Finally my mom lets go. Steps back and glares at John.
“I don’t know what your story is, John,” she says, “but if you have anything to do with the problems my little girl is having? I’ll come back here and I’ll kick your ass.”
“I … I,” John stammers, and then falls silent. Looks away. “I will take care of her,” he says.
“You’d better.”
Yeah, like he’s done such a great job so far. But I don’t tell my mom that.
“Now what?”
Mom and Andy and Mimi have left. It’s just John and me, circling each other like a couple of wary cats.
He stops and massages his forehead, as if he’s trying to pull out a solution with his fingers. “We should go. I can take you someplace. Someplace safe.”
There are all kinds of things I want to ask, questions swirling around in my head so fast that I can barely separate one from another.
First and foremost, how is he going to keep me safe from a guy who apparently has the fucking PLA to do his dirty work?
But there’s no time for that right now.
I hustle into my bedroom, grab my daypack, my laptop, a light jacket, a T-shirt, and clean underwear, my Percocet, the old iPhone I keep because I can buy anonymous SIM cards for it, just in case something like this should happen, and my Beanie squid, for good luck.
God knows I’m going to need it.
CHAPTER SIXTEEN
★
“LET ME CARRY your bag.”
“I can carry it myself.”
John grits his teeth. We’re in the elevator heading down. An ad for cognac plays on the little flat-screen TV by the door.
“Right now we just pretend we are boyfriend and girlfriend,” he says. “Boyfriend carries girlfriend’s bag.”
“Whatever,” I mutter. I hand him my daypack. “Are we gonna hold hands, too?”
“We should act like nothing’s wrong.”
“Why? What difference will it make?”
“Just …” He hisses through his teeth. “Just do what I say, for once.”
Fuck you, I think really loud.
“Can we go out another way?” he asks when we reach the ground floor.
“What about your car?”
“Better to just leave it here. In case …”
In case someone bugged it, I’m guessing, while John was talking about restaurant locations with my mom.
“Yeah,” I say. Behind my building there’s an alcove where they keep a couple of dumpsters and a little yard that has a long bike rack crammed with rusting Giants and a few old Flying Pigeons and some battered electric scooters. It’s enclosed by a cinder-block wall with shards of glass embedded in the top, but there’s a little gate with a triangular metal tube barrier that no one watches and you can slip through if you want, which has never made sense to me, but whatever.
“This way.”
We exit onto a tiny hutong that runs perpendicular to the alley off Jiu Gulou Dajie. If we hang a right, we can head up to Xitao Hutong and over to the Gulou subway station or keep going north to Deshengmen and the Second Ring Road to catch a cab. Or we can head south, to Gulou West and Houhai. Plenty of cabs there, too.
“South,” John says.
“Why?”
“Other way is where car would go, maybe to get on Second Ring Road or Jiugulou Dajie. Or to go on subway. This way maybe they don’t expect us to go.”
“Okay.”
We head south, down an alley lined with grey brick walls. There’s a worker with a bicycle cart hauling empty Yanjing Beer bottles who looks up as we pass. He has a PLA-green cap pulled low over his head, but I can see his eyes, staring at us.
“So where are we going?”
“A safe place I know. Where Yang Junmin can’t find you.”
“A DSD safe place?”
John shrugs.
“Because your boss wants to nail my sorry ass to a wall, so how the fuck is some DSD off-the-books shithole where you lock up dissidents you don’t like safe?”
Okay, I’m yelling. But it’s been a really lousy day so far.
“He is not my boss,” John mutters, his jaw tight.
“Oh, great, here we go with the man-of-mystery routine again.”
We’re getting close to Gulou West. We turn a corner, down another little alley, past one of those tiny shoe box–size stores that sell beer and toilet paper and snacks.
And see two guys heading toward us. Young. Buzz cuts. Sunglasses and fake leather jackets.
“Keep walking,” John murmurs.
“Just … ?”
“Keep walking.” He places his hand flat on my back for a moment, urging me forward.
