City of Strangers (Luis Chavez Book 2)

by Mark Wheaton

  “The very nature of our society is based on survival,” Zeng said. “The five monks who founded our order did so to combat a corrupt emperor and fight for the people. They didn’t stand on ceremony. They survived so that our order might, too. Mr. Qi’s words are born from that same spirit. Your ego is not what’s most important. It’s that our triad may continue to do the work that is its eternal purpose. When we fought Mao, we accepted weapons from the British and the Americans. When we were outlawed, we did business with the Koreans, the Japanese, the Burmese government, and even factions within Ho Chi Minh’s leadership in Vietnam. We have always prospered during moments of oppression by making fortuitous alliances. Mr. Qi has brought that thinking back to the present. Thank you, Mr. Qi, for thinking of the triad first and the individual second.”

  As Zeng bowed to him, Tony bowed back, perhaps the lowest he’d had to for a decade or more. He felt as if he were being blessed. He’d barely known Zeng, yet he’d found in him a surprising and staunch ally.

  The Vanguard who’d overseen Billy’s initiation ceremony rose next and bowed toward Tony.

  “Thank you, Mr. Qi.”

  Several others rose now and bowed, thanking him as well. Tony bowed back as humbly as he could. Hu waited for all of the others to bow and then followed suit.

  “I apologize for my shortsightedness,” Hu said. “And thank Mr. Zeng for correcting this.”

  Tony bowed deeply to him. When he rose, he looked for Billy, but the young man was gone.

  Ah well.

  XV

  It didn’t take long for Michael to regret staying downtown. There was work to be done, sure, but it was nothing Naomi couldn’t handle and actually made Michael look silly. He could hear it in people’s voices. Why is he there instead of doing something more important?

  And the answer was clear: Ah, to score cheap political points.

  Still, he kept at it like a crazed information desk docent. He handed out phone numbers, answered questions, signed forms, and became a veritable rubber stamp. The one thing he couldn’t do, which frustrated more than a few of his callers, was approve overtime or free up additional monies from the city budget. If he hadn’t known where the powers of the district attorney’s office began and ended before, he certainly did now.

  “So what’re they doing about it?” Helen asked when she called.

  “Right now they’re just trying to contain it. But they’ve got epidemiologists coming in from DC, a couple of experts from the Mayo Clinic, and then there’s the surgeon general from Canada, who handled the Toronto outbreak, coming in to consult on all things we haven’t thought of. By the way, did you know being surgeon general is an actual military rank up there?”

  Helen said that she did not. The kids were in bed, so she’d been watching the news. Everyone kept saying the same thing: that the virus wasn’t spreading in a predictable way.

  “Yeah, that’s why everyone’s spooked,” Michael said. “The only way it could get out to this many people spread this far and wide is if there are a great number of carriers that no one’s discovered yet. You couldn’t have staged anything more perfectly to inspire fear. We’ll get to the bottom of it, but right now it’s doing its job.”

  “Well, I hope the source is discovered quickly,” Helen replied. “I know there are a lot of frightened people out there. I’m still not sure why they need you there.”

  Michael hesitated. He hadn’t mentioned the Jeff Lambert conversation to Helen at the science fair. There just hadn’t been the right moment, and he didn’t want to do it in front of the kids.

  “Well, that’s nebulous,” Michael admitted. “I kind of had an interesting talk with Jeff Lambert last night.”

  “I saw him at the science fair,” Helen said. “A skeevy guy, right?”

  “Definitely,” Michael agreed. “But pretty connected with the Democratic Party. He wanted to talk to me about running for district attorney.”

  Helen let out a bark of a laugh so cruel, so tinged with incredulity, that Michael almost hung up the phone. It was ugly and petty. Worse, there was no mistaking it for humor. She’d known he was serious, and this was her response.

  “Thanks for the support, Helen.”

  “Sorry, Michael, but that’s a little bit out of left field. What about Deborah?”

  “They don’t think she can win. The challenger has a massive war chest, and it doesn’t look good.”

