"Justice?" Marco asked incredulously, his thick brows rising. "Did you say justice?"
Shan looked at Jakli, hoping for help. But she was staring nervously at Marco.
"Here is a strange creature for you, Osman," Marco said, his voice as sharp as a razor. "A silk robe who worries about justice." He put his hand around the nearly empty bottle and turned to the tables. "Gentlemen of the court! We have an entertainment. The renowned detective Shan Tao Yun from the court of Chambaluc is about to show us astounding feats of reasoning and deduction! No doubt he is a descendant of the great Judge Dee, magistrate of the Tang dynasty," he barked out, referring to the legendary investigator whose exploits had been the subject of folktales for centuries.
Marco whispered to Osman, who retrieved a long club of black wood from the corner behind the bar, then stood by the corridor to the front door.
"But I can't-" Shan protested, thinking of making a dash for the door himself.
"More crime has been committed among our own," Marco spoke in a tone that told everyone that the joking was finished. "As if what happened to our Lau wasn't enough. There will be an end to it," he vowed with a sound like a snarl.
Shan realized that he was not being offered a choice. He stepped back to the bar, his eyes on the little Buddha. "I would like," he said in a tentative, uneasy voice, "another cup of tea."
Osman smiled, as though pleased with Shan's discomfort, then stepped away from his post by the door long enough to pour the tea.
"I don't wish that anyone be hurt," Shan said after a sip from the cup. This was Turkistan, he reminded himself, where retribution was always a few steps ahead of forgiveness.
Marco merely stared at him.
Shan sighed. "Something happened in here a few minutes before I arrived. An alarm. A signal. A new arrival, perhaps."
"Nothing," Osman said in an impatient tone.
"Sophie," the bald man in the fleece vest called out. "I said I heard Sophie coming."
Marco raised his eyebrows toward Osman.
"True enough," Osman said. "But no one else heard anything. We didn't expect you."
Shan looked at Marco. There was someone else with the Eluosi, someone with the improbable name of Sophie. "The possibility that you were coming scared Hoof," he said.
"Because?" Marco asked.
Shan replayed the events in his mind. Hoof had not simply been trying to flee. He had been wounded and then had lied, trying to blame Shan, and then had given up when he saw Jakli. Shan had not understood the disappointment on the Tadjik's face. "Perhaps because he had taken something. Because he had to lose it, or hide it now that you were coming. He only had a few moments."
Hoof had stood and was inching closer, his compnion behind him. "I've ridden with Nikki," the little Tadjik blurted out. "I have groomed your animals. This Han insults me. He hates our kind."
Marco silenced him with a raised hand, then turned back to Shan.
"All right, tai tai," Marco said. Tai tai, esteemed one, was a form of address reserved for the most venerable of the mandarins.
"Where does Hoof wear the missing pouch?" Shan asked Osman. Hoof retreated to stand with his back against the wall, looking toward his companion, who seemed to be edging away, back toward their table.
"It was big," Osman answered, "it hung from his belt. His left side."
Shan nodded. "Perhaps this is what happened. Hoof had the empress in his pouch. When Marco was coming he had to be rid of it, because Marco of all people would notice it gone. Get rid of it but not get rid of it. Hide it, so he could get it later. He cut off the pouch and hid it in the corridor. Through the opening in the door he saw me, a Han, coming. Thinking he could blame it on me, he cut himself and threw himself on me as I opened the door."
"Someone could have been waiting with a knife in the corridor," Marco suggested. "The Xibo."
"Exactly," Hoof said eagerly. "He stood in front of me, he rushed me." His eyes did not move from Marco.
Shan shook his head. "That floor in the corridor had half an inch of sand," he observed. "It would have left signs of a struggle. But look at it, you won't see any. And he blew out the flames on the oil lamps as he went down the corridor, to make it appear an ambush had been set. The lamps had just been extinguished when I entered. I could smell the oil."
"True," Osman added. "They were dark when I went out to see who was shouting."
"But surely he wouldn't cut himself," Marco countered.
