He was still alive, screaming.
“Freeze! Both of you!” Cudlipp snapped at Snider and Ng Soon.
Snider had half-risen from his chair, but stopped on the command, motionless, suspended, his mouth hanging wide, his nose flowing.
Ng Soon, who did not understand English, just kept getting up, picking the M16 rifle from his lap as he rose.
Cudlipp calmly fired a bullet directly into his head.
Zombie-like, Ng Soon dropped the carbine and, like a drunk doing the white line, deliberately and carefully walked to the open back door and down the step outside. He took three or four paces in the direction of the dock; then he crumpled like a stuffed doll on the ground outside.
Cudlipp reached inside Snider’s jacket pocket, pulled out a gun, and threw the man on the floor.
“Face-down, Sleazy, and spread-eagle,” Cudlipp ordered. “Do it!”
Snider did it.
Cudlipp tore a lamp cord from a wall plug and cut it with a knife, then bound Snider’s wrists behind his back.
He called to Cobb: “I need some more rope.” His voice was raised to be heard above Au’s screams.
“I’m wearing it, for Christ’s sake,” Cobb shouted.
“What?”
“Untie me!”
“Oh, yeah, yeah.”
Cudlipp cut Cobb’s arms and legs free and used the rope to tie Snider’s feet, while Cobb went to Tann and undid her bindings.
She was shaking, and she clutched at him.
“It’s okay,” Cobb said. “I think.”
Outside, Jin Feng approached from the shadows, bent down over the body of Ng Soon, and took the ignition key from his pocket. Then he glanced into the window.
Fate had intervened, and Ma Wo-chien would be satisfied; although, had Feng been left to his own means — without the stupid intervention of the fool Cudlipp — the task would have been performed cleanly, and without witnesses.
A few seconds later, Cobb heard the sound of the rented yacht’s engine. He looked out the back door and saw it moving away from the pier and throttling into high gear, moving out of the bay in front of a high wake.
“Let the sucker go,” Cudlipp said. “They’ll catch up to him.”
Still ignoring Au, whose screams slowly lessened in pitch and intensity, Cudlipp grabbed Snider by the armpits and lugged him outside, depositing him in the daffodils. “Getting rid of the garbage,” he said, returning.
Tann glanced nervously at Au, and when she saw his wounds, she blanched and stepped back.
“Don’t worry about it,” Cudlipp said. “He’s had it. These bullets blow apart when they hit.” He went up to Au. The Surgeon’s eyes rolled toward his assassin, and their hardness began to fade behind a veil of approaching insentience.
“Sorry, Doc,” Cudlipp said, “but I had to perform my end. Somebody else came up with a better offer. I’m a man of my word, too — if I get a better deal.” He looked at his watch. “The plane’s coming in anytime. It was due at noon. Jesus, the timing had to be tight.”
Au’s eyes glazed over. The scalpel and needles slipped from his hand and clattered onto the table.
Cudlipp grinned at Cobb. “Yeah, Mr. Cobb, now I hope you know what it felt like for me when Alice walked into that courtroom last Monday. Sure did not feel very sweet. Got any beer in the icebox?”
“I think there’s a dozen cold,” Cobb said.
Cudlipp wandered into the kitchen and yelled from there: “What about you guys? Thirsty?”
“No,” Cobb said. Tann said nothing. She sat on a chair and buried her face in her hands.
Cobb heard Cudlipp pop a bottle cap in the kitchen. “Sorry I had to rough up your lady a little bit,” he called. “Hell, she almost killed me. Anyhow, I had to get a hold of your gun. They took mine. Distrustful bastards.” He came from the kitchen happily beaming and holding a beer bottle. “Yeah, it was your old buddy Santorini. Sure you don’t want a suck on this?”
“No. Thanks.”
“Yeah, he set it up. I had to take my fucking life in my hands, but it’s better than a sawbuck in the can, right?” He took a hard pull on the beer, and wiped his mouth with his hand. “Went up to see him on Wednesday. Santorini. Actually, he called me in, wanted to make a deal. What the fuck, I’m up against the wall. I got no choice. Not particularly happy about it. I got no love for you, Cobb, and you know that. But I can’t turn it down. What it is, is this: I grease the Surgeon here — like, save your useless balls, not to mention your life — and he lets me go to Australia, agrees not to extradite, agrees not to estreat on my bail. I get exile. You get to live. Shit, it’s a deal.”
