Sci fi, p.12
SCI FI, page 12
part #6 of Yellowthread Street Series
The Green Slime—Special Constable Jensen Ho—said, “The Spaceman. Teddy Wong. He said if I didn’t help, he’d kill my family.” He asked, “What else could I have done?”
*
It was no good. He couldn’t last another moment. Clenching his teeth, Constable Sun made for the toilets hoping to meet Constable Lee on his way out.
He glanced back at the million dollars for a moment. It all seemed quiet. He saw the door marked MEN in Chinese and English and pushed it gratefully open.
A voice shrieked out in English in pure terror, “Oh, NO!” and Sun turned back again to see an Indian and a squat Japanese transfixed to the end of the corridor in horror staring out into the foyer in the direction of the service elevator.
More goddamned lunatics and vampires and publicity stunts. Sun went into the men’s room and slammed the door.
People were running. The Spaceman’s gun was trained squarely on the case containing the million dollars and the flock of million dollar watchers made for parts unknown. The five flights of stairs down which they had just run beckoned to Shimada and Mukherjee and they turned at full speed and began running up them again.
There was the faintest fine clear liquid dripping from the nozzle of The Spaceman’s flame gun.
He waited until everyone was clear, pulled the trigger and, setting off the petrol cascading around the money case like a wind, reduced the million dollars inside it to ash.
The corridor was in a direct line with the money. The concussion of the petrol exploding blew the men’s room door completely off its hinges and, smashing into the long room-length mirror inside, narrowly missed Constable Lee brushing his hair and scattered shards of glass and wood all over the scrubbed-down spotless white tiles on the floor.
12
The diver’s knife had come from a wall display in the Lagoon Bar of the hotel. A heavy, double edged weapon with a thick steel haft, it made a clanging sound as Teddy Wong drew it from its brass scabbard and held it ready. The rest of Room 511 was empty: he paused outside the bathroom door with the knife held ready in his hand and tried the door knob, then, before it turned, changed his mind and got down on his knees to look through the crack under the door. It was dark. If he was waiting inside there for him, then he had the light off. Wong thought for a moment. The light could only be turned on and off from outside. He got up again and looked at the switch. Off. If he was waiting there inside for him then he had gone in with the light off and was there in the darkness.
Wong ran through a mental picture of the hotel bathrooms—they were standard: a sink on the left, toilet facing the door, tiles on the floor, and the shower and bath recess on the right, hidden by a plastic curtain. Wong touched at the point of the knife and put his head against the door to listen.
There was the faintest sound of water dripping.
He put his hand on the door knob again and gave it the slightest turn before it engaged the levers and made a creaking sound.
Wong ran his tongue across his lips and put a little more pressure on the knob and stopped the creaking sound. The dripping water as the door came open echoed in the tiled, windowless room.
Wong flipped the light on and, with his eyes hard and glittering, stared at the closed shower curtain and listened for breathing.
The hot water tap in the sink on his left went steadily drip, drip, drip into the porcelain basin.
Wong grasped the knife hard in his hand, and, tensing himself, went forward and took hold of the plastic curtain.
His heart was thumping like a trip hammer.
He wrenched the curtain aside.
Nothing.
The room The Spaceman was using as his temporary staging post had to be Room 512, next door.
Teddy Wong’s mouth was trembling with fear. He felt a wave of nausea rise up from his stomach and, still gripping the knife, he retched into the toilet bowl convulsively.
*
On the phone in the hotel foyer, the Commander’s voice came as an order, “Harry, you’re going to have to evacuate the hotel and that’s all there is to it.”
The stench of smouldering carpet and melted glass and plastic was still almost overwhelming in the foyer. Feiffer coughed back a lungful of thick, oily black smoke and demanded, “To where? Where am I supposed to evacuate it to? I’ve just had to fight my way in past the front desk through a throng of guests who don’t have to be evacuated—they’ll go entirely of their own free will. But the fact of the matter is that with the Congress there’s just nowhere to put them!”
