We tracked the emptying streets, switching lanes, sometimes swerving into opposing traffic before ducking back in. I unzipped the backpack. Inside were my passport, a plastic bag with a few shirts and some underwear, and a brown paper envelope that had three rubber-banded bundles of bills. A piece of paper in my aunt’s wavering, emphatic hand stated it was three thousand dollars. There was a satin bag with my jewelry in it and a heavy string of pearls the size of cough drops that I had never seen—a gift from my aunt, who never sent me off without some extravagant piece. The tote bag had my notebooks and whatever papers had accumulated on my desk. Also a computer, but here Tita Rosa had been uncharacteristically mistaken because the computer was not mine: it was Laird’s. My computer was stashed in the bottom drawer of the chest in my room. I would have to make sense of this later, just as whoever was now going through my things would have to make sense of what was on mine: inane emails to Inchoy, pictures from my failed marriage, a history of fabric swatches for the curtains, and the first draft of The Human Zoo, just a ridiculous mishmash of meaningless activity of value to no one but me.

Top Gun pulled into the dark quiet of a garage, circling downward and downward until he came to a stop by a metal door. I didn’t know what building this was and, to my recollection, had never been there. The metal door opened and Chet stepped out, resulting in the usual Chinese fire drill rearrangement. Top Gun got in the back, I got in the passenger seat, and Chet sat behind the wheel. He took a moment to compose himself, looking straight ahead, before he turned to me. I said nothing. He took my hand and held it for a moment, then put the car in gear and pulled quickly away.

Neither of us spoke a word for the first fifteen minutes. I had so many questions racing through my head and was hoping he would speak first, but Chet probably had little that he wanted to say and was willing to prolong the luxury of silence for as long as he could.

We sat waiting at a traffic light that finally turned. “We need to get Inchoy,” I said. “If I’m leaving, he needs to leave too.”

Chet shook his head.

“What?” I said. “Damn it, Chet, say something.”

He looked over, mouth pursed, then back at the road. “Ting, we cannot help Inchoy.”

“We can’t or we won’t?”

“We can’t.”

I asked, “What happened to him?”

“What happened to Inchoy,” said Chet, his voice controlling both anger and sadness, “is that he pulled a gun on the president.”