The Mao Case

by Qiu Xiaolong

  “Really!” she said incredulously. “This calls for a celebration. Oh, we will have crabs just like before.”

  “I’m sorry, Mrs. Long. I didn’t know about his high blood pressure, but he is giving me so much help on this book project,” Chen said, rising. “I have to leave now. Next time, I promise we will have nothing but crabs, not a single drop.”

  “It’s not your fault, Chief Inspector Chen. I’m glad you have not forgotten him.” She turned to her husband and said in a low voice, “Go and look at your face in the mirror. It’s as red as Mao’s Little Red Book.”

  “Look at the table,” Long said a little blurredly, accompanying Chen to the door, “It looks like a battle field deserted by the nationalist troops in 1949. Remember the poem about the liberation of Nanjing?”

  Looking back, Chen found the littered table looked somewhat like a deserted battlefield, with broken legs, crushed shells, scarlet and golden ovaries scattered here and there, but he failed to recall the image from that particular poem by Mao.

  ELEVEN

  DETECTIVE YU DECIDED TO interview Peng, Qian’s second lover.

  Yu didn’t know the neighborhood officer in charge of Peng’s area that well, so he had to approach Peng by himself, without telling anybody or revealing that he was a cop. It was a necessary move after an encounter Old Hunter had unexpectedly witnessed between Jiao and Peng – a suspicious meeting in a grocery store, where Jiao gave money to Peng.

  What was going on between the two?

  Peng’s affair with Qian had lasted no more than half a year before he was thrown into jail. When released, he could hardly take care of himself, let alone Jiao. They didn’t have any contact for all those years. She wasn’t his daughter, or even a stepdaughter.

  As Old Hunter considered himself more experienced at shadowing a person, he wanted to focus on Jiao. So it was up to Yu to tackle Peng.

  Early in the morning, Yu arrived at the market where Peng worked as a pork porter but was told that he had been fired.

  “A good-for-nothing guy, capable of soft-rice-eating only,” an ex-coworker of Peng’s said, hacking at a frozen pig head on a stump, spitting on the ground littered with rotten cabbage leaves. “You’ll probably find him eating white rice at home.”

  It was a harsh comment, particularly the “soft-rice-eating,” a phrase that usually referred to a parasitic man dependent on a woman. But, if in reference to Peng’s affair with Qian, it was not true. It had happened many years ago, when Qian had little money. As in a saying Old Hunter would quote, it’s easy to throw rocks at one already fallen to the bottom of a well. Yu thanked the ex-coworker, from whom he got Peng’s home address.

  Following the directions, Yu changed buses twice before he found himself at a shabby lane near Santou Road.

  He saw a heavily built man squatting at the lane’s entrance like a stone lion, half burying his face in a large bowl of noodles, holding a clove of garlic on the edge of the bowl. The noodle-eater wore a faded T-shirt, which was way too small on him, making him look like an overstuffed bag. Yu couldn’t help taking another look at the man, who stared back at Yu, still gobbling loudly.

  “So are you Mr. Peng?” Yu said, recognizing him from the picture. He offered the man a cigarette.

  “I’m Peng, but without Mr. attached to my name for twenty years. Mr. gives me goose bumps,” Peng said, taking the cigarette. “Oh, China. A smoke costs more than a bowl of noodles. What can I do for you, man?”

  “Well,” Yu said. He was going to play a role – just like his boss, who sometimes claimed to be a writer or a journalist when canvassing on a case. “I’m a journalist. I would like to talk with you. Let’s find a place. A nearby restaurant, perhaps?”

  “The restaurant across the street will do,” Peng said, holding the noodles bowl in his hand. “You should have come five minutes earlier.”

  It was a mom-and-pop place, simple and shabby. At the moment, between breakfast and lunch, there were no customers inside.

  The old proprietor looked curiously at the two, who made a sharp contrast. Peng, a down-and-out bum, and Yu, in a light-material blazer Peiqin had prepared for the occasion. She had even ironed it for him.

