Peter May - Snakehead

‘There were lots of ordinary Chinese, and sometimes Vietnamese, who came to the club,’ Xiao Ling went on. ‘Mostly to drink and gamble. Occasionally, if one of them won a lot at cards, he would take one or two of us upstairs. But it was the snakeheads and the uncles, the shuk foo , who had the real money to spend. They usually dressed well and had big fat wallets. The girls always preferred a shetou or a shuk foo because they paid more and tipped well. But a few of them had some pretty unpleasant sexual preferences, and you would try to avoid them. There were some who liked you to hurt them, or wanted to hurt you. Some of them wanted you to piss on them while they jacked off.’ She looked at Li with a sour expression on her face. ‘Men are pretty disgusting, Li Yan,’ she said.

Li’s embarrassment in relaying this to Hrycyk and Fuller was acute. But neither man seemed troubled or surprised by what they were hearing, or aware of his embarrassment.

‘I told you before,’ Xiao Ling said, ‘that I was a favourite. All the important ones had me at one time or another. All the shuk foo , I think, and others. Guests. I would be given as a present, to show respect, or as a mark of subordination. Once to a man they called the ah kung , which I think is Cantonese for “grandfather”.’

There was an immediate tension shared by all three men, but none of them wanted to interrupt her flow, or inhibit her by conveying this as significant. ‘What was he like?’ Li asked casually.

‘The grandfather?’ Xiao Ling pursed her lips and blew a jet of air through them to demonstrate her contempt. ‘Like all the rest. Short and fat, with a big belly and bad breath. They get on top of you and hump for a couple of minutes and then they’re all spent. It’s hard to tell who you’re with.’

‘Anything else?’ Li prompted. ‘Anything else about him you can think of?’

She shook her head. ‘The shuk foo who gave me to him as a gift told me that it was an honour for me to be taken by the ah kung . He said no one else knew that’s who he was. And I was to tell no one or I would be in serious trouble. Then, when he introduced us, he called him something strange. A nickname. I remember thinking it was unusual. And the ah kung nearly struck him. He was very angry and told him never to call him that again.’ She thought back for a moment, shuddering at some unpleasant recollection, and then she said, ‘Yeah, that’s right. He called him Kat. I asked one of the other girls what it meant, and she said it was Cantonese for “tangerine”. You know, like for luck. I thought it was weird.’

‘Who was the shuk foo ?’ Li asked.

Xiao Ling shook her head. ‘I don’t know his name. But he was always around the club. ‘You’d need to ask the dai lo . He was Badger’s uncle.’

The Golden Mountain Club sat in a corner of Ximen Plaza, flanked on either side by rows of shops. Mona’s Skin Care, Mountain Optical, Old China Fast Food. A billboard tacked to the exterior advertised, in Chinese characters, John P. Wu, Dentist— Dentista . Immediately next door was a Vietnamese restaurant boasting dancing and karaoke. The entrance to the Golden Mountain Club itself sat back in the shade of a covered walkway. A couple of felony notices in English and Spanish were pasted to the smoked glass of the door. A sign read: SMOKING PERMITTED WITHIN. Which brought a smile to Li’s face. The idea of a non-smoking Chinese club was risible.

They had been watching the club from Hrycyk’s beat-up old Santana on the far side of the plaza for nearly three hours. It had opened shortly after midday, and a steady flow of customers had followed the first staff — a dozen or so young to middle-aged men wearing suits and ties beneath overcoats that were superfluous in the midday heat of a Texas fall, several girls with short skirts and painted faces, miscellaneous youths in jeans and sneakers. You could tell the staff from the customers. The staff all had dead eyes and a reluctant gait. The customers had an air of anticipation about them, a sense of optimism.

Reluctantly, Li had left Xiao Ling at the house in Georgetown, protected by two armed police officers. She had refused to accompany them to the morgue where Margaret had made a positive identification of one of Li’s attackers — the one who had made the slit-throat sign to her from the passenger seat of the white Chevy. He was the one Li had wrestled the gun from the previous night, blowing away one half of his face in the ensuing struggle.

Now he, Fuller and Hrycyk were going after the dai lo known as Badger. It was a straight line of connection from dai lo to shuk foo to ah kung . The problem, they knew, would be in persuading Badger to squeal. There were codes of honour and loyalty here that law enforcement officers had been unable to break in thousands of years.

It was nearly three when they saw the unmistakable white stripe through the dark hair of a young Chinese wearing a black leather jacket. He was walking across the plaza with the swagger of someone in possession of absolute self-confidence. His hands were pushed into the pockets of tight designer jeans, and he wore soft green suede shoes. His white tee-shirt was emblazoned with the logo of some American heavy metal band. The ubiquitous cigarette dangled from his lips. He swung open the door of the Golden Mountain Club and waltzed in like he owned the place.

Fuller was set to move there and then, but Hrycyk stopped him. The old immigration hand had been here many times before. ‘Give him time to settle,’ he said. ‘Time to have a beer or two. Time to relax. We’re not so likely to lose him that way. We go in now, he’s still buzzing. Physically, mentally alert. And let me tell you, Agent Fuller, I’ve had it with chasing people up alleys. I’m too old for that kinda shit.’

So they waited another half-hour. Li and Hrycyk smoked more of Hrycyk’s cigarettes. ‘First stop, you’re buying some of your own,’ Hrycyk kept saying.

Fuller, full of impatience and irritated by the constant smoking, kept the window wound down at his side. ‘Next time,’ he said, ‘we bring along a HEPA mask so I can breathe.’

Li, sitting in the back, kept his own counsel and said nothing. Even if they were successful in pulling in the dai lo , he had grave doubts about how much, if anything, they would learn from him.

Hrycyk turned to him, and out of the blue said, ‘You were kidding me, right? About this heap being built in China?’

Li shook his head solemnly. ‘Rear off-side window winder always breaks off on them.’

Hrycyk looked at the broken window winder on the rear off-side window and narrowed his eyes. ‘You already clocked that,’ he said.

Li shrugged. ‘Maybe. Maybe not.’

‘Shit,’ Hrycyk said. ‘I’m trading this wreck in first chance I get.’ He opened the driver’s door. ‘Time to go and get that little Oriental bastard!’

Inside the main door there was a small reception area with a desk and a gold 3D profile of the United States mounted on the wall behind it. It was gloomy here, subdued red lighting, smoked glass doors turning day outside into night. A flunky in a suit looked up, startled. ‘Hey,’ he said, ‘this is private club. Members only.’

Hrycyk pushed a warrant in his face. ‘Picked up my membership this morning,’ he said. ‘From a judge downtown.’ And he flipped open his wallet to show him his badge. ‘INS.’

Fuller waved his badge at him, too. And Li held up his maroon Public Security ID. ‘Beijing Municipal Police,’ he said. ‘CID, Section One.’ Which had a great deal more effect than either of the other two. The flunky paled. He reached forward under the desk, and Fuller grabbed his arm.