Snakehead tct-4 Read online

  She stood next to Steve soaping her hands and arms. She had already dispensed with her surgical gown and apron and changed back into her jeans and tee-shirt. Her hair was scraped back from her face and held in a band at the back of her head. She was hot, and tired, and distracted.

  Li had left some hours earlier, and she was not sure when, or even if, she would see him again. Their encounter had been unsettling, blowing away the protective fabrications she had built up around herself over the last fifteen months, since she had returned from China determined to put him behind her. The little half lies she had tried to convince herself were absolute truths: that the differences between them of language and culture were too great to overcome; that she would be happier here in the US without him; that he would be happier in China with a woman of his own race.

  And now he was in America. Had been here, she knew, for nearly a year, making no attempt to get in touch with her. It wasn’t as if he didn’t know that she had taken up a lecturing position at the college of criminal justice in Huntsville, because she had told him that was where she was going. But from his reaction to meeting her across the autopsy table here in Houston, it was clear he had been unaware that she was now the chief medical examiner for Harris County. At least until today.

  ‘So…’ Steve’s voice sounded beside her, ‘…suffocation?’

  ‘That’s how it appears,’ she said. ‘Although they’d probably been in the truck for about twenty-four hours — right through the heat of the previous day.’

  ‘Ah,’ said Steve. ‘Core liver temperature.’

  ‘Mine were all a hundred and seven degrees Fahrenheit or higher.’

  ‘Mine, too.’

  ‘They’d also eaten, and all of my bladders were pretty much empty, so it would seem they had been allowed out at some point to relieve themselves.’

  ‘Which means that the air vent was open when they set out…’

  ‘…and closed, either accidentally or on purpose, when they stopped somewhere en route.’

  ‘And they died either of suffocation or hyperthermia.’

  ‘Or a combination of the two.’

  A thoughtful silence hung between them, then, for a moment, and Margaret noticed a trace of blood in the water in Steve’s sink. She looked at him, immediately concerned. ‘Where’s the blood coming from?’ And she saw for the first time how pale he looked. His smile was almost convincing.

  ‘Ah, it’s nothing.’

  ‘You cut yourself?’

  He took a long time to compose his reply. Finally he said, ‘Usually I leave the organs piled at one end of the table before I section them. When I went back after coming through to talk to you about the injection sites, they had slid down the cutting board, and when I went to lift them I felt this little jag in my finger. I had left my knife lying on the cutting board and the organs had slipped over the top of it. My left hand is well protected. I wear chain mail under the glove in case of a slip. But on my cutting hand, my right, I usually only wear the latex. That’s the hand I lifted the organs with. The tip of my knife made a tiny puncture about halfway down the middle finger.’ He held his open right hand out for her to see, and she saw a tiny fleck of blood oozing from an almost imperceptible nick. ‘At the time I didn’t think I had cut the skin.’ He grimaced. ‘Guess I was wrong.’

  ‘Jesus, Steve,’ Margaret said. They both knew that this smallest of accidents would have made him vulnerable to contracting any viral or bacterial infection carried in the blood of the victim. ‘What have you done about it?’

  He shrugged. ‘What could I do? I’ve taken a lot of samples from the guy and asked the AFIP people at Walter Reed to do a complete blood screen. I’ve drawn some of my own, for a baseline, and I guess I’ll be checking it every six weeks for the next year for HIV and hep B and C.’

  Margaret felt sick. She looked at him with the heartfelt concern of someone who is only ever a split second’s carelessness from exactly the same predicament. ‘You said you thought you hadn’t cut the skin.’

  He grinned ruefully. ‘Hey, you’re talking to paranoid Steve, here. I never take chances.’

  But Margaret didn’t smile. ‘What about whatever it was these people were injected with?’

  ‘I’ve asked the lab to do several specific panel tests to cover as wide a spectrum as possible. Between PCR and the virus panel we should find out what it was pretty fast.’ He smiled bravely. ‘If it was West Nile, then with luck I get free immunity.’ He dried his hands and stretched a flesh-coloured Band-aid over the cut. He looked up at Margaret. ‘I was going to ask you out to dinner tonight. You know how the line goes: I know this great little place…Only, I don’t. At least, not in Houston.’

