White Tiger

was probably bigger than his entire bedroom in his apartment, next to a woman whose beauty was…well, the most amazing thing he’d ever seen up close. Despite being driven nearly crazy by grief over her dead, abusive husband.

Women. You just can’t figure them out.

“It is impressive,” Chee Wei said, rifling through the papers. “It’s a file on Lin Yubo, aka James Lin, former governor of Shanghai, former deputy director of the Central Cultural Revolution Group, and the head of the Shanghai Black Dragon tong. This guy was a real mover and shaker during Mao’s time. He started out as a criminal, working the backside of the Kuomintang and the rest of the Chinese Nationalists until the Japs invaded. When they took Shanghai, Lin faded out and came back into the picture, this time with Mao and his guerilla fighters. He stuck with them during the whole war against Chiang Kai-shek, and it seemed Lin Yubo was a true-blue commie lover.”

Ryker snorted. “Lin? A member of the Communist party?”

“The Chinese Communist Party, no less,” Chee Wei said. “Those guys didn’t mess around, they all believed in the Party, heart and soul. Well, at least in the beginning. But Lin? No way, man. It was just another way to stay alive for him.”

“An opportunist to the core,” Ryker agreed. “Look, all this is really interesting. But what does it have to do with our case?”

Chee Wei flipped a page over and started reading. He finally pointed at a block of text and showed it to Ryker. “Look familiar?”

“Yeah. It says ‘spicy beef platter’, right?”

“It says Bu zhan, bu he. No war, no peace. It was a slogan used during the Shanghai purges in the 1960s, during the beginning of the Cultural Revolution.” Chee Wei flipped over another page and held it up for Ryker to see. It was a photo of James Lin-Lin Yubo, back then, in a time when James Lin didn’t exist-standing shoulder-to-shoulder with Mao Zedong, the crazed deflowerer of twelve-year-olds himself. Mao had a gentle, almost beatific smile. Lin looked just as crusty as he did today, only more than four decades younger.

“So it’s revenge,” Ryker said. He took the printout and examined it more closely. A woman stood next to Lin, half cropped out of the picture. Ryker turned the page and pointed to her.

“Jiang Qing, Mao’s wife,” Chee Wei said. “She took over the post of the Central Cultural Revolution Group from Lin. This is when Lin had some bad times, when he was sent back to Shanghai to oversee the purges. It was actually a demotion, but my cousin thinks he used the time to rebuild part of his tong. Ten years before Mao kicks the bucket, and he was already planning for when China opened its doors to the west. You have to hand it to him, Lin is a really strategic thinker. And he used his crime money to buy his way into businesses and make even more cash.”

“You sound like you admire him,” Ryker said.

“I admire his check book, that’s for sure.”

“What else you got?”

Chee Wei spread out the pages as far as the tiny table would allow. Ryker picked through them, but 99 % of the text was in Chinese. He would need Chee Wei to spoon-feed him everything, which would be incredibly time- consuming. He was about to ask Chee Wei to type up the Cliff’s Notes version when he came across some more pictures. Lin as a younger man. Lin in the trenches with the rest of the commies. Lin as a respected member of the Chinese Communist Party. Lin extolling a group of people-

“Well, lookie here.” He pointed out one of the figures standing beside Lin in his ‘return to Shanghai’ phase. “You were right. It’s that guy the manservant.”

“Han Baojia,” Chee Wei said. “Lin’s deputy. See, I told you those guys had a history.”

“Shoot son, you might actually be worth a detective’s badge after all.” Ryker went through the pictures again, and found yet another person of interest. He’d almost looked over the image but something tickled his eye and he looked back. It took a moment for the face to register with him, and he turned the paper back to Chee Wei again. “Who’s this guy?”

Chee Wei read the caption. “Ren Yun. Until recently, the guy running the Ministry of Transport in China. He was one of Lin’s associates back in the day, and his primary sponsor back into the Communist Party after Mao died and the Gang of Four fell. What about him?”

“He was at Lin’s last-” Ryker said before he stopped himself. “I saw him with Lin,” he amended, and quite lamely, at that.

Chee Wei looked at him, puzzled. “What’s going on?” he asked.

Huh. Maybe he will make a good detective after all.

“I was invited to Lin’s house last night. For a, uh, social function. This guy, Ren, he was there. Looks about the same, only a billion years older.”

“You went to a party at Lin’s house?” Chee Wei was appropriately scandalized. “Hal, you realize that’s a bona fide conflict of interest, and probably ethically questionable, right?”

“Neither of those things ever separated Cueball from his badge.”

“Everyone knows he’s fat and stupid, and every village needs its idiot, so Wallace is ours. But you? You’ve got baggage, and superiors who fucking hate you, man. Going up there was probably not that smart.”

“Yeah, well.” Ryker lifted his coffee cup to his lips.

“You get laid?”

Ryker almost spit his coffee all over Chee Wei. “What?”

“I said, did you get laid? Was Valerie Lin there? Did your hormones assault her?”

Ryker sputtered for a moment, then made a face and shook his head. “Kid, you’re some piece of work.” He dropped his eyes back to the papers, hoping that Chee Wei wasn’t that good of a detective yet.

“Yeah. Yeah, okay. I guess it’s just not your time of the year yet. Don’t worry though, I hear rutting season is right around the corner. In, like, New Zealand.” Chee Wei caught the look of the woman seated at the next table. “Eh, sorry.”

“Do we know what this guy’s here for?” Ryker asked.

“What guy?”

“This guy. The guy I saw last night.”

“Why didn’t you ask him last night when you saw him?”

“Because we weren’t exactly formally introduced?”

“Oh. Well, I don’t know. I guess I can try and find that out, though. But there’s something else I got to tell you. This is the creme de la creme, man. You interested?” Chee Wei wiggled his sparse eyebrows.

“Not at all.”

“Lin had two sons. Danny was the youngest. His eldest? Killed in Shanghai last month. Care to guess how he died?”

Ryker didn’t need to guess. He stared at Chee Wei for a long moment, too stunned to even speak. Then finally: “You mean to tell me this has happened to Lin before?”

Chee Wei nodded. “Totally weird shit, right?”

“A month ago, you say.”

Chee Wei went through the printouts and showed him another page. A younger, taller, more vital version of James Lin stared at him from the small picture on the paper. While he couldn’t reasonably ascertain these things from just a two-inch by two-inch picture printed out from an inkjet printer, he got the impression that Lin’s eldest son had been nothing like Lin Dan. This one had been serious. This one had been intelligent. This one had been studious. And more than likely, this one had been legitimately dangerous.

“Do we know the full circumstances behind this one’s murder? And what’s his name, anyway?”

“Lin Jong. John Lin here in the U.S. No, we don’t know the full circumstances, it’s still an active investigation in Shanghai, and the police have the information closed off. My cousin mentioned that it might not be real smart for him to start a fishing expedition that way, because he thinks the Ministry for Public Security is involved. The Chinese version of the FBI, only not so nice and not restricted by things like, you know, basic human rights.”

“So he can’t really help us any further. I got it.” Ryker tapped the tabletop for a moment, looking down at the photos before him. “Whatever’s been following Lin around is finally catching up to him. Both his sons, gone. That’s