“Oh, stop dreaming,” Amah said. “We couldn’t afford it, for one thing. And if anything happened to him, who would be the first suspected? Chinese may be running this silly little country now, but it’s always people like us who are blamed for everything.”
“I still think—”
“If you have nothing sensible to say, keep quiet and let me get on with my work.”
After school the next day, Jason agreed without fuss to stay inside. “I’ve got a book I’m supposed to read for homework,” he said, and went to his room. He was still there when Helen looked in, before going out for drinks on the padang with Mrs. Clayton.
An hour later she asked Cookie to tell Jason to have his shower. “I don’t think you’ll have any trouble with him. He seems to have turned over a new leaf.”
Cookie was not sure what this meant, but he felt no reason to share the optimism he detected in her voice. Five minutes later he was back, coughing discreetly.
“Yes, Cookie?”
“Jason gone, mem.”
“The little horror. On his bike, I suppose? I knew I should have got rid of it.”
“Bike not gone, mem.”
“Oh, not the reclamation!” Helen moaned at the nuisance of having to go hunting out there for him again. Then she remembered the previous night’s rain. “It’ll be a swamp!”
“Now don’t fret,” Mrs. Clayton said. “I’m sure he’s perfectly all right.”
“You take that side,” Helen pushed Cookie in the direction of the far end of the sea wall. “I’ll go this way.” She started to run, then turned back to Mrs. Clayton. “The police? Do you think we should call the police?”
“Leave it to me,” Mrs. Clayton said, having no idea what she was supposed to tell the police. “I’m sure there’s no need to panic.”
Jason was terrified when he fell into the mud. Floundering wildly, he quickly sank up to his waist; but he had the sense to keep his hands above his head, and when the mud reached halfway up his chest he found that his feet were on firm ground. He stopped struggling. The mud felt quite pleasant as it slid inside his shirt and pants. He even moved, cautiously testing with his feet, farther away from the hard edge of the swamp, to make it more of a nuisance for those who would have to fish him out. He had no doubt that he could climb free by himself, but he preferred a dramatic rescue.
He had been too shocked to scream at first, and he didn’t scream now. He’d probably been missed by this time, and he liked the idea of people wandering in search of him, among the maze of hillocks where the mud and sand was piled. Why let them know, by shouting, where he was, when it would be much more fun to spin things out? The sun would soon be gone, though, and he didn’t like the thought of being here alone in the dark. He decided to count up to 350, slowly, then start yelling.
He had reached 188 when Cookie appeared from behind one of the hillocks. He smiled at Jason.
“Help me, Cookie.”
Cookie, summing up the situation, did not move for almost a minute. He saw that the boy was safe, not struggling or sinking. Cookie moved forward slowly and stopped when his feet began to sink. He squatted and extended his arm, leaning his whole body towards the boy.
Something in the coldness of the man’s eyes warned Jason. He saw that the curve of his mouth was more a grimace than a smile; the angle of the hand suggested revenge, not rescue. Jason summoned his body into a violent effort, grabbing the hand with both his own. Cookie fell forward. His face hit the mud close to Jason’s head. Jason grasped the collar of Cookie’s shirt and began to climb out, using the desperately heaving body as a ladder. He did not hurry as he felt Cookie’s head and shoulders sinking under his sandals. The body, with the head and the top of the torso well down in the mud, was hardly moving by the time Jason was back on firm ground. For another minute, he watched as Cookie’s feet flopped weakly, seeking a leverage that wasn’t there. When there was no more movement, Jason, screaming for help, ran to find his mother.
Five minutes later, on the darkening padang, Helen clutched her trembling son in her arms.
“Oh, Mother, Mother.” Jason knew that, even dampened by false sobs, his accent was more sharply English than ever as he spoke the rehearsed words: “Oh, Mother, that brave man gave his own life to save mine.”
The Theft of Twenty-Nine Minutes
by Edward D. Hoch
©1994 by Edward D. Hoch
With the explosion of gambling on Indian reservations and in states that previously disallowed it, crime associated with the gaming business is bound to be depicted more frequently in fiction through the rest of this decade. If anyone has his finger on the pulse of crime trends, it’s Edward D. Hoch, whose latest caper for Nick Velvet has the lovable thief behind the scenes of riverboat gambling — another popular new venue for the casino crowd...
This was the final gasp of Mardi Gras and the streets of New Orleans were jammed with costumed revelers. Nick Velvet moved among them unnoticed, even though he wore a fringed cowboy shirt and large white hat, with two guns belted to his waist. He felt a certain invincibility in the carnival crowd, where only the worst of crimes brought forth any police response.
Before long he spotted his target, slipping off one of the elaborate parade floats and ducking into a hotel lobby. Nick followed along, pushing past a bottleneck of veiled harem girls. He glimpsed the man in the skeleton costume just entering the men’s room off the bar. Nick stepped inside, waited an instant while a fat man in a tuxedo departed on his way back to the hotel ballroom. Otherwise he was alone with the skeleton. The man had pushed the mask up on his forehead as he moved to the sink and began washing his hands.
Nick drew one of his pistols and said, “Raise your hands. This is a robbery.”
The man looked at him and laughed. “What?”
“The gun is real. Give me your mask.”
“Are you crazy, mister?”
Nick poked the man’s stomach with the barrel of his six-shooter. “Give me the mask or I’ll ventilate you, partner.”
The man quickly slipped the skull mask from his head and handed it over. “Don’t shoot! Here it is.”
“Thanks. Now finish washing your hands and take your time about it. If you come running after me it might not be so good.” Then Nick was gone, out the door and across the crowded lobby to the street.
An hour later, in a hotel across town, he handed over the mask to the woman who’d hired him. “Here it is, one skull mask.”
She smiled as she opened the plastic bag and checked it out. “Any trouble?”
“No.”
“Good. Here’s the balance of your money. It was a pleasure to work with you, Mr. Velvet.”
“The pleasure was mutual.”
He left the hotel room and counted quickly through the money as he waited in the empty hallway for the elevator. It had been one of the smoothest assignments he’d ever carried out. If they were all that easy—
A stocky man with graying hair had come out of one of the other rooms and was walking toward him down the hall. Nick felt a moment of panic as he sensed something familiar about the man, something from way in the past. “Hello, Nick,” the man said as he reached him. “Nice to see you again.”
“I think you must be mistaken. My name’s Dave.”
The man grinned. “Don’t recognize me, do you? Too many years since our last meeting. I’m Charlie Weston — Lieutenant Weston to you.”
The memories came flooding back. First New York, where Weston had been with the 17th Precinct, then a slower-paced New England police force in Eastbridge, Massachusetts, near Plymouth. Nick had stolen some letters from a sign there, and tangled with Weston again after that, but he hadn’t thought about the man in years. “You’re looking older, Charlie. I didn’t recognize you.”