The butler answers Vicky’s rap with the door knocker. Because of course Sidney has a butler. I’m only surprised that he didn’t go all out and hire an English one.
“Cao Xiansheng zai keting,” the butler murmurs to Vicky. Mr. Cao is in the living room.
We walk down the long hall I’ve walked before, the one with the paintings of European lords and ladies hunting and eating and posing with little froufrou dogs, all hung in these massive ornate, gilded frames. The butler leads the way.
I check my phone for the time. High noon.
He’s probably planning some crazy, over-the-top banquet lunch, I think. Expensive food and too much of it. That’s just how Sidney rolls.
The butler opens one of the massive carved wooden doors that are painted a high-gloss white. Gestures for me to enter.
I step inside, and that’s when I realize how wrong I was about lunch.
Sitting there in a semicircle, perched on the fancy French furniture, are the Caos: Sidney, Tiantian, Meimei, and Gugu.
Sidney rises.
“Ellie, thank you for coming.” he says. “Now you can tell us what you found out.”
CHAPTER TWENTY FOUR
★
“I, UH … seriously?”
“Of course,” Sidney says. He spreads his hands, at the room, at his kids, I don’t know what. “Anything you say does not leave this room.”
And that’s supposed to make me feel better?
I look at them all. Tiantian, sitting rigidly on one of the mini-couches, hands covering his knees. Gugu, slumped and defeated. Meimei, leaning against the hard cushion and sculpted chair back in a pose of relaxation. I’m pretty sure she’s not actually relaxed.
Sidney, meanwhile, just stands there, hands clasped in front of him. He isn’t smiling like he usually is. There’s no expression on his face at all.
I think of that guy I saw dying right in front of me a couple months ago, because of Sidney.
“Okay, fine. Whatever,” I say. I don’t even care anymore.
“There was a girl at Tiantian’s party. One of the waitresses. I guess sometimes she worked late. Sold a little doufu. She was just doing what she could do, because she lived in a fucking box in a basement and she wanted something better.”
No one moves.
“She ended up dead, dumped on a pile of garbage.”
Now I turn to Sidney. Because he’s the one who wanted to know.
“I think Tiantian killed her,” I say.
“Why do you think this?” Sidney asks me, his voice low.
“Because he has a reputation for visiting xiaojie. And for hurting them.”
Tiantian half rises from his chair, color flaring on his cheeks. “These are nothing but lies. You have no proof of this.”
I shrug. “No one asked me for proof. That part’s not my job. You know who could prove it, though?” I laugh. “Celine. She saw something that night. But she’s dead, too. Did you know Celine was dead, Gugu?”
Gugu sits up, the blood drained from his face as if someone pulled a plug. “I … no.”
I feel bad for a moment. I think he’s telling the truth. And he may be a privileged asshole, but nobody needs to find out the way he just did that someone he knew has died.
But he’s still an asshole, so fuck him.
“Yeah. Drug overdose. Right after you left that gallery party. Funny how that works. Maybe we can ask Marsh about it. He around?”
Gugu looks like someone slapped him across the face and he’s still trying to absorb the blow.
Sidney nods, his eyes a little narrowed. Making a calculation. “Yes. He is here. But he is not family. First I think we can talk to Dao Ming.”
Now we’re having a real party.
The butler comes in and asks us what we want to drink. I ask for a beer. Sidney’s serving Rogue Dead Guy Ale, and it even tastes fresh.
I drink it as we wait for Dao Ming to arrive.
Dao Ming’s wearing black: black slacks and a short-sleeved black mock turtleneck. She stands in the doorway looking around the room, her eyes wild, like they’re taking up more space than they were meant to.
Finally she sits in a chair that’s catty-corner to Tiantian. As far away from him as she can get.
This time I say it in Chinese. “I know this. At Tiantian’s party a fuwuyuan died. She served as a prostitute. I think Tiantian killed her. I don’t know what the rest of you know.”
