Lone Wolves

by Chesbro, George C. ;

  “Birds have morale?”

  “Most definitely. They must also be allowed to bathe frequently. I will write down for you a recipe for preparing a proper diet.”

  “Thank you, Chou.”

  “What is your real reason for wanting to see me?”

  “I need information. I wish to know which of the three tongs controls the slaving business down here. It will be the one that controls the Shadow Dragons gang.”

  The banker made a sound in his throat like he was choking, then abruptly picked up his birdcage and began to rapidly walk away. Veil remained motionless, waiting, watching the man’s back. The silver-haired banker had almost reached the sidewalk when his pace began to slow, and finally he stopped. He remained motionless for almost a minute before turning and walking slowly back to Veil, furtively glancing around him as he did so.

  “You shame me,” the man whispered to Veil, and then bowed his head.

  “Certainly not my intention, Chou.”

  “My wife and I wouldn’t be alive today if it weren’t for you. I owe you more than I can ever repay.”

  “You owe me nothing. I didn’t come here to ask you to repay any debt, only to ask for information.”

  “This is very dangerous talk.”

  “The reason I’m in disguise and walking my bird like all the other men in the park. The people I’m looking for will not know I’ve spoken to you.”

  “Now you are trying to help someone else?”

  “‘Trying’ is the operative word. I’m looking for a woman I’m sure was brought into this country illegally. She and her family probably contracted for a lot of money to have her smuggled in, and now the people who brought her have her working in a brothel to pay off her debt—which will never happen. She escaped long enough to have her baby, but her slavers caught up with both of them. It’s just a strong suspicion. If I’m wrong, then I suppose I’ll never find her.”

  “These people will not speak with you, Veil.”

  “My problem.”

  “Even you could disappear without a trace in Chinatown, Veil. The people you’re looking for are not just above the law here; they are the law. The police cannot help you if you get into trouble.”

  Veil did not reply. He waited, watching the other man. Finally the banker sighed, continued, “The man you want to talk to is Grandfather—Chan Fu Ong. It is his tong that controls the smuggling of Asians into this country.”

  “Where do I find him?”

  “His headquarters is a social club—really a gambling and heroin den and a brothel—on Elizabeth Street. But you—”

  “Thank you, Chou,” Veil said, slipping the cover back over his birdcage. “May your hua mei sing well today.”

  He returned to his loft to paint, practice, eat and rest, and in the early evening he again shrouded his hua mei, picked up the cage, and walked back into Chinatown, to Elizabeth Street. It was not difficult to find the place he was looking for, for a knot of satin-jacketed Shadow Dragons stood around the entrance to the four-story building. The three youths he had confronted on the subway platform were among them. As he approached, all three—surprise clearly etched on their faces—stepped out to block his path. They glared at him, the surprise in their eyes quickly turning to a film of rage and hatred.

  “Nice evening,” Veil said evenly to the youth in the center, the Shadow Dragon with the spider tattooed on his forehead. The boy had a large bandage over his nose, deep scratches on his left cheek, and both eyes had been blackened.

  “You must be crazy!” the Shadow Dragon said in a choked voice, the color draining from his face.

  “You aren’t the first person to think or say so,” Veil answered in the same flat tone. He glanced up at the surveillance camera mounted over the doorway. “I’ve come to speak to Grandfather.”

  There were grunts of surprise, whispers among the gang members. The albino said, “Who is this ‘Grandfather’ you speak of?”

  “Don’t waste my time, sonny,” Veil said, still looking up at the television camera. The other gang members had moved to surround him. He seemed to be ignoring them, but in fact he was very conscious of the position and body language of each youth, and was prepared to move to defend himself at any moment. “Mr. Ong would consider that impolite.”

  “What do you want?”

  “None of your business, sonny.