"Not a bad cut, just enough for blood to show," Shan said and saw that Marco was not convinced. "This is how it happened. The cut was on his upper right arm. A thief's knife would have been low and to Hoof's left, to cut away the strap of the pouch, not high and to the right. Hoof held the knife in his left hand and cut his own right arm. I was watching everyone drink. Hoof is the only man in this room who is left-handed."
Osman nodded. "Bad upbringing. A good Muslim is always trained to use his right hand."
"So what?" Marco asked.
Shan extended the index and middle fingers of his left hand like a blade and made a chopping motion on his upper arm. "He cut himself like this. A thief would have swung low, cut his belly on the same thrust maybe, but not the upper arm." Shan shrugged, and looked toward the shadows of the front corridor. "There must be shelves in there or niches for the oil lamps."
Osman nodded, pulled a lantern from its hook, and led them into the corridor. The original builders had provided four deep concave shelves for lamps. The first two niches were nearly obscured by cobwebs behind the lamp. At the third the webs had been recently broken. Marco reached in and pulled out a pouch. Making a small, angry growling noise, he marched back into the room and snapped out Hoof's name.
The Tadjik stood with his back to the wall, alone, abandoned by his friend. Marco held the pouch by the man's nose for a moment, then reached into it and pulled out the emerald queen.
Hoof's hands began to tremble.
Marco upended the pouch on the bar and out tumbled two large round objects, both the same size, each wrapped in white paper. Marco shook one and an apple fell out. "You stole from me," Marco growled as he extended the queen toward the Tadjik. "You stole at Karachuk. You stole when we were still mourning our lost aunt."
Hoof looked back at his companion, who stared at him stonily.
"Say it," Marco boomed. "Say you stole."
"I st- stole," the Tadjik murmured.
"Why?"
"Last year, you hit me. I was unconscious for an hour. My head hurt for a month."
"You insulted my camel," Marco shot back.
No one laughed.
Shan picked up the second round object. He pulled on the edge of the paper and a ball rolled out, a three-inch white leather ball joined by heavy reddish seams. Although Shan had never seen such a ball before, it looked vaguely familiar. He stared after it as Osman picked it up, shaking his head at Hoof, and placed it on top of one of the glasses, then tossed the crumpled paper into a basket that was nearly filled with empty bottles.
The men in the room began moving out, trying to look inconspicuous, their heads turned away as though they had seen something in Marco's face and were scared of it. Only six remained by the time Marco noticed. "No!" he called out. "Stay and witness!"
The big Eluosi pointed to the floor in front of the bar and Hoof stepped forward, cowering, his arms half raised as if he expected to be struck. "Here is what you will do, Hoof the thief," Marco announced as he paced around the Tadjik. "The uncle of Osman, he has a camp near the Wild Bear Mountain, at the ford of Fragile Water Creek. You will go there. You will tell them my words. They lost a son to fever this spring. They are outside the county, not in the Poverty Scheme. Which means they are going to winter camp soon. They will need help to gather fodder, to milk the goats. If you leave before they take the herds to spring pasture, I will know it. We will all know it, we will understand that you are indeed someone without honor. And then you will have no protection. Do you understand?"
Hoof lowered his arms and nodded slowly, then more vigorously, as though grateful for Marco's mercy.
Shan stared in confusion. Marco had just sentenced the man as surely as if he had been in a courtroom before armed guards.
At the corridor Osman spoke with Hoof's companion, who grimly nodded and escorted his friend out of the building. Shan stared at the empty doorway. It had been foolish, what the Tadjik had done, almost unbelievably foolish, as though perhaps he had had another motive they had not seen. He picked up the ball and tossed it from hand to hand, until he noticed that it had words imprinted in English. "Made in America," he said to Jakli, translating to Mandarin. He used the traditional Chinese words for America: Mei Guo, Beautiful Country.
"Beautiful ball for a beautiful country," a deep voice said from behind him, in English. Shan turned with a start to see a tall man in his mid-forties, with sandy-colored hair turning to grey. A pair of bright blue eyes stared at Shan from behind gold wire-rimmed glasses. The man raised an oversized leather glove in his left hand, punched his right fist into it, and opened the glove toward Shan. "That would be mine," he said, his eyes full of challenge.
