Forest of the Mind (The Book of Terwilliger 1)

by Michael Stiles

  “What’s your choice, Tien-Ming? I need a decision.”

  Danny swayed in his seat a little. He didn’t have to pretend very hard to look faint. “Really, Mr. Li, I think I’m going to throw up.”

  Li rolled his eyes and waved to the driver, who pulled over. Danny didn’t recognize the neighborhood. When he tried the door, he discovered that he was locked in.

  “Answer my question, Tien-Ming. Yes or no?” Li’s smile was gone now.

  Danny swallowed hard. “I, uh—I have to say no. Sir.”

  “Wang’s men almost certainly saw you get in my car. He’ll think you’ve made a deal with me.”

  “I want to get out.”

  Li sighed. “I thought you were smarter than that.”

  “I guess I’m not too smart.”

  “When you hear from me again, you’ll wish you had said yes sooner.” Li pointed with two fingers toward the door, and the thug in the front seat got out and opened Danny’s door from the outside.

  “Don’t forget to leave him my card,” Li called out to the big man, who grinned and nodded. Danny was halfway out of the car when the goon’s meaty fist caught him right under the eye. He spun around and flopped face-first on the curb, scraping his forehead open and splitting his lip. Then the man kicked him once, just for emphasis, and a few seconds later the car was speeding away.

  Danny lifted his face up from the concrete, spat out a mouthful of blood, and sat up. A crowd of people was gathering around to watch him.

  “Show’s over, gang,” he said thickly. No one moved. He got up, dusted off his jeans (suppressing a wince at the pain in his side where he’d been kicked), and began shuffling very slowly down the street. He didn’t know which way he was walking. It didn’t really matter. He couldn’t see the crowd of people behind him, but he suspected they were all still watching him raptly.

  “Hey!” It was a girl’s voice, calling from across the street. He kept walking. “Hey!” she called again. “Did that guy just hit you?”

  He stopped, but didn’t look up as the girl crossed the street and ran up to him. She was pretty, petite, with long brown hair and an unflattering waitress’ uniform that didn’t fit her very well. The outfit was too big for her, and looked like it had been made by a designer who specialized in potato sacks.

  “Jesus Christ,” she said when she got up close, “what did he hit you with?”

  “His knuckles.”

  “What did you do to make him mad?”

  Danny shrugged and tried a grin. Both were quite painful. “I told his asshole boss to go screw himself.”

  “Nice going.”

  Danny started to walk again. His side was hurting more than it had a minute ago. The girl walked with him.

  “Can I help you? You look like you’re going to pass out.”

  “I’ll be fine,” said Danny. “Just need to get back home.” A crack in the sidewalk caught his foot, sending him staggering toward the curb. The girl grabbed his arm and kept him from falling into the street.

  “My place is a couple blocks over. Let me help you get cleaned up.”

  Danny accepted her support. Those two blocks took an eternity. By the time they got to the girl’s building he was completely relying on her to hold him up. He had no idea how she managed to get him up the stairs to her place.

  Once inside, she plopped him down on an under-stuffed old bean-bag chair and went to the sink, which, along with a tiny refrigerator and a decrepit and hazardous-looking gas range, transformed one corner of the tiny studio into a sort of kitchen. The refrigerator had a piece of paper stuck to it with a pair of magnets—a pencil drawing of something Danny couldn’t make out.

  “I’m Lizzie,” the girl said.

  “Danny,” he replied around a rapidly swelling tongue. Probably bit it when the guy hit me, he thought.

  Lizzie came back over with a warm, damp washcloth and dabbed at his face. He took the cloth from her and buried his face in it, ignoring the screaming pain that hit him at first. The warmth felt good after that initial sting.

  “You must be pretty fearless, bringing some strange Chinese guy up to your apartment,” Danny mumbled through the cloth.

  “I can defend myself. Besides, you don’t look too dangerous to me.”

  “Thanks.” He pulled the washcloth away from his face, and the stinging started up again. “Waitress?”

  “Yeah, how on earth did you know?” She immediately looked a little chagrined and said, “Sorry. I mean, yeah, I’m a waitress.”

