Flower Net

by Lisa See

  “We didn’t do anything,” the old man said. She could see he was shivering.

  Liu Hulan addressed a guard. “Why do you have this man here? Why haven’t you taken him inside and given him tea?”

  The police officer’s features twisted in embarrassment. “We thought…”

  “You thought incorrectly.” She refocused her attention on the pair before her. She leaned down until she was at eye level with the little girl. “What’s your name?”

  “Mei Mei,” the girl answered through chattering teeth.

  “And who’s this?”

  “Grandpa Wing.”

  Liu Hulan straightened again. “Grandpa Wing, ni hao ma, how are you?”

  “They said we would be detained. They said we would go to jail. They said…”

  Liu Hulan looked at the police officer, who lowered his gaze. “You must forgive the zealousness of my colleagues. They have been very rude to you, I’m sure.”

  “We didn’t do anything wrong,” the old man repeated.

  “Of course you didn’t. Please, don’t be afraid. Just tell me what happened.”

  When the old man finished his story, she said, “You’ve done a good job, Grandpa Wing. Now why don’t you take your granddaughter home?”

  The look of relief in the old man’s eyes told her just how terrified he had been. “Xie-xie, xie-xie.” He thanked her again and again. Then he took his granddaughter’s mittened hand in his and they slowly skated away.

  She turned back to the police officer. “You! You get over to where they’re holding the other skaters. I want them released immediately.”

  “But…”

  “They obviously had nothing to do with this. And one more thing. I’d like you to make a self-criticism to your superior. When you’re done, I’d like you to tell him that I do not wish to have you assigned to my cases.”

  “Inspector, I…”

  “Get moving.”

  She watched his retreating back, regretting the need to maintain a cruel facade to protect her position and ensure her status at the ministry. Mao had said that women hold up half the sky, but Chinese men still held the most powerful positions in the workplace.

  As Hulan began walking toward the shore, the Caucasian couple gradually came into focus. They were in their mid-fifties. The woman wore a mink coat and a matching hat. She looked frightfully pale, and even from a distance Liu Hulan could see she’d been crying. The man was, as newspapers customarily reported, extremely handsome. His face, even in the middle of a Beijing winter, was tan. His rugged good looks evoked the prairies and dry winds of his home state, where he had been first a rancher and then a senator.

  “Good morning, Mr. Ambassador, Mrs. Watson. I’m Inspector Liu Hulan,” she said in virtually accentless English. She shook hands with both of them.

  “Is it our son? Is it Billy?” the woman asked.

  “We don’t have an identification yet, but I believe it is.”

  “I want to see him,” Bill Watson said.

  “Of course,” Liu Hulan agreed. “But first I have a couple of questions.”

  “We’ve been down to your office,” the ambassador said. “We’ve told you all we know. Our son has been missing for ten days and you haven’t done a thing.”

  Liu Hulan ignored the ambassador and looked into Elizabeth Watson’s eyes. “Mrs. Watson, can I get you anything? Wouldn’t you rather wait inside?” As the woman resumed her weeping, her husband strode to the edge of the lake.

  Hulan held on to Elizabeth Watson’s hands for a few minutes and watched as she willed herself back to a seeming indifference. Speaking as the political wife she was, Elizabeth Watson said, “I’m sure you have your duties. It’s okay, dear. I’m okay.”

  Liu Hulan rose and went to Watson. They stood side by side, neither speaking, just gazing out across the icy expanse to where the body had been found.

  Without turning to face the ambassador, Liu Hulan broke the silence. “Before you identify the body, there are some things I need to ask.”

  “I don’t know what more I can tell you, but go ahead.”

  “Did your son drink?”

  The ambassador allowed himself a small laugh. “Inspector, Billy was in his early twenties. What do you think? Of course he drank.”

  “Begging your pardon, sir, but I think you know what I mean. Did your son have a drinking problem?”

  “No.”

  “Have you ever known him to use drugs?”

  “Absolutely not.”

