Ghost Month (30 page)

I wanted to kill this man for saying that to Julia. I could have grabbed a knife from the kitchen and torn into him like a pepperoni pizza. But I shouldn’t be mad at the guy for telling the truth. He had summed up my situation better than I had, and had given his daughter good advice.

“So she took the CIA job,” I heard myself say.

A vein in his right temple throbbed. “Don’t say that!” he growled, pointing to his ear and then out the window. I understood what he meant.
This apartment is bugged
.

I nodded to him and patted the box. “What’s in here?”

“Some of her papers that she gave to me. After you came here the first time, some people came over, looking to confiscate her personal effects. They only let us keep a few photos. That was when my wife learned about Julia’s job.” He sighed and adjusted his seat. “I don’t know why I did it, but I hid these papers in this chair quite
a while ago. I had thought about burning them, but now I know you should have them.”

“Did a big Taiwanese-American come here?”

Mr. Huang’s eyebrows shot up. “Yes! He seemed to be in charge, but he wouldn’t give his name. He told us that they were going to seek justice for our daughter. But he warned us not to ask questions about what had happened.”

“I think that’s the guy who had someone beat me up.”

Mr. Huang looked into my eyes. “He didn’t say anything about that. He said he would just talk to you.”

“About what?”

“About forgetting Julia.”

I coughed. “Mr. Huang, I know about your deal with the Lee family. How they bought you out of the night market.”

He sucked in his lips. “Well, so what?” he asked. “I can’t sell my business when I want to? I can do whatever I want, all right?” Originally, I’d had the info ready to use as a final bullet if he wouldn’t talk, but he’d turned out to be helpful. I held up a hand to check his defense. “They’re offering me a sweetheart deal, Mr. Huang,” I said. “They’re going to raze the rest of the market and give me a prime stall in the new indoor space. What do you think I should do?”

“You should do it,” he said, not hesitating for a second. “You’ll be helping yourself. If you don’t, you won’t be helping anybody at all.” He made a lot of sense.

Mr. Huang then cleared his throat. “Get the hell out of here!” he yelled. “I never want to see you again, you ugly son-of-a-bitch!” He winked at me and slapped my shoulder. I got up with the box under my arm and hustled to the front door. Mr. Huang cut across the floor and swung it open. I stepped out into the hallway. Mr. Huang slammed the door shut before I could raise my hand in thanks.

I rode down to the lobby and looked for a side or back door. I didn’t want to be caught with the box Mr. Huang had given me. I found a workshop room that led to a back exit. I had to tiptoe past the maintenance man, who was asleep on a cot.

W
HEN
I
WAS ON
the sidewalk, I turned on my phone to see if there was an update from Nancy.

Ming-kuo had sent two emails only an hour apart and a followup voicemail that seemed to have been left in one breath.

“Hey, Jing-nan, I don’t know if you saw my emails, but I wanted to see if you were free for a meal sometime during the week or weekend. I don’t know what days are better for you. Every day is pretty much the same for me. I work at night like you do and I just want to be with old friends to break it up a little. I know you’re busy, so if you can’t get back to me, I’ll try to catch you again. Talk to you soon!”

Even as I held the phone in my hand, it rang. Give it a fucking rest, Ming-kuo! There was no way in hell I was going to take this call.

I started banging out an email response: Sorry I’ve been missing your calls, Ming-kuo. I seem to have caught a little bit of a cold, and it’s really hard for me to actually speak. I’ll drop you a line when I’m feeling better. See you soon!

I shuddered as I read over the email. Talk about a stock kiss-off message. If he had any social awareness, he’d never try to call me again.

Wait. Did I really want to send him this message? Was it really so horrible for me to hang out with him? Here he was, trying to reach out to me as a colleague with a common history. Or as a boogeyman from my past who was relentlessly pursuing me.

The truth was, he and I both lacked real friendships.

Then again, who in Taipei had time for friends? Who didn’t have an interminable workday? Who ever got enough sleep?

Not me, not Nancy, not Peggy and probably not Cookie Monster.

I sent the email and didn’t think too much about it after.

CHAPTER FIFTEEN

I met Nancy in the lobby of her apartment building two hours later. She had already changed into her latest indie outfit—cut-off stovepipe denims and a new T-shirt that sported a graphic of Ian Curtis’s left eye blown up to cover her entire chest.

I saw one of the doormen cringe as her cheap wooden sandals clacked against the tiled areas of the floor.

“What’s in the box?” she asked as we waited for the elevator.

“Let’s talk when we get into your apartment,” I said. I must have looked scared, because she didn’t say anything else.

When we were in her place, I waited until the door was closed, locked and chained behind us before talking.

“Nancy, when I saw Mr. Huang, he turned up the TV volume and said he wasn’t supposed to have this box.”

“What’s in it?”

“I don’t know, exactly, but it’s Julia’s stuff. I haven’t opened it yet.”

“Why did he turn up the TV volume?”

“Julia was working for …” I thought about how cautious Mr. Huang had been and also spelled out “C-I-A” on my palm. Nancy gasped. “People are monitoring them.”

“That means they’re monitoring you, too,” she said. “And also me.”

I patted her arm. “You’ve got doormen downstairs to protect you.”

“We’re not really going to be safe until we know what’s in there.” She tapped the box, which was wound shut with duct tape, forming crosses on the top and bottom panels.

“Can you get me something to cut this with?”

