Eyes in the Shadow

Chapter Four: The Tape

The next night, 9:55 p.m.

Ella arrived at the study door five minutes early. She had put on a clean white shirt today—the only one without patches, a gift from the nuns when she graduated from the orphanage. The collar was frayed, but at least it was white.

She knocked.

"Come in."

The study was brighter than last time. Chan sat behind his desk, and besides the whiskey and documents, there was now an old tape recorder—the kind that used cassettes, silver-gray casing, worn at the corners, clearly years old.

Two files lay on the desk. Ella glanced at them and caught words like "White Snake Gang," "weapons," "ledger."

"Sit." Chan pointed to the chair across from him.

Ella sat. The chair was leather, larger than her entire body, the seat so deep she felt like she was sinking into a swamp.

Chan pressed play on the recorder.

The tape spun. Hiss of static. Then a man's voice emerged—hoarse, hurried, like a chicken with its throat squeezed:

"Black... listen to me... I really don't know where the shipment went... Old Zhou told me to meet it at the pier, but when I got there, the container was empty... it wasn't me... really, it wasn't..."

The voice began to tremble, edged with tears.

"Black, I've been with you ten years... you have to believe me... it's Old Zhou... Old Zhou, he—"

The recording cut off. Not the end of the tape—someone had deliberately stopped it.

Chan turned off the recorder and looked at Ella. "This man is my man, Ah Keung. Three days ago, he disappeared at the pier. Yesterday, his body was found in Kowloon Bay. Two fingers cut off. His tongue cut out."

Ella's fingers interlaced on her knees, her knuckles white. But her voice was steady: "You suspect Old Zhou did it."

"Not suspect. Confirm." Chan pulled an evidence bag from the drawer. Inside was a severed finger—a small tattoo of the character "dragon" on the nail. "Ah Keung's hand. Clean cut, professional blade. Only the White Snake Gang has knife fighters like that near Kowloon Bay."

Ella stared at the finger. She should feel disgust. She should want to vomit. But all she felt was a cold, clear anger—not at Chan, but at this man called Old Zhou.

"What do you want me to listen for?" she asked.

Chan leaned forward slightly, hands folded on the desk. The desk lamp lit the left half of his face like a spotlight, leaving the right half in darkness.

"Two hours before Ah Keung disappeared, he called me," Chan said. "He only said one thing on the phone: 'Old Zhou is talking to the White Snake Gang. The pier shipment—he sold it for a good price.' Then the line went dead."

"You want me to help you analyze the recording?" Ella frowned. "I'm not a detective."

"No." Chan took the tape out of the recorder and placed it before her. "I want you to memorize this voice. Because the next person who disappears might be you."

The air in the study dropped to freezing. Ella looked at the tape, then at Chan. His expression wasn't threatening—it was more like a statement of fact.

"What do you mean?"

"Old Zhou knows I kept Ah Keung's phone call," Chan said. "He's looking for this tape. The man you saw last night—he came to search the study. He didn't find it. But he'll be back."

"What does that have to do with me?"

"Because Old Zhou doesn't know you." A faint smile played at the corner of Chan's mouth. "He thinks everyone in my manor is my pawn. It would never occur to him that I would give the tape to a maid."

Ella's heart clenched. "You want me to keep the tape?"

"No. I want you to listen to it—until you can recite every word Ah Keung said, including the rhythm of his breathing, the frequency of his gasps, the places where his voice shook." He pushed the tape toward her. "Then, if something happens to me, you go find someone."

He pulled a business card from his pocket. On the back was an address: Kowloon Walled City, Fuk Lo Tsun Road, Third Floor, No Doorplate.

"This man is called Old Ghost. He's an intelligence dealer in the Walled City. He'll do business with anyone, but he only recognizes money, not people. When you go to him, recite the contents of the tape. He'll understand what it means."

Ella took the card. Ordinary white cardstock, but on one corner was a small dark red stain—dried, oxidized, like old blood.

"Why do you think I can do this?" she asked. "I'm just a maid. I don't even know how to use a gun."

"That's exactly why." Chan's eyes suddenly deepened, like a well with no visible bottom. "Old Zhou will guard against my bodyguards, my men, all my eyes and ears. But he won't guard against a maid. Because you look too weak."

He paused, then added: "But you're not weak. When you saw that finger, you didn't vomit, you didn't cry, you didn't look away. You just thought—'This man died wrongfully.'"

Ella's eyes suddenly stung. Not from fear. From being seen.

"I'll help you with this," she said, her voice a little hoarse. "What can you give me in return?"

Chan leaned back in his chair, the curve of his mouth turning dangerous and seductive. "What do you want?"

