Terror has a way of clearing the mind.
You can cloud the brain with exotic booze and plain old-fashioned lust, but then shoot a little terror at it, and it will clean right up. Adrenaline is a wonderful thing.
So Neal was already thinking hard as he sank under the water. It was noisy down there, with the filters and bubblers and all, but he could hear Li Lan’s footsteps running, not walking away, and he could hear a car pull out of the driveway and screech down the street. He figured it was either his hosts or his would-be executioners, or both at the same time.
He was in no hurry to surface, though, just in case the shooter still had an eye to the crosshairs and was waiting for him. It took an act of great will for Neal to let himself rise to the surface, dead-man’s-float style, and show the back of his head on the water. He lay there holding his breath and trying not to think about that second bullet smashing into his skull, spattering bone, blood, and brains.
He hadn’t heard the bullet leave the gun, so it must have been silenced, but he sure as hell had heard it smack the wall. You can’t silence that. So he didn’t think the shooter would hang around too long, or even come check on the body. But you never knew… the shooter could be moving on him now, coming up slowly and carefully, with a pistol this time, to deliver the coup de grace. Neal knew he’d never hear him in the noise of the hot tub, never hear the shot that would kill him.
He lay as still in the water as he could, hoping that if the shooter was still there, he was watching him through the scope of a rifle from a distance, where he wouldn’t be able to see if there was blood in the water or not. He held his breath, trying for one more minute, just one more minute, and then he’d make the break.
She set me up, he thought as pain started to shoot through his lungs. Literally set me up. Put me on my feet, up nice and straight where I’d be a perfect target and she’d be safe. But why? I guess I’ll have to find her and ask her.
He sank his head back under the water and then lunged up, diving for the edge of the pool. He rolled twice in the direction the shot had come from and pressed himself against the fence. Forcing himself to count slowly to five, he caught his breath and then scrambled on all fours to the sliding glass door, reached up to open it, and dove behind the sofa.
His skin pricked with the pins and needles of fear.
The house was quiet. Of course it would be, wouldn’t it, he thought, if someone were waiting with a gun. While I crouch here, naked and dripping and just wanting to lie down and cry. Okay, okay, get on with it. Get dry, get some clothes on, and get going. First things first. Let’s make sure we’re all alone in the house.
The first couple of steps were the hardest. He straightened up and walked past the big picture window. He checked behind the breakfast bar, then walked down the hallway and looked into the bedrooms and the baths. He was alone in the house. Where had all his new little friends gone? Off somewhere waiting for all the nasty blood to drain out of the filter system? Pretty damn smart, shooting him in a hot tub. So little to clean up.
They were so damn confident they had left his clothes right there in the guest bedroom where he had shucked them. His vinyl bag also. That struck him as odd. Why hadn’t they taken his belongings along with them and dumped them? Maybe they were waiting to get rid of them along with his corpse.
He checked his bag. They had clearly gone through it, but hadn’t taken anything. All his nice burglar stuff, his book, even the two grand in cash were all there. Strange, but true.
He took a towel from the bathroom rack and dried himself. Now what would Graham tell me to do in this situation, he asked himself. Easy. He’d tell me to get the fuck out of here, lay low, and call in for help. “No job is so important,” the gremlin had told him more than once, “it’s worth dying for. Believe me, son, the client wouldn’t do it for you.” None of the usual jokes or insults, just a straightforward command: Save your ass.
So, according to the Gospel According to Graham, Book One, Chapter One, Verse One, he should waste no time and haul his butt out of there. But he was beginning to get past the fear into something else: anger. He was starting to get goddamned good and pissed off that they had tried to kill him-would have killed him if he hadn’t leaned over to splash a little water on his face-and he wanted to get a little of his own back. They had made the worst kind of fool of him, set him up in the worst kind of way. Betrayed him.
The absurdity hit him. How could they betray me, he thought? It would be like Christ pulling a pistol on Judas after the kiss.
Nevertheless, he was angry. And scared. Someone had tried to kill him and he didn’t know why and that was a dangerous situation. He put on the black sweatshirt, jeans, and tennis shoes he had packed in the bag, then smeared some black greasepaint on his face. If they were out there somewhere wanting to put a bullet in him, he could at least make it a little harder on them. Then he opened the window and threw his bag out, put both hands on the top of the sill, and swung through, falling gently into some shrubs. It took him ten minutes to find just the right tree, a tall, thick cedar with a low-hanging limb. He hauled himself up on the limb and climbed as high as his fear of heights would let him: about another ten feet.
