Peter May - Snakehead

‘Tangerine?’ And he laughed. ‘This is ve-ery strange name.’

‘You never heard of him, then?’ Hrycyk asked.

Soong pursed fat lips and shook his head. ‘Sorry. Kat associated with good luck at spring festival. I never heard of anyone with name like this. What he do?’

Fuller said, ‘We believe he’s been funding and organising the trade in illegal Chinese immigrants across the Mexican border. The head of the snake.’

‘And you think Guan Gong know who he is?’

‘We know he knows,’ Li said. ‘And we have a witness who can identify them both.’

The dark, secret pools darted in Li’s direction. ‘Who?’

‘A prostitute,’ Hrycyk said. ‘From the Golden Mountain Club. A gift from one to the other.’

Soong’s gaze never left Li. ‘Your sister,’ he realised.

‘That’s right,’ Li said. ‘Someone tried to kill her last night. To shut her up. But they were too late.’

Soong shook his head and snorted noisily. For a moment, Li thought he was going to spit on the floor. But he had been in America long enough to sublimate the instinct and swallowed instead. ‘I am sorry,’ he said, ‘that such things should happen in our community. You must find this snake and cut off its head.’

Hrycyk said, ‘So where’ll we find Guan Gong?’

‘At his restaurant.’ Soong checked his watch. ‘For sure. He always there in the afternoon.’

Li reached out and caught his wrist. ‘Nice ring,’ he said in Mandarin, turning Soong’s hand over so that a large gold ring on the middle finger was facing up. It was set with a shaped oval of engraved amber.

Soong drew his hand away. ‘It is my prize possession,’ he said. ‘A gift from my father. It once belonged to the Empress Dowager Cixi.’

‘Worth a lot of money, then,’ Li said.

‘Priceless,’ Soong responded. ‘I raised the money for my journey to the United States on the strength of it.’

‘You know,’ Li said, ‘that the smuggling of artifacts out of China is a capital offence.’

Soong smiled. ‘Then it is lucky for me that we are no longer in China.’

Li smiled back. ‘Lucky. Yes.’ He paused. ‘What’s engraved on it?’

Soong ran a thumb over the stone. ‘I’ve often wondered,’ he said. ‘Sadly time has all but worn it away.’

‘May I?’ Li held out his hand, and Soong reluctantly offered him his, so that he, too, could run a thumb over the engraving. Soong’s hand was hot and damp. The amber, under Li’s thumb, was cool, the engraver’s work worn away almost to nothing. Li felt Soong’s tension. He said, ‘It is not often one gets to touch history.’ He ran his thumb lightly over it again. ‘Feels like it might have been a Chinese character. It is a pity we’ll never know its meaning.’

Soong smiled and took his hand back. ‘Indeed.’

‘Are you people going to let us in on this conversation or not?’ Hrycyk said, irritation clear in his voice.

‘Just admiring Councilman Soong’s ring,’ Li said, smiling and holding the gaze of the Cantonese. And, then, as if snapping out of a trance, added, ‘We had better go and talk to Lao Chao.’

Hrycyk drove them west along Elgin, through the black ghetto area of east central Houston. Rotting wooden shacks with crudely patched roofs sat behind lushly overgrown and untended gardens. All manner of flora reached for the sky through cracks in the sidewalk. The road was pitted and potholed, and each junction was punctuated by groups of disenchanted black youths, hands sunk deep in empty pockets, haunted eyes watching traffic. Ancient rusting cars limped across intersections, holed exhausts rasping fumes into the sticky afternoon, rap music belting from open windows. Li gazed thoughtfully from the back of the Santana. He was shocked by the poverty. They might have been in Africa, a shanty town on the edge of some Third-World city, instead of the fourth-largest city of the richest country in the world. He lifted his eyes and saw the gleaming tower blocks of downtown Houston rising above the deprivation, almost taunting, a constant reminder to those who lived in the ghetto that the American Dream came true for some and not for others.

Lightning flashed in a brooding sky, and moments later the air shook with the sound of thunder. And the rain came, suddenly and with such force that it raised a mist off the surface of the road. Worn wipers scraped and smeared their way back and forth across Hrycyk’s windshield.

Li said, ‘I guess the FBI will have a fat file on Councilman Soong.’

Fuller glanced back at him. ‘What’s your interest in Soong?’ he asked noncommittally.

Li shrugged. ‘I’d be interested to see the extent of his business dealings.’

‘That’s a matter of public record,’ Fuller said.

‘Yes, but it’s what’s not on the public record that interests me,’ Li said. ‘You must have some kind of file on him.’

Fuller said, ‘I’ll check.’

Hrycyk laughed. ‘Of course the FBI have got a file on him. They’re just not going to show it to you , that’s all.’ He glanced at Fuller. ‘Hell, they probably wouldn’t even let me see it.’

Fuller said nothing.

They turned off Elgin onto Dowling and headed north under the interstate into the city’s old Chinatown area, block after block of low industrial units peppered with restaurants and the occasional Asian goods store. The Green Dragon Restaurant sat on the corner of Dallas and Polk, an ornately carved Chinese façade of intertwining dragons on an otherwise featureless brick square. Hrycyk bumped the Santana into an empty parking lot and they climbed the front steps to glass double doors flanked by hanging red lanterns. The lobby inside was in darkness except for lights from fish tanks lining one wall. Air bubbled and glooped through murky waters, and strange fish came nosing against the glass to get a look at the newcomers. The restaurant beyond was filled with empty tables set for evening meals. The rattle of pans and the sound of raised voices came from unseen kitchens somewhere in the back. A girl in a gold lamé qipao drifted out of the gloom and looked at them curiously. ‘We are not open yet,’ she said.

Hrycyk showed her his ID. ‘We’re here to see Mr. Lao Chao,’ he said.

‘One moment. I tell him.’ And she crossed to the reception counter and lifted a phone. She dialled and listened, and then hung up. ‘So sorry. He is speaking on telephone right now. You wait, okay?’

They stood around for a couple of minutes, Li and Hrycyk smoking, while the girl pretended to sort menus on the counter. ‘You wanna try again?’ Hrycyk growled at her eventually.

‘Sure.’ She lifted the phone and redialled and stood for a good half minute. She shrugged, pushing up painted eyebrows and wrinkling her forehead. ‘Now he no answer.’

A single, dull crack sounded from somewhere in the building. The unmistakable report of a gun.

‘Jesus!’ Hrycyk stabbed his cigarette into an ashtray. ‘Where’s his office?’

The girl looked frightened. ‘Upstairs.’

They ran up a double flight of carpeted stairs to a long corridor running over the restaurant. It was dark, and they couldn’t find a light switch. But faint yellow light seeped out from beneath a doorway halfway along its length. Fuller got there first, gun in hand, and threw the door open. Li was at his shoulder as the door swung in to reveal a large office with flock wallpaper and a red patterned carpet which made it impossible to tell if there was blood on it. There was plenty on the big mahogany desk though, pooling around the head of Guan Gong, where he lay slumped across it, a gun in his hand, a hole in his face, and the back of his head blown away where the bullet had made its exit.