The Hamlet Murders

by David Rotenberg

  He put his hands into the barrel of moving grub pupae and allowed their motion to become part of his existence. “Like spreading the molecules of yourself wide,” he thought, “and allowing all that space in.”

  It was precisely as he completed that thought that two federal officers rounded the corner and headed right toward him.

  Xi Luan Tu took another quick glance over his shoulder – he could beat them to the warrens’ entrance if he had to – and once there, he could lose them.

  At the same time on the far side of the great city, Joan Shui was holding on to a lamppost and trying to stop the world from spinning. Wu Fan-zi seemed to be everywhere in the city. It was as if he’d just left a room whenever Joan entered or ducked into a doorway, as she approached or turned the far corner, as she turned onto a street. She’d been with her “fire-man” almost every moment of her first trip to Shanghai. Now she was here, shorn hair and all, and he was not.

  She found herself drawn to the Hua Shan Hospital where she had seen him last. Where the bomb set by the American who called himself Angel Michael had ended Wu Fan-zi’s life. It was in there their hearts had met. It was in there they had seen each other. It was in there she lost him forever.

  “Move along.”

  Joan looked at the young man in the ill-fitting brown uniform with the insignia on his shoulder. Who was he talking to in that tone of voice?

  “Move along, you!”

  “Was he talking to me?” Joan thought. “I’m no stupid peasant who . . .” then she stopped even the process of that thought. It was good that he thought her nothing more than some stupid countrywoman who had come into Shanghai to beg on the streets. As long as people like him thought that way, she was safe.

  “Move your fat ass!” he screamed at her.

  Now that’s a bit much. Peasant yes, stupid maybe, fat ass never. But she bobbed her head and did a bit of waving with her dirty hands, as if she couldn’t understand his city accent then she put down her head and moved along.

  She needed to find a phone kiosk.

  She turned a corner and entered a crowded street market that ran down both sides of a narrow alley. The smell of rotting fish assailed her nose and swarms of fat flies circled her head then landed on, and seemed to taste, her filthy skin. She swatted them away only to be assaulted by the fish stink again. The gutted fish on the monger’s dirty wooden table weren’t even on ice. Those yet to be gutted swam in the brownish water of a rubber tub. A man wearing a nicely tailored suit approached the table and pointed at a large carp in the tub. The fishmonger reached into the brackish water and grabbed the fish by the tail. The thing thrashed in an effort to free itself from the monger’s grip but the merchant wasn’t about to let it go until the buyer gave his okay. They bartered briefly as the fish arched its body in protest. A price was settled on. The fishmonger stunned the thing with a smack of a short two-by-four then gutted it and wrapped it in old newsprint, using his right hand to get his money and his left to shove the guts beneath his table. The pile of guts was the source of the stink that attracted the flies. The gap-toothed fishmonger finished thanking the man in the good suit then screeched at Joan, “This not for you. This real fish. This for real people.” Then he made a gesture with his hands toward her, not unlike what he should have done to the flies that encircled his table. Joan resisted the impulse to tell this merchant exactly where he could put his comments and forced her way through the crowded market.

  Shanghai was even more densely populated than Hong Kong. She didn’t think that possible, but it was. She finally found a phone kiosk and got in line. She needed to call the number she’d memorized from the e-mail. A half-hour and several nasty comments later, she finally got up to the kiosk, paid the two yuan and placed her call. An answering machine picked up and quickly gave an address then added, “Programmed cell phone there under curb. Pick it up and hit number three once.” Then the answering machine cut off.

  Moving to Xinzha Lu, Joan found a bus shelter with a Shanghai street map and oriented herself. It took her two hot hours of walking to get to the address she’d gotten from the answering machine. She passed by the address twice before it was clear enough of people for her to lean down as if adjusting the bundle on her back, reach beneath the cement overhang above the sewer grate and extract the small cell phone that had been put there for her between two bricks. Once she had the phone, she faced another problem. Looking the way she did, it would be incongruous that she owned a cell phone. So she had to find a place to use the phone where no one could see her. Not an easy thing to do amidst Shanghai’s 18 million souls.

