John Gardner - Brokenclaw

‘You owe Brokenclaw a great deal of money. Okay, Dad, you came to me, laying down the law, telling me I should obey you like an old Chinese father. What were you thinking? What did you want of me?’

He looked away, whispering that he was sorry. Eventually, ‘I’m a doomed man, Wanda. I’ve lost everything this time. The store . . .’

‘Your life? Will he have you killed?’

He gave an unamused laugh. ‘Oh, no. No, that’s not Brokenclaw’s way, though I might as well be a dead man.’

‘What will he do, then?’

‘Take my soul. Bind me to him. Make me serve him in any capacity he decides. You remember old San-San Ho?’

‘The nice old man who used to run the fruit and vegetable store on Stockton?’

‘You haven’t seen him lately, have you?’

‘I don’t go . . .’

‘Into the Chinatown. No, of course you don’t. San-San Ho lost everything to Lee. And what did Lee do? He made old San-San into a drug courier. The old man died in agony half a year ago, sitting on an airplane bringing him back to San Francisco; died because one of the twenty little rubber sacks of heroin lodged in his intestines split open.’

Wanda showed no sign of grief. She knew well enough what could happen to people who carried drugs into the United States in this fashion. ‘So, my father, what did you expect of me ? How did you think I could help you?’

Her father looked away and gave a small shake of the head. ‘No!’ Like a spoiled child refusing to give up some precious secret.

‘Who knows, I might still be able to help you.’

‘Never . . . No. No, Wanda, I don’t know what devil got into me. What I was going to command of you is obscene. Obnoxious.’

But Wanda Man Song Hing had already guessed at the disgusting truth. ‘You were going to pimp for Brokenclaw, weren’t you? You were going to offer him your daughter in lieu of payment.’

‘How could I even . . . ?’

‘You were desperate.’ She was very calm now. ‘Desperate times for any man call for desperate measures. Even loathsome measures like giving your own daughter for Brokenclaw Lee to defile.’

‘Don’t go on, Wanda. It was a madness . . .’

But the germ of an idea was already formulating in her mind. ‘When were you going to do this terrible thing?’

He would not meet her eyes. ‘Tonight,’ he whispered. ‘Lee wishes to see me tonight at The Broken Dragon – where I’ve spent too much time, where I’ve lost my soul. Midnight.’

It would be utterly degrading, she thought, but this might be the way to Brokenclaw. ‘Have you any other things to do today, Father?’

‘No. Well, I have to look my best if I am to see him and deliver myself up to him. That’s all.’

She took a deep breath. ‘I want you to stay here. Not to go out. Just stay here. Don’t answer the telephone. Just rest here.’

‘If you say so.’

‘I might truly be able to help you.’

‘How?’

‘Maybe by doing what you were going to suggest.’

‘Golly, Wanda, I don’t know how to advise you. Gee, I can’t send you out on that kind of assignment.’

‘Ed, it’s me, Wanda. You’re not talking to some unsuspecting hicksville dummy, so quit the “Golly Wanda” stuff with me. I know what I’m doing.’

‘But the guy’s got one hell of a reputation. I mean, you’ve seen the reports . . .’

‘I’m willing to risk all that. Yes, I know he’s supposed to be insatiable as far as women are concerned. I’m ready and quite able to deal with it.’

Wanda had left her apartment and called Ed Rushia from a payphone. He picked her up in a battered old Chevy half an hour later and they drove out on to 101, crossing the Golden Gate Bridge and parking at one of the picnic and photographic areas which gave them a panoramic view of the bay and the city.

‘I’m not at all sure that, even if I went along with it, I can sanction any undercover operation like this,’ Rushia said quietly. ‘I don’t like it, Wanda. Not at all.’

‘Then what if I take full responsibility? What if I just disappear? For heaven’s sake, Ed, we’ve spent hours trying to figure out a way to get a penetration into Lee’s entourage. If I can do it and come back with some decent information . . .’

‘I can’t order this and I can’t sanction it, either.’ Rushia clamped his jaw firmly closed. ‘Sure, we need someone in there, but you . It’s asking too much. You do realise what you’d have to do?’

She sighed. ‘Yes, I’ll have to sleep with him, possibly suffer indignities. I’m going in with my eyes open. It might become very unpleasant and risky, but I accept that. I’ll be doing it for my country.’

Rushia grunted, and the pair remained silent for the best part of two minutes. At last he shifted in the driving seat, turning to look at her. ‘Doesn’t matter what I say, does it? You’re going, whatever. Right?’

‘Unless you drag me back to base and put me under arrest, yes. Yes, I’m going, whatever.’

‘How would it be if I sent you on a ten-day furlough? I do have that authority.’

‘That would be fine, Ed.’

‘Okay, I’ll write you up when I get back to base. Apart from that we didn’t have this conversation. You just asked me for ten days’ compassionate, right?’

Wanda nodded. ‘Right,’ she said.

The Broken Dragon had two entrances, one at the rear leading on to the dark little courtyard where FBI Agent Malloney would eventually meet his brutal end, the other straight off the crowded street. This was the main entrance, but there were no signs or gaudy advertising telling the world what lay behind the ordinary door.

In spite of The Broken Dragon’s existence being public knowledge among those who sought to gamble or use the other, more personal, services afforded by the place, it had only been raided twice in the past five years. The team working on Trojan Horse considered that this fact was proof of some kind of police protection, but nobody had ever been able to prove any such thing.

The other possibility was that the police and other agencies felt it better to allow the place to operate freely. There was never any serious trouble directly emanating from The Broken Dragon, so it could be argued that people would find somewhere to gamble and pick up hookers anyway so it might just as well be at a well-run establishment. But, again, if this was the case, it pointed to a certain lack of enthusiasm with regard to putting Brokenclaw Lee away for a very long time, for it was known that of all his supposed illegal ventures in San Francisco The Broken Dragon was one of his favourite haunts.

At a little before midnight, Wanda and Tony Man Song Hing were deposited from a taxi on to the sidewalk in front of the unprepossessing door that was the entrance to The Broken Dragon. Wanda had dressed for the occasion in a tight, elaborately embroidered silk cheongsam, which showed off her figure to its greatest advantage, but she had been careful to choose one with a side slit that ended modestly below the knee.

Her father was dressed in a powder-blue double-breasted suit, a cream silk shirt with a Sulka tie, cream with diagonal blue stripes. On his feet he wore expensive snakeskin shoes and his fingers were decked with his most ostentatious rings; a gold identity chain was around his right wrist and a large gold Rolex was on the left. He looked the picture of a high roller, prepared to gamble several thousand dollars away at the Dragon’s tables, not a man who was about to plead for his soul with the most powerful gangster in town.

Wanda did not spot any overt surveillance on them, but she was a hundred per cent certain that Lee had people who watched the place both front and rear. The many discussions with the other Naval security people of Trojan Horse had disclosed evidence that the club was well protected, and they had been advised by both the local FBI and other security agencies that it was hopeless putting in their own surveillance which would be spotted and, eventually, dismantled – a polite word for destroyed.