Touch of the White Tiger

by Julie Beard

  “Have you thought about your responsibility to Lin? What if something happens to you? Where will she be then?”

  I shut my eyes and laughed ruefully. “You really go for the jugular, you know that?” I took a fortifying breath, folded my hands and pinned him with my robins-egg blue eyes. “I’m not going to abandon my foster child—not to death, not to the state foster care system. Not to anyone.”

  “Then you’d better quit while you can. While you’re still alive.”

  “Is this about your police committee that’s trying to get the state legislature to outlaw my profession?”

  He shook his head. “No. This is personal.”

  “I’m not going to do it, Marco.”

  “Do it for Lin.”

  I shook my head. “I rescued Lin. Remember? I couldn’t have done that without my training as a retributionist.”

  “Then do it for me.”

  My heart did a funny little somersault. Was he asking me for a commitment? I heard a muted police siren wail down the street in the thick silence that followed. My heart pounded. I wanted to commit, but at what price? I felt like I was trapped in a burning building with no easy exit.

  “You’re asking me to give up my career to love you? That’s not fair, Marco.”

  He shook his head. “No, it’s not. But death isn’t fair, either. Do you really know what death is?”

  I blinked, stunned by the question. I’d spent my life defying death, even ignoring its existence. I had a feeling he knew much more about it than I, but that didn’t mean he could make such an important decision for me.

  “I’m willing to take that risk.”

  “Well, I’m not,” he shot back, anger giving his low voice a bass tremor. His fist came down hard on the table. “If you want to make love to me, you have to hang it up, Angel.”

  “Fuck you!” I yelled and slammed my palms down so hard coffee jumped out of both mugs. “This is my life! Being a retributionist is who I am. It’s me. You’re rejecting me. Why don’t you just call it like it is?”

  “No,” he said, softening his voice. “You are not a retributionist. It’s what you do. It’s not who you are. And until you realize that, we can’t have a relationship.” He raised both palms up in acquiescence. “That’s not quite true. We already have a relationship. But we can’t have sex.”

  I blinked slowly. “You’re kidding?”

  “No.”

  “That’s just great.” I stood abruptly. “You’re a sadist, you know that?”

  “Don’t slam the door on the way out, Angel,” he said matter-of-factly.

  I shook my head in disbelief and left. When I reached the sidewalk, I turned back and slammed the door with every bit of flare and might I could muster. Feeling perversely satisfied, I whirled and stepped right into the methop junkie. His grimy, open palms fit snugly around my breasts. He grinned and guffawed in triumph, nearly bowling me over with his rancid breath.

  “Like I thought,” he said, chuckling, “these melons are just ripe enough to eat.”

  “How ironic.” With lightning speed and force, I jammed my hand down between his legs and gripped hard. While his eyes popped and his throat pumped with unspeakable pain, I added, “The melons might be perfect, but these grapes are way too shriveled for me.”

  I couldn’t sleep that night. I tried to relax by watching an old black-and-white flick. I loved the early twentieth century Hollywood classics. Still, I tossed and turned. I told myself a hundred times to forget about Marco, but he was the kind of guy who made you think. Damn him. Was he right about my responsibilities to Lin? I swore I’d be there for her. She was seven years old. Old enough to know whether I held up my end of the adoption bargain or not.

  When my mother went to prison—when I was seven, ironically—I’d certainly felt abandoned. While I had no plans to go to prison, I never considered that getting killed on the job would be, in effect, abandonment of my motherly duties. Was I willing to give up a dangerous career for a child? When I’d told the social worker a month ago that I wanted to adopt Lin, I hadn’t thought through all the ramifications. Love was more than a feeling when it came to parenthood.

  I’d never before considered myself motherhood material. But my outlook changed a month ago when I stumbled onto a plot to sell a dozen Chinese orphans, including Lin, on the black market.

  The Mongolian Mob had literally been breeding girls outside Barrington, a northwestern suburb, in a downscaled replica of the Imperial Palace in the Forbidden City. Comfortably imprisoned, Lin grew up thinking she was in China. She had been lovingly cared for by an older sister, but her only kin had been slain when it was time for Lin and the other seven-year-olds to be sold at market.

