Spoiler! :
Los Angeles, California
“Five,” Booker Lee yelled, pointing the gun at the woman's head, his face stony. “You've got five seconds before your wife dies. And I swear I'll shoot. You know I will.”
The woman sobbed uncontrollably in the corner, her eyes riveted on the gun. She clawed at her face, at her cheeks – where tears streamed freely – and pulled at her tangled black hair in distress. Her husband was backed up against a table shaking his head compulsively, glancing every few seconds at his wife in the corner and then at his two toddlers – a boy and a girl – hidden behind an overturned chest-of-drawers. A single lamp hung overhead, illuminating the one room apartment perched above the grocery store dimly, casting feeble light on the stacks of newspapers and books and clothing scattered across the floor. Chairs and tables had been thrown aside and bullet holes riddled the ceiling. The husband was silent. The children whimpered. The wife cried softly.
Booker Lee hated this. He hated the crying, he hated the threats, and most of all he hated that children were in the room, their wide eyes watching the strangers in trench coats and masks make their mother cry and make their father beg. They had heard the gunshots directed at the ceiling as a warning, and then seen the men tear apart their small home like rabid wolves. Their minds processed the violence slowly. They watched it carefully. And they would remember it forever. Booker Lee shook his head. This was his job. It was his life. Raiding houses and extorting shop owners and dealing heroine and selling human commodity was who he was. And he hated it. Every minute of it. He hated himself for doing it.
And the children in the corner just made tonight worse.
“Four,” he hissed over the sobs.
Mao Enlai, the owner of the grocery store beneath their feet, the father, the husband, shook his head again, “I don't have it. Business was bad this month. Give me more time.”
“This is the deadline.”
“Please, another week.”
“We told you what would happen at the deadline.”
The wife wailed louder.
“I just don't have it.”
Booker Lee's finger hovered over the trigger. A year ago Black Dragon representatives had walked into Mao's shop and told him frankly that if he did not pay them a thousand dollars a month, they would kill his family. His wife, his children. Incidentally, he had been faithful with his payments ever since. Until tonight, anyway. So out of all the Tong members, Booker had been sent as a grim reaper to visit the man's small family.
His father had a sick sense of humor.
“Three.”
Mao broke down. He fell to his knees and covered his face with his hands, crying along with his wife. The children joined the grating chorus. Booker swore. He was getting a headache. The sooner this ended, the better. Mao crawled towards Booker, as low to the ground as he could possibly get, demonstrating that he was dirt, that he was nothing compared to his debtors. Behind him, three of his men stiffened at the sudden movement and aimed their sub-machine guns carefully at the grocer.
“What do you want me to do?” he moaned. “I'm not lying to you. I really don't have the money.”
“You should have thought of that. You knew the deadline was coming.”
“I did all that I could! I swear!”
Booker hesitated and glanced at Mao's wife, reduced to an animal, her whole frame trembling. As he looked at her he couldn't help thinking of Eva. He couldn't help imagining his own wife sobbing in terror, laid prostrate by strangers. He felt a sudden surge of empathy and anger and disgust with himself.
What am I doing here?
He answered himself immediately. Doing what I've done since day one.
Again, he inwardly blamed his father for raising such a screwed up individual.
The other men behind him noticed his hesitation and nudged him gently. He looked back at Mao. “Two.”
Yuan, the project security leader, suddenly flipped open his cell phone next to Booker. As he put it to his ear, he went pale and swore, “Puk Kai!” He looked at Booker. “The police are here!”
Mao perked up. Booker's jaw clenched.
“Hell.”
“Everyone out!” Yuan screamed. “Get out, get out!”
Booker looked at the window for a split second – sirens bawling in the distance - and Mao lunged forward, a hidden kitchen knife in hand.
One of his men yelled.
At the warning, Booker managed to swerve to one side, but the blade still plunged into his shoulder. Stars erupted behind his eyes and he bellowed in pain, inadvertently catching Mao's hand and wrenching it down hard. He heard the wrist snap and Mao collapsed at his feet. His wife wailed.
“Shoot them,” Yuan was yelling, “Shoot them all!”
