by Wiehl, Lis
“No.” Bo shook her head. Now that she was in Warren’s apartment, she didn’t want to leave. The man who had tried to kill her could be anywhere. Anywhere but here.
“Then we have to call the police.” He started to pull his cell phone from his pocket.
She grabbed his wrist. “No. Don’t call. I don’t trust them. I don’t trust anyone. The only one I trust is you.”
“But Song, he needs to be arrested. He could have killed you.”
On legs that suddenly wouldn’t hold her, she stumbled over to his couch and nearly fell on it. “That was what he wanted. He wanted me to die. And he won’t stop until I do.”
Warren followed her to the couch, but he sat a half cushion away, as if giving her the space to collect herself. “Who? Who did this to you, Song?”
“I don’t know who he was. But he knew me. And I know he’ll hunt me down. He won’t rest until I’m really dead.”
“Song, you’re not making any sense.” Warren scrubbed his face with open hands. “If you don’t know this guy, then why will he hunt you down? If he’s like some serial killer or whatever, can’t he go out and find some other girl to kill? Some girl who will be easier? I mean, why would he come back for you?”
“Because he’s not a serial killer. And I’m not really Song.”
His brows drew together. “What do you mean?”
“Song’s not my real name.”
“Not your name?” His face cleared. “Do you mean that’s not your Chinese name?”
“No. My real name is Bo Yee. Do you understand? My name is Bo Yee.”
“Yee,” he repeated, leaning away from her and crossing his arms. “That’s the same name as the girl who was killed.”
“I am her mother.”
“That’s not possible.” He exhaled sharply. “You’re a student.”
“I lied. I’m not a student. I am her mother. I am Dandan’s mother.” She thumped a hand over her heart. Saying the words made her back straighten. Gave her strength.
“I heard that Dandan’s mother was the one who was always sitting right behind the prosecutor. She had long hair and she wore long dresses. She was a lot older than you.”
“Hair can be cut. Clothes can be changed.” Bo took a deep breath. “But I will always be my daughter’s mother. And I will do whatever I can to help her. It doesn’t matter that she’s dead.”
Warren’s expression changed, and she could tell he was starting to believe her. “How old are you, anyway?”
“Thirty-seven.”
“And is this about the money? Is that why you went out with me?”
“It has to do with David Leacham. I want him to pay for killing my daughter. I needed to get proof of what happened with the jury. How you voted not to convict him.”
He bit his lip. “And did you get that proof?”
She nodded. “You told me. And I recorded it.”
“Then why are you here now? Why did you come back now, knowing I was bribed to hang the jury?”
“Because this is the only place they won’t look. And what you did was bad, but you’re not evil. And David Leacham is. He is pure evil.” She took a shaky breath. “And I knew that you liked me. Really liked me.”
“I liked Song,” Warren said plaintively. “I don’t even know you.”
And that night, Warren insisted on sleeping on the couch, while Bo took the bed.
The next day they moved around each other like polite strangers. He told her when he needed to go out, what he needed to do, and how long he would be gone. He went to the grocery store, and when he came home, he found her in tears. She showed him the news story she had found online, about her friend Abigail.
“I asked her to play the piano in my place. And instead she was killed. They must have realized they made a mistake. And then they tried to fix it.” Wincing, she rubbed the line on her neck.
“You can’t hide here forever,” Warren said.
Bo knew he was only speaking the truth. But she didn’t know what else to do.
CHAPTER 45
If you wanted to learn how to do pretty much anything, Gabe knew what the first step was. Go to YouTube. There you could count on finding a video showing you exactly what to do, step by step.
How to do a kickflip on a skateboard.
How to fix a leaky faucet when it turned out your mom didn’t know how and your stupid dad had gotten himself killed before he could ever teach you.
How to videotape someone without their knowing.
How to secretly gather evidence for the police so they could bust a steroids ring.
