The Wolves (18 page)

Cheung hardly heard him. He couldn’t tear his attention from the plaques at the table. His money. And in the dealer’s seat, Lin, the man he’d battled a month before.

“General.” Lin stood and bowed. Everything as it had been. The night falling into place, a supercharged version of his previous trip. Again Cheung won his first bet, not a natural this time, instead a three-card four that somehow held up to Lin’s three aces, in its own way an equally miraculous victory. Cheung saw Duberman flinch as Lin pushed fifteen plaques across the table. Beating the house for fifteen million while the owner watched helplessly.

“My shareholders won’t be happy.”

“I warned you.”

“If this keeps up, we’re going to need to come up with a five-million-dollar plaque.” Duberman moved to the door. “I have to make some calls. While I’m gone, Chou-Lai will take care of you.”

“Is Malcolm here?” Malcolm, the little toady who ran the VIP room at 88 Gamma.

Duberman seemed puzzled. “He’s at the main casino. Did you want him?”

“No. Don’t trust him.” The words mumbled, almost hissed. Cheung had no conscious memory of the way Malcolm had flinched at his demands the month before. Yet he knew that Malcolm was his enemy just as the snake knew the mongoose.

“Then I promise you won’t see him again.” Duberman wagged a finger at Lin. “Don’t let him win, all right?”

After that first hit, Cheung settled in, sticking to bets of a million dollars a hand, ignoring Lin’s gibes that he was playing like a woman to preserve his money. Not so. For the first time, he sat at a baccarat table thinking about something other than the riches he might win.

A couple of hours later, Duberman reappeared to offer Cheung dinner. After Cheung turned him down, he watched for a while, then left again. Cheung drank steadily, but he tried to sip rather than gulp. He didn’t want to pass out tonight. Or black out. He wanted to
remember every detail, a camera-perfect memory.
Cameras. Of course they’re watching, you think they aren’t?

Again he felt uneasy. Again he ignored the alarm. Or, rather, drank it into silence. He emptied his glass and closed his eyes as a dissociative calm spread over him. He was a hundred stories downstairs, watching the sharks swim, but in no danger thanks to the thick glass protecting him.

Cheung opened his eyes to find that Duberman had returned. He watched impassively for a while as the cards and plaques moved back and forth.

“Everything to your liking, General?”

As an answer, Cheung pointed at his stacks. “A question. Are the suites here ready for business? Or do you plan to bring me back to 88 Gamma?”

“Technically, no one should be here except the construction crews and our own employees. I was planning to take you over there. If that’s where you want to go.”

“Where else would I want to go?”

“Wherever you like.”

“And will you be coming with me?”

As Xiao translated, Cheung focused on Duberman. Would he flinch? But he only nodded. “That’s up to you.”

Cheung never wore a watch when he played. He didn’t want to know how long he’d spent at the table. “What time is it?”

“Three a.m.”

Cheung had arrived around 8 p.m. He would have guessed he’d played for three hours, not seven. He counted his plaques. He was still ahead about eight million, but his luck had turned. If not for that first hand, he’d be down. He decided to bet his winnings. If he won, he’d stay at the table, focus on gambling. Back to work. And if he lost . . .

He’d find out if all Duberman’s hints meant anything.

He fumbled for the plaques, stacked eight, pushed them forward. “Eight million.”

“Finally, some balls,” Lin said. He pulled four cards from the shoe, pushed two across the table. Cheung licked his lips as the cards came his way. Did he want to win or lose? He squeezed the cards together, bent low over the table, peeked at the first. A jack. Useless. Zero.
Good.
He pushed it away, peeked at the second card, a seven. For a total of seven. Not quite a natural, but close. A very good hand. He flipped both cards over, trying not to be disappointed.

“Seven. Not bad. Stand on seven.” Quickly, Lin turned both of his cards. A five and a three. A natural eight. The winner. “Not as good as this. You lose.”

No. I win.
Cheung stood, braced himself against the table as the room floated past him. He’d drunk more than he planned. No matter. He had a bottle of Viagra in his pocket. He would take as many as he needed. “Bag it up.”

“You’re finished for the night? After that? Scared?”

Cheung turned to Chou-Lai. “What we talked about before. The flower.”

“The flower, sure.”

The moment of truth. “I want it.”

