Page 37 of Flash and Bang
“San Diego?” Wu asked. “Isn’t that a little far away to draw a parallel to the Chinatown incident?”
“We have to follow it up of course,” Jarrett said. “I spoze what I really wanted to find out was why there were so few witnesses interviewed at the Chinatown scene. There must have been tons of people on the street to witness it.”
Deukmejian’s partner, Wu, nodded. “Yes. Hundreds. It’s the largest event of the year down here. Not only is it attended by the locals but it has also become a massive tourist destination. LA’s Chinatown draws almost as much spectator traffic as San Francisco or New York.”
“So why so few witness interviews?” Thayne asked, looking down at the report he was reading. Jarrett could tell he was trying to keep an accusation out of his voice. When Thayne glanced back up, Wu was shaking his head. He looked positively sheepishas he looked from Thayne to Jarrett.
“My wife went into labor that morning and I was in the hospital with her so Ari didn’t have his partner by his side.”
“It was just unfortunate timing, Chin. Stop beating yourself up about it,” Ari said, looking at his partner affectionately. He glanced back at Jarrett. “I don’t speak Chinese and my chief sent me out with a rookie who doesn’t speak Chinese either. I couldn’t interview most of the witnesses and couldn’t find any reason to detain them. Chin usually handles our interviews when there’s a language barrier.” He glanced out of the conference room windows toward his boss’s office before looking back and leaning forward. “Can I ask that you please don’t share this with my captain?”
Thayne glanced out the window and then back at Officer Deukmejian. “No problem, officer. We know how it works and we’re not here to get you in any trouble. We just need to see if there’s a correlation between this incident and Miramar. If it wasn’t an accident, then maybe these are the same perpetrators or the Chinatown incident was a test run. See where our heads are?” Jarrett recognized his partner’s sympathetic glance, knowing that Deukmejian had been in an impossible situation.Thayne glanced back down and studied the photos for a minute or two then he looked back up to meet Jarrett’s eyes. “Check these out.”
Jarrett stood and walked around the table, bending down to look at the pictures as Thayne turned them over slowly. They showed a lot of debris on the street—mostly burnt pieces of the lantern that had crashed to the ground on narrow Hill Street in Chinatown. Jarrett was surprised at the size of the lantern. He didn’t know what he had expected, but the remains of the lantern were perhaps six feet long and three feet in circumference, shaped like a large football with pointed ends. It was painted with what had been bright yellow and red with Chinese characters. It showed the remains of a basket that had clearly been where the fireworks had been packed.
Jarrett pointed to the picture. “Can you tell me how this was supposed to work?”
Deukmejian walked over to them and tapped the photograph. “The lantern is hollow and works like a hot air balloon. The fireworks are packed in a basket underneath and in between, the designer hangs a source of fuel, generally a thick piece of dense cardboard which will burn very slowly. The way it’s supposed to work is that once the cardboard is lit,the heat will fill the balloon with hot air and then it will begin to rise. The basket is then lit from the bottom on all four sides from strings that hang down to the ground where the operator stands. He lights the strings on fire when the lantern gets a ways off the ground and the fire travels up the string to ignite the basket. The fireworks are not supposed to ignite until the balloon is about fifty feet above the ground. In this case, everything started out all right but the fireworks ignited prematurely, beginning to explode when the balloon was only about fifteen to twenty feet off the ground. The fireworks shot straight out the sides and down into the crowd as it continued to rise. It must have been like standing above a cannon spraying out sparks. That’s how so many people got injured.”
“Shit. That looks incredibly dangerous even if it worked like it was designed to,” Thayne said. He exchanged a look with Jarrett.
“It was. Several people were injured with minor burns and two kids ended up in the hospital with more extensive burns,” Deukmejian said.
“The lanterns are dangerous but they’re very common in China and they’re not as tightly regulated there,” Wu added. “Here, the city issues permits for them only when the LAFD is on the scene andsupervising the ignition.”
“So, it’s not likely the builder was issued a permit. I take it no one hung around to talk to you afterward?” Jarrett asked. He looked at Deukmejian who exchanged a glance with his partner.
“Like I said, I wasn’t available to translate that night,” Wu replied, “And even if I was, I don’t think many people would have been forthcoming in their witness statements.”
