“My son is getting older,” he said idly. “And so am I.”
Xan took a deep breath. “With all due respect, shan chu, your son-”
“My son,” came the stern reply, “is pak tsz sin-the position of White Paper Fan is a serious one, equal in rank to your own.”
“I know, but-”
“But you think he is not ready to ascend further, is that it?”
Xan tried to control his breathing. “I think all of the society’s money flows through his fingers,” he said carefully.
“That is his job,” said the man. “That is his duty.”
“I understand duty, shan chu,” Xan said slowly.
The man turned slightly and nodded. “I know you do, Xan.” He gestured idly toward the room, where Sally was still looking over the swords. “Who is the instructor?”
Xan shrugged. “Just one of the 49s,” he said. “A sze kau-one of our foot soldiers.”
“He is a good swordsman.”
“He is fast,” agreed Xan, “but he is impetuous.”
Sally looked over her shoulder. Yuan was looking toward Xan, probably wishing Xan would yell at her to get moving. By the time she faced him, Sally wanted Yuan to be impatient at the very least, and ideally mad. Glancing at Xan she saw he was still talking to the older man, but they were both looking her way. It was time to fight.
Walking slowly across the floor, Sally smiled sweetly as she held Yuan’s gaze. As she came closer, his sullen look transformed into an angry sneer, but Sally only increased the voltage of her smile. By the time they were facing each other, Yuan looked as if he were about to scream and Sally looked as if she’d just been asked to dance. She held her sword tightly in her right hand, her eyes never leaving Yuan’s face.
They bowed and Yuan came up quickly, raising his sword before he had even stood upright, his legs sliding apart as he prepared to lunge.
Sally never even stood up. Bent forward from her bow, she swung her sword across her body, catching the tip in her left hand and holding it like a staff. As Yuan started to crouch, Sally somersaulted forward, her hands holding the sword and pushing down against the floor, sending her into a spring-loaded handstand. Yuan started to jump and Sally lunged upward feet-first, her right heel connecting with his crotch.
Sally’s classmates gasped as Yuan choked on his own scream, the force of Sally’s legs sending him flying backward. By the time his back hit the floor and he curled into a fetal position, Sally had landed on her feet.
She stood over him, her sword inches from his face.
“I am the weapon,” she whispered fiercely.
Yuan yelped and curled tighter into a ball.
Xan coughed, as if stifling a laugh, then clapped his hands to signal the end of class.
The man next to him blinked, stunned at how quickly the match had ended. Turning to Xan, he spoke quietly but firmly, making it clear there would be no further discussion.
“She is ready,” he said. “In one month, Xan, give her to me.”
Chapter Nineteen
San Francisco, present day
A block from the retail madness of Union Square, two red columns entwined with golden dragons stood at the entrance to Chinatown. All the San Francisco guide books told you to walk the length of Grant Avenue, starting at the dragons and ending where Grant intersected Broadway and spilled out into North Beach.
Cape had walked from the Broadway side, passing storefronts catering to tourists and offices and groceries that were exclusively Chinese. When he reached the address he’d been given over the phone, he stepped back onto the street, looking up at the two-story building he was about to enter. It stood to the right of a grocery and to the left of a restaurant with Hunan in the name, which applied to every other Chinese restaurant in the city. The first floor housed a print shop, and through the plate glass to the right of the door Cape could see three men talking to a woman behind a counter-the woman pointing to samples of paper-tacked to the wall behind her. Just to the left of the front door was another door of plain wood, held open by an iron doorstop cast in the shape of a traditional Chinese dog. A stairway leading to the second floor started just past the threshold. Set into the wall alongside the door was a bronze plaque:
Chinatown Merchants Benevolent Association
Harold Yan, President
Cape took the stairs two at a time, pausing on the second floor landing to straighten his jacket. He wore a black sport coat over jeans and a white dress shirt but no tie. The pair of New Balance trail runners he’d worn earlier in the day had been traded for black dress shoes. He may not be ready to work at a bank, but at least he looked professional. A grown-up, if not an adult.
The woman in the reception area was young, Chinese, and very pretty. Cape put her at twenty-five, tops. She took his card with a pleasant smile and told him to take a seat, then picked up the handset on her phone and talked quietly to the person on the other end. Cape took one of four straight-backed chairs clustered around a square table littered with magazines and newspapers. In addition to the usual coffee-table clutter of the Chronicle and Examiner, Cape saw several Chinese-language newspapers and a few magazines, as well. Grabbing the nearest one from the pile, he saw that Harold Yan adorned the cover.
The phone buzzed and the young woman said something into the receiver that sounded like shur-dur, then hung up. She smiled warmly as she gestured toward a door in the wall behind her desk.
“Mister Yan will see you now,” she said. “The last office at the end of the hall.”
Cape thanked her and opened the door. The hallway was short, maybe twenty feet long, with two offices on each side and a door at the very end. He could hear voices coming from behind the doors on each side, but as he stepped onto the thick red carpeting of the hallway, his attention was on the photographs lining both walls.
The first showed Harold Yan shaking hands with the mayor in front of the elementary school located just around the corner. The second photo featured Yan with the president from the previous administration, standing with a group of ten men and women on the White House lawn. With the exception of the president, everyone in the photograph was Asian. The next two had Yan talking to the chief of police and the governor, respectively, both of whom appeared to be listening intently to something Yan was saying. By the time Cape reached the end of the hallway, he’d been given a walking tour of who’s who in politics.
The door opened before he could knock, Harold Yan smiling at him across the threshold. He was taller than Cape expected, with squared shoulders under a nicely tailored suit jacket. His handshake was firm, his smile relaxed. His eyes were large, the overhead fluorescents dancing around their edges as he turned and gestured toward a chair in front of his desk.
“Have a seat, detective,” said Yan. The office was fairly spartan. There was a beige love seat set against the left wall, above which a window looked out over Grant Street. Cape stood in front of a desk made of dark wood, its surface cluttered with papers, a phone, and a stack of file folders. In front of the desk sat two red chairs, their backs high, the seats themselves cushioned. On the right wall was a bookcase; Cape scanned the titles, noticing several books on politics and a few on religion and philosophy before he sat down and faced his host. Yan was already seated, his eyes friendly but inquisitive.