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  And D.C. wondered why it had problems.

  The local news broadcast switched over to Rock Johnson, exposé reporter extraordinaire, on camera in front of the Senate Hart Building. He was flanked by a small but vocal crowd, screaming improvised chants and pumping homemade signs into the air. When Senator Day’s face flashed onto the corner of the screen, Jake inched up the volume. Kate, slipping toward sleep, moved closer to him, her head now resting on the edge of his thigh. Jake stroked her hair and turned the volume up one more notch.

  The news clip started with glorious views of the surroundings—palm trees swaying in the breeze, seagulls floating in a cloudless sky. It wasn’t until ten seconds into the report that Jake sat up at attention and adjusted the volume yet higher. Standing against a wall, just off-center from Senator Day, was one Peter Winthrop—tall, broad, and smiling like the politician he was with. The camera moved around to another view of the building, followed by excerpts of video taken during a quick tour of the inside and the facilities. Jake was mesmerized. Lee Chang, the face from the file Jake had stolen from his father’s office, was shown shaking hands with Senator Day and good ol’ Dad. Next to Lee Chang, crystal clear, was another Asian man whom Jake immediately recognized. Jake’s pulse jumped and his mouth went dry again, this time from panic. The eyes, the ponytail, the sheer size of the man.

  Jake almost choked on the desert in his throat. “Holy shit, holy shit, holy shit,” he rasped.

  “Nice language, Jake,” Kate murmured through closed eyes.

  “Sorry,” Jake said, followed by a much cleaner “Dear God.”

  “What is it?” Kate asked, picking up her head and staring at her panicking boyfriend.

  “You don’t want to know.”

  “What is it?” Kate asked again. “You’re freaking me out.”

  “Kate, I think I may be in real trouble.” ***

  The break-room in the First District was the oldest room in a building of old rooms. Brownish tiles that were once white ran four feet up the wall. The original plaster walls bulged and cracked, a relief map without a designated region. The sink in the corner dripped water steadily, and the a/c unit in the window screeched when it ran. If you wanted to have a conversation in the break-room during the summer, lip-reading skills didn’t hurt.

  Detective Wallace and Detective Nguyen sat around the wooden table in the middle of the room. Wallace, the big-bellied detective with an infectious laugh, smoked a cigarette, tipping his ashes into the small ashtray that rested on a tabletop with so many scratches it looked like it had been caught in a cat stampede. Detective Nguyen, bored by an incredibly slow week, drank a bottle of water, a rare break from the coffee that kept him alive during the graveyard shift.

  “A quick game of five card?” Detective Wallace asked, blowing a cloud of used nicotine, tobacco, and tar across the room in the smoke-free building.

  “What are we playing for?” Nguyen asked.

  “A gentleman’s bet. Gambling on the premises is against policy. You know that,” Detective Wallace answered, taking another drag from his menthol to conceal his laughter.

  “Right, no betting unless the captain is at the table.”

  “You young guys catch on quick.”

  The senior detective slid the deck toward Nguyen who shuffled the cards without protesting. Detective Wallace flipped the channel to the news and tuned in to the local stories. He picked up his hand of cards, looked at the two aces and pair of jacks, and wished he had money in the pot. He glanced back at the TV at the end of the next news story and for a brief second, he stopped breathing. Detective Nguyen watched the cigarette droop from Earl Wallace’s mouth, and he wrenched his neck around to see a picture of Rock Johnson in front of the Hart Senate Building.

  “Forget the game and grab your keys,” Detective Wallace said, throwing his two pair on the table.

  Detective Nguyen looked at the cards, and then back up at the TV. “Taking me on a date Sergeant?”

