A Loyal Character Dancer - [Chief Inspector Chen Cao 02]

by Qiu Xiaolong

  That line of argument might work with Party Secretary Li. He would not mention Minister Huang’s phone call.

  “That may be true,” Li said, taking the last sip of his soybean soup. “So you are all for continuing the investigation with Inspector Rohn’s participation?”

  “When you first talked me into taking the case, you quoted from Yue Fei,” Chen said, crushing out his cigarette. “His last two lines are my favorites, When I set the mountains and rivers in order, / I bow to Heaven.”

  “I understand, but not everyone does.” Li tapped his finger on the table for a minute before he went on, “Some people are talking about your giving a gift to Inspector Rohn, and putting it on for her in front of the hotel.”

  “That’s absurd,” Chen protested, trying to grasp the significance of the information. Some people. It must be Internal Security—the police of the police. A small trinket meant nothing, but in the report made by Internal Security, it could mean anything—Chief Inspector Chen has lost his Party spirit, flirting with an American secret agent. “Internal Security? Why?”

  “Don’t worry about who made the report, Chief Inspector Chen. If you haven’t done anything wrong, you don’t have to be nervous about the devil knocking at your door in the depth of the night.”

  “It was after the Beijing Opera. Following your suggestion, I walked Inspector Rohn back to the hotel. A peddler on the Bund tried to sell her a trinket. Some peddlers make a point of ripping off foreign tourists, according to the newspapers. So I bargained for her for a necklace. And she asked me to put it on for her.”

  He didn’t mention that he had paid for it. Since he did not expect to seek reimbursement from the bureau, it made no difference as far as his expense report went.

  “Yes, the Americans can be so . . . different.”

  “As a representative of the Chinese police, I believe it’s proper to show hospitality. It’s beyond me who the devil—” He had a lot more he wanted to say, but he saw the expression pass across Li’s face. It was not the moment to blow off steam since Internal Security was involved.

  It was not the first time for Chief Inspector Chen.

  The involvement of Internal Security might have been understandable in the National Model case, in which the ever-glorious Party image was at stake. But in this investigation, Chief Inspector Chen had not been doing anything that could possibly jeopardize the Party’s interests.

  Unless someone wanted to put an end to his investigation. Not in the interests of the Party, but in that of the triads.

  “Don’t think too much about it,” Li said. “I have made it clear to the informer: This is a very special case. Whatever Comrade Chief Inspector Chen does is done in the interests of the country.”

  “I appreciate it, Party Secretary Li.”

  “Don’t mention it. You’re not an ordinary cadre. You’ve got a long, long way to go.” Li stood up. “It’s not an easy job for you. A lot of stress, I understand. I have talked with Superintendent Zhao. We’ll arrange a vacation for you next month. Take a week off, and go to Beijing—see the Great Wall, the Forbidden City, and the Summer Palace. The bureau will cover the expense.”

  “That would be great,” Chen said, rising. “I have to go back to work now. By the way, how did you learn about the abduction in Qingpu, Party Secretary Li?”

  “Your man Qian Jun called me late last night with this information.”

  “I see.”

  Li walked Chen to the door and said, with his hand resting on the door frame, “About a week ago, I dialed your old phone number by mistake. So I had a long talk with your mother. We old people share common concerns.”

  “Really! She has not spoken to me about it.” Chen marveled at Li’s capacity occasionally to add a human touch to Party politics.

  “She believes it is the time for you to settle down. A family for yourself, you know what she means. It is up to you to make the decision, but I think she’s right.”

  “Thank you, Party Secretary Li.” Chen saw what Li was driving at. The proposed Beijing vacation was part of it. With Ling in the background. Party Secretary Li’s remarks may have been well meant, but his timing was portentous.

  Why should Li have brought this up today?

  After leaving Li’s office, Chen took out a cigarette. But he put it back into his pocket. There was a water cooler at the a corner of the corridor. He drank some water, then crushed the paper cup into a wad and dropped it into a wastebasket.

  * * * *

  Chapter 20

  T

  he moment he got back in his office, Chen dialed Qian Jun.

  “Oh, I called you several times last night, Chief Inspector Chen, but I could not reach you. I lost your cell phone number. I’m really sorry about it. So I called Party Secretary Li.”

  “You lost my cell phone number!” He did not believe Qian’s explanation. He could have left a message at his home. It was understandable that a young ambitious cop might try to please the number-one Party boss—but by circumventing his immediate superior? He began to wonder why Li had insisted on assigning Qian to him.

  “You know what happened to the Guangxi woman, Chief Inspector Chen?”

  “Yes, Party Secretary Li has told me. How did you learn of it?”

  “After I talked to you, I got in touch with the Qingpu police. They called me in the evening.”

  “Any new developments today?”

