Inspector O 02 - Hidden Moon (22 page)

I didn’t bother to knock. “Yang, I’m going to phrase this as delicately as I can. Whatever you’re up to, it’s not courage. It’s foolishness.” Yang was at his desk, staring off into space with a sad look in his eyes.

He glanced up and acknowledged me standing in his doorway, but he didn’t change expressions. “So, you figured out who was driving
that car with the special plates,” he said. He waited, but I didn’t reply. Only then did he nod for me to sit down.

The visitor’s chair had one leg shorter than the others. It had been that way for years. Sooner or later we’d fix it or get another chair. “Did I?” I said, trying to stay upright. “Did I figure it out?”

“They’ve been watching you in order to watch me. And once they spotted me at your apartment, they became doubly interested.” Yang hunched over his side of the desk. He and Li shared an office; they sat on either side of a single worktable. Li was at the Traffic Bureau, checking reports on bus accidents. I hoped he might be able to shake something loose, where I had not.

“Alright, tell me. Why are they watching you?”

Yang shrugged, a minor movement of his shoulders. He blinked slowly while he took a breath. It was like a mask of death, his face when he closed his eyes. For a moment, I almost thought he had died right in front of me. Then he moved slightly and opened his eyes again. “You’d have to ask them.”

“Look, Yang, if I had the time, I’d probably play this game with you for weeks. I raise a subject obliquely. You parry implicitly. I tiptoe to the side door. You slip out over the roof. Back and forth. We’d even begin to look forward to it. Every day, a new line of attack; every afternoon, a new line of defense. But we don’t have time, and I just lost someone in a tunnel, which I always hate to do. So, I need to know why you are being followed. I need to know urgently, am I clear?” It made me uneasy to push him like this, but I didn’t have much choice.

“I told you, O, I don’t know. How would I? How would I know why anyone follows anyone else in this country?”

“ ‘In this country,’ Yang?” I smiled so broadly my cheeks hurt. “What would that mean?”

Yang stood up and took a half step toward me. “Nothing, O,” he said. “It doesn’t mean anything. Don’t worry, I’m not afflicted with a sudden dose of courage. I can see. But I can’t act. It’s a sort of moral paralysis. Many people have it, I’m beginning to understand.”

“My friend, nothing you’ve said in the past two minutes makes
me feel better, put aside that most of it doesn’t make any sense at all.” There wasn’t any decision to make. It had nothing to do with believing Yang or not. I wasn’t going to throw him to the lions. “Alright, if you didn’t do anything, and you aren’t about to do anything, then how do we get this special squad off your neck?”

“Don’t bother,” Yang said. “It’s not worth your time.”

“I’m not bothering for your sake. The person I’m worried about is me. If they don’t like something about you, then it rubs off on everyone nearby, and I’m pretty near. I have enough to worry about. Don’t forget, the guy who was in here the other night said I stole his wallet. Min says the guy was well connected, and you told me he was pulled out of here by people with guns and funny plates on their car. He turns up dead, they go down a list of suspects.”

“No one is going to touch you, O. You lead a charmed life.”

I laughed.

“I’m only going to tell you this one more time. Sit up when I’m talking to you.”

I sat up, not because I knew why, but because when I hear someone using that tone of voice and my hands are tied behind me, it is automatic.

A hand shot out and hit me across the face. “Not fast enough. When I say something, you do it, don’t stop to think.”

It was too dark for me to distinguish any details, though whoever had just hit me didn’t seem to have the same trouble. I sat as straight as I could and tried to look intelligent. Sitting straight seemed to clear my head. A simple question bobbed up: Where were we? I took a breath, and the oxygen helped me decide it was the wrong time to ask. Whoever had just smacked me wasn’t there to answer questions.

“Good, now at least you are with us.” It was growled, the way people with big bones sound. Probably not someone I wanted to annoy.

