Hunt Among the Killers of Men

Chapter 4

It was the first time Mitch had worn a dress in over six years, and the last time had been at a funeral. She felt askew in her rakish feminine attire, but it was necessary if she wanted to blend.

Zongchang Ltd. had tentacles all over urban Shanghai, and the destination to which her cabbie took her turned out to be a casino.

A floating casino.

A floating casino housed inside a converted aircraft carrier anchored in the harbor. The word “Zongchang” was painted on its side in four-foot-high red characters, English and Chinese both.

Inside a buoy-marked perimeter, scuba-capable security staff patrolled from one-man speed skiffs featuring gun mounts.

Loudspeakers advised potential trespassers to stay clear of the boat zone.

At the dock, more security men assisted patrons onto custom mini-ferries that ran to and from the ship’s ornate gangplank. The security men were dressed in nononsense, upscale eveningwear, rather like Mitch was.

Except Mitch was not toting a visible MAC-10 with a huge, priapic SIONICS suppressor stretching the barrel.

The carrier shell had been hollowed out and structurally reinforced to provide for broad, windowed views of the shimmering Bund, with outdoor restaurants on the flight deck. Inside, French staircases curved from level to level. Some bled off toward premium members-only gambling areas.

The main casino floor was anything but Vegas, favoring baccarat and chemin de fer, though tables for blackjack, roulette and Texas Hold ’Em were also in view.

At the armored cash windows, the currency of many different countries was being exchanged for the casino’s special chips.

Mitch passed through another body scanner at the entry. There was no way she could have come in armed. She thought: Play it as cool as dry ice. You’re not Michelle Quantrill. You’re Valerie. You’re not dead. You’re seeking your employer. You’re a guest. Simple. Just ask. Don’t panic.

A tray of drinks was being offered to her before she’d even found her focus on the gambling floor. Mitch hesitated. Chose a martini.

“I’m looking for Mr. Cheung,” she said, but the server had already departed.

She tried again with a passing security man who apparently “did not have the English.” He arched an eyebrow at her and strode away.

Insane bass-heavy house/trance music thundered at her as she crossed an opaque dance floor of solid glass.

Mitch didn’t know it yet, but she had already been made.

Qingzhao Wai Chiu took note of the blonde woman crossing the dance floor. Another lost, clueless American. Another despised tourist.

Qingzhao looked quite different from her previous public appearance, when an aerodynamic suit with a concealed mini-chute had permitted her to disappear into the blackness of the Huangpu River…instead of hitting flat water from a 300-meter drop, which would have been like landing on stone.

Tonight she was dressed to kill, literally and figuratively. New wig of cascading black curls. Tinted designer glasses. She had applied makeup so as to cause light to change the planes of her face. Enough exposure of thigh and décolletage to ensure she could steer men. The prostitutes in the casino were tawdry and obvious. Qingzhao prided herself as a chameleon.

She, too, had entered unarmed.

She, too, sought the man known as Kuan-Ku Tak Cheung.

Qingzhao found herself a likely security man. A bald East Indian, supersized, muscle packed atop more muscle.

“Ladies’ toilet?” she said in a high, squeaky voice.

The idol-huge man rolled his eyes, then jerked a thumb. “That way, gorgeous.”

Qingzhao giggled, as though from too much champagne. In her real life, she almost never laughed anymore.

The East Indian would not do. She needed somebody more reckless, younger, a hotshot on staff here.

“Don’t mind Dinanath,” said a voice behind her. “He’s never polite.”

She turned. Bingo. This guy was like a horny raptor with the eyes of a pit viper. He could be steered.

“You’re funny,” she said vacantly. “Listen…I need to find the toilet. I might need a little help getting there without becoming embarrassed.”

He offered his arm. “Certainly. My name is Romero.”

Qingzhao and Romero navigated across the dance floor, Qingzhao keeping her pace just halting enough to be convincing. By the time they reached the nearest restroom, Romero had already brushed her breasts twice and her ass once, strictly to guide her.

“Wait here, okay?” She gave him a little wave and tottered inside.

