She had excellent footwork. I saw this flash of tiny fists and then felt a sting of a crescent kick in my side. You little…! Darting out again before I could connect.
Around me I heard cheering and whooping and saw bills traded in bets, and when I backed up too far, two hands spitefully pushed me back in. The girl launched herself at me with another flurry of quick blows: bam, bam, bam! Kick to thigh, kick to shoulder, punch to my chin, and this was getting old real fast. For every two blows I could block, one sailed through.
Enough defensive. I gave her a front snap kick, but she repelled it with her instep, and I launched another and that was blocked too. Her kick got in, and I grunted.
The only good thing was that her blows were flicky, not enough finishing kime in them. Not enough oomph.
Fighting in the street is not like in the movies. Somebody breaks your rib, you will give up. You get hit hard enough in the chops, you will go down, and you do not keep standing, ready for more.
But I couldn’t break through to land a punch, and though I was taller and weighed more, my reach and my size weren’t helping me. In karate, you often learn to fight according to your strengths, and you also have the strategy of the swallow—imitating the bird’s style of flying, in and out attacks for small people. I thought of a steamroller approach to counter this, but her blocks were blindingly fast.
Agile. Quick. But not very creative.
There were jeers and laughter as the girl and everyone else watched me kneel down on the cement. She wasn’t stupid. She knew it was a trap. But she couldn’t tell what kind—and she had to come to me to find out.
She sent a kick flying to my head, and I had one shot at this. I grabbed her leg, and now she was hopping in the air.
I put her on the ground fast, and it took only a second to vise an arm around her throat. If I had wanted to, I could have killed her in an instant.
“Are we done?” I asked.
Chinese—addressed to Shu, not to me.
“She says you cheat,” said Bowtie.
“Right, of course I do. Can we get out of here, please?”
Shu’s gang sulked but allowed us to go.
Out on the street, Bowtie gave orders to his men, and they put a bit of distance between us while watching our backs. I couldn’t wait to turn to this guy and say, “What the bloody hell is going on?”
“Ah Jo Lee sent you to Shu,” he said.
“Yes!” I said impatiently. “That was Shu!”
“I’m Shu,” he explained. “He’s a Shu but not the one you’re supposed to hook up with!”
“Oh, shit.”
“Exactly. It’s Lee’s goddamn fault. What was he thinking? Sending a black chick into Chinatown!”
“Thank you very much—”
“Hey, lady, no offense, but you think I could stroll around Nairobi like it’s my backyard? Or even your Chinatown in London?”
“Chinatown in London isn’t that—”
“Whatever! There’s political correctness and then there’s just boneheaded. Listen. A lot of Chinatown action is controlled these days by new immigrants from Fuzhou, back in Mainland China. Most of the nice, middle-class Cantonese moved out to the ’burbs by the late nineties. Lee’s intel is out of date. He sent you to me, thinking there’d be only one Shu to worry about.”
“But the address—”
“Is a place we let them take over,” he added quickly.
“You’re related or something?”
“Triads don’t work like that,” he explained. “That’s why it took years for the loh fann cops in this country to clue in. The police thought in terms of families, like Mafia. The ‘uncle’ who heads up a group will recruit from his village back home, but not necessarily the brothers, the cousins, the family tree. Which brings me to my next beef with you.”
“What? What did I do?”
He gave me a sideways grimace. “You nearly blew my fucking cover, that’s what.”
“You’re a—”
“Jesus, don’t say it!” he barked, checking over his shoulder. “I speak Cantonese, Mandarin, and that guy’s Fujian dialect. Do you know how many Chinese undercover cops there are in America? Never mind New York, but anywhere? It’s not top-of-the-pile career choice, okay? Call it a ‘cultural difference.’ It took me years to build confidence with these guys, and if they ever find out, I’ll be lucky if they slice my balls off after I die. I don’t know what you’re selling, honey, but it fuckin’ better be the second coming.”
“Look, I don’t know about you, but I really could use lunch,” I said.
“Lunch! You got nerve to—”
“Lunch. You never get hungry?”
He relented and took me to a place on Mulberry Street—an Italian restaurant, where a black girl with an Asian guy was far less likely to draw attention.
When the menus were taken away, I let out a heavy sigh. “I’m sorry about all this. I might have blown everything by giving it away to Shu Number Two.” I gave him the condensed version of Isaac and his lab operation.
His verdict was “Holy shit.”
“But shooting my mouth off to your friend back there—”
“Don’t worry about him,” said Shu, giving me a wink. “He’s small-time. He’s due to be busted tonight anyway on a people-smuggling charge. His op will come to a grinding halt as his boys try to figure how to bail him out. He would have had to report anything important to his uncle, and that’s not going to happen. Plus I happen to know for a fact they’ve got no associations with black organized crime.”
“That’s good,” I said. “But who does?”
He bit his bottom lip and answered, “I know of a few operations. This is bad, very bad.”
“I know.”
“Last thing we need is an alliance between some wack job with the brothers and the bastards I deal with.”
“You can’t shut him down yet,” I told him. “I’m trying to prove he committed a couple of murders.”
