Code Name Komiko (14 page)

Heavy metals in the wastewater. Alkylphenols and PFCs in factory discharge. The various dyes and bleaches and detergents formed what more than one site labeled a “poison cocktail” that ran into rivers, lakes, and eventually larger bodies of water, irreversibly damaging everything they touched.

Lian didn’t know half of the chemicals she was reading about, and every link led her down a rabbit hole of runoff effects and biosphere endangerment. She sent herself an e-mail in shorthand with the toxins she needed to read up on and bookmarks to sites like Greenpeace and the World Wildlife Federation.

One compound she did recognize was formaldehyde. She knew it was used to embalm dead bodies. So why then was it showing up in clothing meant for living bodies? She eventually discovered a PDF report that detailed formaldehyde’s use in preventing mildew during shipping. Easier to find, frighteningly, were lists of the harmful effects that the known carcinogen had been found to cause. Anything from eye irritation and skin rashes to, in higher concentrations, respiratory problems, wildly erratic menstrual cycles . . . even death.

What Lian made note of, as she clicked between tabs and read about formaldehyde and NPEs, were the commonalities. Both were banned in several countries, either outright or past maximum allowable levels. Both were the subject of increasing scrutiny from environmental concerns. And, not surprisingly, both were becoming battleground topics as the manufacturers pushed back. Both had been shown to have negative effects on kidney and liver tissue.

Lian wondered whether “negative effects” and “blackish” were roughly the same thing.

The bell chimed, and she logged out, careful to clear her history and cookies. As she left the lab, she downed the remainder of her soda, thinking. She had only scratched the surface; there were dozens more links she wanted to follow, dozens of search terms she wanted to pair with “Rand Harrison,” dozens of leads she wanted to tell 06/04 about. But it would all have to wait for tonight.

The rest of the school day went from a rush to a crawl, her energy flagging quickly once her sugar high wore off. By the time the final bell rang and she’d gathered her books for the weekend, she wanted nothing more than to head home and sneak in a quick nap before taking the bow to her violin strings.

“I literally cannot wait for tonight,” Mingmei said, playfully bumping into Lian on the steps outside the school.

“You literally have to,” Lian replied with a smirk. “Unless you can warp space and time. Or they redefined ‘literally’ while I wasn’t paying attention. And nice shirt, by the way.”

Lian hadn’t been able to ignore the Harrison logo on the new charcoal gray sweatshirt Mingmei was wearing, its sleeves pushed up to her elbows. Like everything, it looked great on her, but now all Lian could think was how many fish had been emasculated to manufacture it.

“Thanks. It feels like a great big hug,” Mingmei gushed. “Matt gave it to me, the night after the break-in. It’s kind of like having him draped over my shoulders all the time.”

Or wrapped around your finger,
Lian thought.

“So you are coming tonight,” Mingmei said. It was, characteristically, not delivered as a question.

“I told you already, I can’t. How is it you can’t remember that when I’ve said it a dozen times?”

“I suffer from an auditory impairment, Lian. You know I only hear what I want to. It’s a very serious condition!” Mingmei made her best earnest face, daring Lian to laugh.

“It’s true,” Matt said as he walked up behind them. “That’s why we’re holding a benefit for it tonight on my dad’s yacht. It’s so important that we raise money and awareness of Selective Listening Disorder.”

“I can’t,” Lian insisted. “Can’t, can’t, can’t. It’s a simple contraction.
Can . . . not
.”

Mingmei turned to Matt and shrugged. “I don’t hear her saying she can’t.”

“My God,” Matt said in mock horror. “It’s getting worse! Please, Lian, it’s such a worthy cause.”

Lian had had enough. “Just drop it, all right?” she said, cutting him off. “It’s not my kind of scene. You guys go, have a great time. You can try telling me all about it afterward, but I suspect Mingmei’s disease is contagious.”

She watched the two of them walk away, their bodies awkwardly close together, as if each was waiting for the other to begin the hand holding. Lian hoped they wouldn’t hold hands—she feared she’d roll her eyes right out of her skull. How Mingmei got anything done at all when boys were in the mix was a mystery. Lian couldn’t imagine trying to date on top of all the other demands on her time.

