by S. J. Rozan
I stayed still, close to Bill, in case he had a question or needed something. Mark pushed back his chair and went silently to the door, to keep out any stray cops with an urge to say hi. One thing about a cell phone: You don’t know where you’re calling. The last thing Maria Quezon or her sister needed to know was that Bill was in the cop house.
Occasionally, as the time went on, I caught a few English words, usually after Bill made a halting attempt to put something together in Tagalog, something he couldn’t manage. His voice, even as he switched languages back and forth, remained calm and steady throughout: the tone you would use to talk a jumper down off a bridge. Unless you saw him, you wouldn’t have known about the lines concentration was carving onto his face, the tension in his shoulders as he leaned forward in his chair, elbows on knees, eyes focused on the carpet.
The conversation lasted a few minutes if you asked my watch; if you asked me, it lasted years. An ocean liner crawled across the water, inching its way from the confines of the harbor out to the South China Sea.
Finally, after saying something that sounded no different in tone or. meaning from anything else he’d said before, Bill listened for a few moments, then lowered the phone, thumbed the off button, and ran a hand over his face.
“Jesus,” he breathed. He looked up at me. “That was Maria Quezon,” he said, about as redundantly as I’d ever heard anyone say anything.
“What did she say?” I whispered. Mark, though he hadn’t moved, seemed full of action, like a parked dynamite truck.
“She says Harry’s all right.”
Please, I thought, let it be true. “What happened? What’s it about?”
“She wouldn’t tell me.”
“That whole time? What was she saying?”
“Some of that was me checking her out—I asked things about the Wei apartment, I asked what she knew about why we were here—and then when I was convinced it was really her, I had to convince her I was okay. She’s scared, almost hysterical. That’s why I kept speaking Tagalog—I figured she’d be most likely to trust me in it.” He gave a rueful grin. “She speaks English.”
“She does?”
“The Filipinas all do,” Mark said, finally crossing the room. “Where is she?”
“I don’t know,” Bill answered. “But she wants to meet with me.”
“Out of the question,” said Mark.
Slowly, Bill brought his eyes to Mark. “It’s not a question.”
“She’s the link to the kid,” Mark said. “And a homicide I have to assume is connected until someone proves otherwise. I can’t let a civilian—”
“She said me, no one else. It was hard enough—”
“You can’t—”
“You don’t—”
“Wait!” I snapped at the two of them. “Before you start. What did she say?”
Bill stood, partly to stretch, and partly, I’d have bet, because Mark was standing already. What happened, I wondered, to the buddy-movie, no-girls-allowed spirit of ten minutes ago?
“She said Harry’s all right,” he repeated.
“He’s with her?”
“She wouldn’t tell me. She says he’s still in danger. She’s claiming she didn’t kidnap him, she rescued him, but she’s not bringing him back or telling anyone where he is until she’s sure it’s safe.” He looked out the window at the ocean liner, barely visible now on the hazy horizon. “She asked me to tell his parents he’s okay.”
“We’ll do that,” I said. “In a minute. Do you have the feeling she’s telling the truth?”
Mark shot me a look and seemed about to speak. This was, after all, his turf; it wasn’t my job to say what we would do, or when. My eyes still on Bill, I waved my hand to silence Mark. It would be absolutely unproductive if the testosterone really started flying.
Bill looked at me. “That Harry’s all right, yes. About what happened and how much she had to do with it, I don’t know.” He turned back to the window. “She wants to meet me on a place called Cheung Chau, but I don’t know if that’s where she is now. It’s one of the outlying islands?” He phrased that as a question and turned to Mark to ask it. Maybe it was a peace offering, I thought, so I waited for Mark’s answer.
Mark hesitated. Then, “About an hour by ferry,” he said. The cop temporarily took over from the male beast challenged in his lair, and Mark pointed out the window to the left. “Ferries every hour from here, twice a day from Lantau. Or if you have a boat, or hire one, you can get there from anywhere: Kowloon, any of the other islands. She could be anywhere.”
