Part of me thought I wanted to be found out. I wanted her to know it was me so she’d wonder why I would do it. I wanted her to know my frustration and the pain she caused me by being so two-faced all the damned time. I hoped she’d see how much she’d screwed things up with her twisted personality and rectify things.

  But the cynical, realist part of me knew she never would.

  Her problem wasn’t just her personality. She was also one of those annoying people who never takes any sort of responsibility for her actions. When I knew her, one of her favorite refrains was, “I didn’t do anything wrong.” The problem was always with everyone else. She complained endlessly about things. And every little muscle strain become a new reason to not push herself during workouts.

  I should have been happy we weren’t friends anymore. The last communication we’d had when she’d learned that I’d hacked her was that she never wanted to see me again.

  Given my current situation, that actually worked in my favor.

  Part of me wondered whether I’d ever see her again.

  Part of me wondered if I even cared.

  I’d been called callous by some. Intense by others. I was a maelstrom of emotions. On the surface, you’d never see it. I was a master at keeping my face from revealing anything. But underneath, deep down inside where I kept my secrets...that was another story.

  I finished the beef chow foon and washed it down with a cup of tea. From my view of the restaurant, I watched a few club goers come in for a bite to eat before heading off to any of the clubs that were scattered nearby.

  I didn’t know about the Golden Lotus. It must have been new. I guessed it might be some new Asian fusion joint that had sprung up down near the gate to Chinatown.

  After I paid my bill, I stopped by the hostess stand and asked the way to get there.

  “Golden Lotus?”

  She blinked and said something in Cantonese to the other hostess then looked back at me. “Never heard of it.”

  But the expression on the other hostesses face told me they were both lying. I simply smiled, nodded, and then walked outside. No sense pushing my luck at Chau Chau City. I liked the food too much to get blacklisted.

  I walked down the block, skirting puddles and trash. Chinatown had a scent all its own, chiefly comprised of urine and soy sauce. Densely packed and yet exotic, the neighborhood straddled both the old world and the new. It could easily hypnotize you if you weren’t careful.

  I crossed Beach Street and headed up Oxford toward the Gate. A block farther, I spotted what I needed and moved in.

  The old man had been sitting in the same place for the last thirty years. He looked exactly the same as the day I found out he was a lookout for one of the gambling dens that made their home in the bowels of Chinatown.

  “Hie been doh ah Golden Lotus?”

  He turned and spat out the cigarette butt he’d been suckling and looked me up and down. His eyes narrowed and then his face blossomed into a wide grin with broken black stumps where his teeth had once been.

  “Jesus, your language skills still suck.”

  I smirked. “Thanks. Good to know all those Chinese girls I dated did nothing for me.”

  “Yellow fever,” said Old Man Cheng. “You always did have a raging case of it, Lo Fan. You ought to know all it does is make your balls wither away.”

  “Is that the bullshit line you used to tell the boys about your daughter?”

  Old Man Cheng cackled and then coughed a wad of yellowish sputum out of his lungs. With one hand, he reached for me and let his spindly fingers close around my wrist. “You’ve been gone a long time, Rick.”

  “You’ve been alive a long time, Cheng,” I said. “I would have thought you’d be long in the ground by now.”

  He cackled again. “They can’t kill me. They’ve tried. Shot me three times, once they did. Imagine their surprise when I dug those bullets out of my gut, patched myself up, and came right back here the next day to keep watch. Now, they leave me alone. ‘Just call us, Old Man, if you see anything.’ That’s what they tell me. No one visits me anymore. Not like it used to be down here. All the old ways are dying. All the old ones are gone.”

  “Gone where?”

  “Back. Back to Hong Kong. The old country. Made their money and left. Some died. Some killed. Doesn’t matter. Old Man Cheng is still here. Still be here forever probably.”

  “Probably so.” I took my hand back. “I need to know where the Golden Lotus is.”

  “Why?” Old Man Cheng looked at me. “Not a place you want to go. Not if you still like breathing and living and fucking.”

