Peter May - Snakehead

Hrycyk lit up. ‘By the way, we found out who owned the truck. It was bought five days ago by a company which was only registered in Mexico City the week before. The names on the registration are phony, of course. No way of tracing them.’ He took a long slug of his cappuccino and a deep draw on his cigarette, then glanced at his watch.

‘So what are we doing here?’ Li asked, sipping at the hot sweet chocolate-coffee mixture.

‘You ever seen a Chinese in a Starbucks?’ Hrycyk asked.

‘You’re looking at one,’ Li said.

‘Jesus Christ, apart from you!’ Hrycyk’s patience with Li was wearing thin.

Li thought about it. He regularly drank at a Starbucks in Georgetown, but the only Asians he had ever seen in there were second- or third-generation Americans. Chinese, as a rule, did not drink coffee. ‘Guess not,’ he said.

‘You see?’ Hrycyk pointed an accusing finger at him. ‘That’s the thing about you people. You think you’re so fucking superior. You come to America, make no attempt to integrate. You take over a corner of whatever city you end up in, call it Chinatown and turn it into the place you just came from. That’s why it’s safe to meet our man here. Because the Chinese hardly ever leave Chinatown, and they don’t drink coffee. Oh, sure, you’ll try it sometime, but you always turn up your noses. ’Cos it’s not Chinese. It’s too goddamned American!’

Li looked at Hrycyk with an intense dislike. Conveniently the INS agent appeared to have forgotten he was sitting drinking coffee with a Chinese who liked the stuff. ‘It’s funny,’ he said, ‘how everything “American” seems to come from somewhere else.’

Hrycyk glared at him. ‘What do you mean?’

‘Well, that cappuccino you’re drinking…isn’t that Italian? And isn’t the coffee itself probably Colombian?’ He paused to let Hrycyk stew on this for a moment, then added, ‘And isn’t Hrycyk a Polish name?’

‘Ukrainian,’ Hrycyk growled.

‘ Very American,’ Li said.

Hrycyk thought about a comeback. But it was either too strong or not clever enough, and he clearly decided against it. He looked at his watch again. ‘Bastard’s late,’ he said. ‘He should have been here waiting for us.’ The air fibrillated with the distant sound of Hrycyk’s cellphone and he fumbled in his pocket to retrieve it. He snapped it open and barked, ‘Hrycyk,’ into the mouthpiece. He listened intently for several moments, then said, ‘Shit,’ and flipped the phone shut. He looked at Li. ‘Our undercover man is late in more ways than one.’

Yu Lin lived in a terraced pink brick condominium on Ranchester, in the heart of suburban Chinatown. Living accommodation was on the second level, up green-painted metal stairs. Several squad cars, a paramedic van, a forensics vehicle and other, unmarked cars, were crammed into the small parking area out front. A large crowd of Asian onlookers had gathered in the street, demonstrating that indefatigable Chinese quality of curiosity. Flashing police lights cut through the twilight, illuminating dark eyes and patient faces.

Hrycyk drew his Santana in under a dusty tree and Li followed him as he brandished his badge and pushed his way through the crowd of police officers at the foot of the stairs. They clattered up the steps, turning left on the balcony and along to the open door of what had been Yu’s apartment. It comprised a small open-plan kitchen-living area and one tiny bedroom. Yu was in the bedroom, sprawled on his back across a bed coloured dark red by his blood. He had been hacked almost to pieces. Hrycyk looked at him dispassionately. ‘That was careless,’ he said softly.

The apartment was full of police officers and medics. Li had half-expected to find Margaret there, but of course she was otherwise occupied. A pathologist from the Medical Examiner’s office was examining the body, the flash of his photographer’s camera throwing the scene into bleak relief. The lead homicide officer shook Hrycyk’s hand and said, ‘Doc thinks it was a machete. Maybe several. He’s counted thirty-six wounds so far.’

‘Who reported it?’ Hrycyk asked, and Li realised that racist though he might be, Hrycyk was nobody’s fool. He had gone straight to the key question.

‘His girlfriend found him.’ The homicide man nodded toward the living room. ‘She’s out there. Doesn’t speak a word of English. She was hysterical, apparently. It was a neighbour who called it in.’

Li leaned into Hrycyk and said quietly, ‘Does she know who he was?’

Hrycyk shook his head. ‘I doubt it.’

‘Do you want me to speak to her?’

Hrycyk hesitated. It probably stuck in his craw, but he didn’t have much choice. ‘Go ahead,’ he said curtly.

Li made his way back into the living room where a slight, long-haired girl sat on the sofa. She could only have been eighteen or nineteen and there was very little flesh on her bones. A female police officer sat beside her holding her hand. Li nodded to the officer who stood aside to let him sit next to the girl.

‘Do you want to tell me what happened?’ he said in Mandarin.

The girl looked at him for the first time, startled. Fear was written all over her face. She drew back. ‘Who are you?’

‘I’m a police officer,’ Li said. He took her hand gently in both of his. ‘No one’s going to hurt you. No one’s going to make you do or say anything you don’t want to. Okay?’

She nodded, reassured by his tone and his manner. ‘Okay.’

‘Have you known Yu Lin for long?’

‘Couple of months,’ she said.

‘And you don’t speak any English.’

‘No.’

‘How long have you been in America?’ Li asked. She cast him a look of concern. ‘It’s alright,’ he said. ‘I won’t tell them . It doesn’t matter a damn to me if you’re illegal or not.’

‘Eight months,’ she said. ‘I came with my brother. My uncle is with one of the tongs here in Houston. He paid our shetou , and now we work for him. Already my brother is a dai lo , you know, a gang leader.’

Li nodded. ‘And Yu Lin?’

‘I met him at the club where I work. But my brother doesn’t like me seeing him. We are Fujian. He is Taiwanese. My brother says he is not a real Chinese.’

Li flicked his head toward the bedroom. He said, ‘Do you think your brother did this?’

Her bottom lip quivered for a moment, like jelly on a spoon, and then her face crumpled and she burst into tears. ‘I don’t know,’ she said. ‘I don’t know.’

‘Hey,’ he said. ‘Take it easy.’ And he put both his arms around her and she pressed her face into his chest, and he felt the sobs shake her fragile frame. There was nothing, he knew, that he could do for her. Her lover had been hacked to death. Her brother was shaping up as a suspect. It would not be long before the authorities discovered that she was an illegal alien, and she would be hauled up before the immigration court and threatened with repatriation. Her American Dream was very quickly turning into a nightmare.

He nodded to the female officer who came to offer comfort in his place as he gently disentangled himself. He found Hrycyk outside on the balcony, leaning on the rail smoking a cigarette. Hrycyk turned a pensive gaze on him. ‘Well?’

‘Looks like Yu got himself into conflict with the girl’s brother,’ Li said. ‘Could be that simple.’

‘Or it could be that he’d been rumbled and they decided that he knew too much.’

‘That’s possible, too,’ Li said. ‘In which case you’ve got a leak in the agency.’

Hrycyk straightened up, bridling. ‘What the hell d’you mean?’

‘It’s a bit of a coincidence that they should decide to take him out the very day he’s scheduled to break cover and meet up with you. I mean, how would they know that?’