The Hua Shan Hospital Murders

by David Rotenberg

  “Order what you like, Chen, this is on us,” Lily said.

  “Thank you, Miss Lily . . . or is it Mrs. Zhong?”

  “For you Lily is fine . . . no Miss. Just Lily,” she smiled at him and touched his hand.

  Fong wondered what had happened to Chen’s wife who he had once described as “a sad woman who can’t get pregnant and blames me.” By the time Fong had figured out what was behind the grotesque murders on the lake boat on Lake Ching, and he and Lily were ready to leave Xian, Chen wasn’t talking about his wife at all. They had probably separated, Fong thought. Why not? Chen was young – almost exactly Lily’s age. He had lots of time to find someone new.

  “Food good, Captain Chen?”

  “Great, sir. Aren’t you going to eat, sir?”

  Fong sipped his Tzing Tao beer and said, “I’m not hungry. Are you ready to work?”

  “That’s why I’m here . . . sir,” Chen said, catching a live shrimp between his chopsticks and plunking it into his mouth.

  “Fine. I want you to lead the investigation into who made this.” Fong took out a photograph of the metal cage in which the fetus had been found. Chen looked closely at the image then put down his chopsticks and spat out the shrimp. He suddenly wasn’t hungry either.

  A half-mile north of where Fong, Lily, and Chen sat, Robert stared at Tuan Li across a cheap card table. They were on Good Food Street down by the river. The street was closed to traffic nightly and turned into the world’s largest outdoor restaurant. It was one of Tuan Li’s favourite places. It was hardly classy dining and Robert knew he stood a very good chance of being quite sick the next morning – but Tuan Li was worth it.

  “There was an explosion in the city today,” she said.

  “I heard.”

  “In a hospital. Awful.”

  He nodded but thought, “Politics. None of my fucking business.”

  A waiter plunked down a dish of steaming noodles in front of Tuan Li. She quickly swirled the sauce into the noodles and wrapped a swath around her chopsticks. “Open,” she said extending the noodles toward Robert’s mouth.

  “This wouldn’t be traif, would it?” he mocked.

  “Is that one of those kosher things?” she mocked back.

  Robert wanted to say, “Yes, it’s one of those kosher things,” but his mouth was filled with the thick noodles. They tasted glorious but he knew that often the company made the food taste better than it actually was. He recalled a particular croissant after a particular night with a particular dark-haired Montrealer. Then he couldn’t believe he was reminiscing about another woman with Tuan Li across the table from him making bedroom eyes. What the fuck was wrong with him!

  “Nice trip?” Tuan Li asked as a small sad smile came to her lips.

  “How do you mean?” Robert covered, surprised that she could see through him so easily.

  “You’re not nearly as good a liar as you think, Robert.”

  “I’m sorry to disappoint you in my . . .”

  “It must be very lonely where you are, Robert,” she stated flatly. “Do you know why your mind floats like that?”

  “No. Do tell.”

  “Because you have no faith. No faith. No love.”

  Robert thought, “No trust. No love,” but said nothing.

  “You know that play I’m working on?”

  “The one about the dumb nigger?”

  “You are a very bad person,” she said. “The love in that play exists because of faith. Both Othello and Desdemona know that love is the gift the gods bring after you make the leap to faith. But no leap to faith. No falling in love.”

  “Well, it doesn’t exactly work out – the love in this play.”

  “No. True. But they have at least lived. Known each other.”

  “I’ve ‘known’ you in the biblical sense,” Robert shot back.

  “No. Robert. We’ve contacted each other but we have not known each other – in the biblical or any other sense.”

  “Well, maybe that’s all there is – contacting each other.”

  “Maybe there’s more, Robert, and you just refuse to see it. You have been with a lot of women but have found no place to rest.”

  He sighed deeply. “You want to go on with this?”

  Tuan Li canted her elegant head, “I do. How long have you been like this?”

  “Always,” he said, hoping that would end the conversation on that topic.

