White Gold

by Caitlin O'Connell

  Mr. Hang shook his head. “It’s very hard to keep track.”

  “Do you think it’s possible for illegal ivory to get mixed in with legal ivory in order to sell it off quickly?”

  “Possible.” He nodded. “But there’s a better price on the black market.”

  “Would you be able to tell if you were buying ivory that was not from a government sale of ivory harvested from natural mortalities?”

  “Before the ban, we had ivory coming in with bullet holes. We could tell that it was not legal. But after the ban, I did not see this. Now it is starting to happen again, but not here in this factory.”

  “What if there weren’t any bullet holes? What if they only gave you illegal ivory, stolen from government stocks that didn’t have any bullets? How would you know?”

  “All the ivory is cataloged once received. If illegal ivory is mixed in, there’s no way to tell. I complain about this, but there are very strict regulations, and the owner says he is compliant. He says we have to trust our suppliers.”

  “And do you trust your suppliers?”

  “Come.” Mr. Hang walked us down a different row. Either he heard my question and completely ignored it, or he hadn’t heard me.

  As we walked down another row, Mr. Hang pointed to a pile of powder that one of the employees was sweeping up. “We send powder to the traditional Chinese medicine vendors. It makes very popular tea.”

  I watched how the powder was swept up from the floor and couldn’t help noticing that a brown layer of dust from the floor was being swept up alongside the ivory. “What are its medicinal properties?”

  “It cures arthritis.”

  I had heard that tiger bone was used for this same purpose based on the false premise that tigers were never seen to limp. I couldn’t think of what the logic might be for elephant tusk curing arthritis.

  Mr. Hang led us back out of the main carving area and into his office. He invited us to sit down at a small round table. “Would you like tea?”

  “Thank you,” I said, “that would be great.” As Sam and I sat down, I asked, “Were you aware that there was a very large shipment of illegal ivory found last weekend that was destined for Da Xin? We found the boat abandoned off Lantau Island.”

  “I read it in the newspaper.” Mr. Hang turned away and wrung his hands. “I have many disagreements with owner about these illegal shipments.” He turned back to face us, but he spoke so softly, I could barely hear him. “We used to run a respectable business. There is enough legal ivory but too much greed. We are ruining the gift that we were given.”

  “What gift was that?” I interjected, uncertain of how to navigate Mr. Hang’s mood.

  “To reopen our factory. To keep the carving tradition alive. To be a respectable operation.”

  “You don’t believe it’s respectable?”

  Mr. Hang hunched his shoulders. “The triad is pressuring us. And my boss is one of them. They are too greedy. And very dangerous.”

  “Have you gone to the police about this?”

  “In China, we have explanation for your term ‘whistle-blower’—whistle is last noise you hear before you are blown up.”

  “Why have you decided to talk to us about it?” Sam asked.

  “Because I am very upset. A very good friend was killed. I think enough people have died. I am tired of watching them die without doing something.”

  “I’m sorry to hear about your friend, Mr. Hang,” Sam said soothingly. “Are you able to share the details of what happened?”

  “I will never know what happened.” Mr. Hang turned on the electric kettle for tea. “They always make it seem like an accident.” He picked up the morning newspaper and tossed it toward us. “The media paints a very different picture than what is really happening. These things are rarely accidents.”

  I looked at the newspaper coverage of the fire. There was a different headline than the one in Hong Kong, and no question about arson. HISTORIC BUILDING CATCHES FIRE. MANY DIE. “He didn’t happen to be in the Chungking Mansions fire?”

  He shook his head. “No. Not a fire.” He shook his finger. “That is a favored method, of course, but not this time.”

  “Where did your friend live?”

  “Lantau.”

  Sam and I looked at each other hesitantly, wondering if it could possibly be a coincidence.

  “What happened?” I asked as I skimmed the article about the fire.

  Mr. Hang placed tea bags in three mugs and poured hot water into each with his back to us. “They say it was a tiger attack.”

  “Tiger attack?” Sam asked curiously.

