by S. J. Rozan
I pushed past him into his room. He opened his mouth to protest, then shut it, as he shut the door after Bill, too, was inside.
“What’s wrong with you?” I demanded, facing him squarely.
“Nothing,” he said. “I think you should leave.”
“Franklin, you’re nuts. One, what you said out there, I know it isn’t true, because your uncle confessed to the whole thing. Two,” I overrode whatever he was about to say, “what can you possibly think Strength and Harmony is going to do now that you’ve done that in public? A news conference? What is wrong with you?”
He paused, as though surprised at something I’d said. “My uncle? He was lying.”
“No, you were lying. There’s no way you could have run an operation like this from New York. I’m willing to believe you were involved, but not alone. And this public announcement—!”
“I don’t really care what you’re willing to believe,” he snapped. The soft lighting in this elegant room and the peach-colored stripes on the Peninsula’s silk wallpaper were doing nothing to restore the color to Franklin’s face. He looked at Bill. “What happened to you?”
“Strength and Harmony,” Bill said.
Franklin kept his eyes on Bill’s face for a few more brief moments. The sight of the broad white bandage—or maybe something in Bill’s eyes—seemed to bring him to a decision.
“All right,” he said. “You’re right about some things, I have some questions for you, and there are a couple of other things I want you to know. I’m going to tell you about them and then you’re going to leave.”
He gestured us to silk-upholstered armchairs and brought the desk chair over for himself. Before he sat he opened the minibar. “Anyone want anything?”
Bill asked for a beer, and I asked for a club soda, and there we were, resuming our interrupted drinks in Franklin Wei’s grand room in the Peninsula Hotel.
Franklin had taken out two tiny bottles of single-malt Scotch for himself. As he poured them into a glass and sat down before us I noticed the room’s two telephones were unplugged, their jack cords snaking emptily along the carpet.
“Ang-Ran,” Franklin said. “What do you mean, he confessed?”
“He was helping the police with their inquiries,” I said dryly. “I was there, with Mark Quan, the detective who went to Steven’s apartment later.”
Franklin frowned. “The police were questioning Ang-Ran? Why?”
“It’s a long story.” I hesitated a moment; then I thought, what the hell. If Steven knew enough to go to L. L. Lee, nothing would be secret from any of these people for long. “Harry’s kidnapping was his idea.”
“Uncle Ang-Ran?” Disbelief was written all over Franklin’s face.
“Because of the shipment coming in from China. He didn’t want Steven to be at Lion Rock until the smuggled goods were all removed, but apparently it’s hard to keep Steven from discharging his family obligations. The kidnapping was only supposed to be a distraction, no real danger to Harry, but things got out of hand. But because he told us all about it, that’s how we know what you said out there is a lie.”
It took Franklin a moment to be able to do anything but stare at me. “My God,” he said. “Ang-Ran didn’t want Steven—Is that what started all this?”
“No.” That was Bill, quietly. “What started it was when Wei Ang-Ran agreed to the original deal with Strength and Harmony thirty years ago.”
Franklin drank and then nodded. For a long time the elegant room was filled with silence, the silence of thick carpets and heavy drapes and other people’s work insulating you from the world. It’s a comforting silence, but unreal, and Franklin finally broke it.
“You’re right.” He drained half his drink, closed his eyes, opened them again. Color was returning to his face. “The operation was obviously Ang-Ran’s. I was a kid when it started, the late sixties, the Cultural Revolution. He didn’t bring me in until seven years ago.”
“Why bring you in at all?” I asked.
“I didn’t realize it until a few weeks ago, after Dad died and the will was read,” Franklin said, “but that’s when Harry was born. I didn’t know that, of course, because I didn’t know about Steven, but I do remember around then Dad changed, started talking and thinking more long-term. I thought it was because he was sick. His heart was starting to go. Uncle Ang-Ran saw it too, and worried that Dad would start looking more deeply into the business, to make sure everything would be okay for Harry to inherit.”
“How do you know that?”
