A Death in China - Carl Hiaasen [107]
Stratton unfolded the shovel and tightened a bolt at the neck. He began to dig with short, powerful strokes. There was no slab on the grave, only a layer of new sod. Below the grass, the earth was moist and soft. It gave way easily—too easily for a three-month-old grave.
For ninety minutes Stratton dug. He expected that the coffin had not actually been interred six feet deep, and he was right. He was only up to his armpits in the hole when the shovel bit struck metal. He dropped to his knees and cleared the rest of the dirt by hand. At the foot of the coffin, Stratton carved out a trench for himself. He stepped down and bent over so far that his chin nearly met the lid. In the darkness he fished like a raccoon for the corners of the coffin.
Stratton got a good grip and stood up with an involuntary grunt. The coffin came loose of the earth. Stratton backstepped out of the grave, dragging the thing half out of its cool pocket until it rested at a peculiar angle—head down, feet toward the sky.
Stratton was panting. He scoured the pines and the cart paths for headlights. His hands trembled and he wiped them on his jeans. He thought it obscene to use dirty hands for this. Obscene, but not inappropriate. With the point of the cheap shovel he gouged the seal of the coffin, and the lid flopped open with a cold click.
Stratton took a deep breath and aimed the flashlight.
The coffin of Sarah Rose Steinway was empty.
The cheap cotton lining bore the indentation of a rigid human form. Something sparkled microscopically against the fabric. Stratton ran a finger lightly along the inside of the casket, as if tracing the spine of the invisible dead.
In the beam of the flashlight, Stratton examined his fingertip and noticed a powdery film of red-brown clay. The ancient dust of another grave, another violated tomb.
Chapter 23
THE CAB RIDE FROM La Guardia was no more harrowing than a spin through downtown Peking, and Wang Bin rode in unperturbed silence. He grunted once when a sleek black limousine cut sharply in front of the taxi, and jumped slightly in his seat at the sudden blast of a trucker’s horn. But it was the vista of Manhattan, seen from the Triborough Bridge, that left him breathless. At first glimpse Wang Bin leaned close to the window and stared at the vast skyline marching along the river, molten in the pink light of the late afternoon. The city was like nothing the deputy minister had ever seen.
Harold Broom glanced over and smiled with a superior air. “Hey, Pop, the cabbie is Russian. How about that?”
Broom had taken to calling Wang Bin “Pop,” an annoying term that the deputy minister did not understand.
“Didya ever think you’d be riding with a Russian through the streets of America?” Broom roared at some dim irony while Wang Bin watched out the window in fascination as the skyline swallowed them.
The two men checked into a small, comfortable hotel on Central Park South. Broom did all the talking—to the cabbie, to the doormen, to the desk clerk, to the rental agent. Wang Bin had nothing to say; New York was richer and more bewildering than he had ever imagined. Compared to that of Peking, even the air was a tonic. The crowds of walkers were garish, and certainly less orderly than the Chinese, but the Americans were equally hurried and wore the same expressions of determination. And the automobiles were boggling—more cars than Wang Bin believed existed in all of China, stacked on every street, inching forward with horns blaring. The noise jarred his nerves.
Wang Bin stood at the window of the fifth-floor hotel room and watched a hansom cab clop down the street toward the Plaza Hotel. On the sidewalk at Columbus Circle, a ragged group of men and women waved placards and shook their fists. Two policemen stood at the corner, chatting calmly. Wang Bin did not understand why they did not hurry to arrest the demonstrators. He decided that the officers must be waiting for reinforcements.
Broom groomed himself in the mirror. “So what’s it gonna be tonight, Pop? Studio 54?”
Wang Bin scowled at the joke.