The Gaze of Caprice (The Caprice Trilogy Book 1)

by Cole Reid

  In the nearby shadow, Liu Ping saw Xiaoyu drawing all attention allowing him time to run. Liu Ping was divided between aiding Xiaoyu and escaping with the time Xiaoyu was giving him. He put his pistol in the back of his pants and lowered himself off the pier into the water below. He pushed off the pylon and swam away from the fray. On the pier, Xiaoyu tried to hold his ground while being increasingly surrounding. He leaned backward waving his baton 360-degrees around his body to keep the surrounding officers at a distance. He turned in all directions trying not to stay stationary, aiming his feet and baton at anything he saw. He kicked one officer in the shin and pushed him back into his colleagues. As he turned around, he felt a firmly gripped baton crash into the back of his head, sending him to his knees. His vision blurred and he saw only the legs of the officers. One more crack from the baton and Xiaoyu hit the cement floor of the pier, unconscious.

  Xiaoyu woke up in a simple room with simple walls, simple chairs and simple table. The walls were painted light gray, police gray. The table was solid cast aluminum as was the chair he was sitting in and handcuffed to. His hands were behind his back cuffed to the back support rung between the legs of the chair. His head ached and his sinuses hurt. The room was new to him, but it felt familiar. He looked around and saw nothing but the gray walls, until an idea came to him. He turned his head to the left, feeling his stiff neck crack. Looking up in the corner he saw something he had used but never seen before—a video camera—the camera that recorded the conversation between Deni Tam and Inspector Mak. He was in the same room where Deni Tam expressed the depths of his paranoia and made a deal to kill Uncle Woo. He was at Hong Kong Police Force Headquarters. Although he couldn’t leave, he was in the heart of the Moons’ territory. Xiaoyu understood someone wanted to talk to him, otherwise he would have been in a holding cell. There had to be someone who wanted to make a deal. He was in the room where cops made deals with crooks.

  He waited for what must have been over an hour. There were no clocks. Clocks had sophisticated movements; the room was too still and simple for clocks. He waited so long he didn’t know what he expected to see. He settled his mind on seeing Inspector Mak walk in with a big bandage around his neck. Maybe he failed; he didn’t have time to stay and make sure Mak was dead. Maybe it was Mak’s half-dead corpse come back to piss on his parade. The cops couldn’t tie him to Mak’s death without a witness or a weapon. He didn’t think they had either. The doors were closed when he shot Deni, no one saw it but Liu Ping and the others. Maybe one had talked. Maybe. The door opened. Inspector Mak was a better guess than what came through the door. A man. Not Chinese. White. Not even British. American.

  The man walked in the room with a white shirt and wintergreen tie. He had charcoal gray slacks and a black belt. A holstered gun was tied to his waist. His hair was well-cropped, dark and parted—combed back. He was clean-shaven with blue eyes. He held a brown portfolio in his right hand. He walked to the table and sat down in the empty chair across from Xiaoyu.

  “Want a coffee, tea or something?” said the blue-eyed man. Xiaoyu sat in silence with his head angled down toward the table.

  “Nothing?” said the blue-eyed man, “No water or anything, you must be thirsty. They say they had you in here for a while. Me, I just got here.” Xiaoyu didn’t say a word.

  “Alright, we’re not even gonna try the small talk,” said the blue-eyed man, “Then I’ll cut to the chase. They’re gonna try to pin you with Mak’s murder, and Deni Tam’s murder and all the other Triads, even Uncle Martin Ma Woo.” Xiaoyu looked up from the table.

  “I’ll admit the evidence is a bit light, but they got a few of your boys here and they’ll get one of them to say something you can bet on that,” said the blue-eyed man, “I’m not trying to scare you, just trying to get you to take a good look at your situation.” Xiaoyu looked back down at the table.

  “Now, I know you speak a bit of English,” said the blue-eyed man, “What is it? The camera. You can be sure I had it switched off. No one’s listening or watching.” The blue-eyed man paused and reconsidered his tactic.

