“All right, sir, I have it. Detective Caprisi, Lane 1522, 6 Bubbling Well Road. Telephone number, Central 36278.”
Field cut the connection and dialed Caprisi’s number. It was busy. He tried again but got the same signal. “Come on, Caprisi,” he muttered, but every time he dialed, he got the same response.
The number one boy was looking at the scene in the doorway and turned with a start as he sensed Field behind him. “Car,” Field said. “Keys.”
The man looked confused and frightened.
Field tried to imitate the action of someone putting a key in an ignition and starting a car. The man eventually understood and reached up to the shelf above him on which his master’s hats were stored.
Geoffrey came out of the living room as the servant handed Field the keys. “Christ, man, you’re wounded.” He tried for a moment to prevent him from leaving, but Field pushed roughly past, catching his uncle off balance.
“For God’s sake,” he heard Lewis say, but he shut the door and reached over to set the spark and throttle levers, then turned the self-starter. He switched the levers again, released the emergency hand brake, and shoved his left foot against the low speed pedal. He eased it off and slipped into high gear as the car gathered speed.
He was going too fast as he came to the end of the street and almost crashed into another dark sedan as he pulled out onto Peking Road.
A few spots of rain splattered against the windshield and he leaned forward, nursing his bad arm, swinging left into Yu Ya Ching Road and then right into Bubbling Well Road.
There was a small crowd outside Caprisi’s apartment. Field sprinted up the iron steps outside the building to the first floor.
He stopped.
For a moment he could not move.
“No,” he whispered.
Field took a step closer.
He fell to the floor, ignoring the searing pain in his arm. He touched Caprisi’s cold neck, fumbling for a pulse. The glass in the door had shattered and Caprisi was lying flat on his back in the corridor, his revolver in one hand. He was wearing white shorts and T-shirt and, like Granger, he’d been hit repeatedly in the chest.
“No,” Field said again.
He shut his eyes and tried to concentrate. He pushed his fingers into the skin and tried to locate some sign of life. He gripped the American’s wrist.
Field put his head on Caprisi’s chest, his hands on his shoulders.
He touched Caprisi’s cheeks and stared into his eyes. He shook him. “Come on,” he said. “Come on.” He shook him harder. He took hold of the American’s shoulders and moved him roughly from side to side. “Come on, for pity’s sake.”
Field ran his hands through Caprisi’s hair. He took some between his fingers and pulled. “Come on.”
He waited for a response.
Caprisi’s mouth was tightly shut, his eyes staring at a fixed point in the ceiling, his slicked-back hair ruffled where Field had held it. His head was tilted to one side, his left hand open, stretching toward the door.
Field sat back against the wall.
He did not move.
Field reached out and touched Caprisi’s cheek with shaking fingers. “Sleep well, my friend,” he said. In his eyes, silent tears were forming. A drop fell on his hand as he withdrew it from Caprisi’s face.
He stood unsteadily. “Fuck it,” he said, wiping his eyes with his sleeve. He took a step back.
He picked up a chair, lifted it, with difficulty, above his head, and hurled it through the broken window.
He took another step back.
Field took a thin yellow raincoat from one of the pegs above him and placed it over Caprisi’s chest.
He leaned back against the wall and breathed in as deeply as his lungs would allow, his eyes shut in an attempt to close his mind to the guilt that threatened to engulf him.
Footsteps clattered up the iron stairs. Field did not move, no longer caring if they were coming for him.
The footsteps stopped. There was no sound. He opened his eyes and straightened slowly, turning to see Chen standing in the doorway, his arm in a sling, his face white from the exertion of the climb. He stepped in, leaned against the far wall, and slid down it, too, so that they faced each other across Caprisi’s body.
Field sat back. “I never even got to thank him,” he said.
Chen looked at him steadily.
“Why Caprisi?”
Chen sighed. “Caprisi did not fit into their world.”
“Why tonight?”
“Your investigation. And the drugs. The