  Pure-blooded Chinese girls were highly prized here and abroad. They were scarce because of China’s twentieth-century one-child birth control policy. Back then, parents favored boys, so females were often aborted or sent abroad for adoption. That led to a shortage of Chinese brides, and many of the men had been forced to marry immigrants.

  Lin and her friends would have netted the Mongolian Mob millions of dollars if I hadn’t rescued them. The other girls were put up for adoption, but I had kept Lin as a foster child. We bonded quickly, even though I practically had to fight for time alone with her. My mother, who now lived in my downstairs flat, and my Chinese martial arts instructor, who lived in my garden carriage house, occupied most of Lin’s time. They doted on her and babysat when I was away.

  Still, Lin knew I was her savior. I was her new mother. When I realized I couldn’t let her go, I set the wheels of adoption in motion. But now that decision was forcing me to consider radical changes in my lifestyle. Could I give up my career for Lin?

  The prospect of working behind a desk just to be safe made me go numb inside. But perhaps there was something else I could do with my skills. Maybe I could be a case worker for social services and make sure foster children weren’t abused. Having been an abused foster child myself, I would certainly know what signs to look for.

  The possibilities churned in my mind. Finally, realizing I wasn’t going to be able to sleep, I called Marco. I used my lapel phone because I didn’t want to wake up Lin using the omnisystem. I popped the receiver in my ear.

  “Riccuccio Marco,” I said softly, and his number began to ring. With a tightening in my gut, I waited for him to answer, entwined wrists resting on my frowning forehead.

  “Yeah?” Marco answered in a groggy voice after five rings.

  “Okay,” I said, barely able to get the word past my heart, which pounded in my throat.

  “Angel?”

  “Yes.”

  “Okay what?”

  “Okay,” I repeated impatiently. “I’ll do it.”

  There was a long pause. He said, more alert, warmly, “Okay.”

  “But only as an experiment.”

  “How will I know you aren’t going to go out behind my back?”

  “I’ll put away my Glock,” I magnanimously offered. “I never leave home without it, at least not when I’m on a job. I rarely use it and have never killed anyone, but it’s like insurance. You know that if you don’t have it, you’ll need it. No Glock, no retribution jobs.”

  “Can you resist the urge to retrieve it in a pinch?”

  “I’ll put it in my bank safety deposit box. You can be my witness. In fact, I insist. I want to make sure I get full credit for this charade. I’ll take a vacation for one week, but I want something concrete in return.”

  “What?”

  “If I go seven days without taking on a retribution job, you have to have sex with me.”

  “Ah, such a price to pay,” he said, teasing.

  “I mean it. I have to have some motivation here.”

  He let out a sexy chuckle. “Okay. It’s a deal. You really want to do this?”

  “Sure,” I said lightly. “It’ll be a cinch.”

  Boy, was I ever wrong.

  Chapter 2

  Mirandized

&nbs
p; Six days, twenty-two hours and twenty-three minutes into my agreement with Marco, my lapel phone rang. Waking from a deep sleep, I slammed my hand on the bedside table, feeling for the noise. At the same time I managed to blink open one eye and saw 3:12 a.m. reflected on the ceiling.

  “Who on earth…?” I muttered as I grabbed the tiny round phone. Plugging the receiver in my ear, I groused, “What?”

  “Angel?” came a gruff and vaguely familiar voice.

  “Who is this?”

  “Roy.”

  I went instantly alert. Roy Leibman was one of Chicago’s best retributionists. I couldn’t imagine why he was calling me at this hour. I propped myself up on one elbow.

  “What is it, Roy?”

  “I need help,” he whispered.

  The hair on my neck sprang up. Roy had never asked for help from me before. He was fifty-five and I was twenty-eight. He’d been my mentor. He shouldn’t need help. That’s not how our relationship worked. “Where are you, Roy?”

  “At the Cloisters. Can you come?”

