Frogmouth (3 page)

Auden, getting excited, said, "Did you see that movie
Rocky
? Did you see the way he went up those stairs in Philadelphia? Did you see—"

Spencer said, "No, I missed that one."

Auden said, "I'll do it! I'll do it for P.C. Wang and I'll do it for me and I'll do it for all the—"

Spencer said, "I knew you would."

Auden said, "It's a challenge!"

Spencer said, "Right!" He patted him again on the shoulder.

Auden glanced up at the hill. It was nothing. He felt his calf muscles flex. Auden said, "You're a good man, Bill. You have a real concern for the underdogs of this world. You're—" He asked out of interest, "What odds did you get on me, by the way?"

He saw Spencer's face.

Auden said with sudden alarm, "Bill? Bill? Bill,
what odds did you get on me?
"

Auden said, "—
Bill?
"

Fifty miles out to sea there was the remnants of a typhoon moving northeast toward Japan. In the whorls of boiling winds, high up, there were plateaus of pressure and currents spreading out toward Hong Kong. Like the arms of a monstrous beating rotor they were turning the upper atmosphere black and seething. As they diminished away from the center, coming closer toward the land, they became flashes in the sky, reflections of power, explosions of silent lightning in the sky like artillery, bringing, alternately, heat and then rain, light and grayness.

In Hong Kong, the Observatory was not going to post a typhoon warning: the center and the swirling arms would stay out to sea, come no closer and, finally, destroy themselves somewhere above the South China Sea off Taiwan.

In Hong Kong, high up, there were only the sudden sheets of lightning.

In Hong Kong, before that lightning had come, all the sleepers had come through their night.

In Hong Kong, at Yat's, everything—everything that had lived or roosted or perched in all the cages and compounds and enclosures, everything that had walked or crawled or flew or hidden, everything—with the coming of morning . . .

Everything was dead.

In the Detectives' Room, all the phones rang at once. Picking up the one nearest on his desk, O'Yee said, "Yes?"

"Herk, herk, herk,
herk!
" It was a Heavy Breather.

O'Yee, watching the wall as it settled down to make vague, evil grinding noises, said in a rasp, "What the hell do you want?" O'Yee said, "Oh, God . . ." It wasn't the phone. In the phone, there was only a steady dial tone.

"Herk! . . . herk! . . . herk . . . !"

It was in the room, in the wall, everywhere. O'Yee said, "Oh, shit . . . !" He looked at Lim at one of the other phones. At one of the other phones, Lim had a funny, stone-faced, glazed look. O'Yee said hopelessly, "Anything?"

"Herk! Herk! HERK!"

It was coming closer.

"Sir—" As a man with only nine months' experience, Constable Lim, as it was clearly laid out in all the manuals, looked to his senior officer for guidance. He guided him. Standing there with the phone stuck against his ear like stone, with a wild look in his eyes, O'Yee said clearly and efficiently and encouragingly to the lower ranks, "OH SHIT—!"

At the phone, in command, he ducked.

In Old Himalaya Street the 8:00
A.M.
rush hour had begun. The street was filling up, coming to life. Up and down its hundred-yard length, getting ready for the business of the day, there were shops, businesses, stalls, cars, buses, people on their way to work, coming and going from all over Hong Bay, and, behind his car in an alley, the odd medieval Knight readying himself in his courtyard for King Richard's Army and the Crusades against the Tibetans.

Hee girdeth hisse loins.

Hee preparedfth himselfe as forre the bayttle.

Hisse loyalle Squire Spencer hee accompaniefth.

Spencer said softly, admiringly, taking Auden's coat and folding it like a flag, carrying it in his hands to the back seat of the car and there placing it respectfully, neatly down,

Reioyle England, be gladde and merie,
Troth, ouercommeth thyne enemyes all,
The Scot, the Frencheman, the Pope, the Tibetan, and
Heresie, overcommed by Trothe, haue had a fall:
Sticke to the Trothe, and euermore thou shall
Through Christe, King Henry, the Boke and the Bowe
All manner of enemies quite ouerthrowe.

He taketh his master's .357 Magnume for too lighten him. He taketh the contentes of his pockets. He taketh: his key ringe, his noxious tobacco weed and hisse tinder and flame maker for to lighte them, hee taketh the scabbard for the .357 Magnume and hee taketh spare ammo. He sayeth, "Verily, My Lord, thy fleetness of foote is legend."

