by Steven Gore
“Yeah. I’m two blocks south of East Wind. In an alley. You still in the warehouse?”
“Everything’s secure. We burst in on some guys who came to rip off the dope. All but one gave up pretty easy. Where’s Ah Ming?”
“Near me, but trapped.”
“I just sent some SFPD backup that way.”
“Call them off. There’s no way they’ll understand what’s happening here.”
Casey switched to his radio and ordered the officers to take positions at the ends of the alley, then returned to his cell. He called ICE to send over their drone.
“Tell me what is going on.”
“I’m near the west end. Some Chinese guy is way east of me on the other side of Ah Ming. He’s committed to killing Ah Ming, otherwise he would have bailed already.”
“Must be with the Big Circle guys who came to rip off the dope.”
“How do you know they’re Big Circle?”
“Buddy came down and looked them over. He recognized the dead one. Some asshole named Red Fire. His fire is out now. How close are you to Ah Ming?”
“He’s across the alley, down about fifteen yards. He’s hidden between some Dumpsters and the back wall of an auto repair shop.”
“I’ll send over some snipers and take him out. And the BC, too.”
“Hold off. There’s no way out of here. We need to take them alive.”
Gage had said it again, surprising himself, shocked that he’d used the word “need.”
He heard a shot and a ricochet off a Dumpster, followed by the opening of a car door. In the silence that followed, he could make out the crunching noise of rolling tires, a car being pushed forward. He glanced around the van and saw it, a small Honda creeping down the alley toward both him and Ah Ming.
Ah Ming fired at the car. Glass shattered. The gunman yelped and swore. The car stopped rolling.
“I think Ah Ming may have hit the BC,” Gage told Casey.
Gage looked under the cars again. The gunman lay on the pavement. He rolled to his side and curled up, holding his upper chest.
“Make sure your people have gotten into position at the east end of the alley so Ah Ming can’t get out that way. And tell them to keep their fingers off their triggers. I don’t want them trying to take him out and shooting me instead.”
Casey gave the command, then said to Gage, “I’m sending others to the rooftops on the north side of the alley. I can’t take a chance of Ah Ming getting out of there and taking a hostage or killing some innocent person.”
“But let me try to talk to him.”
“Okay, but the first time he points his gun at anybody, he’s dead. And you tell him that. Dead. Dead. Dead.”
CHAPTER 94
Gage disconnected the call with Casey.
Everything was starting to have a sense of inevitability about it. Everybody was going to do what they were going to do. The gunman, Ah Ming, and himself. They all knew it. And that understanding brought a reflective silence into the alley.
Gage rose from his knees and propped himself on the edge of the panel van’s step-up bumper.
Why am I trying to save this guy?
The question evoked an image of him standing in front of the Buddhist temple in Bangkok.
Karma. That’s what they call it, that’s what they claim it is. Karma.
Some necessary link, some rational connection, between how we live and how we die. Between who we are and what we deserve.
Ah Ming is death. Isn’t that what Ah Ming deserves?
But cancer is death, too. Does that mean it’s what I deserve?
Did the question even make sense?
Gage then began to think about the gunman and Ah Ming, not only as men who placed no value on life, but as bodies, two healthy bodies their owners had put at risk.
Karma, explain this one.
HIDDEN BETWEEN DUMPSTERS, Ah Ming pressed his back against the sooty wall of the auto repair shop. The odors not only of recent garbage, but the residue of years of compacted refuse caking the walls of the Dumpsters, filled his nose. He could see the knees of his suit shining from the oil and grease coating the pavement under him. But what plagued him now wasn’t disgust at the filth in which he might die, it was the thought that the white ghost across the alley had found him out. He felt exposed, like his clothing had been ripped from his body, like a night hunter wrenched from the darkness, dragged aboveground and into the midday sun.
And he felt shaken for the very first time.
Life had always been simply a matter of living, then not living. It had never entered his imagination that he would spend the last of it in a six-by-eight-foot cell or die like a trapped rat in a grimy alleyway.
