Riding the Snake (1998) (3 page)

Wheeler Sr. had been an investment broker and portfolio analyst who had made it big, eventually opening his own brokerage firm. He had died last year, taking with him Wheeler Jr.'s sole reason for being. There was something exhilarating about being the bad seed son of a domineering, humorless father that lost its thrill when Dear 01' Dad hit Boot Hill. Now all of Wheeler's pranks seemed more desperate than funny. His father's anger had always been the rimshot that saved the joke.

Wheeler started drinking more after his father died, and now, in the morning when he got up, his head was dull as racial humor. His eyes were filled with grain, his stomach always on the edge of revolt. He was approaching middle age and, apart from three years at U
. S. C
. and another two in the Marines, he'd never accomplished anything.

He'd joined the Marine Corps only to fend off his father's threat that he would lose his inheritance for being chucked out of college. Then, just when it looked like he'd straightened out, being accepted for elite Special Forces training, he'd been dishonorably discharged from his unit for fornicating with his Commanding Officer's wife. Since then, he had never finished anything, except for hundreds upon hundreds of bottles of blended Scotch. He'd once read about an old eccentric in the desert who had built a house out of empty beer bottles. If Wheeler had had any architectural ambition, his empties could have built a small city.

It was twelve-thirty and Wheeler's hands were beginning to tremble. It was still a little early, but he moved down the narrow hallway toward the grill, and his first shooter of the day. On the way he passed framed pictures of club pros and golfing celebrities who had achieved recognition or glory on the W
. C. C
. links. As he walked, he glanced through the glass doors of the private dining room that catered lunches for members, and saw his younger brother, Prescott, gathered with five or six businessmen. All of them had yellow pads in front of them, their finished meals pushed off to the side, making notes while Pres lectured. Pres's secretary, Angie Wong, spotted Wheeler, tapped Prescott's shoulder, and whispered. Pres glanced up. His narrow face and intense expression darkened at the sight of his brother. He shook his head slightly as if to say "Don't come in."

JeeZy Pres, I'm not a typhoid carrier, Wheeler thought. But he was ashamed of his younger brother's reaction to him. Wheeler knew he'd been an embarrassment to his dead father. He knew his mother had long ago tired of making excuses for him, and now Pres seemed afraid his older brother might stumble in, vomit on the table, and ruin his business meeting. Before moving on, Wheeler waved at his brother and smiled an apology through the glass door. Then, unexpectedly, Prescott's face softened and, for a moment, Wheeler saw on his brother's narrow features the same look of awe Pres had always given him during their childhood . . . a look of envy and respect that Wheeler hadn't seen in almost sixteen years.

Back then, Pres had thought his big brother could do anything. Wheeler had been Pres's god, his idol. It was a time when if Wheeler had told his little brother to run through fire and jump off the Santa Monica cliffs, Pres would have ended up on the beach with his hair burning. Now things were different. Wheeler was a gravy stain on Pres's huge success. Prescott Cassidy was the family superstar now. At thirty-four, he was arguably among the most important lawyers in Los Angeles. One of the biggest names in the local political spectrum, a huge Democratic Party fund-raiser and power broker, Prescott handled complex legal problems and political deals while Wheeler honked down shooters in the W
. C. C
. grill. Oh well, shit happens.

That look of admiration that Wheeler thought he saw on his brother's face must have been a weird reflection in the glass or bad lighting. Even still, it made him stop . . . made him wonder why things had turned out this way.

He was sitting in the beautiful dining room that overlooked the third fairway, eating alone, when Pres and his secretary, Angie Wong, walked out of the club. Angie was a small, thin Chinese woman in her late forties who never seemed to smile, but had laser intensity and a personality as tough as federal taxes.

Angie looked at him, or through him, and didn't react. Pres never slowed as he moved on with the rest of his party. Pres was always in a hurry, always late to a very important appointment.

Wheeler was looking out the window, his mind far away, when he suddenly heard Pres's voice.

"Wheel?"

He looked up and saw his younger brother. Prescott's narrow face and intense manner hovered restlessly at the edge of the table like a dragonfly over a pond, afraid to land.

"How ya doin', Pres? Big deals, huh?"

Pres shot a look out to the front door where his party was just pulling away in valet-delivered cars. "Yeah, right. Got a minute?"

