Touch of the White Tiger (19 page)

I waved a hand in the air. “No more. I’ve heard enough for one night.” I’d heard too much.

Naturally, the first thing I did was comb my two-flat for signs of bugging devices. Let me paint a better picture—I ran through the apartment like a raving maniac, pulling out drawers, flipping through papers and looking under beds. I found nada.

Hearing the commotion, Lola knocked on the door. She had been playing cards with Jimmy downstairs, and he took the service elevator, joining us a few minutes later.

“What is going on here?” Lola demanded to know, her plump fists planted on either side of the cylinder that used to be her waist.

Jimmy wheeled after me. “What is it, Angel? What are you looking for? I can help.”

“I’m looking for an eavesdropping device,” I muttered angrily as I flashed a pin light under the easy chair.

“What on earth for?” Lola asked. “You broke up a card game I was about to win.”

I growled with frustration and stood, shooing a miniature dust bunny from my hair with a swipe of a hand. “It’s all about you, isn’t it, Lola? It’s always about you.”

“Now, now, Angel,” Jimmy said in his irritatingly avuncular style. “Your mother—”

“My mother,” I shot back at him with seething precision, “is Sydney Bassett.”

“Oh!” Lola sucked in an audible gasp of air and staggered a few steps back.

“Spare me the histrionics,” I continued mercilessly. “They don’t give out Academy Awards for melodrama.”

“Now, Angel,” Jimmy said, “be nice.”

“Nice? She betrayed me to the most notorious syndicate leader in Chicago!”

“I did not!”

I slowly circled Lola, looking closer than I ever had before.
She wore a surprisingly tasteful beige and cream-colored pantsuit. Maybe Gorky had hired her a clothing consultant. Her face, though wrinkled and almost cartoonish in its expressiveness, was expertly painted with refined cosmetics. If I didn’t know better, I’d think she was trying to emulate Sydney. If so, my earlier comment had been even crueler than I’d intended.

“What was your price,
Mom?”
I said sarcastically. “Was it the clothing he bought you? Or the attention he gave you? How much did Vladimir Gorky have to pay to get you to betray your only child?”

“I did not betray you!”

“My apartment has been bugged by the R.M.O.! You don’t call that betrayal? I trusted you. I thought we had an agreement and were starting to have a real relationship.”

“The R.M.O. was spying on you for your own protection, sweetie.”

“Bullshit! Gorky has brainwashed you, Lola. If you’re not going to tell me where the bugs are planted, I don’t want to hear another word from you.”

“But I don’t know where they are!”

I grabbed two fistfuls of my hair, ready to tear it out. “They’ve got to be somewhere. I’ve searched every surface.”

“M-maybe,” Lola said through sniffles as she dabbed her eyes with a tissue, “th-they’re planted in-inside something.”

When she burst into tears, I turned my back on her. Lola had always used tears as a last defense, but I refused to be drawn in this time. Instead, I considered what she’d said.

“Maybe you’re right. Maybe the bugging devices are implanted in something I’d never consider as a suspect location.”

I scanned the room, looking for any object that had recently been introduced into my environment. Something that was mechanical or manufactured but didn’t look like it. Something
that looked natural enough that I might overlook it. My gaze breezed in a 360-degree pattern until I spotted Jimmy. Then I stopped.

“What?” he asked, regarding me with trepidation. “Why are you looking at me like that?”

“Oh, my God,” I whispered as it all became clear in a flash. “It was you all along.”

“Now, Angel,” Jimmy said, smiling nervously, “I haven’t done a thing.”

I slowly stalked toward the compubot as the pieces of the puzzle fell into place. “You arrived the day that I was bonded out of the Crypt.”

“It was a coincidence,” he reasoned.

“And I was so busy that you moved in before I had a chance to say no. I tried to have you returned, but I couldn’t get through the phone system. Now I know why. You were planted here as an operative.”

“No, Angel!”

