Mrs. Pollifax and the Hong Kong Buddha (10 page)

Mrs. Pollifax laughed. “But I didn’t expect such charm, I wasn’t warned! How do you do, Marko.”

“The charm is natural, for I am both French and Greek,” he announced. “My delight at meeting you is thoroughly authentic—this you must believe—but I think now we get down to very serious business and you will not experience my charm for a long time because I have heard the news, Robin. You both found the body as well as this Mr. Hitchens?”

“Yes, we found Hao dead—and much more,” Robin told him grimly.

“Then we talk,” said Marko, and gestured Mrs. Pollifax to a nearby chair.

She sat down, both amused and impressed by Marko and glad that he was not an antagonist, for despite his charm she sensed in him the underlying toughness of steel. Outwardly he was small and lithe, a battered little man in his thirties with a radiant smile and a scar on his
face that ran from his left cheekbone down to his jaw. His skin was swarthy, his hair black and his dark eyes surprisingly kind, with the wisdom of an old soul. She thought that he looked rather like a monkey, but a most agreeable monkey, for he was attractive—
very
attractive, she decided—in the way that unusual people so often were. He was wearing what must have been his chauffeur’s uniform of the morning for he was entirely in black: a silk turtleneck jersey and black slacks, but she saw that he was barefoot as he sprang into a chair and tucked his feet under him.

Robin chose the couch, saying, “We sit and we tell you what we found in Damien Hao’s house, which was quietly visited by the two of us after finding Hao dead. And then we hear from Mrs. Pollifax about Feng Imports.”

“Feng what?”

Robin pointed to Mrs. Pollifax. “
Her
assignment, Marko, which gives every evidence of wandering into ours, because Eric the Red—”

“Eric the Red!” interrupted Marko. “Mon Dieu …! No, I say frankly, my God!”

“Exactly,” Robin agreed and, opening his wallet, he removed the torn news clipping and handed it to Marko, describing how it was found. “At which point, having unearthed it,” he said, “Mrs. Pollifax confounded, startled and shocked me by casually announcing that whoever this man was she’d flown into Hong Kong on the same plane with him and had seen him yesterday morning coming out of Feng Imports when she was waiting to make a contact there.”

Marko whistled and turned to Mrs. Pollifax. “You must know how incredible this is to us. You must also know—Robin will have told you—why we are in Hong
Kong. You find yourself completely sure this is the same man?”

“Yes,” she said simply. “He was very much noticed because I had the misfortune to step on his foot, and later Mr. Hitchens scrutinized him carefully—you can try
him
on the photo, too, when he gets back. The man was traveling on a Canadian passport, by the way.”

“You know that also!”

Mrs. Pollifax smiled faintly. “If he had been polite—but he made the mistake of calling attention to himself, a cardinal mistake, I believe, in anyone traveling incognito. He was flawlessly groomed, and I’ve no doubt his clothes all bore Canadian labels, but he did not like his foot stepped on.”

“A leopard and his spots,” murmured Marko. “It was believed he was hiding in Eastern Germany but lately rumors have surfaced that he had moved on to Italy.”

Mrs. Pollifax said, “But when was he in prison?”

Marko turned to Robin. “It was at least ten years ago, was it not? In West Germany, I believe … He broke out with the help of a woman friend, and of course following that—” He shrugged. “Following that you know the rest, he has left terror behind him in many countries.
Too
many. But please—you say he went at once to this place called Feng Imports?”

“He must have, because he still had his overnight bag with him.”

Very softly Marko said, “If this is so it changes everything—
everything!
We know now what—but you will tell us please of this Feng Import shop and why you go there.”

Mrs. Pollifax drew a deep breath and plunged into her explanation of why she had come to Hong Kong:
she described Carstairs’s alarm about Detwiler, how Sheng Ti happened to be known to her and why he was important; she described her visit to Feng Imports and her meeting with Mr. Detwiler and how she was followed afterward and she concluded with her interview of the previous evening with Lotus and a very frightened Sheng Ti.

“Eleven passports—and one of them no doubt Canadian,” murmured Robin. “He did say eleven?” When Mrs. Pollifax nodded he said, “And he or Lotus will be contacting you tonight?”

“Yes, at least I assume so. If they can.”

