by Carl Hiaasen
This was the talking phase. Dooley smiled to himself. He took his time. It was here somewhere.
"I'm a chef," the young man volunteered. His eyes were glued to Dooley's hands, sifting and exploring. "It's a Chinese joint off Market Street. Li-Siu's. Have you been there? I make good money. And I send half of it home every month-"
"What's this?"
"Film. Kodak film."
Dooley studied the two yellow packages. The end flaps of one were creased, and off square from the carton.
"I bought those here, before I left."
"Really?"
"I didn't take as many pictures as I thought I would." The Malaysian grinned nervously.
Dooley opened one of the film cartons and removed the black plastic containers.
He snapped one of the caps and looked inside. The two agents behind him edged closer. The Chinese man, waiting in the customs line, craned his neck to get a glimpse.
Dooley showed the inside of the canister to the two agents. Gingerly he probed with his pinky finger; it came out covered with what looked like flour. Dooley tasted it with the tip of his tongue. Then he popped the top back on the container.
"Heroin," he said.
"No!" exclaimed the young Malaysian. "You're kidding."
"High-speed film, all right," one of the agents growled.
The Malaysian was led away, squirming. A third agent appeared and confiscated the Samsonite and the film packages.
"Sorry for the delay, folks," Lance Dooley said to the rest of the passengers.
"We'll move right along now. Next?"
The Chinese man wrestled his huge suitcase to the conveyor belt. Quickly, almost frantically, he opened the latches.
Dooley looked at the passport. "You are returning from the People's Republic of China. Is that right, Dr. Wang?"
"Yes, sir."
"Says here you've got some scrolls and some pottery." Dooley was reading from the customs declaration form.
"That's right."
"Worth about?"
"One hundred dollars. Approximately."
Dooley opened the suitcase. The scrolls were on top-inexpensive but delicately painted wall hangings. You could find them all over the place on Fisherman's Wharf.
The pottery had been carefully wrapped in several layers of Chinese newspaper.
Each piece was packed for protection between stacks of clothing. Dooley unearthed two large parcels.
"Vases."
"I'll be careful with them, Dr. Wang." Dooley peeled the newspaper away, making a lame effort not to rip it.
Cobalt dragons writhed on the body of each vase, beneath a crest of ornate blue scrolling, a field of peonies and, nesting there, a mallard. The vases were identical.
"Very nice," remarked Lance Dooley.
"Imitations, I'm afraid, but lovely bookends. For my office at the university."
"How much did these cost?" Dooley asked.
"Sixty-five dollars. A tourist shop in Peking."
Dooley set the vases on the conveyor belt, next to the suitcase. "Dr. Wang, could I see the sales receipt for these?"
"Certainly, it should be right here." He sorted through a billfold. "That's odd.
I can't find it. See here-the receipt for the scrolls-"
Dooley gave it a cursory glance and handed it back.
"I keep all the receipts in the same place. It must be here… "
"Do you recall the name of the store?"
"No… no, I don't. But it was printed on the receipt."
Dooley's boss shot him another glare from the next aisle. "Lance you got another one?"
"No, sir." Dooley could take a hint. Quickly he rewrapped the vases in their paper cocoons and placed them back in the suitcase.
"Where is your final destination, Dr. Wang?"
"Ohio. Pittsville. My flight doesn't leave until tomorrow. I can search for the receipts this evening… "
"That won't be necessary," Dooley said. "How long were you in China?"
"Three weeks, approximately. Eighteen days, I think."
"Have a good trip home, Dr. Wang. Next, please."
Later, on his lunch break, Dooley sat down at a video display terminal in a small gray office and typed the name and passport number of David Wang into a U.S. government computer. He also typed the port of entry, the date of entry and his own identification number. On the single line allotted for general remarks, Dooley typed: "Queried China pottery/ blue-and-white vases (2)."
Dooley pressed the "store" button, and turned his attention-and the remainder of his lunch hour-to the mountain of paperwork generated by the capture of the Malaysian scag mule.
