Changes -- A Randall Lee Mystery

by Charles Colyott

  He reached into his jacket pocket and produced a small gold case. Flicking it open, he took a business card and handed it to me. "It’s been a pleasure to speak with you, Mr. Lee, and if I can be of any assistance with the matter of Ms. Zhao, let me know. For now, though, I would like to enjoy a relaxing evening around my son’s beautiful work, if you don’t mind."

  I pocketed the card, shook his hand again, and bid him a good evening.

  Lau and his boys left to wander amongst the paintings; I stood around and drank. Lately, it seemed to be about the only thing I did well.

  52

  "What’d you get?" Knox said.

  "Free scotch," I said, holding up the glass.

  Knox frowned and rubbed the imaginary stubble on his chin. Marta was off powdering her nose, Tracy was still with her folks, and us boys had a moment alone to talk about the train wreck that was this case.

  "Lau says the Eight Tigers isn’t involved," I said, finishing my scotch. I flagged down a familiar waitress and told her to bring me another – on Mr. Lau’s orders. She nodded and hurried off.

  "Of course he fucking says that…what’d you think, under your justice-seeking glare he’d just up and confess?"

  "He sounded convincing," I said.

  Knox sighed heavily. "Do you honestly think a guy could make it up the ranks to be the big boss without being a cold-blooded fucking snake? C’mon, Randall, think for a minute. What did he say when you mentioned the suitcase of cash?"

  Shit.

  "I…forgot to bring that up."

  Knox leaned back against the wall and lightly banged his head into the marble.

  "What, I’m sorry…it slipped my mind," I said.

  "That’s it, I’m un-deputizing you."

  "You can’t un-deputize somebody…is that even a word?"

  "Yeah, it’s a word, alright. And I can. It slipped your mind, Randall? What the fuck, man?"

  "Y’know what? Next time, you interrogate the Triad boss, alright? You need somebody stuck with needles or, like, a tongue diagnosis - I’m your man. But it’s not like you were scrambling over to pump Lau for info. I had the shot, I took it. I didn’t know what I was doing, obviously. Sorry… shit."

  Knox sighed again. The waitress returned with my drink. Before she could walk off, I caught her elbow and held her in place long enough to drain my glass.

  "Another, please? Thanks. Lau says it’s cool. Really."

  She frowned but left, staring at the glass as she walked away.

  "You talk with Junior yet?" Knox said.

  "Nah, haven’t seen him, but he’s the man of the hour and all…he’s prolly schmoozing."

  Knox started to say something, but Marta returned and leaned on him, saying, "Can we go soon? These shoes are killing my feet."

  "Soon, babe," he said, kissing her nose.

  I glanced over and caught sight of Jimmy Lau walking alongside his son. The older man had his arm around the young man’s shoulders and reached across to ruffle his hair with the other hand – the portrait of fatherly pride. The elder Lau must’ve told his guards to give him some space; only the massive Samson fell within my line of sight, and he didn’t seem to be paying any attention to the boss.

  I watched for a second longer and saw the huge guard standing there, just staring at his own hand. The room, for me, took on a sort of electrical silence, a super-heightened version of reality I’d only experienced twice before: on the day my daughter was found, and the day I nearly blew up. I pushed past Knox, scanning the room quickly for anything that seemed out of sorts before looking back at Jimmy and Tony Lau. Whatever had keyed up my spidey senses hadn’t yet alerted anyone else. I glanced back at Samson to see that he still stared blankly at his palm. At this distance, I could see the dark spots on the man’s hand, but I couldn’t make out what they were.

  A moment later, Samson began to gush all over the floor.

  The flow of dark, inky blood started from his nose, but quickly spread until it leaked from the corners of his eyes, ears, and mouth as well. No one else noticed for a minute, the guards were so adept at blending with the scenery that the other patrons no longer noticed them at all, until I shoved my way through the crowd, calling out to Knox as I went.

  Someone screamed at the sight; Samson slumped to his knees before flopping over onto his side. Jimmy Lau saw me, a look of worry crossing his usually neutral features.

