“I’ve got to go through with it, Harry. Just because I can’t find a hole in your theory doesn’t mean it’s right. Either way, I’m committed. Mei-Li is the only one I can get to identify little Red Shoes. Mrs. Lee could do it, but Liu’s got her tied up so tight I’ll probably never even see her before trial. I still have a gut feeling there’s a connection between Red Shoes’s death and Anthony’s case. If I could open up her murder, it could unravel a lot that I’m just not seeing. If I don’t try, I’ll never know if it cost Anthony his freedom.”
Harry had no answer.
“I know I’m grasping at straws here, Harry. But Mei-Li’s my last straw. Everyone else is hostile or dead.”
I looked over at my faithful coconspirator. “How about you, Harry? Last chance out.”
Harry drained the final bit of coffee and set the cup down. He checked his watch. “Maybe I can score one for the ancestors. Anyway, you’d be like a splayed duck in there without me. Let’s go. It’s time.”
We parked the van closer to the grocery shop. Harry went first. He started down the street toward the store with a large shopping bag in his hand. He was bundled in an oversized overcoat, a wool scarf around his mouth and nose, and a floppy fur hat down over his ears. It could all pass as protection against the cold, and at the same time he could have been anyone from Mao Tse-Tung to Boy George. He put on a limp and a slouch that added age.
I watched from the van as he passed slowly between two young turks at the door. They were different from the two of the previous day. They eyed him but gave no sign of alarm. That cleared the first hurdle-one of many.
I gave him a few minutes to browse around the shelves of the grocery store before I waddled in, attired in a similarly fetching outfit. The fear of the moment was that the two young toughs would notice that the steam had stopped coming out of my mouth when I passed between them. It stopped because I was so scared I couldn’t breathe.
One of them mumbled something to me in Chinese. I tapped my ear and shook my head, which, thank God, they took for a sign that I was hard of hearing. They said something to each other and laughed. I was never so happy to be the butt of a joke.
It was exactly 10:01. There was no one else in the store but Harry in mufti, an old woman in Chinese garb shopping in the back, and the elderly clerk at the front counter absorbed in a Chinese newspaper.
The store was laid out the way Mei-Li described it. The counter with the cash register was to the left of the door as you came in. One dimly lit aisle crowded with merchandise in sacks and cans labeled in Chinese led back to a storeroom twenty feet to the rear. Beaded strings hung as a separation between the two rooms, but I could see into the storeroom.
I got a slight nod from Harry and played my part. I took a can of what looked like water chestnuts from one of the shelves in the front and approached the old man behind the counter. I asked for a detailed translation of the Chinese labeling to check out the sugar content, the amount of salt, whether they added elephant tusks, anything I could think of.
He understood everything I said up to “Good morning.” I, in turn, understood even less of what he was saying. Together we got into a hot debate over water chestnuts without ever exchanging a thought; but more to the point, Harry had free access to the back room.
It took about three hour-long minutes for Harry to locate what he was looking for. Then all hell broke loose. It started with one loud pop! in the back room that brought the old man’s head up and sent his glasses flying off his head. I knew then that Harry had located the stash of fireworks left over from the Chinese New Year. Mei-li had told us where they were.
The second and third pops turned into what sounded like continual bursts from an automatic rifle. Then crates of fireworks exploded in such rapid succession that it sounded like rolling thunder. Sparks spit in every direction, and a cloud of gray smoke billowed out into the store.
Seconds later there was a flash that lit up the rear half of the room. The blasts became deafening as the flames in the back room reached the cherry bombs and possibly M-80s.
The old man was frozen in panic. The two galoots at the front door made a charge for the back room that carried them past Harry and the old lady. They started beating away at flames with old burlap bags until the bags themselves caught fire.
As soon as they passed, Harry hustled the old lady down the aisle toward the front door. As he ran, I noticed he held a razor blade against the fifty-pound sacks of rice on the shelves. It was a beautiful sight to see a waterfall of rice consuming the floor behind him.
When I saw Harry coming, it was my turn to bolt for the door and get the van. I got to within two feet of the door when I ran smack into a wall of flesh. The door was crammed full of the muscle-bound goon we’d seen in the office the day before. He stood there like a zombie, watching the Fourth of July blow the back off the store, while the old man screamed in high-pitched Chinese.
There was no way past him. I heard Harry yell, “Do it, Mike!”
The zombie focused on me. Before he could move, I dropped on my back in a crouch. I kicked both heels straight out with a thrust that came from the spine. I caught him square in the crotch. He doubled over with a groan that drowned out the screaming old man. He fell forward, inside the door. I figured if he ever turned out to be an innocent bystander, I owed him one whale of an apology.
I looked back and saw the two punks in the rear. They’d seen what happened up front and made a charge up the aisle that looked to me like the entire Chinese army coming down on us. They got about to the canned bean sprouts when they both did an upender as if someone had cut their feet out from under them. The rice that covered the floor made it like running on ball bearings. They tumbled in lopsided cartwheels, spewing out Chinese that I didn’t want translated.
I was on my feet and through the open door by the time Harry closed the gap. The old woman was somewhere in between.
I cut left to get to the van and ran head-on into the arms of the two punks that had been at the door of the brothel the day before. One of them grabbed me in a grip that pinned my arms. I could feel my feet leaving the ground. My legs just waved in the air as the grip around my chest tightened.
I could feel the breath squeezed out of me, and I couldn’t get air back in. Everything was going from color to black-and-white. My only conscious thought was of the pain that meant that in another instant ribs would start cracking.
Just before that instant, everything came loose. As fast as I was gripped, I was released. I heard the sound of Harry’s slicing hand on his neck just before I dropped to the ground like a rock. The kid who had the grip fell to the ground beside me. I lurched away from him, but I could see he was unconscious.
I saw Harry standing behind him. Harry spun around to square off for combat with the other punk.
Harry shouted, “Get out of here, Mike!”
I ran for the van.
Fortunately I had left the keys in it for a quick start. I pulled up to the sidewalk beside the shop. I saw Harry exchanging open-fist blows with the second boy. I knew he was in no condition to take on the Karate Kid. I jumped out of the van to help.
Harry yelled, “Get back in the van!”
I was torn between the two, but Harry yelled, “Do what I said, Michael!”
At that moment, Harry took a step back and dropped his arms to his sides with his hands behind his back. He stood still and waited.
The young enforcer froze in confusion for an instant, then seized the moment. He drove in close enough to go for a chop to the base of Harry’s neck. Harry’s hands moved so fast I could hardly see them. He twisted left so the blow glanced off his shoulder. In the same fraction of an instant he grabbed the top of the coat of the attacker in his right fist. He pulled it open with the right while he stuffed something inside with the left. Meanwhile the kid used his position to chop away at Harry’s ribs.
Orders or not, I was about to bolt for the neck of the kid when there was an explosion that sounded like a muffled stick of dynamite. The kid was blown halfway across the street.
Harry half-straightened up, clutching his ribs. He was heading for the van, when I caught sight of three more punks of the same cut as the two Harry had just leveled coming at a full charge down the sidewalk. They were at twenty-five yards and closing. I rammed the van into first and floored it. I swerved around Harry onto the sidewalk and played the three like making an easy spare. They jumped, but I made enough contact to put them out of