“I had a long talk with Ang-Ran about all this two weeks ago. That’s when I decided to come to Hong Kong, partly for Dad’s funeral but mostly to meet the rest of the family. I always liked Ang-Ran—he sent birthday presents and wrote long funny letters when I was a kid, and boy I loved working with him on this smuggling stuff, but I’d never met him. My mom had no family, and with Dad gone … I mean, all I have is skiing buddies and three ex-wives who don’t speak to me.”
Franklin drank some more Scotch and fell silent again. His eyes fixed on the carpet, but I was sure that whatever he was seeing, it wasn’t that.
“So Wei Ang-Ran brought you into his smuggling operation?” I asked. “And you liked it?”
Franklin looked up, a little startled, as though he’d forgotten we were there. He nodded. “He knew I needed money—the ex-wives,” he said, with a sad smile. “And he was so afraid Dad would find out what was going on. He just wanted someone to oversee what was happening in New York, make it come out all right and keep Dad out of it. I didn’t see a problem in that. Dad was sick by then, and to know Ang-Ran was messing with stuff like this could have killed him. And the way Ang-Ran put it to me, we were helping save, my God, the artistic heritage of China from barbarians. All I was was a club-hopping Upper East Side doctor with three divorces and a specialty in squash-court injuries.”
“What did you do?”
“In the operation? Like I said, not much. Some of the stuff came to New York. There was a guy at the New York warehouse whose job was to unload and distribute, but Ang-Ran didn’t trust him. My job was to visit the fences—fences, for Pete’s sake—” Franklin grinned briefly, shaking his head. “—and make sure they got what they were expecting. That the guy wasn’t skimming some little piece of jewelry or some bronze figure that he thought no one would notice.”
“That explains the phone calls,” I said to Bill. He nodded.
Franklin raised his eyebrows.
“Mark Quan got your phone records,” I said. “From New York. You called L. L. Lee from time to time.”
“My—why?”
“We thought you might be behind the kidnapping,” I said matter-of factly.
“Me? You can’t—I’m just—” He seemed about to become righteously indignant, but he looked from me to Bill, relaxed and smiled instead. “Franklin Wei, criminal mastermind,” he said. “What a career that could have been. Yes, I called Lee. Sometimes I had to double-check with him on something.”
I asked, “Who were the fences?”
“About half a dozen guys in and around Chinatown. I can give you a list.”
That might be a useful list to have, I thought, though I wasn’t sure what I was going to do with it.
“I know what a mess this is now,” Franklin said into his drink. “But I’m not sorry Ang-Ran asked me and I’m not sorry I did it. The whole thing made me feel like the Scarlet Pimpernel. I’d go down to Chinatown in shades and a leather jacket—God, it was a blast.”
Well, I thought, but the Scarlet Pimpernel, brainless aristocrat by day, hero by night, was saving lives when he switched identities. Although if you actually believed you were preserving China’s artistic heritage, plus protecting your sick father—plus making a few bucks and getting to walk on the wild side—I guessed I could see it.
Franklin downed some more Scotch. The drapes at his windows were open. The neon Hong Kong skyline shimmered in the ultramarine sky and again, upside down, in the black harbor water
. In the sky and in the water a cloud drifted across the face of the moon. I looked at Franklin. The Scarlet Pimpernel. My skin began to tingle.
“You were there when Mark Quan told the family that some triad guys wanted to trade Bill for Harry,” I said slowly. “You were there. And you were the only one there who knew any triad guys, or why they’d want this trade.”
He met my eyes. “I wasn’t sure,” he nodded, “but I guessed. I knew Lee wasn’t happy when Ang-Ran told him we wouldn’t be smuggling anymore now that Steven was in the business. I figured Lee thought if Ang-Ran couldn’t make Steven agree to keep going, maybe he could.”
“My God,” I said, the tingle sharper now. “Oh, my God. You went to Lee and told him you were Steven, didn’t you?”
Franklin looked at me silently for a moment, then shrugged. “I’d spoken to him on the phone a lot, but he’d never met either of us, Steven or me. And we do sort of look alike.”
Sort of. I thought of my own reaction when I’d first seen Franklin standing outside the door to the Robinson Road apartment.
