is filled with rocks, however, and I’ve learned some can be moved, while some are simply things to flow around. I was beginning to feel the Miyazaki were trying to steer me. I didn’t know why. But I’ve made wandering off in unexpected directions a life’s work. No reason to change now. Flow.
Alejandro and I drove from the dojo in Red Hook, across the bridge into Manhattan. “This man, Lim,” he began. “He’s got a number of places he stays, which is not surprising. It’s always wise to have several places to crash or hide out.” Alejandro sounded like someone speaking from personal experience. “But he keeps one place, an apartment, just for himself. He never takes his crew there. He never even brings his girlfriend there. I think this is really interesting.” Alejandro turned his head to look at me, his brown eyes liquid. “I had the opportunity to ask some of his associates about this. Many claimed not to know the apartment existed.”
“How did you find it, then?”
A hint of a smile. “I am a persistent questioner, Dr. Burke. It is why Don Osorio employs me.”
We eventually pulled up in front of an apartment building on the Lower East Side. My guide double-parked and we went to see the building superintendent.
The man opened the door, looking at us with a face that was grey from exhaustion. Alejandro had a brief, quiet conversation in Spanish. The man looked at me with suspicion, then nodded at Alejandro in resignation. He shrugged his way into a worn canvas work jacket and grabbed a huge ring of keys.
We walked up one flight and down a hall. There was the faint sound of a distant TV playing somewhere, but the hallway was empty and the place was quiet. The walls were freshly painted and the industrial carpet muffled our steps. The super sifted his key collection, selected one, and unlocked a door. He nodded once at Alejandro, ignored me, and shambled back downstairs.
“Here you are,” Alejandro said, and pushed the door open.
I nodded. “Yes. But where exactly is here?”
“Lim’s apartment,” he answered.
“How’d you get the super to let us in?”
He shrugged. “Don Osorio requested his cooperation.”
“Just like that?”
He smiled a full smile this time. Alejandro had very white and very even teeth. “Sí.” Suddenly he had a small automatic pistol in his hand. He motioned for me to wait, slipped into the apartment, then came out. “It’s empty. I’ll wait by the car. Take your time. But hurry up, if you know what I mean.”
The apartment was not what I expected. It was a one-bedroom place with modern furniture and understated decorations. I had a hard time reconciling it with the punk drug dealer who had been portrayed to me. In the photos I had seen, he had been smoking. But there was no odor of tobacco in the apartment.
A tiny foyer opened on to the living/dining room. There was a coffee table with some ski magazines. A side table was piled with copies of the Times and Wall Street Journal from a few weeks back. One wall was lined with books, most of them involved with politics, economics, and history. I saw Karl Marx, but Immanuel Wallerstein was there as well. So was Braudel. And the three volumes of the life of Theodore Roosevelt by Edmund Morris. Lim appeared to be an eclectic, if serious reader. And he was disturbingly neat for a lowlife. The place was clean: no crack pipes or ashtrays filled with roaches. There was a galley kitchen. No dishes in the sink. The fridge was stocked with real food. At the end of the hall leading off the foyer was the bathroom. To the right was the bedroom.
I was at a loss as to what to look for. My preference would have been a note lying around that was entitled “Places I will take Chie Miyazaki.” No go. I peeked around and rifled through the drawers. Nothing. There were men’s clothes hanging in the bedroom closet. There was a duffle bag on the floor. I opened it up: a clean martial arts uniform with the black piping of a taekwondo enthusiast.
So. He cleans. He reads. He doesn’t smoke at home. He works out. Lim’s public persona wasn’t fitting with his private one. And that was interesting.
A laptop computer sat on top of a desk in the bedroom, neatly placed in the center of the work surface. It was already open and when I hit the “Enter” key, the computer woke up. The screen showed four different camera shots of the apartment. In one of them, you could see my back as I peered into the screen. Shit. I was blown. I folded the computer screen down, and headed out of the bedroom. Right into the arms of an angry stranger.
I never heard the apartment door open. He was that good. Probably the only reason he didn’t try to kill me right off was that the narrow hallway we were standing in constricted his range of motion.
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