White Ginger (4 page)

Jason's voice surprised her. She usually got his voice mail. “It's been a while, Bai. How are you? How is Dan?”

“I'm good. Dan's good.” She hesitated. “Jason, I've got a bit of a situation.”

There was silence. She thought maybe she'd lost the connection.

“Am I going to be sorry I answered this call?” he replied with caution in his voice.

She gritted her teeth. “I've got a mess on my hands. I could really use your help.”

“Last time I helped you it cost me. This time I think there should be compensation.”

She swallowed an angry reply. His comment was only a tease, but she wasn't in the mood to play. Her hand hurt from smacking the
Wah Ching
around, and she was hungry. She could ignore the throbbing hand, but her empty stomach put her in a foul mood.

“I'll make it worth your while.”

She put meaning behind the words but couldn't filter out the resentment in her voice.

He must have sensed her mood. His voice changed, becoming more serious. “Where are you?”

“I'm at the Far East Café. And Jason, come alone.”

Jason disconnected before she could add anything more. She turned to look at Lee. He raised his eyebrows.

“You are such a slut,” he said with a sly grin on his face.

“Yeah, I'm working on that.”

Bai thought she might have made a mistake in calling Jason. His Chinese name was
Hu Lum
, forest tiger. There was a saying . . . something about letting sleeping tigers lie.

Jason was a violent man. She'd grown up around violent men and understood them well. Her grandfather had been legendary, perhaps the only
Shan Chu
in history to die of old age. In an organization where assassination was the ladder to success, his longevity spoke volumes about his survival skills. Her grandfather had raised her, and the brotherhood had become her family. It was, she mused, probably the most dysfunctional family in existence.

Jason pounded on the café door to disrupt Bai's reflections. He must have been close when she'd called. She stood to unlock the door. As he stepped into the room, the
Wah Ching
muttered then grew silent.

He looked at Bai and nodded a curt greeting. He wasn't smiling. His stolid appearance didn't make him any less handsome. He wore a black silk suit that showed off his lean, muscular body. Black hair, worn slicked back, gangster-style, accentuated his sharp features. He looked like the ultimate bad boy. Her stomach drew taut at the sight of him.

Jason turned to look at Lee, who remained sitting on a stool at the counter, and voiced a curt greeting. “Pickle licker.”

“Psychopath,” Lee replied while raising his eyebrows in salutation.

The
Wah Ching
flinched at the exchange. They didn't realize they were nicknames, crude endearments between old friends.

“What's going on, Bai?” Jason sounded tired. Dark circles showed under his eyes.

She nodded down at Jimmy, still sprawled on the floor and apparently content to stay there. “Two days ago, Jimmy Yan here, traded his little sister to the
Wah Ching
as payment for admittance into the gang. She's a fifteen-year-old high school student who's been sold into the sex trade. I want her back.”

Jason looked at Jimmy and frowned. He then turned aside to look at the rest of the
Wah Ching
and their girls before his eyes came back to rest on Bai. He spoke in a low voice. “I can't ask for her back. You'll have to go get her. I can provide you with information that might help you find her.”

She thought about his proposal and wasn't at all happy with the restrained offer. She'd hoped he would be able to scare the
Wah Ching
into giving up Jia Yan. “It'll have to do. I realize there are limitations to what you can do on my behalf. I'm a woman, after all. I stand outside the brotherhood. There are rules.”

“And I'm breaking most of those rules just by being here,” he said brusquely, taking her arm and leaning into her. “And I'm very familiar with the fact you're a woman. I don't need to be reminded.”

She bit down on her lip and swallowed the sharp reply she wanted to spout. Instead, she smiled sweetly. “You're grumpy when you're tired.”

“And you're shrill when you're hungry.”

She glared at him. He knew her too well. “You might try feeding me.”

“Sorry,” he replied. “I don't have the time. I'm a very busy man these days. I'm sure you understand.”

She moved closer and dropped her voice. “I understand that you're being an ass, but since you're doing me a favor I'll just suck it up.”

He stared at her long enough to make her uncomfortable then looked off into the distance. Bai assumed he was either gathering his thoughts or searching for a scathing reply. She was surprised when he quickly turned around and walked over to speak with the
Wah Ching
. The punks actually stood up to bow respectfully.

She walked over to take a seat next to Lee.

Jason addressed the boy gangsters in a dispassionate voice. “The
Wah Ching
are in Chinatown without my permission.” Jason's face remained expressionless. His arms were relaxed at his sides and his back ramrod straight. He'd gone deadly cold. “You're trying the patience of
Sun Yee On
.”

The
Wah Ching
remained silent with eyes cast down. He held their lives in his hand. It was within his rights to kill them for encroaching on his territory.

“But, ‘vicious as a tigress can be, she never eats her own cubs.'” He lectured them with a proverb. “You're free to go. You'll speak of this to no one. And don't let me catch you in Chinatown again without my consent.”

The skinny kid hesitated. He pointed to the pile of guns on the counter and spoke softly to Jason. Bai heard the words “
cheung gai,”
firearms. Jason tilted his head and stared at the thug in disbelief before his hand whipped out to grab the skinny kid's offending digit. Before the kid could protest, Jason had forced the finger back.

The crack of the breaking finger shocked Bai. She started to get off her stool. Lee's hand came down on her shoulder to hold her in place with an iron grip.

Jason snatched up a wad of napkins with lightning-fast hands and stuffed the paper into the boy's mouth to stifle the emergent scream. He pushed the boy roughly away. His eyes flashed angrily. “MY PATIENCE GROWS THIN!”

The
Wah Ching
and their girls disappeared like smoke.

