Frogmouth (4 page)

O'Yee said, "None."

"Suicides!"

O'Yee shook his head.

Lim said, "Bad accidents! You know, people falling down and cracking their heads and their spirits coming back to—" Lim said in self-criticism, "Right. If they weren't dead, they wouldn't come back as spirits." It was how detectives worked things out: a step at a time. Lim, hitting it, said, "It's like
The Exorcist
—-it's the psychokinetic outpourings of a girl in that most spiritually traumatic of all times, puberty!" He looked happy. Lim said, "There aren't any girls in puberty around here, are there?" Lim said gently, "I don't suppose . . . I don't suppose we could both be imagining it, could we?"

. . . Creak . . . herk . . . AAARRAGAH—
Wah!

RAAAHHGGG! . . .
Whoomph!

Lim said sadly, "No."

8:31
A.M.

In Old Himalaya Street, he was ready.

Auden said softly, "I'm ready." He looked across from the lane to where Spencer was being inconspicuous looking into the window of an empty shop next to the Russo Harbin Hong Kong Trading Bank and said softly to any part of his anatomy that might be listening, "I'm ready."

He wondered what odds Spencer had gotten. They were probably . . . reasonable . . . Auden said softly, "Bring on the Tibetan Tornado."

8:32
A.M.
He looked at the clock on the wall of the bank. He wasn't going to have long to wait.

He kept himself fit.

He looked after himself.

"A Wang! A Wang!" He peered out around the end of the lane and saw Sagarmatha Hill.

Auden said to his body, "
I can do this!
I-can-do-this!"

8:33
A.M.

He sat down with his back against a wall and his head in his hands to have a little rest before he did it.

In Pets' Corner, Yat looked at him. Yat was a short, bald Southern Chinese in his fifties who, like all Hong Kong businessmen, no doubt spoke perfect English. He blinked. All around him the police and his keepers were laying out dead animals in rows. Looking hard at Feiffer he shook his head.

Feiffer said in Cantonese, "Do you employ a nightwatchman?"

Nothing made sense, not the English, not the question, not anything. Yat said, "No." He tried hard to understand the question. He did not understand anything. His two keepers were his two teenage sons, neither of them very good at school and, like the other children who came to the park, merely happy to be with animals. The animals in Pets' Corner were dogs and a Manx cat, flightless rhea chicks, doves, lambs, a donkey and two tiny Shetland ponies. They wandered free. In the cages around the ark and the kiosk were barn owls and a pelican, peacocks and more doves and pigeons. They were all dead. They were fur and feathers in mounds on the ground. Yat, still shaking his head to the question, said, "No." At the dead donkey the white-coated government vet, like the policeman, a tall, fair-haired European, was bending down doing something with what looked like a pair of forceps. The donkey was dead: it felt no pain from the glittering instrument. Yat said, "Everything's dead."

The cages where the birds had been, like the others in the main body of the park, had been broken into. The locks on the wired gates or grilles were tiny, cheap Japanese padlocks that had been yanked off with the knife that had gutted the donkey. The barn owl had been in a cage by the refreshments kiosk. The lock there must have been a little stronger or the wooden door frame newer: there were score marks where the knife had been slipped in and wrenched back and forth until it gave.

At the donkey, the vet, standing up, said something in English to one of the uniformed cops, and the cop, looking down with a strange expression on his face, nodded and then looked away.

The cop, walking across, said in a whisper, "He says it's one person." He looked at Yat. On his khaki shirt the cop had the name Lee on a plate in English and Chinese characters. He had a little colored flash on his shoulder showing he spoke English. Yat also spoke English. He could not remember the words. The cop said in Chinese to the man asking him all the questions, "He says it was all done by one person." The uniformed cop had children: you could tell by his face. The cop, jerking his head back toward the main park, said in Cantonese, "He says one person would have been able to drag the crocodile over the fence." He looked down at his hands, but not at Yat. He had been here with his children, Yat could tell. The cop said, "The government vet says, so far, there's no evidence of sexual assault." He looked away.

"Do you have any enemies who might do this?"

Yat said, "What?" Everything was dead, everything. Yat said in Cantonese, "I'm sorry, but I don't—" Yat said helpfully, "Maybe the kiosk was—"

"No. It wasn't touched."

