Don Winslow - The Trail to Buddha_s Mirror

Here and there holes had been punched in the lower walls, and people were burrowed into them. Neal could see them peeking out at him through iron grilles and bamboo screens.

He heard Pendleton mutter, “Jesus. Jesus Christ.”

And the sounds, the sounds were horrible. Amid the din of thousands of voices just talking, Neal heard babies crying, children screaming, old people moaning. In the distance ahead he could hear a pack of dogs growling, and from inside the walls around him he could make out the scurrying feet of rats.

Neal reached ahead and grabbed Li by the shoulder.

“Where are we?”

“The Walled City.”

“What is it?”

“It is what you see.”

She brushed his hand off and started ahead. He pushed Pendleton aside, grabbed her by the collarbone, and spun her around.

“What is it?” he asked again.

“It is the Walled City!” she screamed at him. “People-you would call ‘squatters’-live here. The gangs rule it. It is drugs, it is prostitutes, it is sweatshops. It is rats, it is packs of rabid dogs. It is children gang-raped and sold as slaves, it is people living in holes! It is filth. It is when nobody cares!”

“I never knew a place like this existed.”

“Now you know. So what?”

“What are we doing here?”

“We are hiding.”

“For how long?”

“Don’t you like it here?”

“For how long?”

She calmed down. He hadn’t seen rage in her before, and it scared him. Pendleton stood aside like a frightened, overgrown child.

“Until you can phone your Simms.”

“Can he get in here?”

“With the people he knows.”

“Gang people, Triad people?”

“Of course.”

“Are there telephones here?”

“There is everything here.”

She turned around and went ahead. She turned left into a slightly wider alley where people sat slumped against the walls in a doped-out haze. Then she turned right into a concrete tunnel, where they walked through muck, stepped over sleeping bodies, and ducked under dangling light bulbs and power cords. They stepped into another alley, narrower and filthier than the last.

“Jesus!” Pendleton gasped.

A pack of rats was feeding on the bare feet of a human corpse. Neal hunched over and finally vomited, trying hard not to touch the walls.

“Come on,” Li Lan hissed. “We are there soon. It is better.”

The alley led to a T-junction. They went to the left, then through a series of zigzags, then straight on and made two more rights.

We’re in a goddamn maze, Neal thought, and we can hardly see the sky. He suddenly realized that he wouldn’t stand a chance of finding his way out of there. Not a chance.

They came onto a small circular patch of bare din that formed a hub for five alleys.

Four teenage boys, dressed in sleeveless white T-shirts, baggy khaki slacks, and rubber sandals squatted in a circle, smoking cigarettes and rolling dice. It was clearly their turf. The boys stared at the newly arrived trio with amazement. An unexpected bonanza of rape and pillage had been dropped in their midst. The biggest one, the leader, rose to his feet and approached Li Lan. He gazed at her with frank sexual interest, stretched his face into an exaggerated leer, and made a comment to his buddies. They chirped with amusement and got to their feet. The leader pulled a knife from his pants pocket and held it up to Li’s face.

Pull the gun, Lan, Neal thought. This is no time to be a Buddhist.

She didn’t pull the gun, but said what sounded to Neal like two words. The boy’s grin crumbled into a frown of concern and his hand dropped to his side. He barked an order to the others and they took off running down one of the alleys. Then he launched into a monologue of obsequious friendliness. Neal didn’t understand a word, but knew shuffling when he heard it, and this kid was tapdancing for his ass. Li wasn’t buying it. She stood looking at him sternly, not throwing him as much as a crumb. The kid started to shuffle harder.

Ten minutes later, Neal saw why. The two errand boys came back escorting a guy who had “honcho” written all over him. He was older, maybe in his early twenties, and sported a gray pinstriped suit, a blue shirt, a plum tie, and a charcoal fedora. A lit cigarette was jammed in the corner of his mouth. He didn’t show any fear toward Li, but he was polite and respectful, bowing slightly to her as he approached and then nodding to Neal and Pendleton.

He listened to Li for a minute, nodded again, and quietly issued orders. The three boys started to run off, but he stopped the leader, then gave him a vicious backhand to the face. The boy fell into the dirt, picked himself up, bowed to Li Lan, and ran off. The honcho shook his head, then reached into his jacket and produced a pack of Kool Lights. He offered one to Neal and Pendleton, who declined with polite smiles and shakes of the head.

“He’s a stupid boy,” he suddenly said. “Useless. I will kill him if you wish.”

“Thank you for the courtesy, but no,” Li answered.

He’s a clever bugger, Neal thought. Making the offer in English to give Li tremendous face in front of her guests.

He turned to Neal. “Don’t worry about White Tiger. They are big men in Kowloon. This is not Kowloon.”

This isn’t Kowloon, thought Neal. This isn’t even the fucking earth. The honcho’s appearance had attracted an audience. The local kids were gathered around them in a wide circle, and Neal looked up to see people looking out the windows of the ratty concrete and wooden buildings that surrounded the circle. The alleys were filling with wishful gawkers.

“Mr. Carey will need to use a telephone,” Li said. Neal got the idea she said it just to fill a silence.

“Sure… anything,” the honcho said casually.

Yeah, okay, how about a helicopter?

The honcho’s acolytes pushed their way through the crowd and apparently announced that they had accomplished their mission.

“Will you come with me, please?” Honcho asked Li. The crowd parted in front of him as he led them up one of the alleys, into a courtyard ringed by shacks full of sewing machines, through one of the shacks and out a back door into another alley, and then into a cul-de-sac.

At least it looked like a cul-de-sac. When Honcho led them down a stairway into what appeared to be a basement building entrance, the steps ended in a concrete wall. Just to the right, however, there was a narrow crack in the wall. Honcho turned sideways and squeezed through, motioning his guests to follow.

Neal could just fit through the crack, and he shuffled along sideways for about ten feet, trying not to scrape himself on the walls, which pressed against his back and his nose. The walls were home to about ten thousand strains of exotic bacteria, and Neal figured that one open wound would be good for about twenty-five different blood tests. He could feel slime rubbing off on his shin and pants, and was grateful for once that he couldn’t see up or down. He didn’t want to know.

This alley, if you could call it that, ended in another wall. This time the crack led off to the left, and Neal endured another twenty feet of rising claustrophobia before they reached their apparent destination. He had to hand it to old Li Lan: She couldn’t have found a better place to hide.

Some jerry-rigged wooden steps rose straight up from the alley into a dark hallway. They passed by two closed doors before knocking on the third.

Neal followed them in through Door Number Three, not really thinking he’d find Monty Hall, the patio set, and the trip to Hawaii. What he did find was a bare, low-ceilinged eight-by-eight room. In the right corner a homemade ladder provided shaky access to a primitive loft that had been literally carved out of a wall. The loft was just large enough for a stool and, incredibly, a telephone. Maybe it was for running a book, maybe for taking drug orders, maybe it was for calling up local shops and asking them if they had Prince Albert in a can, but there it was. A stubby black rotary telephone. Neal wasn’t sure he had ever seen anything so beautiful in his whole life.