Death Trance (32 page)
As he did so, he turned the mirror away from the leyaks and in one screeching second of terrifying rage, they flung themselves like wolves onto his shadowy spirit and literally began to tear the life out of him with guzzling teeth, snatching claws and flaring orange eyes.
Stroup screamed and fell into the street as if he had been shot. The mirror smashed across the sidewalk, a hundred silver knives. Michael quickly jumped back into the temple, clutching a long, bloody scratch on his hand where one of the leyaks had caught him a glancing blow. Reece, tongueless, grabbed Michael and shook him, but then stopped and stared in horror at what was happening to his lifelong friend, the man who had saved his life.
None of Stroup's physical body was in the realm of the dead, only his spirit was. He twisted and jerked and screamed as the leyaks tore his spirit into shreds, yet there were no physical wounds on him, no blood, no gashes, no bites. He looked as if he were suffering an agonizing epileptic fit, but the leyaks were savaging him just as viciously as if they were a pack of wild animals, and just as fatally.
It took no more than a minute. Stroup lay still. Then, as quickly as they had first attacked, the leyaks hurried away. Only one of them turned around at the corner of the street to stare back at Randolph and Michael with lighted eyes. There was an expression of demonic hatred on its ashen face that Randolph would have nightmares about for weeks to come.
Reece lowered his gun and walked out into the street. He knelt down beside Stroup and felt his pulse. He gently slapped Stroup's cheeks, but Stroup's head fell sideways against the gritty ground and they knew he was dead. A broken man, lying amid the fragments of a broken mirror. Reece uttered two or three strange, glottal cries and then stood up. With a wave of his gun, he indicated that Michael and Randolph should carry Stroup's body into the temple and close the door.
Michael said to him wearily, 'I'm sorry about your friend. Believe me, it wasn't my fault. You don't understand what you're dealing with here.’
Reece took no notice and prodded him with his gun, urging him to hurry. At last they managed to manhandle Stroup's body through the gates and lay him down among the dried-up leaves in one of the temple's broken-down pavilions.
Michael said to Reece, 'We didn't kill him. It wasn't us. There are spirits out there. Ghosts, if that makes it easier for you to understand. They killed him. He shouldn't have turned around. It was only the mirror that was keeping him safe.’
Recce's mouth tightened with suppressed frustration and emotion. His cold eyes darted from Michael to Randolph and back again. His instructions from Waverley Graceworthy had been quite explicit: kill Randolph Clare and bring Michael Hunter back to the United States alive. But there had been explicit conditions too. Randolph Clare was supposed to be killed so that his death looked like an accident and Michael Hunter was supposed to be brought out of Indonesia without any complications from the immigration authorities.
Bob Stroup had been essential to the carrying out of these conditions. Not only had Bob Stroup understood exactly what was wanted, he had been able to express in words every nuance of Recce's feelings. But now Bob Stroup was lying dead, Jimmy Heacox had been decapitated by that gruesome mask, and the only accomplice Reece was left with, Frank Louv, had been as mad as a goddam hatter ever since Khe Sanh, when a stray fragment of shrapnel had taken away half his brain.
What was more, for the first time since he had been captured by the VC in Cambodia, Richard Reece felt frightened. He could deal with muscle, he could deal with knives and guns and broken glass. But what had happened here at the Temple of the Dead was the kind of thing that could turn a guy's guts into clear-running water. If Randolph and Michael had not been standing there watching him, he would have dodged out of that courtyard as fast as he could run and there wouldn't have been a leyak alive or dead that could have caught him.
He pushed his automatic back into his combat-jacket pocket and buttoned up his jacket. He looked at Randolph and Michael with an expression like Barre granite, and then he lifted one finger. A warning.
Don't think that you've seen the last of me, my friends, because just as sure as bears do what bears do, in the goddam woods or out of them, you're going to see me again, and I'm going to make you suffer for what happened here today. You know, like totally suffer.
He turned and walked with a quick, muscular gait out of the temple, hesitating for just a moment by the gates and then disappearing south on Jalan Mahabharata.
