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Island of Thieves Page 17


  No. Too many unlikely factors to fit Kilbane as the obvious suspect. Shaw felt certain that if Bao had been murdered, his killer had been someone already on the island.

  Love or money or fury. Those were the big three motivations. Leave love out of it. Try wrath. Had Bao seen something or said something that had provoked an argument? From what little time Shaw had spent with the man, he’d seemed as mild as they came. A company man. If Bao had a worry, he’d have taken it to Chen, or Zhang.

  So: money. Bao’s death might have delayed the deal between Jiangsu and Droma, for a few days at least. Drastic as hell, if that had been the intent.

  He had seen Bao’s driver’s license. The chemist’s address was an apartment building in the Central District. After a moment’s thought, Shaw brought forth the mental picture of the license in his hand. Cherry Street. Unit 204.

  He tossed the last bite of his sandwich over the fence to a Labrador who caught it on the fly. The dog barked a thank-you as Shaw jogged back to the garage at his place.

  He drove to the CD and parked two streets away from Bao’s. The building was new construction, a three-story apartment block painted seafoam green with white-framed bay windows. Another dab of gentrification in a neighborhood changing fast. Bao’s building lay at the intersection of a T. Directly across the road was the back of a much older, squatter apartment building and a deserted-looking two-bay garage that had probably been an unlicensed body shop before it closed. Shaw gave it less than a year before someone razed the abandoned shop to build town homes. On the other side of the cross street was a fellowship hall for AA meetings and other community events. Its small lot was empty save for one car.

  The apartment block was a good target. Too upscale for college students, too new to have many retirees. Most of the residents were probably at their day jobs right now. And the surrounding buildings were golden. Few neighbors who might take notice of a stranger poking around.

  Slim bars blocked the windows on the first story. The neighborhood wasn’t and would probably never be so renovated as to not require bars. He climbed the stoop to the entrance. The intercom to ring residents was a digital model. He looked up Bao and typed in the call number. The screen said calling—though there was no sound. After a moment the screen went back to the list of names. No answer. No camera inside the foyer either.

  He used his pick gun on the entrance and was walking up the stairs within half a minute. The air in the second-floor hallway was stale. His weight didn’t cause the floor to squeak; an advantage of new construction. The building’s designers had created shallow niches in the wall between each apartment door and a green plastic spider plant in a clay pot adorned each niche. He examined the door to Unit 204 without haste or much worry. Almost no apartments at this price level would have alarms preinstalled for the residents. Too much hassle with resetting codes for every new tenant and people accidentally activating them day and night. And no tenants would have put in an alarm for a place they would leave when the lease was up.

  There was always the chance of DIY security. Nanny cams and similar off-the-shelf measures were cheap and easy. But Bao was dead. He wouldn’t be checking the feed from a Wi-Fi camera. Shaw put on his gloves, entered the apartment, and searched the obvious places for an alarm panel. Clear.

  It didn’t take more than a glance to peg the one-bedroom apartment as a bachelor’s. A tidy bachelor, but still. There was a casualness to the place. Magazines and ashtrays and sundry items on every surface. The furniture crooked. A rumpled blanket and pillow tossed to the side of the couch. Shaw could smell the cigarette fumes that had permeated the fabrics.

  He gave the apartment a rapid search. The drawers and coat closet and larger closet in the bedroom held a surprising amount of clothes and shoes; Bao seemed to have outfits for every occasion.

  In the drawer of the coffee table, he found a manila envelope. Inside were pay stubs and a W2 form for the past calendar year from a company called Avizda. The latest pay stub was from February. The name on all the papers was Yuen Si-Lung. Bao’s Chinese name. Avizda was in Dallas. Shaw put the envelope back where he found it.

  Most of the magazines were in Chinese, the lone exception being an issue of Car and Driver. The seven-foot couch and a fifty-five-inch TCL with Roku for streaming made it clear where Nelson had spent most of his hours while at home.

  The food in the kitchen was basic bachelor chow in both English and Asian packaging. Soups and large frozen meals and noodles, anything that could be heated and eaten inside of ten minutes. Shaw felt a little sympathy; Bao’s apartment seemed like more a place to keep his clothes and television than somewhere he called home.

