Eleven

Back in the office the red light on my phone was flashing to show I had messages. This is a fairly recent innovation for me. For years I had espoused the Dale Carnegie thesis that to make friends and influence people you had perforce to meet them face to face. But when some of those faces seem intent on getting in your face, then a little prior screening seems to be called for. An insult on the phone is infinitely preferable to an altercation in an alley in the scheme of things.

The first was from our Oxford Charlie Chan …

“My dear Mr. Watson. I do hope when this dreadful affair has run its course, we can sit down and break bread—or even share a bowl of rice—together. It is becoming quite embarrassing. Here am I with my unhappy band of pilgrims, who have come all this way with blood lust raging through their veins in pursuit of their holy relic and on each occasion they are frustrated by finding someone has preempted them.

“I ask you, Mr. Watson, is the severing of a deceased digit adequate recompense for a trained assassin? And then today’s little fiasco … I apologize in advance for the theatrical touch my lieutenant Weng Lu insisted on adding but he felt a pressing need to contribute something. It’s the artist in him, you know. It would have been a loss of face otherwise. No pun intended.

“The natives are getting restless, my dear fellow. I really would urge you to redouble your efforts. I’d hate to see you turn from hunter to hunted.”

The second was Anna Kane … a very frightened Anna Kane …

“Jack. It’s me, Anna. Why did you rush off like that? I had so much to say to you. Listen, Jack—I’ve just spoken to Nana and she’s done something terrible again but she won’t say what. I don’t know which way to turn. Jack, can’t you come round here?”

Then the call cut off abruptly. Or had someone at her end cut it off? And what could I do that Jack Daniels couldn’t do better and faster?

The third was Osgood Kane, asking for a progress report. The words were polite but, even through the distortion of the phone line and the voice box, there was an underlying edge to his tone. Since there was no progress to report, I felt no obligation to return his call in a hurry. I pressed the Recall button again.

The last call got my serious attention.

The voice was familiar but I couldn’t place it for the moment.

“This is Dwight …”

Dwight?

Then the caller seemed to realize an explanation was needed.

“Petit. Mallory calls me Petit. You’ve got to come here right away. I know I should call the cops but I want to do the right thing. Mallory liked you. And you treated me OK. You’ll know what to do. Please!”

There was the sound of an open line.

“You heard that, Holmes?” He nodded. “‘Liked’. Past tense.”

“I’m very much afraid that what we have here, old fellow, are the elements of Greek tragedy. And if so, then events are moving toward their predestined end.

However, we must see what we can do to moderate them. I suggest we waste no further time.”

We clattered, drifted and padded down the stairs and across Mrs. Plack’s newlywashed lobby floor, causing the good lady to lean on her mop with her favorite martyred expression that said— “Some people!” For once I agreed with her, though in a rather different context. Some people, indeed.

Mallory’s showroom had a dark, deserted look, like a stage set after the closing night of the play. Something about it tells you that not only the actors but the characters themselves have moved on and won’t be coming back until they find another author.

Nor did the weather help. The rain hadn’t arrived but the sky was growing steadily darker and a wind was rising, coming in from the ocean with a salty dampness you could taste. The darkness was bleaching out the color, turning everything into a contrasty film noir.

Oscar Wilde used to say that life merely imitated art and usually did it rather badly. In Hollywood life imitated the movies. You just had to learn to recognize which ones.

I tried the door handle. As I expected—locked. Then there was a scuttling noise from within, like a pack of mice—if mice hunt in packs—and then the sound of several locks and bolts and chains being unfastened.

The face of Petit peered past the final security chain. But only his heightchallenged stature reminded me of the little man I had seen on my last visit. Gone was the chippy assertiveness and the pugnacious stance. Instead, I was looking at a badly frightened wizened child.

Petit slipped the last chain and stood back to let me in. The moment we were past him, I head the barricades being hurriedly replaced.

“In there.” There being the work room.

Holmes, Mike and I moved through the showroom. Nothing appeared to have been disturbed. It was the same jumble of styles and eras that I’d seen before. Anyone but Mallory or Petit would need a road map to find what they were looking for.

There was a kind of sensory overload about the place. There were just too many images to take in, so effectively you saw nothing. And yet … was it my imagination or was there something different today that I was missing? Before I could stop to think about it, Petit had hurried me into the inner sanctum.

Here it was a very different story. The place had been ransacked—turned over by someone who wanted to find something and wanted you to know that he wanted to find something—if you know what I mean. There were no prizes for guessing what.

Drawers were pulled out and their contents littered the floor—moulds, instruments, files. I found myself crunching over something on the floor. When I looked down, I saw I was walking on the fragments of ceramic birds. No wonder Petit was upset. There were years of work and loving care in those shards.

But, strangely, that didn’t seem to be what was bothering him. When I looked up, the little man was standing at the far end of the room at the side of a large screen, the kind they use in hospitals to give a patient privacy in a public ward. Mike was standing by his side and peering behind it. Now, Mike is a dog with attitude but his present attitude was strictly ears and tail down.

I suddenly had a nasty premonition concerning what I was about to find …

Behind the screen was a long work bench, presumably one Petit used daily, and on it, stretched out as though taking an afternoon nap was Quentin Mallory. It had to be Mallory or two ordinary people laid end to end, occupying one of his suits.

