05x13 - Trouble in Chinatown

Episode transcripts for the TV show "Numb3rs". Aired: January 2005 to March 2010.*
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An FBI agent recruits his brother, a mathematics genius, to help solve crimes.
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05x13 - Trouble in Chinatown

Post by bunniefuu »

♪♪

♪ Oh, help me Jesus ♪

♪ Come through the storm ♪

♪ I had to lose her ♪

♪ To do her harm ♪

♪ I heard her holler ♪ (firecrackers popping)

♪ I heard her moan ♪ (excited chatter)

♪ My lovely daughter ♪ ♪ My lovely daughter ♪

♪ I took her home ♪ ♪ I took her home ♪

♪ Little fish, big fish, swimming in the water ♪

♪ Come back here, man, gimme my daughter ♪

♪ Little fish, big fish, swimming in the water ♪

♪ Come back here, man, gimme my daughter... ♪

(speaking Mandarin)

♪ Little fish, big fish, swimming in the water... ♪

(speaking Mandarin)

(screaming)

Alice, you've got to get over here!

This thing's going bad.

I'm in trouble here.

(car alarm blares, firecrackers explode)

(indistinct chatter, car alarm blaring)

License plate...

Huh?

Looks all right.

Looks open is what it looks, man, and I'm starving.

(distant firecrackers, chatter)

Year of the Ox.

Chinese New Years make ours look boring.

How you doing?

We're just gonna do takeout.

Same menu.

What do you think?

It's a toss-up between the Cha Shui Bao, the Kung Pao San Yan, and Ma Poo curd with Leejee.

What kind of menu is this? I'm looking for an egg roll.

Well, at least they got pictures.

That way, you can just point at whatever you want.

Yeah, flaming pig intestines.

Like I needed a picture of that.

(speaking Mandarin)

(g*nshots)

(rapid g*nf*re)

(glass breaking)

COLBY: So what exactly were the sh**t saying?

I don't really speak much Chinese, but it seemed like the leader guy was yelling, "Where's my girls?

I want my girls back."

DAVID: We got six wounded and four dead.

One of the guys was carrying a FN P-90 machine p*stol.

All right, they were ready for a m*ssacre.

It's funny, you know, my dad used to take me and Charlie here when we were kids.

This place is famous.

Now it's gonna be a stop on the Death and Scandal Tour.

Guys, this is Walter Yoon.

It's his brother's restaurant.

That's my brother...

Harvey. Harvey Yoon.

I'm sorry, Walter.

Can you tell me, you have any idea how this might have happened?

It's already all over Chinatown that the Jade Boys did this.

Maybe he didn't pay his protection money.

Well, he's not gonna pay it now.

Alice Chen, Immigration Control.

I've got an emergency on my hands.

I think one of my agents was grabbed on this street.

She was undercover when she and two other women disappeared tonight.

And, uh...

...that's my chief suspect.

It's too quiet with my dad away.

Drop a spoon or something.

So which reunion is this? His fiftieth.

But you didn't hear that from me.

Imagine Alan in high school.

You know, hanging out by the bike racks, snapping towels in the shower.

Thanks for the shower image.

That's good.

(knocking)

Hello, Professor Eppes.

Remember me?

Yeah, I do.

What do you want?

I need to talk to your brother.

It's professional reasons.

My brother doesn't live here.

I'm not going to give you his phone number -- professional reasons.

When you do see him, please tell him to call me.

You bet.

And, uh...

Your mail.

Night, now.

Who was it?

Simon Kraft.

The police psychic guy?

Wannabe psychic.

What the hell is this nutcase doing on my front porch?

Maybe he's not such a wannabe.

How'd he know where you live?

I don't know. He's a former CIA spook, so maybe he got my address from one of his old contacts.

I'm not sure.

Think I should call Don, or am I overreacting?

You took too long.

(phone rings)

This is Eppes.

Oh, hey, Charlie, I've got to get back to you.

I'm at a crime scene at, uh...

