The Trail to Buddha's Mirror - Don Winslow [83]
The monk came out of the booth and led Simms into the temple, to a statue of a grotesque old man carrying a bar of silver. The monk pointed to the silver bar and then pointed to Simms.
Simms didn’t tell the monk that he spoke perfect Chinese, thank you very much, he just reached into his wallet and pulled out another C-note. The damn Buddhists were worse than the Catholics for soaking you for money.
The monk took the bill, disappeared briefly into the booth, then came back in a few minutes and led Simms through a door and down into some sort of tunnel. Simms was glad he had the piece with him, even though he had no intention of going all the way into the Walled City. The deal was that they would bring Carey halfway into the tunnel and turn him over as soon as they counted the cash.
Honcho stepped into the hovel, poured himself a cup of tea, and sat down to strip the AK. The old man glared at him.
“Where have you been?” the old man asked.
“To the movies,” Honcho answered. He looked up into the cage at Neal. “He still in the clouds?”
“Where is the boy? I need help here, you know.”
“I don’t think he’s coming back. The last time I saw him he was chasing a car. He didn’t catch it.”
That much was true. One of Chin’s shooters had woken up enough to pop a couple into the kid as he was running up Nathan Road.
“Not much help anyway,” the old man said.
“Not much of a boy.”
“How longer will the kweilo be here? If much longer, I want a new boy.”
“Not much longer.”
“You found a buyer?”
Honcho pulled a wad of bills from his pocket.
“Four buyers,” he said. “Well, three now.”
“How do you sell something three times?” the old man asked.
“Practice.”
Simms waited in the tunnel. He figured he was underneath Lion Rock Road, which made sense if they were going to bring Carey out from the Walled City. He wished they’d hurry the hell up, though. Water was dripping from the ceiling onto his suit and the tunnel was like a steambath. Why couldn’t they behave like white people and just deliver Carey to a civilized hotel room?
He heard footsteps coming down the tunnel. Four sets. He made out the faces through the steam. Not a pair of round eyes to be seen.
Simms edged his back up against the wall and waited for their leader to get closer. The leader was easy to pick out—slick dresser, sly leer.
“Did you forget something?” Simms asked.
“Maybe you’d like a nice Chinese boy,” Honcho answered.
“Maybe I’d like what I paid for.”
“Vietnamese? I have a ten-year-old you’d like.”
“I want the American,” Simms said, more out of principle than anything. He knew when a deal had gone south. Now it was matter of getting out.
“Sorry,” Honcho said. He didn’t have to worry about a kweilo faggot stupid enough to walk into a tunnel all by himself.
Simms just smiled as two of the lads edged up alongside of him. The third stood behind the leader’s shoulder.
“Then give me my money.”
“No cash refunds. Only merchandise.”
“I’ll take my money.”
Simms knew he wasn’t going to get any cash. But he needed a negotiating point. Something along the order of “You let me out of here and I’ll forget about it.”
Honcho pointed his chin at the two guys who were pressing in on Simms.
“Talk to the complaint department.”
The kid on Simms’s left pulled a switchblade, flicked it open, and waved it in front of Simms’s face. Simms pulled a silenced pistol from his pocket, stuck it into the side of the kid’s knee, and squeezed the trigger.
“I don’t think so,” Simms said.
He stepped over the kid, who was flopping around like a fish in the bottom of a boat.
“I’ll be leaving now,” said Simms.
13
Joe Graham stood impatiently on a narrow, cracked sidewalk on Lion Rock Road, outside one of the tenement buildings that ringed the Walled City like giant barricades. He shivered a little as he watched a “dentist” in a ground-floor stall dig into the tooth of one of his patients with a hand-powered