Neon Dragon (24 page)

I was still listening.

“You heard Mei-Li. What do you think of your client's innocence now?”

I took a hot sip and still had no real answer. “It's more complicated than that.”

“Well, then, let me tell you how I see it, Mike. That business about your client's getting out of his deal with the tong is pure fiction. Maybe Mei-Li believed it. Maybe even he believed it at the time. But it doesn't happen. They don't let you out. It would set a very bad precedent.”

I looked at him. “Harry, they let you out.”

“That's why I know how special the circumstances would have to be. You want to hear what happened with your client? This is my version, and I'm in a better position to guess than you are. Anthony fell in love with Mei-Li. He straightened out his addiction. So now he's in control of the pressures that got him into the drug-selling deal in the first place. He wants out. Clean.

“He goes to his contact man in the tong, Kip Liu. Liu sets him up. He tells your client that the price of freedom for him and Mei-Li is one little murder of an old man. He has your client meet him at the restaurant at the height of Chinese New Year. He knows the target will be in the window across the street. He convinces your client that one pop of a pistol in that din will never be noticed, and he and the girl are free.

“Your client buys it. Liu gives him the pistol in the restaurant. Your client goes down on the street and shoots the old man. Now Liu has him arrested by the police with two ready-made, honorable witnesses.

“The news media goes crazy over this new violence in peaceful Chinatown. The Chinese community naturally goes into a frenzy over the murder of one of its most beloved fathers. The whole thing is a gift to the DA. And Liu's clear. And the precedent is right. The kid was
not
let out. He winds up put away at the hands of the state. The kid can claim that Liu had him do it, but it's the kid's word against Liu's.

“In fact, it turned out even better than that for Liu. Your client is sticking to the story that he didn't do it, probably because he doesn't want to admit the whole thing to his father. So Liu doesn't even get implicated.”

Harry raised his hands and looked to me to find a hole in the theory. I took a long sip of coffee while my computer was spinning.

“I thought you told me the Chinese don't look to the white establishment for help.”

“They don't, Mike. This is not some Chinese victim going to the police because he's been robbed or extorted. This is the tong using the white system as a tool to get what they want done.”

I had no immediate answer. Everything in me wanted to disbelieve Harry's theory. I wanted Anthony to be innocent. But I'd be doing what Mr. Devlin warned me about. I'd be playing the game with my own fantasy facts. I could miss getting the best outcome for the client on the real facts.

Harry brought me back. “You didn't answer my question. If your client's guilty, is it worth it for you to risk getting killed here?”

I gave it some thought before answering.

“I've got to go through with it, Harry. Just because I can't find a hole in your theory doesn't mean it's right. Either way, I'm committed. Mei-Li is the only one I can get to identify little Red Shoes. Mrs. Lee could do it, but Liu's got her tied up so tight I'll probably never even see her before trial. I still have a gut feeling there's a connection between Red Shoes's death and Anthony's case. If I could open up her murder, it could unravel a lot that I'm just not seeing. If I don't try, I'll never know if it cost Anthony his freedom.”

Harry had no answer.

“I know I'm grasping at straws here, Harry. But Mei-Li's my last straw. Everyone else is hostile or dead.”

I looked over at my faithful coconspirator. “How about you, Harry? Last chance out.”

Harry drained the final bit of coffee and set the cup down. He checked his watch. “Maybe I can score one for the ancestors. Anyway, you'd be like a splayed duck in there without me. Let's go. It's time.”

WE PARKED THE VAN CLOSER
to the grocery shop. Harry went first. He started down the street toward the store with a large shopping bag in his hand. He was bundled in an oversized overcoat, a wool scarf
around his mouth and nose, and a floppy fur hat down over his ears. It could all pass as protection against the cold, and at the same time he could have been anyone from Mao Tse-Tung to Boy George. He put on a limp and a slouch that added age.

