Chinese Cooking for Diamond Thieves

by Dave Lowry

  37

  Rule #5: When someone has a grip on your crotch, they deserve all your attention.

  There are a lot of advantages in speaking another language. Any high school guidance counselor will be delighted to explain them. When those counselors are urging kids to sign up for freshman French, though, there’s at least one advantage they probably don’t mention. Even though it’s a nice one. It’s the one where you can understand what’s being said in front of you without those doing the talking knowing that you understand it. Like I said before, I never got tired of that. Native French speakers or Spanish speakers might be a little careful in front of a stranger. They might figure their conversations with others can be overheard and understood. I’d never had any Mandarin-speaking Chinese I didn’t know pay the slightest attention to me when they were speaking to one another in my presence. They saw a Caucasian face and assumed I thought they were speaking some exotic language no non-Chinese could possibly understand.

  In Asian markets sometimes, I’d be standing beside a couple of old Chinese women. They would be muttering to one another about why those big hairy foreigners were coming into a place like this when they didn’t know the first thing about cooking anything that was for sale there. I’d let it go on for a while, and then I’d speak up and say, “Yeah, I know what you mean. And they smell funny too.”

  Learning Mandarin was a long, slow process. I still made plenty of mistakes in grammar, and my pronunciation got corrected from time to time. But moments like that made it all worthwhile.

  Mr. Sung switched to Mandarin pretty quickly after I let him go. Not long after I’d eased my grip on his throat and his crotch and he’d stopped squealing. He stayed up against the wall where I’d shoved him, touching his throat gently with his fingertips and shifting around, stepping on one foot, then slowly shifting to the other. He seemed to be testing to see if everything was still in place.

  Corinne stood in front of him. She was wearing the black dress we’d bought at the mall. It was one of the first spring nights that could be called warm. Even so, with the sun dropping, so was the temperature. There was just enough cool in the air to raise bumps on her bare arms. She didn’t seem to notice.

  “What?” she said to Mr. Sung in Mandarin. Her shoulders were stiff. Her hands balled into fists. I wondered for a second if she was going to take a swing at Mr. Sung. I considered stepping a little closer to be able to stop her if she did. But then I figured what the hell, and I stayed where I was. Mr. Sung looked around. He glanced at me as if I might step in. When you’re depending on a guy who’s just hoisted you up by your throat and crotch to come to your rescue, you’re in some trouble. He kept himself pressed up against the wall like he was trapped.

  “What?” she said again. It was, I thought, the first time I’d seen Corinne at a loss for words. Her eyes were open wide. Her fists released into open palms that she turned over, her thumbs pointing out. Finally, she said, “Care to explain any of this? Any of it? Anything at all?”

  “Wenqian,” Mr. Sung said. He was trying to sound soothing. It wasn’t working all that well. Maybe it was the tremble in his voice. I couldn’t catch any accent.

  “Yes,” he said. “I can explain all of it. I don’t think the time to do that is standing out here in an alley by a dumpster in the dark, in front of this laowai.”

  I kept my face a blank as much as I could. I still wasn’t any good at it, even though I’d had some practice recently. I just kept looking at Corinne. I didn’t see any advantage in letting him know I understood what he was saying.

  “Oh, really? Where exactly would be a good place for you to explain it? Wait a minute,” she added, without giving him a chance to answer. “I can think of a place. How about the office back in Montreal? You know, the one where I worked for you for all that time? The one where I walked in one morning and found it empty? That would have been a good place for you to explain it. I don’t remember seeing you around that morning, though.”

  Now I watched Sung. He’d determined, apparently, that Corinne wasn’t going to hit him. He straightened his shoulders, took a step away from the wall, then caught himself. He moved gingerly again, testing to see just how much it was going to hurt to walk. From his posture, I thought he might need a few minutes, at least.

  “I certainly didn’t do anything to cause you any trouble,” he said. “You or any other of the employees.”

  “Aside from leaving us high and dry.”