Danny Bodine stuffed his hands in his pockets as he stood in the doorway of the Dong Fang Hotel. Outside a hard gray rain pelted the city of Canton. Things could be worse, he told himself. It was the typhoon season. Traffic crawled on the slick streets and bicycle riders pedaled at double speed, their heads wrapped in newspaper or crinkly plastic rain hats. Everywhere people clustered in doorways, waiting for a break in the downpour.
Maureen and Pam had scheduled an excursion to White Cloud Mountain. Danny had hired a cab for the trip-but there would be no sightseeing today.
A cargo ship docking on the Pearl River sounded its horn, piercing the shroud of rain. Danny was afraid his wife was about to suggest a trip to another museum.
"Let's go to a teahouse," he said, a preemptory strike.
"For lunch? I'm hungry, Danny."
"Me, too." It was Pam, Maureen's sister, fresh from her morning makeup marathon.
She looked pretty damn good, Danny had to admit.
From somewhere out in the rain, a bedraggled American came bounding up the steps of the Dong Fang. He excused himself as he passed Danny, Maureen and Pam in the doorway. Pam watched him in the lobby, his blond hair matted and dripping. He wore thin, ill-fitting cotton clothes.
"Wonder where he's been," she said.
"One of those swell tailor shops near the river," Danny said.
"Be nice," said Maureen. "Maybe he's with a church group."
As Danny had feared, the three of them wound up at the Guangdong Provincial Museum.
When they returned to the Dong Fang three hours later, the American stranger was still in the lobby. Danny and Maureen paid no attention and went up to the room, but Pam sat down next to him in a high-backed leather chair. "What are you reading?"
"Oh, just travel brochures," said Tom Stratton, smiling. "It's all I could find."
"Are you a tourist, too?"
"Sort of."
"We came from Denver-me, my sister and her husband. He works for an oil company that's got an office in Hong Kong. He'll be there a couple of months, I guess.
Maureen and I are going back to the States day after tomorrow."
"Oh? I am too," Stratton said. "Are you at this hotel?"
Pam nodded. She liked his smile, but he looked-well, like he'd come off a three-day bender. In Denver she'd never approach a man who looked quite so worn out, but this wasn't Denver.
"I'm on the eighth floor," Stratton lied. "Eight twelve."
"We're in seven eighteen," Pam said, then added, for clarification, "It's quite a big suite."
Stratton told her that he taught art history. Predictably, she had never heard of the college. "It's a small place," Stratton explained, "but very peaceful."
"It sounds nice," Pam said. She was thinking about the flight home; maybe they could sit together, she and her new friend, if Maureen wouldn't mind.
"What oil company does your brother-in-law work for?"
"Rocky Mountain Energy Corporation," Pam said. "Danny's a vice-president. I don't think he's too crazy about Asia, though. He's heavy into domestic shale."
"Oh."
"What are you doing for dinner?"
Stratton shrugged. "Nothing special."
"Why don't you join us, Tom? We're all going to the Ban Xi. Have you ever tried quail eggs?"
Stratton shook his head.
&n
bsp; "It's supposed to be a beautiful restaurant. You can eat on a houseboat. Danny won't mind if you come-he'd kill for some male company."
"That's very nice. I could use some company, too." Stratton caught her glance after he said it. "What time?"
"We'll meet you here at about seven, okay?"
"How about if I meet you at the restaurant? I'm waiting for a telex. Besides, it'll take me a while to clean up."
"Fine, we'll see you there about seven thirty." Pam stood up and said brightly,
"Maybe the rain'll stop by then."
"Let's hope so," said Stratton, hating himself.
He snuck into the People's Republic's only hotel sauna and baked for ninety minutes. The heat was luxurious, soporific; wisps of steam curled off the tiles.
The grit and dust of Man-ling washed away. Stratton closed his eyes; as exhausted as he was, he could not even doze. Training-that's where the feeling came from. Pack your gun and put your conscience in a drawer.
And love? Where do you put that? No training needed. It just happened. It can even happen when you are fighting for your life.
