us should have been dead these eleven years, son of a bitch. Call in the cards. It was a simple decision.

  It refreshed Stratton and gave him strength. The instant the rag boy raised his voice in accusation, Captain Black would kill him. One dead man kills another.

  Justice in Man-ling. To finish what had been neglected that night in the rain.

  I'm sorry, Bobby Ho.

  Stratton was sizing the blow when he saw what he had not dared hope to see.

  The Chinese eyes spoke plainly. I know you. I have you. You are mine.

  And then, the final message:

  A life for a life.

  "Bushi," the man spat in an unexpectedly deep voice.

  He stalked from the room.

  "Thom-as, he says it was not you," Kangmei cried.

  "Of course not."

  Babbling peasants erased the tension. Minutes later, Stratton and Kangmei were alone in the back of a jeep. Stratton had departed without pity for the old policeman, agape, blubbering alone in a corner of the room.

  Rest in peace, Bobby Ho. You were right and I was wrong, all this time, all these years.

  CHAPTER 20

  "Open your suitcase, please."

  "It's locked."

  "Find the key and open it," said U.S. Customs Inspector Lance P. Dooley, Jr. He strained to be polite. His boss was working the next aisle.

  "But the key is in the suitcase," whined the young man in Dooley's line. "I packed it by accident. I'm sorry, officer." The man had just debarked from Pan American Airways Flight 7, Peking-to-Tokyo-to-San Francisco. He wore blue jeans and a Van Halen concert T-shirt, with Day-Glo lettering. His black hair was long and straight, tied in a ponytail. Dooley studied the face. Malaysian, he decided. The passport confirmed it.

  "Sir, I want to take a look in your suitcase. Either you find a way to open it, or I will. We have special tools," Dooley said. "Hardly put a scratch
on it, you watch."

  "But it's a brand-new Samsonite," the young man objected.

  "So it is."

  Behind the young man a haggard procession of travelers stretched and sighed and muttered their annoyance at the delay. Second in line was a stocky, handsome Chinese man in his sixties. His hair was neatly combed, and he wore gold-rimmed eyeglasses that gave his features an intent, scholarly cast. His clothes fit somewhat loosely: beige slacks slightly wrinkled from the long flight, a knit canary-colored sports shirt buttoned all the way to the neck, and a dark brown sweater with a monogram on the left breast.

  The Chinese man carried only one piece of luggage, a cumbersome old suitcase exhibiting thirty years' worth of scuffs and dents. The man did not hoist the suitcase to the conveyor belt, but kept it at his feet, one hand firmly on the grip, as if it were a Doberman on a leash. He seemed transfixed by the argument in front of him.

  "You can't just break into my suitcase," the young Malaysian insisted.

  "Sir," Dooley said, "if you decline to have your luggage searched here, we will escort you to a private inspection room where we will not only search the suitcase, we'll ask you to take off your clothes-and we'll search some more.

  Which do you prefer?"

  Dooley's supervisor glanced disapprovingly at the long line at Dooley's aisle.

  Dooley got the message and tried to step it up.

  "The key, sir?"

  The young man fidgeted. Dooley nodded to a couple of other customs agents, who had been leaning against a square pillar. They stepped eagerly to the front of Dooley's line.

  "Okay, okay. I'm not hiding anything. Let me see if I can get this open." The Malaysian played with the latches on the Samsonite and it popped open. "Go ahead, see for yourself. Just clothes and some junk I brought back from Singapore."

  "Do you live in Singapore?" Dooley asked as he picked through underwear, socks, snapshots, toothpaste, a packet of condoms.

  "No, I live here in Frisco," said the young man. "Lived here since I was ten. My father still lives in Singapore. I got two brothers there, too. I go back five or six times a year."