Last Days in Shanghai

by Casey Walker

  In the elevator, the officers talked haltingly to each other—the younger asked questions, and the older grunted short answers. I guessed he was the higher ranked, if he had the power to be unfriendly. In the guts of the building, we passed a service laundry the size of a bowling alley. The damp was cave-like, as were the echoes. After walking longer than it seemed possible without exhausting the building’s foundation, the officers dumped me into a room with a table and four chairs. A single row of puzzling interior windows near the ceiling was covered over with white paper. I could see the shadows of feet walking on the floor above me. From the way the ceiling rattled, I thought we must be beneath the laundry room we had passed some time back.

  “You say ‘Luke Slade’ is your name, but we have different reports,” the grunting officer said. He sat across the short table from me.

  “Just Luke Slade,” I said.

  “No other names?”

  “I only need one.”

  “Other identities?” the second called out, standing at the door. “Something for undercover.”

  The grunting man had sweat running down his jagged sideburns.

  “You are fluent in Chinese, this is correct?”

  “No,” I said.

  “Our report is that you speak the language as a native.”

  “That’s a mistake,” I said.

  “This is also in the report,” he responded. “That you will pretend you do not understand what you in fact understand.”

  I stared at his brass shirt buttons and thought how close “uniformed” was to “uninformed.” A hiss of steam pushed in from the hall, and a third official entered. He wore a charcoal gray business suit with a Savile Row fit. He took a post in the corner, observing for a long time as the officers rotated stiffly in and out of the chair in front of me, asking who was I, and why was I here, who did I work for, and where had I been? The suited man looked distracted and never spoke until he summoned the officers out of the room.

  I had plenty of restless time to wonder about the blueprint of the building and how far I was from an exit. I watched shadows pass above me, behind the covered windows, dragging longer shadows behind them.

  Soon a teenage boy with red cheeks and wide eyes entered and addressed me in English. He would translate. Behind him, finally, was a face I recognized.

  “Running and running,” the Kaifeng captain said.

  He remained as washed out and pale as when I’d last encountered him on the waterfront.

  “I would like to call my embassy,” I said.

  “You are going to give this statement,” the captain said through the translator. “The most simple is to admit everything.”

  “Give me a paper and pen and I’ll write everything just as I’ve told it to the others,” I said.

  “I have your statement here.”

  He handed me a Mandarin script, notarized with three square, red stamps.

  “If you translate this into English, I can read it,” I said.

  The translator relayed this, and the captain waved me off like a horsefly.

  “Sign it, and you can make formal request for copy,” he said.

  “I think it’s reasonable to ask what my statement says.” I played attorney, as though I had rights. “I need to confirm that no mistakes or distortions have entered your official record.”

  “You are still playing tricks,” he said.

  “How is that a trick?” I asked.

  “It isn’t important what you think you know,” the captain said, and here he couldn’t resist a wide smile. “It’s important that we know. And we know what you claim you do not know.”

  I looked to the translator and pointed at the statement: “Will you tell me what it says?”

  I felt my whole life concentrated in my lower back, my slumped posture, like I’d never again sit up straight.

  “You have stolen money from the people of Henan Province.” The captain began to shout, only to have the translator relay everything quietly. “That is the already certain criminal act.”

  I flinched, and he puffed bigger.

  “There are fifty public security who have not been paid wages in two months,” he said. “There are village cash reserves that are now all gone. ‘Community project’ money has gone to where? People taken from homes to build for new business. Nothing is built, and those people do not get new homes. Where does the people’s money go to?”

  He cocked himself on the table’s edge.

  “To you,” he said.

  My peripheral vision caught a bat flying across the room, a spread wing that was actually the captain’s open palm. He struck my face hard enough that I think he hurt himself. It was scalding water through my sinuses. I braced for more, but the captain was called out of the room by the man in the suit.

  My dress shirt itched and stunk with sweat. I took it off and sat in the undershirt, yellow at the armpits. If I didn’t dissolve into panic, it was only because I’d long ago succumbed. I might have been bodily confined to a basement room by Chinese authorities, but in truth I was embarked on some other journey—plunging into a valley I’d found in myself. It felt much like the desert valley where I was born. I asked myself who I was, and I could find nothing to map of a topography so featureless. I was fits and starts of a person, not a whole or a good one. For years I’d flowed along, a dirty stream, and let pass in silence events I told myself I had no power to change. I could say that in this room, under interrogation, I discovered my fatalism—but it was a fatalism enlivened by no religious spirit, no conviction of an order beyond the visible. It was a dry valley in the heart and soul.

  It might have been morning. The charcoal-suited man appeared and greeted me in uninflected English. He was maybe forty, with a lean face that looked more Central Asian than Han. He latched the door behind him, sniffed the air, lit a cigarette, offered me one I declined, and tried out three chairs to find the most comfortable. He asked if I had eaten and introduced himself by an English name: Albert. He said he was the officer in charge of foreign visitors to Shanghai.

  “I have listened now to this man from Kaifeng,” he said. “At this time, you should tell me your story.”

