The Shanghai Murders - A Mystery of Love and Ivory

by David Rotenberg

  Wang Jun and Fong stopped at the same time. How did he manage to follow Ngalto Chomi into the market? This narrow, extremely crowded place had side shoots and cul-de-sacs everywhere. More important, each side of the building was backed by an alley.

  “Where did the driver wait?” demanded Fong. Wang Jun checked his notes and pointed left. With a heightened sense of urgency they moved south on Fang Bang and headed down the first alley. Halfway down Wang Jun stopped and tried to check a dirt-encrusted number sign. It was what he was looking for. “The driver waited here. Back there, around the bend”—he pointed down the alley—“is the rear exit of the place where Chomi was, and farther back is where they found him.” To Amanda’s surprise, Fong headed back up to the street.

  Once there he squatted and using a stick, marked a path in the dust. “Chomi ate at the Old Shanghai Restaurant here, and walked down this way. He must have walked along Fang Bang and come to that intersection.” He pointed back to the entranceway of the Fu Yu market where they had been before they went into the alley.

  “The driver said he always went through the Fu Yu market.”

  “I know, but how does our killer know which way he’s going to go? There are alleys behind the houses. How does he cover that?”

  “Two guys?”

  “Couldn’t be. Not with this kind of thing. Wang Jun?”

  “I agree. So—” Wang Jun began to walk back toward the entrance to Fu Yu—“so our guy leaves his bicycle here and races into the market to follow Chomi.”

  “So what does he do with the bicycle? He figures out where Chomi is going but does he know how long he’ll stay? No. He may be going into a store or trying to change money or selling something. How would the killer know? So he sees him go into the place and races wildly around trying to find a back exit in the hope that Chomi doesn’t just turn around and come back out the way he went in. But lo and behold he comes across Chomi’s car and driver and he knows. So he crouches down and waits. Leaving his bicycle where it stood.”

  “I like it. Let’s check out the house first and then follow up the bike.”

  Fong conveyed all this to Amanda as they waded through the dense crowd of Fu Yu.

  Wang Jun stopped in front of a vendor and pointed to the shallow alley behind him. “How do you want to play this?”

  “By the book—we’re not vice. He wasn’t killed there, all I want is to see if there’s anyone who remembers Mr. Chomi.”

  “Show them ID?”

  “If they ask, but I don’t think they will. No doubt, we’re expected.”

  “Could I be caught up?” asked Amanda.

  “Of course. When you were in school did you do any drugs, Ms. Pitman?”

  “This from a police officer?”

  “Your president did drugs.”

  “And your president swam the Yangtze.”

  “He’s not our president now and no one, in China at least, believed he swam the Yangtze.”

  “Yes, I did, as you put it, do some drugs.”

  “Mr. Chomi did drugs too. Elaborate drugs. And he did them in a rather ancient establishment whose entrance is off this alley. We’re going in. Would you like to join us or are you going to stay outside?”

  “I’ll join you.” Then as she followed them she timidly asked, “Heroin?”

  “No, Ms. Pitman, this is China. Opium is the drug of choice here.”

  It was all remarkably simple, Amanda thought. They entered a tiny doorway through which even Fong had to bend down and were greeted as if they had arrived a little late for a casual party. They were asked if they would like to leave their coats. All declined. Then they were asked if they would like some food with their opium. That too was declined. Some alcohol perhaps? No thanks. What about women? Wang Jun beat Fong to the punch with “That sounds like a good idea.” Fong flashed him a look. “Maybe next time, I’m trying to cut down,” said Wang Jun. They were led by another man back into the recesses of a long corridor with small rooms on either side. The smell of the burning tar was thick in the tight space. Several of the rooms were partially open. Many had no doors, the entrances strung simply with blankets or tattered curtains. As they passed the rooms, Amanda saw men in various states of recline. Some had the pipe held, others were being fed, one with two young half-clad women at his side. The whole place seemed in slow motion. Time alteration was the most immediate effect of the drug and even the tendrils of smoke that Amanda had inhaled were enough to begin the process.

  When finally they reached their cubicle, Wang Jun took off his coat and breathed deeply. Then he smiled. “When I get old I’m going to buy a membership to one of these places and spend my days and nights here.”

  “Better start saving—such a retirement could get expensive.”

  The curtain opened and an old man with a long braid stepped into their room and lit the brazier in the corner. He was right out of a Hollywood Fu Man Chu film— floor-length black silk robe with large sleeves, small black beanie, long braid and soft green slippers. He carried a beautiful lacquered box in his long-fingernailed hands. If he was surprised by the constituents of the room, two men and a woman, he didn’t let on.

  “Do you know who we are?”

  “Not by name,” said the old man, “but we have been expecting you for some time. Since the large black man was murdered.”

  “Did you serve the large black man?”

  “Once, but Wu Yeh usually did these honours.”

  “Is she here?”

  “Yes, she is always here. Shall I get her for you?”

  “Please.”

