City of Strangers (Luis Chavez Book 2) (21 page)

So be it if the outcome is the preservation of life,
he thought.

Luis and Susan didn’t have to wait long for the man who’d called himself Tony to return.

“Time to go,” he said, indicating for them to follow him out.

As they passed Billy, Luis could see from the young man’s expression that he disagreed with the way Tony was handling the situation but could do nothing about it. Tony was the man in charge.

“Follow me in your car,” Tony said. “It’s not far.”

Once they were alone in the front seat of her car, Susan turned to Luis in surprise. “Should we follow him? Or just get the hell out of here?”

“It’s not like I trust him, but he did show up with that box,” Luis said. “And he’s not the one who’s pregnant. So there’s somebody out there he’s doing this for.”

“But he’s triad. They killed Father Chang for investigating the pills. Why won’t he do the same?”

“Not this guy,” Luis said. “
Those
guys. The one he called Billy. You heard what he said, right?”

Another damn priest.

“So maybe this ‘Tony’ just saved our lives,” Luis continued. “And if following him means we might save others and stop the outbreak, then it’s a chance we have to take.”

Susan nodded and put the car in gear. She shot a glance back to the warehouse one last time, then pulled behind Tony on the way into downtown.

Los Angeles’s so-called Toy District was among its most unlikely named areas. Though it conjured images of a Santa’s workshop–type neighborhood, it was really storefront after storefront of cheap merchandise wholesalers—in this case, party supplies, toys, and, of late, accoutrements for the numerous marijuana dispensaries springing up around the city—above ground parking lots, and off-the-street sweatshops, where hundreds worked but few for a living wage. The left-turn blinker came on Tony’s car, and he rolled off the street and up a ramp to a rooftop parking lot. Susan followed.

Once on the roof Susan parked alongside Tony’s car. Luis climbed out and looked up to the forest of skyscrapers immediately in front of the building. He wondered if anyone was looking out at them from above. He said a silent prayer and turned to Tony.

“Follow me,” Tony said.

He led them to a stairwell and descended to the first floor. Rather than go out into the street, he approached a side door, plucked a key from his pocket, and unlocked it. He pushed the door open, and the three of them were immediately greeted by the roar of machines. A handful of workers toiled away at molding machines, keeping them pouring out disposable-looking plastic parts for toys. They barely looked up as Tony ushered Luis and Susan inside.

“What is this?” Susan asked.

“One of our brethren’s local manufacturer’s spaces,” Tony said. “The largest one, in fact. If they were in the business of mass-producing pharmaceuticals, it would be done here.”

Luis moved up and down the rows, eyeing the plastic dolls currently being made by the molding machines. It was a surreal sight, dozens of miniature bodies without heads in one row, others without arms or legs on another. The line for the heads was even stranger, eyeless faces with hollow sockets all staring in the same direction, as if accusing the passersby of an unspeakable crime.

But no matter where Luis looked, there was nothing to suggest any of these machines could have much to do with the manufacture of pharmaceuticals.

“Could they have facilities you don’t know about?” Susan asked over the noise.

“Doubtful,” Tony said. “Particularly one large enough to make pills in any real volume. Besides, the manifests at the warehouse said those pallets came from here, no? It must be here or in an adjacent building.”

Luis stepped into the center of the room and looked up. He stood there for a long second before turning back to Tony.

“Is there an emergency stop switch?”

Tony glanced around and found it. “Why?”

“Just shut off the line.”

Tony hesitated a second longer, then flipped the switch. A loud buzzer rang out as a red light strobed overhead. Now the workers looked at Tony. He raised his hand and shook his head.

“Just a precaution,” he said.

What surprised Luis was not the sudden stillness of the room now that the vast assembly line was shut down. It was that the cacophony, though muted, continued from underneath the floor.

“What is that?” Tony asked.

