“Byron wants to buy the whole building and turn it into condos,” blurted Queenie.
“Just trying to be prudent,” said Byron. “What if the New Amsterdam turns out to be a bust? There’s no market for a bankrupt studio so we could lose everything. It’s crazy to have Skyscape tie up the penthouse and the floor below. Quality penthouses in New York have fetched a hundred million and more. With all its soundproofing and protective layering, a studio doesn’t have to take up prime real estate.”
Leonard added, “There’s a demolition clause that says the landlords can kick the tenants out with two years’ notice if the building owners want to re-develop the property. That just doesn’t fly.”
Byron interjected. “But at this point, it’s all speculation. Let’s focus on what we have at hand and take a look at the studio.”
Queenie asked, “Where’s JJ, Noah? I thought he was going to join us.”
Noah shook his head. “I haven’t seen him since this morning. Maybe he got food poisoning and is sleeping it off somewhere. Or maybe he’s lost and his cell phone ran out of battery.”
“I just hope he’s okay,” said Queenie. “New York can be pretty scary for someone who doesn’t know the ropes. Heck, it’s scary for those of us that do.”
Noah’s cell phone dinged indicating a text message. He grinned as he read it. “That crazy ninja. He’s back at The Seventh with a bunch of young girls and they’re all watching Sleepless in Seattle.”
Bingo! The Chinaman was at The Seventh! Gotta deal with that now. Last thing I need is someone crashing the party. “I like that movie, too,” said Queenie. “I’m a hopeless romantic.”
As they lined up to go through the security checkpoint, Queenie discreetly sent a text.
Alexei was beating the crap out of Raoul. Alexei couldn’t care less about JJ but every one of the escaped girls was worth big money to him.
“How you be so stupid? I should kill you now!” yelled the angry Russian boss.
“Give me a chance. I will get them back.”
“How? You have no idea where they are,” snarled Alexei. So angry that his eyes bulged from their sockets, Alexei picked up the table he and Raoul sat at and brought it down on his henchman’s head. “How idiotic you are. They were in concrete room. The girls were drugged. It’s you, Boris and Dmitri against one Chinaman. A Chinaman! You disgrace! In City of New York eight million people, you think it not hard to find Russian girls?”
Alexei’s cell dinged. He opened his phone and read the text from Queenie. “God must be with you. Go to The Seventh Hotel. That’s where Chinaman and girls are. If you screw up again, I kill you myself.”
Kenny greeted Byron, Jeff, Leonard, Queenie, Abby and Noah at the entrance to Skyscape. “Thanks for coming. I’m Kenny, studio manager and one of the producers at Skyscape. This is where magic happens and dreams come alive.”
The entourage listened in fascination as Kenny described the studio’s history, told insider stories of the award-winning artists that had stepped through the door and delicious dirt about who slept with whom and where. On the technical side, he could describe, in layman’s language, the functioning and features of the popular and obscure pieces of equipment.
Kenny stopped at the door of Studio 5 and nodded proudly. “This room is our pride and joy and will be the centerpiece of the New Amsterdam Arts Center. Our plan is for it to be primarily used by world-class musicians, engineers and producers. However, all the assistants and gofers will be from the New Amsterdam. The young people will experience firsthand genius in operation, something they can’t buy for love or money anywhere else. I particularly like Queenie’s idea that all students, not just the top ones, will get a chance to assist here. Let’s check it out.”
Their expectations already raised, mouths still dropped when Kenny opened the door. This was a huge recording room with thirty-foot ceilings, two grand pianos and huge windows overlooking the city. But what really got the juices going was a hundred-piece orchestra and a thirty-voice choir, entirely composed of young people.
Electricity permeated the whole studio as Kenny positioned Abby behind the microphone. The potential investors saw adrenaline coursing through the sea of musicians, singers and technicians. Abby was calming herself with breathing exercises while Tim was like a little pixie, dashing between the young musicians, making sure they knew exactly what he wanted.
