Riding the Snake (1998)

by Stephen Cannell

  "They find implements. The jail is a place of little courage. They would rather die than face Triad justice," Johnny said. "If Quincy's map is wrong, we could go in there with an army of police and be picked off in the dark, one at a time, while we wandered around helpless as blind children."

  "What about Jackie Pullinger?" Julian suggested. "Show her the map maybe. She could confirm it and complete it."

  Johnny smiled and shrugged. "Much has changed since we were partners. I went to see her in the hospital a year ago. She's ninety-five years old and crazy as a box a' birds. I can't trust that map, and nobody is talking. The rumor I have is that Henry Liu is the new Shan Chu of the Chin Lo. Willy has pulled way back, possibly to distance himself before the election. 'Limpy' Liu is even more violent than Willy. He will kill anybody who considers talking."

  "I'd like to see Quincy's map," Tanisha said, "if you still have it. And I'd like to try to talk to Jackie Pullinger. If we can get a map, can't we originate a police raid and search the Temple?"

  "If anybody could arrange that, Johnny can," Julian said, proudly. "Johnny has enough Guan-Xi to pull it off."

  "I'd be grateful for the professional courtesy. One cop to another," she added.

  "I can make you a photocopy of the map," Johnny finally said, "and you can go talk to Miss Pullinger. She was the only White person ever to live in the Walled City. They say she gave Wo Lap Ling his name, Willy, and taught him English. When he became a Triad leader, selling dope to other children, she vowed to get him. However, she's in the Colony hatch and not right in the head. You'd belong in there with her if you listen to anything that crazy old woman tells you now."

  "We'd like to try," Wheeler concurred.

  Johnny and Julian looked at each other. A silent message of some sort seemed to pass between them. "You'd be better served to just beetle off back to America and leave this be," Johnny said sadly. "But if you want to try, I guess we're good for another go. I'll get the map copied and meet you for dinner tonight, in Wan Chai, at the Black Swan.". Johnny looked at the watch on his scarred, bony wrist. "I've got to get back to court. See you at eight then." He walked out of the museum, leaving them standing there.

  "If you've got a jiff, let me show you something," Julian said, and he led them out of the Narcotics Room of the Police Museum and into the Triad Room. He searched the photographs on the wall and finally found the one he wanted. He pointed to a picture of a burned apartment house. Next to it was a shot of a man scorched beyond recognition on a hospital stretcher. "That's Johnny Kwong, right after the fire. It was published in the Hong Kong paper two days later, and I recognized the ring on his right hand. Took me a week to find him. They had him in the Adventist Hospital in Hong Kong under a John Doe."

  Wheeler looked closely at the picture. He thought he saw something. He leaned in closer. "What's that?" Wheeler asked. "It looks like a 1414 written on his forehead." It was exactly the same as Angie Wong.

  "Westerners often think that. It looks like two fourteens, but it's not."

  "What is it?" Tanisha said, leaning in with Wheeler, studying the three-year-old photo of the terribly burned face of Johnny Kwong.

  "It's Hakow writing, an old Chinese dialect mandated obsolete by the Communists. But the language is still written and used by some peasants in the Walled City."

  "What does it mean?" Wheeler asked.

  "It's a promise and a curse," Julian said softly. "It means 'Certain death, certain death.' "

  Chapter 21.

  Bridge of Clouds

  It was just after one in the afternoon when Wheeler and Tanisha finally arrived at St. Mary's Hospital for the elderly and infirm in the northern New Territories. The hospital was a small one-story main building with several wings jutting off on each side. Painted white and perched in the center of a rich green meadow, it looked like something out of The Sound of Music.

  They parked their rented Mercedes in the circular drive and walked inside.

  Behind the reception desk was a Chinese woman in a nun's habit working diligently over a sheaf of papers. She looked up, smiling as they approached.

  "We're looking for Jackie Pullinger," Wheeler said.

  "Oh," the nun replied. "You're from her Solicitor's office. We've been expecting you. I have the final tally all prepared. Her nephew is in there now, clearing out her bureau and bedside locker."

  "He's doing what?" Tanisha asked, an alarm going off in her head. "Clearing the room?"

  "Yes," the nun said softly. "Because as you know, Miss Pullinger has left us. She passed on, God rest her soul."

