City of Strangers (Luis Chavez Book 2) (24 page)

“Then I guess this is the last one,” Nan said, turning back to Saifai.

“Nan, stop it!” Susan protested, stepping past Luis and into the room. “What are you doing?”

“Dr. Susan Auyong, this is Jing Saifai,” Nan said casually. “She’s the chief counsel for the Los Angeles triad. She also negotiated trade agreements that allowed unregulated generics to not only be manufactured here but keep being made even after they’d killed people in Indonesia. Lose enough factories and you start looking for a permanent solution. And who’d think to look for tainted pills coming out of the States? Turns out you can cut corners anywhere these days.”

“Nan,” Luis said, raising a hand.

“No, you listen,” Nan said. “I’m just getting to the worst part. Even after they knew the product was bad, they kept shipping it. You know how they knew? Because Benny told them. But when you’ve already had to put a percentage on what you deem an acceptable death rate for your product, what’s one more death? Isn’t that right, Ms. Saifai?”

The lawyer, visibly shaking, said nothing. She stared at Luis, as if begging him to save her life.

“I’m not going to try and talk you out of it,” Luis said, sitting on a lab stool. “If it makes any difference to you whatsoever, go ahead and kill her. God knows she’s done terrible things. But if she stands trial, what you know and what I know become public record. There’ll be more investigations into every last business dealing she ever made. Villains we don’t even know about will be taken down here and abroad. You kill her and she’s just another victim of your ‘reign of terror.’ Heck, she’ll probably get a whole day’s worth of laudatory praise in the press about being this great upstanding lawyer for her community. Perception is everything. Which is why they knew destroying Father Chang’s reputation was just as important as killing him.”

Nan hesitated. He glanced from Saifai to Luis to Susan.

“They killed him, Susan,” he said. “He tried to save people and they killed him.”

“Do you know how many people you’ve killed already?” Susan snapped back. “You killed a little girl. You killed poor people who couldn’t afford better medicine. You killed people who were just trying to provide for their families. They didn’t do a thing to Benny. Not. A. Thing. And if he were here—”

“You think he’d yell at me about it?” Nan screeched. “You think he’d do what you’re doing?”

“No, he’d weep,” Susan stated. “The people you killed and the people the triad killed in Indonesia are the same. They’re victims. He’d go after you the same as he did them. You would cease being the man he loved and be just one more faceless enemy trying to bring more pain into an already painful world. That’s what he’d say.”

Nan looked stricken by these words, as if he’d never thought of that. His face contorted and he looked like a child. He turned to Luis.

“And if they catch me and put
me
on the stand, everything about my relationship with Father Chang will be in the public record, too.”

Susan grabbed Luis’s arm to keep him from walking into a trap. Luis shrugged and replied anyway. “That’s true.”

Nan nodded and turned back to Saifai. “Let’s go for a walk.”

This wasn’t what Luis expected. “What’re you doing?”

Nan took hold of Saifai’s arm and held the aerosol can in front of her face. “Perception is everything, right?”

Luis rose and stood in front of Nan, but he waved the can in front of Susan’s face next.

“This isn’t SARS,” Nan warned. “It’s strychnine. Works faster in a pinch. Now get the hell out of my way and don’t follow me.”

Susan touched Nan’s arm. For a moment Luis thought she would try to stop him, to deliver the magic words that would yank him back from the brink. Instead, she simply nodded, as if realizing he was beyond the point of no return.

“Bye, Nan,” she said quietly.

“Good-bye, Dr. Auyong.”

Nan led Jing Saifai out of the lab. There were shrieks as a handful of people who’d snuck back into the hall scrambled away again. Luis went to go after them, but Susan reached out a hand.

“We should go.”

Luis looked at her, perplexed, then realized what Nan intended to do. He was right. His plan wouldn’t work if he was brought to trial.

“There’s another stairwell in back,” she said. “If we hurry, we can be out the door and away before anyone gets here.”

“Okay.”

As he hurried after Susan, he recited the Lord’s Prayer.

