The Flower Net (21 page)

“And now the patent medicines,” she said. “We’ve seen them before.”

“We have?”

“Oh, yes. We saw Panda Brand medicines in Cao Hua’s refrigerator.”

“Was it bear bile?”

“I don’t remember. It didn’t seem important at the time.” She ran her finger over her bottom lip, thinking. “We also saw Panda Brand one more place.”

David regarded her curiously as she ran back over it in her mind. “I know!” she said. “We saw it in the lobby of the China Land and Economics Building. Panda Brand is one of Guang Mingyun’s companies.”

“
Aiya
,” Peter groaned. This wasn’t going to be good for his career.

They should have stopped to play out this new information, but they were so caught up in the moment that David simply turned back to Laurie and asked, “Has Guang Mingyun’s name ever come up in any of your smuggling cases?” When Laurie shook her head, David sighed and said, “As much as I’d like to connect him to the Rising Phoenix we still don’t have a single piece of real evidence.”

“We’ve got the couriers,” Hulan reminded him.

“But you’ll never nail the triads with two uncooperative accomplices,” Laurie said.

“What we need is someone who can make the final link for us,” Hulan said. “We need someone to slip in, deliver the contraband, and ask some questions.”

“What about Investigator Sun?” Jack Campbell suggested. “Could he pose as Wang?”

All eyes turned to Peter, as they considered. He seemed perplexed at the idea. “If something happened to him…” David said.

“
That’s
not the problem.” Then realizing how that sounded, Hulan bowed her head in apology. “Forgive me, Investigator Sun.” She turned back to David. “The problem is he looks like he’s MPS.
I
look like MPS. Why do you think Wang Yujen ran away at the airport? He recognized me for what I am. No, we need someone different. You look at Hu Qichen, he’s arrogant. He tries to act like a big man, but he’s not. And Wang…” She snorted lightly. “He’s just a courier. Not smart, not educated.”

David brought his hands to his face and rubbed his forehead. Suddenly he felt very tired. When he looked up, they were all waiting for him. “I know who we can use.”

“Your Mr. Zhao,” Hulan said.

“Yes, my Mr. Zhao.” David’s voice was hoarse as he said, “Jack, you’d better call Noel. Have him grab Zhao during his next trip to the warehouse.”

15

F
EBRUARY
5

The Green Jade Café

A
t eleven the next morning, Zhao stood in the middle of the electronics room at the FBI stripped to the waist as a technician taped a wire to the immigrant’s gaunt, hairless chest.

This time David had little to bargain with. The Rising Phoenix had picked Zhao up as soon as he left Terminal Island. They had provided him with a job and a place to sleep. He was little more than a slave, but his life was not in jeopardy. Now David was asking him to do something that was at best risky, and with nothing in return. David couldn’t promise Zhao a job, a place to sleep, food, or clothes. And yet Zhao had not hesitated. David correctly understood that Zhao’s cooperation was directly tied to the presence of the two Ministry of Public Security agents. He didn’t ask who they were because, as Hulan kept repeating, they were recognizable. Nor did Zhao question why the MPS was in the United States. Perhaps he simply didn’t know any better. Perhaps this was just one more example of his American dream shot to hell: You risk your life trying to go to the United States, hoping for a better future, and when you get there, all you find is more hard work and the MPS to boot. No matter, Zhao was between the proverbial rock and a hard place. From his position, he could live out his indentured servitude to the triad or face the wrath of the MPS. Neither was a choice David would have wanted to make.

Which was not to say that David’s conscience didn’t bother him. He was keenly aware of just how suspect his actions and those of the two U.S. government agencies were by not giving full disclosure to Zhao. He suspected that the FBI agents, like himself, were justifying the means with the ends they anticipated—the murders would be solved, the smugglers caught, and the triad exposed. Still, David worried that the Rising Phoenix would recognize that Zhao was not a courier but merely a man who owed them his passage to America. Noel Gardner, who’d been watching the sweatshop, reassured David that the gang leaders wouldn’t recognize a single face out of all their workers. In fact, as far as Gardner could tell, no one important from the Rising Phoenix had ever come by the shop. Zhao agreed with this assessment.

They tried to work calmly, quietly with the immigrant, but spirits were running high and everyone had an idea of what Zhao should or should not say, questions he should or should not ask, and how he should respond to those asked of him.

“Tell them we arrested Hu Qichen,” David said. “You were questioned, but we didn’t open your rice cooker or your thermos. When you were finally released, there was no one there to meet you. You didn’t know what to do. You waited in the terminal.”