Blinking back tears and staggering sideways, Booker wrapped his hand around the knife and jerked it out, letting fall to the newspaper strewn ground. He gasped. Someone wrapped their arm around his midriff and began dragging him for the door. Booker shoved them off and sprinted for it himself, clutching his bleeding wound.
As he exited the apartment and ran down the stairs, the chatter of sub-machine guns struck up like some macabre concerto.
He tried to ignore the screams of Mao's small family as bullets tore through their flesh.
***
Booker Lee sat at the wheel of his Mercedes silently as he maneuvered the car through the downtown traffic. Advertisements and incandescent store fronts stared down at him, brightly proclaiming their presence in the nocturnal city: invading sight, drawing attention to themselves like some obscene strip-joint dancer. Buy this, buy that. The signs practically screamed, cried out to be inspected. In your face, raucous, loud, leering. Two-dimensional salesmen, every one. I want your money, you want my product, everyone wins. And yes, I do take visa.
Booker tried to ignore them all, knuckles white on the steering wheel. He wanted to be home. He wanted to get drunk and forget all this madness for one more night. He wanted to forget who he was. He wanted to hold Eva. He wanted to sleep. Sleep for a long time...
Shoot them! Shoot them all!
Yuan's voice echoed in his ears.
It hadn't been his first deadline raid and it wouldn't be his last. He had seen and heard plenty of innocent bodies being mown down by machine guns. He had seen the blood. He had worn the blood. But it hadn't bothered him before. It was life. His life taking their life equaled lifestyle for Booker. He had been raised a criminal and he would always be a criminal. Hurting people was his business. The police wanted him, the FBI wanted him. Booker could be aptly described as the scum-of-the-earth, the devil's piss. It seemed to be his destiny to hold a gun. Jin Lee had made sure of that.
Booker turned off of the main street and headed down a residential area.
Before he met Eva, that destiny hadn't bothered him. Heroine was for income, innocent shop owners were for extorting, women were made for selling, and police were made for eluding. It had all been a game.
But Eva had changed that.
She had known perfectly well who he was: the son of a rich crime lord. But she must have seen something in him. Something more than the criminal. She made Booker care suddenly about what he was doing and made him want to change. He knew it would sound like a hallelujah-I've-seen-a-vision conversion story to anyone else, but it was a fact: Eva had tweaked something in him. Opened his eyes – whether he like it or not – to the reality of his actions. His own living, breathing conscience, lying beside him in bed. Two years ago, standing face to face, hand in hand, till death do you part still echoing in his ears, Booker had realized he wanted something different from life.
Unfortunately, being apart of a Tong – especially his father's - was like being a Muslim. There was no way out. You were in it for life.
If you left, you were shot by some radical.
So he went on with the old way of life, despite the internal nagging, despite what he felt, and hated it. Every minute.
Booker eased his foot on the brake and turned into the Village Gardens apartment block driveway, found his designated parking space and opened the car door, wincing at his wounded arm. He had taken off his trench coat and mask and had ripped his shirt sleeve off to reveal the nasty looking knife gouge, laced with congealing blood. He swore out loud at Mao.
Shoot them. Shoot them all!
Ignoring the pain, he immediately shoved fresh images of the Enlai family shuddering grotesquely as the machine guns chattered. And the children. They had killed the children. Both of them. Their screams had been the highest, the most painful.
But that was the fiat from Jin Lee's mouth. No survivors, no witnesses, no messy cleanups. In the prison cells and courtrooms, that is. It was the only way to ensure complete protection for his children. His Tong members. If victims saw evil, heard evil, but couldn't speak of it, they were all home free.
Booker shook his head, walked down the apartment's parking concourse and made his way up a flight of stairs, taking them two, three at a time. He and Eva had just moved into Village Gardens after living in one of Jin Lee's many condos peppered across Los Angeles for a year which, often he knew, housed hidden stores of cocaine and heroine in the attics and wall panels. His wife had finally insisted they become at least marginally independent of Booker's father. She didn't like Jin. And Booker was sure the feelings were mutual. His father had completely washed his hands of the marriage, of Eva. He hadn't approved of Booker marrying outside of the Tong in the first place.