My heart’s racing. I feel the pain shooting up my leg, and I tell myself, I can do it, I can keep walking, just walk right on past these guys, we’ll make it to Gulou West, grab a cab, and get the fuck out, and we’re just about even with them when one of the guys bumps his shoulder into John, hard.
“Watch where you’re going,” the guy snarls.
John lifts his hands, chest-high. “Duibuqi,” he says. Sorry. He takes a step back.
That’s when they rush him.
John drives the heels of his palms into the first guy’s jaw, shoves a knee into his groin. First guy goes down, but as he does, the other guy drives his shoulder into John’s side, a football tackle, and they hit the ground, scrambling and punching and kicking, knocking over a crate of empty Yanjing Beer bottles.
One of those rolls in my direction. I pick it up. Hold the bottle in both hands. Wait till I have a clear shot. And smash it over the guy’s head.
It’s not like the movies. The fucking thing doesn’t break. But I hit him hard enough that he collapses for a moment, lifts his hands to the back of his head like a reflex, and that gives John enough time to roll away and slam his heel into the guy’s ribs a few times. I hear a sound that might be one of his ribs breaking, and I shudder, I can’t help it.
Thankfully, he goes limp. He’s breathing, and he’s conscious, but the fight’s gone out of him.
John scrambles to his feet, my backpack still on his shoulders.
I hear a tinkle of glass, and a beer bottle rolls past my feet. Turn and see a middle-aged woman poking her head out of the doorway of the tiny shop.
“Duibuqi, gei ni tian mafan le,” John says. Sorry to trouble you.
And we hustle ourselves down the alley, leaving the two guys moaning on the pavement.
“You’d think Uncle Yang could afford better thugs.”
John shrugs. “They are not bad. I am simply better.”
I roll my eyes. “Well, you had a little help.”
“I did.” He gives my hand a squeeze. “You were very good.”
The two of us are making like boyfriend and girlfriend, riding on the subway out to John’s safe place, wherever that is. Just laughing and touching each other, like we’re an actual couple.
There’s a part of me that knows I should be asking those questions, such as where are we going exactly, but I’m so wired and buzzing from what just happened that I’m mostly just thinking about how good it feels leaning into Mr. Badass next to me here.
“What about your car?” I ask.
“What about it?”
“Can’t they use it to find you?”
John whispers in my ear: “Not with the plates on it. Fake.”
“Smooth.”
“The next station is Sanyuanqiao. Sanyuanqiao is a transfer station. All passengers, please prepare for your arrival.” I half listen to the recorded announcements, wondering as I always do who they got to do the English—the way she says “transfer,” all nasal like she’s from New Jersey or something always cracks me up.
“We can get off here,” John says.
“We going to the airport?”
He shakes his head. “We just look for a taxi.”
We take the long escalator up to the surface, emerging into dusty yellow skies.
Riding in the cab, I�
��m not sure why, but everything feels heavier somehow. We were having fun on the subway, celebrating that we’d beaten the bad guys. Now the boyfriend/girlfriend act is over. We’re sitting next to each other like near strangers.
We’re out in that patchy no-man’s-land close to the airport. You can’t get here on the subway; the Airport Express doesn’t make stops between Sanyuanqiao and the terminals. Not that there’s much here. Just the highway and scrubby fields and skinny trees, the occasional factory.
We pull off the highway. Close to the interchange, there’s this massive concrete building painted a yellowish shade of beige. It’s about three stories, and I would’ve taken it to be a factory or a school of some kind that was built in the Soviet days, except for the fountain out in front surrounded by a circle of yellow-beige concrete columns and topped by a yellow-beige concrete ring. That and the rooftop sign that spells out AIRPORT HARMONY GARDEN HOTEL.
“Wait a second—” I say as we pull in to the drive.
John shoots me a look. “We can discuss in a minute. Ni keyi dao houbian ting che,” he tells the driver. You can stop around the back.
