Frogmouth (16 page)

It was the end. He was finished.

The commander said softly, still shaking his head, turning to go, "I'm sixty-one years old. I'm in command and I don't have to look at anything anymore if I don't choose to . . ."

The fog was lifting. Section by section, the saline lagoon and all the dead creatures in it were appearing.

They were flamingos. There were altogether twenty-two of them, males and females, nesting pairs, five feet long, pinkish white and cream with their distinctive down-bent beaks, all floating on the water in twos and threes or in colonies by their cone-shaped nesting mounds.

They were all dead.

They were all, during the night, while they slept, gutted. In the growing light their intestines floated around them like snakes, their wings broken and useless, half submerged on the surface of the lagoon like fans.

". . .
Oh, Christ
. . ."

The commander, nodding, said softly, "Yeah." He had turned back. He was looking at the lagoon.

The commander said, "Yeah." He touched at his face. He was sixty-one years old and he, in his time, had officiated at seven legal hangings and so many deaths and murders that they had all turned into a single, ghastly blur.

The fog lifted and on the lagoon there were only the slow, dead, floating birds.

The commander said in a whisper, looking at him for the first time, "God in heaven, Harry . . . God in heaven!" The commander said in total, awful desperation, "God in heaven, Harry,
who the hell is doing this
?"

The buzzing hadn't stopped. It continued. The whispers, the rasps, the dreams—they never stopped. They grew worse. They increased.

"JAKOB!
JAKOB!!
"

The creature inside the cocoon, exploding, in pain, caught, locked in, imprisoned, shrieked one final time, "
No!
"

The pain went. There was only the pale, white-pupiled eyes in the cocoon. There was only a whisper.

"Twenty-eight . . ."

'Twenty-eight . . ."

In the cocoon, there was neither day nor night, there were only, merely events.

The events continued.

By God, he was going to put a stop to it.

In the Detectives' Room, O'Yee, book in hand, said to the wall so it would know just where it stood, "By God, if I have to knock you down plasterboard by plasterboard, lath by lath, interior brick by brick, cavity by cavity and then external brick by brick, I'm going to do it!"

He could do it. He spoke the wall's language. He had a book on wall demolishing. It was Mr. Wong's book. After he had explained he was quite probably under some awful Satanic influence he had had no trouble borrowing it from Mr. Wong at 5:15
A.M.
at all. O'Yee said, warning the wall fair and square, "
Right?
"

The wall—typical—just stood there.

O'Yee said, "
Right?
"

O'Yee yelled, "Lim!"

Lim, far below in the basement with the dead rat, called up faintly, "Here, sir!"

O'Yee, squatting down, said as he had said to Mr. Wong, that most obliging of neighbors, "
Haarragh!
"

Lim called up, "Haaa!"

In the Detectives' Room O'Yee placed the chisel and mallet in position on the wall. O'Yee said, "AAARAAA—GAHH!"

There was no more.

One more.

"One more." It was a whisper, a rasp. It was in English. The creature inside the cocoon said softly, "Yes."

One . . . more and then everyone, all of them, all the animals, all the people—everything, finally, at last—

All of them would be dead.

"There's no profit motive, Phil." At the garbage skip in Annapura Lane a little after 7:30
A.M.
Spencer, shaking his head, peering up and down the street, said, puzzled, "I've been thinking about it all night and there's just no profit motive to it." He could tell Auden was listening. Auden had a glazed stare on his face. He was looking straight at him. "Take it one by one—" Spencer, scratching his nose and then bringing his hand out with the fingers outstretched, began counting them off: "One, the Tibetan doesn't make a profit because he drops the money—"

He waited for Auden to nod.

Auden didn't nod. Auden said, "Hmm."

Near enough. "Two, the person who's robbed doesn't make a profit. He doesn't make a loss either because the bank refunds his money, and three, the air gun shooter doesn't make a profit because he doesn't pick up any of the money that the Tibetan drops after he's been shot, and four, the people who pick up the money after you've dropped it after the Tibetan's dropped it, what little profit they make—" He was standing in the middle of the pavement thinking deeply. He had a rapt audience. Through it all, Auden's face didn't change. "—well their profit is so small and spread among so many people—"

Auden said, "I couldn't sleep last night because of the pain."

