Chasing the Monkey King

by D. C. Alexander

  “Well then, thank you,” Severin said. “I guess maybe I shouldn’t always hate on the federal government.”

  “Indeed. What we do here protects our economy from something that’s a greater threat than terrorism and narcotics combined.”

  “I had no idea,” Zhang said, shrugging.

  “Nobody does. Our investigations don’t sell newspapers. They don’t capture people’s attention the way hijackings, bombings, and cocaine do.”

  “I suppose you can’t expect an unfairly low-priced computer chip to frighten people the same way 9/11 or Pablo Escobar did,” Severin said.

  “Unless they happen to work in one of the targeted industries.”

  “Can I ask you a quick question on an entirely different subject?”

  “Certainly.”

  “Just out of curiosity, why didn’t you want me to say your name on the telephone when you called me last night?”

  “I’m not at liberty to say.”

  “Really? Alright. Well then, why did you want to talk to us?”

  “Because people always suspect the husband. Because I don’t know what other bull people might be feeding you—what lies you’ve heard. Because I’m not,” he paused. Cleared his throat. “Because I’m not well-liked by some people here. So they might be inclined to draw conclusions against me.”

  “Well, we’re not biased. We’re here to get as much information for Kristin’s family as we can, so we’d be happy to take down whatever you’d like to tell us.”

  “I’m not sure how to begin. Kristin’s family never liked me, so there’s no limit to what kinds of crazy theories they’ve come up with.”

  “Why didn’t they like you?” Zhang asked.

  “Because I’m not a millionaire businessman. Because Kristin preferred me to them. Because I don’t eat lutefisk and refused to wear their ridiculous Norwegian bunad folk costumes for their annual family Christmas photo. But whatever,” he said, waving a hand as if swatting away a fly. “What would you like to know?”

  “Well, we skimmed the State Department report,” Severin said. “It says you were over there at the end of the team’s trip.”

  “Yes.”

  “Then for starters, maybe we could flesh that out a little.”

  “Fair enough.”

  “So why were you there?”

  “I was investigating a different company in China the following week.”

  “In the same town?”

  “Not—no.”

  “But nearby?”

  “In Jiangsu Province. Town called Jinhu. Not nearby. Not on the way. They were in a town called Yinzhen. Well off the beaten path, to say the least. It was quite a journey. Planes, buses, taxis. I won’t say it was easy. But I speak Chinese, so that facilitated things. I went to compare notes. To see what they learned that could help me in my own investigative work the following week. A lot of times, it turns out these companies are secretly related. Multiple storefronts of the same entity, owned by the same people. Sometimes, when they know there will be different Commerce teams at each location, you’ll even catch them using the same personnel in the investigations of allegedly different, unrelated manufacturers. That sort of thing.”

  “I see. So your visit to Yinzhen was, in essence, for purposes of making your own investigative efforts more effective?”

  “Yes.”

  “So it was officially sanctioned,” Severin said. “You were sent there by your superiors.”

  “Well, I mean, I had permission to take an acclimation day. Permission to fly over there with enough time to take a 24-hour break before my own work was scheduled to begin. To get over the jet lag and so forth.”

  “So your supervisors didn’t send you. But they knew you were meeting the other team?”

  “No.”

  “But you went there for work reasons. Not for personal reasons.”

  “I wanted to see my wife, too. Is there something wrong with that?”

  “Not at all. Just trying to get the complete picture.”

  “Fine.”

  “And you got to see her? Your wife?”

  “Yes.”

  “And how did that go?”

  “Fine.”

  “No discord? No arguments or anything?” Zhang asked.

  “What would we argue about?”

  “And you were able to talk to them about how things went on the on-site part of their investigation?”

  “Yes.”

  “So how did their investigation go?”

  “Fine.”

  “Anything noteworthy about it?” Severin asked.

  “How so?”

  “Well, I’m no expert on what you people do here, so I’d leave it to you to decide whether there was anything, say, at all out of the ordinary about how it went.”