I watched from the van as he passed slowly between two young turks at the door. They were different from the two of the previous day. They eyed him but gave no sign of alarm. That cleared the first hurdle—one of many.

I gave him a few minutes to browse around the shelves of the grocery store before I waddled in, attired in a similarly fetching outfit. The fear of the moment was that the two young toughs would notice that the steam had stopped coming out of my mouth when I passed between them. It stopped because I was so scared I couldn't breathe.

One of them mumbled something to me in Chinese. I tapped my ear and shook my head, which, thank God, they took for a sign that I was hard of hearing. They said something to each other and laughed. I was never so happy to be the butt of a joke.

It was exactly 10:01. There was no one else in the store but Harry in mufti, an old woman in Chinese garb shopping in the back, and the elderly clerk at the front counter absorbed in a Chinese newspaper.

The store was laid out the way Mei-Li described it. The counter with the cash register was to the left of the door as you came in. One dimly lit aisle crowded with merchandise in sacks and cans labeled in Chinese led back to a storeroom twenty feet to the rear. Beaded strings hung as a separation between the two rooms, but I could see into the storeroom.

I got a slight nod from Harry and played my part. I took a can of what looked like water chestnuts from one of the shelves in the front and approached the old man behind the counter. I asked for a detailed translation of the Chinese labeling to check out the sugar content, the amount of salt, whether they added elephant tusks, anything I could think of.

He understood everything I said up to “Good morning.” I, in turn,
understood even less of what he was saying. Together we got into a hot debate over water chestnuts without ever exchanging a thought; but more to the point, Harry had free access to the back room.

It took about three hour-long minutes for Harry to locate what he was looking for. Then all hell broke loose. It started with one loud
pop!
in the back room that brought the old man's head up and sent his glasses flying off his head. I knew then that Harry had located the stash of fireworks left over from the Chinese New Year. Mei-li had told us where they were.

The second and third pops turned into what sounded like continual bursts from an automatic rifle. Then crates of fireworks exploded in such rapid succession that it sounded like rolling thunder. Sparks spit in every direction, and a cloud of gray smoke billowed out into the store.

Seconds later there was a flash that lit up the rear half of the room. The blasts became deafening as the flames in the back room reached the cherry bombs and possibly M-80s.

The old man was frozen in panic. The two galoots at the front door made a charge for the back room that carried them past Harry and the old lady. They started beating away at flames with old burlap bags until the bags themselves caught fire.

As soon as they passed, Harry hustled the old lady down the aisle toward the front door. As he ran, I noticed he held a razor blade against the fifty-pound sacks of rice on the shelves. It was a beautiful sight to see a waterfall of rice consuming the floor behind him.

When I saw Harry coming, it was my turn to bolt for the door and get the van. I got to within two feet of the door when I ran smack into a wall of flesh. The door was crammed full of the muscle-bound goon we'd seen in the office the day before. He stood there like a zombie, watching the Fourth of July blow the back off the store, while the old man screamed in high-pitched Chinese.

There was no way past him. I heard Harry yell, “Do it, Mike!”

The zombie focused on me. Before he could move, I dropped on my back in a crouch. I kicked both heels straight out with a thrust that
came from the spine. I caught him square in the crotch. He doubled over with a groan that drowned out the screaming old man. He fell forward, inside the door. I figured if he ever turned out to be an innocent bystander, I owed him one whale of an apology.

I looked back and saw the two punks in the rear. They'd seen what happened up front and made a charge up the aisle that looked to me like the entire Chinese army coming down on us. They got about to the canned bean sprouts when they both did an upender as if someone had cut their feet out from under them. The rice that covered the floor made it like running on ball bearings. They tumbled in lopsided cartwheels, spewing out Chinese that I didn't want translated.

I was on my feet and through the open door by the time Harry closed the gap. The old woman was somewhere in between.

I cut left to get to the van and ran head-on into the arms of the two punks that had been at the door of the brothel the day before. One of them grabbed me in a grip that pinned my arms. I could feel my feet leaving the ground. My legs just waved in the air as the grip around my chest tightened.