Veranda lights glistened in the warm early-morning darkness, illuminating his path and painting shafts of yellow on the planking. The silence was punctuated by shouts, laughs, screams in the distance and, to Booker's discomfort, the whine of sirens on the highway near the complex. They had only just escaped this time. Out of Mao's grocery store only seconds before the police appeared at the building in full gun-toting majesty. The cops had been on scene faster lately. Obviously, they were bulking up in the shadier neighborhoods. And for the Black Dragon Tong, lightning tended to strike twice. Not a good quality, they were all learning.
Jack be nimble, Jack be quick! Jack jump over the candle stick!
Booker shook his head again. The flame was getting higher. Clearing the candle stick wasn't as easy as it looked. He was getting tired of running. Always running.
Booker jammed his key into the lock and shouldered his way into his apartment. He glanced at the kitchen clock and shut the heavy door as quietly as possible. 4:26. He winced as hinges creaked behind him. Late again. Eva was getting tired of the early morning Reveilles. And she had no problem telling him so.
After all, she was sleeping for two.
Shedding his torn and bloody shirt, Booker made a bee-line for his liquor cabinet and poured a glass of scotch. The drink of his father. He'd gotten Booker hooked a long time ago. The drink of victors, my son! He drank it slowly. Forget Mao, forget Jin Lee, forget the Tong.
For good measure, he refilled his glass twice more.
Amnesia in a bottle.
Lightheaded, Booker made his way down the hallway, glass still in hand, and fumbled with a pack of cigarettes on a secretary desk in the hallway. Another addiction begun by good ol' dad. First a Camel, then a nail, then a crack pipe, and before long, my boy, you'll have graduated to a syringe. Puts hair on your chest, trust me.
His father was always just a drug dealer at heart, no matter how high up the Tong's political totem poll he climbed.
Footsteps creaking on the apartment floorboards, Booker Lee stepped into his room, tossing the scotch glass in a basket of dirty laundry and headed for his bed. He could see Eva's slim figure in soft relief – her chest rising and falling rhythmically – on her side in the mattress. Though it was dark, he could still see the outlines of her face, large lidded eyes, sharp nose, high cheek bones, a soft full mouth. Beautiful, beautiful. And his. Eva was his. Smiling, he shuffled forward and let his fingers slide across her cheek, warm and delicate, straying to her hair and then beneath her chin. She stirred softly. For a moment, Booker forgot everything.
And then the phone rang.
Cursing under his breath, Booker whirled around and snatched up his cell phone behind him on a nightstand. He flipped it open, backing away from Eva quickly, toward the veranda doors.
“Do you have any idea what time it is?” he hissed. He opened the doors silently and stepped out again into the cool morning air.
“Booker. How're you doing? Heard you took a knife earlier.”
“It's four in the morning, Ben.”
“Had to talk, man. I just wanted to check in on you.”
Booker sighed and leaned forward on the veranda railing, staring into the smoggy horizon. He had known Ben Zhoung since age five. He was also a member of the Black Dragon Tong, also disgruntled with his indefinite membership, but wasn't as influential as Booker. Not that it mattered. The two still had quite a history. Ben was almost closer to him than Eva. Although, sleeping in the same bed was a hard thing for Ben to compete with.
“I'm fine,” he said, touching the wound on his shoulder.
“That's good. Hey, how's Eva doing? I heard the big news.”
“Ben, she's a hippo.”
Ben laughed on the other end. “Love handles: you gotta have 'em.”
“That's one fat kid she's having.”
“Just like his daddy.”
Booker smiled. “It's a girl.”
“Eh. Same thing.”
“Generally, I can spot the difference.”
“Not until the hormones kick in, you can't. That's when they 'blossom'.”
Booker watched the lights of Los Angeles glimmer brightly as dawn fingered the horizon. He tapped a cigarette out of the pack he had been carrying and groped in his pocket for a lighter. “So is this what you really called me for, Ben?”
There was a pause. “No, actually. I've got some bad news.”
“The story of my life.”
“Booker, they found your fathers body in his Hong Kong home. He died of a heart attack and fell off of a balcony.”
