The Shanghai Murders - A Mystery of Love and Ivory

by David Rotenberg

  “The crime scene unit didn’t find the other part?”

  “If they did, they didn’t bring it to the morgue.”

  “And nothing else is missing?”

  “A cleaver or a knife or whatever was used would have nicked off small bits, which were probably left in the alley, but everything else is here. This one knows how the body is put together, and he attacked it at its weakest places.” “But how did the heart get cut in half?”

  After a moment the coroner sighed. “It didn’t get cut in half, if you mean by that that somehow in the process of eviscerating Richard Fallon something happened to cut his heart in two. That didn’t happen. That couldn’t happen. Once Richard Fallon was cut open his heart was cut out of him. Then the heart was cut in two. One half I hold in my hand. The other half is god knows where.” Before he could stop himself Fong found himself thinking, “It’s part of the message.” But even as he did he reached over and touched the frozen item in the coroner’s hand. He ran his finger along the cut edge. The cut was razor smooth for most of its length but near the top there was a jaggedness.

  “Did his knife slip here?” asked Fong with his finger on the spot.

  “No, I don’t think so,” replied the coroner with a cold smile. The coroner then put the organ down on the morgue table and removed the plastic glove from his right hand. Before Fong could ask him what he was doing, the old man reached into his mouth and with a tug pulled out a complete set of dentures. With the dentures in his right hand he picked up the heart with his left. Slowly he moved the dentures toward the jagged section of the heart. The jaggedness exactly matched the bite mark that would have been made by the ripping action of the top four front and canine teeth and the bottom six with the eye teeth at either end.

  “He chewed it and spat it out. I saw it in the photo,” said Fong.

  “You saw that in a crime scene snapshot?”

  “In one of them but not the others.”

  The coroner put down the heart and reinserted his dentures.

  Fong could hear the fluorescent lights buzzing and just for a moment their greenish cast made him feel a little wobbly on his feet.

  “You all right?”

  Fong nodded.

  “This guy’s got a hell of an MO.”

  “Personal style brought to new heights.”

  The coroner grunted a laugh.

  “Not a word of this to anyone. If by any chance this ends up in the papers, I will have your head, old man.”

  “More threats of the young? The Cultural Revolution’s over or haven’t you heard?”

  “I’ve heard. I want your report on my desk by week’s end, okay?”

  “Sure.” The coroner paused and was about to say something, then decided against it and began bundling his gruesome charge back into a large green plastic bag.

  When the State Department official handed Amanda Fallon back her passport he flipped it open to show her the forty-day, single-entry visa to China. To him, Red China.

  “The State Department picked up the forty-dollar charge for the visa.”

  Amanda was going to say thank you but she couldn’t quite think what for, then said it anyway. He smiled at her and mumbled further condolences for her loss and wished her an easy flight to Shanghai.

  When she left the State Department office on Canal Street she turned left and headed toward the Quarter. The intensity of New Orleans’s summer had not yet arrived but in the bright sunshine of mid-April it was hanging in the corners of the Quarter’s old buildings, waiting to fill five full months with heat and humidity, sweat and loving as only ol’N’orl’ns can. Although she was from the north, she had lived in New Orleans since she was seventeen and a student at All Fun U, known to the world as Tulane University. She had been accepted by the women’s college on campus but upon arriving had decided that the men’s side offered more opportunities for study in her area of greatest concern. Men. After going through the undergraduate male population in alphabetical order, she decided that forays into the realm of the faculty merited her attention. And despite the published university policy of a total ban on student/faculty “fraternization,” Amanda found few who could resist her casual offer of a drink down in the Quarter.

