A Death in China

by Carl Hiaasen

  "Maybe," Stratton said. "It's possible."

  "That's good enough for me."

  Stratton slapped a Bodine twenty-dollar bill on the counter and motioned to the flinty-eyed bartender. "Good God, don't be a fool and leave the whole thing,"

  McCarthy hissed. "He's been pissin' in the drinks all night."

  Stratton laughed and shook the newsman's hand. "I'm at the Hilton. My flight leaves at about noon tomorrow."

  "Hey, you're talking to an ace foreign correspondent," McCarthy roared. "You'll have your list by ten sharp."

  Stratton walked back to the hotel room and stood under a steaming shower for twenty minutes. The melancholy and bitterness gradually receded to a remote corner of his mind; he began to feel galvanized, perversely exhilarated by what lay ahead. One race was finished, and he had lost. Another was beginning. This time the track was his.

  CHAPTER 22

  Steve Powell caught up with Linda Greer in the hall outside the embassy conference room.

  "Did you win today?" she asked amiably.

  His hair slick from an after-tennis shower, Powell nodded with an air that said no contest. "The dust was murder out there. Took some top spin off my serve." He propped his briefcase on one knee and opened it. The yellow cable was on top of a stack of files.

  "Here," Powell said, handing it to Linda. "It arrived this morning from San Francisco."

  Linda read the cable twice and went cold.

  "Whatever it means," Powell said, "I don't think I ought to mention it at the staff meeting."

  It means Tom Stratton was right, Linda thought.

  Powell said, "Some guy with two Ming vases makes it past customs and immigration using David Wang's passport. Strange. Didn't the late, great deputy minister tell us that the passport was destroyed?" Powell snapped the briefcase shut.

  "The question now is, Who was this guy? And how the hell did he get the passport?"

  The passport. No, Linda told herself, it can't be true.

  "Maybe the deputy minister swiped it, then turned around and sold it," Powell theorized, "like he was selling everything else. There's quite a few Chinese who'd give anything for a U.S. passport. Your old buddy Bin could have found himself a rich customer."

  Powell watched Linda's expression carefully. She was ashen.

  "I guess you'll have to cable customs," she said finally. "They'll want some kind of report."

  "I've got to let them know the guy was illegal, and screw the damn vases."

  Linda lowered her voice. "Steve, can you wait on it? Two or three days, tops. I need a little time, a head start."

  "For what?"

  Powell could never know, nor could anyone else at the embassy. It would remain her secret because it had been her mistake. Angrily she flashed back to that night at the foreigners' morgue. She had not recognized the welder who had bent over David Wang's coffin, nor had she protested when the odd Mr. Hu had declined to open it for the requisite inspection. I am required to see it first, she had said. You were late, he had replied.

  Now she knew why Mr. Hu had sealed the coffin so swiftly: it must have been empty. David Wang had been alive. Then.

  "Steve, I can't say much. Maybe when the boss gets back from Singapore. All I can tell you is that this"-Linda waved the cable-"is very serious. Extremely serious. Can I count on you?"

  Powell smiled. " 'Course you can. Took customs three days to get us a wire from Frisco… might just take another three days for them to get an answer. Fair is fair."

  Linda squeezed Powell's arm and whispered a thank-you.

  The staff meeting was soporific and Powell droned through the agenda-new guidelines for visa requests, an upcoming visit by an undersecretary of state, still more travel restrictions for American tourists leaving Peking…

  Linda drifted in a rough sea. Stratton was right: she had lost the deputy minister. Not merely lost him, but let him slip away like an eel. He was cunning, but was he the murderer that Stratton claimed? It added up, all right.

  The mystery coffin at the foreigners' morgue, the "official" drowning at the Ming reservoir, the hasty Party cremation-and now San Francisco.

  The sonofabitch had done it, bought his way out of China with the blood of his own brother.

  Now Wang Bin was free. Stratton knew. And he would find out where to look. And when Stratton caught up with Wang Bin it would all explode. There was no avoiding it. My secret, Linda thought, my failure. "One case is all it takes, right?" Stratton had said at that long-ago dinner. Yes, one case was all it took for glory-or for demotion down to some backwater, shuffling papers for the rest of her life. All those years fighting those stupid patronizing male smiles just to get somewhere-and now this. There'd be nothing left to save.