He looked at me as if I’d grown another head. “What do you think this is, lady? Cradle 2 the Grave? We’re not partners! This is my job! You’re a civilian—hell, you are officially a tourist. A foreign national!”
“You can’t connect the dots yet,” I argued. “You shut down the lab, you won’t be able to make a case his people are involved. Trust me, they’re very careful. I’ve seen the financial trail. It’s almost invisible. If you’re patient, you can get them all.”
“Tell me where the lab is.”
“I’ll do better,” I said. “Here.” I passed him the samples of pills I’d stolen. “Have your forensics-thingy guys analyze this.”
“Great, but where’s the lab?”
I didn’t say anything.
“I could have you detained as a material witness,” he threatened.
“If you do,” I said, “I won’t get back to their mansion, and my absence will be noticed. That’ll tip off Isaac and Danielle, and they might pack up shop and bugger off. You’ll still have no case.”
“Are you this annoying to British cops?”
I thought of poor Carl at the Met. He had been so happy I was going to America. “I have a certain reputation, yes.”
“Lucky me.”
“What do I call you?” I asked. “Your name isn’t really Shu, is it?”
We shook hands. “For your information and only your information, Detective John Chen. Don’t you dare call me that once we go back outside.”
Our dishes arrived. He had lasagne, and I had fettuccine Alfredo. Neither of us, it seemed, had much imagination when it came to Italian food.
“There’s something wrong with the whole scenario,” I piped up, scooping up noodles. “Isaac. He makes a lot of disparaging comments about East Asians. He’s got a real thing about them, especially Asian men. It sounds genuine—not like he’s putting up a front.”
“So? Wouldn’t make him the first creep who puts aside his bigotry to do business.”
“That’s just it,” I said.
“If he hates them so much, does he really need to work with the triads for his drug business?”
“You got a point,” said Chen. “I don’t see why he’d go to them at all—especially if he’s making his own stuff. I know heroin comes in from the Golden Triangle, and I’m no expert, but I’m sure the local community gets their ecstasy too from Thailand, Holland, and other places. They wouldn’t let him use their distribution network unless he’s got really hot shit that’s better than what they’re importing.”
“So Isaac should be a rival, not an ally?”
He shook his head. “If Isaac has carved out a territory, doesn’t make sense for them to even overlap or butt heads. Even if they’re vying for the stuck-up, rich white kids in the clubs, they don’t have to make contact or scout each other out. There’s no reason for this Isaac to be in Chinatown unless he needs something from a player here. Or he’s trying to sell his shit and is working with someone local. But as you said, why pick here?”
“Then what’s going on?” I asked.
“I don’t know,” said Chen. “You’re the one on the inside. Maybe we have to be partners, after all.”
I shook his hand for the second time and smiled. “Okay, then, partner. Can you help me find out anything on Isaac Jackson?”
“You haven’t dug into his background already?”
“He’s a cypher. The mansion on Staten Island is in Danielle’s name—her real name of Zamani—and I managed to use the mortgage records to trace her back with the help of a few friends.”
I didn’t think it would be a good idea to give him the names of my chatty friends in the insurance business.
“As far as I know, she’s got no criminal record. Maybe you can tell me different. She’s American, but she lived in Britain and France for a while. She’s the power, but I think he’s the key.”
“Fair enough, but do you have anything else besides his surname?”
“Uh-uh.”
He shrugged. “We love a challenge.”
“Thanks.”
“Teresa…Ah Jo’s a pal, and I’m sure you’re getting top dollar—”
“Pounds. Sterling.”
“But this sounds like some freaky shit you’re involved in.”
“They killed Ah Jo’s sister,” I explained. “And my friend. Her body was dumped in a dirty alley in Brooklyn.”
“Anna? They killed Anna?”
“You didn’t know? You’re a bloody New York City detective!”
“Yes, I’m a ‘bloody’ detective, and I work Manhattan’s Chinatown! I can’t keep track of every homicide, especially out in Brooklyn even if it is an Asian girl. And especially while I’m undercover! You want to see my case load? And shit, why didn’t Jeff even call me? Why’s he got you on this and not me?”
I didn’t respond immediately, and the answer was already clouding his features, Jeff’s rationale dawning on him. He’d spelled it out himself. Because the Chinese do not normally like cops. The Chinese do not normally trust cops. And it’s a steady struggle just to find Chinese anywhere who want to risk becoming pariahs within their own communities by becoming cops, whether it was in New York or Hong Kong or Bangkok.
As good friends as Lee and Chen were, Lee must have been thinking, Well, he’s a cop now. Good enough to hook Teresa up and give her the lay of the land, but that was only because I’d asked him for a name, a contact within Chinatown’s underworld. Enough years and their different “career paths” had dictated that his old friend was not to be trusted with finding the killers of his kid sister.
Chen’s hurt was all over his face. He knew he hadn’t dropped his culture when he put on his badge.
I briefed him on the details. First Oliver, now Chen. Hating this, seeing the grief reflected in others’ eyes.
Chen was similarly baffled by all the trouble they went to to mark Anna with a tattoo.
“They put it on Anna’s leg to throw everyone off,” I explained. “It was written in Thai, but it came from a Vietnamese gang.”
