Chasing the Monkey King

by D. C. Alexander

  “Hey, I’d grab an interpreter and go search for answers myself, except that the Chinese won’t grant me an entry visa.”

  Severin’s eyebrows rose. “They’ve declared you persona non grata?”

  “It’s total nonsense, all over a dispute I had with a corrupt Chinese customs official. Crook tried to shake me down to the tune of almost half a million dollars. I won’t bore you with the details. Nothing for you to worry about anyhow.”

  Severin considered pressing for further information on the matter, but decided to let it go. Still, his face betrayed his skepticism with the whole proposal.

  “Look, Lars. The official channels have failed us, so we’re going off the books.”

  And you have no one else to turn to, Severin thought. The man was rich, but probably not so obscenely rich that he’d be willing to burn the hundreds of thousands of dollars it could take to hire one of the big multinational investigative firms unless it was absolutely necessary. And given the inherent sensitivity of a case involving the disappearance and possible murder of agents of the U.S. government, those firms might not want to touch the case anyway, for fear of upsetting any of their special relationships with the various faces of Chinese government. For fear of losing their precious access. Plus, their bread and butter was simple things like background checks and inquiries stemming from due diligence investigations—not homicides or missing persons cases. Those were entirely different animals.

  “I can’t send one of my own people,” Thorvaldsson said. “I can’t send anyone with connections to our company. It’s too sensitive a situation. Plus, Pete Carlsen’s nephew says you had a reputation for being exceptionally clever and resourceful when you were on the Anacortes police force. A natural detective. The best he’s ever seen in his 17 years as a cop.”

  “That was a thousand years ago.”

  “Regardless, assuming your reputation is deserved, would a large enough paycheck entice you to overcome these obstacles?”

  “The money is a separate matter. But your expectations—”

  “Lars, please. We’re not expecting you to go over there and pull a Sherlock Holmes, where every conceivable loose end is tied up in a couple of perfect paragraphs. But there’s more information out there. You know there is. It may not be much. But we want it, just the same. Maybe Kristin is still alive. But if she isn’t,” he said before pausing to swallow, “then we want to know what happened, who did it, and why. We want closure.”

  “Closure is an elusive thing, Orin. It’s your money. But if I were in your—”

  “We also owe it to Kristin.”

  “Owe?”

  “We—I let this happen. It’s my fault.”

  “No. You didn’t let it happen. That feeling comes from something a detective friend of mine used to call guilt egotism. Whatever happened to Kristin wasn’t your fault.”

  Thorvaldsson took a drink, his face betraying his sadness and rage. “I don’t mean that in a direct sense, of course. But the totality of circumstances, the chain of life events that put her in that position, out on a limb.” He stood and walked over to the window with his bourbon. He swirled it in his glass as he stared out, seemingly toward the gray horizon beyond the mouth of the bay. “Kristin was bulimic,” he said at last.

  “I’m not sure I follow you.”

  “Well, can you imagine what it would be like to be a child, to grow up, in a family of driven overachievers like mine? Think of it. A little girl.” He shook his head. “Ludicrous expectations. Overbearing control. Subtle, insidious judgment and implied criticism. It all but ensures you reach adulthood with hardly a shred of self-esteem. With a bottomless hole in your heart that your whole life becomes a futile drive to fill.” He turned to face Severin. “It’s what made her want to get far, far away from us. It’s what made her susceptible to the lure of an insecure possessive sycophant like her husband. Susceptible to the sappy emotional bait that a controlling, jealous, psychologically abusive worm like him is nearly always skilled in spoon-feeding to the women in his life. Dubious and entirely self-serving gestures and declarations of love. Exactly what an emotionally starved girl like Kristin will be drawn to like an addict to the needle—will be all too willing to delude herself into believing is wholesome and genuine.” He finished his bourbon. “And all her life, Lars. All her life I saw it happening. But I still let it happen.”

  Severin took a moment to digest what Thorvaldsson was saying, thinking the man was something of a dime-store psychologist. “I take it you don’t like her husband.”