“What if there’s a head in there?” she asked.

“Look at the shape, Nancy. Only SpongeBob SquarePants’s head could fit in here.”

Nancy went to the kitchen and brought back a steak knife.

“Everything seemed to go smoothly with Mrs. Huang, right?” I asked as I hacked away at the tape.

“It was so easy to make her come with me. I told her I had a message for her from Julia and that she had to come to the temple to hear it. She couldn’t put her shoes on fast enough. Mr. Huang looked pretty skeptical, but he didn’t dare say a word to stop her. The only thing that held us up was the elevator.”

“That elevator sucks,” I said. She nodded. The duct tape was strong as hell and as fibrous as an unripe mango. “I saw you guys get in the cab.”

Nancy sat down and grabbed hold of herself. “Mrs. Huang covered her face and cried in her hands the entire time. I felt really guilty, like I was tricking a little kid.” Nancy wrinkled her nose. “Also, I realized that it was pretty racist for me to be wearing a Paiwan outfit. I wanted to tell her it was all just a trick to get her away from the apartment.”

I managed to cut through one of the duct-tape bands on the top. “You didn’t tell her anything, did you?”

“No, of course not. I was resolute about carrying out the mission. Anyway, when we entered Guandu Temple, something weird happened.” She rubbed her hands and arms as if spreading lotion.

I put the knife down. “What happened?” I asked. “Did Mrs. Huang start freaking out?”

“Not yet,” Nancy said. She was now rubbing her knees. “I felt something walk right through me. From my back to my front. It felt like a cool breeze, only it went through my body, not just over my skin. It was definitely a spirit.”

“There’s no such thing as ghosts.” I put a hand on her back. “You were just nervous.”

She sat down and turned away. “It was definitely something. It is Ghost Month, right?”

I went back to the box. “Nancy, Santa Claus isn’t real, either. It’s just stuff for a holiday.” I severed the other end of the tape band. Now I just had to slit the tape along the flap edge.

“
I
don’t believe in ghosts, Jing-nan. Honestly. But it was really something. Anyway, Mrs. Huang was walking in front of me and all of a sudden she froze, as if that thing had just walked through her, too. She began to shake, and then she screamed that Julia was there.”

I put the knife down again. “Are you serious, Nancy?”

She nodded hard. “Mrs. Huang knocked over a table of incense burners—on purpose, I think,” Nancy continued. “Then she started pushing people, saying that the Americans killed her daughter.”

“That must have really freaked out all the worshippers,” I said. Temples were noisy with cell-phone ringtones and yelled prayers for help, but nobody touched anybody else. “What did Mrs. Huang do when you told her your fake story?”

“I never got to tell her, because they took Mrs. Huang away.”

“Who took her away?”

“Policemen. There were signs up that undercover cops were around because people have been breaking into the money boxes. I thought the signs were just for show. She was acting so crazy, it took two men to grab her and carry her away.”

I almost wished I could have seen it. The only time I had seen Mrs. Huang flip out was when someone stole some fruit from her stand. The thief wasn’t a big guy, but he probably weighed twice as much as her. She followed him as he tried to scamper away, but the market was too crowded for him to bolt. Mrs. Huang screamed and slapped him repeatedly until he dropped everything he had stolen that night from all the stands.

How could such a plucky person also have a vulnerable side?

Poor Mrs. Huang. I felt a little bad that we had tricked her, but I had no idea that she would be so susceptible to a plan that hinged on a costume. Then I thought about how mean Mrs. Huang had been to me the last time, and I felt less bad.

“I hope they didn’t do anything to her,” I said, renewing my fight against the box.

“I didn’t stick around,” said Nancy. “I just took the MRT home after that.”

I had just cut the last bit of tape holding the box shut, but I hesitated before opening it. I crossed my arms and sat back.

Nancy came over and put an arm around my waist. “Jing-nan,” she said. “Open the box! I’m dying to see what’s inside!”

I pulled all four flaps open and something fluttered inside. The box was packed with papers, some in binders and some held with clips. Julia’s work for the CIA.

I flipped through some of it. Everything was in English. Essays on the political future of China, Taiwan and the US. A study of potential outcomes if Taiwan were to declare independence. None were good. Most tantalizing of all was a thesis project about military intelligence on both sides of the Taiwan Strait. The abstract noted that China would recruit more Taiwanese officers as spies not only to check the island’s military efforts, but to stymie America’s Asia strategy, as well. Taiwan was one of the biggest US allies in the Pacific, along with South Korea and Japan, and realistically it was the only base the US could attack China from.

Under that was a report on the head of a Taiwanese chip company who was selling technology to the Chinese government. Nancy snatched it away, and I was about to protest when I saw what was underneath it.

At the very bottom of the box, folded in half and tucked into a flap, was Julia’s diploma from NYU. I thought she hadn’t graduated. How puzzling. I touched the signatures. They seemed real.

The diploma hadn’t been handled with care. It was wrinkled from water damage.

I touched the paper with wonder before I understood. Not graduating was only part of the cover story. Being a betel-nut beauty was another.

I showed Nancy the diploma.

“Look. Julia did finish college.”

“Oh, that’s nice,” said Nancy. She was still reading the chip report.

“Nancy, why are you so interested in that?”

She put the papers aside. “Julia is the one who helped put Ah-ding in jail. Look, she recorded him talking about selling technology to the Chinese in addition to fixing bids on Taipei city-government contracts for laptops.”