by R. J. Jagger
Prarie waved.
The woman waved back and then disappeared inside.
Two minutes later, Prarie reached Dangerous Lady and tied up.
The door to the cabin was closed but not locked.
Good.
She walked down six steps and looked around.
Ample light came through the portals.
The floor was teak.
The sink was full of dishes.
The bed was unmade.
Stuff was everywhere.
A flat-screen TV was off.
Then something caught her eye; a semi-automatic pistol, black.
She never held a gun before and found it heaver than she expected. Then she looked around for a safety, found it, and figured out how to flick it off.
What are you for?
To get drunk and shoot seagulls?
SUDDENLY HER CELL PHONE RANG and a panic-laced voice came through—“He’s back!”
“You got to be kidding—”
“He’s standing right where his dinghy was, looking around for it.”
“Damn it.”
“You got to get out of there.”
“I just got on board. I haven’t even looked around yet,” Prarie said.
“There’s no time. Get in the dinghy and head east. I’ll meet you over there.”
“No.”
“But—”
“Just stay where you are and keep an eye on him,” Prarie said. “If he actually gets in something and starts heading this way, let me know.”
“That’ll be too late. You’ll be trapped.”
“We’re wasting time,” Prarie said.
Then she hung up and looked around with the gun in hand.
Talk to me, Dangerous Lady.
Talk to me fast.
Chapter Twenty-Six
Day Five—August 7
Friday Afternoon
______________
TEFFINGER SHORED UP ON COFFEE and watched while Fan Rae worked the computer, looking for Billy Shek and having lots of luck—all of it bad. There were a billion Sheks in the city, but no Billy. “Lots of people go by a western name but never officially change their legal name,” Fan Ray said. “It’s a real problem.”
“So I see.”
It was another dead end.
Wait, maybe not.
“Can you cross-reference the Sheks to photographers?” he asked.
She shook her head.
“No.”
Okay.
Dead end.
The computer wasn’t any kinder when they searched for Syling Wu. It was as if she didn’t exist.
Weird.
“You know what I need?” he asked.
No.
She didn’t.
“A thermos.”
“A thermos? Why?”
“For coffee,” he said. “I like to have it with me.”
HIS CELL PHONE RANG. It was Sydney so he stepped into the hall and answered. “How are things going over there?” she asked.
Teffinger grunted.
“I’ve never spent so much time going absolutely nowhere,” he said. “I’m not a single inch closer to finding d’Asia than I was two years ago before I even met her.”
“Yeah, well, that doesn’t make two of us.”
“Meaning what?”
“Meaning I’ve had a few developments,” she said. “Double-F bumped into me and asked how things were going on that railroad case. I told him about the videotape. He said to give it to Kwak and see if he could enhance it.”
Teffinger twisted a pencil in his fingers, then snapped it in half.
“Do it,” he said.
“I will, obviously, but that’s not the main reason I called,” Sydney said. “One of the black-and-whites picked up a homeless guy for trespassing down at the tracks this morning. They got to talking. The guy said he was there the night the woman got dumped. He was sleeping in a boxcar when headlights woke him up. He looked outside and saw a pickup truck. A white man pulled a woman from the bed of the truck and dumped her on the ground. He got a good luck at the guy.”
“How could he?”
“He said the guy dumped her near the front of the truck and the headlights lit his face up pretty good.”
Teffinger remembered it.
He paced.
“I took his statement and then he spent an hour working with a sketch artist, but without any luck,” she added. “So there won’t be a composite sketch going on the news tonight. This guy swears though that he’ll recognize the guy if he ever sees him again.”
She paused, waiting.
“What’s his name?” Teffinger asked.
“Charles DeFry.”
“Don’t know him,” he said. “Maybe he’ll wander off to some other town.”
“He’s been in Denver for five years.”
“Of course he has.”
“Even the winters,” she added.
FAN RAE APPEARED with a brisk step and grabbed Teffinger’s arm as she walked past.
“Come on.”
“Where we going?”
“To a bar I just found out about from an anonymous caller,” she said.
“Why? What’s there?”
“Smoke, if my hunch is right,” she said. “The same smoke that was in Nuwa Moon’s hair.”
“Wait a minute.”
He disappeared down the hall, into the kitchenette, and reappeared ten seconds later with a cup of coffee in hand.
“Okay,” he said.
HONG KONG starts at sea level but quickly rises as it stretches south out of Victoria Harbour. Within a short distance, the terrain gets too steep to build skyscrapers and the cityscape screeches to a stop. From the air, the city looks like a long thin strip of congestion sandwiched between the water and the mountains. The higher portion of the city is called the Mid-Levels. An enclosed escalator runs for several blocks and connects the sea level portion of the city to the Mid-Levels. In the morning, the escalator only runs downward. After ten, it runs both ways.
That’s what Teffinger and Fan Rae ended up taking, the escalator, which carved through SoHo.
