One week later
Arcadia, California
“Would you please turn down that music?”
It was two in the morning, her cousin Charlie was driving like a complete a-hole, and Emily Yan needed to be at her first class of the day in six hours. She hadn’t even wanted to go out tonight. Who went to clubs on a Tuesday? But she knew that if she didn’t go with him Charlie would only get into even more trouble than he usually did. Only last week he had almost gotten arrested. He would have been if Li Yeng hadn’t paid off the kid Charlie had punched.
“What? You don’t like Kanye?” Charlie shot her the easy smile that girls who weren’t his cousin fell for.
“No, he’s an idiot. Which maybe explains why you like him.”
“You’re funny.”
Charlie laughed and pressed down even harder on the Lamborghini’s gas pedal. The fresh burst of acceleration pushed Emily back into her seat. Charlie had no business driving a car like this. He only did it to keep up with his idiot friends. She’d wanted to take the Audi, but Charlie had insisted they take the “Lambo”. He said it like that, Lambo, and sounded like a complete tool.
Emily really wished her aunt would send for her cousin, but there was no chance of that happening. The family was all about them getting their education here in America. America was safe. The schools were good. They had the money, so why not?
She and Charlie were parachute kids. Chinese kids sent to America to get an education while their parents stayed in China. There were thousands of them up and down both American coasts. San Francisco, Los Angeles, Vancouver, Toronto, New York.
Emily and Charlie lived in a seven-thousand-square-foot house her father had bought for them in Arcadia, thirteen miles north-east of Los Angeles. It was pretty much little China, but for rich Chinese families rather than poor immigrants from places like Taiwan. Over half the population was Chinese, with many parachute kids, like Emily and Charlie. There were also lots of ernai, the beautiful young mistresses of wealthy Chinese businessmen and government officials.
The street where Emily and Charlie lived was known as an ernaicun, a mistress village. It drove Emily crazy. She didn’t want anyone to think she was an ernai. On the other hand, Charlie loved it. He was always hitting on the cute little ernai across the street. Emily had warned him what would happen if her “sponsor” found out but, as with everything else, Charlie didn’t care. As far as he was concerned, he was untouchable.
The Lamborghini was almost flat out. The speed made Emily nervous. She checked WeChat on her iPhone X as Kanye blasted from the speakers and the wind whipped her hair across her face.
The supercar slowed abruptly.
Charlie angrily thumped his hands against the wheel. The engine was making a metallic whining noise.
“What is it?” Emily asked.
“How do I know?”
He pulled the Lamborghini into the breakdown lane, opened his door and got out. He walked to the front and tried to yank up the hood so he could look at the engine. This would be good. Emily still had to show him how to put gas in it. He couldn’t even lift the hood so the idea of him fixing the problem was pretty hilarious.
“I told you we should have taken the Audi. How many times has this thing broken down?”
“Can you just be quiet?”
“Fine.” She went back to scrolling through her WeChat messages.
Charlie grabbed the hood and tried again to pull it up. “Can you see a catch in there to open it?”
“No.”
“Can you at least look?” he said.
Pony leaned over in the passenger seat and tapped Joker’s elbow. “Check it out, ese.”
Joker looked across to what had caught Pony’s attention. On the opposite side of the freeway a white Lamborghini was pulled over. Some young Chinese dude was stood next to it, his piece sitting in front.
Joker slowed the beat-up Dodge pickup they were driving.
“Nice whip,” said Joker.
“Maybe they need some help,” said Pony.
Joker knew what he meant. He just wasn’t sure it was a good idea. They could take the car, that wasn’t an issue—it would be like taking candy from a baby—but would they be able to get it back home to East Los Angeles without being stopped?
The pickup they were in, with the lawnmower and gardening tools thrown in back, had been their secret weapon since they’d started working Arcadia. Any time they were stopped they just pulled the no habla English, Officer routine and made out they were driving home from a day doing yard work. So far it had worked like a charm.
Why mess up a good thing? thought Joker, the older of the two by three years.
“What’s the matter?” said Pony. “It’s right there. I don’t see no cops.”
“You not forgetting something?” said Joker.
“What’s that?”
“The dude’s broken down, dummy. How are we going to get it moving?”
“We could tow it.”
“You serious?”
“Not all the way back. Take it somewhere off the road. Throw an old tarp over it. Come back later and get it,” said Pony.
That was why Joker liked working with Pony. He was crazy, like you had to be in Mara Salvatrucha, but he was crazy smart too.
Joker slowed and spun the wheel. The Dodge turned, bumping over the median, crossed two lanes and headed for the broken-down Lamborghini.
Emily Yan shielded her eyes from the glare of the truck’s headlights as it drove the wrong way down the breakdown lane, and stopped in front of them. Charlie was so dumb. He couldn’t even call a proper tow truck. He was lucky he was born rich. If he’d been born poor, he would have starved to death.