  “And somehow you’re the fix for that? Michael, are you sure you’re not being set up as some kind of sacrificial lamb? Like, Deborah knows she can’t win, so she’s bowing out rather than taking a loss, but they still have to run somebody?”

  Now Michael was mad. She might not have believed in him, but she didn’t have to be such an asshole about it.

  “It’s the Marshak case.”

  “Ah, of course it is,” Helen said with a sigh. “What did you tell him?”

  “I told him no. I told him even if I got elected, I didn’t know if I could do the job. I told him that I didn’t want my family to face the scrutiny of a political campaign.”

  This last part was a lie, but he wanted to hear Helen counter it.

  “That’s smart,” Helen said instead. “The kids are too young. And I don’t know if I trust this guy. What if he just wants to use you to raise money because of Marshak but then doesn’t get you in office? Once you’re a loser, people look at you that way. You only get one shot.”

  Exceptions like Reagan and Nixon popped into Michael’s head, but even more examples to support Helen’s assertion.

  “This is something we’ve talked about for a long time, Helen,” Michael said. “There were always going to be campaigns. When we first met, you said you fell for me because you’d always seen yourself as being a congressman’s wife one day.”

  “I was twenty.”

  “But this is what I’ve been working toward for years. I’ve always seen us on this path. We can do a lot of good.”

  “‘We can do a lot of good,’” Helen said, scoffing. “That’s the best you got? Everything comes out during campaigns. Our children are too young to process that.”

  “You really think some scandal is going to come out of the woodwork?”

  “Don’t you?”

  Michael froze. Is she talking about Annie?

  “I thought this was what you wanted,” Michael said lamely. “I thought we were in this together.”

  Helen didn’t say anything for a long moment. Finally, she spoke, her voice a shrug.

  “Maybe we’re not.”

  Luis idly tried to determine if the horseshoe-shaped two-story complex had at one time been a small apartment complex or a motel. Every door and window of the building was boarded up. The grass around the exterior had been allowed to grow wild, and ivy crept up the outer walls. There was a rusty pole jutting up from the sidewalk nearby, but the sign that had once topped it was nowhere in sight.

  It didn’t matter much. In a part of town this bad, he couldn’t imagine people wanting to live or rent there.

  “We’re protected here,” Susan said, clocking Luis’s concerns. “We don’t even have to lock the car doors.”

  The car bounced up into the overgrown courtyard parking lot and pulled to a stop in a space closest to the street. Luis glanced back to the street and saw there was nothing but obstructed views. Nobody driving by could see them. Protected or not, coming down here was asking for trouble. There was always that one guy who didn’t get the memo of who could or couldn’t get jacked.

  Susan popped the trunk and climbed out of the car. She hefted as many of the plastic grocery bags of bottles and boxes as she could and called up to Luis.

  “Can you help me with this?”

  Luis said a quick prayer and got out of the car. He tried to imagine Father Chang coming down here but figured it was during the day.

  “How come we’re here at night?” he asked.

  “No one’s here during the day,” Susan said. “Everyone’s out looking for a cou
ple of bucks or trying to score. The only time anyone’s here is when it’s not good to be out on the street.”

  Luis nodded and took out a few of the bags. “What is all this stuff?”

  “Vitamins mostly. A bunch of antidiarrheals. Some antacids. Some aspirin. A couple of boxes of antibiotics in case we run into any hard cases. Oh, and you’ll want to wear a mask and gloves.”

  She indicated an open box of latex surgical gloves at the back of the trunk, as well as a bag of heavy cotton masks like the kind gardeners wore.

  “It’s cheaper to get the ones at Home Depot than from some medical supply company,” she said. “And they’re just as effective.”

  Luis slipped one over his mouth and nose. Susan moved to the door of the nearest unit and beckoned for the priest to follow.

  “Don’t say anything to anybody,” she warned. “If people talk to you, look away. Don’t make eye contact. You’re not here to talk, make friends, or convert anybody. Cool?”

  “Cool.”