You remember that restaurant that Dad used to take us to in Chinatown?

Yeah, I know. I'll make this fast.

Wait a second, what restaurant?

The Silk Dragon.

CHEN: The agent we're looking for is named Kim Hsiao.

She transferred to us from DOJ, because she's Chinese-fluent and... because I requested her.

Last night's sh**t: that's Jimmy Lim on the left.

He ran the Jade Boys g*ng with muscle from his cousin.

Kim was working undercover in Jimmy's sweatshop on Bernard Street.

That is, until last night, anyway.

The waiter said that Jimmy Lim was demanding his girls back from Harvey Yoon.

You think he could've been talking about your missing agent?

Yeah, that's possible.

The Department of Transportation cameras caught Kim all the way to Central Plaza.

That's the restaurant's location, and that's where D.O.T. stops.

NIKKI: And the security cameras should've kicked in, but on that corner of the plaza, the cameras are all disabled.

What about backup?

She didn't have any.

We, uh, clocked her off at 9:15.

Next thing, I got this call.

HSIAO (on tape): Alice, you gotta get over here.

(firecrackers popping) This thing's going bad.

(firecrackers popping)

(car alarm blaring) I'm in trouble here...

(firecrackers and alarm continue)

(Hsiao screams, tape stops)

Maybe you can do something with it.

Covert ops like this -- wouldn't your agents be wearing a beacon?

Well, she had a beacon.

She didn't turn it in, so we're hopeful that she still has it.

The problem is that it only works for about a mile or so.

A mile? What kind of beacon is that?

Look, we sweatshops every day and never had to fire a sh*t.

Then again, in retrospect, we should've been more careful.

We had a warning flag.

What do you mean?

Well, LAPD says they have five open cases involving Chinatown women who have disappeared, and whose families have come forward.

Add to that missing illegals... (phone vibrating)

...sweatshop labor, and it's anyone's guess how many more there've been.

Our surveillance truck says that the Jade Boys' sweatshop has gone quiet.

All the guards have disappeared.

DON: Why don't you grab David and go check it out, okay?

Thank you.

So why'd Jimmy Lim hit the restaurant himself?

Asian gangs don't have foot soldiers or what?

Yeah, they call them sailo.

Maybe Jimmy didn't trust his own troops.

That's a good question.

DON: Oh, hey, guys. Thanks.

So listen -- Simon Kraft.

Oh, Charlie, I can't deal with Simon or think about him right now.

All right, then think about this, 'cause this is what he drew on our mail.

It's amazing.

You said it was right after the sh**ting, right?

I mean, I-I... don't get it.

CHARLIE: He's got his background, you know?

So he's probably got a police scanner and he overheard the words "Silk Dragon."

Maybe.

All right, so we're looking for a missing ICE agent who was grabbed somewhere near the sh**ting.

Coincidence or connection?

We don't know.

But she did try calling in for help.

Tommy, just boost this up for me.

(car alarm blares, firecrackers popping on tape)

(Hsiao screams, tape stops)

She's in there somewhere.

We could apply, uh, frequency-domain processors.

And Larry can help, 'cause he worked with the NSA on noise analysis.

Yeah, I'll give it a whirl.

All right, great. Have at it.

Why don't you come with me?

So this is the hard drive from the restaurant.

AMITA: Multi-layer encryption.

What am I looking for?

I wish I could tell you, but if you find anything interesting, let me know, all right?

All right.

COLBY: Two floors of sewing machines and nobody's here?

If this is a sweatshop, where's all the labor?

COLBY: FN P-90 casings.

Same as the restaurant.

That one's Cheekay.

Low-level Jade Boy.

Looks like we found our missing foot soldiers.

Why would Jimmy Lim exterminate his own men?

(rumbling)

(flames crackling)

Come here!

What the hell are trying to do, huh?

Easy! Easy!

I got it! I got it!

(muffled voices)

Colby?

(speaking Mandarin)

Kim?

You see her?

No.

DON: You know anything about a girl named Kim Hsiao?