  "… and finally," Powell was saying, "I got a call yesterday from one of our friends in the fourth estate. He wanted another update on our deaths-by-duck, so I presume we'll be reading about it in the next week or so. I'm sure the travel agents back in the States will be thrilled to tears."

  "Excuse me, Steve, who-" Linda began.

  "Jesus, what else can they write?" piped one of the preppy junior officers.

  "Didn't the Chicago Tribune and the Boston Globe do big take-outs year before last?"

  "Yeah. So did AP," Powell grumbled. "But I had to give out the list, it's a public record."

  "Steve!"

  Powell was startled. "Yes, Linda."

  "Excuse me, I was just wondering who it was who called." Her tongue was chalky; her heart pounded.

  "McCarthy. Jim McCarthy from the Globe."

  "He's the one who did the first story," interjected one of the junior officers, hoping that someone would remark on his keen memory.

  But it was Linda Greer's memory that stabbed at her, jolted her back to the first day Tom Stratton had walked into the embassy. Jim McCarthy had been the one who had sent him; Stratton had said so.

  She was sure it was no coincidence. McCarthy wouldn't be updating his story, not so soon. Oh, he wanted information, all right, but not for a newspaper story.

  For a friend.

  "Linda, is there a problem?" Powell asked. "We gave Jim a full list the first time around. Interviews, too. No one said there was a problem."

  Linda smiled. "Oh, no problem. I was just curious." She thought her voice sounded tremulous.

  Powell seemed not to notice. "It's really nothing," he said. "McCarthy just wanted to know how many Americans had died here over the last couple months. I gave him the names. No big deal."

  "Sure," Linda said agreeably. No big deal. Jesus, if Powell only knew. "Is that all for today?"

  In the hallway, she could scarcely keep from running toward her office. Now she knew everything. She knew that Stratton's plan was already in motion, and it spelled disaster for her.

  In a bleak way, it was funny, she reflected. It all came back to the goddamn morgue-her job, too. An awful little job-late at night. A simple detail, really.

  Or one would think. But Linda had botched that, too.

  She would have to leave immediately for the United States. Sick leave, Linda would call it, or an illness in the family. There was no time to fight the bureaucracy.

  Tom Stratton would have to be stopped.

  Wang Bin would have to be caught.

  She had to get to one of them before they got to each other. And she had to do it alone.

  Wang Bin, Stratton-her responsibilities, both of them. That's what you're here for, the station chief had told her. That's what you're good at. Do what you have to, he had said-not warmly-but get them where we want them. Keep them there.

  Gone was not where she wanted them.

  Getting them back was the only thing that would save her career.

  There was no time to worry about breaking a few laws.

  A warm breeze from Tampa Bay ruffled Stratton's hair and stood him up as he walked across a broad, green lawn that seemed to ramble all the way to the water. Wheeling gulls bickered high above and a dour pelican plun
ged into a school of mullet. The splash startled the old man who had been pushing a lawn mower around the tombstones.

  "Hello!" Stratton called.

  The old man cocked his head. He glanced up to the sky, wondering if one of the noisy birds had actually shouted to him.

  "Here! Hello!" Stratton yelled over the mower's engine.

  The old man spotted Stratton and muttered a grumpy acknowledgment. He turned off the mower and pulled a handkerchief from the belt of his trousers.

  "I'm looking for the grave of Sarah Steinway," Stratton said.

  The old man noticed that Stratton carried a modest spray of flowers.

  "Are you a relative?" he asked.

  Stratton said he was a nephew. "I came all the way from New York."

  "Jesus H. Christ," the old man said, shaking his head. "I'm sorry to hear that."

  He led Stratton along the water to a footpath that took them up a gentle man-made hill. On the other side was a stand of young pine trees that formed the boundary of the cemetery's newest lot.

  "If you'd have come tomorrow most of it would have been cleaned up," the old caretaker said apologetically.

  "What are you talking about?"

  "Come on."

