White Tiger

“Your food,” Manning said. He unpacked several containers and placed them on the credenza. Most were still warm.

Lin rose and checked out the selection. He slid open a drawer and removed some very expensive-looking china and handed a plate to Manning.

“I will not serve you,” he said, “so ‘help yourself’, as you Americans say.”

“Thanks.” Manning didn’t serve Lin either, but did allow him to go first. The older man arranged different varieties of food on his plate in small, neat piles and returned to his desk. He had already warmed himself some tea from the electric pot on the desk. Lying next to it was the pistol. Manning quickly dumped three different dishes onto his plate with his chopsticks and headed for the door.

“How long will we wait?” Lin asked.

Manning turned back to him. “Not long.”

“How do you know?”

“Because it’s time to get this over with,” Manning said. He returned to the secretary’s office and left Lin alone with his dinner and thoughts.

The patrolman didn’t seem very enthused to drive Ryker from the Hyatt to 101 California, and for good reason. The traffic was thick, and even worse, it was weekend traffic, which meant the out-of-towners were out in force. As the revelers were just getting started, the black-and-white squad car made some good time at first, but once it hit Kearny the traffic thickened enough that it took almost ten minutes to make it to the intersection with California.

“You want the lights, Sergeant?” the patrolman asked.

“Not necessary,” Ryker said, though he felt a peculiar anxiety beginning to build in his chest. And why was that? His instincts were trying to tell him something, but he didn’t exactly know what.

“Then I guess we’ll get there when we get there,” the patrolman said, slouching in his seat. He was already bored as hell.

Ryker wished he was also, but he was far from it. Far from it.

The air duct was just large enough for her to fit, but not at all comfortably. It was a tight squeeze, and very, very dark despite the night vision monocle she wore over one eye. The aluminum duct felt thin and flimsy beneath her weight, and she feared it might give way and she would crash through the suspended ceiling onto the office floor below. Or worse, the duct might simply fold up and trap her, leaving her pinned inside. That was her greatest fear-being trapped with no chance of escape, alone in the darkness, until the police found her or she simply died from thirst and starvation. And with the accursed Lin Yubo so near…

She pushed the thoughts from her mind and inched forward through the darkness on her belly, slithering through the ductwork like some sort of jet-black serpent, her movements slow and measured and precise. And virtually soundless. Stealth was her primary weapon now.

She came to a junction where the ducts split off, up, down, left, and right. She moved to the edge of the intersection and peered down, the direction she needed to go. Darkness waited, so deep and impenetrable that even the night vision monocle couldn’t properly pierce it after a hundred feet or so. But she could make out junctions like the one she lay at below, one for every story. She only needed to make it to the next one.

Slowly, carefully, she pushed herself over the edge until she hung head-down in the vertical duct. Using her arms and legs as brakes she slowly descended, leaving the ductwork of the 46th floor behind. She arrived at the 45th floor and slowly, oh so slowly, curled to her left and entered the horizontal duct there. She made very little sound the entire time, only a sliding scuffle here, a slight metallic creak there as the aluminum channel flexed beneath her body weight. She knew approximately where Lin’s office would lie, but she had no allusions about being able to attack him directly by alighting from the HVAC ducting. Nor would it be wise; Manning would likely be right with him.

And for some reason, she did not want to kill Manning…but she didn’t know how that could be avoided.

Slowly, she crept forward through the dark shaft, stopping every few feet to listen. All she heard were the sounds of the building, the air whispering past her, the gurgle of water in pipes. There was a distant metallic clicking sound, and it took her a moment to recognize it as a magnetic lock activating. And then-muted voices. Vague, indistinct, almost lost in the rumble of the building, but her keen senses picked them up the same way a bat’s sonar might detect a solitary moth fluttering along in the darkness. She peered through every vent she came across and found nothing more remarkable than empty cubicles or vacant carpet. Yet she was certain she was on the right floor…

And then she smelled it.

Chinese food. Wafting through the ventilation system, Very slight, but unmistakable.

Spurred on by this, Meihua Shi pushed forward through the ductwork, her heart hammering in her chest.

“But we didn’t call the police,” the security guard said. He was young black man with close-cropped hair who wrapped his arrogant air around him like it was an expensive topcoat. He glared at Ryker’s proffered badge and identification with surly eyes. Ryker sighed. He didn’t have the time to deal with some punk who had an attitude problem.

“Yeah, yeah, I get that,” he said. He tried to step inside the lobby of 101 California, but the kid wouldn’t budge-he stood smack in the center of the doorway. He’d decided to make his stand. From the corner of his eye, Ryker saw the squad car he’d arrived in pull away from the curb and merge back into the weekend traffic. He was on his own.

“Listen, you going to let me in, or not?”

“Why should I?” the kid said. “We didn’t call you.”

“Kid, let me ask you something-are you a special kind of stupid? Did you ride the short bus to school? I’m a police officer here on police business, and I need access to this building.”

“You got a warrant?” the security guard said.

Ryker looked past him at the older man sitting behind the desk in the lobby. The man watched the proceedings with something approaching a smile.

“Hey pal, can you give me a hand here?” Ryker called.

“We don’t need ‘a hand’,” said the younger man.

The older black man slowly rose to his feet and started walking toward the door. His gait was slow and ponderous, as if his knees were giving him some trouble. The bemused expression he’d been wearing before was gone. Now, he was all business.

“Malik! Let the man inside.”

The younger security guard kept his eyes on Ryker. “But we didn’t call the po-lice,” he said.

“Let him in.” The older guard made it to the lobby door and stood right behind the younger man, staring holes into the back of his head with his eyes. “Do it right now.”

The young man glared at Ryker for a moment longer, then backed off.

“Thanks,” Ryker said to the older man as he stepped inside. He presented his badge, and older man examined it for a moment then waved for him to put it away.

“I was on the Job myself for over twenty years,” he said. “Patrol. Retired out of Mission four years ago.”

“Ah-how’s life on the outside?”

The older black man shrugged and waved a hand at the lobby. “A lot less threatening.”

Ryker extended his hand. “Detective Sergeant Hal Ryker, homicide.”

“Willy Terrell. Good to meet you, sergeant. What can we do for you?”

“Looking for James Lin.”

“I see.” Terrell hesitated for a moment. “And might he be expecting you?”

“He might be, yes.”

“You don’t sound so sure.”

“I’m here on official business, Willy.”