“She told me the three o’clock ferry.” Bill looked at his watch.
“I can’t let you do it.”
“Look,” Bill said, facing Mark squarely, “I could have not told you any of this. I could have said she was just making contact, then walked out of here and gotten that ferry. Christ, I could have said it wasn’t her. I’m giving you everything I have but she’s the only link to the kid and I’m going to meet her.”
“Everything she said could be a lie,” Mark said. “For all we know she’s working for Strength and Harmony and they’ve decided you’re a bigger catch than the kid. Or you’re trouble and it’s time to get you out of the way.”
“Then why not me, too?” I asked.
“He’s big and Western and he’s a man, and he was the one questioning the Filipinas. That could have set off someone’s alarm bells. You’re just another Chinese woman. You could be his local guide, for all they know. I’m sure they hardly noticed you. Sorry, but this is Hong Kong. That’s how it works.”
“What about last night?” I wouldn’t give up. “Strength and Harmony would know that I was the one dealing with Tony and Big John.”
“Because you speak Cantonese. So you’re his translator, big deal. Or maybe Maria Quezon has something going on the side and Strength and Harmony’s not involved. I don’t know. I agree we need to find out and I agree someone’s got to keep this date.” To Bill he said, “She’s never met you. I’ll send a cop.”
“Her sister will have described me. You have a Western cop my size who speaks Tagalog you can brief and mobilize in twenty minutes? Forget it. I’m out of here.”
“Wait,” I said.
“No.” Bill knew what Wanted. “She said alone.”
“Not alone.”
“Her sister would have described you, too. It’s too risky.”
“No,” said Mark.
“Crap,” said Bill.
“I can’t let you.”
“You can’t stop me.”
“Yes, I can.”
“Then arrest me.”
“Oh, knock it off, you two,” I ordered. “How do men ever get anything done?” I turned to Mark. “He’s right and you know it. He has to go. But not alone. Send a cop to watch his back.” Before Bill could speak I added, “From a distance. So she doesn’t get spooked.” Then to Bill: “I don’t suppose she’s actually meeting the ferry?”
He seemed about to say something else, then gave it up and answered my question. “No. She said she’d call me once the ferry docked.”
“So she may send you somewhere else from Cheung Chau. She may even be on this side, waiting to see if you do get on the ferry, alone. So your man stays way back,” I said to Mark. “And you,” I said to Bill, “you don’t let her get you into any situations where your back can’t be covered.”
Our eyes met. Mine told him what I was asking; his told me what he was going to do.
Bill turned to Mark. “I don’t want to see your man at all. I don’t want to know he’s there.”
Mark didn’t answer. His jaw was set, and the scar on his lip that usually became more obvious when he smiled was white and sharp now, though he was about as far from a smile as a man could get.
“You’ll call the Weis?” Bill asked me. I nodded. He kissed me on the cheek. He looked at Mark. Then he moved between us to the door, and strode fast down the corridor without looking back.
Suddenly I found myself worr
ied that Bill wouldn’t be able to find his way back to the elevator, or to the Cheung Chau ferry. I wanted to go after him, to be with him, to help.
I mentally shook myself. Bill’s ability to find his way around was not the problem.
But I still wanted to go with him.
I turned and said as much to Mark, but he might not have heard me: He pushed past and went striding through the door himself. I hurried after him, prepared to stop him from stopping Bill, but that wasn’t what was on his mind. He twisted through the partitions, past desks and Xerox machines, until he pulled up at a cul-de-sac where three plainclothes cops sat shooting the breeze in Cantonese.
They greeted Mark with grinning advice to each other: “Look out, it’s Quan.” There were inquisitive nods for me, but Mark had no time for that. He addressed himself in Cantonese to the youngest and most cheerful-looking of the cops. “You busy, Shen An-Se?”
“Just finishing my reports, Sergeant,” the young cop said, half curious, half defensive.
“Forget it. You see that tall European who just left here?”
