by J. S. Morin
“You are at the heart of the storm. When it moves, you will be swept away with it.”
For once, I was in no mood to let him dance me around with his cryptic philosophical shit. With 7,000 miles between us, I had enough buffer to finally talk back to him.
“Cut the bullshit, Dad. I’m tired of everyone around here brushing me off. Tell me what’s going on.”
“The shadows are real. I can say no more over the phone. There is a man, an old acquaintance of mine. I want you to go see him.”
“Wait. What? Who?”
This wasn’t the sort of info to drop and run from. Who the hell was tapping phones, anyway?
“Go to Chinatown. Ask for Kang. He will help you.”
“Help me what? And do you have any idea how many Kangs there might be in Chinatown?”
“Ask anyway. You will find the right one. He will keep you safe.”
“What do you know about all this? Do you hear the shadows whispering?” But I asked in vain. The line was already dead. “Can you be any more of a prick?”
I threw the phone.
Chapter Fifteen
The streets of Chinatown were still lively after dark.
Office workers who seeped in during the day to grab lunch or dinner had filtered out, leaving mostly residents. I wasn’t interested in the nightlife, so I steered clear of the shiny happy side of the district where carousing tourists might wander.
I’d been told by various people that I fit right in or stand out like I’ve been painted white. More important than looks though, I spoke the language. While the buildings looked quintessentially Bostonian, and the signs were mixed with English, Chinese was the only language to be heard.
I was on foot.
After some internal debate, I’d worked my shift at Pi On Third. Whether or not my father’s warning about shadows turned out to be valid, I still needed an income. It’d been tempting to sneak off between deliveries and track down this Kang character.
Driving my boss’s car though, I couldn’t bring myself to do it. I took it back and headed inbound to the city after my shift. This time, the Black-Hatted Stranger didn’t show up on my train.
I guess creepy subway stalkers have work hours, too. Mine was off the clock.
My father was, to put it mildly, an asshole.
Li Zhujiu could have given me an address, a number to call, even a freaking first name to go by. I wouldn’t even have minded if he told me a place to go to ask for Kang instead of a quarter square mile district of Boston.
This Kang guy might have been working for my father or at least working with him, but that didn’t mean I was safe from his enemies. Guys with that sort of reputation always had enemies. Drop that name in front of the wrong sort of people and I might end up with problems a lot closer than China.
Most of the light came from the shop signs or poured from store windows. People walked with purpose or hung outside the entrances to buildings. No one meandered.
A light rain had started to fall, wetting the streets enough that cars kicked up a spray as they passed by. I still had my Sox hat on from my delivery run—locals got better tips—but I could have used a heavier jacket. My evening attire hadn’t been planned around wandering Chinatown.
Who to ask was the big question on my mind. Any person I walked past might have known Kang, might have worked for him, or might have a vendetta against him.
A police cruiser flashed past, cutting across the intersection ahead of me, and it was all I could do not to duck behind a parked car. I might have been paranoid, but at least it was a real threat.
Once the cops were out of sight, I started evaluating my options.
The twenty-something couple? Horrible idea. Probably on a date and neither would want the other to know they were involved with anything underworld.
The old lady struggling with the wire pull-cart loaded with groceries? Hell no. I stopped to help her get it up onto the sidewalk and kept moving. Her thanks was the best feeling I’d had all week.
I had to talk to someone.
A guy, probably mid-forties, stepped out of a take-out place and lit a cigarette. He wore an apron tied around his waist, along with a faded polo shirt striped white and yellow. Pacing as he smoked, he seemed as good a candidate as any. People working in food met a lot of customers. Everyone ate, even mysterious one-named mobsters. Plus, smokers were more gregarious on average, forced together by local ordinances to that limited smoking to the outdoors. There was nothing else for them to do on break but smoke and gossip.
I greeted him in Mandarin. “How’s it going?”
The smoking restaurant worker turned his eyes toward me but barely moved his head. He shrugged. “No complaints.”
