Dance with the Dragon

by Hagberg, David

  SEVENTY-TWO

  DOWNTOWN

  A few minutes before midnight the music over at the compound suddenly stopped and the noise level of conversations and laughter began to decrease. McGarvey got the binoculars from the car and walked back down to the water’s edge where he could see the main gate and the cars parked along the road. Gloria came up behind him.

  “Is this it?” she asked.

  “We’ll know in the next few minutes,” McGarvey said. He raised the binoculars as the gate to the compound swung open, and a dozen men and a few girls came out and headed up the road.

  The drivers hurried back to their cars and snapped to at the rear doors. None of them was dressed in uniform, and most of them looked like professional bodyguards. Mexico was a dangerous country for anyone, including high-ranking government officials, especially men like these, who were playing games with a Chinese intelligence officer.

  “Maybe he’s staying put tonight,” Gloria suggested. “Could be the party is just breaking up early.”

  “Has that ever happened before?” McGarvey asked.

  Gloria gave him a sharp look. “How would I know?”

  “You might have heard something,” McGarvey said. “Maybe Louis let it slip.”

  “I told you that I didn’t know anything about Liu.” Her eyes narrowed. “What the hell are you getting at?”

  McGarvey continued to study the activity on the road. “I don’t know,” he said. “The son of a bitch is up to something, but I can’t figure it out and it’s driving me nuts.”

  “Is it worth all this trouble?”

  It was an odd question. McGarvey lowered his binoculars and looked at her. “A CIA field officer was assassinated. I’d say that makes this worth an effort.”

  “I suspect it was more of a warning than an assassination.”

  “Well, I’m not giving a warning,” McGarvey said. He raised the binoculars again as the cars on the road started to leave. “Start the car, but don’t switch on the headlights.”

  She walked back to the car and started the engine. Moments later two BMWs and a Jaguar emerged from the compound, followed by a big Mercedes Maybach and a black Mercedes AMG55.

  Two other cars that had been parked on the road took up the rear as McGarvey raced back to his car and jumped into the passenger seat.

  “Drive,” he told Gloria.

  “Is it Liu?”

  “I think so.”

  Gloria pulled up onto the road out of the parking area in time to see the last set of taillights disappear around the bend a hundred yards away. She switched on the headlights and sped up.

  “How do you want to play this?” she asked. She was suddenly hyped up.

  “Get in close behind the last car, as if we belonged there.”

  “Then what?”

  “I’m betting he’s going to either the Wild Stallion or the Doll House. As soon as we know which, we’re going to get there ahead of him.”

  “Cristo,” she said softly, but she paid attention to her driving, and in a couple of minutes they had caught up with the big BMW at the rear.

  Once they were away from Xochimilco and on the Avenida Insurgentes Sur, which was the main highway back into the city, they encountered some traffic, more than they had seen on the way down a couple hours ago. The city was starting to get its second wind.

  “So what do we do when we catch up with him?” Gloria asked.

  “Make him notice us,” McGarvey said. He had turned the exterior rearview mirror on his door so that he could see if anyone be-hind them was taking an interest. But so far as he could tell they were clean.

  “Then what?”

  They could see the skyscrapers downtown in the distance, and traffic started to pick up.

  “The next move will be his,” McGarvey said. “But he knows that I’m here, and he’ll want to find out who you are when you show up with me.”

  “He’ll realize it’s a setup.”

  “But he won’t know why, and that’ll drive a man like Liu around the bend,” McGarvey said. “He’ll have to try to get to you.”

  “Which I’ll make difficult.”

  * * *

  Twenty minutes later Liu’s choice became clear when the Maybach and his entourage of a dozen cars turned left off Avenue Chapultepec through the park, near Los Pinos.

  “He’s going to Polanco,” McGarvey said.

  “What’s up there?”

  “The Doll House.”

  “Do I follow them?” Gloria asked.

  “No,” McGarvey said. He watched as they passed the exit of Avenue de los Constituyentes, until the last BMW had made the turn. “Do you know the way?”

  “No.”

