The Trail to Buddha_s Mirror

7

He checked into the Banyan Tree properly this time, via the lobby and the registration desk. He whipped out the Bank’s plastic-so what if they tracked him down?-tipped the bellhop, and settled right back into his room. He poured himself a neat scotch, left a wake-up call for seven o’clock, and read two chapters of Fathom before dropping off.

Angels watched over him in his sleep. The angels in this case were not the winged spirits that one Father O’Connell used to tell him about when a younger Neal would help him find his way back to the rectory from the Dublin House Pub. Neal would listen patiently, if skeptically, to the old priest’s description of a guardian angel that followed you everywhere, as he relieved Father O’Connell of all his pocket money and decided that maybe these angels existed after all. The angels now were a bunch of Hong Kong Triad thugs who had thrown a loose protective net around Neal, and who prowled the hotel corridor, watched the entrances and the sidewalks, blocked the stairway leading to Neal’s floor, and did it all without being noticed.

Neal had insisted on that as the price for accepting protection at all.

“This won’t work if I’m traveling in a mob,” he had told Ben Chin. “I have to look like an easy target.”

“A slam-dunk,” agreed Ben, who after all, had attended UCLA. “Don’t worry. My boys will lay back.”

So Neal slept soundly until the phone rang at seven. He showered and dressed-white shirt, khaki slacks, indestructible blue blazer, no tie-and went downstairs to the dining room. He stopped off in the gift shop and picked up the South China Daily and the International Herald Tribune. The latter provided him with sports news to read as he tossed down four cups of coffee, two pieces of white toast, and three scrambled eggs.

He went back up to his room and the package was waiting on his bed, just as he had arranged. He didn’t know how Chin had managed to get all of it done in one afternoon and evening, but it was all there: five hundred flyers with the photo of Pendleton and Li Lan at dinner, and a message in Chinese and English reading, IF YOU HAVE SEEN THESE PEOPLE, CONTACT MR. CAREY, and going on to give his hotel number and extension. There was also a neatly typed list of all the art galleries that might handle Li Lan’s sort of work. There were about three dozen listings with addresses and phone numbers.

Chin had even grouped the galleries geographically, starting in Yaumatei and working down the Golden Mile, and then across the Hong Kong Island.

The first gallery was in the hotel and looked unlikely, but it was a good place try out a new lie.

“Good morning,” Neal said to the clerk behind the glass counter.

“Good morning. Are you enjoying your stay in Hong Kong?”

She was a Chinese woman, in her mid-forties, Neal guessed, and she was wearing an elaborately embroidered padded jacket that looked more like a uniform than her own clothing. The gallery sold a lot of jewelry and cloisonne and exhibited some large oil paintings of Hong Kong subjects: the view from Victoria Peak, Kowloon at night, sampans in the harbor. They seemed more like expensive souvenirs than artistic expressions.

“Very much,” Neal answered. “I’m hoping you can help me.”

“That is what I am here for.”

“I’m a private investigator from the United States, and I am looking for this woman,” he said, handing her a flyer.

She looked at it nervously. “Oh, my.”

“The woman, Li Lan, is an artist. A painter, to be precise.”

“Is she in some kind of trouble?”

Some kind.

“Oh, no, quite to the contrary. You see, I represent the Humboldt-Schmeer Gallery in Fort Worth. We would like to discuss a major showing of Miss Li’s work, but she seems to have changed her place of residence and we cannot seem to locate her through normal channels. Hence the reason for my disturbing you. Would you, by any chance, happen to know her?”

“There are so many artists in Hong Kong, Mr. Carey…”

“As there should be in a place of such beauty.”

“I am afraid I do not know this one, and I am sure we do not sell her work.”

“Thank you for your time. May I leave this flyer with you, in case you should remember something?”

“Yes, of course.”

“My telephone number is right there.”

“In the hotel… very convenient.”

“There is of course a modest reward, and a healthy sum of money in it for Miss Li, if we can locate her.”

“I understand.”

So will Miss Li, if she gets the word. The name Neal Carey will ring a clanging bell. Hi, remember me? Last time you saw me I was dead.

He hit three more galleries in the next hour, working his way north up Nathan Road. None of them sold Li Lan’s paintings, nor had the staffs ever heard of her. Neal made a turn south and headed back down, picking up four more galleries on side streets before he got back to the hotel. The first clerk dismissed him perfunctorily as unlikely to buy anything, the second was a polite young Chinese man who displayed great interest but offered no useful information. The third was an avant-garde place where the young owner thought she might have met Li Lan at a gallery showing on the island once, and the fourth spoke no English at all, but took a flyer. During this entire walk, Neal caught a glimpse of Ben Chin only once, and another time he thought he saw the Doorman in a crowd of people in front of him.