“Then we’ll get the Army to take them in.”
“What Army? This isn’t the nineteenth century, Neil, with entire brigades of Cavalry chaps based in the Empire, this is the good old Socialist cutback eighties. I doubt whether the Army at its current strength in Hong Kong could take in a stray cat from the street, let alone upwards of almost twelve hundred people from a six hundred room hotel.” He saw Superintendent Ashwood pause in the foyer for a moment to discuss something with Deputy Chief Fire Safety Officer Chang, “It looks like now we may be starting to get a few solid leads—”
The Commander said, “Leads like what? Like that some rubber-suited lunatic calling himself The Green Slime tells you that an insurance man named Teddy Wong wants him to open a glass case containing forty five million dollars—which doesn’t exist—so that self-same Wong can blow it up with a petrol gun? Or that—”
Feiffer was silent.
“—or that The Spaceman leaves Triad calling cards in elevators and the Triad Bureau tell you that’s the last thing the Triads would do? Or that another maniac gets messages on smoke and water telling him that—”
Feiffer said, “That was Wong’s work. I’ve spoken to Lam again about the messages and it looks like every time he got one, for one reason or another, Wong had been in his office a few minutes earlier. Because Wong was supposed to be his friend he didn’t—”
“But according to Wong the Singapore backers are the villains. And according to every other reliable source in the world they’re not!” The Commander said, “I hate to state the obvious, but if the million dollars is insured by Wong where’s the profit in his burning it or stealing it?”
“I don’t know.”
“I know you don’t know. The Spaceman—or whatever he calls himself in his lunatic bloody fantasies, has got one thing in mind and one thing only—and that’s to set fire to the whole Hong Bay bloody street map which I, for one, don’t intend to let happen!”
Feiffer said firmly, “Neil, he didn’t burn two producers on the fifth floor, he came all the way down to the foyer for the money. If he was just some sort of psycho—”
“He is some sort of psycho! That’s the way a psycho acts—without rational explanation—”
“There are no sprinklers on the fifth floor because the carpets and curtains up there aren’t nylon, they’re—”
“So what?”
“So, if he wanted to burn the place down and/or aimlessly slaughter the happy multitudes, why the hell didn’t he do it then? If he’d let fly on the fifth or the sixth floor the place would have gone up like a Roman Candle. The fact that he seems to have limited himself to act only on the floors where there are reliable automatic systems suggests that—”
“Yes?”
“Well, that he’s not going to burn the hotel down anyway!”
“Then what is he going to do?”
“I don’t know!” He saw Ashwood look over at him and dropped his voice, “Look, Wong was with Lam when the money went up. According to Lam, Wong was—to put it mildly—astounded. I think if Wong’s involved there’s some sort of double-cross going on—”
“From who?”
“I don’t know. I’m not sure. I think all this stuff about Triads and million dollars and the Japanese Yakuza may be just some sort of—” He was going to say “smokescreen” —”I think there may be someone behind it who—” It was no good. Feiffer said directly, “The only person in the Colony so far as I can see who has access to a firefighting suit of the right type is Chief Fire Safety Officer George Bell.”
There was a moment of stunned silence and then the Commander said evenly, “What did you say?”
“He’s supposed to be at the Roxy movie house seeing a movie called The Towering Inferno—”
The Commander said coldly, “Then, knowing Bell, that’s exactly where he undoubtedly is.”
“But the only trouble is that the manager of the Roxy tells me by phone that they don’t happen to be showing The Towering Inferno at the moment!” He said quickly before the Commander could react, “And neither is anyone else in the whole of bloody South East Asia! They’re all showing sci fi and horror movies. The Towering Inferno is a disaster movie.” Feiffer put the knife in, “And George Bell’s car, far from being parked anywhere near a movie theatre, is parked outside this bloody hotel in the street!”
“Are you trying to tell me George Bell is The Spaceman?” The Commander said furiously, “I’ve known Bell for years!”
