Part 38 (1/2)
”Black, mainly. The special kind of black.”
”When are you meeting him again?”
”Who says I am?”
”I do. You're a good pearl man, Teddy, but you're greedy. The goods are stolen. You know it as well as I do.”
”I don't know any such thing.” He smiled an off-center smile. ”So tell me how is it better if you buy them than if I do?”
”They're already half mine by law.”
Teddy shut his mouth, studied Archer, then slowly shook his head. ”Nope. I'm not buying it.”
Hannah flicked her nails against the tabletop, drawing Teddy's attention. ”You'd better buy it, boy-o, or you'll go to jail for receiving stolen goods.”
”Who's she?” Teddy asked.
”Hannah McGarry. She owns the other half of Pearl Cove, the Australian pearl farm that grew those black rainbows.”
”Well... s.h.i.+t.” Teddy leaned back in his chair and sighed hugely. ”On the good-news side, I wasn't looking forward to seeing the Dragon Moon again.”
Neither was Archer. But how he felt about it wasn't on the table. ”When?”
”Tomorrow morning.”
”You weren't flying very far today, were you?” Hannah asked idly, but her eyes were cold indigo.
”Just down to San Francisco.”
She raised her dark eyebrows.
”Look,” Teddy said defensively, ”he gave me a bill of sale ”
”In Chinese, which you don't read,” she cut in.
” for those pearls. That's all the law requires.”
For a moment she closed her eyes. Weariness rolled through her like a long, breaking wave. ”The letter of the law. Lovely.” Then, before Teddy could say any more, her eyes opened again. They were as bleak as Archer's. ”I'm not judging you, Mr. Yamagata. If I did, I'd say that you're more honest than the law requires in the vast majority of your dealings. This deal, however, was the exception that proved your rule.”
Teddy grimaced and didn't argue. ”There's something about those pearls....”
”They blunt a man's judgment,” she said curtly. ”I'm surprised you sold them.”
”I'm a trader, not a collector. For me it's the deal, not the goods.”
”What time tomorrow are you meeting Yin?” Hannah asked.
”Six a.m.”
”I didn't think the Dragon Moon opened that early,” Archer said.
Teddy shrugged. ”They probably feed a lot of the invisible workers.”
”Illegal immigrants,” Archer explained to Hannah. ”The ones who work for a few bucks a day in eight-by-ten sweatshops or fancy restaurants to pay off the smuggler who got them into the U.S. Obviously a Red Phoenix Triad smuggler, in this case.”
Teddy winced. ”C'mon, Archer. The place is a dump, but not that bad.”
”The Dragon Moon is the Red Phoenix base in Seattle,” Archer said matter-of-factly. ”There are apartments above the restaurant for visitors from Hong Kong, Kowloon, Shanghai, the southern provinces of China, and anywhere else the triad has its tentacles. Everything the triad buys, sells, steals, or makes in illegal labs can be found inside the Dragon Moon's riot-proof metal doors.”
”How do you know?” Teddy demanded.
”Does it matter?”
”Not to me,” Teddy decided instantly, remembering again the rumors he had heard about Archer's past. ”Anything else you need before I catch my plane?”
”How will I recognize Yin?”
”He's got a black eye the size of a pizza and a gash across his chin.”
Archer's eyebrows rose, but all he said was, ”Does Yin speak English?”
”No. He put out a pearl, I put out money, and when the amount was right, we exchanged. But there was a translator a few tables over. She was working with a bunch of guys in silk suits. She was pretty fancy herself. s.e.xy enough to make a man sixty feel like sixteen.”
”Chinese?” Archer asked.
”ABC.”
Hannah glanced at Archer.
”American-born Chinese,” he said without looking away from Teddy. And probably her name was April Joy. The description certainly fit. So did the method. It wasn't the first time she had worked as a translator in order to penetrate a triad. ”How many more pearls are we talking about?”
”Twenty times what I bought before. Two hundred pearls. Maybe more. Hand signals only go so far as a way of counting.”
Another shot of adrenaline kicked into Archer's bloodstream. ”Does he expect cash?”
”Yeah.”
”Are you telling me you were going to walk into the Dragon Moon with a hundred thousand in cash?”
Teddy looked pained. ”That's what he wanted. Besides, I got him down to one eighty-five.”
”Did you see the pearls he wants to sell?”
”You bet I did.”
”Describe them.”
”Three sizes. Twelve, fourteen, and sixteen millimeters. Round as marbles. Same black opal orient.”
Hannah felt as though her stomach had dropped through her shoes. She examined her fingernails and prayed that nothing showed on her face.