Neal stopped at the hotel desk to check for messages. There weren’t any, so he headed south down Nathan Road, into the heart of the expensive tourist district of Tsimshatsui. The day had turned hot and sunny. Tourists, shoppers, and the regular denizens crowded the sidewalks. Neal visited three galleries within the next six blocks. Nobody in any of them had ever heard of an artist named Li Lan, and nobody recognized the woman in the photograph. Neal left the flyers behind.

Two hours and four more shops found him down at Star Ferry Pier, the southernmost point of Kowloon. He could see the gray skyscrapers of Hong Kong Island ahead of him across Kowloon Bay. Victoria Peak loomed above the high-rises like a watchful landlady. Neal spotted the Doorman ahead of him on the runway to the ferry. The Doorman glanced at him nervously, his eyes flicking ahead to the ferry and behind Neal to his boss. Neal read the gesture: Was he planning to board the ferry and cross over to Hong Kong Island? That would take special arrangements. Neal pivoted back toward Nathan Road and strode away from the pier. He could feel rather than see Chin’s net shifting northward, and knew that the Doorman would be running to retake the lead position. Neal slowed down to make his job a little easier in the midday heat.

Neal decided that he would hit the galleries on Hong Kong Island the next day. It was time to become a slower prey and let the predator catch his scent. If anyone was out there sniffing the air, they could hardly miss it. Just to make sure, he turned east along Salisbury Road and headed for the Peninsula Hotel. If there was a place to see and be seen in Kowloon, it was the Peninsula.

The Peninsula Hotel had once been the end of the road, a place where weary travelers stayed before boarding the Orient Express for the long trip back to the West. Its architecture was classic British colonial: a broad veranda, large columns, and white paint. The veranda, now enclosed in modern glass, sheltered a tearoom and featured a view of the bay and Hong Kong Island. The locals who were jaded to that panorama came for a vantage point from which they could observe just who was taking tea with whom, and what romantic liaisons or commercial conspiracies could be inferred from the comings and goings in the Peninsula lobby.

Neal paused halfway up the broad steps to the Peninsula and stood gawking at the view, which was his way of announcing to Chin, the boys, and whoever else was interested, “Hello! I’m going into the Peninsula Hotel now!”

The waiter sat him at a single table in the middle of the enormous tearoom. Neal ordered a pot of coffee, an iced tea, and a chicken sandwich and then settled in to do what everybody else was doing, surreptitiously checking each other out.

It was a well-heeled crowd, the prices at the Peninsula being somewhat steep, and the room had a self-congratulatory air that added to the incestuous feeling. The customers were mostly white, with a sizable minority of conservatively dressed Chinese who had yet to lose the slightly defensive expression inherited from the days when they had been welcomed only as waiters. A large tourist contingent, mostly gray-haired Europeans, rounded out the crowd. The chatter was subdued and desultory; people were too busy looking over their companions’ shoulders to engage in any really direct conversation.

Neal could just make out the Doorman loitering in the outer lobby, and he didn’t so much as lift an eyebrow when Mark Chin took a single table nearby and began to ogle every woman in the room who looked like she might be under eighty years of age.

Neal polished off the meal, paid the exorbitant check, and took his sweet time getting up and leaving. He hit five more shops on his way back to the Banyan Tree. Li Lan’s name didn’t ring a bell in any of them, not a tinkle or a chime.

He worked his way back to the Banyan Tree. He wasn’t surprised to see the Doorman lurking in the hallway outside his room.

“How are you doing?” Neal asked him.

The Doorman nodded and smiled shyly.

“Okay,” he said, trying out the word.

“Okay.”

Jesus, Neal thought, he looks about twelve years old.

Then it occurred to him that he had been younger than that when he started working the streets for Friends.

The Doorman was still standing there, as if he wanted to say something but was afraid.

“You want to come in?” Neal asked.

The Doorman smiled. He didn’t understand a word.

“A drink? Uhhh… Coca-Cola?”

The Doorman tapped his wrist and then pointed at Neal’s. Neal looked at the inexpensive Timex watch he had bought at least three years ago.

“The watch? You like the watch?”

The Doorman nodded enthusiastically.

Neal took it off his wrist and handed it to the Doorman. Apparently the Doorman didn’t rate a watch in the peculiar pecking order of the gang. The Doorman strapped it to his wrist and held it up to his face to admire it.

Shit, why not?

“Listen,” Neal said. “I need it now. I’ll buy one tomorrow and you can have this one. Or you can have the new one, okay?”

He held out his hand for the watch. The Doorman took it off his wrist and put it in Neal’s hand. He looked fucking heartbroken.

“Tomorrow,” Neal said. Hell, how do I explain? He traced his index finger along the dial of the watch and moved it in a circle twelve times. “Tomorrow?”

The Doorman grinned and nodded.

Neal pointed at the Doorman’s wrist. “Tomorrow it’s yours. Okay?”

“Okay.”

“Okay. I’m going to grab some sleep.”

The Doorman bowed and backed off around the corner. Neal went into the room and made himself a scotch. He sipped at it while he tried to read some Fathom and then gave up and flopped down on the bed. He was beat.

