Frogmouth (5 page)

All the phones started ringing again.

Herk, herk, herk . . .

The lightning flashed in the window and lit up the lucky dead fly-

"YAAASHH!" Flash. "Boom!" It was trying to tell them something. It was trying hard. "Naaarragg!" Maybe it was The Secret. Maybe it was— "Grr—rah! . . . creak . . ." It reached a crescendo. It made its point. It got their attention. It was the moment. The wall said clearly and distinctly, suddenly, "Twenty-eight! Twenty-eight!
Twen-ty-eight!
"

All right then. O'Yee, nodding, happy, said, "Anything you say."

"TWENTY-EIGHT!" It seemed content. It had said it.

O'Yee said, "Right!" He took charge. He knew what to do.

Like the wall, completely, utterly, totally, he fell deep-grave and white-haired, inanimately, frozen, stiff, dead . . . silent.

"Probably some sort of Malay parang or a machete—and the good old reliable iron bar." At one of the dead Shetland ponies, the government vet, Dr. Hoosier, pushing his glasses back onto his nose with a surgically gloved finger said softly, "Dead about four to five hours." The creature, fully grown but the size of a stuffed toy, had had roan markings on its flanks and legs. "You can see here on the skull where something was brought down across the area slightly above the right ear transversely over the skull and then skipped off onto the muzzle, removing the eye with a sharp edge." He pushed at the top of the skull. It was soft and broken. "And then a second blow coming directly upon the first, before the animal had time to move—shattered the upper teeth and knocked the creature toward the left onto its side. Then, as it was falling, the first of the incisions was made, badly, in a hurry, slicing the surface derma of the shoulder and then, when the animal was on the ground, the cutting and stabbing continued in the belly in a frenzy." Hoosier, running his fingers down the torn flesh and exposing a length of intestine, said, "It would have taken about ten to fifteen seconds. The first blow would have killed by impacting the brain against the hard interior of the skull and the secondary stabbing wounds—" He looked at Feiffer's face. He said formally, tonelessly, "—the secondary stabbing wounds were done after the bar was dropped and the second weapon drawn as an unstoppable reaction."

"Are you saying it was a psycho?"

"I'm saying it was done methodically cage by cage, enclosure by enclosure." Hoosier said, "The animals and birds in the farthermost areas of the park were done first and then, judging by the fact that the stab wounds and the blows seem to increase in force as they get to this area, whoever did it worked his way systematically up here." He looked across to the donkey lying with its guts spilled out on the roadway like a hose. "The donkey was killed first because the blows and the incisions are still comparatively weak, and then—in my opinion—the frenzy took full hold until it culminated with the dog." He said, glancing up with no expression on his face at all, "The dog has no contusive wounds at all. It probably jumped up onto the person and was stabbed to the heart with a single thrust." He said quickly, "I doubt it attacked whoever did it. It's a Labrador of great age with advanced hip displasia and what appears from the joint swellings to be arthritis and, more importantly, it didn't have any teeth left." He was a tall, athletically built man with what sounded like the remnants of a Canadian or American accent. Hoosier said, "I've never seen anything like it." He said, "It was raining last night. I assume that the rain washed away anything that might be useful to you."

"Yes."

Hoosier said, "Whoever did it didn't get wet. They had an umbrella." He had something in a plastic bag in his hand. It was a scrap of what looked like umbrella fabric. Hoosier said, "I found it in the barn owl's cage. The owl must have been awake, it must have seen what came into its cage and tried to hit it." He handed over the bag. "Judging by the way it's ripped, I think the owl must have thought it was some part of its attacker's body and hit it with its talons." He said, again matter-of-factly, "The owl was cut in two. I'm only guessing, but I think its attacker put up his arm to ward it off with the parang or machete or whatever it was held parallel and the owl flew into it."

Feiffer said softly, "Thanks very much." He glanced back to Yat and his two sons and then to Constables Lee and Yan by the kiosk. They were all silent, like stone, looking away. Feiffer said, "Thank you very much."

