Lethal Circuit (3 page)

Crust lowered his voice to a whisper. “I’ve heard from a reliable source, and not some gap year tourist by the way, but someone in government, that some of these executioners are such bad shots that the poor families end up paying twice. Two bullets. Sometimes even three. Best case scenario, you get busted, they imprison you in a munitions factory and your family gets a trade discount on the shells.”

Larry laughed drunkenly but Crust went on, “I kid you not, the court hears daily requests for imprisonment in armament factories, hence Crust’s number one rule for round the world travel: something goes down....”

To Michael’s surprise, a chorus sounded around the table: “Don’t stick around.”

As tall bottles of beer were toasted in the air, Michael reflected that this was it — the Circuit — the round-the-world backpacking trail upon which travelers of all ages and stripes met up time and time again. There were a thousand variations to it, but a typical broad strokes tour on the Circuit might mean working up the required traveling funds in London, catching a cheap flight to Kenya, maybe hopping a safari before lounging on the island of Lamu, then jumping to India for a stint in Goa, followed by a sabbatical in Thailand, or a brush with Bali. Circuit goers were ever working their way eastward for a little urban entertainment, which is where Hong Kong entered the equation. From there they might double back into South Asia, or head out across Siberia before refueling for funds in a suitably affluent Western land. It was a big world, and there were a million ways around it, but a good backpacker could always count on running into his cronies in the local hot spots, the ones only the other backpackers knew about. Michael had first heard about the Circuit years before, but he’d delayed actually getting on it until he at least had college behind him. Or he had a reason. Now he had both.

The Frenchman must have been about done with Crust’s sermonizing because he put his arm around him and said, “This man has been traveling for too long, no?”

Michael wasn’t sure if the question was rhetorical, but the Frenchman quickly followed it up with another query; one that was bound to come up sooner or later.

“So, tell me, Michael, where are you backpacking on our lonely little planet?”

Michael had already sensed that travel itineraries were more than a simple A to B with this crowd. What he was about to find out though, was how much more. He coughed to clear his throat, reflecting back on the Chinese geography he had picked up from his guide book. “I was thinking,” he said, “I’d kick around Hong Kong a bit, then ease my way north up the Pearl River Delta to Guangzhou, before heading a ways west to Guilin and Yangshuo, then maybe onto Kunming.”

The table lapsed into silence. Finally, Kate asked, “Why Yangshuo?”

“My father spent some time there years ago. He always used to talk about it.”

“That’s,” Crust said with little enthusiasm, “interesting.”

Kate sprung to Michael’s defense. “Lay off, Crust.”

“What? I’m talking about the route, not his dad.”

“So am I,” Kate said. “The Hong Kong—Yangshuo Express. It’s a great route. A classic. We’ve all done it.”

“Like I said, it’s interesting.”

“You said interesting like it was day old bread.”

“Okay, you got me. It’s just that Yangshuo, so early in the game, I don’t know if Michael here is ready for its simple pleasures.”

Kate slid a palm over Crust’s mouth. “It’s a great route, Michael. A good first leg in China and Crust is just jealous. He’ll be getting his ass bit off by malarial bugs, drinking from tire treads in Tibet when he could be joining you.”

Crust rose to his own defense. “Not true.”

Kate didn’t back down. “Tell me you wouldn’t prefer to kick back with a banana pancake contemplating your next rub down instead of bribing some corrupt PSB official to sign your permit so you can set up your frozen teepee on the leeward side of Mount Kailash.”

“Kailash is in the Himalaya.”

“Hmm, banana pancake,” Kate weighed out the options like the scales of justice, “frozen balls.” She looked Michael in the eye. “It’s a good route. You’re going to have a great time.”

It was at that moment that Shanghai Larry, whom Michael was convinced had been slumbering in the corner, came to life.

“Great time. Fantastic time. Tickly-Boo like a pussy tourist in Patpong.” Looks were exchanged around the table, but Larry went on. “But it doesn’t really matter, does it, Michael? Because he hasn’t told you what he’s really doing here.” Larry pulled his shoulders up from a full body slouch as he stretched his arms high, lowering his voice conspiratorially. “Sport, here, has come to find his father.”