  And prying eyes in this city could also report. She remembered the eyes of the man across from her in the fourth-class hard-seat train car. The way they bore into her and seemed to glory in the prospect of reporting her. “We Chinese enjoy the failings of our compatriots too much,” she thought, “and although this may be part of the Chinese character, it had grown exponentially under Communist rule.” More reason to promote an opposition like Dalong Fada.

  She meandered, drawn by some force beyond her comprehension, to the Old City. Once there, the pace slowed. The dankness took over. There was little or no commerce here. Just lives lived in the shadow of the great. And alleyways. Dark alleyways that at this moment in Joan’s life were her friends.

  She reviewed the codes in her head before she hit the number three on the phone. The welcome code was given in response. Then she identified herself. It took a moment for the man on the other end to speak. Then he whistled into the phone and said, “They’re bringing in the heavy artillery, are they?”

  “I guess.”

  “Do you know the Temple of the City God?”

  “No, but I can find it.”

  “Good. Go in the front entrance and buy seven sticks of incense. Kneel and hold them between your palms as if you’re ready to light them. I’ll find you.”

  “How long will I have to do that?”

  “As long as it takes.”

  “But won’t it look suspicious if I hold the sticks and don’t light them?”

  “Hold them for a while, then as if you haven’t decided on your prayer, put them back in your pocket and walk the grounds. It will not appear odd. Just another Chinese person anxious not to waste the cost of seven incense sticks on a frivolous request of the gods. Then come back as if you’ve made up your mind what you want to pray for and if I’m not there yet, go through the process again.”

  “Until you find me?”

  “Yes. Until I find you.”

  Oddly enough, Joan didn’t feel funny holding the seven incense sticks. She had had a moment of dread when she realized that the little money she had been given might not be enough to buy seven sticks of incense. The irony of it almost made her do a very unpeasant-like thing – laugh out loud. Here she had US$25,000 in her bundle and yet it was possible she didn’t have enough money to buy seven stupid incense sticks. However, when she upended the cheap plastic change purse her contact on the ferry had supplied her, she found just enough.

  With the sticks in hand, she opened one of the large wooden doors of the first pavilion. Before her was a pleasing room with hand-carved mahogany rails and three black lacquered screens. The floor was a much-worn marble. She walked through the quiet room and down a set of dark hardwood steps to the prayer chamber with its towering statues and kneeling pads. She waited for a moment then knelt. To her surprise, time seemed to slow down and sounds faded into the distance. She felt at ease.

  She had never celebrated the passing of her lover Wu Fan-zi. And now, with the incense sticks in her hand, she had the opportunity.

  She rubbed the sticks between her palms and in her heart sang his name.

  Forty minutes later, a man knelt beside her with seven incense sticks in his hands. He touched his head to the ground then righted himself and rolled the sticks between his palms. As he closed his eyes he said, “The incense here is quite expensive, isn’t it?”

  She began to rock on her k
nees. “Yes, it is.”

  “Go up the stairs, out the back of the pavilion and look at the statue there. I’ll walk past you. Follow me.”

  Chen came out of Fong’s office so fast that he didn’t even see Shrug and Knock until the poor man was prone on the ground. Chen immediately reached down to help him to his feet, “I’m terribly sorry. I hope your suit wasn’t ruined. If it needs cleaning I will supply whatever money is necessary . . . ”

  “Get your stupid peasant hands off me! This jacket is new. It’s my favourite.” Shrug and Knock howled.

  “I’m terribly sorry,” Chen said as he pulled the jacket off of Shrug and Knock then shoved his hands into the inside pocket while he continued to shake dirt off the jacket, both inside and out.

