Flower Net

by Lisa See

  As David stood there listening to her, he remembered how much Hulan loved the complexity of Chinese. He also recalled she often used pedantry as a way of deflecting his probing questions.

  Hulan put a hand on his arm. Her face twisted with worry. “David, are you listening? Are you all right?”

  Feeling the warmth of her hand, hearing the concern in her voice, David smiled wanly. “I’m fine. Go on.”

  “The killer,” she said, “has used a double meaning here. The word for intestines is chang, which has the same sound as the word for flavor or taste. The killer has written the character for flavor with the intestines. This is a message, a warning, to us. I believe the murderer is giving us a ‘taste’ of what is to come.”

  Side by side, their shoulders touching, they stared down at the bloody calligraphy.

  Soon the local police arrived, as did Pathologist Fong. They did their jobs—securing the scene, examining the body, taking photographs, interviewing neighbors—amid much animated oohing and aahing over the intestinal message. While these men worked, David and Hulan searched the apartment.

  Hulan assumed that the killer had known that they were coming, that he had gotten so involved with the creation of his artwork that he hadn’t had time to remove evidence. She opened drawers and found bankbooks and a passport. She peeked in the refrigerator and found only a few Giant Panda Brand herbal remedies; she checked the closet and found a box of tourist T-shirts made by the Glorious Cotton Company. David tried to look at the scene as his FBI agent friends had told him to. The MO was certainly different from the other murders, but a stage had clearly been set. As Noel Gardner had predicted, the murderer was flaunting not only his own work but also his knowledge of David and Hulan’s movements.

  They met in the kitchen. “Take a look at these, David,” she said, handing him the passport and bankbooks she’d found. As he opened the passport, she said, “He was traveling to L.A. about once a month.”

  “Just like Henglai.”

  “That’s right,” she said. “And look at those bankbooks. I don’t have Henglai’s with me, but aren’t these deposits in the same amounts as his?”

  David leafed through the pages and thought she was right. “Why is all this money in L.A.?”

  She looked around. The others were in the living room with the body. “There’s so much uncertainty in the government,” she said in a low voice. “People like to keep their money safe.”

  “But how do we know this money is coming from China? This could all be U.S. money.”

  “If that’s the case, where’s that money coming from?”

  “That’s the question,” he said. He took her elbow. “Come and look at this.” He led her to the door of the living room. A couple of investigators dusted for fingerprints. Pathologist Fong was hunched over the body. “What makes this murder different from the others?”

  She looked at the guts on the floor and the arterial arc against the wall. “It’s bloody?” she ventured.

  “It’s more than bloody,” he said. “It’s flamboyant.”

  “We still don’t know what killed Billy and Henglai,” she cautioned. “For all we know, their murders were flamboyant, too.”

  David considered that possibility. “Yes, the blackened teeth, the dissolved innards. Neither of our pathologists could determine what killed those boys, though. Is there some poison your people haven’t thought of? I’m talking about something esoteric, something uniquely Chinese, something flamboyant.”

  “There’s Chinese herbal medicine,” she said doubtfully. “But it is medicine.”

  “Medicine can be toxic if used incorrectly.”

  “David, you could be right!” She grabbed his arm. “Come on. There’s someone we should see.”

  She left orders with the other investigators, said a few last words to Pathologist Fong, rounded up Peter, then took one last look at the scene to commit the details to memory. In the elevator, she told Peter they’d be going to the Beijing Chinese Herbal Medicine Institute. “My parents are great believers in traditional Chinese medicine,” she explained to David. “My father says that Dr. Du is the seventh-best Chinese herbal medicine practitioner in the whole country.”

  Like most older buildings in China, the six-story institute had no heat. The floors were swept but hadn’t been washed perhaps ever. The walls had been painted a long time ago and were marred by fingerprints, gashes, liquid stains, and who knew what else. The building itself was made from cast concrete, and David, being from Southern California, hoped that there wouldn’t be an earthquake. This was just the kind of structure that would sandwich in on itself at about six on the Richter scale.

  There were no directories or signs. David and Hulan walked down one corridor and saw no one. They turned down another corridor and all of the doors were shut. Finally Hulan poked her head into a couple of patients’ rooms to ask for Dr. Du. In these moments, David saw the differences between Chinese and American concepts of convalescence. At the institute, the rooms were outfitted with simple steel-frame beds. The sheets looked clean but old and soft from repeated use. The down quilts—with their faded colors and patched areas—looked like they’d been used for decades. In room after room, relatives gathered around the sickbeds, talking, laughing, and eating from steaming bowls filled with noodles or rice and vegetables. Guests and patients wore sweaters or padded jackets to guard against the brisk temperature of the hospital.

  At last David and Hulan found a nurse who told them that the doctor was in his office on the top floor. The elevator didn’t work, so they walked up the six flights. Up there were the consultation offices, and in each of these a doctor sat behind a desk. Some appeared to be taking the pulse of a patient, others just sat with their hands folded in front of them, waiting for customers. Hulan and David reached the office of Dr. Du, where diagrams of the human body outlining its acupuncture meridians covered the walls. The curtains on the windows were torn and faded.