  He started to get up to rinse the blood out of the cloth. She took it from him and made him sit back down. The blood didn’t rinse out very well, so she just ran some more hot water on it and brought it back to him.

  “What about you?” she asked. “Do you work for those guys in the car?”

  He hesitated. Was there some way she could have been planted by Wang to check up on him? Cautiously, he reached out with his mind to touch the thoughts that arced from her like yellow-green electricity. When he made contact, though, he pulled back with a grunt. He’d never experienced pain before when taking in someone’s thoughts. Like a needle in his head; the pain receded quickly once he stopped trying to read her. Could the punch in the face have caused it? “I work in a shop with my mother,” he said quickly, noticing the odd look she was giving him. “Souvenirs and, uh, fortune-telling.”

  “Chinatown?”

  “Yeah.”

  “I don’t get down there much.”

  Danny felt his ribs to see if anything was broken. When his probing didn’t reveal any obviously life-threatening injuries, he rolled himself out of the bean-bag and went over to the mirror over the sink. His face looked pretty bad. The guy’s fist had ripped his cheek open, and the sidewalk had done a job on his nose and forehead.

  “You live here alone?” he said, dabbing at his cuts. “I mean, it’s not really a safe city to live in alone.”

  Lizzie shrugged. “I take care of myself. I used to rely on men for everything. Now I don’t.”

  Danny winced and pulled the cloth away. He had to admit he was a bit of a sissy when it came to injuries. “Good for you.”

  “Yeah, good for me, I guess.” She was smiling, but in a sad sort of way.

  “Did I say something wrong?”

  Lizzie shook away the sad look. “No. I just... First it was my dad. He—he died. Then I lived with my uncle. He died too. Then there was a guy, but he’s gone now.”

  “He broke up with you?”

  “Not really.” She folded her arms and sat back in her chair. “You don’t want to hear my life story.”

  “Can’t be as boring as mine.”

  “Okay.” She looked around nervously, as though expecting somebody to jump out from under the bed, if her bed hadn’t been a mattress on the floor. Danny wondered what she could possibly be afraid of in her own apartment. “Hold on,” she said, and she went to the sink and turned the water on all the way. “I saw this on ‘Man From U.N.C.L.E.’ The noise is supposed to keep them from listening in.”

  Now Danny looked around the room nervously. After a quick glance around, he decided that the apartment was safe and the girl was nuts.

  “I need help,” Lizzie whispered so softly he could hardly hear her over the sound of the water. “I don’t know where to go. I think they might have found me.”

  “Who?”

  “The FBI.”

  Danny struggled not to crack a smile. “Okay,” he said, attempting to put on his mahjong face.

  “I’m not crazy.”

  “I didn’t say you were crazy.”

  “You were thinking it.”

  Danny stopped smiling. “Can you read minds?”

  Lizzie gave him a strange look, as though he was the crazy one. “No. Can you?”

  “Now that would be crazy,” he said, laughing nervously.

  “There was a man I was seeing.” At first Danny thought she might have strange men in her dreams too, but then he understood what she meant. Seei
ng, as in dating. “He got mixed up in some things.”

  “With the FBI.”

  “Shut up,” she said, “I’m not making this up. Yes, with the FBI. And some other people. Bald people. It was complicated. He helped the FBI do something terrible, I think they made him do it. This FBI agent, Kajdas, he was real good at getting people to do things for him. Manipulative asshole. Then they took Ed away.”

  “Ed’s your guy?”

  “Yeah. I found out what happened, what they made him do, and then they took him.”

  “Took him?” The humor in this story was rapidly slipping away.

  “Yes. And they tried to take me.” She had tears in her eyes now, and her lower lip was trembling. “I got away, just barely. And I... I hurt one of them. Accidentally. I might have killed him.”

  Danny looked at her askance. “You?”

  “Mmm-hmm. One of the agents, Driscoll, I think I saw him the other day over on Lafayette. And again on Spring Street yesterday. He found me and he’s watching me.”

  “He’s not the one you killed?”

  Lizzie shook her head impatiently. “No, he’s not the one I killed. You’re not listening.”