Luis moved around the room looking for a door, a hatch,
anything
that might lead down. Finding nothing, he walked back outside, Susan and Tony trailing after. Moving down the sidewalk, he glanced through every window, checked every service door and access hatch, and even went back onto the roof to see if there was another stairwell that maybe bypassed the first floor.

When he looked across the street, however, he realized he was barking up the wrong skyscraper. He waited for a taxi to pass by, then jogged across the street.

“Where are you going now?” Susan asked.

“Every abandoned doorway in downtown is someone’s territory,” he said, then pointed to a narrow vestibule across the street. “Except that one.”

It was an old residential building that once had a bank and, according to the hand-painted signage still on the windows, a men’s clothing store at the street level. A rusty accordion gate blocked the entrance but was bowed at one side. When Luis tried it, it was easily pushed aside.

“In here,” he said.

The trio entered what had at one time been a spectacular Art Deco lobby, with green and white stones and the tail of a peacock stenciled onto a large mirror over the elevators. Only the mirror was mostly shattered, with just the peacock’s head and pieces of its tail visible. Half the stones were now missing as well.

But the dust and grime left behind meant a trail leading across the red carpet from the entrance to a stairwell alongside the elevators was perfectly visible. Luis led his comrades to the stairwell and down. Dim naked bulbs lit the way like in a service tunnel. When they reached a T, Luis recalibrated himself to where the street was overhead and moved in the direction of the toy factory.

Soon they could hear the sound of the machines again. Coming to a thick steel door, Luis tried to open it, to no avail. He saw a small security camera in the upper corner and nodded to Tony.

“Up there.”

Tony stood in front of the camera and looked up. A voice speaking Mandarin came through the door.

“Zhelin Qi,” Tony answered. “We need to be let in. Now.”

There was silence. A few more seconds passed, and then the door slid open. An officious-looking man in khakis and a polo shirt eyed Tony with surprise.

“Can I help you?”

But Luis was already past the man and into the vast underground manufacturing floor behind him. There were eight assembly lines, each beginning at one side of the room, where workers fed raw materials into large heating canisters. These were then poured into mixers that expelled the ingredients into small slugs and sent them onto a mesh screen. A lubricant was added; the ingredients were formed into pills by a punch machine. The finished pills were then shoved down the assembly line, where they were either poured into bottles or dropped into blister packs that were then automatically sealed. The bottles and packs continued down the line, where they were boxed and the boxes sent through taping machines. The finished boxes were then placed on pallets to be shipped off.

Almost immediately Luis saw that the labels on the boxes were of all kinds. He recognized the Indonesian Fanrong but also the domestic Bumblebee Vigor. In addition, there were several others, including a few in Spanish and Portuguese and then another in lettering Luis recognized as Korean.

“What is all this?” Susan asked the man at the door.

“What does it look like?” he responded. “Manufacturing.”

Tony strode to the front of one of the assembly lines and inspected the chemicals being poured into the heating canisters. He then checked the labels at the other end, with Luis looking over his shoulder.

“What does that say?” Luis asked, pointing to a line clearly not referencing ingredients at the bottom of the label.

“‘Manufactured in Hong Kong under the regulations of the CFDA,’” Tony translated, practically shaking as he did so. “It’s counterfeit. The triad is counterfeiting pharmaceuticals. And it looks like they’re shipping them all over the world.”

From Tony’s reaction, Luis could tell he hadn’t known about the enterprise. Even more than that, it seemed to shift his understanding of where he stood in the triad not to have been informed.

“If the pills were infected with SARS here in Los Angeles, people could be getting sick in every corner of the globe,” Luis said. “This isn’t just a police matter anymore. We have to alert the FBI. Any shipment that went out of here, no matter where it is in the world, has to be stopped.”

“But the brethren,” Tony said vacantly. “It will expose everything.”

The words landed flat. Even Tony didn’t seem to believe that mattered, as if airing the concern out of some misplaced sense of duty.

