“Your friends?”she asked with a nod at the rearview mirror.
“That’s right. I always have backup. Too bad you don’t.”
If not for the other car, she could have tried something desperate—steer the Jeep into a skid, hope to throw Chiu off-balance long enough for her to grab a gun from her bag. The odds weren’t good, but she might stand a chance.
The Escalade changed all that. Even if she took out Chiu, she could never defend herself against his goons. She was outgunned, hemmed in. All she could do was talk. Chiu seemed rational enough. He might be open to persuasion.
“I thought you guys had cleared out,” she said.
“The break-in was only a ploy. We were pretty sure you weren’t home.”
“Why?”
“No vehicle in your garage.”
“Oh.”
“We took a quick look around, just in case we were wrong. Incidentally, your place is a sty.”
“Hey, gimme a break. It’s not like I was expecting company.”
“When we confirmed you weren’t there, we waited on a side street to see if the alarm reeled in members of the law enforcement community—or you.”
“I’m not real tight with the cops.”
“Neither am I.”
“We’ve got a lot in common. It could be the basis for a beautiful friendship.”
“I wouldn’t count on it. You’ve been messing with us, Veronica Mars. That wasn’t a very intelligent thing to do.”
“Veronica Mars? Seriously?”
“You prefer a different pop-culture reference? Nancy Drew? Buffy? Snooki?”
“Definitely not Snooki. You know, you don’t sound like a gangsta type.”
“I went to Towson University in Baltimore. Got a bachelor’s in business administration. But I can talk street when I have to. What’s in the bag?”
The change of subject took her by surprise.
“Guns and stuff.”
“Arming for battle?”
“I just like to be prepared.”
She heard him rummaging in the tote, but the gun never left her neck.
“Hit kits, extra-capacity mags. This is some quality gear, Annie Oakley.”
“Glad you like it.”
“Are these grenades?”
“They’re flashbangs. You know, for—”
“Distraction and disorientation. I know. Now what would a nice girl like you be doing with a pair of concussion grenades?”
“I picked up three of them for a job last year. Turns out I only needed one.”
He set the bag aside and leaned forward. “How old are you, Parker?”
“Twenty-eight. Why?”
“What’s your birth month?”
“June. I’m a Gemini. You?”
He ignored the question. “You were born in the Year of the Rat. According to the Chinese zodiac, that makes you smart, adaptable, and unstable.”
“Fits me to a T.”
“I was born in the Year of the Dragon. Which makes me ambitious, energetic, arrogant.”
“You believe in horoscopes?”
He laughed. “I believe in nothing. Except loyalty to my associates. You know, like Joey Huang.”
“Look,” she said, keeping her eyes on the windshield wipers as they beat rivers of rain off the glass, “I know you think I hit Huang. But I didn’t.”
He didn’t bother to acknowledge her denial. “Those grenades remind me of a gambit used by old Sing Dock of the Hip Sing Tong. He was a highbinder in the Tong Wars. The great Mock Duck hired him. That led to the Chinese Theater massacre of 1905.”
“Can we focus on me, please? You know, the girl with the gun to her head?”
“Sing Dock didn’t use flashbangs, of course. He used firecrackers. Tossed them into the audience in the middle of the show. Chaos, panic, everybody running for the exits. In the confusion, Sing Dock’s men gunned down four of the On Leong Tong and got away clean.”
“I don’t care about that.”
“I do. It’s my history. And history has a way of repeating itself. Mock Dock has been gone a long time, but people still know his name. I intend to be what he was. And when I’m gone, people will know my name too.”
“Will you just listen to me?”
“Why should I? There’s nothing you can say. Taking out one of ours—did you really think we’d let you stay alive after that?”
“I was there, in Crossgate Gardens. I admit it. But it had nothing to do with your guy.” She talked fast, trying to get it all in before they reached the beach. “I was tailing Alec Dante. He went into Crossgate Gardens. He must’ve killed Joey.”