Okay, so maybe there wasn’t a video about that, but Gabe figured the YouTube videos on making secret recordings he had watched last night fit the bill.
One of the ways involved putting your phone in a shirt pocket with the top edge, the part that held the tiny camera aperture, just peeking out.
Gabe didn’t actually own a shirt with a breast pocket, but his dad had had a bunch of them. Once he got home from school, he tiptoed down the upstairs hall as if someone might hear him, even though the house was empty. His mom was still at work and would be for hours. Normally Gabe would have already picked up Brooke from preschool, but today he had called and said he wouldn’t be there until late, maybe not until just before they closed at six.
Kali had a doctor’s appointment and Eldon had gone with her. Gabe hoped whatever the doctor had to tell them was good. Or at least not terrible.
He opened the door to his mom’s room, which he still thought of as his parents’ room. The covers were pulled up but still a little messy on his mom’s side. On the side where his dad had slept, the blue-and-white quilt was taut and smooth. His mom tried to pretend like she was over his dad’s death, but Gabe still saw a million clues that she wasn’t. Like always keeping to her side of the bed.
And, Gabe thought, as he pulled open their closet door, she still hadn’t gotten rid of his dad’s clothes. As he flipped through the shirts, a faint smell teased his nose. A shiver traced his spine. It almost felt like he would turn around and his dad would be standing there, maybe holding a towel around his waist, his hair still damp from the shower. Maybe this was why his mom held on to the clothes, so she could pretend.
“I’m trying to be a better man than you were, Dad,” Gabe said aloud to whatever ghost or memory was in the room with him. “I’m trying to be the man you should have been.”
He pulled out a dark-blue shirt. Some of his dad’s shirts were too nice for a kid to wear, made of silk or with contrasting cuffs, but this one was just plain sturdy cotton. He pulled off his T-shirt and slipped on his dad’s shirt. Just a few months ago, it would have hung on him. Now it was a little snug through the chest and biceps.
He was going to miss that feeling. But he was starting to think that Charlie was right, that what made him a man was what he thought, what he did. Not how he looked.
After buttoning the shirt and tucking it in, Gabe set the phone in his pocket, with the pinpoint of the camera pointing out at the world. In the mirror, he checked it out. Against the dark-blue shirt, the black phone was nearly invisible. And he himself looked almost unrecognizable. Like an adult.
And now he was going to act like one.
He took the bus to the Jade Kitchen, the same place he had met Tyler before, a meeting he had arranged after texting him this morning between classes. Every time the bus driver hit the brakes, his stomach lurched. His hands were starting to sweat. Even the bottoms of his feet. Gabe unzipped his down jacket and tried to blame it on the overheated bus. He hoped he wasn’t pitting out the shirt before he even got to the restaurant. At least it was a dark color. After he got off the bus, he turned on the video camera, then carefully slipped the phone back in his pocket and took off his jacket.
“Takeout order?” the hostess asked after he came in the front doors. It was too late for lunch and not yet time for dinner, so the restaurant was nearly empty.
“Um, no. Can I have a table for two? My friend w
ill be coming soon.”
While Gabe waited, he tore tiny strips off his napkin. Despite his churning stomach, he ordered some pot stickers, but didn’t touch them when the waitress set them down.
Even though he had been waiting for him, Gabe still jumped when Tyler pushed open a swinging door in the back of the restaurant. In one hand was a white paper bag. He wore jeans and an open, blue down vest over a skin-tight, pale-gray knit shirt that showed off every muscle on his torso and arms. He pulled out a chair and sat down across from Gabe. The bag was out of sight now, in his lap under the table.
“You’re not done with your cycle yet, are you?” Tyler shifted his bulk. “Because it’s not a good idea to up your dosage when you’re just starting out.”
“Actually, what happened is that my mom found what you sold me before and flushed it down the toilet.”
Tyler swore as his eyes went wide. “What? Where did you tell her you got it?”
“Don’t worry, I didn’t tell her I got it from you. I didn’t tell her anything. I just need to replace what she flushed.”
