Dead Heat (22 page)

“How will you do that?”

Lee checked the tip of his cigar again. “I’ve ways and means.”

Damp with sweat, she shifted a little, feeling the indentations from the plastic seat on the backs of her thighs. For the
life of her she couldn’t think why he would help her find her mother, and said so.

“You really want to know?”

“Yes, I do.”

Steadily smoking his cigar, he told her he was born in a river town called Fuling, which was noisy, dirty, overcrowded, and
the streets rose up the sides of the riverbank so steeply that they were like stairways and the residents had leg muscles
thick and hard as rope.

He’d been eight years old when his grandmother Hairlip Jiang, a Taoist fortune-teller he shared a room with on one of the
lower stairways of Fuling, told him that if you saved a person’s life, you were responsible for them forever. When he’d asked
why, she’d sighed and rolled her rheumy eyes.

“Ayieee! Young fireball, you know so little it makes me breathless! It is so simple that even an ignoramus like yourself can
grasp it. When you save a person’s life, you alter their destiny. If you intervene with destiny, you must be responsible for
it.”

He had argued with her about firemen, ambulance men, and earthquake rescue services, but she said it was their job, so it
was okay for them not to be responsible.

“If you are walking along a river and you see a man drowning, think twice before you dive in and save him,” Hairlip Jiang
had insisted. “You might not only change his destiny, but your own.”

When Lee fell silent, Georgia said, “But that doesn’t make you responsible for my mother.”

He looked at her like her boss would if she hadn’t been listening at the sales meeting. Patiently, he said, “If I hadn’t saved
you, she wouldn’t be where she is now.” Tapping a length of ash from his cigar, Lee added, “Think of me as your own private
hawk. Able to see far and wide and warn you of impending danger and, if necessary, to strike and kill in your defense.”

She wasn’t sure she found the thought of having Lee as her private hawk particularly reassuring, and remained silent.

“They give you a deadline?”

“Until Sunday. Then they’re going to”—she took an unsteady breath—“kill her.”

He nodded. “We’ve five days. Enough time to sort something.”

Watching the way his lips closed around his cigar made something inside her shiver, and she felt a strange urge to touch him.
It was relief, she thought, and gratitude. Relief that she had an ally who knew about her mother’s danger, gratitude for an
ally who was going to help get her back.

“You got a mobile?”

“Yes.”

“Number?”

She watched him punch it into his own phone, cigar clamped between those lips that never smiled.

“I’ll give you a buzz every day or so. See what’s happening.”

“Can I have your number?”

“I don’t think so.” He put his mobile back in his rear pocket. “You have any luck with Suzie’s brother? Wang Mingjun? Know
where he is?”

“Not really,” she said, then frowned. “How did you know his first name?”

“Wang Ming Shu. Wang Ming Jun.” He explained how Chinese names were different from their Western equivalents, in that their
first name was their surname, their second generational, their third current. His was Denham Fong Lee. Hers would be Parish
Davies Georgia.

“How come you want J—” she nearly said “Jon” by accident, and hastily amended, “Mingjun?”

“It’s important I get in touch.”

“What about?”

He shrugged. “This and that. You seen Carter lately?”

Her heart gave a bump. “Er . . . yesterday.”

“Any news on finding who sabotaged our aircraft?”

He said it so matter-of-factly, like he had when they’d been sharing her deep-fried oysters on the beach, that she paused.

“Daniel did . . . um, mention it.”

He brushed a speck of invisible dust from his arm. Studied his cigar some more. Then studied her. She found herself picking
at her bandage, unable to meet his eyes. The moisture on her skin was like a layer of warm oil and she wiped her face, longing
for a cold shower.

He said, “He thinks I’ve something to do with it?”

Startled, she looked up. “I didn’t say that.”

“He knows me. He knows I’m not suicidal.”

She was on the verge of saying that Daniel thought Lee had fabricated the sabotage story when she was struck by a sudden sensation
of being on a tightrope, balancing between two men with two different goals. One on the right side of the law, the other a
fighting dog with his own rules. She had no way of knowing what to say between them, and mistrusted each in their war against
the other. She was defending them both.

Lee said, “So where’s the spoke in our wheel?”

