The Trail to Buddha's Mirror (23 page)

Levine shot him a dirty look, but Levine could go fuck himself, maybe eat a couple more steaks and drop fucking dead of a heart attack. Levine was his supervisor, but Graham had known Levine when he was nothing more than hired street muscle. He was one tough Jew—big, fast, smart, and mean—and Graham wasn’t scared of him one bit. Right now he was so angry he’d stick his rubber arm up Levine’s ass and twirl him.

The cracker, Simms, sighed at the interruption but condescended to answer, “He’s gone.”

“What do you mean?”

“Which word didn’t you understand, Mr. Graham?”

“Listen, you mealy-mouthed fuck—”

“That will be enough, Joe—” Kitteredge said.

Graham saw the Man turn pale with anger. The Man believed in maintaining a tone of immaculate courtesy. Which he can afford to do, Graham thought, because he’s got me to do the nasty shit. Me and Neal.

“No, sir, excuse me, but that’s not enough,” Graham said. He’d thrown the “excuse me” and the “sir” in there in an attempt to save his job and his pension. “Neal Carey gets sent on a job and doesn’t get told what it’s really about. Nobody tells him that Pendleton’s cooped up with a commie spy. Okay, Neal goes off the deep end and boings a major hard-on for this slash—”

“Pardon me?” Kitteredge asked.

“He develops a romantic obsession for the woman,” Levine explained as he drilled Graham with a shut-the-fuck-up glare that didn’t shut him the fuck up.

“So,” Graham continued, “Blue Suit over here knows free labor when he sees it and stands back while Neal gets deeper and deeper into the shit, and now he shows up here and tells us Neal is gone. So, Mr. Simms, the word I don’t understand is ‘gone.’ Maybe you can explain that?”

Simms looked to Kitteredge as if he expected him to intervene.

Kitteredge did. “Yes, Mr. Simms, perhaps you could explain?”

“Neal Carey telephoned me from the YMCA in Kowloon and said he had Pendleton and Li Lan and please come and get him. I of course said I would, and sent the nearest available resources over. When they got there, perhaps forty-five minutes later, Carey, Pendleton, and the woman were gone. When I got there in another hour, they were still gone. That was six weeks ago. We have since managed to track them as far as a temple near the Walled City.”

“What’s that?” Levine asked.

“It is the eighth circle of hell. It is an area only about the size of three football fields, yet perhaps the densest maze in the urban cosmography.”

Kitteredge leaned over his desk. “Mr. Simms, please spare us any further demonstrations of your … erudition. We all acknowledge that you are intelligent. You may take that as a stipulation, and please begin to speak in English.”

Simms flushed. He didn’t particularly care for Yankees, or Irishmen, or for that matter Jews, and he was having to put up with an especially unpleasant combination of all three.

“The Walled City is a no-man’s-land. It had its beginnings as a fort that became a haven for squatters during the early days of British colonization. Neither the Chinese nor the British attempt to administrate it, so it is controlled by an uneasy confederation of tongs. Tongs, or Triads, are gangs—”

“We have them in New York,” Graham said.

“How nice for you. Anyway, the original walls have long since crumbled, but the area is actually an impenetrable maze, a hovel of the worst kind of crime: Drugs, extortion, slavery, and child prostitution flourish there. The police rarely venture inside, and tourists are warned that even to step into the Walled City is a risky proposition. People simply disappear.”

Gone, Graham thought.

“If Carey was lured into the Walled City, I’m afraid he is in desperate trouble.”

“He’s a tough kid,” Levine said, but Graham could hear the fear in his voice. Ed Levine always said that he hated Neal Carey, but Graham knew better. Besides, Neal was Ed’s employee, one of his people, and Ed Levine was fiercely protective of his people.

“That won’t do him much good, I’m afraid,” Simms answered. “If he’s in there, he’s in one of the most vicious slums in the world. A place without law, ethics, or morals. A jungle.”

“What will happen to him?” asked Kitteredge, who had a banker’s way of cutting to the bottom line.

“I doubt they’d murder him outright, unless the Li woman ordered it.”

“Why not?”

“Because he’s much more valuable alive.”

“To whom? As what?”

