by S. J. Rozan
“I am Chin Ling Wan-Ju,” I told it. “I wish to speak to Lee Lao-Li about a gift for my brother. Also about Lion Rock Enterprises.”
That should identify me for L. L. Lee. I tapped my foot some more in the quiet dark, listening to leaves rustling against each other and cicadas whirring. What had been the haze of early evening below was drifting mist up here on the Peak. It floated across the road and paused lazily in the treetops, as though it had nothing urgent to do, no worries, no fears. The speaker didn’t say anything more, but finally, just as I was about to jab the button again, a soft electronic click preceded the silent, slow opening of the gates.
I hurried up the path. Probably, a corner of my mind said, this was a lovely place, especially now, as twilight changed to night. Gravel crunched peacefully underfoot; more statues hid, pale among the greenery; here and there a lantern shone softly, to show the way, and pine and palm trees shadowed a fragrant flower border. Yes, lovely. I charged through it as fast as any Hong Kong citizen on a crowded sidewalk at high noon.
The house loomed before me as I came around a curve in the path. A square white house, I was surprised to see, stucco with a dark tile roof, big windows with wooden shutters: nothing Chinese about it at all. But then, the mansions on the Peak had been built by Europeans, not Chinese, and they, like anyone, had built the houses of home.
Columns flanked the front door, sheltering a porch and lifting a balcony over the treetops. The view from there must be spectacular, Hong Kong Island falling away below you, the sea to the south, the out-islands. Maybe from that balcony you could even see Cheung Chau. But not on a night like this, with a blanket of mist hiding from view everything below. And most nights on the Peak, from what I’d read, were like this.
I tried to guess the age of the house, but I’m not good at that. The 1920s, maybe, or a little earlier. That was the kind of question I always asked Bill; these were the things he always knew.
I climbed the three steps; as I reached the door, it opened. Apparently, once you were inside the gate, there was no need to ring any more bells; the hospitality of L. L. Lee was yours.
Of course, that also meant someone was at all times keeping careful track, on that lovely path, of exactly where you were.
A young man in a navy tunic and pants, black hair brushed straight back from his solemn face, held the door as I walked through it, then closed it quietly behind me. Bowing, not once speaking, he turned and walked across the wide marble foyer to another heavy wooden door, which he opened also, and held.
My sandals slapped against the marble as his silent footsteps had not. The sound abruptly stopped when I crossed through the door and onto a cream-colored carpet where huntsmen rode the forest, sending arrows after elephants and deer. A prince and his courtiers galloped from the left, bows taut, banners flying. They were matched exactly, arrows and horses, men and dogs, by another prince and more men-at-arms coming from the right. The luster of the carpet in the soft lamplight made me understand it was not wool, but silk.
“Do you like the hunt?” asked a voice, speaking in English, not loud but hard as stone. Across the room, L. L. Lee sat in a carved chair in a pool of light. The three walls surrounding him were open wide to the night, their shuttered doors thrown back. Sweet scents and soft sounds floated in from the garden to drift around the lacquered furniture and brush against porcelain jars holding slender yellow blooms. The age of the house my own ignorance kept me from knowing, but this room was different. It might be newly built, finished even yesterday: no matter. It was ancient, the scholar’s study unchanging through two thousand years of the Chinese past.
I crossed the carpet and stood before L. L. Lee. “No,” I answered him, in Cantonese. “Shedding blood for pleasure has never appealed to me.”
“The hunters hunt from necessity; the people must be fed. That it also gives them pleasure is a fortunate thing.”
“It’s all the same to the prey.”
“Speak to me in English. As you told me earlier, your Cantonese is poor.”
“My Cantonese,” I said, switching into English, “is the language I was raised in. But as you say.”
He nodded. “Sit.”
I did, on a mahogany bench scattered with cushions. The young man returned, opening the solid European door in the solid European wall to enter this Chinese garden pavilion. He carried tea things on a tray. He set the tray on an ebony table, bowed, and left.
When the young man was gone, L. L. Lee lifted the pot, swirled it in the traditional gesture of welcoming a guest, and poured golden, sweet-smelling tea into tiny cups. The pot was small and white, painted with plum blossoms in the snow. Plum blossoms also circled the cups, both inside and out.
