Hong Kong Noir

by Jason Y. Ng

  “There were no people around at the time?”

  “None.”

  “Who owns this shop?” Amanda looked up at the stall nearest to the blood splatter; it seemed to specialize in feather boas, animal masks, and sequined hats.

  “Mr. and Mrs. Cheung have run that shop for forty years, but they’re in Guangzhou now. Their boy is around here somewhere. Probably slunk off to grab a cigarette.”

  “We’ll want to check on the Cheungs,” Amanda said. “And make sure all the other shopkeepers are accounted for.”

  She hoped the victim wasn’t one of the old shopkeepers. That wouldn’t make nearly enough of a story. A few things were required to make a murder into a real story. Sex. Money. Foreigners—preferably young, wealthy ones.

  Amanda caught her boss giving her a flint-eyed look, and she struggled to keep the calculations from her face. She suspected Hugh knew a little too much about her history. This was her first big shot since she came back to Hong Kong, and she wasn’t going to waste it. She would have to tread lightly if this murder was going to make her name.

  The blood splatter drew her gaze again. The puddle was almost square due to the way it spread and seeped down the steps. The edges smudged here and there, but there wasn’t so much as a footprint leading away. Even if the person who had bled so much wasn’t dead, she didn’t see how they could possibly have walked away—or been carried—without leaving a trail.

  She glanced up. No overhanging balconies or scaffolds from which the blood could have dripped. It was as if the victim had bled out on the steps and then vanished.

  * * *

  Pictures of the crime scene exploded onto front pages everywhere. The puddle of blood had appeared in one of the most famous tourist sites in the city. Lined with uneven stone slabs, the precarious street had once divided the neighborhoods where European and Chinese residents lived. Now people from all over the world ascended from the expensive glass world of Central to peruse the ramshackle stalls for costumes, holiday decorations, and stationery. The former East-West divide now funneled people together, a microcosm of what Hong Kong had declared itself to be: Asia’s World City, a commercial center for a globalized world.

  Amanda played up the iconic locale in her initial article. The Pottinger Steps, as seen in hundreds of postcards and thousands of vacation photos, now marred with a gory mystery. She relayed the facts of the case but emphasized the horror of the bystanders upon learning of a bloody murder in the center of one of the safest cities on the planet.

  Hugh gave an approving nod when he read the piece and told her to write another.

  * * *

  She had her angle, but there was still no body. The surrounding buildings, alleys, and construction sites were searched thoroughly over the following week. The Cheungs were indeed alive and well in Guangzhou, and none of the other vendors were missing. In fact, no one had been reported missing in the entire city since that Friday, leaving the police—and the reporters—without a single lead.

  Amanda figured it was better this way. The sheer quantity of blood virtually guaranteed a murder had taken place, but the trail ended at the bottom of the steps. Without a suspect or a known victim, the case was a blank canvas.

  So Amanda spun her tale. She wrote a new article as sensational as any tabloid screed. She drew from stories of other famous murders. Poisoned milkshakes and bodies wrapped in Persian carpets. Dismembered heads stuffed in Hello Kitty dolls. Drug-fueled escapades. Sex games gone wrong. She didn’t shy away from the most lurid theories and the most unlikely of scenarios.

  She posted the article to the paper’s blog in the small hours of the following Friday morning, so that by the time her boss noticed it had already been shared thousands of times overseas.

  Hugh cornered her at her desk before noon. “What is this shit?” Sweaty fingers held the phone screen in front of her face. “Who are your sources?”

  “It’s an ongoing story.”

  “What’s that supposed to mean?”

  “They’re theories.” Amanda had prepared for this. “I don’t actually say any of those things happened.”

  “This says the victim is a tourist possibly from a Western country.”

  “It says the victim could be a tourist,” Amanda corrected, “possibly even a tourist from a Western country who hasn’t been reported missing yet.”