What she had been doing while in transit was noting the locations of the security cameras in the non-gambling zones. While there was a spy-eye (much more discreet) in the powder room, there were none in the individual toilets, which were set up in Western-style stalls.

Once inside a stall, she levered loose the stainless steel clip-lid of the toilet tank. The plunger works came loose easily enough. She bent the flimsy metal to form a spiked punch she could wrap around one fist.

Then she ventured a shy around-the-corner peek at Romero through the bathroom door. “Hey,” she said. “This thing doesn’t work.” He stepped toward her. She smiled, grabbed his belt buckle, and pulled him along.

The cameras would only see two hard partiers headed for a stall and perhaps a taste of inebriated hanky-panky.

Qingzhao made sure Romero kept his eyes on her smile and other assets as she boxed him into the stall and quickly punched a gushing hole into his neck. One more strategic punch and the man was soundlessly down. She quickly stripped him of an automatic pistol and spare magazine, concealing the gun in the only place her show-offy dress would allow.

Done, armed, and not a drop of blood on her. So far so good.

Longwei Sze Xie had few peers or intimates, but nearly everybody called him “Ivory.” Even his employer, Kuan-Ku Tak Cheung, used this familiar form. Other times, when matters were more grave, Cheung called him “Long.” It had happened once or twice in nearly twenty years.

He was taking a break in the Zongchang’s security nest—surrounded by monitors and exchanging monotonous chitchat with a console monkey named Zero—when he saw the blonde American stride across the dance floor. The whites of his eyes went stark with surprise at such naked boldness. He snapped his fingers and Zero backed up the feed in order to print out a photo of the woman, after choosing the best vantage.

Ivory’s initial shock had come from seeing what he thought was a woman he knew to be dead, right there, seemingly alive, her body language practically broadcasting the rough retribution she sought for her own demise. Then his rational mind processed the image. No, it’s not her. Close, but no. He was already on the move.

Ivory had feared something like this. Had prepared for its eventuality.

Cheung was holding forth with some financiers in the craps alcove. This woman would spot him eventually, or locate him indirectly. Then nine kinds of hell would break out—if he didn’t get to her first.

He glided up behind her. Took a breath. Spoke calmly.

“Do you wish to enjoy Shanghai, Miss Quantrill?”

Mitch spun, slopping her untouched drink. Sandbagged. “Who the hell are you?”

“My name is Longwei Sze Xie,” said the handsome Asian. “Please call me Ivory.”

“Do you know Kuan-Ku Tak Cheung?”

Ivory was astonished at her directness. She was processing minor shock, he could tell, yet remained bullishly American.

“Yes,” he said.

“I don’t suppose you could point him out to me?”

Ivory dipped into his vest pocket, his free hand cautioning her against rash action. He withdrew a packet of airline tickets. “First class back to New York City, with my compliments.”

Mitch eyed him suspiciously. “What’re you supposed to be?”

“I am the greatest friend you have in the world right now, Miss Quantrill.”

Past the woman’s shoulder, Ivory saw Dinanath, the big bald operative, signaling to him from across the gambling floor. Summoning him.

Ivory clenched his teeth as though mildly pained. “Come with me.”

Kuan-Ku Tak Cheung made a habit of keeping tabs on his Number One, Ivory, and when he spotted his head of security chatting up a strangely familiar blonde, he snapped his fingers and Dinanath jumped to.

It wasn’t quite an arrest, but had more insistence than a mere escort.

Cheung excused himself from the company of his supporters after making sure they had drinks all around. Extra security, all first string except for Romero (who was MIA somewhere), formed an outer ring for privacy as Dinanath, Ivory and their visitor came over. She was not a beautiful woman, noted Cheung. More…handsome. But there was something compelling about her, something about the hardness in her eyes.

Mitch stared. It was not polite, but she couldn’t help herself. Cheung was burly, bristly. Nothing about him seemed Chinese except for the epicanthic folds of his eyelids, and she realized, with a jolt, that the man had probably had surgery to acquire the look. In any event, his eyes were bright blue.

