That night he slept on the sofa until past four in the morning; then he got up, opened the door and went downstairs.
Right beside this residential compound was a vegetable market of no small size. It was barely past four, but the sellers in from the countryside, vegetable men and meat men alike, were already there setting up, and a Western-style bakery by the roadside had its lights on.
Jiaming knocked until they opened up and told them a cousin who had lived abroad all her life had just arrived, her body clock still out of sync, and she had been pestering him half the night for something to eat. Then he bought two big bags of bread, ham, condensed milk, butter and the like and carried them back.
He shut the door behind him. A stirring came from the master bedroom as well; Jiaming knew the blonde woman named Marilyn was already up. He set down the two bags of food and poured a cup of hot water, and just as the bedroom door opened he handed the cup over.
"Th-thank you... cough... cough cough..."
"You're still coughing badly, and I don't think that fever has come down much. You ought to sleep a while longer."
"I... cough... can't sleep. Heidi, she—" As she spoke, Marilyn caught sight of the little girl sleeping soundly in the other room. After a moment she sat down with the cup in her hands. "Thank you."
"It's what a Young Pioneer ought to do," Jiaming said with a smile, sizing up the blonde woman from the sofa.
There were only a few of his father's clothes in that room; what she had dug out of the wardrobe was probably what his mother used to wear.
But his mother had been the petite type, and now, with one of her shirts on this woman, the twin peaks at her chest looked ready to split the fabric, and the trousers had turned into something like the low-rise styles that would be all the rage in years to come. Quite easy on the eyes.
What he said aloud, though, was: "So... why not go to the hospital?"
"The hospital... they'd find me there..."
"They?" Jiaming frowned. "I'd have thought neither the Salieri family nor the Gambino family has power that reaches all the way out here, does it?"
Pei Luojia, the organization Jiaming had belonged to in his former life, had its headquarters in Japan, but it was a worldwide ring of assassins. Compared with ordinary underworld outfits, its roots ran far deeper—deep enough to touch the world's rather rare ability users and evolved humans.
Jiaming had been an assassin in its Asian branch at the time, yet he'd still had some dealings with the Mafia and its like. That kind of underworld ran in family units, an organization on the elite track.
Back then, more than twenty well-known Mafia families had been entrenched in New York; Salieri was one of them, and so was Gambino.
From what he remembered—and it was not much—the Salieri and Gambino families had fought savagely these past years. The Salieris had come off worse, but right up until Jiaming ran into that Fire Phoenix, the family had never been brought to the end of its rope.
And to concede a step or two: even if the Salieris had been wiped out root and branch, Gambino's reach would hardly stretch into China to run a manhunt. On Chinese soil, Hong Kong was held by the Triads, and the mainland had always been tightly controlled.
Mafia men might manage to come and stir up a little trouble, but there was absolutely no way they could get the hospitals, the embassy—or even the communications system—into their grip.
"Yes..." Marilyn hesitated a long while, then gritted her teeth. "It's Heidi's father. His name is... Tang Jingyao..."
That gave Jiaming a real fright. Tang Jingyao was the Deputy Secretary of the Jianghai Municipal Party Committee, and for over a year now he had been one of the city's political celebrities. He had studied abroad and come back with a gilded résumé; people said he was capable and willing to do real work, and before the New Year he had even called at the Huang house to visit Huang Bingxiang, the Provincial Party Secretary. Only that time he had brought his wife along...
With Marilyn's explanation, Jiaming finally understood how it had all come about. More than ten years ago, Tang Jingyao had gone to America to study on a state scholarship, and that was when he met Marilyn—a girl who counted as a rich man's daughter—and the two fell for each other at first sight. And so the child Heidi came to be.
Americans' idea of love was different from the Chinese, after all.
Tang Jingyao at the time had been set on going home to make a career, while Marilyn's father—the boss of the Salieri family—did not like Tang Jingyao to begin with, and liked even less the notion of his daughter following the man back to that "savage and benighted" China to suffer.
With all those reasons tangled together, Tang Jingyao eventually left wife and child behind and went home. Then, at the start of this year, he seemed to finally remember that he still had two relatives over in America, and sent people to fetch them.
By then the Salieri and Gambino families were all but fighting in the open, blades drawn; one might say Marilyn's father had been forced into it, for Marilyn's safety.
But it was not until she reached China that Marilyn sensed something wrong. She was a poor shot and no great hand at fighting, but she was, after all, a woman raised in a Mafia family.
All along, Tang Jingyao had merely installed the two of them in a remote villa; he came often enough, but always, deliberately or not, he was probing her for details about the inner workings of the Salieri family.
What he never imagined was that in the ten years since he left America, Marilyn had been pining for her lover and had long since stopped paying attention to most of the family's business—so there was no valuable lead she could possibly give.
