Hour of the Rat by Lisa Brackmann Page B

don’t know that smoking is bad for you. Maybe because the same government agency that’s trying to get people to quit also owns all the tobacco companies.
    “Yeah,” I say. “Yeah, it is. Maybe you should quit.”
    “Maybe so.” He shrugs. “Then I can eat the baozi made with cardboard, the
youtiao
fried in sewer oil, and the pork that glows in the dark. And feed my kids the milk powder with that chemical in it that makes them sick and die.”
    He’s just rattled off a string of food scandals that have happened in China over the last couple years. He left out a bunch. It seems like there’s a new one every day. Like the chicken fed with minerals so they weigh more. The tofu laced with detergent to make it sticky. The fake eggs. Yeah, fake eggs. Don’t ask.
    “You have kids?” I think to say.
    “No. Just preparing for the future.” He grins again.
    “So the picture I showed you last night. You know that guy, right? David?”
    “Maybe I see him around.” He takes a deep swallow of beer. “Why you want to know?”
    “Like I said, I’m friends with his family. His brother.”
    “You must be good friends.”
    “Yeah. I guess we are.”
    I get the feeling he isn’t buying this, which is kind of ironic, given that I’m actually telling the truth.
    I pull out my iPhone. Open up the photos. “This is his brother, Doug, and Doug’s wife, Natalie. Their kids.” I stroke the screen, going from photo to photo. “There’s the whole family at Christmas. See, that’s … uh, David. Those are his parents.”
    I go through the photos. I come to the one of me and Dog at the FOB, both of us wearing T-shirts and shorts because it was so hot out, him pretending to make a grab at my tit, me laughing and threatening him with a can of Coke. I remember it had been kind of a shitty day up to that point; I’d had to go outside the wire on a run guarding cheesecake for a KBR truck convoy, and it wasn’t like anything really bad had happened that time, but it was always like something bad
could
happen next time.
    “Yeah, that’s us,” I say, and I don’t want to stay too long on that picture.
    “What happen to him?” Kobe flicks a finger at a photo of Dog after he got blown up.
    “Accident. That’s why they asked me to help. Because it’s a little hard for Doug to travel.”
    Kobe draws on his cigarette. Coughs. “Maybe they
are
bad for me.” Stubs it out.
    “They just want to know he’s okay,” I say. “They’re worried about him.”
    Kobe slowly nods. “I don’t know where he is,” he says. “I haven’t seen him for a while. Two months, maybe.”
    “Why did you tell me to ask at the Gecko?”
    “He likes to go there sometimes.”
    “Any particular reason?”
    A longer hesitation. “You know, some of those people who go there, who work there, they’re crazy. About the natural environment. They want to … to save the pandas.” He tugs on his T-shirt, at the pistol-packing panda.
    “And you don’t?”
    “I like pandas that save themselves. That fight back.” He grins.
    So Jason’s a tree hugger? Not Dog’s thing, so far as I know, but thinking about the photo of Jason—the coffeehouse soul patch, the dreamy expression—I guess I can see it.
    “Is there anyone else you can think of who might know where he is?” I ask.
    Kobe takes a long, slow pull on his beer. “Maybe,” he finally says.
    “Go to this place,” he tells me, writing down the name on a napkin. “I think he work out there for a little while.”
    “Great. Anybody I should talk to in particular?”
    A shrug. “Alice, maybe. Maybe Russell.”
    “And should I tell them you sent me?”
    A rapid shake of the head. “No. No, better you don’t say.”
    “Okay.”
    He fiddles with an unlit cigarette, flipping it across the back of his hand, from one finger to the next. “Just promise me, if you find Daisy, you have to tell me.”
    “Daisy?”
    “A girl,” he mumbles.
    “Well, yeah, I figured.” And it occurs to