  “Would you like. . . ?” He opened the box, revealing several balls of opium rolled and ready, and he produced a beautiful pipe from his sleeve, which he showed, rather than offered, to Fong.

  “Is that Mr. Chomi’s pipe?”

  “Is that the black man’s name?”

  “Yes.”

  “Then this is indeed Mr. Chomi’s pipe.” Fong again noticed the obvious signs of deference to Mr. Chomi’s memory. He took the pipe and marvelled at the thing’s deep yellowish-white density and the layers of incredibly delicate carvings that saturated its entire two-foot length. Then he saw Amanda’s admiring stare and passed her the pipe.

  “Is this ivory?” asked Amanda.

  “Without a doubt,” replied Fong and without missing a beat asked, “Have you seen much ivory in your life, Ms. Pitman?”

  “The odd trinket that Richard picked up for me at airports, but nothing like this.” She allowed her fingers to trace the pipe’s length.

  A slender hand parted the curtains and the tiny thing called Wu Yeh slipped into the cubicle. The old man introduced her and then retired. Amanda looked at the delicate girl/woman in front of her—exquisite tapered fingers, skin without a blemish and deep liquid pools for eyes.

  Wang Jun looked at her differently. He saw a practised prostitute who knew her craft and the wiles needed to succeed in that craft. Fong saw a masterful liar. He also saw cleverly hidden age and addiction. Unlike Amanda, he was not impressed with Wu Yeh’s beauty. Beauty is relative. In Fong’s case it was relative to Fu Tsong.

  “Do you know that I am a police officer?”

  “I have been told.”

  “I’m not with the vice squad. I’m investigating the murder of Ngalto Chomi, the black man who owned this pipe. You knew him?”

  For a moment Fong thought she was going to cry. Then she said weakly, “Yes, I knew him. He came often. Near the end, almost every day.”

  “Did you always serve him?”

  “It was my pleasure to serve him.” Fong thought he must be losing his mind. He could have sworn that what the little whore said actually sounded honest. He looked to Wang Jun who signalled that he was at a loss too. Amanda asked to be caught up and Fong did. Then Amanda looked at the girl/woman more closely. “She loved him, Inspector Zhong. We may be in China, a long way from my stomping grounds, but I have seen that look before on others. She loved him.”

  And so it prove
d to be.

  Wu Yeh tearfully recounted her last time with her African lover.

  Slowly the picture of Ngalto Chomi as a much loved man was coming into focus. Here was a man, who not only because of his colour and his height left a lasting impression on others—stone sellers, cooks, and a whore in an opium den who had been with more men in a week than most women have been with in their lives.

  Mr. Chomi is proving to be an exceptional human being, Fong thought, as his eyes strayed to the ivory pipe. A human being whose heart could resist the knife.

  They walked out the back door, as Ngalto Chomi had, and instantly knew where the killer must have hidden. The bend in the alley allowed a place from which the killer could have watched without being seen by the waiting driver. Wu Yeh said that she had walked him to the door and that as he lingered with her kiss, he had slid a hand inside her robe and caressed her breast. She had looked up at him and told him that the room was still his if he desired her more. But he had declined—and probably was murdered directly after he closed the door on the whore who loved him.

  Wang Jun strung the area with police tape and informed the old man that the door wasn’t to be used until further notice. Then the three of them walked to the site itself. It was cleverly chosen but still partially exposed. The attacker had to be fast. Evidently he was. And then no doubt he made his escape away from the place where the driver was parked.

  “Which means he left his bicycle back at the foot of Fu Yu,” said Fong.

  “I agree. It’s two days ago, though,” replied Wang Jun. “We might get lucky, swamp the area with cops. I want to find that bike or whoever stole it. I want every bike on that sidewalk claimed and taken away. The one that’s left is our man’s.”

  Fong drove Amanda back to her hotel in silence. When he finally stopped the car Amanda turned to him and asked,“Could the bicycle really be valuable in finding this guy?”

  “Maybe. A bicycle here is not like in other places. People, you have no doubt noticed, use them all the time. And the roads are rough. No one rides a bicycle without having to get it fixed over and over again.”

  “That’s what all those men with tool kits and pumps are doing on every street corner?”

  “Precisely. And I have found that those men with tool kits and pumps, as you put it, have very good memories when it comes to bicycles and faces. There’s a man around the corner from the academy that we call the master. He can fix anything. And he never forgets either a bike or a face.”

  “I see.”

  He turned to her. Again he noticed the oddness of blue eyes in a white face. Then he said, “I was terribly out of line at the restaurant. I’m sorry for the question about your husband.”

  “You know, I almost said who, when you said my husband. We were not close, hadn’t been for some time, Inspector.”

  “Do you know what your husband was doing in Shanghai when he was murdered?”

  “He was here on business, I thought.”

  “He was a government employee, wasn’t he? What kind of business was he on?”

  “He travelled all the time, Inspector. Europe, Asia, Africa—you name it and Richard had been there.”

  Fong quickly said, “You lied to me about the ivory back in the opium den.”