The ache in Stratton's belly was more than simply hunger.
In the unsprung jeep, they had embraced clumsily, kissing, chattering toward calm after the dispensary confrontation.
"But why, Thom-as? Why? If the young man knew who you were, why did he not say so?"
"I'll never ask him, but I can guess."
"Tell me."
"I'd rather kiss you. I think you are wonderful."
"No more kisses until you tell me."
"Let's say the rag boy-now the young teacher-has given a lot of careful consideration to what happened that night, like I have, and the policeman. I think he came to realize over the years that he was a dead man who had been reprieved by one of the evil invaders he had denounced."
"So he lied."
"I think he was trying to apologize."
"And the fat old policeman. He-"
Stratton stopped her with a kiss.
"Kangmei, I don't want to talk about it anymore. I want to talk about you, and about me. About us. I love you. Please come with me."
She ran cat's-paw fingertips across his jaw.
"I must try to do what I believe is right, my brave Thom-as. Would you respect me if I did not?"
"Respect! I'm talking about love. I want you with me. I need you."
"And I you. But I must try. And I must think. Perhaps one day I will see that you are right; that, as you say, harmony between a man and a woman is really what is most important."
"And then?"
She smiled.
"And then I will confess to you what I feel now, but must resist: that I, too, am empty without you."
"If that happens, will you tell me, please?"
"Yes, I will tell you. I promise."
"I will come back to get you."
"No, Thom-as."
"Why not, damn it?"
"Because." She squeezed him tight enough to hurt and bit playfully at his ear.
"Because," she murmured, "I do not wish to witness a war between our two countries."
The train was waiting. At the station, like a schoolboy fighting a curfew, he had scribbled his address on the back of a yellowed old timetable.
"Write to me, please."
"I love you, Thom-as."
A smiling conductor who spoke only with a warning finger at his lips led Stratton to a darkened soft-class compartment and locked the door.
All the way to Canton the rails whispered her name.
Stratton laid aside his reverie and the sauna precisely at seven thirty-five.
Dressed again in the strange-fitting commune clothes, he took the elevator to the seventh floor and padded the carpeted hallway until he found room 718. He knocked sharply. No one answered.
Stratton found one of the floor attendants sorting cakes of soap.
"Excuse me, but I seem to have locked myself out of our suite. Seven-one-eight.
The name is Bodine. My wife is down at the hairdresser."
"I help," the attendant said. The master key hung from a chain on his cloth belt. The attendant unlocked the door to the darkened suite and Stratton went to work.
He shed his clothes and concealed them beneath a mattress on one of the beds.
From Danny Bodine's closet he selected a navy blue necktie, a pin-striped business shirt and a pair of dark trousers. The clothes fit almost perfectly;
Stratton had guessed as much when he had first noticed the American oilman in the hotel lobby. Even Bodine's black wingtips felt snug.
Stratton removed a blue suitcase from the closet and opened it on the bed.
Haphazardly, he tossed in a suit, a couple of shirts, another pair of slacks.
One could not very well leave China without some luggage.
In the bathroom he borrowed Bodine's cordless Remington.
Danny Bodine was a second-drawer man-that is, the kind of traveler who hides his most precious valuables in the second drawer of the bureau, instead of the top, in the belief that this will outfox the burglars of the world. A jet-setter's illusion.
Stratton triumphantly located Bodine's passport under a stack of jockey shorts.
Next he guessed that the oilman's emergency cash would be either carefully taped on the underside of the drawer, rolled into his socks, or divided in equal sums between the two hiding places.
Again, Stratton silently congratulated himself. A pair of black nylon knee socks yielded three hundred dollars and two hundred yuan. Stratton took only the dollars. Traveling expenses-he had lost everything in Xian.
Before he left Bodine's room, Stratton checked his watch. It was barely eight o'clock. He picked up the telephone and asked the switchboard operator to ring the Ban Xi restaurant. It took five full minutes for a waiter to locate "the American woman named Pam" and lead her to the phone.
