Beijing Payback

by Daniel Nieh

Sun leads me out into the frigid afternoon and over to a black German luxury sedan with tinted windows and a tall guy leaning his hips against the passenger door. The guy looks around my age. He is muscly, with a shaved head and a big jaw, and he seems to be smiling at his cigarette until he looks up and sees us coming.

  “Motherfucker! Fucking shit!” he exclaims, beaming, in a thick Beijing accent. “So you brought us Old Li’s son, huh? Fuck! You look pretty fucking Chinese for a mixed-blood kid.”

  He kind of hugs me and punches me in the stomach at the same time.

  “My name is Ye, but everyone calls me ‘Biceps,’” he says, flexing his arms to make sure I understand why.

  “Uh, hi,” I say, but he’s already dancing around Sun and slapping the top of his head.

  “The cat is back! You are so motherfucked! I shouldn’t even be here,” he says, laughing.

  “I knew you’d do whatever I said,” Sun says, ducking his head and gamely fending Biceps off with a push to the chest. “Can you take us to see Old Ai?”

  “Of course. Where else could I take you? Oh man, he’s going to be steamed. Don’t get me in any more trouble, okay?” says Biceps.

  “I thought Ai was on our side,” I hiss to Sun as we put our bags in the trunk.

  He purses his lips and nods thoughtfully. “He will be when he sees you.”

  We sit in the back of the car, which is immaculate except for several empty cans of Chinese Red Bull on the floor in front of the passenger seat. Biceps navigates the airport expressway with manic enthusiasm, swiping through traffic, slamming on the pedals, and keeping me awake by compelling me to hang on to the grab handle. I am vaguely reminded of the time Eli rented a Camaro for a day and we put two hundred miles on it without leaving Los Angeles County. But these Beijing drivers put L.A.’s best daredevils to shame. Throughout the journey, Biceps uses his horn to express a variety of sentiments, from “Here I fucking come!” and “Fucking thank you!” to “I hope your children are born without assholes, you cow twat!,” which he occasionally supplements with verbal versions for extra emphasis. In between these interjections, he catches Sun up on a number of topics that are difficult for me to follow because of his accent and vocabulary.

  The gist is that the national soccer team once again fucking humiliated itself in a loss to fucking Iran; he has a new favorite karaoke spot with sānpéi girls from Anhui Province who are way hotter than the sānpéi girls from Henan Province at his old favorite karaoke spot; he personally witnessed an actual fucking Ferrari explode at the Thirty Seconds Club; various people are extremely fucking angry for all sorts of reasons; et cetera. I divide my attention between his spirited monologue and the forest of bland office and apartment towers that float deep into the sooty haze in every direction, the farthest mere ghosts of the nearest. The toxic particulate matter suspended in the air intercepts the yellow of the sun’s light, casting everything bluer, lending the endless concrete—roads, bridges, walking bridges over roads, tunnels—a purplish tint. And in this lavender surreality, people are compacted into not tiny spaces but enormous ones, hulking edifices built to accommodate thousands. Godzilla might go to Tokyo for a light dinner, but he’d hit Beijing for the Thanksgiving buffet.

  As I listen to Biceps’s casual patter about the seedy side of Beijing, my worries about everyone back in San Dimas fade into mental background noise, and I recall that I have a purpose here, a goal to accomplish. Ai, Feder Fekhlachev, and Dad’s killers are lurking somewhere in this sea of smoggy concrete, and it is up to me to persuade, bribe, and expose them, respectively. Sitting in the back of the sedan reminds me of a long bus ride to an away game, the giddy calm before the storm—except this time, the action will have consequences beyond next week’s Coaches Poll.

  “What’s a sānpéi girl?” I whisper to Sun when Biceps takes a break from talking to light a fresh cigarette.

  “Sānpéi is three ‘withs.’ Girls who work in clubs. They will drink with you, sing with you, and dance with you.”

  “And that’s it?”

  “Sometimes,” he says.

  Up front, Biceps cackles. Apparently, he has excellent hearing.

  “Old Ouyang controls several bars and karaoke salons in the Finance Street area,” Sun says. “He has the sānpéi girls there selling ketamine.”

  Biceps clucks in disgust. “Those motherfucking bitches are hitting up every single customer for one hundred yuan per line! That’s why I can’t go there anymore. The sluts get all disappointed if you don’t want to score drugs from them and then lie there staring at the ceiling.”

