by Naomi Paul
Twenty-six floors below, the doorman was able to flag her a taxi so quickly that she doubled her standard tip. Three car lengths ahead of her, the potbellied man was just stepping behind the wheel of a pristine, new-model black Mercedes with Rand Harrison in its backseat.
“Where to?” her cab driver grunted.
“I don’t know yet,” she answered. “Go where that Mercedes goes, but not too close, okay?”
“Oooh,” the driver said in a bored tone. “Intrigue.”
Maybe his sarcasm was warranted. She did feel a little ridiculous ordering the tail, like she was in some bad American cop show. But she couldn’t help but be curious about the fat man. Back at the beach, she’d figured him for a plainclothes detective, or a senior officer who’d been called out to the crime scene without the time to grab his uniform. So then why was he moonlighting as Harrison’s chauffeur, fetching his coat and driving him to whatever “business” he was attending to?
Something stank about the whole situation.
“So,” the cabbie said. “Are you his wife or his mistress?”
“Excuse me?”
“This part of town,” he explained. “Wearing a dress that nice, chasing a car that fancy . . . come on. You’re not the first pretty young thing to ask me to follow a two-timer.”
“I’m sixteen,” she said flatly.
“Intrigue, intrigue!” he replied, looking a million miles from even slightly interested.
It wasn’t hard to believe that the cabbie was an old hand at tailing, though. He kept a respectful distance without ever letting a full city block come between the cars, and he seemed to know how the lights were timed so that he could hit them properly.
Harrison, for his part, didn’t appear to be in any particular hurry. The Mercedes indicated a lane change, lazily drifted over, and headed up Gloucester Road for the Cross-Harbor Tunnel.
“Wave good-bye to the yacht club,” the cabbie told her, just before the tunnel swallowed them up. “When we pop out the other side, I guarantee you’re overdressed for wherever we end up.”
Lian thought of correcting him—she was not some helpless rich airhead—but she didn’t think he’d believe her. Let him think this was some petty, sordid affair—there was less chance of him remembering her that way, which was a good thing. Instead, she sat back in her seat, the tunnel lights moving over her in a steady rhythm, and tried to figure out some kind of plan.
The Mercedes emerged into the Hong Kong night and indicated for the Chatham exit. Lian peered through the cab’s windshield, watching the sleek black car ease onto Gascoigne Road and then signal a right turn onto Nathan.
Every block they drove north seemed to grow louder, uglier, and more sinister. Lian had only ever been through the Kowloon district during daylight hours, and even then, she’d have shied away from most of these places. To either side of them were bars and clubs, beckoning with garish neon, bleeding music that boomed and thudded. Advertisements for fast food and hard liquor and plastic junk seemed bolted to every available surface above her head. The sidewalks were crowded, as they always seemed to be, with the sort of people who’d learned to keep their heads down, their faces hidden from passing cars.
“Your boyfriend’s stopping,” the cabbie said, nodding to the narrow alleyway into which the Mercedes had turned. The Mercedes’ headlights shut off, and the black car was all but lost in the dark between buildings.
“Keep going,” Lian instructed. “Pull over at the end of the block.”
The cab slowed to let a bus by, then made for the curb. As she passed the Mercedes, Lian saw the potbellied man opening Harrison’s door for him. The dome light threw odd shadows onto the man’s jowly face.
“You sure this is where you want to be?” the cabbie asked, as she counted out the bills for the fare.
Lian certainly didn’t want to be there, but she’d followed her hunch this far; she had to at least snag some photos of Harrison and the mystery man. She palmed her phone, brought up the camera app, and took a deep, calming breath. Out the back window of the cab, she saw the two men emerge from the alley and head up the sidewalk.
Now or never.
She stepped out of the cab and directly into a puddle of what she hoped was just dirty water. She swore lightly under her breath as the wetness seeped into her shoe. Off to a great start. She closed the car door and patted the fender to send the cab on its way.
Harrison and his companion had a substantial lead on her, but she narrowed the gap quickly; the portly man wasn’t a speedy walker. The two men paused at a crosswalk, and Lian ducked into a doorway littered with used lottery tickets. She held out her phone and snapped a couple of shots, but they were useless: backs of heads, dark and blurry.
Another photo, taken as the men passed under the bright white neon of a beer sign, was a little better. She knew how ridiculous she must look, tottering down the Kowloon sidewalks in her cheongsam, holding her phone out at odd angles in front of her, heels going click-squish-click on the pavement.
“Fish ball?” a street vendor barked, startling her.
“I just ate,” she said, breezing past him, hoping that she sounded cooler than she felt.
Up ahead, Harrison and his driver suddenly broke left and disappeared from view. Lian ran as fast as she dared to catch up. The men had slipped into a narrow alleyway between two towering, ramshackle apartment buildings. She craned her neck and squinted into the darkness.
Their destination was at the far end of the alley: what looked to be a tiny café, tucked away and calling as little attention to itself as possible. From this distance, she couldn’t even read the signage.