He followed his grand pronouncement with a belch before rising from the table. “Piss anyone?” A moment later Larry’s knees buckled out from under him and Michael knew in earnest that the evening had begun.

4

KOWLOON 0100 HKT

T
WO
MURDERS
AND
forty minutes later and they were lost in the neon crowds of Nathan Road. Michael had removed his bloody t-shirt and pulled on a clean white one from his backpack. He was running on adrenalin and he knew as much. You couldn’t be shot at, roll through the trash, and watch a man die without taking some of that with you. And right now, Michael felt as though he had taken it all. In truth, Michael was acquainted with violence. At his father’s behest he had trained in the Shito Ryo style of karate since he was a kid, earning his junior black belt at the age of sixteen and going on to get his first real belt and second Dan in college. Oddly, in the age of ultimate fighting, karate had a bit of an old lady image to it, but it was a martial art and martial meant war. It was meant to prepare you for battle.

That was the theory anyhow. In practice, real violence, the kind where your opponent wasn’t bound by a set of tournament rules, was a whole lot more visceral than any martial art. Michael knew this first hand, even though he often wished he didn’t. And so, even though he felt a strong desire to slow down and clear his head, now wasn’t the time and he knew as much. The police were no doubt already scouring the city. Given the quick escalation of the evening’s events, what mattered in the near term was that they get away.

The electric intensity of Hong Kong wasn’t helping Michael’s state of mind. There were people everywhere. It wasn’t like Seattle, or even a busy evening in Manhattan; here it was the middle of the night and it looked like a coliseum had emptied on every glittering block. Following Kate though the crazy crowds, Michael noted that they stopped and started frequently, Kate checking her back constantly to determine whether they were being followed. When, after a series of circuitous stops and starts, they finally arrived outside a hulking residential skyscraper, Michael had the distinct feeling they weren’t far from where they had started. Kate took him around a side entrance and they entered a swinging security door marked in flaked gold leaf with the words Mirador Mansion. Michael knew they needed a safe place to regroup and as such didn’t question Kate as she led him up the dingy concrete steps of the tenement. When, however, they stopped before a dirty pink door that read “Happy Tom’s,” Michael had to wonder. Kate must have read his look, because her reply was absolute.
 

“We’ll be safe here.”

“With Happy Tom?”

“You need to trust me.”

Kate opened the metal door with a grating squeak and Michael was served his second look at the international backpacking scene. Happy Tom’s was a guest house, a hostel where travelers of all sorts put up for the night, and even at this late hour they were everywhere. A blonde Swede brushed her teeth while studying the notices tacked to a decaying corkboard; a black backpacker with bright red braids kicked back reading a Lonely Planet guidebook; and a waif of a girl who looked like she couldn’t have been more than sixteen pecked out an e-mail at an aging computer terminal.

Kate nudged Michael forward into the narrow hall leading out of the tiny common room. He passed a communal bathroom, followed by an open doorway. Inside Michael saw backpackers snoring on racks of floor to ceiling metal bunks. Kate continued forward another two steps and inserted a key into a door at the far end of the hall. Ensuring that no one was watching, she opened the door. It wasn’t a regular room at the hostel, that much was clear. Brooms and cleaning supplies lined the walls. But there was also a single metal cot complete with trundle bed. She shut the door and flipped on a light.

“We need to talk,” Kate said.

“Here?”

“You have a better idea?”

Michael drummed his fingers on a jug of bleach. “Yeah. We could go to the police. Tell them what happened.”

Kate almost laughed before lowering her voice to a whisper. “This isn’t America. There’s no innocent until proven guilty. There’s only guilty and more guilty and as far as I could tell, you had blood all over you.”

“I didn’t kill him.”

“You fled the scene.”

“It was your idea to leave.”

“To save your ass.”

“And why would you do that?” Michael asked. “You don’t even know me.”

Kate took a seat on the drooping cot. “Call it a character flaw,” she said. “You were in trouble, I helped out. All I want in return is an explanation.”

Michael averted his eyes, glancing around the closet-sized space. “Look, it’s not you personally. I just don’t want to pull anybody else into this.”