  “You know, talking to me is the only hope you got,” said the blue-eyed man, “I’m not a cop, not even by a long shot. Honestly, my line of work isn’t too dissimilar from the Triads. But you’re looking at spending the rest of your life in prison and from what I know about you you’re only twenty years old. That’s a long ass time.” He shook his head and put his hand on the brown portfolio on the table.

  “You’re the toughest guy in the room, in every room,” said the blue-eyed man, “I get it. I’ve known about you for a while. I know what you’ve done, what you’ve been through. You don’t wanna talk. Guys like you don’t ever wanna talk. No reason, your kind live in a different world. I don’t speak you, so you’re not gonna talk to me. Ok, let’s talk about something else.” The blue-eyed man lifted a manila folder from the portfolio and slid out a sheet of paper. He flattened the paper to the table and pushed it in Xiaoyu’s direction.

  “Let’s talk about someone else,” said the blue-eyed man. Xiaoyu raised his head and his body along with it. The chain on the handcuffs clanged against the metal crossbar as Xiaoyu extended his torso. He looked down at the table and saw a ghost. The page was a headshot of someone from long ago—a dead someone—his mother. He studied the photo trying to understand why the blue-eyed man would dig his mother out of her grave. There was something disturbing about the man and his blue eyes. Xiaoyu suddenly realized the man was playing tricks. The more he looked at the photo the more he realized it was distorted, perverted. The woman’s face was too round to be his mother’s. But the hair was the same. His mother was always straight-faced in photographs in every respect. The woman on the table had a slight smile at the corner of her lips; that wasn’t his mother. And her eyes were too long and the photo too modern, the look too modern. His mother was too dead to be modern. Xiaoyu closed his eyes and someone came to him—someone from long ago—but alive. He realized it wasn’t the blue-eyed man playing tricks. It was his mind. The woman in the photo was his mother—not the one who gave birth to him—the one who raised him. The photo wasn’t of Li Qiu, his mother. It was of Xiaofeng, his sister. He was twenty years old and it was June, his sister would be turning thirty-four on the twenty-first of the month, the same age as his mother in her last photographs. It was fitting to mistake his sister for his mother. Most of the photographs he saw were of the two together. His mind fused the images over time. There were no photos of him and his mother. After she was pregnant with him, she didn’t want to be photographed.

  “You recognize her don’t you?” said the blue-eyed man, “Your big sister. While you’ve been climbing the list to public enemy number one, she’s been a model citizen. She’s even applied to become one. That photo is from the application she submitted for citizenship. She’s a professor at UCLA, doing very well, looking at tenure in two years. But if her green card was suddenly revoked, she’d be forced to leave the country. How’s that for a birthday present? Everything she’s worked so hard for gone just like that. She wouldn’t even know it was her little brother that was responsible.” Xiaoyu felt the joint between his jaw and his skull ignite. The heat passed around the base of his skull setting fire to his whole head. The fire burned hottest at two points on his brow forcing him to narrow his gaze to control the flame—he couldn’t.

  The first sound was his metal chair scraping the floor. He hoisted the chair high in the air and let it fly. With the chair as air cover, Xiaoyu rolled over the table sideways unthreading his hands from behind his back passing his feet between his arms as he tumbled. He rolled off the other side of the table to find the blue-eyed man was no longer in his seat at the table. Xiaoyu landed on his feet across the table from where he was seated and found no one. He angled his head to the right to look for the blue-eyed man, turning his head into a piece of cast metal. The metal was placed between his left and right eye; he could feel it more than see it. Staring forward he saw only the blue-eyed man and
his flooded eyes. The man’s eyes said everything Xiaoyu needed to know: I don’t need you, I can find someone else. The man’s preparation was obvious. In the time it took Xiaoyu to move over the table, the man had sprung to his feet removed his SP pistol and converted it for a single-action shot. He had seen Xiaoyu move before and didn’t want to take a chance with double-action. Despite his prowess, Xiaoyu was unable to catch the man off guard. He stood handcuffed with the metal chair still weighing on the cuffs and had a loaded pistol touching his face. Xiaoyu had to give credit to the man. Whatever lay behind his blue-eyes, was fit for preparation. Xiaoyu developed a respect for the man that he wasn’t comfortable with. He thought with the time he had to think and realized Xiaofeng was in no immediate danger. He isolated that thought and took a step back from the man and his gun. He turned his back to the man slowly and walked around the table and sat down in his original place—chair in front. The man holstered his gun and sat down never taking his eyes off Xiaoyu.