A door opened off to the right, and then a lamp clicked on. The light was subdued. It was soothing in a way, though I would have liked to be able to see more. A tall man dressed in a brown suit took a step out of the darkness in front of me. He stopped just at the point where I would have been able to see him clearly. When he talked, he hung back a little in the half-shadow, so I couldn’t watch his eyes. “I’m sorry we had to hit you like that, but you seemed to be dozing off.” He spoke slowly, in a pleasant voice, low and flowing. You might think he was the host, carefully considering the needs of a guest. “Would you care for a drink of water?” Very amiable offer.

“Who are you?” I knew the technique. Start soft. Maybe the man in the shadows would give me an answer. He was moving like one of those interrogators who try to establish “trust” at the outset. For sure, things weren’t going to get any better, so I might as well ask my question before they got worse. At least I’d know whose toe I’d stepped on.

“Now, Inspector, let’s put a few simple rules on the table. Lay them out, get them straight between us, and then not have to concern ourselves with them anymore. I know who you are; you have no need to know who I am. I ask the questions, by and large. You answer what you can, as honestly as you can. If I think you are lying—well, you have a reputation for being straightforward, so I won’t worry about it.” All said pleasantly, as if these rules were well understood by every guest but needed to be reviewed anyway.

“A drink of water would be fine. But I need my hands free. I only drink when I hold the glass.” I needed to set my own rule, if only a little one.

The man in the brown suit moved a millimeter into the light, just enough so I caught a glimpse of a smile. “That is exactly what I would say in your place, Inspector. I think we will get along quite well.” He nodded to whoever was standing in the darkness beside me, and as he nodded, the shadows played on his face. The cuffs were removed from my hands, and I closed my eyes as my arms regained feeling. “There, you see, Inspector, already the situation has improved.”

“I’ll take that glass of water now.” The glass appeared in front of
me. I put it to my lips and drank enough to wet the inside of my mouth. I held the glass out, and it was taken away.

“When you want more, Inspector, you need only ask.”

“I thought I was supposed only to give answers.”

There was a low growl behind, but from in front of me I heard a faint laugh. “Fair enough. Let us say I give you blanket permission to ask for water. In fact, any creature comfort that is lacking, you need only ask. I can’t promise to supply everything, but what I can get for you, I will. Shall we proceed?”

“Let me say something, if I may.”

There was silence. The man in the brown suit was studying my face. I couldn’t see him, but I knew what he was doing. Finally he said, “Of course you may, Inspector.” He stepped back, completely into the shadow.

“You have the wrong person.”

It was quiet for a moment, then an explosion of laughter echoed around the walls. “Really, Inspector,” the man in the brown suit said when he got back his breath. He let me see that he was drying his eyes with a handkerchief. “That is what everyone says, but you say it so matter-of-factly. One could almost believe it.”

“And you don’t?”

“I don’t have any basis for making a judgment. If you are completely the wrong person, we will establish that soon enough.” I never disliked the word “completely” so thoroughly as when the man in the brown suit said it. “If you are the wrong person, but only because circumstances have not yet made you the right person, we will establish that as well. And if you are the wrong person, but have tendencies that impel you in the very direction you say you have not taken, well, then let’s find out beforehand and save us both a great deal of trouble.”

“In other words . . .”

The man in the brown suit leaned forward slightly, another millimeter, enough so I would feel the space between us had diminished. “There are no ‘other words,’ Inspector. Those words you just heard me speak are the words which convey what I need you to know.
Words are what we have, and we will use them with great respect, you and I, in our conversation. In particular, you will notice that I am precise in what I ask. A precise question deserves a precise answer.”

“Not always. What if you ask the wrong question?”

Again, from behind, I heard a growl. The man in the brown suit moved his legs, a gesture of annoyance, though I could not tell if it was at me or at the mastiff in the rear. He took back the millimeter we had gained. “I have no doubt you will correct the question, Inspector. I’m in no hurry to proceed, incidentally. I have all day, and all of the next day, and the next. We can sit here until summer, and it gets quite hot in these rooms in summer, believe me. The sooner we get started, the sooner we will be done. But it is all up to you.” He brushed something off his shoulder, perhaps a stray bit of unwanted light.

“I’ll tell you the truth, I’m very tired, and I don’t think clearly when my mind is clouded. Perhaps I can sleep for a few hours, and we can resume later.” I half expected to be hit again.

