Skulduggery Read online

  “Old bones? Fossils?”

  He had my attention. I pushed away from the door, came closer to the couch, looked down at his young anxious face.

  “Yes,” I said quickly. “As a matter of fact, I know quite a bit about fossils. Why?”

  His head swiveled around, his eyes searching the shadows of the room.

  “I live alone.”

  He nodded, then spoke so softly that I strained to hear. “I have a skull. I want to show it to you. I want to know if you recognize it.”

  “A skull. Where did it come from?”

  He shook his head.

  I shrugged. “You must understand,” I began and I must have sounded professorial, “a skull out of context can be meaningless . . .”

  I broke off for he was shaking his head again, sharply.

  “Not these bones.”

  Bones, he said. Bones, plural. He wanted to show me a skull. But he had bones.

  I felt suddenly breathless. I stared at his handsome face, at his smooth dark cheeks, and saw the thin film of sweat beading his mouth and the rigid line of his jaw.

  Whatever he had, he was wild with excitement. And he would show the skull to me.

  “Where are the bones?” I looked toward my door. “Are they here? Do you have them . . . ?”

  “They’re in a safe place. Not here. If you’ll come with me . . .

  The telephone rang.

  He jumped up, whirled toward the phone, then stopped, almost in a crouch, and looked at me.

  “No,” he said sharply as I moved toward my desk. Then, embarrassed, he spread his hands. “I’m sorry. But, please, don’t say anything about me.”

  I nodded.

  It was Richard.

  “Oh. Oh yes, Richard, that’s thoughtful of you, yes, a sauterne would be excellent. But, Richard, I’m sorry, we can’t have dinner after all . . . oh no, everything’s fine . . . it’s an old friend, Sally Morris, you’ve heard me speak of her . . . no, at the airport of all things, en route to Honolulu, a layover . . . I know, I’m disappointed, too, but you know how these things are . . . I am sorry . . . yes, tomorrow night then.”

  As I put down the receiver, the young man smiled at me and the smile reached deep into his black eyes.

  I moved quickly then, putting the shrimp in the refrigerator, pouring the cracker crumbs into a plastic bag, wiping clean the counter top. It was only as I slipped on my coat that I paused for an instant. I had offended Richard. But, dammit, if an old friend had come to town, he should have been more understanding.

  I buttoned my coat.

  It had been so easy to lie to Richard.

  I was reaching out to open the door when the young man raised his hand.

  “Wait a minute, Dr. Christie. I wasn’t going to say anything, but, I can’t ask you to come . . . and just keep quiet. People have been following me. This isn’t safe, you know. I lost them, I’m almost sure. But, still, if you don’t want to take a chance, I’ll understand.”

  He stood so close I could smell pine-scented shaving lotion and the fog-dampened wool of his checkered shirt.

  Whatever threat he perceived, he believed in it.

  I hesitated.

  Richard, I knew, would send this young man away, tell him to bring his bones, whatever they were, to the museum. Make an appointment. Richard had turned down an expedition to Africa. Too much unrest, he had said. Odd, I hadn’t thought about that refusal in several months. I had hidden my surprise at that decision from Richard.

  Surprise. And disappointment?

  I looked at the handsome young man standing so near me. He waited tensely, hoping.

  “Do you have a car?” I asked.

  He smiled. “I have my motorcycle, Dr. Christie. You can ride behind me. It isn’t far.”

  It was the motorcycle that turned the balance. I was twenty-seven years old and I had never ridden on a motorcycle.

  I always felt, later, that the ride was worth it. Plunging up and down fog-hung streets, the vibration of the motor, the sensation of speed and freedom, it was unlike anything I had ever done.

  I had an idea of our destination when we swung off Hyde onto Pacific and I was sure of it when we turned south on Stockton.

  I had been to Chinatown once before on a cold, damp day in August. To lunch in a delightful and delightfully inexpensive restaurant. When I ate that lunch, I had no idea why it was so good or why it was so cheap in comparison with other restaurants in San Francisco. I thought, if I thought at all, that here was an old-fashioned lure for tourists, buildings with their corners uptilted, Chinese characters in neon, shops with dried seaweed, ginseng and pressed ducks. Exotic, oriental, not quite real.