Booker stopped, the lighter in his hand frozen in front of his cigarette. Dead. He took inventory of his emotions carefully. Mostly he was shocked. Despite his seventy-plus years, Jin Lee was a healthy man. He exercised regularly, had laid of the drugs, and had gone on a diet of all things. But underneath the shock Booker felt relieved, free, smug. A general air of 'good riddance' stole it's way into his heart. The man was his flesh and blood. He had indeed donated twenty-three chromosomes to the cause, but the man never was his father. He was a guardian. He paid the bail. He loaned him cash.
And most of all, he had made Booker a criminal.
No, he wasn't sorry the man had died.
Booker frowned. He was, however, surprised someone didn't kill him, rather than something. He had always supposed Jin Lee would get a shot in the head, not a heart attack as his one way out-of-body ticket.
“I'm sorry, Booker.”
“Don't be. You know what kind of relationship we had. I only hope he has a good time in hell.”
“The man was your father - ”
“No, Ben, he wasn't. He never was.”
Silence.
“What'll happen next, you think?” Ben asked.
Booker lit the cigarette and took a long drag. “We get a new leader.”
“Will Tsao take the job?”
“Probably. Unless someone important has a problem with it.”
“So the Lee dynasty is over.”
Booker nodded even though he knew his friend couldn't see. It was over. He was no longer the son of the boss. Things would be different. Maybe better. Maybe not. But he was always a brother in the Tong. More or less, they were all equal as Black Dragons.
“You should get some rest,” Ben said.
“Yeah. I should. Thanks for telling me.”
“No problem. I'll see you tomorrow then. You know an election ceremony will be going on around five. Catch you there.”
“See you then.”
Ben hung up.
Booker took a long drag on the cigarette and then tossed it away. Slowly, he made his way back into the room, thoughts on the raid earlier instead of his dead father. Yuan's voice echoed through his mind as he slipped into bed beside Eva and rested his hand on her pregnant belly, bulging and distended as if she had swallowed a bowling ball.
Shoot them! Shoot them all!
Booker suddenly wanted another drink.
“Five,” Booker Lee yelled, pointing the gun at the woman's head, his face stony. “You've got five seconds before your wife dies. And I swear I'll shoot. You know I will.”
The woman sobbed uncontrollably in the corner, her eyes riveted on the gun. She clawed at her face, at her cheeks – where tears streamed freely – and pulled at her tangled black hair in distress. Her husband was backed up against a table shaking his head compulsively, glancing every few seconds at his wife in the corner and then at his two toddlers – a boy and a girl – hidden behind an overturned chest-of-drawers. A single lamp hung overhead, illuminating the one room apartment perched above the grocery store dimly, casting feeble light on the stacks of newspapers and books and clothing scattered across the floor. Chairs and tables had been thrown aside and bullet holes riddled the ceiling. The husband was silent. The children whimpered. The wife cried softly.
Booker Lee hated this. He hated the crying, he hated the threats, and most of all he hated that children were in the room, their wide eyes watching the strangers in trench coats and masks make their mother cry and make their father beg. They had heard the gunshots directed at the ceiling as a warning, and then seen the men tear apart their small home like rabid wolves. Their minds processed the violence slowly. They watched it carefully. And they would remember it forever. Booker Lee shook his head. This was his job. It was his life. Raiding houses and extorting shop owners and dealing heroine and selling human commodity was who he was. And he hated it. Every minute of it. He hated himself for doing it.
And the children in the corner just made tonight worse.
“Four,” he hissed over the sobs.
Mao Enlai, the owner of the grocery store beneath their feet, the father, the husband, shook his head again, “I don't have it. Business was bad this month. Give me more time.”
“This is the deadline.”
“Please, another week.”
“We told you what would happen at the deadline.”
The wife wailed louder.
“I just don't have it.”
Booker Lee's finger hovered over the trigger. A year ago Black Dragon representatives had walked into Mao's shop and told him frankly that if he did not pay them a thousand dollars a month, they would kill his family. His wife, his children. Incidentally, he had been faithful with his payments ever since. Until tonight, anyway. So out of all the Tong members, Booker had been sent as a grim reaper to visit the man's small family.
