Hot Poppies (33 page)

“I have something for you.” Tolya patted his pocket.

“Thanks. How's tricks, Tol?”

“Not so good. I worked on this thing, Artyom, since I saw you. I thought to myself I would give it one more try. But Lily's child has been assigned to another family. At least she will know. At least she will have the certainty. I'm so sorry.”

“Thank you.”

“You are welcome.” He slipped the gun into my pocket. The racing hadn't begun, but the noise in the room grew as more people arrived. Waiters served hors d'oeuvres from large silver trays. Dawn took my hand and we found our way to an open balcony where we could look down at the track and the crowd in the stands. Unstable, Helen Wong had said.

“Do you think Pete is down there?” Dawn looked into the sea of faces. “I asked Alice to invite him.” She was playing games with Pete, too, I thought. Sipping Champagne, she scanned the crowd. “I feel he's here, Artie.”

I followed her gaze. “Why did you ask Alice to invite him?” I asked, but all she said was, “Well, let him come or not. What time is it?”

“Six-thirty.”

“I have to go soon.”

“I'll come with you. Whatever you have to do, I'll do it with you. You asked me to come here, Dawn. Stop jerking me around. OK?”

She finished her Champagne. Then she looked at me, tossed her hair back, hesitated. “OK,” she said finally. “OK. If I decide to let you come, it will be on my terms. I'll tell you how and where we do this. Did you pick a horse, Artie? Pick a horse. For luck.”

We went back to the party. Dawn drank another glass of Champagne and looked at the crowd with wistful longing. “I used to love all this so much.” She put her hand on mine. “If you want to come, come. But don't fuck around. You do what I say. I'll give you some instructions and you can meet me. You can't bring a gun, either. They'll stop you if you do.”

“Fine.”

“Do you have a visa?”

“Yes. Where am I going?”

“You make like a tourist, Artie. Or a bozo business guy. There's a regular train from Kowloon Station. It's safest. Get a train. Get out at the last stop. I'll write everything down.”

“What about you?”

“I need my car. I'll meet you. As soon as it's dark. Look, if something goes wrong, you'll bring the car back? Promise me. Just say yes. If they bother you at the border, make like a dumb American.”

“What's this about?”

“It's about a thing I have to do.”

Dawn glanced across the room to where Tolya stood. “And tell him to keep away. You pushed me, Artie. That's why I'm doing this, you understand? I'm doing this so you'll know exactly who I am.”

At first, I had no intention of following her instructions. I had no intention of letting Dawn out of my sight. She was playing games. Then I saw that I had to gamble. If I didn't play the game her way, three hours from now, we'd still be in this room full of laughing people drinking pink Champagne. Without some kind of proof, how could I pin anything on Dawn?

“Where the fuck are we going, Dawn?”

“We're going to Shenzhen.”

“You knew about the Eiffel Tower, didn't you?”

“Yes. I lied.” Dawn looked grim. “I couldn't afford to have you messing around over there by yourself.”

32

“Please mind the gaps in the platform. Please alight on the right.” An English voice that could crack glass played through the loudspeaker on the commuter train from Kowloon to Wo Lu. On the train, workers hugged duffel bags, suitcases and babies. Others crammed into seats, folded up Chinese-style and went to sleep in tiny places. We passed Tai Po where I'd been with Helen Wong the night she died there. Was I a fool? If I had insisted on staying with Dawn, she would have refused to budge. This way, if I got her, I'd have something else on her. Or I'd be spending a lot more time in China than I planned.

Periodically, as the electric train buzzed slowly away from Kowloon toward the Chinese border, this voice delivered instructions. “Please mind the gaps when alighting.”

I had left the racecourse, stopped at the hotel to change my air ticket home and to call Lily. I left her a message on her machine in New York to say that I loved her and I'd be back soon.

“Please mind the gaps.” We stopped at Wo Lu. I got off the train. The trip had taken twenty-nine minutes. I was on the Chinese border.

In seconds, I was into the station. Dawn had fixed our meeting for ten. It was 8.45. I was in good shape.

