by Todd Merer
“Let China sleep,” said Archie. “When she awakes, the world will shake.”
“What?” Smitty kept glancing at his watch, then at the fuel gauge.
“Napoleon,” said Archie. “Short guys are smart.”
“I’m kinda short,” said Smitty.
“Why we’re pards, pard.”
They did not speak for the next several hours. Then, through the heat haze, in the flat sea ahead, appeared a tiny white speck of land. An atoll. Hardly a few irregular acres: a horseshoe of white sand and brush surrounded by a shallow lagoon, which was enclosed by a reef where the deep ocean waves smashed whitely. Archie throttled back and pointed the DC-3’s nose at one end of the horseshoe—
The starboard engine sputtered and died.
Running on only the port engine, they were losing altitude much too fast. Archie pulled the stick back. The atoll was extremely close now, but they were barely skimming the drink.
“Holy Mary, mother in heaven,” said Smitty, covering his eyes.
“Stay up, you fucking goony bird,” said Archie. “Stay up!”
The plane disobeyed Archie’s orders. It hit the water short of the atoll. But with its nose up, the tail struck first, acting as a brake. The plane shuddered to a stop. As its fuselage slowly sank, water began leaking into the cockpit.
“Dunno if I mentioned it before,” said Smitty, “but I can’t swim.”
“You got to be joking. Everyone can swim.”
“Not in Oklahoma. Where’s my life vest?”
Archie opened his window, looked down, laughed. “No one drowns in five feet of water.”
Archie grabbed the jeweled hat, and they got out and waded ashore. The plane had settled with only the tip of its tail protruding above the surface. Archie cocked an ear. A moment later, there was the buzz of a boat engine, growing louder.
“God save the Queen,” said Smitty.
An outboard manned by four leathery, bearded Aussies appeared. They unloaded tools with which they dismantled the DC-3’s tail, leaving no part of the plane showing above water.
“Like it never was,” said Smitty. “Jeez, Arch, smile. We got it all now.”
Archie just fired up a smoke. No, I don’t have what I want most.
They climbed into the boat. It crossed the lagoon, exited it slantways through a break in the reef, and once in open water headed for a tramp steamer a few hundred yards offshore.
Archie spoke quietly. “Smitty? Can we trust these guys?”
“Of course not. I told ’em we were deserters hiding booze. Maybe they don’t buy that, but next week they’re shipping to the Solomons. Gonna be kind of a big fight. The few of them who make it through will be too nutso to remember us.”
After the war, Smitty and Archie made their way to the States. They bunked together in San Francisco, getting by with odd jobs, of which there was no dearth, most Johnnies still not having come marching home, resulting in a labor shortage. They’d spent the war with the Shan. Smitty had married his Shan girl and was arranging her entry to the States under the War Brides Act. They kept the golden crown wrapped in a blanket stashed in their refrigerator.
“On ice,” said Smitty.
Archie didn’t think about the hat, or the statue. He’d resolved to take things day by day, adding a pint of bourbon to his routine. He hadn’t been at all interested in the Shan women, nor was he now interested with the glut of single American women: WACS, WAVES, US Navy nurses, Rosie the Riveter types. Most of all, he avoided war widows. He neither wanted to hear nor discuss angst. So he simply worked and slept.
And dreamed of Kitty.
Although Archie was content to wait many months before retrieving the treasure, the Chinese civil war between the Reds and the Nationalists proved so ferocious that the months became years, during which scarcely a week passed in which clashes didn’t occur in the South China Sea. No way could he mount an expedition to the atoll.
And so Archie went on waiting for diplomacy to defuse the war.
Smitty went on waiting for his bride. Bureaucratic SNAFUs.
One day Archie found himself in San Francisco’s Chinatown having a drunkenly foolish conversation with an old man. Speaking Mandarin was both a painful and pleasant reminder; the last Mandarin conversation he’d had was with Kitty.
The old man excused himself, going off to gamble. “Wish me the same good fortune as Lucky,” he said.