Lian could feel her heartbeat’s pressure in the back of her eyes. This was stupid and dangerous. There was no one in the alley but her and the men. This was the sort of dark corridor that a defenseless young woman might walk into but never come out of.
She thought of Mingmei, who’d had a very expensive clutch purse grabbed from her the last time she’d been in the Kowloon part of Hong Kong. Lian could almost hear her friend telling her to cut her losses and go home.
But she had come this far, and her curiosity was piqued. She brushed away her reservations and took a cautious step into the alley.
The potbellied man reached the café door and suddenly turned to check behind him. Lian dropped quickly behind some trash cans, her heart thudding. Her legs, constrained by the dress, were instantly wobbly, and she strained to keep her knees from hitting the grimy pavement.
From the alleyway’s far end, she heard the fat man rap on the door—three fast knocks, a pause, then two more. She gingerly held the corner of her phone out around the trash bin, and watched on the camera screen as the men were let inside the building. From here, they were two small shadows. She had to get closer, had to get a clear enough photo to make this peril worthwhile.
The door closed behind the men, and Lian made herself count slowly to ten before she stood and moved down the alleyway, staying as close to the wall as she could. The sign over the door, she could now see, read THE FAMILY HAND CAFÉ. And below that, the characters for mahjong. A gaming house, then.
She thought of knocking on the door in the same pattern the fat man had used. But no; she’d be too out of her element. Instead, she moved to the window to the right of the door. A cardboard placard filled most of the window’s area, but around its edges she could peer into the café.
She spotted Harrison right away, just past the gaming tables. He was at a side door, on either side of which stood massive, burly guards. As the potbellied man stood silently by, Harrison spoke with the guards. Lian was no lip-reader, but as she watched she grew increasingly certain that Harrison was speaking fast and fluent Chinese.
Hadn’t he stumbled over basic words at the dinner? Hadn’t he prevailed on the whole room to switch to English? And yet here he was, and Lian was pretty sure he wasn’t looking for a bathroom or ordering dim sum.
She thumbed the shutter on her camera app and managed to get a
handful of decent shots as Harrison and his companion were allowed through the side door. Both men were in the frame, their faces clear even if their intentions were anything but. She powered off the phone, satisfied that her investigation hadn’t been a waste after all.
She hadn’t gone more than a couple of steps back toward the street when four shadows appeared in the mouth of the alleyway. Again, she felt her pulse jump.
“Lei ho,” one of the men called as they approached. “Are you lost?”
“Can we help you?” another asked.
Lian wasn’t sure whether she was just imagining the sinister undertones, but she didn’t think it was wise to stick around and find out. She walked toward them, the only way out of the alley, with a purposeful stride and her head held high, her gaze level.
For just a moment, she thought they might close on her, and she prepared to scream for help. But at the last second, they moved aside to let her through.
As soon as she could see the street, she broke into a run. She made it to the sidewalk and fled from the alley mouth as fast as she could, waving at every cab until she spotted one with its “For Hire” flag up. As it pulled to the curb, she finally let herself breathe. She brought up the photos on her phone and flicked through them.
She wasn’t quite certain what she was looking at, but she felt damn sure that Harrison and his buddy hadn’t come to this part of town for anything as simple as a game of mahjong.
SIX
11:48 PM HKT — Komiko has logged on
Lian scanned back through the chat to see whether there was anything she’d missed since logging out earlier. Torch had laid out the group’s guidelines for Blossom in terse, humorless sentences, with Crowbar trying to lighten the mood with cheery—if misspelled—levity. Blossom meekly agreed with Torch over and over, enough that Lian began to feel vaguely perturbed. She had to step back from her desk a moment and consider before she realized the reason: She, like Torch, was starting to think of Blossom as a girl, on the basis of the delicate user name. And in her head, she was hearing all the muttering from the dinner table. “I thought they were meant to be deferential.”
The evening’s trip into Kowloon had left her with a mix of emotions. She was thrilled to have captured a few decent photos and to take a tentative step toward linking Harrison with the poor dead girl. She was grateful to have made it back to the apartment in one piece and to have beaten her parents home, even though she’d been gone much longer than she’d hoped.
But more than anything, she was angry at herself for feeling so vulnerable, so unprotected . . . so much like a delicate, deferential blossom, nearly trampled into the dirty sidewalk of Nathan Road.
She’d taken off the high heels before she’d entered the apartment, treading lightly in case her parents were home. Now she shimmied out of the cheongsam, pausing to frown at the blotchy stain up its side before returning it to the garment bag; she’d have to deal with the dry cleaning later.
Once she’d changed into her pajamas, she felt less like a shrinking violet. “Comfortable and casual” beat out “dressed to impress” any day, in her book. With a smile, she even put on a spiked punk-rock bracelet that Mingmei had given her as a joke. She gave the mirror a sneer and pantomimed a quick jab; if those guys had tried anything in the alley, she could have taken out all four of them. No problem.
She carried the laptop over to her bed and sat down cross-legged, scrolling through the last of the earlier chat. Torch had logged off not long after she had—for no stated reason, as usual—and Crowbar had given a few upbeat reassurances to Blossom before they’d both signed off.