“Leave him alone.” Lola came to Jimmy’s defense, standing behind his wheelchair, gripping the rubber handles as if she was prepared to run me over. “Stop picking on him.”

I glared at her like a gunslinger in the old west. “Back away, Lola. You don’t know what you’re doing. He’s a compubot.”

“Compubots have feelings, too.”

“That’s just a TV jingle from a public-service announcement. I bought into that propaganda myself.” I returned my focus to Jimmy. He still wore the same tailored pajamas he’d arrived in. He looked up at me like a puppy dog caught rifling through the trash. “Now I realize that his feelings are nothing more than top-notch programming.”

“But I still
feel
, Angel,” Jimmy said. “And one of my feelings is loyalty. I would never spy on you.”

“Jimmy, I know you believe what you just said. But this
has nothing to do with you. It has everything to do with the people who manufactured you and installed eavesdropping equipment somewhere…inside you. Probably on orders from Gorky. With my luck, I’ll probably find out he’s on the board of directors of AutoMates, Inc.”

“No, no, he’s not,” Jimmy said in a nervous rush, cowering as I loomed over him.

“How would you know?” I rasped, finally at the breaking point. “You’re just a pawn, like all of us in this room.”

“Speak for yourself!” Lola snapped.

I held out my hand. “I need your programming chip, Jimmy. If you don’t do it, I will.”

“No.” He shook his head almost desperately.

I marveled that his creators had somehow managed to recreate human survival instinct. Or was he simply panicked over the prospect of failing to achieve his prime directive of spying on me?

“I won’t let you take it, Angel. I came here to replace Bogie. I’ve done nothing but try to please you.”

“Give it to me.”

“No!”

I grabbed his shoulders, pulled him forward, and reached between his back and the wheelchair, fumbling to find the chip.

“Leave him alone!” Lola shouted, shoving me.

“Damn it, Lola!” I tried to push her away without hurting her while Jimmy made a sneaky bid to escape. I stuck my foot between the spokes of one of his two large wheels, but he kept going. “Ow! Stop!”

I grabbed his armrest and bent over to wheedle my foot free. Pain shot through my ribs. Just then Lola whopped the side of my head with a chair cushion. Moaning and cursing, fending off her blows, I nevertheless managed to dig behind Jimmy and grab the computer chip edging out just above the
waistband of his pajama bottoms. He started to fling himself out of the chair, but I yanked out what amounted to his brain which, oddly enough, was closer to his ass than his head.

That ended the struggle. Jimmy sat upright, closed his eyes and went into synthesleep mode. Lola glared at me as if I’d killed him.

“I’ve seen a side of you today, Angel, that shames me.”

I clutched the chip in my fist. “I’m sorry. I don’t like myself very much right now, either. But that’s the least of my concerns. Please, Lola, go back downstairs and leave me alone for a few days. We’ll hash things out when all of this is over.”

At the rate I was going, that would be sometime during the next century.

White Tiger, Blue Dragon

T
here were nearly a hundred hits on my Info-Tech system, from reporters requesting interviews to fellow retributionists who’d shaken down tidbits of information to a request for half of my liver from the Living Donor Organ Bank, which had called for the umpteenth time this month. If that group didn’t stop harassing me, I was going to have to vent my spleen.

I didn’t return any calls, except for a quick message to my lawyer’s system. I crashed, slept fitfully and woke up just before dawn. I must have been working things out in my dreams, because I knew exactly what I had to do as soon as my eyes popped open.

I felt my way in semidarkness to the kitchen. Through an open window, I heard Mike’s chanting floating up from the garden. Tranquil rose-colored light streaked across the build
ing-etched horizon. I heaved a sigh, finally reclaiming a semblance of centeredness. I retrieved my crystal ball, which I kept on the counter, and placed it at the kitchen table.

I put my hands on the cool glass and mentally invited more details of Marco’s brutal crime. As always, I was relieved when the crystal ball grew warm and sparks of orange light glowed inside. I still wasn’t convinced I was a bona-fide psychic. My ability seemed too accidental. I guess I didn’t trust anything I couldn’t control.