Hoosier said, "I came here once or twice myself." He smiled an odd, thin smile, "—funnily enough in my profession, for the trees." He said, "And there's one other thing." It was next to his attache case full of instruments. It was not in a plastic bag, but simply lay there. "I found this in the owl's cage too." He reached down and handed it to Feiffer with a shrug. "It's a feather. It isn't an owl's feather and it isn't from any of the other birds I've examined or any bird listed on the nameplates of any of the cages." He shrugged again. "It's a single wing feather from a bird approximately twelve to fourteen inches long showing no signs of violent removal." He handed it over. "It's a funny color. It looks, in its coloring, like nothing so much as a piece of burned, very dry wood." He said, "I think a bird expert would describe it as woodlands hot climate camouflage marked." Hoosier said, "I hate this. I'm used to dead animals and animals suffering, but, in a place like this out in the open, I hate it. I hate it because all the people who aren't used to it have to see it." He reached down and touched at the pony's mane and stroked it. Hoosier said, "Whoever did this carried an umbrella so he wouldn't get wet. I'm glad for him. Getting a cold after all this would be just too bad, wouldn't it?"

"What sort of bird is the feather from?"

"I have no idea at all." He was still stroking the pony's mane.

In Yat's Animal and Bird Life Park and Children's Zoo of Kwai Chung Street Feiffer said for the third time to the man's bland, expressionless face, "Thanks very much."

He looked down at the feather in his hand.

He wondered what ghastly awful thing had happened here during the night and the rain.

He wondered about the Wishing Chair.

It was only 8:36
A.M.
, only the first beginnings of the day.

He wondered what sort of creature the odd, burned, camouflaged feather had come from.

It spoke English.

It hadn't said in Cantonese, "Yee shap part," it had said 'Twenty-eight."

The wall in the Detectives' Room, for better or worse, spoke English.

8:36
A.M.
In the sky, everywhere, there was lightning.

W
ell, it was too late to give up smoking today.

One cigarette wouldn't make any difference. He needed it to calm his nerves.

Spencer had taken them and put them in the car with his gun. He had also taken the keys to the car. Enough was enough. Auden, like the barons at Runnymede, starting to complain, said under his breath . . .

Auden said, "
Oh my God!
" King John had gotten word and he had gotten Merlin—

Wrong king.

—or Nostradamus, or—

Wrong country.

—or John Dee.

Wrong century—

He had gotten his magician to shoot a bolt of lightning down the street toward the bank. It was the Tibetan Tornado. Auden said, "Oh my God, oh my God, oh my God—" There was a man dressed in a light summer suit at the autobank, pulling his money out of the slot. It was a lot of money. Auden read on the side of the bank
RUSSO HARBIN HONG KONG TRADING BANK, AUTOBANK.
The man was wearing a light summer suit. Coming toward the man at the speed of sound there was a blur, a flashing, a spinning circle of running legs. The legs belonged to the Tibetan. Auden, his mouth hanging open, still framed in the first syllables of, "Give me the keys for the car—" said, not through his mouth, but in a direct line from his speech center, bypassing the mouth to every atom of his body, "Oh my God!" The Tibetan had a face and a body: you couldn't see it in the blur. The man in the summer suit was looking down the road. His coat was flapping as the air around him was sucked up around the Tornado and slipstreamed back past his piston pumping arms.

"PHIL!"

Auden said, "Who?" His mouth was still dribbling on about a cigarette. Auden said, "Oh." He thought it took a long time. It didn't. The words didn't make it. His brain had locked in the job of keeping him upright on the pavement. It was a full-time job for his brain. Auden said, "Oh."
Phil
. That was him. A Wang! That meant something too. His brain just didn't have the time to waste on trivia. Auden, as the Tornado, gathering speed, outstretched his hand like some sort of stiffened battering ram on the castle door that was going to go like matchwood, said to Spencer, to his brain, to anyone who might listen, "I'm—I'm—" Auden said, "Ohh!"

He wasn't moving. He was biding his time. Spencer, reaching for his stopwatch as the Tornado covered the last six feet between him and the man at the autobank in less time than it took to think about it, yelled, "Good! Good! Wait for him! Use strategy! Good! Good!"

The Tibetan hit the man at the bank. The man at the bank didn't know what hit him.

Spencer screamed, "Two seconds! It took him two seconds to cover the—" Runners, like race car drivers, weren't morons: they needed to know scientifically what they were up against. Spencer, holding up his stopwatch to show it was no wild guess, yelled, "Good! Hold your ground until he—"

The man wearing the light suit at the bank shrieked, "MY MONEY!"

He was holding his ground all right. He couldn't move. Somewhere there was the vague memory of having agreed to something, but his brain must have decided he had done it when he was drunk or incapable and, busy with its own problem of wondering why his body wanted to fall down, it had filed it away in one of the synaptic backwaters and forgotten about it.