  “I know little of Wesley. What I do know, I don’t like. My gut tells me to recommend you take a close look at him.”

  “Spouses usually start off near the top of my list.”

  “I’m asking for two to three weeks of your time. I’ll cover all of your expenses. All of them. And I insist that you stay in top hotels and treat yourself well when it comes to food and incidentals. Besides reimbursing you for expenses, I’ll pay you $10,000 up front. If you succeed in getting us a considerably better idea of what happened, I’ll add a $40,000 bonus.”

  “$50,000?”

  “What else am I going to spend it on? Look around you, Lars.” He smiled a sad smile. “That’s the joke, see?”

  “I don’t understand.”

  “Everything that we gave up, thinking, all the while, that we were on target. That we were doing the right thing. That our relentless drive, our achievements, our successes would pay off in some profound and meaningful way in the long run. Everything we sacrificed with respect to relationships, friends, family. Time, happiness, love. For what? All this wealth. All the power and control that goes with it. But was it enough to protect my sweet niece? Will it be enough to save any of us in the end? No. So what good is it?” He shook his head again. “We’re all hurtling toward the same inevitable, eternal darkness, Lars. All of us. And there isn’t one damned thing any of us can do about it. That’s the bitter lesson.”

  *****

  Thorvaldsson’s servant refilled their bourbons a second time as they sat discussing details and logistics.

  “If I agree to do this, I’ll need some help,” Severin said. “I have a guy in mind.”

  “I’ll cover his expenses too. You can share your fee however you see fit.” Thorvaldsson’s cell phone rang and he took it for a 20-second conversation. “Sorry about that. My people say that according to our friendly island mechanic, your car battery will no longer hold a charge. So they put in a new one for you and had your oil and sparkplugs changed.”

  “What do I owe you?”

  “Don’t be ridiculous. There’s also an envelope in your car with cash for your time, fuel, and ferry tickets. If you take the job, we’ll work out a reporting system for your expenses. In the meantime, can I have Paul run you back to the ferry terminal? I can tell my people to have your car waiting there for you. Then you don’t have to drive for a bit.”

  “That would probably be a good idea.”

  “And we’d better get you out of here soon. The last ferry for Anacortes leaves in less than an hour.”

  *****

  Severin stood on the car deck near the open bow of the ferry as it rumbled through the darkness, across Rosario Strait, back toward Anacortes. The cold headwind blew his hair straight back, while swells crashing against the hull sent fans of salt water shooting high into the air, raining a light spray down on him where he stood. It was cold, but the cold helped clear his head, as did the cup of strong, black coffee he’d purchased from a machine in the galley upstairs on the main passenger deck. It occurred to him that he was starving. A turkey pot pie from the Calico Cupboard Bakery in Anacortes—one of his old haunts—sounded good. But he didn’t think it was open this late. He tried to forget his hunger by focusing on Thorvaldsson’s proposal.

  There was no doubt that it had an odd smell to it. Fifty thousand dollars for a quote-unquote better idea of what happened? Either Thorvaldsson and his family were nuts, or there was something else going on tha
t they weren’t telling him. Still, for the possibility of a $50,000 payday, Severin was willing to play along—at least for the time being.

  *****

  That night, reclining on his couch and finishing the half empty bottle of Pappy Van Winkle bourbon Thorvaldsson had sent him home with, Severin turned on his laptop. In a few minutes, he found Kristin Powell’s pages on a handful of social media and networking websites. The first such site, designed for career networking, revealed that she was a fellow graduate of the University of Washington, with a double major in international studies and Russian. In photos on the more socially-oriented sites, she looked more or less as he expected her to look. Blonde. Sad eyes. A cowed expression. He poked around with a feeling that reminded him of touring the empty houses left behind by homicide victims. Most of the photos were of Kristin together with her husband, Wesley—his arm wrapped around her shoulders, as often as not, in a possessive sort of way. Wesley always seemed to bear the same chest-puffed pose and same pretend tough guy expression. It screamed insecurity.