  So it was with a series of ghosts at her side that she stepped into the courtyard of her favourite watering hole off Talouse. If the Creole barman recognized her, he never let on. But he wasn’t surprised when she ordered a tall rum on ice. A literature professor had introduced her to the glories of this particular drink on hot days. He had consumed several that first day as they sat French style side by side on a banquette with the table in front of them. He talked about Tennessee Williams’s work. She had smiled and listened and wondered if there was anything more here than chat and great eyes. Then he had put a hand on her knee beneath the table. She smiled at him and reached down to touch his hand. He started to withdraw it, thinking that she was offended, but as he did she closed her fingers around his wrist. Then sliding closer to him on the banquette she parted her legs and drew his hand up past her thighs. All without taking her eyes from his.

  She flushed slightly as she tasted her rum on ice. She had been a wild kid but that was a long time ago. Now she was in her mid-thirties and was about to get on an airplane and head to Shanghai to pick up the corpse of her husband of eight years. A husband whom she had wished dead more often than she could recall. A husband who had “tamed” her. A husband who had in a very real way killed what was most Amanda Pitman in her and replaced it by a creature named Mrs. Richard Fallon.

  She had finished her second rum on the rocks when the salesman on the other side of the bar finally decided it was time to make his move. “Can I buy you a drink?” he said in a midwestern twang.

  Without missing a beat she called over her shoulder to the barman in her very deepest southern accent, “This Yankee carpetbagger thinks I’m a whore for sale. I could use your assistance.”

  With a thousand apologies, the scuffling of white shoes and touching of white belt, the salesman made his way to the exit.

  Once gone, the barman came over to her table with a tall cold rum on ice. “You got style, lady, this one’s on the house.”

  She smiled wanly at him and took the drink, wondering vaguely if she’d ever enjoy the dalliance of hands under tables and up skirts again, the way she had done so many years ago with the literature professor.

  Fong hated being summoned. “Asked to appear,” “Could I have a word,” “We need to meet”—all were fine, but “In my office now” was not his favourite. So it was with more than a little ire that he approached Police Commissioner Hu’s office.

  The commissioner’s secretary wasn’t at her desk when Fong entered. Her computer, a new acquisition, had been left on and its monitor screen was flashing a series of numbers: E-M-29-7976. Fong didn’t even know how to turn on a computer, let alone what these numbers meant. With a rush of silk, the commissioner’s secretary entered from the main office. She appeared angry that Fong was looking at her screen. Fong momentarily wondered what she would do if he looked at her nonexistent tits. With a hrumph, as if she’d been able to read his thoughts, she ushered him toward the commissioner’s office. As she did, she refused to meet his eyes. Fong got the distinct feeling that she didn’t want to be infected by him.

  When Fong entered the office, Commissioner Hu was sitting at one end of a couch, a piece of computer paper in his hands. Upon seeing Fong he quickly folded the paper but in his haste did it inside out, showing the same numbers: E-M-29-7976. A detail that did not escape Fong.

  The commissioner signalled Fong to the far side of the couch. As he sat, Fong couldn’t get over the notion that they must have looked like the famous pictures of Nixon and Mao—one at either end of a couch—or was it Kissinger and Mao? For the longest time he had had trouble distinguishing among westerners. It wasn’t until he headed Special Investigations and had many more opportunities to deal with them that his eye became attuned to the nuances of Western phy
siognomy.

  The commissioner seemed to have just removed a look of dismay and replaced it by his ever smiling, politically connected “good” face. “How are you today, Detective Zhong?”

  Swell, he thought. I’ve been up since five A.M., seen a body in pieces, had a screaming match with a newspaper editor, held half of a heart in my hand and watched a set of dentures munch on it—all before lunch. But he said, “Okay.”

  “Good,” said Commissioner Hu and smiled.

  The commissioner had one of those smiles that turned his face inside out. As if the action of smiling was completely unnatural for him and he was practising it. And with intense practice came intense fakery. “Pretending is not acting. Acting is about selecting from what you know,” Fu Tsong said in his head. Her voice was so real, so close, so intimate that for a moment Fong lost track of what Commissioner Hu was saying.

  Then he caught the drift. His Hu-ness was upset about his not returning the American consulate’s phone call. His Hu-ness was also going on about a meeting with the Americans later in the day but that he was to allow the Chinese State people to do the talking. Fine, he thought, the last thing I want to do is chat with U.S. Consulate folks.

