Dragon Day (18 page)

And there's Focus. I almost miss it because it's done in these overlapping typefaces that are different colors and seem to make the word shift and blur. Cute.

I walk in the direction of the sign.

The path takes me past old concrete and brick buildings, some plastered, some raw. All kinds of flyers and posters pasted up on the walls, layers of them, for exhibits, for bands, for film showings. I pass a life-size wooden tank, with faces and gargoyles and I don't know what carved into it, along with the block letters
victory!
in English. A little farther down the path, some giant calligraphy statues that spell out
为什么
? “Why?” A couple of people with scarves wrapped around their faces scurry across the grounds, looking for shelter. The wind isn't getting any better. Dust hits a window with an audible rattle; a tin sign on a wooden stake topples over and scrapes against the pavement.

Finally a grey brick building with the same graphic as the signpost by the gate—
focus
—bolted to the wall next to double metal doors. I do a little recon. One small smoked Plexiglas window to the left of the entrance. I don't see anything useful, just high ceilings and some statue shapes I can barely make out.

Weird. It looks like a gallery. Celine can't really live here, can she?

I don't see a doorbell or anything like that. I jiggle the door handle. Unlocked.

Okay, I think. It's nine fifteen. A little early for a gallery, but not out of the question. Just because it's the middle of a howling dust storm, that doesn't mean there's anything so weird about my being here, right?

Right.

My heart's doing double time as I open the door.

If the gallery's open for business, it doesn't look like it. It's dark, with just some dim yellow light filtering in through the skylights. Enough for me to make out the shapes I glimpsed from outside.

Bodies. Limbs and trunks and heads. I let out a gasp, then tell myself to get a grip. They're too big to be human. They're doll parts. Giant doll parts that look like Chinese Barbies. Like a rubbery pink Barbie torso that towers over me, then another wearing a sailor blouse and a skirt that ends that just above its swollen pink crotch. There's a pair of legs, one bent backward at the knee, like my friends and I used to do when we were kids. Arms, hands with painted red nails. Heads. Blank eyed. Cascades of shiny plastic hair: black, blond, and red.

Why couldn't it have been fluffy kittens and puppies, you know?

I pull the bandanna I'm wearing down around my neck.
“Ni hao,”
I say. My voice cracks a little from all the dust.
“You ren zai zheli?”

Anyone here?

No one answers.

To my left there's an alcove with a desk and a computer, behind it shelves with books and exhibition catalogs. The computer's off. At the back of the gallery, a doorway, a dark rectangle. Blue light flickers from inside—a TV?

I hesitate. Listen. Howling wind, things creaking and thumping, the crackle of grit hitting glass.

None of it's coming from in here. I don't think.

Okay, McEnroe, I tell myself. You have one of two choices: keep looking or turn around and walk away.

I almost leave. It doesn't feel like anyone's here, and the whole thing's off anyway. This can't be where Celine lives. The text messages last night, whoever sent them wanted me to come here. But why?

It's that question, the “why?” that makes me keep walking. Which is pretty stupid. Because one of the answers I come up with would inspire a sane person to get out, right now.

I'll just go look in this next room, I tell myself. That's as far as I'll go. I'll check it out, and then I'll leave.

Sometimes I'm really a dumb shit.

It's a smaller gallery. Dark because there's no skylight. A bedroom, I guess, a girlie, Barbie kind of bedroom: pink and red, anime eyes and hearts on the walls, lit by a huge flat-screen TV playing some Chinese soap with the sound turned off. It smells like somebody took a dump somewhere close by.

Over on the bed, there are more larger-than-life dolls. The first is another Chinese Barbie. She's lying on her back with her legs spread. There are three others, all men. I guess you could call them Ken. Unlike Barbie, they're clothed. Two are Chinese Kens. One's a Westerner. They stand there surrounding the bed, seeming to stare at the doll lying in it.

My eyes move right, past the bed, past the giant stuffed Hello Kitty.

Next to the Hello Kitty, propped up against the wall, at first I think it's another doll.

Celine.

Oh, shit.

Chapter Fourteen

★

I keep it
together. I was a medic, right? So my first reaction isn't to bug out. I hustle over there and kneel awkwardly next to her.

