Flower Net

by Lisa See

  While they scanned this unenlightening file, Esther Feltzer continued to look for the active file of one William Watson Jr. She ran a tight ship and was unused to not having things at her fingertips. “Someone has misplaced the file,” she said sternly. “Either that or your information is wrong.”

  It was hard to imagine that Mrs. Feltzer would allow a clerical error in her office, so David considered her alternative. “Could you try the files for departed students?”

  “I thought you said he was enrolled here.” Mrs. Feltzer’s grumpy tone was returning.

  “I’m just responding to your fine suggestion,” David said. “I can’t tell you how much we appreciate everything you’re doing for the victim and his family.”

  But David’s charms were wearing thin. With a “Humph,” Mrs. Feltzer walked away. A few minutes later she came back, dropped the file on the counter, and said in disgust, “Just as I suspected, he is no longer a student.”

  Billy Watson’s academic career was as short and lackluster as his friend’s. They had taken almost the same schedule of classes and gotten almost the same grades. They’d been assigned to the same dorm but had not been roommates. At the end of the first semester, though Guang Henglai had moved out, Billy Watson had kept his residency in the dorm. Unlike Henglai’s file, the rest of Billy’s was filled with formal grievances outlining the young American’s troubled career at the school.

  During his first week, Billy Watson had been caught throwing full beer cans at people attending a frat party. The dean of students wrote sympathetically that this episode showed bad judgment but that Billy had promised that nothing like it would happen again. Two letters from female teachers reported that Billy interrupted their lectures, made inappropriate comments in class, and had not turned in a single assignment. By the end of the first semester, Billy had racked up close to $500 in unpaid parking tickets. These were duly paid by his father before the second semester started. Apparently Billy didn’t learn his lesson, for in the second semester the total for tickets reached $625.

  Private schools like USC accepted vast sums of money in the form of tuition and endowments from wealthy, influential families like the Watsons. Allowances might be made. Nevertheless, Billy Watson had taken it upon himself to voluntarily leave the school. In a letter dated August 14, he wrote that he would not, after all, be returning in September. He asked that his tuition be refunded promptly and that the check be made out to him. That was two years ago.

  “So what was he doing?” David asked as they walked back to the car. “Where was he living?”

  “I’m wondering why his parents didn’t know what was happening. Ambassador Watson said he sent a tuition check each year. But how can that be? How could he not know that his son wasn’t in school?”

  “I don’t know, Hulan. There was a case a year or so ago that was in all the papers here. For four years, parents from Fort Lauderdale sent tuition and living expenses to their son at the University of Michigan. He wrote them letters each month, talking about the courses he was taking, reporting on his grades, detailing his plans for graduate school. Then came time for graduation. The parents flew up to Michigan for the ceremony. Their son’s name wasn’t in the program. Afterward, they looked through the crowd but didn’t find him. They went to the administration office and discovered that their son hadn’t been a student for three years. He wasn’t living where he said he was either. In fact, he was nowhere to be found. I don’t remember what happened after that—whether it was foul play or the kid had just come up with a scheme to dupe his parents.”

  “You think that’s what happened with Billy Watson?” Hulan asked doubtfully.

  “I’m beginning to think anything’s possible.”

  David drove while Hulan learned how to use the car phone. She got information for Butte, Montana, asked for the number of the sheriff’s office, dialed again, and hit the button for the speakerphone. Of course Sheriff Waters knew the Watson family. Why, he’d known Big Bill since high school and had worked on all of his campaigns. When Hulan asked about Billy, there was a reluctant pause on the other end of the line. “Naturally we all knew Billy, too,” the sheriff said cautiously.

  “You know he’s dead?”

  “Yes, and it’s a tragedy. Must be hard on Bill and Elizabeth.”

  “Listen, Sheriff,” David said, as he guided the car onto the Hollywood Freeway, “we’re trying to find out what we can about Billy. We think if we can understand him, then maybe we can learn about his killer—”

  “Yeah, yeah, yeah, even an out-of-the-way law enforcement officer like myself has been back to the FBI behavioral science lab at Quantico.”

