Incensed (25 page)

“I guess you could tell by the sound.”

“You're walking south.”

I stopped in my tracks. “What?”

“I'm following your location on my computer.” I heard him take a satisfied swig of something before he swallowed with a grunt. “I'm glad you bring your phone everywhere. I had Gao stick a chip inside.”

“Spying on your own family. Real classy, Big Eye.”

“Don't give me this ‘classy' shit. I won't stop at anything to find my daughter. I only wish I'd chipped her phone before letting her go to Taipei!”

“I'm hanging up.”

“No you're not. You're gonna goddamn listen to me. Go to the Eastern Princess. Take pictures of the people working in the lobby and send them to me so I can see which specific jerks in Wood Duck's gang I'm dealing with. I'll figure out something after that.” He sighed. “I know how hotel entertainment works. These naïve wannabes, of whom Mei-ling is one, sign on to contracts to perform for peanuts. It's practically a pimp-prostitute relationship.”

You said it, not me, Big Eye. When I thought of pimps, I couldn't help but imagine drugs and guns.

“Big Eye, am I going to get shot?” I asked seriously.

“No one's getting shot, unless Gao's pulling the trigger. Anyway, someone tried to shoot you point-blank before and you came out of that just fine, right?”

“That was pure luck,” I said.

“Hah!” said Big Eye. “You're a lucky guy! If I had your luck, I'd have so much money right now. Not that I don't. I'd have more.”

“All you want me to do is take pictures of people working there? I don't have to leave the lobby or start asking where to find Mei-ling, right?”

“That's right. Just sit tight. Blend in. Read a paper. Eat a fucking cupcake. I don't know. Just go now.”

“Yes, Big Eye.”

“That's my boy!”

I'll admit that Big Eye's sincere praise felt good. I boarded the eastbound MRT and swayed as the train took off. One way or another Big Eye was going to get his daughter back and I was going to have a front-row seat to the action.

Not that there would be any action.

“Big Eye, I'm not going to be in any danger, am I?”

“You? In danger? You sound like you're wishing for it!”

“Because if I see a gun, I'm going to bolt out that door, you understand?”

“This is what's going to happen, Jing-nan. Money's going to do the talking. After you send me the pictures, maybe Whistle will come in and sit with you. Someone will drive up with Mei-ling. Whistle will give the handler some cash and the three of you are gonna walk out of the Eastern Princess into my car.” To meet a fuming Big Eye.

Well, at that point, maybe I would make my excuses and head home instead of getting in the car. I sure as hell did not want to be there when Mei-ling detailed her show to her dad, as I'm sure the disaffected young girl would. She would throw it in his face.

Maybe I never should've called Big Eye, but Mei-ling was definitely in more trouble than I alone could handle. The girl needed help. Why else would she have dropped off a hint in her message to me? No, contacting Big Eye was definitely the right thing to do, if not the least-volatile option.

My hands began to sweat. The actual “rescue” of Mei-ling would pale in comparison with the reunion with her dad.
Gan!
Big Eye was going to explode like a year-old dental abscess and his daughter would wield the drill with a heavy hand.

•••

I've only seen the
Eastern Princess hotel in passing from the street. It was a shape-shifting trapezoid frozen between forms, and I hadn't realized that the entrance was set so far from the sidewalk, maybe to discourage members of the Taiwan branch of Falun Gong from walking in and harassing the Chinese. Falun Gong, of course, was banned in China as a seditious group and a cult. Members gather at the base of Taipei 101 with posters of graphic displays of victims of torture by the Chinese state. Falun Gong followers dodge the cops and force their pamphlets into the pockets of Chinese tourists. They might as well be stuffing dynamite. If the tourists returned to China with Falun Gong material they were bound for big trouble.

I walked up the curved drive to the entrance with my eyes on the hotel's illuminated sign. You knew it was a fancy establishment because the sign didn't have any Chinese characters and “Eastern Princess” was correctly spelled and capitalized.

