Audrey picked up a bag of powder off the glass table. “Or we can forget about all the drugs, and you can tell me where you got this.”

Johnny’s eyes fell on the small packet of gray powder with the dragon stamp, dangling from her fingers.

CHAPTER 30 THE RABBIT

CHAPTER 30
THE RABBIT

macau

Henry Lee’s Louis Vuitton loafers clicked on the old aluminum bleachers as he made his way to the front row of the Macau Canidrome. His tailored suit looked out of place at this relic from Macau’s seedier past, before the big international corporations took over the region’s gambling and entertainment. Though most of the neon signs still worked, the Canidrome had the gritty feel of a third-world soccer venue.

The crowd on this particular weeknight was mostly down-on-their-luck inveterate local gamblers who had eschewed the glitz and glamour of Macau’s new palaces. They mumbled among themselves as the trainers paraded their cadaverous, aerodynamic greyhounds whose mouths were muzzled in little metal cages to prevent them from attacking their competition. One of the dogs lowered its hind legs and shivered as it defecated.

Lee took his seat under the harsh glow of the stadium lights in the half-empty stands. Two seats down, a man studied the night’s racing program. The man lowered his program, and for the first time in two years, Henry Lee looked into the eyes of the Red Pole of the Sun Yee On triad: Wan Koi.

“Nice of you to leave Hong Kong,” Wan said to Lee.

Though the two men’s lives were separated by only sixty-five kilometers of seawater, Wan saw them as creatures of two different worlds that represented the yin and yang of the new China. If Hong Kong was China’s superego—a tightly controlled, sterile corporate biosphere—Macau was its id: a booming, unregulated frontier town.

Both men kept their eyes pinned on the track, not wanting to draw attention to the conversation.

“I heard about your incident on the boat. You need to tone down your operation.”

Wan watched the track as a fresh batch of sinewy greyhounds were led to the starting gate.

“Did you know these dogs will live and die at the track?” Wan asked his older brother. “Most will be losers. A few will be winners. But none ever get out of this life.”

A bell dinged, and the dogs took off at a dead sprint, their bodies reaching and stretching as they lunged desperately after the stuffed mechanical rabbit zipping ahead of them.

“It doesn’t have to be that way for us,” Lee replied. “I am trying to build something for our family, but I need you to cooperate.”

“Power is never won. It is something you must fight for every day. Or did they not teach you that at Harvard?”

“The drugs, the murder—it has to stop,” Lee replied.