White Tiger Read Free Page B

blind! Can’t you see I’m pissing?

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    Chen Song met them in the lobby as he had been instructed. Manning mostly ignored him as he scanned the lobby for any more Fujianese he might have missed. He did take note that Chen Song’s haughty expression had fled in favor of a more suppressed appearance that fit the situation. After all, it took a strong man to maintain arrogance when he was only a few steps away from being dead.
    They were apparently unobserved by anyone more malicious than the staff, which politely bowed to Manning and his charges as they headed for the door. Manning spared them only a curt nod—bad manners in Japan, but he had no time to waste. His car, a very sedate three-year-old Honda Legend, was in the nearby parking garage. Manning rushed the two Shanghainese into the vehicle, and within seconds, they were off.
    “Going smooth,” Chen Gui commented, sitting in the left front passenger seat. “You can drive on the left side of the road?”
    “If I can’t, we won’t be exactly inconspicuous. I want both of you to get down. Now.”
    “Get down?” Chen Song echoed from the back seat.
    “Yes—get down!”
    Both men did as he instructed immediately. As they pulled past the hotel, Manning saw the group of Fujianese jogging toward the entrance. One of them glanced at his car as he drove past with more interest than he would have liked. A glance in the rearview mirror explained it; the man had seen Chen Song peeking above the doorsill.
    “Smooth move, Ex-Lax,” Manning said sourly. “He just made us!”
    “Ex-Lax?” asked Chen Gui.
    “Never mind.” Manning gunned the Honda’s six-cylinder engine, abandoning all hope of making a clean getaway as he wrenched the car into a sharp left-hand turn down Azabudai. He checked his rearview mirror again, and caught a quick glimpse of the Fujianese running to their car. They ran right through the hotel’s well-maintained garden, trampling all matter of flora. Clearly, subtlety was not one of their hallmarks.
    Fight’s on, he thought idly.
    “We’re going to hit the highway,” he told his passengers. “Hopefully these guys will be too cheap to want to follow us through the tolls.”
    “If only they were Shanghainese!” Chen Gui wailed. “Fujianese spend money like madmen!”
    “I’ll remember that,” Manning responded dryly as the car accelerated past the Tokyo American Club. He took his first available right, then his first left, then left again, proceeding on for three blocks before turning left once more against a traffic signal. Horns blared and hazard lights flashed; Manning ignored the commotion. Within moments, he was guiding the car onto the Shuto Expressway. He checked his rearview mirror for the Fujianese; he remembered their car to be an older silver Toyota Grand Saloon. The problem was, the car was fairly ubiquitous in Japan, like its brother the Camry was in the US. It was a rental agency favorite, and it was relatively affordable, so he was nonplussed to see there were at least three silver Grand Saloons in the lanes behind him.
    “Where are we going?” Chen Gui finally asked.
    “Narita.”
    “You killed that man back there. In the hotel. Why?”
    “I don’t know why you’d care, but I didn’t kill him,” Manning responded evenly. “On the other hand, I don’t get paid if you die.” He kept his eyes on the road, checking both the rearview mirror and side view mirrors regularly. He kept the speed up over 100 kilometers an hour, which was only slightly faster than the rest of the Tokyo traffic. Finally, he found a large gravel truck he could use as cover. He switched lanes quickly (from right to left in Japan, something he had struggled to get used to) and sidled up on the other side of the truck.
    Chen Gui seemed shocked by the revelation. “Why didn’t you kill him?”
    “I charge extra for killing.”
    “Two more questions,” Chen Gui said after a time.
    “What?”
    “Can we get up now, and what is