It would be a hell of a lot more convenient to go after someone like me. Never mind that I had nothing to do with it. Forget that I have absolutely no motive or that I don’t even know who the girl is. They could just make some shit up. Close the case, wipe their hands, and that’s that.
Is there any kind of bone that I could throw Zou that isn’t going to get me in even deeper?
I could tell him about Betty, or whoever it was who answered Betty’s phone. She was scared of something.
“Fuck,” I mutter. Because I don’t want to sic the cops on Betty. I don’t know what her connection to the Caos is, other than that she hangs out with Gugu. She could be another fu er dai or hong er dai for all I know, with her own powerful guanxi.
So what do I do?
I could call John.
I slump back against the couch. I call John, what’s he going to say?
That I should have listened to him. I should’ve stayed away from the Caos.
Like I really had a choice.
What happens when somebody connects the dots? When Inspector Zou finds out I’m in deep shit with the DSD? Because he will find out, sooner or later. And watch me go from person of interest to the perfect scapegoat.
Pompadour Bureaucrat would be the happiest little totalitarian ever.
Chapter Ten
★
“Don’t say it.”
John grimaces. It’s as if holding back his “I told you so” is physically painful.
“Okay, you know that chengyu? That proverb? The one about how once you’re riding on a tiger, it’s really hard to get off?”
“Qi hu nan xia,” John mutters.
“Yeah. That’s where I am with the Caos.”
John halts in his tracks, and he just can’t contain himself anymore. “But why you get on tiger in the first place?” He’s punching the air with his fist as he says this.
We’re wandering around the Yuanmingyuan, the Old Summer Palace, which he picked because it seemed like a good place to meet where neither of us would attract much attention, its being a tourist destination and all, but a low-key one. And it’s not that crowded today, but this isn’t exactly turning out to be a discreet conversation, which is what we’re supposed to be having right now.
I didn’t give him a blow-by-blow. Just, this girl turned up dead yesterday morning with my card on her body. And oh, yeah, whose party it was that I went to the night before last.
I lean against the metal railing that circles what used to be a decorative pond, or maybe a fountain. It’s hard to tell. The Yuanmingyuan was sacked and burned “by the Anglo-French imperialist forces” in the middle of the nineteenth century, during the Opium Wars, and what’s left is all these big blocks and pillars of granite, the remains of marble bridges and stone boats, almost like the pictures you see of ancient Greek ruins, just the skeletons of something that used to be really grand. Really powerful.
“Listen. I didn’t ask to get involved with the Caos. Sidney came looking for me. And the problem is, I owe him, big time.”
A six-pack of Chinese girls, college age, are posing for pictures around what must have been the centerpiece of the fountain, this giant scallop-shell thing that looks more European than Chinese. They’re cocking their heads to one side, kicking out their feet, making peace signs. They don’t seem too concerned with the outrage committed by the Anglo-French imperialist forces.
“He got me out of a really bad situation,” I say. “And there doesn’t seem to be anything I can do to make us even.”
John stands rigidly still, the muscle in his jaw still twitching. Looks down at his sneakers. Black leather Pumas. If they’re fakes, they’re good ones.
He nods, still staring at his shoes. Then he looks up.
“I can help you. I have some ideas,” he says.
“What are you planning on doing?” I cut him off before he can object, before he can tell me to let him handle it. “If you’re going to help me, I need to know.”
A shrug. “Simple. I just go to this Inspector Zou and tell him I have interest in the case. He must tell me his progress. He has no choice but to obey.”
Hearing this makes me feel slightly sick to my stomach. “Then he’ll know I have a DSD problem.”
“Yes. But this way he can just report to me, not my bosses. I can make a suggestion, maybe he should arrest someone else.”
I think about it. The plan’s simple and kind of brilliant in a way: Do an end run around the DSD’s getting involved by being the DSD guy in charge before the bosses find out about the case.
But this is the Cao family we’re talking about, the Caos and their hong er dai connections. With people that powerful, if Zou pursues any of them, if they’re in any way connected to a murder and that gets out, what are the odds that Domestic Security gets a call? Either from the Caos or from one of their enemies?
“I don’t think it’s a good idea,” I finally say. “This goes wrong, you could get in a lot of trouble.”
“Not if we solve it quickly. Then I am just doing my job.”
“Solve?”
“Find the right one to blame.” His face darkens. “All those Caos, they are all guilty of something.”
Hoo, boy.
It’s possible that I just made things a lot worse.
On the way home, I stop at a dumpling place I like on Andingmen to pick up a late lunch. I get it to go. I don’t feel like eating in the restaurant by myself, and besides, I need to get home to my dog.
This place is popular, and it’s usually crowded, but right now, just after 2:00 p.m., the lunch crowd is gone. I sit on a hard wooden bench by the entrance and wait for my dumplings. A bunch of fuwuyuan eat their lunches at a round, plastic-covered table in the back, kitchen workers in white, waitresses in cheap embroidered jackets, “traditional” style except done in neon shades of pink and yellow and turquoise. A few more lounge around by the drink cooler in the back, yelling at a soccer game on the TV. Chinese soccer is a pretty corrupt business, or so I’m told, and I guess the national team sucks, but they still really get into it.
I shouldn’t have told John. If he starts digging around looking for dirt on the Caos… what are the consequences likely to be? It’s not like I care if he finds out that Tiantian or Meimei or Gugu or even Sidney is a corrupt fuck. I mean, that’s kind of the default setting if you’re fu er dai. It’s more that poking the hornet’s nest isn’t a good idea. Believe me, I know. I’ve done it when I didn’t even know that was what I was sticking my hand into. But John doesn’t have that excuse. He has to know that going after the Caos is asking for a shitstorm. And I know John. He’s a gung-ho mofo. He’s not going to stop until he completes the mission.
Or someone takes him out.
I get my dumplings.
I walk home along Gulou Dongdajie. Normally it’s one of my favorite streets-old-style grey brick buildings, two or three stories high, traditional signboards, funky little boutiques and coffeehouses. Today, though, I’m tempted to flag down a cab. It’s not that far, but my leg’s just killing me. I stop at a little snack stand, buy a bottle of water, crack it open, and take a Percocet, wondering like I do every time I take one lately how the fuck I’m going to manage when I run out of them this time.
I could try a doctor here, I guess. But everyone I’ve ever talked to tells me it’s almost impossible to get an outpatient prescription, and if you can, they’re pretty stingy with the pills and they cost a fortune to boot.
I’m standing in front of a guitar shop. For whatever reason, this stretch of Gulou Dongdajie has a bunch of music stores. You can buy guitars, drums, violins, traditional Chinese instruments, whatever. The whiteboard in the window of this one lists some of the guitars they have to offer, in English (the national steel country blues guitar), and below that, also in English, these lines: keep anger, keep revolt! fuck the world! fuck the government! fuck the red land!!!