“Insurance,” she said, and told him that if the plane’s sabotage was proved, the insurance company wouldn’t pay out. “Becky
will owe the bank something in the region of sixty grand and it’ll cripple her.”

Lee frowned. “You’re right, but I’m amazed the insurers aren’t crawling all over it. They’ve an interest, after all. You know
who they are?”

She shook her head.

“My guess is someone doesn’t want us looking too hard,” he said, dropping his cigar and grinding it out with his boot. “Bet
Spider’s doing his worst.”

She was about to ask him more about Spider when he put a hand in his front pocket and withdrew his beeper.

“Sorry,” he said. “Got to go.”

Immediately he spun on his heel and headed for his Mitsubishi.

“No, wait!” Georgia got out of the Suzuki and raced after him. “Do you know anything about Ronnie Chen’s murder?”

He spoke over his shoulder. “Sure, I do.”

“Who killed him?”

He was already in his car, and had started the engine.

“Lee!”

Snapping on his seat belt, he picked a gear and released the handbrake. He glanced across at her as his foot pressed on the
gas.

“You’ve guessed right. Don’t push it.”

Shocked into immobility, she watched the Mitsubishi barrel through the gates and swing right and away from the town. A handful
of crimson bougainvillea petals drifted through the dust kicked up by his car and settled on the road. They looked like drops
of blood.

O
n her way to meet Yumuru at the gun club the following morning, Georgia thought about what Lee had said about hiring the car
in Ronnie Chen’s name.
A smokescreen.
He had wanted to lay a false trail, she realized, tricking anyone following him into thinking Ronnie was alive, when he’d
just murdered the man. Lee had obviously “stolen” Suzie, as the Chens thought, and it looked to her like it was a race between
the Chens and Lee; whoever got Suzie’s brother won the war.

Also, Lee appeared convinced that the Piper had been sabotaged, but she couldn’t be sure he wasn’t manipulating her to report
this back to Daniel. Lee could tell her a barefaced lie and she’d never know it. The man’s rocklike face was perfectly unreadable.

When she arrived at the gun club she saw Yumuru waiting for her in his Land Cruiser, and as she approached he opened the passenger
door and indicated she get inside.

Settled in the passenger seat, she watched as he reached behind his seat and, grabbing a large foil-wrapped package, plonked
it in her lap. It was still warm.

“You cooked breakfast?” she said, delighted.

He gave a grunt.

Georgia unwrapped the egg-and-bacon sandwiches, and passed Yumuru his before tucking into her own.

“I thought you’d be vegetarian,” she remarked.

“I am,” he said around a mouthful of bacon sandwich.

She gave a muffled laugh.

“Hey, don’t come the high horse with me,” he protested. “We always had a cooked breakfast in the services, and it’s thanks
to you I feel like I’m back in the army. You’re the devil, aren’t you?”

You little devil.

She was caught by a memory of her mother standing in the commune’s clearing in the rainforest, face startled. Georgia was
nine and had a ragged, very thin young dog at her side. She was out of breath, and so was the dog, whose tongue was lolling
almost to the ground.

“Isn’t that Jo Harris’s dog?”

“She’s mine,” said Georgia. “I’ve called her Pickle.”

“I think you’d better take her back, before Jo gets cross.”

“No!” Georgia put a hand on the dog’s skinny spine. “Jo was kicking her and Pickle was yelping but Jo wouldn’t stop. Look.”
She showed her mother the bloody gash on the dog’s rear leg, the fresh scabs on her muzzle and belly.

“You stole Jo’s dog?”

Georgia concentrated on stroking the rough fur on Pickle’s head. The dog looked up and gave a faint wag of its tail.

“You little devil.” Her mother laughed.

The next day Linette went and bought the animal off Jo for fifty bucks. Georgia and Dawn ate nothing but eggs that week since
their mother’s grocery budget had been blown, but they didn’t care. They had saved Pickle.

Around a mouthful of sandwich, Yumuru said, “How’s the finger?”

“Better, thanks.”

“It shouldn’t hold you up much. I’ll show you how to reload single-handed.”

He ran her through a preparatory talk while they ate—how to respect a gun, and when handed a gun, not to point it at anything
she didn’t want to shoot and to always check and double-check it was unloaded. He ran her through safe “carry” procedures
for a loaded gun, and when he’d finished his pep talk he passed her a pack of caramel Tim Tam cookies.

