Stealing the Dragon (27 page)
Dawn was breaking as Cape walked down Ross Alley. The sun was still asleep, but it had yawned and stretched enough to crowd the darkness, turning the sky a deep blue.
Ross Alley was about as short as its name implied, a minor twist in the Chinatown maze barely a block long. The Golden Gate Fortune Cookie Factory was tucked between two small storefronts, the metal and glass doors incongruous next to the old wooden sign at the entrance.
20,000 fortune cookies made daily. Visitors welcome. Admission free.
Cape stopped a few feet from the door and looked around, but the street was empty. Xan and Sally had circled around the back of the alley. Xan’s job was to find Lin. Sally didn’t say where she would be, but Cape took comfort in that. He was used to her being invisible. His job was to distract Yan for as long as possible.
You’ll think of something.
With his right hand, he casually brushed the back of his shirt and checked the position of the gun, which he’d moved to the small of his back. Satisfied it wasn’t going to fall out of his pants the moment he stepped across the threshold, Cape took a deep breath and tried the door.
It was unlocked.
The front room was crowded with boxes, rolls of plastic mounted on metal spools, a long counter, and a cash register. Cape moved his head slowly, scanning the room, but no one jumped out and pointed a gun or yelled in Chinese to get lost. But looking up, he noticed the small video camera mounted above the door at the far side of the room, its red light blinking.
Cape raised his right hand to his lips and blew a kiss.
Three steps later he was through the door and inside the factory. A low humming sound came from fans overhead, recessed into the ceiling. It was an L-shaped room, and Cape found himself in the short section, surrounded by stacked wooden barrels and blind to the rest of the factory floor. Several barrels near the door were open, revealing thousands of fortune cookies jumbled together, waiting to be wrapped in the next room. Unable to resist, Cape took one from the nearest barrel and cracked it open.
You will live long and prosper.
Cape popped the cookie in his mouth and took another.
The future is uncertain.
And another.
Trouble awaits you just around the corner.
Cape threw the last cookie onto the floor. “Should have quit while I was ahead.” Crunching quietly, he stepped past the barrels into the open, holding his hands out from his sides.
Two large conveyors sat side by side, throwbacks to another age, when bakeries were not massive factories outside the city but small assembly lines in tiny storefronts like this one, the machines feeding the dough to workers who shaped the cookies. Next to the conveyors sat two metal chairs, where each day two old Chinese women would sit, pressing paper fortunes onto the flat dough, then using a metal rod to fold the dough by hand before it cooled. At the end of the machine was a pile of fortune cookies almost eight feet high. Cape walked halfway down the conveyor before he could see the rest of the room.
The first thing he saw was Harold Yan.
He was standing next to the mountain of cookies looking at Cape. He wore a white button-down shirt with no tie, a blue blazer, tan slacks, and loafers. A local politician making the rounds in his community. Cape noticed a small water stain on his pants, just below the crotch.
Maybe he’s nervous, too
.
Behind Yan was a rolling cart holding two video monitors, the one on the left obscured by Yan, the other showing the view from the security camera in the front room. To Yan’s right and standing maybe fifteen feet behind him was another man, someone Cape had never seen before. He had short black hair and a thin mustache drooping on either side of his mouth, scar tissue around his eyes. His trapezius muscles had taken the place of his neck, and his shoulders were stretching the fabric of his black jacket. Cape didn’t bother asking what he did for a living. He locked eyes for a minute, figuring prison logic applied in this case, then turned his attention back to Yan.
“Thanks for inviting me.”
Yan was nonplussed, even though he’d seen Cape on the security camera.
He said, “What are you doing here, detective?”
Cape shrugged. “Jackie Chan wasn’t available.”
Yan forced a smile, but his left eye twitched. “This doesn’t concern you.”
“I got your finger in the mail,” said Cape. “And it pointed in this direction.”
Yan’s eye twitched again. “What are you talking about?”
“I thought you wanted the dragon’s heart,” said Cape nonchalantly, turning toward the entrance. “I must have the wrong address.”
“Stop.”
