“Fine. Where is he?”
“Interrogation Room 3.”
Fong entered the room and stood to one side examining the young man. His eyes were a little too close together and there was a definite nastiness that was nearer the surface than he probably knew. He ought to learn to cover it better and damn soon, Fong thought.
Before Fong could speak, the man said, “I didn’t see anyone. It’s busy in the hospital, you know.”
Fong said nothing, allowing the young man to simply sit in the silence. “Can I go now?”
That Fong answered: “No.”
“Great, is this the silent treatment or something? You old guys are all the same. Where’s your fucking Mao jacket – at the cleaners?”
Fong almost laughed out loud. This boy was playing the role he traditionally played. But Fong understood, although grudgingly, that he was now part of the old guard. Part of what was perceived by the young as holding the country back. It felt uncomfortable. Fong looked at the young man and decided on a tack. “So what did you want to be?”
“When I grew up?” he asked nastily.
“Sure,” said Fong, “when you grew up.”
“Not a fucking clerk in an abortion clinic, that’s for sure.”
“What then?”
“A doctor, if you must know.”
“You’re young enough still . . .”
“. . . to do whatever I want. I know. You old guys always say shit like that.”
“Do we?”
“Yes, you do.” He looked to his left as if there were something or someone there who could help him. “What do you want from me, anyway?”
“I want to know how that note got on your desk?”
“I’ve told them already.”
“I’m sure you did. Now tell me.”
The receptionist let out a breath then sort of threw his hands up in the air in the universal gesture of when-will-this-nonsense-end. “Fine. I saw nothing. I saw no one in particular. The desk was a mad house. As usual. When I had a moment to myself I looked down and there was that piece of paper with the English writing on it.”
“How did you know it was English?”
“I’m educated. I took primary English like everyone who wants to be anyone. So I recognized the letters – not their names – but that they were English.”
Fong thought about that for a moment then asked, “How did you know they weren’t German or French of Spanish?”
“Oh, very good, Inspector. You’ve caught me. I didn’t know that. Can I go now?”
“Were there any Caucasians at the desk?”
The young man looked at him but didn’t speak.
“Come on. You work at a Chinese hospital. Foreigners don’t go there. Or if they did even a moron like you would remember it.”
“Moron?”
“They never used to fight,” Fong thought. But what he said was, “Yes, moron, now did you see any Caucasians or not that day?”
“No, I didn’t.”
“Very good.”
“Thanks, asshole.”
Fong looked at the man. “Do you really think I can’t hurt you?”
“I don’t care what you do to me.”
That was new. Fong looked at the man and what he saw clearly on his face were the unmistakable signs of surrender. At his age he’d already given up. So young to have already lost hope. So young to be so angry. Fong gave him a card. “Call me if you remember anything more. There had to have been a Long Nose at your desk – as you said, the note’s in English.”
As a forensic scientist, Lily had dealt with many dead things – many mutilated things – many corroded, rotted, penetrated, scraped, cut, burned, strangled, scalded, blinded, poisoned things – but none of these had prepared her for interviewing the Hua Shan Hospital’s abortion clinic’s head nurse. She’d seen the heavy-set woman many times as she’d passed by the clinic and gone up the stairs to her lab. But before today they’d never exchanged any more than cursory greetings.
The woman shrugged toward a chair in her small office. Lily sat. The nurse stood. “My supervisor says you have questions for me, officer.”
Lily did her best to smile, then said, “I do.”
“About the bombing?”
“Not directly. I need to understand more about abortion ORs.”
“Fine,” the nurse said curtly, “the clinic is filling up, so please be quick.”
Lily didn’t like the woman’s tone but that made things equal. Clearly, the woman didn’t like Lily’s very presence in her office.
The woman quickly went over the basic scheduling of an abortion surgery – the time involved on the table, prep times, clean-up regimes, etc. When she finished, she looked at Lily, “Anything else?”
“In the bombing, a human fetus was found . . .”
“. . . in a cage. Yes, I heard.”
“It had to have come from somewhere.”
“Clearly.”
“Could it have come from your surgery?”
That seemed to put the nurse back on her stubby heels. When she found her voice it was not nearly so assured as before, “How would I know?”
Lily’s head quickly filled with a terrible image. She forced it aside and asked, “Is an inventory kept?”
“Of what?”
“Of . . . the product.”
The head nurse looked as if she’d been asked if she’d visited Mars lately. Finally, she said, “No. No inventory is kept.”
“So what do you do with . . .?” Lily couldn’t find the word she wanted – or was willing to use.
The nurse nodded and said simply, “The detritus? What do we do with the detritus?”
“Yes,” Lily answered, aware that the nurse had helped her. “Thank you,” Lily said.
The nurse nodded and then said, “Nothing very sophisticated, officer. If the ‘product’ is big enough – if it can’t be flushed – we double-bag it and it goes out with the hospital’s trash. It’s the same at all the hospitals, I expect.”
Lily thought about the constant comings and goings of trash collectors. She had no idea where garbage eventually went – incinerated she guessed. But she suspected that whoever took this detritus didn’t wait til the final drop point. She knew it wouldn’t be difficult to don a garbage collector’s overalls and pick up the refuse from one of the many abortion clinics around town as long as you were Chinese, but things here pointed toward an American.
“Has your clinic received any threats?”
“No.”
“Have there been any Caucasians around the clinic?”
“Not that I’ve ever seen.”
“This is my card . . .”
“I know where to find you if I need you, Lily.” The woman turned and headed out to the crowded, angry waiting room.
Lily watched the woman go and wondered how she managed to deal with so much sorrow on a daily basis.
Fong looked around the conference room. They already appeared as tired as he felt. A folder was open in front of Wu Fan-zi; the new head of CSU was to his left. Six detectives were seated around the room completing their interview notes. Lily sat to one side, sipping from a steaming jar of cha. Her exhaustion carved deep patterns on her face making her look severe, stern. Fong knew she’d rushed home yesterday to settle Xiao Ming in for a night with her mother and then returned to the lab to get ready for the meeting. He didn’t know about her early morning meeting with the head nurse of the Hua Shan Hospital’s abortion clinic.
All eyes slowly turned to Fong, and what little chatter there had been in the room died.
The silence that followed was rife with possibilities. Everyone at the large oval table knew that this was Fong’s first big case since his return from west of the Wall and his still shadowy success at Lake Ching. In the corridors of Special Investigations these events were collectively referred to as The Resurrection. Everyone also knew that there were many in the department anxious to see Fong fall on his delicately boned face.
The meeting room smelled of pungent cigarette smoke. Fong instinctively reached for his pack of Kents. But they weren’t there. He hadn’t smoked since he’d killed the assassin Loa Wei Fen in the construction pit in the Pudong. Fong cleared his throat and tossed two newspapers onto the large oval table. Instantly he was flooded with a memory of another time. Another newspaper he’d tossed on this very table. That newspaper’s headline had screamed: Dim Sum Killer at Large. Of course that had been over five years ago. Back when he still smoked Kents.