Riding the Snake (1998) (39 page)

Two hours later, he died. Then, in the middle of the night, the hangar was opened and they were all loaded onto two stake trucks and taken over dirt roads for several hours to a dock. There they were loaded aboard the Golden Hind.

It was here that the worst part of the journey began. The Chinese peasants he was in charge of spoke many different languages. They huddled like children on the deck of the rusting trawler. The captain was Mexican and very drunk. There were three crew members; two were Koreans and constantly ate kimchi, a hateful Korean habit. The odor came out through their sweat glands, making them reek horribly. The third crewman was a surly Japanese with tattoos all over his body. Fu Hai could not speak or communicate with any of them. The Snake Riders had no place to sleep and had to share the few bunks below. Because Fu Hai was a Chin Lo vanguard and was the leader, he was given his own bunk, but he hated being belowdecks in the hot, smelly quarters, and gave it up to others who were unable to sleep outside in the wind and ocean spray.

The Golden Hind had left port and chugged north. The one propeller pushed them along slowly. The boat rolled in the heavy sea. Everyone, including Fu Hai, got seasick. As he leaned over the rail and vomited into the ocean, his taped wound ached miserably.

Suddenly the engine stopped and they were rolling in the swells off the coast of Southern California. Fu Hai was on deck, looking at a shiny white speedboat moving toward them fast, bouncing off the waves. He waited as the boat got nearer and the two men aboard threw lines over to the surly crew. A slender man climbed out of the speedboat's passenger seat and came aboard the Golden Hind. Fu Hai moved through the crowd of Snake Riders, across the deck to where the man was standing.

"I am in charge here," Fu Hai said in Mandarin, but the man spoke no Mandarin, so Fu Hai switched to broken Fukienese, which he had learned in Khotan. The man introduced himself and said he was called Dry Dragon. His face was swollen, as if he had recently been beaten.

"We will be out with a large boat to get you tonight," Dry Dragon said.

Fu Hai didn't think he could stay on the rolling, rusting Golden Hind another minute. "Is it not possible to get off sooner? There are some infants whose mothers have gone dry. They have not eaten in several days," he said. "There is almost no water."

"I wish I could honor your request, but for safety we must wait until long after dark to come ashore. I will try to accomplish it as early as possible." He was speaking to Fu Hai with great respect, so Fu Hai nodded, proud to be a member of the powerful Chin Lo Triad from the City of Willows.

The speedboat left and Fu Hai stood at the rail, watching. He knew he was close to the end of his journey. Somewhere, not far to the east, was the coast of California. He would live like a Party official in America. He would send for his once beautiful sister. He would nurse her back to health. He would accomplish everything he had set out to do.

If Fu Hai hadn't felt so seasick, he would have been very happy.

Chapter
35.

T. for Tyrone

There weren't nearly enough chairs in Rick Verba's overcrowded office. Wheeler and Tanisha ended up standing, because he was a civilian and had no business being there to begin with, and she was the lowest-ranking municipal employee in the room. Verba had given his desk over to Deputy Chief Gene Pitlick from Parker Center. Pitlick was tall, angular, and bald. He had brought with him two uniformed captains from Major Crimes: Captain Dan Lamansky, head of Administrative Affairs, and Captain Justin Meyers, head of Press Relations. Seated next to that parade of protocol was Captain Verba, and to his right was Al Katsukura, primary detective on the Ray Fong/Prescott Cassidy/ Angela Wong murder cases. Judge Alan Hollingsworth was in a wooden chair, all but forgotten in this sea of blue.