Cudlipp winked and patted his breast pocket. “Got me a set of i.d. here, passport and all. And thanks to our late friend here” — he waved an arm in Au’s direction — “I got myself a stake. Flying off to Sydney tomorrow. But Jesus, what a hassle.” He shook his head and looked mournfully at the wound in his leg. “Guess I have to get this patched up first.”
Cudlipp took another long drink from the bottle, emptying it. “God damn,” he said, “I needed that.”
He went into the kitchen, and Cobb could hear the icebox open and close.
“You’re pretty close to Santorini, right?” Cudlipp called out.
“Yes.”
“He can be trusted to come through hey?”
“He can be trusted.”
There was a great roar of engine as the police Cessna buzzed the house.
Saturday, the Twenty-fifth Day of March,
at Three O’Clock in the Afternoon
After the bones of Cobb’s cheek and wrist were set, he was allowed to go from the hospital. He met Tann and Santorini in the waiting room, and they walked out together, past a newspaper kiosk. He could see the front-page banner line: “orient connection broken, drug ringleader shot.” Below was a picture of Cobb, and the story of Au’s death.
They continued down the hospital steps into their cars. Nobody spoke. Then Santorini smiled and put his arm around Cobb’s shoulders.
“Some opera, huh?” he said. “It wasn’t supposed to drag out like that, Fos, but they took Cudlipp’s gun away from him in the first scene. He had to play it by ear.”
“Yeah,” said Cobb.
“So,” Santorini said. “How do you feel?”
“Great, goddamnit. Outrageous.” He was feeling good, despite his injuries and his nausea and chills. “Hey, Eddie, I have a little speech. There’s a line from Bacon somewhere: ‘We are told to forgive our enemies. But we are not often told to forgive our friends.’ I forgive my friend. Thanks. That’s the speech.”
“Well, gee, hey, Fos, when you’re feeling better, let’s get together for a little piss-up. Like old times.”
“If your lordship pleases.”
“Aw, no formalities, Fos. Just call me ‘Judge.’ I guess you know there’ll be an opening now in my office. I’ll be out of there in a couple of weeks, and you have first claim. Unless you plan to take up Smitty’s partnership offer.”
“I have some other ideas,” Cobb said. “Try this for size: ‘Cobb and Tann, Solicitors.’”
“Has a nice ring to it,” Tann said brightly.
Santorini shrugged. “Maybe I can send some business your way.”
Cobb managed a crooked smile. “No thanks, Eddie.”
Three days later, at nine o’clock in the morning Hong Kong time, Ma Wo-chien dispatched Jin Feng from his study with a wave of his hand. Feng bowed low and left. Ma Wo-chien snapped open a metal box of small Ritmeesters and lit one. He smoked for a while, staring out the window at churning clouds, which spewed rain in wind-driven sheets. His fleet of junks bounced and tossed in the waters of the harbor below.
Ma sighed. There had been losses. There would be gains.
Such was business.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
His first novel, Needles, won the $50,000 Seal Prize in 1979 and the Book of the Year Award. Since then he has published ten best-sellers, including Kill All the Lawyers, Trial of Passion, Slander, and The Laughing Falcon, and a true crime book, A Life on Trial: The Case of Robert Frisbee, based on a sensational murder trial he defended.
Trial of Passion won the Arthur Ellis prize, for the best Canadian crime novel, and the Dashiell Hammett award, from the Inter-national Crime Writers Association, for literary excellence in crime writing in North America. His novels have been translated into ten languages and sold worldwide.
He created the CBC’s long-running tv series Street Legal, which has run internationally in more than 50 countries, and adapted many of his works both to screen and radio. He has served as Visiting Professor of Creative Writing, University of Victoria. He is former executive director and president of the B.C. Civil Liberties Association, and twice was acclaimed as chair of the Writers’ Union of Canada.
He lives on Pender Island, British Columbia, and winters in Costa Rica. Please visit his web site at www.deverell.com
Copyright © William Deverell 2002
Published by ECW Press
2120 Queen Street East, Suite 200, Toronto, Ontario, Canada m4e 1e2
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form by any process — electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise — without the prior written permission of the copyright owners and ecw press.
national library of canada cataloguing in publication data
Deverell, William, 1937–
Needles / William Deverell
ISBN 9781550225433 (bound); 9781770905399 (ePUB)
i.Title.
PS8557.E8775N44 2002 C813´.54 C2002-903343-8
PR9199.3.D474N44 2002
Cover and Text Design: Tania Craan
The publication of Needles has been generously supported by the Canada Council, the Ontario Arts Council, and the Government of Canada through the Book Publishing Industry Development Program.
Needles Page 32