“You don’t think it’s kind of late for that?”

It was true. She was involved now. Almost as involved as he was. “What do you want to know?”

“You accused Larry of murdering your father.”

Michael felt a lump grow in his throat. “Are you sure we’re good here?”

“For now.”

“Then here goes.” He dropped his pack, taking a seat on the far end of the drooping mattress. “My dad worked for a big athletic shoe company. The kind with lots of Madison Avenue marketing and product manufactured wherever it was cheapest to do it.”

“Nike? Adidas?”

“It doesn’t matter. The point is, he traveled a lot. Growing up, my dad spent a lot of time out of town. He was always there when we needed him, but work kept him away a lot of the time.”

“Somehow I don’t think two dead guys are about a lack of quality time with dear old dad.”

Michael rolled his tongue inside his mouth and said, “About six months ago, he didn’t come home at all. The official explanation was an automobile accident west of here in Guanxi province. They say his car plummeted to the bottom of a river gorge. His body was never recovered.” Michael unzipped the top compartment of his backpack. “Larry was the last to see him alive.” Michael removed a letter-sized envelope. “Five days ago I got this in the mail.”

Opening the envelope, Michael pulled out a paper airline ticket for travel between Seattle and Hong Kong. Across the back of it was a simple message scrawled in a violent hand.

It read: “LARRY DID IT.”

Kate examined the envelope. “It’s postmarked Kowloon Central. No return address. You took this to mean that Larry murdered your father?”

“How would you take it?”

“Probably like that.” Kate considered the implications. “What do you think now?”

“Now I don’t know what to think.”

“So the backpacking bit, the route you were going to take?”

“In the event that Larry was a dead end,” Michael winced at his choice of words, “I knew my dad was last seen out here. I came to find what happened to him.”

“So what are you waiting for?”

Kate reached into her daypack and without another word tossed him Larry’s bloody cell phone. It was an Android smartphone, probably less than a year old, and if you looked past the blood, barely used. After a moment’s hesitation, Michael woke the device from sleep mode. Then he hit play.

The first thing about the video clip Michael noticed was the room. It had stark concrete walls, almost like a cell. A battered metal door was visible in one corner. An incandescent bulb hung from the ceiling above a gray metal table. To the side of the table was a gray tubular metal chair. Michael’s father stood between the table and chair. He had several days’ growth of gray beard and his wispy hair was greasy, falling haphazardly over his forehead. From the video, he looked to be in his mid-sixties, though Michael knew him to be younger than that. His father’s eyes burnt like hot embers, despite his obvious fatigue. He wore a simple oxford shirt, the collar open. Michael paid special attention to his neck, because even in this medium shot, he recognized the pendant—three small stars offset in a silver ring—that his father wore.

“What’s he saying?”

Michael realized that the volume was still turned off on the phone. He turned it up.

“One, two, four, six, one, three, eight —”

“Start it from the beginning.”

Michael replayed the message, this time with the volume on.

“Eight, five, six —”

“It’s like he’s reading off the weekly lotto draw.”

His father finished uttering the digits, sixteen of them, all a number between zero and nine, and the screen went blank. That was it. Michael checked the phone, but there was little else. No outgoing calls, nothing in the address book, no cached web pages, no apps, no games, nothing except a record of a single incoming call.

“Either Larry’s really unpopular —”

“Or he purged the phone.”

Michael shared a glance with Kate and did the most expedient thing in the book. He tapped the redial button. There were the telltale tones of digits being dialed, followed by the sound of a connection being made, followed by nothing at all. Dead air.

“Who are you?” Michael asked.

The connection was cut. Michael immediately dialed again, but this time the call wouldn’t go through. He tried for a third time, but it was the same story. Frustrated, he tossed the phone to the bed. Even at this late hour, horns and traffic were audible outside the old building. To say Hong Kong never slept was a cliché. Hong Kong didn’t even slow down to catch its breath.

Michael watched as Kate picked up the phone. Maybe she thought she could find something else. Something he hadn’t seen. She hit the play icon again, watching his father’s video message one more time. Then, about halfway through, she paused it and hit another key. Then she just stared. As if she had seen something unexpected. Something impossible.