  “Turn at the causeway, but you’ll have to hustle if we’re going to beat them,” McGarvey told her.

  She glanced at him. “Why did you have me drive?”

  “You know the city better than I do,” McGarvey said. “Just get us to Polanco. The club is on Avenida Horacio.”

  “I’ll find it,” she said, and she sped up, threading through traffic as if she had been doing this sort of thing all of her life.

  * * *

  They pulled up in front of the Doll House a few minutes later, and the valet parkers opened the car doors for McGarvey and Gloria. There was a great deal of traffic now. The action inside had picked up in the last couple of hours and there was a line outside the door. A pair of beefy bouncers was letting only a few people inside. The rest were not important enough for the moment. If the club did not fill up by one, more of them would be allowed to pass.

  “Welcome back, Mr. McGarvey,” one of the bouncers said. He opened the velvet rope to allow McGarvey and Gloria inside.

  The same hostess as before led them inside. McGarvey’s table had been held for him, and at the same time that he and Gloria sat down, the sommelier brought over a bottle of Dom Pérignon in an ice bucket as their waitress brought them fresh glasses.

  “Thank you,” McGarvey said.

  “You were here before,” Gloria said when they were alone. “When?”

  “A couple hours ago,” McGarvey said, his eye toward the entry from the reception area.

  The classical guitarist had been replaced by a very good combo playing American soft jazz. The dance floor was nearly filled with couples, mostly old men with young women from the club. The lights were lower than before, and the atmosphere had come alive. The night was just starting to get interesting.

  Two wine stewards and several waiters were hurriedly setting up a round table, large enough for a dozen or more people, just off the dance floor fifteen feet from where McGarvey and Gloria were seated. Several of the scantily clad club girls hovered nearby.

  Gloria nodded toward the table. “Liu?”

  “Looks like it,” McGarvey said. “And unless I’ve miseed my guess, he should be showing up any minute.”

  A short Mexican man with a round, pretty face, wearing an Armani tuxedo, appeared at the entry from the reception area. Rencke had identified him as Miguel Roaz from the pictures McGarvey had taken at the Xochimilco compound. He was the owner of the club. He stepped aside with a flourish as General Liu came in at the head of the entourage from the compound. The Chinese intelligence officer was a movie-star handsome man, and tall for an Oriental. He wore an obviously expensive sport coat over an open-collar white shirt.

  Most of the people in the club looked up as Roaz led Liu and his party across the room to the large table.

  They passed within a few feet of McGarvey, who raised his champagne glass in salute.

  Liu was startled. It showed on his broad face and wide, dark eyes, for just a moment, along with something else; maybe fear or perhaps anger, it was difficult to tell. But then the moment was gone, and he nodded.

  Roaz had noticed the exchange, and as Liu and the others were taking their seats, he bent to say something into the general’s ear. Liu shook his head and waved off whatever Roaz had said.

  “Well, he knows we’re here,�
�� Gloria said.

  McGarvey smiled and sipped his champagne. “Indeed he does.”

  SEVENTY-THREE

  THE DOLL HOUSE

  By two the club was in full swing, all the tables filled, the bar area crammed to overflowing, and the dance floor so packed that it was nearly impossible for anyone to move, and still people kept arriving. The jazz combo alternated with strip acts, the dancers all very young, very beautiful, and extremely talented, most of them Oriental, probably from Bangkok or the geisha schools of Japan. Dozens of club girls, some of them dancers, circulated around the floor from table to table until they found customers, whom they led to a curtained doorway into the back rooms. Roaz had a thriving business.

  Gloria had gone to the ladies’ room and when she came back she was bright and animated, her eyes sparkling. She’d obviously done another line of coke. “This is fantastic,” she told McGarvey, taking her seat, her back toward Liu’s table. “Did he notice me?”

  “He spotted you, and so did half the guys in the club,” McGarvey said. “But you’d better pace yourself with that shit if you’re going to be any good for me tonight.”

  “I’ll handle it.”

  “Did you meet anyone in the bathroom?”