  “No. The Qingpu police are still trying to find the jeep the men rode in. It had an army license plate.”

  “Tell them to contact me as soon as they have any leads. They are responsible for what happened in their area,” Chen said. “Anything new about the body in Bund Park?”

  “No. Nothing, but the official autopsy report from Dr. Xia. There’s nothing new in it. No response from hotels and neighborhood committees, either. I’ve interviewed a number of hotel managers. More than twenty of them. None of them provided any clue.”

  “I doubt that they have the guts to speak. The gangsters would never leave them in peace if they did.”

  “That’s true. Several months ago, a cafe reported a drug dealer to the police, and it was totally smashed the next week.”

  “What else are you going to do?”

  “I’ll keep calling the hotels and neighborhood committees. Please tell me what else I can do, Chief Inspector Chen.”

  “There is one thing you can do,” Chen said testily. “Go to the hospital. Ask the doctors to do their best for Qiao. If money is an issue, draw on our special budget.”

  “I’ll go there, Chief, but the special budget—”

  “Don’t give me any buts! That’s the least we can do,” Chen snapped, slamming down the receiver.

  He was perhaps too upset to be fair to the young cop. He felt enormously responsible for what had happened to Qiao, who had gone through all that for her baby, and still lost it in the end. What was worse, she could never become pregnant again. A devastating blow to the poor woman.

  Chen broke a pencil in two, like an ancient soldier breaking an arrow in a pledge. He must find Wen, and soon. That would be his way to retaliate against human smuggling. Against Jia Xinzhi. And against all the evil of the triads.

  He brooded over Qiao’s bad luck in finding the job in Qingpu. “Fortune begets misfortune, and misfortune begets fortune,“ as Lao-tse had said thousands of years earlier. So many provincial people had poured into Shanghai, they could not find jobs even with the help of a new institution in the market economy—the Shanghai Metropolitan Employment Agency. Qiao had succeeded, but that success had led to disaster for her.

  There was another office for him to call, he realized. Wen might have turned to the job agency for a temporary position, such as a live-in waitress or nanny.

  The answer he got was not encouraging. Their records did not show anyone matching Wen’s description, nor was a pregnant woman considered a likely candidate in the present day job market. The agency manager promised, however, to call if any relevant inf
ormation turned up.

  Then Chen phoned the Peace Hotel. It was still his responsibility to keep Catherine Rohn company, whatever criticism this might lead to. She was not in. He left a message. This was not the moment for him to go to the hotel, holding a bouquet of flowers. Not after Internal Security had reported his putting a trinket around her neck, and Party Secretary Li had chosen to bring up the subject.

  He had worked with her for only a couple of days. A partner assigned to him temporarily. It could have been, however, one of the unstated reasons for Party Secretary Li’s proposing the vacation in Beijing. A timely reminder. Everything was politics, and everything would be grist for Li’s mill.

  He decided to go to his mother’s place during the lunch break.

  It was not far away, but he had Little Zhou drive him there in the Mercedes. On the way, he stopped by a food market, where he bargained with a fruit peddler for several minutes before he bought a small bamboo basket of dried Longyan pulp. He recalled Inspector Rohn’s gibe about his bargaining skills.

  The sight of the familiar old building in Jiujiang Road seemed to promise the brief respite he needed from politics. Some of his former neighbors greeted him as he stepped out of the Mercedes which he was using for his mother’s benefit. She had never approved of his career choice, but in an increasingly materialistic neighborhood, his cadre status, with a chauffeur holding the door for him, might help hers.

  The common cement sink by the front door was still damp. He spotted deep-green moss sprouting abundantly, like a large map, near the tap. The cracked walls needed extensive repairs. Several holes at the foot of the side wall, from which the crickets of his childhood had jumped out, were still there. The stairway was musty and dark, and the landings were piled with broken cardboard boxes and wicker baskets.

  He had not visited his mother since he had taken over the Wen case. There, in the same small plain attic room, he was amazed to see a colorful array of breads, sausages, and exotic-looking dishes in disposable plastic containers on the table.

  “All from Moscow Suburb,” his mother said.

  “That Overseas Chinese Lu! He can be overwhelming.”

  “He calls me ‘Mom,’ and refers to you as his real brother in need.”

  “He’s been harping on the same story all this time.”

  “ ‘A friend in need is a friend indeed.’ I’ve been reading Buddhist scripture. It’s not for nothing you do good deeds in this world. Whatever you do leads to something, either what you expect or what you don’t expect. Some people call it luck, but it’s really karma. Another friend of yours, Mr. Ma, has also visited me.”

  “When?”

  “This morning. A regular medical checkup, that’s what the old man calls it.”

  “It’s very thoughtful of him,” he said. “Any problems, Mother?”

  “My stomach has not been so comfortable of late. Mr. Ma insisted on coming over. It’s not easy for an old man to climb the stairs here.”