  I glanced up at the red numbers reflected on the ceiling. It was now 3:13 a.m. I was an hour and thirty-five minutes away from seven days of abstinence from my work. If I answered Roy’s call for help, I’d have to start all over again. Since I was self-employed, I could take off as much time as I needed. And I’d enjoyed hanging out with Lin. We’d done everything from making sand castles on the beach to moonwalking in the Virtual Dome. But I couldn’t afford to be unemployed forever. More importantly, how could I not help a colleague in need? Besides, what Marco didn’t know wouldn’t hurt him—or me—would it?

  “I’m on my way, Roy.”

  “How fast can you get here?”

  “I’ll take a chopper cab. Ten minutes, tops.”

  Chopper cabs were expensive as all get out, and I splurged on them maybe once a year. But Roy needed me and I was determined to be there for him. Fortunately, there was a cab stand on the roof of the Music Box theater, which was just a few blocks north on Southport.

  I dressed fast, wishing I had more than a knife and a whip to attach to my utility belt, woke Lola and talked her into moving from her bed downstairs to mine in case Lin woke up. Then I ran the ten-block distance like athletes used to when humans still dominated the Olympics. When I climbed into the cab, whose blades whooshed overhead, the driver’s sidelong glance looked like one he reserved for a con artist who was going to shake him down after takeoff.

  “Don’t even go there,” I said, pulling out my CRS identification card. Then I held out my cash chip. “And, yes, I can afford it. Chicago and State. Pronto.”

  “Yes, ma’am,” he said with a faint East Coast accent. “Buckle up, please.”

  Like I had a choice. He pushed a button and two belts crossed over my chest and battened me down. While we zoomed up and over the sprawling north side of Chicago, I tried not to imagine the worst and found myself reading the cabdriver’s certificate.

  Herbert Banning IV. He was a Harvard grad. So many of them flew chopper cabs these days. Ivy League degrees were quaint relics of a past when a well-educated human could still outthink a computer. While a Harvard pigskin looked impressive hanging on the wall, it was no guarantee of a job, as was, for example, a certificate from a Vastnet Nanotechnology program.

  I was hoping to help Roy and get back to my place before the clock struck day seven. And Herb was fast, God love him. He’d put his philosophy degree to good use. We flew well above the old-time skyscrapers, like the Chicago Tribune building and the Sears Tower, but below the executive level of the newer 200-story buildings, like the AutoMates Starbelisk and the Morgan’s Organs Surgery Center. Fortunately, only taxis and emergency vehicles were allowed in the downtown skyways, so we didn’t face too much traffic. Before I knew it, Herb settled his small, yellow chopper on a taxi pad in the heart of the Loop. I zoomed down the building’s outer elevator and ran hard to Chicago Avenue and State Street.

  The buildings were so tall in this quadrant that city officials kept the streetlights on around the clock. Like Victorian gaslights, they did little to quell the canyonlike darkness of the streets. And since this once fashionable part of town had fallen on hard times—with free rangers sleeping in well-appointed cardboard boxes, methop junkies shooting up as if they were in the privacy of their own bathrooms, and emaciated hookers lurking in the shadows—it had a vaguely Dickensian aura.

  When I reached the entrance to the alley that led to the Cloisters, I called out, “Roy?” as I stepped through the trash-strewed passageway. Rotting food and urine assailed my nose, which I covered with the back of one hand as I tiptoed through a brackish liquid I didn’t want to identify. It had rained earlier, and a trickle—blessedly fresh and silvery—still flowed down a drainpipe, spilling over the broken asphalt.

  I focused on the cleansing overflow as I made my way toward the end of the alley. I’d almost reached the open courtyard, where I suspected Roy awaited my help, when I was greeted by the one thing in this world that could make me want to turn and run.

  “A rat,” I whispered. Not just any varmint, but a rad rat. Rad as in radiation, not trendy. Rats are never in style.

  About twenty years ago some idiot Director of Public Health decided the city’s rat problem had reached apocalyptic proportions and solved it by feeding the nasty critters radiation pellets. A few—the toughest and smartest—survived, mutated, and spawned offspring so large they could have registered with the American Kennel Association.

