Jason walked with Bai out of Tommy's office and into the lobby. He glanced at her then looked away with features that appeared to be set in stone. The elevator doors opened, and they stepped in to take the lift to the underground garage.
“Where are we going?” Bai asked.
“We're going to get the girl. I thought that's what you wanted.”
His voice implied he wasn't happy.
“Are you angry with me? Do you know where the
Wah Ching
are holding her? You could've said no if you hadn't wanted to help me.”
He took a deep breath and let it out slowly before answering. “No, I'm not angry with you. And no, I don't know where the girl is. But I do know where Sammy Tu bases his operations. If we can find him, there's a good chance the girl won't be too far away. As for my saying no to you, that's always been a problem. All I ask is that you follow my lead and try not to get in the way.”
She turned to him, doubt written across her features. “Are you thinking about going after him now? Why don't we try to sneak the girl out in the middle of the night?”
“Now is the best time to catch Sammy Tu. The sex trade runs late and sleeps late. I'm hoping we can catch the lazy pimp before word gets out you're looking for him. To do that, we need to get to him before he wakes up.”
The elevator doors dinged as they opened. Jason walked quickly out of the lift with Bai trailing behind. He stopped to open the passenger door of a black BMW, allowing her to enter, before walking around the car to the driver's side.
“Do you want to stop and pick up Lee?” he asked as he backed the car out of the parking stall.
The offer took Bai by surprise. She peered at his face, trying to figure out whether he was serious. As usual, his expression told her nothing. “What will your associates think?”
His face tightened. It wasn't until they'd exited the parking garage that he spoke. “It was never personal with Lee. You don't seem to be able to understand.”
His excuses didn't make her any less offended. “I think you fail to understand there's no way not to take it personally. You made the decision that Lee wasn't good enough to be your friend because he's gay. That was your choice.”
Jason threaded his way through traffic. He gripped the steering wheel until his knuckles blanched. His lips narrowed to a thin line.
“The decision's been made,” he stated harshly. “I sometimes wonder if I made the right choiceâtaking the oaths. But it's done. We both know there's no turning back.”
She turned to look at him. For an instant, their gazes met before she quickly averted her eyes. She understood what he was saying. He'd made his choice to join the brotherhood. In doing so, he'd given up his old life, his old friends . . . and her.
Reluctant to look at him, she fumbled around in her jacket pocket for her cell phone. When Lee answered, she asked him to wait on the street. He didn't ask any questions.
Lee stood on the sidewalk as the big beamer pulled up to the curb. He jumped into the back and slammed the door shut as Jason eased the car back into traffic.
Jason drove aggressively, weaving in and out of the choked thoroughfares to avoid double-parked vehicles and pedestrians, who demonstrated an inexplicable aversion to crosswalks. They flew down The Embarcadero and past the old Ferry Building before crossing the Bay Bridge to pick up Interstate 580 to Oakland.
Jason spoke loudly enough for Lee to hear in the backseat. “Sammy Tu is headquartered in an old Victorian in Oakland. It's near downtown. I understand he keeps an apartment on the third floor and leaves the bottom two floors for paying customers.”
“How do we get inside?” asked Lee.
Jason flashed a smile and glanced back at Lee. “You ring the bell.”
“And then what?” Bai asked.
He stared straight ahead at the road. “Then we run up the stairs and shoot anybody that gets in our way.”
Lee popped his head between the seats to look at Bai. He mouthed a silent “no” in protest of Jason's plan.
“We'll be fastâin and out,” Jason added, ignoring Lee's antics. “The less noise we make, the fewer people we'll have to shoot. We'll wear ski masks, but Sammy Tu will eventually realize you're responsible, Bai. Word will get around if you're successful in retrieving the girl. You're going to have an enemy if we leave him alive.”
“There's no need to kill anybody!” she snapped. “What is it with you and killing people? Let's just grab the girl and run. I'll deal with Sammy Tu, if and when the time comes.”
Jason grunted a reply.
The car exited off the interstate and onto Main Street in Oakland.