Shan weighed the ball once more, remembering at last what it was, then tossed it into the glove. "Baseball," he said in English, in an awkward rhythm. The last time he had pronounced the word out loud had been with his father, over thirty years before. He returned the stranger's steady stare. "You're American," he added, as an observation, not a question.
"Dammit, Deacon," Marco muttered. "You don't know him."
"He's with Jakli," the man said. "That's good enough."
Meaning what? Shan wondered. That the American was usually hidden from strangers. But also that Jakli had a much closer connection to the two strange men than he had thought. Shan studied the man named Deacon. There had been another American hidden away, inside a burlap death shroud.
"Jacob Deacon," the American announced, extending his hand to Shan. "Just Deacon will do. You're a friend of Nikki's?"
Shan returned the handshake uncertainly, looking at Jakli.
"A friend of some Tibetan priests," Jakli said.
"Okay," Deacon said with a small smile. "I believe in Tibetan priests too." He looked at Marco. "How about you?"
The Eluosi frowned. "I've known priests and mullahs. And I've known commissars. Commissars are easier to deal with."
Deacon laughed and pounded Marco on the shoulder, then pulled a bottle of water from a carton behind the bar. He poured a glass for Shan, then one for himself. "The real thing. And it's free." Shan studied the man. Had he been listening from the rear corridor the entire time?
"When is Nikki coming?" The question burst from Jakli with a sudden energy that caused Shan to look back at her.
"Caravans are unpredictable." Marco shrugged. "Maybe he decided to hole up in Ladakh for a few days because of patrols." He placed one of his paw-like hands on top of Jakli's head for a moment, the way a father might touch a daughter. "He'll bring you something bright and shiny. Or maybe something soft and flimsy."
Jakli's face flushed and she good-naturedly batted Marco's hand away, then quickly grew serious again. "Shan needs to know about Auntie Lau. Two of the children have died now too." Osman cursed. Marco raised his head with a growling sound, suddenly very sober, as Jakli explained about Suwan and Alta. "Shan thinks it started with Lau. He needs to know who might want to kill her. What happened before she died."
"A good woman," Marco said solemnly. "A bad death."
"Why would someone do this to an innocent woman?" Shan ventured.
"Innocent?" Marco asked. "That's more than I know."
"You don't consider her innocent?"
"Of course not. Are you? I sure as hell am not. Osman's not. My camel's not. They've proven Jakli's not innocent, three times over." The words brought a bitter smile to Jakli's face. Marco looked over to Osman. "Ever meet an innocent person, old friend? I haven't. Hell, Osman's got a niece six months old, still at her mother's breast. She's not innocent. She's Kazakh."
"You're saying Lau was killed because she was Kazakh?" Shan asked.
"No. But maybe in the end that's what it was. What being Kazkah made her do. The bastards."
"What bastards?"
Marco poured the remains of the vodka into a glass. "Just bastards in general," he muttered.
Shan turned toward the rear corridor. The American was gone. He felt Marco's gaze.
"You'd be wise to be gone yourself," the Eluosi observed in a dangerous tone, wiping his mouth on his sleeve. "It's a bad place to be asking questions."
"If you would talk with him," Jakli suggested, "maybe he wouldn't have to ask so many."
Marco sighed. He stepped behind the bar and retrieved three of the flat nan breads. He tossed one to each of them, then mounted a stool and chewed meditatively on the third as Osman collected glasses from the tables. "It was just before Nikki took the last caravan out," Marco said. "We had to pick up some men. Lau rode in that evening, all excited about something."
"Alone?" Shan asked.
"Alone. Her horse was so exhausted we were scared it would die. Osman stayed with it, rubbing it, walking it, making sure it was copied down before drinking."
"Who did she speak with?"
"No one. Everyone." Marco stared at his crust as he spoke, then looked up with a new sadness in his eyes. "They say she was a healer, but many didn't understand the most important thing she did, the most important healing." He paused to bite off a piece and chew. "There's a little brown mouse in the desert," he said in a contemplative tone. "It collects things, like a pack rat. But where the mouse lives is so harsh that it usually just collects thorns and sharp pieces of crystal and small dried dead things. Lau was like that, with people's troubles. People would tell her their nightmares, their painful memories, their fears, and they would feel better, like she had taken them away, collected them inside herself, so they could heal."