Auden looked at his watch.

Hisse Squire relieveth him also of his timepiece. Spencer said, "Stand up straight." He closeth the car door. Spencer, touching him lightly on the iron muscle in his shoulder, said softly, "You're doing a good thing, Phil." He said so no one else heard the battle cry, "A Wang! A Wang! Scourge of the Tibetans."

He wasn't going to tell him the odds. Sometimes you just got through life the best you could. Sagarmatha Hill . . . Auden closed his eyes in silent prayer.

Spencer said, "Andrew Marvell." He said, quoting the death of King Charles, "He nothing common did or mean, Upon that memorable scene. He—"

He loseth hisse patience. Auden said, "All right, I'm here! I'm ready! For Christ's sake, just get on with it, will you!"

It was 8:02
A.M.

Sir Phillip, Auden Coeur de Lion . . .

He touched at where, for the moment at least, that poor dumb bastard his heart was pumping away unconcerned and happy and . . . softlie . . .
sigheth
.

Out of the walls there dripped a dank, dark liquid. It wasn't blood. It was condensation. It was near enough. In the room, Lim, with O'Yee at the window in the lightning as all the phones went on ringing and ringing, Lim, twisting his hands together in front of his shining brass belt buckle, said in a whisper, "Sir, do you think we should do something?"

O'Yee said in a whisper, "Yes."

"Like what, sir?"

There was, now, from somewhere inside the wall, from somewhere Down There, a faint moaning sound. It was just the Prince of Darkness getting up out of his coffin for the day. There was a rusty hinge creaking sound as he opened his coffin.

Lim said in a tiny voice, "Sir . . . ?"

O'Yee said, "Right!"

He felt better about that.

O'Yee said, "Right!" Behind him, in the window, the lightning flashed in silent sheets of light. There was no thunder. O'Yee said, "Right!"

O'Yee was a Eurasian, the product of a Chinese father, an Irish mother and a San Francisco upbringing. If he had thought about it for a full moon, the Prince of Darkness couldn't have found a better candidate.

He was also a cop, an armed, trained defender of the citizenry, a person of good repute and honest and true demeanor who could be relied on in any emergency to take charge.

He took charge.

O'Yee said, "Right!"

Lim, nodding, also a trained defender, but only trained for nine months and not so good at it yet, said, "Right!"

That settled that.

O'Yee, wondering what the hell he was saying it about, said again just to make sure it was absolutely clear, ". . .
Right!
"

He steeleth himselfe in the face of the sheete lightning for the Hordes. Auden said, "I'm ready. Bring on the Tibetan Tornado."

He giveth a weak grinne.

He seeth Squire Spencer taketh out his Omega stopwatch and sayeth to himself, "Oh, shit."

8:28
A.M.

In Old Himalaya Street the rush hour had started.

In Old Himalaya Street, the autobank machine on the wall of the Russo Harbin Hong Kong Trading Bank went click and opened its little smoked glass window for the day's business.

It was 8:30
A.M.
exactly.

In the Detectives' Room, having got them right where it wanted them, the wall, dripping condensation, went, ". . . Creakkk . . ."

T
he crocodile was over five feet long from head to tail. After it had had the top of its head smashed in with what had probably been an iron bar, it had been half dragged over the railing of its compound and disemboweled. By it, there was a dead fallow deer that, before or after, must have tried to run. It had crashed into a mesh netting where there had been sheep, become caught on the wire, and had its throat cut. It hung with its head down on the path with both its eyes open, looking surprised. In the compound behind it, both the sheep were also dead. One of them had a broken leg: the first blow with the bar or whatever weapon had been used had missed the head. There was very little head left. After the blow that crippled it, it had been beaten to death in a frenzy. There was a sign in English and Chinese on the compound that read
MR. AND MRS. SHEEP AND FAMILY
. The family was a single lamb that had had its throat cut. Along the path that led away from the compound there were two dead rabbits and, crushed and twisted around the base of the trunk, a guinea fowl.

In the bird section, all the cages had been broken open and whatever lived inside there beaten to a pulp where they roosted.

It had happened at night, in the rain: whatever lived in all the cages had been asleep, safe, sheltering, bunched-up together.