His perch gave him a nice view of the Kendall household, which was what he wanted. He especially wanted to see what would happen when someone came to dispose of a body that had disposed of itself.
Three hours is a long time on surveillance, but particularly long when you’re literally up a tree. Neal cursed everyone he could think of, starting with Joe Graham, the Man, Levine, Pendleton, the Kendalls, and concluding with one Li Lan, a true artist in every sense of the word. She painted some pretty pictures, all right.
He was still thinking about her when the car-a dumb Saab, naturally-pulled into the driveway, and the Kendalls got out. If they were shaken up with guilt, or hyped with blood lust, or even enervated from a rather special evening, they showed no signs of it. Olivia went straight into the house as Tom went around to the deck. Neal watched as he pulled the blue plastic cover over the tub and then turned the lights out. If there was supposed to be a dead Neal Carey in there, this guy sure didn’t know about it.
Maybe I imagined the whole damned thing, he thought. Then he remembered the sight of Li Lan standing naked on the deck wearing only that smile, and he could hear the sound of that bullet like it was through a headset, and he knew he hadn’t imagined anything. Someone had tried to take him out of the game permanently, and he didn’t have a clue who or why. He waited for another half hour to see if anything more interesting developed. It didn’t, so he let himself down from the tree.
Well, he thought, they suckered me with the oldest combination known to man, booze and a woman. I guess I put one over on them: They wasted their money on the booze.
He moved cautiously but at a steady pace, using the sides of the streets to walk from tree to tree. He knew it would get trickier as he got closer to town, and standing at a phone booth would be the riskiest part, but that was a chance he had to take. He remembered that there was a convenience store on the other side of town, and he headed there. His route would take him through Terminal Square and right past the bookstore and the gallery. It was too much open ground, so he cut north of the square and worked his way toward the sound of running water. He let himself down into the creekbed and followed it south. There was more creek than bed, so he spent most of the walk sloshing through ankle-deep running water-or falling into ankle-deep running water-and it took him an hour to make it to where he thought the convenience store was. He crawled to the edge of the creekbed and peeked out. He had overshot the store by about a quarter of a mile, but there, glistening in the modest parking lot, was a phone booth.
Neal walked back up along the bed, came up to the lip again, checked that the road was empty, and crossed over to the telephone.
He dialed the number he had found in his wallet.
A grumpy voice answered on the eighth ring. “What!”
“Crowe?”
“Who else?”
“It’s Neal Carey. I need your help.”
“Are you having an aesthetic crisis?”
“Sort of.”
Crowe’s Porsche 911-black, of course-rolled into the parking lot just before sunrise. Neal, huddled and shivering in the wet grass on the edge of the creekbank, scrambled across the road and jumped into the passenger seat.
“Drive,” said Neal, “and turn the heat on.”
Crowe put the car in gear, pumped up the heat, and glanced at Neal’s black clothes and black face.
“I can understand a philistine like you trying to emulate Crowe, but do you think you have perhaps taken it a bit too far?”
“Crowe, how do you feel about harboring a fugitive?”
“Are you in trouble with the law?”
“The cops are probably looking for me.”
Crowe’s face broke into a huge grin as he shifted the car into high gear. “A fugitive from the law seeking refuge in the Crowe’s nest! And we thought the Sixties were over! What are you doing?”
Neal crouched down on the car floor. “Hiding. At least until we get over the bridge.”
“Far out.”
Crowe’s Nest occupied the top floor of a three-story house overlooking the Bay from Telegraph Hill.
“A pleasant stroll,” the artist explained, “for Crowe to visit the cafes, bistros, dim-sum places and Italian restaurants that contribute to the overall splendor of Crowe’s existence.”
Neal sat down in a canvas deck chair beside a gigantic sculpture created from the remains of a 1962 Plymouth Valiant, the tailpipe of which was positioned in a fairly impressive phallic display. The walls were decorated with masks-African masks, Chinese opera masks, harlequin masks, even hockey goaltenders’ masks. The walls, the carpet, and all the furniture were stark white.
“The monochromatic color scheme makes Crowe stand out all the more,” said Crowe. “Now please go and cleanse yourself lest you sully the snow-white purity of your present and, may I add, exalted, surroundings.”
