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Last night, David had worked side by side with many of these men. They had labored together to save one another’s lives. This morning most would not speak to him, and none would meet his eyes. “I have that man on me,” David said once in frustration, but nothing he said made any of them speak. Even Zhao turned away.
When they reached port late that afternoon everything moved rapidly. Officials from the INS and the Coast Guard boarded and spoke both in Mandarin and Cantonese over bullhorns. The immigrants gathered their few belongings and padded down the gangplank and into what looked like a gigantic warehouse. David was whisked away in an ambulance. All the while he resisted, repeating over and over, “I need to be there. Take me back.” Finally, the paramedic clamped an oxygen mask over his face. At the hospital David was treated for shock and dehydration, then given a tetanus shot. With an FBI forensics expert on hand, David’s clothes were removed, wrapped in plastic bags, and labeled. At two in the morning, he was released wearing hospital scrubs. David had never felt so alone as he did when he walked into his empty house. With considerable effort he figured out that he’d gone without sleep for forty-three hours. He showered, changed into sweatpants and a sweater, and fell into a fitful sleep.
He woke up abruptly at six-thirty in the morning, showered again—he thought he would never get the slime of that night off him—and went for a mind-clearing run around the Lake Hollywood Reservoir near his house.
Two hours later, as David stepped off the elevator and passed through the security door and into the halls of the U.S. Attorney’s Office, he was immediately aware of a difference around him. Walking to his office, he nodded to a couple of secretaries, who assiduously looked at the floor as he passed them. He passed two young attorneys who worked in Complaints. They stopped talking when he came into view.
David poured himself a cup of coffee and went to the grand jury room, the only place in the courthouse large enough for Madeleine Prentice, the U.S. attorney, to hold her weekly meetings. When he entered, a lull fell over the conversation. Then Rob Butler, Chief of the Criminal Division, cleared his throat. “Here’s David. Back from his adventure at sea.” The other attorneys laughed, but David sensed their discomfort. Still, he was grateful to Rob for just putting his story out there. It was as though Rob were saying, “We’re not going to have gossip. We’re not going to show jealousy. We’re going to treat this case like any other.” Madeleine echoed these sentiments by immediately launching into the meeting and asking for an update on current narcotics cases.
As David grabbed a chair and looked around the room, he saw that Rob and Madeleine’s desire to keep his case out of the realm of the extraordinary might be hard to accomplish. Most of the other assistants in this room had been around long enough to get big cases, but none of them had ever been almost lost at sea or come in contact with a dead body.
One of the reasons David had left Phillips, MacKenzie & Stout was the comparatively collegial atmosphere the U.S. Attorney’s Office offered. The attorneys—to a man, to a woman—had deliberately chosen to pass on the major firms’ big salaries to work for government wages and go to court every day. The only true payoffs—aside from the sense of having done right—were good press and a possible judgeship. Clearly the former led to the latter. Yet there was a line that his colleagues didn’t like to cross. They all—David included—made fun of attorneys who sought the limelight. At the same time, they admired those who could handle the press effectively. And so, today, as David listened to Madeleine and Rob query the other attorneys on their cases, he was fully aware of the weird combination of awe, jealousy, and distrust that floated around him.
Madeleine Prentice ran a manicured finger down her list. “What else have we got going to trial this week? Laurie?”
Laurie Martin, seven months pregnant, opened her file and began her summary. “On September fifteenth, Customs officials became suspicious when a woman, Lourdes Ongpin, stepped off her United flight from Manila wearing a raincoat. Although it isn’t unusual for people to wear coats or sweaters while traveling, Customs thought that in this particular instance it was strange, since the temperature at LAX was about a hundred and five degrees.”
According to Laurie, Customs began questioning the woman. Where was she planning on staying? Was she here for business or pleasure? As they were doing this, the inspectors noticed two things. First, the woman had a peculiar odor about her. Second, her raincoat seemed to have a life of its own. The woman was taken into an interrogation room, where inspectors found fifteen giant snails, weighing a pound or more apiece, sewn into the lining of her coat.
