Beijing Payback

by Daniel Nieh

  “So you have a sister, Juliana, right, who’s twenty-five. And your mother—?”

  “Died of stomach cancer. Nine years ago.” I helpfully finish his sentence.

  “Right.” Lang shifts uneasily, and I see him inhaling my pathetic parentlessness before he regains his track.

  “So, Victor, I want you to give this question a minute before you answer. Think about the times you saw your father in the recent past. Did he say or do anything that seemed strange?”

  The PPQ, the passport, the money flash into my mind. That’s not what he asked about, I tell myself, but nonetheless I feel a hot tingle at my hairline, an incipient dampness in my armpits.

  “Not that I can think of,” I say.

  “Was there any change in his routines? Such as, did he start any new projects, for example, or make any new friends?”

  That jogs my memory a bit—I tell Lang that Dad had recently been spending a lot of time writing on yellow legal pads. Whenever we asked him what he was up to, he claimed he was writing stories.

  “And did you ever read any of the stories he was writing?”

  “I can’t read handwritten Chinese. He said he’d type them up and I could read them when he was finished.”

  “Do you know where these legal pads are now?”

  “I would guess in his office somewhere.”

  My nervousness turns into curiosity as I watch him write in his little notebook with a golf pencil. His movements are slow and deliberate, and the pencil seems too small for his wide, fleshy hands. “LEGAL PADS,” he writes in big capital letters, and then underlines them.

  I find myself wondering how many homicides he has solved during his tenure at the San Dimas Sheriff’s Office.

  Lang flips the notebook closed. “Look, I know you and your sister are going through a lot right now, and I don’t want to disturb you by sniffing around your house. Plus my Chinese is not the best. So if you could take a look around his office for those legal pads . . .”

  “Sure. Look, Detective?” I stop walking and turn to face him. “I already gave a statement last week. What’s going on?”

  Lang looks at me carefully, like he’s deciding how much he should tell me. “In your statement, you said that your father didn’t go to your basketball game that night because he was expecting a business call from China. We know now that there was no call to your house from China or anywhere, answered or not. At least not that night. But there were a couple of calls to and from China in the days leading up to his murder.”

  Murder. This cheerful guy in a Hawaiian shirt and Angel’s cap is filling me in on the details of Dad’s murder as college students walk through the dappled shade of eucalyptus trees, across the manicured grass from one faceless sandstone building to another, texting as they make their way to their next class.

  And then, over Lang’s shoulder, I catch a glimpse of a slight Asian guy in a Lakers cap. Black T-shirt, black jeans, black backpack. The guy who was watching me from the shaved ice shop by Chateau Happiness. Or was he? Probably just some guy in black walking through a college campus, I tell myself.

  “Maybe he was supposed to make the call, but the burglar showed up first,” I say.

  “Right. Maybe. But here’s the thing; this kind of case where a burglar kills someone, it doesn’t never happen, but it’s uncommon. A smart burglar quickly realizes that someone is home and gets out of there. Someone’s home?”—Lang slides his hand through the air demonstratively—“See ya later. Now, a confrontation occurs when you have a dumb perp who doesn’t know what he’s doing and maybe a young, aggressive homeowner with some kind of weapon, which is not exactly who Vincent Li was, but the point is this. These dumb burglars who get in fights and maybe commit assault or homicide? We find them. They’re sloppy. They leave blood, prints, clothing fibers. They’re desperate individuals, head cases, nut jobs, junkies. Or whatever. You get me?”

  “I think so.”

  “Anyway, whoever killed your father was definitely not a dumb burglar. The house is clean. No fingerprints, no footprints, no clothing fibers, no skin under your father’s nails. And he kills him with two precise stabs in the chest and a clean slash across—well, anyway, he does it neatly, so the victim didn’t, ah, you know, spend a long time bleeding to death.”

  It’s like there’s a permanent wince on Lang’s face just from looking at me. He tucks the notebook into the breast pocket of his Hawaiian shirt, pulls off his Angels cap, and scratches his bald spot.

