tight and walked into the mist.
* * *
THE DARK STREETS of Old Shanghai were even narrower than they imagined. They were jam-packed with people, motorbikes, handcarts, discarded produce crates, fish barrels and the occasional car or truck. Trash was piled high everywhere. Telephone poles, thick with wires that resembled drooping black spaghetti, lined every street. The electrified Chinese lanterns and the blinking neon signs added a weird glow, but did little to dispel the misty gloom. And everything, including the people, seemed to be covered with a thin, oily sheen.
The constricted streets were also home to hundreds of overcrowded jiubas, small Chinese versions of a Wild West saloon. Each jiuba was filled with drunken locals, rowdy sailors and Shanghai hookers, all watched over by massive, heavily armed bouncers. Bad eighties music seemed to be blaring from each one. The combined sound was deafening.
* * *
NOLAN AND TWITCH followed the street maps inked on their shirtsleeves. After fifteen minutes of walking through a sea of people, they came upon a particularly dark alley. At the end of it was a jiuba called the Sea Witch.
This was where they were supposed to meet their contact.
The place was much smaller than any of the saloons closer to the docks. Instead of a giant bouncer watching the door, a middle-aged female dwarf stood out front, smiling broadly and giving anyone who wandered by a piece of candy from her straw basket.
The tiny woman let out a yelp, though, when she spotted Nolan approaching.
“My poor disfigured travelers,” she said in barely recognizable English. “For you, special candy.”
Instead of taking two pieces from her basket, she handed Twitch two pieces of candy from her pocket.
“Special,” she repeated, patting him affectionately on his rump. “Special candy for you and your friend.”
They went down the steps to the subterranean bar. The only illumination came from a few candles scattered about the place. A macaw, looking down on them from a perch above the rear door, screeched when they walked in.
Only one other customer was in the bar. He was sitting at a table in the far corner, leaning over a glass of beer.
He was Asian and seemed to have an overly large head. He was totally bald and sported an extremely long Fu Manchu mustache. He was either doped up or drunk, and his eyes were barely open. He was dressed as they were, like a seaman, and was smoking a cigarette right down to the nub.
This was their contact.
They walked over to the table. He looked up at them and visibly shuddered at the sight of Nolan’s distorted features.
“Do I owe you two money?” he asked. It was the code phrase.
“You have already paid us,” Twitch replied, using the counter-phrase.
The man indicated they should sit down.
“I speak a little English,” he said to Twitch. “And I hear you do, too. So we can talk. But, what about your friend here? What’s his story?”
“He is my cousin,” Twitch replied. “Doesn’t speak at all. He lost his voice in a dispute with a knife in Rangoon. But he never had much to say anyway.”
“And his eye?” the contact asked, grimacing at the sight of the empty socket.
“Another dispute—long ago, in Calcutta,” Twitch said. “He can barely see at all, but I consider him a good-luck charm—and good protection. Can’t be too careful these days.”
The contact nodded and tapped Nolan twice on his forearm.
“Don’t worry, my friend,” he said. “For people like you and me, there’s not much to see in this world anyway.”
The surly bartender delivered a pitcher of beer and two more glasses to the table. Twitch poured himself a glass and downed it in one gulp. Then he said to the contact: “Tell us about the Ba Xi.”
The contact sipped his own beer. “Ah, the Game.”
“It exists?”
“It does.”
“And Sunny Hi still plays?”
The contact slapped Twitch hard across the face. Twitch barely flinched, but his cheeks glowed beet red.
“Never speak his name in my presence,” the contact told him in an angry whisper. “Or to anyone else in this city. It’s a good way to get yourself killed. He is simply known as Shang Si—The Boss. Understand?”
Twitch replied through gritted teeth: “My mistake.”
The contact lit another cigarette. Twitch drank a second glass of beer. Nolan, sitting stone-cold mute through all this, had not touched his own drink. He felt the dangerous mission would be best done with clear heads. Twitch obviously thought otherwise.
The contact went on. “So, yes—the Ba Xi exists. And your timing is good, and here’s