The other assistants fidgeted during Laurie’s recital. They knew the way to make a name was by landing a conviction against a corrupt senator or a notorious drug dealer, not by going after penny-ante wildlife smugglers. Even though they were protected by international treaty, giant snails would never make page one of the Times.
Madeleine, with her sense of the dramatic, saved David’s case for last. After his synopsis, Madeleine asked, “Do you think the murder is related to the Rising Phoenix gang, or did someone on the boat simply kill the man?”
“The triads have never shied away from murder. Can I tie them to this case? I don’t know.”
“It could be the break you’ve been looking for.”
“That’s right. If I can’t get them on racketeering or immigration violations, maybe I’ll get them on murder.”
“I’d like to get the Justice Department, maybe even the State Department, in on this,” Madeleine said. “Let’s see what assistance they can give us. To my knowledge, we don’t work with China, but maybe there’s a way we can get unofficial help.”
“I’ll take whatever help I can get, so long as this stays my case.”
“It’s yours as far as I’m concerned.” Madeleine gave a cursory glance around the room. “Anyone else? No? All right then, let’s go get some convictions.”
David poured himself another cup of coffee and headed for his office, where Jack Campbell and Noel Gardner were already waiting for him. Their haggard faces and rumpled clothes showed that neither of them had slept much.
As David sat down, Campbell cocked an eye and said, “Man, you really blew us away last night.”
David shook his head. “I was scared like everyone else.”
“No, you rose to the occasion, and it was one hell of an occasion.”
“I only did what I thought was right,” David said sheepishly. He rearranged a few papers on his desk, then asked, “So, what’s happening with the immigrants?”
Campbell explained that of the 523 immigrants on board the Peony, 378 had already been deported thanks to the Chinese government providing an empty freighter for the return voyage. This was primarily due to the efficiency of INS officials, who had made sure that the immigrants were isolated as much as possible when they first landed. “That way they didn’t have an opportunity to communicate with one another, concoct stories, even rebound enough from their ordeal to think clearly.”
“No one wants a repeat of the Golden Venture disaster,” Noel Gardner added. “It’s been close to three years since that ship ran aground in New York, and we’re still housing over fifty of those Chinese. At fifty-five dollars a day, that’s cost us well over ten million. The INS wants to get the Peony’s immigrants processed and out of the country before the human-rights groups can get mobilized.”
During the late afternoon and through the night, Campbell recounted, the ill, the infirm, and the weak had been separated from those who were healthy and showing high spirits. By midnight, even before David had checked out of the hospital, dozens of immigrants had showered and eaten a simple meal of beef stew. They were hastily advised of their rights to counsel and a hearing, but INS officials had stressed the benefits of accepting clean clothes, food, and passage home rather than a protracted jail stay with no guarantees of freedom. Then the immigrants were taken to courtrooms at the Terminal Island detention facility, where judges—cranky themselves for having been roused out of bed—repeated this advice. At this point, most of the immigrants chose to waive their rights and were processed with alacrity. Most of these had left the port two hours ago.
David switched gears. “Any word on the crew?”
“The Coast Guard has been watching the beaches,” said Campbell. “No bodies have washed up, but they really don’t expect to see any. The storm was severe, and when the crew abandoned the Peony, it was still far out to sea.”
“I think you’ll have better luck looking in San Pedro, Long Beach, or Chinatown.”
“Those are great ideas, Stark, but let’s be realistic. There’s Gardner and there’s me. This case doesn’t have high priority. The Bureau isn’t going to give us the manpower we need to check out every bar and fleabag hotel. Noel and I are trying to do what you want, but we still have to prioritize. You wanted me down at Terminal Island talking to those immigrants, and I went. You wanted Noel to stick with the body, and he did.”
