Frogmouth (20 page)

It had happened at the New China Housing Estate in Pottinger Street: it had happened outside his department too. It had happened in North Point, two streets away from Hong Bay, his precinct, his files, his papers, his Civil Service mentality—but it had happened.

It had happened to someone. Like the killing in the killing chamber, even though no one saw it or wanted to see it, or pretended they had nothing to do with it, it happened.

There was no smell of poison gas in the room. There had not been the smell of poison gas in there for a very long time. In the room there was only the warm, electric smell of the Xerox machine and the carbolic from the cages.

It printed. Not knowing what it printed, not knowing what it meant, obediently—a machine—it went on printing, clicking, over and over.

NORTH POINT WOMAN IN DEATH FALL
Wrote Last Letter To Husband

Over and over . . .

Over, and over.

In the awful, still, ruined room, over and over, until the pages spilled out of the collection trough, over and over, the machine, humming, printed the little, unimportant story in the color it had been set to: a bright—on the white foolscap page—full tonally adjusted bright Civil Service red.

It printed.

It clicked.

Somewhere, somewhere else inside a red cupola, it
hummed
.

8:33
A.M.

In the Detectives' Room, to no one but itself, the wall said in a whisper, weakening, in distress, "Twenty-eight . . .
Twenty-Eight!
"

C
hoofa, choofa, choofa, choofa . . .

Auden opened one eye. He saw the Tibetan at the far end of the street, coming. He was coming choofa, choofa, choofa—he was a train. He was gathering speed, pacing himself, flexing his hand for the mail pickup at the autobank.

Choofa-choofa—he was speeding up, his legs starting to get traction on the pavement, his shoulders moving, tightening. At the autobank the tall Northern Chinese with his briefcase was counting his money . . . One hundred, two hundred, three hundred . . . Choofa-choofa . . . choof. Choof. Choof. Auden opened his other eye. There was a crowd forming around him. They were looking down the street and then to the Northern Chinese and then to Auden.

Five hundred . . . six hundred . . .

Choof, choof, choof!
Choof!

Auden said, "Back!"

The crowd got back. They were a crowd of toothless unemployed Chinese in shorts and singlets. They had feet like meat dishes.

He was a .577-500. Auden said again, "Back!"

"Seven hundred . . ."

Choofachoofachoofa—
choofa
!

He had always wanted to be a sniper. He was a sniper's bullet. He closed his eyes again and then opened one a fraction and got a warm, tunnel womb vision. Auden said, "Click." He cocked the hammer. Choofa, choofa, choofa . . . He began to . . . squeeze his trigger . . .

The crowd, moving, seeing the Tibetan come, seeing the Northern Chinese reach one thousand with his banknotes, said in a hiss, "Weee . . . !"

He was moving. His legs began to piston, his arms began to stiffen. Choofa, choofa,
choofa
! He was gathering speed, getting traction. The Tibetan, pushing, pistoning, his eyes set on the Northern Chinese, his feet disappearing into blurs, was coming. Auden yelled to the crowd in Cantonese, "Back! Stand clear!"

The crowd cheered. They were running on the spot. The Northern Chinese with the briefcase and the money looked up.

CHOOFCHOOFCHOOFCHOOF! The Tibetan's whistle at full speed shrieked, "Tooo-wee!"

"Back!"

The crowd yelled, "Waaeee!"

"
Toooweee!
" ChoofchoofCHOOF—
roar
!

Auden yelled— He was ready to yell, as he fired, "
Boom!
"

The tall Northern Chinese yelled as he saw a blur coming at him with its arm outstretched and a wild look in its eyes, "Aaii-ya!"

Auden, firing, yelled, "BOO—"

Looking across, pointing to him, waving his hand as it became in an instant filled with the Northern Chinese's money, the Tibetan yelled, "Ready! Set!
Go!
"

"—OOM!" He tripped, he fell, he crashed into the crowd as, as one man, it began to run. Auden, scrabbling, getting up, his bullet all bent and off target, all his powder wet, shrieked, "
That wasn't fair!
"

CHOOFACHOOFACHOOFACHOOFA—the train was going, speeding away, becoming an express, the mail arm with the money retracting for streamlining, a single sharp contrail of steam and breath coming out from behind it as it went for the record. The pavement was a railway line, nonstop, express. The road was the station. Barefooted people were running after the train shouting and waving their arms trying to catch it. He wasn't a bullet, he was a goddamned war bride standing there with tears in his eyes as the train roared away into the night without him on it. Nobody in the whole goddamned world was on his side. Auden, hopping up and down and about to punch the garbage skip, yelled in Cantonese, "No one's on my side anywhere!"

