Ling-Ru slowly nosed the door open with her revolver.
I followed behind.
“Jin Jin?” Ling-Ru stepped carefully into the greasy kitchen and immediately pointed her firearm, pivoting and pointing in all directions before moving to the doorframe of the next room.
There was a jangle of pots in a small pantry and Ling-Ru swung her gun around.
I ducked as an extremely skinny cat ran out of the pantry and out the kitchen door.
We both took a breath and Ling-Ru signaled for me to stay put.
Ling-Ru swept the other rooms, and when it was clear that there was no one in the house, we exited again.
“What about the boat?” I whispered.
She nodded and we headed toward a line of palm bushes next to the dock. We sat down behind the palm fronds and tried to make sense of the movement we could see through the windows inside one of the cabins on the lower deck.
“Do you think it could be him?”
Ling-Ru shook her head. “I don’t think so. Jin Jin is really short.”
“Maybe it was just the motion of the boat. Maybe no one is in there.”
“Let’s take a look.” Ling-Ru stood up and I followed.
“Now I wish I had a gun.”
“Me, too.”
Ling-Ru looked around and ran in a crouch toward the dock with me following behind again. I couldn’t help noticing that my gait was not nearly as smooth as hers. She had thighs of steel.
When we reached the dock, I nodded to the super-human-sized mound in the sand next to the dock and whispered, “That’s a little big for Jin Jin, isn’t it?”
“Yes,” Ling-Ru whispered back.
“Maybe one of his buddies?”
She nodded and put her finger to her lips as we stepped lightly onto the dock and slowly moved toward the boat. The beach smelled foul, just as it had across from Li’s apartment, but the boat smelled much worse.
“Hello?” Ling-Ru called out, pointing her gun aft as we passed a plank that led to the bridge. The only noise other than the creaking of the dock and banging of the boat was the buzzing of flies.
We walked farther down the dock and approached the back of the boat, looking down onto the main deck, which was in great disarray. On the back deck, there were PVC tubing, saws, lengths of galvanized piping, chicken wire, and mosquito gauze strewn about, with half-finished cages of different shapes and sizes. Black greasy pieces of a diesel engine were also scattered everywhere. The smell of diesel and rot sat heavy in the air.
Ling-Ru used hand signals to explain that she wanted us to walk across the plank that slanted down onto the bridge, climb down the ladder, and approach the door to the main cabin. We jumped as lightly as possible onto the boat, but it rocked as if a lot of weight suddenly shifted belowdecks in response to our climbing aboard.
We looked at each other, confused, until we could see that the tide was coming in, causing the boat to rock more as the water level rose. It sat slightly higher against the dock than it had minutes ago.
I followed Ling-Ru down the bridge ladder and she planted herself in front of the door. She signaled for me to stand on her left on top of a storage bench, away from the potential line of fire.
I grabbed a metal pipe and held it in my hands like a baseball bat.
“Hello?” Ling-Ru gripped her Glock in both hands and stood an arm’s length from the door. “Is there anybody in there?”
After a few moments of silence, Ling-Ru tried to turn the doorknob but it was locked. She took a step back and kicked the door as hard as she could, which splintered the door away from the doorframe. She slowly pushed the door forward with her right arm as she held her firearm.
There was a snarl as a large beast leapt out from the dark interior. I watched in disbelief as Ling-Ru was knocked to the ground by a blood-spattered Bengal tiger. Her gun clattered out of her hand and slipped past the gunwales and into the brown soup below.
I clutched my metal pipe as the very skinny tiger scaled a leg of the dock and disappeared into the bush, while Ling-Ru lay on the deck, breathing in short choppy breaths and bleeding from a bad gash on her left forearm. “Ling-Ru!” I jumped down and put my hand on her head, looking for evidence of other wounds. “Are you okay?”
She nodded. “Just give me a minute. I hit my head pretty hard.”