  “Actually, as we were about to get in the van to go to the airport, I asked how it went. Kristin said ‘weird.’ I asked how so. But she said that she’d explain later, and nodded toward YSP’s lawyer who was standing nearby as the company people loaded our luggage into the van. When we got in, the lawyer was sitting right there with us and could hear everything we were saying to each other.”

  “So after all your efforts to get there and discuss how their investigation was going, you didn’t really end up talking to them about how it went?”

  “There was a rush to get to the airport. I mean, by the time I got there they’d wound up their work and were trying to get to Qingdao to catch the last flight to Shanghai. And on-site investigations in China are almost always weird. That’s the norm. I didn’t see any reason to press the matter.”

  “Okay,” Severin said. “You arrived to find that they were already done and rushing to depart. Kristin said the verification was weird, but you didn’t ask for details because it didn’t seem warranted and because the company’s attorney was always close by.”

  “Exactly. We never want to give lawyers clues about what our findings will be once we get home and analyze everything. It just gives them a chance to screw with us. Try to apply political pressure and so forth.”

  “I see. Who was their attorney?” Severin asked, playing dumb, wanting to see Wesley’s expression as he said the name.

  “Holloman,” he said in a tone of distaste. “Benjamin R. Holloman of the law firm of McElroy, Steen & Duff. A weasely bastard. Used to be a subpar employee here, actually.”

  “You rode with them to Qingdao airport?”

  “Part of the way. Then I realized it made more sense to take another route. They were driving east. I needed to head southwest, to Jiangsu Province. So I made other arrangements.”

  “After going all that way, going to all that trouble, to see your wife?”

  A hint of dilemma flashed across Wesley’s face. A crack in the façade of total confidence. “It wasn’t a pleasant—I mean … .” Severin waited, watching him deliberate, formulate. “There was an argument. Keen,” he said, his voice suddenly venomous. “Keen kept butting in. I was just trying to have a conversation with my wife.” He shook his head.

  “Why would Keen care about your conversation with Kristin?”

  “That’s how he was. He liked to get into other people’s business.”

  “What was the conversation about?” Zhang asked.

  “I don’t even remember. Nothing. Just husband-wife stuff.” He paused. “She hadn’t returned some phone calls I made, and I was expressing the fact that I’d been worried. Worried over whether or not she was alright. As any husband would be.”

  “So it was an argument,” Severin said.

  “No!” he said too loudly. “I mean, it became that with Keen. He kept trying to answer for her. Like I said, butting in. It wasn’t any of his business.”

  “You were angry.”

  “Yes, but come on.”

  “So then, what, you had them take you to a bus station?”

  “No, I needed to take a walk. Take a breather. I just got out. Isn’t all this in the State Department report?”

&n
bsp; “I’m afraid we haven’t had a chance to look at it all that closely yet,” Zhang lied.

  “You got out where?” Severin asked.

  “Hell, I don’t know. Out on some two-bit, potholed country road. Farm fields all around. Middle of nowhere.”

  “And then what?”

  “Then I flagged down a passing farm truck. Big flatbed loaded with empty pig cages. Gave this fella around $10 worth of Yuan to drive me over to Zhucheng, which was, I don’t know, six or seven miles to the east. From there I caught a bus south. Made my way to the manufacturer I was investigating down in Jiangsu. That’s all I know.”

  “Okay,” Severin said. “Now if you don’t mind, if you could walk us through the facts just one more time, we can make sure we understand exactly what you’ve told us. Got to be sure we don’t screw it up.”

  Wesley retold the story, with Severin listening closely for any and all changes, however slight—any of which could be signals that the story was fabricated. But the story was the same the second time around. Again, it ended with Wesley heading southwest by bus. At that point, Severin decided to test the waters in earnest. “So you never saw Kristin again,” he said, watching Wesley’s face. His hostile expression didn’t change. He just shook his head, then turned and looked out the window as if he were taking a moment for somber reflection. Was it an act?