Neal took a wonderful, hot shower, scrubbing away all traces of black pancake makeup, mud, and sweat. Then he wrapped himself in one of Crowe’s huge white towels and found that Crowe had laid a white terrycloth robe out for him.
He was further surprised to find that Crowe had used the time to start making breakfast: Texas-style French toast, grapefruit, coffee, and champagne. Crowe motioned Neal to sit down at the table beside the picture window. White tablecloth, white linen napkins.
“I didn’t know you could cook,” Neal said.
“Neither did you know that Rubens could paint.”
“Makes a great sandwich, though. Interesting table.”
“Of course. Nineteen fifty-five Renault drive shaft and windshield glass.”
“Do you always have champagne with breakfast?”
“Every day, since corporate America began to recognize Crowe’s surpassing genius.”
“The French toast is wonderful.”
“When Crowe creates, he creates wonder.”
“What do you want to know about my situation, Crowe?”
“Only how I can help.”
“You’re doing it.”
“Then that’s what I need to know.”
After breakfast, Neal took a cab to the Hopkins. He figured that whoever had tried to shoot him didn’t have a way to connect him to the hotel and, in any case, wouldn’t try to take him out there. Besides, he needed to make a private phone call and pack his stuff.
What he needed to do was talk to Graham. He dialed his number, let it ring three times, and then hung up. He waited thirty seconds and dialed it again.
But Graham didn’t answer. Ed Levine did.
“Where’s Graham?” Neal asked.
“Neal Carey, my favorite fuck-up!”
“Where’s Graham?”
“In the old country, probably slumped over a table in some dirty pub. I’m handling his caseload.”
“I only talk to Graham.”
“I’m sure he’ll be touched to hear that, asswipe, but he’s on vacation. You’ll talk to me.”
Vacation? Neal had known Graham for ten-plus years and had never known the man to take a day off. “Are you kidding?” Graham had asked him. “My job is lying, stealing, and cheating. How much more fun could I have?”
“Neal? Neal, sweetheart?” Levine was saying. “What are you calling for? Have you fucked up the job yet? Maybe paid Pendleton to stay in Frisco and put the hooker on a plane to AgriTech, something like that?”
Something is wrong here, Neal thought. Something is very strange. Careful now.
“I haven’t even found him yet,” Neal said. “He’s not where you guys said he would be.”
“Neal, you couldn’t find your arm in your sleeve.”
Witty, Ed. This was the guy who had once given Joe Graham one glove for Christmas.
“Where is Graham?” Neal asked again.
“Jesus, cut the cord, will you? What is he, your mommy? Seeing as how he had to go to England to change your diaper, he decided to take the ferry ride to Ireland and visit the home of his ancestors. He’s probably at the Dublin Zoo, all right?”
No, it’s not all right. Graham had told him a hundred times that he never wanted to go to Ireland: “We got rain and whiskey right here in New York.”
“Yeah, all right,” Neal said.
“Lighten up, college boy,” Levine said. It was a continuing source of resentment: Friends had put Neal through Columbia, Levine had put himself through night school at City. “Come home. The job is over. Pendleton came back all by himself. Called a little while ago from Raleigh airport, and he’s on his way in to the lab.”
“Swell.”
You lying sack of shit.
“So go back to your little cottage, pack up your shit, and get your ass back to New York. We might just decide to make you work for a living.”
“Yeah, okay.”
“What’s the matter, Neal? Pissed off because the job ended before you could be a big hero? Cheer up. At least you didn’t kill this one.”
Levine laughed and hung up. Neal dialed another number.
“AgriTech. May I transfer your call?”
“Dr. Robert Pendleton, please.”
“One moment.”
Here we go again.
Another voice, a harsh male voice, came on the line. “Who is this?”
“Who is this?”
“Why are you inquiring about Dr. Pendleton?”
“Why are you inquiring why I’m inquiring?”
“Please identify yourself or I will have to terminate this call.”
Terminate this call?! What the hell is going on with this stupid case? Who says stuff like “terminate this call”? Security types, that’s who.
“This is the assistant manager at the Chinatown Holiday Inn,” Neal said. “Dr. Pendleton left some medication behind when he checked out, and I wanted to know if I should FedEx it, or whether regular mail would do.”
“One moment.”
They must all go to the same school, Neal thought.