  Susan eyed him one last time as if to let him know she wasn’t joking, then knocked on the door twice before opening.

  “You don’t want to wait?”

  “They knew we were here the moment we turned onto the block. I’m not looking to waste time with pleasantries.”

  Luis was expecting to have to go door-to-door. When they entered, however, he saw that the place was completely gutted. The roof, outer walls, support columns, and a few chunks of second-story floors that now acted as lofts remained, but everything else had been removed. It gave the place a cathedral-like feeling, particularly as the only light streamed in through narrow breaks in the ceiling and areas of the windows where the newspaper that covered them had been torn away.

  Everywhere he looked, Luis saw the belongings of dozens of squatters. There were sleeping bags, cooking equipment, articles of clothing, a few suitcases, a couple of books, and bags of food hanging from the ceiling instead of on the floor, likely to keep rats and other vermin away. What was missing were people.

  “Where is every—?” he began to ask, but then saw that Susan had no idea.

  She was looking around, eyeing the corners and the lofts for any sign of people. It was completely empty.

  “This is crazy,” she said. “This is all they had in the world. They wouldn’t just leave everything here.”

  Luis eyed a couple of the books more closely and saw that they were in Chinese. The labels on the suitcases and even some of the shopping bags were as well. The only things routinely in English were the boxes of pills Susan had brought on earlier trips.

  “If the place had been raided, there’d be signs,” Susan said. “There’s nothing. Everything’s intact.”

  There was a creak from upstairs. Both Luis and Susan froze for an instant before Susan stepped forward.

  “Hello? Who’s up there?” she asked in English before repeating in Mandarin and Cantonese. “My Spanish sucks. You think you could—?”

  “¿Quién es?”

  No one responded to any of it. The creaks, however, continued.

  “Let’s go up,” Susan said.

  “Up” meant taking a ladder to a landing in the corner of the building, then crossing what appeared to be a narrow catwalk to a second section of ceiling. Susan, who’d clearly done this dozens of times, hurried up the ladder and slipped across the catwalk as nimbly as a mountain goat. Luis, whose eyes were just now adjusting to the dark, was less sure of himself and almost toppled off a few times.

  Finally, Luis crossed to where Susan stood in front of a large door that had been sealed off with tarp and tape.

  “This isn’t good,” Susan said. “Something’s very wrong here.”

  Luis stared at the door, wondering why someone would do such a professional job of sealing it off. An answer occurred to him and he blanched. Susan grabbed the doorknob but found it locked.

  “We have to get through here.”

  No sooner were the words out of her mouth than a commotion erupted outside. Multiple vehicles came to screeching halts in the parking lot. Light flooded in from multiple directions. Heavy footsteps followed.

  “It’s now or never.”

  Luis kicked the door with such force that the lower half cracked and fell off. He kicked the top half, and it broke in two before falling out of the doorframe. The smell that poured out was so bad, Luis thought he might throw up. He took several steps back and almost tumbled off the ledge.

  “Oh crap,” Susan exclaimed, looking into the room. “What the hell?”

  As Luis stood back up, covering his mouth with both hands, Susan took out her cell phone and turned on the flashlight.

  “Father?”

  Luis moved to the doorway and saw what she saw. Piled in one corner of the room were the bodies of at least five people. Luis had no idea how to tell how long they’d been dead, but it didn’t seem like it could’ve been more than a few days.

  “I recognize the girl,” Susan said softly. “And that’s her father. Holy Christ.”

  Luis stared at the bodies and for the life of him couldn’t distinguish which one was a woman and which an older man. They were covered in heavy blankets, but this did nothing to obscure the smell. On the floor rats scuttled about, even as the air was filled with flies.

  Behind them Luis heard heavy footsteps pounding up the ladder. Several sets in fact.

  “ICE!” roared the first man up the ladder, an Immigration and Customs Enforcement agent clad in riot gear and wearing a gas mask. “Step out of the room! Hands where we can see them!”

  Susan didn’t comply. She was too busy throwing aside blankets as she attempted to identify the dead.