  “So what’s the Thirty Seconds Club?” I ask louder.

  “Street racing on the ring roads,” Biceps says. “Rich brats who like losing their money. They race their Ferraris against the mechanic kids and their homemade Japanese rice rockets.”

  “And they lose?”

  “Usually. The rich kids aren’t afraid to lose the money, but they’re afraid of losing their pathetic lives, so they don’t dare drive all-out. The mechanics don’t value their pathetic lives, and they don’t even have the money.” He cackles again.

  “So what happens if the mechanics lose and can’t pay?”

  “Oh, usually they’ll just set up some bullshit installment plan and everyone saves face. But sometimes some silly cunt is so high and puffed up that he demands the cash, and then someone has to send him home, know what I mean?” Biceps cracks his knuckles, which are enormous, and frowns. His mood seems to be down-cycling as we get deeper into the city. “It just increases the appeal for those bored fuckheads,” he mutters.

  He grows increasingly subdued as we traverse the Third and Second Ring Roads and enter the narrow, winding hutongs in the heart of old Beijing. His driving slows and gentles as well, and I have almost dozed off, my head lolling back against the headrest, when we come to a stop.

  “You go on in,” he says. “I’m going to stay out here and take a nap. Don’t want to watch Old Ai break your heads.” He manages a final guffaw.

  Sun pats him on the neck and hops out with his usual contained grace. He doesn’t seem worried about getting his head broken. I go around to the trunk, but he waves me off.

  “He’ll bring the suitcases later. First, we say hello and have tea.”

  The entrance to Ai’s hutong compound is a plain iron door in the long cinder-block wall that runs along the alleyway. Sun presses an intercom buzzer, and after a minute, a low and sweet female voice answers. Sun mutters something unintelligible, and the door beeps open more smoothly than I might have expected. We step into an outdoor perimeter space, basically a path around another wall, with weeds pushing up through the cobblestones. Across this path stands a big set of wooden double doors, painted red and studded with thimble-shaped mounds painted gold. These doors are unlocked, and we push through them into what is without question the sickest, most pimped-out dwelling I have ever laid eyes on.

  19

  Ai’s combination house and nerve center off Orange Blossom Hutong appears at first glance to be an ordinary siheyuan-style courtyard surrounded by four buildings. The courtyard itself features a cobblestone floor, some plain wooden and stone furniture, and a gnarled mulberry tree, casting pleasing dappled patterns of shadow that fluctuate in the Beijing breeze. The buildings are a reverent recreation of hutong style: ornate wooden screens and furniture, brocade silk cushions and quilts in reds, yellows, and teals, hanging scrolls of calligraphy and ink painting—all very Qing Dynasty except for the modern kitchen ruled by Ai’s live-in chef, Master Lin. Anyone dropping by would notice nothing more than a tastefully renovated siheyuan with remarkably good plumbing for one of the oldest neighborhoods in Beijing.

  But then there is the basement.

  Tucked behind a false wall in the kitchen, hidden down a steep, narrow stairway, Ai’s underground lair is a dark, sleek refuge, a union of chic hotel lobby and modish bachelor pad, all shades of gray, stainless steel surfaces, and mood lighting. There is a soundproof conference room and a pai
r of facing L-shaped desk setups with flat-screen displays. The lounge-y area has a nice TV, a pool table, and a wet bar displaying a small fortune in cognac. There’s a cutting-edge sound system with little chrome satellite speakers mounted into the ceiling wherever the walls meet. The furniture is the kind of beautiful high-end stuff that looks uncomfortable but isn’t. There are no windows, and the temperature is perfect. There isn’t a speck of dust on anything.

  I take all this in as Sun and I stand on the inside of the vault-style door at the base of the stairs, waiting for Ai to acknowledge us. Ai’s standing with his hands behind his back, bent forward at the waist, squinting into a floor-to-ceiling tropical aquarium in the middle of the main room. A barrel-chested man of average height, he has a handsome face and the Chinese equivalent of Kennedy hair. His expensive-looking sport coat fits him perfectly. His look is debonair to the point of talk-show host or news anchor, except more matte, more classy, more money. If ignoring us is an intimidation play, it’s working. I want to grab Sun and scurry out of there, find another place to stay that doesn’t reek of money and secrets. But I wouldn’t mind taking a few pics for my Snapchat story first.

