A Case of Two Cities

by Qiu Xiaolong

  That was also a Chinese proverb. The devil of unbridled corruption, however, might be a different story. Presently, two massage girls came over to them, both dressed in the red-and-white-striped pajamas, except that they were in short sleeves and short pants, their bare arms and legs glistening in the dark.

  Lei had already given the order. “Back massage to start with.”

  The girl for Chen appeared to be only seventeen or eighteen. She helped him remove the pajama top and rubbed oil on his back. He looked back over his shoulder and glimpsed a slender and fragile-looking figure kneeling over him in the semidarkness, her arms moving in rhythm, and her fingers concentrating on the troubled spots. It was an exotic experience, which reminded him of a remark Lei had made: “In the late Roman empire.”

  The Roman empire fell, Chen thought, with his face pressed against a soft pillow, because of corruption and decadence. Lei would probably not have meant it. For him, the newspaper empire had just started.

  The girl was turning him over again. Perching herself on a low stool, she placed his feet on her lap, and his toes seemed to be touching her soft breasts through the thin pajama material. “Your feet make my heart jump,” she said in a husky voice, her face flushed with exertion, her brow beaded with sweat. Then unexpectedly, she leaned down and put his big toe into her mouth. He was too flustered to stop her, his toe lollipop-like on her soft warm tongue.

  Then his cell phone rang. He took it out from under the pillow. Not too many knew his number, which he had just changed.

  “Comrade Chief Inspector Chen Cao?”

  “Speaking.”

  “I’m Zhao Yan, of the Central Party Discipline Committee. I am speaking to you on behalf of the committee.”

  “Oh, Comrade Secretary Zhao Yan.”

  Chen immediately snapped to attention. Zhao was a legendary figure in Beijing. Having joined the Party in the forties and rising to a top government position early in his career, he spent a large part of the Cultural Revolution studying in jail, and he reemerged as one of the few self-made top Party intellectuals. It was said that Comrade Deng Xiaoping had adopted a number of suggestions made by Zhao in the beginning of the economic reform. Zhao was the Second Secretary of the Party Discipline Committee in the early eighties, founded as an inner-Party self-policing measure. Because of the cadre retirement policy, he then retired to an honorable position. But he remained a most influential man for the committee, which became increasingly powerful in the Party’s effort to fight corruption.

  “I’m retired, only an advisor now. Call me Comrade Zhao. Is this a good moment to talk to you?”

  “Please go ahead, Comrade Zhao.” There was no telling him that the chief inspector was luxuriating in a bathhouse, half-naked, with a half-naked girl sucking his toes. He waved his hand at her, jumped down, picked up a towel, and ran out to the corridor.

  “You must be aware of our new anticorruption campaign?”

  “I have been reading about it,” Chen said, wiping the sweat from his forehead with the towel.

  “Have you read about the case of Xing Xing?”

  “Yes, I have been following its development.”

  Lei came out too, with concern on his face and a glass of wine in his hand. He might have overheard something in connection with the name of Zhao Yan, and he handed over the wine without speaking a word. Chen took it, and he raised the phone as a gesture of apology before Lei moved back in.

  “Xing has caused a huge loss to our national economy, and great damage to our political image. Having fled to the United States, he continues making no end of trouble there.”

  Chen did not know anything about Xing’s activities abroad. There seemed to be quite a lot about Xing in the newspapers. People could be cynical about believing what they read, but when it came to brazen corruption cases involving senior officials, most readers seemed willing to suspend their usual skepticism. But little was written about Xing’s flight and afterward.

  “Our committee is determined to push the investigation to the end. Anyone involved, no matter how high his position, will be punished. As our premier has pointed out, corruption can be a cancer of our body politic. It is an issue concerning the future of our Party, and our country too.”

  “Yes, we have to deal a crushing blow to those rotten elements in our Party,” Chen said, echoing. “A crushing blow.”

  “It’s more easily said than done, Comrade Chief Inspector Chen. We kept a close watch over Xing, but he got away with his family. How? It still beats me.”

  “Possibly through his connections-” Chen stopped, not completing the sentence: at the top.

  “Now he is dragging China through the mire, presenting himself as a victim of a power struggle, and making false accusations against the Chinese government. We have to do something about it.”

  “How, Comrade Zhao?”

  “All the information will be delivered to you. You are in charge of the investigation in Shanghai.”

  “What am I supposed to do in Shanghai?” Chen said. “Xing is in the States.”

  “Xing got away, but not those connected with him. Dig three feet into the ground if need be. You are fully authorized by the committee to take any necessary action. You are a qinchai dacheng-Emperor’s Special Envoy with an Imperial Sword, so to speak. In an emergency, you are empowered to search and arrest without reporting to anyone-without warrant.”

  Chen did not like the term Emperor’s Special Envoy, with its feudalistic connotation. In a Beijing opera, Chen had seen such a powerful figure with a shining sword in his hand. It was a high title, but it indicated an assignment involving people even higher up.

  “But what about my work in the bureau, Comrade Zhao?”

  “I’ll talk to your Party Secretary Li. It’s a case directly under the committee.”