  “Look, sorry. I didn’t need to say that. What I mean is, also, there’s a thousand-dollar watch on your dad’s wrist, and our perp doesn’t touch it. And he kills your father in his office, which was probably not blocking his exit from the house. So what I’m saying here is that the forensics guys, they’re saying that this criminal’s behavior doesn’t resemble that of either a smart burglar or a dumb burglar.”

  “The San Dimas Sheriff’s Office has forensics guys?”

  Lang sighs. “Not exactly. They’re on loan from the Orange County Crime Lab through this interagency collaboration program. I wish I could say it’s going well, but they don’t really share our priorities.”

  “Is that why we weren’t allowed back into our house for four days? Because you couldn’t get these guys out to San Dimas?”

  “Victor, I’m not gonna bullshit you. These interagency collaborations, they’re not all roses all the time. But now they’ve assigned us a team, and I think they’re gonna start acting more serious about it because they’re telling us that possibly, possibly, we’re talking about an experienced killer.”

  I stare at him, unblinking, unsteady, my hands clenched into fists. “So do you have any leads?”

  The wince deepens. Lang puts a big paw on my shoulder. “Look, son, I understand how you feel. Trust me, there’s an ongoing investigation here. But for now, you’ve gotta sit tight and do your own thing, get back to a normal routine as soon as possible. Okay? And, legal pads, right? Here’s my card. You can call me on my mobile. We’ll talk soon.”

  I start to speak again, but then clamp my jaw shut as something inside me says don’t—don’t tell him about the gun. Sit tight and do your own thing. So I just bow my head, take the business card from his outstretched hand, and thank him for his time.

  “Hey, no problem,” Detective Lang says. He claps me on the shoulder again and ambles off toward visitor parking.

  6

  The whistle blows. “Run it again.”

  “Utah! Utah!” Howie calls the play at half court, then brushes Andre shoulder to shoulder on the screen, then hits him with a pocket pass as he rolls to the rim. Andre throws it down with a little extra swag, swinging his legs and slapping the backboard, because practice is almost over.

  I’m standing on the sideline with the rest of the reserves, replaying my conversation with Lang in my head. Possibly, possibly, we’re talking about an experienced killer. The timer on the clock hits zero and the buzzer sounds.

  I stand in the shower with my forehead against the tiles, letting the water cascade off my shoulders and down my body, flicking the handle back and forth between almost too hot and way too cold. I want to take a breath without feeling pain, to claw free of the thick envelope of my shock, to hear a piercing, clear voice in my mind that tells me what to do. But I don’t know how to mourn. After Mom died, Dad never cried. He never talked about her. He took us out to fancy restaurants on her birthday and told us that she would want us to enjoy what we still had rather than dwell on what we’d lost.

  But now I’m not sure what I still have. I don’t have the willpower to help myself, to help my sister, to win basketball games. I want to find those yellow legal pads because they’re a thread that I can follow back into the past. I’m not interested in the future. I want to wrap my mouth around that Walther PPQ and wake up in an alternate universe, or not wake up at all.

  But I know that Dad left it for me for another reason, and if I can manage to want anything at all, I want to know what that reas
on is.

  I’m getting dressed when our head coach, Francis Vaughn, wanders into the vicinity of my locker, looking at the ground, a sheet of paper in his hands. He scrunches up his face and rubs his temple with his forefinger.

  “Hey. Victor. The coaches and I, we’re glad to have you back,” he says. “I was really sorry to hear about your dad. He was a terrific guy.”

  “Thanks, Coach,” I say, silently praying for him not to attempt to console me.

  “And we all know we can count on you to give every last bit of effort.”

  I can tell there’s more coming, so I just look at him. He hands me the sheet of paper.

  “This is our scouting report on Jason Maxwell. You’re going to put in some minutes on him tomorrow night. He’s a tough cover, likes to attack the basket. I don’t want you to try to beat him with your strength. You’re gonna have to be crafty, feel his rhythm and disrupt it. You can’t be a cannonball at all times. Sometimes you need to be a jellyfish. Or whatever. Are you getting me, son?”

  A shimmer of resentment tightens my jaw. So he doesn’t know I’ve already read the notes on Maxwell half a dozen times—that for four years I’ve been getting the scouting reports for every player on every team we play from the assistant coaches.