  All thoughts of Li now banished, Margaret said, ‘You know, funny you should say that. ’Cos I know this great little place…’

  VII

  Li gazed from the rear passenger window in wonder as Consul-General Xi’s driver took them west on Bellaire, under Sam Houston Parkway, and into the heart of Houston’s Chinatown. Li did not know what he had expected, but it was not this. In Washington, Chinatown consisted of a couple of blocks of old tenements, with a few restaurants and Chinese foodstores. Here, one modern plaza followed another, set back off the boulevard. Walkways under green-tiled roofs over shops which advertised their wares and services in Chinese and English. Peggy’s Skin Care. China Fast Food. Asian Pacific Travel. Sweet Country Café. A brick apartment block with a neon Kung Fu sign next to a notice announcing the E-W Cultural Exchange Association. A billboard advertising ‘Immigration Passport Photos and Greencard Citizenship’, next to an acupuncture centre.

  ‘You see? Wherever we go, we create little China.’ Consul-General Xi grinned at him, and Li saw that his bad teeth had been patched up to give him an American smile. There were, he had noticed, dental practices everywhere in Chinatown. Perhaps it was what you did when you got a little money, fixed up your teeth so that you felt a little more like an American citizen. Bad teeth were endemic in China.

  There were also, he had observed, a proliferation of psychics. Perhaps they offered the hope of future citizenship. And a large number of vasectomy reversal clinics appeared to be trying to make up for decades of the one-child policy, a chance to procreate without punishment — or fear of your children starving.

  But Li did not see China in any of it. He saw America plastered with Chinese characters, like graffiti.

  ‘In terms of area, Houston has the third largest Chinatown in the United States,’ the Consul-General said, stubbing out his cigarette. He opened a window to let out some of the smoke, then closed it again to preserve the air-conditioning. ‘On the surface, perhaps, it looks like a quiet city suburb. But beneath the surface, there is a lot of crime. Gambling, prostitution, protection rackets. For the most part, the local police stay out. So crime flourishes. And, of course, the Americans estimate that the illegal smuggling of Chinese generates revenues of more than three billion dollars a year.’

  They passed a large shopping area off to their right, called Diho Square. The parking lot was nearly full, and Li could see only Chinese faces. An old man wearing a white cotton jacket and pants, with open sandals and a white Stetson, turned his ramshackle bicycle on to the road. ‘So who runs the criminal syndicates?’ Li asked.

  ‘Most of the major businesses, legitimate and otherwise, are run by organisations known here as tongs. The tongs employ street gangs as enforcers to guard the massage parlours and gambling dens. The gangs finance themselves by collecting protection money from small traders with shops and restaurants. It is a very rigid structure, with a very clear hierarchy, all the way from the ma zhai, the little horses, or ordinary gang members, through their leaders, the big brothers, or dai lo, to the shuk foo, the uncles who are their liaison with the tongs.’

  ‘Who is the ah kung, Consul-General Xi? Do you know?’

  The consul-general looked at him, surprised, and a little annoyed. ‘I am wasting my time telling you all this, Li, since obviou
sly you are already well informed.’

  Li inclined his head slightly. ‘It is always useful to gather intelligence based on local knowledge, Consul-General.’

  The consul-general raised an eyebrow. ‘They were right when they said that you were like your uncle.’

  Li glanced at him. ‘You knew him?’

  ‘Only by reputation.’

  Li sighed inwardly. Even here in America he was still haunted by the ghost of his uncle. Since his first day at the University of Public Security in Beijing, he had had to bear the burden of his uncle’s reputation as one of the finest police officers ever to grace the Beijing municipal force. He had either had to live up to or live down that reputation. Never judged on his own merits, always against the yardstick of his Uncle Yifu — a man he had loved dearly. ‘I am not really like him at all,’ Li said. ‘But I try to honour his memory by following his teachings.’