  “Are you sure?”

  “Let me put it to you this way, Inspector. The president of my country would not have appointed me to this post if there were drug problems in my family.”

  Good, Liu Hulan thought. Get angry. Get angry and tell me the truth.

  “Was Billy despondent?”

  “What are you implying?”

  “I’m wondering if he was happy here. Often people in our expatriate community, especially the spouses and children of those who have been sent abroad, become lonely or depressed.”

  “My wife and son love China,” he said, his voice rising. “Now I’d like to see if that person out there is Billy.”

  “I’ll take you, but before we go, I’d like to explain to you what will happen. Our customs here may be different from what you’re used to in America.”

  “I’m not accustomed to having my son die either in China or America, Inspector.”

  “Bill,” his wife pleaded softly.

  “Sorry. Go on.”

  “We’ll be taking the body back to the Ministry of Public Security.”

  “Absolutely not. Mrs. Watson and I have been through enough. We want to take our son home for burial. We need to do that as quickly as possible.”

  “I understand your desire, but there are some things that are unexplained about your son’s death.”

  “There’s nothing ‘unexplained.’ He obviously had some type of accident.”

  “How can you possibly know that, sir? How”—and here she hesitated—“how can you be so sure that that is your son out there?”

  “I’m telling you that if that’s my son, I’m taking him home to Montana, where we’ll bury him.”

  “I have to apologize again, because that’s not going to happen anytime soon. You see, sir, I want to know why this young man—if he was your son—was out in the middle of winter without proper clothing. I want to know why he didn’t simply swim to shore. We need to do an autopsy and determine the true cause of death.”

  “Let’s just see if we’re even talking about my son,” Watson said then strode out across the ice.

  As Liu Hulan and Ambassador Watson reached the circle, the human cordon parted and the pair walked through. Fong stood and stepped away from the body. The ambassador stopped, looked down, and nodded. “That’s Billy.” He exhaled heavily. Liu Hulan waited. Finally Watson spoke again. “I want my son. I want him fully clothed and untouched by you or anyone in your department.”

  “Ambassador…”

  He held up his hand to silence her and continued. “I don’t want to hear any of your bureaucratic nonsense. This was an accident. You and your superiors are going to treat this that way.”

  “I can’t do that.”

  “You will do it!”

  “Ambassador, I know this is painful, but look at your son. Something happened here.”

  Bill Watson returned his gaze to the frozen form of his son’s body, seeing the open eyes, the ice-filled mouth and nostrils tinged with blood. The ambassador then looked up and contemplated the lake, the ancient buildings, the leafless willow trees. Liu Hulan wondered if he was memorizing this panorama as the last sight that his son had seen. Then Bill Watson addressed the group.

  “This was an accident,” he said in the even tones of a polished politician.

  “How do you know that, sir? How can you be so sure?”

  But he turned away and walked wordlessly toward his waiting, pale wife.

  Liu Hulan called out after
him. Her words seemed loud and harsh in the cold silence. “I’m not going to drop this, sir. I’m going to find out what happened to your son, and then you can take him home.”

  2

  JANUARY 20

  Los Angeles

  Assistant U.S. Attorney David Stark, dressed in a conservative, pinstriped suit, flipped open his identification—though all the lobby guards knew him on sight—then bypassed the metal detector. He took the elevator up to the twelfth floor. He offered up a hearty “Good morning, Lorraine” to the woman who sat behind the bulletproof glass reception area. She looked at him wordlessly and pressed the buzzer to let him in. One day, he thought, one day I’ll get a reaction.

  David’s office—recently painted in pale gray and decorated in the practical style favored by the government—faced west and was considered to have a great view. Usually that meant miles and miles of smog, but this morning the sky shone a bright Tiffany blue, scrubbed clean by a series of storms that had washed over L.A. during the last two weeks. Sitting behind his desk, he could see over buildings and roadways all the way to the ocean. To his right in the far distance, the San Gabriels glistened with a pristine capping of snow from last night’s storm.

