by E Y Mak
Classic good cop, bad cop routine.
Candice responded defiantly. “But I was there. I was there for what felt like a day. It’s in a small room at a lower level near the gym. It felt like a janitor’s room. It’s—”
Bob cut her off. “What I need you to do is sit down and answer my questions about Daniel Peters.”
“I don’t know much about Daniel. We met the evening before this all happened. We were working on a file together.”
To her left, Robert Garcia sat upright and looked into her eyes. He said, “That’s right. You mentioned the Butler file and this Phantom you’ve been chasing. We’ve looked into it, but there’s no official record anywhere of this case.”
“Sounds like this Phantom got the drop on her,” Bob said dismissively.
"That's impossible. Russell—” Candice said.
Bob cut her off again. “So you want to talk about Russell? Why don’t you tell us about what you meant in these emails?” He took a folded sheet of paper out of his shirt pocket. After unfolding it, he placed it on the table and slid it towards Candice. She picked it up.
“We found these emails coming from Gmail accounts linked to your home IP addresses. You and Russell,” Bob said. “We know you both live alone. There’s no one else who would be sending these.”
Candice read the sheets of paper, which spoke subtly about eliminating “Russell’s boss.” They were fake—she had never written them. “Do you think we’d actually be stupid enough to put something like this in writing?”
Rob once again leaned forward and spoke with his deep, gentle voice. “Candice, we don’t think you and Russell are stupid. In fact, we think you two are really smart.” He paused to look down at the emails. “But we’re smarter and we have access to forensic tools that tell us there’s more to the story than what you are saying. I can help you get out of this, but you need to be truthful with us.”
“I don’t know what else to tell you,” she said. “I don’t know where those emails came from.”
Rob slammed the table. “Why didn’t you disclose to us your relationship with Russell when you were applying to Phineas?”
“Because we aren’t in a relationship,” she responded in a measured tone.
“We have months of texts and emails that say otherwise.” He picked up a thick binder off the floor and dropped it on the desk in front of him. The impact caused the table to shake.
Without opening the binder, Candice said, “I don’t know what these are. I never met Russell before I started here.”
Rob leaned forward and sighed. “Like I said, Candice, we can’t help you if you’re not truthful with us. We can only keep this going so long before we give you up to the NYPD.”
“Have you called Harry Lions? He’ll vouch for this case,” she said.
“Detective Lions is not available. And we checked the status of the Butler file with his partner—it hasn’t been reopened.”
Candice sat back. Bob had managed to get a rise out of her. She could feel herself becoming flustered and was on the verge of losing her temper. But she had managed to almost entirely control her anger during FBI Academy. Her final reports all indicated that she was cool under fire. Leadership potential. Good decision-making.
Calculated.
She stopped talking, sat up straight in her chair, and smiled. She wasn’t going to back down.
“I’d like to speak with my counsel,” she said.
Chapter Forty-Five
Russell walked up the stairs into a long hallway where two Chinese ladies were speaking in loud Cantonese. The first lady was older, had curly silver hair, and was seated on a small folding stool. The second lady was younger and wore a simple plain white T-shirt. Two young children, no more than five or six years old, played a card game on the floor of the hallway. He walked up to the first lady and asked her if she had seen a young exotic-looking lady coming up their stairs. Both shook their heads forcefully, but Russell noticed the younger lady mouth something in Cantonese.
Fifth floor.
Russell thanked the ladies and continued climbing. Two flights later, he paused in the stairwell. Unlike the other floors, the fifth floor didn’t open up into a hallway. It was merely a wooden door with an eye-level slit. There were Chinese characters written in black-ink brush strokes above the door.
西洋子 (Western Boy)
Breaking in would be a huge gamble. There was no way for him to know who, or what, was on the other side. And it was undoubtedly gang territory. Russell had heard about the Western Boys gang on his last mission. He had been asked to infiltrate a crop of new international gangsters that had begun taking up roots in New York. His goal was to pull out Li Bok Man, the son of a transplanted New York real estate mogul that owned a large portion of Soho. During this time, he read an intel report on all Hong Kong triad activity, and the report advised that the Western Boys were small time, with a territory purely within the Kowloon Peninsula. At worst, they acted as hired toughs for more established gangs in the area. They were not affiliated with drug trafficking or murder—at least not yet. Russell considered them wannabes in the world of organized Hong Kong crime. He hoped his information was still current. The circumstances dictated quick action.
After knocking on the door, Russell heard footsteps on the other side and then the sound of wood against cement. It sounded like a stool being placed against the door. The thin slot on the door slid open. A set of dark-brown eyes stared at Russell.
“What do you want?” Eyes barked in Cantonese.
“Got any Vietnamese?” he asked.
“Who’s asking?” said Eyes.
Russell took out his wallet, pulled out four US hundred-dollar bills, and raised them to the slot.
“Yes, sir,” Eyes said.
The slot closed and he heard the sound of something moving on the other side of the door. A short, scrawny Hong Kong man in his midtwenties opened the door. As the man led him in, Russell surveyed the dark and dirty room and saw a second closed door directly in front of him. On the sidewall were a desk and computer.