You get right to it, Don, don't you?

Why don't you have a seat for me, please?

Okay.

You gave this to my brother the night of a sh**ting at a restaurant called The Silk Dragon.

Okay.

I can be businesslike, too.

The last time I helped the FBI, you and I scratched each other's backs, right?

So to speak.

Well, I've got another itch.

Let's just stick to this, okay?

Let's settle on the terms first, all right?

Here's the deal, Don.

I've been pitching, uh, an Internet reality show all about a forensic psychic.

Simon Says -- you like that?

Yeah, it's very catchy. I've been pitching it around, and -- knock on wood -- I got some interest.

KRAFT: So...

Did you come to see the freak show?

You've all got more patience than me.

Let me tag along for this one case, sh**t some footage for my show, and, uh...

I'll help you solve your crime, maybe even solve it for you.

All right, that's it. Forget it -- let's go.

You want to think about it, Don? Huh?

No. And I'll take this, actually.

DON: Let's go.

I'm gonna want that back.

It'll be waiting for you at reception without the tape.

So, Charlie has been giving you a rough time these days, right?

Science versus, uh, the synagogue.

What, are you following me, Simon?

That's not a good idea.

Oh, Don, people are watching.

Hey, I catch you within a block of my family or my house, you're gonna be in for it.

(sighs)

I didn't know about the restaurant sh**ting till I heard it on the news.

KRAFT: At first, I thought that these were Kewpie dolls.

Then, I saw that they were little dead girls.

I don't know what to tell you.

I mean, it's not evidence.

You've got a lot of bodies out there, Don.

And a lot more to come.

(fireworks whistling, car horns honking)

(firecrackers exploding)

(scream)

All right, there are some usable fragments in there.

Four hours of work for that?

LARRY: Hey, it took multiple noise filters to get even that.

We are stretching forensic audiology to the limit here.

Yeah, we can't use simple notch filters because of the overlap.

Now, have you ever seen a computer graphics program?

Yeah, yeah, uh, weekends I take this computer painting course, "Click by Numbers".

Yeah, right now, I am coloring in Van Gogh's "Wheat Field with Crows."

LARRY: You know, they say the sound of the crows caused his final madness.

CHARLIE: Thank you for that, Lawrence.

Anyway, you're sitting at your computer, and you've already colored in the field, but now you've moved on to painting your birds and your clouds.

What happens if you make those birds and clouds larger and more densely packed?

Well, I can't see my wheat field.

But you know the field's still there.

It's just covered up by a bunch of birds and clouds, so in a sense, your scene has become visually noisy.

How would you go about pushing those foreground images into the background?

I would select the crows that were bigger, make them smaller and blurrier, so, to the eye, they seem farther away.

Then, select the clouds and do the same thing.

The result being that you can better see the field.

So it's the same in audiology -- we just shrink the sounds we don't want to hear, so that the sounds we do want to hear become foreground.

LARRY: We use filters to diminish or blur noise, identifying each unwanted sound by its frequency and then discriminating against it.

Yeah, so you find the fireworks.

I got car horn. What?

Fireworks and car alarms -- they emit different sound waves depending on their manufacturer, so, in order to filter them, we need their single frequencies.

I will get my coat.

Right.

Is that the dead restaurant owner's computer program?

I haven't gotten past the screen saver.

There's something odd here.

With the screen saver?

(mouse clicking)

(typing)

Yeah, he chose a mah-jongg board, but it's passive.

And for a game you can't even play, it's eating up a huge amount of memory.

I can't even open it.

It's like a house without any doors or windows.

How do you enter?

And who's inside?

DAVID: We have a missing ICE agent who was working at the sweatshop, Colin.

What do you know about that?

Nothing, man.

Nothing.

What about the sailo, the foot soldiers?

Why is that you're walking around and they're not?

I didn't k*ll those guys.

They were my friends.

Jimmy did that.

Why would the boss k*ll his own g*ng, huh?