However it was supposed to end, it wasn’t supposed to end like this.
CHAPTER 95
Motion caught Ah Ming’s eye. He looked up and spotted agents positioning themselves on the rooftops of the buildings in front of him, three stories above the alley.
“So, gwai lo, is this what you had in mind?”
“They aren’t going to shoot unless you raise that gun.”
“What about you?”
“That’s not what I came for, but it’s up to you.”
“So we have a little more time.”
“We have a little more time.”
“Then tell me. Why are you here?”
“Peter Sheridan.”
“Peter Sheridan? That name doesn’t mean anything to me.”
“How about Ah Pang? You remember Ah Pang. The kid who got killed at the chip robbery in San Jose. Thomas Sheridan is his father.”
“A weakling.”
“Maybe he just learned his limits. You’re the guy squeezed like a rat behind a greasy Dumpster. Not him.”
“You have nothing to connect me with the robbery.”
“Ah Tien.”
“You’re lying. I know he didn’t talk.”
“He was afraid you’d kill him when he came back for his father’s funeral so he left some shipping documents behind, a road map. When your people kidnapped him, they left his briefcase; and when they killed him, they left his address book: Sunny Glory, Lew, Efficiency Trading, Old Wu.”
“Fucking Vietnamese.”
Gage could see a spot of laser light bouncing around on the wall above Ah Ming’s head, then another, and another.
Casey’s voice emerged out of the silence. “This is the FBI. Throw down your weapon and step out.”
Silence.
“Throw down your weapon and step out.”
Silence.
Gage’s cell phone rang.
“What’s he been talking about?” Casey asked.
“Nothing. Just talk.”
“Will he let us come in to get the wounded BC? This’ll look real bad in the press if we let him bleed out.”
“I don’t think he’ll let you. Life isn’t something he seems to care about, and he sure as hell doesn’t care about FBI public relations.”
Gage called out to Ah Ming, “The police want to come and carry out the Big Circle.”
“So what. It’s his own fucking fault. He should’ve stayed out of my business.”
“His answer is no,” Gage told Casey. “Is Sylvia still in the warehouse?”
“No, some clerk collapsed and I let Sylvia take her to the hospital. I don’t want to know what Sylvia was doing in there. In fact, I’m not even sure I saw her.”
From a distance, Gage heard the thumping, whirling sound of helicopter blades approaching from the south. Soon it would be above them.
“Is that yours?” Gage asked Casey.
“It’s NBC. We’re bringing the drone over. Hold on, let me get rid of it.” Casey switched to his radio, leaving the cell line to Gage open.
“Control?”
“Check.”
“Call Channel 3. Get that copter out of here. There are armed men on the ground. It’s putting everyone in danger. Tell them to move it or the pilot will be spending the next year in federa
l prison for obstruction.”
Gage heard the helicopter edging closer. It emerged high above the building behind Ah Ming, the afternoon sun glinting off its glass bubble and polishing its white body. It froze in position, then spun out of sight, later reappearing far to the west, steadying itself for a long live shot. It was far enough away that Gage couldn’t hear the whirling blades, but he knew its camera was locked on the alley. It hung like a clock against a vast blue wall, marking time.
“Remain where you are.” Casey’s voice boomed over the loudspeaker, blasting through Gage’s cell phone. The words echoed and faded. A dominating and expectant silence returned to the alley.
Gage peeked around the corner. He couldn’t see Ah Ming. “What’s going on? Who are you yelling at?”
“It’s the BC. He’s trying to crawl toward Ah Ming. He’s like a wounded, rabid dog. Some mother’s son turned into an animal . . . what a waste.”
Both Ah Ming and Gage heard the clunking of the BC’s gun butt on the pavement and the scraping of his shoes as he crawled toward Ah Ming.
“I’m gonna drop a stun grenade. That’ll stop him.” Through the phone Gage heard the rip of a Velcro strap, then Casey: “Counting down . . . five . . . four . . . three . . . two . . . one.”
