“Bitch?” I supply. “I get that a lot.”
He lunges across the table, toppling a whole bottle of vodka and several water glasses. “Give me that!”
I guess he means my phone. “Sure,” I say. “If you want. But that photo I just took? It’s already gone.”
I’m so busy gloating that I don’t notice the Russian muscle until he’s come around from behind the booth and has fixated on me, like a leopard. Or a jaguar. Whatever.
Oh, shit. I pivot and make for the dance floor.
The music’s pounding, Russian disco, blue and purple strobes flashing in time, and up on the stage there’s a chick with a white fur bikini writhing around one pole and a guy wearing a leather Speedo hanging off the other. I push on through, holding up my arms and waving them in a way that I hope looks sort of like dancing, weaving to the back of the dance floor, Russian Muscle not far behind me, crashing into the dancers like a bowling ball hitting the pins.
“Ellie!”
A hand circles my wrist and pulls me forward.
John.
“This way.”
There’s a door by the back of the stage. I plunge through it, led by John. A dark corridor. Then fluorescent lights, a glimpse of long tables and heaps of costumes, half-dressed women and men, the next act in the floor show. Past that, a long concrete staircase, lit by naked bulbs in iron cages.
I’m barely dragging my ass up all these stairs. “Come on, Ellie!” John says, his hand pressed against the center of my back.
“Okay. Okay.”
We get to the top of the stairs. John pushes against a broad door, and we both stumble outside.
Halfway down the block is a new silver Toyota, right wheels parked up on the curb. John jogs ahead, unlocking it with the button on his key. He already has the engine started when I open the passenger door and fall into the seat.
I don’t even have the door closed when he peels away from the curb, right wheels hitting the street with a jolt that sends a shock up my spine.
I slam the door shut.
“Holy shit,” I gasp. “That was… awesome.”
John turns his head to me. He’s smiling as wide as I’ve ever seen him smile. “Yes,” he says. “I thought you would enjoy.”
Chapter Thirty
★
“He was very angry.” John tries to keep his serious face on, but the smile won’t stop breaking through.
“I bet.”
We’re sitting in a jiaozi restaurant on Andingmen, chowing down on dumplings and vinegar peanuts with spinach. It’s two days since I saw Pompadour Bureaucrat at Strawberry Crème.
“I tell him you send these photos to some of your friends. But you say you won’t put them on Weibo or send to newspapers and websites if he stops bothering you. And stops bothering Lao Zhang.”
“And?”
“Not sure,” he says, spearing another dumpling. “Of course, he cannot tell me what he decides to do. He already lose a lot of face to me.” The grin sneaks back. “But I think he will do as I suggest. This is a bad time to be accused of corruption. Renrou sousuo can cause him lots of trouble. He knows this.”
Renrou sousuo, “human flesh search engine.” Chinese netizens sick of corrupt assholes, who’d really enjoy spreading Pompadour Bureaucrat’s photo through every corner of the Internet.
“Does he know you set him up?” I ask.
John shrugs. “Maybe he suspects. But he cannot prove it. He saw you take picture. Not me.”
I get that hollowed-out feeling in my gut. I don’t know exactly what power politics are like in the PSB and the DSD, but it can’t be a good thing, having your boss or whatever he is to John suspect that you hold blackmail material on him. And being a guy who’s done a bunch of things he hopes Pompadour Bureaucrat never finds out about.
How long can he walk this tightrope before he falls off?
“John…” I hesitate. I mean, who am I to give anybody advice about how to live his life? “I know you care about justice. About China… But working with guys like that…”
I’m probably going to piss him off. If there’s one thing I know for sure now, it’s that this guy has been on my side. But I still have to ask.
“How much of what you do is good?”
John chews on a dumpling, the muscles in his jaw working harder than they really need to. He swallows, like it’s a hard lump to get down. “I don’t know,” he says. “I try to do good things. And China faces threats. I believe this. But…” He picks up another dumpling, shaking his head. “What I do, some of it I don’t like. Sometimes I think I do it because I don’t know how to do something else.” He dips the dumpling in his soy/vinegar/chili mix, focusing on it like it’s the important thing, as opposed to what he’s talking about. “I don’t know if you can understand,” he says.
“I think I get it,” I say.
After we’re done eating, we hang out on the sidewalk in front of the restaurant for a minute to say our good-byes. I’m going to hobble home on foot. John either has his car or took the subway.
Either way, we’re going in different directions.
“What do you do next, Ellie?”
“Get out of town for a while. Just stop… being in this place I’ve been in.” I shift back and forth from one foot to the other, trying to ease the spasm in my bad leg.
He hesitates. Slips his hands in his pockets. “Can I come and see you sometime? On your travels?”
I nod. “Sure. I’d… I’d like that.”
We stand there for a moment, as if we’re trying to take the measure of each other. After all this time, I still don’t really know him, what makes him go, where the anger comes from, why he cares about me.
That last one’s probably the biggest mystery of all.
“I see you soon, Ellie,” John says. He turns and walks away, up the sidewalk toward the Second Ring Road.
Harrison calls me the next day.
“I’ve gotten all the footage from Zhang Jianli’s performance,” he says. “We can have someone cut it together and start releasing it, if you believe the time is right.”
I think about John’s and my blackmail project and whether publicizing Lao Zhang’s detention would help that or hurt.
“Let’s give it a few days. It’s his piece. Maybe he’ll get a chance to cut it together himself.”
I can tell there’s a question Harrison really wants to ask, but he doesn’t. “If you think so,” he says.
“Just so you know,” I say, “I’m leaving town on Tuesday.”
“Next week?”
“Yeah.”
“Do you have a destination in mind?”
“Yangshuo for a couple of days. I might visit some friends who run a bird sanctuary there.”
“After that?”
“Maybe Yunnan. Somewhere the weather’s nice and the air is clean.”
A pause. “How long will you be gone?”
“I don’t know,” I tell him. “So don’t wait for me. Do whatever’s best for the foundation.” We’ve got this charity where we donate money to set up art programs for migrant kids. I’m on the board, but it’s not like I run any of that. I’ve hardly paid any attention to it.
“And your other clients?”
His voice is gentle, but it feels like a slap. I don’t want responsibilities. I don’t want to be reminded I have them.
“Lucy can handle it for now.”
“All right. But you’ll stay in touch. Won’t you?”
“Yeah. Sure. I will.”
“You’re sure this is all you want to take?”
I’ve gotten it down to a little backpack and a small duffel bag. “Yeah,” I say. “This is plenty.”
“Well…” My mom clasps her hands in front of her. “We can keep some things for you at Andy’s place.” She turns to him. “Right?”
“Sure,” he says. “We have room.”
My mom’s already picked over the kitchen and the DVDs. Most of the good kitchen stuff she’d bought anyway.