Reflecting the Sky (33 page)

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Authors: S. J. Rozan

BOOK: Reflecting the Sky
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“It wasn’t like that. I didn’t think of this until after you left. But Mark—”
“Where are you now?”
“In a cab on the way back.”
“To where?”
“Police headquarters.”
“Good. I’ll arrest you when you get here.”
“Mark—”
“Goddamnit, Lydia! What the
hell
were you thinking?”
“I was thinking Lee could stop Tony Siu from killing Bill!”
Momentarily, Mark was silent.
“And I was also thinking,” I admitted quietly, “that if I told you I wanted to come up here and talk to him you wouldn’t let me.”
More silence. My cab took a sharp turn and the harbor opened below us, sparkling lights on black water.
“Goddamn right,” said Mark, but in a calmer voice, his three-alarm fury subsiding into a controlled burn. “Goddamn right I wouldn’t have let you.”
“If I were the cop I wouldn’t have let me either,” I said. “But I had to come.”
“Yeah,” he said. “Yeah, okay. We’ll go into that later. I guess you survived. Did you get anything?”
“He’s intending this to be the ‘rescue’ of Harry. He expects Steven, in his gratitude, to continue the smuggling operation for him.”
“I thought of that. I may be just a dumb cop—”
“I never said that.”
“—but it did dawn on me that Siu and Chou work for L. L. Lee. Except I was thinking more along the lines of extortion than gratitude.”
“What you see depends on where you stand.”
“I was going to suggest it to you when I got back to my desk.”
“I’m sorry, Mark. I really am.”
“You should be. Don’t go back to headquarters.”
“No?”
“No. Meet me at the HKPD Marine Piers.” He gave me the address. “I was about to take off for Cheung Chau.”
I let out a long breath. “Thank you,” I said, and meant it.
“Oh, no problem. Anything for our American cousins.”
“Does that make you your own cousin?”
“Just get here. You’ll want to hear what I’ve been doing, too.”
“You haven’t been sitting around obsessing over where I went?”
“Don’t push it.”
“Sorry.”
I closed up the phone, gave the driver our new destination, and for the rest of the ride tried, by breathing in and breathing out, to bring a rhythm of calm to the pounding of my heart.
 