The most space in the room was taken up by T. Cameron Jobe, coal-black and handsome. He seemed to be constantly aware of the impression he made. Cameron was a strutter. He wore a very expensive, well-tailored suit which Wheeler would have gladly put in his own closet full of European labels. His tie was pearl-gra
y w
ith almost no pattern. It lay neatly against his crisp white English linen shirt. He projected arrogance, and Wheeler hated him on sight. Tanisha knew in five minutes what he was: a consummate politician who used both his black complexion and his Harvard education for maximum effect. She had found out the T. stood for Tyrone. He'd been born in the Compton ghetto, but now acted more like the crown prince of an African nation. He had swept into the office ten minutes earlier, with his two White female paralegals, and had immediately taken the unstated position that nothing was going to happen unless he fully endorsed it. Wheeler and Tanisha had already taken him through the whole story, starting with Prescott's and Angela's murders and ending with the shootout at the Westin coffee shop. Cameron Jobe was now holding the two documents: one taken from the Triad headquarters in the City of Willows, and the other transcribed from Prescott's dash cassette. He was looking from one document to the other, his magnificent face arranged in a theatrical, puzzled frown. "The attempted assassination in the Westin restaurant was because of these?" he finally asked.

"That's what we believe," Wheeler said, trying hard to keep the edge out of his voice.

"Mr. Cassidy, this is a police matter. As much as you would like to contribute, I'm more interested in the opinion of the police professionals." He turned and looked at Tanisha. "Go ahead, Detective."

"What he said," she replied.

For a moment, the mask on T. Cameron Jobe's face slipped slightly and the two ghetto children traded eye-fucks straight from the corner of 103rd Street.

Cameron finally looked over at Judge Hollingsworth. "And you support this epic story, Judge?"

"Yes, I do."

"Okay," Cameron said, "if you're correct, then what we're looking at is a situation with heavyweight political overtones. You're talking about Congressional bribes involving powerful U
. S
. politicians. It's also got serious multinational implications."

"Does all this bullshit mean you're about to pussy out?" Wheeler challenged.

"Wheeler, that will be quite enough," his uncle Al said sternly.

"I've had people dying all around me for two weeks. Hell yes, this is big and full of international danger! Does that mean we're gonna just cover our asses?"

"You obviously haven't spent much time trying to make headway in the treacherous corridors of government," Cameron shot back. "There are a few important bases that need to be hit before we run off on something this complex and potentially explosive. You've got U
. S
. Senators on this list." He waved the document at the room full of cops. "Including Senator Arnold White, who is Chairman of the Foreign Relations Committee. You have any idea how many phone calls he has to make before this whole mess gets classified as a foreign security matter and all of us are bombed into career oblivion?"

"Who the fuck cares!" Wheeler said, stepping forward. He was so angry he could barely keep his voice from shaking. "This isn't about your fucking career, it's about justice. It's about solving Prescott's and Angela's murders. All we have to do is break the windows and let the world press sort out the assholes. You wanna stand around and debate protocol? We've gotta bust this local Triad headquarters and search the place for murder weapons. You've got the two bullets out of my car. You've got the ones from Ray Fong's body. You can run ballistics, or whatever it is you do. The place is probably full of undocumented aliens or immigrants with doctored passports. Make some trouble for these guys, get 'em playing defense, maybe one of them talks. You wait much longer, everything and everybody's gonna disappear."

The room was quiet.

"Mr. Cassidy, I understand your anger," Captain Verba said, "but Cameron's right. We don't want to end up just making hash here. This thing is jurisdictional^ complicated. We need the right probable cause or they'll lock up our search in court. We need a valid warrant to go through Triad headquarters, and the jurist who signs it is gonna have his ass way over the line."

"I'll sign it," Judge Hollingsworth said. "I'm set to retire in a year--they can't do much to me."

Then, almost like spectators at a tennis match, all heads simultaneously turned to Cameron.

"You think I'm playing politics," Cameron said, "and you're right. It's only because I've been wrapped up in this kind of thing before. If everything you're saying is true, we're gonna be in a shit
-
storm from Washington. We're going to have a squad of raincoats from the National Security Council in here on the next Con Air flight. These assholes will be grabbing everything. After N
. S. C
. gets through closing embarrassing loopholes, you people are all gonna be standing in your underwear, pleading for help. I'm gonna be washed out because 1 didn't come in with unbeatable jurisdictional control. Judge Hollingsworth is a state judge. This is most certainly a federal, as well as an international, crime. That brings in the spooks from CIA. You haven't lived until you've had a jurisdictional beef with those guys."

"My brother's murder is a Los Angeles homicide," Wheeler shot back. "He was killed with an acupuncture needle through the heart, in his office in Century City, California. His secretary was sliced up like a honey-baked ham in Torrance, California. I'm no lawyer, but if those aren't state crimes, I'd like to know why."