If you have money, you live in The Oakland Hills, an enclave of trees and gently rolling knolls. On the Bay side, the mean streets of Oakland are inhabited by the poor and the lawless. Downtown, gangs are endemic. Urban blight can be seen on every corner. Parts of the city look like a war zone, complete with barred windows and blast-shield doors.
Sammy Tu didn't live in the hills of Oakland.
Jason stopped the car on a side street populated by older homesâdilapidated Victorians. Clad in a patchwork of once-vibrant colors, the painted ladies looked tired and worn, remnants of a grander era. The street appeared deserted.
Jason pushed a button to pop open the trunk lid before exiting the car. Bai and Lee followed him to the back of the car where he entered a four-digit code to unlock a gun case bolted to the floor of the open compartment. Guns and mysterious green canisters filled the metal box.
Jason handed Lee a 7.62-caliber Nagant revolver equipped with a silencer. “It won't make any more noise than a cough.”
He then turned to Bai with an identical gun.
“I won't need it,” she said.
He stared at her, his eyes tight with frustration. He kept the gun and handed her a ski mask. “Once we're inside, put on the mask.”
Bai felt exposed while standing on the street with two armed men and a ski mask clasped in her hand. The avenue remained empty. If the local inhabitants noticed the strange activities, they showed remarkably good sense in minding their own business.
Jason stuffed one of the green canisters into the front pocket of his jacket where it made a large lump, ruining the lines in his tailored suit. He then closed the trunk and turned to walk across the street. Lee and Bai followed, still unsure of where they were going.
Wooden steps led to the veranda of an old Victorian. The porch wrapped around the house like a tattered shawl on an aged dowager. Columns, painted a faded pink, supported a frog-green overhang. Paint peeled and cracked to expose a patchwork of faded colors underneath.
Lee pushed a button next to a red door while Jason and Bai stepped back to remain out of sight. When nothing happened, he rang the bell again and pounded his fists against unyielding wood. Finally, a sleepy-eyed girl cracked the door. A heavy security chain kept the door from opening farther.
The girl was small, just over five feet, and Asian. She was pretty, despite the annoyed look on her face. She stared at Lee petulantly.
“I'm here for my date,” he claimed.
The girl looked him up and down, bleary-eyed, before replying in broken English. “You too early. Come back laterâfour.”
As she started to close the door, Lee put his foot in the opening and drew a money clip out of his pocket.
“I don't want to wait.”
He held up the bankroll so she could see the hundred-dollar bills clearly. “I'll make it worth your while. After all, âWealth is but dung, useful only when spread.'”
The girl looked at him, then at the fat bankroll. He waved the money in front of her face. She seemed to waver.
Lee pressed her. “Show me a good time, and I'll let you have it all.”
She shrugged nonchalantly, giving in to temptation, and closed the door far enough to release the chain. When she opened the door, Jason and Bai rushed in behind Lee, who already had his hand over the girl's mouth. She resisted for a moment then went still. Jason and Bai pulled on ski masks while Lee held the girl firmly in his grasp.
Stepping around the girl, Jason thrust the barrel of his pistol between her eyes and made a shushing gesture with his other hand. He jerked his head at Lee, who slowly removed his hand from the girl's mouth. When she didn't scream, Lee stepped away to pull on his own mask.
Jason pressed the silencer roughly against the girl's forehead. “Where is Sammy Tu?”
Tears rolled down the girl's cheeks “Not here.”
Bai could see she was telling the truth. The girl was too scared to lie. She barked at her. “Do you know where he is?”
The girl jerked around at the sound of Bai's voice. Their hostage seemed to realize, for the first time, there was a woman behind the mask. She stared at Bai blankly before replying. “No, he tell me nothing.”
Bai took the picture of Jia out of her pocket and showed it to the girl. “Have you seen her?”
The girl nodded her head frantically. “Yes, upstair, but Sammy take. Dunno where.”
Bai looked at Lee, who then bolted up the stairs to check out the girl's story.
Jason grabbed the girl's jaw roughly and turned her head to look at him. “Is there someone else here who will know where he is?”