Even in the TV light, I can tell she's dead. Her eyes are open, her mouth slack, her lips cyanotic, and there's a line of dried white foam running down from one corner. No obvious wounds. Is that white powder around her nose? I put two fingers on the side of her neck to check for a pulse, just in case. The skin's cold. As lifeless as the Barbies.

If I were doing this by the book, I'd do a couple other things—get a mirror and make sure there's no breath moving, check the fingers for the degree of rigor, check for blood pooling—but no fucking way that's my job right now.

That's when I do freak. I scramble to my feet, faster than I knew I could, back out of the room, and then haul ass out of the gallery.

“Why do you never do what I tell you to do?” Yeah, he's pissed. What a surprise.

“Not the time, John.”

I'm out of the gallery complex and hustling down the street, back toward the center of town and, I hope, a taxi to get me the fuck away from here.

“Did anyone see you?”

“I don't know. Maybe. But I had a scarf around my face because of the dust.”

“Good for cameras anyway. Cameras don't work well today. Any inside?”

“I didn't notice.”

I hear that sharp exhalation of air that might be a curse.

My steps are slowing down. I think what's the point of running? Running where, back to Beijing?

“Maybe I should just go to the police. I mean, she's been dead . . . I don't know, at least eight, nine hours—it's not like anyone could say that I went there just now and killed her.”

“Not a PSB case anymore.”

“You mean it's
your
case? What happens if your boss finds out you're freelancing? That you're doing this on your own?”

“Nothing for you to worry about.”

Which is bullshit, of course, but I don't have the energy to fight about it.

“You talked to Inspector Zou?”

“Not yet. Today.”

By now my steps have slowed to a halt. The wind's whipping around like crazy; a gust tumbles over a trash can, and there are papers and leaves blowing everywhere.

“What do you want me to do?” I finally ask.

“Just go home. And stay there.”

For once I'm inclined to do what he says.

I have a little bit of luck at least: There's a taxi dropping somebody off at the gallery complex where I got directions this morning. I have him take me to the Liangmaqiao subway stop—I figure I'll get home faster on the subway than I would in a taxi going through rush-hour traffic.

As it is, the subway ride's long enough to give me plenty of time to think. Too much time. I keep seeing Celine's face lit by the flickering TV, her open eyes, her slack mouth. Just what I need, another fucking thing like that in my head.

God, you're an asshole, I tell myself. I mean, she's
dead
and you're not, so suck it up and drive on. And it's not like I really knew her, but she was smart, smarter than I realized, and she cared about things, and now she's paid for it.

Okay, I don't know for sure that someone killed her. If I had to guess, I'd guess an overdose of some kind, and who knows? Those texts last night could actually
have
been from her. She could've gotten really wasted and decided that she had to talk to me right
now
about what she saw at the Caos' party, because, you know, wasted-people logic where it just couldn't wait for the morning. In which case it really sucks that I didn't go out there, because if I had, maybe she wouldn't have died.

Maybe she was into something and did a little too much, and it's just a weird coincidence that she was at a party where a girl died and that she was writing about the lifestyles of the rich and heinous on her blog.

Yeah. Right.

By the time I get off the Number 2 subway line at my Gulou stop, I'm sweating, streaking the dust on my face and leaving blotches of mud on my bandanna when I wipe my forehead. First thing I do when I get home, I say to myself as I ride up the escalator, first thing I do is tell my mom. Maybe not everything, but enough to convince her and Andy to get the fuck out of Dodge for a while. No bullshit story about how I need the apartment private for me and my boyfriend, Creepy John. I have to scare them enough so they get out of the kill zone. I don't know if Andy has a passport or not, but just go to Hong Kong or something—he can go to Hong Kong, right? And Mimi, what do I do with Mimi? Can they take her to Hong Kong?

As for me
. . .
maybe it's time to call the embassy. Not that they can help much if I actually get arrested for something. Or that they'd necessarily even want to. I don't know how much of the trouble I caused over Lao Zhang and the Uighur last year stayed between me and my private-contractor friends at GSC and how much of it turned into official US government trouble.

I guess I could call Carter, my contract-spook frenemy at GSC. GSC gets a lot of outsourced US intelligence work. Or it's an actual CIA front, for all I know. The distinction is pretty fuzzy these days. Maybe Carter could give me some intel.