“I was wondering if you could help me?”
He shook his head and flicked a hand at me. “Go beg somewhere else.”
“Nothing like that. I’m just looking for someone. Do you know where I can find Kang?”
One eyebrow raised, barely a twitch. Mentally I crossed this guy off my list of people I’d ever play cards with. He was cool as stone. “Boy like you… you don’t want to see Kang.”
That settled it. This guy knew. I wasn’t letting him blow me off. “If I wanted to avoid Kang, where should I steer clear of?”
The smoker nodded slowly. “You might not want to be seen at the Yangtze Valley. If I were you, and I did stumble in there, I wouldn’t mention that name. But, that’s just my opinion.” A flicker of a smile vanished as he took a draw from his cigarette.
Some part of me wondered if I should slip him a few bucks as a tip or a thanks. But I had one more question. “Where’s the Yangtze Valley? You know, so I don’t wander there by accident.”
He snorted. “Don’t you have a phone?”
“I don’t believe in them.” It was a nice, convenient lie, way better than admitting I’d broken it throwing it across a room.
“Two blocks, left, one and a half blocks, on the right. Can’t miss it. Easy place to avoid.”
Chapter Sixteen
The Yangtze River runs through Shanghai, China, but the Yangtze Valley was a restaurant specializing in Benbang cuisine. It was your typical over-under arrangement. The restaurant was up a short flight of brick steps with a wobbly handrail. Overhead, air conditioners poked out of apartment windows, blocking access to the wrought-iron balconies and fire escapes along the red brick facade. The signs were written in English and Chinese, and I couldn’t help smirking at how much more the Chinese signs said.
I stood outside in the rain, already about as wet as I was going to get. The thing about a light rain is that if you’re out in it long enough, eventually you still get soaked through.
Inside the restaurant, I could see customers at the counter. An old man sitting right by the window held a newspaper in one hand and a can of beer in the other. The old man wasn’t looking out, but I still got the impression he knew I was there staring at him.
My shadow lay across the steps but mimicked my movements the way a normal shadow should. Turning to check the source of light, I saw a street lamp—the old fashioned sort that was just a post with a light atop it. It went dark as I watched. The paid parking lot it had overlooked all but vanished from view in the rainy gloom.
I quick-stepped up the stairs before I started reading omens in the streetlights.
A wall of kitchen-warmed air struck me as I crossed the threshold. Shrimp, crab, chicken, pork, ginger, and that tangy scent of sweet-and-sour sauce enveloped me. Fluorescent panel lighting and backlit menus behind the counter gave the tiny restaurant an otherworldly feel, as if it was an alien museum exhibit meant to represent an Earth habitat and hadn’t quite nailed the details. A wind chime rang as the door brushed it.
Other than the old man at the window, I was the only customer. The guy at the register was pudgy-faced, with sweaty hair and rolled-up sleeves. He wore an apron that matched the red-and-gold decor.
Before I said a word, the guy bowed, lowering his eyes. I wasn’
t used to that shit. I’d expected a greeting that balanced the fence between friendly and terse, asking what I wanted to order. He looked like the all-business sort. “Welcome. Please. Upstairs. You are expected.”
By his heavy accent, I knew English wasn’t his only language. “You’re taking me to Kang?” I asked in Chinese.
He smiled self-consciously and switched languages. “Mr. Kang has been expecting you for some time. He is eager to meet you. Please come this way, Mr. Lee.” He beckoned me behind the counter.
I followed him as he exited the restaurant into an adjoining stairwell. There was a line of tiny personal mailboxes along one wall. “What’s your name?” He knew mine after all.
He turned and offered a slight bow. “Duan Junyong. I am pleased that you asked.”
“Do you know what Mr. Kang wants to see me about?”
Junyong was already several steps up, but he stopped and turned. “No, Mr. Lee. Your father also knows my name, and I would be very happy for him to know that I am not the kind of man who asks those questions—or answers them.”
