by Matt Lincoln
The ambulance took off with a police car ahead of it. Two cuffed men were being loaded into a police cruiser. I looked around and gestured to Holm and Chewy to follow. The third guy, the one who’d fought Muscles in the first place, was nowhere to be seen. I cornered the police shift commander.
“There’s one more protester,” I told him. “Where is he?”
He frowned. “We only have two in custody. There was the one out here and one just inside.”
“Shit.” I looked around and only saw police and Zhu’s staff gathering in the lobby. “Robbie, do you see him?”
He shook his head. We split up and scanned the crowd. In the tussle, I barely got a look at the guy when he picked a fight with Muscles. There weren’t many protesters left, but other people had gathered to see what the ruckus was about. There were only ten or so bystanders, and Holm and I pushed through to the other side without seeing the suspect. There was no sign of the bastard. We circled back to the entry to Zhu’s building, where Louise Chen met us with her hands on her hips.
“This riff-raff never gives up,” she spat. “Mr. Zhu is too busy to deal with these trivial matters.”
“These ‘trivial matters’ got your guy Muscles into trouble,” I reminded her. “Do you have surveillance cameras on this area?”
She scoffed. “Of course we do. In fact, I have someone on it already. They’ll deliver copies of the footage to the city police and your office.” She sniffed and tilted her chin up. “Is there anything else we can do for you?”
“Right now? No, but we’ll be in touch.” I turned to Holm and cocked my head. “We’re heading out, right partner?”
He nodded. “That we are.”
On the way back to the office, I mulled over the situation.
“It sounds like Muscles wasn’t himself,” I told Holm. “Think there’s any connection to our disappearing protester?”
“Maybe,” he muttered. “The bigger question is whether that guy really was a protester.” He met my eye. “It seemed a little too staged to me. There’s something else going on here, and I don’t like it.”
“You and me both, Robbie. You and me both.”
CHAPTER 7
The morning after her grandfather died, Alice didn’t know whether to be relieved or furious as she parked the rental car in her garage. Her parents wanted a simple, no-nonsense funeral for Yéyé. They considered themselves too progressive to follow ancient traditions. If they were to observe those customs, they’d be transporting a body to Hong Kong for the wake and a hundred-day mourning period. Going to China would’ve burned through Alice’s vacation time, and her parents hated being away from New York for long stretches.
Instead of observing strict tradition, Ken and Mei scheduled a wake, followed by cremation, both to be held in Miami. On the one hand, Alice would be absolved of last-minute international travel. On the other hand, Yéyé’s friends and associates wouldn’t be able to honor his passing. It wasn’t fair to block Yéyé’s closest people from the chance to tell him goodbye.
As she entered her house through the mudroom she’d designed, she stopped and pressed her forehead against the door jamb at the threshold to the kitchen hall.
The real downside to the funeral happening in Florida was that, without so much as a “please” or “thank you,” her mom planned the wake to happen at Alice’s home. Mei had scoffed at what she considered to be wasted space when she visited the house at the beginning of the week. Now that there was an event, Mei had taken over Alice’s formerly quiet domain.
“You really shouldn’t have placed a column there, my love,” Mei chastised as soon as Alice entered through the kitchen. “It interferes with the flow of the room.”
“That’s a support, Ma. If that’s gone, the house falls in.” Alice went to the fridge and dug through for a snack. “Besides, it’s art. A friend did the metal brushing.”
Liu Mei scoffed. “Scratched metal does not look like art.”
“My house,” Alice grumbled. “It is my house.”
“Of course, it is your house, but the energy, it isn’t right.”
Alice slammed her food-storage container on the counter and yanked her almond milk from the fridge. “It’s not feng shui. Move my things around if you think it’ll help with Yéyé’s wake, but I did not design my house to make you happy.”
“You would be happier if your home had better energy,” Mei insisted. “I want you to be happy. If you are happy, you will attract a man. You might get married.” She beamed at the idea. “And then, you can have babies.”