I doubt he'd actually help me much. Last time I tallied things up, I kind of owed
him
.

I think about what I might be able to trade. He's into horse-trading. It's mostly the only way I can deal with him. I can't count on hitting him in his tiny guilt complex, not again. Not on something like this.

It's your own fucking fault, Doc.
I can hear him saying it already.

Outside, it's brighter than I was expecting. The wind's died down, the dust settling onto the sidewalks. I blink a few times and head south on Jiu Gulou Dajie, toward the
hutong
that leads to my apartment complex.

Okay, think of a good lie to tell Mom. Or an acceptable version of the truth. Maybe,
I've got some Chinese gangsters after me. Because
. . .
No time to explain. Just get out of town.

I've reached the entrance to my alley. There's a new black Audi parked there, pretty much blocking the way. The license plate is white instead of blue, with a big red
V
on it right after the
京
for “Beijing.” Military plates, I think, which means they get to park wherever they like. Half of those plates are counterfeit anyway, and the ones that aren't, you always see them on Audis and Beemers and even Porsches. Way to “Serve the People,” asshole.

That's when I stop in my tracks. New Audi. Military plates. Blocking the entrance to my
hutong
.

I turn on my heel and head back up the street, fast as I can without actually running. Maybe they didn't see me.

I hear the click of a car door, footsteps hitting the ground, and now I am running, which is crazy, because I can't run fast. And whoever these guys are, now there's one on either side of me, and they're jamming hands under my armpits and grabbing my arms, and one of them says,
“Bie zhaoji.”
Don't be nervous.

Right.

“Let go of me!
Fang wo zou!
”

“Don't cause trouble. Just come with us,” the one on my left says.

“Hey!” I yell. “I don't know these men! Somebody call the police!”

I say this, and there's an old, shoulder-hunched auntie staring at us, granite faced. A couple of college kids, who get out their cell phones and start recording. A street sweeper in a Day-Glo vest freezes, broom and dustpan in hand.

The guy on my right punches me in the face.

Nobody does anything as the men drag me back toward the Audi.

Chapter Fifteen

★

Two guys in
front, one guy in back, next to me. I blink, trying to clear the fuzz from my eyes.

They might be driving an Audi with military plates, but none of the three guys is wearing any kind of uniform. Just slacks and sport coats or bomber jackets. They're all young, though, with buzzed hair and military vibes.

The guy next to me opens up my little canvas bag, gets out my iPhone, and powers it off.

I probe the area around my right cheek and eye and temple with my fingertips, wincing.

“Sorry,” the guy on my right says. “You should have done what we said.”

“Who are you?” I manage, my voice shaking.

He doesn't answer.

My ears are still ringing, but my head's cleared some. Enough for me to panic. They could be taking me someplace to kill me, for all I know.

You can't lose it, I tell myself. If you're going to get out of this, you have to keep it together.

My heart's pounding in my throat. I think, I'm sitting by the rear door—do I open it? Take my chances? I look out the window, try to get my bearings. We're on the Second Ring Road. It's a freeway, sort of, but the traffic's so bad a lot of the time, that if it slows enough
. . .

The rear door has to be locked. They wouldn't have missed something like that. I haven't ridden around in Audis much. If I pull the handle, will it unlock? Or does it have some kind of child safety lock on it?

I take a quick glance at the guy to my left. He's staring at me. He's lean and cut and looks like he moves fast. I know he hits hard. I'm pretty sure he's not going to give me a chance to try to find out.

These aren't Pompadour Bureaucrat's people, I don't think. His crew flashed IDs the two times they picked me up. And the plainclothes team didn't have nearly this nice a car.

So someone else. A Cao? Uncle Yang?

Military plates, I'm guessing Uncle Yang.

I am in some serious, big-time shit.

We drive north on the Jingzang Expressway, then west on the Fifth Ring Road. I tell myself they aren't taking me somewhere to kill me. Using an official car to kidnap me in broad daylight, on one of Beijing's more heavily touristed streets? It doesn't seem smart.

On the other hand, guys this high up can get away with all kinds of dumb.

Assuming it's Uncle Yang I'm dealing with.

We keep going west, past the Summer Palace, past temples and golf courses, heading toward the Fragrant Hills. The Fragrant Hills has some of the prettiest scenery in Beijing, people tell me. All the time I've lived here, I've never been. Until now. And this isn't looking like a sightseeing opportunity.