The tone was half command, half plea, Yan still not sure how to play this. But his pants were down and there was no turning back. “You have the heart?”
Cape nodded.
“
You
, a—”
“—white devil?”
Yan stared at him. Cape reached into his left-hand pocket very slowly, conscious of the thug in the corner. He raised his cell phone. “I call and it’s here in five minutes.”
Yan studied Cape for a minute, then seemed to make a decision. He didn’t know how, but Cape had something he wanted, and that was enough.
“You say you have the heart, but of course you don’t have it with you,” said Yan, gesturing toward the man with no neck. “You don’t mind if Shaiming checks, do you?”
“Yes.” Cape put the phone back in his pocket. Shaiming didn’t move, waiting for a sign from Yan.
Yan spread his hands. “And if you don’t call…say you’ve been injured…or worse?”
“Then you don’t get the heart,” said Cape. “Just the cops.”
Yan clenched his jaw and nodded. Since the heart was a Triad treasure, Cape figured Yan never expected anyone involved to call the police. This was a meeting for criminals only.
“It seems we have a stalemate,” said Yan, stepping to the side and revealing the monitor directly behind him.
Cape squinted as he tried to make sense of the image. The woman on screen looked younger than Sally, but so disheveled it was hard to tell. She was sitting against a white wall, slumped to one side, her left hand wrapped in bloody gauze. Cape took a shallow breath and tasted bile.
He fought the urge to rush Yan.
Keep him talking.
“I thought she was working for you,” said Cape.
“So did she.” Yan half turned to admire his handiwork, then looked at Cape with a gleam in his eye. “Can you see the clock?”
Cape had been transfixed by the image of Lin and his own inability to act, but now he saw it, a small rectangle in the corner of the screen. He recognized the gray square under it immediately. It was identical to the bomb he’d found under his car.
Yan had taken a step backward and now held something in his right hand.
“I also have a cell phone,” he said. “But it works a little differently from yours.” He held up the phone. “There’s two numbers that only I know.” He moved his thumb back and forth over the keypad. “One disarms the bomb, and the other triggers the detonator. I just input the second number, so if I push send now, well…you know the rest, detective.”
“What about the clock?”
Yan grinned. “That’s my insurance. You have—” He glanced over his shoulder. “Eighteen minutes to produce the heart, or the girl dies in a very messy explosion. But get me the heart and I’ll make the call. You can have the girl.”
“I don’t want her.” Cape kept his voice as flat as he could. He sensed Yan taking control of the situation and needed to keep him off guard. “I don’t even know her.”
Yan wasn’t buying it. “Then why are you here, detective?”
“To get rich.”
Yan hesitated, finding it hard to argue with greed. “You want money, but not the girl?”
“Are hearing problems common in your family?”
Yan’s eyes narrowed. “So you don’t care if I push this button?”
“Go ahead,” said Cape. “But after the big
boom
, don’t you think the cops will come? Or the fire department? Kinda hard to negotiate with those sirens blaring.”
Yan lowered the phone but held it tightly in his right hand. The image on the monitor shifted and Cape’s heart jumped, lines running across the screen for an instant before the picture returned to normal. Lin still sat there, eyes half closed, the clock now reading seventeen. Cape assumed Yan didn’t have time to set up some elaborate system, but the cell phone made him nervous. Lin might not even be in this building.
Yan’s back was to the monitor. “What do you want?”
“Lots and lots of money,” said Cape. “I thought I’d keep it simple.”
“How much?”
“What’s it worth to you?” asked Cape. “You’re obviously willing to kill for it, so it must be valuable. To me it’s just a lump of green stone.”
“You’re an ignorant fool, detective.”
“Is that why you tried to kill me?”
Yan smiled, the cat completely out of the bag now. “How did you know it was me and not Freddie Wang?”
“I didn’t, until just now.”
Yan studied him but remained silent.
Cape said, “I found a dead body and bomb behind my car, but Freddie could have killed me inside his restaurant.”
“Then why did you leave the body outside my office?” asked Yan.
“I don’t know,” said Cape, shrugging. “It seemed like a good idea at the time.”
