City of Strangers (Luis Chavez Book 2) (16 page)

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 the 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.”

Dr. Soong handed Tony the results. Tony couldn’t make heads or tails of any of it until the bottom of the list. There was no question.

“No one can know,” Tony said. “They’ll investigate the airport, and that means roping in Kuo Kuang. They’ll tie it back to our organization. To our brethren.”

The doctor blanched.

I must never bring trouble to my sworn brothers, or I will be beheaded by a myriad of swords.

“So you need to tell me right now what you can do for her,” Tony concluded.

“Very little,” Dr. Soong admitted. “People do survive SARS, but those few aren’t already in as delicate a condition as she is. In fact, pregnant women are often hit the hardest.”

“And the baby?”

Dr. Soong hesitated. He’d delivered enough bad news for one night. Tony nodded.

“She’ll lose it,” Tony realized.

Dr. Soong nodded. “We could try for a Cesarean, but it would surely kill her. All I can really do is keep her alive for as long as possible. This means putting her on a ventilator and potentially feeding her intravenously. I’ll need to rent the equipment—”

“Do it right now. Don’t wait. Now.”

Dr. Soong nodded and headed out the front door.

Once he was alone, Tony headed to the rooftop deck. He now had to figure out what the CDC, law enforcement, and every doctor in the county and possibly even the state was deliberating at the same time.

How did Jun contract a disease if she didn’t come in contact with a carrier?

XVI

It had been a lifetime since Luis had seen the inside of a cell. He hadn’t seen what they’d done to Susan but assumed she was incarcerated as well. But despite Men’s Central Jail being on high alert for SARS, the doctor who checked on Luis shrugged off his concerns.

“You can’t get it from dead bodies,” the doctor said. “Unless they sneezed on you, you’re good.”

“But it sounds like nobody really knows what the story is with this version of SARS,” Luis replied. “What if it really is traveling some other way?”

“You know how many of you guys have already tried to use that to medical out of the cells? I’ll give you a hint. Every one I’ve seen today.”

You guys,
Luis thought.
How quickly I’m nobody again.

Anticipating bail, Luis was led to the common area still in his Roman collar and clerical clothes. Only his collar was now scarlet from the gash the kick to the face had opened on his bottom lip. At first, Luis worried that his being a priest could be trouble and attract the wrong kind of attention. Then he heard that everyone thought he was in for assaulting a cop and he knew he’d be fine.

“Are you really a priest?” one guard asked.

“I am,” Luis said as he settled into a chair.

“Priests usually go around fighting cops and resisting arrest?” the guard said, loud enough to be heard by the other prisoners.

Luis didn’t say anything.

“Yeah, ICE plays it rough,” the guard said, giving Luis a sort of half wink to let him know he was trying to be helpful. Luis didn’t respond to this either.

Though a few people looked his way, Luis knew better than to acknowledge pests, especially ones that might be high. Instead, he zeroed in on the infomercial droning along on the common room television, cleared his mind, and began to pray. He prayed for the people who had died, those who might still be infected, and all their loved ones. He prayed for Susan. He prayed for Pastor Whillans, he prayed for Father Chang, and surprised himself by praying for Shu Kuen Yamazoe. He then prayed for Miguel.

It was the longest conversation he’d had with God in some time. As usual he didn’t ask for answers, merely guidance in seeing how it all fit together. It wasn’t a solution to his current problem, but it was the closest he’d felt to the Almighty in days.

It was during this prayer that he heard a couple of men gossiping nearby. It was just the typical jailhouse nonsense about mutual acquaintances, messages to be passed, and recitations of their lawyers’ sincere assurances that they’d be out in no time at all. But when the conversation turned to the goings-on in county itself, Luis heard a familiar name. Keeping his eyes closed, he leaned for a moment longer as one wove a story for the other. The story was salacious, intimated secret sources and hidden knowledge, and ended with a murder.

In other words, all the hallmarks of a lie told to pass the time and impress whoever.

But Luis detected a kernel of truth, the one fact that the rest of the tale had been embroidered around. He returned to his prayer, added it to the things he requested guidance over, and realized how troubling the story would be to him if true.

“Chavez.”

It took Luis a moment to realize the voice was coming from without rather than within. He said his “Amen,” rose, and moved to the desk. He’d been praying for just under four hours.