  He sensed the closing of a Shadow Dragon behind him. Veil shifted his stance slightly. He was about to spin around and plant the side of his hand in the youth’s throat when the tension was abruptly broken by the trill of a cellular phone. The youth with the pockmarked face took a phone out of one of his jacket pockets, put it to his ear, listened for a few moments, and then said, “Yes, Grandfather,” before disconnecting and putting the phone back in his pocket. He looked at Veil oddly, and then continued, “It’s the door at the back.”

  Veil walked down the stairway to the below-ground entrance. The lock on the door buzzed as he reached out to turn the knob, and he entered a large basement hall crammed with tables and chairs filled with Chinese who were gambling at various games of chance. All activity and conversation stopped as he wended his way around the tables toward the door at the rear of the hall. He knocked once on the door, then opened it and entered a spacious, thick-carpeted office paneled in dark mahogany and decorated with antique murals of Oriental motifs. A slight, old Chinese man with a long, wispy goatee and dressed in an expensive suit that was too big for him sat behind a massive oak desk. He was flanked by two tall, heavily muscled Chinese with shaved heads who were dressed in flowing silk robes. Aside from the one the old man sat in, there were no chairs in the room.

  “Thank you for agreeing to see me, Grandfather,” Veil said as he walked across the room and stopped in front of the desk. “My name is—”

  “Veil Kendry,” the old man said in a wheezing voice that had a lilting, sing-song quality .to it. “You are a friend of the crazy dwarf.”

  Veil smiled thinly. “My claim to fame.”

  “Hardly. You are a well-known artist whose work is displayed in museums and galleries around the world. You create what are called dream paintings, and it is rumored that your style springs from some sort of physical affliction from which you suffer. You were not always so … aesthetically oriented. You are a master of the martial arts, with an eclectic style that is largely self-taught. You were a CIA operative during your country’s conflict in Southeast Asia. You were considered an insane and merciless killer by your enemies, and your night visits were much feared. Your code name was Archangel. Should I go on?”

  “Not if it’s meant to impress me. I’m already impressed.”

  “I have many sources of information in the Asian communities here—as, obviously, do you. After you so efficiently intimidated and dispatched three of my finest young warriors, I felt it a good idea to find out something about you. I asked about a man fitting your description. It was not difficult to obtain information.” The old man paused, added somewhat ominously, “I know where you live.”

  “I’m practically your neighbor.”

  “It is quite remarkable how you have retained so many of your fighting skills into middle age. You must practice a great deal.”

  “A great deal.”

  Chan Fu Ong gestured to indicate the burly, robed, blankfaced Chinese flanking him. “Wing and Kwok were very impressed. I’m sure you would be impressed by their skills. Unfortunately, they cannot give you a demonstration. They were both champions in China, but the rules of the secret martial arts society to which they belong dictate that any combat they engage in must be fought to the death.”

  “I am not interested in fighting or sowing discord between us, Grandfather,” Veil said, stepping forward and placing the shrouded birdcage on one corner of the massive desk. “I bring you this gift as a token of my respect.”

  The old man leaned forward to draw back the cover on the cage and examine the bird inside, then leaned back in his chair and once again regarded Veil.
“You are here about the woman and her baby?”

  “Yes, Grandfather.”

  “Why?”

  “They are very important to me.”

  “Why?”

  “It’s personal.”

  “She is not here against her will.”

  “I don’t believe I implied that she was.”

  “She and her family contracted with our benevolent society to bring her to this country, where she might search for a better life. She is free to do that—after she has worked to pay off what she and her family owe me, which is a great deal of money. This was all agreed upon beforehand. There is a contract.”

  “Somehow I don’t believe she thought she would be forced to work as a prostitute.”

  “Now you are being rude, Mr. Kendry. She is an entertainer. Businessmen come here to relax. She helps them unwind.”

  “What about the baby? The baby can’t be of any value to you.”

