single news agency had picked up on this suspicious death.
Everyone deserves an obituary
, she thought. Everyone deserves justice.
Typing “Harrison Corp” into the search field, on the other hand, got her just shy of 70 million hits. It was feast or famine for the amateur detective with Web access. She clicked through on a handful of news stories, filtering to show the most recent items. Harrison had an industrial estate over the water, a massive factory and warehouse complex situated on Wan Po Road, on the city’s east side.
She thought for a second, then opened a new tab and searched for maps of the currents around Hong Kong. There were about three miles between the Harrison port and Big Wave Bay Beach, and the gentle curves of the arrows in the waters of the Tathong Channel confirmed what she’d suspected. Anything, or anyone, departing from the Harrison complex stood a good chance of washing up right where Lian had been sunning herself.
This was one coincidence too many, when tallied alongside the ubiquitous potbellied man and Harrison’s questionable “business” trip to the Family Hand Café.
Back in the original tab, she took down the address of both the factory complex and the Harrison Corp corporate offices in the Central District, entering them under the title “Economics lecture notes” into her phone’s Notes application.
Many of those 70 million links, she discovered, led to photos of Harrison fashions modeled by pop stars, athletes, and the entire cast of some American show about attractive white people living in an enormous apartment and sleeping with each other. Two dozen different sites had what they claimed was an “exclusive” sneak peek at the Harrison Denim line: a photo set featuring a rugged black man in a cowboy hat, a buxom blonde whose jeans were so tight they looked spray painted on, and—for a bit of local flavor—the sultry lead actress in a high-rated Chinese cop drama on TVB.
Harrison’s name kept cropping up as one of the sponsors for an American baseball team out of Colorado called the Rockies. A
New York Times
article had a photo of Harrison in a posh luxury suite at Yankee Stadium, wearing a black baseball cap with his team’s CR logo and raising a celebratory tumbler. His other hand was on the shoulder of his son, Matt.
And Matt’s arm was around the stunning blonde girl in the seat next to him.
He’d gone out of his way last night to mention a girlfriend. This wasn’t new information. So why couldn’t Lian stop looking at the photo? The girl could’ve been a model herself. She had her head resting against Matt’s shoulder, laughing at something he had said.
When she heard Matt’s voice calling her name, she had a moment of disconnect before she realized it wasn’t coming from the picture. She turned to see him walking toward her, smiling wide.
“Mingmei told me I might find you in here,” he said. “I thought I’d see if you wanted to walk to lunch together. I don’t know my way around the halls here, and you were a big help in the menu department last night.”
Lian said nothing, stabbing desperately at the keyboard, trying to minimize the browser window before he reached her. Maddeningly, she succeeded only in zooming in on the photo. The flawless faces of Matt Harrison and his girlfriend filled her whole monitor.
Matt put a hand on Lian’s shoulder, just as he had when he’d said good-bye at the restaurant. But this time he drew back quickly.
“What . . . ?” he trailed off. Then she heard him chuckle.
“You know, if you spent a little more time studying Keynes and a little less time Googling me, you might have a shot at the dean’s list again.” He spun her chair so she had no choice but to see his grin. Somehow, she would have preferred him to be angry. She gritted her teeth and willed the ground to open beneath her feet and swallow her up. The ground did not comply.
“It’s . . . I wasn’t . . .” she stammered, her face burning
Everyone deserves an obituary
, she thought. Everyone deserves justice.
Typing “Harrison Corp” into the search field, on the other hand, got her just shy of 70 million hits. It was feast or famine for the amateur detective with Web access. She clicked through on a handful of news stories, filtering to show the most recent items. Harrison had an industrial estate over the water, a massive factory and warehouse complex situated on Wan Po Road, on the city’s east side.
She thought for a second, then opened a new tab and searched for maps of the currents around Hong Kong. There were about three miles between the Harrison port and Big Wave Bay Beach, and the gentle curves of the arrows in the waters of the Tathong Channel confirmed what she’d suspected. Anything, or anyone, departing from the Harrison complex stood a good chance of washing up right where Lian had been sunning herself.
This was one coincidence too many, when tallied alongside the ubiquitous potbellied man and Harrison’s questionable “business” trip to the Family Hand Café.
Back in the original tab, she took down the address of both the factory complex and the Harrison Corp corporate offices in the Central District, entering them under the title “Economics lecture notes” into her phone’s Notes application.
Many of those 70 million links, she discovered, led to photos of Harrison fashions modeled by pop stars, athletes, and the entire cast of some American show about attractive white people living in an enormous apartment and sleeping with each other. Two dozen different sites had what they claimed was an “exclusive” sneak peek at the Harrison Denim line: a photo set featuring a rugged black man in a cowboy hat, a buxom blonde whose jeans were so tight they looked spray painted on, and—for a bit of local flavor—the sultry lead actress in a high-rated Chinese cop drama on TVB.
Harrison’s name kept cropping up as one of the sponsors for an American baseball team out of Colorado called the Rockies. A
New York Times
article had a photo of Harrison in a posh luxury suite at Yankee Stadium, wearing a black baseball cap with his team’s CR logo and raising a celebratory tumbler. His other hand was on the shoulder of his son, Matt.
And Matt’s arm was around the stunning blonde girl in the seat next to him.
He’d gone out of his way last night to mention a girlfriend. This wasn’t new information. So why couldn’t Lian stop looking at the photo? The girl could’ve been a model herself. She had her head resting against Matt’s shoulder, laughing at something he had said.
When she heard Matt’s voice calling her name, she had a moment of disconnect before she realized it wasn’t coming from the picture. She turned to see him walking toward her, smiling wide.
“Mingmei told me I might find you in here,” he said. “I thought I’d see if you wanted to walk to lunch together. I don’t know my way around the halls here, and you were a big help in the menu department last night.”
Lian said nothing, stabbing desperately at the keyboard, trying to minimize the browser window before he reached her. Maddeningly, she succeeded only in zooming in on the photo. The flawless faces of Matt Harrison and his girlfriend filled her whole monitor.
Matt put a hand on Lian’s shoulder, just as he had when he’d said good-bye at the restaurant. But this time he drew back quickly.
“What . . . ?” he trailed off. Then she heard him chuckle.
“You know, if you spent a little more time studying Keynes and a little less time Googling me, you might have a shot at the dean’s list again.” He spun her chair so she had no choice but to see his grin. Somehow, she would have preferred him to be angry. She gritted her teeth and willed the ground to open beneath her feet and swallow her up. The ground did not comply.
“It’s . . . I wasn’t . . .” she stammered, her face burning
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