Wheeler was surprised. Everybody knew time was the big loss leader in the department store of disappointment he was managing. Wheeler had minutes, he had hours, he had years.

His time had become so cheap, it had almost no value except as chronology.

Wheeler motioned to a chair and Pres lowered himself into it. Pres glanced at his big brother and then the look was there again.

Just for a second; just for a flash. It was little Prescott's look from their childhood, an expression that said, Wheel, can you show me how to catch a football? Can you help me learn to skateboard? Can you get her to go out with me? Blue eyes looking at Wheeler Cassidy in worship and wonder; a look he'd once dearly treasured.

And then it was gone. Now Pres was looking down and frowning. A moment of business came next, so Pres could regain control. "I have your check," he said. "If I'd known I was going to see you today, I would've brought it. There are capital gains taxes on the big sale the estate just made on the O
. T. C
. Preferreds, so it's a little less this month than usual. But we had to sell that shit off. The portfolio was overloaded on media stocks." He looked up. "I know you're always running short around the twentieth but the Fed upped the estimated quarterly so I had to hold some back on the account."

"Right. That's okay."

"But if you get pushed, call me. I'll shoot you an advance against your quarterly dividends."

Wheeler lived on the estate money his father had left. It paid out over $180,000 a year, after taxes. But Wheeler lived high and had expensive tastes in women, gambling, and cars. He often ran short and, even with his golf winnings, was sometimes mooching hundreds from friends by the end of the month.

As Wheeler looked at his brother, he saw something else he wasn't used to seeing. He saw tension. It was in and around the eyes, with maybe a tinge of panic. Usually Pres was all business. The white rabbit of the legal profession hurrying out the door, clutching his oversized watch. I'm late, I'm late, for a very important date. Business, of course, not pleasure. Prescott was "happily married" to Elizabeth, the Ice Goddess of charity and consciousness
-
raising. He had a twelve-year-old son, Hollis. Prescott was the eight-by-ten family man in a gold frame.

"Are you okay?" Wheeler asked, because his brother still looked uncharacteristically troubled.

"Uh, yeah, sure. Of course," Prescott smiled, but the smile was the one you give the dentist so he can check your incisors. "Listen, Wheel, I... I wanted to tell you something ... something I haven't said in a long time. . . . It's something I've been thinking about a lot lately."

"Get a job?" Wheeler said, trying to preempt what he suspected was his younger brother's latest attempt to knock him back onto the road of responsibility.

"I wanted to say I . . . that I love you. . . . Sometimes, with all the bullshit, that gets lost. I know things have been difficult since Dad died, but the memories I have of you, the important ones are . . ." He stopped, took a breath, then went on, "You're the reason I made it. I just wanted you to know I haven't forgotten."

Wheeler was instantly choked. Tears rushed into his eyes. He looked at his brother and wondered what to say. He loved him too, but he also hated him. Why did Pres have to be such a damn world
-
beater? Why couldn't he just be a good guy to go drinking with? Why did he always have to be first?

"Remember when you taught me to drive and we took Dad's car and I went too fast on Angeles Crest and lost it?" Pres said unexpectedly.

"Jesus, you were nuts that night," Wheeler contributed to the memory. He'd been sixteen. Pres had been only thirteen. Pres was driving and had slid their dad's new yellow Corvette into the guardrail on the mountain highway, busting the fiberglass front fender, exploding it like fine crystal. The next morning Wheeler had told his father that he had taken the car out alone and had done the damage, which was more or less true. It had been Wheeler's idea. Prescott had always been scared of their father, so Wheeler had taken the hit. Wheeler was grounded for two months, which didn't mean much because he snuck out the upstairs window every night after his father went to bed anyway.

"I just wanted you to know I remember all the great stuff you did for me when we were growing up, and I want you to know that I've always loved you and always respected you. Even now when, when . . ." He didn't finish it but sat there, looking at Wheeler, his hands clasped formally on the table in front of him. "Well, I just wanted to tell you that." He looked at his ten-thousand-dollar watch. "Guess I better go. Got a full calendar this afternoon," the white rabbit said, but he didn't move. He didn't leave the table or rush off. They looked at one another across the W
. C. C
. silverware and crystal. Time slowed, became more valuable. Seconds ticked. Precious seconds, precious even in Wheeler's discount store of failed expectations. They reached out to each other with their eyes and tried to find their childhood.