  “I did what I thought was best for the company,” he said. “That company was founded by my father. I have responsibilities for it you couldn’t—”

  “Aiya!” Corinne cut him off. “What responsibilities? You. Took. Off!” she said, slowly, emphasizing each word.

  “I have your paycheck,” he said. “I can explain. But I need to see you someplace where we can sit down and talk in a civilized way.”

  I was beginning to get the idea that Sung was a bullshitter. Now that neither Corinne nor I seemed to be a further threat, at least not an immediate one, he adjusted his shirt collar and smoothed back his hair. He was trying to look like the successful diamond merchant, a man of means, a force in the business world. He wasn’t doing a great job.

  “I have a phone number you can call,” he said to Corinne. He reached behind him, pulled out a slim wallet, and took out a card that had been folded over. He handed it to her.

  “Give me a call, and we’ll meet and straighten out all this mess,” he said. By now his voice was almost haughty, like he was transforming himself from a skinny guy in cheap clothes to a dignified businessman.

  “Good evening to you,” he said to Corinne. He pointedly didn’t look at me. He walked away, still trying to look dignified. It wasn’t easy. He was waddling a bit, his legs spread wide. Corinne and I watched him go. He disappeared around the corner of the restaurant. It was nearly dark. The air had gotten even cooler. Corinne rubbed one bare arm, holding the folded paper in the other.

  “So that’s what it’s like when you’re angry,” she said.

  38

  Rule #61: Trying times call for expensive tea.

  “You didn’t mention the FBI to Sung,” I said to Corinne.

  We were sitting at the kitchen table back at the apartment. Langston was gone. He hadn’t been home—he’d have left a note if he had been. Which meant he was off hanging out with Bao Yu and some of the guys from his restaurant’s kitchen or somebody else in the Chinese restaurant business, eating pot stickers or dried watermelon seeds, and drinking tea or fiery Chinese liquor. I sort of wished I were with him. Ms. Masterson was sitting in the third chair, pretending to like Longjing tea. When I poured her cup, I explained its history.

  “Supposedly the grandson of one of China’s emperors went to the Hu Gong Temple, in Zhejiang Province,” I said. “He tried the local tea and was so impressed that he took some of the leaves back to the emperor. The emperor named the eighteen tea bushes in front of the temple imperial property. They’re still there; still producing tea.”

  “Is that where this came from?” Ms. Masterson asked. She peered into the cup at the limpid green liquid still sending up tendrils of hot steam.

  “The tea from those bushes sells for more per ounce than gold,” I said. “This likely came from right around the area, though. It’s a variety called que shi.”

  “Bird’s tongue,” Corinne translated.

  Ms. Masterson nodded and took a short, breathy sip.

  “How is it?” I asked.

  “Hot.” She put down the cup. “So,” she said, turning to Corinne, “How come you didn’t say anything to Mr. Sung about the FBI?”

  “Or the guys who jumped you outside your apartment?” I added. “The same guys who shot at us in the park?”

  “I don’t trust him,” Corinne said. “The less information he has, the better off we’ll be.” She glanced at me. “Isn’t that one of Tucker’s Rules?”

  “Matter of fact, it is,” I said. “Number sixty-three. When you’re confronting
an ex-boss who’s being investigated by the FBI and who knows what other law enforcement agencies, it’s best to be stingy with information you give him about the situation.”

  “Good rule,” Corinne said, then turned to Ms. Masterson. “What do we do now?”

  “We do some thinking about why the suddenly corporeal Mr. Sung has come here,” Ms. Masterson said.

  “To see me,” Corinne said. “To explain what went on back at the shop in Montreal.”

  “And to give you your back pay,” I said. “Remember? He told you he had what he owed you.”

  “You believe that?” Ms. Masterson asked, looking at Corinne.

  “No,” Corinne said. “It makes no sense.”

  Ms. Masterson turned to me. “You believe that?”

  “I try to be optimistic,” I said. “You think it’s possible he may have come all the way here for some reason other than to explain to one of his ex-employees why he skipped out on his own business and to give her a handsome severance package?”