  ***

  Afterward, Chen did not want to go back in. He was not in the mood to return to the hall, where the girl might not have finished her job. There was still some wine left sparkling in the cup.

  A short poem by Wang Han, an eighth-century Tang dynasty poet, came to mind:

  Oh the mellow wine shimmering

  in the luminous stone cup!

  I am going to drink

  on the horse

  when the army Pipa starts

  urging me to charge out.

  Oh, do not laugh

  if I fall dead

  drunk in the battlefield.

  How many soldiers

  have come really back home

  since time immemorial?

  The poem carried a disturbing premonition. Chen was not a superstitious man, but why his sudden recollection of those lines? Surely Chief Inspector Chen looked like anything but such a general, standing in the corridor with a white towel wrapped about his shoulders.

  Across the corridor, the door of the private room opened silently. A massage girl walked out, barefoot, much prettier than those in the hall room, her slender fingers tying up the string of her scarlet silk bralike dudou at her back, her hair tousled, her face flushing like a dream.

  2

  CHIEF INSPECTOR CHEN PL ANNED to stay at home the following morning, reading the material about Xing. The initial part had been delivered to him in five bulging folders the previous night. There was also a special one-page document, a statement on the letterhead of the Party Discipline Committee.

  “Comrade Chen Cao, of the Shanghai Police Bureau, is hereby authorized by the Party Discipline Committee to take whatever action necessary for the investigation. Full cooperation with his work is expected at all government levels in the Party’s interest.”

  There was not only a red seal of the committee imprinted underneath the statement but also the signature of Comrade Zhao. It was not just a gesture, it could serve like the imperial sword in ancient history: execute before reporting to the emperor.

  He started studying the file on Xing. Secret surveillance of Xing must have been going on for a long time. Some of the reports were quite detailed,
covering the length of several months. Chen had to get a general picture before making a move.

  He took only one short break. Around nine-thirty, he went out to a hawking street-corner peddler and bought a small bag of fried buns with minced pork and shrimp stuffing. The hot buns tasted delicious, and he devoured them one by one over the dossier. As he was picking up the last bun, he got a call from Detective Yu.

  “You’re not coming to the bureau today, boss?”

  “No. What’s up?”

  “You have a special assignment, I guess?”

  “Yes. Did Party Secretary Li tell you anything?”

  “No. How about meeting you at your place around noon?”

  “Great. Come for lunch.”

  “Don’t worry about lunch.” Yu added, “Go on with your work. See you soon.”

  Yu didn’t explain the occasion for his visit. The timing concerned the chief inspector. He wasn’t supposed to talk about his new work with any of his colleagues. But for Yu, his longtime partner and friend, also the one in practical charge of the special case squad, he had to make an exception.

  So the last bun was left there untouched, stuck to the paper, cold, greasy, flaccid, and dispirited. It was almost like his changed mood, as he went on reading the file about Xing.

  In the early eighties, Xing had served as the Party Secretary of Huayuan County, Fujian Province. It was then a backward agricultural area consisting of four or five poor People’s Communes. For the year-long labor, farmers there made less than a hundred yuan. Xing got caught up in the early waves of the economic reform, setting up several commune factories. Those nonstate business entities enjoyed tax breaks as well as other competitive edges in the new market. Their success soon changed the local economic landscape. Xing became a national model Party cadre in “leading the people on the way to wealth and prosperity.” Instead of accepting promotions, he insisted on working as the number-one boss in the county.

  As the reform gained further momentum, those companies became private-his companies. His business rocketed up, reaching out into large cities. Like many other upstarts, Xing could not help showing off. If “it is glorious to get rich,” as Comrade Deng Xiaoping said, few appeared more magnificent than Xing. He paraded through Fuzhou in a bulletproof Red Flag allegedly manufactured for Chairman Mao. For his family, he built mansions after the fashion of the Grand View Garden. In a visit to his elementary school, he handed a bunch of hundred-yuan bills to a poor old janitor, like a modern-day Robin Hood. Eventually, his excesses caught the attention of some people in Beijing.

  Suspicious things were noticed about his business practice. Because of the market competition, a number of his companies suffered serious losses instead of making profits, but he launched into one new grandiose project after another and went on squandering as if there were gold mountains and silver mines in his backyard. The Beijing authorities had been cautious at first. Xing being a much-touted model Party cadre of the reform, no one wanted to “damage a whole pot of soup with one drop of rat dung.” A special investigation team was sent to Fujian, and the initial discoveries were shocking. Xing had made his real money through smuggling. It was a gigantic operation that covered an incredible range of goods, including automobiles, oils, petrochemical products, liquors, drugs, and weapons. The operation was run by an elaborate network involving his Party connections at all government levels, from the very top in Beijing to the local cops and customs, with the direct or indirect complicity of hundreds of officials. According to one source, the smuggling operation racked up a billion dollars in revenues-an amount equivalent to the province’s annual gross domestic product. No one had taken advantage of the labyrinthine system in a more skillful and more surprisingly simple way-corruption upon corruption.

