The survivor

Seventy-Three

Red Mask cut down the south lane of East Hastings Street. Pain and confusion ruled his mind. He had no idea why he was taking this route, only that it was away from St Paul’s Hospital, where he had completed the first step of his mission. Patricia Kwan had been fortunate to survive the first attack in her home; she would not survive this second one at the hospital.

The thought brought him no happiness. No contentment either. Just one step closer to mission completion.

To the Perfect Harmony.

Huddled in an alcove at the left side of the alley were three women. Crack whores. One of them — a blonde with pockmarked skin — gave him a wary look. He ignored her, and at the next alcove took shelter from the afternoon winds. They blustered through him with enough force to hamper his speed.

The smell of piss and shit hit him. The Downtown East Side. This festering place. The sickness of the city was bested only by the sickness of his body. With every step, the weight of his shoulder bones tore open his wound a little further.

Not that it mattered.

He reached inside his pocket and took out the vial of pills. White and yellow ones. He couldn’t remember what the old herbalist had said, how many to take, so he dumped a few of each in his mouth and chewed them into paste. He had just finished swallowing when he spotted the man. Around fifty, and six feet tall — large for an Asian — he wore a baggy coat that offered perfect cover for weapons holstered beneath. The man entered the lane, casually looked in Red Mask’s direction, then disappeared between the apartment complexes on the south side.

Red Mask felt his jaw clench. This was not the first time he had seen him. The man stuck out. His walk was distinctive, as if he had something wrong with his back. As if his spine was made not from bone and ligament, but wooden rods. When he walked, he took long stork-like strides.

Red Mask recognised this walk. He’d seen it back home in Cambodia. This was the result of disease. Some villagers called it ‘Tree Spine’ or ‘the sickness from the North’, but Red Mask knew the real reason for it. It was punishment.

Bad karma.

The first time he had seen this man was just after leaving Sheung Fa’s office. And that thought weighed heavy in his chest because it meant only one thing.

This man was an assassin.

Red Mask returned to the main drag of East Hastings. At the corner, he entered the Jin Ho Cafe. The waitress hurried over and offered him a seat, but he ignored her, going immediately to the narrow hallway that led down to the washrooms, and turning to spy out of the glass front window.

Within a minute, the strange man reappeared on the sidewalk out front, his stiff legs plodding him along with surprising speed and grace.

One look from this closer distance and Red Mask felt a coldness sweep through his belly. The man’s face was angular, like those from the north, with high, thick cheekbones and narrow hard eyes. Red Mask recognised him. It was the Man with the Bamboo Spine. A man he hadn’t seen in over twenty years.

He was here to kill him.