Gentleman Takes a Chance

by Sarah A. Hoyt

  To distract himself from the machine, he turned his attention to the desks, once more. Above them were corkboards, with the usual family pictures and the like, showing that most people who worked here were pretty ordinary. One of the corkboards was ornamented with groups of young men standing around drinking beer and an inordinate number of pictures of a simpering blond in different bikinis. Rafiel presumed it was a young man's desk and, in fact, looking at the various groups in the pictures on the wall, quickly narrowed down the user of the desk to a tall, disheveled blond who looked like a football player. He was the youth who appeared in every picture and Rafiel had a vague memory of seeing him among the other employees the police had cursorily interviewed. Judging from the attention given to beer and girls amid the man's favorite memories, it wasn't hard to imagine him bringing girlfriends to the shark area to impress them. But then, the pictures were all of the same girl, and she didn't look like she'd be that much into sharp-toothed creatures.

  Next to that desk was another one, whose remarkably neat and empty corkboard showed only two pictures. One had a soulful-eyed, sad-looking basset. The other, which was clearly a bought postcard, showed a donkey about to cross a busy highway and said, in yellow letters across the top "dumb ass." Rafiel thought the desk might as well be labeled as John Wagner's, and resisted a momentary impulse to look through the drawers. He truly had no reason to suspect John Wagner of anything, no matter how much he had—and he undoubtedly had—upset Lei. At least, judging from her comments on him. But then, Rafiel thought, those two would rub the other one the wrong way, wouldn't they? Lei Lani with her careful image, her nice clothes and manners, and John Wagner who seemed to believe his job was to repeatedly poke the universe in the eye.

  He moved on to the next desk, and perked up because it was so obviously a woman's. Or perhaps he was letting his assumptions show, but he truly could not imagine any man, no matter his sexual orientation, adorning a desk with a collection of pretty kitten mugs, and owning a notepad in pink ornamented with butterflies. Besides, the collection of smiling kids in various stages of tooth loss and toothiness on the corkboard seemed to clinch the matter. They were all the same kids, he guessed, at different stages of growth. Or at least, the entire horde were redheaded and blue-eyed and had disturbingly vacuous expressions. "I guess she has what? Eight children?" he asked, more to distract himself from the contemplation of such a thing than to talk.

  "What?" Lei said, the rustling of papers momentarily stopped.

  "I said your . . . colleague seems to have eight children?"

  She looked across and smiled. "Suzanne isn't married," she said, and, as though realizing that really didn't mean much in context, added, "She doesn't have any children. Those are her nephews and nieces."

  "Oh," Rafiel said, embarrassed. He stepped across the other way, to look at the desk next to Lei's, which had pictures of what appeared to be bodybuilders on the corkboard, a note saying "Call me" and the number, and a collection of pink notebooks on the desk. He had just resolutely decided he wasn't going to say anything, much less ask it, when he noticed that Lei was staring intently at him, and blushing slightly.

  He raised his eyebrows at her. It wasn't as if he could ask her why she was staring at him, of course, but raising eyebrows was surely allowed. She sighed and colored deeper, and looked down at her hands, which were resting on a pile of papers, from which protruded a couple of plastic baggies.

  "Look," she said, "I was . . . curious . . . you know . . . after what you told me about what you found on the outside of the . . . of the preservatives."

  "Yes?"

  "Well . . . I looked in Lillian's desk . . . and . . . well . . ." She reached over and slid open the drawer in the middle of the desk.

  Rafiel looked down at a welter of pencils and pens, a forlorn nest of paper clips, a confusion of rubber bands. Lei seemed to lose patience with him. She reached down and picked up a tube of something and put it on top of the desk.

  Rafiel looked closer. "Petroleum jelly?" he said.

  "Well . . ." Lei said. "You know, it's used for . . . you know . . . sex . . ."

  "Yes, I know," Rafiel said. And, he imagined, for a dozen other things. He had a vague idea that it was also used for some sorts of closures that must resist water, like, say, wetsuits, which he knew were used when divers went in to clean the tanks.