  I arrived to the spot where Samson laid and knelt down beside him. The man’s eyes rolled around nonsensically in his head, and his body began to seize, the huge planks of muscle stiffening and shaking. The heels of his dress shoes tap danced on the marble floor, the clicks echoing in the now-quiet museum as onlookers gathered to watch him bleed.

  I pressed my fingers to his neck, feeling for a pulse. What I felt was too fast and too hard. The guy’s heart was ready to burst. I grabbed his shirt and ripped it open, looking for some sign of the trauma. Samson blindly clawed at my arms, his mouth working frantically. The only sound was the wet rasp of a drowning man. More of the blackish fluid spilled from his mouth and spattered my shirt. When he squeezed my forearms, his fingertips erupted, spraying thick, black poison blood from the nail beds.

  A woman near me screamed, and I turned to see that quite a crowd was forming around us. The screamer was my favorite waitress. I stood, grabbed her shoulders, and spun her around so I could see her hair. It was wrapped in a complicated imitation Chinese bun, and held into place with bobby pins.

  Jackpot.

  I grabbed a handful of the pins and yanked, accidentally pulling out a few chunks of hair with them. I’d apologize later.

  Kneeling back down, I bent the pins in half.

  "Holy Christ, what the fuck happened?"

  I glanced over my shoulder at Knox and said, "Bad shit. Stay with Lau and watch him."

  Samson made more gurgling sounds. I turned his head and shoved my fingers into his mouth; the excess blood had already begun to congeal, choking him. I cleared his airway and kept his head turned so that the fluid could drain out. I ripped his sleeves to expose his arms, located several points, and began to shove the pins into them. Several of the onlookers groaned at the sight, but that was to be expected; I swore to myself that I’d always keep a pack of acupuncture needles in my pocket from that moment on.

  The points I’d stuck oozed black. I turned several of the pins counterclockwise and then felt for his pulse again. It was still too fast, but it had already begun to slow somewhat. I wasn’t expecting the guy to make a complete recovery, to recover at all in fact, but I had to try. If nothing else, I hoped he could tell us who’d done this to him, assuming he knew.

  I looked back at Knox. He had Jimmy and Tony Lau with him, and the three of them stared down at Samson and me. Jimmy looked visibly shaken; his skin was grey, one hand pressed to his chest, the other holding a small silver pistol. I looked down to check my makeshift needles again, but did a quick double-take at Lau. He seemed to age before my eyes. His skin had become papery and ashen; he gasped and fell.

  "Shit!" I said, scrambling over to his side. "I said watch him, Knox, dammit."

  "I was watching him. What the fuck was I watching for?"

  "Secure all the exits. Don’t let anybody leave."

  "How the fuck am I supposed to do that?"

  "Call for backup or something, I don’t know. Do your cop shit."

  "Fuck," he muttered, running for the entrance.

  I felt for a pulse, but there was nothing there.

  "Dad? Dad? C’mon, dad…" Tony crouched down next to his father and took his hands. I took a deep breath and let it out before standing and scanning the room again.

  "You!" Tony screamed to me, "You’re supposed to be a doctor - help him."

  "I’m sorry…I can’t. He’s gone," I said.

  "Try CPR or something, c’mon…"

  "He’s gone, Tony. I’m very sorry, but there’s nothing I can do."

  Lau slumped down by his father and wept. I pushed past the cro
wd and ran out to the parking lot. Nothing moved. No squealing tires. Nobody hauling ass out of the lot.

  Because the killer knew he didn’t have to.

  He’d won again.

  53

  After Samson was taken by ambulance to the hospital and Mr. Lau’s body was taken to the morgue, after police interviews and statements and searches of the building and everything else, I met Tracy at her car and together we drove toward home. The car ride was an exercise in uncomfortable silences until she said, "Randall, what happened to that man… the big guy?"

  I thought over my answer carefully before saying, "You know how acupuncture works?"

  "…Well, you told me the whole thing about balancing yin and yang, and something about heat and dampness or something… mostly I was looking at your eyes, so I just did a lot of nodding and smiling."