"I keep money in there—"

"It's intact." Feiffer, reaching out, putting his hand on the man's shoulder to get his attention, said, "The kiosk hasn't been touched."

They didn't move. They lay there torn to pieces; they were all just feathers and gray fur and they did not move—they were piles of useless feathers and fur—and they . . .
and they were all dead
! Yat said, "They're all dead! All of them! They're all dead!" He looked and he saw his two sons in their keepers' uniforms and they were not real keepers at all but only his two boys who liked animals and they looked dressed up and they were weeping by the dead donkey looking down at what the vet was doing and he— Yat said, "People come here to be happy! They come here— it's for children! Children—" Yat said, "Was it a person?"

"Yes. It was someone acting alone."

"They're tame! All the animals are tame!" He knew all their names. They all had names. Yat, starting to turn to see all the dead things on the ground, chopping at the air with his hand to find words, said, starting to shake, 'They're all tame. They all come up to children and they're all tame . . . They—" He asked suddenly, "Who did this? Have you found him? Ask him why he did this!" He was turning, looking. He looked down at the ground. "Look for footprints, for—for—"

"The rain washed everything away that might have been here."

"Then look for—look for—" He was still chopping the air, bringing his hands together as if he wanted to clap hard at the air and, with the sound, dispel something. He could not get his hands together. "Then—then—" He saw the vet bend down over the donkey and take something out from his bag to take a specimen. Yat said, "Sexual assault—are you crazy? What are you talking about?
Are you crazy?
" The hand-painted sign on the owl's cage read in English and Chinese and Urdu,
MR. SCHOLARLY OLD OWL WHO KNOWS SECRETS
. Yat, turning, wanting to get away, finding no way out, seeing only all the things on the ground, all

the uniforms, all the instruments and plastic bags, his two boys dressed up to go out crying as if he had somehow spoiled their day, said, "Knives and—
how was this done
?"

"With an iron bar and a knife." At the kiosk, Constable Yan, watching Lee with the vet, began to walk over toward the two keepers to take their statements. The kiosk was in the shape of Noah's Ark. It sold soft drinks and ice cream for children. Feiffer said, "It happened during the rain. Nothing else had been touched except the animals and the locks on their cages." By the kiosk there was what looked like a white painted rock that was being removed a section at a time by chipping. He had brought his son here once. He knew what the rock had been. Feiffer said, "And the Wishing Chair has been smashed."

"It was the dog's area. It was where Wai the dog waited so children making wishes could pat him. 'Wishing Chair—Wai Will Grant Wishes For Good Children.' It's written on the sign." He asked, "Where is he? Where's Wai?"

"He's dead too."

Yat said, "He was a nice old dog. He was thirteen years old. He belonged to my two boys." His eyes were filling with tears. The pain in his stomach and behind his eyes was, somehow, getting longer and more exquisite: it was a pain that had nowhere to go, would not abate, and to which there would be no end. Yat said, "He lost all his teeth and he couldn't eat meat and he used to eat the soft sweets and sandwiches children brought him and—"

Feiffer said softly, "I'm sorry."

"Children made wishes on that chair! Most of the time—when you heard them whisper to their parents what they had wished for—they had wished for Wai!" Yat said, "He had no teeth! Someone—he would have come up to someone hoping for a pat and he—" Yat, his eyes staring, said in sudden English, "Who's done this?
Who's done this?
" Yat said, "They're not worth anything, the animals—they're just ordinary animals! They're tame. They just came up to you and they—" He saw his boys' faces. "It made people happy!" Yat said, "It made me happy! I was an accountant for a shipping company, I made a lot of money from it. I make nothing from this, but it—" Yat said suddenly, "Look! Those two keepers—they're not keepers at all! They're my children! I was an accountant! Now I work in a kiosk selling sweets and listening to wishes and I—" Everything, everything was dead. Yat said, "Look! Look!" He took Feiffer by the shoulder and turned him to look back through the trees in the main area down one of the walks, "That's the city! That's the city of Hong Kong! Look! Look at it! There are no trees or birds or animals or wishes there, all there are are accountants and companies and— People came here to be happy!" Yat said suddenly calmly, "I was an accountant before. Before, when my two boys didn't even know who I was, I was an accountant." He nodded, "Basic value of assets in zoo: sixty-four animals and birds, common species; buildings: various, no sale value; land: three and one-third acres: reclaimed from sea for parking area, found to be unsuitable for building without unacceptable level of capital investment; present value of business: nil; trained staff: none." Yat said softly, I was a man making a lot of money." He looked across to his two sons. "I was dying little by little." He asked, not to Feiffer, but to the decision he had made a long time ago, "Who would have done this?"