Charlie sprang back at the truck’s approach. He popped the door and climbed in. He was in a panic, but Emily didn’t pick up on it.
“These are the guys you called?” Emily said to him, as two young-looking Hispanic guys got out of the truck’s cab. They looked more like gangbangers than mechanics. Not that she’d seen many of either group, apart from on TV.
“I didn’t call them. I haven’t called anyone yet,” said Charlie, leaning over her and flipping open the glove box.
Emily’s heart rate jumped. The two guys were strolling toward them. They looked relaxed but the way they walked carried menace. “Then who are they?”
The two young men were almost level with them. One had stepped to Charlie’s side of the Lamborghini, and the other was closing in on Emily. They should have at least put the top up, but it was too late for that.
“Nice whip,” said one, running a finger down the bodywork. “Real smooth.”
“This your chica?” said the other, his eyes all over Emily.
That was when she saw Charlie pull the gun from the glove box. It was big and black and frightening. She’d had no idea it was even there, and he’d never mentioned having a gun.
Now he had it in his hand, and was pointing it up and out at the guy closest to him. The guy seemed more than amused than anything. He smiled and put his hands up, like he was in a low-budget gangster movie. “Easy there. We just wanted to see if you needed some help.”
“We don’t need your help, thanks,” said Charlie.
He didn’t seem nervous any more. Emily put it down to the gun. Charlie wasn’t much of a fighter, and he definitely wasn’t a tough guy, like her father or his friends. Charlie was rich and soft and had always had the family’s money to get him out of trouble. Which made the gun all the more surprising.
“Okay, homie,” the guy was saying. He made a gesture to the guy who was on Emily’s side of the car.
They both started to back up.
Charlie started to get out. Emily reached over to grab him and pull him back in but he shrugged her off. “They’re leaving,” she said.
“Yeah, we’re leaving,” the guy said to Charlie.
“So hurry up and get the hell out of here, beaners,” said Charlie.
The guy’s smile fell away. His brow furrowed, his face tightened and he turned side on. The headlights caught his face. That was when Emily noticed the tattoos that ran all the way up his neck to his forehead. She couldn’t make out much. At least one was in Spanish. She picked out the number 13.
“What you say?” the guy said.
Even with the gun in his hand, Charlie seemed to sense he’d overstepped some invisible line. It was like a line he’d heard and spat out without thinking.
The guy took a step towards Charlie. His chest was puffed out, his shoulders back. He didn’t blink.
The guy on Emily’s side said, “Chota.”
That one word seemed to break the spell. The two guys walked back to their truck, got in, and turned around before taking off.
Seconds later, a wash of red lights explained their sudden departure as a California Highway Patrol police car pulled in behind them. Emily snapped the glove box open. Charlie jammed the weapon inside. Emily closed it again.
The truck was gone. The patrol car pulled around them and parked in front of the Lamborghini.
“I’ll speak to them,” Emily hissed at her cousin.
“Whatever. You see those Mexicans shit their pants?”
She rolled her eyes. The two guys had taken off because of the cops, not because of her cousin, but try telling him that. “Shut up, Charlie,” she told him. “Let me do the talking.”
Removing her make-up, Emily stared at herself in the mirror. She would have to speak with Li Yeng about Charlie. Li Yeng was her father’s . . . She wasn’t sure what his official job title would be. She guessed the English word ‘fixer’ would be close. Officially, he looked after her father’s investments, but he also kept an eye on her and Charlie.
Emily had never really gotten a read on Li Yeng. He was detached and business-like. He looked like the kind of man who got out of bed already wearing a blue Brooks Brothers pinstripe suit. She knew he was from Beijing and had studied for his MBA at Harvard. She also knew that he came from a poor family in Henan province.
What had never been explained was how he had made the transition from being the son of a poor farmer to his present position. For all the talk of Communism being about equal opportunities, China was like most countries. If you weren’t born into a family with money and connections, it was hard to make anything of yourself. Not impossible, but the odds were stacked against you.
She did know that Li Yeng had relied upon her father’s patronage. He had paid for him to study in America. But, like everything her father did, it had been an investment that Li Yeng was expected to pay back, with interest. That was why he had been charged with keeping an eye on them as well as all the real estate.
She finished removing her make-up and applying moisturizer. She glanced down at her iPhone. Messages were stacked up. Dumbass Charlie had been all over his social media about how he had scared some gangbangers. Sent them home to the barrio with their tails between their legs.
He had been going on in group chat about Chinese power, and other kinds of stupidity. Those two guys hadn’t been scared of Charlie. Not even when he had a gun pointed at them.
That was what had unsettled Emily the most. Someone pointing a loaded gun seemed like just another day at the office for them. They probably knew it wasn’t the gun so much as who had their finger on the trigger.
At least she was home now. She would get some rest, maybe skip her first class, and start tomorrow fresh. Next time she would insist they take the Audi rather than that penis on wheels.