F Train (16 page)

Snakeheads
…
skins, snakes
…live almost like slaves
…Flo was elated. “Okay, that's how your client got started. An indentured slave to snakeheads. But he ended up doing something else.”

“Indentured, yes, that's exactly it, Lieutenant. But Lee was a natural leader, too. Lee was supersmart and a fine-looking fellow to boot. An Asian stud, you might say. He picked up English fast, not like some of them. And he loved to use it, he loved to talk, he was loquacious, almost like one of our more garrulous brothers in the 'hood. Almost like me, if you will. He'd talk about anything: politics, women, sex, he loved to talk about sex, hookers in Manhattan versus hookers in Atlantic City, white women versus yellow women versus black women—‘Once you go black, you never go back.'—his words, Lieutenant, not mine. He could've been a rapper the way he could talk up a storm in English. He'd talk about food, different kinds of drinks, his family in China, science, outer space, the stock market, gambling. He loved to gamble, of course, many of them do, the Chinese. He talked about all different kinds of capital punishment—he liked every kind—and he said China used the death sentence for almost any serious crime you can think of in that country. He could go on for hours, Lee, about baseball, football, basketball, he loved sports, played soccer, did martial arts, he talked about everything, you name it. Everything, that is, except what he was doing on the side for his employers. There he stayed mum. So they made him a bartender. Great tips. He paid off his debt fast. He started buying up pieces of other people's businesses, an investor. And soon he was paying off other people's debts, too, for a fee of course.”

“In other words—”

“In other words, Lieutenant, he had a nose for finance is what I'm saying. A good head for numbers.”

“Sharking. Shylocking.”

“I didn't call it that, Lieutenant.” Golden Bobby spread his hands, large leathery hands like catcher's mitts, and he shook his head. “Another time, another place, and Lee might have been an investment banker or a bond trader at Goldman Sachs, one of those outfits. He had all the right instincts and all the brains you could ask for. Might as well have gone to Harvard B-School. He was no lowlife, unless you think bankers are lowlifes, and I know some people who do. But I don't. He had no Green Card, and that's what hung him up.” Golden Bobby shrugged. “You get the picture, Lieutenant? A natural-born leader, Lee Ho Fook. With a great set of brains. Could have been a Rhodes Scholar, different time, different place.”

“Tell me something, counselor, you represent a lot of murder one clients from Goldman Sachs?”

Thunderclap of laughter. “No, not lately, no giant vampire squids in my office.” Deep sigh. “Not on East Twelfth Street.”

4:30
P.M.

Flo sat at her office desk with Reilly's notebook.

Snakeheads
…
skins
…
snakes
…
snakeheads
…almost like slaves
…and John James Reilly, immigration specialist, small-time Mister Fix-It for Chinese corporate clients of mandarin attorney, William Eng, Esq.

And Marie Priester, paralegal. Was she duped? An unfortunate pawn? A shill?

Or willfully implicated?

Outside of Reilly's notebook, no firm sign of an ambassador so far, but Flo had little doubt about who that diplomatically immune Excellency might be. And that particular ambassador was a matter of national security, of this much she was certain.

…
sixty
,
thirty
,
unknown ten
…Here, Flo still drew a blank. She closed the notebook and stared up at the projected images of the dead.

Frank walked in. “His widow,” Frank said. “If you run some of that story by her, it might ring some bells.”

“I doubt if I can get anything more out of her, Frank. She's tapped out.”

“At least we know what her husband was working on.”

“We do?”

“You said so. People smuggling. Trafficking.”

“Right, that's my take, but the rest looks clear as mud.”

“It's a helluva business, Flo, billions a year. This is heading big-time. No small-time punks when you start looking up the line.”

Flo gazed thoughtfully into the remains of her afternoon latte, but found no clarification there. She was reluctant—no, utterly unable—to return to the widow's home, that Bay Ridge house of trauma where they spoke for hours pretending it was the whole truth and all the while knowing it wasn't even half-real.

Frank said, “Talk to me, Flo, I'm no telepathist. We on the same page here?”

“Lee Ho Fook and murder one. Or manslaughter, if you prefer—”

“You're reading my mind, keep going.”

