by R. J. Jagger
Teffinger had never wanted a woman so much in his life.
Well, that wasn’t true—he had, but right now they didn’t count.
“I didn’t know if you’d come,” she said.
“How could I not?”
Her apartment was small, but clean, bright and contemporary, with lots of windows, a balcony and great views. “Come on, I’ll show you Hong Kong,” she said. “Do you want to see the high-class Hong Kong or the raw and edgy one?”
He didn’t hesitate.
“Raw and edgy.”
“Good. That’s the one I know better.”
She linked her arm through his.
Then they headed into the night.
THE NEXT COUPLE OF HOURS were a blur. They ate ramen at a noisy, rough-and-ready place where Fan Rae knew everyone by name and the food showed up two minutes after they ordered. Then they headed for the bars in the high energy, sin laden Lan Kwai Foog district.
Kiss.
Joe Bananas.
Club ’97.
They all carried Bud Light but Teffinger drank the local stuff.
They got drunk and grabby.
Fan Rae liked to be touched.
She liked it a lot.
The insane heat of the day finally dissipated and Teffinger said, “You know what I could go for?”
She kissed him.
“No, what?”
“Some quiet time, down by the water, someplace dark where the waves break.”
“I know a place.”
THEY TOOK A GREEN TAXI and ended up on a dark, deserted beach, walking in warm water with bare feet in squishy sand. The lights of Kowloon shimmied to the north and threw a warm patina onto the bellies of low-lying clouds.
The temperature was perfect—about 70.
Fan Rae was perfect.
Everything was perfect.
“Tell me a secret,” Fan Rae said. “Tell me something no one else knows about you.”
Teffinger was half tempted to play along but slapped her ass and said, “No.”
She slapped his ass back.
“Come on,” she said. “If you do, I will.”
“I don’t have any secrets,” he said.
“Yes you do, everyone does.”
“I’ll tell you what I’ve been thinking about all evening,” he said. “How about that?”
She laughed and raised her dress up just long enough to flash a white thong.
“That’s not a secret, Teffinger. Come on, be a sport.”
“What’s my reward, if I play?”
“Whatever you want.”
“Whatever I want?”
“Yes, whatever you want.”
“Well now you have me interested,” he said. “What are my limitations?”
“Only your imagination,” she said. “Your imagination and your endurance.”
He paused.
“Okay, but I want some payment upfront.”
She stood before him.
“Fair enough, what do you want me to do?”
Teffinger led her up to the dry sand, took his shirt off and laid it on the ground. “Take your dress off and lay down on your back,” he said.
She did it.
“Wait, take your bra off too.”
She leaned up, took the bra off and then plopped back down.
“Raise your arms above your head,” he said.
She did it and wiggled her hips.
“It looks like you have me all vulnerable,” she said. “But no more, not until you tell me a secret. You can play with my stomach while you talk if you want, but nothing else.”
He tweaked her nipples lightly.
“I can’t play with these?”
“No, only my stomach.”
He ran an index finger in a circle around her bellybutton.
“Like that?”
“Yes, that’s fine. Now talk.”
THEN HE DID SOMETHING he didn’t think he would do in a million years. He told her about Monday night—how d’Asia had shown up on his front steps asking for his help, and how he gave her a promise. He told her how another woman with a blond wig attacked d’Asia in Teffinger’s own bedroom in the middle of the night, and how d’Asia got lucky enough to wrestle the knife away, and ended up killing the woman in self-defense. He told her how d’Asia ran off into the night, to go back to Hong Kong and meet things head on.
He told her how he should have filed a police report.
“But I didn’t because I live outside Denver in a city called Lakewood,” he said. “If I filed a report with them, they would have chalked it up to self-defense, which it was, and closed the case. That would leave me with no way to fulfill my promise to d’Asia.”
So he put the body in his truck and dumped it in Denver next to some railroad tracks.
He got jurisdiction over the case.
“Then I came to Hong Kong, pretending the woman had been killed in my jurisdiction and that I was trying to find out who she was, as a step towards finding out who her killer was,” he said. “All that was a lie. Well, not all of it. I am actually trying to find out who she is, but not to find her killer—to get a lead on who she’s connected to because that’s who’s out to kill d’Asia.”
He exhaled, not knowing what else to say, waiting for a reaction.
Fan Rae sat up.
“Wow.”
“I had no plans to tell you the truth,” he said, “until just now. I couldn’t let you sleep with me thinking I’m someone I’m not.”
She stood up and put her bra on, then her dress.
“That was wrong,” she said.
“I know.”
They walked in silence.
THEN FAN RAE STOPPED, held Teffinger’s hand and said, “Are you in love with this woman? This d’Asia?”
He grunted.
“I came to Hong Kong for two reasons,” he said. “One, to help her, because I promised I would; and two, to get her into my life. Then I met you and now I’m confused.”
She squeezed his hand.
