Strong Darkness (10 page)

Zhen scanned the crowd and found Brooks lurking near the rear not far from the protesters, a caustic look on his face as if he were sucking on something bitter. But he spotted something else as well that grabbed his eye and made him forget all about the fragments of his country's flag flapping in the breeze: a group of high school girls on some kind of field trip that had coincidentally brought them to the Alamo this morning. They were dressed like an assemblage of dolls in white blouses and plaid skirts that hung high on their thighs, porcelain dolls like the ones his oldest daughter had once collected and were still arranged just as she'd left them back in China before her death.

“This is truly a glorious day for both our nations,” he continued. “I am Li Zhen, CEO of the Yuyuan Corporation. My company has been welcomed by the people of Texas into this wonderful state, a favor we intend to repay many times over given this opportunity we consider a great privilege.”

Louder applause filtered through the crowd. Before him, two more members of the Yuyuan public relations department stretched a red ribbon between two stakes that had been hammered into the soft earth of Alamo Plaza. But Zhen's gaze again drifted well past it to that group of high school girls clustered near the back, the lips of their skirts tossed about by the breeze revealing even more of their shapely thighs. He suppressed a shudder, the air suddenly alternating between waves of heat and cold, as if the sun itself was betraying him. In his mind the many others gathered before him for this momentous occasion could read each and every one of his thoughts, and Zhen imagined a curtain drawing across his mind to keep his most base secrets safe.

“There are those in this country who would chastise and target China for our self-interested pursuits, just as there are those in China who choose to do the same with the United States. On the field of business, though, we stand side by side to make ourselves stronger through an honest and fruitful association, born of supply and demand. There is demand for a fifth generation wireless transmission network and Yuyuan has been graced with the privilege of supplying it to the betterment of all Americans. We were not selected because we were the lowest bidder or even the only company in the world capable of achieving such an arduous and unprecedented task. Yuyuan was selected because we were the best suited for the task, and we are grateful for the opportunity to prove this to all in this great country.”

Li Zhen fought to keep his eyes off the cluster of schoolgirls and failed completely. In his mind they were all naked now, mocking him in the rear of the crowd. Spectral shapes leering at him lasciviously, wetting their lips with their tongues and spreading their legs, the stiff breeze tossing their hair from one side to the other and back again. How many girls little older than this had he put on film to be immortalized and celebrated forever? Zhen's mind began to wander once more, taking him back to the times before his initial visit to the Triad, to when he was a different man entirely.
Peasant scum
, one of the captains had called him.

True enough then, he supposed, but not now, not ever again.

And yet to the befuddlement of Yuyuan's public relations people, Li Zhen decided to end his planned remarks early and stepped out from behind the podium. From there he made his way down off the makeshift stage toward the ribbon strung before him, intending to continue the ceremony without a microphone on ground level where the spectral schoolgirls would be harder to glimpse and thus tempt him. He recalled an old Chinese proverb that warned only the man who crosses the river at night knows the value of day, just now grasping its meaning. He had spent so long in the night that renouncing its darkness had become impossible. If he couldn't resist the sight of the uniformed schoolgirls, he must deny it to himself here in the day.

“Today I am proud to announce that the first segment of the new five G, fifth generation, wireless network is fully operational.” Zhen accepted a pair of scissors from the head of his PR department and eased the twin blades over the red ribbon. “Let this be a symbol of a new beginning,” he proclaimed proudly, “a new road that will take us into a bright future full of life and promise for our two peoples.”

And with that Zhen drew the scissors closed and felt them slice through the ribbon effortlessly. Applause rippled through the crowd and more mindless handshakes followed, while his attention was drawn to a school bus to which the schoolgirls, fully clothed once more, were now headed. Then a shadow crossed before him and he looked up to find Brooks standing there.

“You have absolutely no fucking idea what you've done,” the big man sneered.

Zhen felt his heart skip a beat over being caught in the act of leering at the schoolgirls. In just a matter of days now, Brooks would be dead, the schoolgirls too probably, and another quarter billion of Americans with them.

“You better hope what you pulled in Providence was worth the shit storm you've unleashed.”

“Sometimes your American idioms are lost on me,” Zhen said, breathing a sigh of relief.

“Then try this, Li. Of all the people in the world you don't want to piss off, you picked the absolute worst two.”

 

21

P
ROVIDENCE,
R
HODE
I
SLAND

Cort Wesley was sitting by Dylan's bedside when the sun rose high in the morning sky over the city of Providence. Caitlin had already left to return to Texas, their final conversation in the wake of her failed attempt to chase down the Chinese girl somehow responsible for Dylan being here starting out terse but finishing the way they always did.

*   *   *

“I overheard your call with Tepper,” he told her.

“How much did you hear?”

“Enough to know something's going on at home that needs your attention.”

He could see Caitlin hedging. His dad had been something of a gambler, a magician working the cards as well as a dice mechanic who thrived on ripping off mopes too distracted to follow his hands. Boone Masters had spoken to him a few times about “tells,” how he selected his marks from the varied candidates who submitted their applications just by showing up. Boone could read a man by his actions and mannerisms, most having more than their share.

Well, Cort Wesley knew Caitlin Strong had only one such tell: the way she twirled a finger through her hair, sometimes nibbling at the strands with her teeth. She'd get fidgety and her eyes would start looking past him, seeing other things.

“I can handle everything on this end,” he continued. “It's long past midnight, Ranger.”

“I just can't get the way that girl looked at me out of my mind.”

“Describe it.”

“Pleading. And she recognized me, Cort Wesley. I'm sure of it, just like I'm sure she was almost ready to talk before she ran off.”