  “Oh, and Victor? One last thing.”

  “Yes, Coach?”

  “Take it easy on the sauce, okay, son?” He’s squinting at me like Lang did—like he’s talking to a recent amputee. “I mean, you’re a senior, you can do what you want. But don’t be too proud to hand over those keys.”

  I grit my teeth, close my eyes for a second, compose myself. “Like I told you, Coach, it won’t happen again. I don’t have my license back yet, anyway.”

  “Great, Victor. I have complete faith in you.”

  “Thank you, Coach.”

  “See ya tomorrow.”

  Andre’s talking through the game plan for tomorrow as we walk across the vast parking lot outside the arena, and I’m in my head, asking myself where I would be if I were a yellow legal pad. The wide sky is still lit blue by the remnants of the day’s sun, and after the humidity and closeness of the locker room, the cooling air feels exquisite on my soap-cleaned skin.

  I’m climbing into Andre’s truck when I catch a glimpse of purple and gold floating past the end of the row of cars.

  Muttering obscenities to myself, I shut Andre’s door and crouch-run as quietly as I can to the last row of the parking lot. When I get to the end, I poke my head out, and there he is: the guy in black clothes and a Lakers cap, walking right toward me, his thumbs tucked into the straps of his black backpack.

  I take a deep breath, set my jaw, and step out in front of him. I don’t say anything. I just block his way and show him with my expression that he’s not going anywhere before he explains himself.

  The guy comes to a stop with a surprised smile on his face. “Ò! Nǐ shì Lǐ Xiàozhōu, duì ba?—Oh! You are Li Xiaozhou, right? I am Sun Jianshui.” He starts to bow, then changes his mind and sticks out his hand.

  My hands remain at my sides, clenched into fists. “How do you know my name?” I ask the man in Mandarin.

  He looks at his hand, shrugs, and sticks it into his pocket. “I worked for your father, Li Renyan. I just arrived from China.”

  Andre jogs up and comes to a stop beside me. “What’s going on? Who is this guy?”

  “What do you know about my father? Why have you been watching me?”

  The man’s eyes dance rapidly back and forth between me and Andre. Then he looks away and puts a hand on the side of his head. “I am here to help you. But maybe it’s better if we can talk somewhere else,” he suggests.

  “Help me with what?” I ask in Mandarin.

  “Help you with your father’s work.”

  “Victor, who is this person?”

  I translate for Andre, tell him I have no idea what to do with this guy, and we confer in whispered English as Sun Jianshui grows increasingly agitated. Finally, he fishes under his collar with both hands and pulls out a thin leather cord.

  “He tell me, I can give you a look at this,” he blurts out in English.

  On the cord there’s an iron monkey figurine. Just like the one that was on the cord with the Chateau Happiness keycard. Andre and I look at each other.

  “You speak English?” Andre says, loud and slow.

  The guy bobs his head. “English.”

  “Cool. I am Andre.” He puts one huge hand on his chest and sticks out the other for Sun Jianshui to shake. “You eat tacos?”

  7

  Once we’re at RoboTaco, Sun insists on treating us with a crisp hundred-dollar bill. He’s a lean, watchful type with flat cheekbones and no depth at all to his eye sockets. I guess he’s in his late twenties, maybe early thirties. We let people cut in front of us while he spends a minute holding the laminated menu about six inches from his face.

  “Maybe it better you do for me,” he eventually concludes, handing the menu back to Andre.

  Once we’re situated at a booth in the corner, I ask Sun Jianshui why he’s been following me.

  “Following you?” Sun says.

  “I saw you yesterday at the shaved ice shop by Chateau Happiness. And again today, on campus, when I was talking to that cop.”

  Sun looks down at the table and smiles. “Old Li talk about you sometimes. He say you love to play basketball, that you clever and you have good eyes, like me. You see, we work close together. His enemies are my enemies. So I must behave very careful. I wait until I can find you alone. Sorry”—he nods to Andre—“but since Old Li die, I am like”—he wrinkles his nose, searching for the word—“jiànbudào de.”