Queenie stepped onto the conductor’s platform. “Welcome to the inaugural session of the New Amsterdam Arts Center. None of the musicians you see can legally drink. Most can’t even vote and some are still a couple years away from puberty. This is the fast-tracked version of a process I hope to repeat many times. Abby and Olivia originally answered an audition call that I put out through social media. When I heard them, I booked them for Showcase Monday at Café du Music, where they brought the audience down. Last night, after the gig, I brought them to the next room where Olivia and a rhythm section laid down the bed tracks. Abby gave a great vocal but I think that, with our complete orchestra, she’ll be inspired to even greater heights.”
She pointed to the orchestra. “All the kids here are still in school. Only a few, maybe none of them, will ever become a professional musician. But all of them, and generations more to come, will have the opportunity to expand their capabilities and reach to the sky. Music begins where words leave off, and at the New Amsterdam, our plan is to leave you all speechless.”
As Queenie stepped down to thunderous applause, Tim took her place. He winked at the kids. “You ready to rock?”
With a hundred and thirty kids nodding enthusiastically, Tim tapped his conductor’s baton and did the count-in. “One... Two... One. Two. Three. Four.”
And then the joint started jumpin’. Three minutes and forty-nine seconds of Valhalla, of pure frickin’ energy. A blistering sax solo from a fifteen-year-old, hair-tingling gospel-style harmonies, orchestral depth rivaling the Star Wars soundtracks and Abby, a human dynamo who was simply, pure soul.
Forever, I will love you.
Forever, I’ll be there
No matter where the fates may take you
No matter how hard
Forever, I will love you.
Abby raised her microphone in triumph as Olivia’s final piano chord faded away.
Everyone was quiet for a few seconds, then Tim jumped in the air and shouted, “That’s it. We’re done like dinner!”
What a rush. No overdubs. No take two, take three, take ninety-seven. This tune was ready to release. There was a huge celebration in the recording room. Gofers wheeled in a cake, fruit juices and sodas as Abby was mobbed.
Even Olivia smiled. Her ordinary performance was buried under the wall of sound that Tim created.
A standing ovation greeted Queenie as she took Tim’s place on the conductor’s podium.
Chapter 29
In his hotel room, JJ winced as he heard the muffled anguished screaming of young girls coming through his bedroom door. He listened helplessly to the voices of death breaking through, wishing he could do something, but there was nothing he could do to alleviate the agony of heroin withdrawal suffered by children.
He couldn’t see through the bathroom door but he could guess what the girls were doing to help each other—restraining a girl from breaking her jaw when biting a towel; holding frail bodies as they spasmed; wiping down overheated bodies with cold water; constricting arms and legs as they flailed. JJ offered acupuncture but the girls refused, believing that only enduring the pain of cold turkey could provide real healing. They insisted on doing it alone without JJ’s presence. They appreciated his kindness but he was still an outsider.
JJ was now two hundred dollars poorer, a fee he was happy to give. Sam’s contact took all of half an hour to deliver. The guy in the club and the Samaritan were in fact the same person. Further digging revealed his actual identity: Isaak Filipov, a petty small-time drug dealer with a history of arrests for violent assault. The gorilla’s real name was Ivan Kozlov. K
ozlov had numerous arrests for violent assaults and even more charges dropped because of victims unwilling to testify.
What was interesting though was not the information that JJ paid for but the free information that Sam dug up on his own.
In the rap sheets of both Filipov and Kozlov were assaults on suspected illegal Chinese immigrants. In both cases, a woman by the name of “Elizabeth Watson” posted bail.
Sam was about to show JJ who Elizabeth Watson was when suddenly the room door swung open.
Two fully grown and very angry red-crowned cranes spread their wingspans and were coming straight at JJ. Not the graceful creatures of Hokkaido; these were angry, vicious beasts without subtlety—their sole mission was to maim and destroy. The claws and beaks were as sharp as tiger’s teeth and just as dangerous.
JJ grabbed a chair and held it in front of his body for protection, but the birds’ sharp bills shredded the upholstery with ease, all the while beating their wings against JJ’s body.
