Flower Net (Red Princess 1)

Lee grimaced. “We have gotten—how do you call it?—a bad rap. These things are not Rising Phoenix. You look at the other gangs. You look at those Fujian gangs! Yeah, the Fuk Ching, they’re the ones bringing in illegals, not us. You talk about prostitution, drugs, you look at the Hong Kong gangs. The Sun Yee On—now there’s a bunch of low-life thugs! I’ll tell you something. If someone was trying to horn in on our territory, and I’m talking now about honest businesses, we wouldn’t sit back and take it. You understand me?”

“Enough with the Chamber of Commerce speech,” David countered. “What about the murder of Guang Henglai?”

“That has nothing to do with us.”

“So you admit you know about this death—”

“Whatever you say, I will have to take the Fifth.” His cronies laughed, but Lee’s bluster seemed hollow. After this, any question David asked was met by the same flippant answer.

Walking back out to the lobby, Hulan said, “You did well.”

“I got nothing!” David was exasperated.

“He practically admitted everything,” she corrected. “You can’t prove it in court, but you still know that you’re right about the Rising Phoenix. Most important, he lost face in front of the people under him. That news will travel, and that will help us.”

13

LATER THAT AFTERNOON

Silverlake

Still aggravated from his interview with Spencer Lee, David zigzagged his way on surface streets to the University of Southern California. Hulan took his silence for frustration, so when they pulled into the parking lot she refrained from commenting on how strange it was to be back at her alma mater, nor did she ask if they might take a stroll to her old dorm room or peek in on her favorite professors. Instead, they walked directly to the Administration Building.

Hulan remembered the woman who stood behind the counter. In twenty years, since Hulan was first an undergraduate at USC, Mrs. Feltzer hadn’t physically changed. Her hair was still a preposterous red, her waistline was still on the far side of forty inches, and her dress with the little belt that cinched in at that ample waist was still decidedly 1950s. Supposedly it was Mrs. Feltzer’s job to help people, but she truly excelled at asking students to fill out incomprehensible forms or sending them on fanciful campaigns to get unobtainable signatures from professors. Hulan thought Mrs. Feltzer would have fit in perfectly in Beijing’s bureaucracy.

“May I help you?”

“I’m from the U.S. Attorney’s Office,” David said. “We’re doing an investigation on the deaths of two boys who were students here.”

Mrs. Feltzer was not impressed.

“It would help us a great deal if we could look at their records.”

“I don’t think I could let you do that,” Mrs. Feltzer res

ponded firmly.

David put his elbows on the counter, adopted a slight smile—nothing too blatant, just friendly, entre nous—and captured Mrs. Feltzer’s gaze in his own. She became the center of his attention, and Hulan knew that was a nice place to be. “Now come on, Mrs. Feltzer, I’ll bet you could do anything in here you wanted,” he cajoled. “I bet you know where every last slip of paper is in this office.”

This was how Hulan had first experienced David. During her first week at Phillips, MacKenzie, she was in the photocopying room trying to get the woman in charge to finish copying and binding the closing documents for a merger. The materials were a half hour late, and the lead partner had screamed at Hulan that she was about to have the shortest career in the history of law if she didn’t get those documents on his desk within the hour. The woman in photocopying took a different view. “That asshole is just going to have to wait! I’ve got five other orders before his and I’m taking my lunch break at noon. He can just cool his ugly little heels.” Hulan pleaded, begged, even began to cry, but the woman would not be moved. If anything, she seemed to enjoy tormenting the powerless woman.

Then David, already an associate, came into the room to get a couple of cases copied for the partner he worked for. Within three minutes, the woman dropped everything and was working on Hulan’s job. David and Hulan stayed to help. Twenty minutes later the task was done and David had asked Hulan out on a date, which she refused. It took a full year—her next summer at Phillips, MacKenzie—before she agreed to have dinner with him, and that was only because she’d decided it was the only way she’d get him to leave her alone. Things hadn’t turned out that way. He’d used the same charm and persistence on Hulan that he’d used on the woman in photocopying and now on Mrs. Feltzer.

“The boys are dead, Esther,” David was saying. “The best way we can help them is to learn what happened. For all we know, there could be something of vital importance in those records. I’m sure you wouldn’t want to stand in the way of a government investigation.”

Guang Henglai’s record was easy to find, since it was in the file for students who’d left the school. During his one year at USC, he’d taken basic courses typical for a freshman; his grades were predictably low. He’d stayed in a dorm for the first semester, then moved off campus for the second.

While they scanned this unenlightening file, Esther Feltzer continued to look for the active file of one William Watson Jr. She ran a tight ship and was unused to not having things at her fingertips. “Someone has misplaced the file,” she said sternly. “Either that or your information is wrong.”

It was hard to imagine that Mrs. Feltzer would allow a clerical error in her office, so David considered her alternative. “Could you try the files for departed students?”

“I thought you said he was enrolled here.” Mrs. Feltzer’s grumpy tone was returning.

“I’m just responding to your fine suggestion,” David said. “I can’t tell you how much we appreciate everything you’re doing for the victim and his family.”

But David’s charms were wearing thin. With a “Humph,” Mrs. Feltzer walked away. A few minutes later she came back, dropped the file on the counter, and said in disgust, “Just as I suspected, he is no longer a student.”

Billy Watson’s academic career was as short and lackluster as his friend’s. They had taken almost the same schedule of classes and gotten almost the same grades. They’d been assigned to the same dorm but had not been roommates. At the end of the first semester, though Guang Henglai had moved out, Billy Watson had kept his residency in the dorm. Unlike Henglai’s file, the rest of Billy’s was filled with formal grievances outlining the young American’s troubled career at the school.