  Suggesting the victim was a tourist would get almost as many clicks and shares as hinting sex workers were involved. She was saving that for the next article. In the meantime, she was already getting messages from readers with theories about who the victim could have been. Missing person cases from all over the globe were pouring into her inbox, accompanied by wild explanations for how the individuals could have ended up on a historic lane in Hong Kong on a Friday night.

  Her boss wasn’t finished. “Do you know how this looks?”

  “There’s nothing libelous,” Amanda said. “I checked.”

  “This isn’t that kind of paper.”

  Amanda made soothing noises as she checked her phone under the desk. A Chinese news site had put together an animation showing murder methods that could release that much blood. The local news always used the most graphic imagery. She texted a friend to see if she could get a similar video, with the iconic Pottinger Steps as the backdrop.

  A sticky cough. “Amanda.”

  “People are reading it, Hugh,” she said. “You’re selling ads off the clicks. Isn’t that why you hired me?”

  Hugh’s phone buzzed, and he fumbled at it with his clammy fingers. “I won’t have any more of that stuff here. This isn’t like your last job.”

  Amanda shrugged. Of course it was. Every news job was alike these days. She got the clicks, and that was all that mattered.

  * * *

  Others soon took notice of those clicks. Amanda suspected most news outlets had been about to let the story go. With no leads and no body, it might not even be a murder. But then they saw the kind of traffic Amanda’s article was getting, and they wanted in. Then there were think pieces. Hot takes. Specials. Photos of flowers and stuffed toys left on the steps in memory of the unknown victim.

  When the police issued a statement reiterating that no body had been found, reputable sites used Breaking News banners and flashy graphics to cover it. Amanda’s story was already too big to kill.

  It didn’t matter that no one had been confirmed dead. That’s what Amanda understood. People were still clicking, still swapping theories. Reporters all over the globe interviewed the families of missing persons, trying to find a Hong Kong connection, however tenuous, to link their stories. Tourists wandered up and down the Pottinger Steps, taking pictures of the lurid costumes hanging above the now blood-free stones. History buffs dined out on the tale of the World War II air-raid shelter that had been built beneath the steps and later filled in. Bloggers wrote exaggerated accounts of harrowing experiences in the area—rare though they were—and tagged Amanda in their posts. Everyone wanted a piece of the action.

  Amanda’s work got more and more attention. No one was talking Pulitzer not for this kind of thing, but they were hanging on her every blood-tinged word.

  She became addicted to the commentary, the feedback. She’d had a hint of this before at her old job. It hadn’t worked out then. The wrong angle turned into a sticky mess that ended with her being packed off to the Hong Kong office. She’d probably taken that last theory too far. But this time was different. She could feel it.

  Other reporters wrote balanced meditations on what led people to disappear in this shiny metropolis. They mused on inequality, lack of accountability, economic desperation. Some came up with thoughtful analyses of what made it possible to be so anonymous you could be murdered without being missed in Hong Kong.

  Hugh suggested, none too gently, that Amanda should write something like that.

  But Amanda didn’t care about the balanced takes. She got the clicks, and that was all that mattered.

  At least for a litt
le while.

  * * *

  As the weeks passed without a break in the case, much less an actual victim, new stories began to take precedence. The news cycled. Protests and politicians recaptured the attention of the public. A new food craze overtook social media.

  There was still no body, no verified victim, but Amanda couldn’t bear to move on to another story. A few readers still followed her, still sent her messages asking for the latest. When they did, she assured them a breakthrough was imminent. She offered up tantalizing details, hints of sex and drugs and dripping blood.

  Hugh told her to work on other things, never repeating that single approving nod, never acknowledging the ad dollars she had brought in or the name she had begun to sketch out for herself. She had been so close. She had inhaled the intoxicating vapors of a truly sensational lead. Yet the big break eluded her.

  And the news cycled.

  “Enough,” her boss said one afternoon. “You can’t string this one out anymore. Go write about the election.”

  * * *

  Amanda took to stalking the Pottinger Steps early in the morning, on her lunch break, late into the night. She needed another clue to what had happened that night, a new development to keep the story ticking.