We're off the highway now, going into the hills. There are trees everywhere, pine trees and cypress trees, other kinds I don't know what they're called. It doesn't even look like Beijing, except for the yellow dust that's still hanging in the air.

The road winds around, and I glimpse walls and gates, the top of a pagoda. The park, I guess. We keep going and finally turn off onto a smaller road that heads up into the low hills. More gates and walls. Hotels? Villas?

We turn up a drive, iron gate sliding open as we approach.

It's a two-story building, stone, with these sorts of round towers at the four corners, topped by round red roofs, the bastard child of a Chinese manor and a French château. The driver parks the car, and the guy in the passenger seat gets out and opens the rear door.

“Zou, zou,”
the guy next to me says.
“Xia che.”

Out of the car.

I get out, clutching the doorframe for support, bad leg cramping, stomach churning, shaky as hell. Suck it up, I tell myself. Try to walk like you aren't so scared you're gonna puke.

Or go ahead and puke on the asshole who punched me. Serve him right.

Uncle Yang waits for me in his office.

He's sitting behind a big, modern desk with a new computer on it, examining, or pretending to, some official-looking papers. He barely looks up when I enter. Just puts the papers back into a file folder that he lays on his desk.

“You can go,” he says to the guy who escorted me here. “Sit,” he says to me.

The guy goes. I sit.

Uncle Yang makes a further show of tapping a few keys on his computer keyboard and staring intently at the screen.

Finally he turns to me. “Who is Zhou Zheng'an?”

My mouth is dry. I swallow once. “He's
. . .
a friend of mine. A consultant.”

“What does he really do?”

I take a moment to think. If I tell him who John really works for, will that protect me?

Or will it just screw John?

I stare at Uncle Yang, with his sad, baggy eyes and sharp suit and absolutely no sign of sympathy or warmth whatsoever.

“You have his card,” I say. “Why don't you ask him?”

Uncle Yang stares back. Drums his fingers on the top of the desk, just a single riff.

“He said some very strange things at dinner. Why?”

“I don't know,” I say, which is kind of the truth. “I think he was just making conversation. He's very concerned about conditions in modern society.” Yeah, I say that. It's a phrase in Chinese that I can always remember.

“Really.” His voice is flat. It's not a question.

“Look,” I say, “he's
. . .
my boyfriend. Just recently. So I don't know everything about him. I just, I didn't want to go to the dinner by myself.”

“He upset my sister's daughter,” Yang snaps. “Dao Ming is not well. I don't like seeing her upset.”

“I'm sorry to hear that.”

His cheeks redden; I see sweat start to bead on his forehead. “This is a very complicated time. Do you have any understanding of this?”

The 18th Party Congress next year, maybe that's what he's talking about, when the old leadership gives way to the new. Different factions and players jockeying for power now. Whatever his side is, getting connected to two dead girls isn't going to help his position any, or his allies'.

But if I bring it up, will that get him all defensive? Piss him off even more?

So I just nod, slowly.

He stares at me. And in case I'd somehow managed to forget that this is one powerful asshole who could smash me like a little bug, the look he's giving me now reminds me.

“Tell your ‘boyfriend'”—yeah, he practically puts that in air quotes—“to contact me directly. I don't want to have another conversation with a foreigner.”

I nod again.

He picks up the folder on his desk, makes a show of opening it, picks up a paper and pretends to study it. Does this mean I'm dismissed?

He lowers the paper. Gives me that look. “But if I have to talk to you again, I will. I suggest you make sure that he contacts me. Do you understand?”

I nod. What else can I do?

He picks up the paper again. “Go,” he says to me with a wave of his hand.

I push myself up from the chair and hobble out.

The guys who brought me here are lounging in the living room, which is big and white and marble, with gold highlights. Typical. There's even a white grand piano. I wonder if anyone who lives here actually plays it.

My kidnappers sit on the couch, eating sunflower seeds and drinking Cokes, watching an NBA game on a big flat-screen TV, fist-pumping as a shot hits the basket.

I'm thinking maybe I'll just walk out of the house and down the drive and get to the road and just keep on walking till I find a cab or a bus that can get me back to Gulou.