“This is not true!” Tiantian snarls, the red on his cheeks getting deep and dark.
Dao Ming twitches in her chair. “He likes xiaojie,” she spits out. “Don’t lie,” she says to her husband. “I know what you do. You do it with these girls. You do it all the time.”
“I didn’t …”
I roll my eyes. “Everyone knows you did.”
“I did not kill her!”
“But you beat her, right? You choked her. You get off on that kind of thing. Don’t you.”
I am pretty sure Tiantian’s going to bolt out of his chair right then and launch himself at me, and I’m thinking, Bring it on, asshole, but Dao Ming rises first.
“He broke the rules,” she says, biting off each word. “He had these girls at our house. Our house!” She strides over to Tiantian and gets in his face, pushing and shoving him with each word. “That’s not allowed! How dare you humiliate me that way? How dare you!” Now she slaps him across the face. He raises his hands to protect himself, and she just keeps hitting him.
Finally she stops. Like she’s too exhausted to continue. He remains frozen for a moment, his raised hands in front of his face, palms out.
She turns to me, still breathing hard, cords in her neck standing out like twisted wires.
“Yes, he beat her,” she says. “He choked her. I found her, after. She was half dead, crying and carrying on. So I put her out of her misery. It was an act of mercy.”
The beer roils in my gut, and I feel like I’m going to puke. I grab my pack, turn without a word, and I walk out of the room. No one tries to stop me.
CHAPTER TWENTY FIVE
★
I KEEP WALKING, down the seemingly endless hall, into the entranceway, and out the front door. I walk outside onto the driveway, past the fancy-ass sports car parked there, until I get to a stone retaining wall that overlooks the long drive and the surrounding grounds. I stop there.
The sky’s pretty blue out here, with only a little haze in the distance. I realize I don’t know what the fuck I’m going to do now.
I just want to keep walking, but to where? It’s a couple of miles into Xingfu Cun proper, such as it is, and I can walk that, gimpy leg and all, but what do I do when I get there? Are there buses out of Xingfu Cun? Taxis? Any cars for hire at all?
Will Sidney even let me leave?
I’m not there all that long before I hear slow footsteps on the flagstones behind me.
Sidney.
He looks apologetic. I hope that’s a good sign.
“Is that enough?” I ask.
He nods.
“Can I go now?”
“Soon.”
Soon. I don’t know if I like the sound of that.
Sidney sighs. “Tiantian is my first child. My first son. He should be the best. But … he has this jealous nature. Always. I think maybe because I am not rich when he is a boy. I work very hard … His mother …” He shakes his head. “She works, too. The relationship between us … is not very good. No one pays Tiantian very much attention.”
“So he beats up on girls?” I snort, even though I shouldn’t. “Not a great excuse.”
“No. It is not.”
He doesn’t look mad. He looks like he’s thinking it all over. “Meimei and Gugu have more gentle natures. I think because their mother is more gentle.”
So there are two Mrs. Caos. Neither of whom seems to be around. At this point I’m not sure I care what that story is. Unless Sidney killed them and buried them in the backyard. That might be relevant.
“But Dao Ming,
she is not good for Tiantian.”
“You think? She’s batshit.”
“Bat … shit?”
“Sorry. Fengkuangde.”
“Yes. She is … not happy.” He shakes his head. “I want to … to fenkai … to …”
“Separate?”
“Yes. Separate my family from Yang Junmin’s family. But this is … a little complicated.”
“Yeah,” I say. “I kind of get that.”
“I help give him power. He help make me rich. But … I do not like him. He does not like me.”
“Then why … ?” I ask, before I can stop myself. Because really, do I need to know? But it’s like there’s a part of me that does need to. Like if I can make things make sense, then it means something. It’s not all just some kind of sick joke.
“Do you know Wenhua Da Geming?” he asks.