  “And I thought because your English is so good, you could also translate for us,” concluded his Hu-ness.

  “Pardon me for saying this but I think that we need a professional translator in a situation like this. I speak conversationally but I cannot claim any real expertise.”

  “Conversationally is good enough in this case.”

  “But. . .” Fong never got to complete his sentence. The smile mask was back on and his Hu-ness was indicating that it was time for him to leave. So Fong got to his feet and headed out.

  It was only as he was leaving the secretary’s office (the woman still refused to meet his eye) that he realized why he was being asked to act as translator—the powers that be wanted as few people in on this conversation as possible. But why?

  On leaving the commissioner’s office Fong headed toward the basement of the building and the forensic labs. He knew that there wouldn’t be anything to report yet but he wanted to check and see if there were any preliminary responses. Besides, he liked Forensics and the people who worked there. It was the Buddhist end of police work—silent, slow, and patient.

  He was waved through forensic security and headed down the long corridor toward the main lab in the back. There was the slightest pop of suction as he pulled open the frosted glass door. He thought to himself that this is probably the only well-fitted door in all of Shanghai. He checked for a manufacturer’s label. German, naturally.

  Once inside, the hum of the fluorescent lights was about all there was to hear. Several of the scientists looked up and then returned to their work. They knew Zhong Fong but saw no need to distract themselves enough to say hello.

  Near the south end of the lab he found Xia Hong Shia, who liked to be called by her English name, Lily. Lily was an attractive, tightly put together woman in her late twenties who seemingly spent every penny on her wardrobe. All to fetching effect. Lily’s English wasn’t great but she made a real effort and liked to practice, so Fong addressed her in English. “What’s up, Lily?”

  Momentarily missing the idiom, Lily looked skyward and then smiled at him. “Not a thing fucking.” Lily was especially fond of English slang.

  Pointing at the microscope in front of her, “May I?”

  “Shit, okay.”

  He put his eye to the lens and squinted. He was always amazed how hard it was to actually see anything through a microscope. After a little fiddling with both his eye and the focus, he managed to get an image of some sort of crystal-based solid.

  “What is it, Lily?”

  To explain, Lily reverted to Mandarin. “It’s standard to ask for a piece of the lung. It usually doesn’t show anything, but I found tiny shards of this in the tissue,” she said indicating the image on the slide.

  “And you don’t know what it is yet?”

  “Not yet, copper,” she said in her smiling English.

  There was an unmistakable twinkle in her eye and she stood just a little closer to him than was absolutely necessary. He’d heard rumours that her relationship with her boyfriend had soured but as he looked at her, it occurred to him that his days with younger women were numbered if not in fact over. He didn’t know what he felt about that.

  “The wallet’s in scrapings and should be out soon. Blood typing is almost done. There were a few partial prints on the credit cards,” she said in her beautiful Mandarin. Then she added in English, “They’re being worked up now.”

  “Your English is getting very good, Lily.”

  “I’ve got CNN. It helps. I think I love Larry King.”

  “Who?”

  “Just an older man with lots of attitude, like someone else I know and also care deeply for.” She literally twinkled with her own cleverness.

  Enjoying the game, but thrown a little by her forwardness, Fong pointed at the microscope. “Tell me what it is when you find out.” Then he turned and headed out.

  As he did, he heard Lily whistle at him and mutter, “Yubba Bubla Doo, check out that butt.”

  Mr. Lo entered the Jade Buddhist Temple up Jiang Ning Road near An Yuan and paid his fifteen kwai. Tourist season hadn’t begun yet so it wasn’t crowded. The scent of fresh incense was everywhere as the monks passed out bundles of the fragrant sticks to the faithful.

