Color of Blood(27)

“Mr. Wu,” she said, “we’d like you to come with us, please. This will only take a minute.” Counting Judy, there were now four people surrounding Wu, with two additional uniformed officers on the other side of the metal detector blocking the exit.

Baker put his hand on Mr. Wu’s wrist and said, “Please come this way.”

Judy noticed that the only noise in that area of the airport was the mournful clanking of the conveyor belt; everyone—including passengers and airport screeners—was frozen as the scene played out. Perhaps it was a post-9/11 reaction, but Judy noticed that any police action at an airport seemed to work like a comic-book ray gun, freezing people in their tracks.

The police led Wu down a long hallway into a brightly lit, sterile room where two more men stood waiting. The uniformed officers stayed outside while Judy, Baker, and the two new security personnel surrounded Wu. Judy was not convinced this intervention was going to turn up anything because the evidence of money laundering was not clear cut to her, but she dutifully stood directly behind Wu as one of the new officers said, “Mr. Wu, please take off your jacket.”

Wu suddenly turned around, looked at Judy, and said in heavily accented English: “Very bad.”

“Please remember I’m a police officer, Mr. Wu.”

“You make very big mistake,” he said, and turned away, slowly taking off his jacket and handing it over.

The currency was not in his jacket, nor his briefcase, but was stuffed in neat, flat plastic packets around Wu’s thighs into a knee-length racing swimsuit. Wu’s portly build and baggy slacks hid the bulge perfectly.

Throughout the examination Wu said nothing. When they finished photographing everything, they handcuffed him and turned him over to the uniformed officers, who took him away.

While they watched the two Customs officers count the currency, Baker asked, “What did he say to you, Judy?”

“Wu?”

“Yeah, I thought he said something.”

“He said, ‘you make big mistake.’”

They laughed.

***

He knocked the phone off the bedside table as its ring roared him awake. He squinted at the strong morning glare.

“Yes,” he said hoarsely.

“Is this Mr. Cunningham?” a woman inquired.

“Yes.”

“Um, Mr. Cunningham, this is Jillian Carter.”

“Jillian Carter?” he said. “Do I know a Jillian Carter?”

“Of course you do. I work at the consulate. You interviewed me.”

“Oh yes, I remember,” he said. “How can I help you?”

“When you interviewed me the other day, I forgot to tell you something.”

“You did?”

“Yes. At the time I wasn’t sure I should bring it up. But, like, I think I should tell you.”

“You do?”

“Yes.”

“Well, what is it?” He looked at the clock radio. It showed 6:42 a.m.

“It’s kind of delicate, actually,” she said.

“OK. Go as slow as you want.”

“Well, it’s about Geoff.”

“OK.”

“Um, Geoff was kind of, like, really moral, if you know what I mean.”

“No, I don’t know what you mean, Miss Carter.”

“He was high-minded, if that makes any sense. He didn’t like people being taken advantage of: stuff like that. Do you know what I mean?”

“I think so.”

“Well, one of my jobs at the consulate was to cover for the CG’s secretary, Janice, when she was out.”

“OK.”

“And I did a lot of that because she went on holiday a while back. Anyway, one afternoon I made a big mistake on a report the CG was completing. I accidentally left out a whole paragraph that the CG had written. It was, like, a terrible mistake. But I wasn’t used to typing up huge reports, and I’m not even a good typist, anyway. They just told me to cover for Janice, and I did it.”

“OK, Miss Carter. I think I’m with you so far.”

“Well, the report was completed, and I made ten copies, and we sent it out. Well, it turns out that the paragraph that I messed up on was, like, the central conclusion the CG was making. I mean it was a huge problem when he discovered it. And he was really, really angry. He accused me of being incompetent and yelled at me for like ten minutes in front of two other people. I could have died. And of course I cried.”

“OK.”

“And then he said he was going to order me home. It was terrible.”

“I bet.” Dennis yawned and looked at the clock again.

“But when Geoff heard about it, he was furious.”

“Furious?” Dennis sat up.

“He was wicked angry. He said the CG had no business threatening me like that since I was so new there and I was covering for Janice in the first place. And then he said he was going to straighten it out with the CG.”

“How would he do that?”

“I have no idea. All I know is that I begged him not to make it worse, but he said he was going to talk to the CG about it.”

“Was Geoff that important that he could just go and talk to the CG about a personnel matter?”

“Well, not really. But Geoff was kind of like that. He didn’t care who he had to talk to in order to set things right.”