This time, though, my eagerness for a vision warred with dread that I might actually have one. Did Marco have even more dark secrets? Could I take any more?

I focused on the vision, surprised that it was not at all what I had expected. Marco was walking arm-in-arm with a beautiful young woman. He was young, too. And there was a child tagging along behind them, maybe three years old. The woman laughed at something he said. He stopped, stroked her cheek, laughed himself, then kissed her deeply.

They’re in love
. The certainty hit my heart like a wrecking ball. Marco scooped up the child and they walked on.

“Oh, Lord,” I whispered, “is Marco married?”

As soon as I voiced the question, the vision disappeared. The glass grew cold. The session had been successful. I had more answers. Unfortunately, they were answers to questions I hadn’t even thought to ask.

Marco arrived at the mayoral mansion just as the streetlights flickered out for the day. A rosy hint of sunrise tinged the white fog, hovering over the lake on the other side of Lake Shore Drive and hugging the chimney tops of the impressive Gold Coast historic manses, tightly spaced on a tranquil street that was quaintly crowded with trees.

The mayor’s limo and liveried driver waited for him curb
side. Marco nodded to the driver and jogged up the steep brick stairway to the second-story entrance. An undercover cop he recognized but didn’t know came out of the front door to check him out and politely tell him to get lost. The mayor was under tightened security and wouldn’t see anyone at home.

“Call him,” was Marco’s terse reply. “Tell him Detective Marco knows who killed his son. And it’s not Angel Baker.”

This astounding statement was met with a dubious scowl, but the cop knew Marco had him checkmated. He couldn’t blow off anyone who might have new information on Victor Alvarez’s murder. And Marco’s forthright approach worked. Moments later, to the cop’s obvious resentment, the mayor’s personal assistant escorted Marco to a lush and stately library.

He sat in one of two dark red leather winged-back chairs and waited, scanning the twelve-foot-high bookcases filled with classics that looked as if they were there more for show than pleasure. There wasn’t a hint of Alvarez’s Hispanic roots in the room. Rather, Marco felt like he’d stepped into a British drawing room.

The heavy wooden library door opened fast and Alvarez, somewhat stocky but dapperly dressed in a conservative suit, filled the room with his presence. He walked purposefully across the room to shake hands. “Detective Marco, good to see you.”

“Likewise, sir.”

The two men had developed a cordial relationship while working together on the mayor’s top-secret Mob Termination Committee. Alvarez motioned for Marco to sit, then took the winged-back chair next to his.

“Tell me what you know.”

Marco settled at the edge of his chair. “Angel Baker is innocent.”

Alvarez looked back and forth between Marco’s eyes, purs
ing his full, small mouth thoughtfully beneath his thick, dark mustache. “What are you saying?”

“I’m saying that Angel was set up.”

The mayor’s attentive gaze gelled into a condescending sheen. “You’re in love with her. Lieutenant Townsend told me everything.”

“She’s been set up by Vladimir Gorky. His
sgarristas
killed Victor and Roy Leibman and Getty Bellows.”

The mayor listened, then slammed a hand unexpectedly on a leather arm of his chair. “Damn it, Marco!” He jumped up, smoothed a hand over his carefully coiffed brown hair, then began to pace. “I don’t want to hear this. I hate Gorky as much as you do, but he didn’t kill my son.”

“How do you know he didn’t?”

The mayor’s sleek, black dress shoes slid an inch to an abrupt stop on the thick carpet. He jabbed a finger in the air. “I know what you’re doing. You’re playing all your cards for your girlfriend’s benefit.”

“No.”

“You’re trying to play on my conscience because I decided to give Gorky a pass until after the next election and you didn’t want to wait to take him down.”

