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Tea with the Black Dragon

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“Such a limited choice!” cried Mayland Long. He sat upright, stretching his back with relief. The wind wake blew his black hair around his face. “Our hand is played, child. Sit here with me a while.”

Liz Macnamara straightened painfully, propping the trunk open with one hand. She sat beside him. He put his arm around the young woman’s shoulder, perhaps for support. Nineteenth Avenue shot away beneath them; streetlights, signs and automobiles fading into the past. The streetcar tracks beat against the wheels of the Mercedes. Rasmussen cut through the empty street at sixty miles per hour.

“There’s a man—walking!” Liz waved her free hand and cried for help. The small figure vanished behind them. Rasmussen responded to her noise with a quick fishtail—left, then right across the lanes. The metal wall cracked her in the ribs.

“Goddamn him!” she shrieked, tears of anger in her eyes. Mr. Long’s hand tightened reassuringly on her shoulder. His hand was warm.

“Why didn’t you show up fifteen years ago,” Elizabeth lashed out. “We needed you.”

He drew back to look at her: perfect features, angelic hair, eyes like the sea. “You are a beautiful woman, Elizabeth. Like a painting, which is beauty of color, and like a sculpture, which is beauty of form. But you are alive, and have a beauty of movement which is more than these. Perhaps it is the beauty of music.”

Before she could respond he added, “Do you remember Fred Frisch?”

“Fred? Of course I remember Fred. Class clown. We sat in the same classrooms for four years. Got the same grades, too, I think. How do you know Fred?”

He yawned and settled her against his good shoulder. “I met him a few days ago, while we were looking for you. This past night he… he kept me alive, I think.”

“Fred?” she repeated helplessly. “Fred?”

“I like Fred Frisch,” said Mr. Long.

This same Fred Frisch was sitting at his kitchen table, scrubbing bloodstained chair cushions. They really were ruined. He drizzled peroxide over the rusty blotches. It made a satisfactory hiss and bubble, but lifted the green dye from the ancient satin. By now the cushions were soaked through with his various attempts at cleaning. Probably they would mildew.

Fred sighed. He dropped the cushion, sighed again, dropped the pinkish rag and sighed once more. He did not know what to do.

He was gifted with a quick mind and a very simple emotional nature. He wanted to be loyal to Mr. Long. He was in awe of the man, who could endure such sickness and pain without breaking. Who managed to appear decisive in the middle of delirium. Who lay in this tatty living room so very close to dying—close as a military spec., was the way Fred put it—and spoke considerately, with impeccable manners. Who apologized to Fred for holding his arm too tightly.

And Jeez, that arm still ached.

He would have liked to be like Mr. Long, but he knew the stuff he himself was made of. He was just Fred, and the best he could do was to be loyal, and not blow the other man’s game.

He stared at a cobweb high in the corner by the window and wondered whether being Chinese helped.

He carried the cushions back to the chair. Have to remember not to sit on them the next few days, till they dried. There, on the bright fabric where the seat cushion would rest, sat a small white cassette tape.

The story came back to him: the smashed recorder and the circle on the bathroom wall—which sign he would not have understood had not Long explained its Buddhist significance. This was the tape from the kidnappers hole. He picked it up by one corner, as though it would bite. He took it to the kitchen.

He had four tape recorders in his small apartment. One took large tapes only and two did not work at all. The remaining unit had a bum recording head, but played back reasonably well. He dragged it from its place in the pile and plugged it in by the toaster. He rewound the tape and played it.

After a few minutes his shaking hand slammed down on the eject key. “Oh Jeezus.”

The cries, the curses, punctuated by the thud of something hard against flesh… This was concentration camp stuff. This was murder.

The image of Mrs. Macnamara filled his mind—her old-fashioned braids, the bird-tilt of her head as she followed the toy car over the carpet. Her round, blue eyes, like Liz’s eyes.

The face became Liz Macnamara’s, delicate alabaster yet flushed with anger as she turned to counter some frat boy’s silly cut. The memory was brief; it lasted as long as the action it recorded—Liz was most easily remembered in action.

Could she be dead? And her mother? Was this voice on the tape the voice of a dead woman—dying even as the tape ran? Fred’s imagination quailed and the images faded into darkness.