  I didn’t think of it as a place where people lived.

  We passed closed and shuttered shops, laundries, groceries, then swung right down a narrow street. I was lost, of course. We were somewhere in Chinatown. Then the cycle slowed, turned into the darkness of a narrow alleyway. The noise of the engine was magnified against the looming brick walls. He stopped next to a wooden rack holding garbage pails. I climbed off and removed the helmet he had given me and watched as he locked the cycle and the helmets to the garbage rack.

  He took my arm. “This way,” and he led me deeper into the darkness. I looked back once. The fog already hid the pails and the cycle though the smell of rotting fish and cabbage and spoiled fruit followed us. The only light in the alleyway came from a distant street lamp, but he seemed to know his way. We had gone perhaps fifteen yards when his hand tightened on my arm and he stopped. I waited with him and heard too the soft slap of approaching footsteps.

  He looked back the way we had come, hesitated, then pulled me along. We walked on and the footsteps came nearer. It was an old man, an old bent man in a heavy black wool suit, carrying a string bag, who came toward us. He raised his head and peered through the darkness and fog.

  My companion ducked his head into his collar, turned a shoulder toward the old man and we passed without a word. I looked back over my shoulder and saw black eyes watching us sharply.

  We hurried on, brick walls glistening on either side of us, uneven brick underfoot, and I wondered where this alley led.

  But we didn’t leave the alley.

  I wouldn’t have seen the door, would have passed it by, but he nudged me to the right and there, set flush with the wall, was a red door, almost indistinguishable from the brick around it.

  He dropped my arm, fumbled in his pocket and drew out keys hung on a circle of metal. The door opened slowly, creaking on its hinges, opened onto darkness.

  “Step just inside,” he whispered. “I’ll leave the door a little ajar so we can see our way down the steps. I don’t want to use a light yet.”

  We walked down steep wooden steps, down, down, down into darkness and the air was cold and stale, smelling of mold and dust and age.

  Emptiness. You can feel emptiness. There was no one anywhere. I knew it and I wondered, for the first time, if I had made a mistake. A serious mistake. Every city has its abandoned, disintegrating, boarded-up hulks. Why would he bring me . . . ?

  My foot jolted against the floor because the step I had expected was not there.

  We stopped there at the foot of the stairs and I felt him listen. I listened, too, but there was nothing at all to hear, not the faintest sigh of a sound.

  “It’s empty,” I said sharply.

  He started at the sound of my voice.

  “Be quiet,” he whispered.

  I was quiet, caught up in his intensity, listening, waiting.

  Then I heard a little spurt of air, a sigh of relaxation and he spoke aloud though still quietly. “We’re okay. It’s supposed to be empty and it is.”

  A tiny pencil of light flickered on and he pointed it ahead. I saw rock-hard earth and wondered where there was a building so old that its cellar was of dirt, not brick.

  “This way.” We moved slowly down a narrow hallway, skirting a row of boxes stacked against a brick wall, past wooden cupbo
ards, the wood splintery and unfinished. We walked to the end of the hall to a closed door. He pulled the key ring out of his pocket again, tried several keys until he found the right one.

  He flipped a wall switch and a single low-watt bulb dangling from the low ceiling, came on. It was a small rectangular room and I hesitated in the doorway for this was, unexpectedly, someone’s home. A narrow camp bed sat against the opposite wall. Above it hung a bulletin board with every inch covered, snapshots, yellowed newspaper clippings, ticket stubs, menus, and, in the top right-hand corner, a faded khaki Army cap. A tool bench ran along the wall to the right. To the left were neatly stacked orange crates, holding flour and sugar canisters, a few canned goods, a stack of old iron pans, a shelf full of Chinese paperback books. A hot plate sat atop a metal drum.

  A single wooden chair sat next to the tool bench. The young man pulled it out.

  “Here, Dr. Christie. You’ll be safe here. I’ll hurry.”

  He was at the door before I spoke.

  “Wait, please. Where are you going?”

  “To get the skull.” He smiled, a quick almost impish smile. “It’s in a safe place. No one would ever think . . . Anyway, I’ll be right back.”

