Gugu, whatever else he is, he’s got his pretentions, right? Not that he’s the upholder of Confucian virtues, like Tiantian fancies himself, but that he’s a creative guy. An artist of sorts, even if he says he’s only interested in making trashy movies. The kid who Sidney wants to manage his art collection. Maybe Gugu hangs out here, and it’s where he met Celine.
Stuff I think I’ll ask her about when I see her.
Here’s what looks like an old factory or a schooclass="underline" grey wall with thick pillars on either side of the entrance, painted white concrete buildings, faded gold calligraphy announcing whatever it used to be-okay, that says factory-and a newer signpost with placards for the various galleries and studios inside it. Some brass, some professionally printed, others deliberately hand done.
And there’s Focus. I almost miss it because it’s done in these overlapping typefaces that are different colors and seem to make the word shift and blur. Cute.
I walk in the direction of the sign.
The path takes me past old concrete and brick buildings, some plastered, some raw. All kinds of flyers and posters pasted up on the walls, layers of them, for exhibits, for bands, for film showings. I pass a life-size wooden tank, with faces and gargoyles and I don’t know what carved into it, along with the block letters victory! in English. A little farther down the path, some giant calligraphy statues that spell out 为什么? “Why?” A couple of people with scarves wrapped around their faces scurry across the grounds, looking for shelter. The wind isn’t getting any better. Dust hits a window with an audible rattle; a tin sign on a wooden stake topples over and scrapes against the pavement.
Finally a grey brick building with the same graphic as the signpost by the gate-focus-bolted to the wall next to double metal doors. I do a little recon. One small smoked Plexiglas window to the left of the entrance. I don’t see anything useful, just high ceilings and some statue shapes I can barely make out.
Weird. It looks like a gallery. Celine can’t really live here, can she?
I don’t see a doorbell or anything like that. I jiggle the door handle. Unlocked.
Okay, I think. It’s nine fifteen. A little early for a gallery, but not out of the question. Just because it’s the middle of a howling dust storm, that doesn’t mean there’s anything so weird about my being here, right?
Right.
My heart’s doing double time as I open the door.
If the gallery’s open for business, it doesn’t look like it. It’s dark, with just some dim yellow light filtering in through the skylights. Enough for me to make out the shapes I glimpsed from outside.
Bodies. Limbs and trunks and heads. I let out a gasp, then tell myself to get a grip. They’re too big to be human. They’re doll parts. Giant doll parts that look like Chinese Barbies. Like a rubbery pink Barbie torso that towers over me, then another wearing a sailor blouse and a skirt that ends that just above its swollen pink crotch. There’s a pair of legs, one bent backward at the knee, like my friends and I used to do when we were kids. Arms, hands with painted red nails. Heads. Blank eyed. Cascades of shiny plastic hair: black, blond, and red.
Why couldn’t it have been fluffy kittens and puppies, you know?
I pull the bandanna I’m wearing down around my neck. “Ni hao,” I say. My voice cracks a little from all the dust. “You ren zai zheli?”
Anyone here?
No one answers.
To my left there’s an alcove with a desk and a computer, behind it shelves with books and exhibition catalogs. The computer’s off. At the back of the gallery, a doorway, a dark rectangle. Blue light flickers from inside-a TV?
I hesitate. Listen. Howling wind, things creaking and thumping, the crackle of grit hitting glass.
None of it’s coming from in here. I don’t think.
Okay, McEnroe, I tell myself. You have one of two choices: keep looking or turn around and walk away.
I almost leave. It doesn’t feel like anyone’s here, and the whole thing’s off anyway. This can’t be where Celine lives. The text messages last night, whoever sent them wanted me to come here. But why?
It’s that question, the “why?” that makes me keep walking. Which is pretty stupid. Because one of the answers I come up with would inspire a sane person to get out, right now.
I’ll just go look in this next room, I tell myself. That’s as far as I’ll go. I’ll check it out, and then I’ll leave.
Sometimes I’m really a dumb shit.
It’s a smaller gallery. Dark because there’s no skylight. A bedroom, I guess, a girlie, Barbie kind of bedroom: pink and red, anime eyes and hearts on the walls, lit by a huge flat-screen TV playing some Chinese soap with the sound turned off. It smells like somebody took a dump somewhere close by.
Over on the bed, there are more larger-than-life dolls. The first is another Chinese Barbie. She’s lying on her back with her legs spread. There are three others, all men. I guess you could call them Ken. Unlike Barbie, they’re clothed. Two are Chinese Kens. One’s a Westerner. They stand there surrounding the bed, seeming to stare at the doll lying in it.
My eyes move right, past the bed, past the giant stuffed Hello Kitty.
Next to the Hello Kitty, propped up against the wall, at first I think it’s another doll.
Celine.
Oh, shit.
Chapter Fourteen
★
I keep it together. I was a medic, right? So my first reaction isn’t to bug out. I hustle over there and kneel awkwardly next to her.
Even in the TV light, I can tell she’s dead. Her eyes are open, her mouth slack, her lips cyanotic, and there’s a line of dried white foam running down from one corner. No obvious wounds. Is that white powder around her nose? I put two fingers on the side of her neck to check for a pulse, just in case. The skin’s cold. As lifeless as the Barbies.
If I were doing this by the book, I’d do a couple other things-get a mirror and make sure there’s no breath moving, check the fingers for the degree of rigor, check for blood pooling-but no fucking way that’s my job right now.
That’s when I do freak. I scramble to my feet, faster than I knew I could, back out of the room, and then haul ass out of the gallery.
“Why do you never do what I tell you to do?” Yeah, he’s pissed. What a surprise.
“Not the time, John.”
I’m out of the gallery complex and hustling down the street, back toward the center of town and, I hope, a taxi to get me the fuck away from here.
“Did anyone see you?”
“I don’t know. Maybe. But I had a scarf around my face because of the dust.”
“Good for cameras anyway. Cameras don’t work well today. Any inside?”
“I didn’t notice.”
I hear that sharp exhalation of air that might be a curse.
My steps are slowing down. I think what’s the point of running? Running where, back to Beijing?
“Maybe I should just go to the police. I mean, she’s been dead… I don’t know, at least eight, nine hours-it’s not like anyone could say that I went there just now and killed her.”
“Not a PSB case anymore.”
“You mean it’s your case? What happens if your boss finds out you’re freelancing? That you’re doing this on your own?”
“Nothing for you to worry about.”
Which is bullshit, of course, but I don’t have the energy to fight about it.
“You talked to Inspector Zou?”
“Not yet. Today.”
By now my steps have slowed to a halt. The wind’s whipping around like crazy; a gust tumbles over a trash can, and there are papers and leaves blowing everywhere.
“What do you want me to do?” I finally ask.
“Just go home. And stay there.”
For once I’m inclined to do what he says.
I have a little bit of luck at least: There’s a taxi dropping somebody off at the gallery complex where I got directions this morning. I have him take me to the Liangmaqiao subway stop-I figure I’ll get home faster on the subway than I would in a taxi going through rush-hour traffic.