"Thirty-two thousand Hong Kong dollars." The words tumbled out. "Sister Margaret's chemotherapy. What the orphanage owes the hospital."

Silence. Chan looked at her as if recalculating her worth. Then he smiled—not the cold smile or the testing smile from before, but something more genuine, a smile of restrained appreciation.

"Deal," he said. "But I'm adding one condition."

"What?"

"From now on, you're not just my maid." He stood, walked around the desk, and stopped before her. He looked down at her from his full height, the light behind him casting his shadow over her like a black mountain.

"You're my second pair of eyes," he said. "Where I can't see, you see for me. What I can't hear, you hear for me."

Ella lifted her head, her gray-blue eyes meeting his amber ones. She didn't flinch.

"Then I have a condition too."

Chan raised an eyebrow.

"Don't lie to me." she said. "You can choose not to tell me things, but don't lie to me. I've been lied to my whole life—by life, by fate, by everyone who said 'everything will be okay.' I won't believe lies anymore."

The study was quiet for a long time. The fire crackled in the fireplace—lit for the first time tonight, Chan had ordered it, whether for warmth or for some ritual, she didn't know.

"All right," Chan said, his voice low as a vow. "I won't lie to you."

He extended his hand. Ella looked at it—calluses at the base of the thumb, thinner calluses at the fingertips, his wrist wrapped in the white bandage she had applied last night. She took it.

His hand was warm. Warmer than a man who should be cold-blooded had any right to be.

"Starting tomorrow," Chan said, releasing her hand and turning toward the window, "there are a few things you need to learn."

"What things?"

"First: learn to remember every detail you see—license plates, faces, clothing, accents, walking gaits. Second: learn to forget everything you shouldn't have seen—in front of the other servants, you know nothing. Third—"

He turned his head, moonlight falling on his face, making the old scar stand out starkly.

"Third: learn to protect yourself. Because I can't guarantee I'll always get there in time."

Ella's fingers tightened around the business card in her pocket. The dried bloodstain on its edge pressed into her skin like a heavy promise.

"When do we start?" she asked.

"Now."

Chan pulled a photograph from the drawer and tossed it onto the desk. It showed a middle-aged man—buzzed hair, square face, a mole at the corner of his left eye, wearing a black jacket, standing in front of a warehouse.

"This man is Ma San, Old Zhou's front man," Chan said. "Tomorrow at three in the afternoon, he'll be meeting someone at the 'Golden Sparrow' tea restaurant in Central. I want you to sit in the booth next to his and listen to what he says. Then come back and tell me."

"Alone?"

"Yes. Alone." Chan looked into her eyes. "Are you scared?"

Ella looked at the face in the photograph—a face with no warmth, eyes like two dead fish, a mouth that habitually turned down at the corners, the kind of face that belonged to a man who had grown accustomed to inflicting violence on others.

She thought of the boys who had bullied her at the orphanage. The foreman at the factory who had touched her thigh. Everyone who had ever told her you're too weak, you can't do anything.

"Yes," she said, turning the photograph face-down so she wouldn't have to keep looking at that face. "But being scared doesn't stop me from doing what needs to be done."

Chan didn't smile. But the way he looked at her changed—became more focused, deeper, like he was looking at a fact he had only just discovered.

"Ella Watts," he said, pronouncing her name like a code.

"Yes?"

"You're much stronger than you think you are."

Ella stood up and tucked the photograph and the business card into her pocket. She walked to the door, then stopped.

"Mr. Chan."

"Yes."

"Why did you light the fire today?" she asked. "It's March in Hong Kong. Not cold."

Chan was silent for a few seconds. The fire in the hearth jumped, sparks scattering onto the fire screen with soft crackles.

"Because you said yesterday that your room was cold," he said, his voice so soft it was nearly swallowed by the flames. "So I turned on the heating for the whole house."

Ella pushed the door open and stepped into the corridor. The door closed behind her.

She didn't look back. But she smiled—a tiny smile she didn't even notice herself, like the first flower of winter that hadn't quite bloomed but hadn't frozen to death either.

At the end of the corridor, in the shadows near the stairwell, a figure flickered past.

Ella stopped and listened.

Footsteps. Not a servant's—servants wore soft-soled shoes that made no sound. These were leather shoes on wood floors, crisp, hurried, moving downstairs.

She walked to the stairwell and looked down.

No one.

Only a cigarette butt left on the handrail. Marlboro, with a lipstick mark on the filter—not lipstick, she realized. Men's lip balm, transparent, but the grease caught the light.

Ella crouched down, picked up the butt with her fingernails, and carefully tucked it into her apron pocket.

She didn't know if it would be useful. But Chan had said—remember every detail.

She remembered.