"Why can't we seek an injunction against Wo Lap Ling and file Prescott's and Angela's murders in Judge Hollingsworth's court?" Tanisha asked. "If Judge Hollingsworth won't transfer the case over to the federal court, how can they beat his jurisdiction?"

"Because you don't have enough evidence to get a murder conviction on this Wo Lap guy for conspiracy, and even if you did, the Feds will pull every string in Sacramento," Cameron said. "They'll have an ex parte meeting with the Chief Justice of the California Supreme Court. They'll get him to dismiss the case, with a decision to transfer jurisdiction over to the federal government, terminus ad quern." Off their looks, he translated, "The end . . .

But there won't be an end, 'cause forty corrupt Congressmen are going to fall on the fumble and we won't sort it out for fifty years."

"If you agree to file the charge against Wo Lap Ling, I think I can hold the Feds off," Judge Hollingsworth said. "At least I can slow them down. I can set up a crack media team and we'll help the national press vet it. Tempus omnia revelat." He smiled at Cameron before translating, "Time reveals everything. We'll leak anything to the press that helps us. That'll keep the Feds honest, because once this is uncovered, it's going to have its own life."

Cameron stood in the office now, his big, handsome profile turned to the window, where the lights of Chinatown twinkled in a night sky cleansed by Santa Ana winds. Finally, when Cameron turned, he had a narrow smile on his face.

"Okay then, I'm either the next Governor of this state or I'm back in the Compton Carwash cleaning windshields."

Tanisha had spotted the first three letters on the license plate of the white Pinto when it shot past them on Manchester Avenue several days ago. She had scribbled down "PTC" in her notes and added it to her crime report. The computer had tried to match up a white Pinto with the partial plate, but had come up with nothing. The plate was either stolen or had been altered. Al Katsukura had decided to wander around in the five square blocks of Chinatown with the partial plate letters and look for the car. He didn't expect to find anything.

Sometimes, in police work, you just get flat lucky. Al found it parked in the lot adjoining the Chin Lo headquarters. He got close enough to see that the P was an I that had been doctored. The C was an O that had been whited out on one side. When he got back with that fortunate piece of news it gave Verba probable cause for a hard entry. Judge Hollingsworth had immediately written the search warrant, sitting at Tanisha's old desk in Asian Crimes. He signed it and handed it to T. Cameron Jobe, who looked at it before sticking it in his pocket. "Okay," he said, without emphasis or excitement. " Veritas praevalebit."

"Truth usually prevails," Judge Hollingsworth said, "but not always."

They all waited in Asian Crimes for an hour while detectives from Metro SWAT gathered in the parking lot outside the Hill Street building. Tanisha and Wheeler went to the lunchroom and got coffee. It was machine-made but hot, and they sipped it, sitting at a linoleum table. She looked at him for a long moment, her expression impossible for him to read.

"What?" he finally asked.

"You amaze me sometimes," she said.

"What does that mean?"

"Back there, in Verba's office, chewing out that pompous Latin-quoting Oreo cookie. . . . You were . . ." She stopped and looked at him. "... different than I ever saw you."

"Different like crazy, out of control, certifiable?"

"Kinda sexy." She smiled at him.

"Sexy?"

"Unrestrained, primitive anger. I always find that sexy. Must be my African blood."

"Jesus, I hope so." He smiled, giving her his W
. C. C
. bedroom eyes.

At ten-thirty P
. M
. the SWAT team was organized, flaked in body armor, and gathered in the ACTF parking lot. Wheeler was allowed to sit in a car a few blocks away with Alan Hollingsworth, who was judicial home plate and available to render on-the-spot legal opinions or write additional paper if needed. Tanisha sat in the SWAT van next to the Communications Officer. From there she could monitor the action on the team radios. Team One was the 1.1., "Initial Incursion," Unit. It was scheduled to storm the front. Team Two would remain in the back just outside, to seal off the rear exit. It would not make an entry, because they expected gunfire and didn't want to catch each other in a crossfire. Team Three in the second SWAT van was held in reserve.