The Trail to Buddha's Mirror - Don Winslow [57]
“Help me!” Neal yelled to them.
The rest of Chin’s gang were now backing off in the opposite direction, back toward the observatory, flashing their choppers in front of them to hold off their advancing enemies. Leather Boy One and two of his comrades placed themselves squarely between Neal and Chin’s assistant, who began to back down the trail. Neal was surrounded again.
Fuck it, he thought, and knelt down over the Doorman. He had never seen so much blood. It was all over them. He took off his jacket, ripped off a sleeve, and wrapped it around the Doorman’s leg above the wound, trying to remember how to tie a proper tourniquet. The leg was almost severed, the tendons cut through. The Doorman had lost a lot of blood. His face was gray and his eyes were faint. He looked at Neal with reproach, an expression Neal read to mean, “You have wasted my sacrifice.”
Neal looked up at Leather Boy One.
“Get a doctor.”
Leather Boy One stepped over to them and kicked the Doorman in the leg, right on the wound. The Doorman howled. Neal held him as tightly as he could and stared up at Leather Boy One, memorizing his face. If I ever get out of this, he thought. Leather Boy One smiled broadly at him and raised his big knife over Neal’s face. Neal summoned up every bit of courage and rage he had to stare him in the face. Leather Boy One prepared to bring the chopper down in a smooth backhand stroke into Neal’s throat. Leather Boy One was smiling.
The bullet hit him squarely between the eyes. He crumpled to the ground with the smile still on what was left of his face. Two more silenced shots whooshed in the air and the rest of the Leather Boys scattered into the woods.
The man lowered the pistol and stepped into the light of a streetlamp. He was a white guy in a khaki suit.
“Mr. Carey,” he said. “You have fucked things up, but good.”
“Call an ambulance.”
The man stepped over and took a cursory look at the Doorman.
“It’s too late.”
“Call a fucking ambulance!”
The man spoke in a mild Southern accent. “The tendons are cut. Have you ever seen the life of a cripple in Kowloon? You’re not doing him any favors.”
The image of the beggar across the street from the hotel came back to Neal. He stroked the Doorman’s head and then felt along the side of his neck. There was no pulse.
“Believe me, he’s better off,” the man said. “Now it’s time to go.”
“What about the bodies?”
“They’ll be taken care of.”
Neal took off his watch and put it on the Doorman’s wrist. Then he looked up at the man.
“Who the hell are you?” he asked.
“You might say I’m a friend of the family.”
Neal figured that the house was somewhere on the Peak, because they hadn’t driven more than five minutes before they were let in through a guarded gate to a long driveway. Neal couldn’t see very well through the heavily tinted windows in the back of the car, but he could tell that the house was large and secluded. The man ushered him in through a downstairs door and led him down a hallway past a large study and into a bathroom.
“I’ll see if we can scare up some clean clothes,” the man said.
“Who—”
“I’ll answer all your questions later. Right now I don’t want you getting bloodstains all over these people’s nice furniture. Why don’t you get washed up and then join me in the study?”
The man left and Neal stripped off his clothes. His slacks and his shirt were sticky with blood. He bundled them up and threw them in a trashcan.