Sidestepping the lunge of a beak, JJ did a standing somersault. As he descended, one bird’s head moved to spear him. JJ gave a quick side kick, brushing the crane away. Seeing an exposed belly, JJ launched a hammer fist at its body, sending it writhing to the floor.
Seeing and hearing its agony, the larger remaining crane charged at JJ. To escape, the acrobatic martial artist did a handspring to the window.
While incarcerated by the Russian thugs, JJ’s martial arts stars were taken away and he hadn’t replenished them. He balled his fist and smashed the window. It shattered. JJ’s hand was bleeding but he accomplished his goal. Pieces of broken glass became his weapons.
Crouching, he scooped up fragments and launched them at his winged opponent.
One, two, three, four, five, six pieces of glass and more embedded into the bird’s body, impeding but not stopping its approach.
The bleeding crane stepped unsteadily toward the martial arts master, calling out angrily, head thrusting with beak ready to pierce. When it was almost upon him, JJ yanked down the heavy blackout curtains from the window and quickly wrapped them around the enraged bird.
JJ rushed to the bedroom, opened the door, and the girls started screaming.
“Sorry,” he said. He quickly went through them to his suitcase, taking out a handful of martial arts stars and a dao, the short Shaolin dagger.
He rushed out of the bedroom and slammed the door behind him. As he feared, the curtain was only a brief distraction. The bird had shredded the curtain and freed itself. JJ picked up a sofa and threw it but the crane leapt out of the way and the sofa slammed a wall, leaving a large gouge in the plaster.
JJ’s assault continued with five razor-sharp stars thrown at the bird’s neck in rapid succession. Four of them missed any target but the fifth one sliced its neck. The crane was severely weakened, and blood gushed from its wound. JJ dashed over and snapped its neck. A final squawk stopped in the bird’s throat.
The bird on the floor, seeing the death of its companion, picked itself up and flew at JJ. JJ snatched a sofa cushion and shielded himself from the bird’s death-seeking beak and talons.
The crane easily shredded the cushion and leapt upon JJ. The Shaolin grandmaster pulled out his dagger and stabbed the bird in its breast.
Ignoring its agony, the bird furiously pecked at JJ. Bobbing, rolling and weaving out of death’s way, JJ spotted Noah’s leather jacket. He snatched it from the floor and wrapped it around the bird’s head just as its beak was about to pierce him. He yanked the dagger from the bird’s chest and stabbed it again and again. This time, he hit its heart. Mortally injured, the bleeding crane fluttered weakly before going limp.
JJ took the jacket off the bird. He hated taking the life of any living thing, even if it was trying to take his.
Examining the dead birds, he noticed certain irregularities. The irises of their tan-colored eyes were flecked with red. The red bare skin on the top of their crowns dismayed JJ. There were needle marks, evidence that they had been injected with who knew what. He had already noted that the birds’ beaks and talons were artificially sharpened, then he saw something else on the talons that sickened him: festering, open, infected sores.
These birds had been created by a monster.
JJ sat down on the floor for a moment, trying to figure out his next move. He knew he didn’t have much time because whoever sent the cranes would soon discover that the birds were unsuccessful in their mission.
He noticed that his laptop was on the floor and clicked on the NYPD link that Sam sent. It was to a page on Elizabeth Watson. The woman with the quintessentially Anglo name didn’t look that Caucasian at all.
He chilled. The hair was different, the nose was different, and the cheekbone structure was different, but the eyes were the same. They were the same eyes that belonged to King, the crook who killed his sifu, Master Wu. King was the one who demolished JJ’s monastery, the one who tried and almost succeeded in killing him. Those eyes belonged to Queenie.
JJ tried to call Noah on the hotel’s phone, but there was no answer. C’mon, Noah. Answer.
He was about to go check on the girls when a masked gunman flung the room door open and fired at JJ.
With his instinct for survival operating on overdrive, JJ dodged one bullet by dropping to the ground.