  “So can you help us?”

  For a moment David thought they’d lost the connection, then Sheriff Waters’s voice came back wearily on the phone. “You have to understand, the Watsons are good people. They didn’t deserve to have a kid like Billy. He was born to trouble and he died that way, too, I guess.”

  “Tell us about him.”

  “How can a guy like me pick on an innocent little kid? That’s what I used to think when the Watsons would bring Billy to the ice cream social and he’d do some crazy-ass thing like tip over the ice cream table or push little Amy Scott into the fountain. People around here used to say Billy was just spoiled; I used to say he’d grow out of it. But, man, that kid hit high school and it was nonstop pandemonium. Nothing life-threatening, nothing I could ever haul his ass in here on, just stupid pranks, just always pushing the boundaries to see how far he could go.”

  “What kind of pranks?”

  “Aw, hell, getting caught speeding with a six-pack on the front seat on prom night. Shooting an elk the day before hunting season started. One time—and you got to hand it to the kid for ingenuity—he filled the back of his pickup with old tires, drove to the center of town in the middle of the night, and somehow got those things on the flagpole. It took us days to figure out how to get those cussed tires off of there. See, he was just driving his mom and dad, and me, too, if you don’t mind my saying so, nuts with this crap.”

  “When was the last time you saw him?” Hulan asked on a hunch.

  “Fall, I suppose. He liked to come up here with that slant-eyed friend of his. They’d hang out at the ranch doing whatever the goddamn hell kids nowadays like to do. Seems to me it was one party after another.”

  “Who were they partying with up there?” David asked.

  “Aw, I don’t know. Pretty girls and cowboys. Hell, they couldn’t get enough of those cowboys. You’d have thought Billy was paying them to come over.”

  Silverlake is one of L.A.’s oldest neighborhoods. The lake itself is a reservoir nestled in low hills between Echo Park and Burbank, close to downtown. Narrow streets snake up hillsides on which classic Spanish-style and newer overbuilt, high-tech houses cling. Most of the residents are older, original buyers who raised their families here. Many of them are Chinese, since Silverlake was one of the first neighborhoods in Southern California outside of Chinatown to bend its residency requirements after World War II. This enclave appealed to the Chinese sensibilities of feng shui—wind and water; the wind rustled through the bamboo, bodhi, and persimmon trees they had planted to remind them of home, and the water of the lake glistened outside their picture windows.

  After David parked, Hulan went through her morning’s purchases and pulled out a tin of Danish sugar cookies, saying, “It wouldn’t be polite if we didn’t bring a gift.” They walked down a short flight of stairs and banged the heavy wrought-iron knocker on the dark-stained paneled door. They waited, hearing nothing. David used the knocker again. They waited some more.

  Finally the door opened. A tiny, ancient man stood before them. He was Sammy Guang, Guang Mingyun’s eldest brother. David and Hulan introduced themselves and gave him the box of cookies. He shuffled very slowly to the living room and motioned for them to sit on the loveseat. He asked if they wanted tea, and when they said yes, he snarled an order in Chinese to someone in the k
itchen. His movements were painful to watch as he creaked to a sitting position on a straight-backed wooden chair.

  As Sammy Guang did this, David and Hulan had time to take in their surroundings. The modest house had not been kept up. The living room had probably been decorated for the first and only time when the Guangs moved in. The low loveseat was covered in a practical but ugly fabric that had just barely held up for fifty years. The fireplace was composed of tiles in the muted colors so prevalent in the 1920s, but this was the only interior concession to the house’s original architecture. A few Chinese “antiques”—not good, just old—spotted the room. On the floor before the picture window sat several baskets of azaleas in full bloom and a potted kumquat tree draped with a red ribbon—the beginnings of the Guang family’s Chinese New Year celebration. On the mantel, in the place of honor, were graduation photographs of what Hulan presumed were Sammy Guang’s nine—if she was counting correctly—sons.