They got off on Conduit Road and walked west for three blocks, staying on the shady side of the street. Then they came to a bar called Hei Yewan, which turned out to be a large underground hideaway, barely noticeable from the outside.
It was closed but when they pounded on the door, someone finally answered—a man about 25, dressed in all things black, heavily pierced and tattooed. His hair was spiked and dyed pink.
Fan Rae explained who she was and asked, “What’s your name?”
“Dustin.”
“No, your real name.”
“On Yu Liou.”
“Are you the owner?”
“No, I’m the manager.”
“Show me the back room,” she said. The man hesitated and Fan Rae said, “Just do it. I’m not in the mood.”
THEY WALKED through a large dark space big enough to hold three hundred drunks, with a cement floor, black walls, multiple bar areas and dozens of speakers. At the back was a velvet rope guarding a black door.
Teffinger pictured a doorman there at night.
Dustin unlocked it.
They walked down a short black hallway.
He unlocked a second door.
Beyond that was a room, a fairly large room. On the cement floor, in red spray paint, was a K’ung chia symbol.
“Tell me about this room,” Fan Rae said.
Chapter Twenty-Seven
Day Five—August 7
Friday Afternoon
______________
“GET OUT OF THERE NOW! He just jumped in another dinghy and he’s heading your way!” As soon as she heard the words, Prarie slammed the phone in her pocket, grabbed the only thing she had found of interest—a laptop—and ran up the stairs.
Then she had a second thought, bounded down below and grabbed the gun.
She was in the dinghy and had it untied in a heartbeat. It drifted while
she pulled the rope for the outboard. It sputtered but wouldn’t catch. She pulled again, and again, frantic.
It choked and spit blue smoke, refusing to start.
Damn it!
It was flooded.
She twisted the gas to full throttle and pulled again. It sputtered twice and then fired. She jammed it in gear and headed east at full throttle. The bow slammed into the waves and threw cold salt spray in her face.
She turned and checked behind her.
What she saw she could hardly believe.
The rock star was closing fast, shouting and waving a fist.
There was no way she’d get to shore before he reached her.
Shit!
What to do?
UP AHEAD WAS A BRIDGE for a major road, held up by massive piers rising out of the harbour. She jammed the gun in her belt, swung around the closest one and dived over the side as soon as she got out of sight.
The dinghy went south; faster now, without her weight.
The sound of the other engine got louder.
She ducked under the surface just before it got around the pier. When she surfaced, the rock star was in hot pursuit of the runaway—so beautiful.
Then something bad happened.
He carved to the left and doubled back.
SHE STAYED UNDER THE WATER as much as she could, rising only to take a quick gulp of air.
Minute after minute passed.
The man didn’t leave.
He was trolling and circling, waiting for her to get so tired that she’d have to break the surface and flail her arms. It was only a matter of time before he spotted her. Then the worst possible thing happened, he came directly at her, on a collision course. She got as far under the surface as she could, frantic about the propeller. Then as he passed overhead, she pulled the gun and got ready.
Suddenly the engine revved.
The dinghy sped away.
She stayed under as long as she could.
When she rose, she saw him speeding to the other dinghy, which had lodged against the south shore. Then she saw why.
Emmanuelle was there, spotting the laptop, grabbing it and running.
Chapter Twenty-Eight
Day Five—August 7
Friday Afternoon
______________
THE BACK ROOM OF HEI YEWAN got used for a private affair on Wednesday, the night Nuwa Moon ended up with a K’ung chia symbol carved in her 22-year-old stomach.
“Used by who?” Fan Rae asked.
Dustin, the manager, scratched a tattoo and shrugged.
“I don’t know.”
“Bullshit.”
“Honest,” he said. “Everyone came and went by the back door. The two doors that we just went through, they were locked the whole time.”
“So who knows who was here?”
“I don’t know,” he said. “Not me, though. I don’t have anything to do with this part of the place. I only manage the front and that’s where I was.”
They pressed for information and got none.
He denied knowing if the room was used for pagan purposes. He also denied ever seeing Nuwa Moon or Syling Wu, either on Wednesday or on any other day.
They escorted the man out of the room and shut the door.
“He’s lying about not knowing Nuwa Moon,” Fan Rae said. “This is the exact kind of place she would hang out and she’s way to pretty to miss. Dustin’s a horn dog. He was even checking me out.” A pause then, “I don’t see any blood on the floor, at least to my naked eye. We’ll give forensics a call, though, and let them shine the lights. Public records will tell us who the owner is. It’ll be a corporation because everything here is. But we should be able to peel that back and squeeze the principals.”
Teffinger understood.
They had a liquor license they wouldn’t want to lose.
Answers were out there, they would just take time and effort.
“We should stop in here tonight, have a drink and show Nuwa Moon’s picture around,” Teffinger said. “Do you think they play any Beach Boys songs?”