  Stratton followed him to the gravesite. Many of the plots were recently turned; others remained untouched, the gravestones bare-prepurchased, Florida-style.

  They walked to the end of a long row before Stratton saw what the old man meant.

  The caretaker stopped and pointed up and down the column of graves. "Look what they did!"

  "They" had gone amok, toppling the headstones, shredding the flowers, trampling and thrashing the soil. On one grave sat a mound of rotting garbage, with bright blue flies buzzing obscenely. Another was peppered with broken whiskey bottles.

  Still another grave had been defaced with bright crayons. Stratton bent over the granite slab and read:

  There was an old geezer named Saul Who dropped dead in the Hillsborough Mall His wife called a cop Then went back to the shop So she wouldn't miss the sale, after all "Cute," Stratton muttered.

  "It's sick," the old caretaker said. "Teenagers, that's all."

  One double headstone read: "Eva and Bernard Melman." Beneath the names, smeared in burgundy, was a Nazi swastika. In dripping letters at the base of the tombstone, someone had painted the words more dead jews.

  Stratton stepped closer to study the vandalism. After a few moments he turned to the caretaker and asked, "Did you call the police?"

  "Of course. They sent a man. So what? What can they do?"

  The old man moved forward and pointed with his foot to an area around the Melmans' granite slab. The dirt was dark and moist and loose, as if a shovel had been plunged into the ground and withdrawn.

  "I figure they were interrupted by a car," the old man speculated.

  "What about Aunt Sarah?" Stratton asked.

  The caretaker pointed to the next headstone on the row:

  Sarah Rose Steinway 1919-1983 The only mark of vandalism was another swastika, this one drawn in orange crayon between the "Sarah" and the "Rose."

  "Look at that," Stratton said disgustedly.

  "That'll come right off, mister. I can get it with some turpentine, or some real strong acetate. Won't harm the marble, either. I'll clean it off this afternoon."

  Stratton set the flowers on the grave and stepped back to the footpath. The caretaker took a deep breath. "It's impossible to guard a place like this twenty-four hours a day. You understand, don't you? We're just a small cemetery-I mean, we've got a watchman, but he's old and he doesn't hear so well."

  Stratton was only half listening. He concentrated on the Steinway grave. The sod around the marker was puckered in several places, and badly gashed near the headstone.

  "When did all this happen?"

  "Either last night or the night before. See, I don't get around to this side every day. I mow it three times a week, though, and if there's a visitor like yourself, or the men who came a couple of days ago, then I'll bring 'em here to show the way."

  "What men?"

  "They brought flowers for your Aunt Sarah there… " the caretaker began.

  A lovely touch, Stratton thought.

  "How many men?"

  "Two. Said they were good friends of the deceased."

  The old man dabbed at his neck with the handkerchief. "I'm trying to remember their names. One of them was a thin fellow, about forty-five, fifty maybe. Had black hair. Dressed kind of bright for the cemetery. The other guy looked Japanese. He didn't say much. Last time I saw them they were just sitting on the bench, talking quietly. I'm glad they weren't here to see what happened to their flowers."

  Stratton found two motels within a half mile of the small cemetery. He went first to the Holiday Inn. The young junior-college student at the registration desk was helpful. He allowed Stratton to study the check-in cards going back for seven days; there were no Oriental names registered. Stratton asked the young desk clerk if he remembered an American and a Chinese staying there. The clerk shook his head no.

  "And I probably would have noticed them," the clerk said. "This is the slow time of the year. A lot of our business is lunch hour." He winked.

  Across the street at the Bay Vista Court Stratton was greeted by an attractive, middle-aged woman with frosted hair and a warm smile.

  "Carl Jurgens," he said, holding out his hand. "Apex Car Rentals."

  "I'm Mrs. Singer," the woman said. "How can I help you?"

  "Well, a few days ago we rented a car to two fellows. A red Oldsmobile, brand-new. When they picked it up at Tampa Airport, they wrote on the rental agreement that they'd be staying here at your place. I've got a copy of the rental papers in the car."

  Mrs. Singer nodded. Stratton could tell that she was curious.

  "Anyway," he said, "they stiffed us. Dumped the car at a Grand Union over on Dale Mabrey."