Randolph collapsed on the floor of the courtyard but still Michael refused to let him rest. 'Randolph, we have to get out of this trance. We may be safe from the leyaks but the Goddess Rangda could still get to us unless we're careful. And besides, you've stayed in the trance too long. There's a danger you'll never get out of it.’
Randolph allowed Michael to half-carry him across the outer courtyard, through the
candi bentar
and into the inner temple. There they saw what had happened to Jimmy Heacox. Michael helped Randolph down to the floor of the courtyard and then walked across to give Heacox's body a cursory and disgusted inspection. Heacox's exposed tongue was already alive with glistening blowflies. Michael turned to look at the mask, which was lying on its side only a few feet away, staring with malevolent hatred at the sky.
'What happened?’ Randolph asked. He kept his eyes averted from Heacox's body.
Michael circled around the mask of Rangda cautiously. 'The mask is very magic. How can I put it? It
is
Rangda in a way, as well as a representation of Rangda. It guards the gate, as well as helping us to create it. Rangda does not discourage the living from entering her realm, not by any means, but she makes damn sure that you do it with respect, and on her terms.’
Randolph wiped blood from his nose. 'How come she let
us
through but killed this guy?’
Michael gingerly draped the mask in its ritual silk scarf and carried it back to the centre of the courtyard. 'That's because - like all truly evil beings - the Goddess Rangda is completely unpredictable.’
Michael returned and sat down, studying Randolph carefully.
'Remember too that it's only a mask, even if it is a magic mask. The Goddess Rangda herself is something else. Something a hundred times worse.’
Randolph felt that he was going to faint soon. The Temple of the Dead seemed to grow dark and he could have sworn that he saw movements in the shadows: figures, ghosts. The day was so humid now that sweat was streaking the dried blood on his cheeks and he did not know if he was shivering from cold or from shock.
'One question,’ he said. 'When you went hunting leyaks, how did you kill them?’
'With a Polaroid camera,’ Michael said simply. 'Provided you can stay out of the leyak's way long enough for the picture to develop, you're in business. You hold the picture up in front of him and set fire to it with a cigarette lighter.’
'And what happens when you do that?’
'Believe me,’ said Michael, 'you don't want to know what happens when you do that.’
Michael began to recite the words that would bring their bodies and their spirits together again and restore their mortality. 'O Sanghyang Widi, we ask your indulgence to leave this realm… fragrant is the smoke of incense that coils and coils upward towards the home of the three divine ones.’
Randolph closed his eyes. He felt as if the whole world were being compressed, with himself in the centre of it. Everything became darker and darker, and slower and slower, until he thought that Earth itself must be coming to a halt. When he opened his eyes, he was still sitting in the courtyard and Michael was getting to his feet.
'Is it over?’ he asked thickly. His head pounded and his right arm felt as if it were burning.
'It's over,’ Michael assured him. 'I want you to stay right there while I go find a taxi. We have to take you back to the
losmen
and see how bad you're hurt.’ 'The flight's at three.’ 'Let's just see if you're fit to take it.’ Randolph reached up and held Michael's sleeve. 'Listen,’ he said, 'I know we ran into some trouble today with those leyaks. But if Reece and those other two hadn't interfered, it would have been all right, wouldn't it?’
Michael shrugged. 'Probably,’ he agreed. 'The Dutch Reform Cemetery is always a pretty quiet place.’
'I want to do it again,’ Randolph said. He raised his head and looked Michael directly in the eyes to show him that he meant it. 'I want to do it again, and I want to see Marmie this time.’
Michael gently pried Randolph's fingers off his sleeve. 'Let me go find us a taxi.’
'You know something?’ Randolph said. 'You're a pretty rare kind of person.’
'Maybe. Most of it was inherited.’
Randolph gave Michael as much of a smile as the pain in his arm would allow. Michael was so much like his own sons could have been. It was strange, he thought as Michael padded off on his soft-soled sneakers to find a taxi, that when he had confronted Reece, knowing full well that Reece might be the man who had killed Marmie and the children, he had felt no rage, not even a sense of revenge.
