Stealing the Dragon (14 page)

Chapter Twenty-six

San Francisco, present day

Cape pulled alongside the curb directly across from the park, only a block from the house where Sloth lived. Linda was waiting at the door when he arrived, her hair moving despite the lack of wind.

“Thanks for meeting me here,” said Cape.

Linda gave him a noncommittal smile. “Learn anything new?”

“I think someone wants me dead.”

“That’s new?” asked Linda. “I’ll bet plenty of people want you dead—ex-girlfriends, their ex-husbands or fiancés from before you came along, their therapists, who are probably sick of hearing about you—”

Cape cut her off. “I think someone is
trying
to kill me—note the use of the present tense.”

“Oh,” said Linda, her hair shifting in apology. “That’s different. I guess that means you’re making progress, huh?” She smiled encouragingly and turned to enter the house.

“You find anything?”

Linda’s hair nodded but she didn’t turn around. “I think so.”

Cape followed her through the short foyer, wondering if any of her other friends thought of her hair as a separate person, a fuzzy third wheel that wouldn’t leave you alone.

Sloth had designed his home around his affliction. Born with a rare neurological disorder, the Sloth didn’t get his nickname from how he looked, but for how he moved. Far slower than the world’s slowest mammal, it could take him an hour to cross the room, minutes to finish a single sentence. Until he came into contact with his first computer, the Sloth was trapped inside a frozen body that could only move at a glacial pace.

A large living room dominated the first floor, an open kitchen off to the side separated from the living area by a short counter. In the living room sat small islands of furniture, each arranged by function, none more than three feet apart. A television, DVD player, and amplifier sat off to the left, surrounded by a set of chairs and a small couch. Filing cabinets and a desk sat a few feet away, clustered together in a pattern that seemed quite deliberate but entirely unconventional, as if someone wanted to decorate their house with the furniture equivalent of crop circles.

In the center of the room were the computers. Box-shaped servers lined the carpeted floor beneath a wide desk shaped like a crescent moon, above which were mounted four plasma screens. Sloth sat behind the desk, his face bathed in iridescent light.

Computers had revealed Sloth’s curse to be a mixed blessing. While his body steadfastly refused to speed up, his brain was faster than a laptop on steroids. He saw patterns in data invisible to cryptographers, heard music in equations that spoke only to mathematicians. The screens in front of him flowed like rivers—numbers and bit streams scrolling downward at a dizzying rate, Sloth’s hands shifting spasmodically across the top of the desk. A liquid crystal square was directly below his fingers, a touch-sensitive screen he designed himself. A butterfly landing on the desk could activate it, and the Sloth could play it like a piano. As Cape watched, words and symbols appeared and disappeared from the surface of the desk like stray thoughts, a holographic code only understood by the pale, stoic man behind the desk.

“Hello, old friend,” said Cape warmly.

Sloth’s watery eyes blinked slowly behind his glasses and his mouth twitched, an expression that would have looked pained on anyone else but was somehow full of affection. A lurch of his right hand and the second screen from the left went blank. As Cape watched, words appeared in large black type on the glowing surface.

Cape nodded and sat down next to the Sloth, while Linda, always cautious about anything emitting too much electricity, paced back and forth behind them. The room was lit by halogen lights set directly above each cluster of furniture, except the computers. The screens cast a bluish pall over Cape’s face, the words appearing as if conjured from the depths of a crystal ball.

Cape glanced at the inscrutable Sloth, then gave a quizzical look over his shoulder at Linda.

“That’s it?” he said. “Blue jeans?”

Linda nodded. Her hair shrugged.

“No drugs?” asked Cape. “No heroin?”

“Nope,” said Linda.

“No guns?”

Linda shook her head.

“Uranium?”

“Uh-uh.”

“Plutonium?”

“None of that,” replied Linda. “But there were several dozen refugees onboard—in case you forgot.”

Cape frowned. “No, I didn’t forget. But Mitch Yeung told me it was fairly common for refugee ships to be smuggling operations of another kind. Since they’ve already taken the risk of getting searched, why not double the profits?”

“Does that matter?” asked Linda.

Cape shrugged. “Not necessarily.”

Linda nudged him. “But…?”

“But if there was heroin onboard,” said Cape, “then it would be easier to tie the ship to Freddie Wang, since he controls the smack trade in the Bay Area.”

