by Unknown
“Sorry to bother you so late in the evening, Comrade Weng,” Chen apologized, handing over his business card as he explained the purpose of the visit, highlighting his inquiries into the Ming family.
“I’m afraid I can’t tell you much,” she said. “We moved into the neighborhood about five years ago. The Mings no longer lived here. In recent years, there have been a lot of changes among the residents here, especially along Henshan Road. According to the new policy, the privately owned houses have been returned to the original owners. So some moved back, and a lot moved out.”
“Why didn’t the Ming family move back?”
“There was a problem with the new policy. What about those residents currently living there? Sure, some of them had moved in illegally during the Cultural Revolution, but they still needed a place to stay now. So the government tried to buy the buildings from the original owners. The owners could say no, but Ming, the son of the original owner, agreed. He didn’t even come back to take a look. Later the mansion was turned into a restaurant. That’s another story.”
“Sorry to interrupt you here,” Chen said. “What is Ming’s full name?”
“Let me check,” she said. She took out an address book and looked through several pages. “Sorry, it’s not here. He is a successful man, as I remember.”
“Thank you,” he said. “How much did he get from selling the mansion?”
“All the transactions were arranged by the district authorities. We weren’t involved.”
“Are there any records about what happened to the Ming family during the Cultural Revolution?”
“There’re hardly any records left from that time in our office. For the first few years, our committee was practically paralyzed. My predecessor somehow got rid of the one and only ledger book from 1966 to 1970.”
“You mean the ex-head of the neighborhood committee?”
“Yes, she passed away five or six years ago.”
“It’s easy not to remember,” Chen said, “but I need to ask you one question. Ming’s mother, Mei, died during the Cultural Revolution. Possibly in an accident. Have you heard anything about it?”
“That was so many years ago. Why?”
“It may be important to a homicide investigation.”
“Really!”
“I have heard about Chief Inspector Chen before,” her husband cut in for the first time, speaking to Weng. “He has worked on several important cases.”
“If we heard anything about his family,” Weng said, “it’s because of a trick played by Pan, the owner of the Old Mansion restaurant.”
“That’s interesting. Please tell me about it.”
“As soon as Ming sold the mansion to the government, Pan had his eyes on it. None of the residents wanted to move out. And there also might have been a number of potential buyers. So Pan started rumors about the mansion being haunted and those superstitious stories spread really fast. We had to check into it.”
“You have a lot of responsibilities, Comrade Weng.”
“It’s ironic. We found out that those tall stories had been started much earlier, during the Cultural Revolution, by the Tong family, who lived underneath the garage attic. After Mei’s death, the Tongs claimed to have heard noises in the room upstairs and footsteps on the staircase too. Even after her son moved out. Her neighbors had questions about her strange death, thought that she must have been wronged, so it was understandable for them to believe that her spirit came back to haunt the house—at least the attic. As a result, the Tongs got the ‘haunted attic,’ which no one else wanted—”
“Sorry to interrupt again. You said something about her strange death. Can you tell me about that?”
“I don’t know any details. Her family suffered a lot during the Cultural Revolution. Both her husband and father-in-law died. She and her son were driven out of the mansion and into the attic above the garage. In the second or third year there, the boy also got into trouble. And then one day, she rushed out of the attic, stark naked, fell down the staircase, and died. It’s possible that all these travails proved too much, and she collapsed. Still, the way she died was suspicious.”
“Did it happen in the summer?”
“No, in the winter. There apparently was some talk about her rushing out of a bath, but that isn’t true. It was out of the question for her to take a bath there, there was no heating in the attic,” Weng said, shaking her head. “Pan was really effective with his ghost stories. Soon he convinced every resident, including the Tongs, that the whole mansion was haunted. Accidents happened there and people were panicky. He reached agreements and bought out all of the residents.”
“Did you find out anything else about Mei’s death during your investigation?”
“The superstitious part aside, one of her neighbors said that she did hear strange noises in the attic, like moaning and groaning, in the depth of night for a couple of nights before the boy’s release—before, but not after. The Tongs confirmed that, adding that they also heard her weeping in the night, though they were rather evasive about the part after the boy’s release.”
“Did they see anybody with Mei in the room—anybody coming or going there?”
“The Tongs said they heard something that sounded like a man’s grunt, but they weren’t sure after so many years.”
“Is there anyone in the neighborhood who knows about the Ming family, someone I can approach directly?”
“Well, most of the residents from that time have since moved away, as I’ve explained. But I’ll check around. With luck, I may have a list for you early next week. Some are still here, I believe.”
She might or might not find anybody, and it could take days. But tomorrow would be Thursday. There would be another victim before the weekend.
Still, he could see that was about all she knew. There was nothing else he could do here this evening. He rose, reluctantly, when her husband cut in again.
“There’s one man you should talk to, Comrade Chief Inspector. Comrade Fan Dezong. He used to be a neighborhood cop here. Now he’s retired.”
“Really! Can I visit him this evening?” Chen said. Like a neighborhood cadre, a neighborhood cop usually lived in the area.