The phone woke him up. The digital clock on the radio said it was four-twenty in the afternoon.

“Hello,” he said.

“Stop it.”

“I haven’t even started, Lan.”

“Stop it. You do not know what you are doing.”

“Why don’t you come here and tell me?”

There was one of those long silences he was getting so used to on this gig.

“Please,” she said. “Please leave us alone.”

“Where are you?”

“Someone will get hurt.”

“That’s why I’ve been trying to find you. At first I thought you set me up for a bullet in the old hot tub the other night. Now I think maybe the shot was meant for Pendleton.”

He didn’t get quite the reaction he expected, a gasp of horror or a gush of gratitude. It was almost a laugh.

“Is that what you think?” she asked.

“Maybe it’s what I hope.”

“I am asking you again-please leave us alone. You are only helping them.”

“Helping who?”

“Stop this stupid searching you are doing. It is too dangerous.”

If he hadn’t been half asleep, he could have mumbled something really slick like, “Danger is my business, baby,” but instead he asked, “Dangerous for who?”

“All of us.”

“Where are you? I want to talk to you.”

“You are talking with me.”

Oh, yeah.

“I want to see you.”

“Please forget us. Forget me.”

No, Li Lan, I can’t do either of those things.

“Lan, I’m going to start again tomorrow. I’m going to hit every gallery and shop in Hong Kong. I’m going to pass your picture around the entire city and I’m going to make a spectacle of myself doing it unless you agree to meet me tonight.”

Pause, pause, pause.

“Wait one moment,” she said.

He waited. He could hear her speaking, but could not make out the words. He wondered if she was talking to Pendleton.

“The observatory on Victoria Peak at eight o’clock. Can you be there?”

“Yes.”

“Okay.”

“Aren’t you going to tell me to come alone?”

“You are foolish with me. Yes, come alone.”

She hung up.

Neal felt his heart racing. If this is love, he thought, the poets can keep it. But three and a half hours sure seems like a long time.

He ordered a wake-up call for six o’clock and lay awake until the phone rang.

Getting to Victoria Peak wouldn’t be too tough, Neal thought. Getting there alone would be impossible. That’s what Ben Chin had told him, anyway.

“No way,” Chin had said, with a firm shake of the head. He knocked back a hit of Neal’s scotch with equal firmness.

“My checkbook, my rules, remember?”

“That was different.”

“How?”

Neal had a scotch of his own sweating on the side table, untouched after the first sip.

“You weren’t putting your butt on the line. Cousin Mark would be really pissed if I let you get killed.”

“I’m not going to get killed.”

“Why does she want to meet you at the Peak? Why not here at the hotel?”

“She’s afraid and she doesn’t trust me. She wants to meet in a public place.”

“Let her meet you on the ferry, then.”

“You can’t run away on a ferry.”

“That’s what I mean.”

Neal sat down on the bed and slipped into his loafers.

“I’m not going up there trailing your whole crew.”

“You’ll never know we’re there.”

“I told her I’d be alone.”

“Did she tell you she’d be alone?”

Good point.

“No, I think she’ll be with her friend.”

“I think she’ll be with a whole bunch of friends. You should be, too.”

Neal stood up and put on his jacket.

“No.”

“Okay. Just me.”

“No.”

“How are you going to stop me from following you?”

There was always that.

“Okay, just you.”

Chin smiled and polished off his drink.

“But,” Neal said, “you stay in the background, out of sight and out of earshot. I want to talk to her alone. Once we make the meet and you see that it’s safe, you back off. Way off.”

“Whatever you say.”

“So are you ready to go?”

“It’s only six-thirty. We have plenty of time.”

“I want to get there early.”

“Love is a many-splendored thing.”

“I don’t want to be set up again.”

The rush onto the Star Ferry made a New York subway look like a spring cotillion. The same crowd that had been standing patiently and passively on the ramp moments earlier turned into an aggressive mob as soon as the entrance chain was dropped. Splitting into gangs, trios, couples, and the odd loner, the mob spilled onto the double-decked, double-ended old green-and-white vessel, flipping the backs across the benches to face forward.

Neal, a survivor of the Broadway Local, just managed to stay on his feet as the crowd shot off the ramp and pushed him forward. He claimed an apparently scorned seat toward the rear of the boat and wondered how Ben Chin was going to stay with him. The boat filled up quickly and took off quickly. There was no time for lollygagging; the Star Ferry made the nine-minute crossing 455 times a day.

It was some nine minutes. From sea level, Hong Kong’s skyscrapers loomed like castle keeps, their gray steel and glass standing in sharp contrast to the green hills above. A staggering array of boat traffic jammed the waters of the bay. Private water taxis zipped back and forth while old junks lumbered across. Sampan pilots struggled with their sculling oars to maneuver through the chop left by the motorboats. A tugboat guided a gigantic ocean liner into a dock on the Kowloon side.