“Why so anxious to tie the ship to Freddie?” asked Linda.

Cape told them about his visit to Freddie Wang’s restaurant and the bomb he’d found beneath his car. When he told about his stop at the grocery store, Linda’s eyes went wide and her hair became agitated and seemed ready to leave without her. The corner of Sloth’s mouth twitched repeatedly as if he were laughing.

“There’s a corpse in your car?” asked Linda, as if she hadn’t heard correctly.

“It’s OK,” said Cape. “I told you—I bought ice.”

“Isn’t that against the law?”

“No,” replied Cape. “Ice is perfectly legal in the state of California. It’s one of the few things that is anymore, unless you want to count medicinal marijuana.”

“That’s not what I meant,” snapped Linda. “And you know it.”

Cape held up his hands and shrugged.

Linda crossed her arms. “I have no interest in getting arrested as an accessory to…to…to whatever it’s called when you drive around with a corpse in your car.”

“It seemed like a good idea at the time,” Cape said simply.

“What are you going to do with him?” demanded Linda. “I mean, with it?”

“I haven’t decided,” said Cape matter-of-factly.

Linda made a noise that sounded like
harumph
.

Cape smiled hopefully. “Can we talk about the ship?”

Linda didn’t answer right away, but she turned her frown toward the plasma screen, which Cape took as a conditional “yes.”

“Where was it registered?”

The words materialized on the screen, each new phrase causing the previous one to disappear.

“Who is it registered to?” asked Cape.

Linda cut in. “But Sloth thinks that’s a dummy corporation.”

Cape looked at the Sloth while asking Linda the question. “How come?”

“He hacked their network and checked their balance sheet, then compared it with other Hong Kong shipping companies, including two that work the same trans-Pacific routes.”

“And?”

The screen on the right resolved into four quadrants, each filled with a series of columns and numbers. At the top of each square was a company name. Kowloon Imports was written in the lower right quadrant. The amount of detail on the screen made it difficult to read, and Cape didn’t know where to look. As he watched, a blue rectangle flashed across the screen, stopping at certain figures in each quadrant before jumping back to the top and beginning a new course through the data.

“The cash flow doesn’t line up with actual dates in port,” explained Linda. “We checked the records from the harbor masters in Fuzhou, Hong Kong, and San Francisco.”

Cape knew the answer to his next question but asked it anyway. “You have access to that kind of data? I thought only the feds could plug into those records.”

Linda smiled sheepishly as the Sloth’s mouth twitched.

Cape shook his head. “And you’re giving me shit for driving around with a dead guy in my trunk,” he said. “Talk about a double standard.”

“That’s not the point,” said Linda defensively.

“What
is
the point?” asked Cape.

“By whom?” asked Cape.

Linda answered before any words appeared. “We don’t know yet,” she said simply. “The money trail is complicated, but you’d think the companies expecting shipments would notice.”

“Unless they were part of the scam themselves,” mused Cape.

Linda nodded, her hair bobbing excitedly. “That’s what we thought.”

“So who owns the blue jeans?” asked Cape.

Linda nodded toward the screen.

“Gasp?” said Cape.

“That’s what everyone calls them,” said Linda, “but you’re supposed to say the letters: G-A-S-P. It’s an acronym.”

“For what?”

Cape looked from Sloth to Linda. “Unbelievable.”

“So are midriff shirts that look like they got shrunk in the dryer,” replied Linda, “but all the young girls are wearing them.”

“They’re the new designer jeans, right? Supposed to go up against Levi’s and the Gap?”

“Except they cost over a hundred dollars a pair,” replied Linda.

“Are they selling?”

“They did at first,” said Linda, “but sales have slowed considerably. They’re not the kind of jeans you’d wear every day of the week.”

“Is the company publicly traded?”

Linda nodded vigorously, her hair threatening to take flight. “GASP went public right before the crash a couple of years ago—their stock is in the toilet.”

“And they’re made overseas?”

Linda nodded. “Just like everything else.”

“In China?”

“In Fuzhou, to be specific,” said Linda. “Same place the ship came from.”

“Well, well.” Cape looked back at the screen. “Where are their headquarters?”

“Right here in San Francisco,” replied Linda. “Actually, they’re on the Embarcadero, right next door to the new headquarters for the Gap.”

