Twisted lives, p.9
Twisted Lives, page 9
Virtually everything I read online was broad, general, and glowing. Exactly what you’d expect for a prominent politician in a country that controlled its media coverage.
The news on his only child, Wang Wei, also appeared to be curated but was not as tightly controlled. I learned that junior ran a real estate development company called GreenRoof Holdings. Given the little I did know about the modern Chinese economy that made perfect sense to me.
Since the millennium, the real estate market in China had soared to where it accounted for over a quarter of the economy before its recent collapse. What better way to cash in on daddy’s power and connections than through a skyrocketing business rife with government red tape?
Once I dug in, I discovered that Wang wasn’t the only princeling to have hopped on that opportunity. A blog for China’s English-speaking expat community noted that Yao Yan, the son-in-law of Beijing’s mayor, was Wang’s main rival. According to the posting, their competition had become especially intense following the collapse. That story compared their current situation to “famished vultures fighting for scraps.”
Famished was a feeling I could leverage. I just had to figure out how to make Wang hungry to meet with me.
When a Hershey’s Kiss didn’t provide me with satisfactory mental stimulation, I slid my laptop into my backpack and headed for the library’s restroom to get my blood flowing.
Finding it unoccupied, I extracted a washcloth from my backpack and gave myself a quick sponge bath, bare scalp and all. I figured I could remain effective while living like a hobo if I didn’t look like one. The lack of hair definitely helped.
By the time I was back behind my laptop, I had the kernel of a message in mind. I opened Gmail and attempted to compose a message that was both intriguing and compelling. After ten minutes of writing and rewriting, I had an email that I thought might work. “Dear Mr. Wang, I did wrong by you and I want to make it right with more than an apology. I have skills and information that could be very useful to GreenRoof Holdings. Please consider hearing me out. Thank you, Felix Sparks.”
I had no such information. But between what I already knew about Wang’s situation and guys like him, I figured I could invent some compelling BS. My plan, if Wang replied to my email, was to insist on a videoconference so I could record the appearance of his scarred face for the jury. During the call, I’d bluff my way into making him desire a face-to-face meeting in China. A meeting that I couldn’t attend if the Red Notice wasn’t withdrawn.
Yes, that plan was bold. Yes, it was risky. But I only had twelve days. Bold and risky were my best and probably only shot.
I used Google to translate my message into Simplified Chinese. As a check, I then used it to translate the translation back into English. The match was perfect. I was relieved and impressed. The service had come a long way since I’d last used it.
I sent Wang my message in both languages.
I figured there was a five percent chance he’d reply within the hour, a twenty percent chance he’d reply within the next week, and a seventy-five percent chance he wouldn’t reply at all.
I couldn’t accept a seventy-five percent chance of failure, so I resolved to call him and deliver the same message an hour from now, most likely via voicemail.
Meanwhile, given that I didn’t have an hour to waste, I would be moving on from plan C, China to plan D, Disgruntled Lover. It was time to track down a smell.
Chapter 19
My Old Self
ON THE NIGHTS when Tanya claimed to be “working late” only to arrive home with a strange scent in her hair, her iPhone never left the office. In theory, this evidence from the Find My app supported her claim. However, my wife was an attorney and therefore a tactical thinker. Furthermore, she knew that I was a Federal Air Marshal and therefore a keen observer. Thus, while it was not surprising that she left her phone at the office while sneaking off, it was now tragic, as it left me without leads for locating her potentially murderous lover.
I decided to do the next best thing, even though it was extremely risky. I went to her office.
Tanya’s law firm was on the second floor of a classy high-rise located in another sizable suburb of San Francisco. Walnut Creek was about thirty minutes from Pleasanton at the opposite end of the valley. It sits on a different north-south, east-west highway intersection, on a different BART line, and in a different county.
That combination gave it a completely different population base, even though you could drive from Pleasanton to Walnut Creek faster than you could drive from one side of San Francisco to the other. Given that, I figured there was little chance that I’d be recognized by the police or would bump into an acquaintance while visiting Tanya’s office.
Still, I wasn’t going to take any unnecessary chances.
My first stop in Walnut Creek was a boutique two blocks off main street named Wigs Wigs Wigs. I was going to need one of those for the occasions when I had to appear as myself.
The door tinkled a bell when it opened, causing the elderly red-headed proprietor to perk up on his couch. Yes, couch.
“Nice setup,” I said, admiring the soft, pastel furniture, artistically framed mirrors, and soft lighting.
“My customers seem to appreciate it.”
“You the owner?”
“William Bigs at your service.” He extended a hand, and we shook.
“You didn’t go with Bigs Wigs?” I asked with a smile I hoped he’d find endearing.
“Actually, I did at first. But people tended to assume I catered to the big and tall crowd, so they only came here when they couldn’t find what they wanted elsewhere. Fortunately, I figured that out in time.”
“Good for you.”
“How can I help you today?” he asked, while appraising my freshly shaved dome.
I pulled out my new phone and showed him a picture I’d pulled off Facebook. “I’m hoping you can make me look like myself again.”
