Brilliance. Part 25

"Because they're my friends." She looked at him quizzically, the exterior lights glowing off her eyes. "Not everyone's friends shoot at them."

"Yeah, well, how do I know your friends won't want to shoot at me?"

She shook her head. "They're not part of the movement. Just friends."

He eased the car left and got on the Eisenhower heading east. A low bank of clouds cut the skyline in half, the lights on the tallest buildings bright as a fairytale against indigo skies. The Jaguar's tires hummed on the pavement. There were moments driving when he felt a perfect calm, as though he were the car, skimming above the road, power and control and distance. But tonight it felt off. The distance part, maybe. The last six months seemed like they had been all about distance: from his children, from Natalie, from the world he had so carefully built and the sensible position he occupied in it. Though he was a man who enjoyed his own company, talking to Shannon, having a partner, it made him realize he'd been lonely, too. It sounded nice to be around people.

Besides. Getting closer to her is getting closer to John Smith.

"Okay. Where to?"

CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE.

Chinatown had given the DAR headaches since the beginning.

Not just in Chicago, and frankly, not just the DAR. Whatever the city, law enforcement always had trouble with Chinatown. The places were closed systems, insular worlds that existed within cities, traded with them, drew tourists from them, but nonetheless were never really of them. Police working Chinatown carried a bubble around, a small radius of American rule that extended only as far as they could see, that moved with them and left the place unchanged in their wake.

Which made law enforcement difficult. There weren't very many Chinese cops, and the other races stood out like they were backlit. It wasn't just a matter of not speaking the language; they didn't even know how to ask the questions, which questions to ask. And in a world that existed within itself, a tight-knit community with its own leaders and factions, its own sense of and system for justice, what good could an outsider cop do? And all of that was before the gifted came along and complicated the picture.

Shortly after midnight, and the river was a ribbon of black. Light industry and warehouses gave way to dense cl.u.s.ters of brick buildings decorated with green awnings and paG.o.das, up-down shops with a riot of colorful signs, the characters meaningless as a paint squiggle to him. A handful had English subt.i.tles with awkward phrasing: EAT OR TAKE WITH, THE ALL-BEST CAMERAS, NOODLE FRESH SHOP. Overlapping neon lit the night with science fiction colors.

"Where's your friend's place?"

"An alley off Wentworth. Park wherever you can, we'll walk."

He found a pay lot on Archer. He was about to get out of the Jag when she said, "Leave the gun."

"Huh?"

"These are my friends. I'm not bringing a gun into their house."

Cooper looked at her for a moment, wis.h.i.+ng he had the call girl Samantha's gift, that he could read Shannon, see the real her, understand her intentions. Was this some sort of a trick? Get him unarmed and outnumbered? She stared back. Cooper shrugged, unclipped the holster from his belt, slipped the rig under the front seat.

"Thank you."

Shannon walked half a step in front of him. The windows of shops held a riotous array of c.r.a.p-waving cats and colorful fans and plastic ninja swords. Tourist junk, but the tourists had gone for the night. Everyone on the sidewalk was a local, and many seemed to know each other. They pa.s.sed the window of a butcher where the plucked carca.s.ses of birds dangled by their feet. "So how do you know these people?"

"Lee Chen and I have been friends for a long time. He runs a business here."

"Yeah, but how? How did you meet?"

"Oh, you know, in our mutual abnorm hatred of the world we recognized each other as kindred souls in a long battle."

"Right."

She grinned. "We went to high school."

His gift followed the chain back-school together, but her friend is established here, odds are she grew up in Chicago, a good starting point if he ever needed to track her down. "Funny to think of you in high school."

"Why?"

"The whole mysterious thing you have going."

"Mysterious thing?"

"Yeah. You keep appearing out of nowhere, then disappearing. Before I knew your name, I called you the Girl Who Walks Through Walls."

She laughed. "Better than what they called me in high school."

"What was that?"

