by R. J. Jagger
WHEN KONG SHOWED UP, Fan Lee ran a finger down his chest and said, “So what’s going on?”
He looked around and said, “Let’s talk in private.”
She took him into a room that had a number of devices—a cross, a rack, and an assortment of sexual furniture—and closed the door.
He exhaled.
“I need your help with something.”
“How bad do you need it?”
“Bad,” he said.
She smiled and said, “Good.”
Then she slid her dress off her shoulders and let it drop to the floor. She wore nothing underneath, other than a drop-dead gorgeous body.
“Do a session with me and I’ll help you,” she said.
“You don’t even know what I want you to do yet.”
“It doesn’t matter.”
Kong cocked his head.
“It might be dangerous.”
“Repeat, it doesn’t matter.”
“Now?”
She nodded.
“You’re the only one I trust enough,” she said. “I’ve been in the mood for a month.”
Then she laid on her back on the rack and stretched her arms over her head. Kong knew what to do, he’d done it before. He stretched her out, tight, so that she was barely able to move.
“Comfy?” he asked.
“Yes.”
“How long of a session to you want?”
“A half hour.”
The words shocked him.
The longest session to this point had been ten minutes.
“Really?”
“Yes,” she said, “and no matter what I do or say, don’t stop. I want the full half hour. Promise me.”
“If that’s what you want.”
“That’s what I want.”
Chapter Thirty
Day Five—August 7
Friday Afternoon
______________
PRARIE MADE IT TO SHORE without drowning or getting killed by the rock star but couldn’t find Emmanuelle, so she headed back to the InterContinental.
Good thing, too.
Emmanuelle was there.
They hugged.
“That was too close,” Emmanuelle said.
True.
Very true.
“The laptop got a lot of water on it but it still turns on,” Emmanuelle added. “Unfortunately it has a security password so I haven’t been able to get in yet. Once we do get in, I have no idea whether everything will be in English or Cantonese.”
Prarie frowned.
Neither of them spoke Cantonese, much less read it.
Her hair was dry but felt like straw. She ran her fingers through it, headed for the shower and said, “I need to wash this salt off.”
“Go for it. Hey, it’s nice to have you still alive.”
“Likewise.”
WHEN PRARIE GOT OUT, Emmanuelle was pacing.
Something was wrong.
“I called that number the gallery guy gave us,” Emmanuelle said. “The thousand dollar number.”
“You mean the replica guy?”
Right.
Him.
“He’s willing to meet.”
“Good.”
“He sounded weird,” Emmanuelle said.
“Then forget him.”
“We don’t have that luxury. We’re just going to need to be careful.”
“When does he want to do it?”
“Tonight. Are you tired? Do you want to take a nap or anything?”
Prarie shook her head.
“I’m too wound up,” she said. “But I need food in the worst way.”
“Okay, but no swimming for thirty minutes.”
Prarie rolled her eyes.
“Not funny,” she said.
“A little funny.”
“Okay, maybe a little.”
THEY WALKED UP NATHAN STREET and ended up in a noisy noodle place with wooden floors and sturdy tables and throngs of people jamming food into their mouths as if they were on ten-minute timers.
They ordered.
Their food showed up in two minutes, tasty and cheap.
Prarie told Emmanuelle how she stayed under the water to avoid getting caught. “I was half ready to shoot him when your little episode over on the shore got him distracted. In a way, you saved my life.”
Emmanuelle stared at her.
“Shoot him with what?”
“The gun—didn’t I tell you about that?”
No.
She didn’t.
So she did.
“What did you do with it?”
“The gun?”
“Right.”
“I just left it there on the shore,” she said. “Why?”
“Do you think it’s still there?”
Prarie shrugged.
“I don’t know. Probably—”
“Let’s go get it.”
Prarie shook her head. “Guns are illegal in Hong Kong,” she said. “If you get caught with one, you’re going to jail, period, end of sentence. And the jails here aren’t nice.”
Emmanuelle chewed noodles and considered it.
Then she said, “I’d rather have it than not, at least tonight. If things go okay with the replica guy, we’ll dump it afterwards.”
Prarie shook her head.
“We got the knives,” she said.
Yes, they did.
“Knives aren’t guns,” Emmanuelle said.
Prarie studied the woman.
“This guy really has you spooked,” she said.
“No, I’m just being cautious.”
Prarie rolled her eyes.
“Spooked with a capital S.”
Emmanuelle smiled.
“Okay, spooked, but not with a capital.”
THEY PAID THE BILL and then took the MRT to the Causeway Bay Typhoon Shelter. The rock star was nowhere to be seen but the gun was, right where Prarie left it. Emmanuelle brushed the dirt off and stuck it in her purse.
“Do you think it will still fire?” Prarie asked.
Emmanuelle nodded.
“It should, so long as the water didn’t get to the gunpowder.”
“How do we know if that happened or not?”
