“Welcome to Kowloon,” Chin said. “The real Hong Kong.”
Neal sat down on the bed and began to go through the papers in his briefcase. “What does ‘Kowloon’ mean?”
“Nine dragons,” Chin answered as he lit up a Marlboro. He almost looked like a dragon himself, a big, dangerous beast puffing smoke. “The old people thought that the eight hills here were each dragons, and they were going to call the place Eight Dragons. Then the Sung Emperor came, and the Emperor is a dragon, so that made nine. Nine Dragons-Kowloon.”
“It looks pretty flat to me.”
“It is. Most of the hills were ‘dozed to make room.”
Neal took the brochure advertising Li Lan’s paintings from his briefcase and handed it to Chin. “Where is that address?”
“Is this the babe?”
“Yeah. Is it far from here?”
“Good looking. No, not far. Kansu Street is just up the Nathan Road. Yaumatei District. You get some sleep, then I’ll take you there.”
“I’m not tired.”
“She’s a painter?”
“Yeah.”
“Maybe she’d like to paint my picture. What do you think?”
“I think you should tell me how to get to two-thirty-seven Kansu Street.”
The beggar across the street scored some coins from a young woman tourist. Chin offered the pack of cigarettes to Neal, who shook his head.
“I think,” Chin said, “that I better take you there.”
“Why? Is it a dangerous neighborhood?”
“It’s not the neighborhood, it’s the situation.”
“What situation?”
“You tell me.”
Neal got up and looked out the window. The beggar would have been tall if had been able to stand up. He was certainly thin. He moved by supporting himself on his hands as he swung his torso like a gymnast on the bars of the horse. The crowds of pedestrians surged around him, creating an eddy in the stream of traffic.
The situation is, Neal thought, that I’m a renegade from my own company, which may or may not join the CIA in wanting me dead. The situation is that this woman set me up, maybe even set me up to be killed. The situation is that somehow I’m in love with her anyway and I need to warn her that she’s in danger. The situation is that I have to find her to get some answers before I can get on with my life.
“The situation is,” Neal said without turning away from the window, “that I need to talk to the woman at two-thirty-seven Kansu Street. That’s the situation.”
“Mark told me to take care of you.”
“And you have.”
“He said there are people looking for you.”
“There are.”
“So you need protection.”
Neal turned back from the window. If I boot him, he thought, he’ll lose face with his cousin and with his own boys. Besides, this is his turf and I couldn’t lose him if I tried. All I can do is make it harder on each of us.
“I’ll need to speak with her alone,”Neal said.
“Sure.”
“Let’s go.”
One thing you have to say for Ben Chin, Neal thought: he’s organized. As soon as they hit the street, three teenage boys fell in behind them. They all had that lean and hungry look that Caesar was so worried about, and they all wore white shirts over shiny black trousers and loafers. They dropped their cigarettes as soon as they saw Chin, and wordlessly arranged themselves in a fan formation about thirty feet behind Chin and Neal. A bucktoothed boy, smaller and skinnier than the others, ranged ahead of them, rarely looking back but figuring out their intended path anyway.
“Who do we have to look out for?” Chin asked him. “White guys?”
“Probably.”
Chin grimaced, then said, “Okay, no problem.”
“You have a scout ahead of us.”
“You have a good eye. But he’s not a scout. He’s a doorman. If we have to run, he opens a ‘door’ in the crowd for us and shuts it when we’re through.”
Neal knew what he meant. A doorman in a street operation is like a downfield blocker in a football game. When he sees his players running his way, he clobbers a civilian or two to open a hole. Once his own guys make it through the hole, he throws himself in the way of the pursuit. That’s the way it usually works, but if the doorman sees that it’s the opposition in the way instead of bystanders, he uses a knife or a gun or his hands to open the hole. When that happens the doorman is usually a goner unless the sweepers can get up to the action real fast. A doorman is expendable.
So Ben Chin sure knew what he was doing. Having a doorman ready is about the only way out of a net. Which was one of those good-news-bad-news jokes to Neaclass="underline" good that Chin was ready for a trap, bad that he thought he had to be.
Chin himself seemed relaxed. He moved easily through the crowd, glancing at the store windows and checking out the women. To the casual observer he looked like a Kowloon tough on a leisurely search for some fun. But Neal saw the alertness in his eyes and recognized that each scan of a portable radio or an approachable woman screened a search for potential trouble. Chin was watching out for something, and Neal had the feeling that he wasn’t looking for some white guys. The various kweilo tourists that passed by didn’t earn a second glance.
Neal felt his paranoia come back on him like a stale shirt. Or maybe it was the fact that he had been on all-night flight and hadn’t bothered to shower, shave, or get a meal. It felt like a mistake, but then he remembered that the last time he had stopped to indulge in such human comforts, he had let Pendleton and Li Lan skip out to Mill Valley. He wasn’t going to give them the chance this time.
Chin was staring up and to the left, and Neal braced himself for some action. He turned to follow Chin’s gaze, and saw that it led to a movie marquee. Chin was staring at the poster advertising the current feature. The three sweeps stopped in their tracks, and one of them turned around to cover the rear. The Doorman used the pause to cross over to the west side of Nathan Road, then he stopped on the corner to turn and watch his boss.
Chin didn’t see any of it, but then again, he didn’t have to. He had a well-trained team and he knew it, and this gave him little luxuries like freedom to check out a movie.
The marquee said that the theater was called the Astor, but that was the end of the English; everything else was in Chinese ideograms. The posters showed a brightly dressed Chinese couple in period costume gazing fondly at each other, and another still of the same couple bravely wielding gigantic swords against what looked like an army of grinning villains.
“This place has the latest flicks from China,” Ben Chin explained. He looked at his watch. “Maybe we can go this afternoon.”
The Book of Joe Graham, Chapter Seven, Verse Three: “Everyone has a weakness.”
“Yeah,” Neal said. “Let’s see how it goes.”
The Doorman was doing a quick shuffle-step across the street, like a puppy whose master is taking too long to open the door for a walk. Neal didn’t blame him; the Doorman’s job was a lonely one, especially when he was cut off from his team by a broad and busy avenue. The doorman had a lot of responsibility here. It was his job to give the “Walk/Don’t Walk” signal.
Street crossings are tricky in this kind of work. You have to time it so the traffic flow doesn’t cut the sweepers off from the people they’re protecting. You also have to keep a sharp eye on all the cars that are coming and going. One car might cut off the sweepers while the crew in a second car takes out the target. A street crossing is a vulnerable moment.
They did it flawlessly, the Doorman using subtle hand gestures to call the signals, and the rest of the team coming across in one smooth flow. It was as nifty a job as Neal had ever seen, and he thought he could detect a small look of relief on the Doorman’s face as he led them west on Kansu Street.
Tenement buildings with cheap-looking ground-floor flats made up most of Kansu Street. You couldn’t really call the buildings slums, but they were dirty and in need of a paint job. One of the main landlords must have gotten a great deal on pastel green paint, because the color dominated several buildings on one block. Narrow balconies, open to the street but roofed with corrugated metal, edged most of the buildings. Television antennae poked out over the balcony railings and made a convenient place from which to hang laundry. Beds and hammocks also filled a lot of the balconies, and here and there the tenants had nailed up sheets of tin to provide a little privacy for the family members who lived out there.