  I watched the door close then turned and walked to the chair and sat. But I no more than sat than I was on my feet again, pacing nervously up and down the narrow room. I had come to this quiet cold room, followed a stranger, because I had an inkling what those bones might be.

  There are bones that would bring danger in their trail. Any anthropologist knows which bones. Bones that had surfaced briefly on the other side of the world then been swept away in the chaos of World War II. Bones that had been in the news of late years, whispers that they were in Macao, in New York, in Shanghai, in Melbourne, in the California hills.

  One man had publicly offered one hundred and fifty thousand dollars for the bones.

  Others might pay even more.

  I paced up and down, up and down. Was it possible, was it remotely possible that . . .

  I heard the door open and whirled around. He clutched a YMCA tote bag. I thought he was certainly right on one count. You wouldn’t expect to find the contents of that bag in the average YMCA locker.

  I was close beside him when he put the bag down in the center of the work bench. Unzipping the bag, he reached inside and lifted out a powerful lantern-type of flashlight and sat it on its base. Now there was plenty of light, light enough to see the faintest of scratches on the surface of the workbench. He reached into the bag again, drawing out what looked to be a clump of soiled clothes, a thick grey cotton sweatshirt wadded into an uneven ball.

  He unwound the sweatshirt and my breath caught in my chest. My god, it was, it really was!

  I reached out, took the skull and held it gingerly, turning it slowly this way and that in the bright beam from the lamp.

  You would never mistake it for a modern skull, but, all the same, it was man and not simian. The most noticeable single aspect of the skull was the spectacular projection of the brow, a horizontal bar of bone extending the full width of the lower margin of the forehead. Lightly, I touched that bar of bone. It was this that had given Peking Man his distinctive heavy browed appearance.

  There, I had thought it, put recognition into form. Peking Man. One of man’s earliest ancestors, his fossil bones had been discovered in China 40-odd years ago.

  Bones, irreplaceable, indescribably valuable, and given up for lost after their disappearance in 1941.

  I traced the slight bulge of the forehead and the relatively flattened top of the skull. The side walls of the skull sloped inward and upward. I turned the deep yellow skull to look at the back and there was a bony ridge at its base, just above the nape of the neck. And, along the top of the cranium, a pronounced ridge extended lengthwise along the middle of the crown.

  Oh yes, here in my hand I held a fossil that would rate inch-thick headlines all around the world, an almost complete skull of Peking Man—or a magnificent counterfeit.

  I looked warily at the young man who was watching me so closely, intent upon my appraisal.

  “Where . . .” I began.

  He shook his head. Firmly.

  “It’s Peking Man, isn’t it?” he asked.

  My fingers touched again that bar of bone above the eye sockets. Five hundred thousand years ago, flesh covered these bones. The face had jutted forward with scarcely any chin, but, had we stood face to face, we would have recognized our kinship. Early man, but, man, nonetheless. Eyes had looked out of these sockets, eyes that watched anxiously when storm clouds towered above the valley, eyes that softened in love, closed in sleep, wept with loss and pain.

  I looked into living eyes that watched me so intently.

  I touched the cheekbones then slipped my hand again to the back of the skull and the strong bony ridge near its base. Yes, oh yes, I thought. But I began, “In a laboratory . . .”

  He reached out, grabbed my arm. “Don’t try to kid me,” he said angrily.

  I shrugged. “I can’t tell you. It doesn’t matter what I think . . . or guess. If you want proof, you’ll have to submit the skull and the other bones for tests. Then you’ll know.”

  “But you know now.”

  I pulled away and once again spread my fingers softly on the ancient yellow hard fossil. “Oh yes,” I said softly, “I think you’ve turned the trick. I don’t know where or how, but I think you’ve come up with the most famous lost bones in the world.”

  He expelled a breath gently, slowly, and the tension eased out of his face. He had not then been absolutely sure of his find.

  My hand curved around the back of the skull. “I never dreamed, ever, that I would touch a fossil like this.” What did it mean to him that we had, in this room, in our hands, a scientific treasure? “Do you know,” I asked urgently, “do you have any idea how valuable this skull is?”

  “Yeah, I think I do.”

  I didn’t want to let go of the skull. I didn’t want to do anything but hold it, touch it, look at it. But, I knew my responsibility.