Someone was. It was the Tibetan. The Tibetan, turning at full speed, waving the money, catching his eye for a moment as—so help him his feet rose six inches above the pavement—yelled, "You! Cop!" The Tibetan, calling to him, beseeching him, needing him, yelled, "Run! Please! For God's sake, RUN!"

He couldn't see anything. In the street the crowd had gone toward the hill after the Tibetan like a wave of attacking Korean suicide troops. At the end of Annapura Lane they missed running him down by inches.

Spencer, jumping up and down, trying to see over them, still spinning in the wake of their acceleration, tried to see Auden. Auden was at the garbage skip, hopping up and down. He stopped hopping. He was half hopping, trying to get his legs into order. Spencer, running toward him, looking up at the flat roofs along the street behind cars, back to the garbage skip where the sniper might be, yelled out, "Phil! I can't see anyone! Can you see the shooter?" He looked across to the Russo Harbin Hong Kong Trading Bank. The glass doors were dark at that angle. He saw a blur inside moving past the doors and then disappear. He heard a disappearing dot somewhere through the seething, running crowd, yell, "Where the hell are you?" and Spencer, thinking it was Auden, yelled back, "I'm here! The profit motive is—" It was the Tibetan. Spencer yelled, "Phil! Phil, he's got an accomplice!"

"
All right!
"

Addressing the garbage skip, Auden, on the boil, reaching vapor point, snarled, "All right!" For two days people had been trying to kill him. He had watched his health. For two days people had been trying to— He had tried to be a bullet. It hadn't worked. People hadn't let it work.
All right then
—all right then— He was moving, all the nerves and muscles and sinews in his legs and lungs were coiling, filling with air. Sometimes a man had to do what a man had to do. Bullets didn't count. Men counted. Men who were bullets were men who weren't men. All right then. He had been found out. Fuck Wang—Wang didn't count. The Tibetan and the crowd were fifty yards away. Fifty yards didn't count. Auden shrieked to the heavens at the top of his voice, "All right then! I'm here! My name is Phillip John Auden and I'm ready!" He saw the tall Northern Chinese at the autobank looking at him with his mouth open. Maybe he didn't speak English. Auden, shouting in Cantonese for him, cried bootless to the heavens, "I'm here! I'm ready! I'm me! This time,
I am prepared to die
!"

The tall Northern Chinese, cringing, said, "Oh, my God!"

He did speak English. Good. Auden, his legs beginning to work, his legs turning to blurs, Auden, able to leap buildings in a single bound, yelled from the bottom, the depths of his soul, "For England! For the Empire! For me!" He heard the Tibetan seventy-five, eighty yards away, being pursued by the black storm of running bums, yell, "Run!" and he, at last, for the final time—for the great, ultimate act of his life—girding his loins, coiling his essence, exploding like a .577-500 Number 2 Express and a .17 caliber Remington both at once—he
ran
.

In the New China Apartments in Porringer Street, Feiffer, outside the door to apartment number 816, commanded the caretaker, "Key." There was no sound from inside the apartment—nothing. The caretaker was a worried middle-aged Southern Chinese with slicked-down hair and a good job. He had his ring of keys in his hand. He slid them quickly to find the right one in the bunch. He looked up to Feiffer's face trying to find the right key.

Feiffer said tightly, "Hurry. Please hurry." He had his hand on the butt of his gun under his coat. He listened, holding the caretaker's eyes as the man fumbled at the keys.

Inside the apartment there was no sound at all.

He fumbled.

In the corridor, beginning to sweat, the caretaker fumbled, panicking at the keys.

"Nijamba!" It was Spencer. It meant Stop! in an obscure Sherpa dialect that he had found in a book on yetis. It was too obscure. The Tibetan—the Sherpa—was going toward the hill like an express train, his legs invisible blurs with the crowd behind him slapping their bare feet down.

"
Nijamba!
"

The tall Northern Chinese at the autobank, cowering, said, "
Aaah!
" He saw the blond lunatic in the street—as opposed to the dark lunatic blasting off from the garbage skip—as opposed to the street full of lunatics everywhere—shout at him, "It must be too obscure!" and the tall Northern Chinese yelled back, "Anything! Anything you say!"

