The Cook, the Crook, and the Real Estate Tycoon

by Liu Zhenyun

  Liu returned to the dining hall and bandaged his head, a minor injury that stopped bleeding once his head was wrapped up. He could not sleep that night. It was bad enough that his pack was stolen, but now he had to avenge a beating he’d received because of it. But finding the pack was still the first order of business, for it would be harder to locate as time went by. He had to put aside the thought of revenge and focus on the pack, but he had no idea how. The police were no help, neither was Brother Cao; it was also pointless to enlist the help of Han Shengli and people like him. Liu had reached a dead end, for there was no other solution. By the time dawn broke, he had reached a decision: he had no one but himself to rely on, so it was up to him to find the thief.

  The following morning he asked Ren Baoliang for three days off without telling him why; he did not want Ren to laugh at him and, besides, it was too long a story to condense into a few words. He just told Ren he’d been beaten up and needed to go to the hospital. Convinced by the bloodstained bandage, Ren chose to say nothing. Liu rode out onto the street, his first stop the post office where his pack had been stolen. The man from Henan, still there playing his erhu, had reverted back to the popular song, no longer singing the Henan tune. This time, of course, Liu was in no mood to argue over that; his mind was on something else. Ever since the day the pack was stolen, he had hoped the thief would return to the spot, which was why he gave the Henan man two yuan each day to keep watch. Now, after the beating the day before, he was in a bad mood and flew into a rage at the sight of the man belting out “Love and Dedication” with his eyes shut, as if he were a casual bystander.

  “Stop, stop!”

  The man opened his eyes and stopped singing when he saw Liu.

  “I haven’t seen him again.”

  “You have your eyes shut, so how are you supposed to see him? What did I give you money for?”

  “I’m supposed to do your bidding for two yuan?” he grumbled. “I’ll give you back your money. I think there’s something wrong with you. He’s not that stupid. Why would he come back after making off with your pack?”

  Liu had to admit that the man was right, so he rode off, knowing full well that it was pointless to argue.

  He spent the whole day out on the street. It had seemed like a good idea, but where to begin? He knew that thieves are territorial, so the thief would likely stay close to the post office, if not to the same exact spot, just about every day. So he made a round of the markets, the bus stops, and the subway entrances, all places with crowds, the best areas for thieves to ply their trade. But when the day was over, he had laid his eyes on just about everyone but the thief. Several people had looked familiar from behind, but his joy had turned to disappointment each time he moved in front of them. There were also a few who had resembled the thief, but no dark green mole on the right cheek.

  By the time the streets were lit up, it dawned on him that he had forgotten to eat, though he wasn’t hungry. He was about to call it a day and return the following morning when it occurred to him that thieves also work at night. After buying a flatbread at a stall, he squatted at the roadside to eat and study the people emerging from the subway; the thief was not among them. He got back on his bike and rode along, so intent on watching pedestrians he failed to see a car slowly pull up to the curb, where the driver opened his door. Too focused on the people around him, Liu slammed into the door and hit the asphalt; his bicycle’s front wheel, twisted out of shape, continued to spin. The owner of the car, a Lingzhi, was a heavyset middle-aged man who was alarmed at first. But once he knew what had happened, he ignored Liu and went to check on his car. There was a dent on the front door and a long scratch on the back door from the bike pedal.

  Incensed, he ran up to Liu.

  “Do you have a death wish?”

  Liu appeared to have escaped with no broken bones, but his back had hit the curb and the pain was so intense he nearly fainted. He tried to stand up but couldn’t, so he struggled to sit up, when another piercing pain led him to pull up his pants leg. There was a big bruise on his leg.

  “Do you know how much this car cost?” the man shouted, ignoring Liu’s injuries.

  Liu could not but wonder why he was having such lousy luck. His pack had been stolen and not recovered, and now he’d banged into a man’s car. One problem had yet to be solved and another had come on its heels.

  “I don’t have any money,” was all he could think of to say.

  The man could tell, from Liu’s accent and clothes, that he was a migrant worker, but he clenched his fists and shouted anyway:

  “You’re going to pay for the damage even if you have to sell your house.”

