Chasing the Monkey King

by D. C. Alexander

  “Jinan Road?” Severin said. I remember seeing that just a mile or two north of town. In fact, I might even remember the building.”

  “Can we please wait until tomorrow?” Zhang asked.

  Without answering, Severin smiled, refilled both of their glasses with Baijiu and raised his to his lips. “How you say?”

  “Gan bai, stupid white man.”

  “Gan bai. I’m feeling more optimistic by the minute.”

  They drank.

  “Another round?” Severin asked.

  “No, I want to get a decent night’s sleep for once.”

  “Come on.”

  “You need to cut back, Lars. Seriously. You’re going to die young.”

  “Maybe you need to cut back.”

  “Nice redirection.”

  “I’m not as bad as a lot of people.”

  “Nice rationalization.”

  “Look, Wallace. Do I not handle it? I do.”

  “Wow.”

  “Wow, what?”

  “In just this week, you’ve already gone through more than half the classic alcoholic’s top-10 list of excuses.”

  “Quit being an ass. Let’s celebrate our find. You know you want it.”

  “‘Tis one thing to be tempted, another thing to pass out in a public dining room and urinate in one’s pants.”

  “Hamlet?”

  “Measure for Measure.”

  “Look, you can’t leave me to drink alone.”

  With a sigh, Zhang sat back down as Severin refilled their glasses.

  “By the way, you going to finally tell me what was in that soup back at Rong’s place?” Severin asked.

  “Did you like it?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Then don’t worry about it.”

  “Wallace. I’m not messing around. What was in that soup?”

  “Something that’s good for a man.”

  TWENTY-THREE

  The next morning, Severin shuffled into the dining room to find Zhang already sipping tea and chewing on a small white bun of some sort. He also had a bowl of something steaming hot. There were two other men in the room, chatting quietly, dressed in white, short-sleeve, cotton and polyester blend collared shirts of the sort half the men in China seemed to wear. Along one wall, a row of a dozen or so warming trays held a variety of breakfast items, none of which Severin immediately recognized. Most of the stuff looked like it had been sitting for a few hours. “This doesn’t look that great,” he said to Zhang.

  “It’s the Chinese equivalent of the limp bacon and oily waffle free breakfast you get at your typical two or three-star motel in the U.S. Common Chinese breakfast foods, but not of the best quality.”

  “What’s that bun thing you’re eating?”

  “Baozi.”

  “Thanks. That helps me a lot.”

  “It’s a steamed bun, made of rice dough.”

  “A dough ball.”

  “This one is filled with pork. There are plain ones, and egg-filled too.”

  “What’s in the bowl?”

  “Congee.”

  “Okay, again, your level of helpfulness is—”

  “It’s a rice porridge. You can get different toppings for it. Fermented tofu, pickled vegetables, eggs, meat, peanuts.”

  “How about brown sugar and cream?”

  “Ah, no.”

  “Great.”

  “I thought you said you’d lived in Asia before. Don’t be a baby. Try it with eggs. It’s good. The tea is good too.”

  “Where’s the coffee?”

  “Get real.”

  “Don’t fool with me, Wallace. I’m from Seattle. I could die if I don’t get my morning coffee.”

  “No coffee.”

  After rolling his eyes to the sound of his own subtle groan, Severin worked his way down the buffet line of warming trays, taking a sample of everything but a deep fried fish dish that didn’t appeal to his alcohol-ravaged stomach. In addition to what Zhang told him about, there were deep-fried dough sticks with soybean milk, steamed buns with bean paste or custard, spiced wheat noodles with scallions, and what looked to Severin like thin little egg and onion frittatas. He ended up liking the pork-filled steamed buns the best. And the tea, which Zhang explained was a well-known Chrysanthemum variety from Anhui Province, was excellent.

  *****

  Later that morning, an exceptionally heavy rain fell from a cast-iron sky as they sat in the taxi cab on a muddy shoulder opposite the only building with white-painted corrugated tin walls along the entire length of Jinan Road. The building was shaped like the letter ‘L,’ the base end consisting of what looked like a high-ceilinged warehouse, with the long end comprised of three floors of manufacturing areas and offices. It was flanked by other timeworn industrial properties—one that appeared to be a metal scrapyard, another a facility for storing or distributing barrels of paint—and fronted by a parking lot with weeds growing up through the many cracks in its pavement. A tall, dark smokestack rose from the middle of the building, but no smoke came from it, and there was no signage or anything else to indicate that it was indeed the facility of YSP. In the half hour they’d been watching the alleged YSP factory, they’d seen occasional activity at both of the neighboring properties. But they’d seen none at YSP. Despite the fact that it was well into the work day, there didn’t appear to be anyone on the premises at all. There were no parked cars, no lights on, no sounds emanating from within.

  “How’s your optimism now?” Zhang asked.

  “Be patient, Wallace. Maybe it isn’t sorghum season, so maybe they only come in for half days or whatever.”

  “Or maybe this is a red herring. Maybe YSP only exists on paper, like we theorized yesterday. A front. People will show up a few days before the Commerce Department’s next audit to make the place look legit.”

  “We’ve only been here half an hour. Relax.”