  Following an impulse, Severin followed a link to Wesley’s own webpage on the same social media service. As expected, he found photos that Wesley had put there to convince the world of his greatness. Him on a mountain top. Him crossing the finish line of a half marathon. Him standing in front of a Mayan pyramid. Him shaking hands with the vice-president.

  Severin went back to Kristin’s social media webpage and scrolled through it. He studied her photos, her list of friends, and the comments people had left for her in order to ascertain who her closest acquaintances were. He wrote their names down on a note-pad, just below the names of the government officials and other interviewees mentioned in the State Department investigation report Thorvaldsson had given him. More people he might eventually want to speak with. Then he considered calling Thorvaldsson to accept the job, but held off. He’d call in the morning. It was late. And he didn’t want to come across as desperate—even though he was.

  SIX

  The next afternoon, Severin was walking down an old alleyway of Seattle’s International District, cold raindrops falling on his exposed head, the sky a dull, dark gray, the stink of half a dozen restaurant dumpsters hanging in the chilling, dank air. Multicolored neon lights glowed on overhanging signs with the names—in both English and Chinese characters—of various restaurants, tea houses, travel agencies, nail salons, and specialty shops. He was running down an address Thorvaldsson had given him—the address of what Thorvaldsson said was YSP’s U.S. importer, Sun Ocean Trade. To ensure he wasn’t setting off on a wild goose chase, that morning Severin ran an online search of Washington State Corporations Division records confirming that Sun Ocean Trade’s current business address of record was indeed the same address Thorvaldsson had given him. Despite the chill of the large raindrops peppering his head, Severin was grateful that Sun Ocean Trade was, by happy chance, located in Seattle instead of one of the other major Pacific Coast port cities like Long Beach, Oakland, or some other faraway place.

  He figured it couldn’t hurt to go talk to the Sun Ocean Trade people, to see if they could give him any useful contact information. Perhaps phone numbers of company officials over in China who could tell him anything about the interactions of Kristin and her husband—and presumed widower—Wesley in the hours leading up to Kristin’s disappearance.

  He found the address—number 427. It was a tinted glass doorway that opened on a stairwell between two dim sum restaurants. Small placards on the narrow width of brick wall to the left of the door advertised, in English and Chinese, a Taiwanese apothecary, an accounting practice, and an acupuncture business that all apparently shared the address. Below the placards, a single, large, keyed mailbox. Severin opened the unlocked doorway, scanned the entry for motion sensors or other types of burglar alarm triggers, noted the brand and style of lock, and ascended the narrow, creaky wooden stairwell. The mouthwatering scent of ginger, frying onions, and soy sauce seeped through the risers from one or both of the dim sum restaurants on the main floor, below. Reaching the top of the stairs, Severin found himself at the end of a long, dimly lit hallway with six solid wood doors running down one side. A dozen flimsy, non-locking black plastic mailboxes were mounted on the wall to his right. Some had labels indicating the businesses to which they belonged—while some had clear plastic holders that were either empty or contained loose, easily removable business cards or pieces of paper with the names of individuals or businesses hand-written on them. None of the mailboxes were labeled with the name of YSP’s importer, Sun Ocean Trade.

  He made his way down the hallway, knocking on each door—three of which bore signs for the same three businesses advertised on the placards next to the front door, and three of which were unmarked. Whenever anyone answered a door, he asked whether they could tell him where the office for Sun Ocean Trade was, or where he could at least find somebody who worked for the importer. Nobody had ever heard of it. He then began asking who managed the mailboxes in the hallway, inserting or removing address labels and cards as businesses moved in and out. Each person he asked claimed to have no idea. But Severin thought it was more likely they did know, and, quite understandably, didn’t want to give information to some stranger who might make trouble for somebody’s cousin’s unofficial, unlicensed post office box business. Nobody answered his knocks on the unmarked doors. What was behind them was anybody’s guess. But he noted with interest that they were secured by nothing more than simple knob locks.

