The Flower Net (11 page)

Later, as the Saab sat in midafternoon traffic, David put his gloved hand over Hulan’s. She did not pull away.

When the door swung open to Guang Henglai’s apartment in the Capital Mansion, Hulan heard David’s swift intake of breath. She knew, without even stepping a foot inside, that with its $6,000-U.S.-a-month rental price, it would be vulgar in the extreme. She had already anticipated its excesses, and now as she stood in the doorway, waiting and observing as she always did at a scene, she watched as David moved quickly into the foyer with its glossy black marble floor and smoky glass walls, then disappeared into what she presumed was the living room.

What a shock all of this must be to him, she thought. She could bet that he hadn’t expected the elegance of her father’s office, the opulence of the China Land and Economics Corporation tower, or the extravagance of this apartment. But these things were nothing compared to the jolt of being thrown together again. She, at least, had prepared herself, but he clearly hadn’t known he’d be working with her. But her advance knowledge hadn’t stopped her from wanting to say she still loved him, because she did. At the park, she was ready to put her arms around him and press her lips to his. He seemed only too ready to pick up where they’d left off, but how could they? She knew there could never be any hope for them.

What David valued above all else was justice and truth. He left no room for hedging or extenuating circumstances. But just as his strong beliefs were what she loved most about him, they were also what she most feared, because there were so many things she couldn’t tell him. Her truth and his rigid sense of justice would destroy all that had been between them.

Hulan walked to the middle of the living room and slowly turned, taking in everything around her. Guang Henglai had chosen a place that was new, expensive, and cheaply built. Everything inside these walls conveyed extraordinarily bad taste. She was not being critical. This excessive display of wealth was expected of a Red Prince.

Hand-woven rugs of elaborate design were spread beneath her feet. Soft black suede upholstered the furniture. Flashy modern Chinese landscapes hung on the walls.

David stepped into the room. “Look what I found,” he said, holding up a set of bankbooks. “I think you’ll be surprised at where they’re located and how much cash he had stashed away.”

She doubted that but didn’t say so. Instead, she took the bankbooks from him and fanned them out. Bank of China. Hong Kong National Bank. Sanwa Bank. Sumitomo Bank. East West Bank. Cathay Bank. Chinese Overseas Bank. Citibank. Bank of America. Glendale Federal Savings and Loan.

“All of those banks have branches in the U.S.,” he said. “Several of them—East West, Cathay, Glendale Federal—are based in Los Angeles, and the Chinese Overseas Bank, as you know, is owned by the Guang family.”

Hulan opened one of the bankbooks. She flipped through the pages, noting deposits and withdrawals of $10,000 here, $20,000 there. She opened another. The same thing. She slipped the books into her bag. “We’ll need to take a closer look at these. Compare his deposits with his trips.”

“My God, Hulan, Henglai was loaded,” he said, amazed at her nonchalance.

“Yes, he was, but remember who his father is. I would expect to see these. If we
didn’t
find them, I’d be concerned.”

“But they were just lying around…”

“This is China. Stealing from a Red Prince would likely be grounds for execution.”

David shook his head. She thought, Different culture, different values, different punishments.

“Let’s look around,” she said.

The kitchen was a spotless panorama of chrome, granite, and modern appliances. She opened the refrigerator, but it had been emptied. She guessed that the Guang family had sent someone over to remove perishables after Henglai’s disappearance. The bedroom was another story. His clothes—expensive Zegna suits, Gap jeans, and a nice collection of leather jackets—were stuffed into the closet. The den—again, more leather furniture, this time in sumptuous beige—was messy. Henglai had probably employed a maid, but his personal belongings had been off limits. A few bills, a personal letter or two, and some notes scattered across a mahogany desk.

Above the desk were pinned several photographs. Hulan leaned in to take a closer look. She saw Henglai—painfully young to her eyes—seated at a banquet. His straight black hair flew out rakishly from his head; his arm looped casually over the shoulder of a friend. In another photograph, Henglai posed with Mickey Mouse along Main Street in one of the Disneylands. Several other photos had been taken at a nightclub. Some showed people dancing. In others, Henglai held a microphone and appeared to be singing.