  He avoided the main temple in the centre of the courtyard, with its three gaudy gold-painted statues and kneeling chairs, and headed to the east side of the compound where there was a vantage place from which he could see the carvings on the main building’s roof—what he thought of as “his statues.” The figures formed a unique motif that completed the ends of the upturned pagodalike eaves. On the end of each eave was a long narrow upcurving polelike extension, perhaps five feet long. At the highest point, the farthest from the roof, a tiny robed monk rode a peacock. Behind the monk, following him in a neat line were four lion cubs, each delicately balanced on the narrow pole. All four cubs wore serene smiles. But there was also a fifth lion cub, still on the roof, clearly frightened to make the leap from the safety of the roof to the narrow curving strut. This cub was clearly unhappy. His lack of bravery had kept him from the path—the tao. Clinging to the unreal world of apparent safety, the roof, had left him out of the true world—a world of serenity, the tao.

  As he had so often in the past, Loa Wei Fen willed himself into the eye of the lion cub on the roof. From the cub’s eye he looked at the joy of his brothers on the other side. Then, in his mind, he leapt—across the abyss. Geoffrey’s ride in from the airport was as uneventful as a ride with Soo Jack could be. Long ago he had learned that it was better to sit in the front seat and take your chances than to sit in the back and be sure that Jack would spend the entire trip with his head craned around talking to you.

  Although he had been in Shanghai only ten months before, the changes were obvious. Huge new handpainted billboards, behind which were massive building projects, lined Qiao Road and Yan’an as they headed into town from the airport. The air was thick but not as polluted as it would get later in the year. Geoffrey was happy just to watch the city’s life.

  Shanghai is the largest city in Asia. Its population of fourteen million swells to almost twenty million on any given day because of the people who come into the city to shop and to look for work. The streets, always crowded with bicyclists, taxis, and buses, now had many private cars, some quite fancy, adding to the potentially deadly mix. Jack swerved to avoid a pedestrian who had wandered into the middle of the eight-lane road. He honked.

  Everyone honked. Drivers in Shanghai honked to tell you that they were coming. They honked to warn you not to move. They honked to tell you they were passing. They honked to tell you not to swerve. They honked to tell you to go faster. They honked to tell you not to turn. They honked to let the car they were driving know that it wasn’t being ignored. Despite all the
honking they seldom, if ever, swore or lost their tempers. They honked instead.

  Jack was a registered Chinese Driver, not a private car owner or a cabby. Chinese Drivers were a breed unto themselves. They had real status in Shanghai. They were licensed by the government and knew every road, alleyway, good restaurant, historic site, and pleasure dome within four hundred miles of Shanghai. You want to go to the countryside, you want a Chinese Driver. You want to see the night life in Shanghai, you want a Chinese Driver. You want to shake up your lunch, you want a Chinese Driver.

  At the Shanghai Theatre Academy, Geoffrey was met by Deborah Tong, his translator of many years. She showed him to his rooms.

  After unpacking his various bags (he’d given up on travelling light years ago) Geoffrey went down the stairs of the guest house and wandered across the compound to the filthy old theatre that he adored.

  The invitation from the academy to direct a production of Shakespeare’s Twelfth Night with a large professional cast and a few talented students came as an unexpected gift. It was unsolicited; usually he had to press the academy for invitations. But as he was to learn later, it was a gift complete with strings.

  He’d wanted to work on Twelfth Night for years—since Fu Tsong had first begun to talk about the piece. She had said, “Shakespeare has written everyone into this play. We are all there. I know who I am in the play. Who are you, Geoffrey?”

  He had managed to duck the question. She was convinced that the play was about love as the ultimate expression of living. Geoffrey’s take was more of love as an addiction, a sickness. She had simply smiled at him and continued her analysis. She argued that Malvolio was indeed in love with Olivia, as was Toby, as was Aguecheek, as was Feste. He remembered saying, “That’s some woman to have so many men in love with her.” To which Fu Tsong had countered, “Oh, not just men. The boy Sebastian as well, not to mention the girl, Viola. All love Olivia deeply.” “And what is it that they love so much in this creature?” he had mocked. Totally ignoring his sarcasm she had answered, “Her chi. Her life inside.”