“Thought you weren’t going to tell me what the China desk said.”
“I figure you earned it yesterday.”
“Thanks.”
“My pleasure,” said Holborn. “Stay alive, and call me when you learn something.”
CHAPTER THIRTY
Amy and Steven Zhang built a new life together in the United States, became citizens, had a daughter, saved their money, and brought Amy’s mother to Chicago. They embraced their adopted country with the intense gratitude felt by immigrants from oppression.
But they could not forget the way things were back home and those who continued the struggle, and they felt some measure of guilt for the blessings of their new life. So they decided to exercise their new freedom to help.
Steven used his computer skills to set up special Web sites. One site gave tips on building a backyard koi pond and keeping your fish healthy. Another was a guide to Chicago’s Chinatown for the casual tourist. A couple of years ago, he added a site devoted to Italian recipes and cooking techniques. Completely innocent Web sites, but behind them he built blind pages. You could surf around the sites all day, click every available link, and you’d never stumble upon the blind pages. On those blind pages, he posted news articles about China that appeared in the Western media but were censored back home. He posted the articles as large image files, making them invisible to word-Search applications.
Amy wrote the copy for the main sites. And she used her job as an English tutor at UIC to recruit Chinese students. The students sent e-mails back home, to kids on university campuses in Hong Kong and Beijing, and those kids forwarded the messages to kids on campuses in other cities throughout China. The e-mails looked trivial enough—a lot of prattle about the life of a college kid. Oh, and by the way, I found this really cool site about Chicago’s Chinatown, or koi ponds, or Italian cooking. And certain words within the prattle told the reader what extensions to type, in order to get to the blind pages.
It was a clever system and they were able to funnel a lot of news past the censors. Their big mistake was not doing enough to disguise ownership of the sites. Steven opted for private registration of the domain names, but that’s easy enough to get around if you really want to find out who owns a site and are willing to spend a few bucks. If you did, you’d find that the sites were registered to Zhang IT Consulting. And the ownership of Zhang IT Consulting was a matter of public record.
As Amy told me all this, I realized how I’d underestimated her when we first met. Living in a city like Chicago, you meet cabdrivers who were doctors in their home country, waiters who were engineers, and so on. My own mechanic, Sasha Klukoff, was a professor in Russia back when it was the Soviet Union. You meet these people, but it never occurs to you that some of these cabdrivers and waiters and mechanics were also political dissidents in their native countries. Even political prisoners. Now I saw Amy Zhang through new eyes. She was a fighter, and a survivor.
And then she told me how it all came crashing down.
“The night that Steven died, after the police had gone, I was packing a suitcase. Theresa was at my mother’s and I was going to join her there. I couldn’t stay here. The place…it was a mess.” I’d seen the police photos and I knew what she was saying. “I had to get out of here. I was packing a bag and a man came to the door. He was a huge man, with a terrible burn scar on his face.”
“Blake Sten,” I said.
Amy nodded. “He didn’t say his name but Steven had described him to me. He showed me a photograph of Steven in a coffee shop with Jia Lun.”
“Did you know that Jia Lun worked for the MSS?”
“Before I saw the photo? I knew that he was an important journalist and his reporting always supported Party policy, so he was connected to the Party. That’s what I knew. Sten explained that Jia Lun was a professional contact of his. Then he showed me printouts of our Web sites, including the blind pages. He had the paperwork proving that Steven owned the sites. The last thing he showed me was another photo.” Amy closed her eyes, opened them slowly. “It was taken on the tarmac of an airport in Shanghai. You could read the signs on the building in the background. In the foreground there were six PLA soldiers. They had a man in handcuffs. Yan Benli. He had been one of the June Fourth martyrs, sent to New York on medical parole. He gave lectures here, trying to persuade the American government to take a harder line on human rights in China. He disappeared a year ago. He was supposed to give a lecture at the New School. He never showed up. His body was never found and he’s still listed by the New York police as a missing person. In the photograph, he stood between Jia Lun and Blake Sten.”
