We made a deal, you and I, and rest assured, Detective, I will tell you everything I know. But no matter how many times you rephrase the question, my answer is never going to change. I have no idea where she is. Her WhatsApp and email accounts have gone dark. Her phone number’s been disconnected. And like I’ve already said, you can forget about social media—she guarded her privacy like the Sphinx. I imagine she’s landed in one of those countries that doesn’t extradite to the US—Morocco, or Indonesia, or Qatar. Isn’t that what you’d do in her place?
Winnie didn’t have many friends, here or back home in China. She had plenty of business associates and a few former lovers, and, of course, she had Mak Yiu Fai—Boss Mak—who had belonged to all three of those categories at various points in time. As you no doubt know, Boss Mak owns one of the most highly regarded handbag manufacturing operations in all of Guangdong. His factories’ quality workmanship has earned him contracts with all the big designer brands that go to extreme lengths to hide the fact they manufacture in China: your Pradas and Guccis and Louis Vuittons. (An increasingly meaningless deception, by the way—there are as many sweatshops in Italy as there are state-of-the-art facilities in China.)
Winnie told me that she’d met Boss Mak in Shenzhen, completely by chance, when she was vacationing with her cousin and a few of her cousin’s friends. This was three years ago, right after the 2016 election, which pushed her to contemplate moving back to China. By then she’d married, earned her green card, and divorced, and said that if she was going to live under an autocrat, it might as well be her own.
After a long day of shopping, Winnie and the group splurged on a meal at a restaurant in one of the big international hotels. That’s when Boss Mak walked in alone. Tall and trim, with a full head of silver hair and a well-groomed mustache, clad in a slim-cut linen suit, he struck Winnie as the height of sophistication. He was sixty-seven—the same age as my mother, two years older than hers.
The hostess seated Boss Mak at the neighboring table, and he didn’t balk, even though it was clear that the women were in a rowdy, celebratory mood. They’d spread out their purchases among the used plates: Louis Vuitton Neverfulls and Goyard PMs and Chanel flap bags—all fake, of course. That had been the whole purpose of the getaway. Winnie was the only one who hadn’t bought anything. In fact, she told me she’d come along simply to escape her parents’ claustrophobic apartment.
She happened to be seated nearest to Boss Mak, close enough to observe his skillful wielding of knife and fork as he cut his pork chop, the genteel way he chewed with his mouth closed between sips of Japanese whiskey.
When Boss Mak noticed her watching him, he asked what she’d scored at the shops that day.
Nothing, she said. She held up the tote she always carried, made from sturdy black nylon, purchased on sale at Macy’s, and added, A bag is a bag is a bag.
That’s the thing about Winnie: she didn’t buy into the hype. She couldn’t care less about fashion and status. When she got into the counterfeits game, she carried those absurdly expensive purses and donned those flashy jewels the way a flight attendant dutifully pulls on flesh-toned stockings. It was simply part of the uniform, and she’d do anything to maximize profits. This singular focus and pragmatism is what made her so successful.
That evening at the restaurant, Boss Mak picked up the tab for Winnie’s whole table. One of the women announced they were going to a nearby KTV lounge and invited him along. He declined, and Winnie did, too, and the cousin and her friends, all of them married or at least engaged, traded knowing smiles and set off without them. Boss Mak and Winnie retired to the hotel bar and then to his suite.
Three days later, when she was back in Xiamen, a courier arrived at her parents’ apartment with a stiff orange shopping bag, large enough to hide a puppy. Inside was a one-to-one replica Birkin 25 in cherry-blossom pink, along with a handwritten card:
A bag is a bag is a bag, but only a Birkin is a Birkin.
(Don’t worry, this is a replica. I’m not that senseless.)
The note was clever, but the gift, in its excessive femininity and sheer frivolousness, made Winnie recoil. Later, she would tell me that trip to Shenzhen had given her a window into her future back home, and she’d abhorred what she’d seen. When I pushed her to elaborate, she explained that she had nothing in common with her cousin and those women. Oh, they were perfectly pleasant, but all they really cared about was making enough money to buy designer clothes and eventually send their kids to top universities. And the men were even worse.
But you and Boss Mak had a real connection, I said.
Precisely! she replied. That’s all I had to look forward to—becoming the mistress of an old married man. Plus, I could tell right away he was a drunk.
(Over the course of their night together, he’d methodically emptied the minibar.)
Setting aside the fake Birkin, Winnie made up her mind right then and there to remain in the US. She bought a one-way ticket to LAX, determined to build a new life far away from Charlottesville, Virginia, and her ex-husband Bertrand Lewis. (Yes, the very same man who’d been married to her late aunt, but that’s a whole other story, Detective. I’ll get to that.)
Winnie knew she’d have to be careful with money in an expensive city like L.A. She moved into a studio apartment in a weathered building filled with college kids and bought a used Kia Sportage that rattled like a tin can on the freeway. Armed with a falsified résumé claiming she’d graduated from Stanford in 2004, along with the rest of us, she assumed finding an entry-level job in marketing or communications or sales would be straightforward. She sent her résumé to twenty-two companies and didn’t land a single interview, so she widened her net, applying for Chinese-language teaching positions. She even attempted to get hired as a nanny after a Shanghainese girl pushing a double stroller revealed how much she was paid. When nothing panned out, Winnie started to panic.
One day, several months after her arrival, she happened to drive by a pawnshop, incongruously located a few blocks from Rodeo Drive. beverly loan company read the sign above the dark-green awning, as intimidatingly elegant as that of any designer boutique. Her gaze fell on Boss Mak’s rose-sakura replica Birkin in the passenger seat. Even without the original box and dust bag, she left with a check that would easily cover that month’s rent, and, more importantly, the seeds of a new venture. Back at her apartment, she called Boss Mak for advice. He loved the idea so much he offered to cover her start-up costs. That’s how he became the first investor in her business.
The very next day, an exclusive Chinese immersion school in Culver City called to offer her a job as a kindergarten teacher. Figuring she should hedge her bets, Winnie accepted at once.