Emmanuelle looked around, saw no one close, stuck the tip of the barrel in the water and pulled the trigger. Water splashed into her face. She wiped it off with the back of her hand and said, “There’s our answer. We should clean it though so the salt doesn’t jam it up.”
Prarie tilted her head, impressed.
“You’re such an organized little criminal.”
“Criminal hunter,” Emmanuelle said. “There’s a difference.”
Chapter Thirty-One
Day Five—August 7
Friday Afternoon
______________
THE MYSTERY WOMAN walked east towards Central for five minutes and then hopped on a double-decker bus just as it took off. Teffinger looked for a cab, spotted one ten steps ahead and pounded on the passenger-side glass. Two people in the back recoiled to the opposite side. The driver shouted something and waved a fist.
Shit!
Then he ran after the bus, weaving through bodies and trying to not knock anyone over.
People stared.
He didn’t care.
They weren’t the problem. The problem was the heat and the humidity. The bus came to a stop a half block ahead.
People got on.
People got off, but not the mystery woman.
It pulled away when Teffinger was twenty steps behind it.
Damn it!
How far to the next stop?
Two blocks?
Three?
HE KEPT GOING.
He had to.
This was the person who was out to kill d’Asia.
This was Teffinger’s chance, maybe his only chance.
He fought through the sweat and the pain and kept going.
At the next stop, the woman didn’t get off, and the bus pulled away just be
fore he got to it.
One more stop, just one more.
Don’t die first.
THE CROWDS WERE THICK and got even thicker as he got closer to Central. He wove through them the best he could but then—wham!—the inevitable happened.
A woman ahead made a sudden left directly in front of him.
He tried to stop but couldn’t but mowed her down from behind.
She hit the ground hard.
Two shopping bags and a purse flew.
Everyone in the area stopped.
The woman sat up, disoriented, holding her face.
Blood came from it, then tears.
That’s when someone shouted something at Teffinger, something mean.
He bent down and helped the woman to her feet. “I am so sorry.”
Chapter Thirty-Two
Day Five—August 7
Friday Afternoon
______________
BY THE END OF THE SESSION, Kong was so horny that he took Kam Lee, right there on the rack, and took her hard even by his standards. Then they made drinks, headed for the pool out back, and sat in crystal clear water up to their chests. It was cooler than a hot tub but not by much.
“I’m being blackmailed,” Kong said. “It’s in connection with Destiny Ng Jun.”
The shock on Kam Lee’s face was palpable.
“Destiny Ng Jun? She was what—a year ago?”
Kong nodded.
“July 18.”
She pressed for details.
Kong gave them.
The first call came two weeks after the fact, from a woman who said she was sitting in the shadows by the water watching the lights of Kowloon when a man and woman walked by. For some reason, things didn’t seem right, so she studied them. Then something terrible happened. The man looked around, saw no one, and slit the woman’s throat, just like that.
The woman grabbed the wound, staggered for a second, and dropped to the ground. The man threw a knife in the water. Then he picked the woman up, raised her over his head and threw her as far out as he could. She splashed. He looked around one more time, saw no one, and got the hell out of there.
“I FOLLOWED YOU to the Causeway Bay Typhoon Shelter,” the caller said. “You got in a dinghy and disappeared into the night. Two days later, there was a newspaper article about an 18-year-old woman named Destiny Ng Jun who was found floating in the harbour. The paper didn’t say her throat had been slit, but I knew. That was wrong, what you did. Your prints are all over that knife. For your sake, I hope the police never find it. They won’t, of course, unless someone tells them where to look.”
Kong exhaled.
“WE NEGOTIATED over the next couple of days,” he said. “I tried to figure out who she was but got nowhere. Then I paid her. It was supposed to be a one-shot deal, after which she would go her way and I would go mine. She surfaced again out of the blue on Tuesday, demanding more money.”
“Did you pay her?”
He nodded.
“I had no choice,” he said. “She took me by surprise.”
Kam Lee wrinkled her forehead.
“You should have told me right away, back when it first happened,” she said.
Kong nodded.
That was true.
He didn’t deny it.
“I was stupid,” he said. “There was also another development, just a couple of hours ago.” He told her about the woman who broke into Dangerous Lady, and the other one on shore who got away with his laptop. “My guess is that the one who went on the boat is the same one who’s been blackmailing me. She was looking for more dirt. And now she has an accomplice, too. ”
“So what do you want me to do—help you kill them?”
Kong shook his head.
“No, not kill them,” he said, “just find them. I have a plan to figure out who they are, but I’ll need your help. Once I have them identified, I’ll take care of things from there. You won’t need to do anything else.”
Kam Lee clinked her glass against his.
“I’m in, but all the way, not just half,” she said. “We should bring ’em back here and show ’em how pain works before we kill them.”
Kong pictured it and didn’t mind what he saw.
They deserved it.
“Now that I think of it, I have a client who would love to take it all the way,” she said. “Maybe we should let him do it.”