"Freak, mostly. At least until I got b.r.e.a.s.t.s." They pa.s.sed a restaurant called Tasty Place, another called Seven Treasures, and turned down an alley. The glow of the street faded. Dumpsters overflowed, the smell of rotting trash sweet. At the back of an unmarked brick building she stepped into an alcove, knocked on a heavy door painted green.

There was the sound of a heavy lock, and the green door opened. Within was a small antechamber with a metal folding chair, a paperback book split facedown on it. The guard nodded at Shannon, gestured to a door at the opposite wall, and then leaned on a b.u.t.ton. Cooper heard an electronic buzz of a lock.

"What is this place?"

"This is Lee's. Social club." She opened the opposite door.

The room beyond was bright with bad lighting, overhead fluorescents battling thick clouds of cigarette smoke. There were eight or nine tables, half of them occupied. No one looked up. The men around the tables-it was all men, mostly older-stared forward, lost in a game played with dominos. Loose stacks of bills were scattered between ashtrays and bottles of beer.

"You mean casino."

"I mean a social club. They socialize over Pai Gow. It's part of the culture. Chance and fate and numbers are more important here." She started around the edge of the room. Sugary pop music played in the background. Reaching a table of seven men, she stopped and stood quietly. The men ignored them, all eyes on the dealer, a younger guy, prematurely balding, who slid stacks of tiles to each of them. The tiles clicked softly as the players arrayed them in sets of two. When the last tiles had been placed, all the players turned them over, revealing patterns of dots, and at once the table exploded in a burst of Chinese. Money moved back and forth.

Shannon touched the dealer's shoulder. He looked up at her. "Azzi." His face broadened into a smile that vanished when he saw Cooper.

"Lee Chen," she said and squeezed his shoulder. "This is Nick Cooper."

The dealer stood up. The man to his left collected the tiles and began to mix them as the remaining players placed bets.

"Hi," Cooper said. He held out a hand. "Nice place."

"Sank you," Lee said. "You po-rice?"

"No. I used to be."

"Not po-rice. Now you are fliend to Shannon."

"Umm. Yeah. Yes, I am her friend." The man's pidgin threw him, one of the cla.s.sic problems of operating in Chinatown. So much nuance could be lost when only the broad strokes of a question were understood. He'd have to keep his answers simple, be sure not to offend- Shannon was barely holding back laughter.

Cooper looked at her, then at Lee Chen. "You're busting my b.a.l.l.s."

"Yeah, a little bit. Sorry." Lee smiled and turned back to Shannon. "Have you eaten?"

"A while ago. Why, is Lisa cooking?"

"Lisa is always cooking." He gestured at a young man lounging by the bar and barked a short command. The man straightened, hurried over, and took the dealer's place at the table. The play s.h.i.+fted again, an easy rhythm of long practice. Lee put his arm over Shannon's shoulder and the two started away. "Alice will be happy to see you."

"She's still awake?"

"Her mother made an exception." Lee released Shannon, opened a door marked with characters that even in another language clearly read DO NOT ENTER, and started up a set of stairs.

"Who's Alice?" Cooper asked.

"My G.o.ddaughter." She smiled over her shoulder as they climbed. "She's eight and a beautiful genius."

"And why did he call you Azzi?"

"My last name. My dad's Lebanese."

Shannon Azzi. From Chicago. It sounded so much less dramatic than the Girl Who Walks Through Walls. One was a terrorist operative, a lethal agent of the most dangerous man in America. The other was, well, a woman. Smart, funny, and gifted in both senses of the word. And d.a.m.ned attractive. You may as well admit that, Agent Cooper. "Funny to think of you having a dad," he said.

"Enough with that."

Cooper smiled.

The sounds changed as they reached the top, and the smells. Sharp spices, garlic, and fish sauce. A burst of laughter came from down the hall, and a child's happy shriek.

"You having a party?"

"A play date," Lee said. "Friends with kids."