  “I need to see someone there.”

  “Who? You tell Old Man Cheng and I’ll tell you if you really need to see them or not. After all, I know everyone here in Chinatown. And if I don’t know them, then you don’t need to know them, either.”

  I paused and looked around. I hated discussing business in public. By now, the working professionals had started emerging. As much as Chinatown had been cleaned up over the years, the whores still worked it, knowing that its close proximity to the highway afforded them and their Johns the anonymity they needed to conduct business.

  But whores were also notorious gossips and they kept their ears peeled for anything they thought might earn them a buck. Especially if it meant they didn’t have to use their body to get it.

  I bent low next to Old Man Cheng’s ear. “Hsu-Chi Lam.”

  He leaned back in the rickety chair he sat in. “Why her?”

  “I’m looking for something. Friend of mine says she might have a lead on where I can find it.”

  Old Man Cheng coughed another wad of yellow sputum up and spat it into the gutter close by. “You’ve been gone a long time, Rick. You sure you want to wade back into this world?”

  “I don’t really have a choice.”

  Old Man Cheng nodded. “Things have changed. No more Ping On. No more Gung Ho. You know this?”

  “I know it.”

  “New power in Chinatown. But still old power. Very nice on the surface but very bad. Very bad. This is not the kind of woman you want to meet, Rick. Take Old Man Cheng’s advice and tell your friend his item is gone forever. Tell him to forget that it ever existed.”

  I frowned. “As much as I value your wisdom, I can’t do that.”

  He shook his head. “What you call wisdom…” He sighed. “Not wisdom at all. Just the truth.” He looked into my eyes and then after a moment, his head drooped. “I can see it’s no use trying to talk you out of it, is there?”

  “I’m a stubborn bastard,” I said. “I apologize for being so forward.”

  Old Man Cheng waved his hand in dismissal. “You are more Asian than most Lo Fan I have ever met. But you are still a round eye. I know you understand this. What it means. But still you insist on going and I know I cannot stop you. So I will tell you.”

  “Thank you.”

  “Don’t thank me,” said Old Man Cheng. “You will know why when you meet her.” He pointed with his left hand toward a dimly-lit doorway on Oxford Street. “Go there and ring the buzzer for apartment four.” His eyes locked onto mine. “Apartment four. You understand?”

  “Yeah, I got it. Apartment four.”

  Old Man Cheng sighed. “You listen without listening. Think about it, Lo Fan. Four. Four?”

  “Death,” I said after a minute. “In some cultures four is the number of death.”

  “You’ve been gone a long time, Lo Fan. Perhaps...too long.”

  I patted him on the shoulder. “Thanks for the help.”

  He coughed again. “The only help I gave you was telling you not to go. And you have forsaken it. Good luck, Rick. Perhaps if the gods favor you, we will see each other again in this world.”

  I nodded once, then turned and walked up Oxford Street, wishing for the first time that I’d brought my pistol after all.

  4

  The doorway reeked of shit and piss, but that was nothing new to anyone who roamed these streets. Smells like this were meant to discourage anyone from lingering except those who knew what they were coming here for. I’d wandered the streets of Chinatown long enough to feel at home here, even if had been years since I’d last been to this part of the city.

  The door buzzers were all marked in Chinese, but I knew enough characters to pick out number four. I leaned on it but heard nothing. In front of me, the badly-scarred plexiglas door looked sturdy enough to handle the boot kicking it must have gotten from angry drunks on a nightly basis. After a moment, the door clicked - barely audible - but I yanked the door open and walked up the steps in front of me.

  The heavy scent of mothballs hung in the air, but that was another familiar scent to me. It was amazing how much my past came back to me as I ascended the staircase.

  At the top of the stairs, a small landing awaited. Yellowed, fraying posters featuring pretty Chinese girls hawking beer and cigarettes hung on the walls. I spotted three doors, each marked with numbers from one to three. And beyond them, a staircase led down into the darkness.

  Four. Presumably.