  Nice to know I wasn’t the only one.

  "Just as the body has veins and arteries that carry blood to all of the organs, the body has energetic veins and arteries, called meridians, that provide each part of the body with the energy it needs to do its work. Imbalanced or stagnant energy, among other things, can be corrected by using needles to break up blockages, increase or decrease the energy in an area, whatever’s needed. Follow so far?"

  "I think so."

  "Okay. So when the old masters, thousands of years ago, were developing and cataloguing the various points along the meridians, they would buy prisoners from the jails to experiment on. This was a very different time, you understand… this was an acceptable practice then. The masters would stimulate a point, over and over, and observe and document the effects, good and bad. In this way, healers had a standardized reference work for the first time. The masters were primarily concerned with healing and so they did not publish all of their research; some of the material was too dangerous, too damaging in the wrong hands. In some of the internal martial arts, though, there are specific strikes to acupuncture points that can cause incredible harm to the body… they’re hidden inside the forms to keep them from the uninitiated, but they’re still there."

  "So the same points you use to heal people can also kill people?" Tracy said.

  I nodded.

  "Think of modern medicine… if a person is anemic, their body needs iron, sometimes in large doses. If you give that same dosage of iron to a healthy person, you can kill them. In a way, that’s the sort of thing I’m talking about. The man you saw tonight, Samson, was a very healthy, athletic guy. The man who attacked him used a very secret technique to hyper-stimulate the bone marrow."

  I felt Tracy staring at me. At last, she said, "Huh?"

  "Okay, imagine a factory that manufactures blood. Let’s say that on a normal day, the workers are able to turn out 1,000 units. Now imagine somebody comes in and laces the workers’ coffee with crack cocaine… that day, the factory turns out 10,000 units. Suddenly, there’s no place to put any of it. Do you get what I’m saying?"

  "So this killer guy caused so much blood that it just started leaking out of him?"

  "The goal was to drown him in his own fluids, yes."

  I looked over at her. Her eyes were wide, and she said, "That’s pretty fucking harsh."

  I nodded.

  She said, "So what’d you do to him?"

  "Corrected the problem…told his body to knock it off, basically. The problem is, even though his body’s equilibrium is reestablished, the rest of that blood has to be drained…it’s sort of a full body congestive heart failure."

  "Damn. Somebody really wanted him dead that bad?"

  "No, somebody really wanted to create a big neon sign saying, ‘Look over here, you stupid fuckers,’ and it worked. A big flashy, oozing neon sign of death to get everyone’s attention while he quickly and quietly killed Jimmy Lau."

  "There was nothing you could do for him?"

  "No. The killer took no chances with Lau… he used a point that can make the heart instantly falter and stop. Even if he’d been in a hospital surrounded by the best doctors in the world, the disruption to the energetic system could not be repaired."

  "Shit."

  "Yeah."

  "So where does this leave things with the case?"

  "Fubar," I said. "I was positive that Lau orchestrated the whole thing."

  Tracy nervously chewed at a nail. "Hm. Guess not, huh?"

  "Guess not."

  "You think this is some kind of big vendetta against the family?"

  "To be honest, I don’t know what to think about any of it anymore."

  I was watching the scenery move by outside the windows and listening to the silence when a sudden thought hit me like a fist to the top of the head. I picked up my phone and dialed Knox.

  "Yeah," he said.

  "Hey, you got statements from Lau, right?"

  "Hard to do now, he’s a bit stiff…"

  "Tony Lau."

  "Oh, yeah. Why?"

  "Where’s he staying?" I said.

  "What’s it to you?"

  "Get men over there."

  "You think I didn’t already think of that?"

  "Where is he, John?"

  "Ritz-Carlton, room 290. Don’t make me remind you that you’re a civili--"

  "Thank you."I hung up and turned to Tracy. She was already taking the nearest highway exit.

  "On it," she said. "Just tell me where we’re headed."

  I love that girl.