Our Father who art in heaven, hallowed be thy name.

Thy kingdom come, thy will be done, on earth as it is in heaven.

Give us this day our daily bread. And forgive us our trespasses,

As we forgive those who trespass against us.

Lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from evil.

Several shots rang out. Susan hit the door at the bottom of the stairs and shoved it open. Sunlight streamed in, followed by screams from around the side of the building.

“Let’s go!” she shouted.

For ever and ever, amen.

XXIV

Michael arrived on the scene so fast that the bodies of Nan Tiu and two of the gunmen who’d shot him were still on the pavement in front of the Seaver Science Center. The campus police had taken the triad hit men down, but not before they had killed Nan. The two gunmen had been covered with yellow sheets, but they had held off with Nan, fearing the toxicity of the items in his hand. His heavy-lidded eyes stared straight up but didn’t seem focused on sky or sun. More like he was still processing a thought and had stopped a moment to consider it fully. Blood leaked from beneath his body in three narrow streams that puddled at the base of the steps.

Exit wounds,
Michael thought idly.

He took out his cell phone and rang Luis for the tenth time in so many minutes. It went straight to voice mail, as it had each time before.

Dammit, Luis. What happened here?

“Sir, you’re going to have to step back.”

The words came from a uniformed LAPD officer. When Michael looked over, he saw a hint of recognition on the man’s face but complied anyway. He wasn’t a detective, and this wasn’t his crime scene.

That’s when he spotted two female campus security officers—one sitting, one standing—next to Jing Saifai. She was kneeling in the grass off to the side as if about to pray. Her face was marked with trails of tears. It didn’t look as if she’d been harmed. Seeing that she was safely on the neutral side of the cordon, Michael headed over to her. But before he got within fifteen feet, DA Rebenold appeared in front of her, similarly kneeling and taking her hand. The two of them spoke quietly but then fell into mournful, companionable silence.

Michael was so shocked that he had no idea what to do. Should he take a photo? Should he approach and say, “Gotcha, I knew you two were in league together”? Or should he do the human thing and turn his back to walk away?

He was considering all of these options when Saifai pointed at him, and Rebenold turned. When she made eye contact with him, her features seemed to gray and age. She seemed to nod to herself, as if his presence closed a door there, then turned back to Saifai.

Michael found a detective he was friendly with, Shannon Piriczky, and followed him back to Nan’s dorm room.

“He didn’t exactly leave a manifesto, but he might as well have,” the detective said, picking up several of Nan’s printouts with a gloved hand. “He was tracking triad activity across the city. He knew exactly how the counterfeit generics were delivered and where their source was. He also knew a lot about disease.”

“Where’d he get the SARS?” Michael asked.

“We don’t know that much yet, but he’s a biochemistry grad student at a major research university. With the right accreditation, he could’ve ordered it from somewhere. More likely, however, it was already here. Hell, I was surprised walking into my son’s high school chemistry lab once and seeing all they had on their shelves. There was enough chloroform in one barrel to knock out half the city.”

The detective opened a drawer and pulled out a photograph of Nan and Father Chang. He raised an eyebrow as he angled it over for Michael to see.

“What do we think of that?”

Michael studied it for a long moment and nodded. “Father Chang was this young man’s mentor. This was definitely revenge for Chang’s death.”

“‘Mentor’?” Detective Piriczky asked.

“Yeah, you know I have my guy on the inside, right? That’s the story there. The whole story.”

Detective Piriczky regarded Michael for a moment, then nodded. “You got it, Story.”

Michael looked around Nan’s side of the dorm room but found little. There were a few odds and ends—a playbill from a musical, a program to a concert, a museum’s exhibit guide—but not a thing backdated more than a couple of years. No indication whatsoever of a past. It seemed as if Nan’s only focus had been on the present and future, which was all Father Chang. When this, too, was taken from him—well, he made the world atone.

“Michael? Can I see you a moment?”

