The Flower Net (18 page)

“To say we are expecting you would not do this occasion justice,” said a young man wearing small dark glasses.

“You are Spencer Lee?” Hulan asked.

The man nodded, then gestured for them to come forward. “We meet at last, Mr. Stark,” Lee said cordially. “And you, Inspector Liu, are not unknown to us. We are very pleased to make your acquaintance.”

David had spent months staring at the name of Spencer Lee on his office chart, but he had never seen a photograph or even interviewed anyone who had met Lee face-to-face. Nothing had prepared David for either Spencer Lee’s congenial greeting or the youth that he exuded. He looked to be in his early twenties. His hair was cropped so close that his scalp showed through. His cream-colored linen suit was fashionably wrinkled. David was amazed that someone so young, and so obviously fresh off the boat, could have risen so high in the triad hierarchy.

“We are investigating two murders,” Hulan began.

“I don’t know what that could have to do with me or anyone else in this room.” Lee’s attitude was self-assured, even cocky.

“These murders took place in China…”

“Well, if they took place in China, then they
truly
are no concern of ours. I don’t have to answer your questions.”

“I wouldn’t be so sure about that,” David said.

“We aren’t in China, Mr. Stark. The MPS has no power here.”

“I’m saying I wouldn’t be so worried about Ms. Liu.” With David’s thinly veiled threat, the atmosphere in the room changed. “I have a few questions and I expect you to answer them without any bullshit. Understood?”

“Do I need my lawyer?”

“I don’t know,” David said. “Do you?”

Lee threw his head back and laughed. When no one joined in, he lounged back in his chair.

“What can you tell us about the
China Peony
?” David asked.

“I don’t know. What is it?”

“I thought I made myself clear. We aren’t playing games here. I’ve spent the morning looking at your gang’s handiwork and I don’t like it. In fact, I’m pretty pissed off. So either we can do this right here, right now, or you can come down to my office.”

Spencer Lee brushed nonexistent lint from his linen pants.

David took a breath. “The
China Peony
was a freighter that the Rising Phoenix hired to bring about five hundred immigrants to U.S. soil illegally. On that ship was a dead body.”

“You can’t prove any connection between the
Peony
and the Rising Phoenix, and you need evidence in this country. You know, innocent until proven guilty.”

“Suppose I tell you that I have witnesses.”

“I would respond that there is no one who could point a finger at me and say, ‘Ah, there is Spencer Lee. I have seen him on this boat. I have paid him money.’”

“In point of fact, I have witnesses, available through the Ministry of Public Security, who say that members of your gang hired the
Peony
,” David bluffed. “I also have some officials in the port of Tianjin who are already incarcerated for taking bribes from the Rising Phoenix.”

“They have made full confessions, and as I’m sure you remember, Mr. Lee, our legal system works quickly and efficiently,” Hulan said solemnly, following David’s lead. “We only await a confession on this side of the Pacific, then those men will receive their final sentences. Meanwhile, they are in a labor camp.”

Spencer Lee glared at Hulan. He attempted a light tone but the menace came through. “I’d like to meet the inspector in China one day.”

“As I would you,” she retorted.

“I am in Beijing every other month. Perhaps we can meet for a drink sometime,” he shot back.

“Or at
my
office.”

Again Lee’s manner turned harsh. “Don’t threaten me, Inspector Liu. I have friends in Beijing. You can’t touch me, because my friends don’t want you to.”

“Forget about China,” David interrupted. “Instead you should tell me about triad activities in Los Angeles.”

“I can only think that you are mistaken about us. Our organization is a benevolent society. We do good in the community. We provide jobs. We help feed people when they are new to your country.”

“And prostitution, extortion, drugs?”

Lee grimaced. “We have gotten—how do you call it?—a bad rap. These things are not Rising Phoenix. You look at the other gangs. You look at those Fujian gangs! Yeah, the Fuk Ching, they’re the ones bringing in illegals, not us. You talk about prostitution, drugs, you look at the Hong Kong gangs. The Sun Yee On—now there’s a bunch of low-life thugs! I’ll tell you something. If someone was trying to horn in on our territory, and I’m talking now about honest businesses, we wouldn’t sit back and take it. You understand me?”