  Zhang sighed. “Fine.”

  A large truck full of thoroughly unhappy looking pigs rolled by, dark exhaust billowing from its oversize tailpipe.

  “So the air in your room isn’t hotter than hell?” Severin asked.

  “It’s fine.”

  “I can barely sleep in mine.”

  *****

  The hours clicked by. Hard rain continued to pound on the roof of the car, and they took turns getting soaked in order to urinate on the roadside. Because of the rain, they kept the windows shut, and the cramped cab became a steam bath—the air warm and humid to the point of being stifling, the windows fogged and in need of constant wiping. But there continued to be no observable activity at the alleged YSP building. As the stiffness and eventual ache in his inactive joints grew, Severin began to despair. At sundown, they called it a day and went back to the hotel, back to their usual spot in the empty dining room, back to the Baijiu.

  *****

  The next day was essentially the same, with one notable exception being that they left the cab driver at the hotel after assuring him—through the handover of another $50 worth of Chinese currency—that they were both competent drivers and that his cab would come to no harm. Also, Severin had begged Zhang to ask the hotel staff to fix the thermostat in his room.

  The heavy rain continued. Their muscles and joints ached from sitting, and there was no activity at the YSP factory. But today, instead of taking turns urinating on the roadside while the driving rain soaked them, they were crawling up into scrubby wet bushes to relieve themselves of diarrhea—caused by their breakfast, tainted water, or heaven knew what—that had hit both of them just after noon.

  “Today’s word of the day is lassitude,” an irritated, bored Severin said, not really expecting a response.

  “Lassitude?”

  “Weariness, mental or physical.” His butt sore from sitting, he tried, without success, to stretch—extending his feet under the dash as far as they would go, arcing his torso up over the headrest until his face pressed against the roof of the car. But he couldn’t quite straighten his body. Frustrat
ed, he plopped back down in the seat. “What the hell is the deal with this endless rain? I don’t think I’ve ever seen it rain this hard for this long. Not even in Florida.”

  “It’s the remains of a tropical cyclone.”

  “A cyclone?”

  “The remnants. Its winds petered out before it made landfall. But it still packs plenty of moisture. The news said it’ll be parked over most of the northeast coastal provinces for at least another 24 hours.”

  “If it goes any longer than that, I’m going to start building an ark.”

  *****

  As they sat, time seemed to stretch out. Seemed to slow. They grew more grumpy and miserable and sick of each other by the minute.

  “So let me ask you something, since you’re so full of unsolicited sage advice,” Severin said.

  “Be my guest.”

  “What would you do if you were me?”

  “What are you talking about?”

  “If you were living my life.”

  “You mean if I were a rudderless alcoholic in denial?”

  “Ah. Point taken. I should have known better than to ask.”

  “I’m just trying to understand your question.”

  “You know what? You’re an ass. An irritating, lactose intolerant, pontifical—”

  “Foul words is but foul wind, and foul wind is but foul breath, and foul breath is—”

  “Please—please, just stop talking.”

  *****

  Finally, as the sky grew dark at the end of the day, emboldened by their impatience, they moved the taxi to another street, parking around the corner and out of sight, and approached the factory on foot. Half concealed in the semi-darkness, they snuck around the back of the building and peered through each of the ground-level windows. In the manufacturing spaces, they saw what looked like a large drill press, a rack of basic hand tools, a bundle of brooms, and several dozen woven polypropylene sacks stuffed with some sort of bulk good and stacked seven to eight feet high against one of the interior walls. There was nothing that jumped out at them as being obviously designed for the processing of sorghum—or any other agricultural product, for that matter. Nor did there appear to be any barrels of sorghum syrup nor any remnants of sorghum cane. The building could have been used for anything.

  The office spaces each housed desks. One had an antiquated, dust-covered copy machine. Another contained a stack of three cardboard boxes. While none of this grabbed Severin’s attention, there certainly could have been something worth seeing somewhere in the building. But they could only see a portion of the interior spaces by peering through the first floor windows.

  They tried the two doors on the back side of the building only to find they were both locked tight. But in fiddling with the windows, Severin found one he didn’t think was latched—one he might be able to pry and slide open. It was only three or four feet above ground. He shook it and pushed at it, but couldn’t get enough leverage to get it open. “Go find me a stick or pry bar or something,” he told Zhang as he continued to monkey with it. As Zhang was kicking around the property looking for a suitable tool, Severin was able to slide the window open just enough to get his fingers in the gap. Then he pulled it as far as it would go—maybe a foot. He stuck his head in the dark gap and took a look around. The room was empty. There was a chalkboard with traces of partially erased Chinese writing.

  When Zhang returned, Severin had him give him a leg up. Turned on his side, he wriggled through the window, giving himself a long, deep, zig-zagging scratch on the side of his rib cage as he pulled himself through, dragging his torso across the raised edge of the window frame. As Zhang held his legs, he lowered himself to the floor, head first, before finally pulling his feet through the window and somersaulting into a sitting position. He lifted his shirt to look at the scratch.

  “You bleeding?” Zhang asked.

  “Not bad. Stay here and keep an eye out,” he told Zhang as he stood up and, using a metal chair for leverage, pried the window wider open.