  In the bedroom Shaw found a power strip plugged into the wall outlet and filled with various chargers waiting for phone and laptop and tablet. The tablet turned up in the nightstand drawer, flanked by folded washcloths and a plastic bottle of silicone lube. Shaw tapped the tablet screen with a knuckle. The device was locked, but the wallpaper image behind the password prompt was that of an Asian woman lying on a bed, the sheet arranged to enhance rather than conceal her attributes.

  At least Bao had some secrets, Shaw thought, predictable as they were. It would have been weirder not to find porn in a single man’s apartment.

  That thought made Shaw stop. A single man.

  He went back to the closet. Lots of clothes. Not all the same size. A few of the dress shirts would have billowed on the slight Nelson Bao. Two of the pairs of shoes were size ten and the rest size eight and a half.

  A partner? The image of the woman on the tablet implied Bao was straight, or maybe bisexual. Another man’s clothes in his closet hinted at something different.

  Shaw looked at the bed. It had been made. The sheets were a fraction straighter on the left than on the right. One nightstand. One lamp. He pulled the top layers back to look at the fitted sheet underneath. The right side had many more wrinkles and creases than the left, and the mattress sagged slightly.

  Bao slept alone on the queen bed, at least most of the time, Shaw concluded. Not definitive, but interesting. Why would an occasional lover keep so many clothes here?

  Not that many clothes. No more than might fit in a suitcase.

  Shaw went to the coat closet in the front room. Two large roller suitcases had been stacked beneath the hanging jackets. Different brands. He looked again at the blanket and pillow on the overlong couch.

  Not a lover. A guest. Somebody from out of town, crashing here.

  Shaw had a pretty good idea who. The other half of Chen Li’s team. The larger clothes and shoes in the closet would fit the athletic Zhang just fine.

  He turned his attention to possible hiding places, starting with the living room. The closet doors were hollow-core, like in most rental apartments, but their laminated wood edges were glued tight, straight off the factory line. He shone his penlight into each air vent. Pressed every cushion on the couch and checked the seams for anything sewn within. The apartment had no baseboards or crown molding that might conceal a hidey-hole. The curtain rods were solid.

  Shaw wound up back at the door, frowning at the impassive room. It would be easier if he knew what he was looking for.

  The kitchen was next. He looked behind and within the oven and the refrigerator. When he went to check the range hood above Bao’s little-used stove, he placed the Phillips-head screwdriver tip into the first corner screw. The mesh vent screen lifted at the slight pressure.

  He withdrew in surprise, and the screen clanged softly back down. He pushed on the screen with a finger. It lifted again, tilting up into the chimney of the hood on an unseen hinge, like an upside-down trapdoor.

  Shaw reached up and inside. Just past the open screen, his gloved hand encountered something familiar and unmistakable.

  The grip of a gun.

  He withdrew and shone his penlight up into the hood’s chimney. A rigid Kydex holster had been duct-taped to the metal interior of the square pipe, the butt of the gun protruding from it. The gun
was pointing straight up, held in place by the tension of its holster. On the opposite side of the chimney, a small parcel of black fabric had been similarly taped in place.

  Shaw reached up again and drew the gun out by pinching it near the rear sight. He examined it, taking as much care as he could not to smudge any prints on its grip or barrel. Etched on the slide was the model: QSZ-92. Chinese manufacture. He’d never seen one before. Its magazine was full of nine-millimeter rounds, the chamber empty. Unfired since its last cleaning. The oil smelled like something bought in a hardware store, not the more industrial scent of a protectant straight from the maker. A few light scratches on the slide and at the tip of the barrel suggested that the pistol had seen some use.

  A personal weapon, then. A gun that had been fired many times, at least on a range.

  Shaw replaced the pistol in its suspended holster and pantomimed standing in front of the stove and reaching up to the gun, his right side angled toward the stove, since the holster had been set for someone right-handed. He punched upward, and the range hood’s screen popped open and the gun was there. With practice, drawing the weapon would take barely a second.