Tyler was already pushing back his chair. “I’m sorry, man.” He got to his feet. “I can’t help you out. You’re on your own. Because I do not sell steroids. And I never have.”
He sounded like he was speaking for an audience. Which, Gabe realized, Tyler thought he was. He thought Gabe was wearing a wire. Which was more or less true.
“What are you talking about? I need you to help me. I’m going to get small, man.” At the thought, real emotion colored his voice. “I mean, what am I supposed to do?”
“You lift weights and eat protein. Like I said you should.”
Gabe lunged across the table and tried to grab for the bag, but Tyler clutched it to his chest and pivoted away from him. He made for the front door at something close to a run. The hostess stared after him as the door banged shut.
Now what was Gabe supposed to do? Had his plan just crashed and burned?
But Tyler, for all his muscles and swagger, was probably the end link in the chain. And every time Gabe had gotten steroids, Tyler had come out from the kitchen area holding a white takeout bag. Gabe was pretty sure this was where the drugs were coming from. Maybe he could still salvage things.
He got up and went toward the restaurant’s kitchen, pushed open the same swinging door Tyler had walked out of. If someone caught him, he could say he was trying to find the bathrooms, even though they were actually near the entrance.
The kitchen was straight ahead. Two Asian guys were tending huge blackened woks set over leaping flames that hissed and sputtered. Along the back wall, a third guy was using a hose to spray off dishes on a black rubber conveyor belt. All three men were engrossed in their work and didn’t appear to notice him. Gabe darted down the short hallway to his left. None of the doors were marked.
He opened the first door. An office. An empty office, with a desk, a computer, and even an abacus. But looks could be deceiving. He stepped inside and closed the door behind him. With shaking hands he started yanking open drawers in the desk and then the filing cabinet. All he found were papers. Papers, papers, papers. His heart felt like it would beat out of his chest. He slammed the last drawer closed.
Gabe went back to the door and peeped out. The hallway was still empty. He slipped out and tried the next door. It opened, revealing a very startled Chinese guy. He started yelling at Gabe, putting his hands on his shoulders to push him out. But not before Gabe had made sure that his torso—and his phone—had been pointed in the direction of the two plastic bins, one filled with blue pills, the other with tiny red-topped clear glass vials.
Suddenly an arm went tight around his neck, the elbow right underneath his chin. He felt another hand cup the back of his head, pressing him forward, ratcheting down on the space that was already too small for his neck.
And then everything went black.
CHAPTER 46
With every beat of his heart, Kenny’s eye throbbed, the pain sharp and red. All the fault of a stubborn woman who didn’t know when to let go, when to give up. When to admit that her stupid whore of a daughter was dead and nothing she could do would bring her back.
Instead of accepting her fate and dying quietly, Bo Yee had hammered back with her high heel, leaving a rapidly swelling dent on the top of Kenny’s head. The last strike caught his eyebrow, like a hook piercing a worm. A millisecond later, continuing its downward trajectory, the heel impacted his eye. The pain had been like a live electric current zapping his eyeball.
And then the heel had torn through.
“Follow my finger,” Guangli Lo said now, holding up his index finger and moving it back and forth.
After the attack, Kenny had balled up the scarf he’d planned to strangle Bo with and instead pressed it to his bloody eye. Unsure, at that moment, if he even had an eye. He had driven home with his one good eye and one free hand, then called Guangli.
Guangli had been a doctor back home in China, at least until he had been removed by the Health Ministry for accepting “red envelopes”—money and gifts given in exchange for treatment. By that point he had made enough that he could afford to pay up front to be smuggled to the US. Now he provided homesick Chinese immigrants, legal and not, with traditional Chinese medicine, especially herbs and acupuncture. He could also be counted on to deal with traumatic wounds and injuries without asking pesky questions. In addition to stitching the tear in his eyebrow closed, he had insisted on measuring Kenny’s pulse and looking at his tongue.
