WHEN HE TOLD HIS MOTHER about Lucinda’s departure from the city, she neither chastised him nor said she’d warned him. She merely squeezed his shoulder and left him to brood alone. Fong resumed his place in their lives, acting as though nothing had happened. Sage, still miserable over losing Lucinda, spent his time alone, readying his rooftop garden for winter by trimming branches, clipping rose hips and filling the planter boxes with a thick layer of hay.
A week later Mae Clemens held an intimate dinner party, closing Mozart’s for the occasion. Fong spoke for the first time about how he came to be in the underground in time to aid Sage and Sergeant Hanke. In front of everyone–Ben Johnston, Angus Solomon, James Laidlaw, Sergeant Hanke, and a heavily-bandaged, stiffly-moving Stuart Franklin–Fong said, “Mrs. Clemens is very determined lady. She came to provision store and told me Mr. Adair need help. So, I have a talk with my pride. I think Mr. Adair a very good friend, and it would be wrong to turn my back.”
Puzzlement wrinkled the face of everyone except Mae Clemens and Sage. Fong saw the puzzlement and hurried on, saying nothing whatsoever about LaRue and Sage’s role in the man’s departure from Portland.
“She tell me of plan to trap the shanghai men. We decide it would be better if we find holding pen in afternoon and already be there. I meet with Mr. Laidlaw and he agree. He also thinks that someone needs to be there writing down what people say. He talked to Mr. Johnston and to Sergeant Hanke, so in the end the underground was full of people. It was hard to keep them all quiet when we are waiting. This time Sergeant Hanke,” Fong tilted his head toward the big policeman, who blushed, “finally got a hiding job where he could make plenty of noise.”
The others laughed. They had either heard, or heard tell of, the deafening snores coming from the supposedly drugged men inside the holding pen, snores that covered up the advance of Fong and his men.
“It looks like Mordaunt and his men will either hang or spend the rest of their lives in prison, with much credit due to Mr. Johnston.” Laidlaw said. “His newspaper has made the entire town sit up and take notice. No way they can sweep the whole affair under the table.” Laidlaw raised a glass of wine to Johnston, who returned the gesture, displaying to one and all the ink stains on his cuff.
Hanke gave his information next. “The plywood factory’s manager hasn’t escaped. He’s going to spend time in court trying to explain his role in the kidnapping of Amacker and Kincaid. Those Gray’s Harbor runners, Krupps and Bendt, have loyalty toward no one but themselves. Ten minutes of questioning and they were telling how they met with the factory manager for the job and went back later to get paid off once they’d delivered Kincaid aboard ship.
“That manager was stupid. He conducted the transaction right in his office. The office clerk remembers the two shanghaiers coming in. He’s more than happy to testify. He liked Kincaid, spoke a piece at his memorial service and didn’t like the manager at all. The entire factory shut down for Kincaid’s memorial service. The factory owner paid for it, gave Ms. Kincaid money and fired the manager. We haven’t been able to pin anything on the owner. But then, you always got to wonder. After all, he hired the man. Must have liked how the manager thought to keep him on.”
Sage knew about the factory shutting down for the memorial service. He and his mother drove to Milwaukie to attend the event. They’d wanted to pay their respects and to take one last look at Kincaid’s wife and child before they left with her inlaws. It had been a gratifying experience. The heartfelt tributes from Kincaid’s coworkers sent tears running down the faces of his parents. They stood flanking Grace Kincaid, their arms holding her tightly throughout the entire service.
As for Grace, she’d taken Sage’s hand and said, “Mr. Miner, I will be forever in your debt. You said Joey hadn’t left Faith and me and then you proved it. She’ll never know her daddy but she’ll always know he never wanted to leave her. That he died trying to get back to her and to me.”
“The real crooks in this,” Johnston’s voice interrupted Sage’s thoughts, “Mordaunt’s financial backers, are slinking about town, trying to act as if they knew nothing of his doings.”
“So that means Earl Gordon is going to escape responsibility for his part in Mordaunt’s land shark operation?” Sage asked.