“If Father Chang was right, triad-made pharmaceuticals have already killed dozens if not hundreds of innocent people,” Luis challenged. “You want to make that thousands?”

Tony hesitated only a second longer before reaching in his pocket for his cell phone. “Of course, you’re right,” he said, the cool, unflappable edge returning to his voice. “Will you allow me one phone call before calling in the dogs?”

XXI

For the next three days Michael felt like a cartoon character. All he needed was a tommy gun and a car with a running board and he would’ve been a throwback to the days of LAPD’s take-no-prisoners Chief William Parker. That Michael wasn’t a detective, federal agent, or even had any kind of authority at a crime scene seemed to rankle those that did, but as his office coordinated the busts for the most part, he made sure he was there as raids were conducted at all points along the drug-delivery chain.

His convoy would pull up to a warehouse or depot, hospital or free clinic, manufacturing plant or packing facility, the proper warrant would be served, and everything seized.

“Boxes with the Bumblebee label,” he shouted as his team poured into a free clinic in Northridge that seemed to have been abandoned days ago. “Also, Jiankang Holdings. Anything that looks out of place.”

The men knew the drill and swept in. It was like a training exercise, Michael occasionally pointing out to officers what was or wasn’t within the scope of the warrant.

“These are on the FDA banned list,” an officer would say, bringing up a stack of boxes like a hunting dog happily carrying a pheasant to its owner. “We can get them on all of this.”

“Outside the scope of the warrant means fruit from a poisoned tree,” Michael would reply. “Could unravel the case. Put it back.”

Disappointed, the officer would return the items and carry on. Michael made a mental note to investigate what else the triad was trafficking in to get a better warrant next time.

They’d found eight drug-manufacturing facilities across the city so far, but only the one downtown in the Toy District had turned up trace amounts of SARS. Michael was cautiously optimistic that this would remain the case and limit the exposure of the virus to the pills made on that assembly line.

So, where’s the infected worker? The patient zero?

This was the question that spurred Michael on. As he entered every squat and factory, he fully expected the cinematic reveal of a bloated, blistered corpse. This would be the body of the worker at the Toy District plant, likely a recent undocumented arrival, who had infected the line.

But this missing piece remained frustratingly elusive.

“No one at the plant is willing to talk?” Naomi asked as she joined Michael on his way to the Chinese consulate one morning to discuss what was going on with the obviously concerned representatives of the Chinese government. “They must’ve seen something.”

“From what I gather, they had a different lineup almost every day,” Michael reported. “The triad brought people over, put them up in those squats, gave them a zero- or low-paying job at the plant, but as soon as they could they moved on. We’re trying to pull traffic-camera footage from the area once we narrow down around what dates the pills were tainted, but that may be a couple more days.”

“They’re probably dead, though, right?” Naomi asked.

“Yeah,” Michael said, hoping that was the case. “Just praying they didn’t infect others out there before they died.”

Naomi nodded. “You know they found some of the tainted pills at a couple of the big chain drugstores. The customers had no idea their generics were being bought from these shady distributors.”

Yeah, and the lawsuits are going to be record breakers,
Michael thought.
Big class-action affairs that keep first-years grinding their gears for months on end and partners getting rich off the billable hours. Ain’t America great?

He felt a hand on his knee. Naomi was leaning forward.

“So, how are you doing?” she asked pointedly.

Meaning,
Michael knew,
with the whole being humiliated by your gangster-loving, soon-to-be ex-wife thing.

“I’m good. Glad to have a case like this to throw myself into, but good all the same.”

“Your kids?” Naomi asked. “I mean, if you don’t want to talk about it—”

“No, it’s fine,” Michael said. “We haven’t discussed it with them yet. I haven’t been home, but they think it’s because of all this. A bridge to cross down the road.”

Naomi nodded. “If there’s anything you need, just let me know.”

“Thanks,” Michael said, then realized the gratitude he felt was real. “Thanks,” he said again.