I touched the area where the tiger had clawed her. “It’s pretty deep. You’re going to need stitches.”
Ling-Ru gripped her arm above the wound and winced. “What was it?”
“A tiger.”
“A tiger?”
“A very skinny tiger covered in blood. But with enough energy to climb up the dock.” I stood up and followed the path of the tiger’s quick exit. There was a smear of fresh blood on deck and a few dribbles of blood where it jumped off the boat and onto the leg of the dock. “And it looks like at least some of the blood is his.”
Ling-Ru swept around her outline with her good arm. “Where’s my gun?”
I pointed toward the water. “Over the side.”
“You can’t be serious.”
“Unfortunately, I am.”
“How did that happen?”
“There was no way I could catch it. It happened too fast. I watched it slip through the gunwale.” I looked overboard at the dingy saltwater, getting deeper and deeper and browner as the tide came in farther. “Does it have spring cups? I could try to find it if you think it will still fire.”
“Yes, I put spring cups on, but there’s no way you’re going to find that thing right now.” She tried to sit up and I rushed to help her. She pulled at the bottom of her shirt. “Can you help me tear this? I want to stop the bleeding.”
I pulled out a piece of the hem and tore off a strip from the bottom of her shirt. “Another reason to wear cotton.” I wrapped the white cotton around her arm just below the elbow.
She winced. “Not too tight.” She pressed down around the wound and looked at how deep it went. “At least I’ll have bragging rights in a bar.”
“Not many people can say they were attacked by a tiger and lived to tell about it.” I looked at the door that was now ajar. “I can’t stomach the thought of the conditions in there.”
“I think we should close the door and walk away.”
“Why pack a tugboat full of animals?”
“Strong boats in a storm, more reliable engines.”
I looked at the grease-covered engine parts. “Apparently not in this case.”
She nodded. “Jin Jin is an opportunist. It probably drifted in after it was abandoned. It’s not the first time this kind of thing has happened in and around these islands.”
“Abandoned to avoid getting caught, I presume?”
“Yes.”
“Where do you think it came from?”
“Vietnam, maybe. Through the Mong Cai border. Or maybe up from Cambodia, heading to the Pearl River in Guangzhou.”
“I’ve heard there’s a lot of activity there.” I wondered if the HIN matched one of the pictures I took in the Gulf of Tonkin. “How reliable do you think the customs guys are at that border?”
“You can watch videos on the Internet of how much traffic is crossing the border just below the bridge. On boats crossing the river—it’s a joke. Everyone knows it.”
“Why aren’t they doing anything?”
“It’s too overwhelming, and staff get rotated. Some are better than others. Confiscations go missing and it gets into the papers. And different sources of information fluctuate, depending on who’s involved.”
The air coming from the cabin reeked so badly, my first instinct was to agree with Ling-Ru—to close the door and get out of there. But then I thought about the possibility of other animals on board who were probably in terrible condition. “If anything else is alive in there, they’re probably dying of thirst. How soon do you think your team could get out here?”
She shook her head. “Don’t know.”
“Maybe there’s some fresh water
on board.” I found the tap for a hose hanging off the back of the deck and turned it on. I tasted the water and spat it out. It was fresh. “We could at least leave some water for whatever is alive in there.” I filled a bucket and turned the tap off.
“This boat is probably loaded with booby traps.”
I picked up my metal pipe again. “I’ll go in and check it out.”
“I don’t think that’s a good idea.” She looked at my pipe. “That thing certainly isn’t going to do any good.”
“It’s the best I’ve got. Besides, that tiger was covered in blood. It would most likely have killed anything that was out of a cage, don’t you think?”
Ling-Ru lifted a storage bench next to her and pulled out a machete. “At least take this.”
“Good thinking.” I dropped the pipe and grabbed the machete.
Ling-Ru groaned and held her head. “I’m coming with you.”
“You sure?”
She nodded.
