Season One, Episode Sixteen: Moaji

Markus walked over to the other room to pick up the phone, while Trick poured Charlo' another cup of green tea.
‘Do you know moaji?’ the Taiwanese man asked her.
‘Never heard of her,’ Charlo' smiled.
‘Do you like sweets?’
‘He does,’ Charlo' said with a wave in the direction of the other room. ‘He always has marzipan on him.’
Trick smiled.
‘He learned that here. He was bored with life, so he went about making things himself. Painting, at first. When the galleries weren't interested, he turned to food.’
‘Interesting. So what kind of food were you mentioning there?’
‘Moaji. The aboriginals here in Taiwan make them. Rice stamped into a sweet ball, with peanut or sesame inside and outside. I'll get some for you to taste.’
Charlo' wondered whether he was going somewhere to listen in to Bentley's conversation. But Trick was back in seconds. Carrying a tray with four peanut-colored balls. He offered her a pair of chopsticks.
‘How did you meet Markus?’ she asked.
They reclined, munching on the moaji.
‘Our fathers knew each other. His was stationed here for a long time, and obviously, my father was Taiwanese.’
‘You say his father was stationed here, you mean like a military man?’
‘Something like that. I was young, I don't know too much about that. Markus and I went to the same school and grew up together until he left for the States.’
‘With his dad.’
‘His dad stayed here,’ Trick said.
Charlo' detected a finality.

Markus picked up the phone.
‘Lose the girl,’ said a gruff voice.
‘What? What are you saying, and how did you find me?’
‘Don't ask me questions I don't want to answer,’ Riot said. ‘You're busy in a completely wrong way. Get rid of the girl.’
‘I need her to watch my back. Did you have anything to do with those thugs who attacked me?’
‘So why do you say they attacked just you and not the girl as well? Lose her, you don't need her. And you shouldn't have gone all the way to Taiwan. There is nothing for you there.’
‘Remember who told me to do this for my sister? You did,’ Markus said.
‘I didn't tell you anything. I just gave you some of her belongings, because she wanted you to have them,’ Riot said.
Markus thought back to Riot's impromptu visit and to his sister's objects. Was he wrong about the Three Elders?
‘Do you mean the Three Elders were not the important object in there?’
‘I expected you to be smart enough to figure that out on your own, smart heart.’
‘Hold on. Did you just say smart heart?’ Markus said.
‘Remember, I worked with your sister, she told me what she called you, only I'm beginning to wonder why. As I said, lose the girl and get your act together,’ Riot said. ‘I'll find you for our next talk.’
He cut the connection, leaving Markus staring at a silent phone.

‘He's so predictable, it's beyond sick,’ Riot said to the woman standing behind him eating an apple.
‘Do you think he will get rid of her?’ she asked.
‘Charlo' is not the kind of woman you get rid of after a phone call, I know her too well for that.’

‘You need to return home,’ Markus said as he sat down next to Charlo' and took a pair of chopsticks Trick handed him.
‘Do you really know what you're doing? Running all the way here, dragging me along? You get me shot at by a bunch of roughnecks and now you send me away like I'm a piece of dirt?’
Markus put the chopsticks down.
‘I feel it will be safer for you if you're not with me.’
‘Who was that talking to you?’
‘His name is Riot. He's the man who gave me my sister's belongings after her death.’
‘How do you know he's not her killer?’
‘He's a colleague of hers. If he had killed her, would he have bothered to show me his face and give me her things? Is that your logic?’
Charlo' gave him a look that killed while Trick concentrated on his moaji.
‘I am doing for my sister now what I couldn't when she was alive.’
‘You killed her murderer. What more can you do?’
‘My sister gave me those things. They're a message from the grave, she wants me to do this.’
‘This creep, Riot you call him, how do you know he’s not fooling you?’
‘I know those objects were in my sister's possession, he didn't fool me, they were hers.’
She grabbed another moaji ball.
‘You're not getting rid of me this easily.’
Silence fell as the three digested the moaji.
‘We need to go to Macau,’ Markus said as Trick nodded in agreement.

NEXT: Markus Bentley and Charlo' head for Macau in Episode Seventeen before March 3.