When she tore her glance from her friends, Lian felt a flush of relief.

Standing at a remove from the scooter parking, but keeping a close eye on it, was a familiar face. Zan. It was good to know he was alive.

“What are you doing here?” she asked after beckoning him over.

“I came to find you,” he said. “I remembered your scooter, figured there was a good chance you’d stop by here sometime.” His eyes flicked momentarily to Matt and Mingmei, across the lot. “The, uh . . . that guy you were talking to. That’s your boyfriend?”

Lian laughed out loud. “No, no. No, he’s not. No.”

At least one too many “No’s” there
, she thought, inwardly cringing.
Probably two
.

“Ah,” he said. “Good to know.”

She wasn’t sure, but she thought she’d caught a little smile on his lips.

“Walk with me,” she said, strolling in the direction of Hong Kong Park. “Tell me what you’ve been up to the last couple of days.”

“It’s been a whirlwind,” he said. “I was hired on the spot, no reference check or anything. There’s a big group of Harrison employees sharing a rat’s nest of an apartment at the Chungking Mansions. Since I didn’t give a permanent address and didn’t have any transportation, they set me up there. It’s just as bad on the other side of the doors.”

“Why not stay at the hostel?”

He shook his head. “Living where Jiao lived—how Jiao lived—is my best chance of finding out exactly what happened to her. Besides, it’s a roof over my head, and a mat and pillow I can call my own until the next guy shows up.”

“Next guy?” she asked.

“The factory runs in twelve-hour shifts, so the apartment does the same. They drop off the previous crew and load us onto the same bus. We see them coming and going. I don’t know any of their names, just that one of them clips his nails where I lay my head every morning.”

She shivered. “Gross.”

“Yeah, the whole setup is gross. I’d say they treat us like cattle, but at least cattle get to use the restroom whenever they want. They’ve got floor bosses looking for any and every infraction. But if you keep your head down, do your job silently, and have a huge bladder and a tiny appetite, you can escape their wrath.”

They were ambling in the direction of the park’s artificial lake and waterfall. The day was pleasant and the scenery equally so, but Lian’s thoughts were on the dismal gray factory across the bay.

“Have you been able to ask anyone about your sister?”

He yawned before he answered. “We get two quick smoke breaks and staggered lunches, so I’ve used as much of that time as I can to ask around. A couple of the younger women there used to eat with Jiao, and, when she hadn’t shown up for a couple of days, they asked a supervisor and were told that she’d left. Two or three other guys remember seeing her, but it didn’t sound like they’d even noticed she was gone until I brought it up. I get the feeling that nobody bothers getting too close to their coworkers.”

Lian frowned. “How sad.”

“What’s sad is how scared people seem to say anything about it. A lot of them wouldn’t talk to me at all. The ones who did shut down pretty quickly when I brought up Jiao.” His voice had become a hoarse growl. He was clearly frustrated. “And honestly, I’m starting to get a little scared. I don’t want to push too hard, or ask too many questions at once. I’m nervous that someone’s going to tell one of the gang masters about me and blow my cover.”

“I know it can’t be easy to be patient,” she said. “But for what it’s worth, I think what you’re doing takes a lot of courage.”

He gave a weary smile. “Thanks, Lian. Speaking of patience, has your . . . ‘group’ turned up anything that might help me?”

She wished she had more, and better, news to report. Finally, 06/04 was investigating something in her own backyard, and the intelligence seemed to be coming in a trickle rather than the flood she hoped for.

“It looks like there were some high levels of toxins in her body when she died,” she said.

“What, like drugs? You think someone drugged her?”

“It’s too soon to tell. But . . . I hate to even ask this, but was there any chance that she used drugs recreationally?”

Zan hung his head, and Lian stopped walking, giving him a chance to pick his words. Dragonflies chased one another in the air around them.

“She . . . briefly, one of her friends was getting a lot of ADHD medication,” he said at last. “Methylphenelate, I think? She’d get together on the weekends with some friends, and they’d take it. But that was a couple of years ago. She stopped pretty quickly, and as far as I know, that was the only time she ever did anything like that.”

He was clearly uncomfortable admitting it, and she rushed to reassure him. “It’s okay. That’s not what we’re dealing with here. We think the chemicals she was being exposed to at the factory did a number on her liver and kidneys.”

