Hour of the Rat (19 page)

Y
EAH
. A
N ECOTERRORIST
.

That’s what the spokesman of the company whose property he vandalized called him. I’d write that off to corporate asshattery, except it looks like the FBI is saying the same thing.

Here’s what I found out:

Jason was in some group of environmental activists who went from posting their manifestos online and protesting in front of companies who’d committed ecological sins to more serious shit: “monkey-wrenching” they called it at first. Minor acts of sabotage, like chaining themselves to trees and slapping bumper stickers on SUVs that said things like
YOU ARE DRIVING A DEATH MACHINE
!

Then it escalated.

There’s this one company in particular that Jason and his buddies targeted, a corporation called Eos. I’d heard of them, vaguely. They’re “as good as nature can be,” or something. But I never knew exactly what it is that they
do
.

Turns out they make chemicals. Plastics. Fertilizer.

And seeds.

Hybrid seeds, which Wikipedia tells me are seeds produced by cross-pollinated plants. I’m not sure what that means, but the
seeds are trademarked, meaning Eos owns them. Eos also makes genetically modified seeds, GMOs. Gene-spliced crops created to resist their own herbicides. So you can drop a shitload of Rescue Ride!® weed killer, also made by Eos, on the crops and not kill the plants but kill all the weeds. They also make a potato that contains its own pesticide. Which sounds kind of creepy, but they claim it’s perfectly safe.

The articles I found about Jason don’t have a lot of information about why he and his friends think Eos is such bad news. Mostly the articles are about their “criminal activities,” not about why they did what they did.

But what they did includes trying to set fire to some Eos experimental crops. Which is what got Jason on the FBI’s Ten Most Wanted List.

“Y
OU DIDN
’
T THINK THIS
was something I needed to know?”

“I thought—”

“It’s bogus!” Dog yells in the background. “He didn’t!”

“I don’t fucking care if it’s bogus!” I snap. “You got me running around looking for an
ecoterrorist
? Me and the fucking
FBI
?”

That’s when the hard lines in Natalie’s face get harder. “The way I see it, you owed me one.”

Bitch.

Okay, she has a small point. Me and Dog did fuck around a few times. But, like, that’s all on me? Didn’t
he
have something to do with it?

“Doug wants to find his brother,” Natalie says, her voice cold. “And Doug and I are a team.” She tosses her streaked blond hair. “You can do what you want.”

N
OW
I
REALLY HAVE
to decide.

Once you start calling somebody a terrorist, things escalate to a whole different level. I know that from experience.

Jason’s looking at twenty years in prison, at least, and for what? For setting a bunch of plants on fire?

And of all places, he flees to China. Not the best choice, if you ask me.

I’ve met some pretty sketchy Westerners living here, it’s true. People who are running from something, who get lost in plain sight, almost. Creepy English teachers you wouldn’t want around your daughter. Scam artists living from rip-off to rip-off. Somehow they manage.

Seems to me the best thing that could happen to Jason is that he
doesn’t
get found.

Dog and Natalie insist that he didn’t do what he’s accused of doing. That he was part of the group but not into breaking the law. “He comes home, we fix it,” Dog says. I don’t know about that.

What I do know is that I pretty much don’t trust anything that’s a lot bigger and stronger than me.

Call me bitter. Whatever.

Given what’s going on with the DSD, given the shit that’s happened to me in the past, the last thing I need is to get involved with any kind of “terrorist,” whether he really is one or not.

A
COUPLE OF HOURS
later, me and my crutch are hobbling down Xi Jie, heading for the Gecko.

Okay, yeah, I’m stupid. But I figure I’ll just try to make sure Jason’s okay. And if I end up finding out where he is, if I talk to him, I’ll tell him what Dog wants, and he can decide for himself.

“Hey! Hey,
lamei
!”

It’s Kobe. He trots up to me, unbuttoned Qing-dynasty robe flapping, black fedora pulled down low on his forehead.

“What happened to you?”

“A little accident.”