Then the guy who punched me stands up.

“I need to return home now,” I say.

He nods.

They don't even take me all the way home. Instead they drop me at the subway station by the Old Summer Palace.

Assholes.

I get on the subway. I'm drenched with sweat—the back of my shirt is soaked with it—and I'm shaky enough that I just lean against the wall and clutch the rail to keep from falling over.

I walked out of Uncle Yang's McMansion
this
time, but the next time maybe not.

Phone. I pat the side of my bag. It's still there. I reach in and get it out.

Powered up now.

I saw them turn it off.

I stare at the screen. Yeah, I have a password. Yeah, the lock screen is on. But I have to figure they got all the information off it, or tried to anyway, and for all I know, they could have hacked it, too. I mean, I wasn't there very long, but who knows with this stuff? Maybe it's as simple as installing an app.

I power off the phone.

I find a bit of space by the accordion wall that connects two cars, watch the ads and animated safety messages on the little video screen: Don't walk on the tracks. Don't set yourself on fire. Right—and I try to think it through.

This is a very complicated time.

Uncle Yang is a high-level official jockeying for power in the middle of a leadership transition. And knowing how these guys play, no doubt he has some powerful enemies.

Uncle Yang was at a party where a girl died. And John essentially called him and all the Caos out on it.

Clearly John's not on his side.

Then there's Marsh. The family friend. Is he working for somebody else? Maybe one of Uncle Yang's enemies? Yang's and Sidney's families are connected. What hurts one hurts the other. Is that why Sidney wanted me to check up on Marsh? Or was that just because he's an asshole who's a bad influence on his son, like Sidney told me?

Who is Zhou Zheng'an?

Good question.

When I get home, Mimi greets me at the door, dancing around me and making happy little yelps. Mom and John are sitting at the table sipping tea.

“Oh, hi, hon,” my mom says.

“I thought you were going to stay away from the apartment today,” I say, and I know I don't sound calm.

“Well, sorry,” she says with an eye roll. “Actually, I was at Andy's, and John came and knocked on the door.”

“Yes.” John half stands, then sits back down. “Yili, did you have some trouble getting home?” He's smiling, but there's that nervous twist in his voice that he can't quite cover.

“Yeah.” I go into the kitchen and grab a beer. “I was delayed.”

“John thought the two of you were having lunch, so he was worried when you weren't here.” My mom's looking me over, giving an extra glance to the beer in my hand.

“Beer, it's not just for breakfast anymore,” I say. I sit down at the table, pop open the bottle, and pour myself a glass. Mimi sits at my side and rests her head on my thigh.

My mom leans in closer. “What happened to your eye?”

“I ran into something.”

“John and I were just talking about restaurant locations,” she says, trying to make nice or, more accurately, make normal.

“Yes.” John nods. He turns to Mom. “I think
. . .
Dongsi Shitiao very nice area. But not so many people walking by. Not like Sanlitun. Maybe that is better?”

“I'm not so crazy about Sanlitun,” Mom says with a frown. “I think someplace that's a little quieter might be nicer.”

I chug about half my beer, wishing it were stronger.

“Yili, are you ready to go to lunch now?” John asks.

I shake my head.

“Is something wrong?” my mom asks. The way she's looking at me, she
knows
something's wrong.

I laugh. “Yeah. You might say that.”

I catch John's eye, and he's giving me a warning look. The one that means,
Don't say anything.

I glare back. He doesn't get to have an opinion this time.

I face my mom. “Okay. I can't really explain the whole situation right now. It's complicated. And it's bad. So I'm just gonna tell you a bullshit story about . . . I don't know, Chinese gangsters in the art market, and we're having a business disagreement, so this isn't a good place to be right now.”

“Yili—” John starts.

I hold up a hand. “Don't.” I turn back to my mom. “Can you and Andy go someplace for a week? Like Hong Kong? Maybe take Mimi with you? She's got her papers. Right, John?”

John gets that scrunched-up look for a second, then nods. “Yes. I can help arrange.”

Through all this my mom's watching me with her mouth slightly open and a confused expression on her face.

“Are you talking about actual Chinese gangsters?” she asks.

“I'll explain it all better later, I promise.” I slug down some more beer. I'm thinking it's Percocet time.