“We have two new Vietnamese girls,” Eyes said. “Two thousand Hong Kong dollars for one, three thousand for both.”
“Let me see them first,” Russell said.
“No, money first,” said the tiny pimp.
Frustrated, Russell considered simply knocking him out, but decided otherwise. Instead, he pulled out a US fifty-dollar bill.
“This lets me take a look first,” he said.
Eyes nodded. He opened the second door and took Russell into a small hallway, where three half-naked Asian girls were sitting on a couch in the dimly lit room, watching Chinese soap operas as they waited for their next charge. Russell sauntered in nonchalantly and smiled. All three stood up to greet him.
“Van and Binh here are the new Viets,” Eyes said, motioning to a tall, slim girl with a large chest and a short, pretty girl with her hair tied in twin ponytails. “Which one? Or both?” the bouncer asked.
Russell said, “They are both beautiful. But I’ve changed my mind now. Do you have anything more exotic? Perhaps a mixed girl? Japanese?” he asked in Cantonese.
The smiles disappeared from both of the girl's faces. “There’s a new girl in 5H,” the girl with her hair tied back said in broken Cantonese before she was interrupted by the pimp.
“No, we don’t have any of those! Stop wasting my time, get out of here!” he shouted at Russell. A puzzled look grew on the girl’s face. She shrugged, then sat down to return to her soap opera.
Russell turned around to return to the front door. He pretended to walk back towards the entrance before spinning around and walking towards Room 5H. He pushed back them and said, “Let me just check her out. I’ll make it worth your while.”
Eyes shouted an expletive in Cantonese and angrily began walking back towards the entrance. Unperturbed, Russell quickly found Room 5H. He ducked down and whispered into the door, “It’s Russell.” The sound of multiple chains and locks sliding on the other side
of the door began.
Suddenly, he heard yelling coming from the main entrance. He turned to face the sound. There were six stocky Asian men, all heavily tattooed and advancing on him quickly. Three held machetes, and the other three dragged long pipes behind them. The lead man had a shaved head and a bulbous bright red beard. His shaved head was connected to his muscular body by an extremely long neck, so long that Russell thought that he looked like a giraffe. He advanced with an extra measure of urgency and anger.
Russell turned back to the door.
“Benita, I’m coming in.”
Chapter Forty-Six
After entering the room, Russell locked the heavy iron gate and the flimsy wooden door from the inside with his keys. After double-checking the knob for good measure, he turned towards Benita, who was standing next to a large window situated directly across from the door.
“What happened?” he asked.
“Long story. I was trying to play the hero,” she said.
“Can we go out here?” asked Russell as he walked to the open window and examine it.
“We can. There’s a sketchy-looking fire escape, but there’s no way to get to the ground from here,” she said.
He didn’t have time to ask what she’d meant before the goons started banging on the door and screaming Cantonese expletives.
“We don’t have many options right now,” he said. “Let’s go.”
Russell stepped out through the window onto the fire escape and looked down. It was a cascading set of green metal stairs, something that Russell had seen in older buildings in New York. Benita had been right. Three floors down, a sliding ladder usually would be the final connection to the ground. Without the ladder, the jump was more than twenty feet to the hard pavement.
“We’re not going to make it without breaking our legs,” Benita said.
The banging and yelling continued from the door. Through the racket, he also heard the metallic sound of keys.
“Any of the lower windows open?” he asked.
“Nope. Boarded up too,” she said. “We should try going up instead.” Benita started running up the stairs.
Russell looked up, scanning for drones or airships. He didn’t spot any in the moonlight.
“Let’s go,” Benita said, already two floors above.
Russell quickly started running up the stairs after her. As he ran, he craned his neck over the side of the platform and stared straight up. For the most part, the fire escape zigzagged up and connected windows. However, he could see that about a dozen floors up, the fire escape leveled out and wrapped around the entire building.
“Let’s get to the platform there,” he shouted to her. “Maybe we can reach ground level on the other side. Or at least reenter the building from there.”
Benita nodded.
They had only cleared a few more floors when Russell heard a crash below. He looked down and saw Giraffe pointing at him and yelling instructions loudly in Cantonese. After climbing another three levels, Russell kicked over a stray garbage can and rolled it down the fire escape. The receptacle tumbled down, the sound of metal crashing upon metal disrupting the buzz of evening Hong Kong. It crashed at the bottom of the staircase one floor below and served to slow, but not stop, the line of thugs hot in pursuit. Russell continued pressing onward behind Benita.
Now just two floors from the wraparound platform, Russell and Benita could see that it led to a point about ten feet from the adjacent building. The neighboring structure was being renovated and was enveloped by traditional Chinese bamboo scaffolding. When they reached the platform, Benita nodded at Russell.
Benita sprinted the full length of the platform and launched herself off the building. She landed almost perfectly, taking five more large strides before gracefully slowing to a stop. She turned around and used her thumb to signal okay. Russell threw the briefcase to her, and she caught it with both hands.
Turning around, Russell saw that Giraffe and his thugs were now on the platform immediately behind him.
Your turn, Russell. Here goes nothing.
