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13
AN HOUR LATER, AFTER MAKING A PLAN FOR THE NEXT day, Investigator Lo dropped David and Hulan off at the entrance to the Shanxi Grand Hotel, then drove away to park the car. As they passed through the lobby on the way to the elevator, a woman’s voice called out, “David Stark!” He looked around and saw a woman he didn’t recognize approaching him. She was Chinese, but dressed unlike most women he’d seen here. She wore khaki trousers and a silk blouse. Her hair was pulled back in a ponytail, and large gold earrings hung from her earlobes. She extended her hand. “Mr. Stark, I’m Pearl Jenner. Would you join me for a drink?”
He knew he’d heard the name before but couldn’t place it. “I’m sorry,” he said. All he wanted to do was get to his room and look at Sun’s papers. “We’re just on our way up. It’s been a long day.”
Pearl Jenner studied Hulan, then turned back to David. “I’ve come a long way,” she said. “This isn’t the easiest place to get to.”
“Yes, well…”
“I would think you’d want to talk to me. I’m from the Times. I’ve been covering the Tartan acquisition.”
Now David realized who this woman was. She’d written the article he’d read on the day of Keith’s funeral, saying that the federal investigation into bribery allegations would now be dismissed because of his death. She had gotten her facts wrong and no doubt caused unnecessary pain for the Baxter family.
“I’m not interested in giving an interview at this time,” he said, taking Hulan’s elbow and leading her away.
“I know about Ling Miaoshan,” Pearl called out after them.
David and Hulan stopped and turned around.
A triumphant smile played around Pearl’s lips. “Why don’t you join me in the bar? There’s someone there I think you’ll want to meet.” She spun on her heel, utterly confident that David and his companion would follow.
The bar was in the basement next to the gift shops. She sat down at a table where a young man nursed a half-empty bottle of orange soda. “I want you to meet Guy Lin. Guy, this is David Stark and…Miss Liu, isn’t it?” Hulan didn’t acknowledge her. Instead she shook the young man’s hand and sat down. Guy was young, twenty-two at most. His complexion was sallow and his eyes miserably sad. His shoulders sagged and his frayed cotton shirt hung loosely on his thin frame. To Hulan, he looked like an Overseas Chinese; to David, he looked like a mainlander. In a way they were both right.
“Guy is from Taiyuan, but like you, Miss Liu, he was educated in America. In fact, he’s a graduate of your alma mater.”
“You went to USC?” Hulan asked the boy. He nodded.
David kept his eyes on Pearl, reflecting on the fact that she had not been introduced to Hulan and yet knew not only who she was but also where she’d gone to school.
“Yes, he went to USC to study chemistry on a scholarship,” Pearl went on. “But things didn’t go according to plan. See, he gets there, takes a sociology class to fill an out-of-field science requirement, gets interested, and goes out to do a little community service for extra credit. Guess where he ends up? OSHA.”
“I don’t see what any of this has to do with us,” David said.
“Hear me out.” Pearl Jenner was attractive, but her smile was not in the least bit friendly. “First Guy volunteers in the office, assisting people with their claims, answering questions, filing papers. He begins to like it, and the folks there like him too. Pretty soon he’s forgotten all about chemistry. All he wants to do is go out and help his new friends in their work. He especially likes going into factories and helping people who’re being treated badly. Only one problem. He’s in America on a student visa. He gets pulled over for a speeding ticket. No big deal, right? Only his name gets run through the computer and by now he’s illegal. His friends at OSHA try to help him. They’re government people, but even they can’t do anything. Two weeks later he’s back in China.”
“Ms. Jenner, it’s late. If you have something to tell me—”
Pearl raised her voice and spoke right over David. “He’s seen the outside world. He’s seen the good part of the U.S., but he’s also seen the shit. You know what I mean? Put a greedy American and a hundred illegals together and you’ve got a nice sweatshop operation going. But he knows how it should be. So he’s back in China and he starts poking around. He hears about these American companies that have been opening in his home province. He gets hired by one, works a couple of days, and if he were a different kind of person he probably would have stayed there because the pay’s good, the dormitories are better than government-assigned housing, and the work’s not too hard. But he quits and tries another factory—Knight International. The problem here is he’s only a da
y worker in the warehouse, so he can’t see what the place is really like. Then one Saturday he gets an idea. On Saturdays at one the local men and women leave the compound together. He sidles up to the most beautiful girl he can find and strikes up a conversation.”
David interrupted, “How long ago was this?”
The young man looked up. “Three months,” he said. “But she”—he motioned to Pearl with his elbow—” is making it into something it wasn’t. I wanted to know about the factory, but when I first saw Miaoshan, all I wanted to know was her. On that day I walked her home. She didn’t want me to come inside, but she said she would meet me the next day.” He hesitated, then asked, “Did you know her?”
When David shook his head, Guy said, “She was beautiful, but she had inside of her so much…” He struggled to find the word, then said, “She wanted to know all about America, and I told her. When she found out why I was at the factory, she said she’d help me. She was alive with ideas. She told me what it was like in there: the girls who were too young to work, the way the managers lied about the pay, the way people got injured and how often.”
“Did she have proof?” David asked, thinking that if the factory employed child labor, Hulan surely would have told him.
“She told me what she saw.”
“But those could have been made-up stories,” David suggested. “Just how young are the women? Did she get ID’s from them? Was she able to introduce you to anyone who’d been hurt? Did she have medical records?”
“Mr. Stark, hear him out,” Pearl said. “He’ll get to all that.” Then to Guy she said, “Tell him what you thought you’d do with the information you collected and why it was important.”
Not knowing Hulan’s background, Guy explained that in America things were very different. If someone got hurt from a product, then the manufacturer could be sued. If a product was made in an unsafe manner, then the workers could sue. Most amazing, if the manufacturing process caused damage to the environment, then neighbors or the government could go after the company to clean it up and even make retribution to the people and the state.
“When I left China, we didn’t have any recourse if we were burned or dismembered by products,” he continued. “But while I was away, a consumer-rights law went into effect. Now even state-owned enterprises can be sued! There have been about half a million individual suits each of the last three years. I am sure you have read of the different campaigns in regards to this movement.”