  “It’s possible. It is also possible I may get used to your incessant smart-assedness,” she added. “But I doubt it.”

  “I thought for sure I was growing on you,” I said. “Doesn’t matter right now.” I looked at Corinne. “For right now, it seems the better question is this: How did Sung know you were in St. Louis?”

  Ms. Masterson tilted her head and shot her finger at me. “Precisely.”

  Corinne picked up her teacup and looked inside. “He didn’t know Ariadna,” she said. “Other than her, the only people outside of here who could have any way of knowing I’m here would be those Flying Ghosts who were in his office.”

  “Are we to assume Mr. Sung just might be in cahoots with the Flying Ghosts?” Ms. Masterson asked.

  “You know what ‘cahoots’ means?” I asked Corinne.

  “I do,” Corinne said. “I have been speaking English for quite a while now.”

  “Just checking,” I said. She rolled her eyes.

  “I think we might assume that Mr. Sung and the Flying Ghosts are in cahoots,” she said.

  “I would venture to guess, speaking as a professional investigator,” Ms. Masterson said, “that Mr. Sung became involved in some sort of scheme with the Flying Ghosts. Probably some sort of financial deal. Diamonds would be an excellent commodity to use to launder money.”

  “How does that work?” Corinne asked.

  “I’m speculating here a little,” Ms. Masterson said. “The Flying Ghosts, like a lot of organized crime groups, have a lot of money that is hard to account for when filing income tax forms.”

  “Chinese gangs pay taxes?” Corinne asked.

  “No,” Ms. Masterson said. “But they have to have some explanation for all that money they’ve got. If they put it into banks, they have to answer questions about where it came from. If they try to invest it in something like, say, real estate, they have to have an explanation for it.”

  “They can’t just leave it sitting around somewhere,” I offered.

  “No, for some obvious reasons and some not so obvious. Obviously, if they have stacks of money sitting around in their homes or offices, it can be stolen. Not so obviously, if they have lots of money and don’t do anything with it, they can’t grow. They can’t get wealthier unless they invest it some way.”

  “And diamonds are a good investment for them?”

  “Very good, especially for a smaller gang like the Flying Ghosts. Diamonds are conveniently sized; they’re perfect to be easily put into a safe or safe-deposit box. They can also be resold fairly easily, in most parts of the world, without any questions asked.”

  “So Mr. Sung was selling diamonds to the Ghosts?” Corinne asked. “Who bought them with money they’ve collected from drug dealing, prostitution, or any of their other enterprises?”

  “Sung gets the dirty money and gives them the diamonds,” I said. “Then he uses that money to purchase more diamonds, adding to his inventory. He’s the middleman, in effect.”

  “He only has to report the sales,” Ms. Masterson said. “He doesn’t have to account for where the money for those sales came from.”

  “So he got into these transactions with the Flying Ghosts,” Corinne said. “And he got in over his head.”

  “Way over,” Ms. Masterson said. “And he did what a lot of people do when they are not career criminals but find themselves involved somehow in criminal activity. He went into a panic. He took the inventory and ran off.”

  “But technically, at least part of that inventory belongs to the Ghosts,” Corinne said. “Especially if they’ve given him money and he hasn’t given them diamonds. He’s planning to what? Disappear? Start a new life in Tahiti or somewhere?”

  “What are the odds something like that’s going to work out in the long run?” I asked.

  “Long run?” Ms. Masterson said. “Not good. There are people who have the skills and the personality to take off, disappear, create a whole new identity and life for themselves somewhere else.”

  “Mr. Sung probably isn’t one of them,” Corinne said, looking down into her tea again. I wondered how much of this she’d put together already.

  “Nope,” Ms. Masterson said. “Unless he had a lot of cash—even if he had a fortune in diamonds—it’d be difficult for him to live for any length of time.”

  “Can’t go to a dealership and buy a car with a handful of diamonds?”

  Ms. Masterson shook her head. “He had a substantial amount of wealth, but no easy way to turn it into fungible assets.”

  “So he ran, didn’t think about any long-term plans,” I said. “And now he’s having a shortage of funds.”

