Authors: Stephen Knight
“Nothing.”
Ryker nodded and checked his watch. Mid-afternoon was afoot, and he wanted to get to the downtown hotel in San Francisco and start tracking Meihua Shi. He wasn’t convinced she was the best candidate for the murder of Danny Lin, but she was the only lead they had. He rose to his feet.
“Thanks for your time. If you could check with your people in Shanghai about Shi’s background, that might be very helpful. Please contact Detective Fong with the information, whenever it arrives. Chee Wei, give the man your card.”
Chee Wei repeated what Ryker had said, and then handed Ren his card as instructed. His face was a blank mask, and Ren accepted the card with a similar expression. Chee Wei pointed out the telephone number, and turned to Ryker.
“You want to tell him anything else?”
Ryker considered it for a moment, then shook his head. “No. Tell this cock-sucking, dog-fucking, inbred son of a whore I don’t have more to say to him.”
Ren’s eyes widened slightly, and Ryker laughed. Some words truly had international meaning.
###
On the way back to San Francisco, Ryker called in a phone warrant giving him the ability to search the hotel room registered to Maggie Shi. He then called Morales, still on babysitting duty with the Zhu woman and gave him a quick brief. Morales wanted to meet them at the hotel, but Ryker told him to stay put. He didn’t know where Baluyevsky was, and until he got a handle on that, he didn’t want Xiaohui Zhu left unguarded.
“Man, this isn’t exactly easy duty over here,” Morales said. “This woman’s a hundred percent bat-shit crazy.”
“That’s a high-maintenance woman for you,” Ryker said, and then disconnected.
Chee Wei drove as fast as before, but wasn’t quite as reckless about it. He signaled his lane changes, and didn’t hit the brakes like he was trying to stop a speeding airliner on a short runway. He kept his eyes rooted on the freeway before them, and his chin was set.
“What’s wrong?”
Chee Wei didn’t look over at him. “That motherfucker threatened my family.”
“Ah. Yeah, he did. You should give your cousin a call, and let him know. I don’t think Ren is the kind of guy to make an empty threat, you know?”
“It’s four in the morning in Hong Kong. He won’t even answer the phone.”
“So leave a message?”
Chee Wei nodded, checked his mirrors, and merged into another lane. “You think this woman killed Danny Lin?”
“That’s what we’re going to find out.”
“Are we going to arrest her, or shake her hand?”
“What the hell do you think?” Ryker’s cell phone buzzed, and he checked the display. It was Spider. “This is Ryker.”
“What’s shaking, Hal? I just got a pulse from the DA’s office. You phoned in a warrant?”
“We have a lead. Not sure how hot it is, but it measures up with some new intel Fong picked up.” Ryker gave Furino the short version, elaborating only when Furino asked. It didn’t take long, and the more he talked about it, the slimmer it felt.
But at the same time, it felt
right
.
Spider didn’t comment right away when Ryker finished, and for a moment, he thought he’d lost the connection as the Lexus sped down the freeway toward the Golden Gate Bridge. “Spider, you there?”
“I’m here. That sounds a little thin, Hal.”
“I’m following up a lead, not bringing in a collar and typing up the arrest report for the DA to use at trial.”
“Yeah, yeah, I know. But Jericho’s going to be hearing about this, he’s got the DA’s office spooled up to contact him if there’s any official actions required on the Lin case. That’s how I got the call myself. The only difference is that Jericho’s probably on the golf course, while I’m sitting at home watching my ten-year-old clear a room full of zombies on his Xbox.”
“So what do you want?”
“I want you to loop me in if something develops. And track your time, both you and Fong qualify for OT compensation.”
“Oh, you got that.”
Ryker disconnected and looked over at Chee Wei. The younger detective’s face was almost expressionless, as if carved from stone. Ryker didn’t have anything further to say to him, so he just tightened his seat belt and leaned back in the seat.
CHAPTER 25
The office building was well secured, seemingly surrounded by dozens of video cameras. She knew the doors would be locked, as it was the weekend and there was only a skeleton workforce on the premises, at the very best. This was simultaneously to her advantage and a sort of drawback. If there had been more foot traffic entering and exiting the building, she might have had the opportunity to slink inside and take her chances that way. But that was not an option; to try such an approach in the late afternoon hours would have been carelessly brazen, not to mention a complete failure. While she had no doubt the building’s security team was less than effective—how often had they truly been tested?—she was certain that even on a Saturday afternoon, their numbers were substantial enough to delay her. And more importantly, one of them might be able to summon the police before she could effectively deal with them.
Another impediment to trying to slip in through the ground floor was that, after all these years of waiting, of practicing, of training…she found the blood lust she needed to complete her mission was fading. There had been enough death in her past already, enough to fill a dozen lifetimes with unending remorse and grief. The security guards in the lobby of 101 California were only trying to earn a living, and were not guarding Lin himself, per se. Killing them might give her a few minutes of advantage, but that advantage would be tenuous, at best. She’d had the opportunity to slip into Lin’s mansion the night before, but she’d squandered it, wasted the chance on killing his primary guard dog, just to send a message, to increase his terror a thousandfold, to ensure he knew his life was near its end. She cursed herself now for her stupidity, for prolonging the inevitable. Time had been wasted, and opportunity had been frittered away like rice thrown at a Western-style wedding, despite the fact that millions went hungry on a daily basis.