“Dr. Pendleton says that regular mail will be sufficient.”
“May I confirm that with him personally, please? Company rules.”
“He’s very busy at the moment.”
“I’m sure he is. Thank you.”
Neal packed in a hurry. Suddenly he didn’t want to be in the hotel, where anyone could find him. There were too many contradictions. Joe Graham never takes vacations and hates Ireland, but he’s on vacation in Ireland. Ed Levine says that Bob Pendleton is back at work, but he isn’t, because AgriTech security relays a message from him about medication that doesn’t exist. And someone tries to kill me because I found Pendleton.
Whoever was diddling the door was doing it well, because it barely made a sound. But Neal Carey had done a lot of doors and he heard it like it was an alarm bell. Which it was.
Someone had picked up his trail and was planning something nasty in the ever-so-nice Mark Hopkins, and there was no way out of the tiny room.
Which was maybe okay, he thought.
Neal grabbed the letter opener off the desk and waited behind the door. He was scared as hell, but he was also getting a little tired of being jerked around, and whoever was coming through the door was going to get a little surprise in the form of a letter opener swung fast and hard.
Neal’s heart raced like the ball on a roulette wheel as he heard the lock click and watched the door handle come up. If the guy had a gun, he had to beat him to the punch, so to speak-put him down hard and keep him down so he could ask him a few questions.
The door came open slowly and Neal let loose. The point of the opener stuck into the intruder’s arm and quivered.
“What’s the matter? You got a babe in there, you don’t want me to come in?”
Joe Graham was staring at him curiously.
“Come in.”
Graham plucked the letter opener from his rubber arm. He looked disgustedly at the sleeve of his shirt. “This is a new shirt, Neal. I just bought it.”
Neal’s heart slowed to a mere gallop. He slammed the door shut behind Graham. Looking at the purple shirt, he said, “I did you a favor.”
Neal plunked himself down on the bed and let out a long sigh.
“You’re not happy to see me,” said Graham.
“I thought you were on vacation in Ireland.”
“Funny thing about that, son. I finished prying you out of your cave and called in. All of a sudden, Levine is nagging me about all this vacation time I got built up. Says I have to take it right now. I say okay, but then get to thinking maybe there’s a reason they don’t want me around just when they send you on a job. I get thinking maybe I should come back on the sly and check on my dearly beloved son, who might fuck up and get himself hurt without his dear old dad there to help him out. So, son, how have you fucked up and what kind of trouble are you in?”
Neal started at the top and told Graham the whole story, taking him through the search of Room 1016, his dance with Benchpress, the trip to Mill Valley, dinner at the Kendalls, Li Lan’s seductive offer, and the shot that nearly killed him. Graham sat silent for the whole monologue, except for a few tongue-cluckings and mutterings of “Shame” at some of Neal’s more egregious errors.
When Neal finished the long story, Graham asked, “So what did she look like naked?”
“What?”
“The babe. The China doll. What did she look like in the flesh?”
“Jesus, Graham.”
Graham went over to the courtesy bar and removed two of the little bottles of scotch. He wiped the hotel’s glass with a handkerchief, poured himself a double, and sipped contentedly.
“Tell me again. From the hot-tub part.”
“Graham, if you think I’m going to sit here and indulge your prurient-
“Indulge this,” Graham said, showing him precisely. “Now tell your old dad. And don’t skip a single juicy detail.”
When Neal had finished the reprise, Graham smiled, shook his head, and said, “She never was going to do you, you idiot. She was just stalling you so Pendleton could get in the car without your getting wise. She doesn’t know you like I do.”
“What do you mean?”
“She told you to wait, remember? Then, when you weren’t buying-you’re an asshole, by the way-she gave you something to keep your, uh, mind on until everyone got nice and comfy in the car. Then she ran off, leaving you holding, shall I say, the bag?”
Neal wondered if he looked as stupid as he felt.
“You don’t think she really wanted to have sex with me?”
“Well, you were naked. She probably got a good look at you.”
“What about the shot? She was setting me up!”
Graham went back to the refrigerator, found a six-dollar can of smoked almonds, and poured them on a plate. He popped the nuts in his mouth as he talked.
“Maybe she was, maybe she wasn’t. Could be none of them knew anything about any shot.”
“She ran away!”
“Good idea when shooting breaks out. What did you want her to do, cover you with her body? Oh, that’s right, that’s exactly what you wanted her to do.”