His father had a sick sense of humor.
“Three.”
Mao broke down. He fell to his knees and covered his face with his hands, crying along with his wife. The children joined the grating chorus. Booker swore. He was getting a headache. The sooner this ended, the better. Mao crawled towards Booker, as low to the ground as he could possibly get, demonstrating that he was dirt, that he was nothing compared to his debtors. Behind him, three of his men stiffened at the sudden movement and aimed their sub-machine guns carefully at the grocer.
“What do you want me to do?” he moaned. “I'm not lying to you. I really don't have the money.”
“You should have thought of that. You knew the deadline was coming.”
“I did all that I could! I swear!”
Booker hesitated and glanced at Mao's wife, reduced to an animal, her whole frame trembling. As he looked at her he couldn't help thinking of Eva. He couldn't help imagining his own wife sobbing in terror, laid prostrate by strangers. He felt a sudden surge of empathy and anger and disgust with himself.
What am I doing here?
He answered himself immediately. Doing what I've done since day one.
Again, he inwardly blamed his father for raising such a screwed up individual.
The other men behind him noticed his hesitation and nudged him gently. He looked back at Mao. “Two.”
Yuan, the project security leader, suddenly flipped open his cell phone next to Booker. As he put it to his ear, he went pale and swore, “Puk Kai!” He looked at Booker. “The police are here!”
Mao perked up. Booker's jaw clenched.
“Hell.”
“Everyone out!” Yuan screamed. “Get out, get out!”
Booker looked at the window for a split second – sirens bawling in the distance - and Mao lunged forward, a hidden kitchen knife in hand.
One of his men yelled.
At the warning, Booker managed to swerve to one side, but the blade still plunged into his shoulder. Stars erupted behind his eyes and he bellowed in pain, inadvertently catching Mao's hand and wrenching it down hard. He heard the wrist snap and Mao collapsed at his feet. His wife wailed.
“Shoot them,” Yuan was yelling, “Shoot them all!”
Blinking back tears and staggering sideways, Booker wrapped his hand around the knife and jerked it out, letting fall to the newspaper strewn ground. He gasped. Someone wrapped their arm around his midriff and began dragging him for the door. Booker shoved them off and sprinted for it himself, clutching his bleeding wound.
As he exited the apartment and ran down the stairs, the chatter of sub-machine guns struck up like some macabre concerto.
He tried to ignore the screams of Mao's small family as bullets tore through their flesh.
***
Booker Lee sat at the wheel of his Mercedes silently as he maneuvered the car through the downtown traffic. Advertisements and incandescent store fronts stared down at him, brightly proclaiming their presence in the nocturnal city: invading sight, drawing attention to themselves like some obscene strip-joint dancer. Buy this, buy that. The signs practically screamed, cried out to be inspected. In your face, raucous, loud, leering. Two-dimensional salesmen, every one. I want your money, you want my product, everyone wins. And yes, I do take visa.
Booker tried to ignore them all, knuckles white on the steering wheel. He wanted to be home. He wanted to get drunk and forget all this madness for one more night. He wanted to forget who he was. He wanted to hold Eva. He wanted to sleep. Sleep for a long time...
Shoot them! Shoot them all!
Yuan's voice echoed in his ears.
It hadn't been his first deadline raid and it wouldn't be his last. He had seen and heard plenty of innocent bodies being mown down by machine guns. He had seen the blood. He had worn the blood. But it hadn't bothered him before. It was life. His life taking their life equaled lifestyle for Booker. He had been raised a criminal and he would always be a criminal. Hurting people was his business. The police wanted him, the FBI wanted him. Booker could be aptly described as the scum-of-the-earth, the devil's piss. It seemed to be his destiny to hold a gun. Jin Lee had made sure of that.
Booker turned off of the main street and headed down a residential area.
Before he met Eva, that destiny hadn't bothered him. Heroine was for income, innocent shop owners were for extorting, women were made for selling, and police were made for eluding. It had all been a game.
But Eva had changed that.