“You should have known we would identify you. And once we did, your life would be forfeit.”
“I told you, it was Alec Dante who did the hit.”
“Who is Alec Dante, and why would he touch one of my people?”
“He’s Frank Lazzaro’s nephew.”
“If Lazzaro were starting a war, he would target all our soldiers. Bodies would be dropping. We wouldn’t need you to tell us about it.”
“I think Alec was freelancing. He was doing it on his own.”
“One man taking on my whole crew?”
“He was trying to get in good with his uncle.”
“I don’t think so, Squeaky Fromme. It might make sense if Joey wasn’t our only casualty. But he is.”
“I can’t explain it. My only interest was Alec Dante. I took care of him this morning. It was something personal for a client. It had nothing to do with you or Joey.”
“You never messed with us?”
“No. Never.”
“Then how do you know who I am?”
“The local cops told me the Long Fong Boyz were after me. I researched you online.”
The gun didn’t waver. “You’re feeding me a line, Princess.”
“Everything I’ve said is true.”
“Can you prove this pretty story?”
“I’ll give you Dante’s mug shot. You can show it to the people at Crossgate Gardens, see if they saw him there that night.”
“And meantime, you continue breathing?”
“Breathing’s always been real high on my agenda.”
“Sorry, Parker. I call bullshit. At this moment you’d say anything to keep your heart pumping. You’d tell me the man in the moon did the hit. Or Elvis, maybe. Was Elvis there? Is he here right now?”
She swallowed. “I’m pretty sure Elvis has left the building.”
“Yes, I think he has.” He waved the gun. “Pull in there.”
They’d arrived at Ocean Drive. A line of empty parking spaces stretched along the east side of the street. She steered the Jeep into the nearest space. The Escalade glided in next to her.
She gave it one last try. “Just look into what I’m saying.”
Chiu sighed, bored with her. “I don’t need to look.”
“What if you’re making a mistake?”
“What if I am? What difference does it make?”
“It makes a hell of a difference to me.”
“Then you’re looking at it wrong. Your life, Parker, isn’t anything special. You’re no more important than a dog or a rat. Everything dies. Tonight it’s your turn.”
“Is that, like, Buddhism or something?”
“It’s reality. Exit the vehicle.”
She killed the engine, leaving the keys in the ignition. She cast a sidelong look at the tote bag on the passenger seat. A small-arms arsenal lay within reach. Going for it might be her last chance.
“Don’t.” Chiu was watching her. He couldn’t see her eyes, but he must be good at reading body language. “That’s not the smart play.”
“It’s not like I have a lot to lose,” she said quietly.
“From what I’ve seen, nobody willingly shaves even a few minutes off their time.”
Bonnie couldn’t argue. He was right.
She opened the door and got out of the Jeep, abandoning the tote bag. She left her purse behind als
o. Somehow she didn’t think she’d be needing it.
The wind was fiercer here, so close to the sea. The storm slapped her face and knocked her hat off her head. It flew away into the dark. Instantly she was soaked to the skin.
Two young men emerged from the Caddy flanked her. They wore loose pants and sleeveless black shirts that bared their wiry tattooed arms. Their hair was long and unruly, pulled back by red and black do-rags, gang colors. Their hard, expressionless faces looked ridiculously young. They walked with a swagger, kids showing off.
Patrick Chiu joined his men. Like them, he was clad in black, but he didn’t sport a do-rag. He wore a suit jacket and an open-collar button-down shirt, and he was older than his companions—twenty-four, she recalled from her reading.
None of them was taller than five foot five, which gave her an inch or two advantage in height. Somehow she failed to take comfort from this fact, possibly because one of Chiu’s pals was carrying a Cobray MAC-11 assault pistol, which shot 1200 rounds per minute. It was the kind of weapon that tended to minimize physical differences.
“Get moving, Wonder Woman,” Chiu said. “We’re taking a walk on the beach.”
“Not a great night for it.”
