Byron points to a stained glass window. “Don’t see that very much in New York.”
“That’s why I’m thinking we can make this a land play,” nods Leonard. “We’ll hold the paper on the building. If the charity goes great, everything’s cool. If it goes tits up, we foreclose, take ownership and develop.”
“The owners are only wanting to sell because of the vision,” pleads Queenie.
“Which is perfectly within their rights,” says Byron. “It is also perfectly within our rights to make sure that our asses are protected.”
Seems to be a common theme. “Sorry we’re late,” interrupts Noah. “What are you talking about?”
“Queenie is adding a wrinkle. One is for fifty million, the other is for ten times that much.”
“Fifty is all she needs to get going,” says Noah.
“The problem is that it only protects the equipment and the New Amsterdam as an entity. I read the contract with the building owners today.”
“And?”
“There is a demolition clause that can kick the tenants out with six months’ notice if the building owners want to re-develop the property. What we were just talking about is what if the deal were for the whole building so we could control the future of the building, protect not just the New Amsterdam but have future control of the tenants? But that’s half a billion dollars and we are just talking about how and if we could pull this off,” says Leonard.
Byron interjects. “But at this point, it’s all speculation. I just want to focus on what we have at hand. Let’s take a look at the facility.”
“Let’s catch the elevator,” says Queenie. “Where’s your sidekick bodyguard, Noah?”
“Why is everybody concerned about him? He disappeared. Maybe he got food poisoning and is sleeping it off somewhere. Or he just got lost and his cell phone ran out of battery. Why do you ask? Are you interested in him?”
“I’m interested in everybody,” says Queenie. “So you have no idea where he is?”
“Well, my guess is that he’s going to show up at our room at The Seventh sooner or later, eat room service and watch ‘Sleepless in Seattle’ on pay per view.”
All look at Noah with curiosity on their faces.
“What can I say? Wangdan’s a wuss.”
Bingo! The Chinaman is at The Seventh! Gotta deal with that now. Last thing I need is someone crashing the party. “I like that movie too,” says Queenie.
All line up to go through the security checkpoint. Queenie discreetly sends a text.
Try The Seventh Hotel. I can help.
***
Jonny greets them at the door. “Thanks for coming. Everybody’s mixing right now, so you won’t see any musicians in action but I think you’ll get the picture.”
Jonny gives the entourage a grand tour, describing in detail the history, the number of award-winning artists that have stepped through the door and of course some delicious dirt about them that has never been heard. He takes great pride in describing the equipment in detail, giving the pros and cons of analogue versus digital.
They stop at Recording Room 5.
“This room is my baby. If you go along with Queenie’s proposal, it will still be used exclusively by world class musicians, engineers and producers. However, all the assistants and gofers will be from the New Amsterdam Center. They will have a firsthand look at genius in operation, something they wouldn’t be able to buy for love or money anywhere else. I really like Queenie’s idea that all students, not just the top ones, get a chance to assist here. Let’s take a look.”
Expectations already raised, they are more than fulfilled when Jonny opens the door. There is a recording room full of a hundred and thirty school-aged musicians and singers jammed on the floor as well as an older group of musicians who are the rhythm section. Just like last night there are two vacant spaces—one behind the microphone and one at a grand piano.
Queenie announces, “Ladies and gentlemen, welcome to the inaugural session of The New Amsterdam Arts Center. Olivia, Abby, take your places.”
CHAPTER NINETEEN
Alexei is beating the crap out of Raoul. Alexei couldn’t care less about Wangdan but every one of the escaped girls is worth at least two thousand a day to him.
“How you be so stupid? I should kill you now,” says the angry Russian boss.
“Give me a chance. I will get them back.”
“How? You have no idea where they are,” snarls Alexei.
“It can’t be that hard to find twelve young Russian girls,” pleads Raoul.
Alexei’s eyes bulge out of his head, he’s so mad. He picks up the table they’re sitting at and crashes it over his head. “How idiotic you are. They are in concrete room. The girls are drugged. You got you and your two idiot comrades against a Chinaman. A Chinaman! You disgrace! And in city of New York eight million people and you think it not hard to find Russian girls.”
A beep on Alexei’s cell shows a text from Queenie. He opens it up and his eyes widen. “God must be with you. Go to The Seventh Hotel. That’s where Chinaman and probably girls are. And bring extra help. If you screw up, I kill you myself.”
***
There’s a buzz in the air. It’s throughout the whole studio, the recording area and the control room. Adrenaline courses through everyone’s veins but the most excited in the sea of musicians, singers and technicians are definitely Abby and Olivia. Tim’s going to conduct and he’s like a little pixie going between the young musicians, making sure they know exactly what he wants. The only pros other than Tim are the rhythm section—guitarist, bass player, keyboard player, drummer, and percussionist.
Normally in a recording session, everyone has his own set of headphones and you can hear your own track isolated louder than everyone else’s. However, Tim wants everyone to be able to feel firsthand the vibe of the music, so other than the rhythm section, Abby, and himself, all the other musicians are going to hear themselves live off the floor. Tim thinks that’s the best way to handle the young inexperienced talent.