  “You were always like this?” Tuan Li prodded.

  “Yes, I’ve always been like this.”

  “I don’t believe it.”

  “It’s true.”

  “When did you first experience this? Be honest, Robert.”

  “When I was a kid. My parents sent me to summer camp. Jewish people in Toronto always sent their kids to summer camps named after trees – don’t ask me why.”

  “Why, Robert?”

  “I thought I asked you not to . . .”

  “You did. Why?”

  “Well, probably because there are lots and lots of trees – trees, trees, trees, and one Succoni station. Lenny Bruce said that – heard of him?”

  “No. Why do you do that?”

  “Do what?

  “Talk fast about things that don’t matter?”

  “Because . . .”

  “Yes, I’m listening.”

  “Because I’ve almost always done that.” Before she could jump on top of the “almost” he continued, “At any rate I remember coming home from a tree camp by train and getting off with all the other campers and going into the central hall of Union Station. It’s the downtown train station – not nearly as big as your North Train Station – but plenty big for a kid. Well, everywhere there were kids hugging parents. I looked around and couldn’t find my folks. A neighbour was there and she told me to wait with her. She saw I was upset and she held out her arms to me. I hugged her. It didn’t matter to me that she wasn’t my mother. I hugged her because I needed to be hugged and it really didn’t matter to me who she was. Because it was just as fucking good with this woman as with my mother.” He blushed. He hadn’t intended to spit all that out. He burbled a laugh, then dismissed his outburst with, “Any port in a storm I guess.”

  “But there is no storm here, Robert.”

  “You’re sure about that?”

  “Yes I am, Robert. I know what a storm is – and I sense that you do too. But you won’t share what you know with me.” She waited but he did not speak. Finally she said, “I cannot love a man who cannot fall in love. And you cannot fall in love unless you make the leap of faith to believe in love despite the storms that might be there. What are you doing in Shanghai, Robert? Don’t think about your answer, just answer."

  ” Robert said nothing. How could he tell her that he was “antiquing” to raise money so he could investigate a crime that may or may not have happened over fifty years ago. A crime that may or may not have ruined his life.

  She shook her head and took a deep breath. “I hope your secrets can keep you warm, Robert.” She put her napkin on the table, touched her fingers to his face, then stood.

  He watched her disappear into the omnipresent crowd that is Shanghai, not noticing that she passed within a hair’s breath of a man who had been staring at them. A man from Virginia called Angel Michael by his associates but named Matthew by his adoptive father.

  Matthew watched Tuan Li’s departure. He knew that she was considered beautiful, even exquisite by some. For the first time in his life he wished he understood that – no he wished that he saw that. He had succeeded in the first step of his plan – succeeded brilliantly – and now he wanted to reward himself. But with what? The food in front of him could have been diced cardboard for all the joy it gave him. For that matter, Tuan Li could have been a deformed old crone for all the thrill he got from looking at her.

  He turned in his seat and noticed that his hands were shaking. Quickly the familiar wave of pain began to form behind his left eye. He reached into his pocket and pulled out a
pack of stick matches. He managed to get one out and snap its head against a thumbnail. It flared – and the pain backed off. His hands stopped shaking.

  Suddenly a long thin cigarette was thrust into the flame’s brightness.

  Matthew looked up.

  “Light me,” said the whore.

  Matthew snuffed out the light and glared at her.

  “Hey, it’s your loss, puny one,” she hissed as she turned and left. But as she told her girlfriend later that night, “I got the chills. It’s like that bastard froze my heart.”

  Fong couldn’t sleep. Chen was camped on the tiny couch in their small apartment on the Shanghai Theatre Academy’s campus. He snored. “Naturally he would snore,” Fong thought as he looked out the window. Three young male actors were drunkenly lounging on the lawn by the Henry Moore-esque statue. Fong noted their faces. All would be the only children their families would ever have. For the briefest moment Fong wondered how many had been “selected” by their parents.

  Chen snorted loudly and pulled the blanket up to his lantern jaw.