  "When?" Wheeler asked.

  "Just two days past. So 1 daresay, if we don't know that, we're not from her Solicitor's office, are we?" the nun surmised.

  "That's like an attorney?" Wheeler asked, and the nun nodded. "No, we're not. Sorry to bother you," Wheeler said, and started to go.

  Tanisha was still looking at the nun. "Could we talk to her nephew?"

  "I suppose so, if he's still there. Miss Pullinger didn't have many belongings. He may have already toddled off."

  "Where's her room?" Tanisha asked.

  "It's outside, to the right. Number six. There's a wing with cottages." She pointed in the direction of the room, and they thanked her and left.

  "Her nephew?" Tanisha said as they moved quickly down the path to the right. "Didn't Julian tell us just an hour ago that she came here in 1929 from England, that she lived her whole life alone in Kowloon, never leaving that ghetto? What fucking nephew?"

  "Damn! You're right," Wheeler said.

  They quickened their pace until they got to number six. They paused at the door and could hear dresser drawers opening and closing. Tanisha reached into her purse and took out a .25-caliber Glock that she'd brought with her from Los Angeles. A policeman could check a gun with airport security and retrieve it at the other end. The Glock was a short-barreled, highly inaccurate weapon whose chief virtue was that it was extremely light.

  She silently turned the knob and pushed the door open. They could see a man with his back to them. He was dark-haired, medium-built, and was looking through a jewelry box, working quickly and quietly.

  "What are you doing?" Tanisha said.

  The man spun, his eyes glazed with fright. He saw the gun in Tanisha's hand, and although she hadn't pointed it at him, she was holding it at the ready by her side. The man was about twenty-five and Chinese. He was still holding the jewelry box. Suddenly he threw it at them and lunged across the room and out a side door that led onto a sunporch. As Wheeler bolted after him, he could feel the stitches in his right leg snap like buttons popping off a shirt. Pain from that week-old injury shot up his thigh. He kept going; in three strides, he was out the door, limping badly. He saw the young man vault the three-foot wall, heading toward the meadow and a stand of willow trees a hundred yards away. Wheeler hurdled the low wall, picking up precious yards with the more athletic maneuver, but his right leg almost buckled when he landed. He lurched on.

  This is for Pres, his mind screamed. Go ... go . . . forget the pain!

  He was close enough to launch a flying tackle off his good left leg. With his outstretched right hand, Wheeler managed to catch the fleeing man's ankle as he fell. The Chinese youth hit the ground hard, rolled, and all in one motion came up on both feet, balanced and ready for combat. Because of his leg, Wheeler was slower getting up, and as he rose, he caught a mouthful of shoe leather as the young man's foot swept his face, busting his mouth with a perfectly executed spin kick. Wheeler went down. Blood started to flow from his mouth. He got up again and limped toward the man, who hit him three times with karate-hardened knuckles. Wheeler, who had had combat training in the Marines, caught two of the shots on his forearms but ate the third. It rocked him back. His bad leg folded, he went down, and the man moved in to finish him.

  A gunshot ripped the silence and the young man froze.

  About twenty yards away, Tanisha was in a Weaver stance, her legs spread wide for balance, the ugl
y square-barreled Glock aimed right at the young man's chest. Wheeler picked himself up slowly as Tanisha moved in, holding the gun on the Chinese man. Blood oozed from Wheeler's mouth and leg, staining his new Gap clothing.

  "Who are you?" Tanisha asked, her voice quivering. "You speak English?"

  "I'm Chan Chak," he said. "I'm Miss Puilinger's nephew."

  "She's English, you're Chinese. Get a better story, sugar," Tanisha said as she moved close, still holding the gun on him, aiming for his midsection, where she had the largest target for the inaccurate short-barreled automatic.

  "All of us, her students, her helpers, she called us her nieces and nephews. I loved her," he said.

  "And that's why you were going through her things?"

  "She promised me this," he said and held up a simple gold crucifix. "She said when she crossed the bridge of clouds, I should come over straightaway and fetch it. She wanted me to have it. She said not to wait for the State Solicitor General because the Chinese death taxes will take it." He was still breathing hard. Wheeler reached out and took the cross, looking at it carefully.

  "There's something written on it. If she promised this to you, you should know what it is," he said.