“Take a taxi when you come out of the station,” Dawn had said. “Walk across the square to the Shangri La Hotel and get an English-speaking driver.”

Jogging through the station, I turned a corner and hit a wall of bodies.

It was human gridlock, a tidal wave of bodies jammed together. There was a covered bridge that formed the actual border. I looked ahead of me. All I had to do was get over the bridge.

Pushing against the human wall, I got onto the bridge and shoved my way to the railings at the side. Below the railing, crap floated in the stream. Cola cans, human waste, dead dogs and cats, all of them drifted in the water. On a wall at the far end of the bridge, looking over the sewer of a stream, was Jack Nicklaus. “Jack Nicklaus Golf Course, Mission Hills, China”, the poster said, and Jack beamed at us and at the crappy stream.

Around me, people shoved at each other with chickens, bicycles, strollers and toilets. A few yards away, another American waved. He wore a yellow button-down shirt. He frowned and held his hands up in despair.

“What's going on?”

“Factory workers. Going home. Use your elbows. Good luck,” he yelled as he was carried away in the crowd. I saw his arms flail over his head, a camera in one hand, before he disappeared, like a man caught in a tide pool.

“Fuck off,” I screamed at a boy who banged into me with a bike he carried over his head.

“Fuck you,” he answered, the international English that worked a lot better than Esperanto. Then, like a dam breaking, the crowd broke. Ten thousand people ran. I ran.

It was completely dark when I came out of the station. A little boy grabbed onto my sleeve, chattering at me, begging. He was barefoot and carried a naked baby. I tossed them some coins and started for the Shangri La, but a taxi pulled up in front of me and I dove into it and gave the driver Dawn's piece of paper. He looked at the address and took off. I was in Shenzhen. A million people and pollution so thick you could see it. It was a gruesome, unreal city; I was heading for an unreal encounter, and I wondered if Dawn would be there at all or if I had let her get away.

Ten minutes later, I saw the Eiffel Tower.

A three-storey-high billboard floated out of the dark. “Window of Wonders,” it read. “Theme Park. Seventy great buildings, the Eiffel Tower, the Statue of Liberty, all in exact replica.” The Eiffel Tower, like Pansy Loh said it would be, was in China, after all.

The taxi turned into a side street, then the driver put his foot on the brake, scratched his head, looked around and reread Dawn's instructions. Slowly, he lit a cigarette and peered out of the window. It was getting late.

“Go,” I yelled. “Go.” He didn't understand.

Leaning over him, I scanned the horizon for landmarks.

“A large building,” Dawn had said. “A large building at the end of a narrow road. Two blocks past Kentucky Fried Chicken.”

“There. It's there.” I pounded the taxi driver on the shoulder, pointing, yelling. He moved off, stopped again. I threw money at him and fell out of the cab.

Dawn Tae had been my friend. Whatever she was doing, whoever she was, it wasn't my business. When I tried to breathe, I choked. I thought about Rose and Babe Vanelli and Helen Wong. If this was the bank, if this was where money from the trade in illegals was laundered, I needed the proof. If it was something else—and I already figured there was something much worse than dirty money waiting for me behind those walls—I had to know. I put my hand on the gun and opened the gate.

“You're late.”

Dawn was waiting for me on the other side of the wall. She wore jeans and a man's shirt. The sunglasses were pushed on top of her head and her hair was braided. She looked tense but calm. There was no sign of drugs.

“Come on.” We were in a courtyard. The three-storey building that surrounded it on three sides was a patchwork of concrete blocks, cheap masonry and aluminum siding. A piece of lawn looked ragged and yellow in the light from a lamp stuck over the main door of the building. Some of the windows were half shuttered. A few had air conditioners in them. Laundry hung heavy and limp from others. There was no breeze. Close to the door was a brown Volvo station wagon.

“Wait,” Dawn said.

A security guard emerged and greeted her warmly. She gave him some money and he disappeared swiftly through the gate. Clearly, Dawn was in control here. This was her turf.

“You seem right at home here.”

“Sure, Artie. They all know me here.”

