A uniformed security officer sat at a shiny mahogany desk right in the centre of the concourse. She turned a smile as bright as sunshine on Li, Fuller and Hrycyk. ‘Can I help y’all?’
Fuller said, ‘We have an appointment with Councilman Soong.’
Soong himself came down to take them up to his suite. He was a large man in every sense. He had an expansive personality and an expanded waistline, a very round, smooth face and a thick head of neatly trimmed wavy black hair shot through with streaks of silver. Incongruously, he was wearing sneakers, a pair of Wrangler jeans and a red leather Astros baseball jacket. Solemnly he shook everyone’s hands. ‘Welcome, gentlemen. I am very pleased you can make it.’ Then he grinned and waved his arm around the concourse. ‘Impressive, yes? Restored to all its former glory.’ He pushed open a tall glass door and took them into the stadium. To their left, a long corridor ran the length of the original terminal building, arches opening out on to the baseball field below. Before them, the field itself glistened in the rain beneath three tiers of seats rising into an angry-looking sky, puddles gathering in the red blaize that circled the mound. ‘They gonna close the roof, I think,’ Soong said. ‘Too much rain no good for grass.’
‘Jees,’ Hrycyk whispered in awe. ‘I’ve never seen them close the roof before.’
Soong beamed at him. ‘You are baseball fan, Mistah Hrycyk?’
Hrycyk shrugged, suddenly self-conscious. ‘Yeah, I go to the games sometimes. When I can.’
‘Then you must be my guest next season,’ Soong said. ‘I can arrange seat for you in enclosure.’ He pointed to a small enclosed area of seats immediately behind where the batsman faced the pitcher.
‘Wow,’ Hrycyk said, forgetting his reserve. He was like a kid with a candy bar. ‘That’s where all the celebs sit.’
Soong beamed. ‘It cost twenty thousand dollar to buy seat there. And two hundred dollar a game. Roughly seventeen thousand a year. In thirty years you pay more than half a million dollar for one seat.’ He paused for effect. ‘I got three.’
Li looked at Hrycyk. The INS agent might dislike the Chinese, but when it came to baseball he had no problem accepting Chinese hospitality.
They heard the whine and hum of a motor, and the smooth sound of gears engaging through syncromesh.
‘Yuh,’ Soong said. ‘They close the roof.’
They followed him out on to the near terracing, where they had a view across the field to the arched walkway they had just passed through. Above it, on eight hundred feet of track, stood a full-size replica vintage locomotive painted black and orange and red, the glass towers and skyscrapers of downtown Houston rising into the sky behind it, like the painted backdrop of a theatre set.
Soong laughed. ‘Owner of team pay one and a quarter million dollar out of own pocket to install train,’ he said. ‘It run along track, blowing whistle and letting off steam every time Astros score home run. It’s fun.’
Beyond it, set into the far side of the stadium, the roof was starting to close. It comprised two massive arced sections, one overlapping the other and supported along the open side on glass-panelled scaffolding more than two hundred feet high which ran on rails parallel to the train line. Through the windows of a small control cabin at the base of the scaffolding, they could see the engineer controlling the motors that closed the roof. The cabin moved along the rail with the scaffolding, overtaking the train as the first section stopped halfway and the overlap continued toward the near side of the stadium, above where they stood. Although the whole structure was designed with toughened glass panels to let in as much light as possible, the sky was almost black now, and the engineer switched on the floodlights from his little control room, washing the entire stadium with an unnaturally bright light.
Soong took great delight in displaying his knowledge of the facts and figures. He said, ‘The roof weigh nine thousand ton and cover six-and-a-half acre. It generate its own electricity and take just twelve minutes to close. Pretty impressive, huh?’ But he gave them no time to respond. ‘You come with me, now. We got important stuff to talk about.’
They followed him under a bewildering array of hanging signs arranged to guide fans to their seats, and into a stairwell that led them up from the main concourse through club level to suite level. Soong arrived panting at the top of the stairs. ‘I used to take lift,’ he said, ‘but now I take stair for health.’ He grinned again. ‘Only exercise I get, apart from sex.’
Fuller and Hrycyk gave small, dutiful laughs. Li did not. There was nothing amusing for him in the image of this fat man grunting and sweating over the delicate frame of some poor Chinese girl working to pay off her debt to a snakehead. Soong’s wealth and confidence, his eccentricity — the sneakers and the baseball jacket — reminded Li of those corrupt petty officials back in China who lined their pockets at the expense of the people. Overweight, overbearing, overconfident.
A door led them into a long, curved and carpeted concourse. Large windows gave on to stunning views of the illuminated field below. After a lengthy walk around the curve of the stadium, they arrived at the elaborate wood-panelled entries to the row of private suites. Opposite, a panorama of windows looked out on to the freeway, the lights of the afternoon traffic a dazzle of reflections in the wet. Li could see rain caught in the headlamps, spray rising like mist. Soong opened the door to his suite and they found themselves entering a large room with a conference table at its centre and a hot buffet counter along one side. Facing the entrance, sliding glass doors opened onto a single row of seats with a spectacular aerial view of the field. Overhead they heard a soft thunk that vibrated gently through the building. Soong looked at his watch. ‘We make good time,’ he said. ‘The roof just close.’
Eight sombre-looking middle-aged and elderly Chinese gentlemen in uniformly dark suits and dark hair, white shirts open at the neck, sat around the conference table, noisily slurping green tea from tall glasses. A fog of smoke filled the room from their cigarettes. Ashtrays were full. They had been here for some time. Wary, hooded eyes fixed on Li as Soong made the introductions. These were the leaders of the various business associations represented Chinese commercial interests in Houston. The tongs. And they were clearly ill at ease sitting down with agents of the INS and FBI and a police officer representing the country from which they had all, at one time or another, made illegal exits.
Soong, by contrast, had the appearance of a man supremely comfortable with his own status: as city councilman, director of the Houston-Hong Kong Bank, member of the Astros board. When Fuller, Hrycyk and Li were seated at the table, he offered them green tea from stainless steel flasks. Fuller and Hrycyk demurred. Li accepted. It was a long time since he had drunk green tea. There was a comfort in it. A taste of home. He lit a cigarette and, catching Hrycyk’s eye, reluctantly tossed him one. Fuller coughed ostentatiously into his hand.
‘Any chance we could open one of these windows?’ he said. ‘A guy could get lung cancer just breathing in this place.’
‘Sure,’ Soong said, nodding to one of the dark-suited gentlemen at the far end of the table who got up and slid open the door. As air rushed in, smoke got sucked out, drawn high up into the enclosed roof space of the stadium where it quickly dispersed.
Li said in Mandarin, ‘Whereabouts in Canton are you from, Mr. Soong?’