Alice closed her eyes and took a breath. “I am not a baby machine. I am a successful green architect, and I am happy with my life as it is.”
Mei crossed her arms. “You do not seem happy right this minute.”
They were interrupted by Alice’s phone. The caller ID showed a number she didn’t recognize at first. After a few seconds, however, it registered. She turned her back on her mother and answered the phone.
“Hello, Agent Marston,” she said with a calmness she did not feel.
“Hello, Miss Liu.” The agent’s voice sounded like honey melted over grits… a little sweet with a lot of substance. “How are you holding up?”
She looked toward her mother then out to the living area where her father was reading a Cantonese newspaper.
“We’re holding. How may I help you?”
“If you’re available later, I’d like to get a statement from you about what happened yesterday,” he said. Seagulls cried in the background on his end, and Alice thought she heard boat or ship bells. “We need to get what you witnessed into a file while your memories are fresh.”
“I would be happy to give my statement,” she told him as Mei narrowed her eyes. “What time should I go into your office?”
“I need to speak with your parents, as well.” A car horn chirped, and then a door opened on his end. “If we could meet where they’re staying, that would cover three bases.”
Alice groaned. The home run was her house, then.
“Can you hold on a minute?” The question was a formality, as he was going to have to hold on until she was out of her mother’s earshot. To her mother, she said, “I have to take this outside, Ma. Sensitive case information and all that.”
Marston chuckled from his end. “For that, I will wait.” He shut his car door and started his car while Alice left the living room. A Bruce Springsteen number came on mid-song over the car speakers until the call connected to his ride’s Bluetooth.
Liu Mei frowned but didn’t follow Alice out of the patio door into the lanai. Alice had placed the outdoor retreat on the shady side of the house to allow herself as much time outside during the year as possible. Nothing helped when Miami felt like it was drowning under a hot, wet towel, but on regular days, the lanai was her haven.
She plopped into her wicker loveseat and leaned back on a throw pillow.
“Sorry about that,” she said with a sigh. “My parents are crashing at my house until they get more of their security people in from New York. They left Mo, Larry, and Curly at home because Yéyé brought his guys, and the teams were taking shifts.”
“Does that mean the Marx brothers are already there?”
Alice tried to cover a laugh, but it came out as a snort. She was supposed to be grieving, but she couldn’t resist dumb jokes.
“More like Abbott and Costello,” she informed him. “They never know who’s on first.” She smiled at the agent’s laugh, but then she cleared her throat. “I am so going to hell. Yéyé’s guys died down there.”
“It’s okay to have a sense of humor,” Marston assured her. “You can come in to give your statement, and then my partner and I will go out to see your parents. Give me a cover story, and I’ll convince them you had no choice.”
“Deal.” Her shoulders relaxed. She didn’t know how or why, but this guy got it. “I’ll tell them there was an emergency on one of my clients’ build sites and that I’ll have to meet you later.”
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“Wait, are you a builder?” His voice tensed a little.
“I’m an architect, but not on big projects like that hotel.” She figured she better get it out of the way before he asked. “My projects are sustainable homes and office buildings.”
“Do you work with Shawn Zhu?”
“No, not interested,” she admitted. “He has some decent ideas, but they’re on a different scale than what I do. Mostly.”
“I’d love to hear about that, Miss Liu.” Marston lost the tension in his voice. “I’ll text you the address. You can come over in about two hours.”
“That sounds like a plan, Agent Marston,” she said with a grin. The idea of seeing him wasn’t so bad, even though it was a formal situation. “Hey, just call me Alice. It’ll be easier since my parents are here, and one of the Stooges is a cousin.”
“Makes sense to me,” he agreed. “Feel free to call me Ethan. See you in two hours.”
“It’s a deal and a date,” she told him. “See you then.”
