Chapter 7: Four Stories Down

Wang Lili's first act as custodian was to replace Mo's bloodstained clothes.

Her second was to give him twelve dollars and send him out for coffee.

"The window is thirty paces from the back door," she said. "Two black coffees. If anyone asks, you are staying with family."

"Are the Wangs my family?"

"No."

"Then that answer is false."

"It is also none of their business."

Mo considered this distinction.

Four days earlier he had known none of this language. It had come to him the way an opponent's rhythm came, faster each hour, until he could follow most speech without Mei Lin's voice beside him. Law and forms he still left to her. Printed English he could barely read.

The clothes fit well enough. Black jacket, gray shirt, dark trousers made from coarse fabric, black boots whose soles held the pavement more stubbornly than leather should. Lili had tied his hair low, then stepped back before he could object to the intimacy.

Outside, the morning air carried frying oil, wet concrete, car exhaust, and sweetened coffee. The rear alley ran between the school and a row of narrow businesses. Metal stairs clung to brick walls above overflowing bins. Laundry moved behind fourth-floor windows.

Mo had taken seventeen steps when a young man came out from behind a delivery truck.

He was lean and loose-limbed, with messy black hair and a gray jacket over a red shirt. His worn shoes placed his weight forward on the right foot. One hand stayed inside his pocket.

"You got a phone?" he asked.

Mo understood the individual words. Their purpose was less clear.

"I have no phone and no wallet."

The young man's eyes traveled over the new jacket. "Sure."

He moved closer. The hidden hand emerged with a folding knife.

Mo stopped.

The blade was short. The grip was poor. Fear stiffened the young man's wrist more than intent did.

"Cash," he said. "Whatever you've got."

Mo held up the twelve dollars.

The young man stared at the bills. "That's it?"

"Two coffees cost less."

"You know what? Keep it. Give me the jacket."

"Lili chose it."

The young man sighed as if Mo had made the encounter tedious. "Don't make this difficult."

He reached for Mo's sleeve.

Mo turned his wrist.

The knife closed in the young man's own hand. His fingers opened from the pressure at the joint, and the weapon passed between them without cutting either man. Mo caught it by the handle.

The young man blinked at his empty hand.

Mo examined the knife. The hinge was clever. The steel was not.

"That was mine," the young man said.

"You used it badly."

"I was threatening you."

"Yes."

"You're supposed to give it back."

"That would allow you to threaten me again."

"I wasn't planning to."

Mo offered him the closed knife.

The young man did not take it.

Movement disturbed the far end of the alley. A man in a brown work coat stood beside the school's rear wall, one hand raised near his face. He had been watching through a small black phone. When Mo met his eyes, the hand dropped.

The man turned away.

A thin pressure brushed Mo's senses.

Camphor. Powdered metal. A faint, spoiled current that dragged against his own circulation.

Price's residue.

Mo crossed the alley.

The man in the work coat quickened his pace.

Behind Mo, the young robber said, "Hey. Are we done?"

"No."

"That sounded personal."

Mo reached the place where the watcher had stood. One brick beside the rear door sat deeper than the others. Its edge carried a thumbprint in alley dust and a trace of the same bitter medicine that had clung to Price's dead hand.

Price had come through this alley before entering the school.

Mo pressed the brick. It shifted inward.

A folded yellow paper waited in the hollow behind it.

The young man peered over Mo's shoulder. "You found secret wall mail?"

Mo opened the paper. Printed English covered one side. A name near the top had become familiar through photographs and questions.

NOLAN PRICE

The young man read past Mo's hand. "Bidder claim. HarborLock Storage. Lot three fourteen."

At the mouth of the alley the watcher stopped, dropped his pretense, and ran back, struck the young man hard enough to spin him, and tore the paper from Mo's fingers.

Mo caught the robber before his head hit brick.

The watcher sprinted toward the fire escape.

"Stay here," Mo said.

"Absolutely."

Mo released him and followed.

The watcher jumped onto a bin, caught the lowest ladder, and hauled himself upward. He moved without hesitation. Someone had taught him this route, or he had practiced it often.

The ladder ended twelve feet above the ground once his weight left it.

An ordinary pursuer would have dragged over the bin.

Mo placed one foot against the brick wall.

His weight left the step.

The second foot landed level with his hip. Heat bent the air along the edge of his boot. He took three running steps across the vertical wall, caught the underside of the first landing, and rose through its iron rails without shaking them.

Below, the young robber said a word Mo had not heard before.

The watcher was already two floors above.

Mo climbed outside the stairs, hands touching rail and masonry only where needed. The metal structure groaned beneath the other man's boots. Rust powdered the air. At the third floor, the watcher kicked open a gate and crossed a landing strung with laundry.

A woman holding a basket flattened herself against the wall.

Mo passed between two hanging sheets. Neither touched his face.

The watcher glanced back. Panic broke his rhythm. He cleared the next rail, missed one step, and recovered by striking the wall with his shoulder.

Mo could have taken him there.

The man tore a steel pin from the landing support.

The fire escape shifted.

Mo heard four bolts pull loose inside the brick.

Below them, a father guided a little girl out of the coffee window. The young robber stood in the alley with his phone raised. Two kitchen workers had joined him. All four were directly beneath the iron stairs.

The watcher jumped to the neighboring roof.

The fire escape came away from the building.

For one breath, Mo and three floors of black iron fell together.

He struck the upper rail with his palm, and the force ran down its length like an order passed along a line of men, so that the twisting structure opened away from the people below instead of folding in on them. The brick wall rushed past. He set one foot against it and emptied his lungs, and the impact that should have driven his knee through his chest spread instead across his hips and out along the wall, until the brick under his sole gave one dry crack and his body slowed, hung for the space of a heartbeat, and dropped again.