  “It’s an unfortunate situation. We discourage pregnancy until the debt is paid. The woman hid it from us. She was not really trying to run away, you know. She had no money, no place to run to. It’s remarkable she managed to get down on the subway platform where you found her. All she wanted was to have her baby away from here. She probably intended to give the infant away to the first person who would take it, in the hope that the child would be raised as an American. Perhaps she even offered it to you. If you’d wanted to make her happy, you should have taken the child—and hoped that we didn’t find you. Since the baby was the fruit of her body, which belongs to us until her debt is paid, the baby belongs to us. We will sell it to some childless couple. The child will probably end up being raised American, which is all the woman wanted anyway. We will apply the purchase price to her debt, and she will be free that much sooner. It works out best for everybody.”

  “I wish to purchase the woman’s contract. Her baby will be part of the deal.”

  The old man smiled thinly, but there was no humor in his icy hazel eyes. He pulled at his wispy goatee, said, “A million dollars should do it. Do you have that kind of money, Mr. Kendry?”

  “Now it is you who are being rude to me, Grandfather. Mockery is an impolite response to a serious offer. The top going rate for smuggling a foreign national into this country is thirty-five thousand dollars. That is what I will pay.”

  The old man made a dismissive gesture, glanced toward the ceiling. “What do you really know about Chinatown, Mr. Kendry?”

  “Jack Nicholson. Faye Dunaway. John Huston.”

  “Mocking me would be very unwise.”

  “I understand what you’re saying, Grandfather. Here, things are done your way. People here do not cooperate with the police, for your word is the only law they recognize. The intrigues of Chinatown are closed to outsiders. If I were to fail to leave here, it would be as if I never existed.”

  “Correct.”

  “I just want to make a business deal, Grandfather. I understand that things can get complicated around here, but I don’t see why this has to be one of those things. If I’d wanted to waste my time, I would have gone to the INS and complained that the head of the tong that controls the Shadow Dragons gang is running a prostitution ring stocked by illegal aliens, or I could have told my story to the police and put them to sleep. Instead I came to you, with respect.”

  The old man turned to the Chinese on his right, said, “Inspect the bird, Kwok.”

  The man called Kwok reached across the desk, opened the cage, and cupped his hand around the bird inside. He removed the bird, gave it a cursory inspection, then abruptly closed his fist, crushing the hua mei into a mass of blood, tiny bones, and feathers that oozed through his thick fingers. He threw the bloody remains back into the cage, wiped his hands on the shroud, and then stepped back. “It is from Shanghai,” he said in English, his face impassive as he stared straight ahead, through Veil. “It has not been cared for or trained properly, and it does not sing. It is worthless.”

  “I do not do business with foreigners, Mr. Kendry,” the old man said in his soft, wheezy voice. “Leave here now, and be thankful you are still alive to sing your songs.

  Veil stood motionless, his face impassive as he returned the gaze of Chan Fu Ong and considered his options, which appeared to range from few to nonexistent. Attempting to reopen the discussion would be futile, and would only earn him the tong leader’s contempt—which might prove more dangerous than his anger. Both bodyguards had altered their stance slightly and placed their hands behind their backs, presumably gripping the short fighting swords they would be carrying in the sashes of their robes.

  He knew that many lives could depend on what he did in the next few seconds. On the eve of an important show at the Whitney Museum he could be plunged into a war with one or more gangs, and that war could easily spill over the boundaries of Chinatown. All of his resources would have to be redirected to defense and attack, and, in view of the numbers that would be sent against him, he would have to begin hunting again, as he had done many years before. The streets of lower Manhattan could become a killing ground like the ones he had waded through so long ago. He had not come here to atone for personal guilt; in the final analysis, the Pathet Lao had been responsible for what had happened to the Hmong chieftain and his pregnant wife. Prodded by memory, he had come here simply to try to chase a bit of evil from the world and replace it with a bit of good. Now it appeared that could not be done. Killing, or dying, would accomplish nothing; indeed, the woman and child he had come to help could very well end up among the first victims of any conflict that began in this room. It would be a senseless battle, just like so many of the senseless battles he had been a part of in another lifetime.