“I wouldn’t play games with you like that. I’m here because I know Angel is innocent, and as long as you allow the police force to use her as a quick fix to their public-relations problem, you’re letting the real killer go free.”

Alvarez studied Marco, assessing him with a jaundiced eye and the political acumen that had kept the mayor in power for three terms. Only now a bit of the passion and zest Alvarez had worn like a bright suit of armor had tarnished. Marco suspected the man would never fully recover from the death of his son.

“I’m so sorry about Victor. But you can’t let your pain blind
you to the truth. Bring Gorky in and question him about Victor’s murder.”

“Bring Gorky in for questioning? Talk about a fucking public relations disaster,” the mayor said disparagingly. “Marco, you know if I thought for an instant that Gorky killed my boy, I’d hang him by the balls from the Sears Tower. But you’re wrong. You’re letting your emotions cloud your judgment. What in God’s name did Gorky do to you to make you despise him so much that you’d try to lay every crime in this city at his doorstep?”

Marco leaned back in the chair and shut his eyes, sighing as the memories clawed painfully to the surface. Some wrongs were so heinous they couldn’t be righted. They could only be avenged.

“I lost two of the people I loved most in the world.”

After a long pause, the mayor said, “I’m sorry.”

Marco stood with weary resignation and walked to the door, turning back to say, “I’m not going to lose another. You’ll be wrong on this one, Alvarez. You’ll wish you’d backed me. Just wait and see.”

“I had a dream last night, Angel,” Mike said.

“Really?” I replied offhandedly.

Normally I hung on Mike’s every prophetic word, but I was preoccupied with watching the Bassetts’ front door. After seeing that child with Marco in my crystal ball, I’d been overcome with the desire—no, the need—to see my foster daughter. So I’d talked Mike into driving me up to Evanston in his new used car. It was a beater that shook and rattled as if it would fall apart at every stoplight, but we made it in one piece. And we did it legally. Mike had finally gotten his driving license.

We’d parked across the street and a few cars down from
the house. If I got caught even trying to talk to Lin, my bond would be revoked. So I’d have to be content with a good look as she passed by. If she didn’t come out of the house soon, I’d call Sydney and ask her to contrive some errand for Lin.

“You do not want to know what my dream was about?” Mike prodded when I did not nibble at his bait.

“I’m sorry,
sifu
,” I said, grinning his way, “you’re not getting enough attention from your devotee?”

He shrugged indifferently, looking very western in his jeans and button-down shirt. “It does not matter to me. The dream was about you.”

“Great.” I turned my attention back to the front door of the stately gray-stone Tudor house I’d once called home, looking for Lin. “Whenever you dream about me, something really bad usually happens.”

“At least you know about it ahead of time.”

“That doesn’t count if there’s nothing I can do to change the course of events.”

“So I will not tell you about the dream.”

“Go ahead. I can take it. I’m tough. I’m desperate. My life is for shit. What’s a little more?”

“It was also about Detective Marco.”

My stomach tied itself into a knot over that one. Feigning disinterest, I said, “Oh?”

“You were both visiting the Shaolin Temple in China. You came to see the monks perform kung fu for the tourists. Marco had come with you. He said something and you laughed. Then he stroked your face and kissed you.”

My head pivoted sharply. This was starting to sound too much like my vision. “Was there a kid in the dream? Maybe a three-year-old?”

Mike shook his head. “Just you and Marco and the performing monks.”

“What happened next?”

“Marco went away to talk to a friend, and while he was gone he turned into a white tiger.”

“What does that mean?” In China, animals were significant symbols of human conditions or traits. Everything had a hidden meaning.

Mike stared at the Bassetts’ house a moment before answering. “The white tiger is a predator, a symbol of war. Very powerful.”

“More powerful than a blue dragon?”

He didn’t answer, but his gaze slid nervously my way. I regretted posing the question. If I got into a power struggle with Marco, we’d both lose. At this point the stakes were way too high for silly games.

“What happened after he turned into the white tiger?”