Michael wasn’t sure how long DA Rebenold had been standing in the doorway, but it looked as if she’d been dreading this confrontation. He nodded, excused himself from the detective, and followed her out. Rather than speak in the hallway or the dorm, she led him outside the building and into the law school, heading up to the library on the second floor. Michael was surprised to see that despite books and backpacks on a number of the tables, it was otherwise completely devoid of students.

Deborah indicated the exits.

“There was an active shooter on the grounds,” she said. “They were to shelter in place and then be evacuated by campus police as quickly as possible. Did you know they go over all that during orientation now?”

“That sucks,” Michael said limply.

Deborah fell silent again until they reached a small alcove in the foreign and international law section. She then hopped up onto a windowsill like a twentysomething coed and swished her feet back and forth.

“I did a postdoc year here,” she said. “Bet you didn’t know that.”

Michael did but shook his head anyway. He knew she needed to tell whatever she was going to tell her way.

“This was the part of the library where no one ever, ever came. It was perfect to study, to write, to grade, everything. The students here—a lot of them at least—came from superwealthy families. I came with a chip on my shoulder about that. But they’d been well trained. They knew better than to come off as entitled, particularly when their last name was on the side of this building or that. So they treated me with artificial deference. So polite, so obsequious. Just enough to make me know that in any other context I wouldn’t even exist to them. But as their professor, who might be interviewed one day about them, it had to be all shining marks across the board.”

“Okay,” Michael said.

Rebenold’s eyes narrowed. “You don’t have to include me in the indictments. I can campaign for you. I can write editorials. I can put you in contact with every major political donor in the state, even the ones Jeff Lambert doesn’t have access to. I’m talking about people you may need for next year but will definitely need down the road. My word is golden with them. And then I’ll be in DC. You know how many times I’ve needed a friendly ear in Congress? It’s more than you think. I’ll never not answer my phone. I’ll—”

“Deborah.”

“I’ll meet with whomever you need me to meet with,” she continued, already beginning to tear up. “I’ll be your ace in the hole. Permanently. Anything you need.
Ever.
For example—”

“Deborah.”

This time she fell silent. Michael leaned back against one of the shelves.

“It’s going to be fast. They’re already seizing the bank accounts. Even if someone didn’t talk about payments, there’ll be transfers or payoffs. We won’t even need to look at your bank statements, because we’ll have the money heading there from theirs.”

“Michael, you know how this works. Nobody has to look there—”

“Yeah, but when it comes out anyway I go down, too, for being the guy that didn’t look there. At best I look stupid and incompetent. At worst, complicit. You come in now and do things the easy way, and it’ll be a fine and a slap on the wrist. No jail time.”

Deborah stared at Michael, her face slowly twisting in anger.

“You’re not kidding,” she said, incredulously. “You’re offering me what I wouldn’t even offer my worst enemy. A fine? A slap on the wrist? The second this comes out, it’s my career. Do you even understand what that means?”

“I do.”

“No, I don’t think you do,” Deborah shot back. “What the hell am I supposed to do for the rest of my life?”

“You have money. Pick a beach. Write a book. Hell, find a university somewhere they’ve never heard of you and soak up some more of that artificial deference.”

Deborah’s jaw dropped. Michael realized he’d gone too far. It wasn’t a requirement that he be an utter dick about this. So why was he twisting the knife?

“Rot in hell, Story,” Deborah said, shoving past Michael on the way out of the library.

He watched her go but then took out his cell phone. He dialed Naomi, who was already at the office.

“Hey, so I need you to get somebody in financial fraud to put a warrant together for Deb’s financial accounts. Checking, savings, retirement, every last thing. Got it?”

“Deb? You mean
Deb
Deb?”

“That’s right. When you’re done with that, hit the e-mail and phone records, too. All correspondence relating to Jing Saifai, cross-referencing any names in Saifai’s office, as well as any of the other triad-related warrants. Cool?”

Naomi didn’t say anything for a second, then seemed to pull herself from shock. “Cool. Yeah. You got it, Michael.”

“Thanks.” When Naomi didn’t hang up, he asked, “Something else?”