"You're saying people confessed things to her?"
Jakli nodded. "It's true. I keep wondering. What if someone told her something, a secret she wasn't supposed to know? What if they changed their mind later and decided she had to be silenced? People get drunk and talk. She had a way of getting people to talk."
"No," Marco disagreed. "You didn't see her that night. The way her legs were beaten. If you want to stop her from spreading your secret, you just shoot her. If you want to pry out someone else's secret, you beat her first."
Shan took a bite of his bread and looked up. "You mean, you saw her."
Marco stared at his piece of bread. "I mean I found her. Nikki and I. Nikki first, at the quiet place she liked to go to. Only she and Jakli were the ones who usually go." He glanced at Jakli. "Nikki missed you. I think he went there because it reminded him of you. But when he went inside he found her tied to the old statue. He came and got me, with tears in his eyes." The big Eluosi looked down into his hands. "His mother taught him that, that sometimes it is all right to cry." Marco raised his eyes to Jakli, who seemed to be fighting back her own tears.
"I used to see it a lot, when the Red Guard were roaming the land," Marco said with a bitter tone. "They would break bones in the feet with a hammer. If you do it just so, it makes the skin agonize to the touch. Then they hit the feet and shins with a stick. Doesn't take much force to create a lot of pain. Sometimes they just used chopsticks, snap the skin with chopsticks. Do one foot, start with the second if they still don't talk. Afterward, you would see them on the street. The knobs would laugh and call them drunken foot, because they couldn't walk in a straight line anymore. The ones that held out, they did both feet. No one did much walking after that. Her killer, I don't think he intended that she leave the room, no matter what she told him."
Jakli tore away with a sob and ran out the back passageway, followed a moment later by Osman.
"Maybe she didn't talk," Marco suggested. "She was a tough one." He poured them both some tea.
"She talked," Shan said, and told Marco about the
bruise on her arm, the place where a syringe had been inserted.
Marco sighed heavily. "What's the point of beating her, then?" he asked into his glass.
Shan looked up into Marco's eyes and knew he didn't have to explain. The injection meant that the killer was someone experienced in interrogation technique. Those who were hardened to it sometimes developed appetites for watching people in pain.
Marco was silent a long time. "We would have seen a knob or a soldier," he said in a low, angry tone.
"Not if he was well trained. Or if he was disguised," Shan suggested, and related what Prosecutor Xu had said to him at Glory Camp, how she had mistaken him for a knob agent.
"God's breath," Marco said, and shifted in his seat to face the empty tables, as if trying to fix in his mind each of the faces of the men who had occupied them. "It's a bad time."
Shan watched the brooding Eluosi. A bad time just because of the treachery, he wondered, or bad timing for the treachery, because of something else?
"Why here?" Shan asked. "You were here. A few others. This settlement here, it's not a big place, not easy to hide in. I think the killer took a big risk, killing Lau here. But he had to, because suddenly it was urgent. He couldn't wait."
"Nothing's changed."
"Not yet," Shan said and saw Marco clench his jaw. "What if the secret she died for was your secret?"
Marco drained his tea in one long gulp and fixed Shan with a stare. "You should go home, Comrade Inspector. I will get the bastards."
"You sound as if you know who did it."
"Not yet. But it's what I do. I get bastards." He spoke in a stark, haunting tone, as if it were a threat against the entire world, including Shan. "My hobby," he said with a thin smile. "I remember. I watch. I make sure others don't forget."
Shan considered Marco. A forgotten man of a forgotten people, without legal travel papers, without hope of ever getting legal papers. Not unlike Shan. Maybe that was all that Shan was about too, about getting the bastards, whomever they were. He recalled what Marco had done to Hoof. He had gotten the bastard.
Marco suddenly appeared very tired. He stretched and lifted his heavy frame from the stool, then moved to the center of the room and collapsed into the overstuffed chair. He shut his eyes and quickly drifted into the deep slow breathing of slumber.
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