He saw a flight of stone steps that led down to the terribly polluted Pearl River. He moved halfway down and sat on the cold stone and watched several vegetable vendors wash cucumbers and ginger roots in the reeking water.
Fu Hai did not know what to do. He looked off across the river at a huge structure lit like a Chinese festival. As one of the vegetable vendors carried his basket of "clean" produce up the steps, Fu Hai spoke to him in Mandarin.
"What is that beautiful lit building across the river?" he said, trying to pick a subject that wouldn't be dangerous.
"Who are you that you don't know that building?" the man asked accusingly. Then he stared at Fu Hai's clothing, his cloth shoes, light linen pants, and frightened eyes.
"I ... I am . . ."
"You are a peasant from the provinces. You are looking to steal a job from a Guandong citizen."
"No, I ... I want to go east to America," he said, standing in case the man should call the police and Fu Hai had to run.
"I understand," the man finally said, his expression softening. "I have many times dreamed of leaving this place . . . but now I am married with a child. My lot is fixed."
Fu Hai was not sure what to say next, afraid to ask how to find a Snakehead.
"That building you asked about is the Pearl Hotel," the man continued. "It is the most luxurious and beautiful hotel in all of China."
Fu Hai nodded.
"If I were you, I would not stay here, dressed like that. You will be arrested."
"Where should I go?" Fu Hai asked.
"Go to the Catholic cathedral. Ask for John White Jade. He will help you." And then the man picked up his basket of vegetables and climbed the steps. Before he got to the top he turned and looked back at Fu Hai. "If you are looking for a Snakehead, be careful," he warned. "Tigers and deer do not walk easily together." Then, without waiting for Fu Hai to respond, he continued up the steps with his basket and was gone.
The Catholic cathedral was not hard to find. Fu Hai stood on the steps and looked at the place. Most of the first-floor windows were boarded up and several of the religious statues in the niches of the cathedral wall had been knocked down.
Fu Hai walked up the steps and entered the huge, cold place. He sat in a back pew and looked at the cross on the distant altar. The cathedral was magnificent, with high arched stone ceilings. The boarded-up windows made it very scary; the only light came from flickering candles. His head ached from lack of sleep. His body was sore from fighting and running. His broken teeth throbbed. He wanted nothing more than to get some sleep, but was determined to stay awake. In consciousness, there was control--in sleep, only danger.
He was awakened when a hand shook him gently. He sprang to his feet and was looking into the face of an old Chinese man who was not dressed in religious vestments.
"Who are you?" the man asked, his voice soft and nonthreatening.
"I am ... I . . ." Fu Hai was afraid to reveal his name, afraid to say anything. Then, almost without thought, he added, "I came to see John White Jade."
Father John White Jade stubbornly used his Christian name despite years of persecution. He was maybe a few years older than Fu Hai. They were seated in the rectory office on hardwood furniture that had no padding. Father John, in a black robe and clerical collar, was exceedingly thin, with a nose that appeared as if it had been broken many times.
"You have come a long way," he said.
The old man who had found Fu Hai asleep in the cathedral returned with a platter of steaming rice and chicken from the church kitchen.
"I feel strange being here," Fu Hai said, not knowing how to begin. "I do not believe in God."
"That is never a prerequisite for kindness," Father John White Jade said. Then he reached over the desk and pushed the plate of food toward Fu Hai, who was starving, but had not looked at the food. It was at this moment that Fu Hai noticed that the priest's hand was misshapen, frozen into a withered claw. The bones had all been broken, just like his father's.
"Were you a class enemy during the Cultural Revolution?" Fu Hai asked as he began to eat with the bamboo chopsticks that had been brought with the meal.
Father John held up both hands and showed them to Fu Hai. "The Cultural Revolution was not an easy time. The Red Guards attacked this beautiful place, swinging their hammers, breaking our stained-glass windows and the statues outside. I was eighteen. I had just taken the Sacraments of Priesthood. I was foolish and tried to prevent it. My hands were held down on the stone steps of the cathedral and beaten until no bone was left unbroken. Now I cannot administer the Sacraments. I cannot even hold the body and blood of Christ in these broken hands."