  “Yes, and you’re driving. Meet me in front of the building. I’ll be down in a minute. I gotta make a phone call.” ***

  The D.C. affiliate for the ABC network, WJLA-TV, is housed in the old USA Today building in Rosslyn. The twin glass towers stand on the Virginia side of the Potomac River and are regular recipients of unintended near misses with airplanes landing at Reagan National Airport. Restricted flight patterns over the capital city make the approach at Reagan National one of the trickiest in the nation, and the USA Today buildings are the highlight of the pilot’s dexterity test. Planes bank left and right as they follow the Potomac, the flight path a slalom course a stone’s throw from CIA headquarters, the White House, and the Pentagon. Passengers with window seats were known to get close enough to read the computer screen on the reporters’ desks.

  Earl Wallace and Detective Nguyen showed their badges to the security guard and walked to the TV studio and broadcast production facilities on the second floor of the building. A middle-aged production manager in jeans introduced herself as Crystal and showed the detectives to the newly appointed “news technology room.” Crystal, a redhead with curly locks down to her shoulders, introduced a young, wire-thin intern wearing an old Metallica t-shirt that looked like it was held together by nothing short of magic.

  “This is T.J.,” Crystal said. “He can help you with whatever you need. If you would excuse me detectives, I have to go. News is coming across the wire on a potential terrorist incident in Kuala Lumpur. It looks like I’ll be up all night.”

  “Thank you,” Detective Wallace said to the departing woman’s back. He turned toward T.J., who was happy to be helping with official police business.

  “What do you have for us?” Detective Wallace asked.

  “This is the story you asked to see,” T.J. said, holding the tape in his left hand as if to impress his guests, before shoving it into the machine. “What part are you interested in?”

  “The final picture. The one with the senator and a group of people in front of some building.”

  T.J. forwarded the tape and pressed stop.

  “Go back a couple of frames. Can you do that?”

  “This bad boy can define a standard video tape to fifty frames per second. It can also make a perfect digital copy of a two-hour movie in fifteen seconds. It is the best piece of machinery I have had the privilege to work with.”

  “So can you show me what I need to see?”

  “Sure.” T.J. pushed a button, dragged a small handle to the left and smiled. “There you go.”

  “Perfect.”

  Detective Nguyen took one look at the screen and realized the reason behind Detective Wallace’s desire for the sudden date.

  “Take a look at that guy. Does he look familiar?” Wallace asked with a serious look on his face. He knew the question was rhetorical.

  “The big Asian guy from the Fleet Bank ATM.”

  “Yeah.”

  “Who are the other guys?” Wallace asked. T.J. picked up a note that came with the tape and its untimely, premature circulation. He scanned the handwritten note, words scribbled horribly across the paper at an angle.

  “From what I can decipher from this note, this is the rundown. The guy on the left is Senator Day’s aide. The man next to the senator is a businessman by the name of Peter Winthrop. The man on the other side of the senator is a man named Lee Chang. He is the owner of the manufacturing facility in Saipan where the piece was filmed. Next to him on the far side is one of Lee Chang’s assistants. The ‘big Asian guy,’ as you referred to him. No name given.”

  “How much did you guys pay for this tape?”

  “None that I know of, but I’m a just a techie intern. They don’t let me have control of the checkbook, if you know what I mean. I work here for the cool toys and late hours.”

  Detective Wallace let it go. “Can you zoom-in on the face of the big guy and print a picture of it?”

  “Sure.”

  “Can we get a copy of the tape?”

  “I alre
ady made you one. I didn’t figure you were coming over to spend your evening with me.”

  “Could you also print a picture of the screen with the entire group—the senator, the businessman, the aides, everyone?”

  “Consider it done,” T.J. answered. His fingers jumped to life and moved around the million-dollar equipment like a star player from the video game generation.

  “What are you thinking?” Detective Nguyen asked.

  “I’m not exactly sure yet, but I do have an idea.”

  The detectives thanked the gracious intern and left the building past the now-empty security booth.

  “Where to, boss?” asked Detective Nguyen, behind the wheel.

  “Taco Bell and then back to the station.” ***

  Earl Wallace pulled out the original file for Marilyn Ford and put it on his desk. Detective Nguyen watched the wheels of his mentor’s mind chug through the evidence.

  “Humor me for a minute?” Detective Wallace asked without taking his eyes off the file.

