Another pause.
“Of course!” he says. “She is just in the dining room. Having a snack.”
And he puts me on hold.
A blast of an old-school Chinese patriotic folk song from the fifties, full orchestra and a woman with a high nasal voice warbling at a glass-breaking volume fills my ear. I wait. It feels like forever, but it’s probably more like two minutes. Then:
“Ellie? You there?”
It’s Mom. She sounds anxious. I can’t tell if she’s scared.
Me, I am so pissed off that I’m ready to head down to Xingfu Cun with a black-market AK and do some serious damage.
“Yeah, it’s me. Are you okay?”
“Oh, yeah. We’re fine. Andy’s here, and Mimi. We were just having a bite to eat.”
She sounds fine anyway.
I calm down a notch. “Okay. Listen, you don’t have anything to worry about. Sidney is… a little different, but he likes having guests.”
“Is he one of the arte bandidos you were talking about?” she says in a low voice. I figure Sidney’s got to be listening.
“I, uh… Kind of. It’s complicated.”
“Okay. Don’t worry, hon, everything’s fine. Mr. Cao’s been very nice. The food is delicious. And that wine, what was that wine, Mr. Cao?”
“Call me Sidney!” I hear in the background. “It is Bordeaux. Château Margaux.”
“Yes, really tasty!” Her voice drops again. “Are you okay?”
“Yeah,” I say. “You have your phone?”
“Hm-hm.”
“Okay. I’m going to call it from my new number. You have any problems at all, you call me.”
“Oh, don’t worry, hon. We’re having a lovely time. Y puedo cuidarme de mí misma,” she adds.
And I can take care of myself.
“Oh, it means ‘Have a safe trip,’” I hear her say, presumably to Sidney.
Kick ass, Mom, I think.
“You do what you need to do. Just be safe, okay? And call me as soon as you can.”
“I will,” I say. “You, too.”
For a moment there’s silence. Then Sidney.
“So you see your mother and her friend are having a very nice time in Xingfu Cun,” he says. “Tomorrow we can play laser tag. Or maybe karaoke.”
“Great,” I say.
“And you go to meet my children.” This, in case I had any doubts, is not a request.
“Will do.”
“And you can call me each day and tell me about these meetings.”
“I can do that. But you need to do something for me.”
“What?” He sounds impatient. Like I’ve got no business asking him for anything.
“Get Yang Junmin off my ass. You want me to do this, I can’t be worrying about him getting in my way.”
There is a long pause. I hear footsteps, I think, and a door close. Sidney, getting some privacy maybe.
“Ellie, I am sorry,” he says, and it sounds like he really means it. “I can only have so much control over Yang Junmin. I can tell him you and I are friends and you help me with this art business. But sometimes he does not listen.”
I stare at my bottle of beer and think it’s time to drink some more. The one thing I counted on was that Sidney and Yang were “lips and teeth,” as they like to say here, as close and inseparable as brothers. That Sidney gives Yang money and Yang helps him make it. But if Sidney can’t control him…
Maybe they aren’t as close as I thought.
“Okay,” I say. “Do what you can do. Just… take care of my mom. And Andy. And my dog.”
“I can do that. I like your mother, very much. She is… haoxinren, you know this word?”
Good-hearted.
“Yeah. She is.”
His voice drops to a whisper. “You see, I think it is better for her to come here. Xingfu Cun is a very nice place. And safe.”
After I get off the phone with Sidney, I sit in the café a while longer, drinking my beer. There’s no way I can be sure, but I’m wondering if I’ve gotten things backward with Sidney. Sure, he wants me to do what he wants me to do. Yeah, he’s willing to strong-arm me to do it. And he has people killed. I know this from personal experience. Plus, the amount of money he has and the way he uses it are sometimes pretty gross.
But he also saved my life, and even if that was because he needed something from me, I have to appreciate it, since I’m still alive and all.
Maybe he was telling the truth, in his own way. He might have “invited” my mom to Xingfu Cun to give me an incentive to hang out with his kids. But maybe she is safer there with everything that’s going on.
I can’t be sure. But it would really help me keep on going with this mission if I could believe that.
So what do I do next?
I want to stay off Uncle Yang’s radar, to the extent I can. That means I’d better put off any meetings with Tiantian. I didn’t get the feeling he and Yang are all that close-and if Tiantian’s been banging other women, who knows, they might not be on good terms at all. It’s one thing for rich and powerful men here to have mistresses. More of them do than don’t. Ernai, “second wives,” are a status symbol, like a Rolex, and if you can fit more than one on your arm, more power to you.
But Uncle Yang seemed very protective of his sister’s crazy daughter.
Besides, if I had to pick a least favorite Cao, it would probably be Tiantian.
Though it’s a close call.
Which brings me to Gugu. I have to figure, logically, that if one of the Caos killed that waitress, odds are it was either Tiantian or Gugu. Okay, I guess it’s possible that Meimei could be some kind of crazed psychotic killer, but beating and choking a girl to death like that? I figure it would take a lot of rage, the kind of anger that makes some men attack women, not to mention the strength to do it.
Though Dao Ming seems pretty pissed off. I can’t rule her out.
So… Gugu. He gets off on playing baby and sucking milk from a wet nurse for hire. Could he also get off on beating up a woman? It doesn’t seem to go together to me, but then what do I know about how crazy head cases think? I can’t even figure out my own crazy head.
He’s got some anger issues, though. No doubt about that. And he drinks, a lot, plus who knows what else he’s using? Put those things together and you can’t always predict what happens.
And Gugu comes with Marsh. I still don’t know what I think about that guy. He’s kind of a creep. I wouldn’t trust him with my daughter, if I had one, with my money, if I had some, with my dog, or with my back turned. Or with my mom, given her generally terrible taste in men. He kind of reminds me of one of her boyfriends when I was in middle school, now that I think about it, the one who was super charming and treated her really well and then stole her credit cards and split.
I’ve never seen Marsh get really mad, but maybe he’s the kind of guy who’s good at hiding that part of himself.
Then there’s Meimei. She’s weird. Not because she’s maybe gay or bi and not because she may or may not have been hitting on me. There’s just something about her that feels off. The way she reacts, or doesn’t react, to stuff. Her whole fascination with my being a soldier, being outside the wire, finding that “admirable.”
Which isn’t that unusual, I tell myself. Lots of people think it would be cool to play soldier. Most of them have only played the video game.
There’s nothing very admirable about what I did in the war, or the war I did it in.
But maybe I’m overthinking all this.
I look up Meimei’s number in my online address book, and then I text it.
it’s ellie. yes, had some problems with my old phone. this is my backup. can you give me a call? i’d like to take you up on that offer to help.
Then I sip my beer and wait.
I don’t trust her, at all. I’m just hoping I guessed right that she’s the least lethal. To me anyway.