Riding the Snake (1998) (28 page)

Tanisha was on the bench beside him, and she leaned over and found his eyes with hers, forcing him to look at her. "Julian, I've been playing cops and robbers since I was ten years old. I've been on both sides of the game. It doesn't work that way in L
. A
., and my guess is it doesn't work that way in Hong Kong."

Doubt and confusion fought for control of his round face.

"Gangsters don't go after cops, because it's always a stupid play," she continued. "It gets front-page news coverage. It makes politicians crazy. The heat gets turned up on the gangsters. Angry cops start playing catch-up, people die, everybody loses. So something else is going on, and I think you know what it is," she said. "Johnny didn't just disappear because he was investigating the Triads. If that was all it was, it would have happened years ago. There's something very wrong between the two of you. I could feel it last night at the Black Swan and again after dinner. You and Johnny aren't the same as you once were. And, as long as we're at it, I should tell you I also don't like coincidences. I don't like the fact that we called you from Willard Vickers's house in Cleveland, then you bring in Johnny Kwong, who just, by the way, happens to be Angela Wong's son. Angela, whose murder I started out investigating a week ago in California. So just what the fuck is going on?" she demanded.

Julian's arm jerked once in an involuntary reflex, then he took a deep breath, letting it out slowly. "I didn't know about Johnny's mum being murdered, and then, after the fire, Johnny changed," he said, his voice thin and sharp as rusty wire. "Everything was different after that. It's why we stopped working together. I mean, it probably would have happened anyway, because he got famous and won all the Queen's tinware. But still and all, he was different... bitter and mad. I was glad to call it cappers. Then, about six months ago, the Independent Commission Against Corruption started a Queen's Inquiry into Johnny himself. It was all a bit close to the knuckle, because
Johnny was a hero and it would have been a mess, should it get out. But everybody knew that Johnny was in the broth."

"What were they investigating him for?" Wheeler asked.

"They thought that after the fire he went over and started working for the Triads."

"Let me get this straight," Tanisha said, amazed. "You mean Willy Wo Lap sets Johnny Kwong on fire and then Johnny goes to work for him? How does that track?"

"You have to understand the way it was here. Johnny was a respected copper, an untouchable, as you Yanks call it . . . part of an elite group who were investigating policemen who had joined the Triads. He was going after the most supreme Shan Chu and his vanguards. Then somebody sets Johnny's flat on fire. They burned him to a cinder, and the bloody Royal Hong Kong Police wouldn't even give him his disability or get him skin grafts. They didn't look for him in the rubble even though they knew Johnny was somewhere in that blaze. The reason for that was he'd become a problem for both sides. They let him rot in a hospital bed as a John Doe. He felt like after all he'd done for the Royal Police, they buggered him off. So he got bitter and mad. Some thought he went to work for the Triad, making Charlies of us all in the bargain."

"And do you believe that?" Wheeler asked.

"Johnny was a hero. He would have helped us if he could. I always thought the corrupt cops were trying to get him before he got them, but who knows, it could be true."

"So what happened to the Queen's Inquiry?" Tanisha asked.

"The bloody Queen took a hike. She left with Bonny Prince Charlie on the royal yacht, Britannia, last July. So you go figure the rest."

"And what about our coincidence?" Tanisha asked. "How did this all get so claustrophobic?"

"I can't help you there, Miss Williams. Johnny came to me two days back, said he'd heard two Yanks were asking questions about Willy Wo Lap. Said he knew more about Willy than anyone, and that he'd help give it a go when you arrived. I said okay. He was the only one around here with the guts and connections to go after Willy. He might have worked for Willy once in a while, cut a deal here and there, but I still trusted him. This city is a place of intrigue. You've got to be on both sides of the table occasionally. But if they killed his mother, you can bet he would have gone after Willy." Julian sat looking off at the noisy overpass.

As Wheeler listened to all of this, he had a growing sense of dread. "So, is Johnny dead?" he asked.

"I don't know. He wouldn't just disappear like this. His flat wouldn't be rummaged unless something bad had happened."

"Why would they kill him?" Wheeler asked.