“Ah.” He falls in alongside me, now and again jogging in place to keep from getting too far ahead. “So did you travel, see some sights?”

He’s trying to act casual, but I know what he really wants to talk about.

I stop. “Yes, I saw her.”

Kobe stands there in front of me. The expression on his face, a mix of hope and fear and God knows what—love, I guess—it just makes me feel like shit.

“She … how is she?”

“Miss! Miss! Look, come buy!”

We’re standing in front of an open-front store with tables outside covered with carved wooden frogs, cloth hangings, souvenir T-shirts, embroidered tote bags.

“She’s … she’s okay.”

“Look, see?” The shopgirl is holding up a wooden frog, and she takes the stick piercing its belly and starts rubbing the carved ridges on its back, and it sounds like it’s chirping.

Kobe turns to her and snaps off something in the local dialect that I don’t exactly understand but the gist of which is “Bother someone else right now!”

The shopgirl snickers. Strokes the frog in his direction.

He ignores her. “So what’s she doing? She’s working, she’s still in Shantou?”

Is she still with “David”?

That’s what he really wants to know.

“Yeah,” I say. “She’s working. She’s doing well.”

He stares at me, his eyes pleading. “Did you … did you tell her …?”

“Miss, look,” the shopgirl says to me. “You need this, right? Better than what you have.”

I turn to her, and she’s holding up a walking stick. Carved dark wood, with a metal badge tacked right below that, stamped with the characters for Yangshuo and one of those crazy mountains.

“You stupid bitch, you didn’t hear me?” Kobe snaps.

“
Hundan
,” she says, grinning at him. Slacker.

“Daisy told me to tell you she’s fine,” I say. “And she hopes you’re doing well.”

Which is a lie. Daisy didn’t say anything about Kobe at all. When I mentioned him, she just rolled her eyes.

“She’s not with David,” I tell him. “But she’s happy where she is. She’s not coming back. Not for a while anyway.”

Kobe stares down at his Nikes. “Okay,” he says. He shrugs. “Okay.”

He composes himself. Looks up at me. “Stop by later and have a drink.” He adjusts his fedora. “If you want.”

I watch him go slouching down the street toward the Last Emperor.

“Come on, miss,” the shopgirl says, holding up the walking stick. “Come on! I give you good price.”

I sigh. “How much?”

Mission to Gecko, take two: I go back to Maggie’s Guesthouse and drop off the crutch. The walking stick isn’t exactly as good a substitute, but it works okay and it’s better camouflage—I’m hoping I can walk into Gecko and it’s not so obvious that I’m hurt. Not that I’m too scary when I’m healthy, but I think about those nature movies with the wounded antelope and the lions, and I don’t want to be that antelope, you know? It never ends well.

I hesitate for a moment outside the door, staring at the bright yellow lizard on the signboard. Then think, Whatever. I’m going to a tourist joint in Yangshuo, and it’s barely even dark out. I mean, what can they do to me, right?

I push open the door and walk inside.

I swear, it’s like one of those cheesy westerns where the saloon musician stops playing the piano and everyone turns and stares.

Well, not everyone. There are more customers here than there were the two times I came before, and a lot of them are indifferent. They’re drinking their beers or coffees, eating pizza and nachos, talking about their next rock-climbing or river-rafting or cool authentic-Chinese-village excursion, and I’m just another
laowai
coming in for a stale microbrew or mediocre espresso.

But there are a few people who mark my entrance, who look up and stare when I walk in. The waitress who served me before. Sparrow. And Erik.

Erik stands behind the bar counter, in midconsultation with the waitress, looking at a list on a clipboard.

I limp up to the bar. “Hi, Erik,” I say.

“Do I know you?”

“Yeah. Pretty sure we’ve met.”

“You were interested in a river cruise, right?”

I pull out the New Century Hero Rice sack from my canvas messenger bag and drop it on the bar. “No. This.”

He looks at the bag, smooths out its wrinkles, seems to consider the heroic figure in his overalls and Mao cap and thrusting hoe. “Is there some reason I should care?”