  In order to “get the green light all the way,” he bribed all necessary officials. A Party cadre himself, he knew what worked. A “red envelope” of Chinese yuan or American dollars. If an envelope was returned, he increased the amount until it was finally accepted. With connections secured all over the country, he converted a fifteen-story building in Fujian into a pleasure palace for cadres from everywhere. The mansion was called Red Tower, where the Party officials lost themselves in the woods of the sexiest bodies and emerged as the most loyal allies of Xing in China ’s economic reform.

  As more and more irrefutable evidence was gathered, the Beijing authorities became furious. They gave the order to arrest Xing-as a part of the new national anticorruption campaign. But Xing must have been warned at the last minute, for he sneaked out of the country like a rice-paddy eel.

  Newspaper reports about Xing began to emerge early in the year, making him the national symbol of the mounting corruption, providing sensational details about fat cats cavorting with young women in the hot tubs of the Red Tower, and speculating about bribery and protection schemes at the highest rungs of the political ladder. But there was something not covered in the media: Xing’s application for political asylum from the U.S., claiming to be the victim of a power struggle, and his threat to reveal the criminal activities of high-ranking Party officials if he was deported. The Beijing authorities were worried that these stories might cost the people’s faith in the Party.

  But what could Chief Inspector Chen do about it?

  While Xing’s business had reached into a number of cities, he did not have a company or office in Shanghai. All the chief inspector had gotten was a list of Xing’s contacts here. Chen could spend months checking through the names on the list-without getting anywhere.

  But Chen understood why Xing’s case could be so politically significant. China ’s economic reform had ignited a powerful engine for financial growth, but it had also opened up a Pandora’s box of greed and corruption. Given the opportunity, some Party officials pillaged and plundered like pirates, so the reform itself was seriously endangered.

  Tapping on the file, he realized Detective Yu would be arriving soon. He stood up and began to straighten some old newspapers and books. Yu had been making an effort to quit smoking, so Chen put away the ashtray. The desk was small, and it served as a tea table in the event of a visitor. The efficiency-like room would have looked overcrowded with both a desk and a table.

  As expected, Yu came over around twelve. A tall man with a rugged face, he carried several lunch boxes as well as disposable chopsticks and spoons in a plastic bag, which was a surprise to Chen.

  “Peiqin’s idea,” Yu said. “She insisted on my going to Old Geng’s place first. Free lunch.”

  “Delicious idea.”

  Yu’s wife, Peiqin, worked in a state-run restaurant, but she had a sideline job as an accountant at a private restaurant, enjoying a good extra income, plus free food from the restaurant owner, Old Geng. The private restaurant was expanding, and the sideline job had become practically a full-time one. Old Geng talked about having her as a partner, for he knew what a capable woman she was.

  “Still quite hot,” Yu went on, opening the boxes. “The crisp skin roast piglet and smoked carp head. Old Geng’s specials.”

  Chen took out a bottle of yellow rice wine. “You have something to ask me, Yu,” he said, crunching the crispy pork skin in his mouth.

  “It’s an anticorruption case under the Party Discipline Committee, right?” Yu said, not really as a question. “Someone high up wants you to do the job.”

  “Not exactly,” Chen said. “Most of the investigation is in Fujian. Xing runs a large corruption empire from there.”

  “That bastard!” Yu banged the desk with his fist. “You know what? His Red Tower has become a tourist attraction, in spite of its exorbitant admission fee. People pour in, trying to see the place where those rotten officials luxuriated themselves in ‘the woods of naked bodies, in the pools of mellow wines.’ The local government has to close the building again.”

  “Indeed, it’s such a notorious case that the day the news first hit the press,” Chen recalled, “the People’s Daily sold out.”

  “With Xing in t
he United States,” Yu said, taking a sip at the wine, “it may be easy for the Beijing government to blame corruption on Western influences-the result of opening the door and ‘letting in the flies.’”

  “That’s way too simplistic,” Chen said. “How have you learned all that so fast?”

  “This kind of news people learn in no time. Tell me more about what they want you to do.”

  Chen recapitulated what he had learned from Comrade Zhao and from the file this morning. At the end of his summary, he pushed over the list of Xing’s contacts in Shanghai. Yu looked at the list without responding immediately.

  “Why can’t they have Xing sent back?” Yu said. “Once he’s back, he has to spill. All his connections. No need for you to do anything.”

  “ China is embarking on international cooperation in the legal field, signing extradition treaties with several countries. Some convicts have been returned to China. But Xing is seeking political asylum there by claiming to be a victim of a Party power struggle.”

  “It’s a brazen lie. The Americans really buy it?”

  “Xing must have planned it for a long time. His family moved to the States several months before his flight, taking much of the evidence with them. That made the investigation really difficult. The evidence we have may not even be admissible in a foreign court, and our demands for extradition can be overruled on technical grounds.”

  “It’s a tough job, boss. Most of the people on the list have high positions, or high connections. Not like ordinary canvassing, a cop knocking on one door after another, without worrying about the consequences. These are the doors of the most powerful, capable of getting you into trouble. They may not be able to wreak their anger against the committee, but it will be a different story for that particular knocker.”

  “I know. Beijing could have sent someone to Shanghai,” Chen said, “someone who does not have to work here afterward.”