  “My house is in Henan,” Liu rubbed his leg, “and no one will buy it.”

  Before the man could say any more, a traffic cop on a motorcycle, light flashing, rode up and stopped. Some long-haul, privately owned, unlicensed gypsy cabs were using loud speakers to hustle for fares to Tangshan and Chengde, but drove off when they saw the cop. Ignoring them, he turned off the motorcycle and flashing light to study the scene, as calls came through the walkie-talkie on his shoulder.

  “Make him pay for the damage,” the car owner yelled, “to teach him a lesson.”

  The cop looked to be new on the job, a square-faced young man in his twenties. The day before he had responded to a traffic accident on Fourth Ring Road and, due to his lack of experience, had been tricked by both sides. He’d made a mess of the investigation, placing the blame for the accident on the wrong driver, first one then the other, upsetting them both. They had filed a complaint at traffic court earlier that morning. He’d just emerged from a tongue lashing by his squad leader, and was in a bad mood to begin with. If the driver of the car had been calm and reasonable, he’d have examined the scene of the accident more carefully, but the man sounded as if he was issuing him an order. He frowned.

  If that weren’t enough, the man pressed his face so close the cop could detect a sour smell from the man’s dinner. Rich people all have sour breath. They sit in their air-conditioned cars all day long, safe from the elements, while he was exposed to the elements, inhaling dust and car exhaust. The man’s tone tried his patience. Pushing him away with his helmet, he skipped the scene survey and said in measured tones:

  “Teach who a lesson? How come I think it was probably your fault.”

  Surprised, the man began to argue:

  “Look closely. My car wasn’t moving. He was the one who hit me.”

  “This is a sidewalk,” the cop stared at him, “not a parking spot.”

  Finally realizing he had parked in the wrong place, he was deflated.

  “I just stopped to buy a pack of cigarettes,” he muttered. Then he blurted out, “I know your squad leader.”

  Everything would have been fine if he hadn’t brought up the squad leader. But when he heard that, the cop walked over to check on Liu Yuejin, who was sitting slumped on the curb, foaming at the mouth, by all appearances nearly unconscious. The bandage on his head made the injury look serious, so the cop said to the driver:

  “Drive him to the hospital, right now.”

  Wondering if Liu might be seriously wounded, the driver panicked. He tried to slink away.

  “Where do you think you’re going?” the cop shouted.

  That stopped the man in his tracks. Seeing he was not in the wrong, Liu struggled to his feet. He had faked the foaming.

  “I’m not going to the hospital,” he said to the cop. “Tell him to pay for my bicycle.”

  The cop looked over at the man, who looked at Liu, then at the cop, and then at his watch. He took out two hundred yuan and flung the money to the ground.

  “What the—”

  He glared at the cop before getting into his car and driving off.

  “It’s not that I don’t want to go to the hospital,” Liu said to the cop. “I just can’t, because I need to take care of something else.”

  “You’re not innocent either.” The cop wasn’t happy. “What w
ere you thinking, not watching where you were going?”

  Liu Yuejin had a good feeling about the cop, who had, after all, helped him. It had been days since he’d had anyone to talk to, and he felt sorry for himself because of the accident, so he opened up to the cop, as if he were family. He told him everything, the stolen pack, its contents, his visit to the precinct station, his search on the street, and so on. He was revealing to a complete stranger all the things he’d kept from Ren Baoliang, but he wound up confusing the cop, who doubted the existence of sixty thousand yuan. He took a close look at Liu and said:

  “You’re from Henan, aren’t you? You people are born liars.”

  Then he got on his motorcycle and rode off with the light flashing, leaving Liu behind, half dazed.

  14

  Yang Zhi

  Yang Zhi was feeling seriously out of sorts.

  Four days earlier, he’d stolen a fanny pack near the Ciyun Temple post office, though it had been his day off and he hadn’t planned on working. Normally he worked five days a week and took two days off, unlike other thieves, but much like office workers, the only difference being the days he took off—Wednesdays and Thursdays. Stealing the pack that day was like working overtime. The Temple area was not his territory, so this had been a violation of professional ethics, a risk he usually shunned; money was always good, but you had to know when to stop, like anyone engaged in business dealings.