“Enough with the Chamber of Commerce speech,” David countered. “What about the murder of Guang Henglai?”

“That has nothing to do with us.”

“So you admit you know about this death—”

“Whatever you say, I will have to take the Fifth.” His cronies laughed, but Lee’s bluster seemed hollow. After this, any question David asked was met by the same flippant answer.

Walking back out to the lobby, Hulan said, “You did well.”

“I got nothing!” David was exasperated.

“He practically admitted everything,” she corrected. “You can’t prove it in court, but you still know that you’re right about the Rising Phoenix. Most important, he lost face in front of the people under him. That news will travel, and
that
will help us.”

13

L
ATER
T
HAT
A
FTERNOON

Silverlake

S
till aggravated from his interview with Spencer Lee, David zigzagged his way on surface streets to the University of Southern California. Hulan took his silence for frustration, so when they pulled into the parking lot she refrained from commenting on how strange it was to be back at her alma mater, nor did she ask if they might take a stroll to her old dorm room or peek in on her favorite professors. Instead, they walked directly to the Administration Building.

Hulan remembered the woman who stood behind the counter. In twenty years, since Hulan was first an undergraduate at USC, Mrs. Feltzer hadn’t physically changed. Her hair was still a preposterous red, her waistline was still on the far side of forty inches, and her dress with the little belt that cinched in at that ample waist was still decidedly 1950s. Supposedly it was Mrs. Feltzer’s job to help people, but she truly excelled at asking students to fill out incomprehensible forms or sending them on fanciful campaigns to get unobtainable signatures from professors. Hulan thought Mrs. Feltzer would have fit in perfectly in Beijing’s bureaucracy.

“May I help you?”

“I’m from the U.S. Attorney’s Office,” David said. “We’re doing an investigation on the deaths of two boys who were students here.”

Mrs. Feltzer was not impressed.

“It would help us a great deal if we could look at their records.”

“I don’t think I could let you do that,” Mrs. Feltzer responded firmly.

David put his elbows on the counter, adopted a slight smile—nothing too blatant, just friendly,
entre nous
—and captured Mrs. Feltzer’s gaze in his own. She became the center of his attention, and Hulan knew that was a nice place to be. “Now come on, Mrs. Feltzer, I’ll bet you could do anything in here you wanted,” he cajoled. “I bet you know where every last slip of paper is in this office.”

This was how Hulan had first experienced David. During her first week at Phillips, MacKenzie, she was in the photocopying room trying to get the woman in charge to finish copying and binding the closing documents for a merger. The materials were a half hour late, and the lead partner had screamed at Hulan that she was about to have the shortest career in the history of law if she didn’t get those documents on his desk within the hour. The woman in photocopying took a different view. “That asshole is just going to have to wait! I’ve got five other orders before his and I’m taking my lunch break at noon. He can just cool his ugly little heels.” Hulan pleaded, begged, even began to cry, but the woman would not be moved. If anything, she seemed to enjoy tormenting the powerless woman.

Then David, already an associate, came into the room to get a couple of cases copied for the partner he worked for. Within three minutes, the woman dropped everything and was working on Hulan’s job. David and Hulan stayed to help. Twenty minutes later the task was done and David had asked Hulan out on a date, which she refused. It took a full year—her next summer at Phillips, MacKenzie—before she agreed to have dinner with him, and that was only because she’d decided it was the only way she’d get him to leave her alone. Things hadn’t turned out that way. He’d used the same charm and persistence on Hulan that he’d used on the woman in photocopying and now on Mrs. Feltzer.

“The boys are dead, Esther,” David was saying. “The best way we can help them is to learn what happened. For all we know, there could be something of vital importance in those records. I’m sure you wouldn’t want to stand in the way of a government investigation.”

Guang Henglai’s record was easy to find, since it was in the file for students who’d left the school. During his one year at USC, he’d taken basic courses typical for a freshman; his grades were predictably low. He’d stayed in a dorm for the first semester, then moved off campus for the second.