"
It's the profit motive! I can't work out who has the profit motive!
"

"It isn't me!"

"I am prepared to DIE!" It was the garbage skip. By it, something had taken wings. It looked like a tank. The tank, as it went out of control and disappeared into the seething mass of meat dish runners, yelled residually, "Boom—no good . . . boom . . ."

The tall Northern Chinese yelled to Spencer—

"
Nijamba!
" One last try.

The tall Northern Chinese yelled, "Oh!" He looked everywhere in the street. The entire street was going toward Sagarmatha Hill, going east. They were running.

"RUN!" It was the leader of the loonies, the one almost at the base of the steps. He looked like some sort of obscure Sherpa.

"
NIJAMBA!
"

He wasn't.

The tall Northern Chinese yelled in desperation—

The blond one yelling Nijamba! yelled, "The money—"

The Northern Chinese yelled back, "
Keep it!
"

Why not? Everyone else was doing it. He ran. They were all running east. The tall Northern Chinese, making the best decision of the morning, decided to do the same.

He ran.

He ran, as fast as hell,
west
.

In Yellowthread Street, O'Yee, with the earphones clamped against his head, turned on the metal detector.

Hurley had said the old gas lines ran north.

North was to the left.

The detector, finding it immediately under the pavement, the depth meter registering exactly three foot six below the surface, went strongly, loudly, "
Ping!
"

Following it, tracking it, sticking to it like glue, the detector as O'Yee walked went firmly, unshakably, "Ping, ping, ping, ping . . ."

He passed through the crowd. The crowd were peasants, also-rans. He passed through them as if they were nothing. They broke and gave him room as he sped by on winged feet, as a god passed through mortal men. He was Zen. He was running itself. Everything was working. He knew he was doing it—his brain was working. His brain knew he was doing it. His brain, like a kind wife, had given his legs and his lungs permission to do it and she was there beside him urging him on. Someone loved him. His brain loved him. His brain, as he slipped through the seething mass of poor, second-rate humanity going slapaslappaslappa on their bare feet while his gilded extremities went swish, cried in exhortation and love, "Ahh . . . !" He heard someone say in Cantonese, "Look at him!" and his brain looked and saw that it was good. He was at the base of the steps, Sagarmatha— Everest. He said merrily, "Ha, ha." He flicked his head. He wished he had had a pencil-thin mustache and pirate clothes. His brain could have arranged it. His brain was on his side. Auden said, "No, it's all right." Good old brain. Kind old brain. He saw the Tibetan laugh with a careless laugh. Auden said carelessly, "Ha, ha!" He was on Sagarmatha Hill. Sagarmatha Hill was as nought. He was going up the stairs, higher and higher. He counted. Step number twenty-one, twenty-two, twenty-three, twenty-five—he bounded two steps at a time—twenty-seven, twenty-nine—he was going where no man had gone before. He cried at full throat, his battle cry, "A Wang!" Fuck Wang. He cried, "Auden! I'm Phil Auden!"

"Ranjit! Ranjit Gopol!" The Tibetan had the money in his hand.

"I can do it! I can do it!"

"You can! I knew you could!" The Tibetan, grinning, his eyes bright and shining and admiring, yelled, "You're a noble fellow— I could tell from the first!"

"I am!" Auden, drawing level, yelled, "I keep myself fit!"

"Me too! I climb Mount Everest when I'm at home!"

"I go to the gym Wednesdays and Fridays!"

"I rang up about P.C. Wang this morning—he's been discharged! It wasn't a coronary at all—it was indigestion!" The Tibetan, turning his head, catching Auden's eye as they ran shoulder to shoulder, said, "Phil—is it?"

"Yes!"

"I think it's very unfair that someone else has gotten into all this!"

Auden shouted back, "I've been shot too!"

"You took it bravely!"

"So did you!"

The Tibetan, grinning, showing off, yelled, "Three steps at a time!" The steps weren't even there anymore. They were pebbles.

Auden yelled, "Three at a time!" He went up three at a time— Auden yelled, "Four at a time!"

"Sherpas are short! Our legs aren't as long as yours!"

"Stay on three then!"

The Sherpa yelled, "Lope!"

They loped.

The Sherpa yelled, "I love this! I live for this!" The Sherpa yelled, "Phil, watch this!" He turned in midair, pirouetted, spun. The Sherpa yelled, "Want to try it?"