“Sugar hits before we begin,” he said.

Her favorites. He was definitely a mind reader and was, as she’d hoped, a wonderfully patient teacher. He showed her how to
use a 9mm Glock, a .38 revolver, a .22 rifle, then a .300 Winchester Magnum that had her ears ringing and her shoulders howling
with pain because, Yumuru calmly told her, she hadn’t been holding the weapon absolutely correct.

He showed her how to reload single-handed, and when they’d finished he went to the restroom, returning with his hair wet and
water soaking his shirt front as though he’d tried to splash away the cloying smells of gun oil and burned cordite.

“The things I do . . .” he said with a wry smile, then his expression turned somber. “You’re frightened, aren’t you? Angry
too, or you wouldn’t have spent the past two hours firing at a silhouette like it was a real person.”

He was right. Every time she’d aimed at the target, a black-and-white picture of an armed man racing toward her, she had pretended
it was Jason Chen in his leather jacket.

“Can’t you settle it without using guns?” he asked.

“I hope so,” she said, but she could hear the doubt in her voice.

Come midday, Georgia was approaching Evie’s office, watching a cockatoo gliding past her, screeching away, and thinking how
strange it was that such beautiful birds made such a terrible din, when she saw Jason Chen.

It was only a glimpse of him in the back of a black Mercedes sweeping past, windows open, but she knew it was him because
he turned his head and looked at her, right into her eyes.

For a second, sheer terror drenched her, and then she was running after the car, yelling, “Where’s my mother? Where is she,
dammit? Wait!”

The car powered away, quickly vanishing behind a thick clump of banana trees. By the time Georgia reached the park gates,
the black Merc was nowhere to be seen.

Knees like putty, she put a hand against a palm tree and tried to regain her breath.
He’d been waiting for her.

After a few seconds Georgia pushed herself from the palm and walked fairly steadily back down the road, trying to ignore her
finger’s dull throbbing. The painkillers she’d taken at the shooting range had kicked in a while back, and she knew it had
only started aching again because she’d been reminded of those white plastic shears with the little black button on the side.

Jason Chen had wanted to make sure she’d seen him, to keep her scared, and to let her know that he knew where she was staying.
He saw her as he would a cockroach; insignificant and easily crushed.

A ball of rage lodged itself beneath her breastbone, and she felt an urge to scream. One day, she thought, I’ll get the bastard.
No matter what it takes.

Inside the office, Evie was eating her way through a packet of marshmallows and reading a newspaper, fleshy bare feet propped
on a box of paper towels.

“You all right?” Evie asked. “You look a bit peaky.”

“Have you seen a black Merc around this morning?”

“Nope. Friend of yours?”

“No.” Georgia ran a hand over her cropped hair. “Just curious, that’s all.”

“Only thing of interest in my week was that copper Sergeant Carter turning up.” Evie gave her a keen look. “He dropped off
that mobile for you. Expensive prezzy, all up. You fancy him, then? He’s a bit of all right, wouldn’t blame you if you did.”

Georgia decided not to go along the matchmaking route and said, “Evie, do you know the story about Daniel Carter and Amy Robins?”

“Sure, everyone knows that one.”

“Not me.”

“Oh, right then.” She popped two marshmallows in her mouth and spoke as she ate. “Your mate Carter brought Robins down. Oh,
couple of years back now. She was part of some violent Triad gang in Brizzy and not over-enamored with being caught. She was
facing more than fifteen years behind bars, leaving two kids behind . . . Rumor has it she swore she’d get him back for it,
take his little girl and make her suffer . . . Tammy, isn’t it?”

“Tabby.”

“Yeah, right. Well, Robins knew where Daniel lived, where Tabby went to nursery school . . . She was going to get a mate to
pick up the little girl and hold her till she got out on bail, but when Carter went and picked Robins up from jail to take
her to court, funny thing, but Robins made a break for it and got shot in the head for her trouble.”

Disbelieving, Georgia said, “Daniel killed her? An unarmed woman?”

“Officially she grabbed the other sergeant’s gun. Riggs, I think it was, but unofficially, well, you’ve heard the story.”