  “What do you want?” asked Xiaoyu in Hong Kong-tasting English.

  “Your sister looked after you as a kid, I’m giving you the chance to return the favor,” said the blue-eyed man, “You help me out, I promise she’ll get her citizenship.”

  “How do I know?” asked Xiaoyu.

  “Honestly,” said the blue-eyed man, “You don’t. But I will make good on my promise to ruin her, if you choose not to play ball.”

  “What is play ball?” asked Xiaoyu.

  “I wanna offer you a position with my company,” said the blue-eyed man.

  “What position?” asked Xiaoyu.

  “Better than the position you‘re in now. It’s a bad position to be in, having so many limits,” said the blue-eyed man leaning back in his chair. He looked at the portfolio on the table and looked at Xiaoyu. He looked to the side, as if something in the plain room had caught his eye.

  “I’m talking about having the opportunity to have no limits at all,” said the blue-eyed man, “No limits but one.”

  “What limit?” asked Xiaoyu, looking directly at the man.

  “Me,” said the blue-eyed man.

  “Who are you?” said Xiaoyu.

  “I’ll tell you my name,” said the blue-eyed man, “If you agree to my terms, I’ll tell you who I am.”

  “What’s your name?” asked Xiaoyu.

  “Truthfully,” said the blue-eyed man, “Mason Keig.”

  Xiaoyu looked at the picture on table long enough to remember all he could remember about his sister.

  “Who are you?”

  PART TWO

  Chapter Eleven Vaudevillian

  Xiaoyu woke up feeling like his bones were bugged. He opened his eyes to see his own vision—dark and dusty. The room was the opposite, a fluorescent fog. The light lit his eyes so much they begged for darkness. Xiaoyu winced as his eyes closed but he quickly realized darkness had a partner, curiosity. Xiaoyu had no idea where he was; neither did his eyes. But if they worked together they would fare better. Xiaoyu shielded his face with his right hand. He opened his eyes under a flesh-colored canopy starting his study at the floor. The floor was polished, lonely and unvisited. The janitor was the room’s only visitor. Then there was him—lying on the floor. It was cold but not too cold to sleep on. The room was simple, four fluorescent panels in an even square. Coated cinder block walls strained the imagination of what was outside. The space was meant to be occupied, nothing had to happen in the room but so much could. The floor was large square tile—easy to clean. Xiaoyu looked around the room, with half a second and half a thought. The room was clean and simple, the same atmosphere inside and out. That was his best guess. Xiaoyu was in a similar room before. Both rooms said the same thing, government. Xiaoyu still wanted sleep but sleep no longer wanted him. He was aware of too many things to sleep. Only ignorance slept soundly in an empty room. He sat up from a prostrate position feeling next to naked in his gray scrubs. The blue-eyed man had offered him a deal, no time for any of his crimes. But he felt like a prisoner, rightfully so.

  The room had no mirrors but he guessed he looked like a prisoner—grey scrubs and tattoos. He moved toward the center of the room. The wild light was tame in the corners but the cage had taught him he didn’t like corners. He sat there under the lights. As the light pecked at his flesh, he sat there—ever still. He closed his eyes but imagined nothing. He paid attention only to the synapses firing in his head. He isolated only the instinct. From the electric hum in the lights above to the electricity in his brain, an impulse told him he was being watched. He knew it, just not how. The room had no cameras. If he were in Hong Kong Police custody, they would have him in a room with a camera. With the charges against him, there might have been more cameras, one for every angle. He knew he wasn’t in Hong Kong Police custody. The synapses in his brain kept firing. One fired quickly, over and over again. The sparks jumping across the synapse were something he couldn’t feel. It was the idea they emitted that shocked him—more lightning than spark. Where he was, wasn’t Hong Kong. His mind smiled, a smile that almost reached his face. He was outside China for the first time. He left Changyu to earn his way to Beijing, instead he got a trip abroad with no idea how it was earned.

