The Black Dragon (20 page)

She looks at the cards in Danny's hands. “So. How about that trick then?”

“I'm missing one now,” he says. It makes him feel uneasy—that deck's been with him a long time. He thinks of the cards scattering on the changing-room floor at Ballstone. How long ago
that
seems. If only sneering Jamie could see him now, what would he think?

Sing Sing reaches into her jeans pocket.

“I'll show you a trick,” she says, and snaps a card into the air, holding it in front of his face. “Your card, right?”

It's the ace. A slight dent on one corner.

“I picked it up after I thumped that stupid triad.”

“Thanks,” says Danny. “Thanks a lot.”

“Don't mention it.”

He studies her face carefully, glad to have a few minutes with Sing Sing to himself. “So do you live here? In Hong Kong?”

“With Chow. Since my mother died. Years ago.”

“I'm sorry. How . . . did she die?”

“Killed herself. Not long after she got smuggled across from the mainland,” Sing Sing says, and turns away, as if just commenting on a small piece of bad luck or disappointing weather. But there's a hesitation in her outbreath. More emotion than she's letting on. “Uncle Charlie adopted me.”

“And your dad?”

“He's dead too. Triad. One bad dude, people say. Nobody sorry he's dead, believe me! So—no parents left. Well, I guess you know what that feels like . . .”

She lets the thought hang. Zamora's coming back from the bar with packets of sandwiches.

“How old were you when your mum died—” Danny starts to say, but the girl just shakes her head sharply in a way that could mean anything from apology to refusal. Like he's made a bad move in chess.

“Anyone hungry then?” Zamora says, ripping the cellophane off the first pack.

“Hungry as a horse,” Sing Sing says brightly.

“Girl after my own heart,” the major says. “I got you both tuna. Hope that's OK. And I've treated myself to some beer.”

Danny chews his sandwich thoughtfully and watches the water roll in the ferry's wake. The pulpy mouthful of bread and fish seems to have no taste whatsoever. He swallows mechanically.
Need to keep strength up. Who knows what's coming next?
Food and sleep have been in pretty short supply over the last thirty-six hours.

They've reached the point of no return—the Houdini point, as Dad used to call it. The moment you step from the platform onto the wire, the moment the aerialist lets herself tumble and drop, trusting the silk is knotted right to arrest the fall at the last second. The moment the escapologist plunges into the tank . . . water churning . . .

Dad flailing in the water . . .

I thought he was drowning that night. Something threw him, but he wouldn't talk about it. And when Zamora smashed the tank, and the audience saw the water gushing, I knew we were in trouble.

And there was something else. Something not right. Mum and Dad argued a couple of times that week. Very unusual, that. Mum said: “You're spending too much time with them. Something's going to go wrong.”

And Dad said: “I've just got to do one more blasted trip, Lily. Then it's done.”

And Mum said: “What if you get something else wrong, Harry?”

Something was worrying her, making her words ragged, her accent stronger like it always was when emotion was coursing her blood.

If I could just put a finger on it . . . the look in her eyes. In Dad's.

Sing Sing, wolfing down her own sandwich, watches him intently all the while. She swallows hard, takes a swig of water. Points at the deck of cards in his hands.

“So. Show me a trick then? Now you've got them all.”

Danny turns back from the window. He takes three cards off the top of his deck.

“Do you know Find the Lady?” he says. “You've just got to pick the queen of hearts. I show you the cards and then throw them down. And you put a finger on the back of the right one.”

“OK. I'll have a go.”

Danny shows the cards, then flops the cards down, overthrowing the queen in a beautifully disguised sleight. Would fool anyone.

“That one!” Sing Sing says. And she's right.

“Again,” she says. “Double or quits . . .”

In three goes, she finds the queen twice. That's unheard of—normally he can confuse even the seasoned circus folk who know the scam backwards.
A bit annoying to be outdone
, he thinks. But it just adds to the intrigue that clings to Sing Sing like a fragrance.

“Very good,” she says. “But I grew up around stuff like that. And sometimes it's hard to hide the lady, isn't it? So maybe we find your aunt!”