“You touched him.” Some sort of inner disturbance wrinkled his smooth brow. “And he killed you.”

Before I could reply, I heard the distant sounds of a door opening and laughter.

“It’s Lin!” I leaned my head out the passenger window as far as I dared, greedily consuming every detail of the lithe little seven-year-old girl. Her mahogany hair bounced around her nimble shoulders as she bounded down the front steps to the sidewalk. She had on a new outfit—a red plaid skirt and white doily blouse. I didn’t recognize it and felt a pang of jealousy that she’d been shopping with Sydney. I should feel grateful, and I was. But I had so wanted to be there for Lin in every way.

“Isn’t she beautiful, Mike?”

“Yes.”

“I’m so glad she’s happy. I feel like I haven’t seen her in a year, but it’s only been a few days. She wouldn’t forget me in that short time, would she?”

“No one could forget Angel Baker.”

His tone was slightly sarcastic, but I felt reassured nonetheless. Mike and I had an unspoken agreement that we would never gush about our mutual affection.

“I wonder what she’s doing outside.” I had my answer when my older foster sister made her grand exit, giving a tata wave to Sydney, who watched their departure through the glass door.

The very sight of the ultraperky, ultracoiffed Gigi put me on edge. I had barely thought about the fact that she would be interacting with Lin in my absence. The extent to which she would exploit the situation became clear when Lin trotted back up the sidewalk and took Gigi’s hand.

I literally gasped at this evidence of their quick bonding. Then my jaw dropped when I realized they were dressed like twins. Gigi wore an identical plaid skirt and white blouse. If I didn’t know better I’d think Getty Bellows had risen from the dead.

“Unbelievable! I think I’m going to be sick.”

“I see double,” Mike said.

Gigi squatted until she was eye level with Lin. She stroked Lin’s bangs, smiling wide as if she were a model in a toothpaste commercial, then pointed to her own cheek, demanding a kiss. I watched in horror as Lin obliged. I couldn’t see whether she was happy about it or not, but it didn’t matter.

“That’s it. I can’t take any more.” I pushed the exit button and my door whooshed skyward.

“No, Baker, stay.” Mike reached for my arm, but too late. No sooner had I stepped out of the vehicle than my lapel phone rang. I was torn between answering it and running after Gigi before she and Lin drove off for another shopping spree. I popped the phone in my ear, mumbling, “Who is it?”

“It’s Sydney.”

At the rich and dignified sound of my foster mother’s voice, I abandoned all thoughts of Gigi and looked toward the house. Sydney watched me through the glass door. She had spotted me and was giving me a look of motherly warning.

“You can’t go after them, Angel. The police have been keeping an eye on our house. If they drive by while you’re talking with Lin, you’ll have to go back to jail.”

“I know,” I said raggedly, watching Lin climb into Gigi’s car.

“At least I know you’re back on your feet after that vicious attack. You’re feeling okay now?”

“Sydney, how could you let her do this to me? She’s trying to steal my daughter from me, just like she tried to steal you and Henry from me.”

My foster mother paused, and I could almost hear the pain crackling between us. “Lin needed to get out of the house. I’ve told her that you’re coming for her soon. And I believe you will, darling, but until then, Lin needs to live as normal a life as possible. Think of the trauma she’s been through already.”

Her sound logic chastened me. “I’m sorry. It’s just…do they have to dress alike?”

Sydney chuckled softly. “It’s pathetic, isn’t it? They went shopping and that’s what Gigi brought home. I tried to talk her into taking her outfit back, but she convinced me that Lin was amused by the idea of dressing like an adult.”

There was another long pause as I tried to gulp back the emotion that swelled in my throat. “Sydney…Sydney do you think Lin will want to come back to my house when this is over?”

“Oh, sweetheart, of course she will. She asks about you every night when I put her to bed. You know, Angel, there were many times when you were young that Henry and I thought we were going to lose you. It seemed we were constantly battling the system to keep you in our home.”