The Right Touch

Touch Touchstone Series: Book 2, The Right Touch  (Revised), 98,400 words.

Touch left the US Army after his enlistment was up. Now in his early 30s, he lives in Sausalito (San Francisco Bay area) as a photojournalist for several  magazines. He owns an MG and a parrot name Hypo.

E find him writing a story about the death of Lee Anne, a Chinese woman, the sister of the bride to whose wedding Touch had received an invitation. Touch interrupted Lee Anne "peeking" at his equipment in his MG. Half Chinese and half occidental, she was a raving beauty who had mastered body language.

The next time he saw her, she was dead, on the shore of the Narrows, 150 ft. below the edge of the cliff. That night Touch is brutally beaten. Two days later, in the hospital, he finds his ex-roommate from Paris, Nick, sitting next to the bed, smoking.

The who and the why of everything bug Touch until he discovers a tape recording Lee Anne had tucked in his camera bag. The tape was no good without the data tape to which it was paired. Touch believes the second tape inside a valuable, very old Chinese box with no visible opening. After he interrogates Lee Anne's friends and co-workers, two are subsequently killed. The more Touch probes, the more people are killed.

After opening the box with Nick's help, Touch races to Rosslyn Baker's home which was on fire when he entered it. He encounters and kills a Chinese man running out with a briefcase. He pulls the lovely Rosslyn out of the fire while the house burns and takes her back to his place.

The opposition are members of a revived Chinese Tong into a variety of illegal activities which include financial subterfuge, secrecy, killing, and politics. The leader is a member of Kai Chin's household who is a leading member of Chinatown. Touch makes mistakes and Rosslyn is kidnapped to keep him from further action. Touch is also caught but as he escapes in the Tong warehouse, which catches fire, he loses Rosslyn. 

The Epilogue ties everything together when Touch is photographing his old girlfriend. The leader is garroted and the story ends on an amusing telephone call from Nick.