“Pass me an almond.”
“Get your own food.”
“That is my food.”
“Not anymore.”
Neal found a Swiss chocolate bar priced like a silver ingot.
Graham continued, “You ask me, I don’t think she even heard the shot. I think she was just running from you because that was part of the plan. Get you all hot and bothered so you weren’t thinking straight-again, they don’t know you like I do-and leave you wet and naked in the tub. No clothes, no towel. Very bright of you, by the way, son. You also ask me, I don’t think the bullet was meant for you, as appealing an idea as that might be.”
“Why not?” Neal asked, realizing he sounded almost indignant, as if suddenly he wasn’t important enough to be shot at.
“They could have whacked you anytime. The broad didn’t have to show you her stuff to do that. They could have popped you when you first got in the tub.”
“So who-” Neal started, but stopped because he couldn’t talk and think at the same time. Why had AgriTech told him Pendleton was there when he wasn’t? Maybe because they thought Pendleton was dead?
“I called Ed,” Neal said. “He told me Pendleton came back and told me to do the same.”
“So?”
“So I called AgriTech and they told me the same thing.”
“So Ed is right for a change. These things happen.”
“But Pendleton isn’t there, Dad.” He related his ruse involving the medication, then sat silently while Graham rubbed his rubber fist into his palm.
“I think,” Graham said finally, “we have to find out a little more about AgriTech.”
Something about AgriTech was wrong.
The library said so. One of the things that Neal loved about libraries was that they were all the same-not the layout or the architecture or the carpeting, of course, but the system. Once you learned the system, every library was known ground. Hunting ground.
He started with the usual suspects-Standard and Poor’s, Moody’s, Dun amp; Bradstreet-and found out that AgriTech was a much smaller company than he thought it would be, a lowly sixteenth ranking in the agrichemical category.
The bigger surprise, though, was that it was privately held. That didn’t make sense. Companies engaging in large, long-term research projects usually need the capital they can get on the public market. They’re attractive investments, and the initial investors usually like to roll them over early.
But private firms are just that-private. Harder to get data on, less responsible to watchdog agencies. Neal found a copy of Ward’s Directory, which specialized in private companies. He found out that AgriTech employed 317 people-not many for a research company-and had a narrow market base, mostly in the development of pesticides for the tobacco industry.
Pesticides? Neal thought. What happened to fertilizer? To the old chickenshit?
He took a look at the directors and principal officers. The president was one Leslie P. Little, Ph. D. Chemistry degrees from Nebraska, Illinois, and MIT. Impressive resume of employment at several large agrichemical firms. Vice-President Harold D. Innes very similar. Dull stuff. But Secretary/Treasurer Paul R. Knox-even the title was an anomaly-was a little more interesting. Pretty standard management education, including a Columbia M.B.A. and a long list of prior employment-but it looked fuzzy, out of focus. Knox had worked for Trans Pax, an import-export firm in San Diego, before moving to something called the Council for Swedish-American Trade. He had stayed there for two years and then taken a position in Stockholm with Sverigenet, an American computer consulting firm. After three years at Internet he had split for Hong Kong as executive director of a telecommunications equipment importer called Dawson and Sons, Ltd. Two years there, and he’d left for Directions in Social Inquiry, apparently a polling operation, in Silver Springs, Maryland. Then on to the board of AgriTech, where he was also the comptroller.
By the record, Neal thought, this guy knows less about chemicals than any junior high school student on the West Side.
Neal scanned the board of directors. None of the names meant anything to him until he came to the fourth entry: Ethan Kitteredge, the Man himself. So the Bank had come across with the big loan and bought itself a seat on the board. But for what?
Follow the money. Or, in this case, the money man. Somewhere along the line, Ethan Kitteredge had handed a packet of bucks to Paul Knox, who had a pinball background.
Neal went across the street, grabbed a quick cup of coffee and a toasted bagel, and headed back into the library. It was already noon, and he would have to repeat the process he had used in AgriTech with all of Knox’s former companies. He figured it would take him at least another three hours. It didn’t; none of the companies existed.
He looked in every source that he knew, but couldn’t find any entry for Trans Pax, Internet International, or Directions in Social Inquiry. Dawson and Sons wouldn’t have been listed anyway, but Neal suspected it was another cardboard company.