After being processed out and having his personal items returned, Luis stepped out into the cool early-summer morning to find a very unhappy man waiting for him on the sidewalk. He shook his head in frustration as Luis drew close.

“You called
me
?” the man, Sheriff’s Deputy Ernesto Quintanilla, asked. “Of all people, you called
me
?”

“There was no one else,” Luis said.

“Your pastor.”

“He’s sick.”

Ernesto looked down, having obviously forgotten. It wasn’t as if Luis would’ve wanted to call him even if he were healthy. The only other person that made sense was Michael Story, and there wasn’t a scenario in which the deputy DA wouldn’t use it to his advantage later somehow. Quintanilla, on the other hand, the son of a homebound parishioner whom Luis looked in on from time to time, was sure to gripe about it, but Luis knew he’d show.

“What happened to your face?” Ernesto asked, pointing at the busted lip. “They said you mixed it up with an ICE agent.”

Luis did nothing but return Ernesto’s gaze. The deputy sighed.

“You know how amped those guys get when they go on a raid,” Ernesto said. “If PCP was legal, they’d pop twenty before heading in. You have to get out of their way, or you get the horns.”

Luis understood why Ernesto felt he needed to defend his fellow law enforcement officers. Didn’t change his opinion of the incident one bit, however.

“Do you know what happened to the doctor I was with?”

“She was taken to Good Samaritan with the bodies to talk to the CDC,” Ernesto said. “Samaritan’s become SARS ground zero. They’ve got two whole floors dedicated to dealing with it. You know they found a new case out in Laguna?”

Dear Lord, what is going on?

“They still have no idea how it’s spreading?” Luis asked as Ernesto led him to his squad car.

“No idea,” Ernesto said, sliding behind the wheel. “Your little find gave them a starting place, though. They haven’t announced it yet, but man, the rumors are flying about the squat houses.”

“Houses plural?”

“They raided three squats altogether. Five bodies in yours, one in another, two in the one off skid row. All Chinese immigrants. All fresh off the boat.”

Luis stared out the front window of the cruiser, wondering how these things were linked. There was no logical connection between the murder of Father Chang and a SARS outbreak. So why was God putting so many things that suggested there was one in front of him? If there was anything he took from divinity school when it came to prayer, it was that there were no coincidences. God put signposts in front of you for a reason.

Ernesto changed lanes to head up the entrance ramp to the 10. Luis shook his head.

“Can you drop me in Echo Park?”

“What’s in Echo Park?” Ernesto asked. When Luis didn’t respond, Ernesto shrugged and stayed on Cesar Chavez as it left downtown and became the far eastern tail of Sunset Boulevard.

Rather than have Ernesto drive him all the way to his destination, Luis got out at the corner of Sunset and Lemoyne. He thanked Ernesto again, then walked the rest of the way.

Make him be there, Lord.

Oscar’s auto body shop was a stone’s throw from Dodger Stadium and only blocks from the neighborhood streets Luis and he grew up on. If you were from the area, Oscar barely charged you a cent if your car needed repair. This made for a loyal customer base that kept an eye out for Oscar’s other, more lucrative business of stealing high-end cars from the city’s elite and racing them down to the ports to be shipped overseas almost before the real owner could file a police report. It was old-fashioned ward politics gangster-style, but Oscar was well liked and considered fair.

When Luis walked up the short driveway to Oscar’s garage, he figured there’d at least be some of Oscar’s homeboys around. Instead, he found only the shop’s owner hunched over the engine of a decades-old Mercedes, a shop light hanging low from the ceiling.

“Is that a diesel?” Luis asked as he stepped out of the darkness.

“Yeah, a ’76 240,” Oscar said, barely looking up. Luis figured few got within a hundred feet of Oscar without appearing on his radar. “You ever fired one of these up?”

Luis admitted that he had not.

“It’s a whole process, like starting a tractor-trailer,” Oscar said, getting behind the wheel. “You turn the idle knob all the way clockwise. Then you key the ignition.” He did both of those things. “Next you pull the second knob until the heating element glows to life. See? Once that happens, you yank it back like you’re starting a lawnmower.”

When Oscar did this, the engine chugged and chugged until it finally roared to life. Oscar gave it a little gas and it began to hum.

“No fast getaway with a car like this, huh?” Oscar said, smiling.

“What’s wrong with it?”