“Sten was in China?”
“Yes. And he told me that the same thing would happen to me if I raised questions about Steven’s death, or his illness. And I would never see Theresa again.”
It all made sense. The photo of Steven Zhang and Jia Lun wasn’t proof that they’d had a meeting; it was proof that Blake Sten could engineer such a meeting. Sten hadn’t shown me any other evidence and he hadn’t brought it to the FBI, so the content of their conversation could’ve been completely innocent. All he had to do was send Jia Lun into the coffee shop and snap some photos. Jia Lun could have approached Steve Zhang and struck up a conversation about the weather and Blake Sten would’ve gotten the photo he needed.
Sten might’ve used the same coercion on Steven: I have influence with the Chinese government. Look at this photo of you and Jia Lun—I made that happen. Now this other photo—Jia and me, delivering one of your fellow dissidents to the PLA. I could do the same thing to you and Amy. Look here, I even have the records of your Web sites. You’ll both disappear into labor camps, and you’ll never see Theresa again. There’s no way out for you. But you can save your wife and daughter…
Maybe. But why would Blake Sten have that level of influence with the Chinese government? I had no answer for that one.
Amy said, “Sten went to the door and two other men came in. They searched the house for hours, took everything apart. They spent a lot of time in Steven’s office. They even took the hard drive from his computer.”
If three guys from Hawk River hadn’t found it, I wouldn’t. Amy was right—it wasn’t there. Damn.
“When the police came back, I described Steven’s recent behavior but did not mention my suspicions, or Blake Sten. And as I told you, I was being watched after that. A week later, someone else came to the door—not Blake Sten—and asked me to tell him what I knew about Steven killing Joan. He made no pretense. He said that he worked for Sten and he wanted to hear it the way I told it to the police. There was another visit a week after that. Sten again. It was the same thing, he wanted me to tell it over again. I think really he just wanted to scare me again. Remind me of what would happen if I didn’t go along. A week after that, they stopped following me. Until you arrived.” Amy was silent for a minute. Then she said, “And that’s everything. Now I’ve told you all that I know. Can you do anything with it?”
“I’m not sure,” I said. “If I had the computer files…I think I could get you and Theresa into Witness Protection. But you’d have to tell everything you know to an FBI man I know. And you’d have to testify, if it comes to that.”
“If I testify, would they be able to keep us safe?”
“They’d try. They’re pretty good at it, but there’s no way to know for certain.”
“Because I don’t think Blake Sten will let me live. Once he finds whatever Steven had…or once enough time has passed not to raise suspicions…I think I’ll have some kind of accident. Or I’ll just disappear and Sten will earn some credits with his contacts in China.”
She was probably right.
My grandfather’s voice echoed in my head, dispensing advice both simple and profound: Never make promises you can’t keep, son.
I said, “We’re not gonna let that happen, Amy. I promise.”
I was fading fast, desperate for sleep. Clear thought now required conscious effort. If I didn’t
close my eyes soon, I’d be totally useless. I went out to my car, did a quick circuit of the surrounding blocks, saw nothing, and parked in front of the town house again. I’d brought a couple of portable door jammers from home and I showed Amy how they worked. Then set one up on the back door, the other on the front. I made sure all the blinds were fully closed and gave her instructions to stay away from the windows.
It was 9:20. I swallowed a couple of Percs, set the alarm in my cell phone for 3:30 and placed it on the coffee table. Placed my gun next to it. Pulled the coffee table close to the couch and stretched out.
By the time Amy put a blanket over me, I was asleep.
The phone woke me at 2:05. Delwood Crawley said he would be at Riccardo’s at 5:30. I said that I would be there and we hung up on each other. I’d been hoping for a full six hours of sleep, hadn’t quite gotten five. It would have to do. I rose from the couch suffering from a bad case of bed head, managed to calm it down with a soak under the bathroom faucet. Brushed my teeth. Slapped on some deodorant. Felt almost like a new man.
