“Go ahead, have a look, Detective Zhong. You want to. It’s only human to know who has entered the ring.”
“Who?”
“As you prefer – what. What has entered the ring.”
Fong looked. The black panther was sleek and powerful. A full-grown male with bloodshot eyes and a shiny coat. He circled slowly, never taking his eyes off the deadly tusks of the wild boar. Fong forced his eyes back to the Incense Master.
The man had moved from his chair and was now halfway across the room, eyeing Fong.
“You want to talk about the boat.” It was a statement not a question.
“I do,” Fong acknowledged.
“Not our style, Detective Zhong.”
Fong had always found it odd that gangsters thought they had style of any sort. Women, yes. Money, yes. Power, sometimes. But style, never.
“You mean killing’s not your style?”
The Incense Master smiled. “Killing is such a condemnatory term, don’t you find?”
“I wouldn’t know about that.”
“We are in business, Detective Zhong. We do what is good for business. Killing those foreigners on that boat was not good for business. We were already partway to an understanding with them. We’d offered the necessary protections for working in this part of the world.”
“You mean you’d already settled on your extortion fees.”
“More condemnatory terms, Detective. And no, we hadn’t settled on terms. We were close though to an agreement that benefited all. In fact, as a show of our good faith we offered to supply the entertainment for the party on the boat.”
“What was the party for?”
“A celebration, I believe.”
“For what?”
“That was the foreigner’s business – not ours.”
“Yours was extortion.”
The Incense Master smiled.
“So, you supplied the girls for the party.”
“Women,” he corrected Fong.
“But none of your men were on that boat?”
“Not a one.”
“Explain this,” Fong said as he threw him three pictures of the Triad insignia on the outside of the boat.
“Explain?”
“Yes, I assume you know the meaning of the term.”
“I do. My explanation is that anyone with a brush and paint could have marked the outside of that boat with our emblem.”
“And this?” he threw him a photo of the Triad warning on the ceiling mirror of the dead American’s room.
“That? That you’d need not only brush and paint but also a ladder. Do you have more pictures, Detective Zhong?”
“No.”
“What a relief. I was beginning to think you were going to publish a book. Everybody does these days, don’t they?”
“I wouldn’t know. I do have this.” Fong held up the Triad medallion on its broken chainlink.
The Incense Master laughed.
“What?” Fong demanded.
“Where have you been, Detective? Open the drawer over there.”
The young financial officer opened the drawer for Fong. There were hundreds of medallions there. “They’re big sellers, Detective Zhong. The tourists love them. They are a fine source of income for our business, as well as unpaid advertising. Like putting Tommy Hilfiger on a shirt, wouldn’t you say?”
Fong didn’t want to admit that he didn’t know who Tommy Hilfiger was, but was saved the embarrassment of asking when a huge cry went up from the arena.
The panther had leapt at the wild boar, which had met the challenge by raising its cutting tusks. The sharp things had pierced through the underside of the panther’s chin sending howling cries from the injured cat. The boar then pushed hard off its tiny feet and pressed its advantage, trying to drive the tusks through to the panther’s brain. The move, however, exposed the boar’s underbelly. The cat raked the belly with its back claws. The boar roared and drove forward, its intestines falling as it moved. Blood shot from the panther as its head hit the concrete.
Boar tusks and panther claws did the work for which they were designed. Both animals twitched in the final throes of their lives. Then amid the mess and stink and offal, they died – and the crowd cheered.
Fong dragged his eyes from the event. Both Triad men were looking at him. Finally, the financial officer spoke. Indicating the arena, “That is what we do, Detective. We are here to make money, not scare it away. There was no money to be made in killing those foreigners. There was money to be made in ‘assisting’ the foreigners. Not in killing them.”
“So you had nothing to do with it?” Fong said, feeling stupid.
“Oh, we had something to do with it, officer.”
“What?” Fong demanded.
“As I said, we supplied the women.” With that, he reached into his pocket and took out a fistful of gaudycoloured business cards.
Chen took them.
The Triad man stared at Fong but pointed at the cards in Chen’s hand. “Those women, Detective Zhong.”
The coroner held the bar room section of the model in his hand. The tiny body of the eldest Chinese man swung gently from the rafter, his face a red blotch.
For an instant, the coroner felt the cut that severed the Achilles tendon then the yank that pulled the old man from his feet. No. They would have cut his face first. Then hauled him up into the air.
Keeping him upright would mean he’d bleed to death more slowly. With those facial wounds, he’d bleed out quickly if he were inverted. But he wasn’t. It was meant to last.
The coroner had seen much of his countrymen’s nastiness in his seventy-odd years. He had pulled apart the remains of more men than he cared to remember in an effort to find out how, if not why, anyone would inflict such damage on a fellow species member.
Little surprised him. He accepted much. He understood the deep nature of anger that resided in the Chinese heart. He condoned certain acts of vengeance as just human – just part of the darkness of being.
But the swinging man was an expression of something else. Perhaps not chi, but something other than anger. This was rage, a fury born of something very old, that is stored deep in the heart of humankind.
He replaced the section of the model, took a white cloth from his pocket and swabbed his face. He was clammy with sweat. He began to refold the cloth, but stopped suddenly when he saw to his shock that it was encrusted with rust-red deposits.
Chen pulled the Jeep out of its parking space and made his way through the crowd at the animal park by honking at anyone who dared slow his progress. When he finally got to the gate, he turned to Fong, “Do you believe them, sir?”
“Do you, Captain Chen?”
“I’m afraid I do. They had more to gain by the foreigners being alive than dead.”
“And they are about making money, aren’t they, Chen?”
“At least they have been for quite some time, sir.”
“I actually think the most telling thing is that they didn’t offer up some of their foot soldiers. Pin it on them. It would have been so easy, but they didn’t.”
“Can you figure out why, sir?”
Fong could, but the answer appalled him, so he kept it to himself.
Chen waited for a response then realized that none was forthcoming. He wasn’t pleased but decided to change the topic. “What should I do with the women’s business cards, sir?”
“Check them out.” Chen nodded. “You saw a brokendown bus with young women on your way to the lake that night, didn’t you?”
“Yes.”
“Them?”
“That would be my guess, sir.”
“Mine too, but make sure. Match the cards to accounts at the bus company. Who knows, we might get lucky.”
“Do you believe in luck, sir?”
Fong didn’t bother answering that either.
Lily stared at the model section of the small runway room. She glanced at the photos of the Japanese men on the chairs with the rags of intestine dangling between their legs staring up at her. She fought down her disgust both with the men and their demise. Then she felt for the girl who must have been on the runway – dancing to the music of the American rock band, Counting Crows.