  “No one from his table,” Gloria said. “When one of them heads that way let me know. I’ll see what I can find out. But so far they don’t seem to give a damn that we’re here.”

  McGarvey had been watching Liu’s table for the past hour and a half, making his interest obvious. But neither Liu nor anyone else had glanced his way. “It’ll happen sooner or later,” he said.

  “Does he know who you are?”

  “I’m sure he does. But I told his people that I was here looking for my girlfriend, nothing else.”

  “Shahrzad,” Gloria said. “Do you think he bought it?”

  “Probably not. But he has to be curious.”

  Roaz, who’d been working the room, stopped at the big table. Liu, a young girl on his lap, kissing him on the cheek and neck and his perfectly shaved head, looked up and said something. Roaz nodded, then came over to McGarvey’s table.

  “Good evening, Mr. McGarvey,” he said pleasantly. He turned to Gloria. “Ms.—?”

  “Ibenez.”

  He nodded. “The general is wondering if he could offer you and your lady a bottle of champagne. We have a very good Krug. His favorite.”

  “It’s vinegar,” McGarvey replied coolly. “I’ve always preferred Cristal, or when I’m slumming, a decent Dom, which, as you can see, I already have.”

  Roaz’s features darkened. “The general is a generous man, but he has his limits.”

  McGarvey sat back and smiled. “Are you asking us to leave, Señor Roaz?”

  “I’m begging you to take care, Mr. McGarvey. For your sake as well as for Ms. Ibenez’s.”

  “You might ask him about a friend of mine. She’s disappeared and I’m worried about her.”

  “I’m sure we know nothing about that.”

  “Her name is Shahrzad Shadmand.”

  Roaz returned the smile. “Never heard of her,” he said. “Enjoy your evening.” He nodded politely to Gloria, then turned and went back to Liu.

  “That’ll get his attention,” Gloria said. She was loving it.

  “Go to the powder room now,” McGarvey ordered. “I want to see if he sends someone after you.”

  “What do you want me to say?”

  “That I’m an asshole. A macho bastard who likes to beat up women.”

  Gloria laughed lightly. She got up, gathered her purse, and sauntered past Liu’s table on the way to the ladies’ room, giving the general a pretty smile.

  Almost immediately Liu said something to the girl on his lap. She jumped up and headed after Gloria. He turned and gazed at McGarvey, a calculating look on his face. He was a man who was used to giving orders and having them followed. This was the third time McGarvey had sidestepped him, and it was apparent that he was getting irritated.

  The stripper onstage finished her act for an audience that was mostly indifferent, caught up in their own sexual fantasies. As soon as she was gone the jazz combo came out and began playing a Stan Kenton piece, and more couples went out onto the dance floor.

  Gloria was gone for nearly ten minutes, and when she returned she was flushed and unsteady on her feet. She slumped down on her chair and knocked back her glass of champagne. “Relax,” she said sweetly. “This is mostly an act.”

  “Fair enough,” McGarvey said. “Did you find out anything?”

  Gloria shook her head. “The girl’s a fucking idiot. Liu doesn’t know who I am or what I’m doing with an old guy from the CIA, but he wants to know. She’s his main girl at the moment, and she warned me off. Said she’d send her friends to get me.”

  “She doesn’t look more than fourteen or fifteen.”

  “Try twenty-three,” Gloria said. “She just looks young. She’s been in the business since she was ten. Mostly German tourists in Bangkok. Liu, she told me, is a gentleman.”

  McGarvey had seen stuff like this in ’Nam, especially Saigon. It had sickened him then as it did now. “All this in ten minutes?”

  “I gave her a couple lines of coke. Her name is Sally, and she has a small tattoo of a red and green dragon on her inner left thigh.”

  “Okay,” McGarvey said.

  Gloria shrugged. “The kid is sexy,” she said. “Anyway, I suspect that if at some point you mention the dragon to him it might piss him off. Could be he’ll make another mistake.”

  McGarvey made a mental note of it, but he wondered what she meant by another mistake. Coincidences were starting to pile up around her like dirty laundry.

  “Let’s dance,” he said, getting up. He held her chair and they walked out onto the dance floor.