  He looked toward the front door. For someone standing where Shaw was now, the refrigerator and the stomach-high counters made good cover. Of all the places in the apartment, it was the best choice for defense.

  Question was, defense from whom? Maybe it didn’t matter. Zhang seemed the type to be prepared for the worst-case scenario.

  Shaw reached up into the vent to unpeel the tape and remove the small black parcel. It was a bag, its fabric wrapped snugly around the contents. He emptied the bag onto the kitchen counter.

  A Chinese passport, with the familiar red folder, plus a Hong Kong Special Administrative Region passport in royal blue. An extra magazine for the pistol, also loaded. And a stubby clear vial with a white cap, about the size of his little finger, like a travel jar for eye cream or other cosmetic.

  Shaw looked at the vial first. The liquid inside the glass cylinder was thick and brownish. Fluid, but just barely. The consistency of molasses. Just enough of it to fill the bottom third of the little vial.

  A slim ribbon of white label with a green stripe had been affixed to the vial. Printed in tiny font on the label was a bar code and a string of characters. 146/22.3b/115214012021/JBF. The twelve sequential numbers could be a time and a date from the past January. Beyond that the label was a riddle to him.

  He unscrewed the vial. The liquid’s astringent scent made Shaw draw back his head quickly. Definitely not eye cream, if you wanted to keep that eye.

  The Chinese passport was for Zhang Chao. The name on the Hong Kong regional passport was Liu Fan. Both had a photo of Zhang, taken at different times. Same slightly angry expression in each. Both documents looked authentic, with biometric data chips. Paper-clipped to the inside back cover of each passport was a laminated resident ID card, much like a driver’s license, each with its own photo and matching the name and region of its passport.

  Four different pictures of Zhang. None of them telling him the whole truth.

  The gun, the different IDs, what looked to be a cover story with Jiangsu. All of that painted a pretty clear picture of a spy, or at least some kind of Chinese government operative.

  Shaw put the items back into the bag, wrapping the fabric around the bundle and refastening it with the tape inside the chimney.

  He’d been inside the apartment for thirty-five minutes. Too long for an occupied residence. But the range hood might not be Zhang’s only stash. He decided on a quick check of the bedroom.

  Within twenty seconds, he regretted his choice. He had just knelt to check the baseboards in the closet when footsteps clomped in the hall just outside the front door.

  Shaw lunged for the window and stopped himself just as abruptly. The door was already opening. If he took the few seconds to open the window and knock out the screen to jump, the sound would attract immediate attention. He would be seen running away. He dropped down on the far side of the bed.

  Caught like a junkie sneak thief, he thought furiously. Overconfident. He should have disabled the door lock to buy himself time. The stuck lock might have been chalked up to malfunction.

  The door shut. He heard the steps on the faux-hardwood floor. Dress shoes, not sneakers. Likely a man, from the weight. It must be Zhang, coming home.

  Shaw inhaled and let the breath out slowly. The man was back from his day at work, whatever that work was. He would use the bathroom, or turn on the oversize television, and Shaw would have the moment he needed to slip out the window.

  Then he heard a hollow clang of metal hitting metal. He’d made the same sound himself just minutes before, when he’d opened the vent on the range hood above the stove.

  Zhang was retrieving his gun.

  Did he know Shaw was here?

  Shaw didn’t fancy trusting in the angry-faced operative’s mercy if Zhang walked into the bedroom and found him hiding behind the box spring. Nothing to do but run for it. With one eye on the doorway, he reached up and unlatched the window and slid it sideways, as silently as he could. He was about to shove the screen out and jump when he heard the front door open, and close, and its dead bolt click home.

  Had Zhang left? Was it a trick? Shaw listened. No sound from the outer rooms. He risked moving to the bedroom door and peering out, ready to run and dive full force out the second-story window if the spy started shooting.

  The apartment was empty. He gave it a count of five before looking out the living-room window, down to the street.

  Chen Li was on the sidewalk in front of the building, in a wool overcoat and cloth cap, walking in his deliberate fashion to a silver Infiniti sedan parked at the curb. As Shaw watched, Chen got into the sedan and drove away.