“He still has one small room here, but most of the time he stays with his son, babysitting his grandson. He comes back over in the morning and for the weekend. He patrols the food market in the morning.”
“Do you have his son’s address or phone number?”
“No, we don’t have it here,” Weng said. “But you won’t miss him early tomorrow morning.”
“From five to seven thirty,” the husband said. “He’s highly punctual for his patrolling activity, even in the cold winter. An old-fashioned cop.”
“That’s great. Thank you so much for your help.”
Chen’s cell phone rang. He made an apologetic gesture to them and pushed the talk button.
“It’s me, Xiang. I haven’t learned anything about her son, not yet, but I remember that Mei called him ‘Xiaojia.’ So his name could be Mingjia. People like to add ‘xiao’ or ‘little’ to the given name as a sort of endearment, you know. Also, I dug out a notebook. The name of Comrade Revolutionary Activity is Tian. He wasn’t of the Shanghai Number Three but the Number One Steel Mill.”
“That’s important. I don’t know how I can thank you enough, Professor Xiang.”
“I’ll make a couple more phone calls about her son tomorrow. I’ll let you know as soon as I have learned anything.”
Flipping closed the cell phone, he almost forgot he was in the company of the neighborhood committee cadre. He turned back to her, his thoughts still in turmoil.
“Thank you so much, Comrade Weng.”
“It’s a great honor that you have visited us here,” Weng said, walking him to the door. “I’ll check around first thing tomorrow morning. It’s something urgent, I understand. Now, you’d better hail a taxi on Hengshan Road. It’s cold outside.”
TWENTY-FIVE
OUTSIDE, IT WAS A cold night.
Turning toward Henshan Road, he glanced at his watch again. Almost nine thirty.
Henshan Road stretched ahead, like an unfolded belt of neon lights glittering around the restaurants and nightclubs. Not too long ago, he had visited one of the nostalgic bars here, with White Cloud.
Where could she be tonight? In another bar, or in another’s company, possibly.
He was not in a hurry to go home.
Some of the pieces he had gathered seemed to be coming together. He had to make sure that they converged into a whole before those half-formed thoughts faded into the chilly night, like in a song.
The Old Mansion was close by. It was magnificently lit at this late hour, as if still intent on stirring up memories of the nightless city, though he wondered if it could have been so flashy and flamboyant in Mei’s day.
He walked in, waiting in a spacious lobby for a hostess to lead him to a table. It was evident that the restaurant enjoyed good business.
There were several old pictures on the walls. One of them presented a middle-aged man standing with several foreigners in front of the then new mansion. A picture taken in the thirties. There was a small line underneath the picture: Mr. Ming Zhengzhang, the original owner of the mansion. Chen didn’t find a picture of Mei. It wasn’t a good idea to evoke the memory of the Cultural Revolution; nowadays, few would be interested.
The restaurant owner had done a good job reviving the place. The dark-colored oak panels, the antique grand piano, the oil paintings on the walls, the carnation in a cut glass vase, not to mention the shining silverware on the tables, all contributed to the period atmosphere. People here could believe they were back in the thirties, instead of in the nineties.
But what about those years in between?
History is not like a soy sauce stain, easily wiped away by the pink napkin in the hand of the pretty waitress who was leading him to a table by the tall French window. He asked her a question about how the mansion became a restaurant.
She said with an apologetic smile, “Our general manager paid a large amount to the original residents, more than ten families, and then refurbished the whole house. That’s about all I know.”
He opened the menu, which was almost as thick as a book. Turning to the last two pages marked as “Mansion Specials,” he noticed one called Live Monkey Brains, probably like what he had seen in the vacation village, and another, Live White Rats. He doubted that Mei would have served those dishes in her elegant mandarin dress.
The waitress stood beside his table, observing with an attentive smile.
“Can I have just a cup of coffee?”
“Coffee is served only after dinner. The minimum expense is two hundred Yuan here,” she said. “Don’t you think it’s a bit late for coffee?”
She was right about that. After that scary morning, he really should be wary of coffee.
“A pot of tea, then. And a couple of cold dishes for the minimum expense—let’s see, pork tongue in Shaoxin wine, lotus root stuffed with sticky rice, deboned goose feet in special house sauce, and cold tofu mixed with chopped green onion and sesame oil. Don’t bring up the dishes in a hurry. Just tea for now.”
“Whatever way you like,” she said. “Here is the tea.”
He realized he must be one of those “cheap customers” here, choosing the inexpensive dishes. He thought he detected a touch of snobbishness in her voice.
He poured himself a cup of tea. It wasn’t that strong. He started chewing a tea leaf, thinking of the information he had gathered during the day.
According to Auntie Kong, the old photographer got into trouble because of the picture, so could Mei as well. Her mandarin dress in the picture appeared to be identical to those in the serial murder case. According to Professor Xiang, Comrade Revolutionary Activity, possibly responsible for her death, was none other than Tian, and his daughter Jasmine was the first victim. And according to Comrade Weng, the circumstances of her death were suspicious, with a man possibly involved.