  "P-ll-21," Chan Chak said, his chest still heaving as he struggled to catch his breath. "It's from the Bible; Proverbs 11, Verse 21: Though hand join in hand, the wicked shall not be unpunished: but the seed of the righteous shall be delivered.' That was her message. It was what her life was about. It was why she lived. To prove to all of us that we could be delivered. She gave it to me, it's my inheritance, my memory of her." He looked at Wheeler defiantly.

  So Wheeler handed it back to him.

  Wheeler had his pants off and Tanisha was looking at the week-old bullet wound in his thigh. "It doesn't look that bad," she said. "It's already healing on the inside. This slug musta had eyes-missed the bone and all the major veins and arteries. Just tore a hole in the fleshy part. Couple stitches and you'll be ready to rumble."

  They were sitting in Jackie Puilinger's room. Chan Chak wouldn't tell them where he lived, so they had opened his wallet and copied his business address off one of his cards. The young man was now standing nearby, looking at them with a strange, fearful expression on his face. After a minute, a Chinese nun arrived with bandages and some disinfectant. She started to wash carefully around Wheeler's wound. It had puckered slightly at the edges as it began to pull together and heal. After painting on a disinfectant, she wrapped it tightly with a bandage and clipped it with fasteners. She spoke no English, so Chan Chak conversed with her in Chinese.

  "She's a medical nurse and says you should have a doctor look at it, but she says it seems to be healing."

  Wheeler pulled his pants on.

  "You took off like an N. F. L. running back," Tanisha grinned. "Not bad for a guy with a bullet hole in his leg."

  "You probably didn't see me soak up all that shoe leather Mr. Chan was delivering."

  "Doesn't count," she smiled. " 'Cause technically, you're still on injured reserve."

  Chan Chak closed the door after the nun left. "I have to go. I have things to do. Thank you for letting me keep the crucifix," he said and turned to leave.

  "Did Jackie ever talk to you about Wo Lap Ling?" Wheeler asked.

  Chan Chak froze, then slowly turned back again.

  "Why?" he asked warily.

  "I just wondered."

  "She thought he was a devil, the nastiest sort. She thought he needed to be stopped." Chan Chak had no British accent. His English still rang with the singing lilt of Chinese.

  "She wasn't crazy at all, was she?" Wheeler said. "When the police came, she only pretended to be nuts."

  Chan Chak hesitated, started to answer, then stopped. It was as good as an admission.

  "Why didn't she want to help the police if she felt Wo Lap Ling was such a devil?" Wheeler continued.

  "I don't know. She was old and frightened. She had given her life to others. She deserved a little peace before she crossed her bridge."

  "And you were one of her nephews?" Tanisha asked. "You were a disciple of Miss Puilinger's?"

  "Yes. I was chasing the dragon by the time I was ten. She got me off drugs, taught me English. She named me 'Chauncy.' "

  " 'Chasing the dragon' is heroin," Tanisha said to Wheeler.

  "Wo Lap Ling had also been one of her nephews," Chauncy Chan continued. "She prayed for him because she had once loved him, but he went bad. He became one of the Triad devils. He sold poison in the Walled City and joined the Chin Lo. He ended up being the Shan Chu, the worst of the worst. 'A dreadful piece of mischief,' she called him. And she devoted her life to stopping him and others like him, but she also had to co-exist with him. There is no way an English woman alone can destroy the mighty Chin Lo or its most powerful Shan Chu. She had to swim in their ocean and avoid being devoured."

  They looked at him, both thinking Chauncy Chan could be a valuable resource. Tanisha finally stood and moved closer.

  "You were raised in the Walled City. You lived there, didn't you?"

  He looked frightened for a minute, then the look passed and he nodded.

  "We need your help, Chauncy. If we brought you a partial map of the Walled City, could you tell us if it is accurate and correct, and complete it for us?" she asked him.

  "Anybody who draws a map of the Walled City of Kowloon will die the Living Death." His voice was stretched tight with fear. "The Living Death takes three days. They keep you alive with medicines, they use acupuncture needles to awaken the dying nerves so you can feel the pain more clearly. They cut your muscles and tendons a strand at a time so they snap back against the bone. They feed you to rodents who crawl up your anus and devour your insides while you are still alive. It would be better to set yourself on fire."