She had known perfectly well who he was: the son of a rich crime lord. But she must have seen something in him. Something more than the criminal. She made Booker care suddenly about what he was doing and made him want to change. He knew it would sound like a hallelujah-I've-seen-a-vision conversion story to anyone else, but it was a fact: Eva had tweaked something in him. Opened his eyes – whether he like it or not – to the reality of his actions. His own living, breathing conscience, lying beside him in bed. Two years ago, standing face to face, hand in hand, till death do you part still echoing in his ears, Booker had realized he wanted something different from life.
Unfortunately, being apart of a Tong – especially his father's - was like being a Muslim. There was no way out. You were in it for life.
If you left, you were shot by some radical.
So he went on with the old way of life, despite the internal nagging, despite what he felt, and hated it. Every minute.
Booker eased his foot on the brake and turned into the Village Gardens apartment block driveway, found his designated parking space and opened the car door, wincing at his wounded arm. He had taken off his trench coat and mask and had ripped his shirt sleeve off to reveal the nasty looking knife gouge, laced with congealing blood. He swore out loud at Mao.
Shoot them. Shoot them all!
Ignoring the pain, he immediately shoved fresh images of the Enlai family shuddering grotesquely as the machine guns chattered. And the children. They had killed the children. Both of them. Their screams had been the highest, the most painful.
But that was the fiat from Jin Lee's mouth. No survivors, no witnesses, no messy cleanups. In the prison cells and courtrooms, that is. It was the only way to ensure complete protection for his children. His Tong members. If victims saw evil, heard evil, but couldn't speak of it, they were all home free.
Booker shook his head, walked down the apartment's parking concourse and made his way up a flight of stairs, taking them two, three at a time. He and Eva had just moved into Village Gardens after living in one of Jin Lee's many condos peppered across Los Angeles for a year which, often he knew, housed hidden stores of cocaine and heroine in the attics and wall panels. His wife had finally insisted they become at least marginally independent of Booker's father. She didn't like Jin. And Booker was sure the feelings were mutual. His father had completely washed his hands of the marriage, of Eva. He hadn't approved of Booker marrying outside of the Tong in the first place.
Veranda lights glistened in the warm early-morning darkness, illuminating his path and painting shafts of yellow on the planking. The silence was punctuated by shouts, laughs, screams in the distance and, to Booker's discomfort, the whine of sirens on the highway near the complex. They had only just escaped this time. Out of Mao's grocery store only seconds before the police appeared at the building in full gun-toting majesty. The cops had been on scene faster lately. Obviously, they were bulking up in the shadier neighborhoods. And for the Black Dragon Tong, lightning tended to strike twice. Not a good quality, they were all learning.
Jack be nimble, Jack be quick! Jack jump over the candle stick!
Booker shook his head again. The flame was getting higher. Clearing the candle stick wasn't as easy as it looked. He was getting tired of running. Always running.
Booker jammed his key into the lock and shouldered his way into his apartment. He glanced at the kitchen clock and shut the heavy door as quietly as possible. 4:26. He winced as hinges creaked behind him. Late again. Eva was getting tired of the early morning Reveilles. And she had no problem telling him so.
After all, she was sleeping for two.
Shedding his torn and bloody shirt, Booker made a bee-line for his liquor cabinet and poured a glass of scotch. The drink of his father. He'd gotten Booker hooked a long time ago. The drink of victors, my son! He drank it slowly. Forget Mao, forget Jin Lee, forget the Tong.
For good measure, he refilled his glass twice more.
Amnesia in a bottle.
Lightheaded, Booker made his way down the hallway, glass still in hand, and fumbled with a pack of cigarettes on a secretary desk in the hallway. Another addiction begun by good ol' dad. First a Camel, then a nail, then a crack pipe, and before long, my boy, you'll have graduated to a syringe. Puts hair on your chest, trust me.
His father was always just a drug dealer at heart, no matter how high up the Tong's political totem poll he climbed.