Lights began to glow in the early dusk, and neon reflections started to appear on the water, casting faint red, blue, and yellow shades on the bay, the boats, and even the ferry passengers. Neal’s arm dangled out the window, and he watched it change color as the neon sign proclaiming Tudor Whiskey flashed.

Most of the passengers seemed unaffected by the scene. Only a handful of scattered tourists were paying any attention at all. The regular commuters talked or read newspapers or loudly spat sunflower seed hulls onto the deck. Ben Chin was just sitting, staring impassively ahead, three rows behind Neal.

Neal leaned out to get a view of the Peak. His chest tightened. She’ll be there, he thought. What will she look like? What will she be wearing? What will she say? Will she be holding Pendleton’s hand? A fierce pang of jealousy ripped through him.

Jesus, Neal, he told himself. At least try to remember the job, the gig. The job is about Pendleton, not Li Lan. Yeah, but you took yourself off the job, remember? There is no job. There won’t be any job. There’s only her.

The crowd began to stir in anticipation of the docking. Neal stood up and resisted the impulse to look behind him. Chin would doubtless pick him up. The crew dropped the chains and the mob surged off the boat.

Neal had studied his guidebook and knew where to go. He came off the dock and crossed wide, busy Connaught Road and headed up past City Hall to Des Voeux Road, where he took a left and found the tramway station on the bottom of Garden Road.

He waited about five minutes for the small green-and-white funicular car to arrive, then found a window seat on the right side toward the front. Chin sat down on the left-side aisle toward the rear. Neal didn’t see any of Chin’s crew, and figured that the gang leader had kept his word.

The tram started with a jerk and began to pull up the steep slope of the peak. Most of the commuters got off on the lower two stops at Kennedy Road and Macdonnell Road. Thick vegetation of bamboo and fir trees flanked the narrow tram line on both sides, and sheer rock ledges showed where the line had been blasted through. At times the grade was so steep that the tram car seemed to defy gravity, and Neal felt that it would pitch over backward, tumbling them down on top of the tall commercial buildings that seemed to stand directly beneath and behind. He had an image of the steel cable snapping from the strain and the car hurtling backward through the air, end over end, until it finally crashed into the concrete and steel of the city below. Neal was afraid of heights.

The tram finally pulled into the Upper Peak Station. Neal got off on shaky legs. She had told him to meet her at the observatory. It wasn’t hard to find, being only a few feet to the left of the station. He was forty minutes early for the meet, but he took a quick look around to make sure she wasn’t there. She wasn’t, and he turned his attention to the scene beneath him.

The view stretched out in the distance to the New Territories and the Chinese border, hidden in the brown hills that were going gray in the late dusk. Neal could see the entire Kowloon peninsula laid out in front of the hills, its concrete tenements, rows of docks, hotels, and bars beginning to glow with the lights that were blinking on as night came and people arrived back at their homes. The Star Ferry pier glowed in bright neon, and boats in the bay turned on their navigation lights. Directly beneath him, Neal watched the commercial towers of Hong Kong turn into giant pillars of light in the gathering darkness.

Neal stood on the observation deck watching day turn to night. It was like seeing a bland watercolor landscape change into a garish movie screen filled with electric greens, hot reds, cool blues, and shimmering golds. Hong Kong was a glimmering jewel necklace on a black dress, an invitation to explore a woman’s secrets, a fantasy that tiptoed on the knife edge between a nightmare and a dream.

He forced himself to turn away from the panorama and reconnoiter the area. He took a right on the narrow paved walkway called Lugard Road, which led around the edge of the peak through the thick forests and gardens. A low stone wall bordered the downhill side of the trail, and informal footpaths led off into the woods on the uphill side. There were frequent turnoffs with benches where one could enjoy different perspectives of the stunning view below, but most of the tourists went no farther than the observatory, and the trail was almost deserted save for a few young lovers and a couple of joggers. Neal walked along the trail for about ten minutes and then turned around and went back to the observatory. He hadn’t seen anything suspicious, nothing that looked like a trap or an ambush. He checked his watch: twenty minutes. He walked down to the tram station and waited.

What am I actually going to do? Neal wondered. Just tell her that someone is trying to grease the good doctor? She seems to know that already. Tell her that I think the CIA has a serious grudge against Bobby-baby and may want to waste both of them? Ask her if she tried to kill me back in groovy Mill Valley? Would she tell me if she did? Tell her I’m in love with her, that I’ve dumped my job and my education to follow her, that I can’t live without her? What will she do? Dump Pendleton on the spot and take the tram down with me? Hold my hand? Run away with me? Just what the hell am I doing here, anyway?

He looked around and saw Chin loitering on the hill above him. They exchanged a quick time-to-get-going look, and Neal started himself up toward the observatory. Maybe it’s just another dodge, he thought. Maybe she won’t be here at all.