  David had none of the framed diplomas and commendations that some attorneys hung on their walls, but details about his career and personal life could still be deciphered in the few photos he kept on his desk—a law school graduation photo with his mom and dad, David on the steps of the federal courthouse giving a press conference. Yet another was from his last year as a partner at Phillips, MacKenzie & Stout. The photo, taken during the firm’s annual gala, showed David in a tuxedo and his wife—his ex-wife—in a revealing burgundy cocktail dress.

  David got right to work. He was between cases and took the time to catch up on mail and phone calls. He’d just gotten a conviction against a group of men caught smuggling heroin in from China. The FBI had impounded 1,200 kilos of the drug, which now would never make it to the street. David had also gotten good press coverage, which certainly wouldn’t harm his career if and when he wanted to leave the government to go back to private practice. The buzz around the office was great, which, in turn, would mean more high-profile cases. All this was good, outstanding even. But the conviction was a disappointment too.

  Since coming to the U.S. Attorney’s Office, David had prosecuted drug, racketeering, and massive illegal immigration cases. He’d built a substantial reputation for the most federal convictions against Chinese organized crime, particularly against the Rising Phoenix, the most powerful gang in Southern California. But he’d never been able to tie the crimes to anyone high up in the organization.

  In the meantime, the very face of organized crime continued to change in the United States. The Justice Department continued to pursue the Mafia, but today crime syndicates were multicultural. Some considered blacks and Hispanics—the Dominicans in particular—to be the new “royalty of organized crime.” Others were fixated on the Russian Mafia and the Vietnamese gangs. As a result, the FBI had formed special squads to infiltrate, harass, and arrest each of these groups.

  None was more entrenched or threatening to America’s well-being than the triads. These Chinese gangs, what the Cantonese called tongs, had been in this country since the discovery of gold in California. But the traditions—blood oaths and secret rituals—and the organizations—hundreds of which had been established as the Chinese diaspora spread around the world—could literally be traced back for centuries. Like the Italians, the Chinese gangs had healthy international connections. They had glorious access to heroin coming through the Golden Triangle. From new immigrants, they drew a continual supply of foot soldiers to do their dirty work. Looking at the charts that lined his office walls, David could track what he knew of these activities in Los Angeles alone. He had reason to believe—but not enough evidence to make an arrest—that the Rising Phoenix was involved in casinos, bookmaking, loan-sharking, prostitution, extortion, credit-card and food-stamp fraud, illegal immigration, and, of course, heroin smuggling. All of this was supplemental to a wide array of legitimate businesses—restaurants, motels, copy shops.

  At around two, the quiet of David’s office was shattered when two FBI agents burst in. Jack Campbell and Noel Gardner had worked the Chinese gang beat with David for two years now. Campbell, the older of the two, was a lanky black man with a smattering of freckles across his nose and cheekbones. His partner, Gardner, was short, brawny, and at least twenty years younger. An accountant by training, Gardner was thoughtful and precise, letting the more personable Campbell do most of the talking.

  “Last night’s storm was the break we’ve been waiting for,” said Campbell. “The Peony has drifted into U.S. territory. That makes her ours, my friend.”

  The China Peony, a freighter, had been languishing for a week just outside U.S. coastal waters, over two hundred miles off the California shoreline. The FBI had been tracking the ship because air surveillance had shown hundreds of Chinese crowded on the deck. After a few inquiries in Chinatown, David had surmised that the Rising Phoenix was behind this shipment of illegal immigrants. Once again, David found himself wishing for that little bit of luck that so far had eluded him. Maybe—out of all the people on board—he would find just one person to make the vital connection to the Rising Phoenix.

  “The Coast Guard is sending a cutter out there,” Campbell went on. “But I know we’ll beat them if we go by chopper. So, what we want to know is”—Campbell looked over at his partner and smiled—“do you want to come with us?”

  David didn’t have to think about his answer.