“Everyone has known Bell for years!” Feiffer saw Ash- wood glance over trying to hear, “I’m just telling you what seems to be coming to the fore. One of my Constables told me that Bell was seen in the foyer before the fire and he was—”
“Then he was just—”
Feiffer said desperately, “Neil, the reason we haven’t searched this hotel from top to bottom is that a firefighting suit of the type The Spaceman uses will fit into something no larger than a small box. In fact, Bell’s own personal suit, according to Chang, is carried in the back of his car in a briefcase. I’m having that looked into now.” He paused for a moment, “And Bell, when he came in here—”
“Find bloody Wong!”
“I’m trying to!”
“Then ask bloody Wong about Bell!” The Commander said warningly, “By God, Harry, if that man’s accused of something he didn’t do— That man ...”
Feiffer finished for him, “Yeah, he was the bravest man you ever knew.”
There was a pause, then the Commander said quietly, “Yes, he was. A niece of mine set fire to her parents’ apartment over on Leighton Hill with a box of matches
she’d found in a drawer—and the local Brigade people wouldn’t go into the building because of the fumes, and if it hadn’t been for George Bell—” He gave an order, “You find bloody Wong and even if you have to beat it out of him I want to know that Bell has got nothing to do with all this!” He paused for a moment, not to be side-tracked, “And if you haven’t come to some sort of conclusion in the next few hours, like it or not, theories or not—I’m having the entire bloody hotel and everything around it evacuated faster than you can say fucking S. S. Titanic!”
“I’m not sure that isn’t exactly what he wants us to do!”
“What he wants us to do! What counts is what I want us to do!” The Commander said with uncharacteristic tyranny, “And that, Feiffer, so far as you are concerned, is the authentic voice of God! And I don’t care if you have to kick down every one of the six hundred rooms in that bloody place—”
Feiffer said abruptly, “Five hundred and ninety eight “—you just do it! You find Wong! Find him and get the bloody truth out of him—and, above all, you get bloody George Bell right out of your bloody mind! Do you hear me?”
The remains of the million dollars were sinking in a swamp of sprinkler fluid and foam. Feiffer saw Ashwood looking down at it.
Auden and Spencer were outside with Bell’s car. Feiffer said to the Commander quietly, “Yes, sir,” put the phone down gently, and went over to Ashwood to distract him for a few moments.
*
In the street, Auden said, “You can read, right?” He extended a rigid finger in the direction of the licence plate of the green Range Rover parked near the entrance to the hotel’s front carpark, “That’s the licence number you’ve got written down on your little scrap of paper, right?”
Spencer said for the third time, “Yes! Do you want to see it?”
“No, I don’t want to see it! I might be bloody colour blind or something! That’s the plate, right?”
“Right!”
Auden walked around to the side of the vehicle. There was a decal on it with the colophon of the Hong Kong Fire Service and a little additional legend reading, Chief Fire Safety Officer, Hong Bay—Official. Auden said, “Right? No CDs or bloody DCs or—that’s the badge, right?”
Spencer said, “Right!”
Auden drew a breath, “All right.” He drew his long barrelled Colt Python from his holster, glanced around to make sure the coast was clear, and said pessimistically, “All right then, here goes ...”
The locked side window exploded with a crash as he brought the barrel of the gun down on it hard.
No briefcase containing an asbestos firefighting suit.
For an awful moment, until he read the registration slip in the glove box, Auden thought Spencer had led him to the wrong car again.
*
In the labyrinth of cellars below the foyer of the hotel, Chief Fire Safety Officer George Bell paused attentively.
There was the faintest smell of petrol. Getting down to his knees, he put his ear against the ground. There was only the reverberation of the traffic in the street outside. He glanced back at the service elevator.
He sniffed.
There was a metal door at the end of the main cellar corridor with a legend painted on it in English and Chinese reading KEEP OUT.
Sniffing again, he went towards it, opened the door and, glancing back to make sure no one was around, went inside.