—

C
HOU
-L
AI NODDED
. “Tell him,” he said to Xiao. Who said something in English to Duberman. Who gave Cheung the tiniest smile. “If you’re sure.”

“Yes.”

Duberman came around the baccarat table, put an arm around
Cheung, waved Xiao over for the translation, a strange three-man huddle. “How old?”

“I don’t understand.”

“Yes, you do.”

A third alarm, blaring this time, yet so far away. “Why do I have to say?”

“I don’t want any confusion, that’s all.” Duberman looked at him almost gently. “I’ll say it for you. Fifteen? Sixteen?”

Cheung wanted to scream. To be so close—“No, no. A
flower
.”

“I’m sorry, General—”

“Nine. Ten. Eleven at most.”

“A girl.”

“Do I look like a pansy? Of course a girl!”

Duberman stepped away. He said something in English that Xiao didn’t translate and then strode out of the room. A pit a thousand kilometers deep opened in Cheung’s stomach. Duberman would kick Cheung out and send him home—

A minute later, Duberman returned. Smiling. He didn’t seem angry.

“Everything all right?” Cheung said.

“I have just what you want. Vietnamese. Beautiful. Ten years old. Let’s drink to it. Tequila.”

Suddenly Jian was at Cheung’s side, a tray with two glasses in her hand, two little shots, one in the middle of the tray, the other at the edge. She handed the one in the middle to Cheung as Duberman took the other. The sequence puzzled Cheung, but he couldn’t figure out why. He was too muddled, and too excited.

“Congratulations.” Duberman raised his glass and they drank. The tequila was vaguely bitter, chalky on Cheung’s tongue. An odd warmth chased it down his throat, into his stomach, and from there spread
through him. Not the burn of alcohol. Something deeper and more pleasant. It doubled him over. He would have fallen if Chou-Lai hadn’t grabbed his arm.

Duberman stepped away.

“Are you coming?”

Duberman didn’t answer, and Chou-Lai steered Cheung toward the door. Cheung wanted to fight but he couldn’t. He couldn’t make his muscles move. “My money.”

“It’s fine.”

Then Cheung couldn’t speak. The tequila must have hit him all at once. No. He didn’t feel drunk. Or not just drunk. When he was drunk, he knew what he meant to say even if he couldn’t make anyone else understand. Now he couldn’t speak even to himself. Something was wrong, he could see the door in front of him, the thing that moved up and down, but he didn’t know its name. He knew he should be afraid, but instead he felt the greatest pleasure,
high
, a word he hadn’t understood until this moment, a million meters above the earth—

He was outside—

In a car, on a bridge, the lights of a city leaving streaks on his eyes—

Time turned strange. He wasn’t blacked out, not entirely, but he couldn’t keep up with the world, it was moving so much faster than he was—

Still in the car, slowing now, on a narrow street crammed by dirty concrete apartment blocks. Chou-Lai handed him two blue pills; he felt a bolt of pleasure that he knew them,
Viagra
. He took them without complaint—

Chou-Lai opened a door, a bedroom door; inside a girl lay on a narrow bed, nude, Vietnamese, so young, so beautiful, what he’d wanted all this time—and Chou-Lai shoved him inside and closed the door.

For half a second, Cheung hesitated. He could still leave. Then the girl smiled at him and he stepped toward the bed—

—

C
HEUNG WOKE
. The pain was so much worse than the month before. Like his body wanted to reject the world. Like he was dying. Like dying would be a relief. He squeezed his eyes shut. He already knew something terrible had happened the night before. That
he
had done something terrible. Though he couldn’t remember what.

He wanted to keep his eyes closed forever, hide from the truth, but his body wouldn’t let him. His mouth was dry, his thirst overpowering. It was day, it had to be, the light streamed through his closed eyelids. He lay on something painfully hard, not the perfect bed in the high-roller suite. The room around him was hot, no air-conditioning here, and flies buzzed around him, and he knew that when he opened his eyes, he would be somewhere he didn’t want to be, looking at something he didn’t want to see.

He opened them.

He lay on his back on a concrete floor. Naked. His little bird felt sticky and when he looked down it was covered in brownish dried blood. The blood there didn’t scare him. The blood on his hands did.

He moved his head, gently and precisely as a metronome ticking, until he saw the bed. The girl was still on it, one leg dangling, a trace of blood just visible on her thigh. The mattress was bare and a sheet piled on the floor, blood there, too—

Cheung screamed, tried to scream, his voice wavering and thin in his throat.