Jason strolled over to speak with Jimmy, his voice harsh. “Go back to China. If I see you again, I'll kill you myself.”

Jason turned to Bai. “I'll see what I can find out about the girl and be in touch.” He started to turn away then turned back. He reached up to stroke her cheek with his fingers, his touch gentle. “I'll let you know when I'm ready to collect.”

An amused, almost playful, smile crossed his lips.

“Collect for what?” she asked, her tone tinged with disbelief. “I could have let them go myself. All you managed to do was piss them off before turning them loose. I thought you might reason with them and get the girl back or, at least, make some kind of deal with them. All you've managed to do is make things worse. You're unbelievable!”

He stared at her, his lips drawing taut. His hand came up to point an index finger in her face, but he couldn't bring himself to say anything. She stared at him and shook her head. He offered one final wave of his finger before storming out of the café, the glass rattling as the door slammed at his back.

“I love you, too,” she whispered under her breath.

Bai took a seat at the counter to let the angry heat dissipate from her face. She turned to find Lee staring at her.

“What?!”

“You're an embarrassment,” he said, shaking his head. “You can't be in the same room with Jason for five minutes without either tearing off his head or tearing off his pants. You need to make up your mind. You either love him or you don't.”

Embarrassed by her reaction to Jason, she turned away. Jason confused her. On the one hand, her rational mind told her it was over between them. Yet, she still loved him, which made her angry . . . which was completely irrational.

“It's not that simple,” she blurted.

Swiveling around on her stool, Bai found Ling staring at her with a pokerfaced expression. “Where do you find guys like these?”

“They're pretty,” Bai said, looking aside at Lee, “but, believe me, they're more trouble than they're worth.”

“That's easy for you to say,” Ling replied. “You're beautiful. You have choices.”

“You're young. When you get older, you'll realize nothing's that simple. Everything comes with a price.” She could see that Ling had stopped listening at “when you get older.” She decided to change the subject. “What do we do about you, Ling?”

Ling looked confused. “What do you mean?”

“You've been left with three children and no visible means of support. Do you want to try to find homes for you and your siblings? Do you want to go back to China and find your mother? What is it you want to do?”

“This is our home. My mother ran out on us. Why would I want anything to do with her?”

Bai looked around at the small café. It was dingy, dirty, and run-down.

“I know what you're thinking,” said Ling, defensively. “The place is a dump. I know that. But it doesn't have to be. I know how to cook. I've been cooking here since my mother took me out of school when I was twelve. I can make it work. I can make a home for my little brother and my sisters. It's not their fault we have a crappy mother. I just need a chance.”

The girl seemed sincere, but Bai still had doubts. “How old are you, Ling?”

“Eighteen.”

From the hesitation in her voice, Bai surmised that Ling wasn't really eighteen.

“I've always wanted to own a café,” interjected Lee. “Would you be interested in a silent partner, Ling? I could help you fix this place up and maybe lend a hand with the décor.”

Bai turned to look at him. Her face questioned his interference. He ignored her.

Ling looked at Lee warily then turned to Bai. “Can he be trusted?”

Bai shook her head in despair. “Lee's a man of his word. I trust him with my life. That doesn't mean he won't drive you nuts picking out the perfect colors for this place. You have to understand he's a perfectionist. It's the only thing keeping him from being perfect.”

“In my own defense,” Lee offered, “you won't recognize this place when I'm through with it.”

He grinned, a captivating smile with perfect white teeth.

Ling studied him. She looked worried. Her mouth forged into a hard line. With her hands clenched together in front of her, she asked, “You're
tongzhi
, aren't you?”

She'd asked if Lee was homosexual.

The smile slowly drifted from his face. “Why do you ask?”

“The other man, the one who scared away the
Wah Ching
, he called you ‘pickle licker.' You didn't get angry. I've seen you fight. You could have made him eat his words.”

Lee took a deep breath before answering. “Does it matter?”

Ling stood silent in thought. “I don't think so.” She took a small step toward him. “Are you sure you couldn't like girls—even a little bit?”

Ling's voice was wistful. Bai had seen the symptoms before. Women were constantly falling for Lee. His charm was like an airborne virus.

“It isn't that I don't like women,” he replied. “I love women. I just don't like having sex with them.”

“We're a lot alike in that regard,” Bai confided, hoping to change the subject.

He looked aside at her and scowled. She shrugged off the silent reprimand and turned to Ling. “To answer your question, Ling, you have a better chance of scoring Brad Pitt than you have of seducing Lee. Putting all that nonsense aside, do you want him as a business partner? I've warned you. He can be a pain in the ass.”

Ling's brow furrowed, and her hand came up to press against her lips. “It'll take a lot of money to fix this dump up. What do you want in return?”

“I'd like to be your business partner,” he replied. “I believe in investing in people. You appear to be willing to work hard to succeed. And, to tell the truth, I'm not good at running the day-to-day affairs of a business. I have a short attention span. Partnerships work for me.”

“Fifty-fifty partners?” Ling asked.

He put out his hand. “I'll have the partnership papers drawn up so you can look them over. My name's Lee Li, by the way. I don't believe we've been formally introduced.”

She took his hand timidly. “It's nice to meet you, Mr. Li.”

“Well, that's settled then,” Bai said. “Now we just have to find Jia and bring her home.”

Ling dropped Lee's hand reluctantly to turn to Bai. “I didn't know what Jimmy was up to.” Her voice was full of regret. “Him and his friends came in the middle of the night and just took her. I couldn't stop them. I should've at least tried. Jimmy's so stupid; he couldn't see the
Wah Ching
were just using him.”