“Who the hell’s Lucky?” asked Archie.
“The gambler who never loses.”
“Yeah? I’d like to meet him.”
The old man looked at him oddly.
By 1952, Smitty was happily married with two kids and a third on the way. Archie lived alone in a two-room flat with a calico cat that apparently came with the place. He labored in a rail yard, frequented a rough saloon, occasionally got in a brawl—generally winning, for he’d added muscled heft to his lanky frame and had a need to vent anger at his fate. Very occasionally, he hired a woman, afterward always regretted having done so, for it made him feel as if he were cheating on Kitty. Every day he devoured the newspapers, but the news was not encouraging:
The Nationalists had retreated to the big island of Taiwan, from which they continued their war with the mainland Reds. The South China Sea remained a hot spot, and the United States, still feeling its oats as the champion of the newly freed world, was deeply involved. Which meant the Soviets were, too. Which meant mankind was a button touch from nuclear war.
Which meant Archie might never retrieve the treasure.
Still, he and Smitty had found another way to make money. Using their Shan contacts, each week they had a kilo of heroin dispatched to the States. They dealt it to wholesale middlemen only, wisely limiting contact with potential informers. Archie saved most of his money, except the $200 he forked over every month in the Tenderloin office of a private dick. The dick’s reports were always the same: nothing new to report about Kitty.
But then there was.
The dick heard from people in New York who’d themselves heard a rumor that Kitty and her daughter had abandoned her husband and fled Red China and were now living in the States.
All of which Archie had learned from Winston Lau in Rangoon. He had no idea of what his daughter’s life was like, but although he yearned to meet her, he was no longer worried.
Thank God, she’s free, he thought. Archie, until that moment a staunch atheist, now believed there was a God presiding over love and war.
His immediate reaction was to hop a train to New York and find Kitty. Bags at his side, he waited on a station platform.
“All aboard!”
But Archie hesitated, reconsidering. It would be dangerous, but he thought soon he might safely mount an expedition to retrieve the treasure. The operative word was soon. He’d have to wait a little longer until things settled down. He told himself they would, for soon the Reds would win, and the war would be over.
Moreover, it was a mission he could not leave undone. For several reasons:
For some inexplicable reason—love being blind—he was sure that the treasure was important to Kitty. In their few moments together, more than a decade ago, she’d mentioned the word, but abruptly cut herself off. He’d asked what treasure. She’d just shaken her head, and he’d let it go at that. But he’d remembered every second of their time, every word, and knew the treasure was important to her.
Good. He had a fortune of his own stashed.
The treasure would be his gift to her.
Problem was, he knew Kitty would be repelled by his heroin trafficking. All right. He’d give up the business, but . . .
There was another complication.
The Chinese had claims on the treasure superior to his. Which led to the inescapable fact that Kitty would be dragged into the mess if it was revealed he had found the treasure. He was willing to risk his own life—if the Chinese busted him, he was a dead man—but he couldn’t expose Kitty to their fury.
“All aboard.”
Best to wait until circumstances improved. Then he’d sail to the atoll, where he’d pry out the precious jewels and cut the gold into small pieces. Just as he’d downsized tons of white powder to kilos.
“Last call . . .”
Archie told himself everything was copacetic. There’d be more trains. One would be his. The engine huffed steam that washed over him. It was like being in a cloud. But the cloud would pass and the sun would return, and the air would be as fresh as Kitty . . .
Please wait for me, my darling girl.
He was certain that she would.
That moment in the grass . . .
When Archie returned home, Smitty was handing out cigars. His wife had just given birth to a girl, whom he’d named after his wife. Archie was puzzled when he heard the baby’s name.
“I thought your wife’s name was Ky?”
“Ah, that’s what I call her, sort of our private joke about the phony bar girl name she first told me. We named the kid after her real name, Aung, the same one all her female ancestors went by. Sounds like Awn, but in her language, the final g is silent. In English, the name is pronounced without the hard g—”
“The point being?”
