"Your son tells me you have the inside track on this Bon Bon Hai. I'm ready to take him down, you just point me in the right direction."
"We must go to Chinatown."
"Okaaaay, then what?"
Caine shrugged. "I will know more when I see the extent of his...influence."
"Do you have a destination planned? Or do you want me to drive around until you find some bent twigs and used gum wrappers?"
"I beg your pardon?"
"Never mind. It's a Mountie thing." He stood.
"Ah...no, I have no specific destination."
"We'll play it by ear, then. Come on, my car's out front." He began to lead the way and turned just in time to catch Diefenbaker swiping the forgotten sandwich from his desk. "I swear," he muttered, "one day that wolf will go too far."
He was still grumbling about his stolen lunch when they reached the Riviera, even though he had managed to pry another sandwich out of the precinct's intermittently functioning vending machine. To take his mind off his troubles, he tried pumping his advisor for information, of any kind. "So, what do you do for a living?"
"I am an apothecary. And a priest."
"Oh? Like your grandfather?"
"Yes."
"Hmm. How did you get involved in the detective business?"
"My son is a police officer."
Ray laughed, nearly choking on a hunk of bread. "All right. I admit it, I walked into that one." He thumped his chest a few times to get his food to settle properly. "You're helping him out, then? Good. Good. My old man never would have...well, that's a whole nother story." He made a show of peering through the windows. "You stay on the lookout for--whatever it is you're looking for. We're in the neighborhood."
Caine nodded. Ray reduced the car's speed and they crawled along, alert for any untoward activity. Even Dief had his nose pressed up against the nearest window. The minutes ticked past, uneventful, until suddenly Caine flinched and put his hand on Ray's shoulder. "Here. We must stop here."
The policeman, accustomed to Fraser's similar requests, pulled into the nearest open parking space. "Now what?"
The priest cocked his head, eyes closed. After a moment of concentration, he pointed to a small shop directly in front of them. "There."
They got out of the car, Dief following faithfully at Caine's heels, and entered the shop. It turned out to be a small market, with bottles, cans, packages, and baskets of food resting on the shelves and bundles of dried herbs dangling from various locations. Caine moved through the store in a daze, hands moving in front of him as though feeling the air. "The evil is strong in here."
"Actually," Ray said, dodging around a hanging bunch of something green and black, "I think it's just the garlic."
They arrived at the counter with the cash register, where the proprietor stood waiting with a friendly smile. "May I help you folks?"
Dief began whining, his eyes turning imploringly toward the two humans he had accompanied. Ray grunted in disgust. "Are you still hungry? If you steal something, it's coming out of the Mountie's wallet, do you hear me? Of course you don't, you're deaf. Well, read my lips--NO FOOD!"
The wolf's whine turned to a rumbling growl and he took a step forward, baring his teeth. Caine watched him with intense interest while Ray stumbled out of his way, hands up protectively. "Okay, okay, I'll get you a--"
"You!" Caine pointed at the store owner, his voice low and menacing. "You cannot hide your true nature from Nature's own child. You have chosen to side with evil. You must be stopped!"
The proprietor's pleasant expression twisted to fury at being discovered and he reached beneath the counter, snatching out a pair of knives. "And you, Shaolin, must die!" he snarled.