He was mad because his girls kept disappearing.

CHEN: "His" girls?

Jimmy's a snake head.

He smuggles the girls from China for 30 grand, then they pay him back at 50 cents a shirt.

It's good business.

DAVID: Know something, Colin?

You're the last of the Jade Boys.

Everybody else is dead.

Except for you.

The night Jimmy went crazy, three more girls had escaped.

Jimmy said that was the last three, and then he tortured us.

Some of the g*ng broke down and admitted what they'd done.

They were selling Jimmy's girls to Harvey Yoon.

What's a restaurant owner doing buying up girls?

Harvey Yoon was selling call girls.

Jimmy's girls would catch a van at the Silk Dragon, head to Vegas, wherever.

So why were you trying to burn down the sweatshop with the girls inside?

Hey, wise guy, listen -- we already have you for attempted m*rder and trying to torch evidence.

Now, how much you want to bet that your g*n links up with the b*ll*ts that are in your buddies?

Jimmy made me sh**t the boys to prove that I wasn't stealing his girls or working with Yoon.

But you were working with Harvey Yoon, weren't you?

That's why you had to k*ll the women.

Because they knew it all.

Double-dipping with Harvey Yoon and Jimmy Lim.

That's some dangerous business, man.

Anybody in this town you're not working with?

Just you, man.

But I'm available.

Black.

Red.

Black.

DON: All right, come on.

What are the chances he gets 25 wrong?

Less than one in a million, but I told you, he was reading the reflections.

He knows I was going to temple.

I was in the observation room, I heard him.

Yeah, he knew you were in there.

Yeah, he guessed.

He knew I was in the room when he did this card trick.

He's a fraud, and he sorted through our mail, man -- he could be following us.

The CIA thought he had something.

And his drawings definitely helped last time.

I will not be convinced that he wasn't complicit in every single crime he helped solve.

I don't know, man. You know, it's funny.

The other day, the rabbi was saying something interesting about doubt.

That it's part of life.

You know, the darkness is for a reason.

A reason to invent the light bulb?

(phone ringing)

Yeah. Eppes.

Yeah, all right, I'm sending Colby.

(siren whoops)

Seems like LAPD was trying to pull him over for running a red.

Turned into a high-speed pursuit.

The driver lost control in the turn?

Snapped his neck.

Come see what the dragon ate.

The other two sweatshop girls.

Any sign of your agent?

No Hsiao.

A dragon float, two little dead girls.

It's just like Kraft's drawing.

(speaking Mandarin)

NIKKI: What did I miss?

They didn't want to talk until I told them that two of the women were m*rder*d and one was still missing.

(speaking Mandarin)

CHEN: The night that Kim was taken, it was Colin that brought them Harvey's deal.

She didn't go because it was too dangerous.

(speaking Mandarin)

CHEN: If a woman accepted Harvey's offer, she went to his restaurant, got in a red van and joined the sex trade.

The restaurant delivery van is red.

One night I go for van, see my picture on a wall.

I have no family here look for me, so who put there?

DON: We start here, and we just got to spiral out.

Do you think that Kim's beacon is still working?

I hope so.

Hey, I'll meet up with you guys later.

I'm gonna talk to Walter Yoon about his brother.

All right, I'll let you know if I hear anything.

Thanks. Hey, um, Don, I, um...

I want to say that I'm sensitive to your job position, but it's my agent who's out there missing, and I want all the help I can get, no matter how, uh, unorthodox.

You got to be kidding.

Your boss already okayed it.

I call shotgun.

Good guys to the rescue.

Where's my camera when I need it?

Simon, look, you can't just be chattering away the whole time, all right?

Oh... hey.

Uh, sorry about that.

What are you guys doing?

We're creating a filter for firecrackers.

Probably should have said, "Fire in the hole," huh?

CHARLIE: We're sorry.

Did you get that?

Got it.

(chuckling)

In Chinese tradition, we burn symbolic objects to accompany the soul into the spirit world.

They drive in the spirit world, huh?