She pulled these photos off the wall and shuffled through them again. Guang Mingyun had been right. She did know Henglai’s friends and she knew exactly where to find them.

When they left the apartment, Hulan insisted that Peter drive them back to David’s hotel. “You must be tired,” she said. “You need to rest for tonight.” David objected strenuously. He wanted to go back to interview the ambassador. “We’ve got to clear up the differences in their stories.”

Hulan disagreed. “Ambassador Watson and Guang Mingyun aren’t going anywhere. We can see them another time. We need to understand those two boys—who they were, what they did, who they associated with—before we can begin to know their killer.”

At ten that evening, Peter picked David up and drove him to the Palace Hotel near the Forbidden City. Unlike most modern edifices in the capital, the hotel’s architecture was rich, even excessive, in its use of Chinese motifs. The eaves of the red-tiled roof swept upward. Bright green, gold, and red paint, gilt, and enamel decorated the ceremonial gate before the circular driveway. The owners of this establishment, the general staff of the People’s Army, had spared no expense.

When David pushed through the revolving doors and into the lobby, Hulan was waiting for him. He was dressed in the same suit he’d put on that morning. She, however, had gone home to change. She wore a dress of fuchsia silk cut in the traditional Chinese style. The cheongsam had a high mandarin collar. Frog buttons above Hulan’s right breast and under her right armpit held the fabric tight against her body. Her lavender coat draped over her arm.

He followed her as she swayed through the lobby, down a corridor, and into Rumours Disco. They passed several closed doors as they walked down another hallway and into the disco itself. A mirrored ball slowly rotated in the center of the ceiling, casting specks of light on dancing couples. The music was loud, the lyrics in English. Hulan took David’s hand and pulled him onto the dance floor. She kept her distance and began to rock slowly from foot to foot. She showed a clumsiness very much at odds with his memories of her. But as David looked around, he noticed that all the dancers had this same awkwardness. The women, he saw, were dressed in miniskirts or tight jeans. The men wore collarless shirts, jeans, and leather jackets. Everyone kept a safe distance from their partners. Their movements were jerky and not necessarily in time to the music.

The song came to an end. In the bored applause that followed, Hulan inclined her head to David and spoke just loudly enough for him to hear. “These are the
taizi
—princelings. You see that man over there?” David followed her gaze. “He was in one of the pictures in Henglai’s apartment. See that girl over there?” David looked across the room to a young woman sitting at a table with a tall, icy glass filled with a green drink. “We have her photograph as well.”

“Do you know who they are?”

She nodded as a new song blared through the speakers. Strobe lights pulsed to the beat. She began to dance again. An Australian disc jockey began shouting over the loudspeaker as a fog machine sent cool white mist billowing across the floor. They danced for another minute or so with Hulan moving slowly back the way they’d come. David was relieved when they stepped off the dance floor and back onto carpet. He was even more relieved when Hulan sat down at one of the small tables that bordered the dance floor. Just as the thought that Hulan looked stunning tonight floated through his brain, he realized that they were here to be seen. She had dressed not for him but to call attention to her arrival. She had chosen this table because it was prominent.

Hulan’s strategy had the desired effect. A hostess came to the table and asked them to follow her. They retraced their steps back down the corridor toward the entrance, stopping at one of the closed doors. The hostess hesitated. Hulan didn’t speak. Finally the girl opened the door and the three of them stepped into the room. Cigarette smoke clogged the air, but the smell of American tobacco was clouded by the pungent aromas of perfume and hard liquor. Someone who had been singing stopped abruptly, and the conversation died.

The hostess backed out of the room, closing the door behind her. Even in the tenebrous light, David could see that everyone was looking at them. Still, Hulan waited, saying nothing. Finally, a man dressed from head to toe in leather stood, crossed the room, and said in English, “Inspector Liu, I see you brought with you the American lawyer. We wondered how long it would be before you came to see us.”

“There are no secrets in Beijing,” she said. “We have no such thing as a windproof wall.”

The young man laughed and the others joined in.

“I am Bo Yun,” the young man boomed out, bringing a fist to his chest.