There was a short length of rope on the floor of the little room and he used it to tie the door shut, secure against intruders.
It was 4.43 p.m., and starting at 7.10 a.m. that morning, in the course of less than ten short hours, The Spaceman had murdered three people.
Starting at 5.08 p.m. in the course of ten even shorter minutes, unless things changed drastically for the better, he would kill three more.
*
In the foyer of the hotel, Superintendent Ashwood shook his head and said, “Bullshit! What forty five million dollars?” He looked around the foyer and saw only a throng of people at the front desk and the last of the firemen poking at the carpet with their fire extinguishers and axes, “What do you think this is: some second rate bloody escapade about bloody sunken Nazi gold? Maybe some of those guys there at the desk drivelling about their precious film cans might be able to raise forty five million dollars for their next bloody Star Wars Six, but they sure as shit don’t carry it around with them!” He thought of George Bell, “I don’t give a damn whether it’s forty five million dollars or forty five million bloody doughnuts, Bell just isn’t involved!” Auden and Spencer appeared at the main entrance, Auden settling his gun under his coat in its shoulder holster, and Ashwood, seeing Feiffer shake his head quickly in their direction, called out, “You! Come here!”
Spencer, looking startled, said quickly, “No, it’s registered to George Bell. Honest!”
Ashwood said, “What is registered to George Bell?” He turned to Feiffer with fire in his eyes, “You’ve been searching his bloody car, haven’t you?”
Spencer said, “We only broke one window. It was locked—”
Auden shook his head, “No briefcase.” He saw Ashwood’s face and thought for an awful moment he might be from Internal Affairs, “Are you with—”
Feiffer said evenly, “This is Superintendent Ashwood of the Anti-Triad Bureau. He’s here to look out for Mr Bell—whatever the rights and wrongs of the matter might be.”
Ashwood said, “You’re damned right about that!”
“Then where the hell is he?”
“He’s in the hotel! If that’s where the fire was then that’s where he is!”
“Then why don’t I see him?”
“Because he doesn’t bloody well have to report to you, that’s why you don’t see him!” He saw Auden settle the gun again, “You touch that gun under your coat one more time, sonny, and I’ll take it away from you and wrap it around your fucking ears!” (Auden said, “Oh yeah? Oh, bloody yeah?”)
Ashwood said, “Yeah!”
Feiffer said evenly, “No one’s going to shoot Bell whatever he’s done—”
“And what has he done?”
“At the moment, nothing. I just want to talk to him about a few things—like a missing firefighting suit.” Feiffer said firmly, “Listen, Jack, I don’t know Bell as well as you do—or as well as other people seem to—but I’m not prepared to let him out of the picture just because you say so. All I know for sure is that The Spaceman is dressed in a firefighting suit, Bell has one checked out to him that I can only assume he’s got with him, he isn’t where he’s supposed to be, and, from the fact that you’re here looking out for his interests, that he’s quite probably somewhere here in this bloody hotel!”
“I’m here because—” Ashwood said abruptly, “All right.
He is here. One of my people keeping an eye out for the Yakuza saw him drive up and he rang me, but that’s as far as it goes. If your coppers saw him wandering about before the fire for all I know he could have been here to make a reservation for his little old granny!” Ashwood said, “You find this bastard Wong, that’s what you should be doing!”
“As a matter of fact, I already have.” Feiffer said to Auden, “You and Bill go up to the fifth floor and find O’Yee and spread out into the corridors and see if you can locate Bell.” He saw Ashwood’s face, “And you, sir, oblige me by staying here!” He said as an afterthought, “Get O’Yee over here.” He saw Lam coming towards him with a happy grin on his face and called him over to ask him a question.
Lam said gleefully, “I’m not nuts. It was Teddy Wong all the time.” He put his hand on Ashwood’s shoulder and Ashwood shook him off. Lam said happily to Feiffer, “I’m sane. I’m as sane as you are.”