I could feel the breath squeezed out of me, and I couldn't get air back in. Everything was going from color to black-and-white. My only conscious thought was of the pain that meant that in another instant ribs would start cracking.

Just before that instant, everything came loose. As fast as I was gripped, I was released. I heard the sound of Harry's slicing hand on his neck just before I dropped to the ground like a rock. The kid who had the grip fell to the ground beside me. I lurched away from him, but I could see he was unconscious.

I saw Harry standing behind him. Harry spun around to square off for combat with the other punk.

Harry shouted, “Get out of here, Mike!”

I ran for the van.

Fortunately I had left the keys in it for a quick start. I pulled up to the sidewalk beside the shop. I saw Harry exchanging open-fist blows
with the second boy. I knew he was in no condition to take on the Karate Kid. I jumped out of the van to help.

Harry yelled, “Get back in the van!”

I was torn between the two, but Harry yelled, “Do what I said, Michael!”

At that moment, Harry took a step back and dropped his arms to his sides with his hands behind his back. He stood still and waited.

The young enforcer froze in confusion for an instant, then seized the moment. He drove in close enough to go for a chop to the base of Harry's neck. Harry's hands moved so fast I could hardly see them. He twisted left so the blow glanced off his shoulder. In the same fraction of an instant he grabbed the top of the coat of the attacker in his right fist. He pulled it open with the right while he stuffed something inside with the left. Meanwhile the kid used his position to chop away at Harry's ribs.

Orders or not, I was about to bolt for the neck of the kid when there was an explosion that sounded like a muffled stick of dynamite. The kid was blown halfway across the street.

Harry half–straightened up, clutching his ribs. He was heading for the van, when I caught sight of three more punks of the same cut as the two Harry had just leveled coming at a full charge down the sidewalk. They were at twenty-five yards and closing. I rammed the van into first and floored it. I swerved around Harry onto the sidewalk and played the three like making an easy spare. They jumped, but I made enough contact to put them out of commission.

I threw the van into reverse and backed up to the shop. Harry pulled open the back hatch. He grabbed the arm of the old woman who had been following close behind and practically threw her into the back of the van before jumping in himself. I floored it again—this time on the street.

We made two right turns on the left two tires and one left turn on the right two tires before I let up on the gas. I brought it down to cruising speed once we were clear of Chinatown.

I headed south, as we'd planned. When we stopped at the next light I checked the backseat. Mei-Li had pulled off the gray wig and bulky clothes that had turned her into an old lady. She had found them in the aisle at the back of the grocery shop where Harry had set them down in the shopping bag he brought in. She was able to slip into the back room long enough to age forty or fifty years.

I yelled back, “Stay down, Mei-Li. Just in case.”

I looked over at Harry, who was leaning heavily to his right. “You OK, Harry?”

He let out the breath he was holding. His voice sounded strained. “Why do they always go for the ribs? I'll be all right. Keep moving.”

“My every wish. What did you drop in that kid's jacket? It blew him halfway to Montreal.”

“I kept a couple of cherry bombs from the fireworks box. I thought they might be useful.”

I just whistled at the thought.

WE DROVE ALONG
an open roadway south and west of Toronto along Lake Ontario. I found the small motel in a lakeside village where I'd made a reservation the night before.

I went in and registered in my name while Mei-Li got back in costume. I hustled her into the motel room while Harry rested his ribs in the front seat of the van. I'd bought a few things for her for overnight, since I knew she'd be traveling fast and light. I left some money for meals through the next day.

She was obviously still shaken by the escape, but she seemed to have no injuries or regrets.

“I'll be back for you tomorrow sometime, Mei-Li. Stay in the room till I get here. You can order out for lunch and dinner from the pizza shop. Just don't call a Chinese restaurant. I'll give you a call tonight to see if you're all right. Here's the number at my office if you need me. Don't speak to anyone else. You understand?”