Don Winslow - The Trail to Buddha_s Mirror

“Okay. Now what?”

Chin thought for a second.

“Tea,” he said.

“Tea?”

“Helps you think.”

“Then tea it is. I need all the help I can get.”

Chin pulled a money roll out of his pants pocket, peeled a $10HK bill off, and handed it to the old woman.

“Deui mjyuh,” he said. (“I’m sorry.”)

She stuffed the bill inside her blouse and scowled at him.

“Cigarette!” she demanded.

He gave her the pack.

The teashop was more like an aviary. It seemed to Neal that every other customer in the place was carrying at least one cage with a bird in it.

“I feel so underdressed,” Neal said to Chin as they sat down at the small round table. The Doorman had gone in before them, secured the table, and left. The rest of the crew waited outside, patrolling the sidewalk and observing every customer who came in.

“Local color,” Chin answered. “I thought you might enjoy it.”

Neal looked around the large room. The customers were all men, mostly older, most of them accompanied by brightly colored songbirds in bamboo cages. Some of the cages looked like they cost a small fortune. They featured sloping rooflines with carved dragons painted in shiny colors. Some had swinging perches with gilded chains and ivory bars. A few of the really old men had their pets perched proudly on their wrists. The birds-and it seemed to Neal that were hundreds of them-sang to each other, every warbling tremolo inspiring a choral response. As the birds exchanged tunes, the old men chatted happily with each other, doubtless swapping bird anecdotes and heredities. The men seemed to know each other as well as the birds did, and all parties were enjoying their social outing. The teashop was a riot of sound and color, but Neal noticed that it wasn’t really noisy.

“Quite a place,” Neal said.

“They used to be all over Hong Kong,” Ben said, “but keeping birds is dying out with the old people. Now there are only a few Bird Teahouses.”

A waiter came over, wiped the table with a wet towel, and set out two handleless cups.

“What kind of tea do you want?” Chin asked Neal.

“You order for me,” answered Neal, who drank at least one cup of tea a year and was only vaguely aware that there was more than one kind.

“Let me see… you are tired but need to concentrate, so I think maybe a Chiu Chou tea.” He said to the waiter, “Ti’ kuan yin cha.”

“Houde.”

“I ordered a very strong Oolong tea. It will keep you awake. Alert.”

“That would be a refreshing change. So what do we do now?” “Give up.”

“Can’t.”

“Why not?”

Neal listened to the cacophony of birdsong, chatter, and rattling cups for few moments before he answered.

“There are other people looking for her and her friend. I think the same people might have reason to be looking for me. These other people do not have kind intentions-they’ll kill her, her friend, and me if they have to. I don’t know why. I do know that I have to find her, warn her, and find out what this is all about before I can get back to a normal life.”

A normal life. Right.

“How did you get involved in this?”

Neal shook his head.

Chin tried again. “Mark told me it’s a drug thing.”

“I don’t think so.”

The waiter came back and set a pot of tea on the table. Chin took the lid off, sniffed the pot, and put the lid back on. He filled Neal’s cup and then his own.

Neal sipped the tea. It was strong all right, slightly smoky and bitter. But it felt good going down, warm and soothing. It occured to him that he hadn’t really stopped moving since the bullet had buzzed past his head, that he was wandering in the dark without a plan, moving for the sake of motion, making assumptions based on himself, not on the subject.

He took a long draught of the tea. So what do you know? he asked himself. You know that Li Lan and Pendleton have skipped out on you again. Back up. Skipped out on you? Why do you think you have anything to do with it? Maybe they already know about the danger and that’s what they’re running from. Running? Maybe they’re not running at all. Maybe they came to Hong Kong and simply changed living quarters. The one-room apartment was small even for lovers.

So how do you find them? They’ve taken off in the most densely populated area of the most densely populated city in the world, so how do you find them?

You don’t.

You let them find you.

He looked up from his cup and saw that Chin was also sitting back and relaxing. He didn’t seem to mind Neal’s silence or be bothered by it. He was just drinking tea.

You let them find you, Neal told himself. Why would they want to do that? Depends on who “they” are. If “they” are Li and Pendleton, maybe they find you because you’re making such a pain in the ass of yourself that they have to deal with you. If “they” are the same people who almost canceled your reservation in Mill Valley, maybe they find you because they can find you, and they tie up a loose end.

That’s me, Neal thought, the quintessential loose end.

He poured another cup of tea for himself and Chin, then sat back in his chair. He was sitting in a place where old men combined their pleasures by taking their pet birds to tea. He could take a few moments to enjoy it. Besides, the game had changed. The second cup of tea was much stronger, the third stronger yet, and then the pot was empty. Chin turned the lid upside down on the pot and the waiter picked it up and returned a minute later with a fresh pot.

“Maybe I can’t find her,” Neal said. “But I can look for her.”

“True.”

Neal poured the tea.

“Maybe I can make a big show of looking for her.”

Chin took some tea and swilled it around in his mouth. Then he tilted his head back and swallowed. “Then maybe the unfriendly people who are looking for you will find you.”

“That’s the idea.”

If they missed me once, they can miss me again. But I won’t miss them this time.

“That’s a crazy game.”

“Do you want to play?”

“Absolutely.”

Chin got up and signaled for the check.

“You ready?” he asked Neal.

“Not yet.”

“You need something?”

“I need to sit here and finish the tea and listen to the birds sing.”

The birds must have heard him because they launched into an avian symphony of particular virtuosity. Even the old men stopped their conversations to listen and to enjoy the moment. When the crescendo died down, everyone laughed, not in derision but in the joy of a shared pleasure.

Neal Carey was dog-tired, jet-lagged, culture-shocked, and snakebit, but at least he knew what to do next.

He checked into the Banyan Tree properly this time, via the lobby and the registration desk. He whipped out the Bank’s plastic-so what if they tracked him down?-tipped the bellhop, and settled right back into his room. He poured himself a neat scotch, left a wake-up call for seven o’clock, and read two chapters of Fathom before dropping off.

Angels watched over him in his sleep. The angels in this case were not the winged spirits that one Father O’Connell used to tell him about when a younger Neal would help him find his way back to the rectory from the Dublin House Pub. Neal would listen patiently, if skeptically, to the old priest’s description of a guardian angel that followed you everywhere, as he relieved Father O’Connell of all his pocket money and decided that maybe these angels existed after all. The angels now were a bunch of Hong Kong Triad thugs who had thrown a loose protective net around Neal, and who prowled the hotel corridor, watched the entrances and the sidewalks, blocked the stairway leading to Neal’s floor, and did it all without being noticed.