“I’m going to do something stupid,” she said. “I’m going to help you find her.”
“Why?”
“Partly so you can fulfill your promise,” she said.“But mostly so you can make a choice.”
Teffinger tiled his head.
“What does that mean?”
“It means that I don’t want to end up with you by default. If I end up with you, I want it to be because you could have had someone else, but affirmatively chose me. I don’t want any doubts and I don’t want any ghosts.”
She took off her dress and dropped it to the sand.
Then her bra.
Then her thong.
Teffinger had never seen a more beautiful woman.
That was the truth.
“That doesn’t mean I’ve fully made up my mind about you,” she said.
“I understand.”
WHAT HAPPENED NEXT wasn’t so much sex as it was love.
Tender.
Slow.
Private.
Fan Rae hardly uttered a sound.
Her movements were reserved and calculated, but when she trembled, it was like nothing Teffinger had ever experienced before.
It was like her soul moving into his.
Chapter Seventeen
Day Five—August 7
Friday Morning
______________
KONG GOT UP EARLY FRIDAY MORNING and checked the sky. What he saw, he didn’t like. There were thick black clouds. That, in and of itself, wasn’t the problem. The problem was that they were swirling, meaning it wouldn’t be a good day to be in a light plane, much less a parachute. He pictured the chute collapsing and trailing above him uselessly as he plunged to earth.
He dived off the boat and swam out of the marina.
The seas were high, on the verge of frothy.
They were dangerous even for him.
He turned around and came back. As soon as he dried off, the phone rang and Jack Poon’s voice came t
hough. “Are you still in?”
“Of course.”
“Good. Be at the airport at ten, Gate-7. The pilot’s a man named Chung Fu Zhang. He’s a small man with a gold tooth, about forty. He’ll fill you in on all the details. Remember to be convincing. I’m in this to win.”
“Understood.”
“I’m serious,” Poon said. “Scare the living shit out of her.”
“I will.”
“Have you looked at the sky?”
Yes.
He had.
“Pretty cool, huh?” Poon said. “That’s really going to increase the intensity. With any luck, that plane will be rocking like a leaf in a hurricane.”
Kong grunted.
“Yeah, we can only hope.”
KONG GOT TO THE AIRPORT a half hour early and paced as he waited for the pilot. The sky didn’t improve. If anything, it got worse.
Poon.
How did he get so twisted?
One thing was sure, it didn’t happen overnight.
If Kong understood what was going on—and he was pretty sure he did—Poon had a yearly bet going with six or seven or eight other people. The bet was to see which one of them could scare a person the most and capture that terror on film. The winner got a million Hong Kong dollars, which wasn’t a lot, but was enough to make things more interesting than just the bragging rights.
Poon’s plan this year was simple, brilliantly simple, sickly simple.
Poon would hire the 22-year-old bombshell who was unconscious on his bed—Fion. He’d hire her for the day and pay her in advance, a good deal of money, and tell her to just stay at home until he called with instructions and told her what he wanted her to do.
She’d say fine.
She’d stay home.
She’d wait for instructions.
Poon would call her and tell her to take a cab to the airport, Gate 7.
She’d do it.
Kong would be waiting for her, introduce himself as a pilot, and tell her that Poon wanted her to go on a little flight. She’d say fine. Kong would direct her to the aisle seat in the third row. He would secure her to the seat with duct tap around her wrists, torso and legs. Then he’d blindfold her.
She wouldn’t protest.
The pilot would then sneak quietly on board. Kong would stay in the cockpit and pretend he was the one flying. Once they got to altitude, the pilot would put the plane on autopilot and hide behind a seat in the back of the plane.
Kong would then take the woman’s blindfold off.
Then he’d put a parachute on.
“What are you going?” she’d ask.
Kong would just shake his head disapprovingly and said, “I don’t know what you did to Poon to make him want you to die this way, but it sure must have been something.”
Then he’d jump out of the plane.
The woman would go hysterical.
That hysteria would be beautifully captured by a small but high quality camera that would transmit the scene to Poon where it would be recorded.
After five minutes or so, the pilot would step out of hiding, take the controls and tell her it was all just a joke.
They’d land safely.
No one would get hurt.
Fion would forgive Poon because he paid her so well.
THE PILOT SHOWED UP at ten sharp and asked, “Are you the actor?”
“That’s me.”
“Got a little chop up there today,” the man said. “Be careful when you jump. Don’t open your chute until you have to. That way there’ll be less time for things to go wrong. I’m glad that you’re doing that part and not me.”
Fion showed up at 11:00, right on schedule.
Fifteen minutes later, the plane lifted off the runway and climbed into a swirling charcoal sky.
Chapter Eighteen
Day Five—August 7
Friday Morning
______________
PRARIE PITCHED AND TURNED all night, waiting for Emmanuelle to return to the hotel. But she didn’t. Not at three in the morning, or four, or five.
Dawn broke.