“Yeah,” he said. “That makes sense. Some of the other workers there seem pretty sick, too. There’s a guy, Tingfeng, who works the dye vats. They made him work through a kidney stone yesterday with just a handful of aspirin. He told me they’d stopped letting him leave work because he got one every few months, and they were tired of the lost productivity.”

“That’s barbaric!”

“He said the aspirin was the best medical plan he’d ever been offered.”

Lian was, for perhaps the first time in her life, actually speechless. Such a specific detail made the whole situation seem much more real to her. She realized she could not imagine what it was like to be one of these poor factory workers. And she was extremely grateful for this.

“Do you think you can keep a list of the chemicals that are off-loaded to dye the clothes?” she asked Zan. “Anything that looks suspect, anything stamped hazardous?”

“I’ll do my best,” he said. “I’ll write down everything I see come into the place and leave it to your group to figure out which ones are ‘suspect.’”

“Awesome. Just . . . be careful, all right?” She gave an encouraging smile. Not once did he seem concerned for his own safety around these toxins; he just wanted to get the information, to solve the puzzle, to avenge his sister. In the moment, she felt guilty that she and 06/04 weren’t doing more to help him.

“I just wish there were a way to get close to Harrison himself,” Zan said, staring out past the water to the conservatory. “Figure out how high up this goes, how much of it he’s signing off on. How many of his other employees have washed up on a beach.”

Lian sighed. There was a way to get closer to Harrison. The invitation had been extended; it would be irresponsible not to accept it. Good manners, respect, et cetera.

“I’m going to try to do exactly that,” she told Zan, making up her mind.

Just as soon as I pick out a dress.

“Honestly,” Lian said to the guard. “Two pat downs to get into this thing? Where do you imagine I’d hide something in a dress like this, anyhow?”

The woman, clad in the uniform of the hired private security company Baochi Anquan, had reached Lian’s ankles with her scanning wand, and now stood back up. “I’m the only pat down here, miss,” she said. “The guy who felt you up at the gate doesn’t work for us.”

Lian blanched. “What?”

The guard’s straight face broke into a smile, and she laughed. “I’m joking. Trying to get you to relax, miss. It is a party, after all.” She handed back Lian’s clutch and waved her onto the walkway to Harrison’s luxury yacht, the
Seaward
.

Lian took a deep breath.
It’s a party, after all,
she thought, starting up the ramp. Just like any other party: drinks, music, hors d’oeuvres, snooping for secrets about a corrupt multimillionaire clothing mogul. Maybe a round of charades.

The boat had looked impressive from the dock, but it was almost unbelievable to behold once you were on deck. Every chrome surfaced gleamed, and every inch of teakwood was perfectly polished. Lian could only guess at the dimensions, but two decks rose above the main one she was on, and the guests standing at both the bow and the stern were a bit out of focus from where she’d boarded amidships.

This deck and the one above it were filled with well-dressed partygoers from seemingly every corner of the globe, men and women in designer labels to complement their diverse skin tones and bone structures.
These are the beautiful people,
Lian thought . . .
and the ones who aren’t beautiful must have to find consolation in their insane wealth.
She felt acutely aware of being neither, and the same fraudulent sensation she’d had at the Fàn Xī dinner crept over her once more. Then she chided herself for the moment of self-pity: here she was, spending Friday night on a yacht, while people like Zan were stuffed into a musty shoe-box apartment in the Chungking Mansions.

Perspective was important, she reminded herself.

She looked both ways down the deck, then shrugged and started for the stern, hoping she’d spot someone she knew. As she rounded the corner, she did. Rand Harrison, glass of champagne in his hand and spiritless smile on his face, was holding forth among a crowd of his guests.

Lian stopped in her tracks. The European couple who had been walking behind her didn’t notice, and bumped into her, causing her to stumble. So of course it was at that moment that Harrison looked up, pausing between words as their eyes locked. He just as quickly looked away and continued speaking, and Lian apologized to the European couple, ducking around them to walk the other direction. Harrison’s gaze was an appraisal and a threat, all at once. She wanted to move away from it quickly. As quickly as she could in high heels.