  “In a way yes. I never saw anything but trinkets, but I know a lot about ivory. Through Richard—a lot. For some time I’d known that we couldn’t be living the way we were on the meagre salary of a government official and the profit from the business I ran.”

  “Is it possible that he was involved in smuggling ivory out of Africa under the protection of his government credentials?”

  “It’s possible.”

  Fong looked at her closely.

  “More than possible,” she whispered.

  “Thank you.”

  She looked straight into his eyes for an instant. “Now that you know, you don’t need me anymore, do you?” He didn’t respond. “Do you?” she pressed.

  “No.”

  “I see. May I ask a favour?” He nodded. “Tell me what you know about my husband’s death.”

  Slowly, with precision but without sentiment, he told her all he knew of the passing of Richard Fallon.

  “And that’s what the U.S. consulate didn’t want me to know?” Fong chose not to answer that question. Amanda took his silence as assent. “So that’s everything.” It was a statement not a question.

  A silence began to fill the space between them. She looked down at her hands in her lap. “So now you can go home,” he said.

  She thought about that, about “going home.” When she raised her eyes his were there to meet hers. “I’m not sure I’m ready to go home yet, Inspector Zhong.”

  Fong allowed a moment to pass then asked, “Do you like shopping, Ms. Pitman?”

  “What are you—?”

  “Perhaps you’d accompany me tomorrow. I know very little about ivory and I have a strange feeling that store keepers would be more open to your inquiries than to mine. All right?”

  “Fine.”

  “Tomorrow morning then.”

  “Fine.”

  “Dress up.”

  “You too, Inspector.”

  • • •

  That night Fong sat in the back of the old theatre and watched Geoffrey Hyland stage the drunk scene in Twelfth Night. It was like watching a master etcher daubing his acid on human material. But this product wasn’t set in time and space. It was art in dynamic motion. Art that was molten and tactile. Art that was never the same moment to moment but never random. Never not art.

  Hyland began with a simple question: Why is Toby Belch drinking? Answers were posed and tested. No acting was attempted until Hao Yong suggested that Toby needed to escape. Escape what? “A memory,” ventured the actor playing Toby, a frighteningly thin tall man in his early forties.

  “Good,” replied Geoffrey. “Memories do haunt, don’t they?” For the slightest moment he tilted his head in Fong’s direction and then returned his attention to the actors. “Well?” Finally the actor playing Toby came up with the answer to which Geoffrey had led them. The answer was simple and in line with everything else in this play that parades itself as a comedy but by its conclusion is hardly humorous. The answer of course was that Toby Belch drinks to try to escape his terrifying love of Olivia. To escape even the memory of that unrequited love. Andrew drinks for the same reason. So does Maria, whose love for Toby will never truly be returned. And then there’s Feste—the clown who drinks to forget that he ever loved, that he ever had a reason to carry on with his life.

  Then Geoffrey repeated Fu Tsong’s words, “We’re all here. Shakespeare wrote us all in the play. Which one are you?”

  Time of day became the next discussion. Geoffrey postulated what he called the witching hour. That time when the Moslem crier, the muezzin, climbs the tower of the mosque and holds up a black thread and a white one. When he can see the difference between the two he calls the faithful to the first prayers of the day. It is the point at which Banquo returns to the castle with his son Fleance to meet his end. It is the moment of night’s end, in theory the victory of the light. But in Twelfth Night, the long night only leads to a longer day.

  The actors began to work. A moment found, a moment lost, a line needing a better translation. Finally Geoffrey stops the group. The faces are flushed, alive. “Let’s try working this in vibrating primaries rather than in pure primaries. It’s not complicated, just hear me out for a moment. I have two kids, a boy eight and a girl six. They both love playgrounds—you know with swings and slides—they’d go nuts at the Children’s Palace on Yan’an. Well, every time we pass a playground my kids go into the pure right-handed primary of I SEE, I LOVE. And if I allow them to go into the playground the six-year-old stays in that pure primary, but the eight-year-old knows in his heart that he is too old to love something like this so much. So when he enters the park he changes from the pure right-handed primary of I SEE, I LOVE to the vibrating primary of I SEE, I LOVE
, BUT I KNOW I SHOULDN’T. The six-year-old is a joy to watch in the playground in her pure primary state, but the eight-year-old is downright fascinating sitting squarely in the centre of his vibrating primary. Playing in pure primaries has a tendency to ride an actor’s age down creating that kiddy acting nonsense. To be childlike is not to be childish. To keep the work sophisticated the pure primary has to be mated with its opposite which makes the pendulum swing inside. It carves internal landscapes and hence you are compelling to watch without that hideous ’doing things.’ By the way, only when you’re in primaries is less more. When you’re in secondary less is only less. Clear?”

  A few questions came back at Geoffrey, most having to do with the fear of playing emotions. In each case Geoffrey reiterated that he was not talking about playing emotions but being in emotional states. “You play your actions. You try to make your acting partner feel things that will spur them to do things. But to be compelling— to create density and interest in your work—you must play those actions and release the text’s images from a primary state—hopefully a vibrating primary.”