  Fong moved over to the crib. Xiao Ming slept on her back – her pudgy hands slowly clenching and unclenching in response to some secret nocturnal vision.

  Fong reached down and gently touched his daughter. She momentarily wakened and looked at him full in the face. She was so present. So there. He’d heard that boy children spent about a year slowly coming into the world. But he had found that Xiao Ming had been aware of everything from the very beginning.

  He smiled. She watched his features move and tried to imitate them. She got close, but a few muscle groups misfired and she ended up with an oddly quizzical look on her face.

  Fong knew he should be happy. He was back in Shanghai. He had been reinstated as head of Special Investigations. He had a child. Yes, he should be happy. But something nagged at him. Pulled him toward a waiting darkness. Fong lifted Xiao Ming and held her head against his shoulder. He felt her breath on his neck – it was soft, soft, and so warm. A sweetness from far away. He held her out at arm’slength. She looked away from him. The darkness drew his eyes to the wall mirror. There they were, as if captured in the glass. He noted the distance between them. An arm’s-length. A shiver went through him. Something about their relative positions. He continued holding her at arm’s-length and knelt.

  He put Xiao Ming on the floor and turned away. Then he looked back at her. How had the baby’s skull been positioned in the construction pit? Away. She had been looking away from her father. At least the killers had allowed that. At least the last image in the baby’s mind would not be the agony of the ritual murder of her father. Fong allowed his head to loll back and opened his throat as far as he could. How great the fear would have to be to make a man swallow his own crucifix. He held Xiao Ming’s hand tightly as if saying goodbye.

  “Fong!”

  Lily snatched Xiao Ming from the floor. “How could you, Fong? This is our baby. Not an old skull buried in the ground! What are you thinking! Really, Fong. What are you thinking?” She turned with Xiao Ming in her arms and hurried into their bedroom, slamming the door behind her.

  Fong hung his head. “You’re right, Lily. What am I thinking?”

  “You scared me,” said the head nurse of the abortion surgeries at the People’s Twenty-Second Hospital when Angel Michael entered the room he had rented for her.

  “Did I?” asked Matthew as he took out the evensided cross and handed it to her.

  As she took the icon she turned from him. The wide patch of missing hair exposed the nape of her neck. Matthew had read that the nape of a woman’s neck is very erotic. He looked at the back of the nurse’s neck but saw nothing but slack sinew and aging flesh.

  She turned back to him. The cross now hung directly beneath her Adam’s apple. “Would you like a drink to celebrate our glorious start?”

  He looked at the woman before him. “Our glorious start?” he thought. But all he said was, “That cross suits you.”

  CHAPTER NINE

  AND IN AMERICA

  There was palpable anger in the air of the over-air-conditioned room in Virginia. Copies of the New York Times and several other papers were spread on the table. All screamed of death and mayhem in a Shanghai abortion clinic – and, of course, of the fetus in a cage.

  “This is completely beyond what we agreed to,” said Larry, a tall, thin, Yale-ish man.

  There were loud expressions of agreement around the table.

  “This was a slaughter.”

  “Jesus! What was Angel Michael thinking of?”

  “God,” said the older man, who Angel Michael called his father. That silenced the room. The whitehaired man looked at the last speaker, “And I’d remind you that it’s a sacrilege to use His name in vain.”

  “Yes, but so many dead!”

  “A hundred dead, two hundred, five hundred. That place murders a thousand beings every week – year after year,” snapped back the older man. “What are those dead to the fifty thousand killed every year? This is a war. I warned you when we started. I warned you that this wouldn’t be simple. But there is a simple reality that we all must face. Mid-term Congressional elections are approaching and not a single candidate in this country has even mentioned abortion. Not one has come out against the slaughter of babies. We have to put the evil of abortion back in the light where it belongs. That’s why we’re here. That’s what we are doing.”

  “Yes, but–”

  “But nothing. The sword is in Angel Michael’s hand – we put it there. All of us here did that. And we know why we did it.”