  “Shoot.”

  “Ask me questions about the dead lady and see where it takes us.”

  “With pleasure. What’s her name?”

  “Marilyn Ford.”

  “Age?”

  “Forty-six.”

  “Marital Status?”

  “Single. Never married.”

  “Address?”

  Earl Wallace looked down and read the answer.

  “Phone number?”

  Once again he read the number off the information sheet.

  “Occupation?”

  “Secretary.”

  “Place of employment?”

  Detective Wallace looked down again at the sheet of paper. “Winthrop Enterprises.”

  The two detectives locked eyes.

  “What was the name of the American businessman in the news clip?

  Detective Nguyen checked his notes. “Peter Winthrop.”

  Momentary silence fell on the two as the evidence clicked. “Winthrop Enterprises,” they said in unison.

  “I’ll be damned,” Wallace added. He looked at the clock on the wall. “You better get home and get a few hours of sleep. Tomorrow we start knocking on doors. Early.”

  Chapter 29

  The doctor used both hands to roll Wei Ling’s small frame and lost the first knuckle of his middle finger in the rotting flesh of a festering bedsore. Wei Ling’s scream could be heard on the sweatshop floor over the machinery and the cursing foreman. Upstairs, the blood-curdling wail pierced Lee Chang and he knocked a small plate of orange slices off his lap onto his morning paper. The prolonged agony ringing in the air propelled Lee Chang downstairs to the infirmary. He needed to check on his most-prized possession.

  “How is she?” Lee Chang asked, out of breath, meeting the doctor in the main room of the infirmary.

  “We need to move her,” the doctor said plainly, digging through his black bag of medicinal goodies on the desk.

  “Why. Is she ill?”

  “No. But she has been restricted for a long time.”

  “You said she could be fed through the nose tube,” Lee Chang said hastily.

  “She can. But you aren’t trying to keep her alive. It’s the child your father wants.”

  “I told you to give her enough food through the tubes to feed both. It can’t be that difficult.”

  “Her appetite is not my concern. Even if we stop feeding her through the tube, her hunger strike is not likely to kill the baby…without killing her. But there are other concerns. The feeding tube is causing breathing difficulties and irritation. The body’s natural reaction to having a tube where one isn’t needed. Wei Ling also has bed sores. Serious ones.”

  “Bedsores?” Lee Chang asked.

  “Bedsores. Rotting flesh. They can form in less than a week of immobility, and Wei Ling has been tied up longer than that.”

  “Are they dangerous?”

  “Not as dangerous as pneumonia which can take root in half that time, with the right conditions, in the right environment,” the doctor said, thinking aloud. “But, yes, bedsores can be dangerous.”

  “I’ve never heard of them.”

  “They usually afflict patients in comas and victims of paralysis, but even a broken leg on an elderly person can prove immobilizing enough to develop them.”

  “What’s the treatment?”

  “With all the modern medicine and medical techniques available, flipping the immobilized patient twice an hour, twenty-four hours a day, is still the best prevention. Wei Ling has been on her backside for ten days, give or take. I added antibiotics to the IV drip, but there is no guarantee the infected sores won’t get worse. If this happens and she starts to run a fever, we could have trouble. Pregnancy is a fragile thing. Even when there are no signs of complications, it can be precarious for both mother and child. But we are talking about a woman who can’t move about freely, who is refusing to eat, and who is being fed through a tube. This puts stress on both the mother and the fetus. While self-forced starvation alone is not likely to cause a miscarriage, her body could reject the fetus in an act of self-preservation under a combination of circumstances. The body works in mysterious ways.”

  “Doctor, you were hired by my family to keep her alive.”

  “Yes, and I can keep her alive, but not here. Not under these conditions. Not in a storage closet. I need to move her back to Beijing. Put her in a hospital where we can keep her well and provide around-the-clock care. Your father can arrange it.”

  “I will call and discuss it with my father.”

  “Please. Time is of the essence.”

