Dead in Hong Kong (Nick Teffinger Thriller) (24 page)

HE GOT FOUR STEPS AWAY when Fan Rae grabbed his arm and pulled him to the side. “I forgot to tell you—I got a return phone call while you were getting ready for your date,” she said.

“My investigation, not my date,” he said. “What’d you get?”

“Vance Wu is no ordinary guy,” she said. “He’s an archeological broker.”

Teffinger
looked at his watch.

He needed to leave now if he was going to be there on time.

“What’s that?”

“He finds buyers for people who are selling expensive, historically unique things—treasures, in effect,” she said. “He has a network of contacts that spans the world.”

“Sounds like a fun job,”
Teffinger
said. “Travel, exotic ports of call, high stakes, mysterious underground meetings. If you see him tonight, ask him if he wants a partner.”

She punched him on the arm.

“
Teffinger
, you’re never serious about anything.”

“I’m serious about one thing,” he said.

“Oh yeah, what?”

“If you don’t know the answer to that then you haven’t been paying attention.”

He walked away.

Then
he
heard her shout, “Coffee.”

He gave her the thumbs up without turning around.

FIFTEEN MINUTES LATER,
Teffinger
knocked on Brittany So Kwak’s door. She answered wearing a classy gray dress and chic high-heels, neither of which she had when she left the flat this afternoon, meaning she bought them just for this occasion.

She smelled like strawberries and looked dangerous.

For a brief moment,
Teffinger
pictured her and Fan Rae huddled in a shadowy corner of the night, planning something.

Weird.

Where did that come from?

“I didn’t think you’d show,” she said.

“Well, I’m glad you were wrong,” he said. “So, what’s the agenda?”

She shrugged.

“Why don’t you take me somewhere and get me drunk?”

Teffinger
nodded.

“Sounds reasonable.”

Day Seven—August 9

Sunday Evening

______________

THE TIPSY TYPHOON was a bar in the Cotai Storm Hotel & Casino meant to replicate an old wooden pirate ship in the deadly throes of a savage storm, complete with churning waters, ripped sails, lightning arcs and rolling thunder. Jack Poon spontaneously conceived the idea two years ago as he watched a typhoon ravage Thailand on the news. Kong watched his target,
Nick
Teffinger
, take Brittany So Kwak to the darkest corner of the Tipsy Typhoon and fill her with drinks.

Brittany So Kwak looked nice.

Sexy.

Sultry.

Kong liked her.

He didn’t like
Teffinger
though
, n
ot a bit
, not from the second he laid eyes on
him.
He wasn’t sure he could take the man in a fair fight.
Teffinger
might have had the same chiseled body as Kong at some point in his life, but didn’t now. Still, the man had obvious strength and moved like a cat. Plus he was bigger. More importantly, though, he had a street-fighter look.

Although Kong was ostensibly there for surveillance and protection, he knew otherwise.

Right now, at this second, Jack Poon was watching
Teffinger
on a flat-screen monitor. There was nothing Kong could see that Poon couldn’t. Hell, Poon probably had a microphone planted on the table.

No, Kong wasn’t there for surveillance.

He was there for action, if Poon decided he wanted action taken. That, in turn, would depend on what Brittany So Kwak extracted from the man.

KONG’S CELL PHONE RANG and the voice of Emmanuelle came through. “Where are you?” she asked.

“Macau, on business.”

“We had a development,” she said. “I got Prarie back.”

“How’d you do that?”

“It’s a long story,” she said. “I want you to talk to her.”

“Sure, put her on.”

Another female voice came through and asked him a number of questions, none of which seemed particularly relevant to anything. Then Emmanuelle came back on.

“What was that all about?” Kong asked.

“I wanted her to hear your voice,” Emmanuelle said. “If you were the person from the club, she’d know it.”

Kong grunted.

“Tricky,” he said.

“Sorry about that.”

“I assume I passed.”

“You did,” Emmanuelle said. “You’re free tomorrow, I hope.”

He thought about it.

He needed to kill d’Asia.

He’d get up early and do it in the morning
, w
rap up by noon.

“As far as I know right now, I should be free in the afternoon,” he said.

“Good, we’ll hook up then. I have some ideas I’m working on.”

Day Seven—August 9

Sunday Evening

______________

PRARIE GOT AN AMAZING STORY from Emmanuelle, about how she got abducted by Kong, taken to a dungeon, and ended up forming a pact with him. Emmanuelle and Kong went to the Pak’s house to find Prarie and to interrogate Pak about the paintings. “He said you escaped,” Emmanuelle said. “At first it rang true, but then while Kong and I were driving back to the city, I started to have my doubts. I doubled back. Kong never even knew that I did it.”

She saw the men from the warehouse throw Prarie in the trunk of a car.

She followed, t
hen got along side and rammed them.

The accident followed.

“I knew you might get killed,” Emmanuelle said. “I made a judgment call. It turned out okay but my hands are still shaking.”

Prarie retreated in thought.

“So you never went into Pak’s house after you doubled back,” she said.

Correct.

“They killed him,” Prarie said. “One of them buried a hatchet in the back of his head.”

“Really? He’s dead?”

Prarie nodded.

“They would have killed me too,” she said. “Not just because I knew they killed Pak, but because I killed their buddy, what’s his name?”