“That’s what I do. What’s your timeframe?”
“Today.”
“I see. Well, that rules out a custom unit.” He zoomed in on the photo and studied it for a while. “You have more photos?”
“I can pull some up.”
“Why don’t you do that while I see what I’ve got in back. But first…” William pulled a tape measure from his pocket and gestured toward my scalp. “May I?”
“Go right ahead.”
He proceeded to measure me ear to ear and forehead to neck. “Be right back.”
While he was away, I logged into Facebook and screenshot a few more pictures of my former hairstyle.
“Right, so, here’s what we’re looking at, Mr.…”
“Fox,” I said. “Kevin Fox. Call me Kevin.”
“All right, Kevin. In general, you’ve got straight, medium-density brown hair. That’s good. It’s common.”
“Why did you say in general?”
“You’ve gone ten to twenty percent gray on the temples. Not a big deal. We’ll worry about that later. First, why don’t you have a seat before black beauty.” He gestured toward a large oval mirror with a frame that looked like it had been cut from a polished Steinway piano.
I sat.
“Now, don’t be scared. I promise you this will work out. You’re just going to need a bit of imagination at first.”
I didn’t like the sound of that, but I rolled with it.
“Close your eyes and imagine what you’d look like if your hair grew eight inches while you were asleep.”
As I did that, William slipped something cool onto my scalp and then my face began to tickle. “Okay to open?” I asked.
“The thing about hair is that there are dozens of colors and a million different ways to wear it. Stocking finished product would be impossible. What we get are base units, like this espresso. Go ahead and open your eyes.”
I did, only to find that I literally had a mop of hair on my head. An espresso-colored mop.
“What we’ll do, if you agree, is cut this down until you look like you do after a regular haircut. Then I’ll add a bit of gray to the temples.”
“You can do that now?”
“Usually I book appointments for 5:00, after the store’s closed. But I’m not busy so we can do it now with the understanding that I might get interrupted.”
“You do it right here?”
“I have a salon in back.”
“What’s that going to cost me?”
“Five hundred for the unit, two fifty for the cut, and another fifty for the gray. Eight hundred dollars and you walk out of here looking very much like your old self.”
“You give a cash discount?”
“I’ll throw in the dye job if you pay cash. All sales final, of course.”
“Will people be able to tell?”
“That you’re wearing a wig?”
“Yeah.”
“Professionals, yes. Guys like me can spot hair the way plastic surgeons spot scars. But everyday strangers, rarely.”
“What about friends?”
“Depending on how well they know you, they might notice something’s different. And once they’re looking, some will figure it out. Fortunately, I’ve got a fix for that too.”
“Oh yeah. What?”
“A mustache. They’ll assume that’s the difference and leave it at that.”
I didn’t want to appear different in that way and was about to say no when I realized that the mustache would work well to disguise me when I wasn’t wearing the wig, when I was in disguise. “What would that cost me?”
“Cut to your liking, and with a month’s supply of glue … another two fifty. You’ll be out of here good as new for an even thousand.”
On the one hand, the ability to assume my old identity was priceless. On the other, a thousand dollars represented more than three percent of the budget that had to get me all the way to freedom and perhaps even a new life abroad. Go big or go to jail, I told myself. To William, I said, “Let’s do it.”
Chapter 20
Wrangling
I CHECKED MY EMAIL once I was back in the Jeep, wearing my new hair. No reply from Wang. It was early morning in Beijing, so if I called now Wang was unlikely to pick up even if he were the type to answer unknown foreign numbers. On the other hand, I didn’t actually want to get him live. I wanted to move toward scheduling a videoconference.
I dialed. My call went straight to voicemail. The message was Wang saying simply, “I’m unavailable, leave a message.” I found it was odd that his voicemail message was in English until I remembered that many wealthy Asians and Middle Easterners used multiple phones. DHS had Wang’s English number. Perhaps the email address to which I’d written was Anglocentric as well. I hoped to find out soon.
As the local time neared 5:00 p.m., I decided to stake out Tanya’s office. I grabbed a thick sourdough turkey Swiss sandwich at a grocery store and headed for the parking garage beneath her building.
Cemya Law was a four-attorney firm focused on providing family law services to the Bay Area’s extensive Russian-speaking population. Silicon Valley employed a lot of Eastern European programmers, and over the years that anchor created a sprawling and diverse community that was well connected via various social networks.
I’d met Tanya’s three partners a few times at firm functions but hadn’t gotten to know any of them. Like my wife, they all had the faces and figures of Hollywood actors, so those gatherings looked more like a sitcom studio than a company picnic.
I once mentioned my observation to the firm’s founder and managing partner, Anton Zykin. He gave me a knowing half-smile and replied that they were in fact actors on the stage of high consequence, and he had cast his firm accordingly.
Cemya was gender-balanced, with two male and two female partners. Zykin explained that this was a conscious choice and a tactical decision. “Our client base is fifty percent male, fifty percent female. And they’re often looking for understanding as much as legal representation.” Tanya’s clients were almost exclusively female, I noted to myself.