“You told him you were Steven,” I went on, still slowly, still half expecting Franklin to tell me I was crazy. “You said he didn’t need to complete the trade for Harry. You said you agreed to the deal just knowing what he had in mind, and please, let there be no more trouble. He was gratified,” I added. “L. L. Lee said you were a true Chinese, with a subtle mind.”
To which Franklin threw up his hands and responded, “Great.”
Bill, perched forward on his chair, pulled on his beer and asked, “But you weren’t the one who told Lee about Harry’s kidnapping in the first place.”
Franklin shook his head. “God, no. That’s not the kind of information I’d want a guy like Lee to have. No,” he said, finishing his Scotch, “that was that lawyer. Natalie Zhu.”
“Natalie Zhu? Why?” I said. “What was she thinking?”
“And how do you know that?” Bill added.
“I asked Lee and he told me. I think he was trying to impress me with how tied into my family’s affairs—Steven’s family’s affairs—he was. And apparently she was thinking he could help.”
“Help?” That was me again, my amazement growing at this entire extended mad family.
“Help find Harry.” Franklin sighed, shook his head. Maybe he was amazed too. He got up, got himself two more Scotches from the minibar. “Natalie Zhu stumbled on to the smuggling a couple of years ago. Uncle Ang-Ran almost had a stroke when she told him she knew.”
“What happened?”
“She was disgusted by the whole thing, but she agreed to keep quiet about it for my father’s and Steven’s sake. Ang-Ran kept promising her it would end but she totally dismissed that: You don’t end a partnership with a triad unless they want it ended, she’d say. She thinks Ang-Ran’s pretty pathetic.”
“Did she know about you?”
“I didn’t think so before I’d met her, but now I bet she did all along. Ang-Ran never told her, but I don’t think you can slip much past her.”
“Did she know Wei Ang-Ran was responsible for the kidnapping?” Bill asked.
“She didn’t know that, according to Lee, but she did think the whole thing smelled funny. And she was sure of two things: One, you two messing around could only cause trouble. She was sure you couldn’t find Harry, and any close look at the family might open the whole can of worms.”
I nodded. “She sent us on what was supposed to be a wild goose chase, looking for the amah. She must have been unhappy when Mark Quan told you all that Bill had found her.”
Franklin smiled. “Her face didn’t exactly light up, like Steven’s and Li-Ling’s. I didn’t know all this at that point—I just thought, well, they’re Harry’s parents, of course, they’re more excited than the family lawyer.”
“You said she thought two things,” Bill said. “What was the other?”
Franklin looked at Bill. “That a long-term relationship with a ranking triad member had to be good for something. One of the reasons Lee was ready to believe I was Steven and I was making the deal was because that was what she’d promised him: that if he found Harry she’d guarantee Steven would keep up the smuggling.”
“How was she going to deliver that?” he asked.
Franklin blinked. “Well, don’t you think he would have? She’d made a promise on his behalf, for one thing. It would have been a matter of honor for him to keep it, even if he hadn’t wanted it made. But also, if Lee had actually found Harry, Steven would have been grateful, and would have wanted to show that.”
Very Chinese and logical: Grandfather Gao would have approved. I wondered if he knew it was possible to proceed according to Chinese logic and be insane at the same time.
“When you went to Lee,” Bill said, seeming less amazed by these crazy people than I was, “Harry was still missing.”
“Yes. I didn’t know what had happened to him, but that detective—Quan?—said the cops were looking for him, because of the trade for you. If they were, I had to think he’d be better off if Lee wasn’t. I wasn’t sure I was doing you any favors,” he added apologetically, to Bill, “but a kid … I mean … anyway, I hope I didn’t make it any worse.”
Bill shook his head and drank his beer.
“Okay,” I said. “Okay. Every last one of you is nuts, it must be a Wei family thing. But listen: What were you planning to do once it was over and Lee expected Steven to keep smuggling and Steven had no idea what he was talking about? Because Steven really has no idea, does he?” I thought of Steven Wei’s relaxed and smiling face in the garden at Tiger Gate Academy, a face that was the sunny, daytime mirror of the pale, shadowed one I sat across from right now. Steven really believed the story Maria Quezon had handed him. Steven really knew nothing about his uncle’s involvement in his son’s kidnapping. Steven really had no clue.