“Sleep deprivation is not a technique I practice, Inspector. Some people think it works wonders. I have never been convinced. Please sleep, if you wish. Perhaps you’d like a pill to help you?”

“I think not.”

The man in the brown suit sounded amused. “No, I didn’t suppose you would. Never mind.” He nodded his head. My arms were grabbed from behind and tied to the back of the chair. “Sleep well, Inspector.”

“Here, sitting up?”

“My goodness, yes, this is not a hotel.” I thought he moved into the light, but then the lamp clicked off, a fist came down on my neck, and if I dreamed anything while I was unconscious, I had forgotten it by the time I woke up.

The man in the brown suit was leaning against the wall when I opened my eyes. I couldn’t see his face in the shadow, but his posture
was one of patience. There was nothing aggressive about it, not a hint of tension. That might have been soothing, except I sensed he had been watching me for some time, and being under observation put me on edge whether I was walking on the street or tied up in a chair. “You slept well, Inspector?” he asked solicitously.

The word “bastard” rose up through the fog in my mind. “I’ve slept better.”

“It isn’t easy to sleep sitting up that way, I realize. But it can be done. I did it, others have done it, I knew you could, too. In any event, while you slept, I was busy working.”

I looked down and was surprised to see my hands on my lap. They were completely numb.

“Feeling will return in the next few minutes, don’t worry. But don’t let them fall off your lap just yet, lest they detach themselves from your wrists and clatter to the floor. I don’t think we have the means to put them back.” He chuckled and let a few beams of light strike his lips. “I’m only joking.” There must be marks on the floor; I never saw anyone who could judge distance so precisely.

“You were working while I slept, and what were the results, if I may ask a question.”

“A good question, one I might ask if I were you. I discovered that you were right, you are the wrong person.”

“So, it’s good-bye, then.” I started to get up, but a hand behind me pulled me back onto the chair.

“You are the wrong person, Inspector, but that still leaves a question.”

“No, I don’t know who the right person is.”

“Ah. You don’t know who the right person is. Good, then we are a team; we are on the same side of ignorance. In that case, why don’t we establish some common perceptions? Maybe we can help each other.”

“That’s unlikely, but what did you have in mind?”

“First of all, I have a chart I’d like to show you.” He took a paper from his jacket pocket and unfolded it. After studying it for a moment,
he sighed. “It has a number of blanks, troubling blank spots. I’m not yet sure where to put you, for example.” The chart came out of the darkness and was dropped on my lap. When I could move my arms and my fingers, I picked it up.

“You forgot my grandfather.”

“No, Inspector, I know you are the grandson of a Hero of the Revolution, but he died a long time ago, and if I don’t put a time limit on these charts, they get too big. That’s why your parents don’t appear, either. They died during the war; if I notated everyone connected to you who died during the war, we’d run short of paper. Let the dead rest in peace, Inspector; we have enough problems with the living.”

“Fine.” I glanced at the chart again. “It looks alright.”

“Actually, it errs on the thin side, but that’s deliberate. If I asked you to study it carefully, you might add one or two acquaintances and then think it was done. People have a tendency to feel they only know a few other people, but the interconnections over time are actually quite complex, especially for someone like you.”

“Someone like me,” I repeated. That did not have a good sound to it. My heart was starting to beat so loudly, I thought for sure both the man in the brown suit and the mastiff behind me could hear it. A bomb had been dropped; they were waiting for me to react. In so many words, I had been told that the shield my grandfather’s status had provided all these years was suddenly worthless. “Let the dead rest in peace,” the man in the brown suit had said. The only possible conclusion was that someone in the center had decided that my being raised by a Hero of the Revolution—and equally important, my knowledge of the old stories—had become a burden. But why now, all of a sudden? To most people, the appearance and disappearance of protection stemming from the Center seemed whimsical, shifting winds over an ocean of people treading water. But I knew that usually there was nothing whimsical about it. These shifts were almost always a reflection of something important, a failed policy or an unexpected
event that the Center saw as a threat. Not a bank robbery, something bigger, much bigger.