  “Are we going to give him a show?” she asked as he took her in his arms. Her smile was wide and she was obviously enjoying herself. They began to dance.

  “Just don’t give me a heart attack,” McGarvey said lightly.

  She molded her body closely against his. “God, I hope you know how good you feel,” she said huskily, and she started moving her hips against his.

  McGarvey felt himself responding, much sooner than he’d hoped. But she was a beautiful, desirable woman.

  She looked up at him, a secret smile on her lips. “It’s okay, Kirk,” she whispered. “You do care, but I won’t make the first move. Honest Injun. It’s your call.”

  She laid her head on his shoulder and they danced the next two songs without speaking. McGarvey had wanted to give Liu a show, and that’s exactly what Gloria was doing. She was acting like a woman in love, which in fact she was. It made her a prime target. Liu would have to figure that if he got to her, he would be striking back at McGarvey. And maybe through her he could put himself in a position to find out what the retired director of the CIA was doing messing around down here.

  When the set finished, Gloria went to back to the ladies’ room and Liu’s girlfriend got up and followed her again.

  A stripper came out onstage and began her routine to a nice rendition of “The Four Seasons” over the club’s sophisticated sound system, as the waitress came over.

  “Would you care for another bottle of champagne, Mr. McGarvey? Compliments of the house.”

  “Tell the general that I’m not interested in his hospitality.”

  “No, sir, this is from Señor Roaz,” the girl said. “He told me to tell you that it was a peace offering. He wants you and your lady to have a good time this evening.”

  He gave her a cool look. “That’s exactly what I intend doing,” he said. “Have my car brought up. We’re leaving.”

  The girl started to say something.

  “Now, if you please,” McGarvey told her.

  She left, and McGarvey got to his feet as Gloria came back to the table. She was even more glassy-eyed than before, and a little unsteady on her feet. This time he didn’t think it was an act.

  “We can’t
dance to that,” she said, glancing at the stripper.

  “We’re leaving,” McGarvey told her. “We’ve done enough for tonight.”

  “Good,” she said tightly. “The son of a bitch sent his whore to invite me to a party at his house sometime. But she had the balls to warn me not to show up or I’d be sorry.” She chuckled. “I think I broke the bitch’s jaw. She won’t be giving any head for a couple of months.”

  At the reception desk McGarvey signed his tab, adding a generous tip.

  “We hope that you will join us again very soon,” the young hostess told him.

  “Count on it,” McGarvey told her.

  The crowd waiting to get inside had thinned out somewhat, but McGarvey suspected there’d be people standing in line until nearly dawn. He gave the valet a big tip and drove directly over to Gloria’s apartment up in Lomas Altas.

  She was messed up, sometimes not very coherent. “Did we do good?” she asked.

  “Very good,” McGarvey assured her. He felt rotten about tonight and what was still to come for her. “But tomorrow will be even better.”

  “We’ll get the son of a bitch,” she said. “He and Roaz’s muscle killed a good man. He’ll pay through the nose for it.”

  When they got to her apartment she was half asleep. He helped her out of her car and had to carry her down the walk, where he fumbled in her purse for the key.

  Inside he took her back to the bedroom, threw back the covers, and laid her down. She’d been mumbling something, but as soon as her head hit the pillow she passed out.

  McGarvey looked at her for a very long time, hating what he was about to do to her as much as he hated the necessity of it. Liu was an accomplished master of manipulating people, especially women, into believing in him. Unless Gloria was convinced in her own mind that a real relationship existed between her and McGarvey, Liu would almost certainly see through the deception.

  He took off his jacket and laid it on a chair. Then he took off his tie, tossed it aside, and ripped his shirt open, popping most of the buttons, and pulled it off. Sitting on the bed beside Gloria, he wiped her lipstick on the front of his shirt and dropped it on the floor. Finally he took off her dress and tossed in on the floor on top of his shirt. She was naked beneath, and her breasts were perfect, her stomach only slightly rounded, and her dark complexion flawless. A tiny white rose was tattooed just above her shaved vagina.