Copyright © 2014 Casey Walker
All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever without written permission from the publisher, except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles and reviews.
This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events or locales or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Walker, Casey, 1980–
Last Days in Shanghai : a novel / Casey Walker.
pages cm
1. Americans—China—Fiction. 2. Corruption—Fiction. 3. Political fiction. 4. Suspense fiction. I. Title.
PS3623.A35886L37 2014
813’.6—dc23
2014014419
ISBN 978-1-61902-411-3
Cover design by Jason Snyder
Interior Design by E. J. Strongin, Neuwirth & Associates, Inc.
Counterpoint Press
2560 Ninth Street, Suite 318
Berkeley, CA 94710
Distributed by Publishers Group West
10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1
To Mom, Dad, Karen & Hazel—
We tend to take the speech of a Chinese for inarticulate gurgling.
Someone who understands Chinese will recognize language in what he hears.
Similarly I often cannot discern the humanity in a man.
Ludwig Wittgenstein, Culture and Value
Contents
DAY 3: BEIJING
DAY 4: SHANGHAI
I.
II.
III.
ONE YEAR EARLIER: VENICE
DAY 5: SHANGHAI
I.
II.
III.
IV.
DAY 6: SHANGHAI
DAY 7: NEW YORK CITY
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
WE FLEW BUSINESS class for nearly a day on a packed and pork-smelling China Eastern Airlines jet, chasing back the sunset. Ambien and all the in-flight Harry Potter movies, my companions. When I fell asleep, I was pursued by wizards and schoolchildren with the powers of the devil. Strange how much of life you spend wishing it would only pass, faster, even faster.
Our driver from the Beijing airport wore white gloves and a bellhop’s cap. A drifting April haze gave the city a gray tint, with dark and shapeless buildings that blurred out on the horizon even as we approached them. My first city view was from our Buick, at a stoplight: fifteen construction cranes strapped to naked three-quarter buildings, many of which looked too tall already to support themselves. I followed one up as far as I could see until the smog and sunshine swallowed it.
“See it, Luke?” my boss said, pointing. “The national bird of China.”
“What’s that?” I said.
“The construction crane,” he said.
I’d heard him try this joke around the office in the days before we left. I’d heard all his bits. I made a laugh anyway. Congressman Leonard Fillmore—Republican, California, Fifty-First Congressional District—self-styled Asia hand, now embarked on his first visit to mainland China. He was a presidential hopeful with a familial claim to the office: Leo Fillmore was a distant relation of the thirteenth president of the United States, one of the least distinguished in our history. Nearing sixty, Leo looked to me much older, probably from carrying twice his body weight in grudge and grievance. To his friends he was sometimes known as “Leo the Lion.” But the nickname had spread far and wide among his enemies, too—you could hear it whispered up and down the Rayburn Building corridors: “Leo the Lyin’.”
“Who do we see at the whatever the fuck? Trade people, right?” the congressman said. “I’m fucking starving.”
I reached into my messenger bag for our schedule. The bag, the nicest thing I owned, was a beautiful dark leather piece of work my ex-girlfriend Alex had given me on my twenty-third birthday. I never gave her, in our whole relationship, anything half as thoughtful. Two weeks ago, I’d turned twenty-four, but we hadn’t spoken. I pulled out every piece of paper, sorting through shape-shifting documents, looking for a schedule I was certain I had. Apparently, no. The congressman turned, as much as he could in his seat belt, to give me a shriveling stare. I didn’t acknowledge it. I’d once been more afraid of Leo. I had once been more respectful. Now we just bickered, like he did with his wife—except that she still loved him, possibly.
“You’ve lost the schedule, Mr. Slade?”
He called me “Mr.” only when he was being condescending.
“Everything got scattered when I came through customs,” I said. I’d had to dig deep to find my passport, detained for additional questioning while Leo had already scampered to the bathroom.
“Unbelievable,” he said.
I pulled out my loaner phone and was alarmed to find it had no working signal. Our phones, like the trip, had been provided to us by a real estate firm