  The mark that day was the reason why Yang worked overtime—the man was asking for it. Dressed in a Western suit and sporting a fanny pack, he was chastising a street artist. Yang hated the idea of the strong bullying the weak, and if that weren’t enough, the man was gesturing wildly, pointing to the distant CBD structure and claiming he’d built it. He didn’t look like a developer, at most a foreman at a construction site, and the bulging pack was a sign of hefty contents. Yang simply could not abide the man harassing the street singer and showing off his wealth, which was why he made a snap decision to work that day.

  After snatching the pack and shaking off the man chasing him, Yang went into a public toilet and opened the pack, only to be disappointed by the contents, which he had thought could be tens of thousands. There were a few thousand, nothing to scoff at, but disappointing. The rest was junk Yang did not deign to examine. He’d been tricked by the man’s appearance and ruined his day off, but he put it out of his mind after leaving the toilet.

  Unexpectedly, he’d owned the pack for less than four hours. After leaving the toilet, he’d gone to a public bath and then strolled over to Lao Gan’s Xinzhou Restaurant, where he’d run into Zhang Duanduan, the girl from Gansu. If she’d looked like an ordinary hooker, nothing would have happened; it was precisely because she didn’t that he’d been attracted and gone with her. It had been a trap.

  If it had been only the money and the pack, Yang would have eaten the loss and swallowed the humiliation; but it was like a flood inundating the Temple of the Dragon King, the deity in charge of rain—people in the same trade not recognizing each other.

  The problem was, he was doing the you-know-what with Duanduan when the three men stormed in and surprised him. By itself, that was no big deal; it was just that his you-know-what was shocked into inaction. In the heat of the moment, he’d been in a hurry to grab his clothes to cover himself and paid it little attention when his clothes were snatched away.

  So when they took off with everything after kicking him around a bit, he slinked back home and realized that something was amiss down below. He broke out in a cold sweat; this was serious. The loss of the money and the pack now paled in comparison. Unwilling to accept the prospect, he lay down in bed to play with it, but the more he did the worse it got, until finally he panicked. Grabbing some money, he went out and found a streetwalker; still no good.

  So he went to another one, this time a big-breasted prostitute, with no better result, maybe even worse than with the first one. The next one was neither too skinny nor too plump. She initiated a stirring down below as they walked back to his place. But when they got into bed, it turned into a limp noodle; he refused to give up. He worked really hard at it, his head bathed in sweat; the woman didn’t object for a while, but after half an hour, she impatiently tried to squirm out from under him.

  “Aren’t you done yet?” She added, “Don’t blame me if you can’t get it up.”

  That earned her a slap that shut her up; she lay back down and remained motionless as Yang continued his hopeless rally. Finally, he knew it was wasted effort. He’d only stolen the man’s pack, while the three men and a woman had robbed him of his manhood, yet his anger was focused on the woman only. How could she trick and frighten him like that?

  All he could think of the following day was finding the offending team. He went back to Lao Gan’s diner, then to the little house, as well as to streets and areas frequented by prostitutes, but he never saw them again, which intensified his anxiety. For three days, Yang Zhi searched for them, with no interest in thievery; he would not do anything else until he found them, or more precisely, her, Zhang Duanduan, the cause of all his trouble. He’d kill her to vent his anger and expel the fear inside, which, hopefully, would help restore everything down below. Before long he was blaming it on the pack; it had created so many problems it led to his murderous thoughts of revenge. In the process, he’d forgotten that he’d stolen the pack in the first place, from a man called Liu Yuejin, a cook, not a boss, at a construction site, who was looking everywhere for him. The pack would rob Yang of his manhood and Liu of his life.