“Got it. I won’t tell my father anything to make him think otherwise.”
With another small bow and a smile I could only describe as relieved, Junyong continued up the stairs.
The thick carpets ate the sound of our footsteps but couldn’t stop the creaking of stairs that might well have been original to the building. Apartment doors surrounded the second-floor landing, but Junyong continued past them.
Realizing I was probably a mess, I shook out my shirt and jacket and smoothed down my hair, wiping the wetness on my jeans.
Junyong knocked at the door of apartment 3D. Despite the gnawing worry in my gut, I was still with-it enough to find the number amusing. Nice to know I’d be staying in three-dimensional space. With all the shit going on lately, getting reduced to 2D wasn’t off the menu of fucked-up possibilities.
Straightening my posture and keeping my chin up, I kept my eyes on the peephole, shifting my weight back and forth as we waited.
Muffled voices on the other side of the door made it clear there were at least two people inside. Odds were that one of them was Kang.
This was probably my last chance to back out. Two quick flights of stairs, a short burst through a little restaurant storefront, and I’d be home free. Junyong was too scared of my father to lay a hand on me, and no one else was around to help him.
I could make it.
But instead I held my ground, and after a wait that was probably shorter than it felt, the door opened.
The man who answered wasn’t what I expected. He was young, possibly younger than me, with brush-cut hair and an earring. Gym rat muscles stretched the sleeves of a plain black t-shirt that obscured the upper half of a tattoo. “This him? Come on, get in here.”
Chapter Seventeen
Junyong smiled and backed away from the door as I stepped inside past the bouncer.
The apartment beyond was cozy and more modern than I’d have guessed from the building’s exterior. Hardwood floors looked new and didn’t creak. Cream-colored furniture and a coffee table strewn with Chinese-language newspapers and the remnants of a meal took up most of the living room. The walls were hung with framed, faded photographs along with a flat panel television on mute, with stock ticker symbols scrolling by and a talking head lip-synching silence.
It might have all seemed pretty normal if the windows hadn’t been spray-painted black.
An elderly Chinese man in a light gray suit paced the room with a cell phone to his ear, talking a mile a minute in Mandarin.
When I tell people I’m fluent, it’s a bit of a stretch. I can hold my own in a conversation and pick voices out of a crowd. I know the vocabulary and the slang. But when someone gets up a head of steam, my ears just can’t keep up with it like they can in English.
With a glance over to me, the elderly man spared me a quick smile and slowed enough that I caught the end of the conversation. “Take care of it. I’ll check in later.” He put away the phone and switched to English. “Mr. Lee, I’m so glad to see you.” He had a pleasant accent, but the words sounded comfortable for him.
He shook my hand, holding on uncomfortably long but not so firmly that I couldn’t have pulled away if I wanted to. His grin showed perfect teeth. If I lived to be 900 years old, I could only hope to look so good. He had all his hair, and it was jet black—slicked and possibly dyed, but it didn’t look like a rug. His eyes were bright, alert, and friendly. The clues to his age were the hints of gray hair in his wispy mustache and the cracked-leather wrinkles around every feature of his face. Mr. Kang was also as thin as a broom handle.
“Nice to meet you, Mr. Kang.”
“We’ve met before, but you were too young to remember. Please, sit down.” He motioned to the couch and seated himself in an armchair.
The bouncer cleared his throat. “I’ll be waiting downstairs.” He glared at me before shutting the door on his way out.
When he was gone, Mr. Kang stared at the closed door a moment. We listened together to the footsteps creaking on the stairs. “My nephew. Son of my youngest sister. He worries you might harm me.”
When I looked for it, I could make out an indistinct shape under Mr. Kang’s suit near the armpit. “Don’t think that’d work out well for me.”