“And, this is…?” said Cheung, not speaking to Mitch, but to Ivory.

“I’ve come about Valerie Quantrill,” said Mitch.

Dinanath was upending her small clutch purse on a vacant table, rummaging.

“Who is Valerie Quantrill?” said Cheung, again to Ivory.

“A woman you left dead in a Dumpster in New York,” said Mitch, reddening.

Upon hearing this, Dinanath turned to Cheung and shrugged. It was all we could find. A garbage bin. As if to say, so what?

Cheung looked around to his fellows as though he had missed something, like a punch line. “And…?“

“And I want to know what you had to do with it,” said Mitch.

Cheung splayed his fingers across his mouth, pondering. “Hmm. All the way from the United States? Seems like a lot of trouble just to hurl an accusation. Why bother?”

“She was my sister.”

Cheung seemed truly at sea. Mitch wondered if he was going to toy with her, string her out, maximize the pain. But what he said was infinitely colder. He again turned to Ivory and said, “What does she want? Money? Then pay her some money.”

“I don’t want your money,” Mitch said through clenched teeth.

He looked at Mitch as though truly seeing her for the first time. “You want an apology?” He shrugged. “Very well—you have my apologies for your loss.”

Mitch said, “That’s not all. You know that’s not all.”

Cheung had already turned to resume other business, but allowed himself a parting shot: “That’s all you get, my dear.”

Mitch’s thumb snapped the martini glass she was holding at its stem. With the base held against her palm, she shucked Dinanath’s light grasp and lunged at Cheung’s face, putting her shoulder into the thrust.

Ivory was there instantly, his hand arresting her wrist in a vise-grip, as though he had snatched a fly in midair. The jagged stem of the glass hovered inches from his own eyes. He had stepped in to shield Cheung with unnatural speed. Stoically, he nerve-pinched the glass from Mitch’s hand.

Cheung was grinning—not smiling. The expression was vulpine. “See if you can find another Dumpster,” he said to Dinanath. “And don’t alarm the dakuan.” Cheung needed the high-rollers to remain unagitated.

The backwash of adrenaline in Qingzhao’s system was nauseating.

In a vital confluence of dozens of moving people and wavering vantage points, she’d briefly had the perfect shot at Cheung’s head—maybe time to get two or three rounds in before general panic ruined the target. And that American bitch had spoiled everything!

Now this…this amateur was being escorted to the security nest.

But wait: after a beat, she saw Cheung and his head of security (that son of a bitch, Ivory) headed the same way.

She still might have a chance.

Qingzhao moved across the grand hall as quickly as she could, blending.

“This is really good for headaches,” said the Chinese security man, who wore Buddy Holly glasses and a goatee, and was apparently named Chino. He was referring to a leather glove on his right hand. The glove had rivets across the knuckles. He punched Mitch a second time in the side of the head. “Got one, yet?”

His first punishing blow had been dealt to the left side of her head, so it was only fair that he rock her back the way she came. For balance.

Mitch lolled in the chair, half-conscious.

Chino automatically became less cocky when Cheung and Ivory entered the security room. Zero kept to his monitors.

“Oh, don’t do it here,” Cheung said, piqued.

Before further debate could ensue there came a businesslike rap on the door. Chino yanked it open, prepared to repel all invaders. “What!” he said, full up with brine.

Qingzhao shot him in the head.

Mitch tried to scoot her chair out of the way of Chino’s falling corpse and wound up dumping herself backward on the floor. One chair arm cracked violently loose and the bindings securing her fell slack. She freed herself as quickly as she could.

More gunfire. She saw Ivory tackle Cheung and both men disappeared through the slanted observation window in a hailstorm of glass.

Zero huddled in a quivering ball beneath the console where his monitors were disintegrating from bullet hits as Qingzhao tried to track Cheung.

No go.

Qingzhao was holding her hand out to Mitch.

“Come on. We’ve got to go now.”

The moment Chino answered the door was the same moment that Gabriel Hunt, freshly arrived from America, entered the Zongchang casino ship for the first and only time in his life.