Season One, Episode Fifteen: The Second Elder

Markus and Charlo' had to press themselves against the parked motorcycles as a small blue van squirmed through the alley.
‘What is it with your father?’ Charlo' asked.
A loud bang went off above their heads, on the second floor of the place they were passing. Charlo' ducked, but Markus stayed composed.
‘What the hell was that?’
‘Someone changing a gas bottle,’ Markus said.
The black BMW closed in but did not pass them.
‘Your father?’ she asked again.
Markus looked behind them.
‘What is it?’
‘The new BMW 5. No, let's go, now.’
He grabbed hold of her right arm and pulled her along, running out of the alley. Behind them, the doors of the car opened and three men in black shirts and dyed hair stepped out and ran after them.
One of the men produced a Beretta.
At the end of the alley, Markus turned left, dragging Charlo' with him. They heard the men shout. When they rounded the corner, a shot went off and planted itself in the rear window of the SUV they were just running by.
‘We'll never keep this up,’ Charlo' hissed as they scrambled into the next side alley, past parked motorcycles and a stand selling smelly stuff.
‘We have to,’ Markus hissed back.
Another bullet whizzed past their heads to end up lost somewhere with a clang.
An elderly man on a motorcycle ran into them as they veered left and the cyclist went right. The three pursuers appeared again, and this time the bullet missed Markus Bentley's left arm by an inch.
The next crossroads was easy to take. A noisy bustling street market on the right. Stands selling exotic foods in the center of the road, shoes and T-shirts spread out on plastic sheets on the sides. Markus pulled Charlo' over and together they dived into the crowd, jostling some of the onlookers and sightseers, but that was alright, they didn't seem to mind.
‘Keep your head low,’ he told her.
They kept bumping into people, but there was a system to it. The Taiwanese saw these two crazed foreigners come at them, they just gave way. Once that happened too late, when Charlo’ crashed into a young woman eating a squid on a stick, but she mumbled an apology as Markus pulled her away.
Once he felt they had created some distance, Markus dove into a dark gap between two shoe stores and ran hunched toward a metal box at the end. He crouched behind the box and told Charlo' to do the same.
They watched as almost a minute later, one of the pursuers in black passed by without looking at them. The two others followed just seconds behind, each on a different side of the road, no gun in sight.
Markus waited another five seconds, tapped his companion's shoulder, and off they went, further into the darkness until they reached another non-descript alley, the same motorcycles parked everywhere. Markus made sure there was no dark BMW looming around before he chose the direction.
‘Who were they?’ Charlo' asked.
‘I don't know, but I sure didn't want to wait for them to introduce themselves.’
‘Do you think Lassiter sent them?’
‘It's not important what I think. All I know is, we cannot go back to the Brother Hotel.’
‘Where are we heading then?’
Markus signaled her to keep silent. They reached the main road and hailed a cab, a yellow one like all the others. The cabbie didn't understand English but Markus knew the address in Chinese, or that's what Charlo' assumed anyway.
‘Are we going to look up the second elder?’ she asked as the car passed the last subway station and went uphill out of the urban jungle and into the green.
‘We're going to visit an old friend of mine.’
‘Is he as trustworthy as the last one?’
‘Stop questioning me. You get a free trip to Taiwan and all you do is moan.’
‘I didn't ask for this trip, remember. If I stay away too long, my job will be gone.’
The car turned into a dark tree-lined alley, where the houses stood away from the road, hidden from view behind walls topped with shards of glass. Markus waited until the cab had vanished from their sight before moving away. They had alighted in front of the third doorway in the alley, but Markus now crossed the road and marched deeper away from the main road.
‘What if there's nobody home?’ Charlo' asked.
‘We'll either have to scale the wall or spend the night in the bushes.’
‘You must be kidding. Aren't you? Are you?’
Markus checked the number on the next door. A shiny metal door set in a long wall which had once been white but now only showed off the humidity of the environment in black streaks all over.
There was a bell, no name. Markus rang, counted to six, and rang again.
‘Nobody home,’ Charlo' said.
Just when even Markus began to believe that, a light went on above the doorway.
A buzz and a click, and a youngish Taiwanese man with a crew cut stood grinning at them.
‘Hi, Trick,’ Markus said.
They didn't shake hands, but the Taiwanese man signaled them inside. Markus introduced Charlo' as a friend, and Trick gave her the same grin and the same silent welcome.
The trio walked across a dark grass lawn to reach a house that looked like something out of a fifties movie.
Inside, Charlo' had expected to find Chinese furniture and antiques, but instead all she saw were shag carpets, leather couches and garish plastic chairs, black-and-white pictures of Paris and London on the walls.
Trick offered them hot bitter tea in small green enamel cups.
Markus was the first to speak.
‘I want to show you this,’ he said as he produced the three elders out of his bag.
‘So you still hold on to the past,’ Trick said. ‘The furniture in this house is fifties, sixties, and seventies, but I'm a 21st century man. You should try it sometime, it feels a lot better.’
That was the longest time Trick had been speaking since they entered the house, Charlo' thought.
‘What else can I do for you?’ Trick asked.
‘Our hotel reservation has been canceled,’ Markus said, without irony.
‘My house is your house.’
He filled up their tea cups. A phone rang in an adjacent room, with a loud metallic sound like a dial model from decades ago. Trick walked off.
When he returned, the smile had vanished.
‘Someone in the States named Riot wants to have a word with you about your sister,’ Trick said.

NEXT: Markus Bentley talks to Riot in Episode Sixteen before February 23.

