Peter May - Snakehead

‘Why d’you do that?’

‘Because the guy’s a real sleazeball. He’s been harassing me with suggestive comments ever since I signed a lease on the place. And then I caught him sneaking in and going through my underwear.’

‘So why don’t you just find somewhere else?’

‘Oh, because there’s still six months of the lease to run, and I paid up front. And I didn’t want to be bothered right now with trying to find a new place.’

He looked at her for a long time. Then finally he said, ‘Why do I get the feeling, Margaret, that you’re happy to talk about anything but us?’

‘Because there is no us!’ she snapped, angry that he was forcing her to confront this. And she turned and walked briskly back into the hangar, feeling like she had just inflicted hurt on some poor vulnerable animal who had trusted her. She pulled off her apron and gown, hopping briefly at her table to rip off plastic shoe covers, and headed for the row of sinks at the far end.

She scrubbed her hands and forearms vigorously with anti-bacterial soap as if she thought there might be blood on them, and that it might not come off. After a few moments she turned and saw Steve at the next sink calmly washing his hands.

‘Does this mean I don’t get to take you out to dinner tonight?’ he asked with a wry, resigned smile on his face.

‘Sir!’ The urgency in the call made both of them turn. One of the AFIP investigators was running down the hangar toward them. ‘Sir.’ He stopped in front of them, slightly breathless. ‘We’re outta here.’

Steve frowned. ‘What do you mean?’

‘Just got called back to Washington, sir. Urgent. There’s a flight from Hobby in just under an hour.’

Steve turned to Margaret. ‘Guess that answers my question.’

‘Your presence is required, too, ma’am,’ the investigator said.

Margaret was taken aback. ‘Me? Why?’

‘No idea, ma’am. Guess it’s a need-to-know basis.’

Steve turned to her again, grinning this time. ‘Hey, I know this great little place in Washington…’

Li stood in the car park of the Houston District Office of the Immigration and Naturalisation Service of the United States watching groups of immigrants, mainly Hispanics, gathered under the trees outside the door of the two-storey building on the corner of Greenspoint and Northpoint. Traffic on the Interstate, a couple of blocks away, was a distant rumble. A black uniformed officer approached him.

‘Sir, do you speak English?’ Li nodded. ‘Sir, you cannot hang around this area. Either get in line or move out to the street.’

Li sighed and took out his ID. ‘I’m waiting for Agent Hrycyk,’ he said.

The officer examined his plastic photocard with its US and PRC emblems. ‘Sorry, sir,’ he said, tipping his hat, ‘thought you was an immigrant.’ And he moved off, embarrassed, toward the groups by the door.

Li glanced up at the verdigrised miniature of the Statue of Liberty that stood on a plinth overlooking the car park. Many of the original immigrants who had come to populate this vast country had had to pass beneath the eagle eye of this lady on their approach to Ellis Island. More than two hundred years later, in Texas, they were still having to do the same thing.

Hrycyk came hurrying through the crowds of would-be Americans at the main entrance and flicked Li a look. ‘Let’s get one thing straight,’ he said. ‘You are an observer here. You are not an active participant. If and when I want your help, I will ask.’ And he carried on across the car park to his battered old Volkswagen Santana. He had the driver’s door open before he realised that Li had not followed him. ‘Are you coming or not?’ he called. ‘’Cos if not, I’m quite happy to leave you here.’

Li sighed and walked over to the car and got in the passenger side. Hrycyk started the motor and lit up a cigarette. Li lowered the window on his side.

‘Did I tell you you could open the window?’ Hrycyk growled. ‘I did not tell you you could open the window. It fucks with the air-con. Please close it.’

‘I will if you put out your cigarette,’ Li said evenly.

Hrycyk glared at him, and then stubbed out his cigarette viciously in an overflowing ashtray. ‘I don’t know what gives you people the idea you can come over here and start telling us what to do, but if you think you’re gonna have me dancing to your tune, you got another think coming.’ He jammed the shift into drive, and they lurched forward at speed toward the exit, where an irritated Hrycyk then had to stand on the brakes and wait until there was a gap in the traffic.

On the opposite side of the street rows of single-storey brick buildings advertised passport photos in five minutes. They were doing brisk business, even at this hour of the day. Hrycyk glanced at Li and then followed his gaze. He snorted. ‘Fast food immigration. It’s a goddamned boom industry around here.’

He drove them south in heavy traffic on Interstate 45, turning west on to the 610, connecting eventually with Westheimer and heading into the setting sun toward the jewel in Houston’s shopping crown, the Galleria. They were going, he explained grudgingly, to meet an INS agent who had been working deep under cover in the Chinese community for nearly eighteen months.

‘He’s Chinese, I assume,’ Li said facetiously.

‘Of course he’s fucking Chinese!’ Hrycyk didn’t see the joke. ‘You don’t think we’d send a Caucasian in there with Yul Brynner make-up, do you?’ Li didn’t want to inflame him further by asking who Yul Brynner was. ‘When I say deep cover, I mean deep cover. We haven’t even had contact with this guy for more than three months. It wouldn’t surprise me if he’d gone native on us, switched sides. I wouldn’t trust any of you people as far as I could throw you.’

Li let all of Hrycyk’s aggressive anti-Chinese prejudice slip by him. One day, perhaps, there would be a reckoning. But right now it was not politic. ‘So why are you making contact now?’

‘Why do you think? Ninety-eight dead Chinese in a truck, and the brass in Washington crawling all over the Justice Department demanding results. We don’t want to blow this guy’s cover if we can avoid it. But it’s time for us to know what he knows. And if we have to, we’ll pull him.’

The Galleria was a shopping mall of typically Texan proportions, on three levels and with tentacles spreading out, it seemed, in all directions. It was still jam-packed with early evening shoppers, and Li hurried after Hrycyk past a bewildering display of shops and fast food outlets. They stopped at an open-plan Starbucks coffee shop overlooking a huge ice-rink. Hrycyk looked around as if he expected to see someone there. Then he approached the counter and ordered a cappuccino. He turned to Li and said brusquely, ‘Sorry, they don’t do tea?’

‘I’ll have a white mocha,’ Li said and drew a look of surprise from the INS man. He shrugged. ‘I’ve developed a taste for the stuff.’

‘First Chinese I ever knew that didn’t have his face stuffed in a jar of green tea,’ Hrycyk growled. ‘I suppose you think I’m paying?’

‘Good of you to offer,’ Li said.

They sat at a table by the rail looking down on the ice-rink. A dozen or so kids, watched by proud parents, careened across the ice performing triple salcos with the fearless ease of the young. Their yells of glee echoed up into the arched glass roof fifty feet above them, punctuated by occasional sprinklings of applause.

Hrycyk stuffed his shirt back into his pants where the stretch of his belly had pulled it free, and took out a pack of cigarettes. ‘Any objections?’

Li shook his head.