“Ma’am, this is Tylenol,” Luis said, holding the pill bottle up to a terrified parishioner. “It expired eighteen months ago. I know I’m saying that you shouldn’t take it anymore, but that’s because of the expiration, not because I believe it’s infected with SARS.”

“But, Padre, I took two this morning!” the old woman said, her hands shaking as she sat back down on her bed. “Will I die?”

Luis sighed.

If he’d thought the discovery of the manufacturing plant in the Toy District would calm things for a while, he’d been very much mistaken. The mayor’s announcement about the tainted pharmaceuticals caused a minor panic within the St. Augustine’s community. While most in the city checked their cupboards and medicine cabinets against the labels flashed on TV screens and printed in the paper, others had called the church in alarm.

Knowing that neither the police nor paramedics nor the CDC would respond to the requests to do home visits to check prescriptions, Luis dutifully divided them up among St. Augustine’s priests and began spending every evening going from house to house to quiet nerves. Though he didn’t find a single pill he could remotely tie to the case, he did find several parishioners with potentially dangerous, even narcotic pills in their possession.

Oh, that? Those were the painkillers they gave Frankie after he came home from the last trip to the hospital. What do you mean they’re powerful enough to kill a horse?

I never finish antibiotics. It’s good to keep a few for the next time you get sick. Saves a doctor’s visit.

I don’t know. The pills just make me feel so good. Every time I go to the pharmacy they fill the prescription. If there was a problem, the doctor would’ve limited the number of refills, right?

In the case of the eighteen-month-old Tylenol, Luis simply produced another bottle he’d brought from the drugstore with him.

“How about we just trade, Mrs. Jiminez?” he asked. “This has more in it anyway.”

The old woman looked over the bottle and finally shrugged. Luis pocketed the expired pills and headed out.

When he got back in the car, the radio was blaring the latest news. Shipments of pills from Los Angeles had been blocked at various ports around the world and had actually become something of a political football. Local drug manufacturers who’d for years competed with the supposedly above-reproach American brands suddenly had a foothold. The politicians they owned looked for ways to score even points.

Luis turned off the radio.

The one positive thing out of all of it was that indeed Michael Story had kept his word. The chief deputy DA was very much the hero of the hour and was soaking up the attention. Luis had been surprised, but not surprised to hear the rumor that DA Rebenold might not be seeking reelection and that Michael Story was seen as the heir apparent. But in interview after interview, he deflected credit from himself and laid it at the feet of the martyred Father Chang.

“This was a godly man who’d discovered that local criminals were responsible for unsafe business practices that had led to a number of deaths in Indonesia already,” Luis had heard Michael say on one news program. “He was about to ring the alarm bell here. He had the pills in the trunk of his car, but they killed him first. Father Chang is a hero.”

Rather than being ostracized as a pedophile, Father Chang was suddenly being talked about as someone whom churches, parks, and intersections were to be named after. There were calls for canonization. Luis even saw a quote from Pastor Siu-Tung in the
LA Times
celebrating Chang’s sterling character and action.

It was all too much.

“I had a phone call from the archbishop,” Whillans said, finding Luis in the chapel late on the Saturday night before Luis was to deliver his sermon for the feast day of Saint Peter Claver. “He wishes to speak to you when he returns from Rome. While I did not detail your involvement in the revelations concerning Father Chang, he seems to have plenty from your friend in the prosecutor’s office. It sounded like he was ready to elevate
you
to sainthood. Or at least to bishop.”

Luis shook his head, bemused. Whillans clasped a weak hand on his shoulder.

“You must see that this isn’t normal, can’t you?” Whillans asked. “Whether God is working through you or you just have some sort of preternatural ability toward investigations, you’re doing the Lord’s work. I suppose, why can’t it be both?”