No matter how much I walked, the sign remained as far away as the moon. It took forever to get around the towering circular fountain, which looked like the spindle of a roulette wheel that divine beings would bet on. Eight fire lanterns on the perimeter lit up corresponding water spouts. After fifteen minutes of walking, I found myself underneath a canopy of fragrant coniferous trees. After a turn, the path seemed to backtrack on itself before changing from asphalt to stone bricks. Finally, I was nearing the entrance.

My heart sank. A doorman in a Buckingham Palace knockoff uniform stood at the revolving door, making sure that all visitors swiped their card keys to enter. You couldn't simply walk up to the Eastern Princess and rent a room. This wasn't a love hotel. Everything was prearranged, pre-booked, and pretentious. Why did we treat the Chinese people so good? Two generations ago, you would have been shot on this very ground for even being suspected of being sympathetic to Communists. Now we scrounged and spread our legs for their tips.

I stayed out of the light and ducked behind a tall shrub. I'd have to call Big Eye and tell him I couldn't pull this off. Sorry. I can't help you get Mei-ling back.

I looked at the phone in my hand. I couldn't bring myself to cry uncle to my uncle. I twisted my mouth and crossed my arms. Just like a lull at the night market, when I thought we were going to end in the red, people would show up. Something would come up here. Something had to.

A light went on, just to my left. Two lights, actually. Headlights.

A tour bus with blacked-out windows rolled up to the entrance. The doorman got ready by swiping his own card and holding open the handicapped entrance.

This was it! I could sneak in with the Chinese tourists. I just had to hope it wasn't a solid demographic that I couldn't blend into. Please don't be all pensioners or only women.

The first person who stepped off was an older woman. She was dressed in a pantsuit and stood her ground like an aunt of Peggy Lee. The woman barked at the doorman that she had a number of shopping bags that needed to be brought in. He nodded obsequiously and spoke into his handset. The reply was shards of static.

Slowly the Chinese disembarked. It must have been a long trip. Everybody stepped off stiffly and looked disheveled. That first woman was an outlier.

Luckily for me there was a broad representation of Chinese elites. Parents with teens. Toddlers asleep in the arms of grandparents. By the number of aboriginal necklaces the women were wearing, the group had probably returned from a shop-and-destroy trip to Hualien, which is full of tribal tourist traps. I say “destroy” because Chinese tourists are notorious for littering, petty vandalism, and raising the noise-pollution index. Communities tolerate them because of the money they rain down.

I feel the same way. Each Chinese customer at Unknown Pleasures who buys more than NT$1,000 in food gets to scratch her initials into the chairs.

I spied a small group of grungy young men rummaging through their shoulder bags and comparing trinkets. They could have been Taiwanese. Everything they wore was Uniqlo. As they made their way to the entrance I slipped in a pair of earbuds, kept my head down and trailed them. We all jumped back as bellhops leading three brass-pole luggage carts charged out the door. The Uniqlo brigade bitched about the interruption and the spell was broken. They spoke clinically proper Mandarin; they were probably young recruits of the Communist Party touring the island for the first time. The liberal use of “
taibazi
” tipped me off that they hadn't been impressed by what they'd seen so far on this trip. When the way was clear the line began to move again. The first young man in the group held up a card key but the doorman waved it away. No need to show it. His comrades and I followed him in.

They didn't notice that I had infiltrated their group and neither did the middle-aged couple behind me.

“Everything is so pricey here,” said the woman. “I can't find any bargains. No wonder the travel company had a Mid-Autumn Festival special. Everything else is a rip-off.”

“We could go to Hong Kong again,” the man offered.

She scoffed at him. “I don't like Cantonese people,” said the woman. “They only want to eat animal feet.”

I lost track of their conversation as the cavernous lobby revealed itself. It was brightly lit and the air smelled so sugary it was probably full of carbs. The ceilings were at least thirty feet high and from them two dozen crystal chandeliers pointed down like the sparkled tips of wizard staffs. The lobby furniture resembled swollen hawthorn fruit, blazingly red and rounded. People shuffled over and collapsed into chairs and chaise lounges. Available space was going fast. I glanced around and slid into an ottoman near the front desk. I was blending in beautifully.