Simms smiled tightly. “A white youth would be an oddity there, to say the least. A commodity. They will probably auction him off to the highest bidder. This really is excellent tea. What is it?”

Simms’s hand reached for the teapot but never made it. A hard rubber artificial arm slammed it to the table and held it there.

“Go in and get him,” Graham said.

“Impossible. Now remove your arm, please.”

“Go in and get him.”

“I don’t want to have to hurt you.”

Graham pressed down hard. “Yeah. Do some of your fancy CIA shit on me. Terrify me.”

“Ease up, Joe,” Levine said. Graham could feel that the big man was getting ready to move, to peel him off Simms.

“I’ll break his fucking wrist, Ed.”

“Have you all considered the possibility that your Carey isn’t in the Walled City at all? That perhaps he is cashing a check in Peking, or on a nice beach in Indonesia somewhere, laughing at all of us?”

Simms was trying to maintain his cool, but the voice betrayed pain.

“Mr. Graham,” said Kitteredge, “please release your … hold … on our guest’s arm.”

Graham pressed down a little harder before letting up. He looked Simms in the eye and repeated, “Go in and get him.”

Simms ignored him and turned to Kitteredge. He was red in the face and rubbing his wrist as he asked, “What do you want me to do, Mr. Kitteredge?”

“Mr. Simms, I want you to go in and get him.”

“Look, Carey has disobeyed every single directive we’ve issued. He’s blown a major operation. And, frankly, I don’t know whether (A) we can find him, and (B), if we do, whether we could get him out.”

Levine came from around the desk, leaving his usual position on the right hand of God. He leaned against the Man’s desk and looked down at Simms. “In that case, I don’t know whether (A) we can continue our current financial relationship with AgriTech, or (B) we may have to call in our paper.”

Simms blew his cool. “You don’t fuck with the government.”

“Watch us.”

“You think you can take on the CIA? You don’t know what you’re dealing with.”

“We know enough to launder your goddamn money for the past ten years,” Levine said.

Kitteredge raised a hand to object. “I’m not sure I would call it ‘laundering.’”

“Taking their slush fund, running it through the Bank, and then loaning it back to to their pet corporation to pay for research? Come on, Mr. Kitteredge, what would you call it?”

“Patriotism.”

Nobody answered that one.

Kitteredge smoothed back the unruly lock of ash-blond hair that fell across his forehead. “For an … organization … such as ours, it is our duty and our privilege to support our country. Because we are who we are, that support often takes a covert form. So be it. We do what we can do. However, gentlemen, in this particular case we have erred grieviously. We have—albeit unwittingly, and I am very angry about that, Mr. Simms, very angry—sent our colleague, Neal Carey, into dangerous waters without the proper navigational aids. Thus, sailing in the dark on uncharted waters, he has foundered. If he has indeed … drowned … we must mourn him. But if he is marooned, we must rescue him. We will use—and you will use, Mr. Simms—all our resources to do so. Am I understood, gentlemen?

Ed Levine and Joe Graham nodded.

“Mr. Simms?”

Simms nodded.

“The tea is black gunpowder. Many of my ancestors invested in the China trade,” Kitteredge said.

“Tea traders?”

“Uhhmm. And opium, of course.”

Right, thought Graham. Opium in and tea out. Sounds like money in the bank. Make that money in the Bank.

“Take some with you, Mr. Simms. I’ll have my secretary make up a package,” Kitteredge added.

The abruptness of the dismissal startled Simms. Just who the unholy hell did these people think they were? Nobody wanted to find young Neal Carey more than he did. He shook Kitteredge’s hand, nodded to Levine, and ignored Joe Graham as he left the room.

Kitteredge sat back in his chair and touched his fingertips together at his lips. He looked like he was praying, but Graham knew it was a habit he had when he was in deep thought. So Graham just shut up, something he thought he maybe should have done earlier, because maybe the Man was searching for just the right words to fire him.

Finally he spoke. “Ed?”

“I think we have to assume that Carey’s been the subject of hostile action,” Levine said. “Carey’s an arrogant, undisciplined, unreliable fuck-up, but he’s no traitor.”

“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.

10

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.