  Soon David was sitting in the backseat of a helicopter piloted by an FBI agent who gave his name simply as “Jim.” Below, the ocean frothed with whitecaps. David heard the pilot’s voice through the earphones. “We’re going to be hitting some pretty bad air up here. The storm…” The rest faded into static. Within minutes, Jim’s words became a reality as the helicopter trembled and jerked through rough winds. A dark mass of clouds hung on the horizon. Another storm would be coming through tonight.

  An hour later, the turbulence had gotten so bad that David was beginning to wish that he’d stayed in his office.

  “Hey, Stark, look! There she is,” Campbell suddenly shouted through the earphones.

  Peering over Campbell’s shoulder, David saw the China Peony listing in the swells. As the chopper drew closer, he felt a surge of adrenaline. It was unusual for an assistant U.S. attorney to go out on busts, but he had found it useful to see exactly where things had happened and how people reacted when they realized they’d been caught. He’d accompanied Campbell and Gardner to garment factories in Chinatown, high-rise offices in Beverly Hills, and a few mansions in Monterey Park. The agents seemed to appreciate him as a shrewd observer, and there was always the hope that his presence when suspects felt most vulnerable would one day lead them to the top of the triads.

  As the rotors slowed to a stop, Campbell and Gardner drew their weapons and stepped onto the Peony’s deck. When no one approached or seemed to offer any resistance, Campbell signaled an all-clear to David and he joined the agents. They cautiously made their way forward, unsure if they might still find a fully armed and combative crew.

  Hundreds of Chinese clustered together on this upper deck. Walking along, David could see that the would-be immigrants—most of them men—had cooked over open fires. Small braziers sent up acrid fumes from smoldering coals. Some of the men sat on their haunches talking excitedly among themselves. Others lay stretched out on the deck’s filthy surface, staring listlessly into space. Most of these people seemed beyond caring about what was happening to them. Only a few smiled weakly up at David in relief and gratitude.

  “Jesus,” Noel Gardner said. “They look like they haven’t had food or water in quite a while.”

  “Find the captain,” David said gruffly to the younger agent, who nodded and set off. “And, Jack, maybe you can call back to shore. These people are going to need showers, f
ood, water, clothes, and beds. This is a big one, and we’re going to have to handle it as diplomatically as possible.” Then, as an afterthought, he called out, “Either of you guys bring Dramamine?”

  “I didn’t, but I’ll check with the pilot,” Campbell said.

  David watched for a moment as Campbell lurched away, zigzagging along the deck. David grabbed a railing and continued forward. The Peony convulsed with each swell. Metallic groans rose from below as the ship rode the waves. David realized the ship was adrift.

  From here on out, he hoped the case would be nuts and bolts. The immigrants would be remanded to the Immigration and Naturalization Service Detention Center at Terminal Island, where they would be interrogated. Rumors and gossip would spread quickly among the immigrants about what they would have to say to stay in America. Their best bets for asylum would be to claim involvement in the Tiananmen Square uprising or persecution stemming from China’s abortion and sterilization policies. Out of the hundreds of Chinese David could see on deck, only a handful would be lucky enough to qualify for asylum. The rest would be deported. He felt sorry for them, but he wouldn’t forget who he worked for.

  David felt something pull at his pants leg. He looked down and saw a middle-aged man. “America?” the man asked in heavily accented English. Dehydration had caused his skin to hang slack on the bones of his face. “America?” the man asked again.

  “Yes,” David said. “Yes, you’re here.” Then he asked, “You speak English?”

  “I speak a little. I am Zhao.”

  “How many are on this ship?”

  “Five hundred, maybe more.”

  David let out a low sigh, then asked, “How long have you been at sea?”

  “Almost three weeks,” the man answered.

  “Where’s the crew?”

  “Crew?”

  “The men who work on the ship. Where are they?”

  The Chinese man looked away. “They gone. They leave last night.”

  “I don’t understand,” David said. “How did they leave? Where’d they go?”