  “So what do you think happened to them?” Zhang asked. “Any ideas?” Wesley shrugged. “Do you buy State’s theory that they were killed in a random robbery gone bad?”

  “It’s possible. But so are other things. That company driver, for one. He disappeared, right? State couldn’t find him? That’s suspicious. I’m sure the company didn’t pay him squat. And what an opportunity, right? Cash and credit cards. American passports. Can you imagine what those fetch on the black market in China?”

  “Probably a fair chunk of change,” Zhang said. “Still, sounds a bit extreme for the size of the payout.”

  “Then look at the company people.”

  “Why them?”

  Because of all the money at stake as a consequence of the antidumping investigation. Because of how much depended on the results.”

  “But the company would expect the case to go on regardless of the team’s disappearance, wouldn’t it? Didn’t it?” Zhang asked.

  “Yes, but maybe the on-site investigation didn’t go well for YSP. Maybe the team found something that was going to sink YSP’s ship, so to speak. Something YSP could sweep up after they got rid of the team. Something they could re-hide before Commerce could send another pair of investigators.”

  “Like what?”

  “Could have been anything. Something as innocent as a systemic bookkeeping error. Something as sinister as outright fraud. Who knows?”

  “Well, you would know, if anyone,” Severin said. “If there was dirty work afoot, it would have been headline news, right? The team would have told you the moment you got to Yinzhen. Stands to reason it would have been among the first things they mentioned.”

  “Yeah, I mean—but things … .” Wesley looked profoundly uncomfortable. “Like I already told you, the YSP people were right there with us. Their lawyer, Holloman, rode in the van with us. The team could hardly tell me anything sensitive under the circumstances.”

  “Couldn’t you have snuck around the corner with them before everyone got in the van? Asked for a private word with your wife? Pretended you had to go to the bathroom, asked Keen to show you where it was, then slipped away to get the thumbnail report?”

  “I didn’t know there was any real reason to. And if Keen or Kristin did, they didn’t make it happen. That’s on them.”

  Cold, Severin thought. “So you think it’s possible, if things weren’t going their way, that the YSP people might have effectuated the team’s disappearance?”

  Wesley shrugged again. After a quiet stretch that seemed to make him fidgety, he said, “Is there anything else I can help you understand, or any information I can help you get? All you have to do is ask.”

  Severin decided that Wesley, while clearly uncomfortable, wasn’t quite uncomfortable enough. That maybe it was time to see where a different tack took them. Maybe time for the gloves to come off. “That’s very generous of you, Wesley. May we look at your email account?”

  Wesley looked surprised. Then, for a moment, troubled. He re-mastered himself before answering. “I wish I could let you do that. There is proprietary information in there that you have to be on a protective order clearance list to look at.”

  “Of course,” Zhang said. “We’d settle for your private email account then.”

  “Don’t have one.”

  “You don’t have a private email account? In this day and age? Really?” Wesley shrugged his shoulders again.

  “Do you know anything about our run-in with a State Department flunky yesterday?” Severin asked.

  “You mean one of the State Department investigators who worked this case?”

  Severin sat quiet for a moment, letting the silence do its work, all the while watching for telltale signs the man was playing dumb. He didn’t see any, but that didn’t settle the matter. “Wesley, I’m going to be honest with you. It’s our understanding that you were spitting mad when you got to Yinzhen. That you completely lost your cool in the van. Blew up. That it wasn’t as minor as you are trying to make it sound.”

  “Holloman told you that, right? Another jerk. Fine. Yeah. Maybe I lost my cool a little bit. But gentlemen, come on. I’d just traveled all the way there from D.C. I was worried about my wife. I was tired. It’s only natural I’d be on edge or whatever.”

  “You blew up, you got out of the van, and then you just threw your hands up and went on your merry way to Jiangsu Province, right? Walked it off and carried on like it was nothing, even though you’d just traveled 7,000 miles, a day earlier than you would have otherwise, by subway, airliner, bus, taxi, ox cart, and/or who knows what, in order to see your wife. Can anyone corroborate your story?”

