The Trail to Buddha's Mirror - Don Winslow [54]
“I don’t want to be set up again.”
The rush onto the Star Ferry made a New York subway look like a spring cotillion. The same crowd that had been standing patiently and passively on the ramp moments earlier turned into an aggressive mob as soon as the entrance chain was dropped. Splitting into gangs, trios, couples, and the odd loner, the mob spilled onto the double-decked, double-ended old green-and-white vessel, flipping the backs across the benches to face forward.
Neal, a survivor of the Broadway Local, just managed to stay on his feet as the crowd shot off the ramp and pushed him forward. He claimed an apparently scorned seat toward the rear of the boat and wondered how Ben Chin was going to stay with him. The boat filled up quickly and took off quickly. There was no time for lollygagging; the Star Ferry made the nine-minute crossing 455 times a day.
It was some nine minutes. From sea level, Hong Kong’s skyscrapers loomed like castle keeps, their gray steel and glass standing in sharp contrast to the green hills above. A staggering array of boat traffic jammed the waters of the bay. Private water taxis zipped back and forth while old junks lumbered across. Sampan pilots struggled with their sculling oars to maneuver through the chop left by the motorboats. A tugboat guided a gigantic ocean liner into a dock on the Kowloon side.
Lights began to glow in the early dusk, and neon reflections started to appear on the water, casting faint red, blue, and yellow shades on the bay, the boats, and even the ferry passengers. Neal’s arm dangled out the window, and he watched it change color as the neon sign proclaiming Tudor Whiskey flashed.
Most of the passengers seemed unaffected by the scene. Only a handful of scattered tourists were paying any attention at all. The regular commuters talked or read newspapers or loudly spat sunflower seed hulls onto the deck. Ben Chin was just sitting, staring impassively ahead, three rows behind Neal.
Neal leaned out to get a view of the Peak. His chest tightened. She’ll be there, he thought. What will she look like? What will she be wearing? What will she say? Will she be holding Pendleton’s hand? A fierce pang of jealousy ripped through him.
Jesus, Neal, he told himself. At least try to remember the job, the gig. The job is about Pendleton, not Li Lan. Yeah, but you took yourself off the job, remember? There is no job. There won’t be any job. There’s only her.
The crowd began to stir in anticipation of the docking. Neal stood up and resisted the impulse to look behind him. Chin would doubtless pick him up. The crew dropped the chains and the mob surged off the boat.
Neal had studied his guidebook and knew where to go. He came off the dock and crossed wide, busy Connaught Road and headed up past City Hall to Des Voeux Road, where he took a left and found the tramway station on the bottom of Garden Road.
He waited about five minutes for the small green-and-white funicular car to arrive, then found a window seat on the right side toward the front. Chin sat down on the left-side aisle toward the rear. Neal didn’t see any of Chin’s crew, and figured that the gang leader had kept his word.
The tram started with a jerk and began to pull up the steep slope of the peak. Most of the commuters got off on the lower two stops at Kennedy Road and Macdonnell Road. Thick vegetation of bamboo and fir trees flanked the narrow tram line on both sides, and sheer rock ledges showed where the line had been blasted through. At times the grade was so steep that the tram car seemed to defy gravity, and Neal felt that it would pitch over backward, tumbling them down on top of the tall commercial buildings that seemed to stand directly beneath and behind. He had an image of the steel cable snapping from the strain and the car hurtling backward through the air, end over end, until it finally crashed into the concrete and steel of the city below. Neal was afraid of heights.
The tram finally pulled into the Upper Peak Station. Neal got off on shaky legs. She had told him to meet