I’m liking this less and less. I’m thinking maybe I should just stay in the cab and have the driver drop me someplace else. But I don’t.
John pays the guy, and he gets out, and I slide out after him.
We’re in a small parking lot behind a secondary building, a ragged tennis court to one side. “Wait here a moment,” John says. “I have to make an arrangement.” He trots off toward the main building. I stand there, pissed at myself for going along with him. The two times that Pompadour Bureaucrat had me picked up for tea, it went something like this. Some crappy hotel on the fringes of Beijing. Going upstairs through a side entrance. Never checking in and not knowing if I’d be checking out anytime soon.
But this is different, I tell myself. This is John. I don’t know exactly what his deal is, but he seems to care about me, right?
There are two guys playing tennis in the late-afternoon sun. One wearing jeans, neither very good. I watch them play, the guy in jeans swatting with an awkward hop at a ball that sails past his head and a giggle when he misses.
I stare at the cracks on the tennis court, at the frayed net.
Finally I turn and see John jogging toward me.
“Okay,” he says. “We can go inside now.”
Even though the hall is dark, I can see stains in the worn brown carpet, that the faded white walls are dingy with decades of cigarette smoke. It’s a lot like the hotels Pompadour Bureaucrat had me brought to, except worse, maybe because there’s so much more of it. The halls are wide and strangely empty. Maybe it’s off-season for detaining dissidents.
We pass only one person, a thirtyish man in a cheap leather jacket and dark slacks, Ray-Ban-style sunglasses perched on his forehead. He and John exchange a glance, or am I imagining that? He sure looks like a low-rent undercover nark anyway.
John stops in front of a room close to the end of the hall. Gets out a key card. I hear the little whir as it unlocks. He steps inside, and I follow.
A faded yellow runner over a greying quilt on a bed that I already know is a thin foam pad on top of plywood. Dusty beige curtains. The whole place stinks of mildew.
John stands there, an uncertain look on his face.
“So,” he finally says. “You can stay here awhile. I will take care of things.”
“Awhile? How long? And what things?”
“Just … a day or so. I come back for you.”
“Jesus,” I mutter. “So you’re just gonna leave me here while you go do whatever it is you’re gonna do?”
He gives a little half shrug. I guess that’s all the answer I’m going to get.
“You need to eat some things, you can go to the canteen. They put it on room. You can … you can go to … to jianshenfang, to … to gym.” There’s this weird helpless note to his voice. That’s when it hits me.
“You don’t really have a plan, do you? Awesome.”
“I can manage something. You must trust me.”
“Oh, must I?” I plop down on the bed. The mattress is hard enough to send a jolt up my spine.
It’s not like I have a lot of choices. I don’t have a working phone—well, I have one with no minutes and another that I’m pretty sure is hacked. I do have my laptop, though. I unzip my backpack and pull it out.
John lets out a short, sharp sigh and shakes his head.
Of course there isn’t going to be Internet in a secret black-jail detention hotel room.
“Fine. Whatever.”
“Yili—”
I hold up my hand. “Don’t. Just … just go. Go manage something. I’ll wait here.”
He stands there a moment longer, like he’s looking for something from me. I have no idea what.
“Sorry,” he mutters, and leaves.
Yeah, you should be sorry, buddy, I think. I may not know John’s whole story, but how is he going to deal with a pissed-off Uncle Yang?
I hope the TV works. Maybe there’s an American movie on CCTV-6.
I fiddle with the remote. Nada. Just a black screen.
“Fucking great.”
There’s a teakettle at least. I can make myself a cup of coffee. I usually have a couple of Starbucks VIAs in my messenger bag.
I pull the bag out of my backpack. Slip my hand into the outside pocket. Feel around for the little tube of coffee.
That’s when my fingertips feel something else through the rough canvas fabric, something in the small interior zip pocket. Something round, like a coin. Except it doesn’t feel exactly like a coin somehow. Too thick.
I unzip the pocket and jam two fingers inside, feeling for the thing. I find it and fish it out.
