by James Tucker
Henry Lee pushed back his chair, stood, walked toward the kitchen, and disappeared. Buddy remained alone with the two men.
Buddy reached into his suit coat, pulled out his Glock, and held it, unseen, in his lap. He took a good look at Rat Eyes and Ponytail, and thought they were military or ex-military. With his left hand, he took another sip of tea, but it tasted as cold as the chill crawling up the back of his neck.
Now he knew he wasn’t paranoid. Someone in the NYPD had heard of his case and betrayed him.
Rat Eyes turned. The men stared at him with blank expressions. Buddy looked at them and didn’t blink.
He couldn’t shoot them, not unless he was doing it in self-defense. They’d made no overt threat against him. Yet he was neither paranoid nor stupid.
Nor would he get into a firefight in Henry Lee’s restaurant. Too much risk, and what would he gain?
In his peripheral vision to the right, he saw a waiter in black pants and shirt and a white apron emerge from the kitchen with a tray, two ice waters, and a silver teapot. The waiter spoke to the men. They held up their menus and placed their orders.
Now, Buddy thought.
Standing, he hurried back toward the kitchen.
He moved past the warming trays, the grill, the cooktops with curved woklike skillets, the dishwasher, the walk-in cooler and freezer. He came to a door on the left, and from behind it he heard faint voices—Henry Lee’s among them.
Retreating, he thought. Avoiding the problem. But surviving.
He knew these were options he didn’t have.
He kept going until he came to a wide, scuffed metal door. It had two heavy stainless-steel locks. To the right of the door was a small window, opaque with grease and grime and protected on the outside with vertical metal bars. Buddy peered through the window and saw a man standing on the other side of the door. The man was of medium height and dressed in brown work pants and a heavy jacket. He was smoking a cigarette with one hand and holding a knife with the other.
Ponytail and Rat Eyes out front with guns, Buddy thought. Or a guy on a cigarette break with a knife.
Not a close call.
He checked his Glock, confirming he had a round in the chamber. Then he replaced the gun in his holster, drew both locks, and shoved open the door.
32
Mei thought it was dangerous to go anywhere they might be seen. But they needed provisions and had to leave the house. Standing in the larger bedroom while Ben was in the great room, she opened her tote bag and saw the gun in its nylon case beside the box of ammunition.
No, she thought, zipping the tote closed, the gun still inside. Not for the grocery store.
She drove from the house on the bluff down to Rockridge, the town in the valley below. Ben sat quietly in the passenger seat, absently staring out at the large hills and stands of evergreens. As they descended into the valley, they passed enclosures and barns for horses, everything covered by a fine layer of siltlike snow. To Mei, the landscape seemed devoid of people. When they’d arrived last night, she hadn’t realized the remoteness of the house. Up there, they couldn’t be seen or heard. But that meant nobody could see or hear them even if they were in distress.
Mei saw one car and then another as she drove into Rockridge. The town reminded her of Western movie sets she’d seen in California. The length of it was no more than three blocks. Storefronts faced Main Street, but behind those buildings were only parking lots and fields.
Ben pointed. “There!”
She saw Pearson’s Foods, which seemed to be the only grocery store in town. When she’d parked along the curb in front of the store, they climbed out and walked inside.
Pearson’s was a basic grocery store with limited produce and a lot of liquor. Mei counted two other customers in the small store, plus the cashier, a middle-aged white woman who wore a green ski cap on her head, though the store was warm.
The cashier and the two other customers, both older white men, openly watched Mei and Ben. Their faces showed interest and, perhaps, confusion.
Taking hold of a small metal cart whose wheels rattled, she ignored the stares and proceeded through the aisles, Ben at her side. He put ice cream in the cart. And tortilla chips, shredded cheese, and salsa. She also bought eggs, chicken, butter, coffee, olive oil, bread, pasta, vegetables, milk, juice, peanut butter, jelly, and more.
“You’re not from here, are you?”
This was from one of the other customers, one of the older men, in a cracked voice. Three inches shorter than she, he stared up at her with yellowing eyes.
She said no and continued walking. She felt her stomach tighten. She wanted to leave her cart, leave the store and the town. But she couldn’t. They needed food.
At checkout, the cashier rang up their groceries but said nothing except the amount of the bill. Ben put the groceries in five shopping bags and stood quietly, looking at his watch, responding to texts.
When Mei offered cash, the woman took it, careful not to touch Mei’s fingertips. After making change, the cashier set the bills and coins on the counter, turned back toward the store, and stared into the middle distance.
Despite his limp, Ben helped carry the bags out to the Audi. After setting them in the cargo area, they looked up and down Main Street. A hardware store at one end. At the other, a sign for a bakery and café.
Mei said, “Let’s get coffee.”
Ben shook his head. “I don’t drink coffee. And class starts in half an hour.”
Mei looked at her watch. “Five minutes in the café,” she told him. “And I’ll buy you hot cocoa.”
There were a half dozen people inside. Men and women, all white. Some openly watched Mei and Ben, the rest surreptitiously. One man of about forty and dressed in a policeman’s uniform smiled at her.