So how about the Council for Swedish-American Trade? Was it a nonprofit agency to stimulate business, a government-sponsored agency, or a private concern that put itself in the middle of any potential deal and took its ten points?
Neal found the Washington, D.C., phone book on microfilm, but couldn’t find any listing for the Council. Ditto when he called information. He got the number for the Department of Commerce, and a half-dozen transfers and holds got him to somebody at the International Trade Administration’s Export Counseling Center who at least pretended to be interested in Neal’s brilliant plan to market high-efficiency electric space heaters to the Swedish consumer. This helpful person forwarded Neal’s call to the Administration’s desk officer for Sweden, who politely feigned fascination and advised Neal to contact the Swedish consulate, board of trade, and interior affairs bureau, but who never mentioned the Council for Swedish-American Trade.
“What about the Council for Swedish-American Trade?” Neal asked finally.
He could almost hear the chuckle that preceded the answer, “They’re not really in your field.”
“How come?”
“They tend to handle more high-tech, larger-volume sorts of things.”
“I’m planning real high volume,” Neal said with a trace of belligerence.
“And when you get there, I’m sure they’ll be glad to talk to you. In the meantime, I really recommend you give the consulate a call…”
Okay, okay, Neal thought. What do we have here? A guy on the board of an agrichemical company who has no background or education in agriculture or chemistry. The same guy has worked for a bunch of companies that can’t be traced and for a council on Swedish-American trade that isn’t interested in talking to someone about trade between America and Sweden.
We have a company that should be public that’s private-a company that makes pesticides and is desperate to get back a biochemist whose specialty is fertilizer. We have the Bank writing a big loan to this company to develop not a new pesticide, but a new fertilizer, and then taking a seat on the board of the company. And we have the Man at the Bank sending me to get the scientist back. Then someone tries to shoot me when I do.
We have Levine lying about Pendleton’s return, and AgriTech security backing up the lie. We have Levine telling me to come home and forget about it. Why would they say Pendleton’s back when he isn’t? Why isn’t Levine jumping up and down and screaming at me to do my fucking job and bring him back?
Unless all of a sudden they don’t want him back.
Unless they want to make sure he doesn’t come back.
Ever.
Paranoia is like a seatbelt-it’s when you don’t put it on that you get in an accident.
So thought Neal Carey as professional paranoia gripped him around the middle. Graham would never let anything happen to me while he’s on the job, so they take him off. They make a big show out of sending their golden boy retriever, me, to find the absent professor. Good old dog that I am, I go on point, and someone shoots… not me, but what they think is Pendleton. Dark night, dimly lit deck, the back of my head to the hill, where the shot came from. It’s possible.
So someone goes out and picks up my poor corpse and makes the sad announcement that Robert Pendleton is dead. Murdered. The investigation fizzles and is forgotten.
But who has the swag to carry that kind of load? The same people who have the swag to set up dummy companies, phony histories, and multimillion-dollar insider loans.
He reran his conversation with Pendleton in his head. Meeting in a hot tub to make sure he wasn’t wired. “So did the company send you?” No, idiot, not the company, but the Company. The Company.
Paranoia. Pure fucking paranoia, Neal thought. The CIA? What would a dorky biochemist be doing for the CIA? Get real.
But the bullet was real. Very real, so pay attention here. Suppose they did try to whack Pendleton? That presents some problems for one Neal Carey. If they still think they killed Pendleton, they have to deal with me somehow. And if they know by now that they missed Pendleton, they’ll be looking for both of us. They’ll know where to look for Pendleton. He’s with Li Lan.
And they sure as hell know where to find me, don’t they? I have a return ticket to my isolated cottage in the moors.
Except I’m not going to be there. There’s only one thing to do when paranoia hits this bad-run with it.
First he had to get to Crowe, because Friends and their new CIA buddies could connect Crowe to him with a quick cross-referencing of the files just by pushing a couple of buttons and asking for Neal Carey cases in San Francisco. So he had unwittingly put the artist in some danger.
Crowe answered on the first ring.
“Crowe.”
“It’s Neal.”
“You are taking me to an expensive dinner, aren’t you?”
“Crowe, has anyone been around asking for me?”
“No.”
“Anything unusual? Repairmen you didn’t expect? Pollsters? Jehovah’s Witnesses?”
“No! I’m in the mood for French cuisine, I think.”