  "We're at the Peninsula Hotel," Wheeler said after a pause. "If you can help us . . ." And he stopped because Chan Chak looked away from them, casting his eyes down.

  "She was very brave," he finally said, his voice reverent in memory, soft as a rustling wind. "She could somehow swim in their water and avoid the stinging fish. I am just a shoemaker. I work with leather. I have two children and a wife who is very sick from malaria. I am not as strong as Miss Pullinger, I am only human. She was the Lord Buddha's child. I do not have her courage. I never will have. I cannot help you." And then he turned and left them there, alone.

  Chapter 22.

  The Mucky Duck

  The Black Swan restaurant was on the second floor of the Corral nightclub in the Wan Chai district of Hong Kong. The music vibrations came up through the floorboards from the strip club below. Wheeler and Tanisha sat in a booth in the small back room, which the restaurant reserved for VIPs like Johnny Kwong, and watched in fascination as the famous scarred inspector spooned cooked brains out of the skull of a dead tree monkey. The furry head of the primate had been severed, the top of the skull cut and removed at mid-forehead; the brains were cooked at the table. Julian Winslow was eating another traditional dish called pork-ball soup, which emitted a strong, pungent odor in the hot, enclosed back room. Tanisha and Wheeler had both lost their appetites when the monkey head had been sawed. On the table in front of them was uneaten fish-ball soup and a copy of Quincy's map. It was a baffling drawing that showed a hundred or more crisscrossing lines, some dead-ending, others wandering aimlessly and turning back on themselves like a spilled plate of spaghetti. There was Chinese writing all over the map, which Johnny said indicated approximate distances. The map was incomplete, confusing, and almost impossible to read. Worse still, Johnny explained, it only depicted the front two blocks of the Walled City, which stretched for ten, in all directions around the central park where the temple sat.

  "Bloody shame," Johnny said between spoonfuls of monkey brains. "If I coulda got the whole thing, we might have run a raid on Willy Wo Lap and caught him on the glimmer."

  Wheeler was still looking at the map, distressed at the myriad of transecting, wandering lines. "Who
designed this place?" he finally said.

  "Nobody did," Julian said. "It grew like a jungle fungus, one floor over another, took whatever shape it wanted. If a block of flats tumbled down, the people would scavenge for what was usable, bury the dead, and just build right over it. Reeks in there from garbage and rot. Got no proper sewage."

  "I understand Miss Pullinger is no longer with us," Johnny said as he finished the last bite and wiped his napkin across cracked yellow lips.

  "Yes, but we met a man named Chan Chak," Wheeler said. "He was one of Jackie Puilinger's disciples, if that's the right word for it. A man about twenty-five. He was raised inside the Walled City. He's a shoemaker. We got his business address."

  Johnny put out his hand, and Wheeler dug the address out of his pocket and handed it to the detective. "I know this place. It's in Kowloon," Johnny said, handing it back. "He won't talk. The peasants are even more scared of Limpy Liu than they were of Willy. Evil, skinny, limping bastard's got a complexion like lunar lava, and a heart yellow as piss. If anybody goes up against him, he'll have their guts for garters."

  Tanisha had remained silent through most of this. She was looking at Julian Winslow and Johnny Kwong, using her cop's instinct to see into the dark corners of their complex relationship. Something wasn't right. There was too much intrigue in Hong Kong. She could already tell that there was almost no fraternal trust among the police. Everybody was a potential spy. Julian ate with his eyes down, not looking at them. Something unhealthy was going on, but she couldn't pin it. It was a feeling she had learned to trust. Her instincts had saved her more than once in the street. Now they were screaming at her, but she couldn't figure out which way to look, or even what was going on. She didn't know the rules here. She was lost.

  After dinner, they went downstairs to the Corral nightclub. It was a grind joint with nude Philippine and Thai dancers, slithering onstage and humping brass poles. A loud band played American rock-and-roll badly, slots rang, and mah-jongg tiles and dice clicked on twenty green felt tables. They moved to a game room and watched through an atmosphere thick with cigarette smoke, while Johnny Kwong stacked the little tiles in front of him and made a large bet. His scarred features revealed nothing. The fire had done him one favor--it gave him the ultimate gambler's face.