Yeah, it looks like a coin. An old one-yuan model. And yeah, they’re heavier than the modern version. But not like this.
I stare at the rim. Is that a seam down the middle?
Yeah. It is.
I don’t know what this thing is for sure, but if I had to guess, I’m guessing it’s a bug—or some kind of tracker.
Fuck, fuck, the fucking fuck.
I try to think it through. There was plenty of time when I was having my little session with Uncle Yang for one of his men to plant it. But John, he would’ve checked, wouldn’t he? I mean, he knows all about this stuff, right? Granted, things happened pretty fast—maybe he slipped up.
Or maybe he put it there.
I have absolutely no way of knowing.
“Shit.”
I dump everything out of my bag. Press my fingers against the fabric, feel all the pockets, the seams. Pull all the money and cards from my wallet. I don’t find anything else, at least nothing I can spot.
I scramble to my feet. Go into the bathroom and put the little disk on the counter. Flush the toilet. Then I turn on the shower. It’s streaked with rust and black mold, and I have time to think, at least I won’t be using that thing.
Because all I do know for sure is I need to get out of here, right now.
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
★
I CLOSE THE door to the hotel room, backpack slung over one shoulder, like I’m just going out for a little stroll. Like maybe to the restaurant for a beer and some dumplings.
I look down the hall. That guy we passed before, the one in the cheap leather jacket and Ray-Bans, is loitering by the stairs, doing something on his smartphone.
There’s probably a stairwell at the other end of the hall, but I can’t see it from here. I’m a lot closer to this one. If I’m trying to act casual, does it make sense for me to walk away from the stairs right by me, to the opposite end of the hall?
I draw in a breath and head toward the stairs I can see. Ray-Ban Guy glances up from his phone, then back down to his screen. I’m going to have to walk right past him.
If he’s someone John knows, if he calls John, maybe that’s not so bad, I tell myself.
But what if he’s one of Pompadour Bureaucrat’s men? What if h
e doesn’t trust John? What if John’s just abandoned me here in this dump and isn’t coming back, because he doesn’t have any way to fix this mess and I’m the one who’s going to pay for it?
Dumplings and beer. I’m just going out for dumplings and beer.
I’ve reached the top of the stairs. Ray-Bans doesn’t move. Should I offer to bring him back a bowl of noodles? Would that be casual or just weird?
I keep my eyes forward and step down. As I do, something on his phone squawks. I stumble a little, grab onto the railing.
He’s playing Angry Birds.
I hop unevenly down the stairs.
Outside, the guys who were playing tennis are just coming off the court. Laughing, not sweating. One of them swats the other lightly on the ass with his racket.
If there are taxis, they’ll likely be out in front of the hotel, maybe picking up or dropping off. But do I want to risk going there? If that bug/tracker thing belongs to Uncle Yang, could they already be here, watching? Waiting for me to make some kind of move?
For that matter, they could be parked out here, in this lot, close to the building.
I take a couple of deep breaths, tell myself I can’t panic, that I have to keep it together. I do a scan of the parking lot. Only a few cars. They’re all empty.
Okay, I tell myself. Okay. You’re all right for now.
There’s a feeder road running alongside the back of the tennis court. I have no idea where it goes. But if it doesn’t lead past the hotel entrance, maybe that’s good enough.
I head toward it.
I don’t know how long I walk, since neither of my phones is working and I don’t own a watch. Long enough for the throbbing pain in my leg to feel like someone’s stabbing my thigh with a barbecue fork and for my feet to feel like they’re bruised. There’s nothing much on this road, mostly trees with their white-painted trunks that were probably planted for the ’08 Olympics and a few fields and redbrick farm buildings that haven’t been swallowed up by high-rises and car dealerships and factories.
Finally the road runs head-on into a bigger one. A town. A couple of new hotels with “Airport” in their names among clumps of older white-tiled storefronts. A restaurant, battered red lanterns swaying in the wind.
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