While they scanned this unenlightening file, Esther Feltzer continued to look for the active file of one William Watson Jr. She ran a tight ship and was unused to not having things at her fingertips. “Someone has misplaced the file,” she said sternly. “Either that or your information is wrong.”

It was hard to imagine that Mrs. Feltzer would allow a clerical error in her office, so David considered her alternative. “Could you try the files for departed students?”

“I thought you said he was enrolled here.” Mrs. Feltzer’s grumpy tone was returning.

“I’m just responding to your fine suggestion,” David said. “I can’t tell you how much we appreciate everything you’re doing for the victim and his family.”

But David’s charms were wearing thin. With a “Humph,” Mrs. Feltzer walked away. A few minutes later she came back, dropped the file on the counter, and said in disgust, “Just as I suspected, he is no longer a student.”

Billy Watson’s academic career was as short and lackluster as his friend’s. They had taken almost the same schedule of classes and gotten almost the same grades. They’d been assigned to the same dorm but had not been roommates. At the end of the first semester, though Guang Henglai had moved out, Billy Watson had kept his residency in the dorm. Unlike Henglai’s file, the rest of Billy’s was filled with formal grievances outlining the young American’s troubled career at the school.

During his first week, Billy Watson had been caught throwing full beer cans at people attending a frat party. The dean of students wrote sympathetically that this episode showed bad judgment but that Billy had promised that nothing like it would happen again. Two letters from female teachers reported that Billy interrupted their lectures, made inappropriate comments in class, and had not turned in a single assignment. By the end of the first semester, Billy had racked up close to $500 in unpaid parking tickets. These were duly paid by his father before the second semester started. Apparently Billy didn’t learn his lesson, for in the second semester the total for tickets reached $625.

Private schools like USC accepted vast sums of money in the form of tuition and endowments from wealthy, influential families like the Watsons. Allowances might be made. Nevertheless, Billy Watson had taken it upon himself to voluntarily leave the school. In a letter dated August 14, he wrote that he would not, after all, be returning in September. He asked that his tuition be refunded promptly and that the check be made out to him. That was two years ago.

“So what was he doing?” David asked as they walked back to the car. “Where was he living?”

“I’m wondering why his parents didn’t know what was happening. Ambassador Watson said he sent a tuition check each year. But how can that be? How could he not know that his son wasn’t in school?”

“I don’t know, Hulan. There was a case a year or so ago that was in all the papers here. For four years, parents from Fort Lauderdale sent tuition and living expenses to their son at the University of Michigan. He wrote them letters each month, talking about the courses he was taking, reporting on his grades, detailing his plans for graduate school. Then came time for graduation. The parents flew up to Michigan for the ceremony. Their son’s name wasn’t in the program. Afterward, they looked through the crowd but didn’t find him. They went to the administration office and discovered that their son hadn’t been a student for three years. He wasn’t living where he said he was either. In fact, he was nowhere to be found. I don’t remember what happened after that—whether it was foul play or the kid had just come up with a scheme to dupe his parents.”

“You think that’s what happened with Billy Watson?” Hulan asked doubtfully.

“I’m beginning to think anything’s possible.”

David drove while Hulan learned how to use the car phone. She got information for Butte, Montana, asked for the number of the sheriff’s office, dialed again, and hit the button for the speakerphone. Of course Sheriff Waters knew the Watson family. Why, he’d known Big Bill since high school and had worked on all of his campaigns. When Hulan asked about Billy, there was a reluctant pause on the other end of the line. “Naturally we all knew Billy, too,” the sheriff said cautiously.

“You know he’s dead?”

“Yes, and it’s a tragedy. Must be hard on Bill and Elizabeth.”

“Listen, Sheriff,” David said, as he guided the car onto the Hollywood Freeway, “we’re trying to find out what we can about Billy. We think if we can understand him, then maybe we can learn about his killer—”

“Yeah, yeah, yeah, even an out-of-the-way law enforcement officer like myself has been back to the FBI behavioral science lab at Quantico.”