I held the machete like a baseball bat, ready to swing as I approached the door. A fly landed on my nose and I blew it away. I was not looking forward to seeing what was on the other side of the door.
Tiger Spoils
I pushed the cabin door open with my foot, keeping as much distance between myself and the door as possible. Since I had the machete, Ling-Ru picked up two short pieces of piping as her weapons of choice.
The smell of putrefaction billowed out at us and we both coughed and gagged at the same time. The blood splattered on the walls and floor still glistened fresh.
I looked at the pattern of blood streaking. Whatever the tiger caught couldn’t have been small. And judging from the amount of blood, there must have been a struggle.
I stepped toward a lump at the end of the hallway. In the dim light coming through the portholes, I could see limbs torn off a body—human limbs.
I took my cellphone out and used the flashlight to shine on the body. Amid the blood and disemboweled trunk sat the head of an elderly man. “Is that Jin Jin?”
Ling-Ru nodded, holding her torn T-shirt up to her nose. “He must have put up quite a fight.” She kicked at a cattle prod that was lying against the wall. “Not with his bare hands, apparently.” She picked it up and used it as her second weapon, dropping one of her pipes.
I shone the light on one of Jin Jin’s thighs. “Do you think a tiger could have made such a clean sever?” I crouched down. “It looks like his leg was cut off, not torn off.”
Ling-Ru was distracted by the claw marks on the walls. “This must have been some fight.”
I shined light on both of Jin Jin’s dismembered arms. “Look at this. His arms are sliced through the bone.”
“These claw marks look like they come from more than one kind of animal.” Ling-Ru drew her finger along markings that dug deeper than others, the scratches slightly narrower on some of them.
I grabbed her shoulder. “Ling-Ru, look at Jin Jin.” I shined the light on Jin Jin’s pelvis area. “Look at how the leg separates from the hip.” I pointed to Jin Jin’s detached leg.
“I doubt an animal would make such a clean separation, particularly without any claw or teeth marks. It’s as if he was cut up.” I held up the machete. “Maybe with a machete.” I pointed to the shoulders. “And look at the shoulder sockets as well.” I looked up at Ling-Ru. “I think his attack was staged. Made to look like the tiger did this.”
Ling-Ru inspected the areas that I shined the light onto. “Maybe so,” she admitted, clearly spooked by the idea.
I shone my light around the hallway. “Who do you think would want to murder Jin Jin?”
“Don’t know.”
“One of the triads?”
“Most likely a warning to Jin Jin’s friends.”
“Warning them not to steal from a triad?”
“Something like that.”
“Guess that means they still have their eye on this boat.”
Ling-Ru looked at me. “I’m sure they do.”
“We better make this fast.”
The door to one of the berths was slightly ajar and I pushed it opened. I shined my flashlight inside and recoiled at the sight of a wall lined with giant jars full of enormous snakes. “What the hell is this?”
Ling-Ru stepped in and had a look. “Snake wine.”
“More like pickled snakes.” I shined my flashlight at a giant reticulated python. “People really drink this?”
“Very popular. And very expensive. You can even get one with the fresh blood of the snake dripped into it. One shot could cost you a week’s pay—if you’re middle class, I mean. Otherwise a month’s pay, or something inconceivable.”
Rows and rows of pickled snakes of all sizes and colors were submerged in a clear liquid within screw-top jars of all sizes. “This looks like a museum collection.”
“Yes, a drinkable museum.” She walked over to the largest jar that was almost her height containing a king cobra. “And this one is the most expensive of them all.”
I walked over to the jar that contained the second-largest snake I had ever seen, second to the reticulated python I was just standing next to. “Is that a king cobra?”
“Crazy, I know.”
“Let’s check out the other rooms.” I went back into the hallway, opened the next door, and shined my light around the room. The walls of the room were lined with fur pelts. Judging from the size of the pelts and patterning of fur, they looked like a long-legged raccoon. “Nothing alive in here. Only furs.”