  "But that's not what . . . what made me . . . I mean . . . why I think I should tell you," Lei said. "It's this." She showed him some grey adherences to the slightly greasy outside of the tube. "I thought . . . it might be sharkskin." And then, looking up at his face, she looked like she was trying very hard not to give a sigh of exasperation. "We use petroleum jelly around the . . . you know . . . around the aquariums, on seals and valves and such, and I thought, she might have got sharkskin on it. We collect the skin for samples and such, you know, and that she . . . you know . . . then used it for . . . for other things."

  Rafiel shrugged. He took the tube and reached for the end of one of the baggies under Lei's pile of papers. It came out from under the papers, scattering grey flakes as it was pulled away. It was full of what looked like white and grey dandruff.

  "Oh," Lei said. And then. "Not that." She pulled the baggie away and put it on her desk. "Those are some samples I meant to send to the lab, for sharkskin diseases. Of course, now I don't know if our sharks . . ." She shrugged and looked pained.

  "I need a plastic baggie, if I'm going to send this to analysis," Rafiel said. "And I must put a label on it, then seal it. And you must be willing to say I didn't tamper with it." Though of course, that didn't mean Lei Lani hadn't tampered with it, Rafiel thought but didn't say. Her finding this in the desk seemed very odd, and oddly convenient.

  She primly got him a plastic baggie from her own desk, where she had a pile of them folded together. "We use them for samples," she said, as she handed him one.

  "Curiously," he said, "we do too." Sealing the bag, he wrote on it with a marker from the desk drawer, saying what he had found and where. This would never hold up in a court of law, of course. There were so many ways in which it might have been tampered with. But at this point Rafiel was not operating on the assumption the matter would ever come to a court of law. Instead, he thought, this would end up in the court of Rafiel and it was for himself that he must collect evidence. And he wondered how stupid Ms. Lani thought he was.

  * * *

  Kyrie parked in front of the restaurant and got out of her car, shivering at the sight of the facade, at its cheery sign saying three luck dragon above another sign that proclaimed for your health, we don't use msg in our cooking.

  Kyrie pulled her coat tighter around herself. She had very bad memories of this parking lot. Without meaning to, she looked toward the sky, afraid of a flapping of large wings, the sudden appearance of the Great Sky Dragon in all his golden and green glory. But the skies were empty and a sound somewhere between throat-clearing and a cough made her turn to look.

  In the slightly open door of the restaurant, stood a middle-aged Asian gentleman, with impeccably cut salt-and-pepper hair and a big white apron. She took a deep breath. Three steps brought her close to him, and she had a moment of surprise, at noticing that he was wearing a shirt and tie under his apron.

  "Ms. Smith?" he said, extending his hand.

  She hesitated only fractionally before she shook it. It felt slightly cool to the touch. Not abnormally so. It was the same way Tom's skin usually felt, as if he'd been holding a glass with a cold drink all the time. Maybe it was something about the metabolism of dragon shifters, though Kyrie would bet the dragons were not actually cold-blooded.

  The man held the door open to her. "Please come in."

  He led her past the counter, manned by a small lady who was watching TV and doing accounts at the same time, then past the dining room where only three people sat at tables, and into a door that led into busy, noisy kitchen. Before she had more than a moment to recoil from the sound of pans banged together, the cl
ash of plates, the way people yelled at each other across the room, she felt Mr. Lung's cool hand on her elbow, and saw him pointing at yet another, narrower door.

  She went through it to find herself in a very small room. There was only one table, long and narrow, covered in an immaculate white tablecloth. Three chairs, one on either of the longer sides of the table, and one at the end. At one corner of the table, the tablecloth had been pulled back, to reveal a cutting-board surface. That area was covered in cabbage and there was a cleaver amid it. On the other side sat a pile of papers that looked like account books, but which Kyrie could not presume to decipher, given they were written in Chinese ideograms.

  Mr. Lung smiled and waved her to one of the chairs on the long side of the table, then sat himself on the facing one and took up the cleaver. "I hope you don't mind," he said, "if I work while we talk? I find it helps me concentrate. Also, we are a family operation. I don't cook, but I help with the preparation for the cooking. And then I take off the apron and serve at tables." Judging from his smile, one would think this was a pleasant social chat.

