A very few migrating creatures seem to guide themselves by following the lines of the earth's magnetic field, perhaps sensitized to its alignment by magnetized particles they have swallowed. Since the planet's magnetic field has reversed itself several times in the past, the theorist can only wonder whether these purely physical events have caused wholesale biological exterminations as entire species lost their way over the surface of the earth.
13
“Eleven million dollars,” Peter Lau said, “every two weeks.”
We'd followed him to a new restaurant, and the air, or something, had done him good. His eyes were steadier, his voice less susceptible to sudden spikes of nervous energy. The front of his shirt had dried out. He even smiled occasionally, like someone picking up radio jokes on his fillings. He was drinking lemonade without spilling it into his lap.
At my suggestion, Tran had taken up watch in the parking lot, conserving a Coke and eating ice cream and peering through Alice's dirty windows for a sight of the enemy. In his absence, Lau had grown more expansive.
“Eleven million dollars,” I said. It was a nice thing to say.
“That's just on this coast.” He narrowed his eyes, either in speculation or in defense against the light. “Another five, maybe, on the East. Let's make it sixteen million dollars every two weeks, so that's about four hundred and sixteen million dollars a year.” He put down the lemonade and clinked the rings together. “Tax free.”
“All under Charlie Wah?” Four hundred and sixteen million dollars didn't seem real.
“Charlie Wah runs the West Coast only. East Coast is Johnny King.”
“King?”
Lau smiled, for perhaps the third time. He'd wanted me to ask. “Koh, actually,” he said. “His first name, obviously, isn't really Johnny, either.” Now that he'd decided to talk, he was making a good story out of it, Chinese- style.
“Johnny King,” I said. “Charlie Wah. They sound like movie gangsters.”
“Very good,” Lau purred. “Hollywood has a lot to answer for.” He sniffed at his lemonade as though he hoped someone had slipped something alcoholic into it while he wasn't looking. “But make no mistake. These are appallingly dangerous men.”
“I've seen Charlie Wah in action,” I said.
Lau made a tight little P with his lips and blew air behind it. “Charlie Wah thinks he's the last of the old-time mobsters. He affects the whole gestalt: those bodyguards, that haircut, those awful suits.”
“Powder blue, the one I saw.”
“He dresses like sherbet. He's a pastel rainbow, a complete spectrum of bad taste. He has them made in London, nice piece of reverse snobbery there, by a very good tailor who must go reeling every time a bolt of fabric arrives. They're silk, of course, dyed in Thailand by the inmates of a home for unwed mothers.”
“Interesting labor pool.”
He looked a little disappointed at my lack of reaction. “It's a good holding pen. Bring a couple dozen Chinese girls through Bangkok, put them up in the home while their papers are cooking, then ship them out.”
“Why Bangkok?”
Lau sighed. He was feeling better, but it would be days before he was his old self again, if he still had an old self. “There are two main routes,” he said, industriously moving things around on the tabletop. He laid a knife between us. 'One is over the Chinese border near Yunnan and then by air into Thailand.' He pushed his index finger to the edge of the knife and then hopped over it and skidded onto an unwiped piece of food that apparently represented Bangkok. “In Thailand the CIAs-that's Chinese Illegal Aliens-become Taiwanese or Hong Kongese and fly either to Los Angeles or to New York, sometimes via Taiwan. That's the air route, the most expensive. Fifty thousand dollars each. A hundred arrive on each coast every couple of weeks, about twenty million dollars a month.”
The sums were troubling me. “Where does a mainland Chinese get fifty thousand dollars?”
A scowl informed me that I was breaking his flow. “Later. The second route'-he angled the knife about forty- five degrees away from me-'is by sea. Overland across China to Fujian Province, then by fishing boats into the Strait of Taiwan. They're picked up by a freighter and shipped, like computer parts or automobile bumpers, to San Pedro. Three or four miles offshore, they're loaded into small boats and brought the rest of the way in. As you can imagine, a long and uncomfortable trip. Also, no papers are involved. That's tourist class, thirty thousand apiece. A shipment of two hundred makes Charlie Wah six million dollars.”
“Who owns the freighters?”
“Dummy companies set up by the Snakes. There's legitimate cargo, too, of course. On a good-sized freighter, two hundred people don't take up very much room. Especially if they're Chinese. Chinese,” he said distastefully, “like crowds.”
“The money,” I prompted.
He paused and reached up to pat his pasted hair. “Chinese have very extended families. An entire family, thirty or forty people, will save for years for the down payment to send one young man to America. They're almost all men.”
“What about those girls? In the home for-”
“They're going to be prostitutes,” he said. “Not that they know it. Come to think of it, I'm not sure the Snakes do. It's just a sideline for Charlie. Charlie has a taste for prostitutes. They're useful in other ways, too.”
He looked around absently: one more bright coffee shop, devoid, for the moment, of people who wanted to kill him. A clean, well-lighted place where he could sit with his computer and fax machine and pretend that he was writing and that people were waiting to read what he was writing.
“The men who can't pay,” he said at last, “are the more interesting ones, if your interests run to slavery and degradation. They have no papers, no language except whatever Chinese dialects they speak, no money, obviously. They enter a period of indentured servitude, if we're being polite. One year of work, ten thousand dollars off their debt. Of course, there's interest, too. Most of them come tourist class, so that's roughly three years they owe to Charlie Wah and the Snakes.”
“Three years doing what?”
He grimaced. “Whatever their masters decree. Restaurants, farms, laundries, garment factories, assembly lines, import warehouses. The Snakes own some of the businesses, but for others they're just a source of cheap transient labor. Say the slave earns fifteen thousand a year, which is standard. That's ten for Charlie, two to send home, and three to live on. Three,” he said, watching me with an expression I couldn't read.
I was bone-weary and not paying attention as closely as I should have been. “Doesn't leave much for movies,” I said.
He slapped the table flat-handed. “It doesn't leave much for
“So,” I said, calling him back to the present, “the INS.”
He grimaced. “This is how cute Charlie is. This is typical Charlie. Get some poor coolie into the country, soak him for three years' hard labor, and get Tiffle to hand him a phony green card. Then send a phony INS inspector, an English-speaking Chinese, to wherever he's working, got it?” He was speaking quietly, but he'd picked up a paper napkin and was methodically pulling its corners off.