“Air conditioner. Completely shot. I have to rebuild it. But it’s worth it, since the cars last forever. This one already has over two hundred thousand miles on it. The Germans just don’t understand the economics of building disposable cars.”

“I’ll bet they understand just fine,” Luis offered. “They just fundamentally disagree.”

Oscar grinned at his old friend for a moment while he looked him up and down. He pointed at the gap in Luis’s shirt collar.

“Where’s your dog collar?”

“Bled on it a bit. Gotta trade it in.”

“How come the only time I ever see you is when you get your ass kicked?” Oscar asked, sounding like he was only half joking.

“You should see the other guy,” Luis offered lamely.

“Your unscratched knuckles tell the tale, pal. Is that why you’re here? You want me to exact some revenge?”

“No, but revenge brought me here. I just got out of county and I heard a funny story while waiting.”

“Did you?” Oscar said, giving Luis his full attention now. “Nothing like guys trading ‘stories’ in county.”

“There was a killing of a Chinese prisoner, Shu Kuen Yamazoe, out at Hollenbeck yesterday. Grim case. They got him with poison.”

“Sounds like the Chinese,” Oscar said, smirking.

“Right, but they were saying it was a contract. Paid for.”

“Is that so?” Oscar asked.

“And you know what else?” Luis asked, pressing on. “They’re saying one of the triad gangs was behind it, but since they couldn’t do it themselves without it possibly being traced back, they got another gang to do it. Somebody they trusted. Somebody with connections inside law enforce—”

Oscar’s hand shot out and gripped Luis’s shoulder. It was a friendly enough gesture, but Oscar’s strength was such that he could hold Luis in place if he wanted to.

“I’m going to stop you right there,” Oscar said slowly and evenly, his eyes fixed on Luis. “I can’t have you saying something with consequences, right?”

Luis went silent. Oscar waited a long moment before retracting his hand.

“You of all people should know that guys in jail love having something to talk about,” Oscar said. “So whatever you heard or think you heard is nonsense. Got it?”

Luis stared at Oscar, wondering if his old friend would have killed him if he’d accused him of being the middleman for the Yamazoe poisoning. In truth, how could he be sure that was the case? It was just two guys talking a few chairs away. And Oscar was right. No bigger assemblage of liars than jail.

But something about Oscar’s reaction told him that for once a couple of gossiping prisoners had it right.

“Got it,” Luis said, stone faced. “Didn’t sound quite right anyway. Murder? I don’t know who the guy was trying to impress, but that’s a room you can’t walk out of.”

Luis extended his hand. Oscar shook it.

“You watch your back out there, Father,” Oscar said.

“You too, brother.”

After the ICE raids turned up the seven bodies, any hope Michael had of slipping home even just to shower and change went out the window. This was the worst-case scenario everyone feared. Not only did it double the number of SARS deaths, it suggested that dozens more, the ones who had lived in the squats and handled the bodies, were potentially infected and running through the streets, possibly infecting more people.

The city was about to descend into abject panic.

So not only did Michael stay, but he had Naomi call everybody else in. He went three blocks over to his twenty-four-hour gym, showered and changed there, then hurried back. As he walked into his office, it was like the world had flipped a switch. Only hours before the calls were about warrants and favorable judges. Now they were about the legalities of shutting down whole sections of the city, targeting the ports, questioning and detaining people off the street, and even a few wanting to ban travelers arriving from China.

“If the virus is already here and came from there, all that does is say we think China has an outbreak and they don’t even know it,” Michael said. “It’s xenophobia.”

“I hate to disagree with you, Mr. Story,” said the man from the TSA. “We’re talking about the Chinese government here. They may have no problem getting people out of the country they deem contagious. Makes it our problem, not theirs.”

“You sound paranoid.”

“You don’t sound paranoid enough,” the TSA man shot back. “We’ve had a dozen deaths in seventy-two hours from a Chinese disease that we now
know
came from within the Chinese illegal immigrant population. They didn’t come from nowhere. China knows
something
about this and they’re just not saying what. Maybe I am firing one across their bow, but maybe they deserve it.”

Michael said something noncommittal about needing to consult with the DA when she came in, then hung up. The next call was about shutting down Asian markets and burning the meat. The one after that was about quarantining the Chinese parts of the San Gabriel Valley, Chinatown, and Monterey Park, and banning public assembly.