“Not a great night for you, period. Walk.”
Chiu might not be tall, but he was handsome as hell, and he moved with languid grace, his lean, muscular body hugging her like a shadow. Up close he looked gravely serious, almost bookish. But he was a stone killer. She could tell.
Takes one to know one, she told herself.
Head down, she made her way to the boardwalk. She was about to be killed for a murder she hadn’t committed, but she couldn’t say it was unfair. There had been other murders, starting in Ohio, continuing here. Murders that might have been justified—she thought so—but then, Patrick Chiu thought her death was justified, didn’t he? She was dying by the whim of someone who, like her, had taken the law into his own hands. Hoist by her own petard. Poetic fucking irony. And what the hell was a petard anyway?
She thought she might be crying, a little. With all the rain on her face, it was hard to tell.
Pretty fucking undignified, Parker. The words floated through her mind, spoken in Des’s voice.
Des … She’d just gotten close to him, really close. Too late. Should have trusted him sooner. They could have had more time.
She came to a flight of wooden steps that led to the beach. The staircase wobbled, already coming loose under the pressure of wind and rain.
As she descended the stairs, Chiu leaned in close enough to be heard over the storm. “You can make this easier on yourself.”
“I’m listening.”
“Tell me what happened to Joey Huang.”
“Already did.” The words were hard to say. Her teeth were starting to chatter from the cold. At least she liked to think it was the cold.
“Be straight with me, and I’ll do you with one bullet, back of the head. Bang, and it’s over. Nice and clean. You won’t feel a thing.”
It would be easy to tell a lie, any lie. Say Frank Lazzaro hired her. Let the Long Fong Boyz go after him. He was no innocent. He deserved whatever he got.
Just lie, and take a bullet, and be done.
She sucked in a lungful of air. “Dante killed Huang. I killed Dante. That’s all she wrote.”
“You’re a fool, Parker.”
It was tough to argue with that.
She stepped onto the beach. The surf licked her sneakers. The storm had pushed the tide right up to the boardwalk, drowning the sand.
Chiu shoved her forward, away from the stairs. The sand beneath her was a boiling mass of grit, thick and grasping like quicksand. She splashed deeper into the surf, her feet slip-sliding in the muck, forming long runnels that were instantly filled in. A sign floated past: No Dogs On Beach. Not an issue now. There was no beach.
The water was up to her calves now. Cold. The rain poured down, a sleet of needles. Everything was roaring fury, thundering chaos, the boardwalk groaning, the wind screaming. A hell of noise and water, and no escape.
“Stop here,” Chiu said.
She turned, intending to say something—she had no idea what—and Chiu seized her forearm, his slender fingers digging into her muscles painfully hard. He gave a slight twist, and an electric wave of agony radiated through her arm, weakening her. She fell to her knees in the surf, sending up a white shout of foam.
Jesus, that hurt. Was that what they called a kung fu grip? She’d thought that was just a GI Joe thing.
Chiu stepped back. Wordlessly he signaled to the kid with the gun. The kid handed it over. Chiu hefted the MAC easily in one hand, training it on her.
Bonnie stared up through a mist of spray at the three figures in black. Chiu’s face was closed, unreadable. The kid who’d surrendered the gun looked excited. The other kid, too. Their blood was up. To them it was just a game. They were like children at a carnival. Killing her was like taking a ride.
I took that ride too, Bonnie thought. I’m not any different.
She waited for Chiu to open up on her with the automatic. At this range the gun would cut her in half.
Confused thoughts spun through her mind. Year of the Dragon. Stolen fish in a cooler. Alec Dante: You are about to make a very big-time mistake. Gunshots in a flooded cellar. Blood in the water …
It would be her blood now, as soon as Chiu pulled the trigger.
But he didn’t. He only snapped his fingers in a peremptory command. The two kids moved away, sloshing through the surf.