Luis stared down at his hands for a moment. Something had been troubling him for days, but he hadn’t been able to pinpoint it. In the moments between Tony Qi calling his triad bosses to let them know all hell was breaking loose until the first police officers arrived at the scene, Luis had spent some time looking around the various assembly lines, trying to puzzle out how a single SARS-infected worker could’ve tainted the supply of so many different drugs.

As everything was cleaned during a changeover, it meant that the worker had to repeatedly reinfect their own line but also the adjacent ones. There were six different counterfeit generics, including Glucoxan and Asozide, found to be infected with SARS. That meant the worker had to come in contact with both. But if SARS moved through people so swiftly that they were incapacitated within a day or so, that meant the line or whatever shift they were on switched at least five times. If the shifts were twelve hours long, and the infected person might’ve been contagious long enough to last two shifts two days in a row, that meant almost constant switchovers. The ingredients had to be changed over; the labels, boxes, and instructions had to be changed. The lines had to be sanitized.

It meant that what,
maybe
a few thousand pills went out for each drug a night? And if the SARS-tainted pills numbered in the hundreds, it meant direct contact with pill after pill. So why didn’t anyone else in the factory get sick?

But the CDC didn’t seem to want to focus on that. The infections had ground to a halt, and Luis figured this was all that mattered. It was only when he thought about it that all the probabilities didn’t work out.

“What’s troubling you, Father?” Whillans asked.

“In our vocation we’re hardly unaccustomed to feeling an invisible hand behind the workings of things,” Luis began. “I am feeling one here, but it’s not God’s.”

“What do you mean?”

“As Father Chang discovered, and as Michael Story informed me, it’s impossible to take down a member of the LA triad. But now in one fell swoop the entire organization is brought to its knees in a matter of days by a plague which led to the discovery of a deadly counterfeit pharmaceutical ring. Father Chang had spent months pursuing leads on this, going so far as to fly to Indonesia and beyond. One of his contacts, an investigating blogger named Kirk Asmara, was even likely murdered over this, and he kept going until he was silenced as well. But then—”

“But then God stepped in,” Whillans said. “
God
, so offended by the murder of his own priest, stepped in.”

“You believe that God would kill a few dozen of his own beloved people out of revenge for the murder of a priest?”

“I am saying that what came to pass came to pass. You may never know the great cost in lives that might’ve come if not for the sacrifice of those people.”

Luis stared at the old man in surprise. “That feels like the church’s response, not
your
response, Father. How is that the God we’ve discussed at length?”

“The God who has never allowed terrible things to happen before?
That
God?”

“You seriously expect me to believe that God gives that much of a damn that, no, not the extermination of indigenous peoples, not a Holocaust, not mass starvation, but the murder of one of his own priests is enough to wake him and begin playing a more active role in human affairs? That’s bull. And if you weren’t so high on painkillers right now, I think you’d agree.”

Even as the words came out of his mouth, Luis was shocked by their bitterness. To his surprise, Whillans was not. The pastor leaned across to Luis, putting his forehead against his.

“You are right,” Whillans said quietly. “I am on immeasurable amounts of painkillers. I know you believe my relationship with Bridgette puts me outside of God’s grace. And I know, most importantly of all, whether you will admit to it or not that you are furious with God for taking me away from you.”

Luis said nothing, but real and honest tears began to form in his eyes.

“But spare a thought for the Almighty,” Whillans continued, his words barely a whisper. “His name is cursed ten times as much as it is praised. Yet still there is great beauty, kindness, fellowship, and love in this world. And that is his doing just as much as the pain. My body is on fire. I have the smallest window into the torment of the Nazarene. Forget not that God loved his son more than any others, yet still he stayed his own hand and made his child suffer to benefit mankind.”

Luis nodded, two slow streams of tears sliding down his face. Whillans kept his forehead against Luis’s for another second, then leaned back and rose.

“You may be right in all of these things you believe, but you must also believe that God, for whom you are an imperfect instrument, will reveal all to you in time.”

With that, Whillans offered Luis a weak smile and exited.