  The old man squinted at them. “You want know about Number Four?” His accent was one of the densest David had ever heard.

  “Is Guang Mingyun your fourth brother?” Hulan asked.

  “Number Four is in China. I am Number One. Two brothers dead many years—one in America, one in China. One more brother, Number Five, he live over there.” Sammy raised a hand gnarled by arthritis and pointed across the lake. “You want to talk to Number Five, too?”

  “Yes, your brother in China also gave us his name.”

  “You want me call him, say come over here?”

  “If it’s not too much trouble.”

  Sammy pulled himself slowly out of his chair and shuffled over to an old rotary telephone. Sammy peered at the numbers, trying to make them out. It took three tries before the call went through. He hung up and looked around. “Old woman,” he called out in Chinese, “bring that tea. You take too many years!” Then he again shuffled across the room as a woman with a face like a wrinkled walnut emerged from the kitchen balancing a tray laden with a teapot, cups, and a saucer of watermelon seeds. Her back was folded into a hump as she tottered wordlessly from the kitchen to where David and Hulan sat.

  “Mrs. Guang?” Hulan ventured.

  Sammy cleared his throat gruffly and said, “She no speak English. She come here sixty years ago. I bring her here and she never learn English. You imagine that?”

  Hulan switched to Mandarin, introducing herself and thanking the woman for tea.

  When they heard the knocker, David jumped up to prevent Sammy from having to cross the room again. He opened the door to a sprightly man of about sixty-five. Harry Guang, Number Five, proved to be quite talkative. He was retired, just like his brother. He explained that One and Two had left China in 1926 when they were twenty and eighteen years of age. “That was a hard time to come here. You know the Exclusion Law? No Chinese were supposed to be let into the U.S., but my two older brothers came as paper sons. Lucky for them they bought papers to say their last name was Guang. Otherwise, we could be Lews or Kwoks. My brothers worked very hard, very hard. They thought they were coming here to become rich men. But they worked in the fields. They worked in a factory. The Depression came and it was very bad. They lived in a house for single men. Number Two got pneumonia and died—no money for a doctor in those days. Number One didn’t have enough money to go home.”

  “I stay here by myself,” Sammy said. “You think it easy for a man alone—no family, no wife, no children? I go to letter writer in Chinatown. I mail this letter to China. Send Number Three! Four months later a letter come back. I take the envelope to that same letter writer to have him read it. I pay my money and he tells me, Number Three is dead. Baba dead, too. I can’t believe it! I find out Mama has two more children. I don’t know these boys.”

  Harry picked up the story. “The Japanese came to our village, burned the house, killed our mother. By then, Number Four was twelve years old. I was six. It was 1938. Number Four borrowed money from the neighbors. Not much. One day we started to walk. We walked and walked and walked until we came to the sea. I was crying, but Number Four looked at me with a cold heart. He said, ‘You go to Number One.’ He put me on the boat by myself. I tell you, I was crying the whole time. I was at Angel Island by myself. Only six years old! When I came out, Number One was there. He brought me to Los Angeles. My brother put me in an American elementary school and he continued to work. That’s why my English is pretty good and his is…” Harry shrugged. “The rest, as they say, is history.”

  “What happened to Mingyun?” Hulan asked, “Number Four?”

  “We think he dead,” Sammy said. “China is fighting the Japanese. We are here, working with others in Chinatown trying to raise money. Then America goes to war. I am too old to fight, but I am not too old to work in factory for war effort. My first real American job.” Sammy gave them a gummy smile. “After war, I get my citizenship, Number Five, too. I buy this house, Number Five go to college. He an engineer.”

  “When the Bamboo Curtain fell,” Harry said, “we wrote letters to our old village, but no answer. We thought, if Number Four was alive, he would write us.”

  “So when did you see him again?”

  “Ha!” Sammy grunted. “I never see Number Four in my life. He is not born when I leave.”

  “But he’s traveled to California. He has businesses here.” David had difficulty keeping the surprise out of his voice.