  Lee Chang walked across the infirmary and peaked in the storage room. Wei Ling looked over at the partially open door. “Let me out of here, you bastard,” she said in a surprisingly strong voice. ***

  Lee Chang wasn’t sending Wei Ling to Beijing or anywhere else for that matter. She was his guarantee back to a real life. If he sent her back to China, he would be sending back his leverage, and with it, all hope that his father would find it in his heart to bring him back into a position of power within the family. He needed Wei Ling. He needed the senator’s baby. The doctor wasn’t going to take her away.

  Lee Chang spent the morning trying to find a medical bed on the island that allowed the patient to be rotated like a pig on a spit. The hospital in Garapan had two such beds. Both were occupied and they weren’t for sale. The nearest medical supply company, in Guam, could have one delivered in a week. Lee Chang thanked the medical supplier with surliness, ordered the three thousand dollar bed, and looked for other options in the meantime. He stared out the back of his apartment at the warehouses and piles of discarded fabric spools. Maybe I could make a bed, he thought. As Lee Chang considered an infirmary improvement project, the doctor downstairs drained the pus from Wei Ling’s bedsores. ***

  Lee Chang called his father and ran through the week’s impressive numbers. Output had never been higher. It was amazing what a workforce under lockdown and pulsating with fear could do. Lee polished over the deterioration of Wei Ling’s condition and ignored the medical opinion of the old doctor his father had sent to keep her alive. According to Lee Chang, all was well.

  C.F. Chang finished the conversation as he had every call since finding out about the pregnancy—“keep that girl healthy”—and then hung up.

  Lee Chang put down the receiver and bounded down the stairs.

  The doctor was sliding into his white rental van when Lee Chang approached.

  “I spoke with my father.”

  “What did he say?”

  “He agreed with me. For now, moving the girl to Beijing is too risky. Besides, it will take time to arrange for her to stay at a hospital without raising suspicion.”

  “I understand,” the doctor said, fully aware of the lie. C.F. Chang, the family laoban, could arrange for the girl to stay at a hospital with a wave of his hand. The doctor knew to be careful around Lee Chang. Slyness and mental instability were a dangerous combinat
ion.

  The doctor stuck to his schedule until his evening visit to Chang Industries. When Wei Ling’s blood pressure started to rise unexpectedly, the doctor knew it was time to act. From the phone in the infirmary, the doctor called C.F. Chang directly, speaking in a whisper.

  “We need to move the girl back to Beijing.”

  “Why? What’s the problem?”

  “I thought your son explained it to you,” the doctor asked, expectant of the answer that was forthcoming.

  “No, he didn’t.”

  “I was under the impression that he had,” the doctor reiterated intentionally so there was no mistake.

  “Tell me why you want to move the girl.”

  The doctor ran through Wei Ling’s condition and the risks, the dangers associated with infection being at the top of the list. The discussion on the fragility of a fetus made C.F. Chang uneasy. He understood the doctor’s request perfectly.

  “I will arrange things with the hospital and with immigration at the Beijing airport. It shouldn’t take more than a day or two. Feel free to sedate her for the trip. Do whatever it takes, doctor. If you need to take measures that will only guarantee the long-term survival of the baby, I fully understand. I want to see this child playing with my own grandchildren one day.” ***

  Earl Wallace thrashed on top of the sheets until his wife hit him with her pillow and told him to either quit his epileptic flip-flopping or follow the well-worn path to the sofa. He tried to lie still for another hour, stood, and slipped on his pants.

  The answers to the questions in his head could wait until morning.

  Detective Wallace couldn’t. ***

  Wallace rang the doorbell three times before a light came on in the rectory. There was shuffling on the other side of the door, the usual routine of the drowsy awoken in the dead of night. Any time someone answered the door on the first ring in the middle of the night, sirens went off in Wallace’s head. With the exception of strippers, call girls, drug dealers, and pimps—and of course detectives—the rest of the world slept at night. His mother always told him that nothing good happened between midnight and six. After twenty-two years on the force, he knew his mother was right.