  Mr. Hang brought the mugs over and then a small bowl of sugar and milk. “There hasn’t been a tiger in Hong Kong in many, many years.”

  I sat up to reach my mug. “Are you talking about Jin Jin?”

  His eyes widened as he sat down to join us. “You knew Jin Jin?”

  “No, but I can tell you that there was indeed a tiger involved. But I can’t confirm that it was the cause of his death.”

  “How do you know?”

  “I saw the tiger—and I saw Jin Jin’s body.”

  “So it is true.” He put his hands over his face.

  “The boat was moored at Jin Jin’s dock,” I explained. “I’m so sorry, Mr. Hang.”

  Mr. Hang clucked his tongue as he opened the newspaper to the last page of the front section. He folded it, placed it in front of me, and pointed to a picture of a tugboat. There was the Hull Identification Number clearly visible: HIJ 007JB MI69X.

  “Is this the boat?”

  I quickly skimmed the few lines of text:

  Tugboat out of Mong Cai, Vietnam, thought to be destined for the Pearl River in Guangzhou, 120 kilometers northwest of Hong Kong, broke down and drifted to Lantau Island. Billions in illegal goods get transported openly across this border on barges to feed the Chinese market. Guangzhou is known as the capital of the third world and the destination for much of the illegal ivory coming from Africa.

  The blurb was surprisingly accurate, albeit no mention of the contents of the boat or the fact that someone was killed. The curious thing was that whoever wrote the article seemed to know that the boat was destined for Guangzhou. “The article reports that the boat was destined for Guangzhou.” I searched Mr. Hang’s expression. “How would they know that?”

  He looked at the article. “It is not unusual to suppose this. If the illegal trafficking is by boat, it often comes to the Pearl River.”

  “Did you know Jin Jin well?”

  “Yes.” He nodded. “Does Li know?”

  “Yes,” I responded.

  “His father must be very upset.”

  “When we told Li what had happened and he explained it to his father, he was sure that Jin Jin had been set up.”

  Mr. Hang wrung his hands. “Set up by whom?”

  “The Sun Hee Un, most likely,” I responded. “Do you know why they would have been after Jin Jin?”

  “He had something very important,” Mr. Hang whispered. “Something Li’s father gave him to hide.”

  “How would the Sun Hee Un know about that?” I asked.

  “SHU believe Li’s father stole it from them.”

  “Why would he do that?”

  “He didn’t. But that’s the story they tell because he wins so much,” Mr. Hang explained. “Jin Jin collected the winnings for him and then bought diamonds and hid them,” he confided.

  “At the apartment?” I was immediately concerned for the safety of Li’s family.

  “I cannot tell you this.”

  “What about the ivory on the tugboat?” Since Mr. Hang was being so forthcoming, I was hoping he might help with the tugboat investigation. “Were they planning to steal it?”

  Just as Mr. Hang was about to respond, there was a knock at the door that led into the main carving hall. One of the factory workers stood waiting to speak with Mr. Hang.

  Mr. Hang went to the door. The worker spoke urgently, gesticulating ou
t the window. Mr. Hang walked to the front door and looked down over the parking lot. He quickly turned around to address us. “You must leave now,” he snapped urgently.

  Sam stood up. “Is there a problem?”

  “Come.” Mr. Hang waved us back into the carving hall. “I will take you through back door, and you catch a cab from Erhu Street. Don’t come back around the front of the building or he will see you.”

  “Who would see us?” I asked as he ushered us through the door.

  “Lofty,” he whispered.

  “Nigel?”

  Mr. Hang nodded. “I will tell Marcus about their activities. We will make a plan.”

  “Marcus Fitzpatrick from WTW?” Marcus had said that Mr. Hang owed him a favor, but I had assumed that favor had been used up by my visit to the factory.

  “We must focus on the Myanmar border.”

  Mr. Hang had his employee walk us to the back of the factory. Halfway, Mr. Hang called me back. He whispered out of earshot of Sam. “There is a woman with a stall on Bird Street that I need to talk to. Maybe you can send her a message for me?”

  I suddenly remembered the nightingale vendor. “The one with the nightingale?”