  He remembered the dreadful vision of the old man lying murdered in the bloody bath, skewered by his own ceremonial sword. It was as vivid now as it had been then, and the pain of it never diminished.

  ‘Each of the tongs has an ah kung,’ the consul-general was saying in answer to his question. Li forced the image of his uncle from his mind. ‘But it is generally recognised that one of them is supreme. He is the grandfather. But outside of a very small inner circle, no one knows who he is.’

  ‘His name, or at least his nickname, is Kat,’ Li said, and he felt the consul-general’s eyes turn toward him.

  ‘How do you know this?’ the consul-general asked.

  ‘Because one of those who died in the truck at Huntsville was an undercover Chinese police officer.’

  The consul-general was clearly shocked. ‘You are sure?’

  Li nodded. ‘I briefed him for the job. He was to come to America as an illegal immigrant, and infiltrate the gangs at this end, hoping to pick up clues to the identity of the ah kung.’ Li paused. ‘I have read his diary. At least he was able to give us a name.’

  ‘Kat,’ the consul-general said thoughtfully. ‘My wife always presents me with a tangerine plant for luck at Spring Festival.’ He took out his cigarettes and offered one to Li, who declined. Since coming to America he had made a determined effort to give them up. Only when he was with other Chinese was he tempted to fall back into his old ways. The consul-general lit up. ‘I will open the door and look at the mountain with you, Li.’ And Li smiled to himself. Whenever anyone told you they were going to be straight with you, it usually meant the opposite. ‘There are no flowers dropping from the sky in Beijing over the matter of these illegal immigrants.’

  ‘Nor in Washington,’ Li said.

  ‘I have spoken today with the minister of public security. The government is embarrassed by the high profile nature of this case.’

  ‘Particularly since they are in the process of trying to negotiate a more favourable agreement with the World Trade Organisation.’ Li couldn’t keep the cynicism out of his voice.

  The consul-general looked at him sharply. And then he smiled. ‘I see you have also accumulated a little political acumen on your journeys.’ Then his smile faded just as quickly. ‘The minister would like to put an end to this business, once and for all. There is to be a major crackdown in Fujian and Canton. He wants you to put a stop to it at this end. The Americans have been told that you will be entirely at their disposal. But one way or another, the authorities in Beijing want you to cut off the head of the American snake, with or without their help.’

  Chapter Three

  I

  From the twin torches that marked the angle in the stairs leading up the outside of the building to the restaurant, flames danced and dipped in the warm evening breeze. A terrace ran around the semicircular frontage of the Canyon Café and was open to the night, looking out over a panoply of lights on Westheimer toward the sparkling finger of the Transco Tower rising into a black sky.

  Margaret felt the night air like silk on her face and was glad that they had managed to get a table on the terrace, away from the noisy crowds in the dark interior and the Mexican band music that blared out over the speaker system. She sipped on her coyote margarita and enjoyed the sweetness of it passing over the savoury salt crust around the rim of her glass.

  But she had mixed feelings. She had still heard nothing further from Li and was wondering if perhaps he had already returned to Washington. She was flattered by Steve’s unmistakable interest in her — it was a long time since a man had asked her out — but their night was overshadowed by the apprehension that hung over him following his accident in the hangar. She had watched him closely, and he was doing a good job of hiding his anxiety. But occasionally she caught him succumbing to a momentary lapse, and she would have a fleeting glimpse into the deep, dark chasm of his uncertainty.

  Their shared starter arrived. Grilled turkey skewers basted in a rich, smoky barbecue sauce, served with papaya fruit salsa and cucumber-mint dipping sauce over a tossed salad. Steve waggled his eyebrows at her. ‘This is good stuff. I don’t get to eat much Mexican in Maryland.’

  ‘Is that where you live? Maryland?’

  ‘The Office of the Armed Forces Medical Examiner is just outside of DC in Maryland, so I rent up in a little town called Gaithersburg.’

  ‘On your own?’