  I stood at the edge of the steps that would take me down and paused. Old Man Cheng had pretty much warned me away from coming here. Time was, I would have listened to him without hesitation. For an old Chinese guy who hated every other round eye, he’d taken a shine to me for some reason. The very first time I met him, he’d warned me about a Gung Ho ambush at Tai Tung Village, a housing project on the outskirts of Chinatown where I was headed alone to see a girl I was dating.

  And here I was about to disregard his warning about Hsu-Chi Lam and the Golden Lotus. My gut was already in spasm, warning me about imminent danger. The thought of Dante held firm in my mind and what he’d said about magic.

  I felt like worlds were starting to collide and the mixing didn’t do much to settle the tempest brewing in my stomach.

  Still, I’d been in similar situations before and I had a job to do. Two million dollars was a lot of money. If Langley decided to toss me out on my ass, I had a pension and two million to start over anywhere in the world I wanted. In the right place, my money could last me for the rest of my life. It might even be enough to find a girl and settle down finally.

  Maybe.

  I took the steps down, running my hand along the wall as I did so because the entire staircase was bathed in darkness. Finally, after what felt like a hundred steps, I stood on the floor of what had to be the basement of the building. A single weak light bulb dangled from the ceiling and cast its meager light in all directions. But I was only interested in the brooding door that stood down the hall.

  It looked as if it was three-foot thick steel bolted into the foundation of the building. I saw no hinges on it. No handle. And I felt foolish standing there in the dim light, so I did what anyone else would do: I knocked.

  A section of the door slid back and I saw a pair of narrow eyes look me up and down.

  “Fuck off, round eye.”

  “I’m here to see Hsu-Chi Lam.”

  “No here.” The plate slid back into place, leaving me alone again in the corridor. Clearly, they didn’t like idea of Lo Fan coming into this place.

  But I can be pretty stubborn when I need to be, so I knocked again. The steel plate opened, the eyes looked me up and down again and then swore at me, this time in Fukienese, an even more obscure and challenging dialect.

  “I’m here for the Golden Lotus Club,” I said. “Hsu Chi is expecting me.”

  This produced laughter from the other side of the door. I expected them to shut the steel plate again, but instead, I heard the unlocking and unbolting of a hundred locks. Then with a vague hiss, the door slid open.

  Before me, three young Chinese men with slicked back hair and pistols awaited me. One of them motioned me forward.

  I stepped inside and waited.

  “Hands up.”

  One of the other guys frisked me and did a good job making sure I hadn’t concealed anything of danger anywhere on my body. When he was done, he nodded to the guy who did all the talking. He stood only about five feet five inches, but his demeanor was enough to let me know he was a dangerous bastard.

  “Okay, Lo Fan, you wanna play? Welcome to the Golden Lotus.”

  “I need to see Hsu-Chi.”

  “Everybody wanna see her.” He smiled and I saw his gold-capped teeth. “Maybe she see you, but not until after you play.” He pointed to a corridor and I walked along it, twisting and turning and descending for what felt like hundreds of feet. As I continued along, the ambience changed. The smells of Chinatown vanished, replaced by the soft scent of jasmine. The corridor grew lighter thanks to a row of concealed lights that meandered along with me. I could hear the sound of music farther off, a pulsing cacophony of bass drum and synthesizers.

  I’d been to several underground gambling dens in the past, but I’d never seen anything like this.

  When I finally emerged from the corridor, another door stood before me. As I approached, it swung open and a gorgeous Eurasian beauty stood before me dressed in a tuxedo.

  “Welcome to the Golden Lotus,” she said in perfect, unaccented English. “Would you care for a drink?”

  “Stolichnaya, straight. Direct from the freezer if you can manage that.”

  She smiled. “Konechno.”

  I cocked an eyebrow when she used fluent Russian. “Spaseebuh.”

  “I’ll have it brought over to your table.” She pointed toward the back of the club. “The bank is that way, Mister…?”

  “Fury,” I said. “And what do I call you?”

  “Charade,” she said with a smile. “Best of luck to you, Mr. Fury.”