Gage dropped to his knees, shielding his head and covering his eyes and ears and pressing himself against the van. The explosion reverberated off the brick walls lining the alley. He felt the van rock back and forth, then shudder to a stop as dust, paper, and trash blew past.
The force of the stun grenade broke the gunman’s will, but the billowing dust and debris gave Ah Ming a last chance to run.
He took it. And Gage knew why. The same inner will that had made him hard and tough in his teens, that made him a godfather in his thirties, that permitted him to kill without mercy, that allowed him to live radically alone, now drew him to his feet, lifted his gun hand toward the agents on the rooftop, pulled his finger hard on the trigger, then forced his legs into a sprint west down the alley amid bursting sniper fire.
Slugs that missed him or passed through his body bounced off the walls, skipped across the street, drilled into parked cars, even thudded into the van that gave Gage cover.
“Cease fire! Cease fire! Cease fire!” Casey yelled.
If the weapons followed Ah Ming any farther, the slugs would ricochet into Gage.
Gage caught sight of Ah Ming as he came parallel, his sprint devolving into a stagger, dragging his left leg behind him, his right arm limp. Bleeding from just below his shoulder. The right side of his suit jacket punctured in two places, shiny wet circles surrounding the holes. His gun was now in his left hand.
Gage couldn’t tell whether Ah Ming even realized the shooting had stopped, so intense was his drive, so overwhelming was his will to stay on his feet, to keep moving. Gage drew his gun. He rose, his legs weak. He struggled to raise it, then braced himself against the back of the van, his shoulder throbbing.
Ah Ming turned toward him.
“Go down, just go down,” Gage said. “Please. Just . . . go . . . down.”
Gage could see in Ah Ming’s eyes all the man’s rage, fear, and ambition, now focused on Gage, his whole being reduced to one irrational thought: by killing Gage, the nightmare that had become his life would end and he could walk away.
Ah Ming raised his left arm and tried to steady the barrel in Gage’s direction. Weakened by the slugs that had ripped through him, his arm shook, the gun wavered. Ah Ming willed his arm to fix on Gage. And it did.
Gage fired. The slug hit Ah Ming in the middle of his chest. His arm fell, but he didn’t. He stared ahead, eyes glazed and unfocused. He didn’t see Gage anymore. His eyes didn’t register at all. Then his heart stopped, and his body surrendered.
CHAPTER 96
As Gage lowered his gun, he had only a vague sense of police rushing in. He gazed down at Ah Ming’s crumpled form lying before him. Even though life had left his body, somehow death hadn’t yet arrived, and Gage knew it wouldn’t for another generation, for he understood that Ah Ming was more than just his life, his biography. He was a history, a violent, perverse history. A terrifying robbery, Peter bleeding out on a warehouse floor, Peter’s grieving mother, desperate father, and courageous sister, Ah Tien’s lonely execution, Eight Iron’s manipulation, Lew’s complicity, then abandonment . . . and finally a heart-stopping bullet in the chest.
All this was the history of Ah Ming, and Gage was a part of it—no, it was more than that. At the end, as Ah Ming willed his gun to lock on Gage, he knew he’d become all of it.
The last month welled up inside him. It resisted acknowledging what death brings even to the worst of mankind, resisted a final truth.
What did Casey say? A waste. It was all a waste.
Gage started to turn away, but a chill shot through him and he was lost in an image of himself standing over Ah Ming’s body. The image contained an unformed idea, floating just out of reach. He knew he had to grasp it at its origin and think it through to wherever it led. He once again saw himself standing in front of the Buddhist temple in Bangkok. Then his wedding day, looking into Faith’s eyes. Then Linda Sheridan limping from his office. Finally, he saw the cancer that would kill him.
Ah Ming was death. Cancer was death. And since the day of his diagnosis Gage had them linked in his mind in a way he hadn’t understood. Did he really think that he could prevail over his own death by saving Ah Ming’s life? Slap away the hand of fate?