  Dr. Du, a round little man, stood to greet them. His full cheeks were made more so by sideburns that came down almost to his jaw-line. Circles under his eyes hung on his face like half moons. When Hulan introduced herself, Dr. Du smiled warmly and asked after her mother. Then, for David’s sake, Dr. Du switched to English. “I have been to the United States many times,” he said, “to visit Chinese medicine colleges and to speak at your universities. I have also been to Disneyland and Mount Rushmore. Have you been to those places?”

  When David said he hadn’t been to Mount Rushmore, Dr. Du pulled out a few snapshots. While David looked at them, Hulan explained why they were there. When she was done, Dr. Du addressed David. “You are right. Many of our herbs and minerals are very dangerous if used in excess. You take something like cinnabar. You know it sedates the heart and calms the spirit. You think, I will take extra. The next thing, you are very sick, maybe dead, because cinnabar contains mercury. You know ginseng? You can buy this anywhere—even an American drugstore, no? You think, This will help my longevity. This will make me more of a man. You take it home, cook it in a little water, and drink a lot. Next thing, you have a bloody nose. The life is coming out of you, not going into you.”

  “If you wanted to kill someone very quickly,” Hulan asked, “what would you use?”

  The old doctor clapped his hands together as he realized they’d come to him on MPS business. “You want me to help you! I like this! We must have tea, and I will think.” He called out to the hallway and a young woman came in, poured tea into stubby waterglasses, and backed out of the room. Dr. Du asked about the victims’ general physical makeup.

  “They were both men in their early twenties.”

  Dr. Du shook his head sadly. “So young for death, no?” Then he asked, “Did your labs check for realgar? Do you know this word? We call it Male Yellow. The active ingredient is arsenic.”

  “I’m sure they checked for that,” Hulan said.

  “Can you tell me the condition of the bodies?” Dr. Du asked.

  As
Hulan gave a clinical synopsis, the doctor stood and paced. Suddenly he stopped. “I know! I have it! We have a beetle in China that’s very poisonous. Our beetle is black with yellow stripes. You have it in the West, too. We call it ban mao. You call it by three different names—myalbris, cantharides, or, the most common name, Spanish fly.”

  “The aphrodisiac?” David asked.

  “Could be that, could be for skin fungus, muscle pain, or maybe a tiny bit fried with rice for cancer treatment. But you take only thirty milligrams”—Dr. Du pinched the end of his pinkie to show just how small a dose that would be—“and you are dead.”

  “Symptoms?”

  “Just what you have told me. Stomach hemorrhage, kidneys and liver melt away. Very painful. You hope you die! And who knows ban mao? The body comes in and it is in ugly chaos. Only a very fine doctor, maybe only ten doctors in all the world, would understand what they were looking at.”

  “And you’d know from the damage to the organs?”

  “No, no, no.” Dr. Du wagged his finger back and forth as a small smile appeared at the corners of his mouth. “I would know because the teeth and nails would turn black.”

  “Just like Billy’s and Henglai’s,” David said.

  Dr. Du’s full face broke into a broad smile and he once again clapped his hands in delight.

  Hulan and David’s next stop was the Ministry of Public Security and a visit to Section Chief Zai. Despite his title, Zai’s office was as simple and unprepossessing as Hulan’s. He listened gravely as Hulan described finding Cao’s body, the subsequent discovery of his monetary records and passport, and the recent visit to Dr. Du. Occasionally, Zai shifted his attention to David, observing his reactions. Hulan had been warned not to let the big nose see anything unpleasant. A body with its guts spread across the room clearly violated this mandate.

  “We have followed the information given to us,” Hulan explained. She related their interviews with Ambassador Watson and Guang Mingyun. When she mentioned that Guang Mingyun and her father may have been in the same prison camp in Sichuan Province, Zai didn’t seem particularly impressed. “Yes, your father and Guang Mingyun were at Pitao together. I was sent there, too, you know. Of course by then they had already left.”

  To David’s eyes, Hulan appeared embarrassed by this last detail. “We now know that the boys’ lives were definitely intertwined,” she hurried on. “Cao Hua was my last hope for a free word. If we want more information, we will have to use alternate methods.”

  “But the princes are not used to those,” Zai observed.

  “I know, that’s why we came to you. Does the ministry want us to go back to the Gaogan Zidi? Do you want us to go back to the American ambassador?”

  “Let’s think about the money,” Zai suggested. He turned to David. “Financial crimes are a new phenomenon in China, so we are not always prompt in spotting them. We can contact the Bank of China, which is the main commercial bank of our country. I am sure that officials there will cooperate and give us details on these two accounts.”

  For the second time today, David asked, “Don’t you need a warrant?”

  “The bank is state owned,” Zai said matter-of-factly. “We are entitled to that information.”

  “Besides, we don’t have search warrants,” Hulan added.

  “But I am less concerned with what we will find in the domestic accounts,” Zai continued, “than with where the money was going when it left our country. Could they have been playing with exchange rates?”

  “They would need connections at the bank to do that,” Hulan said skeptically.

