The Trail to Buddha's Mirror (21 page)

Well, maybe he could worry them a little bit.

It took him maybe thirty seconds to find something. A concrete block had been set near the door of the stairway, probably to prop it open in the heat of the day. He carried it to the edge of the roof, tiptoeing along until he was even with the line of sweepers. He hefted the block up to his waist and flung it over the side.

It missed the end sweeper by a good foot, but the sound was like an explosion, and fragments of concrete flew everywhere. The three men dropped to the ground. One of them held a hand over his eye and screamed.

Lan and Pendleton stopped and looked up.

“Don’t go out the alley!” Neal yelled.

They squatted behind some garbage cans and froze.

Ah, rooftops, Neal thought. Tar Beach. The last refuge and repository of the cityscape. The final storage place. He found a cardboard carton overflowing with beer and wine bottles, evidence of some husband’s secret tippling. He carried it over to the edge of the roof and looked down to see the two unwounded sweepers get up carefully and slowly begin moving up the alley.

Neal was impressed with the aerodynamics of the wine bottle as it plummeted through the night sky. He had given it a slight backflip, so it revolved end over end in a gentle arc before smashing on the concrete of the alley floor. The sound was spectacular. The two sweepers dove for cover on either side of the alley. He aimed his second one at the sweeper on the far side and scored a direct hit on his back. The sweeper yelped and rolled backward to the near side. Neal launched another one, and then another, and then risked a long peek over the edge. The two sweepers had their faces pressed up against the near wall.

Your basic standoff.

A burst of machine-gun fire raked the edge of the roof and sent Neal sprawling. Lying flat along the edge, he risked opening one eye, and saw the boy with the M-16 advancing from the other end of the alley, gun held at his hip. He was shouting to his comrades. You didn’t have to speak any Cantonese to understand that he was asking them what the fuck was going on, or to comprehend that they were trying, as quickly as possible, to tell him to shut the fuck up. The boy stopped and just stood there in the alley, rifle on hip, finger on the trigger, waiting for something to happen.

Nothing happened. Li Lan was either too scared or too smart or both to go against an M-16 with a pistol, although the boy made a perfect target standing for a one-shot deal. Maybe, Neal thought, she can’t see him from where she is. That must be it. Maybe I’m the only one who can see him, which really stinks. Why me?

Neal reached out and pulled the carton away from the edge. Crawling on his belly, he pushed the box in front of him. It seemed to take forever to reach the point where he figured he’d be about even with Machine Gun Kelly. He inched the carton to the roof’s edge and peeked over. The boy was starting a cautious advance, moving sideways, close to the near edge of the wall so as to give Li Lan as small a silhouette as possible.

Neal wished he had paid even a little bit of attention in Mr. Litton’s physics classes back in high school. Litton had always been hauling the students up to the roof to drop shit off and then perform calculations, but Neal was goddamned if he could remember what the calculations were or what they were intended to prove except the fact that he was the dumbest kid in physics class. So he just shoved the carton off the edge of the roof and hoped for the best.

One of the sweepers must have seen it go, because he shouted a warning to the gunner, who had a natural but stupid response: He looked up.

That cost him the two precious seconds in which he might have ducked, or run, or even just covered his head with his hands. But he didn’t do any of those things. He just looked up into the darkness, not seeing anything at all until the whole sky was filled with one massive, empty beer bottle hurtling straight toward his face.

Then the alley became a cacophony of shattering glass, thumping bodies, trashcans tipping over, and the clatter of a rifle hitting concrete.

And pistol shots.

The two sweepers hit the dirt as soon as their buddy with the rifle went down, and Li Lan popped a couple off above their heads to make sure they stayed down as she and Pendleton came back up the alley toward Waterloo Road.

Neal got up and ran across the roof. Shit, he wasn’t going to lose them again. He hit the fire escape and scurried down as fast as his legs and his ribs would let him.

“Hurry!” Li Lan yelled.

She and Pendleton were standing on the sidewalk waiting for him.

“Why didn’t you grab the rifle?” he asked her as he hit the street.

“Come on!”

They ran after her down Waterloo onto Nathan and followed her as she turned right onto the broad street. She hailed a taxi on the corner and they all got in.

“Wong Tai Sin,”
she told the driver.