Then, with lightning fast reflexes, he pushed up into a handstand. It was just in time to evade a bullet aimed at his head. The miniature projectile whistled through the space between his outstretched arms.
From the handstand position, he pushed himself into the air while taking out a martial arts star. He whipped it at the gunman, who sidestepped the flying pentangle.
Dropping his weapon, the gunman threw himself at JJ.
Big mistake.
JJ greeted the thug’s face with his open palm, pushing him to the floor.
JJ jumped on top of the attacker and ripped off his mask. JJ was horrified to see long thin but deep scars, probably from a knife blade gouged into a Chinese man’s face.
“Let me die now,” whimpered the man in Chinese. “Then maybe my family can be saved.”
“What do you mean?” asked JJ.
“I tried to escape but they found my father in Guangdong and killed him. He was bitten by a snake.” The man took off his clothes. There were more of the long thin scars all over his body.
“Who did this to you?”
“The Crane Woman. The cranes, the birds you killed? She put me in the cage with them for the last two days.” The man shook his head. “If she finds out you’re still alive, she will kill my wife and daughter. Protect them, please.”
“Where are they?” shouted JJ.
But the man had lost consciousness. He was en route to his final destination.
Even though this man he had never met until two minutes ago tried to kill him, JJ was filled with a deep sense of sorrow. Although he didn’t know his name, he knew what he was. He was just like thousands of others who had tried to escape poverty in China.
These desperate souls thought life in the new world would be the ticket to a successful future, if not for them, then for their children or their children’s children. They went into debt to be smuggled to North America by the snakeheads. For five, ten, fifteen years or more, at least fifty percent of their wages were garnished. At the end of the term, the snakeheads released them into society to fend for themselves. Surprisingly, many of them stayed with the snakeheads. After all, better the yellow devil you knew than the white devil you didn’t.
Devils like the Crane Babe… Elizabeth Watson… Queenie.
She gave the man a chance to save his family. His mission was to kill JJ, either with the cranes or with a bullet. Both methods failed.
The unknown man’s wife and daughter would be next unless JJ could stop her.
JJ opened the bedroom door. “Do any of you know how to activate a cell phone?”
One girl raised her hand. JJ handed it to her just as the front door was flung open. Raoul had arrived
with half a dozen thugs.
The girls screamed.
Chapter 30
“Quee-nie. Quee-nie. Quee-nie,” chanted the young musicians in the recording room.
Queenie raised her hands and said, “Thank you. Thank you, everybody.”
The crowd quieted but the room was still abuzz with energy.
“Thank you for being part of this recording session. It was the first of what I hope will be thousands of sessions here from big name artists to kids with not much more than an idea for a tune.”
“Right on. You got it. Tell it like it is,” came shouts from the assembly.
“Every great song is only as good as those who work on it. Engineers, producers, musicians, composers. A lousy song fantastically recorded and produced is still a lousy song. Play or sing a great song out-of-tune or with wrong notes, what are people going to hear?”
“They’re going to cover their ears to block out the noise,” shouted someone at the back.
“Exactly. That’s why only excellence is good enough. That’s why the New Amsterdam Arts Center is so important. Young people will not be learning from teachers but from seasoned pros who are at the top of their game.”
“Amen, sister,” called one of the young singers.
“Abby and Olivia are a great example. Abby is a fantastically talented singer but she couldn’t get anyone to pay attention to her, even though she has a degree from Juilliard. I heard their demo and thought maybe I could do something with it. By combining brand new first class talent with the seasoned guidance of producers who know what it takes to make a hit and throwing in a hundred and thirty kids who just sang and played their asses off... who could ask for anything more?”
Whistling, applause and shouts of approval.
“But let’s get real. Not every star is going to shine no matter how much polish you give it. That’s why studios can’t afford to take a chance. That’s why all their stuff sounds the same. They think the formula for success is to sell you the SOS...”
The Noah Reid Action Thriller Series: Books 1-3 (plus special bonuses) Page 51