Digging back the other way, Marilyn had roughly worked out that Tang Jingyao already had considerable power in Jianghai City, that he had ties to the Gambino family, and that he had another wife besides. Before it ever came to a showdown, Tang Jingyao had already hired killers from Pei Luojia to clean up her, a useless pawn.
And that was how the scene that night had come about.
By this point Jiaming understood everything, more or less. But since there were no wanted notices or the like out in the open, it meant Tang Jingyao did not entirely trust the police: he could probably get their help readily enough by pinning some charge on her, but he was also afraid that someone among them would follow the thread back to him and find a handle on him. If the government's power was beyond his control, then the force he had built up must on the surface be gangsters. The only question was...
"Why not call home, then? However much power Tang Jingyao has, he can't tap every overseas call. If you'd made the call back then, I think they would have taken you home long ago... Speaking of which, no wonder customs suddenly started checking so strictly these past weeks, openly and quietly both—so it was that fellow giving the orders..." He was only a student, but he still knew plenty about what went on within Jianghai City; you could call it an occupational habit.
"I... cough... cough cough..."
Seeing Marilyn swallow her words again, Jiaming caught on after a moment. If Marilyn's father had not thought much of their romance back then, he probably did not think much of it now.
The situation might have forced him to agree that Marilyn should lie low in China, but that did not mean the two had not quarreled—most likely, when she walked out, Marilyn had already cut ties with the family.
And now that she understood Tang Jingyao's strength, she was all the less willing to drag the family's power over here to take the risk. Call it pride, if you like; it had nearly killed both mother and daughter.
Jiaming cursed inwardly, then rolled his eyes. "Enough coughing. I understand. One way or another, give me a phone number—a number where I can reach your father directly."
"Ah..."
"Don't 'ah' me. If I hadn't saved you, you and your daughter would be dead by now—one raped, one starved. And now, on top of everything, my own neck is on the line too. Do you think I'm a god? Going up against an organization—fine, you can gamble with your own life, you can stop caring about your daughter, but my life is precious. One way or another, I want to come out of this alive, so cut the nonsense. There's paper and pen over there; write one down for me."
"I..." A complicated look came into Marilyn's eyes; she looked at the paper and pen, then at Heidi asleep in the room. After a long while she finally made up her mind and wrote a number on the paper. "Cough. My father's name is..."
"Tom Ford Salieri. Most people call him Old Tom. I know a little." Jiaming took the paper and cut in. A moment later he set the paper alight with a lighter and ground even the ashes underfoot; when he looked up, the blonde woman across from him was coughing softly, a look of sheer wonder in her eyes as she watched him.
"Chinese children really are amazing... Do you really have the legendary Chinese kung fu?"
Jiaming helplessly covered his forehead. "Chinese kung fu and then some. The carriages on our streets are all horse-drawn, and that room you're staying in is actually a thatched hut—only you're sick, so you may be hallucinating..."
"Heh, cough, sorry." The blonde woman could not hold back her laughter, then said, "May I know your name?"
"No need for a name. Your illness has not improved at all—you're only talking this much because your spirits are up. If complications set in, I'll have to put you in the hospital, and then if you get caught, what if you give me away? Besides, Young Pioneers never leave their names when they do a good deed..."
He fancied he had made a joke; unfortunately she did not understand what the joke meant. After a moment he said, rather sheepishly, "It's getting late, I should be off. You and Heidi stay in here and don't go out.
There's bread here—make do with it for breakfast. At noon I'll come back with groceries, look in on you and give you your shot.
I'm going.
Say good morning to Heidi for me."
He waved his hand, pushed the door open and stepped out. Marilyn asked, "You... where are you going?"
Jiaming sighed. "Young Pioneers in China all have to go to school. What, does America not have Young Pioneers?"
That was naturally a question he already knew the answer to; only after she shook her head did Jiaming put on a look of profound, pained dismay.
"Not even Young Pioneers—what a savage, backward country..."
The sky was already light by the time he left. Jiaming ran the whole way to the Huang villa, and as he neared the back gate he spotted Lingjing, just about to go in. He quickly put on a burst of speed, covered her eyes from behind, and said in a gruff voice, "Guess who. Guess wrong and I'll prickle you with my beard."
"Jiaming, you villain, you're always copying my dad's voice. I'm going to hit you!"
The pretty girl pried Jiaming's hands apart, her flushed cheeks wearing a lovely, reproachful pout. "How come you came around from the back today?"
"Heh, I got up early today. I saw you run past inside, so I came around by the back gate to give you a scare."
"You and your naughty ideas." Lingjing swatted him on the chest, then said, "Come on, Shasha's bound to be waiting for us on the lawn already."
The two children ran and chased and scuffled toward their secret spot—which was less morning exercise than it was a date—as the sun rose slowly over the mountains to the east. In a sky full of dawn clouds, a new day began.