“Pierre Durand.”

Right.

Him.

“I can’t believe I killed a man and can’t even remember his name,” Prarie said. “So your judgment call was the right one; they would have killed me for sure The only question is how much they would have tortured me to get me to talk before they did it.” She hugged Emmanuelle. “Have I said Thanks yet for saving my life?”

“Actually, no.”

Prarie smiled.

“Well don’t worry, I will.”

Emmanuelle laughed.

“I’ll watch for it,” she said. Then she got serious. “It’s funny how things work. If Pak hadn’t put you down on the bluff, you would have been in the house when those guys showed up and started swinging the hatchet. More than likely the heat of that moment would have spilled over to you.”

THEY CONTEMPLATED IT.

Then Emmanuelle said, “Oh my God, I just thought of something.”

“What?”

“Well, Pak passed out because of that death star I hit him with,” she said. “When he woke up, he looked out the window and said something about the tide cresting more than an hour ago. It didn’t mean anything to me at the time. Looking back on it, though, he must have thought you were dead. That’s why he didn’t tell us where you were, because I had already told him that if you were dead, he would be next.”

Prarie shivered.

“This is all too much,” she said. “I need sleep.”

Emmanuelle did too.

They showered
, t
hen fell asleep as soon as their heads dropped.

Day Eight—August 10

Monday Morning

______________

SYDNEY
WOKE
TEFFINGER
Monday morning with bad news. “The chief wants you back in Denver,” she said. “The official reason is that he’s stretched the budget as far as he can with this trip of yours. Unofficially, though, if you want my opinion, I think he wants to talk to you about something.”

“You mean the videotape,”
Teffinger
said.

“That’s my opinion,”
Sydney
said, “but like I said, I could be wrong.”

Teffinger
looked at Fan Rae, still asleep
, s
o damned gorgeous.

He thought of d’Asia, e
qually gorgeous.

“Tell the chief I can’t leave right now,” he said. “Tell him I’m going to pay for this whole trip out of my own pocket. I’m not going to submit any reimbursement requests. So he can relax about the money.”

“
Nick
, you don’t have—”

“I’ll sell the ’67 if I have to,” he said. “I have three weeks of vacation coming. Tell the chief I’m taking my vacation time, starting the day I left. As far as the videotape goes, that might become moot anyway.”

Silence.

Then, “What does that mean?”

“It means I like Hong Kong,” he said.

“You’re not coming back?”

“Maybe yes and maybe no,” he said. “I have to wait and see how things play out. By the way, don’t spread it around. This is just between you and me.”

A pause.

“It’s that Fan Rae Fan woman,”
Sydney
said. “She has you in her spell.”

True.

She did.

But d’Asia did too.

They both did.

“You need to get some distance from that place and clear your head,” she said. “You’ve spent a lot of years and a lot of energy building up your career here in Denver. Do you really want to throw all that away?” She exhaled. “I’m half tempted to fly there and drag you back.”

“I just thought of something,” he said.

“What?”

“I need coffee.”

“God, you’re impossible sometimes.”

TEFFINGER
FOUND A CASINO RESTAURANT that served pancakes smothered under strawberries and whipped cream. With a fork in his right hand and a coffee cup in his left, he gave Fan Rae more details about his “date” w
ith Brittany So Kwak last night, w
here he got nothing out of the woman.

“I came away with the feeling that she really isn’t working the Syling Wu case very hard,” he said.

Fan Rae cocked her head.

“That doesn’t make sense,” she said. “If Poon laid his money down, he could walk to the moon on it. You think she’d be billing the hell out of him.”

Teffinger
grunted.

“That part she’s doing,”
Teffinger
said. “I’m not saying she isn’t putting in the hours. I’m saying she isn’t putting in the creativity.”

“Maybe she doesn’t have any.”

“No, she has it,” he said. “She’s just not breaking it out.”

“How do you know?”

He shrugged and took a long swallow of coffee.

“Just a gut feeling,” he said.

Fan Rae got a distant look.

Then she said, “If you’re right, maybe Poon hired her to not find anything out.”

Huh?

“Maybe she’s in a conspiracy with Poon to trick Vance Wu into thinking she’s doing an investigation when she really isn’t,” Fan Rae said.

Teffinger
wrinkled his forehead.

“Why would he do that?”

“To protect the person who took Syling Wu,” Fan Rae said.

“That’s a pretty farfetched theory.”

Oh?

Really?

“It’s not that farfetched if Poon is actually the one who took Syling Wu,” she said. “He’d be smart enough to set up the whole Brittany So Kwak thing as a charade.”

“Why would Poon take Syling Wu?”

“I don’t know,” she said. “Why would anybody take her?”

Teffinger
exhaled.

“You’re making my brain hurt.”

Day Eight—August 10

Monday Morning

______________

ABERDEEN HARBOUR, on the south side of Hong Kong Island, was an endless maze of docks and boats, nestled among clumps and strings of high rise buildings. Fisherman’s Village was where the fisherman tied their boats together at the end of the day, free of charge, so long as they had a fisherman’s license. They partied there at night and hung fish from their roofs to dry. Just down from that was the Jumbo Floating Restaurant, three stories high and a city block long. Docks were everywhere, housing everything from ancient steel rigs to contemporary state-of-the-art yachts.