  “Out of the room now!” roared the agent. “Or we will shoot!”

  Susan ignored this order, too. Holding a glove over her hands, she checked the nose and mouth of the youngest of the dead, as well as the skin under the arms and torso.

  “She’s been dead about three days. Jesus Christ, Luis. We found our patients zero.”

  Before Luis could respond, he felt a hand on his shoulder. He was spun around, his eyes filling with bright-white light just before the butt of a rifle was slammed into his stomach. He doubled over and hit the floor. Hard.

  “I’m a doctor!” Susan shouted behind him. “We were passing out medicine and found these bodies.”

  “Holy crap!” barked the agent, though his voice registered shock. “She’s dead?”

  “Yes, and judging by her mucus expression, you’re going to need to quarantine everyone in this entire building. Including yourself.”

  Still doubled up on the floor, Luis stared up at the chastened agent.

  “What’re you looking at?”

  Before he could respond, the agent fired a boot strike into Luis’s chin. Everything went black.

  After his success at the triad meeting, Tony Qi felt like celebrating. He knew it was a terrible breach in protocol, but he thought he’d head up to the house on Grand View and see if Jun was awake and interested in hitting the Sunset Strip for another dinner. With Chen Jiang and Archie in tow, naturally, but even that would be okay.

  It was ironic then that while he was on the way up Laurel Canyon Drive, he got a call from Dr. Soong.

  “Tony? Um, I’m not sure what the protocol is here, but I think we need to get Jun to the hospital.”

  “What happened? Is it the baby?”

  “No. It’s, well, it’s her. She’s taken ill. Worse, her symptoms are not so far removed from . . .”

  And the doctor said the name of the virus that was on everyone’s lips. Tony couldn’t believe his ears. It had to be some kind of a mistake.

  “I’ll be right there,” he said.

  Tony hung up and hit the gas. The canyon roads were winding and narrow, but he couldn’t care less. The universe wouldn’t let him crash. It couldn’t. When he finally got to Jun’s door, he barely remembered to put the car in park before launching toward the house.

  “What’s her condition?” he asked t
he first person he saw, Archie, when he entered.

  “I don’t know,” Archie said. “But I don’t think I can be here anymore. This isn’t the job. You understand?”

  Tony nodded. Archie took his leave and went to his car. Tony hurried to the bedroom, where he found Chen and Dr. Soong, both masked, standing over Jun. Her skin had paled, and her cheeks had gone sallow.

  “Jun!” Tony exclaimed.

  Everyone in the room turned. Tony was immediately embarrassed by his outburst. Jun sat up and smiled at him a little.

  “I’m fine, Mr. Qi,” she said, eerily calm. “Really. I’m fine.”

  As much as he wanted to believe her, her breathing was labored and her movements unsteady.

  “I’ve done this before,” she continued. “It’s anemia. I’m so stupid. I don’t eat right, and then I’m surprised when I fall apart.”

  But there was real fear on her face. She knew it was bad, and her eyes were pleading with anyone who caught their gaze to come up with a solution. Tony shot a look to Dr. Soong. He didn’t move, but he obviously didn’t think it was something as simple as anemia.

  “Who has been here?” Tony demanded to know after leading Chen Jiang and Dr. Soong from the room. “There must have been somebody.”

  Chen shook her head. “Only you, Archie, and the doctor. That’s it.”

  “No one that Kuo Kuang sent to check on her? No friends here in the States you don’t want me to know about for fear word will get back to Kuang? I need to know, auntie. And I need to know now.”

  From the fear in Chen’s eyes, he knew the old woman was telling the truth. There’d been no one. No friends. No secret lovers.

  “How could this be SARS?” Tony asked Dr. Soong. “Unless she brought it over from China. And that seems very, very unlikely.”

  “I took a sample of her phlegm and had it tested. Then I sent a sample to a lab in Agoura Hills. The entire city’s in an uproar, so it was expensive to keep the results quiet. But it confirmed it.”