He had seen Reece for what he was, a hired killing machine, cruel and violent, but thoughtlessly violent. Randolph had regarded Reece with nothing more than stunned curiosity. He reserved his anger for the men who had thoughtfully and with utter malice employed him. When he returned to Memphis, he would have his pound of flesh from them. Yes, and all the blood that came with it.
He thought he heard Michael coming back. His mind suddenly rushed in on itself and he fell sideways onto the stones.
Memphis, Tennessee
Dr Ambara came away from the window, allowing the fine lace curtains to fall back, and said, 'You should be able to go out today. I think those stitches will hold.’
Randolph took off his glasses and set them on his breakfast tray. He had had a good breakfast of corned-beef hash and poached eggs and now he was reading
The Wall Street Journal
while he drank his coffee.
'How long before you can take them out?’ he wanted to know.
Dr Ambara looked even darker than usual, silhouetted against the window. 'What you want to know is, how long before you can attempt another death trance.’
Randolph sipped his coffee and waited while Dr Ambara packed away his surgical instruments. When the doctor was silent, Randolph asked, 'Well?’
'Well what?’
'How long before I
can
attempt another death trance?’
Dr Ambara shook his head. 'I don't know. The injuries you suffered were quite severe. You were lucky not to lose the use of your right arm altogether. Perhaps a month. Perhaps six weeks.’
'Are you sure I couldn't try it any earlier? I mean, once the stitches are out -?’
'No,’ said the doctor, sitting down on the side of the bed. 'It is not just your body that needs to recuperate. It is your mind too. The emotional experience you went through in Bali was enough to send many normal people into lifelong psychotherapy. You saw the dead, Randolph; you saw demons. And now you lie here in bed in Memphis and although it all happened far away, it has left you with scars.’
Randolph picked up his glasses and began folding and unfolding them. 'Well,’ he said with resignation, 'I guess I did ask you to take care of me.’
Randolph had suffered the worst of his agonies during the long journey back from Bali to the United States. Dr Ambara had patched up his wounds as well as he could but by the time they reached London, Randolph had been running a high temperature and shivering and shaking like an agued horse. Only a massive injection of tetracycline had kept his infection and his temperature under control but he had insisted on returning to Memphis, even after Dr Ambara had warned him there was a risk of septicemia, even of death.
It was Monday now. The doctor had cleaned and stitched Randolph's wounds and dosed him with sedatives and antibiotics. This morning's breakfast had been his first real meal, and even though his lips were still swollen and he ached all over, he had thoroughly enjoyed it. He had realized, very early this morning, just after the sun had slanted into his bedroom and awakened him, that he was no longer grieving for Marmie and the children, at least not in the same way as before. He had seen Natalie, the Dutch girl, and touched her, and he knew now that he would see Marmie in the same way, and touch her too. And although he had lost his children, he would be able to hold them again and assure them once and for always that he loved them.
There was something else too. He was sure, after everything that had happened, that it was Waverley Grace-worthy and Orbus Greene who had sent Reece and his rat pack after him to Indonesia, maybe to kill him, maybe to do no more than frighten him, but certainly to make sure that the Cottonseed Association asserted its supremacy over Tennessee's cotton-processing industry and that Waverley Graceworthy at last had his petty revenge on Randolph's father.
'How's Michael?’ Randolph asked. 'He's not too upset?’
'Oh, I think he's settling in fine,’ replied the doctor. 'You have to remember that this is the first time he has ever been to America. It seems to me that he's walking around in complete amazement, trying to understand what it was that made his father into the kind of man he eventually became. How can a man from a country like America become a mystic? There is not much mysticism in Memphis.’
'Well, maybe there is now,’ said Randolph, grimacing as he adjusted his pillow. 'Have you two discussed the idea of your possibly seeing your late wife?’
Dr Ambara coloured. 'Yes, we have. We may attempt a death trance later in the week, but I don't want you to think I'm keeping you in bed in order to preempt Michael's attention. You
do
need the rest, and your stitches
do
need to heal.’