The night came back to him all at once, Duberman in his boots, the casino, the whiskey, the tequila—

Then nothing. This time, he knew he wouldn’t remember no matter how hard he tried. What had they given him? What had he done? He pushed himself up, grabbing the windowsill for balance, ignoring the inferno in his head. The girl lay unmoving, head curled at a strange angle, blood leaking from her mouth—

The door swung open. Two men walked in.
Laowei.
Round-eyes. One not much bigger than Cheung, the other enormous, a mountain of a man. They wore suits and latex gloves. Without a word, they grabbed him, pulled him down a dim hallway. Cheung tried to fight but they were too strong, far too strong.

Thirty meters down, a door on the other side of the hall was open. They threw him inside, pulled the door shut. The room was a mirror image of the other, a single bed, a wooden chair, a dirty window, the smell of sewage, flies buzzing through the open bathroom. One difference. A laptop lay on the bed instead of a girl. The big man pushed him down on the chair as the small one reached for the laptop.

“Watch this.” He pushed a button on the laptop and a video played, the image on the screen clearer than the one in Cheung’s mind. The Sky Casino. Black plaques sitting on the baccarat table. Him and Duberman.

“How old?”

“I don’t understand.”

“Yes, you do.”

“Why do I have to say?”

“I don’t want any confusion, that’s all. I’ll say it for you. Fifteen? Sixteen?”

Exasperation twisting Cheung’s face.
“No, no. A
flower
.”

“I’m sorry, General—”

“Nine. Ten. Eleven at most.”

“A girl.”

“Do I look like a pansy? Of course a girl!”

The screen went dark. The big man grabbed Cheung’s arm, threw him to the floor. The small one kicked him twice in the back, the pain radiating into his kidneys, up his spine—

“You’re disgusting. Get up. Stand.”

Cheung pushed himself to all fours.

“Stand.”

His legs shook as he stood. “But he agreed, Duberman agreed—”

“I don’t think so.”

“Play it, you’ll see, it comes next.”

The man played the video again.

“Do I look like a pansy? Of course a girl!”

On screen, Duberman stepped away, spoke the English words that Xiao hadn’t translated.

“You don’t know what he’s saying.”

Cheung shook his head.

“Too bad you studied in Germany and not the U.S. It translates as
‘Get out of my casino, you piece of shit. I don’t do business with pedophiles.’
”

“But he—”

“He threw you out.”

“He
agreed
.” Cheung wasn’t sure why he was bothering to argue, the truth hardly mattered, but he wanted to understand. “He gave me a drink—” Cheung could taste it now, feel its strange warmth, the euphoria that followed. Despite everything, his body craved another dose. Not tequila. An opiate. They’d given him those drugs in the hospital after his crash. “Play the rest.”

“That’s the end. There isn’t any more. So he tossed you, you found your way here—”

“That’s
not
what happened.”

“Tell me, then, how you got here, wound up in that room with that girl.”

Cheung had no answer. The whiskey and whatever was in the shot glass had erased his memory. He squeezed his eyes shut, tried to think. A trap. Duberman had
trapped
him—

A slap stung his face, sent him sprawling. From the floor, he looked at his tormentors.

“You think we’re done? I have another video for you.”

“No, please, no—”

“The one that shows what you did to her.”

Bile filled Cheung’s mouth as it had the month before. This time, he knew he couldn’t control himself. He ran for the bathroom, retched a thin yellow stream of drool and acid into the stinking toilet. He mopped his mouth with the back of his blood-splattered hand and tried to understand how his life had come to this point.

The big man was behind him now, dragging him back, not a moment’s peace.

“You don’t want to watch?” the other one said. “You put on quite a show.”

“Let me go.”

“Where? Your clothes aren’t there. Nor your phone. Nothing. How far do you think you’ll get before someone calls the police to report a naked man covered in blood? What will you tell them when they pick you up?”

“Do you know who I am?”

“I know just who you are. A half man with a thing for little girls.” He reached into his pocket, came out with Cheung’s air force identification. “General Cheung Han of the People’s Liberation Army Air Force. Maybe you should call your friends in Beijing, ask Uncle Xi to cover for you. I’m sure he’ll be glad.”