Auden said, "Ack . . . ack . . ."

". . . and GO!" He had underestimated Auden. He was good. He was standing his ground looking relaxed with his mouth held slack and he was simply watching the Tornado come toward him and there wasn't an ounce, not an iota of nervousness about him. Bannister, Landy, Zapec—all of them, they had that greatness about them, that cool, calmness that— He was going to move, wasn't he?

The man at the bank yelled, "MY MONEY!"

Spencer yelled, "
Phil!
"

He was grinning. He was a thin little man in a khaki shirt and khaki shorts and no shoes and he was grinning. Auden stared at him. He was coming like a whirlwind. He had good teeth and short, wavy hair. Where his legs should have been there was a sort of spinning thing. He was a Tibetan. You could tell he was a Tibetan because he looked . . . Tibetan. Well, that solved that one. Auden, his brain happy, going back to its main work of getting his heart to keep working, said, "Right." The Tibetan was almost upon him. It would be nice if he said hullo in Tibetan as he went by because that would settle it once and for all and he could put in his report
Tibetan
. Well, that solved it. Auden, thinking his body was turning around to go back down the lane to have a bit of a rest after all that hard work and not moving an inch, said somewhere in the dark busy brain recesses, "Good."

"
PHIL!
"

Auden merely smiled at him.

The Tornado reached him in a sonic boom that swayed him. Auden, staring at him wide-eyed as he went by, said pleasantly, "Um—"

"MY MONEY!"

Auden said, still smiling, "The Tibetan's got it." He looked for the rockets on the Tibetan's feet.

"THAT'S HIM, PHIL!" Spencer, aghast, shrieked as the Tibetan passed on his way to the hill and Auden merely nodded knowingly at him, "Phil, don't be sporting! Don't give him a start! Get him now!"

It wasn't whether you won or lost, it was how you played the game. He had heard that somewhere. He couldn't think where. He tried to think where. His brain couldn't be bothered. Auden said to his brain, "No?" and his brain said back, "No." Auden said—

"A Wang! A Wang!"

It was Spencer. Auden said, still smiling, numb . . .

The Tibetan going past in a blast of air that hurt his ears, shrieked in English, "Number One! Number One hill climber!" He was going for the ninety-degree barrier of stone and brick at the end of the street that masqueraded as Sagarmatha Hill. The Tibetan, chortling, yelled, "Number One dumb cop scarer!" He had the money gripped in one of his pistoning hands. The Tibetan yelled, "Fat, useless European!"

Auden said, "WHAT?"

"Phil! Phil! RUN!"

Auden said, "WHAT!"

His brain, unused to all the concentrated work, went
bang
!

Auden said, "
Fill your hands you sonofabitch!
"

Spencer shrieked, "Phil!
Run!
"

By God—

By God—

The Tibetan, going for the hill, called back over his shoulder, "Ha, ha, ha, ha!
Fatso!
"

By God—

Auden yelled to his brain, "You!" His brain went
pop
! He called on his body. It was there.

Auden yelled, "By God—"

Spencer yelled, "
Run!
"

By God, in that instant, Auden—

By God, he—

With the Tibetan traveling away from him toward the hill at something approaching Mach One, Auden, only waiting for the right moment, biding his time, Auden the Great, Sir Phillip Auden Coeur de Lion, Auden the Magnificent—Auden the
Mortified
—ran!

Far out over the harbor there was a single bird wheeling and hunting above the shoals of fish moving to deeper water on the changing tide. Sailing and then turning to gain height, then stalling and circling over the water, it was a silhouette against the glittering morning sun on the water, at that distance too far away to identify. On Beach Road, traveling east, Feiffer saw it execute a thirty-degree roll on soundless wings and side-slip down, then, missing something or not seeing something it has seen from higher up, slide out of the roll on an invisible rising current of air and flap to catch another current.

Often, watching the birds, he had merely watched the birds. It was the Bambi syndrome, the legacy of Walt Disney anthropomorphic pretenses that little lambs and birds and baby animals had names and lived, like Badger in
Wind in the Willows
, in little underground houses with their tweed jackets and hats on pegs behind their armchairs as they sat reading the Sunday paper. It was the pretense that the family cat could be spoken to like a baby and did not, at night, kill and slash and torture anything it caught for the sport of it.