Ridley Pearson - The Risk Agent

The sound of shuffling slippers announced the husband’s arrival.

Grace threw open the door. Knox stepped through, shoving the unsuspecting man back. Grace shut the door. Knox drove the husband onto a stool that overturned as he fell, and Knox followed him to the floor on one knee. The room was sparsely decorated but well kept, with a tile floor and a low coffee table surrounded by wooden stools.

Knox spoke an angry, unforgiving Shanghainese. “I will tear your sack off your body, my friend, and give it to your wife as a souvenir.”

A plastic ID and lanyard landed on the floor next to Knox. Grace had tossed it to him, from a hook by the door.

“Steel inspector,” she said.

“The man who paid you-” Knox said.

His victim shook his head frantically shouting, “No good! No good!”

“We have come for him.”

“Bu xing!” The man backpedaled, trying to get Knox’s hand off his throat. Then: “I do not know!” Repeatedly. His face had gone the color of an old bruise; his eyes occupied a third of his face and were growing.

“You tell me now,” Knox said, reaching between the man’s legs, “or you piss blood for a week.”

The color in his face deepened.

“He paid you, my friend,” Knox said. “Do not lie to me!”

“I take the money! It is true. Each week, I take the money. For this I give favorable quality standard reports. May Buddha forgive me. I know nothing more than payment did not come this week. Nothing more, I tell you!”

“Enough!” Grace called out.

Knox released him and shot her a look that warned her not to interfere.

“And this week?” Knox asked the man. “Did you still give favorable report?”

The man flinched and recoiled as Knox lifted his hand toward him.

“I did not think so,” Knox said. He scooped up the man’s ID and pocketed it. “If you ever take so much as another fen for such a favor, your family will pay for generations.” Knox knew a threat to a man’s lineage was the most serious of all.

“I told you!” cried the wife. “I warned you nothing good came of such greed.” She, with both a new refrigerator and a dishwasher in her kitchen. Not even expats had dishwashers.

“Your phones,” Knox said to the man.

He glared back, puzzled.

“Both of your phones,” he said to the couple.

They produced them. Knox collected the SIM cards and crushed what remained.

He grabbed Grace by the arm and they backed out, pulling the door closed behind them.

“Walk calmly,” Knox said.

Grace was unfazed. Knox’s right hand was shaking.

“We might have handled that differently,” she said, accusingly.

“That’s how it’s going to be,” Knox said. “Exactly like that until we’re convinced the person’s telling the truth.”

“And if they know each other? If he should call ahead to warn the others?”

“That’s partly why I took the phones,” he said.

“I think you took the phones to look at who he calls, who he knows.”

Knox said nothing. She was too smart by half.

“But if he should call ahead,” she said, repeating herself, provoking him.

“What do you want me to say?”

She didn’t answer. Together, they climbed onto the scooter and drove off, Grace holding Knox around the waist. She read directions from the GPS while Knox recalled everything Danner had recorded as if it had been left for him personally.

They moved between districts and neighborhoods, honing their interrogation skills with each stop. Grace was forced into the fray twice, responding with a technical precision and efficiency to her movement and force. Together, they manhandled and subdued three more recipients of Lu Hao’s bribes, bringing the total to four, when they found themselves facing a cluster of impressive high-rise apartments overlooking the Huangpu River.

Danner’s voice notes had the floor and apartment numbers as well as comments about the lobby security.

Knox passed Grace a ball cap for the sake of security cameras.

“These buildings,” she said. “No expats. All Party officials, Chinese businessmen. Important people. Everyone in Shanghai knows this address.”

“Construction inspectors?”

“We do not know for certain, neh? Not until we find Lu Hao’s accounts.”

She pushed this on him, reminding him he had failed to secure the accounts. She couldn’t analyze what she hadn’t yet seen.

“Every kind of successful person lives in this compound,” she said. “Inspectors? Perhaps. Also city planners and regional supervisors. Architects. Engineers. Decision-makers.”

“It’s early yet,” Knox said. “Every reason to believe they will be at home.”

“Two are in the same tower,” she reminded him.

“Yes. The fifth floor and the twelfth.”

“Once we have visited the one, it is highly unlikely-not likely at all,” she emphasized, “that a second interview will be possible in the same building.”

Interview, he was thinking.

With each stop, Knox sunk into a darker place. He’d begun to enjoy the punishment he delivered, to transfer his anger over Danner’s situation into his fists. To look forward to the next stop. He’d failed to fully consider the conflict this building presented until he heard her voice it.

“That is a problem,” he said. “We can’t pick one over the other. People in power-the way you describe these people-these could be the people we’re looking for.”

“Yes. We must coordinate our efforts. Time this perfectly.”

“You’re suggesting we split up?” he said. She’d been complaining about his techniques.

“Is there a choice?”

He imagined her gloating. “There’s always a choice,” he said.

“Then I will take the fifth floor,” she said. “If they throw me out the window, it is shorter to fall.”

“You’re going to joke about this?”

“I am learning,” she said.

Knox laughed aloud.

“You understand-” he began.

Grace put her fingers to his lips, stopping him. “Much more than you can possibly convince yourself of.”

She removed her hand just as fast as she’d used it to silence him. There was no hidden meaning to be read into her touching him. There was nothing suggestive implied by it. Yet Knox felt his lips tingle well after her fingers were gone, reminded for the first time since the cocktail party of her femininity, and the power women wielded over him, intentionally or otherwise.

He said, “We have two choices for gaining entry-subterfuge or power.”

“You leave this to me,” she said. “We will go to the twelfth-floor apartment together. From there, I will leave you and take care of the fifth.”

They made it past two doormen in the lobby by Grace holding on to Knox’s arm and acting incredibly sexy. She turned it on so quickly it surprised him, which was her intention. She ran her hands all over him, while giggling and purring. She pulled his hand onto her backside and he held it there. The boys-for that’s all they were: boys in gray suits-couldn’t keep their eyes off her and weren’t about to interrupt such a woman with a waiguoren involved.

They rode the elevator to the twelfth floor with Grace continuing to act her part, well aware the security boys would be attempting to follow them using security video.

Grace gambled correctly that a maid-the ayi-would answer the door. Taking a cue from Danner’s voice note, she mentioned a teenage boy to the Chinese woman at the door, saying she had important information that could keep the family from embarrassment. The door came open.

Knox swept inside. Grace pulled the door shut, leaving Knox cupping the unsuspecting maid’s mouth as he dragged her to the telephone and pulled the phone off-hook, engaging the line and ensuring an outgoing call could not be made. The maid went limp, having passed out from fright. He left her on the floor and hurried down the hall. Grace stayed behind to tie her up.