I didn’t bother to answer her.
“So what do you want?” she asked, gray eyes glacial.
I told her everything. Well, not everything. Nothing about Lune. Or how I got the information. But all the facts.
“So this dirtbag has graduated to international, is that what you’re telling me?” she finally asked.
“What I’m telling you is that he tried to take me out. Spent a lot of money doing it. If it’s revenge for what we did to him years ago, you could be on his list, too.”
“Fine. Now he’s on mine,” is all I got out of her.
“You never heard of this Darcadia thing before?”
“Sure. It’s no real secret, especially with the kind of money they’ve been raking in. But I didn’t know this freak was the big player.”
“Aren’t the
“Maybe IRS. Or the money-laundering guys. Might even be a candidate for RICO-fraud, I don’t know. But it’s not lighting up anybody’s screen, I can tell you that.”
“Good.”
“I don’t under—Oh. It’s like that, huh?”
“I’ve got no choice.”
“You had choices
The building directory was all in Chinese. I followed Max up the stairs. On the second floor, he made a gesture like pulling a tooth, telling me the office we wanted belonged to a dentist. The mute Mongol turned the handle of the office door and stepped inside. It was almost two in the morning, but a young Chinese woman in a white dental smock bowed to Max in greeting as if he were an expected patient. She didn’t acknowledge my presence. Max made a series of quick hand signals. The dentist led us into an operatory, then left the room. Max went over to what looked like a closet. It turned out to be an opening to a flight of stairs, leading down. I followed him again, and we ended up in an alley.
We walked for a couple of blocks, then Max rapped on a door the exact color—New York dirt—of the building it led into. The door opened. A Chinese man with a small meat-cleaver in his right hand stood there. He bowed to Max and stepped aside. I followed, still invisible.
This time, the exit was from the basement. But not into an alley, into a tunnel. It had obviously been there a long time, probably built by coolie labor for one of the Tongs, back when Chinatown was another country and tourists weren’t welcome.
When a branch of the tunnel finally took us into the cellar of Mama’s restaurant, I wasn’t surprised.
It took me a while to tell the story. When I was finished, the Prof spoke first. “Ain’t but one way for us to play, Schoolboy.”
The “us” came out of him so natural that I had to bite my lip to keep my face flat. Almost dying had really fucked up my internal controls.
“If we could find where he is …” the Mole offered.
“Not a prayer, Mayor,” the Prof chopped him off. “Motherfucker’s not putting himself on the spot. We want a date, we got to have the bait.”
“And he will have plenty of firepower behind him, Father,” Clarence added. “That team that tried to kill Burke …”
“Soldiers,” Mama said. “Very expensive.”
“What are you saying, Mama?” I asked her.
“All about money. This … place you talk about.”
“Sure, but …”
“Money is bait,” she finished for me. “Money bring him to you.”
“But he’s
“No, he doesn’t, honey,” Michelle put in. “Mama’s right. If he did, why would he still be raising all this cash? You said the operation’s still going on, right? Still soliciting in the right places.”
“Sure!” the Prof backed her up. “Motherfucker had his whole rack stacked, he’d just jet off the set.”
“Okay, so he’s still collecting cash. How does that—?”
“Investor,” Mama said. “Big investor.”
I thought it through, taking my time. And kept coming up against the same flaw.
“No way this guy’s going to go face to face without knowing who he’s dealing with,” I told them. “I’d need an X-ray-proof ID, back-legend and all.”
“Didn’t your girl build you one of those before, youngblood?” the Prof asked.
“Wolfe won’t … won’t work with me anymore.”
“I can do it,” Michelle piped up.
Nobody said anything, waiting.
“I know just the man,” she said. “An old man. Lives in Key West. A real recluse. A
