Neon Dragon (21 page)

“Another thing, sonny. I'm calling Tom Burns. I want you covered, too. This is getting way out of hand.”

It was hard to say no, but the last thing I wanted was a tail. I didn't know where the next few days would take me, and speed and invisibility
could be my two best friends. A tail could interfere with both. I said it and kept at it until Mr. Devlin backed off.

I later found out why.

BEFORE GOING BACK
to Lanny, I checked my messages. Nothing at the office, but there was one at home. It was from Daddy. I returned the call and got him at the club.

“Hey, Mickey, it's like this. There were two men in here yesterday. They were asking questions about you.”

“Like what, Daddy?”

“When you be in, where you live, stuff like that.”

“What'd they look like?”

“Both Orientals. Maybe Chinese. One a big guy. He's no sumo wrestler. A little smaller'n me. The other one's a little guy. About your size.”

I realized anyone of normal proportions would be “a little guy” to Daddy.

“Thanks, Daddy. I know what you told them.”

“Right. Nothin'.”

It was painful, but I told Daddy about Lanny. He felt the pain, too. He, of course, asked what he could do. I told him same as me. Sit tight and pray.

I WAS MORE CERTAIN
than ever that all of this could be traced back to Kip Liu, my personal perversion of Dick Clark. The gaping hole was the lack of proof. More than ever I wanted five minutes with Mei-Li.

I called Harry to see if we were still on for the next morning. After I filled him in, he was on with a vengeance.

There was no change through the day. I held Lanny's hand and babbled on, but there was no response. Around four in the afternoon, my mind was numb. I was out of one-way conversation. The best I could do was recite song lyrics. At some point I told her I was going to say the words to one of my favorite Harry Arlen songs, “My Ship.” I got to the part where it says that the pearls and all the treasures my ship will bring will mean nothing “if the ship I sing doesn't also bring my own true love to me.”

I could feel the wetness on my face as my head rested down on the pillow beside her. I must have fallen asleep, because I came up sharp when I thought I heard a hoarse whisper say, “Weill … Curt Weill.”

I jumped up and looked at her. Her eyes were at half-mast, but they were open.

“What? Lanny, did you say something?”

I bent down close and I could hear her say, “Curt Weill. You said it was Harry Arlen. Curt Weill wrote it.”

I grabbed her hand and almost yelled, “You came back! Lanny, stay here. Don't move. And don't go back to sleep!”

I ran out the door and down the corridor to the nurses' station.

“Get the doctor! She's awake!”

The nurse was on the pager, and the doctor arrived just after I was back beside her. I read encouragement in his face, and I started to come back to life. He checked her signs, asked her some questions, and gave orders to the nurse. He came over to me before leaving.

“That's the big one, but there are a couple more. She seems alert and that's the best sign. We're treating her primarily for concussion. We'll know a lot more in a couple of days. Were you there when it happened?”

I filled him in. “If that car door hadn't been open and she hadn't been leaning out. That blast …”

He just shook his head. “She had something working for her all
right. I'll tell you something else. She had to want to come back just now. You must have been saying the right things.”

I STAYED ANOTHER HOUR
just holding her hand and talking. This time it was two ways. A team of nurses and younger doctors came to do some tests, so I left them alone.

I called Mr. Devlin to give him the news. It was a lift to hear that it really meant something to him. I told him I was coming back to the office and I'd check in with him. One more call to Daddy to let him know she was awake, and I was on my way.

IT WAS DARK, AND THE NIGHT
air felt so good that I decided to walk. I came up Cambridge Street and took my usual shortcut through Pi Alley. I always loved that little paved pathway. It was actually where the newspaper trade in New England began. Printers used to throw their printing type, called “pi,” into the street, whence the name.

It was dark, but I knew every inch of the rough pavement. Fifty feet into the alley I might have heard something or just sensed that someone was behind me and gaining. I looked back and saw the outline of a man moving directly toward me.

I couldn't tell if it was paranoia or just good, solid fear, but I picked up the pace anyway. The pace of the footsteps behind me came up, too. It was a good seventy feet to the end of the alley ahead of me. I'd have given next year's pay for just one more human being in that alley.

I looked up and my prayer was granted double. I could see two figures coming toward me about fifty feet away, and the comfort it brought cannot be overstated. They were clearly men, which, under the circumstances was all to the good, although any form of humanity would have done.

The comfort was short-lived. The steps behind me were beginning to gain speed. I was tempted to call out to the approaching pair, but I had no idea what to say.

In what seemed like a second, the steps behind me were up to a dead run and no more than twenty feet away. The other two were still a good forty feet ahead. Even if I yelled, what could they do? I was tempted to run toward them, but it was too late.

I spun around with both fists ready. A glint of light from above played on the barrel of a gun. I braced for the shot and crouched. What I felt was a kick in the ankles that sent me sprawling. I hit the ground in a gangly lump just as I heard a forced whisper, “Stay down! Stay down!”

The form went flying past me. It stopped and crouched and fired a volley of four shots. I saw the two figures that were coming down the alley drop where they were. The man who fired was standing over them, gun pointed, checking for signs of life.

That same raspy whisper said, “Come up here.”

He still had the gun, so it seemed like a good idea to follow orders. When I was beside him, he pulled out a small flashlight and shone it on the two bodies at our feet. There were two large, running holes in the chest area of both of them, and neither man showed any sign of movement.

The light moved to the area of their arms. Both had forty-five-caliber automatic weapons in hand. Most chilling of all, they were both Chinese, one a little less than Daddy's size and one about my size.

The voice beside me said, “You better get out of here unless you want to spend the night answering police questions.”

“Who are you?”

“It doesn't matter. I work for someone who works for someone who wants you to stay alive.”