SOMEONE KNOCKED on the door and then pushed it open, tentatively. Teffinger expected Dustin, but it turned out to be a woman with black glasses, attractive, almost on par with Fan Rae, wearing white shorts and an eggshell-blue tank top over a very nice non-pierced, non-tattooed, non-g-punk body. She was taller than most, about thirty, and wore her hair short and stylish.
She had a classy, exotic look.
She could be a model or a corporate executive.
As interesting as she was, Teffinger’s focus shifted to Fan Rae, who seemed to be in shock.
“We need to talk,” the woman said to Fan Rae. The words were in English. A glance at him meant, “In private.”
“Hey, no problem,” he said.
He headed down the hall, then to the restroom.
When he got back to the hallway, the women were still talking—no, not talking, whispering. He hung there, trying to figure out if they were done enough for him to go back in. He could only pick up bits and pieces of the conversation, but definitely heard the word d’Asia, several times in fact.
Weird.
He tiptoed closer.
Then heard a clear sentence from the lips of the mystery woman, “I’m going to kill her, end of story. You can help or not, your choice. Either way she’s dead.”
Silence.
“When?” Fan Rae asked.
“Soon.”
“Call me before you do anything,” Fan Rae said.
“Does that mean you’re going to help?”
A pause.
Then Fan Rae said, “I don’t know. I got to think it through.” Then she lowered her voice and said, “Don’t say anything to that guy in the other room. He came here to protect her.”
“Who is he?”
“A detective from the United States. I’ll fill you in later.”
THE TALKING STOPPED and Teffinger backed out of the hallway. Thirty seconds later, the mystery woman walked into the main bar at a brisk pace and threw him a sideways glance before she pushed through the front door.
Teffinger headed to the symbol room.
“Who was that?” he asked.
Fan Rae shook her head as if it was no biggie.
“Just someone from work.”
“Oh.”
“I’m going to call forensics,” she said, referring to the hunt for bloodstains.
Fine.
Good idea.
“I’m going to head out and find some coffee,” he said.
“You are so addicted.”
He was already in the hallway, walking fast.
“You want some?”
“No.”
Outside, he looked for the mystery woman.
She wasn’t to the left, or the right, or across the street.
Damn it!
She was nowhere.
He headed to the right at a trot, which turned out to be a good move.
There she was up ahead, weaving quickly through the crowd.
He hung back thirty paces and followed.
HIS HEART WAS HEAVY.
Fan Ran wasn’t who he thought she was.
He was alone.
The city felt cold.
Chapter Twenty-Nine
Day Five—August 7
Friday Afternoon
______________
THE WOMAN ON SHORE ran with the spirit of a deer being chased by sharp yellow teeth. She escaped but Kong got a good enough look at her to tell she was the same woman who hit on him at D-Drop last night. As for the other woman, the one in the dinghy, she disappeared after rounding the pier and Kong never got a good look at her.
Maybe she escaped.
Maybe she drowned.
Hopefully the latter.
Back at Dangerous Lady, everything seemed intact except for the laptop and the gun. He didn’t care about the gun and in fact was glad it was gone. It was illegal as hell and could only bring trouble.
Good rid
dance.
The laptop was a different story.
He needed to get it back.
The best he could figure, the woman in the dinghy was the person blackmailing him. She must have recruited the other woman, who tried to pick him up last night, with intents of having him take her back to his place where she could snoop around in hopes of getting even more dirt. When that didn’t work, they decided to break in.
Well, screw that.
That insanity was going to end.
It was time.
He called Kam Lee Yao and said, “Where are you?”
“At the establishment.”
Kong chuckled.
“I’m going to come over and talk to you.”
“Why, what’s going on?”
“I’ll tell you when I get there.”
KAM LEE OWNED AND OPERATED the best dungeon in Hong Kong. It sat in the hills south of the city, on Bowen Road not far from Lover’s Rock. Outside, it looked like a mansion. Inside, it was a world unlike all others—a world of addictions, a world of secrets, a world of forbidden pleasures. Kam Lee didn’t know it at the time, but her kinky side took hold at age ten, when a pack of boys held her down spread-eagle on the ground and took turns tickling her to death.
That incident laid dormant for ten years.
Then she began to explore.
She preferred to be a top.
In fact, she was always a top.
Well, not always.
She’d submit to a certain few.
Kong was one of those few.
She had a stable of lovelies, available 24/7, tops and bottoms, varied enough to satisfy even the most extreme desires. They were pricey, make no mistake about that, but they were worth every penny. There were ten soundproof rooms with a variety of themes; dark dungeons, bedrooms, devices. Five women were on hand at all times to handle the walk-ins—fifteen on the weekends.
The girls’ schedules were posted on the website.
Clients could pay cash or credit.
Confidentiality was paramount.
Special arrangements were available for high-profile clients or anyone else who wanted absolute discretion. They would be picked up by car, driven to the back door, and escorted in total secrecy to one of the rooms. If they wanted, the slave could even be blindfolded the entire time and never even know who the session was with.