  Eyes were averted around the table.

  “Lest anyone have second thoughts now – I’ve had all our conversations in this room videotaped.” Before the uproar could start, he continued, “There’s no going back. In the eyes of the law we are all accessories to multiple murder – a crime punishable by death in Mr. Bush’s America.”

  “That’ll shut them up for a while,” the older man who Matthew called his father thought. As the truth of the situation sank into the minds of the people around the table he allowed his thoughts to drift to Angel Michael. Such a big first step and so melodramatic – the fetus in the cage. So gaudy. So unlike the boy he had carefully raised as his son – his weapon to return the world to God. He looked out the window at the setting sun, at the quiet beauty of the Virginia farm country. Then for the first time in his life he questioned the wisdom of his plan, the wisdom of putting the sword in Angel Michael’s hand.

  Later that night, after he read the reports more closely, he had a second question about Angel Michael. Where did the boy he raised as his son get the money necessary to pull off such a feat?

  * * *

  The arrival the next morning of a large unmarked package at the reception desk of the Hua Shan Hospital set alarms ringing all over Shanghai. Fong raced out of his apartment still wet from a shower meant to fool his body into believing that it had slept well. He ran past the academy’s theatre in which Othello was being rehearsed. Out the gate and down Ya’nan Lu to the Hua Shan Hospital. People streamed out of the hospital complex as the sound of approaching sirens filled the air. A tourist with a video camera taped the proceedings.

  The local block wardens stepped aside as Fong approached them. The head of hospital security ran over to him, “A large unmarked package arrived at reception, sir.”

  “Has anyone touched it?”

  “No, I immediately had the lobby cleared and started the evacuation of the hospital wards.”

  “Then you called me?”

  “Right, sir.”

  “Fine. Call my office and get the arson division over here.”

  “It’s already been done,” said Wu Fan-zi as he moved toward Fong while putting on the last of the bomb protection gear.

  Fong took him by the arm and guided him to the top of the steps leading into the Hua Shan Hospital’s front entrance. “You take a good look?”

  “Only a peak. It’s big.”

  “
Does that mean it’s powerful?”

  “Not necessarily. In fact, it makes no sense for a bomb to be that big.”

  “Then why get into the suit?”

  “I’m fifty-two, right?”

  “If you say so.”

  “Well, I am and next year I’d like to be fifty-three.”

  Wu Fan-zi turned and looking like something that could walk on the moon entered the front door of the Hua Shan Hospital.

  Fong moved down the steps to the front row of the gathering crowd and waited with everyone else. Then he felt flesh press into his hand. He looked to his left. Lily was at his side, her fingers intertwining with his.

  “A bomb, Fong?” Lily asked in English.

  “I don’t know. Wu Fan-zi is in there now.”

  “Everyone out?”

  “Everyone who can safely be moved is out or in the process of getting out. Most are in the back courtyard.”

  “From bomb far enough?”

  “We think so, Lily,” Fong said, still speaking English.

  The young man standing to one side was surprised by the crowd on the hospital steps and even more surprised to see the delicately boned middleaged man speaking English to the younger woman beside him. He heard the wail of sirens and saw more cops arrive. Something had clearly gone wrong. They couldn’t have found the cage already and the fully wired bomb was still in the briefcase he carried at his side – the message in an envelope in his left hand.

  What had gone wrong? He mentally retraced his steps that day. It had been a little more complicated to get the cage with its grisly contents into position. More complicated without the assistance of a nurse, but not impossible – just a little climb. Surely they hadn’t already found the cage. Not yet. If not, then why is the place swarming with cops?

  He could have placed the bomb at the same time as the cage if his explosives supplier hadn’t suddenly doubled the price and demanded cash – but he had. Then another thought occurred to him and he almost swore. He thought about the e-mails queued and ready to be sent to newspapers throughout the Western world. Then he sighed. There was no way to stop them now without making contact with his remote server and he knew that contact could be traced back to him.