The Black Dragon

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Authors: Julian Sedgwick
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hard, Danny thinks, the knuckles of Lo’s hand white as he grips the pen. Stressed.
    The detective underlines what he has written, then rips the note off the pad.
    â€œGotta go,” he says, grabbing his jacket. “Busy night. You go back to your hotel. We’ll do everything we can.”
    An idea leaps into Danny’s mind. He stands and makes as if to shake Lo’s hand.
    â€œThank you for your help—”
    But as Lo reaches for his grip, Danny moves his hand quickly sideways. The unexpected movement confuses Lo’s attention, and Danny’s left hand sweeps across the Post-it pad, whipping the second sheet.
    â€œSorry.” He shakes Lo’s hand now firmly, palming the note like a playing card, transferring it to his back pocket in one smooth movement right under the detective’s nose. Feels good to be doing something. And he has done it for good reason.
    He’s convinced that Lo has been less than straight with them.
    The detective leads them out into the corridor. “I’ll have a couple of officers take you back to the Pearl. Keep to the hotel. Don’t trust anyone you don’t know. If the Black Dragon are involved then we will all need to be careful.”
    He adjusts the gun in his shoulder holster. “Understand?”
    Danny glances at the door that slammed on White Suit. There are raised voices coming from inside now, but indistinct. There’s a muffled thud, like a heavy weight falling to the floor. Another—and then a stifled cry of pain.
    Lo glances at the door, seems to hesitate a fraction, and then turns on his heels, striding briskly away down the echoing corridor.
    Danny nods at the door, drops his voice. “The white suit man’s in there.”
    â€œ
Caray!
Why didn’t Lo say?”
    â€œI think he’s being interrogated.”
    â€œMaybe there’s more to this than meets the eye,” Zamora says.
    â€œYou have no idea who he is? White Suit?”
    â€œNot a clue.”

    A police car takes them back to the Pearl on rain-slicked streets. So many lights overhead that they fuse into a white smoke in the humid air. Danny gazes up at them. The feeling that has been growing these last few days—that began with the explosion and that washed over him in the rain outside the Bat—is loud in his head.
Something’s coming. Something I’ve been trying to avoid, but can’t avoid any longer
. And ever since the trip began it has felt like Mum and Dad are closer again somehow. Their personalities, their actions conjuring themselves back to life around him.
    He turns to Zamora beside him on the backseat of the patrol car. The dwarf’s profile is giving nothing away except grim determination—the kind that used to play on his face when they were facing a difficult crowd or pitching the big top in a high wind. In the glow of the neon signs overhead he looks older than Danny remembers. Tired.
    â€œAt Mum and Dad’s funeral you said I could always trust you.”
    Zamora shifts on his seat.
    â€œWell, of course you can, Mister Danny. Let’s keep focused on the immediate problem . . .”
    But the memory of the funeral is stirred now. Danny remembers how well Zamora supported him then. Danny had found himself alone, standing in the steadily falling snow, the entire company of the Mysterium gathered under the skeletal trees in the Berlin Kreuzberg Friedhof. Darko Blanco was saying how hard it had been for the gravediggers. Pneumatic drills were needed.
    Danny had desperately tried not to think about what Mum and Dad looked like in those long silent caskets. The worst of it was this: when you were used to seeing them escape from confined spaces—despite being bound and shackled—you couldn’t help but assume that any moment now the coffins’ lids would spring open, and there they would be, smiling and taking their bows after another daring stunt. But the lids stayed resolutely

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