“Chi yidian,” Sparrow whispers to the bird. Eat a little.
“Do you trust Han Rong?” I ask.
“Not really,” she says.
KANG LI DRIVES ME into town in his vintage PLA Jeep. He drives like he does a lot of things-with swagger, one hand on the wheel, other arm draped casually across the seat back.
“Han Rong, he’s okay, I guess,” Kang Li says. “He comes to sanctuary a few days a week, works a little. Best thing he does? Gives money. I think this is really why Sparrow has sympathy for him.”
“Ah.” Well, that explains a lot. You got a guy who pitches in, says all the right things, and, most important, helps pay for the birdseed and kibble. Maybe you’re not inclined to look too closely at his story.
And who knows? Maybe it’s even true.
Kang Li shrugs. “Hard to keep the place going. Always short of money. Sparrow worries.”
I nod, distracted. We’re just pulling in to Yangshuo, and I’m more than a little nervous about going back to my hotel. I’ve got stuff there, and if I don’t check out, God knows how many days of charges I’ll pile up before they give up on me. But who’s to say that those two rent-a-thugs, Mr. US Polo Team and his plain-wrap pal, don’t still have the place staked out?
I glance over at Kang Li. He’s got his aviator shades on, his careless, confident vibe, and I think I understand what kind of guy he is: the kind who gets off on a little action.
“I have a small problem,” I say.
“SURE, I CAN WAIT.” Kang Li grins. I told him about my mystery stalkers, and, just like I figured, he’s into it.
I direct him around the back of the hostel. It’s on an alley, with an overflowing dumpster and a rack of cruiser bikes and a minuscule parking lot, two of the three cars there double-parked. “Ten minutes,” I say. All I’m going to do is run up to my room, get my duffel bag, and check out.
The back entrance to the hostel is unlocked. I head up the sagging wooden stairs to the second floor. Swipe my key card. The Do Not Disturb sign is hanging on the doorknob where I left it.
Inside, it’s dark, the blackout curtains drawn, the lights turned off. I never really unpacked, so all I have to do is grab my duffel from the chair by the desk and TV where I left it. So I do that. Head downstairs. Approach the battered front desk, where a girl with dyed blue hair sits and stares at her monitor.
“Hey, ni hao. Wo xihuan jiezhang.”
I push my receipt for the deposit across the counter. She nods, picks up a walkie-talkie, calls for a fuwuyuan to check out my room and make sure that I didn’t leave anything and/or steal the television.
While she’s doing all this and toting up the figures, I stand there anxiously, the nerves in my back and shoulders twitching like whiskers on a mouse.
I owe less than the deposit I’d left. She hands me a night’s worth of yuan, a hundred fifty and change.
“Okay, thank you very much, please come visit us again!”
“I will, thanks,” I say, jamming the money into my jeans pocket. “Very nice hotel!”
And I am out of there. I walk as fast as I can, which is not very-daypack on my back, duffel on my shoulder, Yangshuo walking stick helping me balance-open the back door to the tiny parking lot, and I notice two things: First, Kang Li and his Jeep aren’t there. Second, a new black Buick is, and leaning against the driver’s door reading a manga is US Polo Team.
I close the door. Fumble for the dead bolt. Lock it. Scramble as fast as I can back into the minimal lobby. Blue-haired girl looks up and smiles.
“Sorry!” I say. “Wrong way!”
Fuck, fuck, fuck. Did he see me? And Kang Li-fuck. I thought I’d read him right. Guess not. What the fuck do I do now?
Out the front. Look for a taxi. Ditch the duffel if I have to.
I shouldn’t have gone back. So what if they have my passport number? My visa? So I get into trouble and pay them a bribe later. Like I’m not in worse trouble now?
I push open the Plexiglas door. Step outside. Look toward Xi Jie. And see Plain-Wrap Windbreaker, stationed by the lamppost.
He lunges toward me. I stumble back.
“Hey!” I hear behind me. I half turn. And there’s Kang Li.
Who takes two steps up, balls his hand into a fist, swings, and connects with the guy’s jaw.
Windbreaker staggers, Kang Li kicks him in the side of his knee, and he goes down, hard.
“Come on!” Kang Li yells. “Lai, lai!”
He gestures over his shoulder, and there’s the Jeep, parked way illegally, two wheels on the sidewalk.
I throw the duffel into the back and scramble into the passenger seat as Kang Li vaults into the driver’s seat, just like in the movies, and jams the key into the ignition.
“Where to?” he asks as we bounce off the curb, brakes squealing.
CHAPTER NINETEEN
“I WAIT FOR YOU, and I see the Buick. The guy in the jacket. Just like you told me. So I move the Jeep to the front. Hope you find me.”
“Good plan,” I manage. We’re weaving through traffic on the main road out of Yangshuo, and I seriously don’t know how he missed the middle-aged couple on the tandem cruiser bike and the kid on the skateboard.
“Who are these guys?” Kang Li asks. “What you do to piss them off?”
“Wish I knew.”
We swerve around a bicycle cart loaded with a mountain of Styrofoam packing, and now we’re on the highway heading back to Guilin.
“You think it has something to do with this… with these seeds? The thing that Han Rong and David-Sha bi!” He waves his fist as we screech around a tractor that crawled onto the road and barely chugs into gear. “Some people should not be driving,” he mutters.
“Heh. Yeah.”
“So where you want to go?”
I think about this. “Guilin, I guess. If that’s not too much trouble.”
“No trouble. We can be there in half an hour.”
The way he drives, probably so.
Kang Li glances at his rearview mirror. His face scrunches up in a frown. “That the same car?” He points a thumb over his shoulder.
I look behind me. The Jeep has a roll-bar frame with a battered canvas roof, a scratched plastic “window” in the back, and it’s hard to see through it. I check the side mirror. And see a new black Buick, moving out from behind a bus, trying to pass it.
“Same kind of car,” I say. But I can’t be sure. Buicks, for whatever reason, are prestige cars in China. There are a lot of them here.
The Buick nestles in between the bus and a taxi, which is the car right behind us.
“Huh,” Kang Li says. “Let’s find out.”
He glances to his left and suddenly spins the steering wheel hard in that direction, and we cut across the oncoming lane, right in front of a military truck, and barrel onto a small road that leads into a little town, but I have my eyes closed and am not sure of that part for a moment.
“Holy shit,” I gasp.
We’re flying down that road, and now I open my eyes and can see the town, built mostly of that yellow brick they use around here, interspersed with white tile and concrete, and as we pass, a couple of panicked chickens flutter into the air and a mom yanks her kid back away from the street, and we careen around a corner, barely avoiding a guy selling yams off a cart.
“You see him now?” Kang Li asks.
I look. Fuck if the Buick isn’t following us.
“Yeah.”
“Cao dan,” he mutters. He steers hard right, and the Jeep goes up on two wheels as we take the corner onto another narrow street. Through the gaps in the low buildings, I can see fields, and before too long the buildings fall away and we’re bouncing down a rutted dirt road bordering rice paddies. We turn again, onto an even bumpier lane that turns to mud as it suddenly runs downhill into an even smaller village. The Buick is still right on our ass. We nearly take out an old guy on a bike and we kick pebbles onto a couple of old aunties shucking corn out on a stoop, and then we’re through that village and into more fields. The road’s even muddier now as we barrel along, the Buick behind us, and I think, okay, maybe this was why Sparrow didn’t tell Kang Li about the whole David-Han Rong thing, because this is insane, and that’s when Kang Li pulls the Jeep off the road and heads into a flooded field. The Buick follows. The Jeep chugs and churns and keeps moving, oversize wheels throwing up wads of mud.