  The vendors quickly learned to avoid her questions, designed to tease out salacious quotes. They just wanted to sell wigs to rugby spectators and knickknacks to backpackers in peace. One day the woman who sold paper lanterns told Amanda she was bad for business, making the steps out to be an illicit corridor of sex and violence. “Go home,” she said. “That is not Hong Kong.”

  The old man who worked at the stall across the way looked up. His rheumy eyes cleared as he met Amanda’s gaze. Then he returned to rearranging the masks hanging from his stall. A row of limbs hung below them, painted blood dripping down rubber skin.

  “There is always a price,” he muttered to a plastic demon head. “Success can be bought, but the price is never up to you.”

  * * *

  That Friday night, Amanda didn’t leave after the vendors had packed away their stalls and shuffled down toward the bus stop. She was desperate now. She needed an angle that would bring the eyes of the world back to this spot. She sat on a broad step, her phone on one knee and a notepad and pen on the other, listening to the murmurs of the evening.

  It was never fully dark or fully quiet in Central. City lights blotted out the stars. Taxis and lorries kept the silence at bay. Voices and laughter drifted over from Lan Kwai Fong, the nightlife district located a block away. Someone was always walking by, always looking on from the towers overhead.

  Midnight came and went. Amanda clicked her pen. Click-clack beneath her thumb. A rat skittered over the old paving stones. A cat burst from the shadows, its tail flicking against her arm as it passed.

  It must have happened on a night just like this, but it was too busy here, too bright and noisy. Someone should have seen. Someone should have heard. No one could get away with murder here.

  Amanda’s pen clicked. What if it was just blood? Click. What if there had never been a murder at all? Click-click-click.

  No. She couldn’t accept that. Anything but that. She needed some way to renew the cycle, to bring back the eyes and the clicks. She needed another hit.

  A long shadow stretched across her back. A muttered phrase came back to her: Success can be bought, but the price is never up to you.

  A young man stumbled down the steps toward her, weaving slightly. He wore a button-down shirt that had probably been crisp at the start of the night. He had a good-looking face, white, with designer glasses. His shoes hinted at money. They were the kind of shoes that would squeak across the floor of a bank or a law firm. The kind of shoes that held feet that people would miss. And that face would look great on the front page.

  The click-click of the pen stopped. Amanda stood, grasping it tight.

  * * *

  The old man shuffled up the Pottinger Steps. Something felt different this morning. Different, but familiar. An extra smell mixed with the mango scent of the juice stand and the early-morning truck exhaust.

  The old man’s back creaked as he bent to undo the lock on his stall. It was already open. He knew then that the shadow had come again. The cycle continued, as the presence had promised the first time its shadow appeared over his shoulder.

  He pulled back the door, revealing the rack holding his wares. Extra limbs hung from the stall, paint-red blood dripping onto the steps. The old man reached out to touch the rubber that wasn’t rubber, the bright-white bones.

  Four years earlier, desperate for success, he had promised the shadow a blood-price in exchange for a few good years. His mistake was that he never specified whose blood, or when it would be extracted. The shadow had haunted his successful years, reminding him that one day blood would spill, his or another’s. The price was not up to him.

  He pictured a pair of tourists buying lanterns, their bodies vanishing into shadow. And so much blood.

  The shadow had proved crafty. It had used his debt to renew the cycle, to snare a new victim.

  The morning crowds were beginning to climb the steps, already thronging toward this fresh spectacle. The old man turned to face them as sunlight cut straight through the long shadow behind him. The presence was gone. A price had been paid today. But not by him. Not this time.

  * * *

  The story was sensational. Dismembered tourist hangs from vendor’s stall alongside costume body parts after night of debauchery. He had a handsome face. Expensive shoes. An Anglo-Saxon name. He’d been seen with a woman just after midnight, faceless, probably a sex worker. The backdrop was recognizable. Iconic. The body was real, every chopped-up piece of it.