All the cops nodded. Anywhere else a man walking through an office might not be noticed at all, but these were cops. They could tell you the color of Bill’s shirt and the design on his belt buckle.
“He’s making the three o’clock Cheung Chau ferry,” Mark said. “Follow him, but stay way back. He’ll be watched; don’t let them see you, don’t let him see you. He may go somewhere else from Cheung Chau. Stick with him. Ko Pan,” he turned to a tall, thin cop dangling his feet off Shen’s desk, “go along. If he meets someone—probably a woman—you take her if they split again. Invisible, guys. The point is invisible.”
The two cops stood immediately. Shen grabbed his jacket and shrugged into it. “What’s up, Sergeant?”
“I don’t know. We’re looking for a seven-year-old boy, maybe with the woman, but if you see him, don’t move in, call me. Call me anyway when it’s safe. I want to know what’s happening.”
“This guy,” Shen said. “He could hire a boat, to Lamma or someplace.”
“Then get an urge to fish,” Mark suggested. “Or grab a local girl for a romantic boat ride. Be creative, Shen, but stay with him.”
They were off. The third cop, slipping Mark a disappointed look, left also, to find someone else’s desk to sit on.
“You can’t go,” Mark said to me, his gaze following Ko and Shen. He’d switched back into English to answer what I’d said in the conference room doorway, what I’d thought he hadn’t heard.
“I know,” I said.
He watched his cops; I watched him. He let his shoulders relax. The male beast, I thought, reasserted as ruler of his lair, with other members of the pack out doing what they were supposed to do. I wondered what Grandfather Gao would say about that.
“Those guys,” I said. “You said you were unpopular around here, but they don’t seem to have a problem with you.”
“Unpopular with the bosses,” he said. “The young guys like to work with me. Something exciting could always happen, and if there’s a screwup, Quan was giving the orders and they were just being good cops, and everyone knows about Quan.”
Mark led me through the office warren to a partitioned corner far from the windows. “Is he always like that?” he said as he gestured to a chair in front of the desk and dropped himself into one behind it.
“Bill?” I said. “Yes.”
“Must make him hard to work with.”
“No. It makes him easy.”
Mark gave me a long look. “Those guys are good,” he finally said. “Ko and Shen. You don’t have to worry.”
“Do I look worried?”
He didn’t answer that. “What are you going to do now?” he asked.
“Sit here and worry. What about you?”
He picked up a pencil and bounced it on the desk the way he had on the conference room table. “Before all that, I was going to call Wei Ang-Ran and invite him to help with our inquiries. I think I’ll do that. That ferry won’t get to Cheung Chau for over an hour anyway.”
Something suddenly hit me. “I’m starving,” I said.
Mark grinned. He left his chair, went around the partition, and came back with a steaming teapot and two paper containers that, for all that they were covered with Chinese characters and the smiling faces of Chinese children, looked suspiciously like Cup-o-Noodles to me. He tossed me a container and poured the hot water in after I’d torn the top off. Sitting again, he opened his desk drawer and handed me a pair of chopsticks. I stirred the stuff around.
“Smells awful.”
“Tastes worse.”
I sighed. “I thought all the food in Hong Kong was supposed to be good.”
“You thought this trip was going to be a cinch,” he pointed out. “A nice, relaxing vacation.”
“No,” I said, “I don’t think I really did.”
“Because of Grandfather Gao?”
I nodded and filled my mouth with noodles. Even hungry as I was, I couldn’t persuade myself this meal was any better than lousy.
“When this is all over,” Mark said, “I’ll take you to this seafood place near Happy Valley where your fish is swimming until they cook it for you. And you have to buy bottled water if you want it, but beer is free.”
“Bill will like that part,” I said. “If he’s invited?”
Mark shrugged. “Table for three, could get a little crowded.”
I thought maybe I wouldn’t answer that. I scooped in more noodles and said, “What kind of a place is Cheung Chau?”