“Just shut up and listen. I won’t be back. Thanks for all the help. If anyone comes around asking questions, you haven’t seen me or heard from me in years, okay?”
“Where are you going?”
“It’s too long a story.”
“Where are you now? Neal, are you in trouble?”
Well, sort of, Crowe. I have this creepy feeling that the CIA and my own employers want to kill me, but other than that…
“I just need to disappear for a while, Crowe.”
“Let me help, Neal.”
“You already have. Thanks, Crowe, and ’bye.”
Neal met Graham outside the Chinese Crafts Center on Grant Avenue. Groups of tourists from Grey Line bus tours were prowling Chinatown, gawking in store windows and choosing restaurants as night fell and the neon came up.
“Let’s take a walk,” Neal said. He told Graham about his research and his suspicions about AgriTech.
“And the Man is on their board?” Graham asked when Neal was finished.
“Yeah.”
“So what is AgriTech to the CIA or the CIA to AgriTech?”
“I don’t know. But I’m going to find out.”
Graham grabbed him by the elbow. “Are you crazy? You’re not going to do shit. What you’re going to do is what I’m going to do.”
Neal wrenched his arm away. “Which is what?”
Graham started walking again and gestured for Neal to come with him. As they were walking, Graham started to lecture.
“Neal, listen. I don’t know if you’re right or not about this CIA thing. Sounds crazy to me. But whatever is going on here, it is very serious. With this kind of stuff, we don’t fuck around. So what we’re going to do, we’re going to catch the next plane to Providence, we’re going to walk into the Man’s office and say, ‘Mr. Kitteredge, please tell anyone you may or may not know that Joe Graham and Neal Carey don’t know anything and care less.’ Then we’re going to ask him what he wants us to do. He’s going to tell us in polite terms to keep our fucking mouths shut and forget about Dr. Robert Pendleton, and Neal-that’s what we’re going to do.”
“They’re going to kill her!”
“You mean him.”
“I mean both of them.”
Graham looked at him real funny. “You mean her.”
“All right. Her.”
Graham slammed his rubber hand into a lamppost. “Fuck! What is it with this babe, everyone falls in love with her?”
“I’m not in love with her.”
“Yes, you are.”
Yes, you are, Graham thought. I know you, kid, you’re in love with the heartache.
“Look, Neal… say you find them, say you warn them. What then? Are you going to save them? How? You won’t save them, dickhead, you’ll join them. You’ll be in the wrong place at the wrong time, and this time the bullet won’t miss. Son, you don’t know these people, what Pendleton did, what the China doll did. Maybe they deserve it.”
“Her name is Li Lan. She has a name.”
“A little while ago you thought she set you up for a bullet in the head, now you want to rescue her. What next, you want to fuck her? Listen, Neal, if you want a little Chinese pussy, I’ll buy you some, it’s all over the place.”
Neal’s fists clenched. For a moment he thought he might punch Graham.
Am I in love with her? he wondered. I must be, because the thought of her hurts, the thought of her dead… and I don’t give a rat’s ass about Pendleton and haven’t since I saw her. And the thought of never seeing her again…
“See you, Dad.”
Neal turned and started walking away. Graham is always telling me that he taught me everything I know, let’s see if he taught me everything he knows, he thought. Graham may be the best street man ever born, but I may be the best ever made.
He was right, but he was right on both counts. Graham hung on his tail like a burr on a dog. Neal couldn’t get the space he needed to break the connection. He took the older man along Grant, then up Clay to Stockton. He passed through crowds and crossed the street, doubled back, went into a store through one door and left through another, took it fast, took it slow, and still Graham stayed with him. It was all right, though. In this game, like baseball, the tie goes to the runner, and Neal knew that time was on his side. Graham couldn’t stop to call in for backup, so he wasn’t able to drive Neal into a tightening net. And once Neal shook him, that would be it.
Mark Chin had kept the net loose all day and was glad it was finally time to jerk it shut. He’d let the kweilo sit around the Hopkins hotel, had let the one-armed guy come in, had waited while the kweilo did his thing in the library, and finally saw his spot as the two kweilos had an argument. About fucking time. It had taken the efforts of seven of his best boys to keep this Neal Carey person in an invisible net. Now the mark was running hard, trying to shake his partner. The opportunity was at hand.
He fell in behind him and let himself be seen as the mark turned to check on his partner.
