The second voicemail was from the captain’s brother-in-law, a pain in the ass of such proportions that the captain had more than once considered divorcing the love of his life just to get away from him. His brother-in-law was calling to see if he could press charges against his neighbor. A coconut had fallen from the neighbor’s tree, which straddled their property line, and hit one his free roaming chickens. The captain deleted the message as his brother-in-law explained in detail how the chicken was now walking in circles and may have to be put down. The captain shook his head. The things you should know before you say, “I do.”
The third message was Jake’s and the captain listened to the voice-mail in its entirety. On the second pass, Captain Talua wrote down the girl’s name, and on the third try, he managed to catch Jake’s name and number. Wei Ling, he said to himself, followed by a surly grunt.
He pushed his rolling chair around his desk with his feet and pulled a file from a stack on the corner table near the window. No sirens went off in the captain’s head. No warning bells of suspicion rang in his ears. The phone calls were not uncommon. They usually came from family members looking to make contact with a relative who was incommunicado. Saipan averaged two murders a year, and in his fifteen years as captain of the police force on the island, every killing had been committed by spouse, family member, or a boyfriend. Sure, there were accidents, people on the run passing through the island, lost causes looking for a place to be lost. But when the captain got a call looking for an Asian woman, he always checked the Chang Industries list first.
The captain opened the file and flipped the piece of paper with his scribble on it next to the file. He looked down the list, looked back at the name on the piece of paper, and checked the list again. Employee number one hundred eighty-seven. Wei Ling. Seamstress. Chang Industries.
As I thought, the captain said to himself.
The captain looked at the folder and reminded himself that he needed an updated list of the girls at Chang Industries. It was summer and time for the arrival of a new shipment of hard-working sewing princesses. He made a note to stop by and see Lee Chang. He could pick up a new list and see if the Chang Industries coffers were in the mood to contribute to the captain’s family education fund.
Captain Talua went to the john for his morning constitution, and then returned the call to Jake’s office. He left a short message stating that the girl in question was present, accounted for, and in good health.
Chapter 11
C.F. Chang ordered Chow Ying back to Beijing with a ten-second phone call that lacked explanation. The Mountain of Shanghai worked directly for Lee Chang, but everyone worked for C.F., also called “laoban,” loosely translated as “boss” in Chinese. And when C.F. Chang called, you went, no questions asked. Chow Ying closed his mobile phone, packed a single leather bag he had bought in Hong Kong a decade before, and grabbed his passport. Chow Ying, all two hundred thirty pounds of chiseled muscle, sat in the airport until a seat was available on a connecting flight through Seoul, and boarded the last plane out for the day.
Ten hours later Chow Ying checked into the top floor of the five-story Emerald River Hotel, twenty minutes from Tiananmen Square in downtown Beijing. He slept for a few hours in bed, got up for a glass of water and went back to sleep on the small sofa, legs hanging over the sweeping arm of the worn furniture. He woke from his slumber, took a shower, and tied a slightly stained hotel towel around his waist when he finished. He wiped the moisture from the mirror with his bare hand, leaving a streaking smudge in the glass, and looked at his reflection. He wondered what had happened to the carefree boy who once enjoyed school, sports, and his friends.
He checked the time and called down to the front desk to order a taxi. The young lady at the front desk answered in rough Chinese that the taxi would be there in five minutes. Chow Ying answered in an equally gruff tone, “I’ll be down in four.”
The humidity in Beijing was stifling, sucking dryness from the air and everything in its grasp. A shiny coat of fresh moisture immediately replaced the sweat that Chow Ying wiped from the back of his neck. He slipped on a light pair of cotton pants, a lighter-weight shirt, and reached for his eight-inch hunting knife resting in its leather sheath on top of the TV cabinet. C.F. Chang could be demanding, but Chow Ying had yet to attend a meeting with laoban that wasn’t professional. He threw his knife back on the sofa as he left the room.
The hall was empty when Chow Ying pulled the door shut and rattled the handle to make sure it was locked. He swaggered toward the elevator at the end of the long corridor with its communist red carpet and outdated lamps mounted sparingly on the walls. He thought about what he was going to have for dinner. Chow Ying was primitive. He operated on sleep, food, and gambling. He would take a woman too, if one found her way into his reach.
The elevator door opened with a quiet “ding” and Chow Ying joined two other male guests in the six-by-six foot lift. The door shut and the elevator dropped with an initial, prolonged chug.
Then all hell broke loose.
The man behind Chow Ying reached up and wrapped his arm around the thick neck of his target as the second man hit the stop button on the elevator. The lift lurched to a halt abruptly, causing Chow Ying and his attackers to momentarily lose their balance. The glimmer of a massive knife blade reflected in the mirror trim of the elevator control panel provided all the warning Chow Ying needed. The two would-be assassins didn’t have a prayer.
When the elevator stopped on the second floor, Chow Ying casually stepped out, brushed himself off, and straightened his disheveled shirt. With the pulse of a surgeon about to perform an operation, he walked the three flights of stairs back up to his room to collect his meager belongings.
The female half of the young Chinese couple standing arm-in-arm in the lobby shrieked when the elevator door opened. Two male bodies were propped against the walls in opposite corners of the elevator, their arms resting in their laps like a warped rendition of Buddha in his meditative pose. The Mountain of Shanghai had a sense of humor. The knife, the intended weapon of the attackers, rested on the floor between the two bodies, spotlessly clean. There were no cuts on the victims, no blood. The injuries were internal and fatal; a fact confirmed twenty minutes later by the ambulance personnel who arrived to find that the bodies had been moved from the crime scene to a quiet corner of the small lobby.
There was only one elevator, and the guests needed it. ***
It was late evening when Peter took off his suit jacket and put it on a hanger dangling from the coat rack in the corner of his office. Thoughts of Wei Ling danced in his head, and he sighed the sigh of a man in trouble. He needed to do something. And nothing gave him better ideas than his regal friend, Chivas. He pulled the half-empty bottle of scotch from the small bar in the built-in bookshelves that lined one side of his office. He grabbed the Rolodex on the edge of the desk and leaned back in his chair, flipping through pages, corners tattered from wear. He flipped past the number for the head of the Trade Administration, the number for Clinton’s office in Harlem, and the home address of the president of FedEx, Fred W. Smith. His Rolodex had girth and the index cards were full.
He was organized the old-fashioned way. In Peter’s mind, paper was an invention that didn’t need improvement. Computers broke down, got viruses, needed power. They were great when they worked perfectly, but when they didn’t, they were as good as a rock sitting on the desk, taunting the user. Of course, Peter knew how to use computers, but short of a fire, nothing was going to stop his Rolodex from giving out numbers when he needed them. He stored a handful of contacts in his cell phone, programming the small Samsung a duty that Marilyn handled effortlessly. Thumbing the small device with his thick fingers was wasted time. That’s what secretaries were for.