Stealing the Dragon

Chapter Fifty-eight

Dawn was breaking as Cape walked down Ross Alley. The sun was still asleep, but it had yawned and stretched enough to crowd the darkness, turning the sky a deep blue.

Ross Alley was about as short as its name implied, a minor twist in the Chinatown maze barely a block long. The Golden Gate Fortune Cookie Factory was tucked between two small storefronts, the metal and glass doors incongruous next to the old wooden sign at the entrance. 20,000 fortune cookies made daily. Visitors welcome. Admission free.

Cape stopped a few feet from the door and looked around, but the street was empty. Xan and Sally had circled around the back of the alley. Xan’s job was to find Lin. Sally didn’t say where she would be, but Cape took comfort in that. He was used to her being invisible. His job was to distract Yan for as long as possible.

You’ll think of something. With his right hand, he casually brushed the back of his shirt and checked the position of the gun, which he’d moved to the small of his back. Satisfied it wasn’t going to fall out of his pants the moment he stepped across the threshold, Cape took a deep breath and tried the door.

It was unlocked.

The front room was crowded with boxes, rolls of plastic mounted on metal spools, a long counter, and a cash register. Cape moved his head slowly, scanning the room, but no one jumped out and pointed a gun or yelled in Chinese to get lost. But looking up, he noticed the small video camera mounted above the door at the far side of the room, its red light blinking.

Cape raised his right hand to his lips and blew a kiss.

Three steps later he was through the door and inside the factory. A low humming sound came from fans overhead, recessed into the ceiling. It was an L-shaped room, and Cape found himself in the short section, surrounded by stacked wooden barrels and blind to the rest of the factory floor. Several barrels near the door were open, revealing thousands of fortune cookies jumbled together, waiting to be wrapped in the next room. Unable to resist, Cape took one from the nearest barrel and cracked it open.

You will live long and prosper.

Cape popped the cookie in his mouth and took another.

The future is uncertain.

And another.

Trouble awaits you just around the corner.

Cape threw the last cookie onto the floor. “Should have quit while I was ahead.” Crunching quietly, he stepped past the barrels into the open, holding his hands out from his sides.

Two large conveyors sat side by side, throwbacks to another age, when bakeries were not massive factories outside the city but small assembly lines in tiny storefronts like this one, the machines feeding the dough to workers who shaped the cookies. Next to the conveyors sat two metal chairs, where each day two old Chinese women would sit, pressing paper fortunes onto the flat dough, then using a metal rod to fold the dough by hand before it cooled. At the end of the machine was a pile of fortune cookies almost eight feet high. Cape walked halfway down the conveyor before he could see the rest of the room.

The first thing he saw was Harold Yan.

He was standing next to the mountain of cookies looking at Cape. He wore a white button-down shirt with no tie, a blue blazer, tan slacks, and loafers. A local politician making the rounds in his community. Cape noticed a small water stain on his pants, just below the crotch. Maybe he’s nervous, too.

Behind Yan was a rolling cart holding two video monitors, the one on the left obscured by Yan, the other showing the view from the security camera in the front room. To Yan’s right and standing maybe fifteen feet behind him was another man, someone Cape had never seen before. He had short black hair and a thin mustache drooping on either side of his mouth, scar tissue around his eyes. His trapezius muscles had taken the place of his neck, and his shoulders were stretching the fabric of his black jacket. Cape didn’t bother asking what he did for a living. He locked eyes for a minute, figuring prison logic applied in this case, then turned his attention back to Yan.

“Thanks for inviting me.”

Yan was nonplussed, even though he’d seen Cape on the security camera.

He said, “What are you doing here, detective?”

Cape shrugged. “Jackie Chan wasn’t available.”

Yan forced a smile, but his left eye twitched. “This doesn’t concern you.”

“I got your finger in the mail,” said Cape. “And it pointed in this direction.”

Yan’s eye twitched again. “What are you talking about?”

“I thought you wanted the dragon’s heart,” said Cape nonchalantly, turning toward the entrance. “I must have the wrong address.”

“Stop.”

The tone was half command, half plea, Yan still not sure how to play this. But his pants were down and there was no turning back. “You have the heart?”

Cape nodded.

“You, a-”

“-white devil?”

Yan stared at him. Cape reached into his left-hand pocket very slowly, conscious of the thug in the corner. He raised his cell phone. “I call and it’s here in five minutes.”

Yan studied Cape for a minute, then seemed to make a decision. He didn’t know how, but Cape had something he wanted, and that was enough.

“You say you have the heart, but of course you don’t have it with you,” said Yan, gesturing toward the man with no neck. “You don’t mind if Shaiming checks, do you?”

“Yes.” Cape put the phone back in his pocket. Shaiming didn’t move, waiting for a sign from Yan.

Yan spread his hands. “And if you don’t call…say you’ve been injured…or worse?”

“Then you don’t get the heart,” said Cape. “Just the cops.”

Yan clenched his jaw and nodded. Since the heart was a Triad treasure, Cape figured Yan never expected anyone involved to call the police. This was a meeting for criminals only.

“It seems we have a stalemate,” said Yan, stepping to the side and revealing the monitor directly behind him.