He waited for me to taste the tea. It was as sweet as it smelled, tropical, mild, for evening. He lifted his cup after I drank from mine, sipped his own tea, then spoke.
“Why have you come to see me?”
The formal grace of ritual hospitality did nothing to soften the stone in his voice.
“Two men who work for you—they call themselves Tony Siu and Big John Chou—are holding my partner,” I said, in a measured, hard voice myself. “He’s injured and they’re threatening to kill him. They’re demanding that I give them the great-nephew of Wei Ang-Ran, the man who smuggles antiquities from China for you, in exchange. I don’t know where the boy is and if I did I wouldn’t turn him over to men like that. I want them to release my partner and I want to know why you want the boy.”
I didn’t have to identify Wei Ang-Ran for L. L. Lee; he knew perfectly well who he was. I did that to cut out any dancing around we might otherwise have to do, about what I knew, about who he was.
“Your partner.” He nodded. “The Spaniard.”
“That was a ruse. He’s as American as I am. We came here to bring a gift to the boy from his grandfather, who recently died in New York.”
In the slight lift of his eyebrows and the nod L. L. Lee gave me, I read a connoisseur’s cold appreciation of skill in an art he doesn’t care for. “A ruse. Well done, then.”
“I’m sure he’ll thank you if he gets the chance.”
“What do you want?”
“I told you: I want them to let him go. I want to know why you want the boy.”
“What are you offering?”
I’d been expecting that. “I don’t know.” I took a breath. “Whatever reason you have for wanting the boy, maybe I can help you achieve your goal another way.”
L. L. Lee’s eyes rested on me then, and we sat in silence for a time, in this room both indoors and out, open and enclosed, solid and here and ancient and legendary.
“No,” he said. “Your value is limited. This is the way you will be most useful.”
My cheeks blazed. No, Lydia! I ordered myself: Think why you’re here. Forcing myself calm, I spoke. “There must be another.”
“This is the way I choose.”
“Why? To accomplish what?”
“That is not your concern. You must find the boy.”
“My partner—”
“Will live, if you find the boy.”
“I think,” I said, trying to keep my voice hard, “that Tony Siu will kill him before morning.”
Another long look. Then: “No. That will not happen.”
“You can promise that?”
“Yes.”
“And that he won’t hurt him further?”
A pause, and then a nod. “Yes.”
“And if I can’t find the boy?”
“Then I can promise nothing.”
L. L. Lee put his teacup down. A tendril of mist from the branches of the pines outside crept into the room, wandering past a scroll painting of pine trees and mist.
“This is about the smuggling,” I said. “You intend to use the boy to pressure his father into continuing smuggling for you.”
“A father,” he said, as if instructing me on a law of nature, “will look for a way to express gratitude at the rescue of his son.”
“I was told.”
“By Tony Siu?”
“By someone who knew.”
“How do you know the father will do as you want?”
“Indebtedness is a powerful motivation.”
“So is fear.”
“For many people.”
“How did Tony Siu know to go to Cheung Chau?”
His stony gaze rested on me. “Shall we sit here until morning, discussing the past?”
“No.” I stood. “But I have until morning. And I have your promise.”
L. L. Lee spoke not another word, nor took his eyes from me, as I crossed the hunter’s carpet. The door to the room I opened myself. The silent young man pulled wide the front door as I crossed the marble hall, and shut it without a sound behind me, leaving me standing alone on the porch facing the path through the trees.
I raced down the path as quickly as I’d come up it. Outside the iron gates, which swung wide as I reached them and closed when I was through them, my cab was still sitting, engine off, radio on. Whatever the fare for the ride down the mountain, I decided, this cabbie was getting double, protocol be damned. I told him where I wanted to go and pulled out my cell phone. Twice more during my talk with Lee it had shaken discreetly on my hip. I’d glanced down, but both times it was Mark. I hadn’t answered.
Now, without listening to the messages, I called him back.
“Wai!”
“Mark?” I said, closing my eyes against the blast to come. “It’s Lydia.”
It came. “Where the hell are you?” Mark roared.
It was obvious nothing I said would be okay, but I gave him the truth anyway. “Up on the Peak. I went to see L. L. Lee.”
“You went to—Jesus Christ, Lydia! You sit there handing me this shit, Siu and Chou, Franklin Wei—you just couldn’t wait until I was out of the room, could you?”
“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 S
iu 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.”
