Hour of the Rat (10 page)

“Sounds cool. But I think I’ll pass. You guys go ahead.”

I grab my pillow and hug it close. I’m feeling seriously sleep-deprived and maybe slightly hung over.

“Ellie, I think we need to talk.”

Oh, fuck.

I open my eyes again. There’s my mom, still standing by my bed, wearing sweatpants and another Sunrise T-shirt that says
PRAY IT FORWARD
.

“I know you’re upset about Andy,” she says.

“I’m really not.”

“I don’t really blame you.” She stands there, twisting her hands together, struggling to smile. “I mean, I haven’t always made the best choices when it comes to men.”

No shit, Mom.

But that’s not what I say. What I say is, “Can we talk about this later? I’m really tired.”

“Okay. I was just hoping … well, I was hoping this vacation would be a chance for you to get to know Andy a little better. He’s …” She ducks her head. Her cheeks flush. “Well, I think he’s a very special person.”

What I want to say is,
Oh, for fuck’s sake. You’ve known this guy
how
long? A month? More like three weeks? Maybe
you
should take some time to get to know him better before you come asking
me
to give a shit
.

What I actually say is, “He seems really nice. Look, I’ll catch up with you guys later. Promise. Okay?”

“Okay.” She crouches down, gives me a kiss on my forehead. “See you later.”

A
FTER
I
GET ANOTHER
hour and a half of sleep, after I get up, get dressed, find the nearest coffee place, and have my first cup, I think about what to do next.

I can go back to the Gecko. See if I can corral Erik and get something useful out of him. I’m not sure how I would actually do that. Confront him? Accuse him of setting me up? Would that do any good?

Or I could look for a young British guy with a bad limp and a bloody hand.

It seems so easy when people do this kind of detective stuff on TV, you know?

“
N
I HAO
. S
O IS
Erik here?”

The same waitress who served me last night smiles—nervously, it seems to me—and shakes her head. “No. Sorry.”

There aren’t too many customers this time of day. I guess
they’re all out rock climbing or what have you. A couple of younger Chinese women checking out a Lonely Planet guide to Tibet; an older Westerner reading a novel and drinking a cup of coffee.

“Do you know what time he’s coming in?”

“Sorry, no.”

“Gee,” I say. “Because he told me I should stop by if I wanted to, you know, go rafting.”

“Oh!” She brightens considerably. “Sparrow can help you. I’ll fetch her.”

S
PARROW
,
NOT SURPRISINGLY
,
IS
tiny. Short, spiky hair, tanned, the beginnings of crow’s-feet, with a wiry build that suggests she got that way from doing healthy outdoor activity. A miniature jock. She wears a hoodie that says, in red,
CLIMB ON
.

“Hi,
ni hao
.” She sticks out her hand, American style, though she’s as Chinese as they come, pumps mine like she’s shaking a cocktail.

“Hi.”

“So you want to go rafting? I have space for tomorrow.”

“Maybe.” I hesitate. “Can we sit and talk about it? I have … uh, kind of a leg injury.”

We sit at an empty table in the back, next to a bookcase full of travel guides and dog-eared paperbacks. “If your leg is hurt, maybe rafting not a good idea,” she says with a frown.

“Yeah. I wasn’t sure.” I reach into my bag, grab the folded paper with Jason’s photo, smooth it out, and push it across the table. “Look, I’m actually trying to find this guy. He’s the brother of a friend of mine, and they’re worried about him. Do you know him? Have you seen him?”

She stares at the photo. “Looks like David. But David has … light hair. No beard.”

Score!
I mean, hair color can be changed. Beards can be shaved. Easy.

He’s calling himself David.

“The colors are a little off in this picture,” I say. “You know, it’s a photocopy.”

“Huh,” she says, and the way she says it, I can tell she’s drawing back, getting suspicious, wondering why I’m asking her these things.

“Is he around?” I ask.

“Not now. Been gone for a while.”

“Do you know where he is?”

She shakes her head. “Maybe camping.”

I lean back in my chair and watch Sparrow for a moment. She’s staring down at the photo. I don’t think I’m going to get anything else from her.

I take a chance. Reach into my bag, get out my card case, and extract a card with my name, my email address, my phone number. I hold it out to her with both hands.

“I just want to tell his family that he’s okay,” I say. “If you hear anything, if you hear from him, please call me or email me.”

