by Matt Rogers
And he was loving every second of it.
As the concierge ushered him into a private elevator with thick carpet flooring and a gold-plated interface, he took a deep breath and released every ounce of tension in his bones. He could calm himself in almost any situation where he wasn’t fighting for his life — and this, thankfully, was one of those times.
The concierge nodded farewell, and the doors whispered closed.
A floor had already been preset into the digital interface — level 22, the same floor he’d been visiting for the last two weeks. As the numbers ticked by and the elevator pressed up into the heart of the skyscraper, he composed himself for the hours ahead.
It would take a marathon of gambling and subtle conversational cues to imbue the notion in the staff’s heads that he wanted more than just a high-stakes betting streak. He would have to hint at a darker side, a side that didn’t exist, and all the while cover his true intentions.
If they offered him a trip into the seedier, off-limits areas of Mountain Lion — which, by this point, he was almost certain existed — he would run with it. He would follow the trail into the bowels of the casino, until he stumbled across whatever it was Peter Forrest had intended to use Shien for.
Then he would unleash hell.
The elevator’s digital interface ticked over to “22” and Slater felt the cable car decelerate, coming to a halt with barely a whisper of noise.
The doors sliced open, and a suit-clad security guard with a stocky frame and short, close-cropped hair offered a hand to greet the newcomer.
Slater reached out intuitively to complete the handshake.
Simultaneously, their gazes lifted to make direct eye contact.
Slater spotted the swollen cheek and the handful of cuts across the guy’s forehead.
It was one of the men from the limousine.
The heavyset guard recognised him a split second later.
29
Blood soaked through the gauze bandage wrapped tight around Forrest’s mangled hand. The treatment so far had been the very definition of rudimentary, but it was only a temporary measure until the triad could usher him away from the crime scene and into the heart of their territory.
He went along with the rough treatment, realising that apart from the pleasantries exchanged with the head of the triad, he was in a similar predicament than if Jang had whisked him away to an undisclosed location.
His guards were dead.
His driver was dead.
He was on his own, in the middle of nowhere, far from the safety and power of his empire. Out here, in this desolate wasteland, the triad could do as they pleased. They always would have been able to — he scolded himself for making a gesture as foolish as willingly venturing into their land.
Now he sat in the back of a nondescript grey sedan, so dull and uncharismatic that it seemed to become unnoticeable amidst the junkyards and rundown neighbourhoods. Forrest stared silently out the window, unsure whether to cry or moan in agony. The middle-aged triad leader sat across the rear seats, staring straight ahead, his posture rigid and his gaze unflinching.
Suddenly, he turned and looked at Forrest. ‘I hope you don’t mind that we delay our business talk until we reach the residence. Just tradition.’
Forrest nodded. What the hell else am I supposed to do? Protest?
But he didn’t say that, because he might have received a bullet for his troubles. Instead he said, ‘We met briefly, when I asked for some help running my casino. I don’t think I ever caught your name, though.’
‘Jerome.’
Forrest stared at him. ‘That’s not your real name.’
‘No. But it is what you will call me.’
‘Something you go by often?’
‘Something I go by when I don’t exactly trust the man I am talking with.’
‘You don’t trust me?’
‘Consider it a professional gesture. I simply don’t know what you came here to say. You must understand?’
Forrest nodded and gulped back apprehension. In truth he wanted nothing more than to high-tail it back to Mountain Lion and crawl under the covers — then he could ignore his problems until the front door to the penthouse burst down and his enemies slaughtered him where he cowered.
The latter end of the mental image turned his stomach, so he forced it from his mind and doubled down on the situation at hand. ‘Yes, of course I understand. I’m sure you will be more than receptive of what I came here to say.’
‘I hope so, Mr. Forrest. I hope so.’
The sedan turned sharply as the trail narrowed, condensing to a single laneway that curved through embankments teaming with trash and waste. In truth, Forrest hadn’t realised this section of Macau existed. He didn’t quite know where he was, either. The limousine crash had inflicted blunt force trauma on his skull, enough to fog his memory and rattle him. He’d lost track of time and space.
They could be in China, for all he knew.
His attentiveness ebbed and flowed as it pleased.
In his degraded state, he simply sat and waited with his shoulders hunched and his head bowed as the sedan turned onto a claustrophobic driveway complete with overbearing trees and rough gravel under the tyres. The branches hung thick over everything, masking what lay beyond the driveway to anyone passing by. Forrest wasn’t sure, but he thought he spotted silhouettes ghosting through the trees, clutching automatic weapons at the ready, prepared for any unwanted visitors.
He chalked it up to his muddied proprioception and stared straight ahead, trying his hardest not to sweat.
They pulled up to a rundown, weatherboard house bordered by two literal trash heaps. The entire place stank of grime and filth — even in Forrest’s semi-coherent state he could smell the putrid rot all around them. He climbed out of the sedan as it pulled to a stop near the front terrace, and gazed around with a certain trepidation.