“Cultural Revolution. Yeah.” I know something about it anyway. Ten years in the sixties and seventies, when Mao decided to stir shit up, promote a “revolution” that was part idealistic crusade, part power struggle among the leadership, part score settling among ordinary people with generations of resentments. It got crazy bad. Almost a civil war in places. Most of the younger generations here hardly know a thing about it. Just like they don’t know about the Great Leap or Tiananmen.
But how many people in the US know why we went to war in Iraq?
I’m getting lost in my own thoughts again, something I shouldn’t do when I’m at a house containing at least several people with homicidal tendencies and in the presence of one who outsources.
“What about it? About the Wenhua Da Geming?” I ask.
“My family and Yang Junmin’s family. We grow up in same place. Same town, very close to here. Our families … we are not friends. Then Mao start Cultural Revolution. Yang Junmin and I are Red Guards. We smash the Olds.”
He smiles a little. “Making revolution is … fun. When you are young.”
I get a shiver, right across my shoulders and the back of my neck.
“My Red Guards split from Yang Junmin’s Red Guards. We are enemies. We hate each other, very much,” Sidney continues. “But later, when all of that is over, we are still two young men from Anhui. It is time to rebuild China. So we work together. Now …” Sidney spreads his hands. “Here we are.”
Here we are.
He starts to pace. “I try to build something. Something big. Something beautiful. Why? My children, they all are … terrible.”
“Meimei and Gugu are … okay.”
“They do not care, about what I build. They do not start families. They do not work. They simply want to … play.” He’s pacing harder now. Building up to something. I’ve never seen him lose it before. But I’m wondering if I’m about to.
“There is nothing left but to buy beautiful things,” Sidney says. “Enjoy them in this life.”
He stops suddenly. “Do you know something?” He jabs a finger at me. “You.”
My heart jumps.
“Me?”
“You. Are. Right.”
He whirls around, stretches out his arms toward his fake French château. “I can spend it all. When I die, I can leave it to the people. We can build this museum. Make it … great. Beautiful. For the people. I want everyone to see these things and learn about them. Let this art bring them some joy and good feelings.” He drops his hands. “It is all I can offer.”
“It’s … a good thing,” I manage.
“Thank you, Ellie.” He bobs his head a few times. “Thank you, for helping me understand this.”
Then, “Please stay for dinner. I can send you home after.”
“Okay,” I say. “Sure.”
What else can I say? I’m all out of words right now.
I decide to take a walk. If I’m stuck out here for dinner, I don’t want to spend any more time than I have to with the people in that house.
I head around to the back of the mansion. There’s a fancy garden, with trimmed hedgerows, flowers, and fountains. Beyond that, another low retaining wall and a gently sloping hill.
I walk out to the retaining wall. Unsling my pack. Take a look at more of Sidney’s domain.
Off to the left, rows of what might be grapes. A vineyard, I’m guessing, given Sidney. To the right, I’m not sure what that is. Some tall hedges, some structures I can’t quite figure out. Sheds? Another garden maybe.
I can’t tell how big the grounds are. They seem to go on as far as I can see, but who can tell where Sidney ends and Xingfu Cun begins, right?
“Hey.”
I jump. Turn. It’s Marsh.
“We need to talk,” he says.
“Oh. We do?” I’m looking for the quickest route out of here.
His hands are balled into fists, arms dangling at his sides. Pissed as hell, but not quite ready to beat the shit out of me.
“What the fuck, Ellie? Seriously, what the fuck?”
“What.” I say it that way where it’s not a question.
“You told the Caos I fucking killed Celine?” His cheeks are red. He’s standing close enough where I can catch a whiff of scotch.
Can I walk away?
“No. I said she died right after Gugu left the gallery. It’s not my fault you were still there.”
He’s breathing hard. Like he’s trying to calm himself down. “Look, we need to help each other. You think Yang is going to trust either of us with knowing all this shit?”
I shrug. “Hey. I don’t actually know anything. Do you?”