The room smelled of warm blood and something sour. When I looked at the pelts more closely, I realized that they had been freshly skinned, the insides still shiny and pink, as if they had just been peeled off their owners.
Ling-Ru came in behind me and inspected a huge pile of paws in the corner of the room. The paws had been cut off at the ankle and each were the size of a small dog.
“What’s all this?”
Ling-Ru poked at the pile with her pole. “It’s sick, is what it is. I’ve been told that some traders are peeling the fur off of animals live in the open markets, one leg attached to two-twenty volts of electricity to prevent them from moving while being peeled.”
“Is that really true? Craig told me that story was made up by activists.”
“That’s what I’ve been told and I can believe it.”
I was having trouble shaking a video that Craig and I watched showing how the skinning was done while the animal was being electrocuted. He was sure it was faked to create a sense of outrage about animal conditions in the fur industry. I wasn’t able to confirm it either way, but I couldn’t stomach the idea.
I opened the next door to the most awful smell I had ever experienced. I shined the light into a room full of densely packed small cages, each containing an oblong scaly ball. There was movement in only a few of the cages. “Pangolin,” I whispered and stepped closer, holding my breath as best as I could to see what condition these extremely endangered animals were in.
I couldn’t bear to see these strange little creatures suffer. A pangolin looks somewhat like a small anteater except that it’s covered in hard scales made of keratin that look similar to tortoiseshell—hence the common name, scaly anteater. It has a really long tail and a soft underbelly, so when threatened, it curls up into a ball, looking almost like a spiny pineapple or artichoke, which is where the term ‘pangolin’ comes from—one that rolls up.
Ling-Ru looked at all the cages. “I’ve never seen one alive. I’ve only seen them descaled and frozen. You know you can get a jail sentence of up to ten years if you’re caught with one of these.”
“Ten years, really? Is that enforced?”
“No.” She shook her head. “In Guangdong Province, they call the trading an open secret. No one does anything. Pangolin scales are prized as traditional Chinese medicine. And the restaurants can’t get enough of the stuff. Braised pangolin breast with soy is how it tastes best, I hear.”
I poked my index finger in to touch the long nose o
f one that was still lively enough to walk around. Of the very few things that I knew about pangolins was that they didn’t have teeth, and therefore couldn’t bite me. Their tongues were apparently about as long as their bodies, designed to reach into termite mounds and ant nests to access a mother lode of food.
Polyurethane string held the latches of the cages closed. I stumbled upon a ball of string in between cages and put it in my pocket. “What magic could their scales possibly contain?” I asked Ling-Ru.
“Ground-up scales in a tea apparently help new mothers lactate.”
“Lactate? That’s ridiculous.”
“Yup,” Ling-Ru said dismissively. “And cure anything from asthma to cancer. Irresistible, really.”
“And how much does the meat sell for?”
“There was finally a crackdown a few months ago. Four tons were seized from a market in Guangzhou from a vendor called Happy and Rich.
“Four tons? That’s a lot of pangolins!”
“Nine hundred and fifty-six, as far as I remember. The guy was selling the meat for five hundred yuan per half a kilo to the restaurants who were turning around and selling for two thousand.”
“What’s that in U.S. dollars?”
“About eighty bucks for the vendor, three hundred for the restaurant.”
“Three hundred dollars a plate? People can afford that?”
“It’s a booming business with the new economy.”
“And what about the scales? How much do they cost?”
“A whole pangolin can cost around a thousand dollars.”
“How many scales is that?”
“About a thousand.”
More than half of the pangolins in these cages appeared to be dead. “I can’t take this anymore.” I looked below the pangolin cages at the many buckets full of freshwater turtles with barely any water in them. I assumed they were endangered turtles, like the ones depicted on the endangered species posters in Craig’s office. “I’m going to get that bucket of water and give these poor guys a drink. And these turtles need fresh water.” As I left the room, I called over my shoulder, “Don’t go anywhere.”
White Gold Page 9