Alice realized what she’d said as soon as she ended the call. She cringed and pressed her phone to her forehead. Great. A Freudian slip like that was all she needed when she was supposed to be showing grief for her grandfather. With her luck, she’d end up looking like a suspect.
She wasn’t sure whether she believed Yéyé’s death was intentional or an accident. While Mr. Zhu had been generous of his time and hospitality, he hadn’t exactly shared his blueprints with her family. Trade secrets were, well, secret. The Adapta-Build technology he’d bragged about seemed good in theory, but from what she saw, its function was to preserve the building over the decades, if not centuries. She had yet to find much to support its role in the environment other than for the artificial reef attraction.
Mei knocked on the patio door, and Alice waved her on out.
“Was that the detective?” her mother asked.
“Special Agent, Ma. He’s the one who pulled Yéyé out of the water.”
“Federal agent?” Mei frowned when Alice nodded. “Don’t you talk to him until this Mr. Yao is here. Those feds want to destroy our family.”
“Agent Marston isn’t with the FBI.” Alice stood and went over to a small potted palm she kept inside the screened-in area. She checked the fronds for dryness as she spoke. “He’s with MBLIS. They investigate crimes that happen along the coastal areas if they involve the US and another country.”
“I don’t trust this.” Mei walked over to Alice and stood at her elbow. “You wait for Mr. Yao.”
“I avoid the business for a reason,” Alice reminded her. “I can’t tell them what I don’t know. If you don’t tell me anything, you don’t have a problem.”
“Promise me,” her mother hissed.
Alice reeled back. “I’m not promising you anything. Wait for this lawyer if you want. I don’t care. It’s not my problem, and you are not going to make it my problem.”
“You ungrateful little…” Mei caught herself and took a deep breath. “After all your father and I did for you—”
“You mean what Yéyé made you do when you didn’t have a boy?”
Mei raised her hand to slap Alice’s face, but Alice caught her by the wrist. Alice wasn’t fast enough to stop the other hand.
“How dare you?” Mei cried. “How dare you disrespect your parents?”
“This conversation is done. When the wake is over, I want you out of my house.”
Alice didn’t wait for her mother to respond. She turned and stalked into the house. Her father barely noticed beyond offering a limp wave from behind his newspaper. Alice started toward the garage but thought better of it.
She wasn’t about to leave her cat in the house with her angry mother. The aging calico was the first long-term pet she’d had. With all the guests on the way, Alice had already arranged for River to stay with a friend, so she grabbed the cat’s things and put the unhappy feline into her little travel cab.
“I thought you were going to drive us to the airport,” Ken called after Alice as she took the cat’s crate toward the garage.
“Call a rideshare,” Alice snapped.
Her father started his usual bluster, but Alice got out to her car before he could really wind up. On the way to her friend’s house, she couldn’t stop thinking about her parents’ attitudes since Yéyé’s passing. From their apparent indifference at the scene to her mother’s bothered air during funerary arrangements, Alice didn’t sense one bit of grief. It was almost like they’d expected his death. Despite his advanced years, he was as vibrant as ever when Alice left him in the suite with her parents and Zhu David.
If someone caused the implosion on purpose, that meant Yéyé and the other three men were murdered. Yéyé hadn’t been a good man, but he was Alice’s grandfather, and he had always been kind to her. If he was murdered, she intended to do all she could to make whoever did it pay.
CHAPTER 8
Our team sat arrayed around a double-wide conference table. The shades were down over our view of palm trees and water, and our new smartboard displayed a schematic of the Seascape Tunnel and Suites as they were before the collapse.
Diane was in her formal role of MBLIS regional director, unlike the day before when she’d been called in from a casual activity and arrived in off-duty shorts and a tank. Today, she wore a navy-blue pantsuit and had her hair pulled back.
“Preliminary results suggest traces of explosives at three locations,” one of our two lab techs, Rosa “Bonnie” Bosci, informed us. She touched the section of the tunnel where it rounded past the alcove that led to the suites and zoomed in. “Personally, I wouldn’t want to go through a public space to get to my rooms,” she ad-libbed, “but that’s me. I guess they had to make compromises.”