She was there. Right on time and alone. Neal felt a twinge of guilt as he looked at her. She stood on the observatory deck where it joined Lugard Road. She looked splendid. She was wearing a loose black blouse over jeans and tennis shoes. Her hair hung long and straight, parted in the middle, and her blue comb was fastened to the left of the part. The view behind her turned to mere background. She looked directly at Neal and gestured quickly for him to follow her up Lugard Road.

Pendleton was standing by a bench at the first turnout. He was looking at the view. He wore a white shirt and baggy gray trousers, and he was fidgeting with a key chain in his right hand. Li Lan took him by the elbow and turned him to face Neal.

Neal was twenty feet from them when Pendleton asked, “What do you want?”

“Just to talk.”

“So talk.”

“I’m trying to warn you-”

The look in Li Lan’s eyes cut him off. She was looking over his shoulder, and her face showed fear and anger.

“Bastard,” she hissed at Neal. She grabbed Pendleton by the arm and pushed him up the path in front of her. They started to run.

Neal turned around to look behind him and saw Ben Chin standing there. He didn’t take the time to bitch him out, but started running after Li and Pendleton, who were disappearing around a sharp curve beneath a huge banyan tree. No problem, Neal thought, he could catch them easily. He hit his stride quickly and was gaining on them when he reached the curve. He could hear Ben Chin pounding along behind him.

Li Lan hadn’t come alone. There were three of them, and they stepped between Neal and his quarry. They were ten feet in front of him and they looked like they all had the same favorite movie-each wore a white T-shirt, jeans, and a black leather jacket, and each was carrying a chopper, a Chinese hybrid between a carving knife and a cleaver. Neal could just see Lan and Pendleton fading into the darkness behind their human screen. He looked at the Leather Boy in the middle: a large, solid youth who stood there shaking his head. Neal stopped cold and stood as still as he could. He raised his hands in the universal gesture of surrender and began to back up gently.

“Okay… okay… you win,” he said. “I’ll just go back the way I came.” I’ll go all the way back to Yorkshire, if you want. Walking. Backwards.

He heard movement in the bushes above him. Maybe it was Ben Chin. Maybe he had broken their deal and hidden his whole vicious crew in the woods. Please… Neal slowly turned his head to see three more armed men come down through the woods to block the path behind him. Wrong crew.

Oh shit, oh dear. Okay, Ben Chin, where are you? Nowhere to be seen. You’re pretty tough with old ladies, Ben, but when it comes to your peer group…

Neal risked a glance to his right. Maybe, just maybe he could make it to the low stone wall and jump over the edge. The problem was that he didn’t know what was over the edge, a nice soft fir tree or a fifty-foot precipice culminating on a rock.

Leather Boy One raised his chopper and made a crisscross motion in front of his chest. Neal heard the fighters behind him close in another couple of feet. Then the line in front of him did the same thing.

The fifty-foot-drop option didn’t seem so bad. Being smashed on a rock seemed preferable to being chopped to pieces. His Eighteenth Century Lit friends would call that a Hobson’s choice.

Leather Boy One raised his chopper.

The Doorman dropped from the limb of the banyan tree right on top of Leather Boy One. They crashed to the ground and the Doorman reached out and grabbed the ankle of another one of the gang and pulled his feet out from under him. The Doorman was no match for Leather Boy One but held him down long enough to look up at Neal and gesture with his eyes to jump over the tangled mass-he had opened the door.

Neal heard a mass of running footsteps from behind and then in front, and Chin’s crew filled the path in both directions. One of them sliced the third Leather Boy across the arm with a chopper while the other reached out and pulled Neal over the top of the Doorman and Leather Boy One, who were still grappling on the ground. Then he pushed Neal along the path.

“Run!” he yelled.

Leather Boy One got a leg behind the Doorman’s ankle and flipped him over. He brought his chopper down on the back of the Doorman’s knee. The Doorman screamed in pain and grabbed Leather Boy One’s ankles and held on. The chopper came down again, on the other knee.

Chin’s assistant was pushing Neal away from the scene.

“Go, go, go!” he yelled.

“We have to help him!”

“He’s dead!”

Neal looked behind him and saw that both gangs were fighting. Screams of rage and the clang of metal on metal hit his ears, and the flashes of steel under the streetlamps dazzled his eyes. He felt more arms pulling on him now, moving him away from the fight, away from where the Doorman lay bleeding and whimpering, away from the danger. He could run now and make it, and Chin’s assistant and the others would protect his back. He felt the cool, clean air of safety.

He tore himself away from the arms and headed back toward the Doorman, who lay in the middle of the fight. Neal grabbed one of the Leather Boys by the back of his jacket and ran him over the side of the wall. Another one was leaning over the Doorman, searching for money. Neal grabbed the back hem of his jacket and pulled it over his head, trapping his arms. He hauled back and hit him in the face four times and the boy dropped. Neal reached under the Doorman’s arms and began to drag him back along the path, where Chin’s assistant and two of the others stood watching in disgust and confusion. They were outnumbered, they had just enough manpower to get Neal out, not fight a pitched battle, and the kweilo had fucked it up, and wasted a good doorman in the bargain.