“Finally you saw another of your countrymen.” Hulan picked it up. “You went up to him and said you were lost. This man was very kind. He told you to…”

“Take a bus, which you did.” David seemed momentarily stumped. “The money. How does he get money?”

“Wang Yujen had about fifty dollars on him. He had it exchanged at the airport, then got on the bus.”

“I’ll call RTD and find out about buses from LAX to Chinatown,” Gardner volunteered.

“No, wait,” David said. “Maybe he should go to Monterey Park. We know the Rising Phoenix has business in both cities. But where will Zhao end up? At someone’s house? At headquarters? We don’t know where any of those places are, but I’ll bet those guys aren’t living in Chinatown. They’re probably up on some hill above Monterey Park taking advantage of the
feng shui
.”

As Gardner disappeared to make his call, David returned to his scenario. “You get to Monterey Park and you start asking questions…” David seemed at a loss again. “And then…and then…And then you’re on your own.”

“Say you’ve got a package for Spencer Lee or Yingyee Lee,” Hulan said. “Play dumb.”

“And when you get there, try to tell us where you are if you can,” Jack Campbell said. “We’re going to be listening. You won’t be able to hear us, but I promise you won’t be alone. If you need us, just shout. We’ll be right there.”

“And one more thing,” said Hulan. “Ask him about Guang Mingyun.”

For the first time, a shiver rippled through the immigrant’s body. Wordlessly, he shook his head. But Hulan was firm. “You ask how Guang Mingyun is involved, how much money he makes from this trade, and who he uses in China to send the products out of the country.”

By now her MPS colleague had caught on to what she was suggesting. Peter argued with her in Chinese, but she cut him off in English with fierce finality. “I will take full responsibility.” Then she put a gentle hand on Zhao’s bony shoulder. “You ask about Guang Mingyun if you think you can.”

They drove together in a surveillance van supplied by the FBI. During the long trek across the city, the seriousness of his position began to register with the immigrant. By the time they dropped Zhao off at an intersection two bus stops away from downtown Monterey Park, he looked pale and drained of all energy. He walked a few steps, then turned and grinned bravely. Noel Gardner called out one more time, “We’ll be with you the whole time. Don’t worry.” Then Gardner pulled the sliding door shut and the van pulled away.

The plan moved ahead with amazing accuracy and precision. Zhao had been a perfect choice, since he didn’t have to feign ignorance of the city in which he found himself. He walked along the streets of Monterey Park, which were quite different from the two blocks of Chinatown that he’d been allowed to see in the course of his deliveries. He recognized the Chinese characters on the shop signs, but the rest—the vast restaurants, the luxury cars, the bejeweled women—was foreign to him.

He was lost and he looked it. Several times women approached him, mistaking him for a homeless man and offering him small change. When he asked for Spencer Lee or Yingyee Lee, they shook their heads and said they had never heard of those men. One matron asked Zhao his name. When he told her he was Wang Yujen, she suggested he go to the Wang family association house. She gave directions, pressed a dollar bill in his hand, then briskly continued on her way, calling out a final few words of reassurance. “They will help you.”

Zhao did not go to the family association house, where an immigrant might find help and where American-born Chinese of the Wang clan could find companionship and common interests years after their family’s arrival in the United States. Instead, he wandered into a video arcade, where the wire transmission was lost in the noise of simulated battles, drag races, and the players’ squeals and shouts of delight, outrage, encouragement, and triumph. But once back on the street, Zhao seemed to know exactly where to go.

He entered a 7-Eleven and again asked for Spencer Lee or Yingyee Lee. At first the clerk denied knowledge of either man. When Zhao insisted, his voice rising in frustration, explaining that he had a delivery for one of the Lees, that he’d been detained at the airport, that he’d come all the way to Monterey Park by himself—as a foreigner and totally new to the city—the clerk relented. “You wait here,” he said. “I will make a phone call.” When the clerk came back, he told Zhao to wait outside. Someone would be by to pick him up shortly.

From their vantage point in the van, David and Hulan could see Zhao anxiously standing on the street corner. He shifted from foot to foot, paced a few steps in one direction and back again. Then, in an apparent effort to calm himself, he squatted on his haunches, setting his small suitcase and his packages beside him. He could have been on a street corner in any Chinese city.

A black Mercedes with smoked-glass windows pulled up to the curb. The driver rolled down the window and called out, “You are Wang Yujen?”

Zhao nodded enthusiastically.

Inside the van, David groaned. “He’s got to talk. The tape won’t pick up nods.”

Zhao opened the door to the backseat, put his belongings inside, and, without a glance toward the van, got into the front seat of the car.

The driver said in disgust, “You smell like you haven’t taken a shower in ten thousand years.”