I could really use a piss break. I was on a mission, however. A rescue mission. Craning my neck to try to get within earshot of the front desk, I edged down the ottoman and my butt scraped something that had been left in the folds of the cushion. It was a key card. I pocketed it. Could come in handy.

I continued to survey the room to see if my presence had attracted attention. I spied two of the men I had snuck in with. They were lingering over a rack of tourist-attractions pamphlets with strategically incomplete maps. One of the guys unbuttoned his linen shirt, revealing a T-shirt with the tomb image of Joy Division's
Closer
album. I had just worn my
Closer
shirt the other day!

I couldn't help but stare. Was this more than a coincidence? It had to be! This man and I were connected!

Did this mean that underneath China's calloused and colorless skin there was a heart, a facility to feel pain, an appreciation of beauty, and the need to be in love right now this second?

I was almost breathless. This Chinese guy loved Joy Division and he even had a bootleg shirt to prove it!

Of course it was a bootleg shirt. The version that Joy Division and New Order bassist Peter Hook sold at his shows featured “Manchester” underneath the album cover. The other official design sold by the continuing version of New Order featured Joy Division's name and the album title. The Chinese guy's shirt was the exact album cover, as originally issued. No words. Just the picture. Exactly as it should be.

Another Chinese guy joined them. He was now wearing a Flipper T-shirt. That was a punk band from San Francisco that I could never get into. Flipper had two bassists and the songs just never ended.

The dudes left the lobby and waited out front for a cab. Now that they had done the family-friendly tour, it was time for their night out at a club. Good for them and back to work for me.

Two concierges were behind the front desk, a woman and a man, both of medium height. They were wearing similar black jackets and bowties. Each was handling a line of three people. The woman was in her late thirties and had the insular-yet-friendly look down pat. I'll bet she didn't take any shit. The man was in his mid-fifties and had the beaten-down body language of the coach of a last-place high-school volleyball team. He nodded a lot. There was a deep-seated sorrow in his pudgy face but his eyes were dead and, even from where I was sitting, terrifying.

They looked like gangsters. Could that woman have been the one who escorted Mei-ling to The Perch? Maybe she was the one who'd driven the motorcycle.

I shot two close-ups of both employees and sent them to Big Eye. The doorman was the only other employee currently in view. I shot his face from the side.

Big Eye texted back,
who else is there?

I wrote back,
there are at least three bellhops but they are busy now.

send their pictures. whatever happens, don't leave the lobby. stay there until i tell you to go.

all right.

I pulled out my earbuds. I needed to be fully alert so I could hear them the second they came back down the elevators.

I became aware of a burbling sound behind and beneath me. A koi pond. The sound came from a larger-than-life statue of a vaguely divine-looking woman. Water was pouring out of a magical vase she cradled. Her face was serene and too young for her exaggerated height.

It was also oddly familiar.

She bore a striking resemblance to Mei-ling, especially in the nose and ears. I looked over the figure's flowing multi-layered robe and felt a chill.

A bell sounded and an elevator opened. Two of the bellhops emerged, strutting jauntily. I took each of their pictures, although honestly up close they looked nearly identical. Rounded jaws, jutting ears, freckles and light brown eyes. Must be brothers. As they crossed the lobby to the front desk, one of them slapped the other's ass. The woman at the desk reacted immediately.

“Act professionally!” she spat. The two shimmied to the side and stood with their backs against the wall. Where was that third guy? Maybe he was helping someone unpack.

I sent the two pictures to Big Eye.

one more left
, I typed.

hurry up. remember, don't go up into the hotel. stay in the lobby.

of course.

The lobby was never completely empty nor was it ever really quiet. When the human activity level seemed in danger of tapering down to an off-peak MRT platform, another busload of tourists would arrive. As people poured in, I understood how I'd missed the splashing fountain in the koi pool earlier. A group of five Chinese, yelling as if testing the lobby for echoes, easily blocked the statue and masked the sound.