"—That any profit they did make wouldn't be worth the trouble hiring an air gun shooter and a Tibetan and risking two cops catching them." Spencer said, "Yes, that's right." He put his hand back to his nose and, thinking about it, did a sort of duck-diving air-holding grip on it. Spencer said, "Yeahrbz."

"I read a book." Auden said, "It was a book about guns."

"—so why do it?" Spencer, letting go his nose said, "No, I can't see it. There's nothing in it for anybody at all." Spencer, shaking his head, said, "No."

"Everyone has been treating me as if I'm a .17-caliber 30-grain bullet with a muzzle velocity in excess of four thousand feet a minute." Auden said, "I thought maybe I might be something like a .221 50-grain Jet at maybe twenty-four hundred feet per second because I keep myself fit, but I'm not even that." He looked sad. Auden said, "No, I have to accept that I'm getting older and I'm putting on weight. What I am is not even anymore a 5.7mm Johnson Spitfire. What I am is something bigger, something slower—"

"Then why do it?" Spencer, getting angry or short of air, said, gasping, "Someone's making a profit, but whoever it is, it's someone we can't see!" He demanded, "Who is it?"

"—what I am is a .577-500 Number 2 Holland and Holland 360-grain Express!"

Spencer said, "What?"

Auden said, "What I am."

Spencer, smiling, patting him on the shoulder, said, "You're a pistol."

"No." Auden, looking hard down the road and then up toward the cloudy peak of Sagarmatha Hill, dreaming his own dreams, said softly, "No, what I am is a
bullet
!" He saw Spencer put his thumb and fingers to his nose to go down for air for the third time. He had a strange, faraway, dreamy look about him that came with no sleep, reading a lot, and having a very sore arse. Auden, putting his face closer to Spencer's, dropping his voice to a whisper, said, letting him in on the terrible secret, "Bill, guess what? When I looked up the .577-500 Number 2 Holland and Holland 360-grain Express bullet in my book, guess what it said? I'd never looked it up before, I promise! It said—" He was whispering. His eyes were two inches from Spencer's. "It said . . . it said . . ." Auden, goggling, glazed, happy, giggling, said ecstatically, "It said it was a round designed exclusively for Himalayan game!" Auden, his eyes wide, said encouragingly, "Well, what do you think about that?" He demanded, "Aye?"

He was happy. He was ready for the new day. He smiled at the garbage skip.

Auden, mad as a hatter, said joyously, "Heh, heh, heh!" He looked up at Sagarmatha Hill, at Everest. Auden, fiercely triumphant, said to a question he thought he heard Spencer ask as he recoiled, "Why? Why?
Because it's there!
"

He paused, stopped by something. In the bamboo forest, halfway down the packed-earth path that led to a dogleg of the lagoon, he stopped.

He had seen something. He was not afraid. In the forest of planted forty-foot-high closely laid-out thick bamboo, he stopped, listening.

He had seen something. In the forest there was still a light gray mist between the thick yellow trunks and about the earth. There was the smell of wet earth and old, rotting vegetation.

He heard sounds. It was bamboo touching bamboo. In the absence of wind it was only a faint tapping. Looking across the lagoon as the commander had gone to meet Forensic coming through the park in their truck, he had seen something at the edge of the lagoon move. It was at the edge of the forest, where the reeds met the lagoon. It was a backwater of the lagoon. He had seen a grayness there, a change—he had seen something move.

Stopped on the path, listening, Feiffer touched at his gun.

It had been a shadow.

He listened.

Far off, he heard a siren coming and then, through the tapping, someone call out and give an order. It was Forensic. He heard a splashing sound and then another shout as someone began wading into the water for the birds and called for more people to follow. He could see to the end of the path where it met the water: the path turned to the left and there was only the darkness of the bamboo.

Whatever it was that had been there at the edge of the forest, it had moved the moment the commander did.

"Bring over evidence bags to the right!" It was the commander speaking in Cantonese to P.C. Lee. An engine started. The commander called, "You won't need that. Sergeant, get those men to the far side and form a search pattern along the shore!"