“Butting up against their competitors,” said Cape.

Linda groaned. “Was that an attempted pun?”

“Couldn’t resist,” said Cape. “I don’t suppose GASP Jeans has any warehouses in town?”

An address flashed onto the screen. Cape recognized it as south of Market Street.

“Interesting.”

“What?” asked Linda.

Cape didn’t respond. Freddie Wang had basically told him to check some warehouses south of Market Street. That was fine. But he also told Cape to go fuck himself, if not in so many words. Freddie spoke in half-truths, and Cape had no way of knowing which half was bullshit. But the address on the screen was too much of a coincidence to ignore.

Cape put his hand on the Sloth’s shoulder and squeezed. “I’d be lost without you,” he said gently.

Cape nodded. “You’re probably right, but at least I’ve got somewhere to go.” He turned to Linda. “You mind doing one more thing?”

“What?”

“Who owns GASP?”

“Michael Long,” replied Linda. “Chairman and CEO. Used to work for Disney and, before that, the Gap. Rumor has it, he used to manage strip clubs in Vegas before coming to California.”

“That would explain his fashion sense,” said Cape. “Can you get me on his calendar tomorrow?”

Linda shrugged, her eyes narrowing. “What do you want as cover?”

“Tell him I work for your paper,” replied Cape. “And we’re doing a story on local fashion icons—Levi’s, the Gap, and him—he should love that. Tell him I’m the fashion editor.”

Linda gave him a deliberate once-over, stopping at the running shoes.

Cape shrugged. “I’ll be presentable,” he said. “I promise.”

Linda looked skeptical but nodded. “Just don’t wear jeans,” she said, “unless they’re his.”

“Got it,” replied Cape. “And thanks.”

Linda smiled, her eyes just visible beneath her shifting hair. “Anything else?”

Cape glanced at his watch. “Yeah,” he said, looking past her toward the kitchen, then over his shoulder at Sloth. “Can you spare some ice?”

Chapter Twenty-seven

Tokyo, 11 years ago

Sally had been sitting at the bar for over an hour when she saw the bartender’s eyes go wide with fear.

Kano had arrived.

It was the same expression Sally had noticed the other night, when Kano brutalized the young couple. Now Sally sat alone on a barstool, her black skirt hiked up as far as it would go, letting the pounding bass from the speakers override her heartbeat and protect her from what was about to happen.

She felt Kano’s hand on her back.

Swallowing bile, Sally turned and smiled, nonchalantly knocking his hand aside.

“I’m working,” she said.

For an instant, Kano’s face twisted into a mask of rage, but he quickly recovered, showing Sally a smile that was half sneer, full of bravado and male posturing.

“You’re new, heh?”

Sally smiled prettily and shrugged, turning her attention back to her drink.

Kano pressed on, his tone gaining confidence.

“You must be.”

Sally nodded absently at the bartender, saying nothing. He took her empty drink and replaced it.

Kano grabbed Sally’s arm before she could raise her drink to her lips. She noticed he’d made it a point to reach across the bar and use his maimed hand, his shirtsleeve pulling back to reveal the elaborate tattoos on his arm.

“If you’re working this bar,” said Kano, his eyes flashing with broken light, “then you’re working for me.”

Sally smiled again, not flinching under the cruel squeeze of his hand. Letting her eyes move lazily across his tattoos, she looked at him coolly. Reaching out with her free hand, she put it on Kano’s chest, her fingers outstretched. She felt him jerk involuntarily from the warmth of the gesture. She laughed lightly.

“Fine,” she said, removing her hand. “But buy me a drink first.”

Kano blinked as he released her and barked out a laugh. “You have some steel in you,
baita.
” He gestured at her new drink. “But you already have one!”

Sally took her drink and swallowed it in one gulp, her eyes never leaving Kano’s face. As she lowered the glass to the bar, she jerked her chin at the bartender.

Kano laughed again as he threw some money on the bar. “This will be the first time I paid for a drink in this bar,” he said smugly. He smiled at the bartender as if they were best friends. “Tequila.”

Sally nodded her approval. “A man’s drink.” She raised her glass, reflecting on the advantages of arriving early. At this point the bartender knew she was drinking cranberry juice and soda water, which looked exactly like the vodka drinks so many young girls in Tokyo favored. So while she and Kano kept asking for another drink, he was getting drunk and she was getting more sober by the minute.