There was a Chinese ring-necked pheasant a little way up the wooden path, its wings spread out in an attitude of a stiff, silent glide. It had been gutted. As he turned it over with his hand, Detective Chief Inspector Harry Feiffer drew in his breath. Feiffer said softly, "God in Heaven—" He stood up from the bird and looked across to where Constables Yan and Lee were also with the dead animals. He saw Lee stand up and shake his head.

Yat's Animal and Bird Life Park and Children's Zoo covered a little over three acres, set up in a series of meandering circular paths that took in all the cages and compounds arranged around them and then traveled off onto steps and little picnic areas.

All the animals and birds had had names.
Benny
. On the sign wired to a cage past the pheasant there was a cartoon of a yellow-billed macaw leaning down from a tree reading a newspaper. The newspaper said in Chinese, MACAWS VOTED ZOO'S MOST POPULAR PET. It was dead. One of its clipped wings had been severed at the root and it lay dead and ugly and misshapen at the bottom of its cage in its own dung.

A little farther up the path, the kangaroo enclosure had been hit. Feiffer read the sign. They were not even kangaroos, they were wallabies, less than four feet high. There had been four of them. He had come to see them once with his own son. When he had seen them it was a warm day and they had all been lying around on the grass picking at their fur with their front paws waiting to be let out into the picnic area at lunchtime to see what they could mooch.

Everything, everything was dead. Everything.

In the night, in the rain something awful had come by this way and in the night, in the silence—dark and silent itself—methodically, maybe even in some mad order, it had climbed all the fences or broken into all of the cages or merely caught hold of anything that was free and harmless on the paths or at the base of the trees, and it had slaughtered them.

There had been what looked like a bite mark on the neck of the pheasant.

Feiffer took out a cigarette and lit it.

Ting
. It was the name of a tiny spider monkey that hung down from its parrotlike perch and wooden box by a litter bin. There was a cartoon on the perch: if you handed Ting your small piece of litter—your candy bar wrapper or tissue or even something you brought with you for the occasion—he would toss it into the litter bin for you. Hanging from one leg by the silver chain that tethered it to its pole, it looked with its stiffened fingers like a dead child.

Feiffer must have dropped the cigarette without noticing. He put his hands together and rubbed at his palms and the cigarette was gone.

Across the picnic area, Constable Yan yelled out in a strange voice to Constable Lee coming toward him, "How many?" and Lee called back in the same, stilled, ghastly tone, "Sixty-four."

Everything was dead.

Before it had stopped at dawn, the rain had washed anything out that might have helped: a single footprint—anything.

Everything was dead.

There was a large colored sign with a cartoon of what looked like a cross between a Chinese junk and a giant wooden barge full of animals stuck into the ground ahead of him with a black plywood arrow pointing left. The sign read in English and Chinese and one other language that looked like Urdu,
NOAH'S ARK THIS WAY
!

It was Pets' Corner. It was where the goats and pigs and hares and squirrels and talking parrots and cats and dogs and peacocks were.

It was where Yat waited.

NOAH'S ARK THIS WAY
!

He saw Lee and Yan glance at each other and shake their heads. The silence of all the deaths was tangible. Feiffer, drawing a breath, began walking slowly toward the worst of it.

In Borley Rectory, Lim looking hard at the wall of the Detectives' Room, said as an inspiration, "It isn't what's in the wall, it's what's behind it! The wall is acting as a sort of eardrum for it and it's—" He looked down at the Public Works Department's renovation blueprint of the place on O'Yee's desk. What was behind the wall was air. Lim said, "Maybe from the cellars!" He was thinking hard. Things like this shouldn't be allowed to beat you. Lim, tapping hard at his teeth with his thumbnail, said, "Maybe it's—" He had run out of maybes. His thumbnail stuck to his teeth, sweat starting on his brow, Lim, all his brass tarnishing as O'Yee watched, said in sudden panic, "Sir! Mr. O'Yee,
what the hell do you think it is
?"

"I've got it!" Lim, starting to jump up and down, said in triumph, "It's the ghost of someone you beat to death in one of the cells downstairs and he's come back to exact his revenge and the terrible howling sounds and the scrapings and the chain-rattling"—so far there hadn't been any chain-rattling, but if he was right that would come later—"and the shrieks and laments are the psychic sound of the boot being put in and the blood flowing on the tiled floors and the cries of—" He was getting carried away. Keep it professional. Lim asked, "How many people have been beaten to death in this station over the years, would you say, sir?"