His hands were folded primly over his stomach and to keep the mosquitoes at bay he had placed a white handkerchief over his face. On the beach or in a garden hammock it would have been an idyllic sight. In this context it was more than a little disturbing.

For one thing there was no reassuring rise and fall of his chest, no flutter of the handkerchief caused by the lips of the sleeper. I didn’t need to be a coroner to know that this was an extinct antique dealer I was looking at.

I heard a low keening sound. To be accurate, I heard two. One was from Mike, whose tail was now firmly between his legs. The other was from Petit, who, I now saw, was standing by Mallory’s covered face.

As I moved towards him, he suddenly whipped the cloth away, like a chef presenting his specialité du jour. At which point I nearly lost my breakfast and the combined meals of the past several days.

For Quentin Mallory no longer had a face. Somebody who had a handy way with a scalpel had neatly removed it. I also saw that I had been correct in my supposition that his crowning glory was a hairpiece, since it was nestling cozily on top of his skull. I had heard of people being scalped but here was someone who had been de-faced and his scalp left in situ.

Now, when the time comes for me to make my exit, I have to say that, all things considered, I’d prefer to meet my Maker face—as it were—to face. But perhaps at that time all normal bets are off. And, in any case, before I hastily replaced the cloth, I had time to observe that it wasn’t a loss of face that had caused him to shuffle off to Buffalo.

Someone had drilled a neat bullet hole through Mallory’s forehead, leaving him with a third eye through which he wouldn’t be seeing a thing either.

“Watson,” said Holmes’s voice in my head, “I see you have discovered the cause of death. Would you be so good as to come over here? It would appear that our hyperactive oriental friends have been at work again.”

I looked around but Holmes was nowhere to be seen. From which I deduced that he must have returned to the showroom. I made my way back there with Petit bringing up the rear. Mike decided to stay put well out of harm’s way.

Holmes was standing in the midst of what looked like a battlefield. There was medieval armor, weaponry, banners. You could have staged a rerun of Agincourt with no trouble at all and had enough left over for a couple of small sieges.

There was also, now that I came to look more closely, a long row of kneeling terracotta figures. I remembered I’d seen something about them on a cable TV show. That’s right. The Xian Warriors. Hundreds of years old but only unearthed in northern China in fairly recent times and now replicas were de rigeur in all the most pretentious gardens coast to coast.

Holmes was standing somewhere near the middle of the row and his thin hand pointed to the warrior nearest him. As I came closer, something in the pit of my stomach told me what I was about to see. And it was right.

One of the warriors was wearing Mallory’s face like Halloween mask. It had been put there and then lacquered in place. The pot of lacquer and a brush were at the statue’s feet. Among the impassive faces of the line of Chinese chorus boys Mallory’s deathly white grin stood out, as he took his final bow.

Well, it was certainly a memorable way to go, that had to be said for it.

Behind me there was a soft thud. I turned to see that Petit had fainted. The only consolation was that at least he hadn’t had far to fall.

“I suppose it would be too much to ask for you to find your bodies the way decent ordinary people do—stabbed in the library by the butler, dumped in a dumpster by the Mob, swinging from a bellrope? No, you have to give us Baron Frankenstein’s laboratory, complete with Igor over there. While we’re here, perhaps you’d like to give us some idea of Coming Attractions? God knows how I’m going to do the paperwork on this one …”

McNulty seemed to have arrived almost before I’d put the phone down. Now the premises were discreetly sealed with the shop’s CLOSED sign. But, to my surprise, there was no yellow crime scene tape and he hadn’t filled the place with uniforms. In fact, apart from the police surgeon, who was now examining Mallory’s body, he only had his regular sergeant in attendance.

McNulty soon made his thinking clear.

“I don’t know if that little weasel Nicky is behind this one, too, but I sure ain’t taking chances. We’re piecing something together on his operation and if I move too soon, he’ll be through the net and walking away whistling Dixie. Which I definitely don’t want.

“Mallory’s been mixed up with him somehow or other but a couple of things don’t add up. If this is another execution, the bullet’s in the wrong place. Back of the head is the friendly family way. Pow! Caio! And it’s the wrong kind of bullet. Nothing more than a .22, from the look of it. We call it the ‘Lady’s Special’ in the trade. Well, you don’t need me to tell you that. And this stuff with the face. That’s not the work of a pro—not unless we’ve got somebody who’s thinking of retiring and taking up taxidermy.

“Anyway, compadre mio, I don’t know what your interest in this guy is—and frankly, at this moment I don’t want to know. So what I’m saying to you, nicely as I know how, is … for the next twenty-four hours it’s the zipped lip. OK?”

“OK.”

Which suited me just fine. Twenty-four hours was just about long enough for me to play out the scheme that was forming in what passes for my brain.

At that moment the medic came over, stripping off his gloves.

“As we thought, Lieutenant. Single shot from a .22 at close quarters. Somebody he knew, most probably, to get that close. No sign of a struggle. We’ll sweep the place, of course, but the only thing I’ve found so far is this …”

He took a clear plastic evidence envelope from his apron pocket and handed it to McNulty, who held it up to the light.

“Looks like a single hair. Too long to be a man’s. Blondish.”

“Mid-blonde. Chignon Style.” It was Holmes whispering in my head. “Come along, old fellow, there is nothing more we can do here and time is of the essence.”

I told McNulty I’d keep in touch and he told me he’d keep in touch. And neither of us believed a word of it. All the same I had a shrewd suspicion he wouldn’t be far away.