  “How do you know this?” Mr. Hang appeared to be stunned by my response.

  “There was an argument. Nigel was trying to either take or purchase the bird from her, but she refused to give it to him.”

  Mr. Hang’s face lit up.

  “What is it?” I couldn’t imagine how my statement could have elicited this response.

  “I don’t need to send a message,” he whispered as he pushed me toward the exit. “Good boy, Jin Jin.” He giggled under his breath. “Jin Jin did his job.”

  I thought about Jin Jin’s quartered body and wondered who would have done such a thing. Then it occurred to me that Mr. Hang might know something about the group of men I had seen in Kunming, each carrying a nightingale cage. “Maybe you could tell me what NNS means.”

  Mr. Hang’s face darkened. “Where did you hear of these letters?”

  “I saw a symbol of bird wings, I think, carved onto nightingale cages in a park in Kunming. There was a group of men sitting in a circle. Each cage had the symbol with NNS carved into it.”

  Mr. Hang interrupted me and grabbed my arm sharply. He pulled me closer. “Were you alone when you saw this?”

  I didn’t know how to respond. I nodded, not meaning to lie, but I didn’t think there was anything to worry about since it was only Ling-Ru and me.

  “You must never speak of this again—ever,” he whispered again, looking at me gravely. “You will put very good men in great danger.”

  He waited for me to respond and I nodded.

  “For the elephants,” he said, winking, and let go of my arm. “You must warn Li as soon as possible,” he said, returning to the previous conversation. “They will come for his father.”

  Scramble to Hong Kong

  Sam and I grabbed a cab to the White Swan, threw our stuff together, and got the first train we could back to Hong Kong. All the while, I couldn’t help wondering what Jin Jin could have done that involved that old woman’s nightingale—and why Nigel cared so much about that bird.

  And why had Mr. Hang been so visibly shaken when I asked about the NNS, the three letters surrounding the symbol that I saw affixed to all those nightingale cages in Kunming. I was tempted to ask him if he knew Mr. Weiping but thought better of it, given his reaction to my other question.

  Racing to Li’s place would mean missing Jon again, and I wondered about sending Sam instead, but knew it would be better if we both went. And even better if Ling-Ru was there as well.

  “What did Mr. Hang say to you just as we were leaving the factory?” Sam had been watching me closely.

  “I’m still trying to make sense of it myself.”

  “Anything we need to act on?”

  I didn’t want to tell Sam what Mr. Hang had said until I talked to Ling-Ru. “As soon as we get to Hong Kong, I’ll call Ling-Ru and get her to meet us at Li’s place. I can talk to her about it there.”

  “He smiled too much.”

  “What do you mean?” I asked.

  “When a Chinese man smiles, he is lying.”

  “I’ll take that under advisement.” I noticed that Sam was still splattered in goose blood from the Guangzhou market. “Goose blood suits you,” I teased Sam.

  He dismissed his condition. “My date won’t mind.”

  “You have a date tonight—a date that won’t mind you being covered in goose blood?” I laughed. “That’s some date.”

  “Yes.” He smiled. “She is.”

  “I was hoping you’d join Ling-Ru and me in Lantau. Might be good to have a policeman there to ask questions.”

  “I could do that.”

  “Your date won’t mind?”

  “What about your date? I gather he’d be pretty disappointed if you put him off a second night after he traveled all the way from Africa to see you.”

  “I’m hoping he’ll forgive me.”

  “Me, too.”

  “So I have to ask, when I was in the market surrounded by large surly men while you disappeared into the fur aisle, what good would the five stances have been? Are they actually useful for anything other than thigh burners?”

  He burst out laughing. “Clearly more training is in order if you think they’re only good for a thigh exercise.” He pointed a finger at me. “But first of all, I didn’t disappear—you disappeared. And secondly, perhaps we need to include a Bruce Lee movie in the training.”

  “It’s a date!” I immediately regretted the word. “Well, not a ‘date’ date, you know what I mean.”