  “You’re familiar with the place, Peng. Go ahead and order.”

  Peng ordered four dishes and six bottles of beer, which came close to a banquet at this place. Luckily, nothing on the menu proved to be expensive. Peng shouted out his order loud enough that people outside the restaurant could have heard it too. Possibly it was a message to the neighborhood as well: that he was still somebody, with well-to-do people buying a big meal for him.

  “Now,” Peng gave a loud burp after swigging down the first cup of beer, “fire away.”

  “I just have a couple of questions about your experience during the Cultural Revolution.”

  “I know what you’re driving at.” Peng started gulping down the second cup. “About my damned affair with Qian, right? Let me tell you something, Mr. Journalist. I was only fifteen when I first met her. More than ten years older, she seduced me. If a white voluptuous body, like a bottle of iced beer in the summer, was put in front of you, for free, what would you do?”

  “Drink it?” Yu responded sardonically, astonished by the callousness with which Peng spoke about Qian.

  “In those years, a young boy like me didn’t know anything. I was a substitute, there to satisfy her lust. She didn’t care for me at all – only for my pathetic resemblance to her dead lover. And after I got out of prison, my best years and opportunities all gone, I couldn’t find a decent job. A wreck with no skills or experience. No future.”

  Staring at this middle-aged man, sloppy and sluggish, swigging down beer as if there were no tomorrow, Yu wondered what Qian could have seen in him.

  “Things have not been easy for you, Peng, but it’s such a long time ago. You can never know what she really thought at the time, and she paid a terrible price for her actions too. So please, go ahead and tell me the story from the beginning.”

  “You mean the story of me and Qian?”

  “Yes, the whole story.”

  “Come on, I’m not that dumb, Mr. Journalist. The story is worth tons of money. You aren’t going to buy it for a couple of beers.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “Someone came to me long before you. A writer, at least he introduced himself as one.” Peng put a large piece of pot-stewed beef into his mouth. “I was naïve enough to tell him everything, and he didn’t even buy me a bottle of beer. Only a couple of cigarettes – Red Pagoda Mountains. Such a cheap brand. He wrote the book, sold millions of copies, and I got nothing.”

  “Have you read the book?”

  “I’m just a rascal in the book, I’ve heard.”

  The writer, presumably the author of Cloud and Rain in Shanghai, might have portrayed Peng in a negative light in contrast to Qian, a romanticized and glamorized heroine.

  “Listen, Peng, I don’t really have to listen to your story. I can read the book. So how about a hundred yuan for a couple of questions?” Yu said, producing his wallet, imagining Chen’s move under the circumstances. Chen, however, had funds available to him as a chief inspector, which Yu did not.

  “Five hundred yuan.” Peng helped himself to a large spoonful of the Guizhou hot fish soup, slurping, smacking his lips.

  “Let me tell you something.” Yu banged the table with the bottom of the beer bottle. “You were following Jiao, and taking money from her the other day. It was a tip from a cop friend of mine, and I stopped him from taking action against you. After all, you’re a victim of the Cultural Revolution.”

  It was a long shot. Peng might have blackmailed her. But even if he hadn’t, his history was such that it wouldn’t be too difficult for the police to get him in trouble.

  “Those damned cops. They came to me about a month ago, treating me like shit. Naturally, they got nothing,” Peng said in a dramatic way, stretching out his arms, snatching the hundred-yuan bill from Yu. “Jiao’s
my step-daughter, isn’t she? She has so much it’s only fair for me to share a little bit of it.”

  “So Qian must have left something behind?”

  “A treasure trove – that’s a matter of course. What was her mother? A queen in the movie world. How many rich and powerful men had she slept with?”

  “But the Red Guards must have ransacked her home and taken the valuables away.”

  “No, I don’t think so. I’ve done some serious thinking – I’m not a brainless rice pot. At that time, the local Red Guards didn’t rush to her house like with some other families. She could have hidden her riches away.”

  The idea of treasure must have been mind-boggling for Peng, given the little he made at those odd jobs. The scenario was possible, but would it have taken Internal Security, and Chief Inspector Chen too, to launch such an investigation?

