Don Winslow - The Trail to Buddha_s Mirror

Neal polished off the meal, paid the exorbitant check, and took his sweet time getting up and leaving. He hit five more shops on his way back to the Banyan Tree. Li Lan’s name didn’t ring a bell in any of them, not a tinkle or a chime.

He worked his way back to the Banyan Tree. He wasn’t surprised to see the Doorman lurking in the hallway outside his room.

“How are you doing?” Neal asked him.

The Doorman nodded and smiled shyly.

“Okay,” he said, trying out the word.

“Okay.”

Jesus, Neal thought, he looks about twelve years old.

Then it occurred to him that he had been younger than that when he started working the streets for Friends.

The Doorman was still standing there, as if he wanted to say something but was afraid.

“You want to come in?” Neal asked.

The Doorman smiled. He didn’t understand a word.

“A drink? Uhhh… Coca-Cola?”

The Doorman tapped his wrist and then pointed at Neal’s. Neal looked at the inexpensive Timex watch he had bought at least three years ago.

“The watch? You like the watch?”

The Doorman nodded enthusiastically.

Neal took it off his wrist and handed it to the Doorman. Apparently the Doorman didn’t rate a watch in the peculiar pecking order of the gang. The Doorman strapped it to his wrist and held it up to his face to admire it.

Shit, why not?

“Listen,” Neal said. “I need it now. I’ll buy one tomorrow and you can have this one. Or you can have the new one, okay?”

He held out his hand for the watch. The Doorman took it off his wrist and put it in Neal’s hand. He looked fucking heartbroken.

“Tomorrow,” Neal said. Hell, how do I explain? He traced his index finger along the dial of the watch and moved it in a circle twelve times. “Tomorrow?”

The Doorman grinned and nodded.

Neal pointed at the Doorman’s wrist. “Tomorrow it’s yours. Okay?”

“Okay.”

“Okay. I’m going to grab some sleep.”

The Doorman bowed and backed off around the corner. Neal went into the room and made himself a scotch. He sipped at it while he tried to read some Fathom and then gave up and flopped down on the bed. He was beat.

The phone woke him up. The digital clock on the radio said it was four-twenty in the afternoon.

“Hello,” he said.

“Stop it.”

“I haven’t even started, Lan.”

“Stop it. You do not know what you are doing.”

“Why don’t you come here and tell me?”

There was one of those long silences he was getting so used to on this gig.

“Please,” she said. “Please leave us alone.”

“Where are you?”

“Someone will get hurt.”

“That’s why I’ve been trying to find you. At first I thought you set me up for a bullet in the old hot tub the other night. Now I think maybe the shot was meant for Pendleton.”

He didn’t get quite the reaction he expected, a gasp of horror or a gush of gratitude. It was almost a laugh.

“Is that what you think?” she asked.

“Maybe it’s what I hope.”

“I am asking you again-please leave us alone. You are only helping them.”

“Helping who?”

“Stop this stupid searching you are doing. It is too dangerous.”

If he hadn’t been half asleep, he could have mumbled something really slick like, “Danger is my business, baby,” but instead he asked, “Dangerous for who?”

“All of us.”

“Where are you? I want to talk to you.”

“You are talking with me.”

Oh, yeah.

“I want to see you.”

“Please forget us. Forget me.”

No, Li Lan, I can’t do either of those things.

“Lan, I’m going to start again tomorrow. I’m going to hit every gallery and shop in Hong Kong. I’m going to pass your picture around the entire city and I’m going to make a spectacle of myself doing it unless you agree to meet me tonight.”

Pause, pause, pause.

“Wait one moment,” she said.

He waited. He could hear her speaking, but could not make out the words. He wondered if she was talking to Pendleton.

“The observatory on Victoria Peak at eight o’clock. Can you be there?”

“Yes.”

“Okay.”

“Aren’t you going to tell me to come alone?”

“You are foolish with me. Yes, come alone.”

She hung up.

Neal felt his heart racing. If this is love, he thought, the poets can keep it. But three and a half hours sure seems like a long time.

He ordered a wake-up call for six o’clock and lay awake until the phone rang.

Getting to Victoria Peak wouldn’t be too tough, Neal thought. Getting there alone would be impossible. That’s what Ben Chin had told him, anyway.

“No way,” Chin had said, with a firm shake of the head. He knocked back a hit of Neal’s scotch with equal firmness.

“My checkbook, my rules, remember?”

“That was different.”

“How?”

Neal had a scotch of his own sweating on the side table, untouched after the first sip.

“You weren’t putting your butt on the line. Cousin Mark would be really pissed if I let you get killed.”

“I’m not going to get killed.”

“Why does she want to meet you at the Peak? Why not here at the hotel?”

“She’s afraid and she doesn’t trust me. She wants to meet in a public place.”

“Let her meet you on the ferry, then.”

“You can’t run away on a ferry.”

“That’s what I mean.”

Neal sat down on the bed and slipped into his loafers.

“I’m not going up there trailing your whole crew.”

“You’ll never know we’re there.”

“I told her I’d be alone.”

“Did she tell you she’d be alone?”

Good point.

“No, I think she’ll be with her friend.”

“I think she’ll be with a whole bunch of friends. You should be, too.”

Neal stood up and put on his jacket.

“No.”

“Okay. Just me.”

“No.”

“How are you going to stop me from following you?”

There was always that.

“Okay, just you.”

Chin smiled and polished off his drink.

“But,” Neal said, “you stay in the background, out of sight and out of earshot. I want to talk to her alone. Once we make the meet and you see that it’s safe, you back off. Way off.”

“Whatever you say.”

“So are you ready to go?”

“It’s only six-thirty. We have plenty of time.”

“I want to get there early.”

“Love is a many-splendored thing.”

“I don’t want to be set up again.”

The rush onto the Star Ferry made a New York subway look like a spring cotillion. The same crowd that had been standing patiently and passively on the ramp moments earlier turned into an aggressive mob as soon as the entrance chain was dropped. Splitting into gangs, trios, couples, and the odd loner, the mob spilled onto the double-decked, double-ended old green-and-white vessel, flipping the backs across the benches to face forward.

Neal, a survivor of the Broadway Local, just managed to stay on his feet as the crowd shot off the ramp and pushed him forward. He claimed an apparently scorned seat toward the rear of the boat and wondered how Ben Chin was going to stay with him. The boat filled up quickly and took off quickly. There was no time for lollygagging; the Star Ferry made the nine-minute crossing 455 times a day.

It was some nine minutes. From sea level, Hong Kong’s skyscrapers loomed like castle keeps, their gray steel and glass standing in sharp contrast to the green hills above. A staggering array of boat traffic jammed the waters of the bay. Private water taxis zipped back and forth while old junks lumbered across. Sampan pilots struggled with their sculling oars to maneuver through the chop left by the motorboats. A tugboat guided a gigantic ocean liner into a dock on the Kowloon side.