At the foot of the mountain, across the rushing highway, the HKPD Pier was ringed with a chain-link fence. My cab dropped me at the gate, where the driver seemed on the verge of expressing his outrage at the insult my large tip implied. Then, probably contemplating how hard it would have been for me, after all, to find another way down the Peak, and contemplating also the upcoming race day at Happy Valley, he grudgingly stuffed my money in his pocket and U-turned away.
I crossed the asphalt to the guard booth. Before I reached it, its door swung open and Mark jumped out. He waved to the guard, took my elbow and, wordless, hurried me along down a concrete pier to a sleek launch rocking impatiently on the harbor waves. It had an HKPD ID number painted on the sides and cabin roof and the cabin lights were lit. Growling, its engine exhaled diesel fuel into the sea air. It tugged on the thick rope tethering it as though anxious to get going. Or maybe that was me.
A uniformed cop on the dock pulled the boat close enough for us to leap onto. He slipped the single rope that had been holding it to the concrete, glass and asphalt of downtown Hong Kong, and we were at sea.
I watched the skyscrapers and neon recede fast, signs and logos blurring into a ragged rainbow in the mist. Rushing wind blew my hair into my eyes. I brushed it back. The snarl of the engine was louder now that it was released to run, and the wind covered me in a fine salt spray and tore my words away. I had to yell twice to Mark to make myself heard. “How long will it take us to get there?”
“Half an hour,” he answered. “Come below.”
In the cabin I could feel the engine pound but its noise was less. The trim room, in fact, seemed like a miraculous place of peace after the spray and the growl and the wind. Forward of us, in a glassed-in cockpit, the launch’s captain, his HKPD uniform including discreet nautical insignia on the shoulders, held the wheel. Another Marine District cop on deck did whatever else you have to do to get a boat from here to there.
Mark closed the cabin door. Now it was quiet enough to talk in this room, and we were alone.
Before us, a small table was folded out of the wall between two benches that were also bunks and storage bins, depending on what you needed. On the table, a battered kettle released a thin trail of steam from its spout. The steam coiled through the air like the ghost of the electric cord snaking along the table to an outlet behind it. Next to the kettle sat two Styrofoam boxes. The smell of diesel fuel was no match for the aromas of fish paste and soy sauce filling the cabin.
Silently Mark handed me a pair of chopsticks.
“You’re feeding me?” I was amazed. “I thought you were going to kill me, and instead you’re feeding me?”
“Maybe I poisoned it.”
“Maybe I don’t care.”
We dropped onto opposite benches and attacked the boxes. Slippery wide
chow fun
noodles shared space and sauce with bitter greens, carrots, and shrimp.
“It’s to make up for the noodles before,” Mark said.
“Forgiven.”
A squat, slow ferry drifted up beside us. Mark said, “That was crazy, what you did, Lydia.”
I lifted a shrimp off its noodles. “No,” I said. I looked at the shrimp, not at Mark, as I went on. “I’m not dangerous to L. L. Lee. In fact he needs me. I’m the only person who cares enough about Bill for this to work. Without me he’d have to find Harry himself.”
The launch bucked, slapping the water, as we crossed the ferry’s wake. Lifting my eyes to Mark I added, “Lee promised me they wouldn’t hurt him anymore. That Tony Siu wouldn’t kill him before morning.”
“And after that?” Mark asked softly.
I looked away again and shook my head.
For a brief time there was only silence in the cabin, and the aroma of food I seemed to have lost my appetite for. Then Mark went back to something else I’d said.
“About L. L. Lee finding Harry himself: Siu and Chou came close.”
“Yes,” I said, grateful for something to focus on, “and I wish I knew how.”
“I do.”
“What?” I braced myself against the table as the launch veered. “Tell me!”
“I don’t know,” said Mark. “It’ll probably just give you another bright idea and you’ll go charging off someplace.”
“Mark—”
“You’re not going to do it again, Lydia, okay?”
“Just that once. I had to.”
“Twice, actually. I don’t remember you telling me you were going to look for the prayer-seller.”
I nodded guiltily. The launch resumed a steady course. “That’s true. But—”
“—but you had to. And you knew I wouldn’t let you.”
“Am I wrong?”
“No, you’re right. I wouldn’t have. I’m trying to keep you from getting killed.”
“I don’t need—”
“Oh yes you do! Maybe you can run around New York like that, but this is Hong Kong. It’s different here.”
“It’s not different! People want the same things and go after them in the same ways. Money, love, respect.” God, Lydia, I thought, this is what Bill said to you in Kwong Hon Terrace Garden, a million years ago, yesterday. “The balance may be different but it doesn’t really matter. You, for example,” I told Mark. “Right now you’re acting like every other cop I’ve ever met.”
“Proving you must be as far out of line back home as you’ve been here.”
I slumped back against the cabin wall. “Okay,” I said. “Okay, you’re probably right. Can we table this? I’m trying to save Bill’s life. I’m trying to bring a little boy home. I’m doing the best I can.”
Mark put down his chopsticks, too, and looked at me. I met his eyes, and I didn’t look away, but the cabin began to feel small and confined, and I wished I were on deck, alone, with only the wind and the spray, moving very fast across the huge ocean.
“Okay,” Mark said. “Okay, now listen. I’m out on a limb here. I’ve requisitioned a boat and two Marine District cops. I have Shen and Ko out there doing overtime, and Wei Ang-Ran, a respected businessman, not quite under arrest back at Headquarters. I have you, a civilian—worse, an
American
civilian—heading with me out to Cheung Chau, which is against every regulation we have. My excuse, when someone finally asks—and they will—will be that you had knowledge essential to the case, that you were the only person who could have led me where we needed to go when we got to Cheung Chau. Of course, that’s complete bullshit. You don’t know anything I don’t know already, and that’s not why I’m letting you come.”
He picked up a chopstick and bounced it on the Styrofoam box. “All this probably kills any chance I had left of ever making lieutenant but I can live with that. What I cannot live with is if you, or Smith, or Harry, or
anybody,
winds up worse off because you’re here than they would have been if I’d left you standing on the quay.”
He reached for the teakettle and poured hot water into a chipped white pot. He swirled the pot around, then put it down to settle and steep. “Now eat your dinner, because you’ll need it. And listen to what I’ve been doing, because by now
I
know a lot of things
you
don’t, and the more blanks we can fill in before we get to Cheung Chau, the better off we’ll be.”
Eyes on Mark, I picked up my chopsticks, too, but I didn’t use them right away. “‘Casting a brick to attract a piece of jade,’” I said.
Mark frowned. “What?”
“Those two Tang Dynasty poets, I don’t remember their names. You must have learned about them in Chinese school. One of them wrote two lines of poetry on a monastery wall because he knew the other one, who was a much better poet, couldn’t resist finishing an unfinished poem. Then the world would have two more lines of great poetry.”
“And?”
“I feel like the brick here.”
He stared at me, shook his head, and went back to his noodles. But I saw the corners of his mouth tug upward, and that was enough.
“Okay,” I said, a few
chow fun
later. “What have you been doing?”
Mark poked around in his noodles, hunting shrimp. “After I got back to my desk and found you gone,” he said pointedly, “and after I’d reamed out a few innocent cops who had no idea they weren’t supposed to let you leave, I went to see the Weis. I didn’t know when the hell you’d ever show up again, and talking to the Weis was as good an idea without you as it had been with you.”
Ignoring the accusatory tone, which I deserved, I asked, “What did you find?”
“One: The flat
was
bugged.”
“No kidding! You found the bug?”
“I found one. I sent a sweeper. He should be there by now; he’ll find any more. I did this whole stupid mime-show thing, flashed my badge and made the elevator guy take me up without announcing me, made the Weis come out into the hall before I opened my mouth. Franklin was there, by the way.”
“Franklin? Did you—?”
“I ran it through in my head and decided whatever he’s up to, let him think we’re on to it but not on to him. Maybe he’ll tip his hand. So I told them about Iron Fist Chang, about Smith, about the trade for Harry. I asked them how long he’d been missing, just to hear what they’d say.”
“What did they say?”
“One little hesitation from Steven, then it all came out. I don’t think. the lawyer wanted him to tell me, but once he started, he didn’t stop.”
“Natalie Zhu? She was there?”
“Is that surprising? I thought you said she was always there.”
“She seems to be, except she wasn’t there earlier today, and Steven was vague about where she’d gone. To see another client, he said. That was surprising.”
“Well, she’s back. Anyway, I told them I had reason to believe Harry was on Cheung Chau. I said we had no intention of making the trade, but I was going to try to find him whether or not they admitted he was gone, because now there were some pretty nasty customers also wanting him. That seemed to be what decided Steven to talk.”
“Did he tell you anything new?”
“No, pretty much exactly what you’d said. I fudged a little on how I got into the thing, by the way—they think it was through the Iron Fist Chang case—so they wouldn’t think you went to the police when you were told not to.”
“Thank you.”
“I didn’t do it to do you a favor. I wasn’t in much of a mood to do you favors right then. But I thought it might be useful if they still trusted you, if we ever need them for anything.”

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