  When Ai finally speaks, his voice is deep and gravelly, a voice that commands respect. “Your father gave them to me.” he says, turning to face us. The left side of his face is lit blue by the undulating aquarium light. “The tank and the fishes. ‘A piece of the ocean for you,’ he said. He gave me very specific instructions on how often to feed them.”

  He walks toward us and stops right in front of me. He is running a big silver coin over and under the fingers of his right hand. “Recently, I’ve been looking at them a lot.”

  Then he hugs me. It is a long, strong, superawkward hug. He more or less pins my arms to my sides, so I gingerly reach up with my wrists and pat his ribs. Just when I begin to worry that the two of us might spend all day like this, he releases me, wrings my hand in a viselike grip, and says, “I am Ai Yongping. Your father was my close friend.”

  “Thank you. He was my dad, but also my close friend.”

  Ai raises his thick eyebrows, and a wide smile spreads across his face. He turns to Sun. “Well, Young Sun, what about you?”

  Sun shrugs and smiles without showing his teeth.

  “Ha! Ha ha ha! Ha ha!” Ai laughs. He actually laughs like that. “I knew it. He was your close friend, too. What a friendly son of a bitch. Ha ha ha ha! Here, come look at this stuff. You want a drink?”

  Within a few minutes we are all perched on a futuristic sofa, looking at an old photo album and sucking down VSOPs. I have no idea what Biceps was talking about—Ai has no intention of breaking anybody’s head. He is clearly the hands-down nicest guy in the world.

  “That’s when I visited your dad in Hong Kong back in seventy-nine. Ha! Ha ha! You see what a dump he lived in.” In the photo Ai points to, he and Dad are perched on a single unmade bed in a narrow room with dirty white walls. Chungking Mansions. Dad has sideburns, a mustache, a cowboy shirt, and a deep tan. Ai wears a boxy suit and has his hair slicked back. They are grinning. Ai turns the page.

  “Ah, there he is with Bairui when she was pregnant with your big sister,” Ai says, using Mom’s Chinese name. Dad had adopted a more clean-cut look by then, and Mom wore a prim denim dress, but her rosy cheeks and unselfconscious smile strike me. She looks like a person—instead of, you know, Mom. I notice a picture on the facing page of Dad and Ai with two other men: a stout, fleshy guy and a lean man with an intense face and rimless glasses. The four men are standing shoulder to shoulder, their hands clasped behind their backs, by the railing of a bridge or vista point, the Forbidden City stretched out in the background. Brother Ouyang, Brother Zhao. I lean closer, learning their faces, silently asking them what kind of betrayal they have inside them.

  Then someone breezes into the room from somewhere deeper in the lair and passes behind the couch to the kitchenette area with a perfumed whoosh, bringing me into the now on a knife’s edge and flipping all my systems into freak-out mode.

  “Dàgē, nǐ huílái le—Big brother, you’ve come back,” she says to Sun as she crosses the room. The low voice from the door buzzer, a voice that sounds the way strawberries taste. Her tone is pleasantly nonchalant, a perfect fit with the little smile that occupies the southern real estate of a face so beautiful that I can’t fully process it. I can see all the symmetry and clarity even across the room, despite partial obstruction by the bangs portion of her shampoo-commercial hair. She’s wearing black patent-leather pumps and a sleeveless wool dress the color of charcoal. She glances up at me, red lips and white-gold skin, the little smile lingering.

  “You also brought a friend,” she says. “I’ll make a pot of tea.”

  “Oh, too good. Xiaozhou, this is Wei Songqin. She is, ah, my executive vice president, ha! Young Wei, come over here,” Ai says, throwing his arm over the back of the sofa and craning his neck in her direction.

  “No rush, no rush,” she mutters without looking up from the silvery green needles that she’s scooping from a little glass jar into an earthenware pot. “The water hasn’t boiled yet.”

  Ai gives me a knowing look, as if to say, Females! What a disobedient gender.