  One of their descendants stood ten feet away from me right now, the size of a pit bull, daring me to pass. That’s what I hated about rats. They had attitude, in addition to beady eyes, creepy tails and vicious teeth.

  “Get out of my way!” Out of habit, I reached for the Glock that wasn’t there. I seldom used it and had never killed anyone, but it was a menacing weapon to wave around. Instead, I pulled out my whip and cracked it in the air. The rat flinched, but waddled closer.

  “What do you think this is?” I shouted. “Showdown at the OK Corral? Go on! Get out of here!”

  Just then another rad rat stepped out of the shadows. I’d read somewhere that they mated for life. How touching.

  “Okay, which one of you freaks of nature wants to be widowed first?”

  I snapped my whip at the one who’d been acting like John Wayne. “Bull’s-eye!” I shouted triumphantly as it squealed and ran.

  The second rat, apparently outraged by the assault, ran toward me so fast I couldn’t use my whip again, so I met it halfway and punted it, literally. The squealing—I swear, screaming—creature flew through the air and landed hard against the brick wall, then limped away.

  “Ha!” At least I was warmed up. I only hoped these disgusting creatures weren’t an omen.

  I ran the rest of the way down the alley to the entrance to the Cloisters, so named because it was a square courtyard surrounded by arches, as in a medieval monastery. It used to be a loading dock where trucks would unload their wares. But it was abandoned about fifteen years ago, and soon after was the site of a terrible shoot-out between police and drug runners that claimed the lives of nine officers.

  Since then the Cloisters had been virtually crime free. Word on the street was that the slain cops haunted the place. Retributionists, who weren’t as a rule superstitious, sometimes took advantage of the empty real estate because it was centrally located. It was a convenient place to meet with a client who wanted a contract to remain secret.

  I found the square courtyard well-lit and littered with the remains of a giant forklift, whose metal parts were scattered like the bones of a small dinosaur.

  “Roy?” I called out. “Roy, where are you?”

  “Here!” came his croaking reply. “It’s safe. They’re gone.”

  Spying his bloody, prone body amid the metal rubble, I raced to his side, scraping my knees as I dropped to the dirty concrete. I touched his damp and cold forehead. He was very weak and, I suspected, badly in need of blood. He eyed me with a glint
of affection. “Hey, Blue Dragon.”

  He often called me that because of the easy-stick dragon tattoo I sometimes wore on my forehead during retribution gigs. It had become my symbol. In Chinese mythology, blue dragons are powerful creatures that live in water. Since one of my great joys as a child was swimming in Lake Michigan, and since I’d learned my best combat techniques from a former Shaolin kung fu monk, the imagery seemed to fit and gave me confidence.

  “What are you doing in this shitty neighborhood?”

  “You called me, remember?” I squeezed his hand hard, willing my life into him. Blood had splattered his white shirt like a panel from a Rorschach test. His abdomen looked like meat ready for a sausage grinder.

  “Shit!” I muttered, momentarily squeezing my eyes tight.

  I jammed my earpiece in place and called for an ambulance and police, then snapped it back on my lapel and took Roy’s pulse. It was too slow. If the ambulance didn’t hurry, he wouldn’t make it.

  “Angel…”

  “Yes, Roy?” I stroked his cheek. “What is it?”

  He looked at me with eyes I had once watched so carefully for approval. With a gray mustache and silver hair, Roy was elegant and smart. He was also wily. He’d been the first man to tell me it was okay to be a little bad for a good cause.

  “Go help the boy,” he croaked.

  “What boy?”

  He raised his right hand and pointed, then dropped it and passed out.

  I checked his pulse again to make sure he was still alive. Then I carefully headed in the direction in which he’d pointed. My stomach surged with vertigo when I spotted a second body, which was so utterly still I knew immediately that “the boy” was dead.

  As I knelt, both fascinated and horrified beside the lifeless form, I thought of Marco’s question to me: do you really know what death is? Trying to take it in as much as I could, I carefully tugged on the shoulder of the young man’s Hawaiian shirt. The weight of his shoulders pulled his still-supple torso toward me, and I winced at the scarlet carnage. I reached down and pulled his head my way so I could look at his face, in case I recognized him.