“Help me!” Neal yelled to them.

The rest of Chin’s gang were now backing off in the opposite direction, back toward the observatory, flashing their choppers in front of them to hold off their advancing enemies. Leather Boy One and two of his comrades placed themselves squarely between Neal and Chin’s assistant, who began to back down the trail. Neal was surrounded again.

Fuck it, he thought, and knelt down over the Doorman. He had never seen so much blood. It was all over them. He took off his jacket, ripped off a sleeve, and wrapped it around the Doorman’s leg above the wound, trying to remember how to tie a proper tourniquet. The leg was almost severed, the tendons cut through. The Doorman had lost a lot of blood. His face was gray and his eyes were faint. He looked at Neal with reproach, an expression Neal read to mean, “You have wasted my sacrifice.”

Neal looked up at Leather Boy One.

“Get a doctor.”

Leather Boy One stepped over to them and kicked the Doorman in the leg, right on the wound. The Doorman howled. Neal held him as tightly as he could and stared up at Leather Boy One, memorizing his face. If I ever get out of this, he thought. Leather Boy One smiled broadly at him and raised his big knife over Neal’s face. Neal summoned up every bit of courage and rage he had to stare him in the face. Leather Boy One prepared to bring the chopper down in a smooth backhand stroke into Neal’s throat. Leather Boy One was smiling.

The bullet hit him squarely between the eyes. He crumpled to the ground with the smile still on what was left of his face. Two more silenced shots whooshed in the air and the rest of the Leather Boys scattered into the woods.

The man lowered the pistol and stepped into the light of a streetlamp. He was a white guy in a khaki suit.

“Mr. Carey,” he said. “You have fucked things up, but good.”

“Call an ambulance.”

The man stepped over and took a cursory look at the Doorman.

“It’s too late.”

“Call a fucking ambulance!”

The man spoke in a mild Southern accent. “The tendons are cut. Have you ever seen the life of a cripple in Kowloon? You’re not doing him any favors.”

The image of the beggar across the street from the hotel came back to Neal. He stroked the Doorman’s head and then felt along the side of his neck. There was no pulse.

“Believe me, he’s better off,” the man said. “Now it’s time to go.”

“What about the bodies?”

“They’ll be taken care of.”

Neal took off his watch and put it on the Doorman’s wrist. Then he looked up at the man.

“Who the hell are you?” he asked.

“You might say I’m a friend of the family.”

Neal figured that the house was somewhere on the Peak, because they hadn’t driven more than five minutes before they were let in through a guarded gate to a long driveway. Neal couldn’t see very well through the heavily tinted windows in the back of the car, but he could tell that the house was large and secluded. The man ushered him in through a downstairs door and led him down a hallway past a large study and into a bathroom.

“I’ll see if we can scare up some clean clothes,” the man said.

“Who-”

“I’ll answer all your questions later. Right now I don’t want you getting bloodstains all over these people’s nice furniture. Why don’t you get washed up and then join me in the study?”

The man left and Neal stripped off his clothes. His slacks and his shirt were sticky with blood. He bundled them up and threw them in a trashcan. The he ran some hot water into the sink, took a washcloth and soap, and scrubbed himself. His hands were trembling. He looked at himself in the mirror, and the man who looked back seemed a lot older than he remembered.

Then he heard a timid knock on the door. He opened to see an old Chinese man in servant’s livery. The man handed him a white short-sleeved shirt, some baggy black cotton trousers, and a pair of black cloth rubber-soled shoes, then shuffled away. Neal put the clothes on. The shoes were a little too large, but they would do. He padded down the hallway into the study.

Thick red drapes masked wall-to-ceiling windows, and a rich Oriental carpet covered the floor. The effect was one of tremendous quietude. An enormous black enameled desk took up most of one wall, and a smaller black enameled coffee table flanked by a sofa and two straight-backed chairs occupied another. The man was sitting in one of the chairs. His tie was unknotted, his shoes were off, and he was sipping from a nearly translucent cup.

“You want some tea?” he asked Neal.

“Fuck you and your tea. Who are you?”

“Sorry about the coolie clothing. It’s all we had around.”

Neal didn’t answer.

“My name is Simms,” the man said. He had thick blond hair cut very short, and blue eyes. He looked about thirty plus.

“Are you with Friends?”

“I’m not against them.”

“I’m not in the fucking mood-”

Simms set his cup down. “See, I really don’t care what you’re in the fucking mood for. I just had to kill someone because of you, because you just couldn’t do what you were told. So let’s forget about your mood, all right? Have some tea.”

Neal took the other chair. He poured himself a cup from the teapot that was set on the table.

“And please don’t trouble yourself to thank me for saving your ass. I’m just a public servant doing my job,” Simms said.

“Thank you.”

“You’re just barely welcome. Believe me, Carey, if I didn’t need you, I just might have let them chop you up, I’m that pissed off at you.”