CHEN: This is Mr. Yoon, the spiritual director here.

My brother and I... we were not close.

Hard to honor someone so... complicated.

Actually, Mr. Yoon, that's, uh, what we want to talk to you about.

Were you aware of his involvement in criminal activities, specifically the sex trade?

I certainly suspected.

But good or ill, he was my brother.

Harvey... is just one face of Chinatown.

Please, let me show you another.

While the modern world wages its culture wars, we elders try to pass ours along -- what's left of it.

Our cultural center offers language class.

Ah, mah-jongg.

Some say the game goes all the way back to Confucius.

Tai chi -- most ancient of disciplines.

(Walter speaking Mandarin)

They found her.

Why don't these parents go to the police?

And be arrested?

Most are undocumented.

As a practical matter, there are two million illegal Chinese immigrants living in the state of California.

It's hard to track the missing ones when the police don't even know they exist.

WALTER: And as a moral matter, many of these girls paid $30,000 to a smuggler just to get here.

They would rather be chained to a pimp or a sewing machine than be deported.

My own mother was a sl*ve to a sweatshop.

Welcome to Chinatown.

KRAFT: Outward spiral search?

Why are we wasting our time?

That's the standard FBI search procedure, Simon.

Uh-huh.

You think a psychic would know that.

Well, I'd think the FBI would've moved on since J. Edgar Hoover.

(chuckles)

All right, so, uh, I mean, if we get within a mile, we should be getting a ping.

Yeah, unless we get a ping from our psychic first.

DON: Yeah.

In fact, Simon, when do you actually clock in?

I'm in. Like I told Chen, the first body I find you guys is a freebie.

After that, I want a signed contract.

(chuckles) Oh, okay.

HSIAO (on tape): I'm in trouble here!

Suspect is driving a silver Toyota Sienna van.

(electronic whooshing)

Licen... (whooshing)

(Hsiao screams)

Okay, we're getting there.

What is the sound after "license"?

It's, like, two distinct sounds. (thud)

(Hsiao screams)

Metallic followed by some kind of rustling noise.

Okay, metal -- you know what it is? It's the van door.

So now we know we need another filter.

Right, not to mention the rustling noise.

Her blouse, maybe? Why not?

You know, she was grabbed.

Maybe she was trying to hide her phone.

Okay, so that's two more filters.

Okay, wait. I help you, you help me.

I discovered Harvey Yoon was passing his accounting to somebody.

CHARLIE: Some kind of an ad-hoc network?

Yeah, the problem is whatever he was sending was going out through a ghost IP.

And you can't run it down.

So far it's bounced me from here to China with stop-offs along the way.

I mean, it'll take forever to trace.

It's "The Mystery of the Secret Pen Pal."

It's supposed to be the golden days, right? High school?

A cafeteria manager r*ped a student worker in that building last night, poor thing.

The police know about this?

I just saw it a second ago.

The CIA tells me you were discharged from the service for sexual as*ault.

What can I tell you, Don? I'm a hugger.

(gasping)

Left turn! Now!

What's that?

I said make the left! All right, all right.

Why don't you call Chen.

All right, Chen, Simon seems to think he's onto something.

So hold on for a location. Right turn.

Right turn again.

Left turn.

(beacon pings)

Wait a minute -- we're in range of the beacon.

(beacon pinging)

All right, Chen, we're in Monterey Park.

Hill of Peace Cemetery.

♪♪

(pinging)

(pinging faster)

Whoa.

Here we go.

We got to get some shovels.

All right, I'll find someone from the cemetery.

Be careful, we got something down here.

She's alive.

All right, let's get her out of there.

Must've caught an air pocket or something.

Nice and easy. Let's go.

Let's get her to a hospital, guys.

Move!

You see the way she was dressed?

Like the others, right?

Yeah, exactly.

There's a fully intact coffin in here;

I don't know if they just laid her out on top of it or what?

What the hell's going on around here?

I don't know how this happened.

Who's grave is this?