“Why is that?” Jarrett asked.
Wu sighed. “It might help if I explain what we’re dealing with down here. We have a heavy immigrant population in this area. They are very distrustful of any outsiders and that includes anyone in a position of authority like the LAPD or the fire department. When they are victims of a crime, they are often reluctant to report it and we have to drag it out of them. The residents and businesses circle the wagons like nothing you’ve ever seen and they clam up like crazy. Even if they speak English, and most do, they pretend not to. Some are here illegally and fear the possibility of being sent back to China. Some just prefer to handle things on their own. That allows Chinese street gangs to prey on them as a result of their closed-mouth behavior. The locals feel it’s better to deal with it as a Chinese problem than bring inpolice because they are often threatened by these street thugs. There’s a fair amount of organized crime down here with gambling, prostitution, and the extortion rackets. People would rather pay protection money than talk to the police. They’re afraid of retaliation.”
“Honestly, I was lucky to get the two interviews I did,” Officer Deukmejian said. “And even then, I didn’t learn anything except how the explosion went down. Like I said, I really thought it was an accident. Nothing pointed to anyone suspicious hanging around to watch it like an arsonist does, but then again, I didn’t arrive to take the report until after the fact. In addition, I couldn’t find anyone who was willing to admit they caught it on their phones or cameras. Honestly, our resources down here are so overtaxed, I doubt I could get anyone to analyze a video tape or a phone recording even if I could have found one. I checked store security video from two stores which recorded the incident, but I couldn’t find evidence of a crime here.”
He shook his head, looking down at his hands before glancing back up. He spread his palms up in a helpless gesture. “Look, I’m not trained in profiling. I’m just a beat cop. I think the only reason the parents of the injured kids spoke to me was becausethey knew me from the neighborhood. Wu and I have been out here working the beat for over five years and they still don’t trust us completely and probably never will. And if I thought there was a crime here, I would have taken it further. No one died and unfortunately, that’s the only thing that gets a hell of a lot of attention.”
“That’s rough,” Thayne said. Jarrett watched him turn his attention back to the photos, leaning down to examine them closely.
“So maybe this was only an accident,” Jarrett replied. “What about the maker of the lantern? Did she cooperate with you after you issued the citation?”
“No one was there by the time I got there,” Deukmejian said. “How do you know the lantern maker was female?”
“The ATF investigator, Chang, says it was a woman but she didn’t put the name in the report. She’s checking her notes. She also told us you issued them a citation.”
“I never told her that,” he said, sounding offended. “I don’t know how she came by that information. By the time I got the call and got out to the site of the explosion, whoever sent up the lantern had vanished from the scene. No doubt it was someone who either knew very little about the natureof the way fireworks explode or someone who wanted to hurt a lot of people at once. To be honest, if someone deliberately wanted to hurt a lot of people at once, there’s better ways of doing it,” Deukmejian replied. “The LAPD is more concerned with getting illegal weapons off the streets, as the ATF well knows.”
Jarrett nodded. He did know that but he and Thayne had to investigate these fireworks incidents for the time being. Hell, Thayne had spent two years undercover to break up a gun runner’s operation and it had nearly gotten them both killed in the end. He understood the LAPD’s desire to get unregistered weapons off the street and he and Thayne shared it. The fact that Chang outright lied about the citation was troubling in and of itself. She couldn’t be so stupid to think that they wouldn’t follow up on what she told them. This case just got weirder and weirder.
“I’d like to see the permits that were pulled for the parade that day,” Jarrett said.
“The parade permits?” Wu asked. “Okay, I can do that but can I get them to you tomorrow? It might take a while to hunt them all down. You want street vendors as well as anyone in the parade itself?”
Thayne nodded. “All of them, please. I take it no one took out a permit for a Chinese lantern withfireworks?”
Deukmejian shook his head. “No. Unfortunately, no one did. Like I said, the LA Fire Department would have to be there if one of those lanterns was approved. That’s one of the things that made investigating this accident so difficult. If you’ll read the rest of the report, you’ll see, I concluded it by saying I couldn’t locate the owner of the lantern.”
Jarrett nodded. He was certain Deukmejian was telling them the truth. He could usually smell a lie and that’s probably what made him so suspicious of Chang.