  “I called the writer,” Peng went on. “He gave me no money, and no money to her either, he said. So she must have Shang’s hoard.”

  “Jiao was as poor as you until about a year ago. If Shang had left something behind, Jiao would have sold it much earlier.”

  “Shang must have left something, I know.”

  “How?”

  “You’re a clever man,” Peng said with a mysterious air, poking out the steamed carp’s eye and rolling it on his tongue. “Shang danced with Mao, who came from the Forbidden City, with the treasury of the ancient dynasties at his disposal.”

  “That’s just your imagination, Peng.”

  “No. I’ve done my research. Only recently has the antique market become so hot. Two or three years ago, there was no way to find a buyer for the stuff from the Forbidden City. Not at a good price anyway. This explains why she suddenly became rich about a year ago. Besides, I can tell you something that will prove it,” Peng added, trying to pick up a soy-sauce-stewed pig tail with his chopsticks. “But you have asked your question, and I have given my answer.”

  “Really?” Yu produced his wallet again, in which there was about two hundred yuan left. “That’s all I have here. One hundred more. And I have to pay for the meal. Tell me how you can prove it.”

  “You’ll have your money’s worth, Mr. Journalist,” Peng said, pocketing the bill while taking another big draught of beer. “I’ve been shadowing Jiao for quite a while. As I suspected, she has been selling the antiques – piece by piece. No one could have afforded the whole set. So one day I followed her to the Joy Gate.”

  “Joy Gate?” It was a dance hall where Shang had once shone like the moon, as Peiqin had told him. Then he remembered another case with a sudden ache in his heart. Not too long ago, one of his colleagues had been murdered there while he was stationed outside. “That’s nothing too suspicious, I think.”

  “But the way she went there was. She kept looking over her shoulder, like she was worried that she was being followed. Then she slipped into a hair salon and, instead of having her hair done, she left through the back door, putting on a pair of sunglasses before she emerged out of a side lane. I happened to be buying a pack of cigarettes nearby, so I didn’t lose sight of her. To follow her into the Joy Gate, I spent all the money in my pocket for an entrance ticket. Sure enough, she was there, dancing with a tall, robust man who had a round face like a full moon.”

  “Do you mean that she’s a ‘dancing girl’?”

  “No, I don’t think so. Those dancing girls don’t make a lot of money. And that was the only time I saw her go there. Most of the time, she goes to Xie Mansion. There are dancing parties there every week.”

  “So the man is someone she knows from Xie Mansion?”

  “That I don’t know. I will never be admitted there and I know better than to try. But that same evening, I think I saw him at her place.”

  “You tailed her from the dance hall back to her home?”

  “No, not exactly. She danced only a couple of dances and then she left. I was curious, so I followed her out. She hailed a taxi and I squeezed into a bus. It took me much longer to get to her apartment complex. There’s no way I could get in, of course, so I walked around, hoping to confront her if she came out. Then looking up, I saw someone standing by the window of her room – the man from the dance hall. For a short moment, she was leaning against him, in a most intimate manner.”

  “When was this?”

  “About a couple of months ago.”

  That was before Chen’s investigation started, possibly before Internal Security’s too, Yu reflected. Apparently, no one had been seen at her place since.

  “Anything after that?”

  “The light went out and I saw nothing more.”

  “That could have been a neighbor of hers.”

  “It was the man she had danced with, I’m positive. That round-moon-like face of his was unmistakable. I followed her for several more days, but without ever seeing him again. I wasn’t able to watch her all the time. I had to work, carrying frozen pigs on my back at the food market. Then I was fired and yesterday I confronted her.”

  “What did you say to her?”

  “When I told her that I’d seen the man in her room, all the blood went out of her face. She kept saying it was none of my business. I told her I’d been fired and that she could help me a little. So she took the money from her purse, about two hundred and fifty. She said she’d call the police if I ever tried to approach her again.”

  “Are you going to contact her again?”