“You think?”
She nodded.
“He’d probably pay big dollars, too,” she said. “You’d get your money back, or at least some of it. He’d take his time. I can already picture it. It gives me chills just thinking about it.”
Kong cocked his head.
“Go ahead and feel him out, with no guarantees,” he said. “Just be sure you keep things vague.”
“He’ll definitely want to do it,” Kam Lee said. “There’s no doubt in my mind. We’ll even shut the place down so he’s the only one here.”
“What’s his name?”
She ran a finger down his chest.
“You know I don’t do that.”
Chapter Thirty-Three
Day Five—August 7
Friday Night
______________
FRIDAY NIGHT, THE SUN GAVE WAY TO NEON and the heat lost its stranglehold. Prarie and Emmanuelle took a double-decker bus north on Nathan Road, deep into Kowloon, and got off in Mangkok at Argyle Street. The rumor was that this was the most crowded real estate in the world; the golden mile
Being here, right now, Prarie believed it.
Insane bumper-to-bumper traffic, four lanes wide, crawled along. Thousands of people congested the sidewalks, elbow to elbow. Neon signs were everywhere, not just flat against the buildings, but cantilevered over the street, as big and as far as their supports would go, creating a canopy of light.
“Somewhere there are three nuclear reactors going at full speed just to power this block,” Emmanuelle said.
Prarie chuckled.
“I was going to guess four.”
Every store was open.
The eateries and bars were jammed to the walls.
Prarie’s purse seemed heavier then usual and then she remembered why—the knife. Emmanuelle’s would even be heavier.
She had the gun, cleaned now, with six bullets left in the clip.
All of Emmanuelle’s credit cards and identification papers were in her back pocket, however, not the purse. That way she could abandon it in a Hong Kong heartbeat if she needed to and not worry about getting traced to it.
THE BAR THEY WERE LOOKING FOR turned out to be a loud, smoky, shoulder-to-shoulder place with a Filipino band, Grade-C, considerably drunker than it should be. They got drinks, found a place to stand and waited. When the men looked, it was usually at Prarie, who was more their size. Emmanuelle intimidated them. Ten minutes later a man walked up and said in English, “Are you the ladies who want the painting?”
He was young, about twenty-five, taller than average, nice looking and clean cut; not what Prarie expected.
“Yes,” Emmanuelle said.
“I’m the artist,” he said. “Come with me.”
He led them out of the bar and off the beaten path, away from the neon, to a crappy car, and told them to get in the back. Then he handed them blindfolds and said, “Put these on.”
Prarie’s heart raced.
“Why?”
“Because no one gets to know where the studio is,” he said. Prarie must have had a look on her face because the man added, “This is a deal-breaker.”
Prarie looked at Emmanuelle who exhaled and put the blindfold on.
Prarie followed suit.
The car pulled away.
THEY DROVE FOR A LONG TIME. Based on the decreasing traffic congestion, they were probably going north. No one spoke. Ostensibly, all the cloak-and-dagger was to keep the location of the studio unknown, not only because of the inventory of replicas, but because the artist was also a collector.
He was ripe for the robb
ing if a robber knew where to look.
He took no chances.
“We’re almost there,” he said. “Two more minutes.”
Chapter Thirty-Four
Day Five—August 7
Friday Afternoon
______________
AFTER LOSING THE TRAIL of the mystery woman, Teffinger called Fan Rae and told her he just got a call from Denver and needed to handle an emergency matter this afternoon. A man charged with murder filed a motion to exclude evidence and the D.A. needed to email a number of documents to Teffinger and go over them.
That was a lie; a lie to avoid seeing Fan Rae until he could figure things out.
“We’re still on for tonight, right?” she asked.
“Absolutely,” he said. “I’ll call you as soon as I’m free.”
When he hung up, he called Dr. Leigh Sandt, the FBI profiler from Quantico, Virginia. She answered on the third ring, groggy, getting woken up. He pictured a classy lady sitting up in bed, about fifty, with the best legs in the universe—Tina Turner legs.
“It’s me,” he said.
“Nick?”
“Yeah.”
“Do you know what time it is?”
He did a quick calculation.
It would be 4:00 a.m., Virginia time.
He should have waited three hours.
“Look, I know I’m waking you and I’m really sorry about it, but I have a situation,” he said. “I didn’t know who else to call.”
“You sound faint,” she said. “Where are you?”
“Hong Kong.”
“Hong Kong?”
“Right.”
“What are you doing in Hong Kong?”
“Hunting,” he said. “But here’s the thing. I’m working with a Hong Kong detective by the name of Fan Rae Fan. I just came across some information to the effect that she’s actually connected to the people I’m looking for—I’m not sure yet if she’s part of them or covering up for them or what. But I do know that she’s dirty and she’s lying to me. What I need is some background on her.”
Silence.
“That would be a CIA matter,” she said.