I found Amy reading the newspaper in the kitchen. She wanted to visit Theresa. She hadn’t gone yesterday and this was the longest they’d been apart since Steven’s death. We had time to get to Grandma’s for a quick visit and be back before Vince arrived. There was still no one watching Amy’s house and I couldn’t think of a reason to say no.
So we went. And there was no surveillance set up at Grandma’s place in Chinatown, either.
As we entered Grandma’s apartment, Theresa flew into the living room and into Amy’s arms. There followed hugs and kisses and Amy smoothed Theresa’s hair down the way a mother does. Theresa led Amy by the hand and we all went into the kitchen, where a chubby Chinese girl in her early twenties sat at Grandma’s kitchen table. Schoolbooks were spread across the table. Amy introduced the girl as Samantha and told me that she was Theresa’s tutor, until the time was right for Theresa to return to school.
Samantha had long hair, dyed very black. Black eyeliner generously applied, and black fingernails. Black cargo pants and pink Chuck Taylors. A matching pink Hello Kitty T-shirt. About a thousand string bracelets, some with pukka shells, others with little skull beads. I might’ve guessed Goth, but the pink shoes and the Hello Kitty T-shirt said something else. I think she may have been what kids of her age call Emo. Whatever that means.
Although her English was better than most American kids, it was not her native tongue and I wondered if she might’ve been one of Amy’s UIC students who, until recently, had helped smuggle news to university students in China.
Samantha told us that Grandma was out grocery shopping, and Amy put the kettle on the stove. I left them in the kitchen and sat out in the living room, by the front window.
There was still no one watching the place.
I thought it through: Sten gave me a story to feed my client. I sincerely hope that, once you pass all this to Mr. Richmond, he can move on, too, he said. And just in case that was too subtle for me, he’d followed up with the assault on Ernie Banks. A clear message: Put this case to bed. Now. I hadn’t allowed Tim Dellitt to buy me off the case, so an unambiguous threat would be the natural next step for a guy like Sten. But then Terry called Hawk River with questions about Steven Zhang and Joan Richmond. Sten couldn’t know if Terry had been put into motion before my visit, so Terry’s call didn’t tell him if his threat had achieved its goal.
Sten needed to know if I was still on the case. I’m usually a pretty hard guy to tail (despite my screwup the previous day) so it would require a team. Waste of manpower. Easier to simply put Malibu Man on Amy. If I were pursuing the investigation, I’d turn up in Amy’s life. If I didn’t turn up, then either I’d dropped the case or I was such a lousy detective that I wouldn’t get anywhere anyway.
But once I’d spent the night in Amy’s house, Sten knew. She’d let me stay overnight—Sten would assume she’d told me everything. So there was no need to keep a man on Amy. Whatever damage Amy could do by talking to me had been done. I was the threat now. They could take care of Amy later. And killing her before me would be a serious tactical error.
It was too soon after the attempt on my life for Sten to move on me. I was too hot. If I’d convinced the police that there would be another attempt, there might even be a CPD team shadowing me for a few days, ready to swoop in and grab anyone tailing me. Better to wait. Regroup. Restrategize, in the light of recent events.
And if I was correct about the identity of my attacker, Blake Sten was as surprised by the attempt on my life as I was. Maybe, like me, he was right now wondering what the hell just happened.
Amy broke the silence of the drive back to her house with, “I still haven’t told her. How Steven died. But I will have to, before she returns to school.”
“Or before she gets on the Internet,” I said.
“Oh my God. I hadn’t even thought of that.”
“Amy, you’ve got to tell her.”
She ran her fingers through her hair. “She’s so young and she’s already been through so much. I don’t know how. I don’t know what words to use…”
“It doesn’t matter how, just tell her.” It came out a little harder than intended. “For Christ’s sake, the longer you wait, the worse it’s gonna be. If she finds out somewhere else, it’ll be a double betrayal—her father kills himself, and then her mother lies to her about it.”