The girl's eyes drifted to the right. She was hiding something. Jason cocked the hammer on the revolver.
“Your choice,” he whispered.
“No, wait,” the girl pleaded. “Chan and Shen in basementâthey maybe know where Sammy go.”
Jason eased the hammer down on the revolver as he stared at the girl. “What are they doing in the basement?”
“Dunno. Off-limits.”
Lee returned, taking the stairs two at a time. “The girl's telling the truth. The top floor's empty. But someone's been there recently. I found this.”
It was a pink cell phone with the initials J and Y. Jia Yan's phone.
Jason spoke to the girl as he grabbed her roughly by the arm. “Take us to the basement.”
The girl's head bounced up and down in agreement.
“Don't make a sound, and maybe you'll live,” he added.
They passed through a dining room and a round table cluttered with dirty dishes and empty beer bottles. The room smelled of cheap perfume, rancid food, and cigarettes. On the far wall was a door leading to the back of the house. As they walked through the door to the kitchen, the girl nodded toward another door across the room, positioned next to an old, white enameled stove the size of a Buick. “Basement. Don' tell I rat.”
Lee spoke to her comfortingly. “Don't worry. When we leave, you're going to go back to bed and forget we were ever here. You can tell them you slept through the whole thing.”
The girl nodded enthusiastically.
“Stay with her,” Jason said to Lee.
Jason turned and nodded to Bai before cautiously opening the door to the basement. He slipped swiftly and silently through the entry. She followed, dogging his footsteps as he moved rapidly down crude wooden steps.
Reaching the foot of the stairs, Bai stepped off onto soft soil. Light filtered down through cracks in the porch decking overhead. As she looked around, Bai realized the girl had been wrong in calling it a basement. It was a tall crawl space. The house was supported by thick brick columns eight feet high and spaced roughly ten feet apart.
Cautiously slipping around the stairwell with Jason, she spied a light at the far end of the crawl space near the back of the house. Two men, framed by the glow of an electric torch, held a conversation. One leaned against a brick column and talked, as the other man, standing knee-deep in the ground with a shovel in his hand, listened.
Jason motioned for her to stay behind him as he crept in the direction of the diggers. The ground rolled and swelled gently like waves on open water. The single bulb of the electric torch cast deep shadows, creating the impression the ground reached up to meet her. She concentrated on her footing while, at the same time, trying to keep an eye on the men under the light.
The man standing in the hole and leaning on a shovel saw them first. He picked the shovel up to point it at them and yelled, “Who are you?”
Jason ran forward to stab the barrel of his gun against the other man's head before the dazed gangster could figure out what was going on. Bai stood between the digger and the stairwell. She slipped the knife from the sheath on her arm. The digger froze. His eyes darted around furtively while his mouth hung slack.
Bai realized immediately the hole was a grave. Next to the grave lay a black plastic garment bag stuffed to the point of bursting. Her heart sank. She motioned for the grave digger to put down his shovel. When he'd tossed the potential weapon aside, she walked over to kneel down next to the garment bag and slit it open with her knife.
The stench of voided bowels made her head jerk back. The person stuffed in the bag was familiar. Standing up in shock, she took a step back and put a hand over the opening in her stocking cap to cover her mouth.
Bai motioned to the grave digger with her knife and took her hand from her mouth. “Sit down! And keep your hands in the air where I can see them.”
Jason shoved his hostage toward the grave. He gestured with the barrel of his gun for the man to take a seat next to his friend. “Sit.”
The gangsters did as they were told. Deep frowns etched their faces. Bai could empathize. She wasn't enamored of the situation either.
“Who's in the bag?” asked Jason.
“Mrs. Yan.”
“I thought she went back to China.”
“In spirit only, it would seem.”
Bai's mind whirled with questions. She knew a mother's instincts to protect her young were strong and wondered what Mrs. Yan had gotten herself into. Did Jimmy Yan know his mother was dead? What had happened to Jia? The woman's death posed more questions than answers.
She caught Jason's eye and motioned in the direction of the men sitting in the partially dug grave. “Keep an eye on them for a minute. I need some time with Mrs. Yan.”