  A lane dotted with food stalls lined one side of the Tonghui River, a stinky ditch that had seen better days, with clear water and boats, during the Republican era. On the left side of the river were rows of CBD buildings and to the right were the food stalls; the area was quiet in the day, a filthy mess that was obscured by bright lights at night. The turbid, foul-smelling water reflected the high rises along its bank, giving off the illusion of a bustling city as the water traveled east. The row of stalls sold just about everything edible: barbecue, entrails soup, stew and wheat cakes, spicy hotpot, spicy prawns, Korean cold noodles, Turkish barbecue, and so on. Smoke permeated the air above the crowds of diners, so tightly packed they could barely move. Standing along the railings were working girls looking for business.

  After three days of a fruitless search, Yang recalled that Duanduan was from Gansu and that the three men also spoke with a northwestern accent; after asking around, he learned that there was indeed a Gansu gang working the Tonghui River bank, an area with no clear territorial demarcation that drew petty thieves for minor work. Now Yang changed his tactic from searching to waiting. On the third night, going stall by stall to ask for answers, he got one at the spicy hotpot stall, where he was told that three men from Gansu often came for midnight snacks with a woman. That had to be them, Yang said to himself. He sat by the stall and waited for them from six o’clock till two in the morning, with no sign of them. The stall owner, also from Shaanxi, thought Yang was waiting for friends.

  “They come just about every day,” he said. “I wonder why they aren’t here tonight.”

  Yang was in no hurry. He came the following night, but instead of the Gansu gang, Liu Yuejin showed up. Liu had learned about Yang waiting at the stall from Hong Liang, the inept duck slaughterer. Liu had been out all day searching unsuccessfully for Yang, planning to wait all night if necessary. But a downpour drenched him and gave him a minor fever, so he went back early to the dining hall, where a small makeshift room of broken bricks against one wall served as his living quarters and a guard house for the dining hall. With the light from the site, he bent down to open the door as someone patted him on the shoulder from behind. Startled, he turned and saw it was Hong Liang, the fat youngster from Cao’s shed, a sight that set him off right away.

  “What do you want?” he asked gruffly.

  “I didn’t help beat you up,” he said, then came straight to the point: “I want to make a deal with you.”

  �
��I’m busy,” Liu grumbled.

  “I’ll tell you where the thief is for a thousand yuan.”

  Liu paused, his elation quickly replaced by disbelief. If even Brother Cao couldn’t find the thief, how would this fat little guy, who had trouble killing a duck, know where he was?

  “You still have my earnest money,” Liu said, convinced that he was being conned. “Don’t get on my nerves, or I won’t let you off easily.”

  Undaunted, Hong Liang held out his hand. Liu thought he looked like he meant business, and though he wasn’t entirely convinced, in the end, his desire to find the thief won out and he decided to trust him for now. He could always square things later if he was lying. He took out a hundred yuan, one of the two hundred he’d gotten from the accident.

  “This is all I’ve got. Blood money.”

  Hong Liang took the money and stuck his hand out again. Liu was beginning to believe him, but did not want to give in.

  “Search me if you don’t believe me.” Liu raised his arms. “I’m running a fever and I’m not even willing to buy a bottle of water.”

  “It’s not for this piddling amount.” Hong Liang flicked his finger at the bill. “I’m doing it because the thief hit me once.” He added, “I should have told Brother Cao, but Baldy Cui and the others have beaten me too, so I didn’t want to share anything with those bastards.” He wasn’t done yet:

  “I sneaked out early this evening to try my luck at the snack stalls by the Tonghui River. I didn’t steal anything but I saw the man you’re looking for. He was having something from the spicy hotpot stall.”

  Leaving Hong Liang behind, Liu got on his bicycle, with its second-hand wheel, which had cost him thirty yuan, and sped over to the Tonghui River. It was not quite ten at night, the busiest time for the area. After locking his bike, he began inching his way through the crowd, his eyes on the spicy hotpot stalls. After checking out several he spotted Yang Zhi at a stall by the bridge. The sight of his old nemesis brought back all his anger; he was surprised to find him here, since he’d been to this spot before, but maybe he hadn’t looked carefully enough. Who could have predicted that he’d find the thief with the help of a hapless duck slaughterer, after spending so much time searching fruitlessly on his own?