“It’s that bad?” she asked.

“Yes,” Michael said hoarsely. “But we’ll make it right.”

A Chevy Tahoe had been waiting for Oscar and Helen in front of their newfound residence on Outpost. A second Tahoe was parked in the culde-sac at the end of the block, with a third just down the street already angled back down the hill. A young man stood beside the first SUV, a tight smile on his face.

“Mr. de Icaza, Mrs. Story—”

“Helen,” Helen replied evenly. “Just Helen, please.”

“
Helen
. I’m Min Hsiao, an associate of Wanquan Yang,” Hsiao said with a clipped bow. “As I mentioned on the phone, Yang has requested the pleasure of your company at a meeting place a short distance from here. I hope you don’t mind.”

“Not at all,” Helen said. “Our own cars aren’t sufficient?”

“A courtesy,” Hsiao replied, indicating the backseat of the waiting Tahoe. “If you would.”

Helen nodded and entered, sitting in the back as if she were sitting in a cab. Oscar wanted to make a run for it but knew he’d be gunned down in a heartbeat. Also, he’d look foolish in front of his much braver counterpart. He entered the car as well, the door slamming shut behind him. He stared back out at the house and wondered if it would be his last view of the place.

“Oscar.”

He turned to Helen as Hsiao climbed into the passenger seat and spoke to the driver in Mandarin. Helen, making sure the two men saw her quick movement, leaned over and kissed Oscar on the lips.

“Screw these guys,” she whispered. “You’re Oscar de Icaza. What the hell are you afraid of?”

The remark made him smile, and he kissed her back. When they finally broke apart, he saw Hsiao looking at him in the rearview mirror. Oscar shot him a smug grin, sank back into his seat, and took Helen’s hand in his.

I’m Oscar de Icaza. And I fear nothing.

The distance was anything but short. They wound out of Hollywood, through Studio City, past Burbank, and out toward Pasadena. It took Oscar all that time to realize where they were going. Over the course of the entire drive, Helen’s eyes stayed fixed ahead, just as her hand held Oscar’s in a tight grip. It wasn’t one of worry, however, but resolve. Oscar was bemused for being so turned on by her even as they were being driven to their deaths.

If only they were allowed one last tumble in the hay. He’d make it worth it, something to remember all the way to hell.

If there was a hell, of course.

The paved road gave way to the gravel one, which gave way to dust as they approached the tree where Tony Qi had made his offer of a partnership with Oscar only days before. Rather than one car waiting there now, there were several. The lead Tahoe broke away from the caravan and circled around back as Hsiao indicated for their driver to slow to a halt up ahead.

“We will wait here for just a moment,” Hsiao said.

“Of course,” Oscar said.

A few men idled between cars, chatting and smoking cigarettes while others spoke on cell phones. The driver kept the engine running but also scrolled through his own cell phone. A man barely older than Hsiao exited a nearby SUV and came over to Oscar and Helen’s. Hsiao hopped out and opened the back door. The young man extended a hand to Oscar, who shook it. He then nodded to Helen.

“My name is Billy Daai. I regret to inform you that your former contact, Zhelin Qi, has been removed from his position within our brotherhood due to an inexcusable insult made against the father of one of his brethren. After he was presented with these charges, he confessed that he had passed a list of delivery sites relating to your business along to Deputy District Attorney Michael Story. To your knowledge, is this true?”

Luckily, the question was directed at Helen and not Oscar. If it had been, Oscar feared his incredulity would’ve given away the game. Why would Tony have covered for them? How could he even have known what they did? Then he realized that of course he’d have known. There was probably only one person other than him who’d had all that information.

Helen simply shrugged. “I have very little knowledge or interest in my husband’s affairs.”

The answer surprised Oscar, but Billy didn’t seem fazed. He nodded and turned back to the assemblage of vehicles. He nodded to one of them, and the back door opened. Two men escorted Tony Qi from the back of the vehicle, bringing him to the side of the tree. They forced him to his knees.