Three drinks later Kano asked Sally her name.

“Miko,” she said. She bit her tongue until it bled, forcing a smile.

It was her mother’s name.

The next hour lasted forever, a purgatory of flashing lights, smoke, and the incessant throbbing of the bass in her skull. When Kano finally started to slur his words and his hand slid lazily off her thigh, Sally made her move. She leaned across the gap between the stools and put her lips close to Kano’s ear. It took all her will not to scream.

She pointed toward the ladies’ room. “When I come out,” she said sweetly, “I want you to take me home with you.” She squeezed his thigh as she stood up, then ran her hand across his cheek. Kano had a drunken, lopsided grin on his face as she turned and walked briskly across the club.

Silence.

The door to the ladies’ room was padded, and suddenly Sally found herself in a cocoon, her ears ringing, the bright fluorescent lights making her blink. Walking over to the nearest sink, she looked at herself in the mirror. The short black dress, the makeup, the silver locket around her neck. The dead, flat look in her eyes.

Sally turned away suddenly, rushing to the closest stall. She dropped to her knees and retched, the drinks from the last two hours and what little food she had eaten spilling out into the bowl in a swirl of loathing and pain. Closing her eyes, she rocked back and forth on the cold tile.

“Not much longer,” she whispered. “You can do this. You must do this.”

Coughing, she went back to the sink and washed up, forcing herself to look in the mirror one more time. Her eyes seemed to absorb all the light in the room, green dark seas with no bottom and no shore.

Kano was drunk but not drunk enough. The ride in the limo was the hardest thing Sally had ever done. She needed him sober enough to keep him interested, but that came at a price. She found the strength to smile once or twice, playfully batting his hands away, letting her fingers wrap around his leg or arm. But the ride took too long, and Sally felt part of her soul break away with every passing minute. She closed her eyes as his hands slid across her legs, bit her cheek as his coarse lips drooled their way down her neck. By the time the car stopped, the only sensation Sally had left was the taste of her own blood.

Kano was talking to her, telling her to get out of the car, but Sally couldn’t hear the words, the music from the club still with her, filling her body with a rhythmic drumbeat that kept her heart from stopping.

Sally had been to Kano’s apartment building before, when he was out making rounds. Thirty stories tall, it looked like a sewing needle thrust into the sky, its tip obscured by low clouds mixed with smog. The limo pulled into an underground garage and let them off at an elevator, then pulled away down a ramp. Her arm around Kano’s waist, Sally stepped into the elevator and held her breath.

Kano leaned close, his breath foul with cigarettes and drink.

“I’ve got something to show you upstairs.”

Sally smiled and let her eyes move down to his belt.

“I’ll bet.”

Kano blinked and gave a short laugh, his reaction time a few seconds off. “That, too,” he promised lasciviously, leaning closer. “But something else.”

“I can’t wait,” replied Sally. It was the first time all night she had told the truth.

The apartment was huge, the kitchen bigger than the room Sally shared with Jun back at school. Black leather and chrome, halogen lights. A large modern painting of a samurai warrior filled one wall, slashes of color and abstract shapes surrounding a classic image of a lone warrior with drawn sword. A large television and stereo dominated the opposite wall. The far wall was made entirely of glass.

Neo-masculine
yakuza
-chic, Sally thought to herself.

“It suits you,” she said, smiling.

Kano grunted absently, then led her through the open kitchen and across the living room toward the glass wall.

“Now I’ll show you something,” he said, pulling open a sliding glass door.

Sally stepped onto a curved balcony that wrapped around the apartment. By Tokyo standards, the entire place was huge, but the balcony alone was larger than many families’ apartments. There could be no doubt that Kano’s uncle paid the rent.

Kano stepped over to the railing and gestured down, reaching out with his other hand to pull Sally closer.

“Take a look,” he said, obviously pleased with himself. “Not bad, huh?”

Looking straight ahead, Sally could see the soft glow of other skyscrapers penetrating the clouds, fixed constellations for the rich and privileged to gaze upon. Looking down, a dark ring encircled the building, a wide swath of landscaping that looked black in the night. But just beyond were the streets of Tokyo, a maze of headlights, neon, and reflections in the clouds that looked like rivers of light. Sally gasped despite herself, thinking of pictures she had seen of volcanoes, rivers of molten lava coursing down the mountainside.