Now he at least had a better grasp of the connection between Mei in the original mandarin dress and the victims in the red mandarin dresses. As he had discussed with Yu, Jasmine, the first victim, could have been the real target, and the rest, possibly picked for a different reason. The murderer could be someone connected with Mei, knowledgeable about her death and how it was related to Tian.
And he had partial answers to some of his other questions. The long wait between Mei’s death and Jasmine’s, for instance. The murderer might have taken delight in Tian’s long years of suffering instead of making one fatal strike.
So meeting with the neighborhood cop could be crucial. He was probably the only one knowledgeable about the exact circumstances of her death and about the relationship between Tian’s revolutionary activity and Mei’s death.
Only with that established could he move forward with the scenario in his mind.
The waitress started serving the cold dishes on his table.
“We also have special Dongzhi dishes,” she said. “Would you like to try some of them?”
“Oh, Dongzhi dishes,” he said. “Not now, thanks.”
He had no appetite, though the color combination of the white tofu and green scallion looked quite enticing. He tried a spoonful without tasting it, then he took out his notebook again.
It was too late to contact Yu at home, so he dialed Yu’s cell phone. No one picked up.
He hadn’t called his mother, either, since the day he had left for the vacation village. She usually went to bed late. So he dialed her number.
“I knew you would call. Your partner Yu has already contacted me,” she said. “Don’t worry about me, but take good care of yourself. In my eyes, you’re still Little Cao.”
“Little Cao” was something he hadn’t heard for a long time. She, too, was sentimental on the eve of Dongzhi Festival.
And he was vaguely aware of something stirring in the recesses of his mind.
“I’ll try to come over as early as possible, Mother.”
“Tomorrow night is Dongzhi. If you can make it, that will be great,” she said at the end of their talk, “but it doesn’t matter if you can’t.”
He finished the tea, making a gesture for the waitress to add hot water. She came with a tray that also contained the bill.
“Can you pay the bill now, sir? It’s late.”
He tossed out two hundred fifty Yuan. “Keep the change.”
People were not supposed to tip in the socialist China, but the restaurant was owned by a “capitalist.”
He tried to make a plan for the coming day. He had only one day’s time, and it had to be a plan that would work against all possible odds.
When he looked up again, he noticed the waitresses clearing away the other tables in the dining hall. He was the last diner sitting there. Because of the tip, perhaps, she did not come to hurry him up.
At the back of his mind, he seemed to hear the refrain from a poem he had read long ago. Hurry up. Please, it’s time.
He stood up, leaving most of the dishes untouched.
“Good night, sir,” a new hostess said at the gate, slightly shivering. “Good night.”
Again, he hesitated at the prospect of going back home.
He had to be here early the next morning. Hurrying back and forth like that, he wouldn’t be able to get much sleep anyway. Nor was he sure that he could get a taxi at around five o’clock in the morning—for a meeting he couldn’t afford to miss.
Perhaps an all-night café in the neighborhood would be an alternative, so that he could easily walk to the food market around five thirty.
The night was a deep metal blue against the neon lights. He reached for a cigarette, aware of a woman approaching him from the shadow of the restaurant.
“I’m a madam for the Henshan Nightclub,” she said in a Beijing dialect. “Come with me, sir. There are hundreds of girls for you there. Only one hundred Yuan for the room fee. No minimum expense.”
He was confounded, as if dragged into a movie scene of the old Shanghai red quarters. Little did he expect that it could have happened to him.
For once, he didn’t instantly reject the offer.
He hadn’t been unfamiliar with three-accompanying services. In the company of Big Bucks, however, Chen had never gone “all the way,” feeling obliged to keep up the police officer image when with people like Gu, who made a point of paying for everything.
But it was different tonight. He wasn’t going all the way, but some intimate knowledge of the profession might be helpful for the investigation.
And he could spend the rest of the night there, cozy and comfortable in the company of a young girl, instead of wandering like a homeless skunk, running about in the cold night.
“Please, Big Brother,” she went on with a pleading smile. “You are a man of distinction. I wouldn’t pull your leg.”
His distinction probably came from the fact that he emerged from the Old Mansion, one of the most extravagant restaurants in the city. Still, he thought he had just over a thousand Yuan left in his wallet, not including the small change in his pockets. Enough for a night in the club.
“Our girls are so beautiful, and talented too. You don’t have to sing if you don’t want to. Some of them are highly educated, with BA or MA degrees. They talk like understanding flowers.”
“Show me the way, then,” he said in Shanghai dialect. He might learn something from talking to a girl there, the way he wouldn’t have talked to White Cloud.
There were several tough-looking men standing at the entrance of the nightclub, yawning, turning suspicious eyes on Chen, who didn’t look like a regular client.
The woman led him to a room on the second floor. Barely had he seated himself on a black leather function sofa when a bevy of girls swarmed in, wearing slips or bikinis, their bare shoulders and thighs flashing against the wall behind them, like a jade screen of female bodies.
“Choose one,” the madam said with a broad grin.
He nodded toward a girl in a black mini slip, who had almond-shaped eyes and cherry lips curving into a sweet smile. Probably twenty-five or twenty-six, slightly older than the rest. She slid down beside him, her head resting against his shoulder naturally, as if they had known each other for years.