madness and sanity became one.
To postpone insanity, he thought about the women he had known. Sometimes names eluded him and he associated them with events in his life. He tried to reconstruct his first high school romance — what was her name, Haley? He remembered touching her the first time, in the backseat darkness of Cirillo’s Chevy, groping, feeling her soft down and feeling her rise to his touch, moving his hand to her breasts, those soft buds just beginning to bloom. He was terrified, she was impassioned. But after the first time, their fervor approached insanity. They did it everywhere, in the darkness of the balcony of the town’s only movie house, rolled in blankets in the green Massachusetts forest, and once, late in the afternoon, in the girls’ locker room at the high school, abandoned for the day, the tin rattle of the locker door providing rhythmic cadence as they stood against it, thrashing in the agony of youthful passion.
Then he had gone off to the academy and she had fallen madly in love with the high school wrestling champ.
The loss of his innocence haunted his fevered memory as his mind wandered freely in time, back to the alleys of Boston, where Cirillo had nabbed him. Hatcher was a tough, crafty street orphan, and Cirillo a just-as-tough cop who had taken him in hand and changed his life forever. It had been Cirillo who had forced him to go to high school, challenged him not only to climb walls but to show his best, and finally arranged the appointment to Annapolis, where Harry Sloan had discovered him. Sloan. Hatcher’s torment was that he could no longer imagine life without that treacherous intrusion, could not remember the precise moment when he had traded truth for expediency, had traded light and beauty for the shadows of the shadow warrior, and in his desolation, Hatcher, like many men and women in less desperate conditions, futilely cried out to relive that moment and change his destiny.
At first, hate was all Hatcher had. Sitting in his box at night, he would imagine every conceivable kind of torture he could inflict on Harry Sloan. But as time passed he began to look elsewhere, to shift the blame to someone else. But in the end it always came back to the same thing. Sloan had betrayed him, had set him up and condemned him to a living death.
Cirillo had been Hatcher’s salvation, Sloan his destruction.
And yet the cord was difficult to break. Sloan had been more than a friend, he had been Hatcher’s mentor, had exposed Hatcher to experts in every conceivable field of lawful and unlawful endeavor, from lock-picking to murder, had taught him how to survive under the worst conditions. In a strange irony, Sloan had prepared him to survive Los Boxes.
Yes, Sloan had delivered his promises. His silver tongue promised adventure and romance, spiced with words like ‘patriot’ and ‘duty’ and ‘country’. Well, there had been plenty of both. There had been a lot of good times. Tokyo, Singapore, Manila.
Hong Kong and Bangkok.
He always thought of them together, remembering Cohen and the weekends when he would fly to Hong Kong from Bangkok just to get away from the hell of the river wars for a little while.
And the special suite he had at the Peninsula in Kowloon, shared only with Daphne.
God, Daphne. What a memory - Was she still alive? Was she still as beautiful as ever? Daffy, he had called her and it fit.
There was also Sam-Sam Sam and Joe Cockroach and the Ts’e K’am Men Ti, the secret lair of the Chinese river pirates. And there was Tollie Fong, the triad assassin who had sworn a blood oath against Hatcher for killing his father, his uncle and four of his most trusted gangsters.
He could never go back to Hong Kong and Bangkok. Too many ghosts. Too many enemies. Too many unsaid good-byes.
And so Hatcher always thought of Sloan with mixed feelings. The bond between mentor and student was almost as primal as that between father and son. In his misery, his feelings toward Sloan wavered. One day he thought of Sloan with affection, the next he damned him to hell.
What he eventually learned was that there was no precise moment when his values changed. When he met Sloan he was young and impressionable, easily charmed by Sloan’s omnipresent smile, and seduced by his soft- spoken promises. It was what Sloan did best, spinning images of mysterious worlds with that silver tongue of his. In the end, Hatcher had to accept the responsibility for what he was and where he was, a house of his own making.
Life in Los Boxes became Hatcher’s penance.
Then one night he heard a scratching on the wall. He thought it was a roach or perhaps a rat until a small stick punched through the wall, augured for a moment, and was withdrawn.
‘Psst.’
Hatcher leaned over and put his ear close to the tiny hole. And heard a voice, an ancient voice, hoarse with disuse. ‘One twenty-seven?’ the voice said.
126
Hatcher would not answer, could not answer. Paranoia and fear prevented any response. Suppose it was a guard, testing him? He would not risk having his tongue ripped out. He leaned against the wall, his ear against the pinpoint, listening.
Again the hoarse whisper: ‘One twenty-seven?’
His mouth was dry with suspicion. He sat for a moment, then he coughed.
‘Ah, very good, very clever,’ the voice whispered in Spanish. ‘I am one twenty-six. I knew your predecessor for many years. He was a journalist in my country. A famous journalist. Green berries and belly worms got him.’
My God, to hear a voice, a friendly voice, was like a postponement of his madness, and finally Hatcher asked himself, What good is a tongue, anyhow, if you don’t use it?
‘I am here,’ he whispered back, and immediately, reflexively, stuffed his fist in his mouth.
‘Ah, ’whispered 126. ‘Salvation.’
‘I am Hatcher, what is your name?’