“Haude.”

The driver took a right and headed north, up the Nathan Road. Way up, through the sprawling tenements of Mongkok, past Argyle and Prince Edward Street and into Kowloon City, a nest of shiny skyscrapers that literally towered over the surrounding slums. The driver turned onto Lung Shung Road and stopped in front of a massive building with red columns and a garishly yellow roof.

Li Lan paid the driver and gestured for the men to get out.

“Where are we?” Neal asked.

“Wong Tai Sin Temple,” Li answered. “We are coming to thank Kuan Yin.”

“Who’s Kuan Yin? Your case officer?”

She shook her head and laughed. “Kuan Yin is goddess of mercy. She has been very kind to us tonight.”

“Goddess? What kind of communist are you?”

“A Buddhist communist.”

“And this is a twenty-four-hour temple?”

“Gods do not sleep.”

“Mao wouldn’t like hearing this.”

“The Chairman is dead. He has met the Unpredictable Ghost.”

“Who’s that?”

“The Unpredictable Ghost guards the next world. He guides souls to the next world.”

“Which next world? Heaven or hell?”

“You don’t know. That is why he is called unpredictable. I will show him to you in the temple.”

“No thanks.”

She laughed again. “Sooner or later you will meet him. Better to know him sooner.”

“Better later.”

“As you think. Come. First we get our fortunes told.”

“You really do make a shitty Marxist.”

She led to them to where an old man sat behind a tiny, ramshackle booth on the outside of the temple. She handed him some coins and he handed her a bright red cup with holes in its cover. She held the cup up to her ear, tipped it upside down, and shook it. A stick fell out. She caught it in her other hand and gave it to the old man, who studied it intensely and then began to talk to her in rapid Chinese. She smiled broadly and answered. Then she bought another cup and handed it to Pendleton.

“Do one, Robert. Prayer stick. It will tell you your fortune.”

“I know my fortune. I’m going to live happily ever after with a beautiful woman whom I love very much.”

“Thank you, Robert.”

Neal thought he might throw up, and it wasn’t his ribs.

“What’s your fortune?” he asked.

“To go inside the temple.”

“Listen, we have to get hold of Simms. He’s probably at the Y right now, going nuts.”

“Just quickly thank Kuan Yin.”

“Quickly.”

They went up the steps past elaborately carved railings. A large screen was set in the middle of the entrance, leaving a narrow passage on either side.

“What’s this for?” Neal asked.

“Bad spirits can only move in straight lines,” Li Lan explained. “Therefore they cannot get into the temple.”

Every bad spirit I know is absolutely incapable of moving in a straight line, but never mind, Neal thought.

They stepped around the screen, presumably leaving any bad spirits behind, and into an enormous chamber. Dozens of shrines lined the two side walls, each shrine an altar presided over by a statue of its particular spirit. Even at this hour of the day, some pilgrims knelt at the altars, praying, and other devotees had left burning sticks of incense, small piles of apples and oranges, or coins as offerings or invocations. Rich red fabrics hung from the walls and large rectangular lamps hung from the ceilings, which, combined with the burning candles and sticks of incense, cast the room in a dark golden light.

The shrine at the front wall dominated the room. A large statue of a young woman sitting in the full lotus position occupied a broad platform. Her face was alabaster white, her eyes almond-shaped, her smile beatific. She wore a diaphanous gown slung over one shoulder, a headpiece of gold laminate, and black-lacquer hair piled high on her head. The effect was a strange combination of garishness and benevolence.

“Kuan Yin,” whispered Li Lan.

Li Lan knelt at the railing below the platform. She touched her head to the floor three times, then repeated the series twice more. She stayed hunched over, and Neal could see her lips moving. She was speaking to her goddess. Neal and Pendleton stood awkwardly behind her.

When she got up, she went to Neal and said, “We must see to your injuries.”

“We must call Simms.”

“How can we call him if he is at the Y, going nuts?”

“We call the Y and have him paged.”

“I am not waiting out in the open for your Simms to arrive. Too dangerous.”

She had a point. A five-year-old kid can keep a secret better than a cabdriver who’s offered cash, and it was a safe bet that Chin’s gang, and maybe Ben Chin himself, were strongarming the neighborhood to find the cabbie that had driven off with Li and the two
kweilo.
And it wasn’t exactly rush hour—the cabbie wouldn’t be that hard to find.

