Peter May - Snakehead

‘Jesus, Li,’ Fuller said. ‘I wouldn’t like to pick a fight with you.’

Li turned and looked at the FBI agent, and then beyond to where Hrycyk stood smoking in the doorway. He had seen them arrive a couple of minutes earlier. ‘Just tell your INS buddy that,’ he said, ‘next time he wants to start getting personal.’

Hrycyk raised a hand of submission. ‘Hey,’ he said, ‘I don’t have to like you to respect you.’ He pulled a pack of cigarettes from his coat pocket. ‘Here, have a smoke. You look like you could do with one.’ And he crossed the room to offer him the pack. Li drew one out and took a long, hard look at Hrycyk. Grey hair scraped back from his receding hairline, a face losing its shape, lined, and puffy from lack of sleep. Pale blue eyes with whites yellowed by nicotine. His shirt, stretched and pulled by his belly, in danger of dragging free of his trousers. ‘What?’ Hrycyk demanded. ‘What are you looking at?’

‘Just trying to figure out where the hell you come from,’ Li said.

‘I’ll tell you where I come from,’ Hrycyk said, bristling. ‘I come from a time when people spoke their minds, said what they thought. Before all this political correctness crap. You may not like it, but I tell it like I see it — and, believe me, I seen a lot. I say what I think. And you get what you see.’ He snapped open his lighter and lit Li’s cigarette.

Li dragged on it through swollen lips and sucked the smoke gratefully into his lungs.

‘Yeah, and what you’ll get is kicked out of the agency if you don’t watch your mouth,’ Fuller said. ‘I happen to know there’s a complaint file this thick on you.’ He held up a hand, stretching thumb and forefinger apart to create a four-inch space. ‘I know, ’cos I’ve seen it.’

Hrycyk turned a hostile eye on him. ‘And wouldn’t you people just love to see another INS man bite the dust.’

Fuller grinned. ‘Take the early retirement, Hrycyk. Life could be tough without a pension.’

Hrycyk turned back to Li. ‘See? That’s what you get in this country now, smart-assed kids telling you what to say and what to think. Used to be a man had a right to freedom of speech. Next thing you know we’ll be copying you people, declaring the People’s Republic of America. Big Brother just around the corner. Then we’ll be comrades, you and I.’ He took another pull at his cigarette and blew smoke at the ceiling. ‘What the fuck happened down there, Li?’

Li told them, in graphic detail, exactly what had happened, just as he had told the homicide detective in his statement forty minutes earlier. They listened in awed silence, and Hrycyk let his cigarette burn down to the tip without taking another draw on it. ‘Jees,’ he said softly. ‘You’re a lucky man to still be alive.’

Fuller said, ‘And you figure they were after your sister?’

Li nodded. He told them about the ma zhai harassing Margaret and Xiao Ling in Houston.

‘Why the hell didn’t you tell us this before?’ Hrycyk wanted to know.

‘I wanted to get her somewhere safe first.’

Hrycyk snorted. ‘Yeah, real safe, wasn’t it?’

‘Why would they want to kill her?’ Fuller persisted.

‘Because she knows something,’ Li said. ‘She must. Something she saw, something she heard…She worked for a few months at the Golden Mountain Club.’

‘High-class whorehouse and gambling den,’ Hrycyk said.

Li said, ‘Apparently all the tong leaders use it, all the top people in Houston’s Chinese underworld.’ He glanced at Hrycyk, reluctant to confess this in his presence. ‘Seems my sister was one of their favourites.’

But Hrycyk was unaware of Li’s discomfort. He was thinking hard. ‘Then they find out she’s your sister,’ he said, ‘and they start getting scared. Because she knows who these people are and they don’t want her telling you.’

‘You talked to her about it?’ Fuller asked.

‘Earlier,’ Li said. ‘Yesterday.’ He shook his head. ‘She wasn’t very forthcoming.’

‘Well, she’s going to have to start coming forth pretty damn quick,’ Hrycyk growled.

Fuller said, ‘Let’s go talk to her now.’

Li checked Xinxin’s room first. Margaret sat against the headboard, Xinxin curled into her lap, fast asleep. She raised a finger to her lips. She looked tired and pallid, with dark rings beneath her eyes, but Xinxin needed the comfort and reassurance, and so she was prepared to sit with her for as long as it took. As he pulled the door shut, Li realised that Hrycyk had been peering over his shoulder. ‘Cute kid,’ he whispered.

‘Cute Chinese kid,’ Li said.

Hrycyk shrugged. ‘Whatever.’ He appeared to be faintly embarrassed, as if Li had discovered a hairline crack in the enamel of his racist image. ‘Kids are kids. They’re just cute.’

Xiao Ling was curled up on top of her bed, fully dressed, dried tears staining her cheeks. She sat up, alarmed, as the three men came into her room.

‘It’s okay,’ Li said. ‘They’re sort of police officers. We need to talk to you about the Golden Mountain Club.’

She pressed her lips together and gave a tiny shake of her head.

‘Oh, yes we are,’ he insisted. ‘Those men came here tonight to kill you because of something you know. We need to find out what that is, because the chances are they’re going to try again.’

She glared sullenly at the three men. ‘What can I tell you?’

‘Just tell us about the club. What it was like. The people you met. The other girls. Anything you can think of. Who ran it, how it worked.’

She drew her hands down her face, steeling herself to remember things she had buried, things she only ever wanted to forget. Her words came in bursts, as she dredged up the memories, and then spat them out fast to escape the nasty taste that came with them. Li translated as she spoke.

‘The owner of the club was from Hong Kong. He was a small man, in his forties, I think. They called him Jo-Jo. I think his name was Zhou. He liked to touch the girls. You know, he never had sex with any of us. But he loved to sit at the bar and chat, and run his hands over a thigh, down an arm. Occasionally he would brush a breast with the back of a hand. He was a toucher. The other girls said he went off to masturbate in his office.’

Li was shocked at this from his sister, and embarrassed to translate it.

Hrycyk chuckled. ‘Know the type,’ he said.

Xiao Ling said, ‘There were bouncers on the door, and young guys who kept order in the club. You know, sometimes people got drunk, maybe got violent with one of the girls, or there would be a fight. And the boys would throw them out. They were all members of the Silver Dragon gang.’

‘ Ma zhai ,’ Li said.

She darted a look in his direction. ‘Yeah, ma zhai .’

‘The ones who followed you in the car yesterday?’

‘I don’t know. Maybe.’

‘Xiao Ling…’ Li warned.

She lifted one surly shoulder and let it drop again. ‘They looked familiar. Probably from the club. There were about twelve or fifteen of them that you would see regularly. And then there was the dai lo …’

‘What the hell’s a dai lo ?’ Fuller asked.

‘The Big Brother,’ Hrycyk said. ‘The gang leader.’ And both Fuller and Li looked at him, surprised. ‘Hey,’ he said, ‘I been around this game a long time.’

Xiao Ling said, ‘His nickname was Badger, because he had this strange white stripe running through his hair, on the right as you looked at him. He said it had been like that since he was a kid. I think he was proud of it.’

‘Should be easy enough to find,’ Hrycyk said. ‘Unless he dyes his hair he’s gonna stick out like a sore thumb.’