  “And your guy—Ed? What did they do with him?”

  “Who knows? I don’t think these are the kind of guys who put people on trial. I think they’re keeping him somewhere. You know, for good. Unless they’ve―” She trailed off, unwilling to finish that thought.

  “Have you called the— “ Danny reconsidered before finishing his sentence. “Oh.”

  “Right, can’t really go to the cops.”

  “But if this Driscoll found you, wouldn’t he just arrest you? Why would he follow you around?”

  Lizzie pursed her lips. “I don’t know. But I’m afraid to go anywhere. I think they had Ed’s apartment bugged. That had to be how they caught him. They probably bugged mine too.”

  “What about your family—your mother? Does she live around here?”

  “No. My mom and sister don’t want me around.”

  “But if they knew you needed help―”

  Lizzie gave him a look that told him that avenue was closed.

  “I don’t know what I can do for you. I’m just―”

  “You don’t understand. I don’t have anybody. My boss at the restaurant is a womanizing asshole. The other girls there are nice enough, but they’re all stupid. All they talk about is makeup and clothes and who’s sleeping with the owner. When I saw that guy beating you up outside, I thought maybe you know the kind of people who could, you know, help me out.” The end of this sentence petered out as her confidence began to waver.

  “I think I may know some of those kinds of people. But getting their help is sometimes worse than not getting any.”

  “I don’t believe that.”

  “I do.”

  There was another long silence.

  “What happened with those guys?” Lizzie said at last. “Why were they beating the tar out of you?”

  “It’s a long story.” When he saw that she was not going to let him out of it, though, he told her his story. He started with the destruction of the shop, described the deal he’d made with Wang, and finished with the conversation with Li in the car. Some things he left out, like the method he used to win at mahjong. All she really needed to know was that he was good at the game.

  “So,” he said by way of conclusion, “I don’t think you want help from those guys. Once they help you, or even if they don’t help you, you can never get away from them.”

  “But will you tell your boss? Mr. Wang? If I ask you to?”

  Danny sighed.

  “Will you see if there’s anything he can do to—I don’t know, hide me or something? He must know something about how to deal with the FBI.”

  Danny wondered how on earth to broach that subject with Wang. He knew he should say no, that it would go badly for everyone if he offered to talk to Wang for her, but he was a pushover at heart. “I’ll ask him.”

  Lizzie’s face brightened. “Thanks. It’s nice of you to try.” Suddenly she had tears in her eyes again, but she blinked a few times, hardened herself, and somehow seemed to draw strength from some deep reserve that Danny hadn’t seen until now. “Maybe there’s a way I can help you somehow, too. I don’t know what it is, but―”

  Danny smiled sadly. “Maybe.”

  “If I can find a way, I’ll help you. I promise.”

  Lizzie let him keep the washcloth. Danny limped back downstairs—he was very sore now, and his muscles were starting to stiffen—and peeked outside for any sign of Li’s henchmen. He didn’t see any Chinese men lurking about, just a man in rags rooting through some garbage bags at the curb, so he took his chances and stepped out.

  The beggar glanced at him as he walked by. His matted hair, long and gray, hung down to his shoulders, and his sharp blue eyes caught Danny’s gaze before Danny looked away. That brief, penetrating look made Danny feel like he’d been thoroughly examined and catalogued for future reference. Could this be the FBI man Lizzie was talking about—Driscoll? This man didn’t look like a typical beggar. Danny walked faster, and the man didn’t follow. Once he was around the corner, he hurried home as quickly as his aching body would allow.

  35

  Burlap Bags and Fingernail Scratches

  Danny couldn’t make out what Blake was shouting at the crowd. The people called his name and shouted in an overwhelming cacophony that drowned out his words. He yelled at them, pounding his fist into his hand, but the people didn’t listen. Each time Blake smacked his fist against his hand, there was a sound like a hollow boom. The booms came louder and louder until Danny awoke to the splintering crash of his apartment door being forced open from the outside.