Prarie wasn’t in the mood for it, not even close, and stayed under the covers. She was sound asleep when she detected movement and heard the shower running.
“Is that you?” she shouted.
No answer.
Two minutes later, the water shut off.
“Is that you?”
“Yeah.”
“Where were you all night?”
“Hunting.”
Emmanuelle emerged from the bathroom naked, crawled under the covers and said, “I need sleep like you can’t even believe.”
“Have you been up all night?”
“Every freaking minute of it,” Emmanuelle said. “Be a princess and rub my back, will you?”
Prarie did.
“You scared me half to death.”
Emmanuelle didn’t respond.
She was already asleep.
SHE DIDN’T MOVE UNTIL NOON. Then she rolled onto her back, stretched and said, “Coffee, I need coffee—food too, coffee and food.”
“What happened last night?”
Emmanuelle grunted.
“I made a move on the rock star.”
“And?”
“And I need coffee.”
Chapter Nineteen
Day Five—August 7
Friday Morning
______________
FRIDAY MORNING, TEFFINGER WOKE UP in a strange room next to a naked woman—Fan Rae Fan—just as dawn broke over Hong Kong. He studied the sensuous curves of her body for a second and felt sorry for every guy in the world who wasn’t him. Outside, the life-sounds of the city were already resonating.
He felt good.
He dressed without waking Fan Rae, gave her an imperceptible kiss on the cheek, closed the door gently on his way out and took a cab to the Fleming.
Then he went for a three-mile jog.
Clouds filled the sky.
There would be rain today, lots of rain.
He could already tell.
He showered and just got toweled off when his phone rang and the voice of Sydney Heatherwood came through. “I got the surveillance tapes from that bar,” she said. “It was raining heavy and the lighting was bad.”
Teffinger exhaled.
“Good,” he said.
Silence.
“Well, not that good,” Sydney said. “Things were clear enough to show a white pickup truck. And there’s a second, more like half a second, where your face shows in the window. You actually turned and looked towards the building.”
TEFFINGER REMEMBERED THE MOMENT.
“And?” he said.
“And to me it looked like you,” Sydney said. “Don’t panic, though. I think that the only reason it looked like you is because I already knew it was you. If I had been seeing it for the first time and didn’t know it was you, I don’t think you would even enter my head. I would just be thinking it was some white guy, and that would be about it.”
“What about the license plate?”
“It never showed.”
Okay.
Good.
“Be sure the tape gets in the file,” he said.
“It already is. How are things going over there?”
“I met a woman,” he said.
“Who?”
“The detective, Fan Rae Fan.”
“And?”
“And I could be happy with her.”
“What does that mean, exactly?”
“I’m not sure.”
Silence.
Then Sydney said, “You’re not thinking of moving there, are you?”
“I don’t know what I’m thinking,” he said. “To be honest, d’Asia hasn’t quite left my thoughts.”
“Teffinger, you need to slow down,” she said. “You always move too fast. You know that.”
True.
He did.
“I don’t exactly plan this stuff. It’s more like getting hit in th
e face with a rock. There it is, deal with it.”
“Two rocks.”
Teffinger chuckled and said, “Yeah, two rocks. I’ll keep you posted. By the way, I told her what I did—her, meaning Fan Rae. She’s going to help me find d’Asia.”
“Unbelievable.”
He almost hung up and then said, “Hey, you still there?”
She was.
“I almost forgot to say thanks.”
“Okay, you’re welcome. For what?”
“For not getting dirty,” he said. “If you had done that, I don’t know how I could have lived with myself.”
He hung up and got dressed.
TWO MINUTES LATER, Fan Rae called.
“Where are you?”
“The hotel.”
“Someone saw our beach victim on the news last night and thinks she might be a woman who lives in his apartment building, someone named Nuwa Moon. I’m going to head over and check it out. You want to tag along?”
He did, he did indeed.
“Be out front in ten minutes.”
THEY HEADED TO THE OTHER SIDE of the city, west of Central, to an area where cheap-but-good eateries and grocery stores and Laundromats sat at street level with six or eight floors of apartments stacked up top, typical city living.
“When did you leave?” Fan Rea asked.
“Just a little bit ago,” Teffinger said. “Dawn or thereabouts.”
“I thought maybe you left in the middle of the night.”
No.
He didn’t.
“I needed a jog and a shower and clothes that didn’t smell like smoke,” he said. “I didn’t want to wake you.”
“Next time wake me.”
“Okay.”
“You promise?”
“You looked so peaceful.”
“Screw peaceful,” she said. “Next time wake me.”
ACCORDING TO THE CALLER, Nuwa Moon lived in apartment 308. Fan Rae bypassed the elevators, headed for the stairwell and said, “I usually walk. I like the exercise.”
Teffinger shrugged and said, “Fine with me.”
They knocked on the door.
No response came.
The doorknob didn’t turn.
“We’ll need to find the manager,” Fan Rae said.