“Manhattan homicide ran the investigation start to finish.”

“Far as I recall.”

“Then the file should be complete.”

“The summary ought to be in the database, the rest is all on paper. Must be over a thousand pages, Flo, when you think about it. That's a ton of reading, it could take all night.”

“So what you're saying—”

“What I'm saying is Marty hates winter. A jock like him and he hates snow and ice and all that wind out there. He would love being indoors tonight, guaranteed snug as a bug holed up in the archives. Nice and warm. Might get a little bored, but at least our jockster be cozy.”

“He can borrow Krish and the two of them can comb the haystack. Find a connection, if there is one.”

“And in all this, we're looking for—”

“I don't know precisely,” Flo said, “not at this point. A trail head, for starters. A trail that may open up and lead us to Lee Ho Fook somewhere in Chinatown again. Since no one has said that's
not
him in the picture with Reilly and Priester, not even his former lawyer…”

5:40
P.M.

Detective Sergeant Marty Keane was warm and satisfied in the Manhattan archives.

He arranged into several piles the records of the almost eight-year-old investigation of the killing of Chan Han, a Chinatown building contractor, a specialist in converting old tenements into new condos, boutique premises, restaurants, bars.

Marty smiled. “This should keep us busy here a few hours, Krish.”

“Looks like it.” Intern Krish Krishnaswami didn't sound overly enthused. He collected the archive files, the raw material from the original investigation, and carted a couple of mounds of yellowing documents to the table where Marty Keane set up a temporary office.

“You know the broad outline of the old case, Krish?”

“Lieutenant Ott said it was a loan shark killing, a punishment. And the defendant's lawyer got it down to manslaughter one. There was really no trial, just a plea deal, so the court records at Foley Square don't have much. Lots of people were interviewed by the police—the transcripts are all in these files—and assistant DAs got started on the case, but they stopped when the defendant offered his plea and the deal was worked out.”

“According to the database summary here,” Marty said, “and this draws no conclusions, Krish, only factual findings—Lee Ho Fook shot the guy in the back of the head, one round, and then he took off. The guy was on his knees, execution style. Fook said he only wanted to scare the poor son of a bitch, just get him to pay his debt. Apparently, Chan Han owed the sharks vig up the wazoo. And they didn't want his crappy little business, all they wanted was cash. Fook said he didn't know the gun had a round in it and he had no intention of killing the guy. He only wanted it to go
click
and give the guy the shits. But instead it went
bang
. And his lawyer cut the deal for manslaughter one. Fook did some time, named nobody else, and got deported.”

“What are we looking for?”

“Well, the weapon was found, an unloaded gun, dropped not far away in the street, no prints. And Fook was nailed the same night. DNA analysis linked him to the body. No question. He beat the guy up a little with his fists and feet. He pulled a gun. Some people nearby were willing to talk when interviewed, but most were hopeless. Some of them were almost right there on the spot only a few yards away and then they couldn't be found anywhere on earth. These names these people got, all these Chinese names, they start sounding the same. But we'll work up a list, we're looking for anyone
connected—before
or since—with smuggling illegals, ID forgery, financial felonies, killing of course, and probably also narcotics, why not? Your standard repertoire.”

“Who identified the body? Of the victim, Chan Han.”

