It wasn’t hard for Li and me to ignore each other because Li flew first class while I settled for tourist, or economy, as the going euphemism had it. When we landed I left a note for Li at the airline’s counter. It told him where to go and when to be there. I took a taxi to the old hotel and walked up a broad flight of stairs to the second floor where Shoftstall and Bourland had rented a large room.
At twenty-six John Bourland was twenty pounds overweight, which wouldn’t have been so bad had it not all settled into a paunch that, because of his small frame, made him look as if he were trying to conceal a soccer ball under his jacket. It was Bourland who answered my knock and greeted me in Mandarin. He still seemed amazed that when he opened his mouth another language might pop out.
“You staying over?” Bourland asked.
“Not if I can help it,” I said.
“How are you, Luci?” Shoftstall said from his prone position on the bed. Tail and lean, Shoftstall had once been a second-string guard on a losing Northwestern basketball team and was considered something of a prodigy in the electrical engineering field, although he had had to hire someone else to take his final examinations in history, English, and political science. I tried not to wince at the Luci, but failed. It didn’t really matter because Shoftstall didn’t notice. He didn’t notice much of anything unless it had a wire connected to it.
“Is all your stuff set?” I said.
“We checked everything out at the office. Perfect.”
“Who’s the pigeon?” Bourland asked.
“Just a man.”
“You want me to help with the questioning?” Bourland said. He was pressing too hard, I thought, and once again wondered what they were teaching them these days in that in-service training program. Not enough, it seemed.
“Just help with the gadgets,” I said.
Shoftstall swung his long legs over the side of the bed and sat up, stretching and yawning mightily. Our nation’s yearning, blue-eyed pride, I remembered from somewhere. Cummings, I decided. Or cummings.
“When’s he due?” Shoftstall asked, yawning again.
“Any minute if you can stay awake.”
Three minutes later there was a rap on the door and I opened it. Li Teh came in quickly, his eyes darting as he catalogued and classified the occupants, the furniture, and the equipment. “This is Mr. Jones,” I said, not trying to be clever, only simple. “My associates.”
Li didn’t even nod at them. “Let’s get on with it,” he said in English.
I nodded at Shoftstall, who moved to a writing desk which held the lie detector in its gray metal case. “Would you remove your coat and roll up your sleeves, Mr. Jones?” he said. “Then please sit in this straight chair in front of the desk.”
Li removed his coat, folded it neatly, and put it carefully on the bed. He sat in the chair. Gingerly, I thought. Shoftstall bustled around, readying his equipment and giving out with an endless line of chatter which he seemed to think would soothe the obviously nervous Li, but which, in fact, only made him more jittery. Li obviously wished that the American fool would shut up.
I let Shoftstall talk. “The purpose of this machine, Mr. Jones, is simply to establish validity. That’s all. Nothing else. It’s painless, and there’s absolutely no reason to worry — Mr. Dye here will just ask some simple questions to which you can answer either yes or no. That’s all. Just yes or no. Before you know it, we’ll be through.”
Li said nothing. Bourland plugged his tape recorder into the outlet under the desk. Shoftstall continued to chatter away as he affixed the lie detector’s attachments to Li’s chest, forearm, and palm. “Now if you’ll just turn your chair a little this way — to the right,” Shoftstall said. “Fine. That’s just fine.”
“We brought the big Ampex,” Bourland said. “I thought you might want the fidelity and its mike will pick up everything.”
“Good,” I said, not really caring, eager only that the entire sorry scene end itself as soon as possible.
Shoftstall stepped back from Li as if to admire his work. “Okay,” he said to Bourland. “You can roll the tape.”
Bourland turned a knob on the recorder, made a couple of adjustments, and said, “Tape one and rolling. Interview with Mr. Jones.” He looked at Shoftstall. “It’s rolling.”
Shoftstall dropped to his hands and knees and groped for the polygraph’s plug that dangled down behind the writing desk. He glanced up at me. “As soon as I plug it in, you can start,” he said.
“All right.”
He groped again for the electric cord, found it, and plugged it into the wall socket, the same one that powered the Ampex.
The flashes were cobalt blue, I suppose. Whatever the color, they leaped three feet out into the room, twice, and they were accompanied by a series of sputtering, wet-sounding plops. The lights in the room died instantaneously, but it took Li Teh a little longer. He screamed only once. It really wasn’t much of a scream; it was more like something that a dying kitten would make.
I groped my way over to Li Teh and held the lighter before his face. His eyes were open but they didn’t see the flame. I stood there and stared at him until the lighter burned itself out. Shoftstall and Bourland were moving around, cursing and muttering as they rummaged for their equipment. It seemed that we were there in the dark with the dead man for a long time, but it was really only a matter of minutes before the police began pounding on the door and I moved over to open it before they broke it down.
Chapter 5
They handed Carmingler the chore of telling me that I was finished. He said so when we were about halfway through the debriefing at Letterman General. I don’t think he relished doing it, but then it didn’t bother him much either. Nothing did really, unless it was when one of his horses came down with the croup or rale or whatever it is that horses get. He sat there behind a gray metal desk in the bare tan room and fiddled with his Phi Beta Kappa key which most thought came from Princeton, a misconception that Carmingler never discouraged, but which actually came from Louisiana State. There was one thing about Carmingler though: he had shucked his bayou accent.
“It’s a pity, of course,” he had said. “Especially since it wasn’t your fault. Not your fault at all. But I’m sure you appreciate our position.” If he had been smoother, or if that course in sensitivity that he had once taken had had any effect, Carmingler would have said their position, not ours. I let it pass.
“After they issued the initial denial that none of you belonged to them, well, I’m afraid we got stuck with it.”
“You could fix it,” I said, again not really caring, but willing to argue a little for the sake of form.
“I’m afraid not.”
“You’ve fixed worse ones.”
He frowned and gave up on his Phi Beta Kappa key and started to mess with his pipe. “Not recently,” he said.
“What about the other two?” I said.
“What other two?”
“Those two clowns you sent me. Shoftstall and Bourland.”
“Oh, yes, of course,” Carmingler said, as if I had just recalled two mutual acquaintances who really didn’t quite belong in his social set. “The same thing for them, although we’re not being quite as liberal. Financially, I mean.”
“Why should you?” I said. “They’ve only got eighteen months in. I’ve got eleven years and when I go looking for a job I can’t very well tell a prospective employer that I’ve had amnesia for the past eleven years.”
Carmingler had finally got his pipe lighted and he was sucking away on it. “That does present a bit of a problem and if it weren’t for all that publicity—”
“My name was never mentioned,” I said.