  It had been Chen he’d heard, not Zhang. And the senior man had gone straight to Zhang’s hiding place.

  Shaw returned to the range hood. The parcel with the passports and the vial of chemical was gone, and so was the gun.

  Cleaning house. Moving Zhang’s items to a more secure location, or perhaps leaving town entirely.

  Of the things Zhang had hidden, the vial with its chemical was the most intriguing. The Jiangsu men had thought it worth stashing. And the laboratory on the island had been set up to analyze chemicals. Not a huge leap to guess that the chemical might be crucial to the business deal. Perhaps it was the motivation for all Rohner’s secrecy. Maybe even valuable enough to kill for.

  Shaw left the dead man’s apartment and made sure to lock up behind himself.

  TWENTY-NINE

  He was due to pick up Karla Lokosh in an hour at the Crowne Plaza, a business hotel just off the interstate. A choice that implied Bill Flynn didn’t make his Bridgetrust team travel on the cheap, but he wasn’t going to spring for the Fairmont Olympic either.

  He showered and thought about what to wear. Shaw had forced himself to acquire some clothes other than jeans and work shirts during the past few months. Dating Wren had been part of that decision. She dressed well whenever they went out, which he perceived as her way of showing a kind of respect, for the occasion as well as for him. He’d wanted to meet her halfway.

  The night was warm. He picked a plaid shirt in muted red, gray trousers, and a dark blue lightweight jacket. Addy had proclaimed it a Harrington jacket, which he’d had to look up. Shaw didn’t think he looked much like James Dean in it, but it fit across his shoulders, and that was good enough. Shaw had never liked dress shoes. He was accustomed to hiking boots or running shoes, anything that he could move in. Hard soles on dress shoes slipped, and rubber ones looked like a cop’s footwear. He compromised by finding chukka boots with crepe rubber soles and working conditioner into the leather for a week until the boots were as flexible as fabric.

  He drove to the Crowne Plaza and found a spot at the curb. As he walked toward the hotel, a text chimed on his phone.

  I’m in the lobby. K.

  The Plaza lobby was a two-level atrium.
On the upper level, bar tables made a line along the railing overlooking the entrance. Karla was seated alone on the left side, typing into her phone.

  As Shaw came off the elevator, a waiter removed two half-empty wineglasses from her table. She looked up from signing the bill and smiled.

  “That was fast,” she said.

  “I’m early. I figured I’d have time to hang around and make the concierge nervous.”

  “I just finished meeting with Morton.” She waved with her free hand, What can you do? “He’s brilliant at his job, but it’s like pulling teeth with chopsticks to get him to tell you something. And when he does . . .” She shook her head.

  “He’s a jackass?”

  “A condescending jackass. And clients feel it, too. Once we’re home from this job, I’ll recommend we toss him out with his used vape cartridges.”

  “You speak your mind.”

  “Yes I do. And I trust you. Even if you had a reason to throw a wrench into this deal with Droma, I don’t think you would.”

  “Not if they’ve been straight with me.”

  Karla looked at him quizzically. “You say that like they haven’t. Is there something I should know?”

  “Yes, but it’s a longer story. Shop talk over dinner?”

  “Great. Wine on an empty stomach isn’t my usual habit.”

  She stood up. She wore an emerald-green cowl neck blouse with a skirt that was short enough to show off graceful knees and an inch of thigh as a bonus. Like Shaw, Karla had chosen footwear for comfortable walking, some sort of combination shoe and sandal. The low heels put the top of her red curls near Shaw’s chin.

  “We can find good food almost anywhere,” he said. “You’re the sightseer. What sights would you like to see?”

  The corner of her mouth turned up. “Take me somewhere touristy. The cheesier the better. What’s that place where they throw fish?”

  “The Market. But the fish will be grounded by now. Salmon are morning fliers.” He jabbed a thumb in the direction of downtown. “We could walk the waterfront, plenty of souvenir shot glasses and snow globes made with Mount St. Helens ash down there. Or the Space Needle.”