  “I haven’t made up my mind yet, but there must be something going on between Jiao and the man. He must have given the money to her.”

  “Hold on, Peng. How did she get her money – from the man as a lover or as a buyer?”

  “Perhaps both, but who cares? It’s just like the old saying: If she weren’t a thief, she wouldn’t feel guilty or ner vous. She wouldn’t have given me the money for nothing.”

  “But that’s blackmail. If she reported it to the police, you could get into big trouble.”

  “I’m a dead pig. What difference would it make throwing me into a cauldron of boiling water?” Peng said, crunching the last sweet and sour rib and wiping his fingers on the paper napkin. “What I did in those years is nothing today. Go to any high school, and you can see so many students billing and cooing on campus, behind the trees and in the bushes. But I went to jail for many years for that.”

  “Many people suffered in those years.”

  “I tried to start over but people avoided me like a piece of stinking meat. And after all these years, they are still telling their horrible stories about me and Qian. Do you think I really care about anything now?”

  Peng was lost in self-pity, half drunk, his face red like a cockscomb. Yu didn’t think he could get any more out of him, not with six bottles of beer empty on the table.

  “You have suffered a lot, but don’t try things like blackmail. It won’t do you any good.”

  “Thank you, Mr. Journalist. I won’t if I have any other choice.”

  “If you happen to think of anything else, you may contact me,” Yu said, putting down his cell phone number on a scrap of paper.

  “I will,” Peng said, draining the last cup.

  “Don’t tell anybody about our talk. Some people may try to get you into trouble,” Yu said, rising. “Take your time here.”

  “Don’t worry about that. I’m going to finish the noodles too.”

  Walking out of the restaurant, Yu turned back to see Peng burying his face in that bowl of noodles again, the same scene he had witnessed earlier. Perhaps there was a reason Peng’s coworker had commented on his rice-eating capability.

  TWELVE

  CHEN ARRIVED AT THE tea house on Henshan Road, in the company of Old Hunter. The waitress recognized them, led them into the private room, and left them alone.

  As soon as he seated himself at the table, Old Hunter started briefing Chen about what he had done and what Yu had found out from Peng. For once, he wasn’t like a teasing Suzhou opera singer but instead talked fast, not digressing at all. Che
n listened without interruption. Old Hunter then drained his cup and stood up. “I have to leave, Chief.”

  “Why such a hurry?” Chen said. “The second cup of tea is the best.”

  “I have to get back to the hot-water house opposite her apartment complex. An old security guard named Bei has a habit of fetching hot water in a stainless-steel cup and scurrying back to his cubicle around noon. I bet he buys a penny’s worth of hot water to warm up his cold rice. The owner of the hot-water house will try to introduce me to him today.”

  “Be careful. Internal Security is watching.”

  “Don’t worry. I’ll be sitting there, it will be simply a chance meeting between two old customers at the hot-water house. Who’ll bother? So you see, I’m going to have a second pot of tea in an hour. Bei’s retired too. Two retirees may have plenty to talk about.”

  “Really, like in one of your favorite proverbs, a piece of older ginger is spicier indeed.”

  “Spicier indeed,” the retired cop echoed with a wry smile. “But I’ll tell you what! It’s another Mao case, and my left eyelid has been twitching all morning. That may not be a good omen.”

  “Rub your left eye three times and say, ‘It’s a good omen,’ ” Chen said, smiling. “It works, according to my mother.”

  Chen rose to accompany the old man to the door of the tea house, watching him until he was out of sight. Then Chen came back to the table, to the suddenly solitary teacup. The waitress must have removed the other one.

  He was disturbed at the thought of Yu’s involvement, though it might not be something that could be helped. For such a Mao case, Old Hunter alone could do only so much, and Detective Yu had to chip in, a reinforcement which was already making a difference. There was no stopping a loyal partner like Detective Yu from throwing in his lot with Chief Inspector Chen.

  What Yu had discovered was a possibility not to be ignored, Chen contemplated, sipping at the tea without tasting it.