This man was buried Tuesday.

We're in the Chinese section, so obviously he's Chinese... or was.

You didn't notice anything out of the ordinary here?

Somebody hanging around or anything?

Not at this grave, but, uh... maybe the police told you.

Told us what?

My security guy chased some people away from another grave a few weeks ago.

Which grave? It was dark; he couldn't see who they were.

She's been dead awhile.

All dressed up, nowhere to go.

COLBY: That's one smart psycho.

Bury your victims in a cemetery.

How many women were found like this?

Four so far.

What are you thinking?

Those two were injected with some form of paralyzing agent.

I'm good with poisons, but I had to send this one out to the lab.

Resembles a shellfish toxin.

Death by shellfish?


It's a good guess. Look at this.

Mascara was applied thick and fast.

See where some got in her eye?

Normally, that would cause tearing and the mascara would run.

There's no smudge here.

CHEN: What does that tell you?

The victims were paralyzed or dead when they were made up.

That's pretty sick, doll them all up like call girls and dump them in graves.

Right?

Four victims.

Four identical dresses...

It's a weaver's label from the bottom of a cloth bolt.

Yeah, made locally.

I'll check it out.

You know, I think I have a picture of my mother in a dress like this.

She's no call girl.

Hey.

So we ran another filter on Hsiao's tape.

She said the suspects were in a silver Toyota Sienna van.

Oh, it's not like there's a lot of those, right?

One more pass, I may be able to get a plate number, so I'm going to go record a van door shutting.

Okay, good.

Hey, guys. Hey.

So we're finding more of the double-occupancy graves.

The victims are female, Asian, all dressed up for a party.

The coffins belong to Chinese males between the ages of 14 and 78.

What about Hsiao?

They traced the toxin to a type of sea snail.

The syringe struck bone and broke off before all the poison could get into her.

She just might wake up.

Well, that's good, but I doubt it's going to be in time to help us.

More about the data?

I mean, there's just nothing like this in the FBI database.

No similar deaths, no matching MO's, nothing.

Well, try Interpol and the Chinese, right?

Yeah, the Ministry of Public Security.

I can help out with that.

KRAFT: Hey! Finally!

I got my camera back.

Why so glum, Professor?

The failure of higher math to find Agent Hsiao?

Did it fail?

My brother filled me in on your search pattern.

Huh? How -- well, now, how...?

How do you mean, Professor?

Left turn, two right turns, another left?

Maybe you went into the Dead Zone for your directions.

More likely followed a classic Levy flight path.

Lucky for Agent Hsiao that I thought to follow a Levy flight path, whatever the hell that is.

This is yours. Thanks.

AMITA: You're looking at the restaurant's accounting program.

You see what I see?

Not being a CPA, I have to let my eyes adjust here.

Take a closer look at the column for take-out food.

All right, okay... let's see --

134, 440, 521...

Hey, wait.

Each of these sets sums to eight.

And that's too many eights for coincidence.

Now take a closer look at the column for wedding catering.

All right. 1,314, 3,231, 1,800...

Each set now sums to nine.

Harvey Yoon, what were you up to?

You think it's some sort of hidden accounting system or pricing system?

"The Mystery of the Motionless Mah-Jongg Board."

There is something to this graphic, but I don't know what.

Maybe a hidden pattern in the squares?

Yeah, or under the squares.

You know, Harvey Yoon had a thing for the numbers eight and nine.

Have you tried just hitting those?

Larry, I've tried every number and every combination of number.

Even control-eight?

Command-eight. Option-eight.

Okay.

Okay, call me low-tech, just hit the eight eight times.

Harvey Yoon's sex stable.

Complete with what looks like a price list.

Larry, what do you say we take a closer look at the wedding catering?

By all means. I am guessing we enter by the nine key.

Okay. Time to talk to Don.

You know something? I want to phone a friend.

Who?

The librarian at the monastery.

Not only is he Chinese, he knows numbers.

Better than Charlie?