Now he was back to evaluating how badly damaged his eye was.
Kenny must have adapted to American ways. For this injury, he did not want traditional Chinese medicine, with its emphasis on balancing yin and yang. He wanted to go straight to the emergency room, he wanted to see an ophthalmologist, he wanted high tech scans. But he couldn’t take the chance of seeking out that type of care. He didn’t know where Bo Yee was, just that she had taken off. Even though she didn’t know his name and they had never met, what if the local hospitals had been alerted to be on the lookout for a Chinese man with unusual facial injuries? Injuries inflicted by a woman’s high heel?
With difficulty, Kenny tried to follow Guangli’s fat finger. Or was it fat? It was like trying to see through a red curtain.
Guangli stopped moving his finger from side to side and began to move it up and down. “Does it hurt to move your eye?”
“No more than it hurts to keep it still.” Kenny supposed he should be glad that he could still see something. At first he had been afraid that his eye was completely destroyed. With his good eye, he had stared in horror at the blood trickling through his fingers and willed himself not to scream again. Kenny had heard Bo get on her bicycle and bump down the stairs, followed by some sort of crash when she reached the bottom, but he hadn’t paid much attention.
“Cover your good eye and watch my finger again.”
Kenny did as he was told, and immediately the edges of everything went soft and dull.
“Is it blurry?” Guangli asked.
Kenny sought the right word. “Watery.”
Pressing his hand on Kenny’s forehead, Guangli tilted his head back underneath the light, peering so closely that Kenny could smell the fishy odor of the man’s dinner creeping into his nostrils.
“I believe you have a scratch on your cornea. It should heal, but you need to let it rest. If it begins to hurt more or if things get more watery or blurry, you may still need to go to a hospital emergency room.”
“Will I lose my sight?”
“Probably not. But it is hard to say. Again, this is not my area. You should go to the hospital—”
“No.” Kenny cut him off, even though it was what he wanted more than anything. “No hospitals.”
“Then let me see if I have a patch.”
Guangli dug into his bag of wonders—treatments and supplies that were half American and half Chinese—and came up with a black eye patch. He also left behind some herbs to swallow and others to
make a poultice of, to be applied three times a day.
After he left, Kenny took stock of his situation. Bad things never walk alone. His eyesight compromised, maybe gone from his left eye for good. Bo Yee run off, who knew where? David Leacham out on bail, but how long would that last? Atkinson dead, or soon to be dead, leaving Kenny without anyone he could trust to solve his problems.
His musings were interrupted by a phone call. It was a woman named Kwong who worked as an interpreter. Whenever a policeman or a doctor or a lawyer hired an interpreter, they needed someone who spoke the right dialect. But that shared dialect meant they had grown up in the same region as the person whose words they were translating. Maybe in the same city. Maybe even on the same street.
Which meant that interpreters often knew a lot more than they might let on. Interpreters were supposed to be more machine than human, doing their jobs without favor or rancor. They weren’t supposed to gossip. They weren’t even supposed to acknowledge someone they had met through the job if they saw them again on the street.
Every month Kenny paid Kwong to report back on anything interesting she had learned. A lot of it wasn’t interesting, of course. But now and again there was a hidden gem.
As had happened a few hours ago, with an arrested prostitute named Jiao. Kwong had not realized whom Jiao was implicating until the girl had said Kenny’s name, at which point Kwong stopped translating. She had realized she had to put a stop to things before they got worse. So she had told the girl that if she kept talking to the police she was going to die, and die slowly, and so would all her relatives back home in China.
The girl had decided to end things then and there, and nearly succeeded, with a little help from Kwong. Without Jiao to testify, how far would they get, really?
“Do you think she will die?” Kenny asked.
“With luck.”
“Maybe there needs to be more than luck,” Kenny said carefully. “Maybe you should be very concerned about her. Concerned enough to visit her in the hospital. I would be most grateful.”