After nodding to him, she turned to the girl behind the cash register, at the same time placing an arm around Ben’s shoulder. She said to the girl, “I’d like a large coffee, black. And a large hot cocoa.”
The girl rang them up. Mei again paid in cash, and they stepped back from the counter. She could feel the other patrons’ eyes on her, and she impatiently tapped her foot.
The girl behind the counter set two large cups on the counter.
Snatching them up, Mei said to Ben, “Would you get the door?”
In the car, Ben said, “Why is everyone looking at us?”
She considered several ways to answer this question. After a moment, she said, “They’re just curious.”
He turned to her. “Is that all?”
Despite her suspicions, she knew that must be all. Nobody in the town could be connected to the men who’d tried to kill her and Buddy. She thought the town probably saw people like her and Ben—city people—in summer or even fall, but not in January. Residents of Rockridge had stared at them because they were obviously city people, because she was very well dressed and with a Caucasian boy who obviously wasn’t her biological son. And because she was Asian.
Yet she wouldn’t mention her clothes and her race to Ben. So she said, “I’m sure that’s all it is. But don’t worry. We’ll be gone in a few days.”
She hoped this was true.
In the house on the bluff, she made them omelets. Then she showered. When she emerged into the house’s great room, she saw Ben sitting at the kitchen table, his laptop open and his headphones over his ears. She walked behind him and saw that he was watching one of his classes, either live or via video podcast. He had a notebook open and was writing on its lined paper.
She didn’t understand how virtual classrooms could be equivalent to real classrooms, but she knew he had no choice.
Perched on the edge of the sofa cushion, she set her laptop on the coffee table and searched for job openings at galleries in Manhattan. Her body was tense. She didn’t need the money, but she wanted to land something before Judge Miles could find out she’d been let go from Porter Gallery. After updating her résumé, she applied for two of them. Yet before long, the
battery ran out, and the screen went dark. Getting up, she rummaged through her handbag and realized she’d forgotten the power cord. Even worse, she knew that Ben’s newer laptop used a different power cord. At first her forgetfulness angered her. But then she relaxed.
It will good, she thought, to be free of everything. For a day or two.
When she heard Ben laughing aloud at something in his class, she felt relief. Her mood brightened. They were out of danger; he was doing his work; she’d find another job. She heard what sounded like spray against the house.
Looking up, she saw snowflakes brushing against the window.
33
Buddy drove the metal door open. It swung fast, banging on the brick wall. The man smoking the cigarette and holding the knife began to rotate toward the sound.
Buddy clamped both hands on the fist holding the knife and ran the man with the brown work pants into the wall. The man’s grip loosened, and the knife clattered to the concrete.
The man brought his other hand around and tried to stub the cigarette into Buddy’s left eye.
Buddy was ready. He raised his left arm and backhanded the cigarette, flipping it to the side. He put his left hand around the man’s throat and squeezed.
Then he reached for his Glock, took it out, and hit the guy twice across the face with the gun stock. Hard. His anger driving explosive force.
The guy fell and lay unmoving on the concrete.
Squatting next to the man, Buddy searched the back pockets of his work pants. He found a wallet with a driver’s license, two credit cards, and about a hundred dollars in cash. He took out his phone and snapped a picture of the man’s driver’s license. He tossed the wallet on the man and then noticed another card held by a lanyard around the man’s neck.
It was an employee identification card. Turning it over, he saw the man’s photograph below a name.
Cromwell Properties.
He remembered the name. Henry Lee had told him about Cromwell.
After he’d walked to the end of the alley, he peered around the corner of the building and looked up and down Hester Street. There was no sign of Ponytail and Rat Eyes, though he assumed they’d leave the restaurant via the front door. He’d try to avoid them, but he wouldn’t hide.
Across the street, he saw a row of shops, restaurants, and a clothing store. Turning to his right, he watched a crew install construction fencing around an old building—the demolition job and new condominium development Henry Lee had mentioned.
After once more checking Hester Street, he walked out of the alley and around the fencing. He came to a break in the fencing and looked through it. He saw a three-story building, old and red brick, with rickety metal fire escapes painted black. Nobody would call it an architectural gem, but it wasn’t a dive. Above the stone entrance to the building and the silver-colored doors, the builders had carved a word. At first he thought the word was made of Chinese characters, but then he realized it was written in an old-fashioned script. Now he could read the word. The letters spelled Nanjing.
Proceeding along the old building’s front wall, he came to a new construction sign at the corner of Hester and Elizabeth. It showed the image of a shiny glass luxury-condominium tower, probably thirty stories high, called Haddon House. Below the image and the name, the sign announced that Haddon House had been designed by the architect Antoine Rousseau and would be built by Cromwell Properties, with the participation of the New York City Economic Development Agency. The addresses of Cromwell and the EDA were listed, as well as two real estate brokers helping with sales, both with ethnically English, rather than Chinese, names.
Cromwell and the EDA, Buddy thought, remembering Henry Lee’s mention of them.
