Peter May - Snakehead

‘Ma zhai,’ Margaret said, still with no idea what it meant. But Xiao Ling nodded.

Margaret took a left into William C. Harvin Boulevard. Flanked by trees and puddles in sprawling parking lots, she felt the almost overwhelming relief of getting on to home territory. At the end of the boulevard, in the middle of the road opposite the entrance to the Joseph A. Jachimczyk Forensic Center, she saw the glass security booth with the silhouettes of two armed officers inside it. She rounded it, cutting left across the central reservation and into the car park on the south side of her office building. There was a space there reserved for the chief medical examiner. She drove into it and cut the engine. For a moment she just sat there, and then leaned forward to rest her forehead on the steering wheel. Her legs and hands were trembling. Xiao Ling was looking at her in a state of high anxiety. She had no idea that they were safe here. Margaret exhaled slowly, and then took a long, deep breath and sat up. As she opened the door and stepped out on to the wet tarmac, she saw the Lincoln and the Chevy pull up on the other side of the boulevard.

‘Oh, my God!’ she whispered, almost frozen to the spot by fear as the car doors opened, and four young Chinese in dark suits stepped out on to the road. She flicked a glance at Xiao Ling who had climbed out of the car and stood on the far side of the Bronco looking at them, a creature immobilised by fear, capable neither of action nor reaction. Her hair was streaked down her face by the rain, her dress soaked already and clinging to her slight frame.

The security guards in their glass booth were engaged in some private conversation involving much laughter. They were oblivious to what was going on outside.

The four Chinese simply stood there in the rain, their car doors wide open, looking across at Margaret and Xiao Ling. They gave no indication of wanting to do anything other than stare, and something in Margaret finally snapped.

‘What the hell do you want?’ she screamed through the rain. And she started across the car park toward them. Her first few hesitant steps turned into a brisk walk and then, as all four Chinese turned and got back into their cars, a positive run. Doors slammed shut as she sprinted through the downpour, and even as she made it to the boulevard the Lincoln pulled away from the far side, followed by the Chevy, and they headed off at speed toward the junction with Old Spanish Trail.

Margaret stood, dripping, on the sidewalk, tears of rage and fear streaming down her face. She felt almost as if she had been violated by their silent intimidation and frustrated by her inability to confront them. She knew what she had done was crazy. What if they had simply pulled out guns and shot her? And yet, she also knew that if you didn’t confront your fears then they could crush you.

‘You alright, ma’am?’ It was one of the security guards calling over from the shelter of his booth.

‘No thanks to you,’ she shouted, and turned and strode back to where Xiao Ling stood waiting for her, marvelling either at her bravery or her stupidity.

Giant windows threw long arches of light across the marble floor. White pillars rose high into a vaulted ceiling lined with guastavino tile. Where once the smoke and steam and shrill whistle of freight and passenger trains had filled its vastness, only three solitary sets of footsteps now echoed across the concourse of what had been the elegant Union Station. The tracks beyond the terminal were long gone, replaced by a diamond of grass, the rumble of wheel on rail supplanted by the thwack of leather on wood and the roar of forty thousand baseball fans. Designed by the firm that built the Grand Central Station in New York City, and with a one-time reputation as the finest station in the South, this monument to the heyday of the American railroad was now home to the Houston Astros. Minute Maid Park.

A uniformed security officer sat at a shiny mahogany desk right in the centre of the concourse. She turned a smile as bright as sunshine on Li, Fuller and Hrycyk. ‘Can I help y’all?’

Fuller said, ‘We have an appointment with Councilman Soong.’

Soong himself came down to take them up to his suite. He was a large man in every sense. He had an expansive personality and an expanded waistline, a very round, smooth face and a thick head of neatly trimmed wavy black hair shot through with streaks of silver. Incongruously, he was wearing sneakers, a pair of Wrangler jeans and a red leather Astros baseball jacket. Solemnly he shook everyone’s hands. ‘Welcome, gentlemen. I am very pleased you can make it.’ Then he grinned and waved his arm around the concourse. ‘Impressive, yes? Restored to all its former glory.’ He pushed open a tall glass door and took them into the stadium. To their left, a long corridor ran the length of the original terminal building, arches opening out on to the baseball field below. Before them, the field itself glistened in the rain beneath three tiers of seats rising into an angry-looking sky, puddles gathering in the red blaize that circled the mound. ‘They gonna close the roof, I think,’ Soong said. ‘Too much rain no good for grass.’

‘Jees,’ Hrycyk whispered in awe. ‘I’ve never seen them close the roof before.’

Soong beamed at him. ‘You are baseball fan, Mistah Hrycyk?’

Hrycyk shrugged, suddenly self-conscious. ‘Yeah, I go to the games sometimes. When I can.’

‘Then you must be my guest next season,’ Soong said. ‘I can arrange seat for you in enclosure.’ He pointed to a small enclosed area of seats immediately behind where the batsman faced the pitcher.

‘Wow,’ Hrycyk said, forgetting his reserve. He was like a kid with a candy bar. ‘That’s where all the celebs sit.’

Soong beamed. ‘It cost twenty thousand dollar to buy seat there. And two hundred dollar a game. Roughly seventeen thousand a year. In thirty years you pay more than half a million dollar for one seat.’ He paused for effect. ‘I got three.’

Li looked at Hrycyk. The INS agent might dislike the Chinese, but when it came to baseball he had no problem accepting Chinese hospitality.

They heard the whine and hum of a motor, and the smooth sound of gears engaging through syncromesh.

‘Yuh,’ Soong said. ‘They close the roof.’

They followed him out on to the near terracing, where they had a view across the field to the arched walkway they had just passed through. Above it, on eight hundred feet of track, stood a full-size replica vintage locomotive painted black and orange and red, the glass towers and skyscrapers of downtown Houston rising into the sky behind it, like the painted backdrop of a theatre set.

Soong laughed. ‘Owner of team pay one and a quarter million dollar out of own pocket to install train,’ he said. ‘It run along track, blowing whistle and letting off steam every time Astros score home run. It’s fun.’

Beyond it, set into the far side of the stadium, the roof was starting to close. It comprised two massive arced sections, one overlapping the other and supported along the open side on glass-panelled scaffolding more than two hundred feet high which ran on rails parallel to the train line. Through the windows of a small control cabin at the base of the scaffolding, they could see the engineer controlling the motors that closed the roof. The cabin moved along the rail with the scaffolding, overtaking the train as the first section stopped halfway and the overlap continued toward the near side of the stadium, above where they stood. Although the whole structure was designed with toughened glass panels to let in as much light as possible, the sky was almost black now, and the engineer switched on the floodlights from his little control room, washing the entire stadium with an unnaturally bright light.