“Why?”
“As you said yourself, neither of us would be working on this case if it weren’t for Guang.”
Hulan reached across the table and took his hand. “Let’s not talk about the case anymore. Please?”
He looked at her then, relishing the delicious irony of her request. Only a few days ago, he was pleading with her to talk about something besides the case. Besides, she was right. They had done a lot in the last two days. What harm could there be in having some time just for the two of them?
After dinner, they returned to Hulan’s hotel room. They stood facing each other. He put his hand on her cheek, then slowly let it glide along her neck, over her collarbone, down to her breast. They took their time unbuttoning each other’s clothes. His mouth lingered on Hulan’s nipples. She moaned in response to the caress. Soon her lips sought the tender nook under his left ear, then went to the hollow place at the base of his neck before continuing their downward journey. Tonight David and Hulan would make their passion last.
Several hours later, they were awakened by the ringing phone. It was a sign of how much Hulan had let down her guard that she didn’t hesitate to answer.
“Hello,” she said sleepily.
She and David had been nestled together on their left sides like two spoons. His hand had draped over her waist and held her left breast. Now she felt that hand begin to travel as the voice on the phone said in educated Mandarin, “We have something to discuss. Please meet me at the Green Jade Café on Broadway. You may of course bring Mr. Stark.”
Hulan put the receiver down and pushed David’s hand away. In a low voice, she reported what she had just heard. He sat up, looking worried. “We’d better call the FBI. They can get ahold of Gardner and Campbell. Let them take care of this.”
She shook her head. “No. The caller asked us to come. He wants to tell us something. If we want to hear it, we’d better go alone.”
“It’s dangerous,” he insisted, but her look told him she was not afraid.
After David and Hulan left the room, they stopped and knocked quietly at the door of Peter Sun’s room. When they received no answer, Hulan glanced at her watch. It was after midnight.
“He should be back by now,” she said.
“He’s just with Campbell. Don’t worry about it.”
David drove down to Chinatown. Pink, yellow, and green neon lights from the closed shops and restaurants glowed on the deserted streets. David pulled into the open-air parking lot of one of the strip malls that lined Broadway. For the first time since being in California, Hulan felt chilly, and David put an arm around her as they walked to the Green Jade Café. Neither of them carried a weapon.
Once David and Hulan reached the windows of this modest establishment, they could see that it was closed for business. Hulan suddenly flashed on the image of Cao Hua’s body. Believing now that another gruesome spectacle awaited them inside the restaurant, Hulan wished that they’d followed David’s advice and called the FBI or the police. The Green Jade’s door stood wide open, and they entered. The smell was enough to tell them why they had been summoned there.
“Maybe you should wait here,” Hulan whispered.
“I was going to say the same thing to you.”
“I’m accustomed to death,” she said.
He took her hand. “We’ll do this together.”
Cautiously they walked into the restaurant. They listened but heard nothing. David gestured toward the kitchen and Hulan nodded. They edged around the cash register and pushed through the swinging doors.
Zhao lay in five pieces. His arms and legs had been cut off in the traditional punishment for betrayal against the triads and tossed carelessly aside. His head and torso lay discarded in the middle of the floor. Behind him, on the stove, a huge triple-layer dumpling steamer sent out putrid fumes. Hulan was the first to move, crossing the blood-smeared floor gingerly and turning off the burner. David bent over Zhao, looked into the man’s eyes, and relived the moment on the Peony when he had felt that tug on his pants leg. Gently David closed Zhao’s eyes, stood, and went to Hulan’s side. She seemed paralyzed, staring at the huge steamer.
“I don’t think I can do it,” she said.
David carefully lifted the large bamboo lid and set it on the counter. Inside lay a mass of steamed flesh. This was all that remained of Noel Gardner.
16
FEBRUARY 6–7
The Federal Courthouse
They phoned the police and the FBI. They called the hotel and woke up Peter, who’d returned from his night on the town. An FBI agent brought him down to the restaurant an hour later still half-drunk. When Jack Campbell didn’t answer his phone or page, a couple of FBI agents went out to his house and found the phone off the hook, the pager on an end table in the living room, and the agent sprawled across his bed in a deep sleep—his reward for an evening of boozing and rabble-rousing. Campbell arrived at the Green Jade, claiming he wanted to see with his own eyes what had happened to his partner. Afterward, he sat down in one of the dining room chairs, put his head in his hands, and cried.
It was close to four in the morning when David and Hulan left the restaurant. As they stepped through the doors that led to the street, they were immediately assaulted by minicam lights, microphones thrust in their faces, and a barrage of questions from local news teams that had picked up the reports on their police scanners. David took Hulan by the arm and they pushed through the crowd to his car. As he drove toward Hollywood, he kept one hand on the steering wheel, while the other held tightly onto Hulan’s cool palm.
Once off the freeway, David let go of Hulan to focus on the curves that wended from the bottom of Beachwood Canyon up the narrow road to just below the HOLLYWOOD sign. He pulled into the garage, opened the door to the house, punched in the security code for the alarm system, and led Hulan through the kitchen and into the living room. She was drawn to the arched picture window and stood before it, gazing at the lights of the city below. How many times over how many years had he longed for this moment? But looking at her profile silhouetted in the dim light, he felt only desperate sadness.