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“How did the pathologist put it? ‘We’ve got an organic toxic critter thing going here.’”
“So whatever it is—this poison—came from an animal?”
“An animal, an insect, a snake, a spider—the pathologist wasn’t sure. I had him draw tissue samples. They’re on their way to Washington to the FBI crime lab with everything else.”
“What ‘else’?”
“Dental impressions, the contents of his wallet, the gloves. Unfortunately, when a body’s been submerged, we lose fibers that we could tie to a crime scene.”
“Hang on! Hang on! What’s all this?”
“I forget you aren’t used to dealing with murder victims.”
“You’re damn right.”
So Noel Gardner explained how the FBI would work in this situation. Given time, the local M.E. might be able to identify the compound of the poison and still not know what it came from. He would have the expertise to take dental impressions and fingerprints from the gloves, but he wouldn’t have the resources to make any matches.
“As for the wallet,” Gardner continued, “it was in the water a long time. But it’s amazing what our guys in Washington can do. They may be able to pick up traces of ink or an official stamp.”
“Good work, Gardner,” said Campbell.
“Great work,” added David, “but how long will all this take?”
“Who knows? Days? Weeks? Months?”
“I keep coming back to his identity,” David reflected. “If he wasn’t one of the immigrants, who was he? A crewman? A gang member?”
“Poison isn’t a typical modus operandi for Asian organized crime,” said Campbell. “If the victim is one of their own—say, someone who betrayed them—you’d expect to see his arms and legs cut off—”
David’s phone rang. Lynn Patchett, an INS lawyer, was on the line.
They met in a small conference room at Terminal Island. Lynn Patchett, who’d postponed her day’s calendar of hearings for Peony immigrants, paced along the length of one wall. She was dressed in a square-cut navy-blue suit, a white blouse buttoned to her neck, and blue flats. Jack Campbell paced against the adjacent wall. In the corner where they should have met in their nervous wandering sat a court reporter, who waited patiently for someone to speak so she might do her job. At David’s side, Noel Gardner scratched geometric designs on a yellow pad.
Mabel Leung, a court interpreter who spoke Mandarin, Cantonese, and several other Chinese dialects, had pulled her chair a foot away from the table and industriously knitted on what looked to be a sleeve. So far no one had needed her linguistic skills. Milton Bird, a court-appointed immigration attorney, checked his notes. Next to him sat Zhao, his arms hanging limply at his sides. He wore a red jumpsuit with black numbers stenciled on the back and bright white tennis shoes—the official uniform of those incarcerated at Terminal Island.
It was now late afternoon. They hadn’t broken for lunch, although Mabel had ducked out for a few minutes and come back with her arms full of diet Cokes and bags of potato chips bought from a vending machine. This strange repast combined with the stress had left them all jittery.
So far the meeting had been an exercise in perseverance. Zhao wanted to buy his freedom; David desperately wanted information. Zhao reminded David that he had promised to help; David struggled with the definition of “help.” They had talked over terms: identification of the body in exchange for Zhao’s freedom. If the case ever came to trial, David expected Zhao to appear as a witness. The government wouldn’t pay Zhao any money, but the INS would agree to give him a green card. David could see that Zhao wanted to take the deal. At the same time, David could see that the immigrant was even more frightened now than he had been aboard the Peony.
As the day wore on, David read through Zhao’s file a couple of times. According to his INS interview, Zhao Lingyuan—who, according to Chinese custom, placed his surname first—had once been a student at Beijing University, which explained his fluency in English. In 1967, during the Cultural Revolution, he’d been sent to the countryside. A decade later, when other students went home, Zhao stayed behind. All these years later, with the market economy sweeping China, Zhao had decided to come to the United States to start over.
Campbell suddenly stopped his pacing and burst out, “Look, Zhao, we’re going to have to fish or cut bait. You know what that means? It means either you talk or forget it!”
When Zhao didn’t move
, Campbell growled in frustration, hit the wall with his fist, and resumed his metronomic gait. David flicked his pen open and shut. Then Zhao said in a flat voice, “I don’t know how to say these words.”
Mabel set down her knitting, and the two of them spoke for five minutes in Chinese. Occasionally, Mabel would say a word in English—dragon, bear, phoenix, rat, mole—and Zhao would repeat it. As their chattering came to an end, it seemed as though the two of them had reached some sort of agreement. David looked questioningly from Mabel to Zhao, then back again. Mabel wordlessly picked up her knitting and Zhao hunched back down in his chair, his eyes focused on the bare table in front of him. Milton Bird pulled out his handkerchief and wiped his brow. Gardner stretched his neck from side to side, then flexed his arm muscles.
“We have a saying in China.” Zhao’s voice was heavy with resignation. “Dragons bear dragons, phoenixes bear phoenixes, and moles bear sons good at digging holes.”
David waited.
“This man, he is a dragon’s son,” Zhao continued. “I am a mole’s son. Do you understand?”
“No, no, I don’t.”
Now that Zhao had broken his silence, he couldn’t stop. “On the ship, we know the man is in the water. That water was for drinking. By the time the crew tells us to get our water from that place, that man is stinking inside there. We open the water crank at the top of the tank and that smell comes out. Most of us are peasants. A farmer, he floods his fields to grow rice. There is no way to warn the animals that the water is coming. Animals sometimes get trapped in there. Sometimes they swim away. You see rats swimming with their noses just above the water. Sometimes a rat gets caught in the plants. Days later, weeks later, I would smell it. This happens sometimes, so on the boat we know something dead is in that place.”
