to tolerate that once, but when the deadlock in Congress threatened a second American default, China came down hard. A shot of the LA Times front page of the time.
Maddy hit the pause button and splayed her fingers to zoom in on the image. She could just make out the byline: a young Jane Goldstein. The headline was stark:
China’s Message to US: ‘Enough is enough’
A copy of that same front page was here now, framed and on Goldstein’s wall.
At the time the People’s Republic of China was America’s largest creditor, the country that lent it the most money. And so China insisted it had a special right to be paid back what it was owed. Beijing called for ‘certainty’ over US interest payments, insisting it would accept nothing less than ‘a guaranteed revenue stream’. China said it was not prepared to wait in line behind other creditors – or even behind other claims on American tax dollars, such as defence or education. From now on, said Beijing, interest payments to China would have to be America’s number one priority.
Maddy imagined the kids in class watching this story unfold. The voice, calm and reassuring, was taking them through the events that had shaped the country, and the times, they had grown up in.
But China was not prepared to leave the matter of repayment up to America. Beijing demanded the right to take the money it was owed at source. America had little option but to say yes. There followed a clip of an exhausted US official emerging from late night talks saying, ‘If China doesn’t get what it wants, if it deems the US a bad risk, there’ll be no country on earth willing to lend to us, except at extortionate rates.’
Experts declared that the entire American way of life – fuelled by debt for decades – was at risk. And so America accepted China’s demand and granted the People’s Republic direct access to its most regular stream of revenue: the custom duties it levied on goods coming into the US. From now on, a slice of that money would be handed over to Beijing the instant it was received.
But there was a problem: Beijing’s demand for a Chinese presence in the so-called ‘string of pearls’ along the American west coast – the ports of San Diego, Los Angeles, Long Beach and San Francisco. China insisted such a presence was essential if it was to monitor import traffic effectively.
Now came a short, dubbed clip of a Beijing official saying, ‘For this customs arrangement to work, the People’s Republic needs to be assured it is receiving its rightful allocation, no more and no less.’
The US government said no. It insisted a physical presence was a ‘red line’. Finally, after days of negotiation, the two sides reached a compromise. A small delegation of Chinese customs officials would be based on Port Authority premises – including in Los Angeles – but this presence would, the US government insisted, be only ‘symbolic’.
Archive footage of a CBS News broadcast from a few months after that agreement, reporting Chinese claims of smuggling and tax-dodging by American firms, crimes they suspected were tolerated, if not encouraged, by the US authorities. Beijing began to demand an increase in the number of Chinese inspectors based in Los Angeles and the other ‘string of pearl’ ports. Each demand was resisted at first by the US authorities – but each one was met in the end.
Next came pictures of the notorious Summer Riots, a sequence that had been played a thousand times on TV news in the US and around the world. A group of Chinese customs men surrounded by an angry American crowd; the LAPD trying to hold back the mob, struggling and eventually failing. The narrator took up the story. On that turbulent night, several rioters armed with clubs broke through, eventually killing two Chinese customs officers. The two men were lynched. The fallout was immediate. Washington acceded to Beijing’s request that the People’s Republic of China be allowed to protect its own people. The film ended with the White House spokesperson insisting that no more than ‘a light, private security detail’ would be sent from China to LA and the other ‘pearls’.
Maddy smiled a mirthless smile: everyone knew how that had turned out.
She was halfway through a reply to her former colleague – ‘Think that covers all the bases’ followed by a winking emoticon – when she looked up to see the editor striding in, three words into her sentence before she got through the door.
‘OK, we run the Walker picture tomorrow.’
Short, roundish and in her mid-fifties, her hair a solid, unapologetic white, Goldstein exuded impatience. Her eyes, her posture said, Come on, come on, get to the point, even before you had said a word. Still, Maddy risked a redundant question. ‘So not tonight?’
‘Correct. Walker remains unnamed tonight. Maybe tomorrow too. Depends on the re-act to the first piece.’
‘But—’
Goldstein peered over her spectacles in a way that drew instant silence from Maddy. ‘You have thirty minutes to make any final changes – and I mean final, Madison – and then you’re going to get the fuck out of this office, am I clear? You will not hang around and get up to your usual tricks, capisce?’
Maddy nodded.
‘No looking over the desk’s shoulder while they write the headlines, no arguing about the wording of a fucking caption, no getting in the way. Do we understand each other?’
Maddy managed a ‘Yes’.
‘Good. To recapitulate: the suck-ups on Gawker might think you’re the greatest investigative journalist in America, but I do not want you within a three-mile radius of this office.’
Maddy was about to say a word in her defence, but Goldstein’s solution actually made good sense: if a story went big, you needed to have a follow-up ready for the next day. Naming Walker and publishing his photo ID on day two would prove that they – she – had not used up all their ammo in the first raid. That Goldstein was perhaps one of a tiny handful of people on the LA Times she truly respected Maddy did not admit as a factor. She murmured a thank you and headed out – wholly unaware that when she next set foot in that office, her life – and the life of this city – would have turned upside down.
LA tended not to be a late night town, but the Mail Room was different. Downtown, in that borderland between scuzzy and bohemian, it had gone through a spell as a gay hangout; the Male Room, Katharine called it, explaining why she and her fellow dykes – her word – steered clear of it. Though now enjoying a wider clientele, it still retained some of that edgier vibe. Unlike plenty of places in LA, the kitchen didn’t close at eight and you didn’t have to use a valet to park your car.
Maddy found a spot between a convertible, the roof down even now, in January, and an extravagant sports car with tinted windows. The high-rollers were clearly in; maybe a movie star, slumming it for the night, plus entourage. She considered texting Katharine to suggest they go somewhere else.
The speakers in her car – a battered, made-in-China Geely that had been feeling its age even when she got it – were relaying the voices of the police scanner, announcing the usual mayhem of properties burgled and bodies found: the legacy of her days on the crime beat. She stabbed at the button, found a music station, wound up the volume. Let the beat pump through her while she used the car mirror to fix her