  Veil turned on his heel and walked out of the room.

  Veil dreams.

  He completes his journey back to the village, his clothes and flesh torn by the numberless tiny claws of the jungle he has surged through in an attempt to warn the villagers before the Pathet Lao come. But he is too late. Every man, woman, and child in the village has been slaughtered. Both the chieftain and his pregnant wife have been tied to stakes, disemboweled, and beheaded. The woman’s head lies at her feet in a pool of gore that had once been the child growing inside her.

  He uses his bare hands and his knife to dig shallow graves for the chieftain and his wife and their unborn baby, then slips back into the jungle to begin a hunt of vengeance that will last six weeks.

  There had been no tears in him then, no ability to cry, but his life has changed and he now weeps copiously in his dream as he flies away from the village, high over the jungle, rolls away, and drifts back down into deep sleep.

  It was dusk when Veil finished the first panel in the mural that had become his work-in-progress. He framed it, then went into the kitchen area of his loft and took a garbage bag from beneath the sink. He put the painting in the bag, then went out and walked back over to Chinatown.

  He was prepared to gain entrance to Chan Fu Ong’s brothel and social club any way he had to, but breaking in proved unnecessary. When he approached the phalanx of Shadow Dragons at the entrance to the building and looked up at the television camera, the door buzzed almost immediately. He entered, walked through the crowded hall that had once more gone absolutely still, and went through the door at the opposite end.

  The tableau in the office was the same as it had been the day before, with the two blank-faced, robed bodyguards flanking the old man with the wispy goatee, who sat behind his desk.

  “Thank you for seeing me again, Grandfather,” Veil said in a flat tone as he stopped before the desk.

  “You have the look of someone who feels he has left something unsaid, Mr. Kendry. This is the last time you will be admitted here, for, in fact, there is nothing left to say.

  “That is unacceptable, Grandfather.”

  The old man’s thin lips curled slightly at the corners of his mouth. “Unacceptable? I simply refuse to do business with you.

  “You caused me to lose face.”<
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  Chan Fu Ong laughed scornfully. “Lose face? What do you know about losing face?”

  “You killed my bird.”

  “It was worthless.”

  “Not to me. I was growing quite fond of it; you could say I always root for the underbird. You humiliated me in front of your men. To make up for that you must agree to turn the mother and child over to me.” He paused, took the painting out of the garbage bag, and held it up for the other man to see. “This is what I will give you in exchange for the woman’s contract.”

  The tong leader studied the painting, frowned. “A green blob? This is what you call ‘art’?”

  “I work on a very large scale—wall-length murals that are comprised of dozens of separate panels that are sold separately. As it so happens, collectors and dealers around the world vie to find and gather together the panels to complete the larger work, like a jigsaw puzzle.”

  “An unusual commercial gimmick.”

  “The way I work and choose to present it. The ideas often come to me in fragments, in dreams, and so the work is sold in fragments. In time, this painting could be worth more than the thirty-five thousand dollars I originally offered you.”

  The old man looked back and forth between his bodyguards, and then giggled. “What will the larger work of yours depict, Mr. Kendry?”

  “A place I visited many years ago. There was once a village there but now it is just jungle, completely overgrown. The completed work will be titled ‘Unmarked Graves.’”

  Chan Fu Ong held out one of his frail hands. “Give it to me. Wing, here, is my art assessor. I will have him evaluate your work as Kwok did your hua mei.”

  “I think not. I have already told you its value. You’ll get it when you bring the woman and child to me.

  “I have no interest in Western art.”

  “Develop it. If you do not accept this offer, then you will have made an enemy of Archangel. If you do that, your operations in this particular sphere of yours may not continue to run so smoothly. You’ve taken pains to warn me that what happens here may never get the attention of the outside world. Fine. Archangel was always at home in the jungle.”