  “He’s got probably a million in diamonds,” Corinne said. “But he can’t buy a taco.”

  “How would he turn those diamonds into taco-purchasable cash?” Ms. Masterson asked.

  “That would be tough for him,” Corinne said.

  “I get the impression Sung doesn’t do ‘tough’ very well,” I said.

  “Umm,” Ms. Masterson murmured, while taking a tentative sip of the tea. “What would he do in a difficult situation like that?”

  Corinne held her teacup in both hands and looked into it, thinking.

  “Mr. Sung isn’t a bad person,” she said slowly, still looking into her tea. “It’s more like he’s a weak person. He worries a lot about appearances. He wants people to think he’s successful, that he’s important. I don’t think he ever cared much about that younger girlfriend. I think he just liked having people see her with him, think that he was successful or whatever, that he could attract a woman like her.”

  I took a sip of my tea. It occurred to me that bird’s tongue tea tastes the way a freshly cut lawn smells. Grassy, herby, like spring. It was expensive, and I could make a can of it last for months by drinking it only every once in a while. On the other hand, my funds were not tied up in hard-to-negotiate diamonds. I took another sip. Corinne went on.

  “When the gang people started showing up,” she said, “that’s when I first noticed it about Mr. Sung. He should have been scared. And I think, in some ways, he was. But they didn’t come in and threaten him the way they do with a lot of business owners. They came in and treated him like he was an important person. They spoke to him with lots of respect.”

  “They sucked up to him,” I said.

  “Exactly. They made him feel like he was doing them a favor. He enjoyed that. By the time he would have realized they were using him, I’m guessing it would have been too late.”

  “So he runs,” Ms. Masterson said. “But that still doesn’t answer the question of what he would do when he became desperate for money.”

  “Probably,” Corinne said, “he would have contacted them.”

  “The gang?” Ms. Masterson asked.

  Corinne nodded. “Sooner or later.”

  “Even though by that time, they would have been looking for him, looking for whatever he would have owed them.”

  “They’re his only chance of
getting any money,” Corinne said.

  “What’s his play there?” I asked. “Are Chinese crime gangs noted for their tendency to forgive and forget?”

  Ms. Masterson smiled and tried another sip of tea. It had cooled enough that she was able to get some down without flinching. “This kind of grows on you,” she said.

  “Don’t get used to it,” I said. “It’s expensive. I only break it out for special occasions.”

  “Like crime solving?” Ms. Masterson asked.

  “Yep,” I said, “so solve. Sung has to turn the diamonds over to the Ghosts; otherwise he’s right back where he started.”

  “Unless he’s got some leverage,” Ms. Masterson said. “Unless he has an angle he can work.”

  “Like what?”

  “Like me,” Corinne said. She put her cup down. “He’s told the Flying Ghosts that I took the diamonds.”

  “How would he explain his disappearance?” I asked.

  “A good lie always has some element of truth to it,” Ms. Masterson said. I sensed she and Corinne were on the same wavelength.

  “He would tell the Flying Ghosts that he panicked,” Corinne said. “Which is true. Now that he’s in trouble, he’s gone back to them and told them when he took off it was partly because he was scared, partly because he was off looking for me.”

  “And now he’s found you,” I said. “Probably with their help. Sung and the Ghosts are now working together, and if he’s convinced them you have the diamonds, it takes the heat off him; if you can’t produce the diamonds, they can focus their anger on you.

  “They’ll believe Sung?” I asked Ms. Masterson.

  “For the time being,” Ms. Masterson said. “And it’ll give Sung a believable story. Now that he’s found you and they know it, he can always say he talked or coerced you into giving up the diamonds. He gives them the diamonds he still has, says he got them from you, and all’s well.”

  “Except for Corinne,” I said.

  “Except for that,” Ms. Masterson agreed. “Gangs like the Flying Ghosts are unlikely to, as you said, ‘forgive and forget.’ Once they’ve got the diamonds back, they’re going to want to extract some revenge for all the trouble they believe she’s caused them.”