'Come on, I understand,’ Randolph said. 'If it hadn't been for you, I wouldn't even have known about death trances.’
'Well, maybe that would have been a blessing,’ Dr Ambara said philosophically.
At that moment there was a brisk rapping at the door and Wanda came in, dressed in a pair of tight white pedal-pushers and a dark blue silky blouse. She looked remarkably pretty and attractive.
'You're looking almost human again,’ she told Randolph.
'I feel like Frankenstein's monster. All I need now is a bolt through my neck.’
'Neil Sleaman is outside. He'd like to see you.’
'All right,’ Randolph said. 'Would you ask him to wait for ten minutes while I finish my breakfast. See if he wants a cup of coffee.’
'You've had calls from Mr Graceworthy, Mr Trent and Mr Petersen. Also, your Cousin Ella called and she wants you to call her back as soon as you can. It's something about the funeral, nothing important.’
'I see we're back in business,’ Randolph commented. 'I beg your pardon?’ Wanda asked. 'Wanda,’ Randolph said earnestly, 'you went all the way to Indonesia with me and now we've come back. All this while you've been patient, understanding, loving, honest, open, and attractive beyond all description. Now that we're back at work, I don't want you to think I've forgotten any of that, because I haven't.’
Wanda was silent for a moment, a little smile touching her lips, her eyes looking away in a mixture of modesty and self-satisfaction. 'Thank you,’ she said at last and turned and left the room.
'Good girl,’ said Dr Ambara, unexpectedly letting out a short laugh.
'When are you seeing Michael?’ Randolph asked.
'Later today. He wants to teach me some of the basic mantras.’
'Well, just make sure that nobody follows you.’
‘I’ll be careful,’ Dr Ambara promised. Michael was registered at Days Inn on Brooks Road under the fanciful name of Husain Qizilbush, the cover he had taken in case Reece or any other Cottonseed Association hirelings tried to find him. Randolph was no longer prepared to give Waverley Graceworthy or Orbus Greene the benefit of the doubt. They were killers as far as he was concerned.
Dr Ambara left and Neil Sleaman came in carrying a cup of coffee.
'Neil,’ Randolph said. 'How are you doing?’
'Fine, thank you, Mr Clare. Surprised to see you back so soon. And - my God - you sure took a pasting in that taxi accident, didn't you?’
'Superficial cuts mainly,’ Randolph said casually. 'Do you mind taking this breakfast tray off the bed for me?’
Neil carried the tray over to the other side of the room and then pulled up a chair and sat close to Randolph, parking his cup of coffee on the bedside table.
'We had a slow start out at Raleigh,’ he said. 'There was trouble with the valves, like I told you. And then some of the staff downed tools until there was a security inspection. You know, they were afraid of more explosions. But everything's running pretty good now. The only problem is, we can't possibly catch up on lost production. Not for nine or ten weeks at best. We don't have the oil and we don't have the processing capacity.’
Randolph sat up a little straighter to distance himself from Neil Sleaman's Binaca-flavoured breath. The problem is solved, I told you,’ he said.
'Well,’ Neil said with a slight grimace of irritation, 'I'd sure like to know how you did it. We were working all week to come up with some kind of an answer and… well, there was no answer. We've fallen way behind on our production schedule, and that's it.’
Without changing his expression, Randolph said, 'The Cottonseed Association is going to help us.’
Neil stared at him. He exhaled a sharp, disbelieving snort and then sat back in his chair, planted his fists on his hips and snorted again. 'The Cottonseed Association?’
'That's right,’ Randolph replied, trying not to sound smug.
'Well, I'm sorry, Mr Clare,’ Neil said, 'but the Cottonseed Association won't help us out, never in a million years. Orbus Greene still has not replied to that deal you tried to make, and the way I hear it, he isn't going to either. Times are too tough, Mr Clare, and the Cottonseed Association isn't going to help you survive as an independent. They won't do it. They'd rather see you -’
'Dead?’ Randolph interrupted.
'I wasn't going to say that. I was going to say bankrupt.’
'Nevertheless, the truth is that they would rather see me dead.’