Footsteps creaking on the apartment floorboards, Booker Lee stepped into his room, tossing the scotch glass in a basket of dirty laundry and headed for his bed. He could see Eva's slim figure in soft relief – her chest rising and falling rhythmically – on her side in the mattress. Though it was dark, he could still see the outlines of her face, large lidded eyes, sharp nose, high cheek bones, a soft full mouth. Beautiful, beautiful. And his. Eva was his. Smiling, he shuffled forward and let his fingers slide across her cheek, warm and delicate, straying to her hair and then beneath her chin. She stirred softly. For a moment, Booker forgot everything.
And then the phone rang.
Cursing under his breath, Booker whirled around and snatched up his cell phone behind him on a nightstand. He flipped it open, backing away from Eva quickly, toward the veranda doors.
“Do you have any idea what time it is?” he hissed. He opened the doors silently and stepped out again into the cool morning air.
“Booker. How're you doing? Heard you took a knife earlier.”
“It's four in the morning, Ben.”
“Had to talk, man. I just wanted to check in on you.”
Booker sighed and leaned forward on the veranda railing, staring into the smoggy horizon. He had known Ben Zhoung since age five. He was also a member of the Black Dragon Tong, also disgruntled with his indefinite membership, but wasn't as influential as Booker. Not that it mattered. The two still had quite a history. Ben was almost closer to him than Eva. Although, sleeping in the same bed was a hard thing for Ben to compete with.
“I'm fine,” he said, touching the wound on his shoulder.
“That's good. Hey, how's Eva doing? I heard the big news.”
“Ben, she's a hippo.”
Ben laughed on the other end. “Love handles: you gotta have 'em.”
“That's one fat kid she's having.”
“Just like his daddy.”
Booker smiled. “It's a girl.”
“Eh. Same thing.”
“Generally, I can spot the difference.”
“Not until the hormones kick in, you can't. That's when they 'blossom'.”
Booker watched the lights of Los Angeles glimmer brightly as dawn fingered the horizon. He tapped a cigarette out of the pack he had been carrying and groped in his pocket for a lighter. “So is this what you really called me for, Ben?”
There was a pause. “No, actually. I've got some bad news.”
“The story of my life.”
“Booker, they found your fathers body in his Hong Kong home. He died of a heart attack and fell off of a balcony.”
Booker stopped, the lighter in his hand frozen in front of his cigarette. Dead. He took inventory of his emotions carefully. Mostly he was shocked. Despite his seventy-plus years, Jin Lee was a healthy man. He exercised regularly, had laid of the drugs, and had gone on a diet of all things. But underneath the shock Booker felt relieved, free, smug. A general air of 'good riddance' stole it's way into his heart. The man was his flesh and blood. He had indeed donated twenty-three chromosomes to the cause, but the man never was his father. He was a guardian. He paid the bail. He loaned him cash.
And most of all, he had made Booker a criminal.
No, he wasn't sorry the man had died.
Booker frowned. He was, however, surprised someone didn't kill him, rather than something. He had always supposed Jin Lee would get a shot in the head, not a heart attack as his one way out-of-body ticket.
“I'm sorry, Booker.”
“Don't be. You know what kind of relationship we had. I only hope he has a good time in hell.”
“The man was your father - ”
“No, Ben, he wasn't. He never was.”
Silence.
“What'll happen next, you think?” Ben asked.
Booker lit the cigarette and took a long drag. “We get a new leader.”
“Will Tsao take the job?”
“Probably. Unless someone important has a problem with it.”
“So the Lee dynasty is over.”
Booker nodded even though he knew his friend couldn't see. It was over. He was no longer the son of the boss. Things would be different. Maybe better. Maybe not. But he was always a brother in the Tong. More or less, they were all equal as Black Dragons.
“You should get some rest,” Ben said.
“Yeah. I should. Thanks for telling me.”
“No problem. I'll see you tomorrow then. You know an election ceremony will be going on around five. Catch you there.”
“See you then.”
Ben hung up.
Booker took a long drag on the cigarette and then tossed it away. Slowly, he made his way back into the room, thoughts on the raid earlier instead of his dead father. Yuan's voice echoed through his mind as he slipped into bed beside Eva and rested his hand on her pregnant belly, bulging and distended as if she had swallowed a bowling ball.
Shoot them! Shoot them all!
Booker suddenly wanted another drink.
Please don't resurrect ancient posts.
-Kylan
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