  54

  I saw the squad cars on the street and told Tracy to park well away from them. I felt too tired and too irritated to deal with delays from cops, however well-meaning they were. We parked in the hotel lot and got out.

  "Stay here," I said.

  Tracy raised an eyebrow and put her hands on her hips. "Uh, fuck you," she said.

  "This could be really dangerous," I said.

  "Might not be," she said.

  "I might not be able to protect you," I said.

  "Randall? I’m a woman, I have boobs, and I’m a bartender…I’ve kinda had to learn to handle myself."

  I didn’t want to waste any more time arguing. We went in, collected what Tracy called "a cubic ass-ton of dirty looks," and made it into an elevator before any hotel personnel could throw us out. When the doors opened on Tony’s floor, I found myself looking into a familiar pair of black sunglasses.

  "You," Daniel said.

  "Me," I said. "Hello, Daniel."

  There was no expression on his face; another bastard who’d make a good poker player.

  With no telegraphing at all, he dropped into some kind of one-armed handstand-thing.

  I didn’t get to see much more than that because the heel of one of his expensive dress shoes caught me in the side of the jaw, loosening a few teeth and knocking me into the back wall of the mirrored elevator hard enough to crack the glass. I heard Tracy scream; my brain went through a quick damage assessment and decided I was more or less alright.

  I shook off the hit and faced my assailant. Daniel grabbed Tracy as she tried to punch and kick him, and pushed her out of the elevator. Then the doors closed, leaving us alone. He sank down into a low, rhythmic, moving stance. For a moment I thought maybe he just wanted to dance. It was then that his accent finally clicked.

  "Brazilian," I said.

  He didn’t answer. Instead, he dropped low and skittered along the floor like some kind of lethal crab. Even in an extra spacious luxury elevator like this, there was nowhere to go.

  The skitter became a spin, and he drove his shin into my left ankle. With all of my weight transferred into my right leg, the kick did nothing but provide me with the momentum needed for a left Lotus kick into the bridge of his nose. His sunglasses snapped in half and dangled from his ears for a moment before falling to the floor. The man beneath them was not so easily broken. Blood lined his flared nostrils, but that was the only sign I’d hit him at all. His eyes, steel blue and wicked, bored through me with an undisguised hatred; the rest of his features betrayed no emotion.

  I heard the faint dings as
the elevator passed each floor on its descent.

  Eighteen floors – this could take awhile.

  He leapt forward like a leopard, throwing his front fist and knee at me simultaneously. I sidestepped and brought my hand down on his fist, trapping it to his knee, as I brought up my left knee – a posture in the form called ‘Golden Rooster Stands on One Leg’ – into his stomach.

  Though I knew that it had to hurt, he made no sound. Instead, he wrapped his calves around my standing leg, locking his ankles together, and hooked his arms around my back, seeking to smother me to avoid another hit. With Fa-jin, I shook from the waist like a wet dog and the internal force behind the movement dislodged Daniel from my body and threw him into the elevator wall. I heard a satisfying crunch as another of the mirrored panels shattered. At least I wasn’t going to get stuck with the full bill when this thing was done.

  Assuming I lived, of course.

  Daniel’s eye was bleeding now, a thin trail that, in the elevator’s lighting, looked like a black tear. He kicked off his shoes; not the smartest move, I thought, considering he was barefoot and there was glass on the carpeted floor.

  "Hey…" I said. The rest of the sentence was intended to be some kind of entreaty to just give up and tell me where the rest of his crew was, where Mei Ling’s killer was.

  Instead, all that came out was, "Ow."

  I blinked away the pain and blood that blurred my vision and tried not to look too surprised at the burning wet line that had appeared on my cheek. Especially considering I’d dodged the crescent kick Daniel had thrown at my face.

  Then I noticed the long, mirrored sliver of glass held adeptly between his toes.

  "Oh, what the..?" I managed before I had to go on the defensive again. I shrugged off my sling; it was really starting to cramp my style. A whirlwind of spinning kicks headed my way; first low, then head-level, then low again. It was unpredictable, erratic, hard-as-hell to get away from.