  “What did he say?”

  “Nothing serious. The imbalance of yin and yang, so on and so forth. He had the medicine delivered here,” she said. “Like Lu, Mr. Ma is anxious to pay you back, or he won’t be at ease. A man yiqi.”

  “The old man has suffered so much. Ten years for a copy of Dr. Zhivago. What I did was nothing.”

  “Wang Feng wrote the article about him, didn’t she?”

  “Yes, that was her idea.”

  “How is she doing in Japan?”

  “I haven’t heard from her for a long time.”

  “Any news from Beijing?”

  “Well, Party Secretary Li talks about arranging a Beijing vacation for me,” he said evasively.

  His mother did not really approve of his relationship with Ling, he knew. The old woman was concerned that High above, in the jade palace of the moon, / it could be too cold. What had worried Su Dongpo thousands of years earlier worried her, but what worried her more was the reality of his approaching thirty-five, still a bachelor. As the saying went, “Anything in a vegetable basket has to be counted as a vegetable now.”

  “That’s good,” she said with a smile.

  “I’m not sure if I can make it.”

  “So, you’re not sure—” His mother left the sentence unfinished, “Well, Mr. Ma told me you brought an American girl to his place.”

  “She is my partner temporarily.”

  “You seemed to think a lot of her, Mr. Ma said.”

  “Come on, Mother. I have to take good care of her. If anything happens to her, I will be held responsible.”

  “Whatever you say, Son. I’m old, and I hope you will settle down, just like everybody else.”

  “I’m too busy with my work, Mother.”

  “I do not know anything about your work. The world has changed too much. But I don’t think entanglement with an American will do you any good.”

  “Don’t worry, Mother. It’s totally out of the question.”

  He was disturbed, though. Normally, his mother refrained from interfering—except for quoting the same Confucian maxim, “There are three unfilial things in the world; to be without offspring is the worst.” Now she seemed to agree with what Party Secretary Li had tacitly suggested.

  People cannot see the mountains clearly when they are in the mountains, Su Dongpo had written on a Buddhist temple wall in the Lu Mountains. But Chief Inspector Chen was not in the mountains, he believed.

  He did not talk much as he helped his mother prepare lunch. Before he finished warming up the dishes from Moscow Suburb, however, his cell phone rang.

  “Chief Inspector Chen, this is Gu Haiguang speaking.”

  “General Manager Gu. What’s up?”

  “I’ve got something for you. There was someone from Fujian here a couple of days ago. I am not sure if he’s a Flying Ax. He got in touch with some organization people here and then disappeared. “

  “So he was not Diao, the Hong Kong visitor to the club you mentioned?”

  “No, definitely not.”

  “What was he doing in Shanghai?”

  “He was looking for someone.”

  “For the woman I described to you?”

  “I have not yet got any details, but I will try my best to find out, Chief Inspector Chen.”

  “When was that Fujianese last seen?”

  “On the afternoon of April seventh. Some people saw him having dumplings in a snack bar on Fuzhou Road. There was a car waiting for him. A silver Acura.”

  The date matched. The development seemed to be encouraging. Possibly it related to the park case, or to Wen’s case. Or maybe both.

  “Great job, General Manager Gu. What’s the name of the restaurant?”

  “I don’t know. It sells a special kind of Fuzhou dumplings. Yanpi. It’s close to the Foreign Language Bookstore.” Gu added, “And please call me Gu, Chief Inspector Chen.”

  “Thank you, Gu. There’re not too many silver Acuras in the city. It will be easy to check through the Traffic Control Office. I really appreciate your tip.”

  “Don’t mention it. Meiling, your secretary, called me this morning. She may come over to take a look at the Dynasty. For a club like ours, she said a parking lot would be essential.”

  “I’m glad she thinks so.”

  “She also told me a lot about you, Chief Inspector Chen.”

  “Really!”

  “Everybody knows you will soon be the director of the Traffic Control Office. Indeed, with your connections at the highest level, that position means nothing to you.”

  Chen frowned though he understood why Meiling had said those things to Gu. It had worked. And Gu had made several calls to obtain information for him. Gu finished the conversation with a warm invitation.

  “You have to come again, Chief Inspector Chen. Your stay was too short yesterday. We have to drink to our friendship.”

  “I will,” he promised.

  His mother must have noticed something. “Is everything all right?”

  “Eve
rything is fine, Mother. I just need to make another phone call.”

  He dialed Meiling, asking her to check into the registrations of silver Acuras. She promised to do so immediately. Then she discussed the parking lot issue with him. It happened to be a borderline case. If the land was not zoned as the parking lot for the club, the city might realize sizable extra income. She needed to do some additional research. Toward the end of their conversation, she heard his mother coughing in the background and insisted on saying a hello to “Aunt Chen.”