The Book of Joe Graham, Chapter Eight, Verse Fifteen: Don’t give the bastards anything, not when you’re right, and especially not when you’re wrong.

“Boo-hoo, boo-hoo,” Neal said. “And by the way, fuck you. I’ve been doing this shit for half my life and I’ve never seen anyone killed before. Now I see a kid get his legs half hacked off and another get his face blown away and I’ve got blood all over me, literally and figuratively, and I figure you’re involved in all of it. So don’t give me this guilt trip, you preppie fuck. I have plenty already.”

Simms smiled and nodded his head.

“Can I have a real drink instead of this goddamned tea?” Neal asked.

Simms went to the sidebar and poured Neal a healthy scotch.

So you have a file on me, Neal thought. And you’re not with Friends. Which leaves alphabet soup.

“CIA?” Neal asked.

“If you say so.”

“So AgriTech is just a paper corporation.”

“AgriTech is real, all right. It has laboratories, offices, a lunchroom, company picnics, the whole nine yards.”

The whiskey burned pleasantly in Neal’s stomach. He wished he could just go out and get drunk.

Instead he said, “Yeah, AgriTech also has a treasurer named Paul Knox, who has a-how shall I put this-‘fantastic’ employment record.”

“Paul’s a good man.”

“Yeah, I’m sure he’s a credit to his race and a terrific fourth if you’re caught short at tee-off time, but I want to know why one AgriTech research scientist is worth all this killing.”

Simms held his teacup gently in both hands and inhaled the smell, as if the answer were in the tea’s aroma.

“AgriTech,” Simms explained in a slow, soft drawl, “is what we call a ‘bench company.’ It’s a place to put players you can’t use on the field at the moment but who you want around in case you need them. In the good old days before Watergate and Jimmy ‘I’ll never lie to you’ Carter, we had a lot more money to keep people on our full-time payroll. As it is now, anytime we want to hire a janitor, we have to appear before a Senate subcommittee and explain to some alcoholic wazoo why we can’t clean the toilets ourselves.

“So we took some of the monies that were sitting around in nooks and crannies and invested it in businesses that perhaps needed a little help. We even created companies out of whole cloth. These companies are expected to conduct actual business, turn a profit, meet a payroll-”

“The whole nine yards.”

“-and in return they employ some people we can’t keep on our lists but might want to use from time to time. Naturally, we need to have understanding people in executive positions in these companies, because, as you have demonstrated, the books do not always bear the closest of scrutinies.”

“And these execs might have to okay some frequent and lengthy leaves of absence.”

“That too.”

“But Pendleton isn’t on an authorized leave.”

“Not hardly.”

“So what happened?”

“So what happened is we got greedy. See, we had ourselves this bench company called AgriTech. AgriTech makes pesticides. At the same time, we found it a little difficult to obtain appropriations for research funds. So it seemed like a natural solution to ask AgriTech to carry a little bit of that load for us.”

Neal finished his drink. He didn’t feel any better.

“So you funneled illegal money into AgriTech to conduct unauthorized chemical experiments.”

“Which is another way of putting it.”

“Under the watchful eye of Paul Knox.”

“Probably.”

“And Robert Pendleton was conducting the actual research.”

“Can I freshen that drink for you?”

“So that whole story I was given about chickenshit-”

“Was chickenshit. For all I know, Pendleton might have been working on some sort of super-fertilizer for AgriTech, but for us he was working on herbicides.”

Neal took the fresh glass from Simms. Well, well, well, Doctor Bob, he thought. This does put a different light on things. Good old, kind old Doctor Bob doesn’t make things grow, boys and girls-he makes them die.

“You see,” Simms continued, “if you know how to make something grow, you have a pretty good shot at knowing how to make it not grow. Killing it when it’s still in the ground is a whole lot nicer for all concerned than spraying it with, for example, Agent Orange.”

“It’s real humanitarian work, all right.”

“It is, in fact. Especially if the plant you’re thinking about killing is the poppy plant.”

The next shot of scotch still didn’t provide Neal the soothing warmth he was after. “Okay, so Pendleton gets the Nobel Peace Prize. What’s your beef with him?”

“The woman, of course.”

Of course.

“You’re an art critic?” Neal asked.

“She’s a spy.”

“Oh, come on!”

This is getting too fucking ridiculous, Neal thought. Li Lan a spy? Next thing you know he’ll tell me A. Brian Crowe is an FBI agent.

“She’s a Chinese operative,” Simms insisted. “Look, Pendleton went to this conference of biochemists at Stanford. The opposition covers those things as SOP. We do the same with their meetings. Li Lan-and let’s call her that for convenience, who knows what her real name is-is assigned to snuggle up to one of the scientists. Share a little pillow talk, you know: ‘Who are you? Where do you work? Gee, that’s fascinating, tell me all about it.’ It just gives the opposition an idea about who’s up to what. Usually it doesn’t go beyond that, but little Li hits a home run. The mark falls in love with her.