*   *   *

Once Caitlin had left, Cort Wesley's thoughts veered the way they always did when he got scared or angry: to taking a two-by-four with rusty nails hammered through it to whoever had done this to his son. It was the only way he knew to deal with the tide of violence that always seemed to find him no matter his resolve to avoid it. It was, Cort Wesley supposed, his tell. For so many years in his life, first in Army Special Forces and then as a much-feared enforcer for the Branca crime family out of New Orleans, violence had been a first resort, not a last. It came naturally to him and he saw no reason to resist the temptation, couldn't have even if he wanted to.

And that made Cort Wesley wonder if the last five, six years had been a lie. That he'd fooled himself into believing it was possible to reconcile the worlds he moved in and the dueling instincts that battled to control him. Suddenly he smelled talcum powder and fresh root beer and turned toward the window to find old Leroy Epps standing there, winking his way.

“How you be, Bubba?”

 

22

P
ROVIDENCE,
R
HODE
I
SLAND

“Been a while, champ,” Cort Wesley said to the ghost of the man who was the best friend he'd ever had.

Epps grinned, showcasing the full rows of teeth that alternated between shiny white and the decaying brown Cort Wesley remembered better.
“Too long. How is it you only see me when times are tough, the world turned all upside down on you?”

“I don't know.”

“Believe I do, 'cause them's the times you start looking outside yourself for answers and your gaze turns naturally to me. Just like it used to when we was inside the Walls together.”

Epps held a bottle of root beer in a thin, liver-spotted hand. His lips were pale pink and crinkled with dryness. The early morning light filtering through the window cast his brown skin in a yellowish tint. He'd been a lifer in the brutal Huntsville prison known as the Walls, busted for killing a white man in self-defense; his friendship and guidance had gotten Cort Wesley through his years in captivity. The diabetes that would ultimately kill him had turned Leroy's eyes bloodshot and numbed his limbs years before the sores and infections set in. As a boxer, he'd fought for the middleweight crown on three different occasions, knocked out once and had the belt stolen from him on paid-off judges' scorecards two other times. He'd died three years into Cort Wesley's four-year incarceration, but ever since he always seemed to show up when needed the most. Whether a ghostly specter or a figment of his imagination, Cort Wesley had given up trying to figure out. He just accepted the fact of his presence, grateful that Leroy kept coming around to help him out of one scrape after another.

His old friend extended the bottle of root beer out toward Cort Wesley.
“Say, you want a swig?”

From this angle, a measure of the sun's rays seemed to pass straight through him. “No thanks, champ. You enjoy it.”

“Don't seem like you be enjoying much right now. You know the amazing thing about where I be these days?”

“What?”

“You can't see better really, just farther and deeper. By deeper, I means on the inside and out. And right now, old Leroy can see you making bad thoughts in your head.”

“Can't hide anything from you, can I, champ?”

“If it's in your head, you might as well write it down on a chalkboard from where I stand.”

“What is it you see?”

“You fixing to scramble a whole lot of people's brains. I remember how you used to deal with the shit of the world on the inside. Nothing seems to have changed on the out.”

Dylan snorted, something like the noise he made during nightmares hatched in the first few months after watching his mother murdered five or so years ago now. Cort Wesley glanced over, watched his son's eyelids seem to dance. A good sign, he hoped.

“One thing has,” he told Leroy, leaving his gaze where it was.

“You think the reason for the thoughts you got matters?”

“As a matter of fact, I do. I think it matters a whole lot.”

“A man ain't allowed to determine the circumstances of his own changing. In for a penny, in for a pound—you reading me here, bubba?”

“Not really.

“Goes like this. You think the cause changes things, but it really don't since the only change that matters is the kind that happens real deep inside a man at his core. You remember me telling you about that?”

“
Ilk
you called it.”

“Damn straight I did, 'cause that's what it be. You're a much different man today than you were when I had feet that made marks in the sand. Except when you dig down real deep where it takes someone like me to see what's going on. Down there you're the same and that's the way you're thinking right now. I ain't blaming you none—it's the way you deal with things, how you keep control by knowing what you can do when push comes to shove. I just want you to know the cost.”

“What's that?”

Leroy drained the rest of root beer, his thin neck expanding like a snake swallowing a rodent, and then laid the empty bottle down on the windowsill.
“Only way a man can change who he be is down at that core with his very ilk. Everything else is for show, and the problem is it seems you gotta step into the kind of shoes I'm wearing now to finish the job. So I guess my point is don't look for it, bubba, but be ready when it comes.”

“Whatever you say, champ.”

“Doesn't sound like you mean that much.”

Cort Wesley's gaze veered back to Dylan. “Somebody put my boy in a hospital and damn near killed him. Caitlin and I think it may have something to do with the porn industry and prostitution.”

“How is the Ranger?”
Leroy asked, the whites of his eyes brightening.

“Same as ever. Just like me.”

“You say that like it's a bad thing.”

“Isn't that what you just told me?”

“Which I take to mean you weren't really listening. No matter. What I say'll make sense to you soon enough, but I imagine some heads will have to get cracked first.”

“Nothing new there, champ.”

“Every day is new, bubba, every hour and minute too. That's what you learn where I'm at, where time don't have no matter at all. Like I told you, I can't see better, just farther but, man, what a sight!”

A doctor he hadn't met yet, wearing a white lab coat, pushed the door to Dylan's room all the way open and entered, startled when he saw Cort Wesley seated in the chair.

“You must be the boy's father.”

Cort Wesley rose, his knees cracking, noticing that Leroy Epps was gone. “I am. How's my son?”

“As his neurologist, that's what I came to check,” the doctor said, moving to the bed. “We should begin to see some improvement today.”