Bu zhan, bu he.
She repeated the hated axiom to herself, over and over, like a mantra. It took some time, minutes even, but soon her breast filled with the anger, the hatred, the components that allowed her to disassociate herself from the horrible events that lay in the near future.
Bu zhan. bu he. Bu zhan, bu he. Bu zhan, bu he.
No war, no peace. Without going to war with oneself, there was no chance for peace.
She embraced it fully now, as she had never allowed herself to do before. It was an interesting moment, drawing power from her enemy’s most hateful slogan, a slogan that had been the epitaph for thousands. Friends. Family. Her mother, her father. Her brother, so small, so defenseless.
If she’d had much humanity left, she might have shed another tear for their absence. But the part of her that felt pain at the touch of grief had perished long ago, and now the despair only served as fuel. As motivation.
She pulled her old Corolla into the driveway that led to the parking garage. She pulled the magnetic card she had taken from Baluyevsky’s body last night before fading into the night, and swiped it across the card reader before the sealed garage doors. Automatically, one of them opened, rolling upward into its ceiling recess. She pulled her car into the garage and drove around, looking for the black GTO. The garage was mostly deserted, and she had no trouble finding it. She parked a few spaces from it, then exited her car, carrying a black, nylon duffel bag over one shoulder. The bag’s color matched her clothes, baggy garments the color of midnight, loose enough to allow for freedom of movement. She walked toward the car and pulled a lock pick from one pocket.
In just a few moments, she had the trunk open. She removed the recording device she had planted in the vehicle the night before while Manning slept, sated. The memory of the early part of the night rose in her mind unbidden, and she remembered the rapture she had felt while riding him. It had been years since she had allowed herself to run so freely, to take pleasure, and in a rare moment, return it as well. She wished she had allowed herself to lie beside him throughout the night and take him again the following morning, but that was not to be. Never to be.
She knew Manning was perhaps more lethal than Baluyevsky, and most certainly smarter. Otherwise, Lin would not have recruited him. The old man must have sensed that Baluyevsky, for all his skill, would have been nothing more than a helpless sheep being led to the slaughter. Manning was not that way at all, and she knew if he’d had even an inkling as to who she was, she would be dead.
Walking toward the elevator bay, she inserted a pair of ear buds into the recording device’s RCA input. As she entered the bay (once again with the assistance of the magnetic card she had liberated from Baluyevsky’s bloodied corpse), she played back the conversation Manning and Lin had had during their drive back to San Francisco. She had missed nothing, and it presented no further clues as to what Manning’s plan was.
But she knew. Both men were upstairs, where there was almost no place to run. It was a trap. Manning intended to ambush her when she went for Lin Yubo.
She called the elevator and pressed the button for the 46th floor, which was also leased to Lin Industries. As smart as Manning doubtless was, there were other ways to defeat an ambush.
###
The manager and the hotel security officer granted Ryker and Chee Wei access to the room with barely any questioning. They stood in the doorway and watched while the two detectives pulled on latex gloves and went through the room with a practiced, methodical ease.
There wasn’t much to it. While the hotel room was certainly upscale, it was also bereft of anything other than the most carefully-manufactured character—most certainly nothing like the Taipan Room at the Mandarin. Ryker didn’t need to turn it upside down to see that it had barely been used, if at all. While he’d been hoping the room had been used as a home base, he was disappointed to find that wasn’t the case. The closets and dresser were bare, and there were no feminine toiletries of any sort in the bathroom. The glass-walled shower was bone dry, the towels perfectly folded and aligned in the rack above the toilet. Of course, housekeeping had been through. Ryker asked about that.
“I’ve already checked,” the hotel detective said. “The staff says the room’s pretty much been like this the entire time. No room service, no calls for extra towels, no nothing.”
Chee Wei carefully stripped the bed and inspecting the linens. He looked up at Ryker after a few minutes and shook his head.
“Nothing. Not a single hair. You want to get forensics in on this?”
Ryker debated that, then turned to the hotel manager and the detective. “You guys mind if we call in some extra troops? We’ll keep things as discreet as possible.”
“Is it absolutely necessary?” the manager asked. “This
is
a Saturday night, and we have plenty of filled rooms on this floor.”
Ryker nodded. “Sorry, but it is.”
The manager looked entirely unhappy about it, but he nodded his assent. Ryker looked at Chee Wei.
“Go ahead and call in the troops. And have the local district send a cruiser over.”
“Okay, but why?”
“Because you’re going to stay here and keep an eye on things. I’m headed cross-town.”
Chee Wei frowned. “Where to?”
“One-oh-one California. I’ll bet you twenty bucks I’ll find Lin and his hired boy Manning there.”
###
The time passed slowly, but Manning was used to waiting in place for something to happen. He had long ago trained himself to ignore boredom, and to stave off sleep through sheer discipline. Those were the major problems with pulling sentry duty like this. There was usually nothing to do, nothing to keep the mind occupied. Waiting in ambush took a great deal of patience, and Manning had had years to cultivate that specific skill, both inside the Army and outside in the private sector. While it had been some time since he’d had to tap that well of patience—working for Chen Gui was usually all rough-and-dirty work that was over in minutes, if not seconds—he still had the hunter’s knack for lying quietly in wait until his quarry showed itself.