  “Look,” I said abruptly, “we need to get the rest of the bones, get them all together, put them in a safe place. Let me call the chairman of my department at the museum. He will know best how to protect the fossils, who to get in touch with and . . .”

  He was shaking his head.

  I suppose all along I must have known. Still, I was shocked. My face must have shown that shock.

  A dull flush moved under his honeydark skin but his eyes were implacable.

  “Then why bring me here?” I asked angrily.

  “I’m sorry, Dr. Christie, sorry as hell. But, I wasn’t sure. I thought it was Peking Man, but I couldn’t be sure. I had to be absolutely sure before . . .”

  He didn’t finish. He didn’t have to. I understood. He had to be certain of his ground before he looked for a buyer. But, still, I asked, “And now that you are sure?”

  His eyes shifted away from me.

  “Please,” I said swiftly, “I’m sure there must be a reward of some sort . . .”

  “Oh no, Dr. Christie.” He laughed and it wasn’t a pleasant laugh. “Give the boy a nice pittance and thank him.” He shook his head again. “No. If I handle it right, there’s a lot of money in the old boy. I know damn well how valuable these bones are and I’m going to swap them for a bundle.”

  Cheap words. But he didn’t have a cheap voice. Or a cheap face. The way he talked, the way he moved, it was like an echo of all the quick clever students I’d dealt with at the museum.

  “I should think . . .” I began.

  “Jimmy! Jimmy, where the hell are you? Jimmy!”

  The loud angry shout shocked both of us.

  He snatched the skull out of my hands and grabbed up the gym bag.

  “Be careful!” I cried. “Don’t drop it, for God’s sake!”

  He didn’t bother to answer. He plumped the skull into the bag, began to zip it shut.

  The door burst open behind
us and we both turned to face it.

  “So there you are. What the hell are you up to, Jimmy?”

  Jimmy, his face tight and angry, held the gym bag close to his chest. “What do you want, Dan?”

  The newcomer, Dan, loomed in the doorway. He was a good deal bigger than Jimmy. A man, not a boy. And he looked out of place in that narrow basement room with its single shabby cot and shelves of orange crates. His suit was a grey pinstripe and it fitted him superbly. Everything about him commanded attention.

  Especially his face.

  Some faces, once seen, stay with you always. I would know him wherever we met again. I would not forget his face, deep-set black eyes, straight black brows drawn now in a tight frown, a thin tough mouth, high sharp-angled cheeks. In a different age, in a faraway country, it would have been the face of a warlord.

  He looked from Jimmy to me. His eyes rested on me for a long moment, bold appraising eyes.

  “What’s going on?” Dan’s voice was as compelling as his face; husky, abrasive, insistent.

  Jimmy edged back a step. “How did you know we were here?”

  “Sammy Ching,” Dan answered. “He passed the two of you. He was curious enough to turn and watch—and when he saw you bring her here, he called me.” His eyes slid back to me, then, unexpectedly, he grinned, a good-humored lively grin. He nodded slowly. “I can understand Sammy’s interest, but,” and the laughter left his voice, “this isn’t the place, Jimmy. I would have damn well thought you would know better. To bring a woman to the basement of a family association,” he shook his head again, “that won’t do. And it isn’t even the Lee family association!”

  “Look, Dan, it isn’t what you think,” Jimmy objected. “I needed a place that was empty and Jack Wong went to visit his son today so I knew no one was here. Besides, it isn’t any of your damn business, anyway.”

  Dan looked at Jimmy intently. “Why else would you bring a woman here?”

  “Now, just a minute . . .” I began angrily.

  “Look, Dan, it isn’t . . .”

  But Jimmy never finished. His eyes widened. I saw fear and shock move in his eyes. For an instant, he stared, his mouth still open, then, so quickly that all of us were taken unawares, his hand moved, he grabbed up the heavy lantern-shaped flashlight and threw it hard and straight toward the single low-watt bulb that hung from an electrical cord in the center of the ceiling. In the last instant before the flashlight smashed into the bulb and it chattered in a fiery crackle, I half-turned toward the door and saw them, two of them, black leather jackets, tight dirty Levis, broad flat empty old-young faces, saw them and recognized danger.