Dragon Day

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.

As it is, the subway ride’s long enough to give me plenty of time to think. Too much time. I keep seeing Celine’s face lit by the flickering TV, her open eyes, her slack mouth. Just what I need, another fucking thing like that in my head.

God, you’re an asshole, I tell myself. I mean, she’s dead and you’re not, so suck it up and drive on. And it’s not like I really knew her, but she was smart, smarter than I realized, and she cared about things, and now she’s paid for it.

Okay, I don’t know for sure that someone killed her. If I had to guess, I’d guess an overdose of some kind, and who knows? Those texts last night could actually have been from her. She could’ve gotten really wasted and decided that she had to talk to me right now about what she saw at the Caos’ party, because, you know, wasted-people logic where it just couldn’t wait for the morning. In which case it really sucks that I didn’t go out there, because if I had, maybe she wouldn’t have died.

Maybe she was into something and did a little too much, and it’s just a weird coincidence that she was at a party where a girl died and that she was writing about the lifestyles of the rich and heinous on her blog.

Yeah. Right.

By the time I get off the Number 2 subway line at my Gulou stop, I’m sweating, streaking the dust on my face and leaving blotches of mud on my bandanna when I wipe my forehead. First thing I do when I get home, I say to myself as I ride up the escalator, first thing I do is tell my mom. Maybe not everything, but enough to convince her and Andy to get the fuck out of Dodge for a while. No bullshit story about how I need the apartment private for me and my boyfriend, Creepy John. I have to scare them enough so they get out of the kill zone. I don’t know if Andy has a passport or not, but just go to Hong Kong or something-he can go to Hong Kong, right? And Mimi, what do I do with Mimi? Can they take her to Hong Kong?

As for me… maybe it’s time to call the embassy. Not that they can help much if I actually get arrested for something. Or that they’d necessarily even want to. I don’t know how much of the trouble I caused over Lao Zhang and the Uighur last year stayed between me and my private-contractor friends at GSC and how much of it turned into official US government trouble.

I guess I could call Carter, my contract-spook frenemy at GSC. GSC gets a lot of outsourced US intelligence work. Or it’s an actual CIA front, for all I know. The distinction is pretty fuzzy these days. Maybe Carter could give me some intel.

I doubt he’d actually help me much. Last time I tallied things up, I kind of owed him.

I think about what I might be able to trade. He’s into horse-trading. It’s mostly the only way I can deal with him. I can’t count on hitting him in his tiny guilt complex, not again. Not on something like this.

It’s your own fucking fault, Doc. I can hear him saying it already.

Outside, it’s brighter than I was expecting. The wind’s died down, the dust settling onto the sidewalks. I blink a few times and head south on Jiu Gulou Dajie, toward the hutong that leads to my apartment complex.

Okay, think of a good lie to tell Mom. Or an acceptable version of the truth. Maybe, I’ve got some Chinese gangsters after me. Because… No time to explain. Just get out of town.

I’ve reached the entrance to my alley. There’s a new black Audi parked there, pretty much blocking the way. The license plate is white instead of blue, with a big red V on it right after the 京 for “Beijing.” Military plates, I think, which means they get to park wherever they like. Half of those plates are counterfeit anyway, and the ones that aren’t, you always see them on Audis and Beemers and even Porsches. Way to “Serve the People,” asshole.

That’s when I stop in my tracks. New Audi. Military plates. Blocking the entrance to my hutong.

I turn on my heel and head back up the street, fast as I can without actually running. Maybe they didn’t see me.

I hear the click of a car door, footsteps hitting the ground, and now I am running, which is crazy, because I can’t run fast. And whoever these guys are, now there’s one on either side of me, and they’re jamming hands under my armpits and grabbing my arms, and one of them says, “Bie zhaoji.” Don’t be nervous.

Right.

“Let go of me! Fang wo zou!”

“Don’t cause trouble. Just come with us,” the one on my left says.

“Hey!” I yell. “I don’t know these men! Somebody call the police!”

I say this, and there’s an old, shoulder-hunched auntie staring at us, granite faced. A couple of college kids, who get out their cell phones and start recording. A street sweeper in a Day-Glo vest freezes, broom and dustpan in hand.

The guy on my right punches me in the face.

Nobody does anything as the men drag me back toward the Audi.