Oh, I don't think this involves math, but magic.

Have you seen Don?

Thanks a lot.

What do you got?

So Nikki was right about the tag inside the red dress.

It's from a local loom, and that particular weave has been discontinued.

Now, all the remainders were purchased by one single dress shop.

Guess where that shop was?

Gotta go with Chinatown.

Ministry of Public Security sent us this output from their database.

It's Chinese. I'll let Chen know.

Yeah, mug sh*ts in any language.

I sell a lot of red dresses.

Sold any to a man like him?

Yeah, I remember him.

Kind of stands out.

Young guy buying 12 red dresses.

All cash.

Cash.

Thank you.

Thanks.

What does he know that we don't?

And how does he know it?

Ladies.

What are you doing down here, Kraft?

Looking for these places that are in my sketches, huh?

The Sun Yat-sen memorial -- Chinatown plaza.

On every tourist map.

Well, you won't find this... on any map, huh?

All right, and don't try to follow me, ladies.

I'm really rather shy.

Is that what you call it?

LARRY: In his accounting, Harvey Yoon kept his escort service under "take-out."

Just a little gallows humor, I suppose.

So what are these numbers? AMITA: Uh, prices maybe.

Higher values for younger, more attractive ones?

DAVID: Well, question.

Why do the numbers add up to eight?

LARRY: This is not about numerics.

This is about numerology.

Consider when the Beijing Olympics began.

Yeah, August.

More precisely, eight seconds past 8:08 on August 8, 2008.

See, the Chinese organizers wanted to bring good fortune to their games, and eight is their luckiest, most auspicious number.

Larry discovered that Chinese couples routinely marry on August 8.

One airline paid a fortune to get an all eight phone number.

DAVID: So Yoon wasn't just pricing his girls, he was wishing them luck?

LARRY: And he was protecting his investment.

See, by the power of the eight, he was attempting to bring good karma to a very bad business.

That's not all the restaurant was hiding.

Under the line item "wedding expenses," we found these.

LARRY: If eight is their luckiest number, nine is their most magical.

It stretches beyond this life.

It reaches up to the very heavens.

So I don't believe that Harvey Yoon was simply renting these women out, I think they represent final sales.

And except for Hsiao, all were homicides?

They're called ghost brides.

I remembered a picture of my mother wearing a long red dress like the victims.

And when I called her, she knew right away -- it was her wedding picture.

NIKKI: We traced one of the victims' gowns to a shop in Chinatown.

Now, the storeowner sold 12 red dresses just like it to Colin Pang.

NIKKI: Wedding dresses.

I translated these.

It's an arrest sheet.

Two years ago, in Sha'anxi Province, a g*ng of criminals was arrested for k*lling girls and selling their corpses to grieving parents.

Parents whose sons d*ed bachelors.

And just like here, all the graves contain unmarried Chinese males with unmarried Chinese females placed next to them.

So Harvey Yoon just picked up the California franchise.

Providing ghost brides to ghost grooms.

Not to mention, he was sharing his accounts with a ghost IP.

That's right -- the wedding planner may be dead but his partner's still out there.

(phone rings)

All right, now, Jimmy Lim is dead, and Colin Pang is in jail, so who's left?

It's Charlie.

The tape's clean.

We have our license plate.

(woman shrieking in distance)

(woman shrieking)

(tires squealing, sharp thud)

HSIAO'S VOICE: I'm in trouble here!

Suspect is driving a silver Toyota Sienna van.

(muffled traffic noise on tape)

License plate, B-A-8...

You got it? Getting it.

B-A, somebody's initials.

Ba is the Chinese word for number eight.

Lucky eight. DAVID: It's a company car.

Five Emperors Cultural Center. Bernard Street.

That's Walter Yoon.

Good. Why don't you guys get over there.

We'll check the back.

Hey, where's Walter Yoon?

All right. Call it in.

Looks like Walter's been fishing where there ain't no fish.

Yeah, but a whole lot of sea snails.

What you want to bet that's our toxin?