  I thanked him. Albert struck me as vastly more educated than the Kaifeng captain and like a man who needed me to recognize that distinction.

  “First let us establish: Did you meet this captain in Kaifeng, as he says?” Albert asked.

  “I was sent to Kaifeng,” I paused. “I’m here at the invitation of Bund International. Have you heard of it?”

  He looked at me as though I’d just told him the order of the seasons.

  “You know about the mayor?” Albert asked.

  “The man from Kaifeng . . .” I said.

  “His name is Zhang,” Albert said. He said the name like it was funny to him.

  “Zhang told me the mayor of Kaifeng was dead,” I said. “But he seemed not . . .” I searched for the appropriate words, “entirely believable.”

  “The death is sensitive. An open matter. That’s the report as I have it,” Albert said, as though he was sorry to hear it. He continued: “But you admit it was you in Kaifeng. It was not your boss the congressman who attended? Many have reported contact with an American official.”

  “I went in his place,” I said. “Some of the guests may have been confused.”

  “Or misled,” he said.

  I let his assertion stand without protest. The table between us was empty, but Albert looked at it like he was reading from a file.

  “What’s ‘Shoes’?” he asked.

  “Mr. Hu?” I said. “He’s a project manager for Bund.”

  “I have never heard anyone called ‘Shoes,’” he said.

  I tried to put the facts in order, at least those at my disposal. “We left the mayor’s house very late. Everyone had been drinking. I flew to Beijing in the morning. They were Bund meetings. Armand Lightborn? Have you heard of him? That’s all that happened.”

  “It’s not all that happe
ned,” Albert said, drawing out the last word. “There was a briefcase.”

  “It was given to me as a gift,” I said.

  “And somewhere you possess this briefcase?”

  I thought I should be direct with Albert.

  “Yes,” I said.

  “And you say this is where your involvement with the Kaifeng mayor ends,” he said. “How was the mayor when you last saw him?”

  “Drunk,” I said. “But still standing.”

  “Captain Zhang is certain that not only have you taken money, but you have a part in the sudden death,” Albert said. He stood and paced to the wall.

  “I can’t even imagine how,” I said.

  “You don’t need to imagine,” he said. “The man is dead.”

  “Not because of me,” I said. “I promise you that.”

  “I have no opinion of your promises. I have no ideas about you as a man,” he said. “I do not have special information that tells me your private capabilities.”

  My heartbeat reached into my throat, but my voice was caught at my tonsils. I’d adjusted to the room’s smell of smoke and mold, but I stopped breathing long enough that the stench became new again. I placed my head between my knees and stayed that way until Albert hoisted me up, disapproving.

  “You say you are no killer,” Albert said. “I have a man who insists otherwise. You see the situation I am in. Who would you like me to believe?”

  “Me,” I said when I realized he expected an answer. “Believe me.”

  He surveyed the room like a scientist taking air-quality samples or cataloging indigenous life-forms.

  “Your error is that this is not a question of belief,” Albert said. “I can see you are very tired.”

  “When you talk to Mr. Lightborn . . .” I said, “or to Mr. Hu . . .”

  Albert held up his hands.

  “I am here to speak with you only,” Albert said. “My recommendation is that you untie yourself from concern for Mr. Hu.”

  “Have you talked to him?”

  Albert took this placidly, not interested in answering.

  “I have only one problem for this late evening,” Albert said. “I would like to send five people home satisfied that there is justice. Myself. The man from Kaifeng. These two officers he has pled his case to. And you. Therefore: How might all five of these men agree?”

  For all his philosophical distance, he had a predator’s footwork. He stalked me in logical circles and left me speechless.

  “Some cause exists for the death of the mayor,” he continued. “My duty is to determine if the cause requires you to accompany our visitor back to Henan Province. There are ‘many edges to the sword.’ Is that your expression?”

  “Close enough,” I said.

  “Now you can ‘play your part,’” Albert said. He leaned on his English idioms, slowing down their enunciation. “How is it the mayor of Kaifeng has died? Who were his enemies? Who were his rivals?”

  “I barely knew the man,” I said. “Maybe he had a stroke. A heart attack.”

  Albert weighed these. “This is your educated opinion, having observed the man and his health?”

  “I’m not a doctor,” I said.

  “Very good, very good,” Albert said. His way was to make me feel hopeful and then stupid. “You are lacking this expertise. Let us establish that speculation is uninteresting to me. I am not asking for ignorance or guess. But now you have offered your ‘point of view,’ so let us consider it. If what you say is correct—a stroke, a heart attack—then there is nothing more for you and me to accomplish. The mayor died at his time.”

  “Middle-aged men,” I said, and here I spoke from experience, “hard jobs, bad diets, excessive drinking, no exercise, no sleep. They die for all sorts of reasons. No one has to murder them. They’re as fragile as hamsters.”

  “The case that can be made, of course, is whether he was pushed along that course,” Albert said. “Arrived at his death more quickly than expected.”

  “He wasn’t pushed by me,” I said.