  I swallow and stare at my knees, mesmerized by not just her beauty but also the way she navigates the room, her slender frame shifting through the light in a relaxed gait that says everything. She doesn’t need words—she sets a tone with her movements, her glances, her dissemblance, showing us that she’s friendly and curious, but laconically so; cool, but just so cool. Now she’s behind us, assembling the tea things on a tray, but despite Ai’s insinuation of control, I feel her presence dominating the room. As we flip through the old photographs, Ai speaks in a voice that seems deliberately pitched at a volume to include her, or more quietly, to exclude her, if it’s some trifling remark that she doesn’t need to hear. As for me, I’m having trouble focusing on what he has to say. It takes all my willpower to keep from turning my head to watch her make tea.

  Wei comes over with the tray and sets it on the low table in front of us. She sits erectly on the edge of the sofa opposite me, tosses her hair behind her shoulders, and smiles the secret smile again.

  “Like he said, I am Wei Songqin.” She holds her hand out to me.

  I stand partway, lean across the space between us, and shake it.

  “I am Li Xiaozhou.”

  Her eyes widen and she looks to Ai, who curtly lowers his head a few millimeters. She turns away, rolling her lips into her mouth and blinking rapidly.

  “Excuse me,” she says. “I am so sorry.”

  Her emotions catch me off guard and threaten to uncork mine. My face goes hot as the unqualifiable fact of Dad’s death rushes back to me. I feel especially mad at myself for neglecting my grief.

  Ai gives a stern huff, then reaches forward to pour the tea from the earthenware pot into four little porcelain cups.

  “You can see how much your father was loved here,” he says, and he pats Wei’s knee with his hand. “Young Wei, we will be masters of our emotions like Brother Li always was, and drink to his memory with tea instead of wine. Come.”

  With two hands we raise our cups to our lips. The tea is astringent, clear, and slightly bitter, and it sharpens my senses. I shake off the daze of our arrival here and the jolt of Wei’s appearance, and sit up a little straighter.

  Wei produces a tissue from her clutch and dabs at her eyes. “Have you two eaten already?” The standard Chinese greeting.

  “Yes, we’ve eaten.” Sun gives the standard reply, even though our meal on the plane feels like a month ago.

  “Certainly you must be quite sleepy,” she says. When I lift my eyes to meet hers, I find them inquiring about much more than jet lag. Her gaze is curious and attentive to an extreme—am I being invited or invaded?

  “A bit sleepy,” I say, glancing away.

  Wei turns to Ai. “I’ll go get two rooms ready,” she says.

  He grunts in approval. Wei sta
nds and smooths her dress. The tiny smile is back in its place again as she glides back out the way she came in.

  After she leaves, Ai flips through a few more pages of the photo album, but all the air seems to have gone out of him. After a minute or so he sets it aside with a sigh.

  “It’s a sad thing,” he says to his lap. “I always wanted to go see him in the United States, but—as you know . . .” He trails off, and a confused senior-moment look passes across his eyes.

  Wei is standing in the doorway.

  I glance at Sun, who looks a little pained himself, and then I say, “Mr. Ai, can you tell me about Ice?”

  He snaps out of his reverie and looks at me keenly. “Ice? Hmm. I don’t know much about Ice. But I will tell you what I do know. We will speak of such things later. And please, call me Uncle Ai, or Old Ai. Ha! Ha! Even your father called me that. Even though I am only a few months older than him, he always called me Old Ai, never Brother Ai. Well!” he says, slapping his thighs and sitting forward. “You are tired. Young Wei can show you to your room.”

  I wake up with a parched throat after a heavy nap of God knows how long. I blink, disoriented, struggling to reattach myself to reality, a specific time and place. Looking around the room doesn’t offer much help, because I had barely glanced at my surroundings before collapsing onto the bed. I’m in a compact, windowless cell with decor consistent with the rest of the place: slate-gray walls, angular furniture, and recessed lighting. Like a cabin on a futuristic submarine, Ai’s lair is sensory experience once removed. There’s nothing natural in the whole environment, no plants, no daylight, just the fish confined to their curated environment, a simulacrum of ocean. I feel like I’m in a magazine advertisement for an airport lounge, or in an airport lounge, flipping through a magazine.

  The events of the day flood back. The grief tugs at me as I recognize the reflections of Dad visible in everyone I’ve met here: Ai, Wei, even Biceps. I had begun to think of him as duplicitous, but he was evidently the same person in both parts of his life: the loving, charismatic guy everybody liked to be around. Filling in the blanks, I see him in a new way, and I feel like I know him better than before, more thoroughly. So the hurt is deeper, too. But I haven’t chosen the path of moving on.