Mark picked up noodles in his chopsticks and let me get away with the change of subject. “It’s got a big fishing fleet. It used to be just an island with a fishing village, but now people retire there, villas and everything. There are a couple of schools and academies because land’s available. A Buddhist college, a music school. About half a dozen martial arts schools, the old kind where academics fills as little of the day as they can get away with and the kids practice kung fu the rest of the time.”
“Is that the kind of place you went to?”
“Me?” He seemed surprised at the question. “I learned kung fu in Birmingham.”
“Oh.” I went back to my mediocre noodles.
“People go to Cheung Chau for the day, to go to the beach or to hike,” he went on. Lifting another noodle mass, he added, “It’s got a huge graveyard.”
So much for the picture I’d just begun to paint of an idyllic resort. “Graveyard?”
“Great feng shui—covers the whole hilltop down to the sea, good ocean breezes, water wherever you look. You can’t get buried on Hong Kong anymore, land’s too valuable. There’s the big mausoleum at Sha Tin on the Kowloon side, but on Cheung Chau you get a real grave if you want one, not just a file drawer.”
“Don’t be disrespectful. That’s where old Mr. Wei’s getting buried, Sha Tin. As soon as this is over.” The idea of this being over brought me back to something, and thinking about graveyards wasn’t something I wanted to do right now, anyway. “I told Bill I’d call the Weis. To tell them Harry’s okay.”
Mark asked, “What if it isn’t true?”
“Bill thought it was. I think it’s only fair that they hear about it. And,” I added, “if I call them I can find out if they’ve heard anything.”
Mark chewed thoughtfully. “Assuming Maria Quezon is telling the truth,” he said, “then look at this: She won’t tell anyone where the kid is until she’s sure it’s safe. Not even the parents. So she doesn’t really trust them. But she wants them to know he’s okay. So she doesn’t think they’re part of it. What does that mean?”
“Maybe she thinks if they get him back they won’t be able to protect him from something like this happening again.”
“Like if Steven Wei’s brother’s involved.”
“Or Strength and Harmony.”
“Or both.”
“And she can?”
“Obviously she doesn’t think she can, or she would
n’t be taking the risk of meeting Smith.”
Maybe it was something in my face when he said risk; this time he was the one who changed the subject. “What are you going to say if you call them?”
“Not very much.”
So I called the Weis from Mark’s desk phone, trying to preserve my cell phone’s charge so Bill, if he needed to, could call it. And I didn’t tell them very much.
“I wanted you to know,” I said carefully, after Steven Wei’s excited “Wai!” and the dispirited greeting when he found out it was only me, “that we’ve been in contact with Maria Quezon. She says Harry’s okay.”
“Maria?” he shouted into the phone. I pictured him shooting to his feet, mashing the phone to his ear, trying to get closer to this news.
“Where is she? Where is Hao-Han?”
In his excitement Steven Wei reverted Harry’s name to Cantonese, I noticed, though we were speaking English. “I don’t know,” I told him. “We’re supposed to hear more later.” That was hedging, but I wasn’t sure how to explain to him that Bill, the big foreigner, was on his way to meet the amah, who claimed to have his son; and that he, Steven, wasn’t going because the amah, who loved his son like her own, wouldn’t allow it.
“What do you mean later?” Steven demanded. “What happened? How did you find them? Who took them?”
“I’m sorry, I don’t know that. We were only able to contact Maria because we were able to find someone who knows her, and passed the word along that we wanted to speak to her.” I offered him that almost unrecognizable description of our morning in the Filipina sea. “We haven’t actually found her, and we don’t know where she is; she called us, on the cell phone.”
Steven Wei took a moment to digest this. “Passed the word to someone who knows her? But that would seem … but it sounds as if … as if she’s not being held.”
“As if she took Hao-Han and ran away,” I finished for him.
“No,” he said firmly. “That cannot be true.”
“Steven—” I began gently.
“No. Maria loves Hao-Han. She is a part of this family. She would not put my son in danger any more than we would.”