As she stared at the shifting lights, Sally sensed Kano move closer, his hand grabbing her ass and pressing her against the railing. “Turn around,” he commanded. “Now I’ve got something else to show you, bitch.”

Taking a deep breath, Sally felt the fires from below seeping into her. She turned slowly, her smile warm and inviting. “Now that’s no way to talk,” she chided. “Come here, I want to show you something first.” Grabbing his belt with her right hand, Sally pulled Kano closer, her left hand moving up toward her breast.

Kano’s eyes were glazed with lust and alcohol, and the smell of tequila and sweat oozed from his pores. As he pressed closer, Sally could feel him stir beneath her right hand.

Kano licked his lips, his eyes following Sally’s left hand as it swept across her body and stopped at the locket around her neck. As he watched, she deftly opened it and spread the two halves apart, revealing a photograph on each side.

“I wanted to show these to you,” said Sally. The warmth was gone from her voice, taken by the wind, burning somewhere in the streets below.

Kano’s eyes blinked as he tried to focus on the two images. A man on the left and a woman on the right, the man smiling broadly, his American features strong and friendly. The woman was Japanese and looked more serene but no less friendly, her long black hair shining even in the small photograph. Kano’s eyes narrowed as if in sudden recognition or fear. His body stiffened as he started to say something, but Sally cut him off.

“These are my parents,” she said simply. “And you killed them.”

Kano looked up at Sally and then again at the pictures, his eyes narrowing. Before he could react fully, Sally pulled at his belt, holding him close.

If you want to kill this man, you will first have to get close to him. Closer than you would like. Master Xan’s words echoed in her thoughts as Sally spoke again.

“I wanted you to see them again,” she said, her eyes locked on Kano’s. “Before you died.”

Kano’s face twisted as he tried to jerk away from Sally, his right hand up as he prepared to strike.

Kano was a bully, used to men and women shrinking from a blow before it landed. But Sally stepped forward as he stepped back, her right hand still grabbing his belt. Before he could start his punch, she slid her hand under his belt and into his pants.

As Kano clenched his fist, Sally squeezed.

Kano buckled as Sally dug her nails deep into his scrotum. He screamed as she twisted her wrist, first to the right and then the left.

Kicking wildly, he caught Sally in the right knee, causing her to lose her grip momentarily, which gave him an opening. Kano desperately backhanded her across the face, catching her in the nose and snapping her head back. As Sally fell, Kano dropped to his knees, gasping.

Sally caught herself on the railing. She tasted blood, which flowed freely from her nose, and her eyes were watering. The lights from below were a jumbled blur, and as she blinked she saw stars. She heard Kano’s feet scraping on the cement behind her, the sound punctuated by the noise of metal against metal.

Sally looked down and saw the locket clanging gently against the metal railing just as she felt Kano’s hand grab her hair from behind. Blinking the tears from her eyes, Sally stole a glance at the two smiling faces around her neck as Kano pulled her head back.

When Kano tensed his arm to bash her head against the railing, Sally closed her eyes and relaxed.

Kano’s arm thrust forward and Sally’s foot thrust down, her heel crashing onto his instep and shattering the small bones there. Kano bellowed in rage as Sally spun like a dancer to face him, her hand already a blur. She bent her fingers and struck Kano’s nose with the heel of her hand.

Blood sprayed across the balcony as Kano screamed, both hands clutching his ruined face. He fell on his back, head hitting the cement hard as Sally jumped lightly and landed next to him, her right foot coming down to press against his neck, holding him.

Kano coughed and spat, his hands flopping around the floor as if he were being electrocuted. Sally held him in place for several minutes before his eyes focused again.

“You fucking bitch!” His tongue was thick with blood, his voice ragged. Sally stood calmly over him, not even hearing the words. The music from the club had returned, coursing through her veins and pounding in her ears, turning everything else to white noise. As Kano’s lips moved, she pressed down slowly with her foot.

“You can’t kill me,” Kano coughed defiantly. “You know who my uncle is?” Kano said his uncle’s name as if it were a magic spell. “You’re fucking dead. A fucking dead whore, that’s all you are.”