While she waited for the rest of 06/04 to log in, Lian poked through her e-mails—some spam, a useful coupon from an online electronics retailer, and a message from Mingmei saying she’d be by at 8:00 the next morning so they could head to school together on their scooters.
11:56 PM HKT — Crowbar has logged on
Komiko: What’s the word, hummingbird?
Crowbar: Gettin sleepy, probably going 2 make this a short 1
Komiko: No arguments here.
11:57 PM HKT — Blossom has logged on
Crowbar: Hello again
Blossom: Hi guys! Or gals? Crap. Dont tell me, I dont want to know.
Lian laughed out loud at this.
Torch signed in with the customary precision, right at midnight, and brushed aside the small talk.
Torch: So you’ve got something new for us, Komiko?
Komiko: I do. I went for a casual stroll tonight and got a few photos.
12:01 AM HKT — Komiko has uploaded three JPGs
Komiko: I’m not going to quit my day job to get into portrait photography or anything, but does that look to you like our friend from the beach today?
Blossom: At first glance, it certainly does. Changing out of the tracksuit was a good move.
Crowbar: I agree . . . whos the other man?
Lian started to reply, but Torch beat her to the punch.
Torch: Rand Harrison.
Komiko: Correct. Clothing mogul, owns nine factories. Moved his operations here from the States. And apparently he likes a good game of mahjong.
She wasn’t going to go into any detail about the dinner, but she was pleased to have gleaned a few facts from the man’s son that she could share with the group.
Komiko: I don’t want to jump to conclusions, obviously.
Torch: Obviously. That’s not what 06/04 does.
Komiko: But seeing these two together, I have to entertain the thought that Harrison has something to do with the dead girl at Big Wave.
Komiko: Does he set off alarms for any of you?
Blossom: I dont know him, outside of seeing his logo on clothes and billboards and such. Seems like half of what anyones wearing right now is Harrison.
Crowbar: Hes shown up on the 06/04 radar B4
Lian grimaced. How hard was it to just type “before,” honestly? But she paid close attention to what Crowbar said next.
Crowbar: Major investor in a Chinese silk factory, they were monopolizing a cluster of villages on the mainland
Crowbar: Right B4 the authorities cracked down harrison sold his stake & walked away clean. . . . Timeline always seemed suspect 2 me
Komiko: No kidding. I’ll do some looking into that.
Crowbar: 2 bad Mynahs in jail, harrison was 1 of his pet projects
Lian sighed and massaged her temples. Hearing this was almost too frustrating, and she was suddenly feeling quite tired after one of the longest days of her life.
Komiko: That sucks. That means that A) Harrison’s worth investigating, and B) we don’t have a lick of Mynah’s evidence to look at.
Blossom: . . . Can I ask, whos Mynah?
Lian braced for another upbraiding from Torch to the new kid, but when nothing happened for a good twenty seconds, she took it upon herself to respond.
Komiko: He was one of us. He got a little ambitious with one of his “pet projects” and they traced it back to him.
Komiko: The problem is, he kept all of his crucial data where no one could get to it: In his head.
Blossom: Thats impressive.
It really was. The group had agreed to never write down the ten-digit access codes that allowed them to log into the chats; Lian and the others carried that information nowhere but in their brains. But Mynah had been on another level entirely. He deleted all his chat logs immediately and didn’t keep hard copies of anything. Still, when called upon, he could recite tiny details from months or even years back.
Mynah’s paranoia had been 06/04’s saving grace—in the wake of his arrest, there hadn’t been a shred of evidence linking him to the group. But now he was behind bars, and there was no way for them to get in touch with him. Whatever he knew about Harrison, it was locked away along with him.
Komiko: But what that tells us is, there’s dirt to be found on Harrison, so we’d better roll up our sleeves.
Torch: Piece of advice?
Torch:
Don’t look too hard into Rand Harrison. The man is dangerous.
12:22 AM HKT — Torch has logged off
Social graces were clearly not a priority for Torch.
His warning did nothing to dissuade Lian. If anything, she felt spurred to turn up every bit of info she could on Rand Harrison. Even if he wasn’t connected to the dead girl, it was a sure bet that he had his hands in some dirty deals of some kind.
The others said their farewells, and they all signed off. Lian was just walking the computer back over to her desk when she heard her parents at the front door.
Quickly, she brought up the summer coursework file. She stared at the screen, counted to ten, then reached over and flicked off her overhead room light. There, she thought. Now I didn’t lie to mom. I’m still a good girl.
Lian tucked herself into bed, still buzzing from the night’s events but determined to catch a few hours’ sleep so she wouldn’t wind up drooling on her desk on the first day of classes.
Still a good girl.
SEVEN
Monday
Lian was distracted. Not in the pleasant, daydreaming way that a couple of the other students seemed distracted, as they gazed out the windows of Island South High School to the impeccably crafted gardens of Hong Kong Park. And not in the flirty way that Dingbang (who had, admittedly, gotten cuter over the summer) and some new girl in pigtails were distracted by one another in the back row of seats.