“Where do you want to go?” Neal asked.

“It is arranged.”

It’s arranged. Swell.

“By your handlers. No way.”

“Not by my handlers. By
them.”
She waved her arm impatiently around the temple.

“By who?”

“By the monks. Do you really think I stopped to get our fortunes told? Do you think I am a superstitious idiot? I stopped to arrange a hiding place.”

“You know these people?”

“These people are all the same every place.” She looked at him stubbornly. “Long before there was a communist party, there was Kuan Yin. Now … let’s go!”

“I don’t know.”

Pendleton grabbed his elbow. “I do. I don’t want to hang around here waiting to get blasted to bits by a machine gun. You can trust Li Lan with your life. I have.”

Terrific, Doc. Every time I’ve trusted Li Lan, I’ve just barely gotten away with my frigging stupid inane life. Nevertheless, the good doctor has a point, and I don’t much fancy going back out on the street.

“So let’s get going,” said Neal.

“Finally.”

She knew just where she was going. She strode to the corner of the room and knelt down at the shrine, beneath the statue of an old man wearing a torn robe, a hideously mocking grin, and carrying what looked to Neal like a gold ingot. She performed the nine bows, and then took a small bell from the altar railing and rang it just once. Then she turned to Neal.

“Neal Carey,” she said, pointing at the statue, “meet Unpredictable Ghost. Unpredictable Ghost, Neal Carey.”

“Pleasure,” Neal muttered.

A monk appeared from behind the shrine. He was tall and thin. His head was shaved and he wore a plain brown robe and sandals. He returned Li Lan’s bow and motioned for them to follow him.

There was a red curtain behind the shrine, and behind the curtain was a wooden door. It opened to a stairway that took them down to a basement, which looked like a maintenance shop for the temple. Wooden lathes, jars of paint, brushes, candles, and parts of lanterns lay scattered about in no discernible order. Here and there a head or a hand or a trunk from a statue was set on a small worktable. Body Shop of the Gods, Neal thought. The monk led them through this room into a boiler room, through a plain, functional metal door, and into a corridor. Down two more steps and they entered a corrugated metal tube.

It was as narrow and dark as a walkway in a submarine. Every thirty feet a naked light bulb dangled from the low ceiling. Moisture dripped from the seams in the sides and tops of the tube. Neal could hear traffic noises above them and realized they were going underneath the street.

“Are we in the goddamn sewer?” he asked Li Lan.

“Quiet.”

He turned around to Pendleton. “Are we in the goddamn sewer?”

“Looks like a goddamn sewer to me.”

“Christ, I didn’t like
reading
Victor Hugo, never mind
living
it.”

“Quiet.”

They went up two steps and then through another door. They were in a basement of sorts, a small, musty, dirt-floored chamber. The monk stepped onto a short ladder and unlocked a hatch. Then he stood at the bottom and gestured for them to climb up. This was as far as he went.

Li Lan went up, then Pendleton. He took his sweet time about it, Neal thought, impatient to get above ground again. He followed Pendleton up the ladder and was instantly sorry.

He was in hell.

It was an alley, maybe four feet wide, maybe a little less. A sliver of daylight revealed filth-encrusted walls, on which moss, urine stains, and dirt competed for space. The ground beneath him was a mix of mud, shit, broken glass, and some cracked and broken planking.

Neal covered his mouth and nose with his hands, but the stench was overwhelming. His eyes teared and he fought back retching.

Tenements loomed above him, so high and close they looked as if they were about to topple over. Homemade bridges crossed the alley, veritable villages of hammocks were strung from one side to the other, tangles of wires and cables looked like jungle vines.

Here and there holes had been punched in the lower walls, and people were burrowed into them. Neal could see them peeking out at him through iron grilles and bamboo screens.

He heard Pendleton mutter, “Jesus. Jesus Christ.”

And the sounds, the sounds were horrible. Amid the din of thousands of voices just talking, Neal heard babies crying, children screaming, old people moaning. In the distance ahead he could hear a pack of dogs growling, and from inside the walls around him he could make out the scurrying feet of rats.