  “Enough, you . . . ” Then Shrug and Knock let fly with a particularly demeaning comparison between Chen’s facial features and lower parts of other human beings’ anatomies, grabbed back his coat and walked back to his desk.

  An hour later, Joan Shui was sitting across a table from her contact, who was clearly honoured to have her in his house. She thanked him for his help. She desperately wanted to ask to use his shower but she didn’t. Cleanliness could be dangerous. Her disguise of filth had protected her so far and she wasn’t going to change it now.

  “Where is Xi Luan Tu?”

  The man looked away.

  “What?”

  He took a deep breath then said, “He was supposed to contact us last week. All we know is that he is in Shanghai and he’ll contact us through the Internet.”

  Joan’s heart fell.

  Finally on the fourth call to the sixth name on Geoff’s list of numbers, Fong made contact – he thought of it as “getting through.” Through what he wasn’t quite sure.

  “Are you the second wave?” the lightly lisped high Shanghanese female voice asked.

  Fong flipped through the notes he’d made from Geoff’s CD-ROM to get the code sequence right. “Yes, I am here to drive away the storm.”

  “Very clever,” the voice said.

  Fong noted the word clever as a “go ahead, all is safe” code word and said, “We should meet.”

  “We, no doubt, should.” A moment passed then she spoke. When she did, her voice was harder than before, “The Catholic cathedral on Caoxi Beilu, just after evening prayers.”

  Fong didn’t know what time that would be but he could find out on his own. “How will I recognize you?”

  “You won’t. I’ll recognize you.”

  The phone went dead. For a moment Fong was at a loss: how could she recognize him? Then he got it – fuck! She thought he was Geoffrey Hyland, a white theatre director from Canada. He immediately punched redial on his phone. But the woman’s phone didn’t even ring. “A one-time cell phone,” he thought. “Damn.”

  “Well?” Li Chou demanded of the young officer in front of him. “Have you succeeded?” The officer knew very well that Li Chou was not really asking a question but demanding results. The man nodded and held out a diskette that he slid into the D drive of the laptop on Li Chou’s desk. With a click of a mouse, a map overlay of Shanghai’s streets appeared on the screen. With a second mouse click, a point of light began to blink. The point of light remained in the middle of the screen but the street map overlay was in constant motion identifying the dot’s whereabouts.

  Li Chou smiled. “How long will it last?”

  “It draws power from their bug. As long as their bug’s bugging, our bug’s bugging their bug. They draw power from the cell phone; we draw power from them.”

  “Power drawing power,” Li Chou thought. He liked that. Then he looked closely at the young man before him. Being a devious man himself, he assumed that this man would also have a hidden side – and more immediately important, a hidden agenda. Li Chou knew that the best way to defeat such agendas was to demand exact details. “How did you mange to bug Captain Chen’s bug?”

  “Your man saw Chen enter central stores. I called my contact there. He informed me that Captain Chen had requested a bug. Well . . . ” the man shrugged, “my friend bugged their bug and gave me the software to follow it.”

  Li Chou didn’t like it. This young man was too clever by half then by half again. He smiled but filed away his concern. He would not nurture potential competition in his ranks.

  “Is there a problem, sir?” the man asked.

  “No,” Li Chou lied easily. “You can leave.”

  The man waited to get at least a nod of appreciation or a mention of a job well done – but none was forthcoming. He turned and left.

  He wasn’t brave enough to slam the door.

  Li Chou hit the Enlarge icon and immediately the scale of the street map changed. Li Chou checked the street coordinates. There was some sort of Christian temple right there.

  He reached for his phone.

  Evening prayers began just after sundown. A call to the Bishop of Shanghai confirmed the exact time. Fong had all the cathedral’s side doors locked so everyone had to use the main entrance. Just inside the front foyer, Fong had positioned four uniformed cops facing the entrance doors. He and Captain Chen waited outside on the front steps in the hope that a Dalong Fada member would enter the cathedral, see the cops and, as surreptitiously as possible, head right back out.