Robin and Marko exchanged glances. Marko said, “I think we must immediately go and see this place, don’t you? Mrs. Pollifax must lead but not be seen, and I think we bring in—how many men?—to watch this place in case Eric the Red returns to it. But until we have more help I am thinking you will have to lose your secretary.” His eyes twinkled at Robin. “Shall you phone or I?”

Robin said, “I will.” He rose and walked into another room and closed the door.

“And you,” said Marko, rising in one fluid easy motion from his chair, “you are not too tired to show us? Tired from this game we play that sometimes brings violent death?”

“What matters,” she said slowly, “is to prevent any more deaths. There’s young Alec still missing, and if you’re thinking what I am—” She did not finish her sentence, but Marko gave her an appreciative glance.

“Yes,” he said, and they sat quietly until Robin reappeared.

“There’ll be two men here by nine tonight—Krugg and Upshot,” he told them, “and a third man—Witkowski—before
morning. It’s all they can spare at the moment but at least they begin to understand that things are beginning to happen here.”

Marko nodded. “Good. I will go and pack my knapsack then, and take over until nine.”

“Interpol, but still no local police?” commented Mrs. Pollifax as she placed her hat on her head and skewered it into place with a hatpin.

“I have to remind you that Damien Hao avoided them,” Robin said dryly, “and don’t forget all those stolen diamonds, which—if they went into bribes-bought a hell of a lot of people. A little paranoia helps in this job, as you know. I’d guess that most of the police here are as trustworthy as you and I, but if Hao
was
framed, and
was
murdered for what he learned, just how do we find which ones can be trusted? It’s too chancy just now, like Russian roulette. My superiors are sending in men from Tokyo and Bangkok.”

“And what is Marko packing?” she asked quietly.

“Food, radio transmitter, batteries, camera and film and probably a gun. Or so I’d guess. We’ll hope like hell we can find a hiding place for him in your Dragon Alley.”

Mrs. Pollifax felt a stir of excitement; her watch told her that it was almost two o’clock in the afternoon and that once again she would be missing lunch, but she felt that a missed lunch was a very small price to pay to watch two professionals at work. “I’m ready,” she said as Marko emerged from the next room with his knapsack. “We’re off to the freight elevator again?”

The first lesson that Mrs. Pollifax learned in the art of reconnaissance was that there would be no setting foot in Dragon Alley at all. They circled it instead, researching
first the street in back of Feng Imports, stumbling through yards and over piles of junk until Mrs. Pollifax finally spotted the high slanted window of Mr. Detwiler’s rear workroom, whereupon Robin jotted down location and description in a notebook and stared with particular interest at what looked to be an empty warehouse room on the top floor of a nearby building.

They next moved to the lane on the other side of Dragon Alley and scouted the shop from this approach, squeezing through narrow apertures in a fence and peering around trees until they located the building that faced the front door of Feng Imports. This proved to be a rooming house, a ramshackle wooden affair listing subtly toward the street below. The proprietor of the rooming house was not on the premises, and Mrs. Pollifax was enchanted by the dispatch with which Marko and Robin dealt with this problem: they simply entered the building by the back door and walked up and down halls knocking on doors until they found someone at home.

Their discovery was a man named Pi and they had interrupted his sleep. He slept, he said, because he had lost his job a week ago, and who were they? Over his shoulder Mrs. Pollifax looked into the cubicle he occupied and saw that not only did it have a window, but that the window looked out on Dragon Alley and directly down at Feng Imports. Twenty minutes later Pi had bundled up his belongings—they made a pile no larger than Marko’s knapsack—and had sublet his cubicle to them for a week. From the amount of money that was paid to him for both his silence and his absence Mrs. Pollifax thought that he could very well afford to move into the Hong Kong Hilton but Robin and Marko had their stakeout. Once he had gone she and Robin lingered only briefly to help Marko rearrange the furniture,
to lay out his lunch—Mrs. Pollifax tried not to regard it too wistfully—and to set up his radio; then they too left.

“What now?” asked Mrs. Pollifax, intrigued by the thought of more revelations.

