“Who was her mother?”
“Mrs. Lee.”
“The owner of the Ming Tree restaurant?”
“She is not the owner. They own the restaurant. They only put the restaurant in her name to make it look respectable.”
That dropped a piece in place. No wonder they were free to conduct business at the Ming Tree. Harry gave me an emphatic look, but I had one more question.
“Mei-Li, I’m sorry to ask this. If your friend were too badly beaten to recognize by her face, could you identify her any other way?”
“Yes. She has a scar between the fingers of her left hand. It was a broken dish. I was with her when it happened.”
I filed that away. I began to see the dimmest light at the end of the tunnel.
When she could straighten up, I held her by the shoulders.
“Listen to me, Mei-Li. I need you to come back with me. I don’t know what’s left to save for Anthony. There may be nothing. I don’t know. I can only promise you it’ll be dangerous, but I believe you can help Anthony.”
I looked at Harry. His eyebrows had climbed a solid inch at the realization that I had promised the impossible. On the other hand, Mei-Li had no hesitation.
“I’ll do whatever you say. Can you take me to Anthony?”
Harry was shaking his head vigorously while I said, “I’ll try.”
Harry lifted me by the arm while bowing slightly to Mei-Li. He nearly carried me six feet away in spite of the toll it took on his ribs.
“Michael, are you suddenly suicidal? You got the information. If God chooses to grant a miracle, you and I will get out of here before that cockroach changes his mind about the phone call.”
I got Harry to ease his grip before speaking in the softest tone I could manage.
“I need her, Harry. I have a feeling she can tie this thing together.”
Harry was so furious he was hissing out the words.
“You don’t need her. You got the facts. You can find people in Boston to testify. Besides, she digs your client in deeper. Can’t you figure out what the ‘price’ was Anthony had to pay? And when he killed the old man, they weren’t going to let him out. They don’t do that. They were going to use the court to send him to prison for life with their witnesses. He was an example to any of their people who got frisky.”
“Maybe, maybe not. I know this. I can’t leave her here, Harry. This is too pathetic. This is slavery. They can’t get away with it. Dammit, this isn’t third-century China! It’s the United States.” The hot steam seemed to go out of Harry’s words.
“Actually, it’s Canada, Michael.”
“So what? You said it’s your community. Look at her. You like this?”
He had no response, but he let go of his grip. I went back to Mei-Li.
“Do you ever get to leave this place?”
“Only to go downstairs to the grocery store. I go in the morning to shop for rice and vegetables for the house. They never let me go outside.”
Harry came back to our tight little circle, and I had the feeling that he was back in the lineup. He picked up on my thought.
“What time in the morning, Mei-Li?”
“Around ten o’clock.”
“Make it exactly ten o’clock tomorrow.”
We put together an idea so sketchy, and iffy, and dependent on circumstances, that it started everything from my tonsils to my toes vibrating with fear. A lifetime of reading James Bond novels, and a fat lot of good it did me when the chips were down.
25
Harry and I shopped that night for some essentials for the following morning. We checked into a motel, and each fought a war with our nerves for an hour or two of sleep.
At nine forty-five in the morning, we were sitting in a rented van, a block from the grocery shop on Columbia Street. Toronto was putting on a gray bluster that promised snow. The temperature had dropped to the low teens. I prayed that the snow would hold off until we had finished business, in case we needed traction.
The coffee was hot in our hands through the plastic. We’d talked a lot the night before about what we were up to, but we never got to the heart of the matter. Harry finally got the words out through the plume of steam rising from the cup next to his lips.
“I know now why I’m doing this, Mike. This really is more my cause than yours. This is my chance for a payback.”
He looked for a reaction, but I waited to see where this was going.
“You’re just here for your client. I’m not a lawyer, but I think you could get killed doing him more harm than good.”
I was still listening.
“You heard Mei-Li. What do you think of your client’s innocence now?”
I took a hot sip and still had no real answer. “It’s more complicated than that.”
“Well, then, let me tell you how I see it, Mike. That business about your client’s getting out of his deal with the tong is pure fiction. Maybe Mei-Li believed it. Maybe even he believed it at the time. But it doesn’t happen. They don’t let you out. It would set a very bad precedent.”
I looked at him. “Harry, they let you out.”
“That’s why I know how special the circumstances would have to be. You want to hear what happened with your client? This is my version, and I’m in a better position to guess than you are. Anthony fell in love with Mei-Li. He straightened out his addiction. So now he’s in control of the pressures that got him into the drug-selling deal in the first place. He wants out. Clean.
“He goes to his contact man in the tong, Kip Liu. Liu sets him up. He tells your client that the price of freedom for him and Mei-Li is one little murder of an old man. He has your client meet him at the restaurant at the height of Chinese New Year. He knows the target will be in the window across the street. He convinces your client that one pop of a pistol in that din will never be noticed, and he and the girl are free.
“Your client buys it. Liu gives him the pistol in the restaurant. Your client goes down on the street and shoots the old man. Now Liu has him arrested by the police with two ready-made, honorable witnesses.
“The news media goes crazy over this new violence in peaceful Chinatown. The Chinese community naturally goes into a frenzy over the murder of one of its most beloved fathers. The whole thing is a gift to the DA. And Liu’s clear. And the precedent is right. The kid was not let out. He winds up put away at the hands of the state. The kid can claim that Liu had him do it, but it’s the kid’s word against Liu’s.
“In fact, it turned out even better than that for Liu. Your client is sticking to the story that he didn’t do it, probably because he doesn’t want to admit the whole thing to his father. So Liu doesn’t even get implicated.”
Harry raised his hands and looked to me to find a hole in the theory. I took a long sip of coffee while my computer was spinning.
“I thought you told me the Chinese don’t look to the white establishment for help.”
“They don’t, Mike. This is not some Chinese victim going to the police because he’s been robbed or extorted. This is the tong using the white system as a tool to get what they want done.”
I had no immediate answer. Everything in me wanted to disbelieve Harry’s theory. I wanted Anthony to be innocent. But I’d be doing what Mr. Devlin warned me about. I’d be playing the game with my own fantasy facts. I could miss getting the best outcome for the client on the real facts.
Harry brought me back. “You didn’t answer my question. If your client’s guilty, is it worth it for you to risk getting killed here?”
I gave it some thought before answering.
