“Why would someone call up and laugh? It must be kids.”
“He didn’t laugh. The laughter came from the background somewhere. And it wasn’t that kind of laughter. …”
“Look at this!” Latzarel interrupted as the Hudson angled up Fourth Street toward downtown. “‘The ship docked in the Sea of the Arroyo Seco where two men came aboard, one with a steamer trunk, and one tall and thin and pale with terrible scars on his neck. In the trunk, I was told, was the body of a boy with the head of a fish.’”
“What?” said Edward, half shocked and half unbelieving. “What does that mean, ‘with the head of a fish’? Was it a fish-headed boy or was there simply a fish head in with him? What is this anyway, a novel?”
“A ship’s log,” Latzarel said flatly. “Mostly charts and maps. There’s a navigable subterranean sea, according to this, that stretches from the Pacific to beyond the San Gabriel mountains. I’m not sure about the notations here, but it looks as if most of it is navigable only by submarine.”
Edward jerked around in his seat to stare at Latzarel who nodded slowly at him, puzzled. “And it’s not at all clear that the boy wore the head of the fish. Listen. ‘I ferried the doctor to Venice …”
“What doctor?” Edward asked.
“The man with the steamer trunk, apparently,” said Latzarel, starting over. “‘I ferried the doctor to Venice where, late in the evening of the 26th he delivered the chest to a Chinese in exchange for three plugs of black opium knotted together with rawhide. The Chinese was referred to as Han Koi, and the doctor, who I knew as de Winter, was addressed as Dr. Frost by the Chinese, who was apparently in grave fear of him.’” Latzarel waved Edward to silence without looking up, and went on. “‘I myself shared his fear, having through the mate heard that the supposed corpse in the trunk had been the victim of one of de Winter’s experiments. A violent thrashing and gasping started within the trunk, which toppled over onto its side and broke open. Within, lying in a pool of green bile, was the live body of a youth with the head of a great fish, suffocating terribly, its eyes jerking to and fro in stark terror. Han Koi shouted and a dozen pig-tailed Chinese, half of them with knives drawn, swarmed out and dragged the trunk away into the depths of an abandoned cannery beneath the docks. I was given a two-inch knob of raw opium as payment and was glad to be quit of de Winter.’ That’s it,” said Latzarel.
“Just like that?” cried Edward. “Nothing more about the thing in the trunk?”
“Not a bit. This is a ship’s log, I’m telling you. That’s the last Pince Nez knew of it, apparently, unless there’s references to it later in the book.”
“There can’t be any doubt about the identity of this de Winter.”
“Not a bit.”
“No wonder William was in such a sweat to hide the message away.” The two rode along for a moment in silence, tooling up the on-ramp onto the Harbor Freeway. “It’s got to be lies,” mused Edward finally.
“It doesn’t look like lies to me,” answered Latzarel. “What conceivable reason would he have for fabrications? There isn’t enough here to develop a good fiction. Half of the volume is appended matter — charts and such. And you’re the one who said that de Winter’s identity is obvious.”
“Who was the fish-boy?” asked Edward abruptly.
“Some poor devil of a lost youth, I don’t wonder. Snatched possibly, like a stray dog.”
Edward nodded, but was unconvinced. “When did Reginald Peach disappear? He was younger than Basil, wasn’t he?”
“By ten years,” said Latzarel. “It was in the late thirties, I think. I remember it was then that Basil was institutionalized for the first time. We both know who his doctor was.”
“This thin man aboard the ferry,” Edward said, “what if that was Basil Peach?”
“Then we’re living in a strange world,” Latzarel said, closing the book and staring out of the window.
“Pince Nez assumed that de Winter was a vivisectionist. He had to. It was the only rational explanation. He wouldn’t have suspected that the thing in the trunk was a product of nature.”
“Maybe,” said Latzarel, “except that he was uncommonly familiar with the inhabitants of the subterranean sea. Lord knows what he understood about the products of nature.”
Edward agreed. And the more he thought about it, the more he agreed. He accelerated into the right lane and coasted down the off-ramp and onto Carson Street, turning right into the traffic of Figueroa and right again onto Sepulveda, pulling back onto the Harbor Freeway, westbound now, back the way they’d come. Latzarel knew immediately the reason for the change of direction. They hadn’t learned half enough from Captain Pince Nez. They couldn’t have. Neither one of them had known what to expect. They had been too easily tired by ear trumpets and senility.
It seemed to take hours to plod along down the Pacific Coast Highway from traffic light to weary traffic light. They rolled across Alameda and over the Dominguez Channel, then made the light at Santa Fe and angled over the Long Beach Freeway, dropping onto the bridge that spanned the Los Angeles River, the thin channel of dark water murky as tea and hinting at strange and unimagined sources. Iron doors led away into the concrete walls of the riverbank and, perhaps, into a dark chasm world lit by the glowing lights of gliding submarines and by the occasional lamps of the sewer dwellers, little stars that glinted on distant islands, goblin fires in the black void, miles below the concrete and asphalt lace of surface streets.
There was an ambulance and a police car in front of the building on Fourth and Ximeno. Edward drove past, turned up Ximeno, and parked on Broadway. Both men leaped out of the car, a thrill of fear catapulting them along the sidewalk. They forced themselves to slow when they reached the corner. It was Captain Pince Nez — dead — being loaded into the back of the ambulance which motored casually away past a half dozen lackluster onlookers. There was nothing particularly exciting in the death of a man ninety-two years old; at least there was nothing exciting in it for anyone but Edward and Professor Latzarel — them and a fat, balding man with a stick and a cigar who turned out to be the landlord. He seemed half irritated that Pince Nez had chosen to die in his apartment building. “Crazy old fool,” the landlord said, whacking his stick against a little flagstone planter that sheltered a crop of weeds.
“Heart attack was it?” asked Edward, affecting a tourist’s concern.
“I suppose so,” said the fat mail, chewing his cigar. “Went straight to hell. You could see it in his face. What a look. I hope to never see what it was he saw. Devil finally came for him, I suppose. It was me who found him. Screamed he did — uncanny damn scream. I broke in, and there he was, face down on the floor. Had a dead fish in his hand. Can you beat that? Some sort of codfish. Was eating it, I guess. Him and his damned Oriental ways.”
Edward was trying to think of an excuse to look through the empty apartment. The dead fish business was troublesome. It would look suspicious, though, if he and Latzarel just nosed in. There was no telling what brought about the old man’s death, although Edward hadn’t any doubt that it wasn’t any simple heart attack. He’d seen something, like the landlord said. Only it wasn’t any spirit sent out from hell; it was a flesh and blood devil.
The landlord, about then, produced a wad of money from the pocket of his soiled khaki work pants. Edward guessed the denomination of the bills as well as the number — twenties, three of them. The landlord counted them with a satisfied look. Edward glanced at Latzarel who shook his head. “Water under the bridge,” he said. “Spilt milk.”