why: The Boss’s son’s birthday is nigh, and he is accepting presents in his name. You arranged for a tribute, I hope?”
Twitch nodded. “A cargo hold full of sugar,” he replied. “Twelve thousand tons of it.”
The contact let out a long, low whistle.
“An impressive gift,” he said. “Do you have a dollar figure on that?”
“Almost eight million,” Twitch told him.
The contact smiled. “Very impressive. That will get you noticed, especially if you say it’s a present for his son. But who did this sugar belong to originally?”
“Who knows?” Twitch said. “We found it, floating around at sea.”
They clinked beer glasses. Then Twitch reached inside his pocket and came out with ten hundred-dollar bills. He discreetly passed them to the contact.
“What do we have to know from here?” he asked the man.
The contact pocketed the money. “You must go to a jiuba called the Red Lantern, twenty blocks north of here. Pay your way in. Talk to the people who always sit in the last booth. You can’t miss them—they’re identical twins. And don’t be intimidated by their firearms, even though they will be in full view. Say shengri liwu—birthday gift. Then tell them what you told me. If they like you, they will pass you on to the next station.”
“And what if they don’t like us?” Twitch asked.
The contact smiled darkly. “Then say your last prayers—because you’ll be chopped up and fed to the fishes by morning. In fact, that might happen to you anyway. There are people in this town who will kill you just for sport. Or maybe because they don’t like the color of your coat, or the look of your hat. Or maybe they’re hung over or need a fix. Or maybe they just haven’t killed anyone in the past hour or so and they’re bored. But they might also be looking for a spare kidney or an eye or two. Stealing body parts has become a very big business here. Humans hunting humans is what it is. Your liver is worth more than a kilo of cocaine. Your kidney is worth its weight in gold. The old city is an extremely treacherous place to be these days, so you must be careful at all times. You might never know when your last breath has arrived.”
The contact finished his beer, a sign the meeting was over. But Twitch had one last question.
“The Ba Xi,” he said. “What is it? Poker? Blackjack? Craps? Is it a ‘game’ at all?”
The contact smiled again. “The ‘Ba Xi’ is a game—but it’s not poker or blackjack or craps.”
Twitch was surprised. “What is it then?”
The contact began to reply, but suddenly they heard a dull thud. The contact pitched forward, landing face first on the table. A large kitchen knife was sticking out of his back.
Nolan acted instantly. He swept the candle off the table, plunging half the jiuba into darkness. At the same time, the bartender pulled a gun from under the bar and started firing. One round hit a candle hanging from the ceiling—its ricochet killing the macaw in the process. Now it was completely dark inside the bar and raining feathers to boot. Two more rounds went through the curtain behind the table from where the knife had come. But was the bartender shooting at the contact’s murderer—or at Nolan and Twitch?
They didn’t stick around to find out. Nolan yanked Twitch off his chair and together they ran for the door. But on reaching the top of the stairs, Twitch collided head-on with the woman dwarf. She went straight up in the air, only to hit Nolan face first on the way down. Nolan literally saw stars as he fell halfway back down the jiuba’s stairway.
He pushed her away and crawled back up the steps, just as they heard more gun blasts going off inside the bar. Twitch finally got Nolan back to his feet and they ran out of the dark alley.
Reaching the main street again, they stopped to catch their breath amid the bustling crowds. Bent over, hands on his knees, Nolan was spitting out streams of blood—and something else.
The woman’s tiny skull had caught him square in the teeth, shattering his number seven incisor and destroying the tiny radio imbedded within. Nolan studied the minuscule remains in the palm of his hand.
“Hey, didn’t they say that thing was expensive?” Twitch said, still out of breath. “Will we have to pay for it?”
As this was happening, a young girl appeared out of the crowd. She walked