“But Anna was Chinese.”
I groaned my impatience. “Yes, I know, John, thanks. That’s the problem that’s been nagging at me. They didn’t know she was Chinese, they thought she was Thai. But the motto comes from a Vietnamese gang. How the hell do Isaac and a bunch of black dudes know anything about Vietnamese gangs? Especially since they didn’t bother to even check Anna’s ancestry?”
“But we know they must be hooked up with one of the gangs in Chinatown to distribute the ecstasy,” he argued. “Maybe they picked up a few things. You fall back on what you know, right?”
“Right,” I mumbled. I told him I’d better get back to the mansion.
“Wait a minute.” He scribbled down his cell number and a private text code we could use to contact each other.
“Cheers.”
“Let me ask you something,” said Chen. “You regularly get mixed up in crazy stuff like this?”
I tried to be modest. Tried, anyway. “Do you remember news stories a couple of years ago about that pointy-nosed tobacco heiress who got into trouble over her visit to Paris?”
“You’re the one who slapped her?”
I shrugged. “She bought a person, John. Twelve-year-old Ugandan girl to scrub her floors, do her laundry—the girl put in an eighteen-hour day and hadn’t been outside the house in a month.”
“Teresa Knight,” he said, “I just know you’re gonna give me a migraine.”
I went about my chores for the next three days to avoid suspicion. And when I thought I wasn’t raising any alarms, I used my free time to be with Violet. That time was gold. I couldn’t get enough of her, and yet we had to ration each other’s company.
On the third day I found her in her favorite place, the meadow field where we had first made love. Looking cute in her reading spectacles, scribbling away on a pad as she sat on the grass in front of a football. What we in the rest of the world call a football—not that leather pecan-shaped thing the Americans throw around with their hands and call a football.
“Hey, stand right there,” she requested. “Just stand for a moment, ’kay?”
I stopped a few yards away. “Okay. Umm, what am I doing?”
“You’re a gravitational mass,” she explained.
“Oooh, a pet name! Thank you, darling.”
She smiled, and then I could see her mind switching back to her work, looking right through me as if I really were a dwarf star or a planet or whatever cosmic thing she was thinking of. At last she said, “Okay, you can move now, thanks.”
“In circles?” I teased. “Orbits? You want me maybe to make a crash sound like an asteroid?”
“I think you mean meteorite.” She took off her specs, letting them plop on her equations, and raised a hand for me to take.
“Uh-oh,” I said. “Serious face.”
“Yeah…”
Her hand was actually trembling in mine. “Whoa! What is it? What’s wrong?”
“Nothing, nothing—I’m okay. Well, I’m not, but…Look, we ought to talk, baby. I know you’ve been here, like, I don’t know—days? Weeks, whatever? But I don’t think I can stay here anymore. That’s because of you.”
“Oh, God, I didn’t mean to—”
“Teresa, just shut up for a second, girl. I’m not finished, all right? I’m telling you I think I want to leave. This place isn’t what I want—not anymore. I’m not getting work done, and I’ve got no one to talk to about it.” She smiled faintly. “Besides you.”
“Where do you want to go?”
She laughed at herself. “That’s the part I haven’t thought through! I don’t know. I can’t go back to my family, I just can’t, and they’re not in New York anyway. I can see if one of my old girlfriends still has her place in Washington Heights maybe.”
“Come with me,” I said.
“What?”
“Come with me.”
“Where?”
“I don’t know, back to Britain? Look, we’ve got some of the most prestigi
ous universities in the world—not that I ever stayed that long in one, but still! We could go through the paperwork, look into how you could apply. I don’t even know what the costs are for international students these days, but my dad’s a professor, and he’s got contacts, and I’m coming into a big chunk of change soon—”
I was talking in a mad rush, watching her face. “I’d find a way, depending on where you want to go—I mean, unless you want to go here. I don’t know how I’d stay in America, but I’ll have enough money for us to figure out what we both want.”
She looked very pensive. And scared. Couldn’t blame her, really. The mansion, the princes—she likely suspected they’d put pressure on her not to leave.
I put in quickly, “I’m not staying either, darling. I’ll explain when we’re out, but for now I need you to trust me.”
“You’d really help me with university entrance?” she asked, astonished.
“You think we’re going too fast,” I said nervously.
“No, no, babe. I’m sure about you. I’m just not sure what I want.”
“Do you want to figure it out together?” I asked.
“Yes. Oh, yes, Teresa, please!”
We kissed each other, giddy over the idea of running away together, and then she turned practical. “Baby, I’m kinda scared of what they’re going to say to us.”
“We don’t tell them,” I said. “You pack what you need and only what you need in one bag. Can you do that? Don’t do it too early or you’ll tip them off. I’ll tell you. It’ll be okay, Violet, I’ve still got my hotel room in town.”
“If you’re here, how can you afford—”
“I’ll explain it all to you when we’re out, darling, I promise.”
“Okay.”
I caressed her cheek, kissed her again, and said, “I’ve got to do some things in the city tomorrow. You going to be all right? You can’t give them a hint anything’s different.”
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