“Sorry, so sorry.”

Keeping a safe distance, Jack Campbell followed the Mercedes through the business district, then into a residential area. The Mercedes began to snake its way up a winding road. The houses got bigger, changing from 1950s tract homes into ostentatious mansions too large for their lots.

“Chinese people live in these villas?” Peter asked. When he found that they did, he shook his head in disbelief. What was called a villa in Beijing was nothing compared to the size of these Spanish-style monstrosities.

The Mercedes slowed, waited for a pair of electronic gates—each with the character for happiness rendered in wrought iron—to slide open, then pulled inside. The driver didn’t bother to close the gate behind him. Gardner parked the van across the street. When Spencer Lee got out of the car, David immediately recognized him. Tonight he was nattily dressed in a silk shirt, creamy white slacks, and tennis shoes.

“Hurry up, hurry up,” he ordered.

Zhao got his possessions out of the car and followed Spencer Lee up the marble steps and into the house. Over the transmission, they could hear Zhao exclaiming over the foyer and the living room. “Be quiet,” Lee snapped. “Too much noise. You sit down and tell me why you are here.”

The next few minutes proved to be the toughest for the team in the van as they listened to Zhao—through Hulan’s translation—recount his misadventures at the hands of the law. To David, Zhao sounded like a groveling fuck-up. Zhao was just a poor peasant. He didn’t understand anything of what happened. He was afraid when the foreign devil came up and took him away. He thought he was going to be executed. In other words, David thought Zhao sounded believable, but Spencer Lee was not so easily satisfied.

“They take Hu Qichen. They put you in another room. Okay. I see that. But why are you here? Why do I not see Hu Qichen?”

Zhao’s reaction surprised David. “Fuck my mother! Fuck your mother! Someone says, You go to America, you come home, you make some
yuan
. I think, Maybe I earn enough to buy an automobile. Maybe I can be a driver for foreigners. But I tell you what happens. I come to America. The policeman looks in my mouth. He puts his fingers up my asshole. I’m thinking, Next thing this man is going to put a bullet in my head. My children will have no father. My wife will go and marry Noodle-man Zhou. He has his eyes on her for many years. I’m thinking, Maybe I don’t want to buy a car. Maybe I want to stay alive. Better to be a poor man in China than dead in this ugly place. Fuck your mother!”

The tirade—shrill and loud—ended as abruptly as it began. Dead silence followed, then Spencer Lee began to laugh.

“Sit down, Mr. Wang. Have a cup of tea.”

“
Eaaah
,” Zhao grunted, still annoyed.

During the next few minutes, tea was brought in and Spencer Lee checked his contraband. When Zhao saw what the merchandise was, he once again feigned curiosity.

“What do you have there?”

“Bear bile.”

“I bring that into the country for you and you don’t tell me?”

“Yes, but you will be paid, remember?”

As Spencer Lee measured the loose crystals, Zhao asked, “Where do you get that?”

“It is no concern of yours.”

“You tell me things, I will understand. Next time I make this trip for you I do an even better job.”

There was silence on the transmission as Lee considered. “Yeah. Okay. You did a good job. You got here, right?” Zhao didn’t respond. “Up in Jilin Province, too many Koreans. They’re not trustworthy and the price is too high. Heilongjiang Province is too remote—close to Beijing if you can fly but dangerous, and it’s too hard to get merchandise to Beijing overland. So, we get our bear products from Sichuan Province.”

In the van, Hulan said, “That’s where Guang Mingyun was in the labor camp.”

David thought, Right, and so were your father and Section Chief Zai.

The transmission resumed with Spencer Lee. “Hundreds of bear farms around Chengdu and the police don’t care who buys, who sells. You know what I mean? We go to the airport. We tell the officials that our bear bile comes from a farm with a license. Everything is legal. No problem.”

“Why is some in a bottle, some loose like that?”

“Different products, different farms, same price.”

“But that one in the bottle is Panda Brand. That company is Guang Mingyun company.”

“So?”

“Guang Mingyun works for you?”

In the van, as Hulan translated this exchange, David marveled at how deftly Zhao was playing to Lee’s ego.

“Guang Mingyun has many businesses,” Lee replied enigmatically.

“I see,” Zhao said, as though deep in thought. “Guang Mingyun is Rising Phoenix, too.”

“A curious man can become a dead man,” Lee remarked. “Guang Mingyun likes money. I like money. You like money. That’s enough to know.”

Zhao nervously fell back into the sycophant role. “You use me again next time, right? I bring more in for you, maybe work for you. Maybe come to America?”

“We’ll see,” Spencer Lee said.

“What do you want me to do now? You have another job for me?”