  There was the crash, and then there was silence. Danny sat up and listened in the semi-darkness that was as close as Manhattan ever came to being completely dark. Could he have imagined the noise? The Blake dream was always so vivid that it was possible—

  His bedroom door squeaked open. Two men came in wearing ski masks. Danny quickly stood up, found himself looking down the barrel of a gun, and sat back down again. One of them left the room while the other kept the gun pointed at Danny’s nose with two quivering hands. Danny raised a hand to brush his hair out of his eyes, startling the man so much that he almost dropped the gun.

  “Sit down!” the stranger said in Cantonese.

  “Okay!” Danny replied, deciding at the last moment it would be in poor taste to point out that he was already sitting.

  “Shut up!”

  Danny almost said “okay” again, but thought better of it and concentrated on not wetting his pants instead. He was mostly successful in this.

  A scream came from the hallway, and Danny caught a glimpse of Alice being dragged toward the front door by the other intruder. She was fighting him furiously with her fists and trying to hook one leg around the edge of Danny’s doorway. Her attacker grunted every time one of her fists made contact with his face or gut, and his nose appeared to be bleeding.

  “What the fuck are you doing?” Danny demanded, but the trembling gunman was looking over his shoulder repeatedly and paying so much attention to what the other one was doing that he didn’t seem to hear. Danny took the opportunity to reach into his mind to try to find out what was happening, aided in his effort by the stark terror that opened the stranger’s thoughts to him. The gun barrel in his face made it practically impossible to concentrate properly, but the man was oozing panic and the thoughts that tumbled out of his mind all pointed to one person: Li.

  Alice clawed her attacker’s hand away from her mouth and screamed once more, earning a hard punch in the face that left her dazed. She put up no more resistance as he dragged her out of the apartment.

  Danny decided to try again. “What does Mr. Li want from me?” he asked, and the remaining attacker turned back to him.

  “He respectfully asks you to reconsider his offer,” the man said, struggling to keep his cracking voice
under control. Not a man at all; he sounded like a teenager. The kid backed away and lowered the gun, then turned and ran from the apartment.

  Danny took a few steps toward the door, unsure what to do, until the sound of sobbing from his mother’s room stopped him. He found her huddled at the foot of Alice’s bed, clutching the sheets in her hands and shaking with grief. She looked up when Danny came into the room. The look she gave him was full of ice.

  “You started all of this,” she whispered.

  “Li started it, Ma! If he hadn’t destroyed the shop―”

  She closed her eyes as though she couldn’t bear to look at him any longer. “Men like Li always do things like that. It’s up to real men not to react poorly by doing stupid things. Your father would never have let you work for either of those criminals if he were still alive. He would have skinned you alive for even thinking about it. But instead of staying out of trouble, you walked right into it! And now you’ve dragged the rest of us into it too!”

  “Li wants me to quit Wang and work for him instead. Maybe if I―”

  She opened her eyes and fixed him with a hard stare. “Don’t you dare. Wang will kill you, and Li will kill your sister, and then what? Where does that leave me?” She gripped Alice’s bedsheets even harder, her hands white and trembling. “This wouldn’t have happened if you had thought before you acted. We could have done fine for ourselves.”

  He knew she was in no condition to be shouted at, but he shouted just the same. “I had to do what I did, Ma! We couldn’t get by without the shop. We would have starved, lost the apartment―”

  “And how are we better off now, Tien-Ming?”

  * * *

  Ching punched the wall with enough force to crack the plaster. “That snake,” he spat. “If he tries to use her as one of his call-girls to service the bok goy, I swear I’ll—” He glanced at Danny and stopped himself. Li’s reputation as the king of Chinatown prostitution was well-known, but mentioning such things was not helpful to Danny’s state of mind at the moment.

  They were standing in the crumbling, smelly entryway of Ching’s parents’ apartment building, between the bottom of the stairs and the mailboxes, because Ching’s father was upstairs sleeping off whatever it was he’d been doing the night before. The smell came from several garbage cans just inside the front door, which were seldom emptied and stank to high heaven. Danny and Ching stopped talking every time someone came into the building or came down the stairs, so their conversation was disjointed and they kept repeating themselves. Danny had gone to his friend to figure out how to get Alice back. So far they had not come up with any kind of plan.