“I don’t know. You tell me. I’m pretty sure that David does.”

Some movement at the corner of my field of vision makes me glance left.

Sparrow, staring at me, taking a step forward. Then she ducks her head and retreats, back to the station by the rock-climbing equipment and the river-rafting posters.

Erik stares at the rice bag a moment longer, and then he looks up at me. “It’s interesting that people you talk to end up getting hurt.”

“It’s interesting that people I talk to pull dick moves like trying to mug me and sticking a knife in my face. Or is that just how you guys like to say hello?”

“People attack when they’re threatened,” he says.

“You think I’m a threat? Seriously?” I laugh. “Wow. I guess I should hang out around you and your buddies more often. You’re making me feel all empowered and shit.”

I pick up the rice sack. Fold it and stuff it back into my messenger bag. “I know I’m kind of repeating myself here, but all I’m trying to do is find out if David is okay so I can let his family know how he’s doing. The rest of this I don’t give a fuck about.”

Now I see something, a real emotion, flash across his face, but I’m not sure what. Anger?

“Maybe you should,” he says.

“But you’re not going to tell me why.” I shrug. “Whatever.”

I take one of my name cards out of the pocket of my bag and lay it on the counter. “If you wanna enlighten me, here’s my phone number and my email address.”

Then I turn my back and walk away.

So maybe that was dumb, giving Erik my information. But here’s what I figure: He’s a foreigner. The odds of him having some kind of juice here in China aren’t that great. Maybe he’s the guy who pushed Russell to attack me or maybe not, but there’s a big difference between him trying to jack me up and being able to bring the DSD or the Public Security Bureau
down on my ass. If he’s involved in something sketchy, he’s not going to go out of his way to call attention to it.

Unless, of course, he’s fronting for someone else who does have the juice.

I shudder a little, the muscles between my shoulder blades twitching, and I tell myself, Don’t be paranoid. And what’s done is done.

I pause for a moment at Sparrow’s station. She’s making a show of rearranging the brochures on the wall.

“
Ni hao
,” I say.

“Hello,” she says, not meeting my eyes.

“So about that river rafting …”

Now she stops shuffling pamphlets. Gives me a quick look. “You have my card,” she says in a low voice.

That’s right. I do.

I
DON
’
T CALL HER
right away, not with Erik probably still hanging around. Besides, I’m feeling like I need to lie down. My leg really hurts, it feels warm and swollen beneath the compression bandage, and I’m thinking ice, elevate, and some aspirin.

When I do get back to my little room at Maggie’s with a bag of ice from their café, I take off my jeans, sit on the bed, and contemplate the bandage. I really don’t want to take it off and see what I’m dealing with. But I was a medic once, and I know how things can go wrong, and given how fucked up my leg was—all the surgeries, then the blow, and the pain I’m having now—it could be a DVT, a deep vein thrombosis. The danger with a DVT is a blood clot can form, dislodge, and travel to the lungs, which I’m really not in the mood for.

I unwind the bandage.

There’s my leg, crisscrossed with scars, the indentation on
the quad where no amount of PT can make up for the chunk of muscle I lost. And there’s the bruise from where that asshole hit me, a deep purpling red. I have this flash of something that happened, something I saw that was really bad, back when I was a lil’ ol’ 91 Whiskey medic, but I push that out of my head. No fucking point going down that road again.

There’s generalized swelling as well, but there’s no way I can be sure what it’s from—maybe just, you know, because the guy hit me and I fell, and I’ve been walking around like an idiot since it happened.

I take some aspirin and a Percocet, make a pile of the extra pillow and a rolled-up quilt, put a towel over my leg and the ice pack on top of that, and I lie down. I switch on the TV, landing on a Chinese game show that seems to be a rip-off of
America’s Next Top Model
, which is weirdly compelling, especially when they do a photo shoot where they’re dressed up like Red Guards and
qipao
-wearing class traitors, except with kohl outlining their eyes, their arms and legs posed like displaced puppets in front of deconstructed Qing-dynasty sets.