“Now I’ll drop you off at the hotel,” Robin said deflatingly, “because I’ve got to go back and see about renting that second-floor space overlooking the rear of Feng Imports, and for that I’ll need some fake business cards that I don’t have with me, and a change of outfit. After that I’ll set up the radio in our hotel suite and establish contact with Marko. What I hope you’ll do is find Mr. Hitchens for me and set up some kind of appointment. I’d like very much to have him verify the news photo of Eric the Red, but also”—Robin gave her a sheepish glance—“also …”

She smiled. “You want to borrow his psychic talents. The only problem may be that with all the publicity he’s suddenly getting we may have to stand in line.”

Robin swung the Renault into a parking space at the mall entrance to the hotel. “Nonsense,” he said. “If that’s the case you must gently but firmly remind him of who gave him sanctuary last night in his moment of travail, and just who called a doctor for him, and you might throw in the hint of a terrorist or two and remind him that you and I are on the side of justice, peace and order, etcetera—relatively speaking—and then pray hard that he can answer Inspector Hao’s WHEN? We desperately need a date … a week, a month, a day.”

“That’s a tall order,” pointed out Mrs. Pollifax.

“All orders are tall in this business,” said Robin, “and at the moment I’m feeling very short.” He reached over and opened the door for her. “It’s already midafternoon, there’s no telling when Hitchens will turn up
and I’ve a great deal to do; we’d better settle for a very firm date early tomorrow morning. I’m a reasonable man,” he added. “Offer Mr. Hitchens a luxurious breakfast with us in my suite at eight o’clock. He’s just mislaid his employer and he could be wondering where his next meal’s coming from.”

“I wish I’d thought of that,” she said warmly. “Robin, you
are
nice.”

He grinned. “Of course I’m nice … If anything comes up, I’ll be manning the radio until it’s time to meet planes at the airport tonight. See you!” He saluted and drove away to find a parking space and to undoubtedly make his entrance by way of the freight elevator, on which he was becoming a regular commuter. Mrs. Pollifax entered the hotel through the mall to begin a search for Mr. Hitchens.

But she was thinking as she walked through the mall that she would still have no news of Alec to give Mr. Hitchens, and this would be one of the first questions he would ask of her because Alec was the reason for his being in Hong Kong, just as Detwiler was
her
reason for being here. On the heels of this thought came the realization that she’d not thought very much about Detwiler at all today. She had been concerned with Mr. Hitchens and the missing Alec; she had helped discover a body and the identity of the man with the violent aura, and she’d enjoyed very much observing how Robin and Marko set up the surveillance point from which they’d watch Feng Imports, but she’d scarcely given a thought to either Detwiler or Sheng Ti, and they were both her immediate assignment.

She paused to glance idly over the jackets of magazines in one of the shops but they all seemed to have names like
Peek, Spy, Prowl
and
See
. She thought,
If
there’s a connection between Mr. Detwiler and Eric the Red—and Alec still mysteriously missing—isn’t it possible that Detwiler might be hiding Alec in his home, wherever it might be?
She wondered if Detwiler lived in an apartment or a house, and where she could find the nearest phone directory to see if he were listed. Leaving magazines behind, she headed for the escalator to the lobby.

She had just found Detwiler’s address and was copying it into her memo pad when she felt herself tapped on the shoulder and Mr. Hitchens said, “I’ve been looking for you!”

She turned to find herself face to face with a Mr. Hitchens whose face had almost vanished under a huge hat that looked like a cross between a panama and a Stetson. Repressing an urgent impulse to laugh she said in amusement, “Are you in disguise, Mr. Hitchens?”

He said reproachfully, “No, I’ve an ice pack on my head and it didn’t seem quite the thing to wear in the lobby while I waited for you so the manager very kindly loaned me his hat. Shall we sit down?”

“Yes, do let’s,” she said heartily, and they moved toward the nearest couch.

“I can’t tell you how wonderful they’ve been to me here,” he confided. “I’ve been given another room because apparently I put up quite a fight last night with that—that
thug
, and the maid found my room a shambles this morning. I’m in room 302 now, and”—he paused for breath, beaming at her happily—“and I’m going to be on the television news tonight, it’s already taped, and just look—” He held out his newspaper to her. “Fresh off the press!”

They established themselves on the couch, and Mrs. Pollifax unfurled the paper to gaze at a photograph of
two policemen and Mr. Hitchens blinking in the sun. Lower on the page was a large close-up of Mr. Hitchens, his bandage at a slightly rakish angle, and a smaller-case headline that read NOTED AMERICAN PSYCHIC IN HONG KONG.