  Mildly frustrated but, given his customs experience, hardly surprised at not being able to find any trace of what was supposed to be a legitimate and thriving import firm, Severin cheered himself up with an excellent and excessive dim sum lunch at the better looking of the two restaurants downstairs. Sweet and sour spareribs, pork dumplings, braised beef noodle soup, a steamed black sesame bun, a rice cake, and hot jasmine tea. After that, his belly uncomfortably full, he went home and took a two-hour nap.

  *****

  Just after 11 that night, in a move that was so out of character it made him laugh out loud, Severin was back in front of door number 427. He stood in shadow and sheltered from the pouring rain in the shallow recess of the entrance, pausing to look over his shoulder every few seconds as he patiently worked at the deadbolt lock with an old-fashioned set of picks he’d held onto from his detective days on the assumption he’d one day have to break into his own house after losing his keys while stumbling around drunk. The nonsensical shouts of a mentally ill or drugged out and presumably homeless man echoed through the streets.

  Severin was out of practice, and it was incredibly tedious work. But 15 minutes and one hair-raising pass by a Seattle Police Department patrol car later, he had the deadbolt sprung. He stepped inside, closed the door silently behind him, and tiptoed up the stairwell by the dim glow of a nearby streetlight that shined through the tinted glass. At the top of the stairs, he switched on a tiny but amazingly bright key ring LED light to illuminate the floor of the dark hallway. First, he checked each of the black plastic mailboxes. Finding nothing of interest—certainly nothing to or from Sun Ocean Trade or the sorghum processor YSP—he strode to the first unmarked door. It was one of the three at which nobody had answered his knocks during his earlier visit. He popped the simple knob lock with a bent polycarbonate butter knife he’d brought along from a set of backpacker’s flatware he’d dug out of one of his closets, stepped inside, and scanned the room with his LED. It appeared to be nothing more than a storage room for one of the first-floor dim sum restaurants—containing, among other things, plastic containers of spices, giant cans of cooking oil, burlap sacks of rice, crates of new water glasses, and a stack of surplus banquet chairs. The next door he opened revealed an empty room. There wasn’t even a lightbulb in the lone socket. Finally, the third door opened on haphazard stacks of cardboard boxes. He opened one to find it full of documents—all of them in Chinese. He couldn’t be sure, but his best guess was that they were invoices of some sort. Even the phone numbers
were foreign. He had no way of knowing what type of transactions the documents might have recorded—whether for services, products, or anything else. Digging down through the box, he found it contained more of the same—as did all of the other boxes. With the idea that he’d find a translator, he used his smartphone to take photographs of documents that appeared to be representative of each box.

  Annoyed that he hadn’t found anything obviously useful, he took a deep breath, buttoned up his coat, and made his way back out into the cold, rainy night. If Sun Ocean Trading had ever really existed, and if they actually had an office at this address, they were long gone.

  SEVEN

  “Hey, Man Pretty,” Severin said into his phone. “It’s almost 10 a.m. You sound sleepy. Did I wake you?”

  “Who—Lars?” Wallace Zhang said.

  “How did you guess?”

  “You’re the only person who has ever called me Man Pretty,” he said through a yawn.

  “I’m sure other people think you’re pretty, even if they don’t say so.” Severin paused, pondering where to begin. “So, anyway, do you still speak Chinese?”

  “Do I still speak Chinese? Of course. What the f—”

  “Listen, I have something I want to ask you about. Let me buy you a beer. You still live in Seattle, right? Or did you just keep your old cell phone number?”

  “No, I still live in the Seattle area. Federal Way.”

  “Near your parents’ old place?” Zhang was silent. “Wallace, tell me you didn’t move back into your parents’ basement.”

  “From a financial standpoint—”

  “Oh, Wallace. Oh, wow.”

  “It’s so nice to hear from you, Lars. So very, very nice.”

  “Busy this morning?”

  “It’s Tuesday.”