"I don't know."

"Who doesn't have wishes?"

The vet, standing up, moved on to the gutted Shetland ponies by the donkey.

Feiffer said softly, "I don't know." He had been there with his son himself.

Yat was weeping, shaking. He had nowhere to look. He looked steadily at the silhouettes of all the buildings and the smog and slightly blue mist of the city of Hong Kong through the trees. Only the Wishing Chair had been smashed. All the animals and birds were dead.

WISHING CHAIR—WAI WILL GRANT WISHES FOR GOOD CHILDREN.

Yat said, "I'm sorry, I'm sorry." He was weeping, smiling, trying to apologize.

Yat said softly, apologetically, "I'm sorry, I'm sorry, I can't talk anymore. I want to be with my two boys."

Everything, all the wishes, were dead.

Still moving his hands in front of him, a short, balding man in his fifties, still trying to clap the air to make it all go away, still weeping, he began to walk slowly toward his two sons dressed up as keepers trying to think of what to say to them.

At the going down of the sun we will remember them.

You didn't have to. At the beginning of the day they were rising out of their graves to visit.

You couldn't have a haunted wall. Yes, you could. In
Poltergeist
, for God's sake, you had a haunted television set. In
The House That Dripped Blood
you probably even had haunted fuseboxes. In the Detectives' Room all the phones were ringing. There was no one on the line. Oh, yes there was, but it was the wrong line. It was the line to The Pit. Down in the pit, in the wall, the pendulum with the scythe on the end—the one that took off Vincent Price's head in the last reel—was going, "Whoomp, whoomph, whoommp" as it swung slowly back and forth, back and forth, back and forth . . .

"RAAAHHGG!"

Something in The Pit didn't like it.

Or It did.

"—Wah!"

Yep, it liked it. It loved it. There was a cackle, a roar and then, as virgins' heads rolled like cauliflowers somewhere between the brick, the masonry, the plaster and the peeling green paint, there was a hissing sound, then a gasp and then . . .

All the phones stopped ringing. All the phones started howling.

"RAAH-HA!"

It didn't like it: it loved it. There was thumping, pulsing, roaring. Grabbing on to the side of his desk, waiting for the wind that would stick them both to the ceiling, Lim with his hand upraised in the traffic policeman's Number One Stop Signal, yelled, "Go! In the name of God and all the angels in heaven I command you to GO!" It didn't work. You had to be a Christian. He was a Buddhist. Lim, as the sound of a lost soul with a sledgehammer came banging off the wall, yelled to O'Yee at the top of his voice, "Sir, sir, you're Irish! Say something Catholic!"

O'Yee said, "Oh, Jesus—"

The Thing inside the wall said, "RAAH-HO!"

Lim said, "Say something else! You've got him on the run!"

The wall was dripping slime. It wasn't slime. It was still condensation. It was very slimy condensation. It fell onto the dead fly and made it glisten. There was a flash of lightning and the fly was luminous. O'Yee said, "Oh, God . . . oh, God . . ." O'Yee said, "I'm a married man!"

"Command it!" You needed a voice like Rod Steiger. O'Yee, his glasses fogged, had a voice more like Rod Steiger's cat. Lim, waving his arms around, thinking he was going forward, but in fact going backward, ordered the wall, "Be still!"

The wall ordered him back, "AAARRGG—
wah!
" The wall, getting hold of the pendulum and swinging it like an axe, went, "Boom! Boom! Boom!"

Lim yelled, "Sir!" Lim yelled, "Sir! Do something! A cross! Get a cross!" The Thing—The Force—was lifting Lim off his feet and then dropping him back down again. No, it wasn't. He was hopping up and down. Lim, hopping, yelled as the wall, moving onto higher things, began screaming at them like a woman having her throat cut, shrieked, "Sir! Mr. O'Yee, goddamn it—
you're the senior officer around here, not me
!"

"Boom, boom, boom, boom! Aaarrrgg—wah! Aaiiyaaa!"