“That’s it?”
“To be honest, I thought it might stir things up, make you take an interest.”
“You never suspected me?”
Cape shook his head. “Not until the body disappeared,” he said. “But when you told me to check out the cargo on the ship, that made me wonder.”
“I read the police arrested Michael Long,” said Yan.
“A failed jeans designer masterminded a human smuggling operation?” Cape frowned.
“The authorities seem satisfied.”
“I showed Long a picture of your dead thug,” said Cape. “It scared the hell out of him. The cops don’t know that.”
Yan blinked several times. “You’re not as stupid as you look, detective.”
“It’s the broken nose,” said Cape. “Throws them off every time.”
“So what do you want?”
“I already told you,” said Cape, stealing another glance at the monitor.
Ten minutes
.
“A million dollars,” offered Yan.
Cape coughed.
“Not enough?”
“I was thinking at least five,” said Cape.
Yan started to raise the cell phone. “Let’s say I believe you don’t care about the girl,” he said slowly. “That’s still a lot of money—what makes you think I have it?”
“I figure I’ll need to disappear,” said Cape. “Especially if you push that button. You know, change my name, get a new identity…the whole Joan Rivers treatment. Maybe even get my nose fixed.”
Yan was watching him very closely now.
“What did it cost when you did it?”
Yan’s jaw dropped.
“Want me to guess your real name?” asked Cape. “I already know it’s not Rumplestiltskin.”
“Who
are
you?”
“That’s not the question,” said Cape. “Who are you?”
Yan’s voice was defiant. “I’m
Harold Yan
, the next mayor of San Francisco.”
“Liar,” said Cape.
“
President
of the Chinese Merchants Benevolent Association.”
“Criminal.”
“Respected member of the City Council.”
“Murderer.”
“Mayor of Chinatown.”
“Moron.”
Yan took a step forward but stopped, his eyes burning holes in Cape. He started to say something but Cape cut him off.
“You were the worthless son of a Triad leader,” he said. “You betrayed your father, then faked your own death to come here.”
Yan’s shoulders slumped as he listened, but his eyes remained hard. His nostrils flared when Cape spoke again.
“Your name is Wen,” said Cape. “Zhang Wen.”
“Zhang Wen.”
Sally had bellowed with rage when she first heard the name.
When Cape said it during their run through the tunnels, Xan had to restrain Sally from running ahead. After a furious exchange in Cantonese, Xan released her. But judging by the expression on his face and the vein pulsing on his forehead, it took all Xan’s self-control not to sprint down the tunnels himself. Cape didn’t ask what had been said, but when Sally told him how she knew Wen, he said, “We don’t have to stick with the plan.”
“It’s a good plan,” she replied. “We need you to buy us time.”
But now there was no time left. A million questions roared through her brain, but all she could do was count down the minutes. Sally watched Cape talking to Wen, the men only ten feet apart but fifteen feet below her.
She hung upside down like a spider, legs curled around a black nylon rope. She wanted to go lower but knew she’d risk being spotted by the goon in the corner, whose eyes were still riveted on Cape.
She heard Cape say the name again, daring Wen to respond. As he talked, Cape nonchalantly brushed his right hand across his hip, as if wiping sweat from his palm. Sally had seen Cape do that before. He was getting ready to draw his gun.
Taking a deep breath through her nose, Sally relaxed her grip on the rope.
***
The man who was no longer Harold Yan smiled involuntarily at the sound of his real name.
Ten minutes ago this
gwai loh
had walked into his plans, somehow in possession of the heart, catching him red-handed with a girl and a bomb. He knew right away he would have to kill the detective; he just wanted to get the heart first. But when their conversation took an unexpected turn and Wen heard his name spoken aloud for the first time in ten years, instead of being afraid, he felt
relieved
.
No more lying and obfuscation. Just life and death—two old friends Wen had known since he was a boy. He’d never been stronger than his brother but was always more clever, which is why he came out ahead even when others were arrested or killed. Like that
yakuza
swine Kano, so many years ago. Today was no different. After this was over, he could put the mask on again and become Harold Yan, charming politician. But for this moment he could be himself, Zhang Wen. Ruthless, powerful, and smarter than everyone else.
