Don Winslow - The Trail to Buddha_s Mirror

“For the right woman?” Kitteredge asked.

“In Carey’s case, there is no right woman. He’s psychologically incapable of that depth of feeling.”

Kitteredge turned to Graham. “Do you concur?”

“If Ed means that Neal is generally pissed off at women and doesn’t trust them, sure,” Graham answered. “Is this what they teach you in night school, Ed?”

Levine was on a roll. “It’s more than not trusting them. Neal expects betrayal. His mother was an addict and a prostitute, and worse than that, she left him-”

“We kicked her out of town.”

“Nevertheless, deep down, Neal knows that any woman he loves will eventually leave him, betray him. When she does, she validates his view of life. If she doesn’t, he’ll do something to make her leave. If that doesn’t work, he’ll leave and be pissed off when she doesn’t follow him. So-”

Graham slammed his fist on the table. “If Doctor Fraud here is finished, I’d like to start looking for Neal.”

“That’s what I’m trying to do, Graham. Keep your arm on. What I’m saying, so that even Graham can understand it, is that it’s just not possible that Neal is living happily in China somewhere with this broad.”

“So you believe he’s a prisoner, Ed,” asked Kitteredge.

Ed got quiet for a minute, which made Graham nervous. Ed being quiet was never good news.

“Yes,” Ed answered. “Or he’s dead.”

“He’s not dead,” Graham replied.

“How do you know?”

“I just know.”

“Terrific.”

“Either way, gentlemen,” Kitteredge said, “we have to find him.”

“How are your connections in Chinatown?” Levine asked Graham.

“Not so good anymore. Things have changed, the old guys are dying out. It’s all kids now, and they’re all crazy. Gun-happy. But I’ll ask around, see if anyone can do some digging in Hong Kong.”

“With your permission,” Ed said to Kitteredge, “I’ll head over there, keep the heat on our friend Simms.”

“Good,” Kitteredge said. “I’ll make the appropriate calls to Washington to apprise certain people of our… sentiments in this matter.”

Swell, Graham thought. Maybe if we hadn’t been dicking around with certain people in Washington, we wouldn’t have to have any sentiments in this matter. Well, the Man can make the phone calls, but in the end it’s going to come down to somebody putting his feet on the ground and walking in and getting him. And guess who that’s going to be.

“Shall we be about it, gentlemen? Time seems to be an issue here.”

Joe Graham headed back to the train station and only had to wait about an hour before catching the Colonial back to New York. He’d visit a couple of the old boys on Mott Street, but he knew exactly what would happen. They would look somber, give him a bunch of assurances, and then do exactly nothing. He didn’t blame them; it wasn’t their problem, and the Chinese didn’t usually go around borrowing trouble. They had plenty of their own. No, Graham would go through the motions to make the Man happy. But then he was going to hop on a plane to Hong Kong and go find his kid. Walled City, hell… Joe Graham was from Delancey Street.

Neal thought about escaping at first.

It should have been easy-his guards were a lunatic boy and an ancient man. Neal came up with clever nicknames for them. He called the boy “Marvel” and the old man “Old Man.” Neal almost tried to bolt when they stripped him, when Marvel stood close by with the chopper raised as Old Man took Neal’s shirt, pants, socks, and shoes. Neal thought maybe he could grab the chopper, overpower Marvel, and make his break. But he didn’t expect that the old man would be that quick and he also didn’t expect the handcuffs-rusty bracelets that were comically large and looked like props from an old vaudeville bit. And he didn’t know that handcuffs could be so heavy. Cuffed, weighted down, and stark naked, he knew he wouldn’t stand a chance, so he went docilely back to the cave as the boy nudged him up the ladder.

He thought maybe he could wait it out. Simms must be poring over the city for him, tracking his steps, figuring out that he was somewhere in this no-man’s-land. Surely, any minute, the door would come crashing in, and Simms, leading a band of efficient killers, would rescue him. Any minute now…

Any minute turned to any hour turned to any day now as Neal tried to keep track of the time. It must have been during the second week when he got sick. He had taken to counting his days by the rice bowl, because they gave him one a day. It wasn’t exactly rice, either, but more like rice gruel, a runny, dirty mixture with some rice grains and God only knew what else floating in it. He had always had trouble with chopsticks, and with the handcuffs on it was a lot worse, especially since his wrists were raw from the weight of the rusty metal. But he forced himself to raise the bowl to his mouth and shove the food down. And he made himself use the bucket they gave him as a lavatory, the bucket that Marvel emptied once a day for him when he remembered.

So by counting rice bowls, he figured that it was the second week when his guts turned to napalm and the violent, uncontrollable emissions of the green, watery shit started. He couldn’t stop it, all he could do was double over from the fierce cramps, and after a while he couldn’t even do that. All he could do was writhe in it, then lie exhausted until the next spasm hit.

Marvel thought it was funny, but Old Man got pissed off, yelled at him, and took away the bucket on the old “use it or lose it” theory, Neal supposed. And he supposed that the stench he made was his only form of vengeance, and maybe it would provoke them into killing him, which seemed like a decent option by the end of the second week. Because by the end of the second week he had given up all hope of escape or rescue.

He tried to fight it at first, tried to make himself eat, even though every mouthful meant another spasm of dysentery. He tried to make himself at least sip on the weak tea they gave him, because he knew he was getting dehydrated and that was what would kill him first, but each sip was like liquid flame, and there was that day-which day was it? how many rice bowls?-when he soiled himself and just lay there sobbing while Marvel danced around beneath him mimicking his sobs between peals of laughter and cries of “Red Kryptonite! Red Kryptonite!” and Old Man screamed at him. That was when Neal stopped eating, and the next day he stopped even trying to drink, and started the conscious process of dying. He thought about Li Lan and Kuan Yin, the goddess of mercy, and where were they now? He thought about Simms, the incompetent son of a bitch, and then about Joe Graham.

Then he started crying again. Please, Dad, come get me. Dad. Come get me. Please.

The diarrhea stopped, because there was nothing left, and the cramps became worse. The dry fire in his stomach wrenched him upward like an inchworm crawling. The fevers came and hit him hard, twice a day. He shook with cold, the chains between his hands rattling like Marley’s Ghost, his teeth chattering. He felt as if he were being poked with thousands of icy needles. The fever would suddenly stop, and he would be rewarded with unconsciousness. The dry heaves and cramps were his alarm clocks, and the cycle would begin again, and after a while he lost track of time because there were no rice bowls to count anymore.

So he wasn’t sure when it was that Honcho showed up and threw the fit. Neal was lying in the cave, racked with cramps, when he opened his eyes and saw Honcho standing on the ladder peering at him intently. Honcho grunted with disgust, got off the ladder, and began screaming at Old Man, punctuating his major points with kicks at Marvel, who scrambled into a corner and huddled up. Honcho kept putting the boot into him as he argued with Old Man, who didn’t take the diatribe passively, but also came over and started kicking the kid.