"The same thing happened to my father for violating the Four Bigs," Fu Hai said, instantly feeling affinity for the priest, knowing they had shared some of the same terrible evil. He told the story of the persecution of his father, Zhang Wei Dong. When he finished, Father John White Jade nodded.
"Men do strange and ugly things in the name of politics and culture," he said. "But it cannot be helped. I have learned that rivers and mountains are more easily changed than some men's natures."
Fu Hai knew this was true. He had decided to spill out his needs to this kindly priest.
"I need to find a Snakehead," Fu Hai said, "but I have no money. I'm sure I will need money."
"You will need a down payment, but this can be arranged. I have some Guan-Xi with these people."
"Then you know a Snakehead?" Fu Hai said, his heart quickening.
"I know a man who does these things. He is a tou she." The Chinese words for Snakehead. "They call him 'Big-Eared' Tou. He works for Henry Liu, a powerful White Fan of the Chin Lo Triad in Hong Kong."
"I must get to America. I must find a way to get my beautiful little sister and her family there." When he spoke of Xiao Jie, he tried to remember her as a child, blotting out the memory of the prematurely aged crone with the brown teeth and skinny body who had looked into his eyes and cried.
"I will talk to some people. In the meantime, you must get some sleep. You look as if you have gone many days without rest."
Finally, Fu Hai felt safe, and after he finished his meal, he lay down on the hard bench where he was seated and immediately fell asleep. The polished oak felt as soft as a mattress of clouds.
He was awakened after dark by Father John and led out into the cathedral, where a young, ugly girl with big teeth and a fiat nose waited. She spoke in Fukienese, a dialect that Fu Hai couldn't understand. Father John talked to her for a minute, then turned back to Fu Hai.
"She will take you to meet the Snakehead. Good luck." And then Father John White Jade said a prayer over Fu Hai in a strange language he couldn't understand, but assumed must be Latin.
Without looking back at him, the ugly girl led Fu Hai out of the cathedral and down the wide steps. She led him back to Shamian Island, and finally, after going down many narrow streets, she stopped, turned to him and put her hands on his shoulders, then pushed him down onto a stone bench. She didn't talk to him, but he knew he was supposed to wait. She left him there.
An hour passed and then she came back and led Fu Hai down several more narrow streets into a crowded restaurant at the edge of the Ching Ping Market. She pointed to a man sitting alone at a table in the back of the murky, dark place. He had huge meaty ears, an undershot jaw, and big teeth. Three black hairs, nearly a foot long, grew from a large wart on his chin, and he stroked them as he sat waiting. As Fu Hai approached, he guessed that the man was the ugly girl's father. Fu Hai stood at the edge of the Snakehead's table, with his eyes down, and waited respectfully.
"You want to Ride the Snake?" Big-Eared Tou asked in Mandarin, without introducing himself.
"I am determined to get to America."
"It is very expensive."
"I have heard this."
"Over thirty-five thousand American dollars. Do you have enough money?" he asked, smiling for the first time, showing big teeth.
"No, sir, but I will
do anything to earn my way."
"You would kill? You would wreak havoc on my enemies? Commit violent crime?" Big-Eared Tou said, looking intently at Fu Hai.
"I have never killed or done any of those things."
"But you said 4anything.' A man willing to do anything could have great value, if this is not just a boast to impress me."
"To get to America, I would do anything," Fu Hai said, again thinking of his little sister and her plight.
"There was a time when I would ask you to give me a hostage to secure the debt, somebody in your family who would be my slave and work if you should flee. But Father John White Jade is my countryman. We come from the same village in Fukien. He has spoken highly of your honor and trustworthiness and he has Guan-Xi with me, so I will take you at your word. You must work seven days a week until your debt is paid. However, if you fail your responsibilities to me, I will collect your life as payment. You agree with this?"
"It is a fair bargain," Fu Hai said.
