Shen Deshi looked it over through the plastic, handed it back to the messenger and told him to keep it frozen. He then studied the photographs, all properly scaled, and a sheet of partial fingerprints. He read the paperwork carefully.
“The ring?” he asked.
“Oklahoma State University,” the captain replied.
Shen Deshi leveled a look on the man. “You see? Not so difficult. An American. It is a fortuitous start.” Burned into his eyes was the fact that the captain had failed to notify anyone of the apparently dead foreigner.
The captain picked up on this and quickly defended his actions. “It was our intention to complete the preliminary investigation before troubling our superiors.”
“Yes, of course.”
“Third document. We have faxed a copy of the fingerprints to the Ministry and are awaiting a response.”
“You covered yourself properly,” Shen Deshi said, his voice grating, barely able to contain his temper. “The hand was cleaved cleanly at the wrist. There is either a one-handed American out there looking for his school ring, or a dead American butchered on Chinese soil, his body parts floating down the Yangtze-the rest of him long gone by now. The Americans must be notified.”
“Right away.”
“The evidence-all of it-must be shared with them.”
“I will see to it. I will contact the embassy myself. Personally. I will do so immediately.” The captain reached for the phone.
“Not the embassy,” Shen Deshi said, finally venting. “Your idiocy is a pox on us all. You bring us great shame.”
The captain recoiled. This was the gravest insult one could deliver. Great shame obliterated careers. Great shame could lead a man to the noose.
“Let me think a moment.” Shen Deshi reached over and took up the teacup and sipped. “Nice tea,” he said, suddenly pleasant. “I thank you for it.”
“My pleasure.” The captain was sweating.
“The better course is to deliver the evidence to the consulate here in Shanghai,” Shen Deshi said. “You will notify the U.S. Consulate.”
“Humbly begging your pardon, honorable Shen, but it would be faster to-”
“Faster, yes. But that’s the point. It will take the consulate time to determine exactly what they have. I need that time to further my investigation and get ahead of them. I must be able to answer the obvious questions they will have. You will quietly make inquiries if any upstream districts are reporting any assaults, murders or disappearances involving foreigners.”
“Right away.”
“I will need duplicates of all of this.”
“Immediately.”
“We must not lose face with the Americans. Bad yunqi for us all.”
“I will make the calls.”
“Quietly.”
“As a mouse. And I will deliver the information to a low-level bureaucrat I know at the consulate. And even then, not all the evidence. Not until they officially request it. That may factor in another day or two for you.”
“This is very good thinking, captain. There’s yet a chance that you can undo these mistakes that were no doubt made by your subordinates.”
“You are gracious.”
“Perhaps,” said Shen Deshi, smiling grimly, “some discipline is in order to set the proper tone.”
Hey, there.” Skype video challenged Knox, not for the technological issues but because his brother looked so normal. Boyishly handsome. A kind face. One would never suspect the problems that lurked behind the man’s warm eyes.
“You haven’t called me in a long time,” Tommy said. The child-like singsong to his voice gave him away.
How long had it been? Knox wondered. Tommy was prone to exaggeration.
“I’m heading to China for a week or two.”
“I thought you were in Cambodia?” Tommy didn’t miss much-the doctors got that part wrong, time and time again.
“En route to Hong Kong. Then on to Shanghai.”
“More pearls? I think our inventory is okay, Johnny.”
“There’s always something good in Shanghai.” Like a paycheck that might begin to endow Tommy’s future medical costs. Their partnership gave them a reason to work together. It was something Tommy not only could handle but was good at. It kept Knox traveling. It was never going to make them rich. “It could be good for us.”
“I thought you were coming home?” Pouty.
Knox rarely went home. He made a million excuses to himself, all of them convincing, but the truth nibbled at the edges, stinging.
“I am, buddy. Just need to get this out of the way first.”
“Business first,” Tommy said, sounding like a mynah bird.
“You got it.”
“I’ll tell Eve.”
Evelyn Ritter, their bookkeeper. Tommy had a crush the size of Texas.
“Good idea.”
“What’s wrong?” Tommy asked.
That was the thing about Tommy: what he lacked in academic intelligence he compensated with intuition. Maybe he’d learned to read Knox’s expressions, though Knox was well practiced and tried not to send conflicting signals. Maybe he’d heard something in his voice. Or maybe it was far more subtle: Knox’s timing; his choice of short sentences. Maybe his kid brother just got him like no one else.
“It’s a side job, Tommy. Moonlighting.” He wasn’t going to lie. Talking down to Tommy resulted in regression, a lesson long since learned. “Something for Dave Dulwich.”
“Mr. Dulwich?” Excitement. “The soldier you rescued?”
Dulwich had been a soldier once, but not when Knox had pulled him from that truck.
Knox said, “You know Mr. Dulwich.”
“Can I speak to him?”
“I think you already did,” Knox said, not meaning to.
Silence. He’d stung him with that. Tommy lived to please his older brother. Any sense he’d inflicted something on Knox would burrow down deep inside him and come out later as something far more vile.
“I wouldn’t have gotten this offer,” Knox said, “if it hadn’t been for you.”
“You think?”
“I know. Are you kidding? You’re taking care of me. I thought it was supposed to be the other way around?”
Tommy’s laughter coughed static across an otherwise surprisingly clear connection. Knox, at forty thousand feet in a private jet; Tommy on a smart phone in Detroit.
He leaned to get a good look out the window at the chunks of land and water so far below. From somewhere within came the urge to refuse Dulwich’s offer. Or was it too late?
Knox laughed along with his brother as a cloud pulled the blinds and the space inside the plane grew mildly claustrophobic.
SATURDAY
