Yellowthread Street (11 page)

‘You guys,’ Mrs Skilbeck said with undisguised dissatisfaction, ‘You guys are nuts! Do you know that?’

‘We know,’ O’Yee said.

‘It’s three o’clock in the morning,’ Mrs Skilbeck said. ‘Doesn’t that mean anything to you people?’ She paused on the steps of the police station. A telephone inside rang insistently.

‘Someone keeps telephoning me,’ Feiffer said. He was thinking about the gangsters. He said, ‘I keep hanging up.’

Mrs Skilbeck looked at him. She did not pause, she stopped. She said with feeling, ‘You people are nuts. The only one of you people who isn’t nuts is that little Chinese girl.’ She stormed into the Police Station where Minnie Oh held an enormous Webley .455 revolver trained on the front door. She held it up with two hands and aimed it at the middle of Mrs Skilbeck’s forehead.

She said fiercely, ‘I’m ready. Let them come.’

Mrs Skilbeck went limp.

‘It’s all over,’ Feiffer said. He deposited Mrs Skilbeck in a chair. Minnie Oh put down the giant revolver with relief and rubbed painfully at her wrist tendons. She said, ‘It was the only one I could find. No one told me—’

‘O.K.,’ Feiffer said. He said, ‘You better get a cup of tea or something for the lady,’ and went over to hang up his ringing telephone.

He got Spencer and Auden up from the cells where they were giving first aid to The Fourth Gangster and sent them around to Camphorwood Lane on foot.

The Mongolian saw the gangsters come. They came in two black cars and stopped at the western end of Camphorwood Lane. The Mongolian glanced over the parapet of the flat roof on which he lived to the other end of Camphorwood Lane. Two more black cars came and stopped at the eastern end. No one got out. They sat in their cars and orders were given and arranged.

The Mongolian was not sure who they were. Some of the goldsmiths came out of their shops alerted by telephone calls between themselves and they looked at the black cars and smiled. Then they went back inside their shops and drew the blinds and the
CLOSED
signs on their glass doors. They walked past the four black cars, two at either end of the street, and went away. The street went quiet.

Behind the Mongolian, on the roof, half a dozen families slept fitfully on blankets and padded Chinese quilts. A game of Mah-Jong was in progress in the far corner of the area and the white bone tiles went slap! slap! slap! as the players smashed them down zestfully on to a plywood table.

One of the men from the black cars got out and looked up at the roof. He looked back into the front seat of the car and nodded in response to an order. Then someone else in the back of the car handed him an object that he put under his
coat. The object was long and black and it went under the coat snugly. The Mongolian pursed his lips and smiled a faint smile. The man with the black object under his coat came probingly across the street and disappeared into a building next door to the Mongolian’s building. The Mongolian pursed his lips and shook his head in amusement. He went unhurriedly across to the other side of the roof and waited for the man to appear.

‘You people are nuts,’ Mrs Skilbeck said weakly. She put the teacup down on a chair next to hers with disgust. ‘And I don’t like British tea.’

‘It’s Chinese tea,’ Constable Lee said. He smiled ingratiatingly at Minnie, ‘Constable Oh made it for you herself.’

Mrs Skilbeck looked at Constable Oh. She was another nut. Mrs Skilbeck said, ‘No wonder you people can’t find anything.’ She said, ‘I’ve had nothing but humiliating experiences ever since I got to this goddamned place.’

‘We’re very sorry,’ Minnie Oh said sweetly.

‘So am I!’ Mrs Skilbeck said suddenly loudly. Inexplicably, there were tears glistening in her eyes. ‘Where the hell’s my husband?’

‘We’ve had other things on our minds,’ O’Yee said. He thought if Spencer and Auden—
Bill
and
Phil
—weren’t here it behoved someone to defend poor Minnie. ‘We’ve been a little busy arresting criminals.’ He flipped through the papers in the Pending tray absently and read one. He said without changing his tone, ‘Your husband comes up before the Magistrate in the morning.’

‘What?’ Mrs Skilbeck said.

Minnie Oh said, ‘What?’

Constable Lee said—

‘In the morning,’ O’Yee said. ‘Charged with being drunk and disorderly in a common brothel, attempted rape, assaulting a police officer, and resisting arrest.’

‘What?’ Mrs Skilbeck said.

‘In the mornings,’ O’Yee said. The telephone rang and he turned around to pick it up. He said to Feiffer, ‘It’s for you.’ He said, ‘Herman A. Skilbeck, New Jersey, United States of America.’ He said, ‘My parents live in San Francisco.’ He said, ‘We probably won’t proceed with the rape charge.’