"I am a man of great patience and understanding," the ugly Triad mobster said piously. "I perform this service not so much for money as for the love of my fellow man."
"That is very noble," Fu Hai said.
"Then it is a bargain. I will get you to America and you will do what I ask," the Snakehead concluded. He motioned to a waiter, who stepped forward holding a wriggling black indigo snake with a flickering tongue. The mobster nodded, and the waiter severed the snake's head with a single chop of his cleaver and cast the still wriggling head into an enameled basin. Blood oozed from the twisting coils. With a sound like a zipper, the waiter pulled back the serpent's skin, exposing the pink pearly flesh. He fished amid the glistening meat for a small black pill-shaped organ and placed it in a glass of rice wine at the gangster's elbow. Big-Eared Tou swallowed the wine and the snake's gallbladder at a gulp, eyeing Fu Hai as he did so.
"You must be very careful I don't swallow you too," the ugly Snakehead said with a horrible grin.
Chapter 14.
Would You? Could You? Should You?
It was Wednesday afternoon and Wheeler was in his brother's den helping his sister-in-law straighten up the mess. Wheeler was by the bookcase, teetering on his crutches, rearranging volumes, while Liz and Hollis crawled on the floor gathering up and reshelving Prescott's priceless leather-bound editions. Full first-edition sets of Emily Dickinson, Poe, and Herman Melville, which Prescott had collected. Some volumes ran as high as ten thousand dollars. The perfect gift for L. A.'s most promising young lawyer. Each one unwrapped to a chorus of "aahhhs" on Christmas morning.
Wheeler was now restacking, in order, the twelve leather-bound volumes of John L. Stoddard's History of California. John Stoddard had been a Dominican monk who published this historical work in 1898, and he had an undoubtedly cloistered view of the debauchery and death surrounding the California gold rush. Also ready to be put back on the shelf was the Complete History of the World, by Henry Smith Williams, L. L. D., twenty-five dust-covered first editions, published in 1904. Prescott was a history buff.
Wheeler had actually given his brother three of them. A Christmas bargain at five hundred a copy. Money spent on historical thought was not deemed to be pretentious over-spending, and beat the shit out of rings and watches in Cassidyville.
Wheeler had just started sliding Henry Smith Williams back onto the shelf when his mother arrived.
"Arrived" was sort of an understatement. She flew through the door, tears streaming off her high cheekbones, and immediately started to rail at all of them and at none of them. "How can they say, how can they even hint that he . . . that he was . . ." Unable to finish, she started to cry. Both Wheeler and Liz rushed to her and helped her across the living room to the sofa, where she sat and continued sobbing.
"What is it, Mother? What happened?" Wheeler said, assuming this wasn't about Prescott's death. That had been three days ago, and this hysteria was over something recent, something that had just happened.
"What is it, Kay?" Liz echoed.
Both Liz and Kay looked drawn and sleep-deprived. Wheeler was holding up better. Except for the bullet hole in his leg, he had weathered the emotional storm of his brother's passing with the least visible strain.
"The police. The police say . . . they say . . . that Prescott was . . . that he was killed!"
"Murdered?" Wheeler asked.
"The autopsy. The police just called. They said somebody stuck an acupuncture needle into his heart. They want us all to make appointments to come down and talk about what Pres was up to. They want to take our statements," she said, finally looking at Liz and Wheeler, as if they would somehow magically know how to avoid this.
"That's ridiculous," Liz said hotly. "What he was up to? He wasn't up to anything!"
Wheeler held his silence.
"How could he even be dead?" Katherine wailed. "And now they say killed . . . murdered. I'm not going to be questioned like a common criminal. That Negro detective . . . she'd love to find something horrible. You just know it."
"Mom," Wheeler heard himself saying, "I think we should cooperate." He'd long ago learned to overlook his mother's slightly racist Southern upbringing.
She turned on him, venom and anger mixed with extreme loss. "You think . . . you . . . ?"
'Nuff said. It was clear to all of them, even Hollis, that she meant: You have no say. You're not good enough to even be part of this. All you do is drink and hold this family up to ridicule, blah-blah-blah.
