“Is your brother still the man I knew?”
“Hah. Even better. Please wait, Chen Gui.” A hand covered the phone mouthpiece and voices murmured. Then the man, whose name was Pak, said, “My brother sends his regards, and asks what you wish of him?”
Chen Gui told him, and Pak conveyed the request to his brother. They easily reached an agreement. The task, after all, was simple enough. And Pak’s brother would not even have to leave their house, which was in Shanghai. Easy money.
He hung up and made a second telephone call. He told the man who answered what he wanted and how soon, and received assurance it would be done.
Minutes later Chen Gui met Chen Song downstairs in the courtyard. Two cars sat waiting, fumes spewing from their exhausts. Four young men wearing cheap suits and long hair waited also. They radiated arrogance. There was no respect in their eyes when they looked at Chen Gui; just the opposite, in fact. Chen Gui wondered what Chen Song had told them. Did they even know that Chen Song worked for Chen Gui? Or did they think his nephew was Boss Chen, and Chen Gui some ancient relative allowed to live in the house?
“These are your best men?”
Their chests swelled with self-importance and they thrust their jaws out or narrowed their eyes, trying to look tough, just like in the movies. One smoked a cigarette which dangled from lips that were frozen in a cynical half-grin, an expression that obviously attracted wanton whores by the wagon-load.
“The very best, uncle.”
Chen Song opened the rear door of the first car and for a moment Chen Gui thought he was about to climb in-but then he seemed to remember his manners and instead held the door wide for Chen Gui.
They settled themselves in the back seat and Chen Gui gave the driver the address. Chen Song looked at him curiously; it lay in one of Shanghai’s oldest quarters, steeped in history which upstarts like Chen Song and his cocky young guns knew nothing of. He watched the man in the front passenger seat play with his gun, removing and inserting the magazine again and again as if it were a toy. He spoke to the driver in gutter dialect, telling him he hoped he got the chance to use his weapon. The driver opined that the Fujianese didn’t have the balls to try anything. Chen Gui, who knew otherwise, kept his silence. Chen Song turned and looked out the rear window every thirty seconds, as if unsure whether the second car was still following them. Chen Gui wondered if the driver of the tailing car suffered from an eye impairment that might cause him to lose sight of them and accidentally wander up the wrong street.
The streets became narrower, the houses more traditional. Cobblestones made a roaring noise underneath their tires. The driver slowed and the noise died down until Chen Gui could hear himself think again. When the driver hesitated at a street junction, Chen Gui directed him to go straight ahead. He marveled that he still remembered the way after so long.
It was a moonless night, and Lin Yubo had been with him. So were Boss Hong and Boss Sun. Nominally business partners, technically rivals, they had worked together for almost a decade, abiding by the terms of a truce hammered out by the previous leaders of the Green, Red and White Dragon Tongs. They’d all benefited from the truce, no denying that, but some recent territory disputes had led to friction and so Lin Yubo had suggested they meet at a neutral location to agree who owned which streets. It would be a simple matter of give and take, he’d assured them; in the end no one would leave the meeting unhappy. Which was true.
“There,” he said, pointing at a red-tiled house surrounded by a high wall. The gates swung open as the two cars approached, and swung shut again as soon as they were inside. As the cars rolled to a stop on the oval courtyard’s dark flagstones Chen Gui saw Pak waiting at the front door, small and wiry, his arms folded inside the sleeves of his black silk jacket.
“Who’s that?” Chen Song asked, leaning forward to peer through the window.
“An old acquaintance,” Chen Gui said. He reached for the door handle. Chen Song took the hint, got out his side and hurried round to open Chen Gui’s door.
Chen Gui went up the steps and greeted Pak. He motioned for Chen Song to join them. The four gunmen waited by the cars in their rumpled suits, looking around but finding nothing to impress them. The same gunman checked and rechecked his magazine, ramming it in with the heel of his hand, heedless of the fact he might damage the weapon.
“Stand very still,” Chen Gui told Chen Song. “No matter what happens, make no move to interfere.”
“Uncle?” Chen Song said.
“Watch, and learn.”
A shadow flew over the roof of the house and landed in the courtyard without a sound behind He Who Constantly Reloaded His Weapon. The shadow moved into the gunman, who screamed as both his arms were hideously twisted and quite plainly broken, his weapon and its magazine spinning away in opposite directions. The scream cut off suddenly as vertebrae were expertly dislocated; the gunman flopped like a sack of rice. The other three men drew their guns but not one shot was fired as the shadow moved among them, making
Chen Song, stupid as ever, ignored Chen Gui’s warning and reached inside his jacket, but Pak tapped two fingers against Chen Song’s wrist, stopping him. The last of the gunmen sprawled face down in the courtyard below, quite dead. Pak’s brother, clad in a suit, hood and mask that exactly matched the dark of the flagstones, came to a stop at last and stood facing the house. Chen Gui bowed to him. The bow was returned.
“I can’t move my arm!” Chen Song said, panic in his voice. He only distracted Chen Gui for a second but in that second the shadow was suddenly gone, as quickly as it had appeared, and leaving no trace of its passage or whereabouts. Had it ever been there? Four broken bodies leaking blood into the courtyard suggested it had.
Chen Song’s expression betrayed his pain and his astonishment at his inability to make his arm work. Pak tapped his wrist with two fingers again, and Chen Song had control of his limb once more. He cradled it to him as if it were a long-lost child.
Chen Gui slipped the envelope containing the agreed sum of money into Pak’s hand. It disappeared inside his sleeve and he retreated into the house, closing the door behind him, their transaction complete.
A light breeze blew across the courtyard, stirring the leaves. Chen Gui returned to the first car. Chen Song, quite dazed, staggered down the steps and joined him. He bent to examined one of the corpses, stepped over to another, checked a third. Chen Gui could have told him he was wasting his time.
“Uncle, what…?”
“We’re leaving. You’re driving.”
Chen Song opened the door for Chen Gui, moving like a robot. Chen Gui climbed into the passenger seat. Chen Song took up position behind the wheel, still wearing a dazed look. Chen Gui slapped him hard. Chen Song shook his head and came out of his trance.
“Start the engine. Take us home.”
Chen Song started the engine. The gates swung open again to permit them to leave, and swung shut behind them as soon as they reached the street, blocking their view. The bodies, of course, would be disposed of forthwith. Just like the bodies of Boss Hong and Boss Sun had vanished that fateful night years ago when Lin Yubo brought them to this same house to meet Pak’s brother, the night tiger, who slew them and their helpless bodyguards without mercy, clearing the way for Lin Yubo to command the united Shanghai Dragon Tongs. They had not left the meeting unhappy, as Lin Yubo promised.
They negotiated the light traffic in silence. When they were very nearly back where they started, at Chen Gui’s house, Chen Song said, “Uncle. I think we are being followed.”
Chen Gui looked in his side mirror. A black sedan cruised behind them. “Don’t worry about that,” he said. “Just keep on driving.”
“They could be Fujianese! We have no protection!”
Chen Gui took pleasure in saying, “They are our protection.” He watched for a reaction. Chen Song’s expression changed from open-mouthed surprise to blank-faced puzzlement as he tried to deduce what was going on. And finally, frowning realization.
“Why did you have them killed, uncle?” he asked.