“With you two on the case, anything's possible,” Zamora says. “So what happens when we get to Cheung Chau?”

“Find the pier that Lo scribbled on the Post-it note,” Danny says. “And then improvise.”

The ferry engines ease down as they rumble through the solid arms of Cheung Chau's typhoon walls into a picture-postcard harbor.

A few windsurfers are visible in the distance, their white sails carefree and unencumbered as they run with the wind and the last of the light.

The harbor itself is crammed with fishing boats. They bob against the quayside, some offloading their catch, some readying for sea or awaiting their crews, some abandoned and forgotten and burning slowly with rust. Along the quayside colored lights are winking into life, making the fish stalls and bars and restaurants look festive. A holiday atmosphere—its tranquility deepened by the complete absence of cars on the island's little roads.

“OK, boys,” Sing Sing says as the ferry disgorges its passengers and they shuffle down the ramp. “I'll go and ask about Sai Wan Pier. You keep your eyes open.”

Danny watches her go, then scans the surroundings, his eyes sparking green and brown. The harborside is a world away from the one they have left just half an hour ago. Small buildings cluster the quayside sprouting sun-bleached awnings and laundry flapping in the breeze. To either side of the village, the houses run away on the undulating spine of the landscape, slowly giving way to low, peaceful hills, like sleeping dogs in the warm evening. Small groups of tourists relax in the bars, but they're outnumbered by locals taking the air. A constant shuffle of bikes, the ringing of their bells. In any other circumstances this would be a place to switch off and unwind. But now Danny's pulse is kicking quick time. Will there be triads alerted to watch for them even here? Or is the real danger still to come when they find Sai Wan?

Sing Sing trots quickly back toward them.

“OK. The pier's just round the other end of this bay, past the Thousand Buddha Temple.”

“The what?” Zamora says.

“Tourist trap these days,” she says. “But very beautiful. We can take a trishaw.”

“Did you ask if anyone had seen Aunt Laura?” Danny says as they head for a tangle of waiting pedal cabs.

“No. We need to keep a low profile,” she murmurs. “Lots of triads on this anthill.”

She and Danny hop into the trishaw on the stand and Zamora takes the next one.

“Sai Wan Pier, please,” Sing Sing says. “And get a move on!”

Their rider pushes down his strong, sinewy legs on the pedals and they're away along the quayside, for all the world as if they're just off to take the evening air too.

At one of the rowdier bars, a middle-aged man with cropped, bleached hair sits slumped in his plastic chair, phone held hard to his ear. He puts his little finger in the other one to concentrate over the noise. Getting hurriedly to his feet, he scowls and stomps out into the road.

In the distance Zamora's bowler is just visible over the seat of the second trishaw.

The man hangs up abruptly, then punches another number on his phone, walking down the street, talking fast all the while. From a small gap between the shops and houses a mini police car emerges. The driver beckons to the man with bleached hair and sets his blue flashers spinning.

27

HOW TO BE PERFECTLY STILL AMIDST CHAOS

In the front trishaw Sing Sing turns to Danny. “Guy in the bar told me there are occasional boat trips from that pier. Fishing business. And some tourist stuff to outer islands. Wanshans.”

“The what-Shans?”

“Hundred or more little islands. Some have maybe twenty, thirty people on them. Others deserted.”

“We should get a message to Ricard, shouldn't we?”

Sing Sing scrunches up her face, shaking her head. “Only if he answers the phone. If we leave a voicemail there's no telling who may get it. And his home line may be tapped. That
gwai daan
Lo's out to get him. Trying to frame him up.”

“
Gwai daan
?”

“Turtle egg. Idiot.”

They're passing a row of fish stalls—every shape and hue of sea creature Danny has ever imagined, all hauled from the depths, some still alive in plastic tanks, others gasping their last on beds of ice. He stares at them as they whip past. For them it's like drowning . . .

The buildings start to space out as they move away from the heart of Cheung Chau village, and they run on into the evening, clinging to the shoreline. A breeze slides in off the South China Sea. Sing Sing taps Danny's shoulder and points out to where it has come from, into the vast emptiness beyond.

“Typhoon season,” she says. “Think there might be something brewing out there . . .”