A wave rolled in, a big comber, detonating around her, blasting her with spray like shrapnel. It receded, and Chiu was still there, drenched but uncaring, rigid despite the insults of the storm.
One of his men fished a stick of driftwood out of the tide. Another found a short length of pipe, part of the boardwalk’s railing, which was already coming apart.
They returned, weapons in hand.
She got it now. Chiu didn’t want her shot. He wanted her beaten. His boys would whale on her with the plank and the pipe until she told whatever she knew. And even then, she wouldn’t get a bullet. They’d beat her to death or leave her crippled in the surf to be batted around by the storm surge. Her remains would be recovered eventually, but by then she would look like a victim of the hurricane, not the Long Fong Boyz.
Smart. She couldn’t help but admire the elegant simplicity of the plan.
The two kids looked to their boss. He, in turn, looked at her.
“How you doing, Parker?”
“Never better.” She forced out the words past the tightness in her throat.
“You look like a drowned rat.”
She tried to laugh, choked on the effort. Year of the Rat, she thought. That’s me.
“You going to talk?”
“Got nothing to say.”
“Last chance.”
“I’ve already told you. You just don’t want to hear it.”
Chiu’s head inclined in a barely perceptible nod. His boys started forward.
This was where it would get rough. She could lie, but it wouldn’t help. They’d gone past the point of letting her off easy. She would just have to take the beating and go on taking it until she was dead, or as good as dead. It wasn’t the way she wanted to go out. But there weren’t a whole lot of good ways to die.
They were almost on top of her when Chiu said, “Hold it.”
The two kids stopped, looking confused.
Peering past them, Bonnie saw Chiu cradling something under his chin. A cell phone. He’d gotten a call.
Reprieve from the governor, she thought numbly.
She knelt in the surf, waiting. Her two assassins stared down at her with cruel, hungry faces. They wanted blood. She could almost feel the itch in their palms.
They weren’t going to wait much longer, word or no word. Bonnie could see it in each one’s shifting stance. They were like little kids who had to take a pee. They could hold it for only so long.
Chiu folded the phone. The call was over.
“Back off,” he said, just loudly enough to be heard over the background roar.
The two kids exchanged questioning glances. For a moment, caught between bloodlust and obedience, they didn’t move.
“Back the fuck off!”
This time they retreated. Reluctantly they threw aside their makeshift weapons and returned to Chiu’s side.
Bonnie stared at him through a tangled net of hair.
“It’s possible you’ve been truthful,” he said.
He turned and walked away, striding easily through the tide. His men followed, black ghosts dissolving into darkness.
Then they were gone, and she was alone. And alive.
Somehow, still alive.
CHAPTER 17
Patrick Chiu settled into the backseat of the Escalade, listening to the rain.
He liked rain. He appreciated its cleansing qualities. As a child he would sometimes imagine a hard steady rain washing away the grit and garbage of the streets, making the world new and shiny.
Childhood was far away now. He no longer dreamed of immaculate streets or new beginnings. But he still enjoyed the rain.
The Cadillac’s front doors opened, and Lam and Eng climbed in, dripping, the tote bag from the Jeep in Eng’s hands. “We did what you told us, dai lo,” Eng said.
“You left the handbag?” Chiu asked.
Eng nodded. “There was hardly no money in it anyway.”
Chiu didn’t want his guys in possession of Parker’s credit cards or anything else that could tie them to her. But he was willing to bet the guns and other gear couldn’t be traced.
Lam sat behind the wheel, keys in hand. But he didn’t start the engine.
“You sure we want to book?” he asked.
Chiu leaned forward in the backseat. “Why not?”
There was a tense silence in the car, punctuated by the beat of rain on the roof.
“My man,” Eng said finally, “I don’t see why we didn’t blip that cooch. I thought that was the fuckin’ plan.”
“Plans change.”
“She gonna bang on us, we not gonna do nothin’?”
Lam nodded his agreement. “We need to take this shit all the way. Every second she keeps breathing is fuckin’ unacceptable.”
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