“Give that to your grandpa. You’re way too young to identify those.”
Chen handed the bag to the coroner who held it at a distance from himself to get a good look. Fong marvelled that the man’s vanity still prevented him from wearing glasses. Fong wondered when vanity finally left a man alone. Gave him some peace. Then he realized that when vanity left, so did a part of life – a part he wasn’t ready to let go of just yet.
“These belong in a museum,” the coroner said. “I’m surprised they actually fired. Doesn’t gunpowder deteriorate or something?”
“It does, Grandpa,” said Lily.
“So, how did they fire?” asked the coroner.
“They’re new,” said Lily.
“What? He just said they were ancient, Lily,” Fong said.
“They were. And Grandpa is right that gunpowder deteriorates. These were the original shells – probably from the 1860s or 1870s. I’ll have to check that. But they’ve been recharged with modern powder, although no doubt fired from the original weapon. If you look at the markings on the shells, I think they were made in Japan, Tokugawa era or some such.”
“Why? Why bother? Weapons aren’t that hard to get. Why bother filling old gun shells with new powder? Why would Triads bother with that?” asked Chen.
Fong was happy when the coroner jumped in, “More important, why leave them there to be found?” His old face was a mask of confusion. “There were at least five gunshots fired in that bar room. But the specialist only found these two shells. Why? And look where the shells were.” He shuffled through the photographs and found the wide-angle shot of the room with the two shells circled on the floor. “Right in the middle of the room. Why would they end up there? It doesn’t make sense.”
Fong felt their eyes move toward him. He kept his face as neutral as he could but his mind was racing. The bar room. The faceless Chinese men. Each countenance one large dark mouth, screaming. Gunshots. Knife wounds. A man hog-tied and allowed to bleed to death from the wounds on his face – one awful red cry.
“Good questions,” said Lily. “Here are some more mysteries to ponder. The splatter patterns on the walls of the bar indicate that some of the other shots were from modern weapons. The distance between the deceased and the marks on the mirrors indicate that a high-powered, definitely modern, handgun was used. Without the real bodies, we’ll never be able to know exactly what kind of weapon it was. Apparently the lake is filled with eels. By the time they’ll be able to retrieve the bodies there won’t be enough left to bury, let alone autopsy. But the issue remains. The splatter marks indicate that there was at least one high-powered weapon on the boat. Why bother using an antique when you have a modern gun?” Without waiting for discussion, she reached into the box with the evidence bags at her side. She tossed the bag with the Triad medallion on the broken chain onto the table. “Typical ‘14K’ stuff. I’ll check, but my guess is that it’s pretty low in the hierarchy. A foot soldier would be my guess. Then there are these.” She tossed out the four photos of the amulet on its chain. “A lot of pictures for. . .” Lily never completed her thought.
“Film’s cheap. He took a lot of pictures of all the Triad markings,” said the coroner.
“Next,” said Fong, not wanting to deal with Triads just yet.
Lily pulled out the Hong Kong video and tossed it onto the table. “Standard issue pornography – of the hetero variety. I guess we could track down where in Hong Kong it was made but I doubt that there’s anything to it.” She looked at her male company. “Just guys having their boyish fun.”
The men averted their eyes as if looking at the black rectangle implicated them somehow in the event.
Lily held the plastic bag with the set of Parisian glasses taken from the Japanese man. “I have no idea why the specialist insisted that they be itemized. There are no doubt prints on them but whose is beyond our ability to determine. Same for the CD from the runway room.” She tossed it onto the table.
Fong picked it up. It was American. He wasn’t much on Western music but Fu Tsong had insisted that he listen to all sorts of things that her lover, the Canadian director Geoffrey Hyland, had given her. He allowed the thought to dissipate into the thinness of the air. It’d been a long time since that jealousy had haunted his thoughts. He looked at the CD and forced himself to remember his English sounds. Somehow they were easier when he spoke than when he read. Counting Crows. He wondered if that was the name of the artist or if it was a group. Surely “Counting” was an odd first name. His English didn’t extend to bird nomenclature. He had no idea what “recovering the satellites,” which was written in odd print on the cover, meant. He turned the casing over and read the names of the songs. His eyes landed on title after title: “Angels of the Silences,” “Daylight Fading,” “Children in Bloom,” “Millers Angels,” “A Long December.”
The shiver again – the mongoose was running.
Fong understood synchronicity. He understood it in his bones. And he didn’t believe totally in human will. At times he knew that accidents were caused by nature. That two things in one place often meant something. He would totally deny that he was superstitious – but serendipity was a way of conveying meaning. Angels, silences, children, bloom and December – clues as far as Fong was concerned.
He put the CD back on the table. “What does it say?” asked Chen.
“Nothing important,” Fong answered.
The coroner laughed deep in his throat. All eyes swung to him. “I just love the way he lies, don’t you?” he said. “What does it say, Fong?”
Fong translated every word on the CD. “Satisfied, or would you like me to translate the liner notes, too?”
“No, I think that’s enough, Fong.” But the coroner was smiling as if he’d been lied to.
“Who cares?” demanded Lily. “Some girl took off her clothes while that stuff played. What’s the difference what the songs were?” Her vehemence ended the discussion. She tossed a bag of dirt on the table. “That was found on the runway. Again I’m not sure why the specialist thought it was important.” The bag was handed around. Fong made a point of hardly looking at the thing and handed it on to Chen.
“What else do you have, Lily?” asked Fong, making sure that he didn’t look back at the bag in Chen’s hands.
“A stack of clothes that I’ve only begun to catalogue. Seventeen wallets. All of which identify who these guys were but little else. Drivers’ licences, picture IDs, pictures of grandkids.”
“No visas or passports?” asked Fong.
A silence descended on the room. Everyone knew what the question meant. If these men entered China without visas or passports, then they were government guests and this whole thing was even bigger than it already was.
“I’ve asked Chen to check their hotel in Xian. It’s possible that the men left those kind of documents with the front desk, I guess,” said Lily.
Fong wanted to leave this behind for a while. There was more than enough fear to go around without the possibility of government involvement. Although they all knew that was silly. There was government involvement in everything that was important in the Middle Kingdom. It was just a matter of how much involvement . . . and who in the government.
“What else have you got, Lily?”
“Just a roll of film from one of the Japanese men’s cameras. The other camera had no film in it.”
“So what’s on the film, Lily?”
She switched to English despite the obvious anger of the coroner. “I don’t know, Fong. No black room here, safe.”
Quickly, he responded in Shanghanese, “There is nothing secret here, Lily. Why do you think they put us up in this abandoned factory? It’s got to be bugged. Just get the pictures developed. There’s nothing else we can do.” He turned to the men. “Lily was concerned that she couldn’t find a secure darkroom to develop the film.”