edge of the cliffs with an extended neck.
Surveillance was boring but necessary, and the isolation of the cliffs was perfect for staying low. The oppressive heat kept most tourists at the beach, away from the scorching sun. And when the odd tourist or history buff did infringe on his activities, DiMarco got out of his car and headed down the narrow trail that lead to an even smaller scenic overlook. The trail was narrow and treacherous enough to scare a billy goat, much less beachcomber tourists in flip-flops. A ten-minute walk by DiMarco was usually enough time for the crowds to move on.
Now armed with a photocopied picture of Lee Chang liberated from the circulation stack at the local library, DiMarco kept his eyes glued to the back end of his binoculars. On his fifth day of surveillance, the Bostonian from Southie realized Lee Chang wasn’t coming out, and even if he did, he certainly wasn’t coming out with the girl. He had noted the two guards on duty during the day, and the team of four that patrolled the lot at night. The girls who worked in the factory walked from the building on the left in the morning, and returned at night. There was little else to see, with one exception. For the fifth day in a row, he watched the white van arrive, the driver retreating into the smallest building on the company grounds. The van and its driver left an hour later. It was a routine repeated three times a day—morning, noon, and night.
DiMarco stood by his car and felt the breeze on his face. He shooed away a persistent horsefly that attacked by stealth, twice making a getaway with a small bit of flesh. DiMarco slapped his leg and missed his target, never taking his eyes off the facilities.
Chapter 38
DiMarco followed the white van into town, blending in easily with the island traffic in his rented American two-door. The Chernobyl-red sunburn on his driver’s side window left arm was his biggest risk to being spotted.
The van obeyed the speed limit and signaled when turning. DiMarco kept pace. Years of driving in Boston—a mix of Indianapolis raceway and demolition derby, with extra points for nastiness to your fellow commuter—made driving on the island almost boring.
DiMarco followed the van to the Seaside Breeze Resort, an establishment neither grand enough for a resort nor close enough to the ocean to be seaside. The garbage cans in front of the hotel were full from the tourists who walked down the main drag, launching trash missiles in the hotel’s direction. At night the empty beer bottles, thrown by teenage gangs with nothing better to do, rained down. The pool was empty, a green sheen on the remnants of water resting on the bottom. The pink paint on the balconies of the hotel peeled, begging for a new coat. The van pulled into the parking lot, past a set of palm trees with dangling brown leaves, its roots no longer able to find an ample water supply.
The doctor pulled his van into the small parking lot wedged between the hotel and the moped rental shop and miniature golf course next door. DiMarco found a space near the back of the lot that allowed him to keep one eye on the empty pool, the other on the white van. He took a walk around the lot to stretch his back, peeked into the back of the van as casually as he could, and walked across the street for more fast food. The stakeout continued, only the location had changed. Tonight the bucket seat would be his mattress.
The doctor strolled out the front door of the hotel at six-thirty. DiMarco, already up for an hour with back pain, stood from the park bench on the side of the hotel near the pool, leaving his two-day-old newspaper on the table and throwing his half-eaten honey bun in the grass for the already circling seagulls.
The doctor pulled the handle on his van, the door sliding smoothly back on its rollers. He threw his little black bag on the back seat, shut the door, and rolled down the manual window. The knife on the side of the doctor’s neck snapped him awake much quicker than the black cup of Hawaiian coffee and shower he had already had.
The doctor looked at DiMarco out of the corner of his eye, the knife touching his skin a fraction of an inch from his jugular. “What do you want?”
“If you do exactly as I say, you will live. If you don’t, you won’t. Those are the rules. The only thing keeping you alive is that I am not interested in you.”
“Take my wallet and the car.”
“I’m not interested in money.”
“What do you want then?”
“You are on a need-to-know basis.”
“I think you’re making a mistake. I’m just a doctor. It is my job to help people. Take the car and my wallet. I won’t call the police.”
“Well, doctor, if you are in the business of helping people, then you’re perfect. You’re going to help both of us. I have told you the rules. You can take them or leave them.”
“That’s not really much of an option.”
“I was hoping you would see it that way.”
DiMarco slid the side door open and switched knife hands, the blade now touching the skin at the base of the doctor’s skull. All DiMarco had to do was grab the doctor’s head, pull it back, insert the knife and scramble his brains. The doctor, fully aware of the anatomical danger, kept his hands on the wheel as instructed.
“Where are we going?”
“According to my schedule, you have to be at Chang Industries by seven. Let’s get moving.”
The white van slowed as it approached the gate to the sweatshop. DiMarco pulled the doctor’s black medical bag onto his lap. Still sitting behind the doctor in the back seat, DiMarco spoke with an eerie calm. “Tell them I am a fellow doctor from the local hospital. And if I hear you speak a single word of anything other than English, it will be the last words that ever leave your mouth.”
The doctor never had the chance to scream for help. The two daytime guards waved the van through without even a cursory inspection, too busy with their conversation to be distracted by the doctor and his clockwork routine.
“Pull up close to the building. Closer than you usually do.”
“You have been watching me.”
“Of course. I
The doctor did as he was told, pulling the van near the door in a dirt spot between the infirmary and the building that housed the sweatshop floor. “Get out slowly.”
The doctor took his orders. DiMarco followed him into the infirmary, knife at the doctor’s back. The Bostonian shut the infirmary door behind them and checked the room, keeping the doctor in front of him as he moved from corner to corner, from the door to the bathroom. The doctor played along, trying to give the impression of a lamb to the slaughter.
“Now what?”
DiMarco walked to the last door in the room and rattled the knob of the locked storage closet.
“I need to meet with Lee Chang.”
“He’s not home.”
“The man doesn’t leave. If he did, I wouldn’t have gone through all this effort to come to see him.”
“Wouldn’t it have been easier to just make an appointment with him?”
“If I wanted to meet him, yes. If I wanted to kill him, no,” DiMarco said into the doctor’s ear.
“Kill Lee Chang?” the doctor said aloud.
“Yes, and if you don’t keep your mouth shut, you’ll be first.”
DiMarco moved closer, one hand on the doctor’s shoulder, the knife still at the base of the doctor’s skull, only flesh between metal and the brain stem.
“Call him,” DiMarco said.
The Chinese doctor moved slowly toward the wall and pressed the intercom button near the door. The speaker crackled.
“Lee. Could you come down to the infirmary for a moment, please?”
“I’ll be down in just a minute, doctor.”
DiMarco pulled the doctor to the corner of the room and pulled out a second knife, a heavily weighted, perfectly balanced Spanish piece of steel that DiMarco used with the precision of a surgeon. DiMarco stood by the