“She contacts her bosses, who do a little research of their own. Let’s face it, Carey, if a half-baked rent-a-cop like you can tumble AgriTech, Beijing can do the same. They tell her to stick with him, do that voodoo, etcetera, until he’s so pussy-whipped he’ll follow her anywhere.”

“Like to Hong Kong.”

“Like to Hong Kong, where he’s just a midnight boat ride from the PRC. Maybe they grab him, maybe they’ve already turned him and he goes willingly, but whichever… Li Lan gets a promotion and Pendleton gets an eight-by-ten hospitality suite in some Beijing basement and an opportunity to answer all kinds of interesting questions on a daily basis.”

Dinner should be surprises.

“Where did I fit in?” Neal asked.

“No offense, but we used you like a springer spaniel. Your job was to flush them from the bushes and make them run. You did a great job, by the way, Fido.”

Okay, except Fido here went on point and the hunter didn’t let them run, he took his best shot. What’s wrong with this metaphor?

“Thanks, but why did you want them to run? Why not arrest them in the States? Wouldn’t that have been easier?”

“Sure. The only problem is that the old boys in the Congress won’t allow us to conduct operations within the States. That’s why we used Friends of the Family instead of sending one of our own pups. If we had picked up Li Lan in the States, we’d have had to turn her over to the FBI, and that would have been a damn shame. They’d have just had a big old trial and chucked her lovely ass into prison, which is not the best and highest use of that particular piece of flesh.”

“What are you talking about?”

“Li Lan wants to turn Pendleton. We want to turn Li Lan.”

Neal settled back into the rich red velvet of the seat cushion. This was getting interesting. Maybe there was a way everybody could survive this thing, although Simms’s explanation was still one bullet shy of a load.

“See,” Simms went on, warming to his subject, “we don’t take these things personally. We harbor no ill will toward Li Lan or Pendleton. Hell, we have so many Russians defecting we can’t keep the safe houses stocked in vodka. We turn them away. But a Chinese defector? A rare bird, my friend. A rare bird who could sing some interesting songs.

“We knew she’d run to Hong Kong to cover the trail before she took him into the PRC. If we could trap her here and explain her options… well, we think she’d choose air conditioning, ice cubes, color television, and the good old U.S.A. over a Hong Kong jail cell. Hell, she’d probably prefer that over the pure numbing blandness of the PRC. A lot of the comrades will defect just to go shopping.”

“And if you take her in Hong Kong you don’t have to deal with the FBI.”

“Exactly.”

“Or any bothersome defense attorneys or judges or that shit.”

Simms sighed. “Try to be professional about this, Carey. Her options aren’t all that rosy. If she came with us, we’d debrief her for a year or two and set her loose with a nice new identity and a bank account. For a Third World baby like Li Lan, that’s like winning the lottery.”

Yeah, maybe it is, Neal thought. She could stay with Pendleton, paint her paintings, go to the supermarket and shop for elaborate Chinese dinners. There are worse lives.

“What would you do to Pendleton?”

“Nothing. Frankly, his brains and his knowledge protect him. We’d rather have him working for us than for the Chinese. Of course, you’ve fucked all this up, Carey, with your heroic chase up Austin Road. When you first slipped your leash in San Francisco and bolted over here, I was ready to have you busted. But then you actually came up with a half-bright plan, so I thought, let’s go with it. Mind you, we’ve had you followed since day one.

“I figured that you weren’t coming up to Victoria Peak just for the view, so I was all nice and ready to make contact with our little friend. But you spooked them and they called out the troops and I lost them. Mostly because I had to save your worthless butt. Thanks.”

Neal contemplated the red hue of the room reflecting in the golden color of the scotch. Maybe it’s all true, he thought. In which case I was the target in the hot tub, just like I was a candidate for the slice-and-dice treatment tonight. But then why would she want to meet with me at all? Just to set me up? Sure, so the track is a little colder for the next guy. And if she thought I was the CIA hound, that’s exactly what she would do. Come on, Neal, face it. How many times do you have to dodge the bullet, so to speak, before you face the facts? She’s a killer. A spy and a whore and a killer. A triple threat.

“So what’s next?” Neal asked.

“Well, I’m going to have the staff bring in some food and we’re going to have a nice long chat. You’re going to tell me everything-and I mean everything-you can remember about your friend and mine, Li Lan. What she wore, what she said, what she did-everything. Then I’ll have the driver drop you off at the ferry and you go back to your hotel and stay there until the next flight out.”

“And what about Li and Pendleton?”

“If I can find her before she bolts to the PRC, I’ll offer her the deal. She’ll take it.”

“What if she won’t talk to you? What if she bolts?”

Simms poured a cup of tea and savored the smell.

“Well,” he said, “I can’t let her take Pendleton to China.” He slipped the lapel of his jacket back to show the butt of his automatic pistol. “More tea?”