‘This is your place?’ he said, trying his best not to sound condescending.
‘You wouldn’t expect it to be,’ Jerome said. ‘Which is exactly why it is.’
Sudden agony burned in Forrest’s hand — he raised it to his chest again and winced, shifting from foot to foot to try and ride out the sensation.
Jerome noticed.
‘I have people who can take care of that for you.’
‘I have my own people,’ Forrest said, a semblance of his confidence trickling back. He’d made it this far — why couldn’t he salvage this situation? He’d doubted himself for long enough. It was time to act. ‘I’d prefer it if we had our talk and you dropped me back at Mountain Lion. I have urgent business to attend to.’
‘You should have asked us to come to you,’ Jerome said, his eyes wide. ‘That would have been perfectly acceptable.’
I know I should have, Forrest thought. I haven’t been thinking straight for days.
‘It’s unexpected business,’ he said. ‘I’m sure you understand.’
‘Of course. Let us talk first, though. I hope you didn’t come all this way for nothing, given … the slight problem you ran into.’
‘How did you know to find me there?’ Forrest said as they sauntered toward the unimpressive residence.
‘Where?’
‘That must have been a mile away from here.’
‘It’s where our territory begins,’ Jerome explained matter-of-factly. ‘Unofficially, of course. But you’d need a death wish to disobey us. No-one conducts business like that on our grounds. We were out there to intercept you, anyway.’
‘Intercept me?’
‘We would have ordered your driver and bodyguards to stay where they were while we brought you here for a private conversation. So, I guess, everything worked out the way we intended anyway. You simply won’t be getting your men back at the end.’
Forrest bit back a retort as they stepped onto the front terrace and a solemn-faced Asian man pushed open the front door, inviting them inside. He had considered his two guards allies — even if he hadn’t
known their names, they had served him well. It sent fury through his chest to hear Jerome mention their deaths so dismissively.
As if they meant nothing.
Then Forrest realised he was simply looking for a fight.
He disposed of his own men all the time.
That thought sent a shiver down his spine as he stepped into a dingy entranceway with dim lighting and shadows flickering across the walls. How far had he fallen since he’d first arrived in Macau? He almost hadn’t paid any attention to his descent — life had been moving impossibly fast for as long as he could remember.
Now’s not the best time for an existential crisis, he thought.
There were almost a dozen of Jerome’s henchmen in the house, Forrest realised. It was a cramped, single-storey dwelling with little space for movement. He noticed silhouettes moving through countless doorways in his peripheral vision, not daring to look in case anyone took offence to his behaviour. He wished to cause as little trouble as possible, and then get on his way.
‘Not much room to move around here,’ he muttered. ‘How do you get anything done?’
Jerome froze alongside Forrest, adopting a demeanour that could only be described as menacing. ‘We have underground quarters.’
‘Oh.’
‘All the important work is carried out down there.’
‘I see.’
‘Don’t worry, Mr. Forrest. I have no intention of taking you down there.’
Forrest realised the thinly veiled threats had been designed to slowly implement control over the course of their time together. Jerome wanted Forrest to know that he owned him. Whether the concussion was wearing off or he simply felt the urge to assert himself, he decided to retort.
‘I certainly hope not. That wouldn’t bode well for you.’
‘Oh?’ Jerome said with a smirk, raising an eyebrow. ‘Maybe it is time we had our talk. If you would, please…’
He gestured into an adjoining room consisting of a pair of well-worn couches and an old-fashioned desk lamp resting on an ornate table between them.
‘Our meeting room,’ he explained.
There was barely any unnecessary furnishings in the entire place, Forrest realised. The entire house had the aura of a hospital — sterile and soulless. He wondered how much blood had been spilt on the premises. Trying not to let his fear show, he stepped into the room and sat on one of the couches.
Jerome sat opposite. ‘Now — after all that pain you went through — what is it you came here for, Mr. Forrest?’
Forrest composed himself. An icy determination settled over him. He reminded himself of the need to retrieve the money — it was paramount to his survival.
‘Your three men,’ he started. ‘Tak. Antoine. Jin. They’ve been working for me for months, now, and they’ve been doing their job excellently. They’ve been involved in some of my most brutal work — I’m sure you can understand that my business sometimes requires tough responses.’
Jerome nodded. ‘Of course. And I have also been under the impression that they have carried out their work with the utmost professionalism. You pay them handsomely, after all.’
Forrest nodded back. ‘Not handsomely enough, it seems. I’m afraid I placed too much trust in them after we went through so much together. I firmly believe they are the perpetrators in the theft of nearly five hundred million U.S. Dollars of my personal money. They were the only people who knew enough about my accounts to successfully complete the transfer. And they have alibis during the time the transfer took place, which means they used scapegoats. This was all planned out with precision. Would I be correct in assuming they were operating of their own accord, and that this behaviour wasn’t endorsed by you and your organisation?’