“Yes, you are,” Hulan said.

Bo Yun and his friends laughed appreciatively. “No secrets, right, Inspector? You know us. We know you. We are all friends.”

“We are here to talk…”

“Good, good. Come, join us. Sit down. Here, here.” Bo Yun took David’s arm and led him to the red banquette that ran along the room’s perimeter. “What would you like to drink? We have orange juice. We have Rémy Martin. A hundred and fifty dollars U.S. a bottle.”

Now that Hulan’s eyes had adjusted to the light, she could see perhaps two dozen people in their early twenties lounging on the banquettes. Ashtrays overflowed with cigarette butts. Numerous bottles of brandy and cognac, pitchers of freshly squeezed orange juice, and glasses filled with these drinks littered low lacquer tables.

The
taizi
smiled a lot. They laughed boisterously when their leader made a joke. They wore Rolexes, carried beepers, and at least two were talking on cellular phones. These were the youngest of the Red Princes and Princesses. They were corrupt yet forward thinking. Surveying the room, Hulan began to recall who they were and what they did. Some, of course, didn’t work at all. Others had been handed cushy jobs—chairman of a factory, manager of an international hotel, deputy governor of a bank, director of an arts organization.

Once again, Hulan wondered if David understood what he was looking at. He probably saw innocent faces, harmless kids out on the town spending their allowance. He couldn’t possibly know the power they wielded or the money they received just through the luck of their birth. The young man who was associated with the hotel was known to charge American businessmen up to $100,000 U.S. for audiences with his father. The young woman seated to David’s right was wearing a bracelet worth more than what an entire peasant village might earn in a lifetime.

Between David and Bo Yun sat Li Nan, whose grandfather served on the Central Committee. The Chinese press had not been kind to Li Nan. She was allegedly worth $20 million. She was reputed to have a large collection of American pornographic videotapes with which she stimulated innocent young men. She liked to bathe in champagne. She owned a fleet of classic automobiles but preferred to be driven around the city in a white limousine.

Hulan had recently heard a story about how Li Nan had ordered a hundred-dish “emperor’s banquet,” featuring such delicacies as camel hump, moose nose, and bear paw. Hulan’s co-worker had lavished particular attention on the bear paw. It was one of the eight most precious ingredients in Chinese cuisine; the left front paw was recognized as the most tender and sweet because it was the one that the bear used to extract honey from bees’ nests. The meal cost $100,000 U.S., the investigator had told Hulan, and was totally illegal, since the bear meat and several other ingredients were protected by Chinese environmental laws.

This kind of story could circulate only because Li Nan’s grandfather had been accused of corruption. Hulan suspected Li Nan, like Henglai and everyone else in their circle, had bank accounts, stocks, and real estate in the United States, Switzerland, and Australia. If Li Nan had any brains, she would understand the old saying—as soon as the guest leaves, the tea becomes cold—and abandon China for her penthouse in New York before her grandfather lost all of his power or his life.

Hulan knew too well that Li Nan and her friends were powerful only in the sense that they had protection. If their father or grandfather died in disgrace, they could lose everything. Even the secure ones would have to wait for the older generation—men in their sixties, seventies, eighties, and nineties—to die before they themselves could assume real power, political power.

“Ning Ning, Di Di, sing us a song,” Bo Yun called out. A lovely woman, the daughter of China’s most famous opera singer, and a raffish fellow, the youngest son of a general, stood and went to the center of the room. The soft strains of a romantic melody filled the room as a giant video screen lit up with the image of a beach at sunset. A Chinese girl walked in the surf; a Chinese boy sat on a rock nearby. Ning Ning and Di Di each took microphones, then sang of love as the Chinese ideograms appeared at the bottom of the screen.

Bo Yun took a gulp of brown liquid from his snifter. He sank back into the banquette and beamed contentedly. “So, you want to talk about Guang Henglai. What can we tell you?”

“What do you know?” Hulan asked.

“He was rich,” Bo Yun said.

“Don’t try to be clever,” Hulan said. “His father was Guang Mingyun.”

“No, I mean
Guang Henglai
was rich.”

“Maybe his father spoiled him. He was an only son.”