  “Invisible,” I say. “Are you saying that you know who killed my father?”

  Over the course of the next hour, Sun tells us his story in the janky English he says Dad taught him: hard to follow at times but pretty impressive for someone who claims to have just arrived in the English-speaking world for the first time in his life. He tells us that he worked for Dad—“Old Li”—as his personal assistant and general gofer. That Dad and three other men formed a brotherhood in Beijing more than thirty years ago, and that the brothers did a lot more than run restaurants.

  “Mr. Ai, Mr. Ouyang, Mr. Zhao, and Old Li,” he recites their names. They were teenagers when they met, basically street kids. In the uncertain years following Mao’s demise, they carved out a niche in the gray market, wrangling permits for street stalls and running discreet errands for officials. Then, when China opened up in the 1980s, the brothers scored big by bringing Western goods in through Hong Kong. Microwaves, handbags, cordless phones—China’s nouveau riche scrambled to pay inflated prices for the limited supply.

  “Are you saying they were smugglers?” Andre asks.

  Sun looks at me.

  “Zŏusī—smuggling,” I translate.

  “Ah, smug-ling?” Sun tilts his head to the side as he considers. “Yes. It is smuggling. But it is not, you know, pirate ship, middle of night, dadadadada”—pantomiming a tommy gun. “More look like normal ship, but pay bribe, cash money, easy time through the, uh, hǎiguān.”

  “Customs.”

  “Customs, yes. And in the end, customer is government official. So.” He sticks his palms out like the scales of justice, weighing them up and down as if to say, Who am I to judge? He’s a good storyteller despite the language barrier, so affable and unassuming that it’s easy for me to nod along, even as my skin goes clammy, my heart sinks into my stomach, and I realize that Lang’s forensics guys must have been right.

  When Dad started a family and decided to move to the United States, Sun tells us, his so-called brothers agreed to use the company to help him set up a restaurant business here. But not all of them were willing to let him make a clean break.

  “China-America trade is number one big business,” Sun explains between tidy bites of the al pastor special. “Big big cake. For some of Old Li’s partners, whatever is not enough, they always wanti
ng more. Two men, Mr. Ouyang and also Mr. Zhao”—he shakes his head, makes a disgusted face—“they are, you know, greedy, kě’è?” He looks at me.

  “Kě’è? Despicable. De-spic-able.”

  Sun nods gamely. “De-spic-able, yes. They think, why not eat some more cake? Mr. Ouyang and Mr. Zhao, they try to use Old Li to get into some American markets. Sometime Old Li say yes, and sometime he say no. And there is Mr. Ai, too, he take Old Li’s side in Beijing, argue for them to leave Old Li alone. Many years go like this, more and more fighting between the brothers, but not open fighting. Then Mr. Ouyang and Mr. Zhao have an idea to bring something dangerous to sell in the United States. Something they are calling ‘Ice,’ but I do not know exactly what is ‘Ice.’

  “Old Li decide that Ice is very bad idea, terrible,” Sun says, scowling. “Mr. Ai and Old Li, they oppose Ice together, but Mr. Ouyang and Mr. Zhao insist. Now the fight is open. Old Li start to worry, what if his position is in danger? So he make a preparation.”

  “So these men, Ouyang and Zhao, my father’s business partners, they—” I can’t speak the words aloud to finish the sentence.

  Sun nods intently, says this is probably what happened, but he doesn’t know for sure. Maybe they conspired to kill Dad, or maybe one of them acted alone. Either way, it’s a tragedy, he says. They used to be the closest of friends. He looks at me, and his eyes show pain and sincerity. He switches to a formal Chinese.

  “Lǐ Xiǎozhōu, nǐ fùqīn bù yīnggāi yǐ zhèzhŏng fāngshì líshì—Your father should not have died like this, Li Xiaozhou.”

  His words sound muddled, reaching me through a thick buffer, finding me somewhere deep beneath the surface of consciousness. My palms are slick, and more sweat beads out of my underarms and the back of my neck. I look away from Sun, look around the restaurant, look down at the Guisados Sampler that remains untouched on the plate in front of me.