She holds herself rigid and he brings his face up close to hers and whispers, “Don’t fuck around here, Veronica.”
She tries to prevent a huge, gulping swallow, but it happens, anyway. Speer doesn’t try to move her or hurt her, he just holds her in place by her wrists, his tongue darting out of his mouth a few times, moistening the patch of skin below his nose.
She could scream again, but she knows there’s no one to hear her. And it’s likely both her wrists could be snapped in one movement.
“I know he was at the station with you the other night,” Speer says, clearly having difficulty keeping his voice in control. “I know he was right there next to you while you did your filthy show. You don’t know what you’re involved in here. You’ve got no idea. You picked the wrong side of the fence. And that’s not my fault. Your stupidity is not my fault. Sooner or later you’re going to have to realize that.”
He takes a stuttering breath and then his head drops to her neck and he begins to kiss her with a wet, open mouth and too much pressure. And then she feels his teeth and this controlled, limited biting begins. It hurts, but she stays silent, eyes closed.
A phrase comes to her that she hasn’t heard since high school. Love bruise.
And then he’s finished. She knows in the morning, on her body, warm or cold, there’ll be a round, brown mark on her neck, a sign that the night really happened.
He steps backward. His face is shining with sweat. There’s a foolish, limp grin on his mouth. He waits a moment, looks her up and down, and then in a movement that’s so fast it seems at odds with the man’s bulk, he steps to the side, releases one of her wrists, bends the other behind her back, pulls a set of handcuffs off his belt, manipulates her down to her knees, and cuffs her wrists together.
Then he pulls his revolver from a holster inside his wind-breaker and holds it up in front of her face, sideways, not pointing the muzzle at her, more like it was a visual aid, an advanced show-and-tell item. He grabs a handful of her hair at the back of her neck, gives a sharp tug until her head is aimed at the ceiling.
He bends down, brings his face next to the side of her head, pushes the tip of his tongue into her ear, and then swallows and whispers, “We’re going to see Flynn now. And if you give me any problems, I’ll put this gun in that filthy mouth of yours and turn you into a goddamn bonfire.”
41
Hannah takes the china teacup from her lips, swallows, and says, “There’s no way to tell someone what ginseng tastes like. They’ve got to try it themselves.”
Dr. Cheng nods to her and smiles, then places his cup back on the saucer that rests on his bony knee. “You give your friend Ike the recipe for the kelp soup with ginger. Two weeks, you’ll both feel like new people.”
They’re sitting in the living room of Cheng’s apartment above his herbarium. It’s a tiny place where he’s resided for over fifty years. The apartment is laid out like a modified bungalow or railroad flat, with three rooms running front to back. There’s a small galley kitchen at the head of the building, followed by the living room and a tiny bedroom with grass-cloth walls that contains only a bamboo trunk filled with coolie gowns and a thin straw mat that the doctor has used as a bed since the day he moved in.
In contrast with the bedroom, the living room is cramped and filled with all Cheng’s worldly possessions. The walls are lined with shelving on which rest hundreds of old, threadbare books, moldy leather and vellum and snakeskin volumes, their spines lined with Oriental characters. Alongside the books are various-sized mason jars filled with cloudy liquids and vague vegetablelike forms, things pickled and pruned and toxic-looking. There are no labels on any of the jars and Hannah wonders if the doctor has ever made a fatal mistake, dispensed a poison instead of a remedy, ended a life rather than saved one. She decides this is probably unlikely. Or at least it’s never happened by accident.
Hannah has never deceived herself about Dr. Cheng. This kindly old man serving her tea and inquiring about her friend’s health is still one of the deadly crime lords of the city. This humble-looking man has amassed a lifetime fortune off the opium trade, gambling, extortion, prostitution, political fixing, and very likely, murder for hire. She also knows that if their purposes crossed and a mutual resolution looked unlikely, neither one would flinch while going after the other. Cheng could have her neck snapped as easily as he serves her ginseng. And Hannah knows, if her back were against a wall, she could pull her Magnum and whack the old man with little or no hesitation.
And yet, they genuinely like each other. They find one another’s company pleasant and informative and beneficial. Hannah thinks that Cheng views this contradiction the same way she does. They’re both players in a machine that neither can completely understand. And they know that machine runs on the brutal and rigid laws of both business and nature. If those laws conspire to pit Hannah against Dr. Cheng, they’ll act accordingly and not waste time debating the nature of fate and free will. In the meantime, they’ll enjoy ginseng tea and quiet, often enlightening conversation.
The building is quiet. Downstairs, in the front of the shop, two of the doctor’s muscle-boys are playing a dice game at a small folding table. They nodded to Hannah as she came in the rear entrance and went up the wooden spiral stairwell to Cheng’s apartment. Unlike the doctor, the muscle-boys were dressed in double-breasted silk suits. She has a feeling that Cheng might order his staff to dress this way, a pointed contrast to his peasant attire.
Hannah is dressed in pleated black woolen slacks and a black leather blazer over a red silk blouse that she knows the doctor loves. Sometimes, when they’re sitting like this, talking quietly, segueing easily from subject to subject, roots and bark and herb medicine giving way to money movement and new players in and out of the Park, Hannah wishes she’d known Cheng fifty years ago, in his prime. Even then he was a committed bachelor, a weird Triad monk, married only to his vision and his plotting. At night, at home in her apartment, Hannah has caught herself once or twice wondering what it might have been like if she and the doctor were contemporaries. Could they have become lovers? Could she have seduced the lord of Little Asia into a very different kind of partnership, something beyond the bonds of importation fees and opium distribution? And if she did, whose world would they have moved into? Could she have made the crossover into full-blown Bangkok residency, no longer just a semi-untouchable envoy, not the one cop with the knowledge and connections that translate into a permanent visitor’s visa, but a woman with Park citizenship, an official denizen of Quinsigamond’s underbelly?
The fact that she’s not sure of her answer is what makes it difficult to broach the subject she came here to discuss — what to do with Fr. Todorov’s murderer. Hannah doesn’t want to clash with the old man. She knows that for all his pleasantries and hospitality, he’s uneasy with her presence here. She doesn’t want them to have to walk opposite sides of the street. But she knows Dr. Cheng has ideas about tradition and consistency. And she knows those ideas could conflict with her own plans.
She takes a breath and says quietly, “I owe you for tracking down the benzine, Doc. I hope it didn’t cost you too many favors.”
Cheng takes a dull silver coin out of the loose sleeve of his gown and begins to roll it around his fingers with the skill of a carnival pro. Hannah knows this is his lucky quarter and that the sight of it usually means a serious and possibly not-pleasant discussion is about to begin.