“We call her Awn.”
CHAPTER 17
The present.
I steam-opened the sealed envelope Duke had given me. Inside it was a smaller envelope of heavy stock on which a shaky hand—Duke’s?—had written a name: Kitty.
I considered opening the smaller envelope but decided not; it was securely shut, and I feared it would show tampering. I replaced it in the larger envelope, which I reglued shut.
Duke and his machinations. In the unlikely event Phuket happened the way Duke promised, I’d refuse to accept title. Say so to Duke and Richard’s hidden recorders and in writing by registered mail, return receipt requested. Say so loud and clear that I was clean as an Ivory Soap baby.
I liked that image of me. A far, far better image than the old me.
But for now, I had to continue. Duke expected me to be Dirty Benn, and I needed his approval to continue lawyering on behalf of Stella Maris.
I visited a reputable security firm—not too many of those, trust me—and overpaid an ex-NYPD Detective One turned private investigator to enjoy a week’s vacation in beautiful Thailand.
“What’s the catch?” he said.
“Just snoop, baby.”
The cop’s name was Steivler. I’d met him when he worked undercover on a joint city-state-federal task force, an experience that had imprinted suspicion as his first and foremost thought. I was curious about Phuket but dared not stick my nose into the deal. I needed a stand-in to do the work.
Next, I retained a young rising star at a 150-lawyer firm. Serious young man with ambitions. So straight he wouldn’t use an office postage stamp to mail his home electric bill. I gave him a check for $5,000 as an advance against his $500-an-hour fee and told him to check out the Phuket deal.
“Verify the purchase offers from the big companies,” I said. “Then reduce your work product to a Real Estate for Dummies–type reader like me.”
“I’ll make everything perfectly clear.”
“The smell factor is important.”
“Pardon?”
“I want to know if the deal smells.”
“Of course, we do due diligence.”
“Not the look, the stink.”
Was I being overcautious? Ha! No such thing. I learned the hard way that the best defense was a good offense, and I wanted dirt in case I needed to leverage Duke.
“Yes, sir.”
The lawyer’s firm was in the older part of the downtown Financial District, where majestic old edifices loomed above narrow sidewalks and roadways, cutting off the sunlight so the streets lie in perpetual gloom. No cabs or Ubers around, and Val was home in bed smoking menthols, his way of nursing a cold.
So when I left the lawyer’s office, I walked.
The crowd at the corner of Wall and Beaver was so thick and slow-moving, I had to move sideways. Which was a good thing. Because that’s when I noticed I was being tailed, much as I’d anticipated. Actually, all I saw were people waiting for the light to change, but one was a guy in a Brooks Brothers raglan raincoat who too abruptly averted his eyes and pretended to amble away down Beaver Street. The confirming tell was that immediately, a middle-aged woman with green cat’s-eye glasses slid into the curbside space he’d vacated and made a point of not looking at me.
So. If there were two of them, I was seriously being tagged. But by whom? Duke was the prime suspect. An equally prime suspect was the crooked agent Richard. Or Dolores. Or Missy Soo.
I rode the subway uptown. Another pair of snoops—black gentleman wearing glasses and a bow tie; a tattooed white boy carrying a skateboard—took over the surveillance. As the train slowed at the stations, I picked up on their tensing in anticipation at the possibility I might dash out just before the doors closed.
I didn’t.
Instead, I casually got off at the East Sixty-Eighth Street stop, enjoyed a pastrami on rye at PJ Bernstein on Third, then strolled the few blocks to my hotel. They were still behind me.
On my way past the front desk, I glanced sideways. They were outside the entrance, although now Skateboard was partnered with Brooks Brothers. I continued on to the hotel restaurant, which operated within the hotel but was open to the public via its own entrance. I didn’t even bother looking that way because my watchers were cover-all-exit-type pros. Instead, I scooted into the kitchen, hurried by white-aproned people too busy yelling at one another to notice me, and left by a back door.
I found myself in an alley rank with overflowing garbage. The alley’s far end was midblock around the corner from the hotel entrance.