She hesitates. Takes the card. Makes a show of studying it, in polite fashion.

“Okay,” she says. “I give you mine.”

I
WALK OUT OF
there with Sparrow’s card and consider what I’ve learned. Which is that Jason was in Yangshuo and he’s calling himself David. And whatever it is he’s up to, it’s something worth sending an amateur goon to try to … well, I don’t know. Scare me? Hurt me? Kill me?

I’m thinking about all this wandering down Xi Jie, trying to ignore the vendors who want to sell me wooden frogs “for give you good luck!” when my phone rings.

I grab it. A number I don’t know. My heart starts pounding. Maybe I’m getting somewhere. Maybe it’s even Jason.

“
Wei?
Hello?”

“Ellie McEnroe?” A woman’s voice. Chinese, I’m pretty sure.

“Yes. Who’s this?”

“I am Vicky Huang.”

I stand there for a moment, thinking, Who the fuck is Vicky Huang?

“I represent Sidney Cao,” she continues. And who the fuck is Sidney Cao? “Hi,” I say. “How can I help you?”

“I contact you by email. Mr. Cao has interest in buying some Zhang Jianli art pieces.”

“Oh, right,” I manage. The Chinese billionaire collector. “Look, I’m sorry to disappoint you, but—”

“Mr. Cao is willing to pay top dollar.”

“Like I explained in the email, there’s nothing for sale right now.”

“But how can that be? I hear he has many unsold works.”

“It’s just … um, it’s a little complicated.”

“No need to be complicated. Mr. Cao has resource to manage all complication.”

“Look, I’m on vacation right now. How about we talk when I get back to Beijing?”

“When will you return?”

“I’m not sure.”

“When can we schedule this talk?”

“In a couple of days, I promise,” I say through gritted teeth. “It’s been nice speaking with you.” And I hit the
DISCONNECT
bar.

Apparently “Vicky Huang” is Chinese for “bulldozer.”

“Hey,
lamei
.”

I turn. Walking beside me is the doorman from the club last
night, the place called the Last Emperor. He’s got his Qing-dynasty robe on, unbuttoned to reveal a T-shirt with a cartoon panda holding a pistol, and he’s wearing sunglasses and a Yankees baseball cap. The perpetual cigarette dangles from one corner of his mouth. I don’t think it’s even lit.

“
Ni hao
,” I say, not sure how I feel about his calling me a “spicy sister.”

“Thought you said you’d come for a drink last night.”

“I wanted to,” I lie. “I was too busy.”

“Too bad.”

I think about it. “I can have a drink now,” I say. “But only if you have one with me.” And I do my best attempt at a flirtatious smile.

Which, admittedly, sucks.

He grins and says, “Sure.”

Well, he did call me a hot number.

It’s not dangerous, I tell myself. I’m just going to have a drink with the guy. He gave me a good tip last night, about the Gecko, and I’m wondering if he knows more about it than he said.

We’ll sit down, have a drink, and it’ll be fine.

“C
OME ON
,
A BEER
?” He raises his hands, seemingly incredulous. “We make best mixed drinks in Yangshuo. Martini. Cosmopolitan. Long Island Iced Tea. Name your favorite. I make it for you.”

We sit just inside the doorway of the Last Emperor. I wish we could sit outside, but it’s still a little chilly for that, the leaden sky threatening rain. The decor is kind of what you’d expect: red and gold, a couple of giant hangings of some famous Qing emperor, a huge paper dragon suspended from the ceiling, Plexiglas panels bordering a dance floor that at the moment is dark. A few dead-eyed customers sit around the borders, sipping drinks.

“Well, see, it’s the middle of the day. I have to meet my mother later.”

His expression suddenly shifts. He almost looks embarrassed. “Ah,” he says. “Okay. A beer. You like Budweiser?”

“Not so much. Do you have Liquan?”

“Sure. Okay.”

I watch him walk behind the bar and pour the beer. He returns with two full mugs of lager. I hope it’s not drugged. He deposits them on the table and sits.

“Cheers,” I say, lifting mine.

“Cheers.”

Tastes like beer to me.

“What’s your name?” he asks.

“Yili. You?”

“You can call me Kobe.”

I almost laugh. “Kobe? Like the basketball player?”

“Sure, why not?” He grins. “I aim high.”

“Okay, Kobe.” I have to admit the guy cracks me up. “Last night I showed you a photo.”