“So can you help us?”

For a moment David thought they’d lost the connection, then Sheriff Waters’s voice came back wearily on the phone. “You have to understand, the Watsons are good people. They didn’t deserve to have a kid like Billy. He was born to trouble and he died that way, too, I guess.”

“Tell us about him.”

“How can a guy like me pick on an innocent little kid? That’s what I used to think when the Watsons would bring Billy to the ice cream social and he’d do some crazy-ass thing like tip over the ice cream table or push little Amy Scott into the fountain. People around here used to say Billy was just spoiled; I used to say he’d grow out of it. But, man, that kid hit high school and it was nonstop pandemonium. Nothing life-threatening, nothing I could ever haul his ass in here on, just stupid pranks, just always pushing the boundaries to see how far he could go.”

“What kind of pranks?”

“Aw, hell, getting caught speeding with a six-pack on the front seat on prom night. Shooting an elk the day before hunting season started. One time—and you got to hand it to the kid for ingenuity—he filled the back of his pickup with old tires, drove to the center of town in the middle of the night, and somehow got those things on the flagpole. It took us days to figure out how to get those cussed tires off of there. See, he was just driving his mom and dad, and me, too, if you don’t mind my saying so, nuts with this crap.”

“When was the last time you saw him?” Hulan asked on a hunch.

“Fall, I suppose. He liked to come up here with that slant-eyed friend of his. They’d hang out at the ranch doing whatever the goddamn hell kids nowadays like to do. Seems to me it was one party after another.”

“Who were they partying with up there?” David asked.

“Aw, I don’t know. Pretty girls and cowboys. Hell, they couldn’t get enough of those cowboys. You’d have thought Billy was paying them to come over.”

Silverlake is one of L.A.’s oldest neighborhoods. The lake itself is a reservoir nestled in low hills between Echo Park and Burbank, close to downtown. Narrow streets snake up hillsides on which classic Spanish-style and newer overbuilt, high-tech houses cling. Most of the residents are older, original buyers who raised their families here. Many of them are Chinese, since Silverlake was one of the first neighborhoods in Southern California outside of Chinatown to bend its residency requirements after World War II. This enclave appealed to the Chinese sensibilities of
feng shui
—wind and water; the wind rustled through the bamboo, bodhi, and persimmon trees they had planted to remind them of home, and the water of the lake glistened outside their picture windows.

After David parked, Hulan went through her morning’s purchases and pulled out a tin of Danish sugar cookies, saying, “It wouldn’t be polite if we didn’t bring a gift.” They walked down a short flight of stairs and banged the heavy wrought-iron knocker on the dark-stained paneled door. They waited, hearing nothing. David used the knocker again. They waited some more.

Finally the door opened. A tiny, ancient man stood before them. He was Sammy Guang, Guang Mingyun’s eldest brother. David and Hulan introduced themselves and gave him the box of cookies. He shuffled very slowly to the living room and motioned for them to sit on the loveseat. He asked if they wanted tea, and when they said yes, he snarled an order in Chinese to someone in the kitchen. His movements were painful to watch as he creaked to a sitting position on a straight-backed wooden chair.

As Sammy Guang did this, David and Hulan had time to take in their surroundings. The modest house had not been kept up. The living room had probably been decorated for the first and only time when the Guangs moved in. The low loveseat was covered in a practical but ugly fabric that had just barely held up for fifty years. The fireplace was composed of tiles in the muted colors so prevalent in the 1920s, but this was the only interior concession to the house’s original architecture. A few Chinese “antiques”—not good, just old—spotted the room. On the floor before the picture window sat several baskets of azaleas in full bloom and a potted kumquat tree draped with a red ribbon—the beginnings of the Guang family’s Chinese New Year celebration. On the mantel, in the place of honor, were graduation photographs of what Hulan presumed were Sammy Guang’s nine—if she was counting correctly—sons.

The old man squinted at them. “You want know about Number Four?” His accent was one of the densest David had ever heard.

“Is Guang Mingyun your fourth brother?” Hulan asked.