  ‘Only since my wife took my little girl and ran off to live with a banker down in Alexandria.’ He scratched his head thoughtfully. ‘Did I say banker? Usually I get it wrong. Easy mistake to make.’ Margaret grinned. ‘Anyway, she told me he wore nice aftershave and didn’t come home each night smelling of dead people. Did I mention that he also makes ten times as much money as I do?’

  ‘No competition.’ Margaret smiled.

  ‘None at all.’ Then Steve’s grin faded. ‘Only thing I regret’s my little girl. Don’t get to see much of her these days.’ But he wasn’t about to dwell on it. ‘So how about you?’ he asked quickly.

  ‘What you see is what you get,’ Margaret said.

  ‘Oh, I doubt that. Chief medical examiner of the third largest county in the United States? That’s no mean achievement for a thirty-four-year-old woman. Not to mention two and a half years living in China, working with the Chinese police on some pretty hair-raising stuff.’

  Margaret cocked an eyebrow at him. ‘You’ve been doing your homework.’

  ‘The Internet’s a wonderful thing.’ He waved a finger at her. ‘And I’m sorry about that.’

  ‘About what?’ she asked, taken aback.

  ‘Oh, the eyebrow thing. It’s catching, you know. I never realised I did it myself until I saw an interview I did on TV once.’ He waggled his eyebrows around his forehead. ‘Like two demented hairy caterpillars every time I opened my mouth. After that I took them to eyebrow training, but they still won’t lie down when I tell them.’

  Margaret laughed, and felt a marvellous release of tension in the laughter. She liked Steve a lot. And in the twinkling of his orange-green eyes she could see that he was pleased he had made her laugh.

  ‘So tell me about you and Li Yan.’ He killed her laughter as effectively as he had created it.

  ‘What makes you think there’s anything to tell?’ She was on the defensive now.

  ‘Anyone who’s done their homework would know that you and he had some kind of relationship in China.’ He paused, gauging her reaction carefully. ‘Was it just professional, or…’ He let the ‘or’ hang.

  Margaret hesitated only briefly. It was not something she had discussed with anyone, and there was a whole dam inside her waiting to burst. ‘We were lovers,’ she said and wondered if it was disappointment or disapproval she detected in Steve’s eyes. She knew that in China it was considered a cachet for a Chinese man to have an American lover, but that a Chinese woman who had a relationship with a white man was thought to be a whore. She suspected that Americans might view her in the same light.

  Steve said, ‘But it’s over.’ He didn’t couch it as a question, but that’s what it was.

/>   ‘Yes.’

  He sat back, watching her carefully. ‘Why don’t I believe you?’

  She smiled. ‘Maybe because it’s only over in my head, and not in my heart.’

  ‘I don’t think I understand.’

  She said, ‘You have to realise that life in China is very different, Steve. While they like to say that women hold up half the sky, it is still a society dominated by men. Women are second-class citizens. Even professionals like me.’ She paused. ‘Li Yan never treated me that way, but he was a senior police officer. He was having a relationship with a foreigner. It was frowned on by his superiors. We could not even live together officially without being married. Life was not easy.’ She flicked her hair back over her shoulders, a little self-conscious mannerism. ‘And then there were all the linguistic and cultural differences. Every time a Chinese woman even glanced at Li Yan I would feel vulnerable. How could I compete? There was so much that he couldn’t share with me that he could with a Chinese lover. And then there was the question of commitment. Was I really prepared to spend the rest of my life in China?’ She gave a tiny, sad shrug. ‘I couldn’t. I knew I couldn’t. Just as I knew I couldn’t ask him to give up his country and come to America with me. Whichever way it went, one of us would be a fish out of water.’ She drained her margarita. ‘So I told him it was over, and I came home.’

  The waiter came to take away their starter. With all their talking, they had eaten less than half of it. A waitress brought their entrées. In front of Margaret she placed a plate of flame-grilled shrimp rubbed with chili spices and skewered with vegetables. Steve was having fresh chili tuna topped with an avocado fan and smooth chipotle sauce. The food smelled great, but somehow neither of them had any appetite. The waiter filled their wine glasses. ‘Enjoy,’ he said.