  “In the rain?”

  “It will help wash the diarrhea off your shoes.”

  “Great.”

  “Give a shout if you see anybody coming.”

  “Alright.”

  Using the flashlight feature of his smartphone, Severin exited the room, emerging in a long, empty hallway with office doors lining each side, a broad stairwell at its midpoint. He climbed the stairs to begin his search on the 3rd floor, making his way from room to room, searching desks, cabinets, and closets, looking for anything helpful. In room after room, he found nothing but furniture and office supplies—if anything at all. Finally, in the last room at the end of the hallway back down on the main floor, he opened one of the three cardboard boxes he’d seen from the window to find it full of documents. Printed in English, they appeared to be invoices and bills of lading for dog food shipments destined for a U.S. importer called Yang & Lui Trading of Seattle, Washington. The header, however, was in Chinese. The other two boxes contained empty three-ring binders labeled by month and year.

  He grabbed a representative sample of each of the documents and moved down the hall to the manufacturing floor, where he took a closer look at the woven polypropylene sacks stacked against the wall. As he expected, they were labeled as dog food, the labels including the same set of Chinese characters as on the headers of the documents. On the floor next to one of the stacks, he found a pile of large adhesive labels of the exact same dimensions as the labels already affixed to the dog food sacks. But there were no Chinese characters on these labels. Instead, the company name was written in English. It read Zhucheng Pet Food Products Co. Ltd. Severin guessed that whoever worked here was simply relabeling the feed bags for shipment to an English-speaking country so that the ultimate customers would be able to read the company’s name. Still, a sense of suspicion rose in his gut. He grabbed a screwdriver from a rack of hand tools in the corner, came back over to the sacks, and used the screwdriver to tear one of them open. Brown pellets spilled from the hole. He cupped his hand under it and, catching a few, raised them to his nose and took a whiff. Dog kibble.

  Great.

  Severin sighed, not knowing where else to look, beginning to think the whole journey to Yinzhen was a dead end. He gazed around the manufacturing floor, feelings of dejection taking hold of him. As he moped back through the doorway and into the dark antechamber that separated the offices from the manufacturing floor, he stopped before a small door he hadn’t previously noticed. It was steel framed. But the door itself was wood. He tried the knob and found it locked. Inspecting it with his light, he saw that it had no deadbolt and was held in place by nothing more than a standard latch and strike-plate assembly. He had a strong suspicion that this was the infamous closet Keen had found—the closet that may have contained a second set of books that would have been irrefutable evidence that YSP was committing fraud to fool the Commerce Department.

  Giving himself a moment to ponder other options, but unable to come up with any of promise, he raised his right foot and gave the door a powerful kick just below the knob. It held fast. But after five more strong kicks, the wood around the latch cracked and the door broke open, with splinters flying this way and that. Severin shined his light in to have a look. Though it might have been the very closet Keen was concerned about, it was empty now. It didn’t hold so much as a broom and dustpan. But as Severin turned to leave, he saw that there was a small safe in the wall with a combination lock. Could it contain some critical piece of evidence that would set them on a course toward learning what had happened to Kristin? He doubted it. Regardless, he had neither the tools nor the know-how necessary to get into the safe. Any attempt at breaking into it would have to wait.

  Emerging back into the hallway, he started walking toward what appeared to be an exit door at its far end when a tiny red light caught his eye. It was up in a corner of the ceiling. As he got closer and shined his flashlight up at it, he saw that it was a motion sensor. Just as he began to wonder wheth
er anybody was actually monitoring its readings, he heard the sound of tires crunching on gravel on both sides of the building.

  “Lars!” he heard Zhang shout through the window.

  “Coming.”

  Severin scrambled back out the window to find Zhang backing up toward him while retreating from three Chinese men with hostile expressions advancing on him from around one corner of the building. Then two more came around the other corner. Severin and Zhang were trapped between the building, a high chain-link fence, and the men.

  “You can fight, right?” Severin asked Zhang.

  “I was a Golden Gloves semi-finalist. Can you?”

  One of the men took a lazy swing at Severin, who deflected the fist as he stepped forward to meet the man nearly chest to chest, simultaneously delivering a powerful uppercut palm-heel strike to the man’s chin. The sickening sound of the man’s teeth crashing together was followed by a sort of shocked sigh as the man crumpled to the ground unconscious.

  “Okay then,” Zhang said, as he raised his fists to the two men nearest him. They appeared to study him for a moment before backing up a few steps—perhaps recognizing from his stance and body language that he knew how to fight. The men on Severin’s side, dropping their aggressive posture, grabbed their unconscious comrade by the arms and legs and circled around to regroup with the other two. This left a path of escape open to Severin and Zhang—a path they promptly used. Exiting the property, they saw two newly arrived black sedans parked to either side of the building. They took the long way around the block in an attempt to hide the fact that they were going to their parked taxi cab, hopefully keeping secret the fact that they had one at their disposal for surveillance purposes.

  “Should we get their license plate numbers?” Zhang asked.

  “To do what with? Call the cops and then have to explain to them why we’d like a registration trace?”

  “Well, I mean—”