R. MacAvoy - Tea with the Black Dragon

Immediately she shot a guilty look at Long. “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to offend you.”

“Why would I be offended?” he replied. “I too have noticed the porcine element in Mr. Rasmussen’s physiognomy. And character. On top of that he has an unpleasant laugh. Pray continue.”

“Well, I wrote this letter and left it in my safe deposit box. Explaining all I’ve told you. I gave the key to Ellie Haig, of Surber and Haig. She’s my lawyer. I call her every Monday, to check in. If I should miss a call she opens the box, where I left the letter in an envelope addressed to the police.”

“I see. And you told Rasmussen about it.”

“It was my trump card. I thought he couldn’t touch me as long as I had that letter.”

Long nodded. He tore a sheet from the roll of towels and fingered it absently. “It seems a sound idea. Why did you feel it necessary to call your mother?”

“I was frightened!” She shuddered. “As soon as I mentioned the letter, Threve got… ugly.”

Neat black eyebrows shot up. “You could have simply left town.”

“And wound up in prison, as soon as they audit the bank. I’m the obvious suspect. I mean, as soon as the police squeezed Carlo, he would squeak. Then it would all be over for me. Not Doug or Floyd, just me.

“Oh, I should have gone to the police myself, I know. Confessed the whole thing,” she said in a rush. “But I kept hoping I would find a way to make it right, first. I haven’t spent that much of the money, you see—not like Floyd, who bought a yacht, or Doug with his Cessna and constant partying—and by working a few years I could make it up. I’m afraid of going to prison.”

“You don’t sound like a person who is afraid,” remarked Long.

Stern blue eyes met his. “I know. I don’t know how to show I’m afraid. Never have. I can be scared green about something—like now—and I come across as pissed off.”

Liz scowled, tearing skin from the bone of the wing. “Sorry if my language bothers you. I can’t think straight.”

“No sort of language bothers me,” he answered, “unless it’s dull. But you looked quite frightened. Miss Macnamara, the first time I saw you.”

“In the kitchen? Well you spooked the sh—you really startled me, there.”

“No. I first saw you outside Rasmussen’s office, about an hour ago. I followed you home.”

She stared a moment. “What were you doing at RasTech?”

His answer came slowly, as finger by finger, he toweled the grease from his hands. “I was standing in the shrubbery, waiting for events. I expected the evening would produce Floyd Rasmussen. Instead, it has produced you. That was a change for the better, Elizabeth.”

“Liz. And if I looked bad, the reason was that Floyd had just told me Threve had picked up my mother, and if I didn’t go with him to the bank tomorrow morning”

Liz paused and took a deep breath. Her hands clenched together, blotched salmon and white. “They’d kill her.”

Long’s brown face remained impassive. He looked down at the remains of the meal. “Tomorrow morning,” he said, and sighed. “I didn’t know we had so little time.”

“How did you think your mother’s presence would neutralize a major felony, not to mention two major felons?” His words were mild—merely curious, and he did not look at Liz Macnamara as he spoke.

“If you knew my mother you wouldn’t ask that question. But I didn’t expect her to… neutralize the crime. I just wanted her to know all about it before I gave up and went to the police. I knew she’d stand by me. At first I was going to fly to New York and talk to her, but I had a hunch that my leaving town would put the wind up Floyd and Doug, and they’d be gone when I went to the police. That would have taken a lot of the impact out of a voluntary confession, you see. If it was found that my partners had already run out on me.” The young woman shivered. “When I called Mother last week I didn’t know what—monsters—those two were.”

“Not monsters, Elizabeth,” he murmured. “Merely thugs.”

“Anyway, I decided that if I were going to dump the bad news on Mother, I’d treat her as well as I could in the process. It was kind of silly, really, because my mother doesn’t care whether she sleeps on satin pillows or gunny sacks. Maybe I did it for my own sake, to salve my conscience, but I sent Mother two thousand dollars and told her to fly out first class. I made a week’s reservation at the fanciest hotel I could find. In the City, I mean, not down here. I didn’t want her too close to Floyd or Doug. I told her that I had to talk to her. I didn’t tell her I was afraid.”

“You didn’t have to,” said Mayland Long. The gentleness of his words caught her attention and she stared at him.

Food and drink had worked their magic on Mr. Long. His face flushed gold. His eyes glistened with lights of the same color. His left hand arced out in an involuted gesture, as though he followed threads in a tapestry only he could see. She followed his motion.

“Your mother can read signs in the air,” he said. “The winds talk to her. She knew there was something very wrong with you and that is why she… let me help her find you.” He let his gesture hang in the air. His eyes saw memories: a blue dress, a blue eye.

Liz Macnamara’s eyes perceived an odd and unexpected beauty in the man’s words and in the man. She blinked away the tears that terror alone had not brought forth.

He rose with boneless grace. His eyes were narrowed. He was thinking, Liz Macnamara stared up at him. “Where did she find you?”

“On a shelf,” he answered, preoccupied. “I owe my involvement in your trouble to that gift you sent Marth—your mother.”

She shook her head, not comprehending how a few thousand dollars could command the man before her. “Just get Mother away from those two and I’ll work the rest of my life to pay you. I’ll give anything. Do anything.”

He became aware she was speaking. His gold eyes searched her face, puzzled, not following her words. A huge yawn caught him unaware. He shot a glare at the bottle, and he leaned one elbow on the refrigerator door.

“All I need,” he said, “is a dark corner. And I only need it for a few hours.”

“You need what? Why?”

He yawned again. “Because I’m tired. Too tired to think properly. It has taken a number of days to find you, Elizabeth, and I haven’t slept much in that time. I have work to do tonight. It is a task important to our purpose, and best accomplished after nightfall. Between then and now…”He stepped forward, resting his hand on the back other chair, “I must sleep. And since I haven’t the time to drive to my rooms in San Francisco, I am asking you to put up with me.”

“Of course.” Liz Macnamara pushed herself away from the table. “But not in a corner. Please. Give me a minute to straighten up the bedroom.” Dropping a rumpled paper towel into the wastebasket, she left the room.

He stared at the bed in horrified fascination. “I… I have heard of them, of course, but…”

Elizabeth dropped a hand to the undulating mattress, as though quieting a huge beast. “It’s just a waterbed. It’s really comfortable. Not cold at all.” Seeing his expression unchanged, she half-smiled. “Don’t be afraid.” She left him, closing the door behind her.

He was dubious but also very weary. Mr. Long undressed, folded his clothes, and gave himself to the embrace of the waves.

Liz spent the next two hours seated at the kitchen table. Her mind raced wildly, without traction. At nine she cracked the bedroom door to wake Mr. Long. The vertical thread of light happened to fall over the form on the sheets. He was bronze, like a statue, and his skin appeared as tight to the body and as hard as the finish of a bronze statue. He lay sprawled with the dramatic indifference of a statue, also. One arm was tossed up in line with the lean torso, and the back-tilted head repeated the angle. The other arm, the left arm, was flung outward, and the fingers grasped air. There was passion in the pose: passion and a quality of abandonment quite foreign to the presence who had shared her meager dinner.