Neal saw Benchpress come out of a doorway behind him, and this time Benchpress looked like an opportunity. Graham was coming up about fifty feet behind them. Neal turned on his heel and bumped straight into Benchpress.
“A hundred bucks for taking that guy out without hurting him. Another bill for meeting me, giving me some help.”
Benchpress mumbled an address and turned back toward Graham.
Graham saw the guy coming, but it was too late. The fucker was huge, and Graham felt himself wrapped in a bear hug that choked his breath and obliterated his view. In two seconds there were three more Chinese guys around him.
“Don’t hurt him,” Chin told his assistants.
“I’ll beat whatever he paid you,” Graham said.
“This isn’t an auction.”
And Neal was going, going, gone.
Neal checked the address on the doorway under a yellow neon sign with XXX on it in black letters. A tired-looking black man behind the raised counter nodded to him. There were three or four customers in the shop, but none of them looked up from the porno magazines.
“You can shop, you can buy, you can get tokens from me. You can’t read. This isn’t a library,” the counterman said to Neal.
“I’m meeting a guy.”
“Gay stuff back and to the left.”
Benchpress came in just then and handed a five-dollar bill to the clerk, who handed back a plastic sleeve full of tokens. He jerked his head to Neal and pointed to a swinging door at the rear of the shop.
“Step into my office.”
Chin selected a booth, gestured Neal in, and shut the door behind him. There was a pull-down bench just large enough for one person to sit on. A box of Kleenex completed the furnishings. Chin dropped two tokens into a coin slot, then glanced at the channel selector.
“Any preferences?”
Neal shook his head.
Chin pushed a button and the porn video started.
“Sit down. Make yourself at home.”
“Thanks.”
Neal handed him another fifty.
“I get the idea,” Chin said over the sound track of groans of phony passion, “that you got more than a fifty-dollar problem.”
Neal could hear similar groans from the next booth.
“Turn up the volume,” he said.
Mark Chin cranked it up to full. The tinny rock music vibrated on the cheap walls.
“So?” Chin asked.
“I need a place to hide.”
“No big deal.”
“In Hong Kong.”
Cries of “Fuck me, fuck me, fuck me!” seemed to be coming out of Mark Chin’s chest, as if he were the dummy in an obscene ventriloquist’s act.
“No big deal,” he said.
“Great.”
The video rose to an ear-shattering crescendo of passion as Chin asked, “It’s about the woman, isn’t it?”
“What woman?”
“Room ten-sixteen, the incredibly gorgeous Chinese woman.”
The video shut off in mid-climax. Chin stuck another token in the slot and changed channels. Two women in a steam room were making tentative advances. Their quiet conversation was a welcome relief.
“That Pendleton is a lucky guy,” Chin continued. “Me, I would not mind a piece of that luck.”
Neal felt himself flush with anger. What is this, he thought, jealousy?
“So what is he?” Chin asked. “The chemist?”
Now how the hell would you know that? Neal wondered. He didn’t answer, but let the soft sighs coming from the video fill the silence.
Chin said, “Pendleton tests the heroin? Tells the boss, ‘This is good, this is not so good’? He makes a nice salary, plus benefits? She’s one of the bennies? You don’t want to mess with that, that’s tong business. Big time.”
“I have to find her.”
Yeah, I do. Find her to warn her. Find her to ask her some questions. Find out what the hell is going on. Find out how to come out of this alive.
“What, you’re in love?”
Why is this so obvious to everybody but me?
“Yeah, okay.”
Chin shook his head disgustedly. The two women on the video began a fresh erotic encounter.
“It’s your funeral,” Chin said. “When are you leaving?”
“As soon as possible.”
“Before your friend finds you?”
“How hard is it to disappear in Hong Kong?” Neal asked.
“It can’t be too hard. People disappear in Hong Kong every day.”
Neal opened his bag and came out with a package of cash. He counted ten hundred dollar bills out and handed them to Chin.
“Disappear me.”
Chin folded the money into his pants pocket. The old saying was right, he thought-it’s amazing how lucky you get when you work hard. But he wasn’t that interested in old sayings. His metaphor of preference was western chess, and he knew that to capture the opponent’s queen, you had to move a pawn forward. He pointed both open palms toward Neal, closed his fingers, and snapped them open again.
“Presto!”
As he and Neal left, the warm ripple of a woman’s laughter followed them.