She let the Hula-Hoop drop to the floor with a clatter and then stepped over it. Zhang described Mad Dog and asked if she had seen him on Saturday night. She shook her head.
Zhang tried a massage parlor, a shop selling air conditioning, and an estate agent, but nobody could tell him anything. As he walked on, he thought of how he first met Mad Dog. One Thursday night, not long after he moved to Shanghai, he called in at the House of Blues and Jazz, and sometime in the early hours of Friday morning a three-piece band took the stage. Two white Americans were playing the guitar and drums, but the man on the double bass was Chinese. Afterwards, Zhang went up to Mad Dog and told him how much he had enjoyed the set. Buy me a drink, was Mad Dog’s response. Zhang smiled. Some things never change. They started talking, and there came a point when Zhang told Mad Dog that he should be playing with musicians who were at least as good as he was. Like who? Mad Dog wanted to know. Like me, Zhang said. Mad Dog’s eyebrows lifted, and he looked Zhang up and down, but he agreed to meet a few days later, and after their first session together he grudgingly admitted that Zhang wasn’t a total disaster.
Zhang had reached a creek that ran under the road. Tractors stood on the north bank. On the other side was a row of wooden shacks with lights on in their windows. Shadowy figures moved through the squares of yellow. Next to the bridge was a simple noodle place. Four or five people stood about while a middle-aged woman tipped a bucket of slops into the gutter. Walking over, Zhang asked if any of them had noticed an old man passing by on Saturday night.
“No shortage of old men round here,” the woman said.
“He’s got shoulder-length gray hair,” Zhang said. “He was wearing a suit.”
The woman grunted.
“He’d had a few drinks,” Zhang added.
The people exchanged a glance, but no one volunteered any information. A little girl kept kicking a pink plastic ball into the air with the side of her foot.
Moving back to the road, Zhang leaned on a wall that overlooked the creek. To the east, above a jumble of dark rooftops, he could see the high-rise building that housed the Park Hyatt, its sheer sides outlined in blue neon. That was where he and Naemi had spent their first night together. Another world. Once again, he pictured her on the plane to London, hard-edged and golden, and everyone around her sleeping. Why did he find that image so unnerving? Behind him, a car sped past. A rush of air, then nothing. He was aware of one set of concerns shadowing another. Parallel uncertainties.
He began to walk again. On the left side of the road was a dreary, brightly lit restaurant, its seats covered with purple fabric. He went in and told the man behind the counter that he was looking for a friend who had gone missing.
“This place is on his way home,” Zhang said. “It’s possible he came in here on Saturday.”
The man sucked on his teeth. “I wasn’t here on Saturday.”
Someone tugged at Zhang’s sleeve, and he turned to see a wiry man with bloodshot eyes.
“I was,” the man said.
“My friend was wearing a gray suit and a green shirt,” Zhang said. “He’s about seventy, with long gray hair.”
“No,” the man said. “I don’t remember anyone like that.”
Zhang left the restaurant and moved on.
Hanyang Road was quiet, but whenever he came across a business that was open he stopped and asked about his friend. Nobody remembered him. Nobody. Perhaps, after all, Mad Dog had taken a different route home—or perhaps he had gone somewhere else entirely. The possibilities were infinite. Zhang was tiring, and he felt he had lost the scent—if he had ever had the scent, that is—but since he was close to where Mad Dog lived he resolved to keep going. Then at least he could tell himself that he had covered the ground.
* * *
—
He came to a crossroads near Mad Dog’s house. Positioned diagonally across from each other were two 24-hour convenience stores. He thought he should try them both.
The girl behind the counter in Quik wore glasses with thick black frames. Her hair was long on top and shaved at the sides, and a snake tattoo coiled round her left forearm.
“Were you here on Saturday night,” Zhang said, “at about this time?”
She stared at him with hard, unblinking eyes. “I’m here every night.”
He described Mad Dog. “Did you see anyone like that?” He saw her hesitate. “It’s all right. I’m a friend of his.”
“Gray suit, you said?”
Zhang nodded. “And a green shirt.”
“I think I saw him. But it was earlier than this—about one in the morning.”
“How do you know?”
“Because I’d just got off the phone with my pain-in-the-ass boss. He asked how business was going, and I said it was slow. He said it was down to me. He thinks I put people off.”
“Where was my friend when you saw him?”
The girl came out from behind the counter and moved over to a glass-topped freezer cabinet. “I was standing here, checking the plug. The connection’s faulty, and the ice creams keep melting. At some point, I looked out of the window. That was when I noticed him.”
“Where?”
She pointed. “Over there, by the shop where they cut keys. He was talking to a blonde woman.”
Zhang stared at the girl. All of a sudden, his heart was beating high up in his throat. “You’re sure?”
The girl nodded firmly. “It was the woman I saw first. I probably wouldn’t have noticed him otherwise.”
“And they were talking?”
“Yes—but it was strange. They didn’t look like people who would know each other. It wasn’t just that she was foreign. It was like they came from two completely different worlds.” She gazed through the window. “The woman was amazing-looking, like a comic-book character or a superhero, and he was just an old man in a suit, you know?”
“Do you remember anything else?”
The girl screwed up her eyes, thinking. “The way they were talking was strange too. She seemed to be trying to explain something to him, or plead with him, but he wasn’t interested.” She paused. “You’d think it would have been the other way round—him bothering her…”
“Then what happened?”
“The phone rang, and I went to answer it. Next time I looked out of the window they were gone, and there were some foreign guys outside with skateboards and beer.”
“Thank you. You’ve been very helpful.” At the door, Zhang paused and turned back. “You know something? You’re wasted in this place. You should be a detective.”