He paces a step or two in a tight little circle, clenching and unclenching his fists, running a hand through his hair, like he’s trying to figure something out. I’m watching him, and I can’t decide if he’s dangerous or not.
I don’t think I can get past him.
“Okay,” he says. “You want to know what happened to Celine? I’ll tell you.”
I hesitate. I don’t know for sure if this guy’s a murderer or just a douchebag. But what I do know is that I want to know what happened.
The truth. The end.
He gestures at the low wall, slowly, like he doesn’t want to startle me. “Let’s sit.”
“Let’s not. If you’re serious about this, you can take a step back. I don’t want you this close to me.”
Marsh lifts his hands. “Okay.” Steps back. “Okay.”
“So tell me,” I say.
“Celine liked heroin,” he says. “Said it made her feel like she lived in a beautiful world.” He smiles a little. “She was kind of … dramatic. You know? I stayed behind to do some with her. Just a snort. We crashed out and listened to music for a while. I left. I guess she did some more after that. She just did a little too much. I used to think she was maybe suicidal. Maybe she was.” He shrugs. “That’s it. There’s nothing else to it.”
“Nothing? Nothing about how she saw a dead girl at Tiantian’s party?”
“So what? So did I.”
We just stand there for a moment, staring at each other.
“You want to know how it went down?” he asks.
I nod. I can’t help it.
“The two of us were … just kind of hanging out. Celine and me. After it happened, Tiantian called Yang. He sent two guys to take care of the body. Celine helped them put some clothes on her that they brought over. Cheap-ass worker’s uniform, like a supermarket smock or something.”
I flash back to the photo of the dead girl. What the fuck is her name?
Wang Junyi. That’s it.
“Here’s the thing,” Marsh says. He sounds calmer now. “They’re gonna want to blame a foreigner. You’ve got Sidney in your corner. I’ve got Tiantian.”
My heart’s speeding up like somebody turned a dial.
“Tiantian?”
He nods. “Yeah. Gugu’s my buddy, but I fix things for Tiantian. Help him move money around. The pay’s a lot better.”
“Okay,” I say. “So we both have friends. How exactly do we help each other?”
That’s when h
e laughs. “Yeah, you know what? I can’t help you. But you can help me.”
He’s reaching behind him, into his waistband, and I already know what he’s reaching for.
I snatch up my daypack by the straps and swing it hard, as his hand rises with the gun.
The weapon, some pistol, I can’t see what it is, goes flying, but there’s no way I can beat Marsh to it. I don’t run that well, and he’s bigger than I am.
There’s only one thing I can think of to do.
I clamber over the low retaining wall and tuck and roll. Down the gentle hill, side over side, arms clasped over my chest, like I’m a kid playing a game, just rolling down the hill, collecting grass stains, except I’m going too fast, and I don’t come to a stop until I slam into a row of grapevines and some kind of wire strung along them, my forearm absorbing most of the blow.
I pick myself up and look up the hill. I don’t see Marsh, yet, but I have to figure he’s going to get the gun and come after me.
I head for the tall hedges. They’re like walls, one running along the side of the vineyard, the other perpendicular to it, facing the retaining wall up the hill. There’s a gap between them, the entrance to the garden, or whatever this is.
I don’t like going into terrain I don’t know, into someplace I could get trapped, but I need to find some cover, and there aren’t a lot of choices.
“What the fuck?” I mutter.
I can’t figure out what this is at first. One of the sheds I saw, it’s like this house or something, painted sand colored, and in front of it there’s a life-size stand-up figure of a soldier, in full-on battle rattle, holding a rifle aimed at me. I look around, and I see a mock-up of a tank—I mean, it can’t be a real tank, right? It looks pretty real, if a little old, metal rusting around the edges, done up in green camo. Behind that are concrete walls, crumbling in places, with black bursts around the broken places like they’ve been hit by mortars.
Dragon Day Page 25