"The Chinese have a saying," Julian said. " 'Water can both sustain and sink a ship.' Who knows what happened. Things change, laddie."

"If Willy is running for Chief Executive in three months, then maybe he's shutting down all the people in Hong Kong he doesn't completely trust," Wheeler said. "Maybe he's afraid his affiliation with the Chin Lo will be made public and ruin everything. Prescott and Angela were being questioned by the FBI about campaign funding. Maybe that's why the Triad had to eliminate them."

"There's still something wrong with it," Tanisha said. "Why leave the picture of Johnny on her as a warning? They must have known it wouldn't scare him off but just make him furious."

Julian had been quiet. Finally, he looked up at them. "Not necessarily. He would have realized he was a dead man when his mother died. ... He would want revenge, but Johnny was a survivor. He would want to pick the timing. Johnny was Chinese--he could play the waiting game. He might have offered Willy something of value in return for his life ... a swap to buy him time."

"What would he trade?" Tanisha asked.

"Us," Julian said. "Johnny tells Willy we were planning to get a troop of coppers inside the Temple. But Willy doesn't keep the bargain and kills Johnny anyway. Wo Lap Ling is not a man you trust when his vital interests are at stake."

"If that's true," Tanisha said, "then we made a terrible mistake with Johnny."

"What's that?" Julian asked.

"We never should have told him about Chauncy."

They left the Mercedes and took Julian's English Ford Popular, because it had a police light and siren. They roared across the business district of Hong Kong Island, turned on Gloucester Road, and raced down into the Cross Harbor Tunnel, heading toward Kowloon. The morning traffic was heavy, and Julian had to slam on the brakes. They found themselves in an eight-thirty A
. M
. tunnel traffic jam. They crept through the noxious fumes beneath Victoria Harbor, the green lights on the tunnel walls inching past their windows with maddening slowness. Finally, they escaped the underground congestion and shot up the ramp and across Hong Kong Road, toward the New Territories.

If they had been just a few seconds later, they would have missed the whole thing. As they reared the front of Chan's shoe shop, they could see three young men, dressed in black, struggling to pull Chauncy Chan out the side door of his store. Chauncy was screaming for help, but nobody was responding. Pedestrians watched in disbelief as one of the Triad hoodlums pulled a knife and held it to the struggling Chauncy's neck. Tanisha yelled at Julian to stop the car. He hit the brakes, and while the car was still skidding to a stop, she yanked the plastic Glock out of her bag and started banging off rounds, pouring lead just past Julian's chest and out the far window. She could see her rounds sparking off the side of the building. She was firing for effect, not trying to hit the three hoodlums, because she didn't trust the inaccurate handgun and didn't want to hit Chauncy. The barrage scared the Triad killers, who were still trying to wrestle Chauncy Chan over to their car, where another man dressed in black pulled a Russian AK-47 out of the back seat.

Julian put the Ford in gear and tromped down on the accelerator. It shot into the parking lot, but then, as if from out of nowhere, a cart vendor rolled his trolley right into their path, and, for a second, Tanisha and Wheeler were looking into the frightened eyes of Zhang Fu Hai. Fu Hai was there with the stolen cart to block the drive if anybody came. He desperately held the cart handles while Julian's English Ford skidded into the contraption. The three young gangsters now dove for their car, and one came up with another AK-47. Without a second's hesitation, both armed men started spraying lead at the entangled English Ford. The little vehicle rocked with the impact of the rounds, the bullets shredding the interior, coming dangerously close. The windows on the car shattered, raining crystallized safety glass all over them. The sound of tearing metal and ricochets filled the street.

"Bloody bastards," Julian screamed. He had his Russian 7.65mm auto-fire out and was blowing off rounds. The hot brass was ejecting, bouncing down, burning Tanisha's legs. She didn't react. She fired the Glock. until it locked empty; then, ducking below the window, she dropped one clip and slammed in her backup, chambered the gun, and came up firing.