In the half-minute or so of silence, it was magically recovered. It was okay. They were brothers again. Sort of. And then Prescott said a very strange thing.

"Whatever happens, promise me you'll do the right thing."

Then Pres got up and walked out of the dining room without looking back.

Wheeler was unsettled by the incident.

It was almost as if his brother had been saying good-bye.

Chapter
2.

Fu Hai and Xiao Jie
Zhang Fu Hai awoke as the train lurched violently on a switch-back turn, then rattled and groaned down the east face of the Tianshan range, the huge Mountains of Heaven in northwest China. Shortly after he was awake, a middle
-
aged woman moved unsteadily down the crowded aisle of the car. She was carrying a steaming thermos of kai shui and knocked on the board he was lying on with her knuckles, asking in Mandarin if he wanted tea. He nodded and she poured him a steaming cup, which he paid a few fen for, then she moved on. Fu Hai was traveling "hard sleeper," which, on Chinese trains, meant second class. Only high-ranking political figures, foreign tourists, and wealthy company chiefs could afford "soft sleeper," or first class. He had spent extra money to avoid the uncomfortable "hard seat," or third class, where he would be cramped and have to sleep sitting up. It was worth it. This escape from the Taklamakan Desert had been his goal for almost fourteen years, since he'd been exiled to the boiler room of the No. 3 Silkworm Factory in Khotan for political crimes his father had committed.

His father, Zhang Wei Dong, had been a calligrapher in Beijing and had been turned in by Fu Hai's older brother, Lu Ping, for practicing the "Four Olds," which were forbidden by Chairman Mao. The Four Olds--Old Thoughts, Old Habits, Old Customs, and Old Ideas--were difficult to defend against because they were so general. His father had been taken from their house in Beijing twenty years ago when Zhang Fu Hai had been only seven. He had watched in sorrow as his father had been made to daub his face with black ink and wear the dunce cap of social degradation. He cried as Zhang Wei Dong was led from the house while an angry mob of Communists shouted, "Leniency for those who confess, severity for those who do not!" He had never seen his father again. His older brother, Lu Ping, was rewarded for his act of patriotism with a commission in the Chinese Army and was stationed at a secret nuclear base somewhere in northern China. In one letter to his little sister, Xiao Jie, his brother had bragged that he was helping to develop a nuclear arsenal that would bring great glory to Mother China.

Fu Hai was taken from his mother's house shortly after the letter arrived. It was determined that he was a product of bad parenting by his politically corrupt father--that his mother had fallen into the trap of the "Four Over-dones": Over-indulgence, Over
-
protection, Over-caring, and Over-interference. It was decided that he was a candidate for "reeducation," so Fu Hai was shipped to Khotan, which was a place as close to hell as he could imagine.

Khotan was in the northwestern section of China, near the Pakistan border. The Turkic-speaking natives called Uighurs hated the Chinese. The dusty desert town sat on the east face of Khafa Gumbaz, the Domes of Wrath Mountains, on the edge of the vast Taklamakan Desert. Taklamakan meant "You go in, you don't come out." Fu Hai was never tempted to try.

He had been assigned to work in the black, windowless boiler rooms of the silk factory there. The intense heat was almost unbearable. Fu Hai's job was to make sure the boiling water continued to flow across the huge metal trays on which the silk cocoons were soaked before being spun. The working conditions were slimy and dank, and Fu Hai spent almost fourteen miserable years sweating in that hell-hole. He soon realized that he could not stay in that place much longer. He had seen older laborers who had been in the boiler rooms for fifteen or more years slowly go blind; a blindness, he learned, caused by being made to stare at the white cocoons in the inky blackness, hour after mind-numbing hour, surrounded by steaming silk, screaming spindles, and unbearable heat. In a sense, the boiler room had become a cocoon of political hatred for Fu Hai . . . hatred for Mother China, which, as an innocent child in Beijing, he had once adored. He decided he would find a way, not only to leave Khotan, but to leave China. He would find a way to "Ride the Snake" to America. "Riding the Snake" was the dangerous practice of illegal immigration out of China. The criminal Tongs in Guangzhou and the newly repatriated Colony of Hong Kong provided this service for anyone willing to pay the price. Fu Hai had heard it was exorbitant, over thirty thousand American dollars. A figure so vast he could barely conceive of it. The only way a penniless worker like Zhang Fu Hai could afford it would be to sell himself into slavery to the Tongs.