  "You . . . know my name . . ." Kyrie said.

  "Of course," he said, equably. "We met before. I mean, I've seen you. And I knew who you were. I was not . . . in my human form."

  Kyrie thought of the assembly of dragons, of the Great Sky Dragon and of Tom—as she then thought—getting killed. She felt as if her throat would close.

  Mr. Lung seemed to notice her discomfort. He set the cleaver down again, amid the chopped cabbage, gently, as if he were afraid the blade might scare her. "I know what it must have seemed like to you," he said. He joined his hands and rested them on the edge of the table, but kept his spotless shirt sleeves away from the cabbage. "But even then, I knew . . ." He shrugged. "He doesn't tell us much. He doesn't need to. He's like . . . the father of the family, and the father doesn't owe explanations to anyone, does he?" He smiled suddenly. "Well, now your attitudes here are different, but where I grew up the father could do as he pleased and didn't need to tell wife or children anything." For a moment it seemed to Kyrie as though he glanced across endless distances at a time she couldn't even imagine. "But we don't question him, and I haven't. I do have my suspicions, but I'm not so foolish as to share them, and besides, I might be quite wrong. But I can tell you he didn't mean to seriously punish the young dragon. If he had . . ." Mr. Lung shrugged.

  He picked up the cleaver again, and resumed chopping cabbage. "If he had, you wouldn't be worried for the young dragon now, because he would be dead. Himself can be quite ruthless when he chooses. I don't think he has it in him to mind what other people feel or think." He shrugged again. "But he treated the young dragon very gently, particularly for someone who had just led him on a chase and defied him the way—what is his name? Mr. Ormson?—had."

  Kyrie heard herself sniffle skeptically. "He had given people orders to kill him before."

  Mr. Lung narrowed his eyes at her. "This is where I can't give you more detailed explanations, Ms. Smith. Partly, because they are only my conjectures. But I think . . . I think Himself found out something about Mr. Ormson when he met him in the flesh. And that's when he decided he could not kill him."

  "Found out what?"

  Mr. Lung shrugged. "I can't tell you that. All I can say is that the dragon triad looks after its own."

  "But he's not . . . an Asian dragon."

  "Sometimes the differences are smaller than you think," Mr. Lung said. "And not everything is as black and white as it appears. For now . . ." He chopped cabbage with a will. "Let's establish that it matters to Himself—in fact, it's important to him—that nothing should happen to the young dragon. So, anything I can do to help you with this . . ."

  "He'll never join you, you know?" Kyrie felt forced to warn. "He just can't. He would . . . he will never give anyone that sort of authority over him."

  Mr. Lung nodded. "I talked to his father," he said, as if he were admitting to a distasteful encounter. "I know all about Mr. Ormson's hatred of authority. All I can say is that he's very young."

  Kyrie opened her mouth and almost said it wasn't the authority, it was the feeling of belonging absolutely to someone, and the fact that the triad was, after all, a criminal organization. But she realized in time that nothing could be gained from antagonizing the people she needed to help her, and almost smiled. It would be such a Tom thing to do, after all. Perhaps Tom was contagious. Instead, she closed her mouth. And when she opened it again, it was to say, "There's a dire wolf shifter in town."

  "Ah, the executioner. We've . . . heard." The nimble fingers plied the cleaver impossibly fast, chopping exact, neat strips of cabbage. "We have . . . a pact with the Ancient Ones."

  "I know. I don't know if Dante Dire intends to violate it," she said. And watched his eyebrows go up, as the cleaver stopped.

  "What do you mean 'violate it'?" For just a moment, Mr. Lung's urbane mask seemed to slip. He set his mouth into what would have been a grin, except that it displayed far more of his small, sharp teeth than any natural grin could display. "He wouldn't dare."

  Kyrie could swear she saw an extra pair of nictitating eyelids close, then open from the side, but she knew it couldn't be true. She looked away from him, hastily. "I don't know," she said. "I know the following: he's a sadist. He's not as much in control of himself as he thinks he is. He seems to have decided he likes me, or at least is not willing to hurt me, for now. And he's looking for a scapegoat for the deaths that brought him here."