Her voice trails off.

Two men are standing in the middle of the street. They've got a small cart—a kind of souped-up golf buggy—turned across the trishaws' path, blocking the route. It sits on big, all-terrain tires, and its striped canopy flaps in the wind. The men are waving to the lead cyclist to stop, their faces dark.
They're not out to play golf, that's for sure
, Danny thinks, gripping his seat that little bit tighter.

“Triads,” Sing Sing says, as their driver brakes hard and looks around at his passengers uncertainly.

Zamora's cab pulls level.

“Trouble?” he says, getting to his feet like a sea captain on his bridge, peering forward. Sing Sing nods.

“Local boys, I think. After the reward. I'll see if I can talk them round. Uncle Charlie's name can still scare the pants off some of them. Stay here.”

“Come off it, Miss Sing Sing, I can't let you—”

“No arguing!”

She jumps down from the trishaw and marches briskly toward the two men. Again the staccato Cantonese, waving her hands, as if
they
are the ones who should be scared of
her
.

“She's a real live wire, that one,” Zamora says. “Perhaps I should give her a hand, though.”

“Wait a minute, Major. She knows what she's doing.”

Sing Sing is pushing one of the men repeatedly in the chest, her voice crisp on the evening air.
She's trying to take the momentum
, Danny realizes.
Put them on the back foot
. But the man's smile is brittle on his flattened face, about to snap.
Might need a plan B.

Danny looks around, assessing their situation. Above and to the left of the buggy and the heated conversation squats a temple. Stylized lions stand guard, weathered and smoothed by the sea winds, and writhing dragons spiral along the length of its ornate roof. Beneath that, vermilion pillars shield a darkened space beyond. The bite of incense on the breeze.

No obvious way out, a high wall either side of the temple. Sea to the other side . . .

An engine is approaching from behind them. Danny glances around to see a low-slung Harley Davidson motorbike rumbling to a stop beside his cab. The rider, an elderly man in an oversized biker's jacket, peers at them quizzically, and then gets off to see what the holdup is. He spits a chunk of phlegm into the dust and then stomps away to the cart blocking the road, his own voice raised in the argument.

The triads look up, distracted.

Suddenly Sing Sing takes her chance. She snaps into action, kicking out hard at one of the two men, winding him badly—but before she can react the other has her by the shoulders. She tries to throw him, but he's ready for her and sweeps hard with his foot, throwing her off balance.

“Run, boys! RUN!” she shouts, blocking a crunching blow. The elderly bike rider is shouting angrily now, trying to wade into the brawl to help Sing Sing. He wrestles one of the men to the ground, but is then whacked over the back of the head and slumps unconscious into the gutter. Another gangster kicks him for good measure.

Zamora glances over his shoulder. There's a siren just audible in the distance.

“Let's go, Danny. We'll just borrow that poor man's bike . . .”

“We should help! And we can't leave Sing Sing.”

Zamora is already astride the rumbling Harley. “No choice, Danny.”

Sing Sing's back on her feet, giving as good as she gets. Rapidly parrying blows from both men, then driving them backward. She glances back at Danny.

“Move it, Woo!” she shouts. “It's you they want, not me. Get out of here!”

Danny hesitates as the words hit home.
It's you they want.
Not just these men blocking their way. Maybe not even just the Black Dragon? It's starting to feel like everything's been pointing toward a confrontation—that focuses on him. Is that possible? Ricard and Sing Sing and Chow and Lo all seem to know something about him, to be somehow expecting to see him. And yet the decision to travel was so last minute. Fired by the explosion at school.

But then there were those dots on the charred paper.
This isn't about Laura at all. Not really. It's about me. They're after me. But why? And who are they?

“Get on the bike, Danny,” Zamora shouts, revving the throttle. “We can't help Laura if we're cooling our heels in some police cell. Or worse.”

Danny takes one more look at Sing Sing. It seems like she's about to break free and make a run for it, and glances their way, her fierce gaze urging him to move. That decides it. He jumps onto the pillion, throwing his arms around the major's solid form. Two more men have appeared from out of the shadows of the temple, drawing guns from shoulder holsters. Definitely not monks . . .