  I moved into the club and took it in for the first time. The music was loud but not so loud that you couldn’t talk. The ceiling overhead stood at least forty feet, bedecked with a dizzying array of lights. The walls were obviously sound-proofed but then covered in a gauzy crimson fabric that billowed as the air conditioning system blew gentle currents of air about the place. From where I stood I could see an endless series of spy cameras keeping track of everything. A dance floor stood in the middle of the club, occupied by at least forty people dancing while a DJ held court in a suspended balcony overlooking the floor.

  The gambling took place on the fringes of the club, nestled against the back walls. I saw traditional Mahjong games but also blackjack, roulette wheels, and baccarat. A few of the tables played poker as well.

  I sighed. I should have asked for an advance from Dante. I had the feeling it was going to cost me some serious coin to get an audience with Hsu-Chi, and if she even suspected that I was some type of cop - or worse, a spy - then she’d kill me without blinking twice.

  At the bank window, a pleasant old woman took my credit card and ran it through the machine before giving me two thousand dollars in chips. I figured that was enough of a start to make it appear that I was serious about being here. Now I just had to make sure I didn’t lose it all.

  I headed for the blackjack table, figuring it had the best odds. But after losing five straight hands, I wandered over to the poker table instead. Maybe pitting myself against other players was the smarter option than betting against the house.

  Four other men sat at the table when I joined them, each a unique specimen. I made up nicknames for them on the spot: Fat Joe, Larry from Three’s Company, The Bald Boil, and Shifty. Fat Joe looked like your typical financial services guy, dressed in a bad-fitting suit that someone probably told him was a good look for him. Larry wore his hair in a perm and had enough gold around his neck to drown him if he happened to fall into a puddle. The Bald Boil looked like a walking zit about to pop, with a face so red I couldn’t tell if he’d been exposed to a UFO or was so drunk that he couldn’t stand up. Finally, Shifty sat there looking like a time bomb about to explode while his eyes danced in every direction around the table. He didn’t look happy to see me show up.

  Tough.

  We played a few hands and I folded each time until I drew a pair of aces. On the flop, I picked up another ace and decided to check until the pot grew. Then I went all in on the fourth, which caused Larry to immediately fold, and Shifty to swear loudly. But Bald Boil stayed in and so did Fat Joe. By my estimate, the pot had almost ten grand in it.

  The dealer motioned for all of us to show our cards. When I showed my pocket aces, Fat Joe and Bald Boil looked like they could have murdered an orphanage. The river card did nothing for them, or me, but my three aces carried the day and I scooped up my winnings.

  Which is when Charade showed up with my drink, handing it to me with a sly grin. “It seems you’ve found your table, Mr. Fury.”

  I couldn’t decide what was colder: the vodka glass or her hand as her fingers gently brushed mine. I sipped the vodka and let it slow burn its way down my throat until it found my stomach and smoldered there.

  “Excellent,” I said.

  “Are you going to play all night?” asked Charade. “Or is there anything else we can do to make your time here at the Golden Lotus more enjoyable?”

  “Yeah, fuck off,” said Shifty. “I was doing well until you showed up.”

  I ignored him and stared into Charade’s eyes. “What did you have in mind?”

  “All things are possible here,” she said. “And for those with the money to spend, those things are easily obtained.”

  “How much to enjoy your company for a drink?”

  She smiled, her eyes as dark as the tide. “Just a drink?”

  I leaned in close to her ear and breathed, “I’m absolutely starved...for good conversation.”

  A small laugh escaped her lips as I pulled back. “I think I can accommodate you, Mr. Fury.”

  “Rick.”

  She inclined her head. “Rick. Follow me, please.”

  She led us across the dance floor, which parted for her like Moses and the Red Sea. On the other side, beneath the DJ platform, I saw a curtained off section of red velvet couches. Curtains obscured everything, twisting and blowing in the air currents. It was like a maze of silk, but Charade took me by the hand and guided me toward the back, where she sat down and waited for me to do the same.

 

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