“The police. That's to say, the vice squad. He was well known there, back from when he was young and putting together the nut for his construction business. Chan Han started out a pimp, strictly in Chinatown. Part of the trafficking chain. Arrested only once, he was part of a big New Year's pardon by an outgoing governor, they slipped Chan's name in on the list right before Chan was supposed to start serving his six months. His people bought the pardon, you get right down to it. Nobody wanted the trafficking exposed and they were all worried Chan might blab. And then there was an amnesty on illegals, maybe fifteen years ago, and Chan Han applied and got his status regularized. A state senator went to bat for him then. Not an unconnected guy, this Chan Han, a very well-wired person. And after that Han turned legit, more or less. When he got killed, he had his papers in for citizenship. Over a dozen people must have heard that shot and yet nobody heard it, at least nobody willing to say so at first. He was killed in the storeroom of a Chinese grocery. It was closed for business, but the restaurant next door was open. A freezing winter like now, so the back door to the restaurant wouldn't usually be wide open. But that night it was because there was a grease fire in the kitchen and they were airing out the place. They didn't report it to the fire department, although they were supposed to, so you got reckless endangerment to the customers, who didn't know from Shinola. Kitchen fire, shooting? They knew nothing. They're all too busy scarfing up rice and dumplings, oblivious. Some of the workers were out behind the restaurant taking a smoke when the shot was fired. There were people living upstairs. There were two guys coming home to go upstairs and someone ran out of the grocery store. Lots of potential witnesses. But most of them saw and heard absolutely nothing. Or so they claimed. A lady upstairs called in to report the shot, but didn't give her name. That's what brought the police around to investigate. Never guess how they grabbed the shooter—squad car almost hit him, he was running against a light on Canal right out into traffic. The call was just going over the radio and they detained him, Lee Ho Fook. Bloody fists, bloody shoes. Chan Han's blood. Here, Krish, start with the first folder. Get down all the names.”

“There's a list you have to sign, Sergeant, for checking out the files. I have to bring it back to the clerk.”

Marty Keane added his signature to the list of those who had consulted the files in the past.

And then: “Hey, this is no goddamn haystack,” he said. “Hell, what are we talking about? These files here, every single one of them checked out only a few months ago. First time in almost eight years. And by John James Reilly. Special agent, FBI. Krish, get Flo on the horn.”

7
P.M.

Brooklyn district attorney's office.

“Great break,” Flo said to Cecil King. “We're headed in the right direction, same as John James Reilly.”

“What does the Bureau say?”

“Zip. Usual excuse, national security.”

“Flo—” Cecil King paused to blow his nose. A winter cold thickened his speech. “They could beat us to death with national security. And I don't mean only the Bureau, they got their job to do for sure. But they got a commander in chief—” Sneeze, blow, honk. “They do as they're told. The commander's troops could make life even more miserable for us.”

…
commander's troops
…
miserable for us
…Flo needed no translation here.
Troops
: the mayor, his people, and their White House allies.

And
us
? In particular, the mayor's opponent and soon-to-be senatorial candidate, Kings County District Attorney Cecil King. He was the mayor's number one competitor.

As soon as word leaked out—as it almost surely would—that one of the seven dead had been nosing around in the dusty files of an eight-year-old murder case solved years ago and long since closed, and the dead nosybody was an FBI special agent assigned to watch the comings and goings of the People's Republic of China's diplomatically immune ambassador, then national security came straight back into play.

Big-time.

Never mind that no political group, foreign or domestic, had claimed any remotely credible credit for the F train slaughter.

But the district attorney wasn't the only one playing his own best friend here, on the alert for Number One's self-interest. That dependable source of battalions, of entire regiments, of self-concerned troops—the New York underworld—was flashing category red alert ever since the first morning's news of the F train massacre. Inactivity was a non-revenue-producing posture, and lying low had become the position of forced choice, as long as the police were combing the streets, armed with lists of names, names linked to such free market activities like dope dealing, extortion, people smuggling, prostitution, human trafficking, document forgery, financial fraud, loan sharking—all these were major cash-producing
enterprises—and
you do have to have enterprise to succeed in New York. Criminals of every variety were now feeling a sharp pinch in their wallets.

In only a few days after the F train massacre, the squeeze was on and felt even outside the Chinatowns and the underworld. Never mind how low the Federal Reserve set the prime rate, cash was growing tight almost overnight in New York wherever questionable big money changed hands. Banks were not pleased. Condo developers were starting to cry in their fifty-dollar-a-glass wine, the market was slowing, some downtown restaurants were even considering Chapter 11, art galleries were closing for vacation in midwinter, Sotheby's was canceling auctions—it was like the death of vaudeville all over again. There was hardly a New York investment banker, art dealer, or real estate broker who wasn't praying the mass killer or killers would soon be brought to justice, so the police could once more devote their energies to antiwar and antiabortion and anti–estate tax demonstrators, and ticket all those death-defying jaywalkers and bike messengers, and let the spirit of free enterprise once again breathe its life-giving force back into the greatest city on God's good earth.