  Sam smiled. “We’ll call it a sparring session.” He looked out the window as the landscape turned from rural sprawl with mountainous backdrop to an urban dump as we approached Shenzhen. He looked up at the electronic board that listed the stops. “Looks like our stop is next.”

  “That was fast.”

  Since Shenzhen was the last stop for anyone going to Hong Kong, everyone was getting off at the same time. We waited for others as they grabbed heavy luggage and made their way to the door.

  I tried calling Ling-Ru on my cellphone as we waited. If she was still dealing with the landslide in Shenzhen, she’d be right near this station. I wanted to tell her about Mr. Hang’s warning as quickly as possible so she could convey the message to Li. My message went straight to voicemail. “Damn it.”

  Sam turned to me. “What’s wrong?”

  “I can’t get through to Ling-Ru.”

  “Maybe you’ll reach her when you get to your hotel.”

  “I was hoping to contact her right away. I think we should go directly to Lantau.” I texted Ling-Ru, hoping she’d get the message and head over to Lantau immediately.

  We disembarked, made our way to the subway station, and took the train to Lantau. We had to get to Li’s place as soon as possible as there was no way to know how much time was at stake. It would take an hour to get there, and we couldn’t risk any delays.

  Li’s reception was intermittent, and his landline had been down for a week, so there was no chance of trying to convince Jon to reconsider starting over. And no chance to see if Craig had convinced him to stay longer. I wished our reunion hadn’t started off so terribly, but I hoped that with a little perspective, he’d understand.

  The Guilty and the Dead

  Sam and I got to the apartment just as Ling-Ru arrived. Li was seeing off a taxi and his wife, Hui-Fong, was inside trying to comfort their daughters who were crying hysterically. Li had tears streaming down his face.

  Ling-Ru ran up to him. “Li! Li! What happened?”

  “It’s my father.” He hugged her. “Oh, Ling-Ru!”

  “What happened?”

  “He’s been murdered.”

  Mr. Hang had been right, and we were too late to do anything about it.

  “Murdered?” Ling-Ru hugged him again. “I’m so sorry. How did it happen?”


  We walked toward the shop.

  “I don’t know exactly. I took the family out clamming this afternoon and came back to find him dead. Garroted.”

  Ling-Ru gasped. “Garroted! What! Why? What about Smara? Doesn’t she know what happened?”

  “There was an argument.” Li entered the shop and started making tea for everyone.

  “Between whom?” Ling-Ru asked in shock.

  “My father and Jin Jin’s son.”

  “Yuan?” Ling-Ru looked confused. “I thought they got along.”

  “Yuan blamed Dad for what happened to Jin Jin.”

  “Was anyone there with your father during the argument?” Ling-Ru asked.

  “Smara said she got scared and went into the garden to pick some vegetables. When she heard the door slam, she went back and found my father dead.”

  “Do you think Yuan killed your father?” I asked gently.

  “He was angry, but he wouldn’t have done that. Yuan looked up to my father like an uncle.” Li shook his head. “He left me some notes. Notes written awhile back. Smara kept them for me. I am still trying to absorb it all.” Li threw his hands up. “Why did Father have to do that? Things were fine the way they were. We were a happy family. We didn’t need anything.”

  He put his head in his hands and wept.

  Ling-Ru rubbed his back and tried to soothe him.

  Sam sat down next to him and spoke softly. “My name is Sam Woo. I’m a constable in the Hong Kong Police Department. I’m terribly sorry about your father. I’d like to help with the investigation.”

  Li nodded between sobs.

  Sam continued, “Can you tell me what you are referring to—what your father might have done to instigate this unfortunate incident?”

  Li shook his head. “He had saved up the money from betting. And he had some diamonds. He never told me about it. He said he didn’t want anyone to know or the triad would claim it was theirs and steal it.”

  “Maybe the SHU came to collect his winnings,” I offered, thinking about what Mr. Hang had told me.

  “Who else would have reason to kill him?” Ling-Ru asked gently.

  Li was lost in his own thoughts. “Why wouldn’t they just steal the money? That would have been easy enough. Why did they have to kill him?”