  "I still don't see how I can possibly help."

  "Simple, Mrs. Singer. Just tell me if they were here, and maybe let me have a look at the registration cards-to see if they left an address, or a phone number. The ones they gave our people were phony, of course. Maybe they paid you with a credit card. Now that would be great."

  Mrs. Singer stood up and smoothed her dress. "How much did they get you for?"

  "A hundred and ninety-four," Stratton replied. "It's not Fort Knox or anything, I know… "

  Mrs. Singer smiled. "It's a lot of money. I understand, believe me. We've been burned a few times ourselves." She pulled a Rolodex wheel across the counter and .thumbed through the cards. "What were their names?"

  "One was an Oriental man, a Chinese. His name is Wang. W-A-N-G. Like the computers."

  Mrs. Singer nodded vigorously. "Yes, I remember him. Here." She unfastened a three-by-four card from the Rolodex. "They stayed one night. Room forty-one, no phone calls. Paid with a Mastercard. Here's a copy of the charge slip."

  Stratton read the name: Harold Broom.

  Broom… Broom? Then he had it: the overbearing art broker he had met at the consular office in Peking. What was it he had said: This is new territory, and I don't know whose back needs scratching. Maybe we could help each other out. Hey, pal, wanna buy some artifacts?-it was almost that blatant. Broom was a soulless cretin, the perfect confederate for the deputy minister of art and culture.

  "Are these the men?" Mrs. Singer inquired.

  "Yes. This is very good."

  "But they weren't driving an Oldsmobile, Mr. Jurgens. They drove a white van-like a U-Haul, only white. Mr. Broom did all the driving."

  A van, of course. Prosaic but practical-a modern hearse for an eternal warrior.

  Mrs. Singer asked, "Do you rent vans like that?"

  "No, only cars. Perhaps they got the van after they ditched our Oldsmobile.

  Well, the important thing is that these are the fellows I'm looking for."

  She gave Stratton a coy look. "I might be able to help. Mr. Broom asked to borrow a phone book-we don't
keep them in the rooms anymore. They just get stolen. Anyway, I let him borrow the telephone book. Then he walked over to that pay phone and called Delta Airlines. He made reservations for today to New York.

  La Guardia, I think."

  Stratton wanted to hug her.

  He drove to a Holiday Inn on the other side of St. Petersburg and checked in. It was almost dusk. He turned on every light in his room, slipped out of his shoes and sat down at a wobbly desk. From another pocket in his suit jacket, Stratton took the piece of paper that Jim McCarthy had delivered to him in Hong Kong. The list was typed under the letterhead of the Boston Globe. It said:

  U.S. citizen deaths May-August 1983:

  Steinway, Sarah 5-10-83 - Canton - St. Petersburg, Fl.

  Mitchell, Kevin P. 6-22-83 - Xian - Baltimore, Md.

  Bertecelli, John 7-4-83 - Xian - Queens, N.Y.

  Friedman, Molly 8-14-83 - Peking - Fort Lauderdale, Fl.

  Wang, David 8-16-83 - Peking- Fort Lauderdale, Fl.

  With a blue felt-tip pen, Stratton circled the name of John Bertecelli, who had died on the Fourth of July in Xian. Bertecelli's body now lay somewhere in New York. Probably Broom and Wang Bin were already there, and maybe already at work.

  Stratton thought: I ought to leave right now. There is no time to do what I had planned. Catching them will not be easy, even with the right grave.

  The right grave.

  Stratton contemplated his macabre odyssey. Chasing the coffins was a shell game.

  Five caskets, three Chinese soldiers. Scratch off McCarthy's list the name of David Wang, whose "death" at the Heping Hotel had been staged after the theft of the warriors. That left four possible caskets.

  Stratton had arrived in San Francisco with a simple strategy: geography. He could think of no other logical way to go at it. He had booked a flight to Miami where he had planned to begin the search, moving north, following his death list.

  Molly Friedman had been first. A death notice published in the Fort Lauderdale News had announced that Molly was at rest at the Temple of David Mausoleum in Hallandale. A brief memorial service had been held four days after her sudden death in Peking. Rabbi Goren had kindly presided.