In the control room, Jonny’s got his finger on the talkback. “You ready to rock?”
He gets the thumbs-up from Tim, the kids and musicians in the recording room. Tim taps his conductor’s baton and does the count in. “One... Two... One. Two. Three. Four.”
And then the joint starts jumpin’. Three minutes and forty-nine seconds of Valhalla, of pure frickin’ energy. Solos, harmonies, kickass rhythm and a hundred and twenty kids join Abby in the final chorus:
Forever, I will love you.
Forever, I’ll be there
No matter where the fates may take you
No matter how hard
Forever, I will love you.
The final chord from the electric bass guitar fades to nothingness. Everyone is quiet for a few seconds, then Tim jumps in the air and shouts, “That’s it. One take. We’re done like dinner!”
What a rush. No overdubs. No take two, take three, take ninety-seven. This tune is ready to release. There’s a huge celebration in the recording room. Gofers wheel in a cake, champagne, beer, wine and sodas—and Abby is mobbed.
CHAPTER TWENTY
There’s muffled screaming coming from the bedroom that Wangdan listens painfully to. Several of the girls are going through heroin withdrawal and the rest are trying to help them through it. When Wangdan asked if they wanted help or acupuncture to relieve the agony, the girls shook their heads. Whether they are right or not, they believe that cold turkey is the way to go. Two girls try to restrain a friend who bites down hard on a towel while her frail body spasms and flails. It’s an agonizing sight to see. Wangdan wants to help but the girls insist on doing it themselves.
Wangdan is now two hundred dollars poorer and much the happier because of it. Sam’s contact took all of half an hour to deliver. The guy in the club and gorilla’s Good Samaritan were in fact the same person and it turns out this particular Samaritan was not so good. His real name was Isaak Filipov, a petty small-time dru
g dealer with a history of arrests for violent assault. Gorilla also had a series of arrests for violent assaults, mostly for his role as a bouncer in after-hours clubs. His real name is Ivan Kozlov.
What was interesting though was not the information that Wangdan paid for but the information that Sam dug up on his own that he didn’t charge Wangdan for.
In the rap sheets of both Filipov and Kozlov were assaults on suspected illegal Chinese immigrants. In both cases, a woman by the name of “Elizabeth Watson” posted bail.
Sam’s about to show Wangdan who Elizabeth Watson is when suddenly the hotel door swings open. Two fully grown and very angry red-crowned cranes spread their wingspans, enter and are coming straight at him. Not the graceful creatures of Hokkaido, these are angry, vicious beasts without subtlety—their sole mission is to maim and destroy. The claws and beak are as sharp as tiger’s teeth and just as dangerous.
Wangdan grabs a chair but the birds peck away at it, beaks shredding the upholstery with ease, all the while beating their wings against Wangdan’s body.
He does a standing somersault but as he comes down he is about to be speared by the beak of one of his attackers. He quickly kicks one bird in the head and punches the other in its body. While the birds recover, he handsprings to the opposite end of the room by the window.
While incarcerated by the Russian thugs, his martial arts stars were taken away and he has nothing to defend himself with. Wangdan balls his fist and smashes the window. It shatters and Wangdan has accomplished his goal—he has weapons.
He picks up the larger pieces of glass and launches them at the birds.
One, two, three, four, five, six pieces of glass embed slightly into the birds’ bodies and slice at their legs and necks. This is a problem—the glass is almost ineffective.
The cranes step steadily toward the martial arts master, calling out angrily, heads thrusting with beaks ready to pierce. When they are almost upon Wangdan, he pulls down the heavy blackout curtains from the window and quickly wraps them around the cranes.
Wangdan rushes to the bedroom, opens the door, and the girls start screaming.
“Sorry,” he says. He quickly goes through them to the bedroom closet, takes out his suitcase and grabs a handful of martial arts stars and a dao, the short Shaolin dagger.
He then dashes back to the living room area of the hotel room and slams the bedroom door. By now, the birds have shredded the curtain and freed themselves, only to find a sofa thrown at their heads.
The birds leap out of the way and the sofa flies out the window.
Wangdan’s assault continues.
One, two, three razor-sharp flying stars are thrown at the neck of one of the birds.
The first one misses. For the second one, the crane dodges to the side, but number three hits the mark.
It slices the neck of the bird, decapitating it. A squawk is stopped in its throat.
However, the other bird is now on top of Wangdan with only a sofa cushion separating him from talons and biting beak.
The claws shred the pillow and are about to shred Wangdan when he rolls over and stabs the bird with the dagger toward its heart.
Squawking loudly, the bird has a burst of energy where its beak starts pecking furiously. Wangdan tries to hide but the bleeding bird is relentless.
Wangdan sees Noah’s new leather jacket and makes a quick decision—either Noah will kill him or the bird. He decides to take his chances with Noah.
He takes Noah’s jacket and wraps it around the bird’s head. The leather is too thick for the beak to penetrate.
Wangdan pulls the dagger out of the bird’s chest and stabs it again—this time not missing its heart.
The large bird flutters for a moment, then stills.