‘The rape charge . . .’ Mrs Skilbeck echoed.

‘We won’t proceed,’ O’Yee said. Feiffer said, ‘Feiffer,’ into the phone. He hoped it might be Nicola suffering from insomnia.

‘You can see him in the morning,’ O’Yee said. ‘We won’t oppose a reasonable bail provided he hands in his passport and onward tickets.’

‘Feiffer,’ Feiffer said into the phone for a second time, ‘Hullo?’

‘Oh,’ Mrs Skilbeck said. She picked up the teacup and drank the contents without remembering that Chinese tea disgusted her. ‘Oh,’ Mrs Skilbeck said.

‘Feiffer,’ Feiffer said for the third time, ‘Is there anyone there?’

‘Ha!’ the voice on the other end of the line said in triumph and slammed the receiver down.

‘Oh,’ Mrs Skilbeck said. She got unsteadily to her feet and said uncharacteristically quietly, ‘Oh.’ She gazed at the Police Station interior. She said very softly, ‘Oh.’ She said to Minnie Oh, ‘I think I’ll go home now.’

‘Can we drive you?’ Constable Lee asked sympathetically. Mrs Skilbeck patted him on the shoulder and said, ‘No, thank you, dear,’ then patted him again. She went carefully across the room and down the steps to the sidewalk.

‘We didn’t get her address!’ Constable Lee said. He began to go after her.

Minnie raised her hand to stop him. She understood women. She said, ‘She’ll be back in the morning,’ and then she patted Constable Lee on the shoulder too.

Constable Lee thought he had done something. He wasn’t sure what it was. He wished he knew how to do it again.

The roof next to the flat roof was pitched and uninhabited. The gangster came out there and checked the loads in his sawed off shotgun. He glanced across at the Mah-Jong players and the sleepers, but he didn’t see the Mongolian.

Someone tapped him gently on the shoulder. Shotgun Sen said without turning around, ‘I can’t see him. Got any ideas?’ He thought, ‘Wait a minute, I came up alone—!’

First the Mah-Jong players came out of the building and ran away down the street, then something was thrown over the parapet of the flat roof and landed in the middle of the road near the cars at the western end of Camphorwood Lane, then Hernando Haw identified the something as what was left of Shotgun Sen, then Low Fat said, ‘Bad—’ then the Mongolian opened fire on the two cars with Sen’s sawed off shotgun, then the sleepers and the residents woke and came running out of the building.

The Mongolian stood in full silhouette on the flat roof pumping lead into the street and reloading from Shotgun Sen’s captured belt of cartridges.

Then Constable Cho ran out into the street, collected a charge of twelve-gauge pellets full in the chest and fell over.

Mr Boon scrabbled out of his car and took cover on the protected side of the insubstantial metal from one of Mr Ford’s Asian factories and shouted to his colleagues at both ends of the street, ‘Kill him!’

The Medical Examiner ran out of
Edgar Tan and Company
to give assistance to Constable Cho. A blast of pellets whizzed past him and he stopped. The Mongolian levelled the weapon at him again for a second shot and pressed the trigger. The gun went
click!
The Mongolian reached for another two cartridges. The belt was empty. Doctor Macarthur looked at him. The Mongolian screamed something and threw the shotgun. It landed on the ground next to the Doctor and snapped across the breach. Doctor Macarthur went to Constable Cho. Constable Cho was dead. A singularly nasty-looking Oriental
person went past Doctor Macarthur firing an enormous pistol with a shoulder stock at someone and then another person ran by wielding a lignum vitae club with nails sticking out of it and Doctor Macarthur threw himself flat on the ground and stayed there.

The last of the residents came running out of the building holding screaming children and disappeared around the Lane into Canton Street on their way out of the Second World War. A Japanese shrieking something in Japanese rushed into the building across the street carrying a short sword. Doctor Macarthur heard his war cry inside the building, then the Japanese staggered back out of the building without his sword, holding his arm in his right hand. Doctor Macarthur put his hands over his head and kissed and hugged the roadway. Then something clicked inside his anatomically-qualified mind and he stole a quick second glance at the Japanese arm. The Japanese had dropped it. It lay on the ground still wearing a wrist-watch.

The Japanese shrieked something else in Japanese and lay down next to his arm and died. There were four shots inside the building, then about forty, then another scream, then more shot.

Mr Boon said to Mr Haw, ‘He almost shot me.’

Mr Haw leaned over from his ground-loving position on the sidewalk and said, ‘Yeah.’ He said, highly offended, ‘Me too.’