As he looked at Cape across the factory floor, he ran his left hand across his face. “They told me the plastic surgery would be painless,” he said. “They lied. I couldn’t smile for almost two years. My jaw ached. My scalp itched constantly.”
“Head lice?” asked Cape.
Wen ignored him. Nothing the
gwai loh
could say was going to ruin this chance to stop acting for a few minutes—to be free to say whatever he wanted—because no one in this room would live to talk about it. The girl would be dead in less than ten minutes, one way or another, then he’d play hardball with this buffoon detective. See how cocky he was after a few minutes with his bodyguard Shaiming. And even if he didn’t get the heart today, Wen knew he would eventually. Kill enough people and you’ll find someone willing to make a deal.
The detective was talking again.
“Why the ship?” he asked. “Why smuggle those people from China—why take the risk before the election?”
Wen shook his head, marveling at how someone so stupid could know so much about him. “Do you have any idea what political campaigns cost?” he said. “That ship brought in more cash from those families than a hundred fundraisers.”
“What about the speech in your office? How this affected—”
Wen cut him off. “All citizens of San Francisco? You think the socialites in Pacific Heights spent more than two minutes at cocktail hour talking about that ship?”
“I was thinking more of the folks here in Chinatown.”
Wen laughed, a sharp sound even to his own ears. “Not all Chinese are equal, detective. There are people with power, and there’s everyone else—that’s true in China and it’s true here. Those families were a means to an end. They just happened to be Chinese.”
“So it was just for the money.”
“And the heart,” said Wen. “Don’t forget why you’re here.”
“You actually believe the heart would help you win the election?”
“You wouldn’t understand,” replied Wen. “If you hold the heart, you cannot be defeated in any contest.”
“If you say so.”
“Where is it, detective?” asked Wen. “You’re running out of time.”
“How do I know you’re not going to double-cross me, like you did Michael Long?”
Wen smiled at the memory. Long was desperate to save his company, said yes to everything Wen had suggested. He even offered the use of his warehouse. “This is a different situation.”
“Yeah, maybe. But I saw the guy in the warehouse, with his throat cut—I assume that was your handiwork.”
Wen glanced over at Shaiming with a look of pride, then said something in Cantonese.
***
Cape didn’t like the expression on Yan’s face—or Wen’s face—and was having a hard time deciding what to call this asshole from one moment to the next.
Wen had gone from looking surprised to worried when Cape first walked into the warehouse, but now the guy looked almost euphoric, like every question Cape asked was a trip down memory lane.
He was pretty sure Wen, Yan—the man in front of him—was nuts.
It’s all out in the open now
, thought Cape.
He’s going to kill the girl, then me.
Cape realized Wen thought he had an accomplice, someone to call on his cell phone that would bring the heart. But Wen’s expression said he figured it would still be for sale later, after Cape was dead. There wasn’t any leverage if you didn’t want the heart for yourself—you either valued the heart or you didn’t, in which case it was only worth something once it was sold. One way or another, Wen would get what he wanted, with no witnesses.
Cape saw Shaiming nod at Wen and unbutton his coat, revealing a snub-nosed revolver sticking out of his pants. Cape stole a glance at the monitor and wiped his hand across his hip.
***
Lin had managed to drag herself against the door, perpendicular to the monitor and video camera. She could barely keep her head up, but she managed to raise her right foot and kick, once.
The video camera crashed to the floor just as the door over her head splintered below the deadbolt.
***
Xan kicked a second time, separating the door from the frame. A third kick knocked the door off the top hinges, leaving it hanging and twisting against the broken lock. Wrapping both hands around the door, he heaved backward.
***
The screen behind Wen turned to static as Cape drew his gun and pointed it somewhere between Wen and Shaiming, who was already holding the grip of his revolver.
Wen raised his phone and brought his thumb down on the keypad.
Shaiming took a step forward and pointed his gun at Cape.
Sally let go of the rope.
Cape took aim and pulled the trigger.