  “Corroborate?”

  “Any witnesses who can put you on the bus south. Anyone who can confirm the time at which you arrived in Jinhu. A coworker? Hotel personnel? Anyone?”

  “I don’t actually think—”

  “Or documentation? Receipts? I’m sure you have to keep all your receipts and ticket stubs for claiming your travel expenses when you return home, right? Bus ticket stubs with departure and arrival times, maybe? Taxi receipts?”

  “I didn’t keep any of that for in-country travel until I got to Jinhu. It was personal. You can’t claim expenses for personal travel.”

  “Personal credit card bills then? Your monthly statements?”

  He shook his head. “I negotiated cash transactions for the tickets. That’s how it works over there. So no.”

  “Anyone or anything, Wesley, to show that you didn’t decide to chase Kristin and Keen down, confront them at Qingdao Airport or wherever, give them a piece of your mind?”

  “You mean anything to prove that I couldn’t have killed them.”

  “Phone or hotel bills showing that you tried to call Kristin every day, because you missed her so much, the following week?” Zhang asked. Wesley just stared. “Something, anything, that shows you tried to call her, even just once?” Zhang asked.

  After a pause, Severin stepped in again. “Why did you take two months off after you got home?”

  “I was mourning. I was depressed. Is that unreasonable?”

  “Tell us more about this explosion on the van ride.” Wesley was flushing, but his expression remained stone steady. “Were you upset about anything in particular?”

  “I already told you. Keen kept butting into our conversation.”

  “When you were asking Kristin why she didn’t take or return your calls from the U.S.?”

  “I’ve told you that twice now.”

  “Was that was the primary source of your anger with her at the time?”

  “I wasn’t angry with her.”

 
; “Okay, then let’s say you were emotional.”

  “I was just expressing my disappointment in her communication because I’d been worried that something had happened to her.”

  “But you were able to make contact with Keen, right? More than once, we understand. Keen certainly would have told you if you had any reason to worry about her health and safety when you spoke to him each day, right?”

  “I didn’t—look, he said she wasn’t feeling well.”

  “Sure,” Severin said. “Well, look, whether or not you had logical grounds to be worried about her safety doesn’t really interest me. Because honestly, looking at this as an outsider, I’ve got to tell you that, by far, Kristin and Keen’s relationship, and especially the whole Bali thing, had to have you more upset than anything else. If I had been in your shoes, a little communications hiccup would have felt petty compared to that.“ Severin stopped to watch Wesley’s face for reaction and response. Wesley looked caught between emotions. His lower lip quivered, just perceptibly, as if he were fighting to contain profound sadness. Yet at the same time, his eyes burned with naked fury.

  “Can’t say that I have either the time or inclination to pay attention to the dynamics of all of my coworkers’ relationships,” he said, doing a poor job of feigning obliviousness. “Anyway, I’m going to need to get back to work here, so … .”

  And you don’t even bother to ask what I meant by the Bali thing, Severin noted.

  Wesley’s lip quivered again, and for a split second, Severin felt sorry for him. Pitied him for his low self-esteem and the sad childhood that had no doubt crushed it. But Severin had no time for pity.

  “I imagine you must have felt pretty damned low whenever you caught one of your friends or coworker’s furtive, knowing glances,” Severin said.

  “Their obvious changes of subject when you came through the door,” Zhang added. “The whispers.”

  “I’d like you to leave.”

  “Look,” Severin said, his eyes still locked in its study of Wesley’s facial expression, “I’m sorry to have to bring up something so unpleasant. But I’m of course talking about the romantic relationship between Kristin and Bill. I mean, I don’t care how tough a guy is. Under those circumstances, any man would feel a terrible—an absolutely terrible sense of betrayal and loss. Of humiliation. Especially with your colleagues knowing.” Wesley’s mouth hung open, but no sound emerged from it. “When did you figure out that they were running away to Bali?” Severin let the silence hang once again. Then he asked a final question of Wesley. “Are you sad that she’s gone?”