“I felt the same,” Special Agent Sylvia Muñoz pointed out. “For all the effort they put into this thing, why do that?”
I paged through the brochure and supplemental information we got at the tour a few weeks earlier, along with what Zhu’s assistant had thrust at us on our way out that morning. There had been something about that, but it was buried under glossy photos and splashy fonts.
“They wanted to tease the other guests,” Holm suggested in a cheerful tone. “Think about it. You go through the tunnel as a hotel guest or during the public hours, and it’s gorgeous. Even better, you get a chance to see a celebrity going to their suite, where they have these cool underwater rooms you can stay in for your honeymoon or next vacation.”
I pushed the folder away. “That sums it up,” I agreed. “The limited public hours also encourage future visits because hotel guests can walk the tunnel twenty-four seven. Rather, would have.”
Bonnie shrugged. “It still seems weird to me. Anyway, this join showed explosive residue.” She zoomed way in to show a corner seam where the alcove branched off. “It’s amazing that the suite door held as long as it did. Whoever designed it did a heck of a job. The system worked the way it was supposed to, even with the other explosions.”
“There were other explosive points?” Diane asked.
Bonnie nodded, but it was her lab partner who answered.
“They all ignited simultaneously,” Joe “Clyde” Clime said as he went up to the smartboard. “In fact, there were three. Someone accessed the lower level outside the elevator shaft and planted explosives here and here.” He pointed at the outside of the shaft itself and then at a support pillar close on the same side of the building. “We don’t think they wanted to bring the building down, just destabilize it.”
Bonnie zoomed out a little, scrolled toward the hotel’s foundation, and then zoomed in on the intersection with the tunnel.
“The divers almost missed this one,” she told us with a frown. “A few people assumed the building’s structure was compromised by the tunnel’s implosion. It was designed to tolerate a breach, so we made sure they checked all the way to the elevators and on that lower level.”
“If they had wanted to bring it down, they failed,” I su
ggested. “Either way, the hotel shifted and can’t be safely occupied.”
“Actually, it might be salvageable,” Clyde said with a grin. “There have been advancements to reinforcing older buildings, especially in earthquake-prone areas. I heard they’re flying someone in to take a look to see if they can do something.”
“What about the foundation?” Muñoz asked with a frown. “We don’t have the best bedrock. This could’ve damaged whatever is underneath.”
“That’s why they’re bringing in more specialists,” Diane answered. She stood and gestured for the lights. “There are a lot of questions here. Who or what was the target? John Liu was an international crime boss. Shawn Zhu has a quieter reputation, but he has enemies as well. Either man, the hotel, or a combination of the three could have been the target.”
“Nothing like complicating a rescue gone bad,” Lamarr Birn leaned back in his chair and rubbed at his bald head. “What did you get us into, Marston?”
I held my hands out. “All I did was try to help. Besides, we would’ve landed this anyhow. I know you and Sylvia have your own caseload right now, but there are so many players here that we need your help. You two are going to question crews from the construction site and try to track down the source of that TNT.”
Muñoz nodded, and Birn sighed. I had them both, but they weren’t going to thank me for it as their casework added up. Holm and I had a stack of open cases, also, but this was the big one.
“I have a specialist coming in for a look at that foundation.” Diane paced an oval at the front of the conference room. “Something feels off, but I’m no expert. All I know is that the building shouldn’t have shifted, not with all that reinforcement they bragged about.”
I tapped at the table. Alice had talked about the way the hotel shook when the explosion occurred. Small items had rolled across the floor afterward that wouldn’t have before.
“Diane, when we were on the way to the hospital, didn’t Alice mention she was an architect?” I stopped tapping my fingers and frowned. “She didn’t say much about the building going out of level after she told us about it.”
