Dead in Hong Kong (Nick Teffinger Thriller) (8 page)

She’d say fine.

She’d stay home.

She’d wait for instructions.

Poon would call her and tell her to take a cab to the airport, Gate 7.

She’d do it.

Kong would be waiting for her, introduce himself as a pilot, and tell her that Poon wanted her to go on a little flight. She’d say fine. Kong would direct her to the aisle seat in the third row. He would secure her to the seat with duct tap around her wrists, torso and legs. Then he’d blindfold her.

She wouldn’t protest.

The pilot would then sneak quietly on board. Kong would stay in the cockpit and pretend he was the one flying. Once they got to altitude, the pilot would put the plane on autopilot and hide behind a seat in the back of the plane.

Kong would then take the woman’s blindfold off.

Then he’d put a parachute on.

“What are you going?” she’d ask.

Kong would just shake his head disapprovingly and said, “I don’t know what you did to Poon to make him want you to die this way, but it sure must have been something.”

Then he’d jump out of the plane.

The woman would go hysterical.

That hysteria would be beautifully captured by a small but high quality camera that would transmit the scene to Poon where it would be recorded.

After five minutes or so, the pilot would step out of hiding, take the controls and tell her it was all just a joke.

They’d land safely.

No one would get hurt.

Fion would forgive Poon because he paid her so well.

THE PILOT SHOWED UP at ten sharp and asked, “Are you the actor?”

“That’s me.”

“Got a little chop up there today,” the man said. “Be careful when you jump. Don’t open your chute until you have to. That way there’ll be less time for things to go wrong. I’m glad that you’re doing that part and not me.”

Fion showed up at 11:00
, r
ight on schedule.

Fifteen minutes later, the plane lifted off the runway and climbed into a swirling charcoal sky.

Day Five—August 7

Friday Morning

______________

PRARIE PITCHED AND TURNED all night, waiting for Emmanuelle to return to the hotel. But she didn’t. Not at three in the morning, or four, or five.

Dawn broke.

Prarie wasn’t in the mood for it, not even close, and stayed under the covers. She was sound asleep when she detected movement and heard the shower running.

“Is that you?” she shouted.

No answer.

Two minutes later, the water shut off.

“Is that you?”

“Yeah.”

“Where were you all night?”

“Hunting.”

Emmanuelle emerged from the bathroom naked, crawled under the covers and said, “I need sleep like you can’t even believe.”

“Have you been up all night?”

“Every freaking minute of it,” Emmanuelle said. “Be a princess and rub my back, will you?”

Prarie did.

“You scared me half to death.”

Emmanuelle didn’t respond.

She was already asleep.

SHE DIDN’T MOVE UNTIL NOON. Then she rolled onto her back, stretched and said, “Coffee, I need coffee—food too, coffee and food.”

“What happened last night?”

Emmanuelle grunted.

“I made a move on the rock star.”

“And?”

“And I need coffee.”

Day Five—August 7

Friday Morning

______________

FRIDAY MORNING,
TEFFINGER
WOKE UP in a strange room next to a naked woman—Fan Rae Fan—just as dawn broke over Hong Kong. He studied the sensuous curves of her body for a second and felt sorry for every guy in the world who wasn’t him. Outside, the life-sounds of the city were already resonating.

He felt good.

He dressed without waking Fan Rae, gave her an imperceptible kiss on the cheek, closed the door gently on his way out and took a cab to the Fleming.

Then he went for a three-mile jog.

Clouds filled the sky.

There would be rain today
, l
ots of rain.

He could already tell.

He showered and just got toweled off when his phone rang and the voice of
Sydney
Heatherwood
came through. “I got the surveillance tapes from that bar,” she said. “It was raining heavy and the lighting was bad.”

Teffinger
exhaled.

“Good,” he said.

Silence.

“Well, not that good,”
Sydney
said. “Things were clear enough to show a white pickup truck. And there’s a second, more like half a second, where your face shows in the window. You actually turned and looked towards the building.”

TEFFINGER
REMEMBERED THE MOMENT.

“And?” he said.

“And to me it looked like you,”
Sydney
said. “Don’t panic, though. I think that the only reason it looked like you is because I already knew it was you. If I had been seeing it for the first time and didn’t know it was you, I don’t think you would even enter my head. I would just be thinking it was some white guy, and that would be about it.”

“What about the license plate?”

“It never showed.”

Okay.

Good.

“Be sure the tape gets in the file,” he said.

“It already is. How are things going over there?”

“I met a woman,” he said.

“Who?”

“The detective, Fan Rae Fan.”

“And?”

“And I could be happy with her.”

“What does that mean, exactly?”

“I’m not sure.”

Silence.

Then
Sydney
said, “You’re not thinking of moving there, are you?”

“I don’t know what I’m thinking,” he said. “To be honest, d’Asia hasn’t quite left my thoughts.”

“
Teffinger
, you need to slow down,” she said. “You always move too fast. You know that.”