  “Too many years,” the old man said, shaking his head. “What he want with know-nothings like us?”

  “But you knew his son.”

  Sammy nodded. “My nephew, yes. He come here maybe three years ago. He go to college like Harry. The Old Woman makes dinner. We visit. He a good boy, tells us all about Number Four. You know something? Number Four a rich man now. First millionaire in our family. Can you imagine?”

  “And that was the only time you saw Guang Henglai?”

  Sammy waved his hand. “We see him many times! Always he says, ‘Father rich. You come work for Father.’ I am laughing, because you know how old I am?” When David and Hulan shook their heads, he answered, “Ninety. What I need job for?”

  “But the nephew got my granddaughter a summer job at the bank,” Harry Guang said. “And Number One’s third grandson works in the China Land office in Century City.”

  But Sammy was still back in his own conversation. “Always that nephew comes here and says, ‘You want job? You want job?’ He says, ‘You know old-timers here. You know people who like the old ways. Not hard work. Easy work. Good money.’ I’m thinking, This boy need have his head examined!” Sammy laughed at his witticism.

  “What kind of work?” David and Hulan asked simultaneously.

  “He wants me to sell something. ‘You make good money,’ he tells me.”

  “What was the product?” David asked.

  Sammy shook his head. “What I care? I am old man. What I need to sell merchandise for? I tell that boy, ‘I’m retired. Leave me alone.’”

  “And Guang Mingyun?”

  The two brothers exchanged a look. “We don’t know him. He doesn’t know us. He’s a big man now. We are”—Harry searched for the appropriate word and settled on—“insignificant.”

  “But family—”

  Harry cut Hulan off. “My older brother took care of me when my mother died. He sent me to California to make sure I’d be safe. I will always be indebted to him for that. But what happened later, who can say? You are from China, Miss Liu, maybe you can tell us what changed him.”

  But David knew the harsh but honest answer, and it had come out of the mouth of another Chinese immigrant. Guang Mingyun had become a phoenix. His two brothers were moles.

  Driving back down the narrow road, David pulled the car over and turned off the ignition. “What were those kids selling? Drugs?”

  “It would fit with the triad angle,” Hulan said.

  “Yeah, but I don’t see Sammy selling heroin to the old-timers in Chinatown.”

  “But maybe they were selling drugs up in Montan
a,” Hulan suggested.

  “Then how do you explain Sammy? Why would Henglai want to use him anyway?”

  “The Chinese not only trust their relatives but they try to help them. It’s our duty to take care of the older generation.”

  “But I don’t think Henglai was much of an altruist, do you? No, I think it has something to do with the product. Not drugs. Jade? Gold? What’s something an old person in Chinatown would want?”

  Hulan shook her head.

  David tapped the steering wheel as he thought. “And what’s with the cowboys up in Montana? Henglai was a Red Prince. That kid was used to Beijing’s nightlife—Rumours Disco, the karaoke bar, Rémy Martin, and the rest of it. Why go up to that ranch? Why have those parties?”

  “That’s easy. You think we haven’t heard about cowboys and the romance of the American West? He probably just wanted to tell his friends back in Beijing that he’d experienced the real thing.”

  David went back to his tapping as he ran through the facts again. “Billy Watson lied to his parents about being enrolled in school. Instead, he’s hanging around up in Montana throwing parties, showing his friend your romance of the West.” When Hulan nodded, he continued, “You’ve got two rich kids in their twenties, right? I see the pretty girls. In fact I see lots of corn-fed cowgirls.”

  “Billy and Henglai were young men. It makes sense.”

  “So why do they keep inviting back the cowboys? Wouldn’t one party have been enough? Wouldn’t they have wanted to keep all those girls to themselves?”

  “You tell me. You’re the man.”

  “That’s just it, Hulan. I can’t explain it because I can’t get those cowboys out of my mind.” He threw out another possibility. “Do you think Billy and Henglai were gay?”

  “No, I would have seen it in Henglai’s personal file. Believe me, my government wouldn’t miss something like that.”