Season One, Episode Fourteen: The First Elder

Charlo' returned to their room at the Brother Hotel at 9 p.m. She found Markus changing, preparing to go out.
‘How was Taipei 101?’
‘Awesome. The tallest building in the world. The mall was too expensive for me though. I thought everything in Taiwan was cheap.’
He let that one go.
‘There is one in Dubai that's taller. It's called the Burj Dubai, 160 floors high. But since it's not completed yet, this one is still officially the tallest one.’
‘I see you've done your research. Anything else while I was away?’
She picked up the book from the sofa. American Gods by Neil Gaiman.
‘So are you going somewhere?’ she asked as he was rifling through his bag. ‘Without me?’
He picked out the statuette of the three Chinese men, the thing he called the Three Elders.
‘We're going somewhere, so get ready,’ he said.
‘I only just got back. Can't I get some rest for a change.’
‘Later. We've got an appointment.’

Markus marched around the Renai Circle, looking into a side alley for a pub he used to know, but it was no longer around. Fancy French bakeries and Japanese design stores were the new standards around here. The circle was a major traffic intersection on Taipei's tony east side. Charlo' walked behind him, as if they were on separate trips. She had had no time to change, so she felt sweaty and self-conscious in her pink T-shirt and jeans. She wasn't dressed for an important visit, but maybe the target of their visit wouldn't mind.
Markus kept looking left and right, as if lost. Asian cities changed much faster than American ones, and Markus Bentley had been away from Taiwan for at least five years. He looked foolish, but then Charlo' couldn't know.
He stepped into an alley where local couples were leaving a restaurant through a garish red gate. Charlo' didn't read Chinese characters, and she wondered whether Markus could.
He turned right, she followed. He turned left, she followed. Several times, she had to press herself against parked motorcycles as some black limousine worked its way through the narrow alleys built for, well, motorcycles.
It was 10 o'clock sharp when she saw Markus stop outside the doorway to a five-floor apartment building and press the bell. She couldn't hear what he was saying, but she slowed down, as he had told her to. The buzzer rang, he went in, and turned around, motioning at her.
‘I'm in?’ she asked.
‘You're in. But don't say too much. Don't say anything about what we did back home together.’
A concierge in the marble and gilt lobby gave them a magnetic card that allowed them to take the elevator up to the fourth.
The welcome was warm. A bulky man in a Hawaiian shirt, about sixty, long gray hair and a beard covering his smile. He embraced Markus in the doorway and then let them in.
‘I am Lassiter, so you can call me Lass,’ he told Charlo' as he shook her hand.
The apartment had bright white walls, but dark wooden furniture, most of it Chinese, giving the place the appearance of an antiques store. Lassiter signaled them to sit down on a cream leather couch, while he disappeared out of view for a minute before coming back with three bowls filled with a dark brew.
‘Red bean soup, the best sweet in the world. Watch it, it's hot,’ he told Charlo' with a smile.
The conversation was thin, the brew wasn't. Lassiter and Bentley obviously were aficionados, Charlo' was the newcomer to Chinese food, the odd one out.
‘We have something in common,’ Markus said when the two men were reaching the bottom of their bowls.
He pulled the statuette out of his bag and put it in the middle of the table. Lassiter stared at it with an expressionless face and turned back into an adjacent room. He returned with what looked like a precise copy of the same Three Elders.
‘Where did you get yours from?’ Lass asked.
‘My sister gave it to me before she died.’
Lass looked taken aback but didn't say a word.
‘Your sister died, my condolences,’ he said, as an afterthought. ‘Who told you?’
‘A man came to my house one morning with a laptop showing what happened.’
‘You mean like on YouTube? What did he look like? Who was he?’
Markus gave the story of the man in the car who deposited the computer at his place, and continued with the visit later that morning.
‘He was really messed up. Blood all over, falling, moaning. He called himself Riot. Never seen him since.’
Lassiter didn't register any reaction.
‘So you think I can help you?’
‘My sister had this guy bring me the Three Elders. That must have been her way of telling me the solution lies here,’ Markus said.
‘Did this Riot guy pass on anything else?’
‘Nothing significant,’ Markus said.
‘Where are you staying? Just in case I can reach you with new information.’
‘At the Brother Hotel,’ Charlo' cut in, just too hastily. Bentley shot her a look of why don't you shut up you were doing so well.
Lassiter refilled their red bean soup. The conversation turned to memories of old Taipei from there on. Charlo' was fascinated.
‘The man looks like the pilot from Lost,’ she told Bentley after they had left the building.
Markus pulled out the Three Elders and pointed at the one wearing yellow.
‘That's Lassiter?’
‘That's Lass.’
‘Where are the others?’
‘We need to find one more,’ Markus said.
A dark BMW turned into the alley, careful not to scrape against the parked motorcycles.
‘What about the third one?’ Charlo' asked.
‘He's my father.’

NEXT: Markus Bentley looks for the second elder in Taiwan in Season One, Episode Fifteen before February 13.