Kobe leans back in his chair, adjusts his ball cap, lights his cigarette. “Smoke?” he asks.

“No thanks.”

“Smart. They say it’s bad for your health.”

I can’t tell if he’s kidding or not. A lot of Chinese people don’t know that smoking is bad for you. Maybe because the same government agency that’s trying to get people to quit also owns all the tobacco companies.

“Yeah,” I say. “Yeah, it is. Maybe you should quit.”

“Maybe so.” He shrugs. “Then I can eat the baozi made with cardboard, the
youtiao
fried in sewer oil, and the pork that glows in the dark. And feed my kids the milk powder with that chemical in it that makes them sick and die.”

He’s just rattled off a string of food scandals that have happened in China over the last couple years. He left out a bunch. It seems like there’s a new one every day. Like the chicken fed with minerals so they weigh more. The tofu laced with detergent to make it sticky. The fake eggs. Yeah, fake eggs. Don’t ask.

“You have kids?” I think to say.

“No. Just preparing for the future.” He grins again.

“So the picture I showed you last night. You know that guy, right? David?”

“Maybe I see him around.” He takes a deep swallow of beer. “Why you want to know?”

“Like I said, I’m friends with his family. His brother.”

“You must be good friends.”

“Yeah. I guess we are.”

I get the feeling he isn’t buying this, which is kind of ironic, given that I’m actually telling the truth.

I pull out my iPhone. Open up the photos. “This is his brother, Doug, and Doug’s wife, Natalie. Their kids.” I stroke the screen, going from photo to photo. “There’s the whole family at Christmas. See, that’s … uh, David. Those are his parents.”

I go through the photos. I come to the one of me and Dog at the FOB, both of us wearing T-shirts and shorts because it was so hot out, him pretending to make a grab at my tit, me laughing and threatening him with a can of Coke. I remember it had been kind of a shitty day up to that point; I’d had to go outside the wire on a run guarding cheesecake for a KBR truck convoy, and it wasn’t like anything really bad had happened that time, but it was always like something bad
could
happen next time.

“Yeah, that’s us,” I say, and I don’t want to stay too long on that picture.

“What happen to him?” Kobe flicks a finger at a photo of Dog after he got blown up.

“Accident. That’s why they asked me to help. Because it’s a little hard for Doug to travel.”

Kobe draws on his cigarette. Coughs. “Maybe they
are
bad for me.” Stubs it out.

“They just want to know he’s okay,” I say. “They’re worried about him.”

Kobe slowly nods. “I don’t know where he is,” he says. “I haven’t seen him for a while. Two months, maybe.”

“Why did you tell me to ask at the Gecko?”

“He likes to go there sometimes.”

“Any particular reason?”

A longer hesitation. “You know, some of those people who go there, who work there, they’re crazy. About the natural environment. They want to … to save the pandas.” He tugs on his T-shirt, at the pistol-packing panda.

“And you don’t?”

“I like pandas that save themselves. That fight back.” He grins.

So Jason’s a tree hugger? Not Dog’s thing, so far as I know, but thinking about the photo of Jason—the coffeehouse soul patch, the dreamy expression—I guess I can see it.

“Is there anyone else you can think of who might know where he is?” I ask.

Kobe takes a long, slow pull on his beer. “Maybe,” he finally says.

“Go to this place,” he tells me, writing down the name on a napkin. “I think he work out there for a little while.”

“Great. Anybody I should talk to in particular?”

A shrug. “Alice, maybe. Maybe Russell.”

“And should I tell them you sent me?”

A rapid shake of the head. “No. No, better you don’t say.”

“Okay.”

He fiddles with an unlit cigarette, flipping it across the back of his hand, from one finger to the next. “Just promise me, if you find Daisy, you have to tell me.”

“Daisy?”

“A girl,” he mumbles.

“Well, yeah, I figured.” And it occurs to me: “Your girlfriend?”

“A friend.”

Right.

“If I find her … what? Do you think something happened to her?”

Because as much as I want to do this favor for Dog, I’m not about to put me, my mom, and even Anal Andy in a situation where there might be people getting killed over it.

Yeah, there was the guy who attacked me, but I don’t think he was serious.

“No. Not that.” Kobe stares at the table, and I can tell it’s killing him to admit this. He’d lost face, but it’s more basic than that. “I think she left with him. With David. I call her cell, she doesn’t answer. I CQ, just get a text not to bother her.”