Dawn reached for the door. “What did you think, darling? That I was the bad guy?”

“What is this place, Dawn? What are we doing here?” She pulled the door open, but I grabbed her hand. “No more games.”

One more time, she glanced over her shoulder towards the courtyard. “It's not a game. And you can put the gun away for now, if you wouldn't mind.”

“Then what the fuck are we doing here?”

Dawn started through the door. “We're going to steal a baby.”

33

Even in the hallway where an old woman sat, a sentry on a stool, I could hear the sound of babies crying. The veins on the woman's legs were thick, raised and purple, but when she saw Dawn she made to get up. Dawn patted her shoulder, gave her some money and smiled.

“She's the matron,” Dawn said. “She's a Christian. She likes to think she helps me for love, not just for money. I encourage her.”

There was a flight of stairs and I followed Dawn up it. She opened a door and shone the flashlight she had in her bag on the floor. Squinting, I could see a few cots and on them, fast asleep, girls of seventeen or eighteen. One of them snored lightly. Another muttered in her sleep. Dawn closed the door and we moved on, climbing another flight of stairs. “I'm sorry. It was the wrong room.”

“Who were they?”

“Some young women who help out here.”

Pansy, I thought. Pansy had been one of them.

“Illegals?”

“Yes.”

We climbed another flight. The sound of crying grew louder and more insistent. Dawn opened a door. A blast of air conditioning hit us and a young woman greeted us, then hurriedly picked up a milk bottle and resumed feeding a baby in a crib. She murmured something to Dawn. From the other cribs in the room, more babies yowled.

“What's she saying?”

“She says the geese are always hungry. The fat babies. Remember? I told you. They fatten up the babies before adoption. They feed them around the clock.”

The room was large and freshly painted. The air conditioner rattled in the window and toys that dangled over the babies' cribs danced in the breeze. There were six babies all in cribs of their own, all of them fat, all with skin like silk. The helpers, three of them now, ran from crib to crib to feed the bawling infants, feeding them and making soothing noises.

“Fat babies!” Lily's Mrs Ling had said. Lily's baby had been fat like a little sumo wrestler. I was beginning to understand.

Outside, rain splattered the windows, clattered on a tin roof. The sound of an engine came from the courtyard. I gestured to Dawn, to the stairs. “Come on,” I said, silently, mouthing the words.

“We'll be all right for a few minutes. I paid him off. You saw the station wagon?”

“Yes.”

“It's mine. It's registered in my name. And yours. I fixed some spare papers before I left.”

“Spare papers?”

“It doesn't matter. I couldn't tell you before. I couldn't risk it. I'm sorry.” Dawn was self-possessed and brisk now. “Everything's in order. In the glove compartment, there are the names of a couple of border guards. Decent guys. There's a can of extra gas in the back in case you get stuck on this side. But you won't get stuck. Go back to Hong Kong. Go straight to Alice Wing. Do you understand?”

I waited.

“In case I don't make it back, I need you to know something. I'm not the bad guy, Artie. I have to tell you. The drugs make me weird sometimes. I'm trying to stop. Sometimes I have to put people off the track, OK? I'm sorry if I hurt you, but I'm still me. More than for a long time, in fact.” Dawn hugged me and started downstairs.

In the back of the building was an annex. I had to duck to get inside. The ceilings were low, there was no air conditioning. The place stank, the air was hot and dead. Rain clattered on the windows. Clink clink clink. The floors, the walls, the ceilings leaked humidity like an abscess leaks pus.

Dawn turned the flashlight on. The floor was raw concrete. There were cribs, seven of them jammed into the space, but they had no sheets, no mattresses. The stink that came from them almost made me gag.

In one of the cribs, two babies were wedged together so that they could barely move. Bottles of milk stood on the ground out of reach. There was no way the babies could get to the milk or feed themselves.

Against a wall was an iron cot with a baby on it. “Girl or boy?” I said.

“Don't you get it?” Dawn whispered. “They're all girls here.” She shone the light on the infant, who looked about four months old. “She's two,” Dawn said.