The words hung in the air — it seemed as if Jerome were tasting them, rolling the accusations through his mind and contemplating how to respond. He clasped his knotted hands together — hands that had no doubt been used to inflict untold trauma — and pursed his lips as he composed a response.
‘You are correct,’ he said. ‘My organisation had nothing to do with this.’
‘That’s good to hear.’
‘Five hundred million dollars is an awful lot of money, Mr. Forrest.’
‘I understand that — which is why I’m asking for your discretion. I wish to do business with you long into the future. I hope you can work with me to return my money to me, and I’m sure you will be handsomely rewarded.’
‘And what of my men? Jin. Tak. Antoine.’
‘I never want to see them again. What you do with them is your business. But, if I were you, I would consider the situation wholly unacceptable. They shouldn’t be conducting business like that without your knowledge.’
Forrest trailed off, even though he had a lot more to say. Amidst his tireless rant, an insidious flicker of doubt had started in the back of his mind. He realised he’d been in such a hurry to get the money back that he hadn’t considered the ramifications of revealing all to Jerome.
Why doesn’t he just send me on my way, and get the money off his men later?
Fuck.
It seemed Jerome had realised this near the beginning of the conversation. He had all the control — Forrest sat in his house, surrounded by his men and his guns. Mountain Lion was an enormous complex, but Peter Forrest was not a gangster.
As much as he tried to be.
Jerome crossed one leg over the other and tried to stifle a smirk. Despite the attempt, a half-smile crossed his face. ‘Mr. Forrest, I think you can consider your debt repaid.’
‘I’m sorry?’
‘I saved your life in that ditch.’
‘Y-you did.’
‘How much did Mountain Lion cost you?’
‘I’m sorry?’
‘How much did your casino cost you?’
‘Billions.’
‘Did you use your own fortune to pay for it?’
‘For the most part. Some loans were necessary, but it was mostly me.’
‘So you are worth billions?’
Forrest nodded. He knew where this was headed.
‘So by receiving five hundred million dollars in exchange for saving your life, I’m actually being extorted…’
‘Jerome—’
‘That’s quite a low price to pay for protecting someone as valuable as yourself, Mr. Forrest.’
‘I need that money.’
‘What money? The gift you offered me in exchange for protection? It’s rude to take back a gift.’
‘I—’
‘You should leave, Peter. And consider yourself lucky I didn’t take offence to a sum as measly as five hundred million. My men will guide you to the car.’
Forrest said nothing. The blood had drained from his face — he was powerless, and he knew it.
As he got to his feet and shuffled toward the door, Jerome said, ‘There’s always a bigger fish, my friend.’
30
Slater’s fast-twitch muscle fibres fired and he realised — in the half-second it took to connect the dots and place the guard from the night before — that everything he’d fought to accomplish since he’d rescued Shien from that limousine came down to how fast he could react.
He spotted a congestion of silhouettes at the very end of the corridor, over one of the guard’s shoulders. There was no time to discern where they were looking, or who they were — Slater simply recognised them as potential witnesses and burst off the mark, acting out of impulse.
His fingers were halfway through the act of wrapping around the guard’s instinctive, involuntary handshake. In one motion he tightened his grip with every ounce of strength in his bones, and crushed the guard’s hand to ensure the guy wouldn’t manage to slip out of his grip. Then he yanked the guard into the elevator, wrenching the man forward, throwing his balance off and making him stumble wildly across the threshold and into the cable car.
At the same time, Slater reached out blindly with his other hand and smashed his palm against the “close doo
rs” button — once, twice, three times.
A little more than a single second had unfolded by the time the steel elevator doors responded in prompt fashion to Slater’s command and whisked closed.
The interior of the cable car turned to madness, but Slater could deal with madness.
He couldn’t deal with detection.
There hadn’t been any time to check whether any of the guests in the corridor had spotted the abrupt series of gestures, but as the doors touched together and sealed the cable car’s occupants off from the outside world, Slater unleashed hell.
The guard had seized a moment of capitalisation as Slater fumbled with the control panel, taking the chance to swing a wild haymaker at his face. Slater noticed the punch coming and shot away from the majority of the impact, sidestepping to allow the fist to crash against his head at the peak of its trajectory.
As a result, very little power was transferred through to Slater’s skull.
Nerve endings fired across his temple — nothing adrenalin couldn’t deal with. He shrugged off the non-concussive strike and darted back into range, bundling the guy into the opposite wall.
My turn, he thought.
He stayed as calm as possible — given the fact that one wrong move could result in a knockout punch and allow the guard to beat him to death with his bare hands. He reached up with both hands and looped them around the back of the guard’s head, clasping his fingers together at the base of his neck.
In Muay Thai, it was called seizing the clinch.
In the heat of the moment it seemed idiotic — reaching for a favourable hold instead of letting punches fly seemed like a short-term disaster. It allowed the security guard to hammer a couple of punches into Slater’s mid-section, but he’d been prepared for that. His core muscles were tense, hard as rocks, ready to take anything the guy could throw at them in the split second he had to try his luck.