Franklin said nothing, but Bill did. “That’s what the press conference was for. You’ve exposed the whole thing and laid it on yourself. Steven won’t have to know about Ang-Ran—the kidnapping or even the smuggling—and Lion Rock is useless now to L. L. Lee. If he saw you on TV, he’ll know he was had. Why didn’t you mention him or Strength and Harmony by name?”
“Tomorrow,” I said. “You said you’d give the authorities details tomorrow.”
Franklin smiled and swirled his whisky. “American melodrama,” he said. “I couldn’t resist it.”
“Franklin,” I said, “you may not have thought about this, but what you just did isn’t going to make L. L. Lee very happy.”
“I have that under control.”
“How?”
Franklin looked out the window at the clouded moon, and then back at me and Bill for a very long time. “Listen,” he finally said, “I’m exhausted. You must be too. You especially,” he said to Bill. “I really don’t want to talk anymore right now. Come over in the morning, I’ll give you the rest.”
“You need a bodyguard,” I said. “Bill and I are both trained and experienced at that. We—”
“No,” Franklin said.
“Franklin—”
“It’s the Peninsula,” he said. “Nobody’s going to come blasting down my door at the Peninsula.”
“We’re staying.”
“I’ll call security,” Franklin said. “I’ll have you thrown out.” He stood, a little shakily, it seemed to me, from all that Scotch. He plugged one of the phones back in and started to punch buttons.
“Franklin—” I tried again.
He paused, then put the phone to his ear.
“No,” I said. “No, you win.” If security came to throw us out they’d also make sure we couldn’t get within two blocks of the hotel in any direction. That wouldn’t help at all.
I stood. “Franklin, you’re crazy. This is Hong Kong. You can’t do things like this here.”
“Sorry,” Franklin told the phone. “My mistake.” He lowered the receiver and unplugged the phone again. “Hong Kong,” he said. He stared for a moment out the
window at the two moons, the two neon skylines. Then he turned to me. “Hong Kong. Didn’t you just get here more or less the same day I did?”
“Yes, but—”
“I know what I’m doing.”
“I don’t think so.”
“You’re wrong. Now go.”
He crossed the thick carpet, opened the door, stood waiting for us to leave. Without a choice, we left.
We didn’t go far. My first thought was to stay in the hallway, planted like soldiers on either side of Franklin’s door, but hotel security wouldn’t have been happy with that either. What we did was to go back down to the lobby, where, on a maroon expanse of Oriental carpet among two-story columns with ornate tops, the Peninsula’s famous tearoom became, at this hour, the Peninsula’s famous lobby bar.
Not that a bar was what either Bill or I needed right then. I ordered tea and Bill ordered coffee and I called Mark Quan.
“Wai?” This was a hoarse and sleepy Mark, and I felt bad for waking him as I obviously had, but some things can’t be helped.
“It’s Lydia.”
“Lydia? What the hell’s wrong? I just got to sleep an hour ago. Are you—?”
“I’m sorry, Mark. But there’s a big problem.” I gave him a fast rundown of Franklin Wei’s press conference.
“This isn’t happening.”
I knew how he felt. “Bill and I were just up in his room, but he threw us out. He thinks he’s safe here. It’s true the desk won’t give out his room number and he’s probably smart enough not to open his door, but I don’t think that’s enough if he’s pissed off L. L. Lee.”
“No,” Mark said, completely awake now, his voice both urgent and unbelieving. “It’s not. He’s totally crazy. Everyone in that family is totally crazy. Okay. It’ll take me twenty minutes to get down there. I’ll call in a couple of cars to get the entrances watched. Maybe nothing will happen this fast. When I get there I’ll arrest him.”
“You’ll arrest him?”
“He confessed to a crime, didn’t he? At least he’ll be safe with us.”
“Can you get him kicked out of Hong Kong—shipped back to the U.S.?”
