weren’t quite gentrified yet. Jack lifted the gun and studied it. He inspected the clip: three shots in it. He double- checked on the safety and he stuck it into his pocket. It felt awkward. He would put it in his knapsack.
He went back toward the shower – it should be nice and steamy now – and it was then that he heard the quiet of her voice. She must have thought he was still in the shower.
She stood, her back to him, speaking softly, over the hiss of boiling water. ‘Yes. He’s here. Where do you want me to bring him?’
He stood back from the door, the notebook itching in the small of his back.
‘No. I won’t do that. But I want to make a deal for him.’
Shock reached inside him and wrenched his stomach. She had lied. Who the hell was she calling? A lawyer.
‘So where do you want me to bring him?’
Bring him. You promised, Mom. He listened to his mother, sewing up his betrayal.
‘Send a car for us. He might… resist.’ She dumped noodles into the pot. She stirred in chopped vegetables. He took a step backward. ‘Not sure I can get him out of the apartment without help.’
Resist? A chill flicked along his spine.
‘No. No one else saw him. He wants to hunker down here today.’ Silence. ‘I am so glad you called me about him. Thank you.’
Jack Ming stepped slowly back from the kitchen. He tiptoed back to his room, back to the hissing steam of the shower. He grabbed his backpack. He left the shower jetting against the porcelain, the steam curling from the bathroom like fingers raised in farewell. He spared his childhood room a final, bitter glance. And then he hurried toward the door.
‘Jack?’ his mother’s voice sliced across the room.
He glanced back at her.
‘Goodbye, Mom,’ he said.
‘You lied to me!’ she said. And he knew she meant the shower, that she was the one outraged that he had not done what he said.
‘Goodbye. Forever. I still love you.’
‘Jack, wait! Wait! They can make all the charges go away. They called me, all right, they called me first… ’
She knew I was coming? Panic flushed through him. He ran, not wanting to wait for the elevator, feet hammering down the stairs.
He bolted into the lobby and out onto the street. He ran the whole way to the 59th Street subway station. He got onto the first train that arrived. He sat huddled on the cold plastic bench, holding the backpack close to him.
Send someone. He might resist. Who the hell had she been talking to? Who would call her before he arrived?
This can’t be. Not my mom.
He rode down to Union Square and then he changed trains and rode the L train into Brooklyn, getting off at Bedford Avenue station in Williamsburg. Trust no one, he thought. So much for help and shelter from his mother.
He exited onto Driggs Avenue and crossed the street and watched the faces of those who’d left the train with him. Could his mother have called someone? Could he have been followed? Her betrayal cut him to the point he could not breathe.
They can make all the charges go away. Then who the hell were they?
He was going to have to be very careful. A plan began to form in his mind.
26
Manhattan
On my walk to the subway I texted Leonie, told her that Jin Ming was really a guy named Jack Ming and to drive our rental car and meet me at the East 59th Street address. We were so close now.
If I didn’t find Daniel – well, that was an option I couldn’t face. Anna’s grim words I won’t sell him to nice people shivered in my blood, like a plucked wire. Daniel, with my eyes and his mother’s mouth, handed over to someone who would abuse him, use him, eventually kill him when his usefulness reached its end. Or, if he lived, would the horror he survived shape him into a person bent, wrong, broken. I had never held Daniel, never seen him with my own eyes, but I could never abandon him to such a fate. Never.
It was strange to ride the subway, knowing I was heading to kill someone. A guy who smelled of mints stood too close to me, a girl with purplish, lanky hair stared at my shoes and through her earphones, just once, I could hear distant strains of Mozart, wandering into the train like a lost tourist. Two people across from me chatted in Portuguese and I eavesdropped on their gossip. You spend your childhood traveling the world, you pick up a little of a lot of languages. They were talking about a boyfriend, his pros and cons, his smile, his cheapness in picking restaurants, normal everyday talk, and I was sitting there thinking about how to kill a young man in cold blood.
Across from Sandra Ming’s apartment tower stood a sushi bar. It was decorated in a spare, minimalist style and in the background regrettable Japanese pop played, but at least at a whisper. The chef seemed very angry; he scowled as he chopped at the ahi, the sea urchin, the inoffensive salmon. He muttered in Japanese and I nearly told him in his own language that he might consider anger management classes. I could tell from his face that he liked chopping flesh apart. It was good that a man like him had a creative outlet.
I got my lunch and sat watching in the window. The fish, the rice, the wasabi, all had no flavor to me. Rain, heavier in the morning, had lightened. Now the day was gray, the wind carrying the scent of the unfallen storm. I had not seen any sign of Mrs Ming or her son arriving at or leaving the building. I didn’t want to think of him as a Jack. Jack Ming sounded like the name of some kid I could have known in any of the American or Anglican schools I’d attended in fourteen different countries in my misspent youth, hauled around the globe by my parents, who worked for a relief agency. They were good people, but more concerned with fixing the world than paying more than five minutes’ attention to their own children. I loved them and they appeared to love me, and not much more else to say on that front. I’m sure the armchair psychologists would have a field day dissecting my youth and how it related to my stolen child. But it’s not like I could let any child be taken this way. My son or not. There are standards. You have to fight back.
Leonie slid onto the stool next to me. ‘You found him.’
‘I did.’
‘Without a database.’ She made it sound like I had somehow cheated.
‘Yes.’
She opened up her laptop. ‘And now what? We sit here and wait for him to show up and’ – she lowered her voice – ‘you shoot him dead in the street?’
‘No.’ I swallowed the last bit of sushi on my plate. It offered only sustenance, not pleasure. Waiting to kill someone makes you feel dead inside.
‘We’re only supposed to do what Anna told us,’ she said and I wondered what she would do if I picked up the chopstick, oiled with soy sauce and wasabi, and shoved it into her ear.
‘I have done both my job and a key part of your job so far,’ I said. ‘You are rapidly losing your right to a vote in this.’
‘Sam. Okay. You had resources I didn’t. But I found out about Jack Ming, something you didn’t know.’
‘What?’
‘I don’t think he will come to see his mother.’
‘Why not?’
‘She blames him for his father’s death.’
I glanced at her. ‘How would you know?’
‘I built a network of names around Jack Ming,’ she said. ‘Yes, he went to NYU, so I did searches on people