No, that’s not right. This wasn’t about sowing and reaping, the scales of justice balancing, or justice winning out, or karma, or just deserts. The world just doesn’t work that way. There was nothing inevitable about Gage’s cancer or Ah Ming’s death. Gage knew, finally knew, that fate was no more or less than a series of chance events and human choices. Ah Ming was dead because Gage killed him, and Gage was going to die of cancer. Nothing would change either one.
A wave of weariness crested above him. It seemed to pause, as if waiting for him to finish his thought. He felt himself reaching out, grasping at images that dissolved in his hands. Then he was wrenched back inside himself as words captured the images warring in his mind.
It was an illusion of immortality.
As long as the hunt for Ah Ming continued, Gage wouldn’t have to look cancer in the face. But now the hunt was over, and the wave crashed down.
Gage felt a hand grip his arm. He jerked it away.
“Graham, it’s me.”
Faith was standing beside him. She wrapped her arms around his chest.
“Sylvia called . . . I came . . . I heard the shot . . . I thought . . . Casey, he . . .”
Gage reached his arm around her and pressed her against him. Her tears soaked through his shirt, warm and wet against his skin.
Casey took the gun out of Gage’s hand and passed it to a uniformed cop, then led Gage and Faith past the swarming police officers and through the news crews gathering at the end of the alley. Gage felt the peering eyes of secretaries and clerks who listened on the radio or watched the live feed on their office computers. A pouting street woman leaned against a wall, waiting for everyone to leave so she could return to her alley home. An ambulance passed them on its way to where Flat Nose lay in the alley. A coroner’s wagon crept up and stopped, waiting for Ah Ming’s body to be released. A warehouse supervisor gathered up his workers, herding them back to their jobs.
“The show’s over. Time is money.”
An SFPD homicide detective, black suited and red tied for television interviews, stepped into Casey’s path as he led Gage and Faith away.
“This is a homicide. Nobody’s gonna run off. I need a statement. I need to know what happened.”
Casey grabbed the detective’s shoulder, spun him around, and then yanked back on his collar. Casey pointed upward and jabbed his finger at the NBC helicopter hovering above.
“Get the video, you idiot. The whole world knows what happened.”
Casey pushed past the detec
tive, through the mass of patrol cars with their lights flashing and around the television news vans with their antennas raised toward the sky. He guided Gage to an ambulance parked at the corner. The EMT pulled open the rear doors and sat Gage down on the ledge where he cut off Gage’s shirt, bandaged the wound, and stabilized the arm.
After the EMT left to report in, Casey glanced around, making sure all the cops and news reporters were out of earshot. Then he leaned down toward Gage.
“To tell you the truth I don’t really know what happened out here. For a while I thought I did, but I don’t, not a clue. Maybe, someday, you’ll explain it to me.”
Gage looked up at Casey’s face, now decades older than when they first met in that Chinatown alley. And he knew he owed Casey more than just an explanation. But it was a place to start.
Someday.
EPILOGUE
As I recall,” Dr. Stern said two days later when she entered the examining room where Gage and Faith waited, “my orders, rephrased by you, were to get rest, avoid infections, and stay away from people who can hurt you. Is there anything about those orders you haven’t violated?”
“No infection.”
“Let me see, tough guy. Take off your shirt.”
After Gage slipped it off, Stern unwrapped the bandaging that covered the stitches he received in the emergency room at SF Medical after the surgeon dug out the slug.
“Nice work. Faith, why don’t you come look at this?”
Faith got up from her chair and looked over Stern’s shoulder.
“I see a little redness there.” Faith shook her head, feigning a kind of professional disapproval. “Just as we thought, a little infection.”
“Can I still do chemo today?”
“Of course. The blood results show you’re healthy enough. You’ll just need some antibiotic ointment.”
Stern applied cream from a tube she took from a cabinet and then rewrapped the wound. Both she and Faith sat down. Gage slipped down from the exam table, then pulled on his shirt.
“You mind if I ask you something?” Stern asked, crossing her legs, resting her folded hands on her knee.