With his pursuers behind him, Russell only managed half the running start that Benita had just used. Right before the end of the platform, Russell exploded powerfully off his right foot and made it clear off the building. He landed on the bamboo platform, tucking into a roll to soften the impact of the fall.
As he rolled, he suddenly felt the plastic fibers holding the bamboo together buckle under the momentum of the sudden weight of his body.
He reacted by shifting to the left, but the bamboo shoots forming the platform had already begun to give way.
He felt himself sliding to the side of the platform.
He continued rolling right off the edge and looked helplessly down at the fifteen-stories of air between him and the concrete roads of Hong Kong below.
Chapter Forty-Seven
It was more than reaction.
It was instinct.
Before Russell fell completely off the edge, he reached out with his left hand and grabbed just enough of the vertical cross bamboo shoot to arrest his momentum. A searing pain burned through his left shoulder as he swung violently back towards the building, one floor lower, and he yelled out as he slammed into the hard-concrete building, and dropped onto the platform.
Alive. Each thump of his heartbeat felt as though it was bursting through his chest.
“Russell?” he heard Benita yell. Russell tried to answer, but the shock of the near fall prevented any coherent noise from leaving his throat. It was only after the second time Benita had called out that he was able to answer.
“Shhhhh,” he said softly. “You’re going to attract some drones.”
“Are you okay?” Benita whispered as her head popped over the edge of scaffolding above him.
“I think I separated my shoulder, hold on.”
Russell tried to hold both arms in front him, but his left shoulder dangling limply in front of him. He resisted the urge to scream as he used his right hand to rotate his left arm counterclockwise. He then rotated it slowly upwards and gritted his teeth as he raised his arm above his head, feeling the shoulder naturally slip back into place. It stung incredibly, but it’d have to do for now.
“Where are they?” he asked, trying to keep his mind alert.
“I see them. They look too scared to make the leap after what happened to you,” she said.
Russell looked back towards the other building and noticed their pursuers still gawking at him from the far side of the chasm. Most of them anyway. Two of them were already running down the fire escape.
As they watched the gang scatter, a quiet, dark object suddenly dropped from the sky. It was a drone, and it was clearly focused on the gang members running loudly down the staircase. It hadn’t seemed to notice Russell or Benita yet. Russell hid behind a blue tarp attached to the bamboo frame. He didn’t know for sure, but he guessed that Benita had done the same.
The drone was likely in observation-and-deterrence mode and was not directly engaging the gang. He watched it follow the two gang members running down the fire escape before floating away to a safe distance. He saw one of the gang members point in his direction, as if the thug was trying to instruct the drone to find Russell instead.
He finally heard Benita whisper, “There’s more where that came from.”
“Let’s climb down,” he said.
“Not with your separated shoulder,” she said, as she climbed down to his level.
Reunited, they walked around the side of the building on the scaffolding. Russell followed her, alternating between holding onto the next bamboo support and caressing his left shoulder, trying to provide some relief for the sharp pain in his arm. When they got to the other side of the building, Benita finally gave in to her frustration. She picked up a hammer left carelessly on the ledge of one of the windowsills and, with one swift blow, shattered the exterior window.
Inside, they found a compact living quarter consisting of a kitchen, bed, and floor to
ilet all in one room. They walked towards the entry door opposite the window, which opened up into a darkened hallway. His shoulder pulsated as he followed Benita through the door and towards the elevator at the far end of the hall.
Change that channel, he thought. It was a technique that he had picked up during his time with the Canadian Forces. When the mind begins to succumb to pain, visualize changing the channel. Focus your mind on the technique required for your next move—focus on it with each step. By doing so, Russell had realized that he could use his mind to trick his body into a second, third, and fourth wind. He managed to mentally reduce his shoulder pain by literally just carrying on.
About halfway down the hallway, a light above the elevator lit up and he heard a chime. They both ducked into a door nook in the hallway. Russell mentally counted three pairs of feet exiting the elevator. He could hear the metallic rattle of dog tags echo closer towards their location. He held his breath, hoping that the sound would go back towards the elevator.
It didn’t.
The rattle was now just around the corner. There was nowhere to hide. Russell stood tall and readied himself for a fight. In his peripheral vision, Russell saw Benita’s outstretched hands near her own combat-ready body.
The rattle turned the corner, and the tension instantly subsided as an elderly Chinese man walking a large rottweiler appeared, the slack its chain leash rattling. The dog, startled, jumped at Russell, but the elderly man held him back, cursing at Russell for surprising him.
The Canadian in Russell involuntarily apologized before he resumed his approach towards the elevator. He was about six yards away when Russell spotted the unlit EXIT sign in Chinese characters.
“Let’s take the staircase,” Benita said.
Russell nodded. “Read my mind,” he said.
They were passing by a window on the third level when Benita raised her hand as a signal to stop. They could hear the loud clamor of footsteps rushing up the stairs a couple floors below. Without hesitating, Benita stepped out the window and back onto the scaffolding. Russell followed suit. He turned back in time to see two of the goons reach the window and try to follow them through the opening. He gave the first goon a quick kick. The hoodlum crumpled back awkwardly midstep, tripping his companion and launching them both back inside the building.