He shuddered, and the table rattled in sympathy. He saw Mr. Long—the Black Dragon—as he had lain on the living room rug, unconscious. Here was another one who might be dead now. Or soon.

But the eyes in his memory opened. Brown eyes, heavy lidded, looked out calm and focused. They held Fred in place as though he were a rabbit.

No. The young man shook his thick pale hair. No sir, loyalty was one thing but life was another. Lives.

Fred hit rewind. He picked up the recorder with tape inside and snatched up his keys. As he locked the door behind him he rehearsed the story he had to give the police.

“The sea,” whispered Mayland Long. “I smell it. And listen!”

“I don’t hear anything but the car,” Liz responded. “And I smell gas sloshing out of the tank. He’s taking comers like a madman.”

He drew her close to him, his single hand gripping her canvas belt. A screen of laurel appeared at the left, very close to the car. The leaves rustled in the breeze—a sea breeze, foretelling the dawn. “It is time for you to leave us,” Long announced. “Please double tie your belt, so that it doesn’t come loose.”

Mystified, Liz complied with his order. “What do you mean—time for me to leave? We’re going too fast, still. And what about you? I’ll bet you could survive jumping a lot better than I could.”

The pressure against her waist increased. She was lifted from the sheet metal. “Ouch! Please! You’re twisting me all around. What are you doing?”

“I’m sorry,” said Mr. Long, in unconscious parody of Elizabeth herself. “But it is difficult with only one arm.”

“What is?” she began, as the Mercedes, following the angle of the road, went into a hard right turn. In answer, Long braced his feet against the right wall of the trunk and flung his companion out of the ear and into the shrubby trees.

Her shriek of surprise faded—like all else—into the past.

Chapter 16

The drive leading to North Beach Marina cut through an immaculate lawn. The Mercedes careened into it, skidding on gravel. The sky above the ocean was clear and black; the moon was setting, tinged mustard yellow. To the east, however, where the far shore of the Bay lay hidden, the darkness was dull and linty, and the stars were fading. As the Mercedes’ nose dipped down toward the piers, its lights flashed three times.

Rasmussen maintained his breakneck speed along the straight entryway, then jammed the brakes. Before the car had stopped moving he was out the door and running. He dropped to one knee behind the open trunk, bracing his pistol with his forearm.

A smaller shape sprinted up the road to join him. In the distance, dogs began to bark.

“All right, folks. Get out here, now!” snarled the big blond. Threve, standing beside Rasmussen, hissed, “What the hell happened, Floyd? You got Liz in there?”

“No. Just me,” answered Long, climbing wearily to his feet. He ignored Rasmussen to consider Threve.

Threve glared in turn at Long over the gleaming barrel of an automatic.

The prisoner spoke. “We haven’t been introduced. My name is Mayland Long. I know that your name is Threve. And I’m told that you are a murderous thug.” His words were easy, urbane, almost cordial. “I’ve come to make sure it is true.”

Threve inched closer to Rasmussen. “This is—is this the weird guy?”

Rasmussen nodded. “Where’s Liz?” he snapped.

“Far away,” Long answered placidly. He lifted his head to the breeze. The moonlight shone on his glossy black hair.

Rasmussen’s teeth ground together. “Then she’s dead,” he stated. “I didn’t slow down under fifty the entire trip.”

“Why the hell didn’t you lock the goddamn trunk?” roared Threve, stung by the prisoners attitude and furious at Rasmussen as well. The chorus of barking rose with his voice.

Rasmussen divided his attention; he trusted neither man.

“I don’t think she was injured,” said Long. “She landed in a bush.”

“Shit! You said you had her, Floyd! How the hell did you let her get away?”

Floyd Rasmussen did not answer. He locked eyes with Long, who smiled grimly. “Why her and not you?” Rasmussen asked.

Mr. Long turned his face to the water. “I came to see Mrs. Macnamara. ’Til I find her, my business with you isn’t done.”

“It is, because you are,” growled Rasmussen, shifting his grip on the black pistol. His eyes were doubtful. “Hell of a price to pay.”

Long smiled. “You don’t even know what I’m buying.”

The dogs were silent suddenly; perhaps their master had come out to hush them. Only a chorus of crickets sounded at the edge of hearing, like the blood pounding in Rasmussen’s ears. The pistol didn’t waver, but he stared warily at Long, afraid that his prisoner had plans that he, Rasmussen, did not understand.