Zykin had also balanced the paralegal services at Cemya. Tanya and Dina Demarko shared Alex, the firm’s male paralegal, whereas Zykin and Igor Akmerov shared Sveta, the female.
Among the firm’s members, Alex was my best guess for Tanya’s paramour and killer. He was young and handsome, undoubtedly horny, and given his relatively young age, the most likely to be violent. Unless he was gay, there was no way he could watch Tanya walk around the office day after day with her charms on display and not develop carnal desire. She’d been a stunning woman.
My goal tonight was to look Alex in the eye while getting a good whiff of his hair. I figured his car was the perfect place for that.
Cemya had six assigned parking spaces, all near the elevator on level B2. Only Tanya’s was unoccupied at the early hour.
I knew from small talk with my wife that the spaces were assigned by seniority, with Zykin’s closest to the elevator. That meant Alex’s was either the fourth or fifth down from Zykin’s matte black Mercedes CLS.
The fourth car was a midsize white SUV, an Acura RDX. It looked new. The fifth car was a black Jeep Wrangler that appeared to be about a decade old. My ownership question had an obvious answer. The 2-door, off-road 4×4 was the ride of a person who wanted to appear manly, and Sveta was about as far from manly as Venus was from Mars.
My plan was to wait for Alex to unlock the Wrangler, at which point I’d slide into the passenger seat while he got in on the driver’s side. Forty minutes later, that was exactly what I did.
I said, “Hey, Alex,” as we both slipped in, hoping to minimize the freakout factor. In response, he whipped his head in my direction while raising his left fist.
“It’s Felix Sparks, Tanya’s husband.”
The handsome, late-twenties paralegal studied me for a second with wide brown eyes before lowering his arm. “What are you doing?”
Smelling your hair, I thought. “I just wanted a chance to speak to you alone, about Tanya. I wanted to be sure you didn’t feel any peer pressure, so you could be completely honest with me.”
“Honest about what?”
“My wife, and her work. Do you mind moving the car to another level so we’re not disturbed if one of your colleagues comes out?”
“You’re making me uncomfortable, Mr. Sparks.”
“Way ahead of you there, Alex. Please, this is for my daughters. We need your help.”
Alex paused with his hand on the shifter. “I don’t have a lot of time. I’ve got a train to catch.”
“Another one will be along every fifteen minutes.”
“I’ve got law school in The City at 7:00.”
“Good for you. Drive to the station. We’ll talk on the way.”
The BART garage was close enough that we could walk as fast as we could drive. I guessed that Alex would have walked if it weren’t for the return trip. In any case, I’d only have a few minutes.
“Just one thing first,” I added, opening my backpack and extracting Tanya’s cell. “Can you unlock her iPhone?”
Alex shook his head. “No.”
“Really? She told me you saved her once when she left her phone at the office.”
Alex looked skeptical, then I saw the light go on. “All I did was answer a call. No password required.”
“Maybe you saw her unlock it?”
“She used her face.”
“What about her laptop?” I asked, pulling Tanya’s MacBook from my bag.
“She used her fingerprint. And before you ask, no, I don’t know her code.”
“Can you guess? You must have seen her unlock it a thousand times.”
Alex shrugged. “I think it started with a capital B and ended with 99. Maybe.”
“How many characters in-between?”
“I don’t know. Five or six I guess.”
He put the Wrangler in reverse while I made a mental note then added. “I’m really sorry about your wife. She was a wonderful woman.”
“Yes, she was.”
“The news didn’t say how she died.”
“No, they didn’t. How long did you two work together?”
“I joined the firm six years ago. Have been working with her and Dina ever since.”
“That’s what I thought. Tell me, had my wife been acting differently, lately?”
“Different, how?”
“I don’t want to lead you.”
“How lately?”
“Don’t worry about what’s on my mind, just tell me what’s popping into yours.”
“She grew more anxious over the years. Clients didn’t see it. I don’t think she let the other partners see it either. Clients want calm lawyers as much as they want calm doctors, and Zykin is very attuned to meeting client expectations. But Tanya let her guard down around me, so I saw her condition developing,” he added with a half-smile.
“To what did you attribute her anxiety?”
“I don’t know.”
“Come on, Alex. People don’t work like that. They speculate. It’s human nature.”
“Money problems. Marital problems. Hormones. I don’t know. But some days she had to work hard to hold it all together. Did she—,” Alex trailed off, then turned to look at me when he hit a light. “Did Tanya take her own life?”
“That was my first thought when I found her. You were right about her anxiety. It was hormones. But she was murdered, so I’m working to ensure that justice is served.”
“Oh my god.”
“Yeah. So tell me, any ideas who might have wanted Tanya dead?”
“No. God, no.”
“No clients whose spouses got screwed? Guys who got stuck with huge alimony payments or no custody of their kids?”
Alex’s expression changed. First his eyes widened, then the corners of his mouth drew back. “There were lots of those. Divorce is a zero-sum game, and our goal is always to get our clients the biggest piece of the pie. The piece or pieces that matter most to them.”
“Was Tanya ever threatened?”