I went through the alley. On the street I walked against one-way traffic, then stole a cab from the little old lady who’d hailed it. I directed the driver to Midtown, got out, hailed another cab.
“Take me to Newark Airport. Take the Holland Tunnel.”
“Lot of traffic that way. Lincoln Tunnel’s much better.”
I pushed crumpled bills into the plexiglass receptacle. “The Holland. Fast.”
The route to the Holland Tunnel ran down the West Side Highway, where it’d be easier to spot a tail than in the heavily trafficked Midtown entrance to the Lincoln. Same deal in the tunnel. Only two lanes Jersey-bound, curved, allowing a long hindsight view.
Not a suspicious vehicle in sight. Looking good.
I flew west, napping a couple of hours to ward off jet lag, then reading the latest Earl Swagger novel. Ol’ Earl was a stand-up marine who fought his way across the Pacific toward the South China Sea . . .
China. Figured.
In San Francisco, I checked in to a boutique hotel on Nob Hill. Small number of guest rooms, small lobby, the easier to spot strange faces in.
The next morning I rented a Mercedes convertible. The price was ridiculous, but I wanted to convey a well-heeled impression. Then, wearing wraparound shades, I crossed the Golden Gate, then drove north, paralleling the Pacific Coast, keeping the speed down, enjoying the beautiful scenery.
The highway narrowed and became the main street of a prosperous village. At the far end of town, just before the highway began again, I turned left. The roadway ran narrowly between high hedges, an occasional ornate estate gate. The ocean came into view where the road ended.
There, a gate fronted a long driveway at whose end was a bluff occupied by a sprawling house, towers, and terraces, all white stucco and red tile in 1920s California style. Not quite San Simeon but impressive.
The gate was unguarded. There was an intercom alongside, and I pressed the buzzer. Nothing. I waited a few minutes and pressed the buzzer again. Still nothing. But I had a tingly feeling in my neck, as if I were being watched. I got out of the car and made like I was checking my tires while sideways looking at the house. For a moment, I thought I saw a wink of sunlight reflecting behind a window, but it was quickly gone. Was I being w
atched? Only one way to find out. I reconsidered the gate, wondering if I could climb over. Waste of time.
It was ajar.
I took my time driving up to the house, as if I belonged there, much like the cars parked near the main building: a highly polished old Rolls, a station wagon, and a red Ferrari.
I got out of the Mercedes and lugged my attaché to the entrance. I pressed the bell and heard chimes deep within the house. The door clicked open.
“Hello?” I said.
No reply.
I entered the house. The entrance hall was high ceilinged, decorated with expensive-looking antique Chinese furniture. I called out:
“Hello? Hello?”
No response.
I went deeper inside to a great room dominated by a sweeping marble staircase. From somewhere, Chinese music played softly, not the screechy kind Albert Woo sang; this was easy listening, sort of a symphony of wind chimes. I followed the music up the staircase.
“Hello . . . ?”
Nothing.
The staircase ended at a landing. The music was coming from a door that was ajar. “Hello?”
Nothing.
I went through the door.
It was a large room, dim and clouded by smoke from incense burning in a large stone bowl. The walls were lined with antique Chinese furniture set beneath old framed photographs. Double doors opened to a balcony, the sea shushing below. For a few moments, I thought the room was unoccupied.
Then I saw her.
An old Chinese woman sat with her back to me, gazing at the sea. I walked around to face her. Age had stolen her flesh and bones: parchment skin, rail-thin, bent. She was still as death or, if alive, showed no inkling of my presence.
I said, “Terribly sorry to walk in on you unannounced, but—”
“Quite all right, sir,” said the old woman in a surprisingly refined upper-English accent that reminded me of the actress Maggie Smith. Although sunken in her time-ravaged face, the old woman’s eyes were beautiful, and in the dim light her high cheekbones shadowed her cheeks. I tend to be struck speechless by a great beauty, and no doubt she’d been one—