Laidlaw raised an eyebrow and cleared his throat.“What was it that you told me Mr. Fong here likes to say, Adair? Something about how floating in life’s current can turn up unexpected things?” Sage nodded, despite the inaccuracy of the paraphrase.
Laidlaw didn’t keep them waiting. “You told me that Earl Gordon’s son owed Mordaunt money. It turns out Mordaunt wasn’t the only crimp the boy owed. The night of Mordaunt’s arrest, Gordon’s son disappeared from Erickson’s. Gordon hired Dickensen detectives, but they couldn’t find him. Word around the harbor is that the boy is now somewhere out in the Pacific Ocean, on the Calypso no less, hauling lines and lifting sails. I must admit that the idea tickles my ironic funny bone. He was well on his way to becoming a blowhard like his father.”
The thought crossed Sage’s mind that if the pampered Gordon heir survived, the hard work might mold him into a better man than his father. “Does Gordon know they shanghaied his son?” Sage asked.
The Scotsman’s watery blue eyes held a subdued twinkle. “Let us just say that the information was conveyed to him–so he knows. I suspect this is the first time in Gordon’s life that money can’t soothe his discomfiture or relieve whatever guilt he is capable of feeling. He is looking pretty bleak these days—lost quite a few pounds. Not the same man at all.” Laidlaw did not try to suppress the satisfaction in his voice.
Sage thought of Grace Kincaid and of little Faith who would grow to womanhood never knowing her father. But still, she would hear stories about the loving, brave, unselfish man he’d been. There was satisfying irony in the fact that one of the men ultimately responsible for the continued existence of the shanghaiing business, Earl Gordon, was now feeling a measure of the torment Grace Kincaid had suffered. For a brief moment, Sage sensed that there was a pattern to Life’s currents. A pattern that surfaced, rippled and changed things before vanishing as if it had never existed. He hoped so.
At the evening’s end Sage watched out the window as Matthew darted around the corner to waylay the departing Hanke. The boy looked at Hanke in the same way he had once looked at Sage.
At the touch of a warm hand on his shoulder, Sage turned to see his mother. “I guess you know that Matthew’s switched his hero-worship to our Sergeant Hanke since you didn’t want the boy to know the role you played in his rescue,” she said.
“Thank God,” Sage said fervently. “Being someone’s hero is a real burden because there always comes that day when they discover you are somewhat short of perfect.” Sage looked around the dining room. “Where’s Mr. Fong?”
“Upstairs, in the attic, I think,” she answered, understanding.
Fong sat cross-legged on the floor. The hatchet lay before him, its steel edge glinting in the candlelight, its wooden handle satin smooth from those years of use that Sage didn’t want to think about.
For some minutes Sage said nothing and merely sat beside the other man, gazing at the weapon, wondering how to begin this conversation. Eventually he cleared his throat to say, “You know, Mr. Fong, LaRue may survive his whaling trip and turn up here again–he’s ornery enough. You might get another chance at him.”
“Ah,” Fong said, his tone mildly resigned, “If LaRue does return, I will not be the same man I was a few weeks ago.” Sage turned his head to look at the other’s profile. He saw nothing there to explain what Fong meant. He saw only that serenity that he’d never be able to emulate.
Fong spoke again, “Sometimes a man is lucky. He has friend who is like calm pond is to crane. Smooth water of pond is sometimes mirror of crane’s truth and sky in which he flies.”
Fong reached out a hand to clasp Sage’s wrist. “You are such a friend. You make me see that my actions do not match my words, my Way. I almost step away from promise I made to my uncle’s spirit that day in the desert when I thought LaRue was dead. You save me from mistake. I am most grateful,” he said.
Sage covered Fong’s hand with his own. Then, when the intensity of the moment became overwhelming, he retreated into the familiar, “Which wise and illustrious Chinese sage blessed us mortals with that pond saying?”
Fong turned to look at him. A smile slowly spread across his face, “Fong Kam Tong,” he said, tapping his chest with two fingers and lowering his eyes modestly.