Cape squinted as he tried to make sense of the image. The woman on screen looked younger than Sally, but so disheveled it was hard to tell. She was sitting against a white wall, slumped to one side, her left hand wrapped in bloody gauze. Cape took a shallow breath and tasted bile.

He fought the urge to rush Yan. Keep him talking.

“I thought she was working for you,” said Cape.

“So did she.” Yan half turned to admire his handiwork, then looked at Cape with a gleam in his eye. “Can you see the clock?”

Cape had been transfixed by the image of Lin and his own inability to act, but now he saw it, a small rectangle in the corner of the screen. He recognized the gray square under it immediately. It was identical to the bomb he’d found under his car.

Yan had taken a step backward and now held something in his right hand.

“I also have a cell phone,” he said. “But it works a little differently from yours.” He held up the phone. “There’s two numbers that only I know.” He moved his thumb back and forth over the keypad. “One disarms the bomb, and the other triggers the detonator. I just input the second number, so if I push send now, well…you know the rest, detective.”

“What about the clock?”

Yan grinned. “That’s my insurance. You have-” He glanced over his shoulder. “Eighteen minutes to produce the heart, or the girl dies in a very messy explosion. But get me the heart and I’ll make the call. You can have the girl.”

“I don’t want her.” Cape kept his voice as flat as he could. He sensed Yan taking control of the situation and needed to keep him off guard. “I don’t even know her.”

Yan wasn’t buying it. “Then why are you here, detective?”

“To get rich.”

Yan hesitated, finding it hard to argue with greed. “You want money, but not the girl?”

“Are hearing problems common in your family?”

Yan’s eyes narrowed. “So you don’t care if I push this button?”

“Go ahead,” said Cape. “But after the big boom, don’t you think the cops will come? Or the fire department? Kinda hard to negotiate with those sirens blaring.”

Yan lowered the phone but held it tightly in his right hand. The image on the monitor shifted and Cape’s heart jumped, lines running across the screen for an instant before the picture returned to normal. Lin still sat there, eyes half closed, the clock now reading seventeen. Cape assumed Yan didn’t have time to set up some elaborate system, but the cell phone made him nervous. Lin might not even be in this building.

Yan’s back was to the monitor. “What do you want?”

“Lots and lots of money,” said Cape. “I thought I’d keep it simple.”

“How much?”

“What’s it worth to you?” asked Cape. “You’re obviously willing to kill for it, so it must be valuable. To me it’s just a lump of green stone.”

“You’re an ignorant fool, detective.”

“Is that why you tried to kill me?”

Yan smiled, the cat completely out of the bag now. “How did you know it was me and not Freddie Wang?”

“I didn’t, until just now.”

Yan studied him but remained silent.

Cape said, “I found a dead body and bomb behind my car, but Freddie could have killed me inside his restaurant.”

“Then why did you leave the body outside my office?” asked Yan.

“I don’t know,” said Cape, shrugging. “It seemed like a good idea at the time.”

“That’s it?”

“To be honest, I thought it might stir things up, make you take an interest.”

“You never suspected me?”

Cape shook his head. “Not until the body disappeared,” he said. “But when you told me to check out the cargo on the ship, that made me wonder.”

“I read the police arrested Michael Long,” said Yan.

“A failed jeans designer masterminded a human smuggling operation?” Cape frowned.

“The authorities seem satisfied.”

“I showed Long a picture of your dead thug,” said Cape. “It scared the hell out of him. The cops don’t know that.”

Yan blinked several times. “You’re not as stupid as you look, detective.”

“It’s the broken nose,” said Cape. “Throws them off every time.”

“So what do you want?”

“I already told you,” said Cape, stealing another glance at the monitor. Ten minutes.

“A million dollars,” offered Yan.

Cape coughed.

“Not enough?”

“I was thinking at least five,” said Cape.

Yan started to raise the cell phone. “Let’s say I believe you don’t care about the girl,” he said slowly. “That’s still a lot of money-what makes you think I have it?”

“I figure I’ll need to disappear,” said Cape. “Especially if you push that button. You know, change my name, get a new identity…the whole Joan Rivers treatment. Maybe even get my nose fixed.”

Yan was watching him very closely now.

“What did it cost when you did it?”

Yan’s jaw dropped.

“Want me to guess your real name?” asked Cape. “I already know it’s not Rumplestiltskin.”

“Who are you?”

“That’s not the question,” said Cape. “Who are you?”

Yan’s voice was defiant. “I’m Harold Yan, the next mayor of San Francisco.”

“Liar,” said Cape.

“President of the Chinese Merchants Benevolent Association.”

“Criminal.”

“Respected member of the City Council.”

“Murderer.”

“Mayor of Chinatown.”

“Moron.”

Yan took a step forward but stopped, his eyes burning holes in Cape. He started to say something but Cape cut him off.

“You were the worthless son of a Triad leader,” he said. “You betrayed your father, then faked your own death to come here.”

Yan’s shoulders slumped as he listened, but his eyes remained hard. His nostrils flared when Cape spoke again.

“Your name is Wen,” said Cape. “Zhang Wen.”