Amy looked out the side window as we crossed over the Chicago River. She said, “But how do you explain suicide to a child?”
My mother’s cold body naked on top of the sheets, an empty pill bottle beside her, a half-empty bottle of Sambuca on the nightstand. My grandfather’s inadequate words: “Human beings are odd creatures…. She wasn’t thinking straight—people never are when they do that.”
“I have no fucking idea,” I said.
“Am I making you angry?”
“I’m not angry.”
“You sound angry.”
I took a deep breath. Just tell her, Dudgeon. I spoke with a forced calm. “Look, I’m not angry, it’s just…okay, here’s the thing…my mother killed herself when I was thirteen.”
“Ray, I’m so sorry.”
“Me, too. Anyway, it was a long time ago. Point is, you need to tell Theresa the truth and go through this thing together. Probably the only thing that saved me when my mother killed herself was that her parents took me in and we all went through it together.”
Amy thought about that. “She’ll never get over it.”
“Not completely, no. But you’re making it worse by keeping it from her.”
I wanted to shut up and say nothing more. But I heard myself say, “When this trouble is over…when your life returns to whatever new version of normal you can make of it…after you’ve told her…you know, I could visit with her. Tell her about my mother. Maybe it would help her to talk with someone who’s been there.”
I didn’t look at Amy. I couldn’t. What if I looked and saw pity on her face? What if she said No, thank you in that too-polite tone of hers? I just kept driving, kept my eyes on the road.
Amy’s warm hand covered mine on the stick shift.
“Thank you. You’re a nice man.”
Was I? Did I really want to talk with Theresa so I could help her? Or so I could help myself? I couldn’t honestly say.
“You don’t know me, Amy.”
We rode the rest of the way in silence.
CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE
Ric Riccardo was a WPA artist and popular bon vivant who styled his eponymous restaurant after a Parisian café and commissioned six of his fellow WPA artists to paint large murals in the bar area, depicting the Seven Lively Arts. Riccardo’s own painting depicted Dance. The place doubled as an art gallery and drew a lot of local artists and jazz musicians. In the late ’40s and for some years after, it was the only downtown restaurant in Chicago that extended a genuine welcome to black people.
Because it was hip and because the martinis were huge, Riccardo�
��s also attracted a loyal clientele from the nearby newspapers and ad agencies. It became the official hangout of the local scribblers when they felt like going upscale.
The news scribblers stuck around through new ownership, despite a slow decline in the food and decor, until they were the only customers left. After a few failed attempts to revitalize the place, Riccardo’s finally closed down in 1995.
Another part of the Real Chicago gone, while publicly traded national chain theme park food factory restaurants opened all over the neighborhood and even the news business became just another part of your mutual fund’s investment portfolio.
It reopened in 2000 as 437 Rush. Part of a chain, but at least it was a local chain. Phil Stefani promised to re-create the original vibe of Riccardo’s, and he did a pretty decent job of it. The place had a lot of mahogany, black-and-white tile floors, wavy glass dividers, and framed photos of many of Chicago’s prominent editors and columnists through the years. Stefani even commissioned Gregory Gove to paint a new mural over the bar, celebrating jazz. Soon the reporters and ad guys returned and everyone still called it Ric’s, holding on to the past like nothing had changed.
Sometimes that’s the best you can do.
I entered through the revolving door and was greeted warmly by Paulo, who told me that Delwood Crawley was waiting for me at a table in the back room. I glanced at the bar and spotted Scott Jacobs and a couple of young Sun-Times reporters whose names I couldn’t recall. Went over and said hello, then headed to the back for my date with Crawley.
Crawley’s trim three-piece suit was a pale shade of gray that matched both his waxy skin and his thinning hair. He wore a blue shirt with white collar and French cuffs, and a paisley bow tie. He saw me coming, took a long sip of his drink, and reached for a monogrammed silver cigarette case on the table. Long bony fingers extracted a cigarette and lit it with a silver Dunhill lighter that matched the case.
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