The government vet, Hoosier, called out in English, "Leave that one—"

Lee shouted back, "Yes, sir!"

In the forest, on the path, he heard the tapping.

"Mr. Hoosier—!"

The voices were becoming fainter. There was another sound behind the tapping. Feiffer strained to hear it. He touched his gun in its holster. It was a buzzing.

". . . we'll take you three with your wading gear . . . and we . . . to the edge describing a . . . pattern and . . ."

Hoosier said, ". . . those people with glassine bags . . . from the Quarantine truck . . . larger . . . and I can . . ."

They faded. The voices were gone. In the forest, he had begun to walk and above the buzzing there was only the sound of his shoes crunching on the packed earth.

What it had been had been nothing. It had been a shadow.

It had been a presence.

He heard the buzzing.

The voices came back.

". . . Mr. Feiffer gone . . . ?"

Lee called back, ". . . sir . . . and I . . ."

He felt a coldness. He heard something move. He was not afraid. It was not that. It was something else. In Shanghai, the Chinese had hired coolies to walk their dogs for them. In the West, birds and animals and little creatures were drawn in Technicolor and had human characteristics and the kindergarten voices of blonde-maned Californian actresses. It was something else. What was happening was something else.

The path turned off to the left on its dogleg down to a dark, overgrown path to the lagoon. On the earth there were no footprints. Whatever had come down here before him, whatever was still there if there was anything still there did not leave signs as it passed.

All he had seen had been a shadow.

He reached the end of the path. At the end of the path there was only a broken half-submerged bench in the waters.

". . . bring it around and . . ." He heard the commander say in a whisper, "Oh, my God . . ." He heard it clearly. It came not from across the lagoon, but in it. It came from the edge of the forest where, overgrown and in darkness there was something lying on its side in the reeds.

". . . bring . . . to . . ."

The buzzing dropped in intensity. It was a humming. He was standing a little behind the bench with his hand still on the butt of his holstered revolver and there was nothing there at all.

He had thought he would be able to see the lagoon. There was nothing. It was a backwater, a stagnant pool choked with crushed and fetid reeds. The bench lay partly submerged in it, rotting.

He could not see anyone in the lagoon and all their voices were gone.

Touching the back of the bench, he looked along the reeds, following the line of the shore and the bamboo forest's edge. It was all old, disused, let run wild. Where the water met the land there was still a faint gray mist. He heard tapping, the buzzing turning into a soft, insistent humming.

It stopped.

There was silence.

Looking along the fetid weeds into the forest itself, following its twisted and curving line, Feiffer said softly, "Oh, my God!"

He saw, twenty yards away in the reeds, a second bench.

He saw, next to it, by it, to one side of it, a grayness.

The grayness was moving, forming, becoming real.

Feiffer said softly, "Oh, my God . . ."

He saw, for the fast time in his life, something he knew did not exist.

He saw forming, becoming real, creating itself out of the mist and the grayness, a shadow.

He saw an old man with his hand on the back of the bench looking over, directly at him.

It rooted him to the spot. It was a shadow. It was forming, wavering, coming and going as if it hung on only tenuously to whatever combination of fog and sound, water and reeds had brought it there. It was by the bench. The bench was real. The bench, in sharp focus, was old and splintered, disused, left there when the lagoon had been remodeled. The shadow beside it was only a shadow.

It formed. It had shape. It had the line and shape of an arm and then an upper chest and then, wavering, losing touch, it went again and dissolved, then came back. It had a face, eyes. The eyes were blurs. It was something—

It was a dream, something from—

Feiffer said in a whisper, "Oh my—" and it firmed, and the face was there and then as a chill ran through him and he thought to look away, it began to go and become only mist.

It was him. He was doing it himself.

He tensed, staring at it and the mist became real again and began forming.

It was him. He was doing it himself.

He tried to look away, but could not, and the blur began to melt. In the forest he heard the tapping of the bamboo. There was a buzzing. It was getting louder and louder.

It was an old man. It was not real. It was an invention. It was the tapping and the mist and the water and all the dead things and all the places in his soul he could not explain and all the questions about the birds sailing alone in the sky and he was doing it himself.