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cursory glance around the room. “Anyone else? No? All right then, let’s go get some convictions.”
             
    David poured himself another cup of coffee and headed for his office, where Jack Campbell and Noel Gardner were already waiting for him. Their haggard faces and rumpled clothes showed that neither of them had slept much.
    As David sat down, Campbell cocked an eye and said, “Man, you really blew us away last night.”
    David shook his head. “I was scared like everyone else.”
    “No, you rose to the occasion, and it was one hell of an occasion.”
    “I only did what I thought was right,” David said sheepishly. He rearranged a few papers on his desk, then asked, “So, what’s happening with the immigrants?”
    Campbell explained that of the 523 immigrants on board the
Peony
, 378 had already been deported thanks to the Chinese government providing an empty freighter for the return voyage. This was primarily due to the efficiency of INS officials, who had made sure that the immigrants were isolated as much as possible when they first landed. “That way they didn’t have an opportunity to communicate with one another, concoct stories, even rebound enough from their ordeal to think clearly.”
    “No one wants a repeat of the
Golden Venture
disaster,” Noel Gardner added. “It’s been close to three years since that ship ran aground in New York, and we’re still housing over fifty of those Chinese. At fifty-five dollars a day, that’s cost us well over ten million. The INS wants to get the
Peony
’s immigrants processed and out of the country before the human-rights groups can get mobilized.”
    During the late afternoon and through the night, Campbell recounted, the ill, the infirm, and the weak had been separated from those who were healthy and showing high spirits. By midnight, even before David had checked out of the hospital, dozens of immigrants had showered and eaten a simple meal of beef stew. They were hastily advised of their rights to counsel and a hearing, but INS officials had stressed the benefits of accepting clean clothes, food, and passage home rather than a protracted jail stay with no guarantees of freedom. Then the immigrants were taken to courtrooms at the Terminal Island detention facility, where judges—cranky themselves for having been roused out of bed—repeated this advice. At this point, most of the immigrants chose to waive their rights and were processed with alacrity. Most of these had left the port two hours ago.
    David switched gears. “Any word on the crew?”
    “The Coast Guard has been watching the beaches,” said Campbell. “No bodies have washed up, but they really don’t expect to see any. The storm was severe, and when the crew abandoned the
Peony
, it was still far out to sea.”
    “I think you’ll have better luck looking in San Pedro, Long Beach, or Chinatown.”
    “Those are great ideas, Stark, but let’s be realistic. There’s Gardner and there’s me. This case doesn’t have high priority. The Bureau isn’t going to give us the manpower we need to check out every bar and fleabag hotel. Noel and I are trying to do what you want, but we still have to prioritize. You wanted me down at Terminal Island talking to those immigrants, and I went. You wanted Noel to stick with the body, and he did.”
    “Jesus, the body!” David turned his attention to Gardner. “How’s my body? Better yet,
who’s
my body? Hey! And weren’t you supposed to stay with him?”
    “Don’t worry,” Gardner soothed. “He’s locked up in the morgue down in Long Beach. He isn’t going anywhere.”
    “Gardner gave him the full FBI treatment,” Campbell boasted.
    Gardner beamed. “I only told the M.E. that this was a federal matter of life and death. He agreed to do the autopsy right away, but I can’t take any credit for that. Our John Doe has been dead for some time. It behooved the M.E. to get the body into cold storage as quickly as