Henry Chang - Red Jade

Many men walked past the car but none of them looked like the men from the temple fight.

By the time they dumped the food cartons the rain had stopped.

Wearing the black coat over the black frock, the business pumps, and the drugstore eyeglasses, Mona was ready for the necessary transactions at the AAE Bank, the final actions before she’d fey , jump back into the wind.

The morning was camouflage gray but she noticed him the moment she stepped out of the house; a slightly built bespectacled Chinese man who looked a little too old to be a student, carrying a pen and a clipboard that had the Chinese characters for CENSUS marked across the back.

He saw her at the same moment, pausing to check something on the clipboard. He approached her as she started to walk away.

“Nay ho?” he began politely in Cantonese, How are you? readying his pen at the clipboard. “I’m conducting a residential survey for the census. May I ask you a few questions?”

“I’m sorry,” she replied quickly. “I’m only visiting. I’m not from here.”

“I see,” the man said easily, noticing a resident exiting an adjacent home. He gave her a lingering glance, nodding his thanks before heading toward the other house.

She noticed that he walked with a slight limp.

From a block away she looked back over her shoulder and saw the man engaged in a conversation with a Filipino. He checked his watch and didn’t seem to be looking in her direction.

Two blocks away she decided to take a different route, passing through the Won Chang Mall, just to be on the safe side.

Back on James Street, the man watched as Mona quickly disappeared around a corner, a thin smile twisting up his mouth. No need to follow for now, Tsai thought. Her height and hair could be misleading, he knew, recalling her features as compared to the likeness on his clipboard. The eyeglasses, also, were a distraction. He hadn’t been able to get a good look without staring at her. She’d appeared nervous and he hadn’t wanted to spook her. But what got his attention was the flash of the gold bracelet on her wrist, and the jade charm dangling off it; a round white tablet covered with faint veins of gray. She wears the bot kwa on her wrist, the Taoist etchings clear to see. Just the way the limo driver Johnny Wong had described from his jail cell.

Now that he was sure she was the one, he needed only to wait for the arrival of Paper Fan, knowing the leader would want to be in on the snatch. They planned to take her to a Hip Ching property on Harbor Island, where gang-rape for videotape awaited her, before being taken back to Hong Kong, where they would force her to whore-off what she had stolen.

It was mid-afternoon and Alex spotted them first, the two men from the temple fight. They came down the alleyway wearing dark rain jackets, the big man lumbering along, and the slight man walking with a hitch in his gait. I should have snapped his knee, Jack thought with regret.

The men slipped into the sedan and waited as windshield wipers cleared their view.

Jack knew he could bust them for assault but he would have to call in the SPD and he realized there was more at stake. He chose to let the bad kharma ride. After a few minutes, a gray minivan rolled up to the intersection and pulled in at the curb.

The sedan flashed its headlights twice.

Things stayed that way until the sedan pulled off the sidewalk and slowly came out of the alley. The minivan fell in behind.

Jack keyed the ignition, gave them a block’s distance before he started tailing them. They came to a busy avenue and mixed in with afternoon traffic, with Jack still several cars back. After a ten-minute drive, a short distance, they reached James Street. The sedan and minivan pulled over as Jack passed them and circled, figuring he’d double back and wind up watching them from behind.

The street was quiet when Jack pulled back into James Street.

It started to rain again as everyone waited.

Mona knew that a brisk walk would bring her to the water-front in twenty minutes. Even in the light rain, it would take her no more than twenty-five minutes. She’d abandon the tour bus plan and take the ferry, right now.

She’d chosen the running sneakers she’d always worn with her jogging outfit from the Spa Garden. Her legs and lungs had gotten stronger, she knew, and so had the shattered pieces of her soul. She zippered shut her shoulder bag, closed her eyes, and took a breath. Opening her eyes, she scanned the little apartment, making sure nothing telltale would be left behind. When the red door closed behind her, she double-bolted the lock.

She didn’t plan on coming back.

They were watching the street, or a house, Jack figured. But which one? He downed the last of his black coffee, hoping he wouldn’t have to wait too long for an answer.

Looping the adjustable strap of the black rubber bag over her head, Mona slid the bag against her hip and ribs and stepped out into the concrete-gray Seattle afternoon.

A little black umbrella sprang open in her hand as she went west on James Street.

“Look,” Alex said intently. A woman had exited one of the houses. She was dressed in black, and wore black jogging shoes. Jack caught a glimpse of her face before the umbrella came up, as she turned left and went up the street.

Jack sensed the other vehicles keying their engines and he did the same.

The woman kept her umbrella low over her head, and held it at an angle so that it was hard to see her face. Walking quickly, she headed west toward the waterfront.

The sedan waited, let her go a short distance before following her, with the minivan behind.

Jack fell in line, well back, but able to keep the others in view. Alex did her best to copy down license numbers.

Mona noticed there were only a few people out on the streets, mothers and nannies picking up schoolchildren, older kids with bookbags on their backs. An occasional deliveryman. None of them was Chinese. Or Asian.

She opened her mouth slightly and sucked in air between her teeth as she went.

Her heart pounded a beat inside her ears.

It was a slow-motion pursuit, as if the stalkers were biding their time, waiting for the right opportunity. He wondered who was in the minivan. Paper Fan? More goons? How many men would it take to kidnap a woman? He brushed back the edge of his jacket, felt the reassuring grip of the Colt.

The odd procession rolled along.

The woman occasionally glanced behind her, but the rain had chased people off the streets. After several blocks, Jack wondered if she could maintain the pace, but she seemed to have the legs for it, never letting up.

The buildings got taller when she approached Pioneer Square, a tourist destination even in the rain. Scattered groups of tourists in wet plastic ponchos were taking flash pictures.

She zigzagged through Pioneer Square as if she knew where she was going, heading toward the railroad tracks, the bus terminals, the piers along the waterfront.

The sedan barged through traffic to keep up as she forged ahead, dodging the clots of tourist umbrellas, veering left as she left the square. Just beyond where the avenues ended, a set of block-long industrial buildings provided a truck thoroughfare that cut diagonally toward the terminals.

She’d walked that stretch before, and only occasionally seen deliverymen in vans and trucks. A convenient shortcut. Seeing no one around, she seemed to relax her pace. The gray minivan struggled to stay behind the sedan.

Abruptly, she cut left behind a series of warehouses lining a deserted road that ran parallel to the railroad yards. The truck route was desolate under the Sunday rain. No people around, perfect. She quickened her pace again.