  Fong reached into his pocket and touched the bugged cell phone with the wireless Internet connection he had retrieved from behind the toilet.

  “Is this a religious place, sir?” asked Captain Chen.

  “Yes, it’s a main Catholic church, Xujiahui Cathedral. It was built by the Jesuits. In English they call it St. Ignatius Cathedral.”

  “We have nothing quite like this in the country.”

  “No. But with all the beauty out there why would you need it?” Fong checked his watch. It was 8:30 p.m. The service had begun twenty minutes ago. Fong cursed himself for not asking the bishop how long it would go on.

  All the people who came to this evening’s service had gone past the cops without comment and had stayed for prayers. Shanghanese were usually unfazed by the presence, even the large armed presence, of the police. Fong and Chen watched, but no one had turned around and come back out since the service began.

  Li Chou looked at the six CSU detectives in his office. “Keep in cell phone contact with me. I’ll guide you. No one is to make any move toward the suspect until I order it. Got that?”

  Nods from all six.

  “Good. Let’s go.”

  Fong and Captain Chen moved down to the bottom of the cathedral’s wide front steps. Time seemed to move two paces forward, one back and one sideways. Then the front doors of the cathedral opened. Fong checked his watch. Evidently evening services were a little longer than an hour. People began to leave the large building. Fong didn’t look at the faces. Unless his contact was already inside the cathedral she would arrive soon, looking for a tall white man with what Westerners called black hair but people in the Middle Kingdom knew was really red hair. “We Chinese have black hair,” Fong thought. “That’s why spoken drama from the West is called Hong Mao Ju, literally red-haired drama.”

  Then he saw a small middle-aged woman make her way slowly up the steps. She had a slight limp, as if one leg were shorter than the other. Her face was pleasingly calm as she passed by Fong and entered the cathedral. A moment later she re-emerged, shielding her eyes from the remains of the setting sun. She strode down the steps with a quick but unhurried stride.

  “Is the bug activated in the phone, Chen?”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “How long will it last?”

  “It’s hooked into the power supply. Every time the cell phone charges, the bug fills its capacitor. So in theory it could last forever.”

  Fong just heard this last as he raced to the curb.

  The Dalong Fada woman had already crossed the six lanes of traffic and four of bikes on Caoxi Beilu with remarkable ease and was headed directly to the Xujiahui subway station entrance. Fong moved as quickly as he could throu
gh the traffic and raced down the stairs to the subway. He dug in his pocket for change, found none, flashed his badge at the ticket-taker then hopped the barrier, to a chorus of complaints from his fellow citizens.

  The platform was almost empty as the train pulled out. Fong cussed and was about to turn away in disgust when the last car of the train moved past him revealing the Dalong Fada woman standing patiently on the opposite platform.

  Fong ran through the underpass and came up on the platform. He pushed his way through the densely packed crowd ignoring the colourful insults hurled at him and took a position right behind the Dalong Fada woman.

  The train came into the station. The Dalong Fada woman stepped in and held onto one of the vertical central posts with her small left hand. Over her right shoulder she had an open red-white-and-blue nylon bag. Fong came up behind her and found a handhold above hers. As the train lurched forward, he slipped the cell phone into her bag then made his way around the pole to look at her.

  Instantly, fear bloomed in her eyes. “It’s in your bag,” Fong said as casually as he could manage.

  Her fear receded. She said nothing.

  Fong smiled then pushed his way through the throngs in the car, pulled open the door between the cars and stepped into the next car.

  He got off at Caoxi Beilu station, took out his cell phone and called Captain Chen. “She on your screen?”

  “Yes, sir, I’ve copied the software to track her onto my PalmPilot and the signal from her cell phone is coming through just fine.”

  “And our Li Chou?”

  Chen laughed aloud, something that Fong had never heard from the man before. He wasn’t sure exactly what to make of it. “Where are you, sir?”

  Fong told him.