  “You’re right. I don’t think that would happen. Too many people watching, too many official seals to obtain. They couldn’t move quickly enough.”

  “And that kind of corruption brings a death sentence,” Hulan reminded him.

  “I do not think the hooligan is afraid of the consequences. This is what worries me.”

  “Why is that?”

  “Why?” His tone showed surprise. “Too much profit is being made. By whom we don’t know. But we have already had three murders, Inspector. The question is not who do you interview next, but should you continue at all? These murders are terrible, but you have done your best. As for Attorney Stark—he is a lawyer. He is not an investigator. He came to China to help us, and he has. But perhaps we must accept the fact that the killer is too smart for us. He is probably triad—too clever, too slippery to be caught.”

  “I didn’t come all this way to look the other way,” David interrupted.

  “The killer has done you the courtesy of giving you and Inspector Liu a warning. I don’t think you will get a warning the next time.”

  “You’re right. I’m just an attorney, not a professional investigator. I’m not immune to the horror of death. But I can tell you that you’re wrong to walk away from this.”

  Zai considered, then asked, “What would you do, Mr. Stark?”

  “From their passports we know Cao and Guang were going to L.A. regularly. We also know they kept large sums of money there. I want to know why, and I want to know how Billy was involved. I think that if we follow the money, the lives—and deaths—of those three will become clear.”

  “Follow the money,” Zai mused, then considered. “Yes, yes, you are correct. This is exactly what you must do.”

  “But that means going to California,” Hulan said.

  “This is true, but you will be out of the way. I think you will both be safe there. Come,” he said, standing up. “We must talk to your father.”

  David was surprised at who that turned out to be. But even now that the connection had been made, there still was no proper introduction or anything in the conversation—either in words or emotion—that would convey that Vice Minister Liu was Hulan’s father. Instead, as Hulan and Zai ran through the details of the case, the wiry man simply listened, puffed on his cigarette, and jotted down a few notes. When they finished, silence filled the room. Smoke from the vice minister’s Marlboro curled up around his face. He tapped his note pad with his pencil. Finally he said tersely, “You may go.”

  “We ask the vice minister to please take this information under consideration,” Zai said, and for the first time David heard the supplication in the man’s manner.

  “I am saying she may go. To America,” Liu amended. “I am relying on you, Section Chief Zai, to make the arrangements quickly. The sooner this case is over, the better for our two countries.”

  That evening when Liu Hulan got back to the hutong, she immediately went to the home of Neighborhood Committee Director Zhang Junying. Hulan informed her old friend and observer that she would be gone for a few days, but Zhang Junying had already been made aware of this and offered to go back to the Liu compound to take away any perishables. “To waste food,” the old woman cackled later as Hulan handed her a bag of fruit and vegetables, “is to mock the blood and sweat of peasants.” As Hulan escorted Zhang Junying to the outer gate of the Liu compound, the old woman took her arm and squeezed it tightly. Madame Zhang’s eyes filled with tears. “We have always been close to your family. Things happened in the past—this I won’t deny—but I always had respect for the Liu clan.”

  “Don’t worry,” Hulan said. “I will come back.”

  “In time for Spring Festival?” Madame Zhang asked querulously.

  “I promise.”

  Hulan watched as the old woman, bundled in a padded pea-green Mao suit, hobbled down the alleyway and out of sight. Hulan went back inside. The early rituals of Spring Festival—the celebration of the lunar new year—were just days away. Hulan spent a few minutes putting together an altar to commemorate her ancestors. She arranged a few oranges on a plate, placed sticks of incense in a bronze pot filled with sand, then set out a few framed photographs and painted miniatures of long-dead relatives. This done, she made a pot of tea and began packing. For the first time in many years, she allowed herself to feel deep regret, sorrow even. If only there were a way to turn back time, t
o go back and repair the damage, to set events on a different trajectory.

  These thoughts were interrupted by a knock at the door. She had been expecting it and opened the door without a second thought. Without waiting for an invitation, he entered in his usual way. He eased himself onto one of the stools that ringed the kitchen table. His hand felt the side of the teapot. It was hot. By the smell, he knew she had selected his favorite tea. She pulled out two ceramic cups. As he poured, she sat down opposite him. Here, under the bright overhead light, she saw the coldness in his eyes. His voice—so familiar to her—was harsh and unforgiving.

  “Tomorrow you leave,” Section Chief Zai said. “Of course, you have been away in America before. You came back when you were asked. This time, we won’t ask you to come home. We expect you to return. Do you understand?”

  “Yes.”

  “It is my responsibility to caution you. Our country has come a long way since you first left us. Today we have eyes and ears in many places, not just China. We will know if you do or say anything to embarrass our country. We will know if you try to contact dissidents, reporters, or other groups that do not give China the proper respect. We will know if you try to defect. We most certainly will know if you try to give away any state secrets.”

  “I would do nothing to harm China,” she said.

  “Liu Hulan, you have many people that you love. Your mother, your father, this David Stark.” He held up a hand. “Do not try to deny it. This is your weakness. You know it. I know it.”