Like most parties, everyone had cl.u.s.tered in the kitchen. A dozen or so men and women, all Chinese, were jammed together around a counter packed with bowls of food. A pot simmered on the stove, a sweet, sour smell rising on wisps of steam. Everyone glanced over as they entered, their smiles slipping only slightly when they saw Cooper, no hostility in it, just surprise.

"You all know Shannon," Lee said. "This is her friend Nick Cooper."

"h.e.l.lo all." He looked around the room, spotted a slender woman perched on a stool, stylishly dressed, delicately chic in that distinctly Asian-girl way. He read the comfort in her body, said, "You must be Lisa."

She slid off the stool, held out her hand. "Welcome."

"Thank you."

"Are you hungry?"

He wasn't but said, "Starving."

"Good. We have way too much food."

"I wonder how that happened," Lee said dryly, plucking beer bottles from the fridge. He twisted the caps off, pa.s.sed them to Shannon and Cooper, and kept one for himself.

Lisa ignored her husband, slid her arm into Cooper's. "Let me introduce you."

"Aunt Shannon!" A blur of dark hair and pale skin streaked past him, collided with Shannon, who laughed and wrapped her arms around the girl. The two began firing questions at one another, neither waiting for the answers.

Lisa piled rice on a plate and handed it to him, then began to point out the dishes, saying their names, explaining each as if he'd never eaten in a restaurant. Cooper said how good everything looked and scooped some of every dish, balancing his beer against the plate. Shannon brought the girl over, said, "Alice, this is my friend Nick."

"Hi."

"Hi. Can you do me a favor, Alice? Can you call me Cooper?"

"Okay." The girl took Shannon's hand and dragged her away. "Come on, come play with us."

Cooper ate and drank and moved around the room. Most everyone spoke in Chinese until he joined, then s.h.i.+fted seamlessly to English. He spent half an hour making bland party conversation. Everyone was very nice, but he felt the same discomfort he always had at parties. Small talk wasn't his thing, and he didn't have the knack for storytelling. There was a skill to organizing your life into neatly bundled anecdotes, and he lacked it.

Besides, what are you going to say? "So this one time, I was tracking an abnorm who had played a loophole in Bank of America credit cards and racked up half a million in microtransactions before killing the bureaucrat who came to his door and fleeing into the backwoods of Montana on a snowmobile?"

A cl.u.s.ter of shrieks echoed down the hall where Alice had led Shannon. Cooper helped himself to a fresh beer and followed the noise. He found Shannon in the family room, standing on top of a sectional sofa, counting down with her eyes closed. "Three, two....one...go!"

Seven children, Alice among them, all s.h.i.+fted from foot to foot, ready to dart. Shannon opened her eyes, glanced around the room, then made a languorous fake to the left before leaping off the couch to the right. The boy she lunged at tried to dodge, but she tapped him with one hand, spun, saw two children running toward each other, held a half a beat, then tagged them both as they collided. The touched kids stood still as statues, while the remaining four dodged around the edges of the room, using the furniture and their frozen friends as cover. Shannon said, "I'm gonna get you," then turned and tapped a boy who had been sneaking behind her. He giggled and froze.

Cooper watched the game with a broad smile. Shannon stalked the final three children, easing left and right, corralling them. The woman was the indisputable master of freeze tag.

"You have kids?"

"Huh?" He turned, saw Lee had come in behind him. "Two. A boy and a girl, nine and four." He thought but did not say their names. Took a long swallow of beer.

"Greatest things in the world, aren't they?"

"Yes. Yes they are."

"Even when you want to kill them."

"Even then."

Shannon tagged out the final three in rapid succession, getting Alice last, then wrapping her in one arm and tickling her with the other. When Shannon finally let the girl breathe again, Alice said, "Me next!" She moved to the center of the room. But instead of beginning a new round of tag, she said, "Chicago places."

"Navy Pier," said a pig-tailed girl.

"600 East Grand Avenue."

"The Zoo!"

"2200 North Cannon Drive."

The other children began to yell out. "Tasty City!"

"My mom's house!"

"The airport!"