Don Winslow - The Trail to Buddha_s Mirror

It took them about ten minutes to find number 346, which looked pretty much like 344 or 345. The building was mustard yellow and only five stories tall. The typical balconies stuck out like guardian parapets, the colorful laundry resembling pennants.

“You have a flat number?” Chin asked Neal.

The Doorman stood in the building’s foyer, looking up the staircase. An ancient woman, clad entirely in black from her skullcap to her shoes, sat on a stool staring nervously at him between puffs of a cigarette.

“No.”

Chin laughed. “I’ll bet now you’re glad I came with you.”

He approached the old woman and spoke roughly to her in Cantonese. She spoke back just as roughly, and Neal felt relief when Chin laughed, reached into his pocket, and handed her a cigarette. Her eyes showed pleased surprise when she saw the Marlboro.

“Give me the picture,” Chin said.

Neal handed him the brochure, and Chin showed it to the old woman. She stared at it for a few seconds and gave a brief response.

“She knows her,” Chin explained to Neal, “but she wants more cigs to tell us.”

Neal felt a rush of excitement in his stomach. Li Lan might be just upstairs, a few seconds away.

“Ask her if she’s with a white man.”

“This old bag?”

“Li Lan.”

Chin’s face crinkled up in a broad smile as he looked at Neal and said, “I think I get it. You want the guy beat up?”

“No.”

“Suit yourself.”

Chin turned back to the woman and handed her three more Marlboros. She snatched them, then snarled at him and stuck her hand out.

“Gau la!” Chin answered. (“Enough!”)

“Hou!” (“Yes!”)

Chin gave her one more cigarette.

“Do jeh.” (“Thank you.”) She shoved the cigarettes in her jacket pocket and then pointed upstairs and gave directions.

“Mgoi,” Chin said sarcastically. (“Thanks for the help.”) “Upstairs, fourth floor.”

The doorman went ahead of them and two of the crew followed. The third stayed at the lobby door.

When they reached the apartment, Neal said, “I want to talk to her alone.”

“We’ll wait out here,” Chin agreed.

Neal felt his heart racing as he knocked on the door. There was no answer, no scuffling of feet, no cease in conversation. He knocked again. Still no answer. The third time wasn’t a charm. The locked door presented only a momentary inconvenience, and Ben Chin nodded approvingly at Neal’s dexterity with his AmEx card.

“Fuck!” Neal yelled.

The apartment was empty. Not merely unoccupied, but empty. No clothes, no cooking utensils, dishes, pictures, old magazines, toilet paper, toothbrushes… A bare bed and an old rattan chair were the sole occupants of the one-room apartment.

Neal looked out the window at the balcony. Nothing. He turned around to see Ben Chin standing in the open doorway. Chin looked angry, a lot angrier than he should have been, but Neal didn’t notice it. He was too pissed off.

“Go get the Old Mother,” Chin said to the Doorman in Cantonese. Then he turned back to Neal and said, “It looks like you missed her.”

“No kidding.”

“She must have just left. Apartments don’t stay empty long around here.”

“She took the time to clean it.”

Chin laughed. “Maybe. It’s more likely, though, that the neighbors stripped it the second she walked out the door.”

Pretty goddamn inconsiderate of the neighbors. Didn’t they know I’d want to search for clues?

Neal heard the old woman squawking in the staircase. The Doorman brought her into the room. At Chin’s signal he shut the door behind them.

“Are you a ghost?” Chin said to her in Cantonese. He walked across the room and opened the window. “Can you fly?”

Neal didn’t understand the words, but the threat was fairly clear. A thug is a thug is a thug, and his techniques vary little from culture to culture.

“Come on, Ben,” Neal said, feeling more tired than he had for years.

Chin ignored him.

“Answer me,” he said to the old woman. “Are you a ghost? Can you fly?”

She glared at him with a look that spoke more contempt than fear. She didn’t say anything.

“Why did you make me climb four flights of stairs for nothing? Huh? Why didn’t you tell me she had left?”

Her answer was a variation on the “you didn’t ask” theme.

“Where did she go?”

“How would I know?”

“Let’s see if you can fly.”

The Doorman grabbed her from behind and put his hand over her mouth to stifle her shriek. Neal stepped in front of the window.

“Tell him to let her go,” he said.

“Stay out of it.”

“I’m paying the bill, I give the orders,” Neal answered.

“I’ll give you a refund. Now get out of the way.”

Neal slammed the window shut. He realized his knees were trembling and he knew that if Chin wanted to throw the woman out the window he could do it. Shit, he thought, if he wants to throw me out the window he can do it.

No real witty, intimidating threats came to him, so he settled for, “What could she tell us anyway?”

“Everything,” Chin said. “The old bag has probably been sitting downstairs for forty years. She sees everyone who goes up and everyone who comes down. If she hears someone fart, she knows what he ate for lunch.”

Chin stepped up to the woman and poked her in the chest. “Tell me.”

She broke into a long monologue.

“What man? What kind of man?” Chin asked.

The question inspired another soliloquy. When she was finished, Chin signaled the Doorman to release her. She sank to her knees on the floor and gasped for air, looking up at Neal with an expression of unmitigated hatred.

Chin wasn’t much friendlier when he said, “Okay, Mr. Gandhi. Old Woman Know-Nothing says your babe was here with a kweilo-a white guy-for just one day. Do you think this old hag wouldn’t notice that? Do you think that anybody on this whole block wouldn’t notice that? She says another guy came to visit both days. A Chinese. She says the three of them left together this morning, but she doesn’t know where they were going, and she had better be telling the truth.”

Neal plunked himself down on the windowsill. He was tired and angry and he didn’t like the smug look on Chin’s face.

“Okay,” Neal said, “so you got out of her that they were here, and now they’re not, and they left with a Chinese man. Hell, they should be easy to find now. All we have to do is find a Chinese man.”

Chin looked at him like he was thinking about the window again. Neal looked at the Doorman and pointed to the door. Chin nodded his okay and the Doorman left.

“And something else,” Neal said to Chin. “I don’t like the way you work. You’re on a job with me, there are certain things you don’t do-I don’t care if it’s your turf and your language. One of the biggest things you don’t do is you don’t rough up old women, or any women, or anybody unless you have to. And by ‘have to’ I mean only if we’re in actual, physical danger. Now if you can’t deal with that, fine-walk away right now and I’ll finish the job myself.”

The silence that followed was about as long as a “Gilligan’s Island” rerun.

“You don’t know how things work here,” Chin said quietly.

“I know how I work.”

“If you had talked to me that way in front of my crew, I would have had to kill you.”

Neal recognized a peace offering when he heard one. He had to give Chin back some face.

“I know. That’s why I sent him out of the room. To tell you the truth, I was pretty scared.” He gave Chin his most self-deprecating laugh.

Chin laughed back and the deal was done.

“Okay,” Chin said. “Your checkbook, your rules.”