Don Winslow - The Trail to Buddha_s Mirror

“I think you do, too.”

Ben Chin eased his way skillfully into the flow of slow-moving early-morning traffic. He stayed in the mainstream moving down Chatham Road for about twenty minutes, then manuevered into a turn lane and onto Tung Tau Tsuen Street.

Chin pointed out the window to a patch of decrepit, filthy, high-rise tenements about the size of two football fields.

“You don’t ever want to go in there, Neal.”

“No?”

“No. That’s the Walled City. You go in there, you don’t come back out. It’s like a maze.”

Neal said, “I don’t see any walls.”

“Torn down. It was a Sung fort. Even the British didn’t want it when they took over in Kowloon. You’re looking at one of the worst slums in the world. No government, no law. It’s the end of the road.”

Ben sped up again and turned back onto Chatham Road.

“Speaking of the end of the road,” Neal said, “where are we going?”

“To the hotel. We got you a nice room.”

Any time now, baby Jesus.

“Ben, didn’t your cousin explain to you that some people might be looking for me?”

“sure.”

“So, a hotel?” Neal asked. No wonder you flunked out.

“Not a hotel, Neal. My hotel. You don’t sign the register, and you have a room we can keep an eye on. Nobody will get to you.”

“Who’s ‘we’?”

“My boys at the hotel.”

“The other guards that you supervise.”

Ben Chin chuckled. “Sure. We pride ourselves on keeping our guests safe and secure.”

Chin took a left off Chatham onto Austin Road.

“Hey, Ben?”

“Yeah, Neal?”

“Let’s cut the happy-Buddha, Hop Sing routine, and get down to it. You’re mobbed up, right?”

“I don’t know what you mean by ‘mobbed up.’”

The idea sure didn’t make him mad, though. He was grinning with glee.

“You’re a junior executive with one of the Triads. In the management training program, so to speak.”

“Oooohh, ‘Triad’… the man thinks he knows the lingo.”

Yeah, the man thinks he does. You’d have to be deaf, dumb, and stupid to do my kind of work in any major city in America and not know about the crime syndicates that controlled so much of daily life in every Chinatown. Neal knew that the Triads’ high-ticket item was heroin, but the protection racket provided a big slice of the daily bread, and the Triad bosses used this extortion as a training ground for its thugs and up-and-comers. The Triads had spread their fingers over the Asian communities worldwide, but their home offices were in Hong Kong.

“Quit running a number on me, Ben.”

“So you’re from New York, Neal? You’ve had some Peking Duck on Mott Street and you think you’re an expert on the inscrutable world of the Orient? Let me tell you, something, Neal-you know shit.”

He took a left off Austin onto Nathan Road.

“So tell me what I need to know,” Neal said.

“You need to know that you’re in good hands and leave it at that.”

“Am I in good hands?”

“The best.”

The Banyan Tree Hotel occupies a block on the east side of Nathan Road in the Kowloon District called Tsimshatsui-the Peninsula. It’s the major tourist area in Hong Kong, with its “Golden Mile” shopper’s paradise, restaurants, and bars.

“You’ll blend right in here,” Chin assured Neal as they climbed the back staircase, not bothering to check in. “And you’re prepaid.”

They walked up to the second floor and then grabbed the elevator to the ninth. Neal’s room, 967, was large and anonymous. Its furniture and decor could have been in any hotel room in New Jersey, except that the large picture window looked out over Kowloon Park, across from Nathan Road. The banyan trees that lined the park were survivors from the days when Major Nathan first surveyed the lines for the dirt track that at the time led to nowhere and hence got the name “Nathan’s Folly.” The park appeared to be filled mostly with old people and kids. A deformed beggar, his legs bent underneath him, was crawling along the sidewalk, feebly chasing passersby.

“Welcome to Kowloon,” Chin said. “The real Hong Kong.”

Neal sat down on the bed and began to go through the papers in his briefcase. “What does ‘Kowloon’ mean?”

“Nine dragons,” Chin answered as he lit up a Marlboro. He almost looked like a dragon himself, a big, dangerous beast puffing smoke. “The old people thought that the eight hills here were each dragons, and they were going to call the place Eight Dragons. Then the Sung Emperor came, and the Emperor is a dragon, so that made nine. Nine Dragons-Kowloon.”

“It looks pretty flat to me.”

“It is. Most of the hills were ‘dozed to make room.”

Neal took the brochure advertising Li Lan’s paintings from his briefcase and handed it to Chin. “Where is that address?”

“Is this the babe?”

“Yeah. Is it far from here?”

“Good looking. No, not far. Kansu Street is just up the Nathan Road. Yaumatei District. You get some sleep, then I’ll take you there.”

“I’m not tired.”

“She’s a painter?”

“Yeah.”

“Maybe she’d like to paint my picture. What do you think?”

“I think you should tell me how to get to two-thirty-seven Kansu Street.”

The beggar across the street scored some coins from a young woman tourist. Chin offered the pack of cigarettes to Neal, who shook his head.

“I think,” Chin said, “that I better take you there.”

“Why? Is it a dangerous neighborhood?”

“It’s not the neighborhood, it’s the situation.”

“What situation?”

“You tell me.”

Neal got up and looked out the window. The beggar would have been tall if had been able to stand up. He was certainly thin. He moved by supporting himself on his hands as he swung his torso like a gymnast on the bars of the horse. The crowds of pedestrians surged around him, creating an eddy in the stream of traffic.

The situation is, Neal thought, that I’m a renegade from my own company, which may or may not join the CIA in wanting me dead. The situation is that this woman set me up, maybe even set me up to be killed. The situation is that somehow I’m in love with her anyway and I need to warn her that she’s in danger. The situation is that I have to find her to get some answers before I can get on with my life.

“The situation is,” Neal said without turning away from the window, “that I need to talk to the woman at two-thirty-seven Kansu Street. That’s the situation.”

“Mark told me to take care of you.”

“And you have.”

“He said there are people looking for you.”

“There are.”

“So you need protection.”

Neal turned back from the window. If I boot him, he thought, he’ll lose face with his cousin and with his own boys. Besides, this is his turf and I couldn’t lose him if I tried. All I can do is make it harder on each of us.

“I’ll need to speak with her alone,”Neal said.

“Sure.”

“Let’s go.”

One thing you have to say for Ben Chin, Neal thought: he’s organized. As soon as they hit the street, three teenage boys fell in behind them. They all had that lean and hungry look that Caesar was so worried about, and they all wore white shirts over shiny black trousers and loafers. They dropped their cigarettes as soon as they saw Chin, and wordlessly arranged themselves in a fan formation about thirty feet behind Chin and Neal. A bucktoothed boy, smaller and skinnier than the others, ranged ahead of them, rarely looking back but figuring out their intended path anyway.

“Who do we have to look out for?” Chin asked him. “White guys?”

“Probably.”

Chin grimaced, then said, “Okay, no problem.”