"Hi," said Stratton. "I've got some bad news: I don't think I'm going to make it to dinner. I'm sorry for all of the trouble."
Pam was disappointed and curious.
"Did you get your cable?"
"Yes, and that's the bad news. I've got to go back to the States tomorrow,"
Stratton said. "For a funeral."
"I'm so sorry."
"I'm the one who's sorry-for all the inconvenience. Could I have your address?
I'd like to write after we get back." This time he was telling the truth.
Stratton wrote down her address in Denver.
"I'm going to send you something," he said. Something the size of a man's suitcase, he thought. Bodine would be thrilled to get his wingtips back, not to mention the three hundred bucks.
"You're missing a great dinner," Pam said. "I skipped the quail eggs and ordered something called 'fragrant meat.' It's very tasty, Tom."
"Dog meat," Stratton muttered.
"What did you say?"
"Never mind. Good night, Pam."
The rain had stopped. Stratton left the Dong Fang Hotel by foot, carrying Bodine's suitcase as nonchalantly as if it were a briefcase. He strolled past a city park, lushly landscaped, its circular ponds ringed by orchids. A young Chinese couple sat together on a bench, whispering in the twilight, touching each other's hands. On a downhill sidewalk, slick from the rain, Stratton was startled by a throng of teenagers who flew by on roller skates, giddy with speed.
At the Guangzhou Railway Station he had only an hour to wait for the train to Hong Kong. Bored immigration inspectors barely glanced at the passport.
CHAPTER 21
The taxi climbed haltingly toward Victoria Peak through the morning rush-hour snarl. On all sides, Hong Kong howled at Tom Stratton; a glitzy, avaricious, sequined city, a century from Peking, light-years from Kangmei's bucolic Bright Star. It seemed impossible that they shared the same continent, let alone the same blood. Below, the famous harbor, tickled by the prows of a thousand boats, glinted gold in the early light.
The driver braked to a stop at the foot of a steep hil
l. Behind the taxi, a long line of cars bunched up, honking-gleaming Subarus, BMWs and Jaguar sedans, all seemingly driven by serious, thin-lipped businessmen. Stratton scrambled out of the cab, dutifully toting Bodine's suitcase. On the hillside sat the United States Consulate, square-windowed, flat and uninviting. It reminded Stratton of a cut-down version of the Boston City Hall except for the forest of antennae prickling from the roof.
Stratton lugged the suitcase up a winding flight of steps. By the time he reached the black iron gate, his injured leg throbbed in misery. He was intercepted by a young Marine in a white hat and a starched blue-and-khaki uniform. Stratton asked to meet the station chief.
"Sir?"
"The head spook, Sergeant. It's an emergency."
"Wait here, please, sir."
Stratton sat down in a waiting room, paneled with fine honey-colored wood. The sound of typing chattered from behind a closed door. Stratton's shirt clung to his back, and the cool breath of the air conditioner brought goose bumps. With one foot Stratton slid the suitcase across the waxed floor into an empty corner.
"Sir!" The Marine was back. "Mr. Darymple."
Mr. Darymple was a young man with perfectly sculpted black hair that looked to Stratton like it had been parted with a laser beam. Stratton pegged him as an idle subordinate.
Darymple held out a slender hand and introduced himself as the assistant administrative officer.
Stratton said, "I need to see the CIA station chief."
"I'm not really sure whom you mean." Darymple smiled officiously. "Perhaps I could help."
"Very doubtful," Stratton said. "I've just spent the last week or so getting the shit kicked out of me in China."
Darymple expressed concern. "You'd like to report an incident?"
Stratton sighed. "An incident, yes. Go get your boss and I'll tell him about it."
"Could I have your name?"
"Stratton, Thomas. Tell him I was classified Phoenix."
Darymple stiffened. "Here?"
"No, Saigon. 1971. Go ahead and check, but hurry. Then go tell your boss I need a line out, right away."
Darymple said, "He'll want to see your passport."
"It was taken from me in Xian."
"Then how did you… excuse me, Mr. Stratton." Darymple walked out of the office in long, hurried strides.
