He went back in the bedroom, swiftly packed the Gurkha bag, zipped it up and took it back to the living room. Then he returned to the bedroom.
Ginia was still sleeping. He stared down at her.
The past was tapping his shoulder. What the Chinese called the ch’uang tzu-chi, the window to oneself, was open.
What ghosts were waiting back there to wring his soul?
Hatcher had thought Hong Kong and Bangkok were history. Upriver and the lair of the Ts’e K’am Men Ti.
The White Palm Gang and the Chiu Chaos. Tollie Fong, Sam-Sam Sam and White Powder Mama. Fat Lady Lau’s,
Cohen.
Bangkok.
And Daphne.
Names he had tried to forget and couldn’t.
He had tried to put them away, but they were all his yesterdays, the sum of his life.
Sloan had returned like the devil crawling up out of Hades, extending a long, bony finger to him, beckoning him back to the dark places that even 126 did not talk about, places seeded with hatred and death.
Going back really didn’t have much to do with Sloan, or with the names he’d dredged up — Buffalo Bill or Murph
Cody. It was time to go back, time to close out some unfinished chapters in his life. Time to pay the fiddler.
He sat down on the bed and began to rub Ginia’s back. She stirred and rolled over on her stomach. He got some moisturizer and began to massage her. For a moment the thought occurred to him that he was going to miss her, and the thought annoyed him because missing was like remembering. Hatcher had never missed anyone before in his life. It didn’t fit the pattern. It could be distracting, and that could be dangerous, screw up the old clicks, pull you out of the shadows into sunlight, where he knew he didn’t belong.
‘Attachments can be fatal,’ Sloan had said once. ‘They put your mind in the wrong place at the wrong time.’
Funny how often 126 and Sloan disagreed. What was it old 126 used to say? A man who has forgotten how to cry is dead inside.
He dismissed the thought, kneading his fingers into her shoulders and then up to her neck, moving along her arms to her finger-tips and stretching each one, massaging it with cream, then back to her sides and down to her hips. She groaned very faintly and spread her legs slightly. He put one leg between hers, pulled her down against it and, leaning forward into her, started to massage her neck again.
‘Hurry home,’ she whispered.
CIRILLO
Hatcher waited near the marina parking lot, listening to the night birds courting one another in the darkness, their melodies echoing across the broad, flat marsh. It was past midnight and the causeway leading to the mainland was almost deserted. Five miles away on the other side of the marsh, the lights of Brunswick twinkled like fireflies. He had one more task to finish before he left on his journey. He had said his good-bye to Ginia and now he waited in the dark, the briefcase sitting beside his leg.
A pair of headlights appeared far down the causeway and gradually grew larger as a car approached the docks. It turned off the narrow two-lane blacktop that connected the island with the rest of the world. The tan-and-brown police car, its tires crunching on the oyster-shell drive, stopped beside Hatcher. The door swung open.
Hatcher peered in at the beefy police officer in the brown uniform, a gold lieutenant’s bar twinkling on the open collar of his starched shirt. Jim Cirillo was a muscular man, deeply tanned, his black hair salted gray by time and sun. Powerful hands rested casually on top of the steering wheel.
‘You lookin’ to get busted for loitering?’ his deep voice drawled.
‘Yeah,’ Hatcher answered with a grin. He got in beside the cop. Cirillo dropped the stick into drive and wheeled out of the lot, turning back across the drawbridge and onto the island. Tall oak trees with Spanish moss hanging from their limbs like gray icicles arched the narrow roads. This was Cirillo’s time. He was a night person who preferred to sleep and fish in the daytime. They drove in silence for a few minutes.
‘Sloan found me,’ Hatcher finally croaked.
‘So? You don’t owe him,’ Cirillo answered with a shrug.
‘That’s right,’ Hatcher answered.
‘If anything, he owes you.’
‘Yeah.’
And Hatcher thought to himself, I owe you a lot, Jimmy. Cirillo had been surrogate father, friend, teacher and confidant, had even arranged his appointment to Annapolis.
A small mule deer hardly any bigger than a Great Dane darted across the road in front of them and dashed off into the woods.
‘Sloan wants me to do a job for him,’ Hatcher said.
‘No kidding,’ Cirillo snorted, slowing the car and shining his spotlight in the window of a tiny bait shack. Satisfied that the place was secure, Cirillo drove on.
‘I’m going to have to do it, Jimmy,’ Hatcher whispered in his strange cracked voice.
Cirillo drove for a few moments, then said, ‘Okay.’
‘It hasn’t got anything to do with Sloan,’ Hatcher went on.
‘Okay.’
‘A classmate of mine at Annapolis was supposedly killed in Nam in 1973. Apparently he’s turned up alive in Bangkok. It’s a touchy situation.’
‘And you’re the only one that can find him?’
‘I’m the only one who knows the subject — and who Sloan trusts.’
‘And do you trust him?’
‘Never again.’
‘You believe this story?’
‘Enough to find out.’
‘Lot of devils over there waiting to be dredged up,’ Cirillo said quietly.
‘Yeah,’ Hatcher answered.
‘Is that part of it, Hatch?’
They drove quietly. Hatcher thought about the question and said, ‘That’s part of it. Been off the wire too long, too.’
‘A real seductive lady, danger is.’
‘Yeah. Well you’re the one who introduced me to her.’
Driving through the overhanging moss, Cirillo was remembering that day on the mountain. ‘You looked pretty good that day,’ he said. ‘To tell you the truth, I never thought you’d do it. That was the day I decided you might turn into something.’
From Cirillo, Hatcher had learned a sense of obligation and duty, a simple code of honour, but a code easily exploited by a man like Sloan. The irony was that Cirillo had joined the Boston SWAT Squad at almost the same time Sloan had proselytized Hatcher. Like flies, both men were drawn into a web of violence that would shape their lives for years to come. Now both had come to this island to break the patterns.
Hatcher broke into both men’s silent reverie. ‘I need to check out the Aug, make sure it’s A-1.’
‘You need an Aug to look for a guy in Bangkok?’ Cirillo said, obviously surprised.
‘I’ve got a lot of enemies between here and Bangkok.’
‘So make your peace with them.’
‘It’s a nice thought,’ Hatcher said. ‘There’s only one way to make peace with some of these people.’
‘Then I guess you’ll have to do that, too,’ said Cirillo.
‘I hope not,’ Hatcher said. ‘You’ll keep an eye on the boat?’
‘I got the key. Any way I can reach you?’
Hatcher thought for a moment. “The Oriental Hotel in Bangkok. Just leave a message for me.’
‘Right.’ Cirillo paused and added, ‘You’re not a little too rusty for this kind of stuff, are you, kid?’
Hatcher thought for a few moments and shook his head. ‘I don’t think so,’ he said.
BUFFALO BILL
It was raining in Washington, a steady spattering downpour from a cold leaden sky that etched teardrops down the black polished face of the memorial. The rain collected in the shallow letters chiseled into the stone, overflowed and dribbled erratically down to the floor of the chevron scar in Constitution Gardens. There, memories of the fallen had been placed: a purple heart, a vase of daisies, the tattered photograph of a perfectly restored ‘56 Chevy, a now soggy worn teddy bear.