  “Here again you are talking about your word only,” Albert said. His eyes wrinkled. “And I cannot establish justice simply based on your word.”

  “What else do you want?”

  Albert didn’t like this question.

  “We must establish the truth,” Albert said. “I am asking you to participate in the truth.” He touched two fingers to his temple. “The men who were loyal to this mayor in Henan Province will have testimony of perhaps a dozen men. Every one will swear to the local judge what evils you have committed.”

  “What about a coroner’s report?” I said. “That should tell you everything.”

  “Is a coroner a lifelong position?” Albert asked. “Who holds a coroner’s salary in his hand? Who protects the coroner’s side business? And who will feed a coroner’s family if he loses his position?”

  I exhaled, unable to answer.

  “The medical records your accusers will possess will look favorably upon their version of events. Is that much understandable to you?” Albert said. “Now, if you are interested in establishing your version of events, one that is more true for you, then perhaps your truth can counteract theirs.”

  “Maybe he drank himself to death,” I said.

  A look of frustration passed over his face.

  “You are still in search of the irrefutable answer to how this man has died,” Albert said. “But only the dead man’s ghost knows it. For our purposes, no cause is irrefutable. This situation is contested by men with loyalties. Please understand: You were in close proximity to an unfortunate event. You are a foreigner and, worse, an American. So they will have a suspicion of you that will never be disproven. It can only, if you will take the appropriate measures, be disputed.”

  The paper over the high windows had begun to come unstuck at the corners. It let in a small light from the room above.

  “How can I prove to you I’m innocent?” I said. “You won’t take my word. You’re saying the medical reports will be tainted.”

  “It is a hard problem, I do not disagree,” Albert said. “This man Zhang believes that someone has introduced a poison. In all probability this was in the late evening when the mayor was too compromised by baijiu to pay attention to its taste or early effects. Now, we know the mayor has had two late guests—this man who will call himself ‘Mr. Shoes’ and also you.”

  He pulled a grave face, but there remained in his features a soft afterimage of empathy. This brief moment of compassion was so unexpected that it made me aware of a space Albert had been trying to leave open for me since the moment he’d entered the room. I felt like I’d come out of a long tunnel. He was not talking about fair adjudication of the accusations against me. We were talking about exchange.

  “The truth isn’t with that man waiting to take me to his province,” I said.

  “It’s not even with us here,” Albert said.

  I tried to pick up his elliptical way of speaking. Albert would never entrap himself, never be caught saying what he wanted outright. I took up the paper that had fallen from the window. I held it in front of him.

  “There are some people who can construct a beautiful bird from a flat piece of paper,” I said.

  Albert looked at me as though I was an unpromising student who’d suddenly decided to apply himself. He smiled, his muscles for it unpracticed.

  “What was nothing becomes something,” I said. I folded a loose airplane and placed it on the table.

  “A paper truth,” Albert said.

  “I understand that a fair investigation of the accusations against me would be a great expense,” I said. “But I’m a person who believes in the truth.” I fixed my eyes on Albert’s. “And I’ll pay whatever it costs to discover it.”

  “The price could be very high,” Albert said. He picked up the plane and floated it across the room.

  “The mayor’s briefcase has papers that should be examined by a professional,” I said. “I have the case in my roo
m. I think you are the appropriate man to take possession of this evidence.”

  Albert was too wary to believe promises until he saw them realized, but I’d apparently interested him enough that he rose and invited me to follow. What had happened to the mayor had irremediably happened—but the tale belonged now to the highest-bidding tellers.

  WE FILED BACK into the industrial guts of the hotel. Captain Zhang waited, drinking unfiltered tea and spitting out the dark green leaves that stuck to his lips. Albert called over the two arresting officers and spoke to them in Mandarin. Zhang looked to Albert and then to me. He must have noted the easy manner between us. He began to protest, and when the Shanghai officers approached him, he smashed his teacup against the far wall.

  Albert tore a sheaf of paper from Zhang’s hands—my “confession”—and waved it in the air.

  “He insists you are a thief and a spy,” Albert laughed. “A foreign assassin.”

  The light went out behind Zhang’s eyes. They became small with rage. He addressed me with a haltingly pronounced English sentence: “The money is not for him. The money is for the people.”

  Zhang swung his fists in the air—it was peasant money, he said, stolen money. The Shanghai officers tried to placate him, but when he shoved the older one in the chest, the younger closed in and bent Zhang’s arms behind his back. A wincing Zhang protested another minute, but he was soon reduced to hurt silence and looked resigned to my release. The young officer let him go, and Zhang shook his body loose to quell the pain.

  With his newfound freedom, Zhang cocked his welterweight arm and hit me in the eye socket. He punched me at least twice more, and someone was shrieking like a whipped dog, and that was me. Albert tried to lock Zhang’s right arm, but with the next concentrated stroke of his left, Zhang hit me hard enough across the mouth that I twisted and fell onto my stomach. I crawled to the corridor wall. My nose and mouth had broken open with what I didn’t at first recognize as blood because it tasted so sour. Captain Zhang was duck-walked out of sight, arms bent behind his neck.