Kang pulled back his jacket and removed a semi-automatic pistol, setting it on the coffee table between a fountain soda and a take-out box of fried rice from the restaurant below. “This isn’t meant for you. Your father is a dear friend of mine. I would let you shoot me before I dreamed of causing you injury.”
He talked a good game, but I wasn’t entirely reassured.
There were other rooms in this apartment, not to mention the adjoining apartments. If I were in Kang’s shoes, I’d have a guy in one of the bedrooms or even a closet, ready with a gun. That’s how I’d have written it in one of my Keith Damon novels, anyway.
Assuming Kang did this sort of stuff for a living, I could only imagine he had precautions in place that were at least as good as my top-of-the-head plans.
“So what’s the deal? My father was a bit… short on the phone.”
If this guy was friendly with my dad, telling him Li Zhujiu was a dick wasn’t going to help me. Then again, if he knew my dad that well, he already knew.
“Events have been set in motion. Prematurely, it would seem.”
I leaned forward, catching myself before it might look like I was reaching for the gun. “Can you do any better than that? I mean, there’s been some crazy shit going on lately.”
Kang smiled and reached into his jacket pocket for an envelope, which he set beside the gun. “I’m afraid I cannot. Your father wants you protected from his—let’s call them annoyances—not involved with them. Ignorance will keep you safer. Your safety is my number one concern.”
“What’s this?” I nodded to the envelope, still wary of making a move anywhere near the gun. I wrote about guns—detectives carrying them, criminals firing them, people getting interrogated at gunpoint—but I’d never so much as picked one up.
My writer’s instinct told me this one wasn’t loaded. If I picked it up and aimed it at Kang, he’d laugh and give one of those villain speeches about what a fool I was. My common sense told me I ought to treat it like it was loaded and had a hair trigger.
He spread a hand toward the envelope. “Please. Take it. Look inside.”
Swallowing and glancing toward the bedroom door out of the corner of my eye, I slowly removed the envelope from the table. It wasn’t sealed shut; the flap had merely been folded inside. I opened it and pulled out the contents.
I stared.
Staring back at me from behind the laminated surface of a Chinese driver’s license was my own picture. It identified me as Li Chao Dong, but all my other personal information was correct. Then there was a banded wad of cash that looked straight out of a bank heist. But what nearly blew a fuse in my brain was the passport.
I held it open
and showed it to Kang, as if he were unfamiliar with the contents. “This is a diplomatic passport.”
“Yes.”
I set everything down on the coffee table. “I can go to jail for having any of this.”
Kang laughed. “That’s the best part: you can’t. Diplomatic immunity.”
This wasn’t helping settle my worries. “Yeah, and when I get arrested trying to pass off phony documents, I’m in shit with the United States and China.”
Suddenly serious, Kang reached out and laid a hand atop the passport. “Not phony. Delivered direct from Chinese embassy. Arrived this afternoon.”
The logistics of that boggled my mind. How far ahead had my father planned?
I picked up the driver’s license. “Then how come this looks used?”
“Tony—my nephew. I made him put it in his wallet, take it out again. Hundreds of times. He sat all day watching Shadowblood on Netflix.”
Picking up the bundle of cash, I waved it in Kang’s face. “And this? How am I supposed to get home without getting mugged? Are these even real bills?”
“Your father made sure you have a reasonable allowance to set your affairs in order.”
“My affairs? What the hell does he think I do for a living? I barely have a credit score.”
Kang stood. “I’m being a poor host. Can I get you something to eat? To drink? Junyong can bring something up. One call is all it would take.” He took out his cell phone.
“No. I just… can’t you tell me anything? My world has gotten really weird lately, and I’d hoped my father had… I don’t know, relayed a message to me maybe.”
Setting aside his phone, Kang nodded and lit a cigarette. “I understand. But you can ask him yourself. Your father knows much more than he tells me. I’m just a moneyman these days. There is one more thing there you should look at.”
There was a folded sheet of paper inside, with an index card attached by paperclip inside the fold. The page was a list, an itinerary with no times.