He took out his phone and snapped a photo of the sign. After replacing the phone in his pocket, he studied the image of the glass tower. He wasn’t ignorant of basic economics. Haddon House, a project for the rich, would replace the tired Nanjing building. That sort of thing was happening all over Manhattan. Standing by the sign, he did some rough calculations. A one-bedroom unit in Haddon House—a new building with amenities—would be over $4 million. A two-bedroom would be $6 to $8 million if on an upper floor. Plus the cost of parking spaces in the underground garage. Plus association fees for the fitness center and the rooftop pool. Looking around, he saw the traditional buildings of Chinatown, many of them former warehouse buildings and tenements, and rising above them, here and there, were modern condominium towers. Reaching up into the sky around the neighborhood was evidence of hundreds of millions in profit from all the residential buildings constructed in lower Manhattan during the years Henry Lee had mentioned. And some of those modern buildings had encroached into the historic district.
Money, he thought.
He knew it had been changing the city since 1626, when the Dutch bought the island of Manhattan from Native Americans for sixty guilders, the equivalent of about fifteen hundred dollars in today’s money.
And who was he to put his finger in the dike? He couldn’t stop it. Nobody could, unless the laws of economics changed. But he could do one thing. He could bring justice to killers.
34
He checked all directions from the corner, but still saw no sign of Ponytail and Rat Eyes. Crossing to the north side of Hester, he began heading east. He saw small offices and shops and numerous all-residential buildings, many with signs impossible for him to read, except for the phone numbers printed across them. After going two blocks, he’d seen the same phone number three times.
He realized that he needed help.
Two women—one in her fifties, the other in her eighties—were walking toward him. They wore heavy coats and knit caps on their heads. He heard them speaking in what he assumed was Mandarin. They glanced at him and kept going.
He held up a hand. “Excuse me.”
The women paused. Their eyes showed apprehension but not coldness.
He pointed to the sign and said, “Would you tell me what that sign says? Would you translate it for me?”
The women looked at the sign. The younger woman smiled at him and said, “It says there’s a two-bedroom apartment for rent. And it gives the phone number to call if you’re interested.”
Buddy nodded. “Anything else?”
The woman looked again at the sign and then back at Buddy. She shook her head. “Nothing else except the real estate agent’s name.”
Buddy didn’t know if this information was valuable, but he said, “What’s the name?”
“Lin Wong,” the woman told him.
Buddy said, “Does he work around here?”
The women chuckled and spoke to each other quickly, in Chinese. The younger woman said, “Lin Wong’s offices are on Bowery, between Grand and Hester. Middle of the block. But he’s everywhere.”
Buddy nodded. “What do you mean, ‘everywhere’?”
She shrugged. “He’s a big broker in Chinatown. Many listings. All the time.”
“I understand,” Buddy said. “Thank you.”
Both women smiled before continuing past him.
Keeping alert for an ambush by Ponytail and Rat Eyes, Buddy walked north on Bowery. Halfway down the block he found a street-level office with a large sign outside the door. Most of the words on the sign were in Mandarin, but he could read two English words: Lin Wong.
He opened the office door and walked inside. It was clean but not large. A twentysomething female receptionist sat behind a white desk. She rose when he entered and offered him tea. He shook his head and asked if he could speak with Mr. Wong.
She said, “Perhaps I can help you. Are you interested in one of our listings?”
In response, he took out his badge wallet, flipped it open, and held it up for her to see. “I’m Detective Lock with the NYPD. I’d like to speak with Mr. Wong if he has a moment.”
Her smile vanished, but she nodded and walked back through a hallway to what he assumed were the offices of Lin Wong and any associate brokers who worked with him. He lo
oked around the small reception area. On the walls were awards Mr. Wong had won, and also laminated marketing materials for apartments to lease or purchase. He hadn’t been waiting more than thirty seconds when the receptionist returned, followed by an elegantly dressed Chinese man in his midsixties.
The man wore a dark-blue suit with pinstripes, a white shirt, and a solid blue tie. His thinning hair was combed back from his face, and his expression was pleasant. Buddy thought the man had the air of success about him.
The man said, “I’m Lin Wong. What can I do for you?”
Buddy said, “I’d like to ask you a few questions about real estate in Chinatown.”
Lin Wong nodded. “Certainly, please come back to my office.”
Buddy followed the older man into offices containing modern white furniture and iMac computers. In a conference room with a clear glass wall, Mr. Wong indicated a chair for Buddy and sat down across the table. Buddy removed his overcoat and gingerly rested on the delicate chair, fearing he’d break it and wind up on the floor. He looked over at Lin Wong and said, “I’ve seen your phone number on for-lease and for-sale signs around the neighborhood. You do a good business here?”
Wong shrugged modestly. “Yes, I do a pretty good business.”
Buddy thought for a moment. Then he said, “You seem well connected. But I didn’t see your name on the sign for the new Haddon House project. Did they ask you to list the units, try to sell them?”
Lin Wong’s forehead grew lined as he shook his head. “They didn’t ask, and I wouldn’t have worked with those people. Haddon House and other projects like it are ruining Chinatown.” Wong pointed in the direction Buddy had come. “What’s wrong with the Nanjing building?” he asked, then answered his own question. “Nothing. But it makes nobody rich, and that’s the problem. So they’re going to destroy it, even though there are holdouts.”