  "He should be more concerned," the dragon said, "with the other deaths. The ones that originally got you involved."

  "Yes," Kyrie said. "But he doesn't seem concerned with searching out the true culprits or investigating anything. He wants to protect himself, and get out of here with his . . . reputation undiminished." Mentally she added to herself that at least she hoped he wanted to get out of there. The idea that he had a thing for her and that he might stick around to make himself agreeable to her was driving her insane. In the long list of suitors she'd rejected, Dante Dire was something she'd never met. Something she didn't need.

  She started telling the dragon about her encounters with Dire and more, about what she sensed and feared from the creature. When she was done, Mr. Lung swept the cabbage into a mound, and looked at her over it. "So, you fear he might inadvertently kill the young dragon? While baiting him?" He looked skeptical. "We are not that frail, Ms. Smith. Nor that easy to kill."

  "No," she said. "That is not what I fear at all. What I fear . . ." She shook her head. "You know Tom, such as he is." She smiled a little. "Hatred of authority and all, he insists on looking after those he thinks he's obliged to protect. To . . . to keep them from harm. As such, he's . . . well . . . he doesn't want me hurt. And he doesn't want Rafiel hurt, nor Keith, nor anyone in the diner. That girl reporter getting killed just outside the diner scared him. He thinks it's up to him to save us all. And I'm very afraid he's about to do something stupid."

  Mr. Lung was quiet a long time. When he spoke, it was in measured tones. "I would say he will do something stupid. That sense that he must do something he's completely unprepared to do . . . I've seen it before. He will get hurt."

  "Yes," Kyrie said, feeling a great wave of relief at being understood. "That's what I thought. He will get hurt."

  "No," Mr. Lung said, with great decision, his face setting suddenly in sharp lines and angles. "No. Himself would not want him hurt. I will do what it takes. What is your plan?"

  * * *

  "Right," Rafiel said over the phone as he drove away from the doughnut shop where he had dropped off Lei Lani. "And I want you to check the backgrounds of the aquarium employees," and to McKnight's protests answered, "No, nothing special, okay? Just basically their resume. But check with the places where they're supposed to have studied and all."

  "You . . . suspect one of them is an impostor?" McKnight asked.

  "I don't know what I suspect," Rafiel said. "I just want to check it out."

  "Oh
," McKnight said. "Now?"

  "Now would be good," Rafiel said, as sternly as he could. "Call me as soon as you have anything."

  He hung up before McKnight could formulate an answer, and set a course towards the laboratory to drop off the petroleum jelly. He was fairly sure the petroleum jelly would have sharkskin in it. He was also fairly sure that the skin had come from the scrapings in that baggie Lei had on her desk. It had taken all of Rafiel's self-control—plus some—to avoid giving away how obvious all this was. Except that he could feel a theory assembling, like an itch at the back of his brain. If he had to bet, he would bet that Lei Lani was the shark shifter. And he would bet she took her dates to the aquarium and then . . . made a snack out of them.

  The problem was, even if it proved that she hadn't gone to the University of Hawaii, even if it could be proven that she wasn't who she said she was . . . how could he be sure she was a shark shifter? And even if he were sure she was a shark shifter, how could he be sure that she was committing these heinous crimes? Or that she was committing them on purpose? Or that she knew what she was doing?

  In a normal crime, you knew. And if you didn't know—if you weren't absolutely sure that the criminal knew right from wrong, or that he was in full possession of his faculties, you had the courts. Rafiel's job was supposed to be to provide a case to the courts. Not constituting himself judge, jury and executioner. That would make him no better than Dire.

  No . . . he needed to go and talk to someone. He looked at the clock on the dashboard. Middle of the day. Normally both Kyrie and Tom would be at home and awake. He wasn't sure how the strange schedule was affecting things. He also knew they wouldn't be home. Rafiel had left their key with his father, who said his uncle would have the bathroom repaired in the next two or three days. But for now, Kyrie and Tom would be at the bed-and-breakfast. Or at least one of them would be. Almost for sure.