  For the first time in a long time he found sitting still easy. His instinct settled. He was alone in a room and he wasn’t in Hong Kong. His enemies weren’t close where ever they were. He liked moving around since he began training with Master Song. Master Song had taught him to be adaptable, to keep his body and mind flexible. Xiaoyu found sitting still ever easier. Alone in the room he was being watched but not threatened. He could sit still because there wasn’t anything else for him to do. Curiosity was helpful only to a point. He decided thinking too much was useless. As long as he wasn’t in Hong Kong, he didn’t have to know much more. He was sure he would know more than he wanted in time. He steadied his eyes on the steel door in front of him. With legs folded he closed his eyes trying to think of nothing.

  • • •

  The steel door opened from the outside. Xiaoyu’s eyes stayed closed. He heard one step then one lighter. The person was right-footed. The door closed behind the person and he could be heard moving toward the center of the room. With eyes closed, Xiaoyu realized he had seen the person before or at least smelled him. Aftershave, cologne or lotion, something on the man smelled familiar. Xiaoyu opened his eyes to switch shifts with his ears and nose. There was someone else in the room. The memory took him a moment. It was the blue-eyed man. The one from Police Headquarters. The man with the deal, who threatened his sister. In his left hand he held a foldable steel chair like so many others. In his right hand was a file folder unlike any other. He unfolded the chair and sat down, three feet in front of Xiaoyu. He dropped the file folder to the floor.

  “Guam,” said the blue-eyed man, “That’s where you are. I know you don’t remember. Do you remember me?” Xiaoyu looked at the blue-eyed man and looked.

  “Mason Keig,” said Xiaoyu.

  “And what’s my label?” asked Mason.

  “Chessmaster,” said Xiaoyu.

  “And your label?” asked Mason.

  “I don’t know,” said Xiaoyu.

  “You still have a bit of an accent but it should melt away in time,” said Mason, “That’s how it works. Your mind knows how but the muscles in your mouth are playing catch up. It will be like that with the other languages too.” Mason picked the file folder off the floor showing the front side to Xiaoyu.

  “Your label,” said Mason. The brown file folder had one word written in all caps across the front: RAINMAN.

  “Your Chinese name means ‘little rain’ so we thought Rainman would fit and be easy to remember, given the volumes of things you have to remember,” said Mason putting the file folder down on the floor.

  “You know what this is about?” said Mason, “It’s about vegetables.” Mason paused for effect. Xiaoyu sat preternaturally still, legs folded on the floor.

  “Artichoke,” Mason continued, “That was
the name of a project run by the technology office before either of us were born. They tried to find better ways to interrogate people with useful information. Of course that’s a very raw question: How do you get information out of someone’s mind? Especially if they know they become useless when you know what they know. The mind has great ways to protect itself. In our business there are so many lies that you believe them when you’ve told them enough. And that’s it again, the mind trying to protect itself. There’s nothing better and worse than believing your own lie. There’s nothing better because it protects you. No one will be able to prove you’re lying by interrogating you. You believe you’re telling the truth. There’s nothing worse because we have to go to extraordinary lengths to prove a person’s lying. That’s expensive and inefficient. What if you find two people who say the opposite is true. How do you know who the liars are? You have two people saying one thing and one person saying another. A lie also has strength in numbers. So you and the other guy might be getting set up by two people with the same false story. Or maybe they’re all lying. Or maybe all three are working together against you. Maybe they give you truth enough to believe them and that’s what they want.”