Yeah, now where the hell is he?

I'll get a warrant for this computer.

Any sign of Walter?

Simon Kraft is dead in the alleyway.

What?!

How?

I think he was run over.

Take a look at this.

DAVID: That's the silver van.

Wait a second -- I know her.

An older couple took her picture down off the Missing Persons board and handed it to Walter.

What if they were shopping for a daughter-in-law?

You know, like at the restaurant with the pictures.

You just point at the one you want.

It's a menu.

They're gonna bury this girl.

NIKKI: We've got exigent circumstances --

I think we can search this computer without a warrant.

Try hitting the nine key nine times in a row.

NIKKI: There she is.

(speaking Mandarin)

DON: FBI! FBI! Freeze!

NIKKI: Put your hands behind your back.

No! Stay away from here!

Stay away!

Let's go! WALTER: You stay away!

You stay away from here! Take it easy.

Just take it easy, it's over.

No, this is a question of honor!

Whose honor? Tell me.

This couple lost their only son.

Give them the comfort of knowing he will not spend eternity alone.

I can't take the sh*t as long as that needle's on her neck.

DON: What about her?

What about her family? They don't matter?

WALTER: Ghost brides are a tradition as old as China, as old as time itself.

We all have our place in this tradition.

This is hers.

Here with him.

We got a tradition, too, and it's saving lives, okay?

I'm going to let you hurt her.

You misunderstand -- this is not a funeral, it is a wedding.

(speaking Mandarin)

Come on, come on. I got ya, I got ya...

You all right, Colb?

Yeah.

What'd you say to him?

Shame on you.

I wonder how many other women the Yoon brothers have buried.

Never found or even missed.

This is for them.

"Lead with your brain, but follow your heart."

It's fitting.

"Your dreams can't come true unless you wake up."

That's rather profound.

An amazing creation, the fortune cookie.

It says in my book, it predates the Han dynasty.

Fortune cookies?

No, minghun, the marriage of the dead.

Well, the Yoons perverted the custom, where the bride and groom are naturally deceased.

Astrologically suitable corpses keep each other company through eternity.

There's a certain poetry in that.

Sounds a little macabre.

No, I see what he means, in an Eastern sort of way.

Two total strangers locked in eternal embrace, joined only by their connection to the stars.

That's it, like my department at CalSci.

All right, so, how do we all ultimately come down on Kraft?

That's a life that ends in a question mark.

Yeah, the question being:

Why does the world require a Simon Kraft?

You know, you look at the news -- you've got Bigfoot or the Loch Ness monster.

Nothing on the great apes or the blue whales, which are real marvels.

Now, remote viewing, psychic warfare -- these weren't some tabloid invention, but the brainchildren of respected physicists at Stanford.

CHARLIE: I will fall on my slide rule if anyone can prove to me that Simon Kraft had extrasensory abilities.

All right:

What inner power led Simon to the k*ller's van precisely at the moment of kidnap?

Oh, you mean the same power that failed to warn him that he was going to be run over by that van?

Help me out here.

You know, I have to say I'm in the undecided column.

I am going to read my book in peace.

And I to my bed.

But I will leave you with this.

When Magellan landed on Tierra del Fuego, this remote island at the bottom of the world, the villagers all gathered to greet him, but mostly they kept staring at the horizon behind him.

Having no concept of a boat larger than a canoe, they somehow didn't even see these five galleons anchored in plain sight.

A flotilla of ships was invisible to their disbelieving eyes.

Yeah, well, you're illustrating my point.

That the ignorant can't see the plain truth right in front of them.

Or maybe an ocean fog concealed those ships.

Yeah, well, I can see the fog has rolled in all right.

Good night, Charles.

Don. Good night, Lawrence.

I gotta go pick up dad at the airport -- you want to come?

Yeah, sure.

You know, Larry looks up at the stars and asks why.

You've been going to temple...

I don't know.

Maybe it's okay living without all the answers.

If I ever get any, I'll let you know.
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