"Mother, the police think--"
"You've been talking to them!" she all but screamed. "You've been talking about our family? Good God, Wheeler, this is a time to band together, to put up a front. We need to put family before everything. Do you want to read about this in the L. A. Times'? Do you want us treated like that Ramsey family, for God's sake?"
"Mother ... I had no choice . . ."
"You always have a choice."
"I found Angie Wong's body. She was murdered. Cut to ribbons. It's some kind of Chinese punishment murder. I reported it. The police questioned me. Then I shot two Chinese gangsters right here, in this house, two nights ago. The police think it's all connected. How am I not going to talk to them?"
"Connected? Connected to what?" She had stopped crying and was now alert, feral, and fiercely protective. Wheeler was the problem now, not the police. They were back on familiar ground.
"Connected. Just . . . connected," he stammered.
"How . . . ?"
"Mother, c'mon . . ."
"No, you come on. I demand an answer. Tell me what they think. I don't like that colored detective. She can't wait to cause trouble. In the hospital ... she indicated Prescott was involved in something. Why are they saying this?" This last sentence shot out with force and venom.
"Mom . . ."
"What are they thinking, Wheeler? At least tell us that, for God's sake."
"That Pres . . . maybe was . . . that he could've been involved in illegal Chinese immigration. That perhaps he was fixing I. N. S. visas, buying off politicians." He watched an expression of utter disbelief cross his mother's features, distorting her high-cheek-boned beauty. The room was unnaturally quiet. You could almost hear dust settle.
Then, unexpectedly, Liz took a few steps closer to her mother-in-law, and Hollis followed, leaving Wheeler in the center of the room to hold his vile, traitorous position alone.
"Did you hate your brother that much?" Katherine finally whispered.
"No, Mother, I did not hate him. I didn't always understand him, and sometimes I wished he would've understood me, or dealt with things differently. But I didn't hate him. How could I? I loved him. He was my little brother."
"Deal with things differently?" his mother said, seizing on just that one statement. "Deal the way you do? Take a permanent seat at the bar? Thank God that wasn't his solution."
"No, Mother, I didn't want him to do that. I wanted him to ... understand. He was the only one who could see things from the same place as me. If he got talk
ed into some bribery scheme to gain influence, so he could live up to Dad's impossible expectations, then maybe it wasn't completely his fault."
Katherine's mouth actually fell open. Then she stood and took the two steps across the room to him. "God damn you," she said softly. "If you try to balance the scales for your miserable performance on your dead brother's back, I'll never forgive you for it."
"Doesn't it matter to you that Prescott was murdered? That somebody drove a needle through his heart? They killed him, and now, because of some mistaken sense of family loyalty, we're going to let them walk away from it? Don't we need to stand up for him in death? Can we let him get murdered and then turn away just to save the family's reputation?"
"To save his reputation. To save your brother's reputation," she shrieked.
"He's dead! He's gone to the next level. Let's deal with what's here."
"What you want, Wheeler, is to bring Prescott down to your level. You want to find some made-up crime against him to soil his memory, to take the heat off so you won't stand out as such a monumental and colossal fuck-up!"
He'd known her for thirty-seven years, he'd watched her in times of extreme crisis, he knew every side of her layered, complex Southern personality . . . yet, this afternoon was the first time he'd ever heard her swear.
He left without saying another word. . . . Their stares burned holes in the back of his jacket. He stood on the front porch of his brother's beautiful house, looking out at the maple trees lining the expensive street. His emotions boiled. He felt like a traitor to his little brother. He felt like he had turned on him, and yet, somebody had killed Prescott. Wheeler was beginning to feel rage about it and a need for revenge. And he also felt something else. For a moment as he stood there, he couldn't pin the feeling down . . . then it hit him. In this tragedy, there was opportunity. It could be a second chance for him. Maybe it was his last opportunity to reclaim his wasted life. Maybe Prescott had died so Wheeler could be reborn.
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