Wangdan takes the jacket off the bird. He hates taking the life of any living thing—even if it is trying to take his.
He looks at the dead bird and notices certain oddities.
The irises of the tan-colored eyes are flecked with red. Impossible to tell if the bird was born that way or if it was a result of someone tampering with the bird, but it is definitely abnormal.
There is no doubt that the rest is human caused. He looks at the red bare skin on the top of its crown with dismay—needle marks are evidence that someone has been injecting the bird with who knows what? He had already noted that someone had filed the birds’ beak and talons to sharp points but then he sees something else on the talons—festering sores. Whoever did the filing was careless, witness the jagged cut marks. Someone had jabbed the poor bird’s feet with the file, causing open wounds that got infected.
Wangdan sits down on the floor for a moment, trying to figure out his next move. Whatever it is, he knows he doesn’t have much time because whoever sent the cranes into his room will soon discover that the birds were unsuccessful in their mission.
He notices that the laptop is on the floor too, courtesy of him grabbing the table to hit the cranes. He never had a chance to complete his conversation with Sam who had sent him the link to the NYPD page on Elizabeth Watson. It turns out that this woman with the quintessentially Anglo name doesn’t look that Caucasian at all. In fact, Elizabeth Watson is the spitting image of Queenie. Without any make-up, Queenie looks like a much different person—yet very familiar.
He chills. The hair is different, the nose is different, and the cheekbone structure is different, but without contact lenses, the eyes are the same. They are the same eyes that belong to King Chin, the one who killed his Sifu, the one that caused his monastery to be demolished, the one who tried and almost succeeded in killing him.
He clicks on his cell phone and tries to call Noah, but there’s no answer. C’mon, Noah. Answer.
He jumps off the bed and is ready to pounce out the door when a masked gunman enters and fires directly at Wangdan.
With an instinct for survival operating on overdrive, Wangdan dodges one bullet by dropping to the ground.
Then with lightning fast muscle movement, he uses his hands to push up into a handstand as another bullet aimed at his head on the ground passes through the space between his outstretched arms.
From the handstand position, he pushes himself into the air and takes out a martial arts star. He whips it at the gunman, who just as adeptly as Wangdan sidesteps the flying missile.
The gunman throws the pistol aside and throws himself at Wangdan.
Big mistake.
The thug’s face is greeted by Wangdan’s open palm, pushing him to the floor.
Wangdan jumps on top of him and rips off his mask. He is horrified to see long thin recent scars probably from a knife blade on the Chinese man’s face.
“Let me die now,” whimpers the man in Chinese. “Then maybe my family will be saved.”
“What do you mean?” asks Wangdan.
“I tried to escape but they found my father in Guangdong and killed him. He was bitten by a snake. And now, look at my face.” The man takes off his shirt. There are more of the long thin scars. “And they are all over my legs.”
“Who did this to you?”
“The Crane Woman. The Cranes. The birds that you killed? She had me put in the cage with them for the last two days.” The man shakes his head. “If she finds out you’re still alive, she will kill my wife and daughter. Protect them, please.”
“Where are they?” shouts Wangdan.
But by now, the man has lost consciousness. He is en route to his final destination.
Even though this man whom he had never met until five minutes ago tried to kill him, Wangdan is filled with a deep sense of sorrow. Although he doesn’t know his name, he knows who he is. He’s just like thousands of others who have tried to escape poverty in China.
These desperate souls think that life in the new world will be the ticket to a successful future, if not for them, then for their children or their children’s children. They go into debt to be smuggled to North America by the snakeheads. They are indentured for a year, five years, whatever ... During t
hat time, up to fifty percent of their wages are garnished. At the end of the term, the illegals are released into society to fend for themselves. Surprisingly, many of them go back to the snakeheads. After all, better the yellow devil you know than the white devil you don’t know.
Devils like the Crane Lady … Elizabeth Watson … Queenie.
She gave the man a chance to save his family. His mission was to kill Wangdan, either with the cranes or with a bullet. Both of the methods failed.
The unknown man’s wife and daughter will be next unless Wangdan can stop her.
Wangdan quickly tries to call Noah on his cell again but there’s still no answer. Frustrated, he quickly writes a text but before he sends it, there’s another problem.
Raoul has arrived, this time with half a dozen thugs.
CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE
All applaud Queenie as she steps into the recording room. She walks directly to the microphone and smiles broadly. “Thank you, everybody, for being part of this recording session. It is the first of what I hope will be thousands of sessions here from big name artists to kids with not much more than an idea for a tune.”
“Right on. You got it. Tell it like it is,” are shouts from the assembly.
“Every great song is only as good as those that worked on it. The engineers, producers, musicians, composers. A lousy song that is fantastically recorded and produced is still a lousy song. Play or sing a great song out-of-tune or with wrong notes, what are people going to hear?”
“They’re going to cover their ears to block out the noise,” shouts someone at the back.
“Exactly. That’s why only excellence is good enough. That’s why the New Amsterdam is so important. Young people will not be learning from teachers but from seasoned pros who are at the top of their game.”
The Noah Reid Series: Books 1-3: The Noah Reid Action Thriller Series Boxset Page 52