‘He almost shot me,’ Mr Boon said again.

‘He’s killed Onuki and Sen and the cop,’ Mr Haw said. He said to Low Fat on the ground next to him, ‘Did he kill the cop?’

‘He killed the cop,’ Low Fat said.

‘He almost shot me,’ Mr Boon said. Nothing like this had ever happened to him before and he was very shocked. He said, ‘He almost shot me, Hernando.’

Across the street, the building now housed six very active gangsters and an even more active Mongolian and there was
the sound of much running on its old staircases, much shouting reverberated inside its yellowed wooden walls, and there were more gunshots.

‘Very bad,’ Low Fat said. He said, ‘Not good.’

‘Bad about the cop,’ Hernando Haw said. He said, ‘We’re on the side of law and order now.’

Mr Boon only replied, ‘He almost shot me.’ He put his hand across his eyes in shame and mortification.

The shooting and shouting continued.

Down at the single water tap near the resettlement area in Hop Pei Cove, the first of the trouble started. The first squad of Riot Police put out their cigarettes, donned their helmets, and went in to quell it.

Feiffer’s phone rang. He picked it up and said, ‘Feiffer.’

‘Ah!’ the drunken voice said again, ‘Ah! It’s me.’

‘Who is “me”?’

‘Ha!’ the voice said. It sounded like it was going to be a very basic conversation.

‘Listen, “Ha!” I’m getting more than a little tired of maniacs ringing me up just to say “Ha!”’

‘Ha!’ the voice said, ‘Ha! Ha!’ The voice said, ‘I’m going to get you, Feiffer.’

‘Good for you,’ Feiffer said. He listened for background noises the way blindfolded kidnap victims did in the movies and on television, but there weren’t any background noises: no level crossing bells, no tug boat engines, no sovereigns or pieces of eight clinking away in a nearby gold market, no steam compressor hisses—in fact, none of the things movie and television cops found it impossible to trace phone calls and kidnap victims without. There was only a drunken voice saying, ‘Ha!’ at past three o’clock in the morning.

‘Are there any steam compressors or level crossing bells or tug boats around there?’ Feiffer asked cordially. He thought O’Yee would be better at this than him. He was the movie
buff with the free ticket to a twelve-month sentence of matinees at the Peacock Cinema.

‘What?’ the drunken voice said, ‘Any what?’ He said, ‘Don’t try to trace this call!’

‘I wasn’t going to.’

‘It won’t work!’

Feiffer thought of the response he would get from the Post Office if he tried to get half a dozen of their engineers out of bed in the middle of the night to trace a drunk saying, ‘Ha!’ in a public telephone box. He said, ‘It never does.’

‘That’s sensible of you.’

‘I’m glad you think so.’ He said, ‘Do you happen to speak English?’

‘Of course I do!’

‘O.K.,’ Feiffer said in English, ‘Who was the first Tudor king of England?’

‘What?’

‘I said, if you speak English, what was the name of the first Tudor king of England?’

‘I’m an educated man!’ the drunken voice said, ‘I wasn’t always a—’ He said, ‘I’m an educated man!’

‘O.K.,’ Feiffer said, ‘I repeat, what was the name of the first Tudor king of England?’

‘I learnt all this at school. I went to an English school here before my family fell on—’

‘I can tell,’ Feiffer said. ‘The name of the first Tudor king of England.’

‘Henry the Fourth!’

‘The second?’

‘Henry the Fifth!’

‘The third?’

‘Henry the Sixth!’

‘Wonderful!’ Feiffer said. ‘Just the names will do. The Stuarts.’

‘The Stuarts?’

‘Yes. The name of the first Stuart king.’

‘James!’

‘The name of the second?’

‘Charles!’

‘The name of the third?’

‘Charles again!’

‘The name of the fourth?’

‘James!’

‘Your name?’

‘Lop!’

—there was a pause.

‘Thank you,’ Feiffer said. ‘How is everything in Cat Street these days?’

‘You put the tax man on to me,’ Lop said. His voice was quieter. He said, ‘You put the tax man on to me . . .’

‘Wrong,’ Feiffer said. He said, ‘I’ve enjoyed our little chats. Goodnight.’

And he hung up.

The phone rang again.

‘Listen!’ Feiffer roared into the phone, ‘Do you want to be charged?’

‘Yes, please,’ Nicola said, ‘and I’d like to serve my sentence in bed with you if that’s all right.’

‘Yeah,’ Feiffer said. He let out a breath and calmed. ‘That’s just fine. What would you like to be charged with?’

‘How about simmering sexuality?’

‘You already are,’ Feiffer said.