That meant Lex Devlin. Now I knew why he agreed not to call Tom Burns to have me protected. He was going to do it anyway.

“How did you know about these two?”

“I spotted the guns in their hands when they turned into the alley.”

“I didn't see anything.”

“You weren't looking. You were more worried about me.”

I still had the shakes, but the panic was rapidly turning to anger. Someone had turned the legal battle into all-out terroristic war, with the worst possible casualties so far being Lanny and Red Shoes.

I figured I had two clear choices. The first was to go underground and hide or depend on rescuers for the rest of my life. That was unacceptable. The second might well result in a seriously shortened season, but anything was better than the first. I chose the second, and knew I'd better do it while I was still white-hot angry enough to overcome abject fear.

I searched through the pockets of the two dead Chinese until I found what I was looking for. I turned around to thank the man beside me, but he was nowhere in sight. I ran down to the Washington Street end of Pi Alley and turned right up toward Chinatown.

I WAS ACTING ON INSTINCT
, but without time and proof, it was all I had. At that moment, I'd have bet the pot that the one behind the attacks on me and Red Shoes was that slick dude I first met at the Ming Tree. He was the only one who knew both of us, and he set off alarms the first time I met him.

I ran or jogged most of the way to Tyler Steet. I knew I could never bring off what I had in mind if I were cool and rational. I climbed the steps of the Ming Tree restaurant and walked straight in.

I was just inside the door when I spotted Kip Liu seated at a table at the far end with his back to me. There was no one else in the restaurant. I made a direct line at quick march. He must have heard determined footsteps, because he spun around when I was ten feet away. I hovered over him so that he couldn't stand if he wanted to.

His first expression told it all. He was looking into the face of an Occidental ghost. I was supposed to be dead—twice.

While he was still off balance, I snapped down on the table in front of him, picture-side up, the two driver's licenses I had taken from the bodies in the alley. I let him recognize the faces and draw his own
conclusions before I grabbed them back. I was not irrational enough to leave the evidence of two homicides in his hands.

I leaned over him to say it directly into his ear.

“Listen to me, you cowardly son of a bitch. The word is out. If one more incident, even an accident, happens to me or anyone close to me you'll have every cop in the city of Boston and one particular detective on your personal ass. You and that parasitic pack of bastards you run will be hung out to dry. Every one of you. That's a promise.”

He just stared. I don't think he'd had a personal threat since the day he was born. It was all bluff, but I was raging enough to carry it off. I had no idea how he'd handle it. I didn't have to wait long. I turned around and saw two muscular teenagers coming down the aisle with blood in their eyes.

I turned back to him. “You want to test the system? It's up to you.”

He looked in my eyes, which must have been as cold as the steel I was feeling inside. He made a living trading on the fear he put in others. Now it was his turn. They were five feet away when he waved them back.

I straightened up and looked at the two of them. They were completely blocking the only way to the door. The big shot hesitated just long enough to give me chills from toes to nose. I could only wait. I put every bit of concentration I could muster into holding the bluff. I knew he was weighing the loss of face in front of his men—no small item—against loss of his whole seedy empire if I could pull off what I threatened.

It took five of the longest seconds of my life right then, and probably ten years off the back end of my life, before he made the decision. He finally gave a signal. They stood aside.

I walked between them with every ounce of deliberate cool I could muster. I figured that if I made it alive to the door, we'd have established a stalemate. At least for the moment.

I've never smelled or tasted air as sweet as the air I breathed outside the door of the Ming Tree. I caught a cab on Beach Street to get back to room 504 at Mass.. General Hospital.

FRIDAY MORNING
I was up and off early in a rental to pick up Harry and catch a direct flight from Logan Airport to Toronto. I decided to take advantage of the dead time during the flight to get a handle on the game plan. Obviously Harry had given it some thought.

“The first thing we've got to do is to get inside the place alive. If we do that, we have to find someone who'll trust us to see Mei-Li alone.”

“Right on, Harry. How?”

“I'll do the talking until we're alone with Mei-Li. It'll all be in Chinese. So I'll let you know now what I hope is going to happen. When we find the building, I think it'll be pretty much the same layout as the Beach Street house. I'm going to try to get us in by telling them I was sent by Kip Liu, the man you met at the Ming Tree restaurant. You'll be a business associate of mine.”

“Why Kip Liu?”

“From what you and Mr. Qian said, my intuition tells me he's the man in the Boston tong. Not the Dragon Head, but probably the
Fu Shan Chu
, the number two man.”

That reinforced my instinct.

“Will that carry weight in Toronto?”

“It's the same tong. They have branches in New York and Toronto. That way they can shuttle prostitutes among the three. They do the same with soldiers in the gang when one of them gets in trouble.”

“Suppose whoever you talk to decides to call Kip Liu to check on the Chinese Batman and his white Robin?”

“Then they'll probably kill us. Have you got a better plan?”

“Nothing concrete.”

“I've got another ace in case things get dicey.”

“Which is?”

“Somehow I slip into the conversation the number 489. That's the code number for the Dragon Head, the
Shan Chu.
They'll figure I wouldn't know it if I weren't a member of the tong. And no one who's a member would use it lightly. It might get immediate respect. They might not want to risk offending the Dragon Head by questioning anyone he sent.”

“Where did they get 489?”

“It goes back centuries. I told you they were big on symbolic numbers. If you add four and eight and nine, you get twenty-one. Add the two and the one and you get three, which was the most significant number to the old triads. Also, twenty-one is the big three times lucky seven.”

I must have looked at him a bit doubtfully. “Are you by chance pulling this straight out of your ass?”

“Michael, those three digits could be the only thing standing between us and the kind of death I'm not even going to tell you about. Believe me, I'm not making it up.”

We had a window and an aisle seat. Fortunately there was no one between us. I unbuckled and slipped over to the middle seat.