Third floor.

His fingers touched a window ledge. He did not grip. A grip would have torn it free.

Second floor.

The heat along his hands brightened enough to bleach the dust around them. He pressed the falling stairs once more. The lowest flight swung across the alley and struck the delivery truck instead of the child.

The truck roof collapsed with a roar.

Mo turned in the remaining space, touched the wall with the ball of one foot, and landed beside the girl.

His knees bent.

Above, the watcher reached the roof edge. The stolen claim showed yellow in his fist.

A brass key slipped from his coat, struck two rails, and spun into open air.

Mo caught it before it reached the ground.

By the time he looked up, the roof was empty.

The fire escape settled across the ruined truck. A side mirror fell off and broke.

Nobody beneath it had been touched.

The little girl stared at Mo's hand.

Smoke rose from the dust in his palm. The brass key had pressed a red line into his skin.

Her father pulled her behind him.

Mo closed his fingers.

The thin air offered almost nothing to replace what he had spent. His breath found a hollow place below his ribs before his circulation steadied around it.

The young robber lowered his phone.

"What are you?"

"Shen Mo."

"That did not answer anything."

"It answered what you asked."

A woman leaned out of a second-floor window. "I got the whole thing!"

The young man looked at his own screen.

"So did I."

"You were instructed to remain where you were."

"I remained. You went up."

Sirens sounded beyond the alley.

Mo examined the key. A blue plastic tag hung from its ring.

HARBORLOCK STORAGE

8C

The young man's phone began making sounds.

He tapped the screen. His eyebrows went up.

"Forty-seven views. Eighty-two. How does it have eighty-two?"

"Perhaps forty-seven people showed it to others."

"That's not how fast any of this should work."

Another sound.

He read the screen and stopped smiling. Then he turned the phone. Beneath the video, an account marked with a blue symbol had posted a comment.

PLEASE CONTACT ASHWOOD FOUNDATION REGARDING THE ORIGINAL RECORDING.

The young man read it aloud, slowly, as if the words might change.

"What is Ashwood Foundation?" Mo asked.

"Somebody with money," the young man said. "They want the video."

"They cannot have the original event."

"That's not what they mean."

A dark sedan stopped at the alley entrance before the patrol cars arrived.

Su Yue stepped out.

She left the door open behind her and swept back her jacket to clear the holster as she walked. Her gaze moved over the wrecked truck, the fire escape, the broken wall, and Mo.

She came straight to him.

"What happened?"

The young man raised one hand. "I can explain."

Su showed him her badge. "Start with your name."

"Jay Lin."

"Lin," Mo said. "Like the interpreter."

"I don't know any interpreter," Jay said. "Half the Bay is named Lin."

"The knife?" Su asked.

Jay looked at Mo.

Mo held it out, still folded.

"His," Mo said.

Jay pointed at him. "He gave it back."

Su's eyes narrowed. "Why did he have it?"

Jay lowered his hand. "That part makes me sound bad."

"It was a robbery," Mo said.

"A failed robbery."

Su took the knife by its edges and passed it to an approaching officer. "Stand over there, Mr. Lin."

Jay obeyed.

Su faced Mo again. "Are you injured?"

"No."

She looked him over the way he would have read a stranger, not his face but how he stood. "Lift your arms."

He lifted them. Pain answered beneath the lowest rib, and her eyes went to the place.

"No?" she asked.

"The injury is small."

"You fell four stories."

"I reduced the fall."

"That sentence does not improve it."

She did not touch the rib. Her hands stayed at her sides, and Mo understood that she was keeping them there.

"Show me your hands."

He opened them. She looked at the burned palm without taking it.

"What did you catch?"

Mo gave her the brass key.

She turned the blue tag to the light. "Where did this come from?"

"The man who took Price's claim dropped it."

"Price's what?"

Jay called from beside the patrol car. "Storage auction claim. Nolan Price, HarborLock, lot three fourteen."

Su looked toward the hollow brick, then up at the roof where the watcher had vanished.

"You read it?"

"I saw it before he took it," Jay said. "I have excellent recall under criminal pressure."

"You tried to rob him."

"Different criminal pressure."

Su's mouth resisted.

Mo watched the struggle last half a breath, then lose.

Her laugh was low and brief. One shoulder lifted with it. The sound belonged to no memory he carried. It struck him with the clean surprise of cold water, present and alive.

She caught him watching.

"What?"

"I had not heard you laugh."

"Don't get used to it."

Jay raised his hand again. "Do I get credit for that?"

"No," Su said.

"You may repay your debt by explaining phones, transit, and why Ashwood wants the recording," Mo told Jay.

Jay stared at him. "What debt?"

"The attempted robbery."

"You kept the knife."

"I returned it."

Su laughed again.

This time, Mo knew it before memory could offer him anyone else.

"Both of you are coming with me," she said. "Jay as a witness. You because Wang custody has apparently become a public works emergency."

"I prevented the emergency."

"You are standing inside it."

Mo looked at the wrecked truck.

That was difficult to dispute.

Su placed the key in an evidence bag. "HarborLock, unit 8C. We find the facility, secure the footage, and do this legally."

"The claim is escaping."

"The claim is paper. The key is a lead."

"The man is also escaping."

"And chasing him already cost us every phone angle in the neighborhood."

She held his gaze, a detective with his key in her hand and brick dust still settling on her shoulders.

Mo looked from the key in its bag to her face and let the man go.

Su opened the sedan's rear door.

He got in.