Stealing the Dragon

Chapter Eight

Tokyo, 21 years ago

“Sally, your parents are dead.”

Just like that. No preamble. Nothing to soften the delivery. Li Mei’s face was a mass of wrinkles that seemed to crack open as she delivered the news. The old woman looked at the five year old with an expression that begged no questions.

When Sally just stood there, Li Mei spoke again, this time in Cantonese.

“They’ve gone from this place, Sally.” Li Mei’s dark brown eyes were kind but unblinking. “And now we must leave.” She turned the small girl around with a gentle shove. “Go and pack your things.”

Your parents are dead.

Go and pack your things.

Everything happening at once. Even at five, Sally sensed her nanny was trying to distract her, keep her off balance before shock could set in. Push her away before reality could touch her.

It was an old trick. Don’t look at the cut on your knee, look at me.

Sally dug her heel into the carpet and stared at Li Mei as if she didn’t recognize her, the five year old looking in that instant as old and jaded as her ancient Chinese caretaker. Sally had her Japanese mother’s jade green eyes and lustrous black hair, but her cheeks were painted with freckles, a genetic gift from her Irish-American father. These and other telltale traits she got from her parents, but her will was all her own.

“Tell me,” she demanded, looking as if she would know if any details were omitted.

So the old woman sat down on the floor and took the little girl in her arms. Sally’s father had left the Army base around four and drove to Shinjuku station in downtown Tokyo, where he picked up her mother every day after she finished work. Most Japanese did not drive if they could avoid it, preferring to take the trains and skip the traffic, but her father was so very American. He said he preferred doing things himself; he liked being in control. Likewise, many Japanese women didn’t work, but the family’s rent was expensive since they moved off the Army base. And like Sally’s father, her mother was independent in spirit.

Traffic was heavy that time of day, and it was dark by the time they headed home. That meant they probably never saw the truck that killed them. The driver was drunk and had neglected to turn on his headlights. The police said the only warning might have been a brief flash of sparks from the undercarriage as the truck jumped the median and struck their car in a head-on collision. They were both killed instantly.

“They did not suffer,” added Li Mei, tears flowing freely down her cheeks. She said something else but Sally couldn’t hear it over the roar of blood rushing in her ears. She searched Li Mei’s face for something else, a happy ending the old woman had forgotten, a story within the story that only Sally could hear. But now there were spots before her eyes, and her heart convulsed as if it had stopped. As she gasped for breath, she saw Li Mei’s face dissolve in a waterfall of tears, replaced by the smiling faces of her mother and father.

That was the last thing Sally saw before she blacked out.

The trip to Hong Kong was a blur, along with everything else about the next week. Li Mei explained that Sally had no surviving relatives, either in Japan or the United States, so the old woman was adopting Sally herself and taking her to Hong Kong. That was where Li Mei had grown up. She just knew Sally would feel at home there.

Even at five, Sally could sense a lie. Not a single official-looking person had come to the house to talk with her, bringing official-looking papers for Li Mei to sign. Li Mei and Sally had simply left Japan, boarding a ferry in Osaka that would take them to Hong Kong. Along the way, no one asked any questions that Li Mei couldn’t answer. Sally didn’t really care one way or the other, so she didn’t say anything about it to Li Mei.

In fact, she had said very little over the past week, and Li Mei noticed that Sally was speaking less each day. She looked at her young charge and wondered what she must be thinking, now that her world had turned black.

Throughout her short life, Sally had generally been a happy child. A week ago, Li Mei would have called her precocious. But she was also strangely intense for a little girl, approaching every game or new activity as if it were a test. While the other girls giggled, Sally would frown in concentration. Only when she mastered the new skill would Sally relax and laugh like the other children. To Li Mei it seemed that Sally was two little girls sharing the same body-one girl full of life and hope and the other experienced beyond her years, earnestly preparing for some hardship yet to come.

Now that hardship had arrived, Li Mei could see the smiling, laughing side of Sally going into hiding. She hoped the two different girls that comprised Sally were friends, and she wondered if the hardened girl sitting next to her would ever share her happy playmate with anyone again. She suspected the smiling, hopeful side of Sally would be jealously guarded for many years, protected from the cruelty of the outside world. Li Mei prayed she was not lost forever.

It was an odd train of thought for the old caretaker, given their destination.

Li Mei had been anxious to return to Hong Kong for her own reasons, but she also had plans for Sally. Several times during the voyage she considered turning back but quickly derailed that line of thought by telling herself there was no better alternative. Sally did not belong in an orphanage-she had talents and potential that only Li Mei and a select few could recognize. And when the time came, when Sally was older, she would have a choice. That was what Li Mei kept saying to herself: I am not giving her away. I am giving her a choice.

If Li Mei wasn’t completely convinced by her own argument, at least it kept her moving closer to their destination.

Hong Kong hadn’t changed much since Li Mei had left, except to grow even bigger and louder, if such a thing were possible. There was no other city in the world that was so alive-not even Tokyo or New York. From the moment they disembarked at Kowloon, their senses were assaulted with the glare of neon, the smells of open cooking stalls, the roar of traffic, and the planes overhead. It was hot that time of year, steam rising off the street and choking the air with humidity. It didn’t take long for Li Mei to get her bearings, and young Sally simply let the crowds buffet her along as she held Li Mei’s hand and tried to keep up.

They spent their first night in a cheap hotel in the Kowloon district, the glare from a neon sign outside their window painting the room a lurid blue. That and the constant buzz of traffic five stories below kept Sally awake well into the night. It was after midnight when she spoke into the darkness, her small voice echoing around the room.

“Is he still alive?” she asked the ceiling. She could tell from the sound of Li Mei’s breathing that she was also awake.

“Who, Sally?” asked Li Mei, though she already knew the answer.

“The man who killed my parents,” said Sally, her voice very flat now. “The man who was drunk.”

Li Mei hesitated, but only briefly.

“Yes, he survived.”

“Will he go to jail?”

Li Mei sighed. “Yes, child, for a little while.”

“But not forever?”

Another sigh as Li Mei struggled to find the words. “The police said he was the nephew of the man who owned the trucking company. His uncle was…is…a very important man. He plays golf with the Finance Minister.”

“What does that mean?” asked Sally, not understanding what golf had to do with losing her parents.

“I’m saying…” Li Mei began, then faltered before finding an answer. “I’m saying that in this world, sometimes it is hard to find justice, Sally.”

Sally thought she knew what justice was, but she wasn’t sure. But if finding it meant the man who killed her parents would suffer, then she would look.

“I will find it,” she said to the shadows and the neon.

Li Mei thought again of their destination and the weight of the little girl’s words, then nodded to herself in the darkness.

“I know you will, child,” she said softly. “I know you will.”