While this was happening, Wheeler, who was unarmed, dove out of the car on the far side. The AK-47s continued to burp death at them from the parking lot until both Russian weapons pin
-
locked. They heard the gangsters start up their car and roar out past the now-disabled English Ford, pausing just long enough to pick up the terrified Fu Hai, who had been hiding behind his bullet
-
mangled trolley. He dove into the back seat of the Triad car, which then roared away, up the crowded street.

Tanisha, Wheeler, and Julian had lost sight of Chauncy Chan. They took off, running toward the shoe shop, exploding into the store. "Police!" Julian yelled, and they saw Chauncy bent over a wounded Chinese woman, who was bleeding from a bullet wound in her chest. Chauncy was talking to her softly in Chinese.

Chauncy Chan looked up. He had blood streaming down his neck where the point of the blade had stuck him. "My wife. They shot my wife," he said in terror.

Julian moved to the phone and called for an ambulance. Wheeler was standing in the center of the shop when all of a sudden his legs and arms began to shake. It was all he could do to stand up. This time, the reaction was not from alcohol, but from adrenaline. He looked at Tanisha. The residue of combat fear still lingered on her face; the plastic Glock hung hot and empty in her hand.

"I don't know about you," Wheeler said softly, "but I'm starting to get pissed."

Chapter
25.

Powwows

Willy Wo Lap Ling sat in his living room and listened while Henry Liu explained what had happened. The Hong Kong apartment was modest but had exceptional Feng Shui. Feng Shui was the Chinese practice of having a house or business "read" by a Master to see if the layout of space and the directions the windows faced, along with the position of the bathrooms and kitchen, would bring good fortune or bad. Wo Lap had had the house read by the best Feng Shui Master in Hong Kong. As a youth, he had not had time for such indulgences, but now he took no chances. The Feng Shui Master said the apartment was cloaked in good fortune: It was facing north, toward the harbor, which guaranteed wealth; the main windows faced away from the mountains; the front door to the apartment was east; and the kitchen was farthest from the bedroom. The Feng Shui Master said this layout guaranteed favorable health, sexual prowess, and good fortune. Willy hoped the Master had been right as he listened, in distress, while Henry Liu told of the difficulties now facing the Triad.

Johnny Kwong had been careless. His mother, in California
,
had allowed the United States government to find out about their payoffs, forcing Willy to order the death of an American attorney, as well as Johnny's own mother. Since he could no longer trust Johnny, Willy had also ordered his Death by a Myriad of Swords.

Willy feared the loss of his Guan-Xi with Beijing. He was on the eve of his political career and was not willing to accept blunders from Limpy Liu. He listened with rising anger as his old White Fan, and now most powerful Shan Chu of the Triad, explained the many problems.

"The Americans who came here believe that you have made an agreement with Beijing and that it is on paper. That is what Johnny Kwong told us before we executed him. They have a partial map of the Walled City and had contacted one of Jackie Puilinger's disciples to try and complete it. We failed when we went after this man earlier. He is just a shoemaker, but somehow he escaped. I think we may have fallen into some jeopardy," Limpy Liu said, his ugly, pock-marked features and protruding teeth giving him a scary but comical appearance. He limped slowly over to the picture window that looked north and protected Willy from the dual dragons of greed and avarice.

"This cannot be a serious threat," Willy said. "If it was serious, would they send a woman, a racial, who has limited Guan-Xi, even with Americans?"

"If they try to breach the Walled City with a force of police, we could have a bloody confrontation," Limpy Liu warned. "We might lose the City of Willows because of interfering Western politicians who will demand to know why it exists here, why our Temple hides in the park. Our secrets will be exposed."

Willy sat still for a long time, his liver-spotted hands thrust forward on his knees. "The cunning hare always has three burrows," he finally said.

Limpy Liu nodded. "So you believe we are protected? The police here don't know of your arrangement with Chen Boda."

"I believe that it will be almost impossible for the police to move against me. Beijing will instruct their police not to kill the hen to get one batch of eggs. They have much to lose. But you must take great care not to make matters worse," Willy told the Shan Chu. "And you must be ever vigilant. You must place our best Red-Pole fighting section on the roof and around the perimeters of the park. You must protect the City of Willows with your lives."