  It was the perfect story.

  KAM TIN RED

  by Shen Jian

  Kam Tin

  The swine glistened in red, its limbs splayed out on a wooden board, having been carved straight down its front side. Uncle Number Two raised the cleaver high above his head, so that for a moment it reflected the noon sun and made me squint, then swung it down with swift swipes, each chop slicing through the crackling skin, the melting fat, and the juiced flesh, before hitting the board with a thump of finality.

  We drew lots for the best pieces, and my father asked Uncle Number Two to chop our chunk of the right thigh into bite-sized pieces. They filled three Styrofoam boxes, one of which I took and opened as I walked through the rusted gates of our family cemetery.

  I came here with my family each winter for Chinese New Year, when I would at least receive red envelopes, and each spring for Ching Ming, the tomb-sweeping festival I enjoyed only for the roast pork. This Ching Ming, I bit into another piece with each grave I passed, first the largest, my great-grandfather's, its mound as tall as me, the tombstone marked with euphemisms for anarchy. Here lay a general, not a warlord; a hero, not a fugitive.

  Next were each of the general's nine wives. The tombstone of my own great-grandmother, Wife Number Three, was weathered but in a dignified way, as evidence of sturdiness and in contrast, my father always noted, to the grave of Wife Number Nine, which was still marked by only a plaque, and which on rainy days that softened the soil appeared almost fresh.

  A few steps beyond Wife Number Nine's plaque was an unusually small banyan tree, and a few steps beyond the tree, a grave unlike the rest, for a relative from a contemporary generation, one of my father's distant cousins. There were no words of glory, not even expressions of piety or accomplishment. Just a man's name, Lee Koon Sang; his occupation, police constable; the year of his birth, 1946; and of his death, 1967.

  * * *

  December 9, 1967, was a Saturday. My father began that day, as he did all school days, by bowing in front of the smoky image of his grandfather, the general, hung too high to be dusted, over the altar at the center of the ancestral hall. The ancestral hall was the fulcrum of the family compound, a small walled village with ten interconnected houses, one for the general and one for each of his wives
and their children. The village, run-down since the day it was built, slouched among the pastures of Kam Tin, in many ways the oldest part of Hong Kong, where families like the Tangs and the Mans had settled hundreds of years before the British had even heard of tea, let alone opium. They had fought the British occupation and lost, badly. As a consolation prize, they were as "indigenous" families given certain privileges under British rule, including political heft that they threw around Kam Tin and the wider Yuen Long area. My family is not indigenous; the general absconded to Hong Kong only after the British occupation, and his was a constant, fruitless struggle to wield anything close to the kind of influence he once did on the mainland.

  He started by building the village, and on the road through Yuen Long between Kowloon and Shenzhen there was a brief incline from which, at least during my father's childhood, you could just make out the eaves of the ancestral hall. Under those eaves, beneath narrow murals depicting the general's military victories and the cobwebs that straddled them, my father lit three joss sticks and lowered them three times in the direction of the general's portrait. It was to thank the general, and receive his blessing, for the education my father received, for the blood the general shed so that his descendants could compete in schools instead of battlefields, for jobs instead of arms. My father was fifteen in 1967; he had been performing the ritual for ten years.

  Every child of the village did the same. Brother Sang, as my father called him, did it until the day he was admitted to the police academy. My father wasn't close to Brother Sangthere were nearly a hundred cousins in their generation, some who couldn't recognize othersbut he remembers the day of Brother Sang's police academy admission, because it was occasion for such a celebration that a pig was roasted in the courtyard, like on Ching Ming. It was also the last time my father saw Brother Sang's grandmother, Wife Number Nine.

  There was a pig every time a child of the village found a way out, to the police academy or teacher's college or, more rarely, university, which was my father's goal and why, despite not believing the general's ghost could do anything for him, despite the sacrament seeming absurdly incongruous in a time of jetliners and the Beatles, he still went to the altar every morning, just in case.