True.

He did.

“I don’t exactly plan this stuff. It’s more like getting hit in the face with a rock. There it is, deal with it.”

“Two rocks.”

Teffinger
chuckled and said, “Yeah, two rocks. I’ll keep you posted. By the way, I told her what I did—her, meaning Fan Rae. She’s going to help me find d’Asia.”

“Unbelievable.”

He almost hung up and then said, “Hey, you still there?”

She was.

“I almost forgot to say thanks.”

“Okay, you’re welcome. For what?”

“For not getting dirty,” he said. “If you had done that, I don’t know how I could have lived with myself.”

He hung up and got dressed.

TWO MINUTES LATER, Fan Rae called.

“Where are you?”

“The hotel.”

“Someone saw our beach
victim on the news last night and thinks she might be a woman who lives in his apartment building, someone named Nuwa Moon. I’m going to head over and check it out. You want to tag along?”

He did, h
e did indeed.

“Be out front in ten minutes.”

THEY HEADED TO THE OTHER SIDE of the city, west of Central, to an area where cheap-but-good eateries and grocery stores and Laundromats sat at street level with six or eight floor
s of apartments stacked up top, typical c
ity living.

“When did you leave?” Fan Rea asked.

“Just a little bit ago,”
Teffinger
said. “Dawn or thereabouts.”

“I thought maybe you left in the middle of the night.”

No.

He didn’t.

“I needed a jog and a shower and clothes that didn’t smell like smoke,” he said. “I didn’t want to wake you.”

“Next time wake me.”

“Okay.”

“You promise?”

“You looked so peaceful.”

“Screw peaceful,” she said. “Next time wake me.”

ACCORDING TO THE CALLER, Nuwa Moon lived in apartment 308. Fan Rae bypassed the elevators, headed for the stairwell and said, “I usually walk. I like the exercise.”

Teffinger
shrugged and said, “Fine with me.”

They knocked on the door.

No response
came
.

The doorknob didn’t turn.

“We’ll need to find the manager,” Fan Rae said.

Ten minutes later they were inside.

Inside a small cubical with a sofa-bed and a bathroom, to be precise. “I couldn’t live here in a million years,”
Teffinger
said.

“This is typical Hong Kong.”

“Two million, even.”

A photograph on the refrigerator showed that Nuwa Moon was in fact t
he dead woman with the carving
on her stomach. There was another woman in the picture,
too—a young woman, equally g-punk
, with her arm around Nuwa’s shoulders and a cynical smirk on her lips.

Pretty.

“It looks like our victim had a friend,” Fan Rae said. “I’ll bet if we talk to her, she’ll know something.”

Teffinger agreed, b
ut that’s not where his thoughts were.

He walked over to the only window, pulled the curtain shut and found it was thick enough to bring the room into a deep darkness. Then he picked Fan Rae up, carried her to the couch and laid her down on her back.

“Here?” she said.

“I can’t wait another minute.”

Then he took her.

Hard.

Like an animal.

Day Five—August 7

Friday Morning

______________

FION SEEMED LIKE A NICE GIRL. Kong had no desire to scare her to death, but a job was a job. The pilot climbed to ten thousand feet, put on the autopilot and started the digital camera transmission. Then he whispered in Kong’s ear—“Jump in exactly three minutes”—and hid in the back. Kong took the blindfold off Fion, got into character and slipped the parachute on as she watched.

“I don’t know what you did to deserve this,” he said. “But look at it this way—we all have to die at some point. You’re luckier than most, actually, because it’ll be so fast that you won’t even feel it.”

The plane pitched and tossed.

Violently.

Loudly.

To the front and above, the sky was clear.

The clouds were below.

Black.

Twirling.

Laced with lightning.

Kong couldn’t see the ground. It would be insanity to jump, but the game had gone too far to back out. 

The woman screamed and pleaded and pulled at her bonds
, l
ouder than Kong thought.

He ignored her as best he could.

His thoughts were on what he was about to do.

A violent downdraft suddenly grabbed the plane and dropped it for one, two, three, four, five seconds. Then it slammed into a floor of air. If Kong had jumped just then, the wing would have cracked his skull.

He checked his watch.

Ten seconds.

Nine.

Eight.

He muscled the door open.

The force of the wind was incredible.

It was all he could do to get his body wedged in.

“See you in hell!” he said.

The woman screamed.

Kong listened for a second.

Then
he
jumped.

Day Five—August 7

Friday Noon

______________

EMMANUELLE TOLD PRARIE the story as they drank coffee and walked outside at the harbour’s edge. The sky was mean and complicated. The story by contrast was short and simple. Emmanuelle made a move on the rock star after Prarie left last night. He wasn’t rude but was
n’t
interested, either, and ended up leaving an hour later with curvy black-haired beauty in a tight red dress. Emmanuelle followed them to an apartment six blocks away, which she surmised belonged to the woman because she pulled keys out of a purse just before they entered.