'You're serious?’
'I'm very serious,’ Randolph replied. 'And what's more, I have evidence. And that's why the Cottonseed Association is going to help us out, because if it doesn't, I'm going to take that evidence to the chief of police and have Waverley Graceworthy and Orbus Greene indicted for homicide and conspiracy.’
'I'm sorry, Mr Clare,’ Neil replied, shaking his head. 'I really don't think this is going to work. I mean, there is no conceivable way in which any member of the Cottonseed Association could have been connected to your family's homicides. Chief Moyne said that himself, and I have to say myself that you seem to be getting… well, I wouldn't say paranoid but -’
'Oh, paranoid, am I?’
'I'm sorry, sir, I didn't mean to be impertinent. But you can't blame everything that's happened on the Cottonseed Association. It just isn't realistic.’
Randolph asked suddenly, 'Have you heard of a man called Reece?’
Neil coloured but vigorously shook his head.
'Let me tell you something about this man called Reece,’ Randolph said. 'He's a mute, a Vietnam veteran and a hired enforcer for the Margarine Mafia. Reece and three other gorillas followed me all the way out to Manila, to Djakarta and to Bali, and when I got to Bali, they threatened my life and nearly succeeded in killing me. It was only through luck and through the efforts of friends that I managed to escape alive.’
Neil said nothing but tried to meet Randolph's unrelenting gaze without flinching.
Randolph said, 'I can produce a witness who can connect Reece with Waverley Graceworthy - Jimmy the Rib - and I can produce plenty of other evidence that connects Reece with the murder of my family and also with the murder of an innocent man in Djakarta.’
Neil said, 'I hate to make this point, sir, but if you can do that… why don't you do it right away? I mean, I'm not trying to moralize or anything, but surely it would be indefensible to use this evidence simply to get all the cottonseed oil we need rather than to bring Mr Grace-worthy and Mr Greene to justice?’
Randolph frowned at him. 'My intention, Neil, is to do both. First to squeeze them, then to see that they get what they deserve.’
'I see.’
'You don't seem very happy about it,’ Randolph commented.
'Well, sir, there is one snag for sure.’
'Yes? And what's that?’
Neil said, 'My briefcase is in the other room. You'll have to excuse me while I get it.’
Randolph waited impatiently, and when Neil returned, he was carrying a newspaper clipping from the
Press-Scimitar.
He handed it to Randolph without a word.
The headline read, 'Black Gangster's Legs Amputated In Bizarre Beale Street Slaying.’ Randolph read the text quickly, then looked up at Neil questioningly.
They found him just after you left for Indonesia,’ Neil said.
'Well, they sure did,’ Randolph said bitterly. He read aloud the last two paragraphs of the news report. 'Chief of Police Dennis Moyne said that the killing was "more than likely" the work of black fanatic groups exacting revenge for previous acts of violence that the deceased had perpetrated against them. He discounted reports that several white men had been seen leaving the victim's apartment after the slaying, alleging that these reports were nothing more than "ill-informed and ill-intentioned gossip."‘
Neil said, 'I'm sorry. It was just unfortunate.’
'For Jimmy, yes.’
'I'm sorry.’
Randolph handed back the clipping. 'Why should you be sorry? You never knew him, and there are probably plenty of people on Beale Street who are quite happy that he's dead. He wasn't what you might call a bundle of fun.’
'I'm sorry because it kind of cuts the ground from under your case against the Cottonseed Association, doesn't it?’
Randolph frowned. 'Oh, no. Jimmy the Rib's evidence was only minor, only circumstantial. The real evidence comes from eyewitnesses.’
'Eyewitnesses? Eyewitnesses to what?’ Neil wanted to know. His face was pale and he kept folding and unfolding the news clipping, first this way and then the other, with thin, agitated fingers.
Randolph said, 'Ask Waverley if he'd like to meet me Wednesday morning, say ten o'clock at the Clare Cottonseed Building.’
'Well, I'll try,’ Neil said doubtfully.
'Tell him to bring his attorney,’ Randolph added. 'We might be drawing up a contract.’
