The Trail to Buddha's Mirror - Don Winslow [70]
“Where do you want to go?” Neal asked.
“It is arranged.”
It’s arranged. Swell.
“By your handlers. No way.”
“Not by my handlers. By them.” She waved her arm impatiently around the temple.
“By who?”
“By the monks. Do you really think I stopped to get our fortunes told? Do you think I am a superstitious idiot? I stopped to arrange a hiding place.”
“You know these people?”
“These people are all the same every place.” She looked at him stubbornly. “Long before there was a communist party, there was Kuan Yin. Now … let’s go!”
“I don’t know.”
Pendleton grabbed his elbow. “I do. I don’t want to hang around here waiting to get blasted to bits by a machine gun. You can trust Li Lan with your life. I have.”
Terrific, Doc. Every time I’ve trusted Li Lan, I’ve just barely gotten away with my frigging stupid inane life. Nevertheless, the good doctor has a point, and I don’t much fancy going back out on the street.
“So let’s get going,” said Neal.
“Finally.”
She knew just where she was going. She strode to the corner of the room and knelt down at the shrine, beneath the statue of an old man wearing a torn robe, a hideously mocking grin, and carrying what looked to Neal like a gold ingot. She performed the nine bows, and then took a small bell from the altar railing and rang it just once. Then she turned to Neal.
“Neal Carey,” she said, pointing at the statue, “meet Unpredictable Ghost. Unpredictable Ghost, Neal Carey.”
“Pleasure,” Neal muttered.
A monk appeared from behind the shrine. He was tall and thin. His head was shaved and he wore a plain brown robe and sandals. He returned Li Lan’s bow and motioned for them to follow him.
There was a red curtain behind the shrine, and behind the curtain was a wooden door. It opened to a stairway that took them down to a basement, which looked like a maintenance shop for the temple. Wooden lathes, jars of paint, brushes, candles, and parts of lanterns lay scattered about in no discernible order. Here and there a head or a hand or a trunk from a statue was set on a small worktable. Body Shop of the Gods, Neal thought. The monk led them through this room into a boiler room, through a plain, functional metal door, and into a corridor. Down two more steps and they entered a corrugated metal tube.
It was as narrow and dark as a walkway in a submarine. Every thirty feet a naked light bulb dangled from the low ceiling. Moisture dripped from the seams in the sides and tops of the tube. Neal could hear traffic noises above them and realized they were going underneath the street.
“Are we in the goddamn sewer?” he asked Li Lan.
“Quiet.”
He turned around to Pendleton. “Are we in the goddamn sewer?”
“Looks like a goddamn sewer to me.”
“Christ, I didn’t like reading Victor Hugo, never mind living it.”
“Quiet.”
They went up two steps and then through another door. They were in a basement of sorts, a small, musty, dirt-floored chamber. The monk stepped onto a short ladder and unlocked a hatch. Then he stood at the bottom and gestured for them to climb up. This was as far as he went.
Li Lan went up, then Pendleton. He took his sweet time about it, Neal thought, impatient to get above ground again. He followed Pendleton up the ladder and was instantly sorry.
He was in hell.
It was an alley, maybe four feet wide, maybe a little less. A sliver of daylight revealed filth-encrusted walls, on which moss, urine stains, and dirt competed for space. The ground beneath him was a mix of mud, shit, broken glass, and some cracked and broken planking.
Neal covered his mouth and nose with his hands, but the stench was overwhelming. His eyes teared and he fought back retching.
Tenements loomed above him, so high and close they looked as if they were about to topple over. Homemade bridges crossed the alley,