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Harry cut Hulan off. “My older brother took care of me when my mother died. He sent me to California to make sure I’d be safe. I will always be indebted to him for that. But what happened later, who can say? You are from China, Miss Liu, maybe you can tell us what changed him.”
But David knew the harsh but honest answer, and it had come out of the mouth of another Chinese immigrant. Guang Mingyun had become a phoenix. His two brothers were moles.
Driving back down the narrow road, David pulled the car over and turned off the ignition. “What were those kids selling? Drugs?”
“It would fit with the triad angle,” Hulan said.
“Yeah, but I don’t see Sammy selling heroin to the old-timers in Chinatown.”
“But maybe they were selling drugs up in Montan
a,” Hulan suggested.
“Then how do you explain Sammy? Why would Henglai want to use him anyway?”
“The Chinese not only trust their relatives but they try to help them. It’s our duty to take care of the older generation.”
“But I don’t think Henglai was much of an altruist, do you? No, I think it has something to do with the product. Not drugs. Jade? Gold? What’s something an old person in Chinatown would want?”
Hulan shook her head.
David tapped the steering wheel as he thought. “And what’s with the cowboys up in Montana? Henglai was a Red Prince. That kid was used to Beijing’s nightlife—Rumours Disco, the karaoke bar, Rémy Martin, and the rest of it. Why go up to that ranch? Why have those parties?”
“That’s easy. You think we haven’t heard about cowboys and the romance of the American West? He probably just wanted to tell his friends back in Beijing that he’d experienced the real thing.”
David went back to his tapping as he ran through the facts again. “Billy Watson lied to his parents about being enrolled in school. Instead, he’s hanging around up in Montana throwing parties, showing his friend your romance of the West.” When Hulan nodded, he continued, “You’ve got two rich kids in their twenties, right? I see the pretty girls. In fact I see lots of corn-fed cowgirls.”
“Billy and Henglai were young men. It makes sense.”
“So why do they keep inviting back the cowboys? Wouldn’t one party have been enough? Wouldn’t they have wanted to keep all those girls to themselves?”
“You tell me. You’re the man.”
“That’s just it, Hulan. I can’t explain it because I can’t get those cowboys out of my mind.” He threw out another possibility. “Do you think Billy and Henglai were gay?”
“No, I would have seen it in Henglai’s personal file. Believe me, my government wouldn’t miss something like that.”
“But what if it did?”
“Then we would have heard about it from Bo Yun or Li Nan, even Nixon Chen.”
“Okay, all right,” he agreed, “but I still don’t think Billy and Henglai were interested in the girls. Those boys were liars and connivers. They wanted something from those cowboys just like they wanted something from Henglai’s uncle. The connection—and don’t ask me what it is because I don’t know—has to be the product.”
“If we’re lucky, we’ll find it at the airport tomorrow.” She put a hand on his knee, then slowly let it glide up to his crotch. “Come on, there’s nothing more we can do today. Let’s go back to the hotel.”
It was the most brilliant suggestion he’d ever heard.
14
FEBRUARY 4
Los Angeles International Airport
The next morning, an hour before the United flight from Beijing via Tokyo was scheduled to arrive, the whole group—minus Noel Gardner, who was orchestrating the surveillance on Zhao—met Melba Mitchell at the U.S. Customs Service desk on the passenger departure floor of the Bradley Terminal at Los Angeles International Airport. Melba, a middle-aged black woman, was a liaison for Customs.
As the group made their way across the terminal floor, Melba briefed them on the role of Customs in the airport. “We enforce six hundred laws for sixty different agencies. This means we’re looking for everything—gems, narcotics, cash, child pornography, computer chips. I’d say that seventy-five, maybe eighty-five percent of the people who come through are honest. But the rest—either knowingly or unknowingly—are trying to bring in illegal goods.”
As they rode the elevator to the lower level, David asked, “How do you know what to look for? Do you have a profile of the typical smuggler?”
