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

by Qiu Xiaolong

  Catherine clasped Yu’s other hand, her face smudged, her blouse torn at the shoulder. “I’m so glad to see you here, Detective Yu.”

  “Me too, Inspector Rohn. I am happy to meet you.”

  “I thought you were on your way back to Shanghai,” Chen said.

  “My plane was delayed. So I checked my phone one more time before boarding. I got the message left by Inspector Rohn that no one had picked you up at the station.”

  “When did you place that call, Inspector Rohn?”

  “While we were waiting for you to rent a car.”

  “The absence of the local police at the station did not make sense,” Yu said. “The more I thought about it, the more suspicious it appeared to me. After all those accidents, you know—”

  “Yes, I do.” Chen had to cut Yu short. It was more than suspicious, he knew. Inspector Rohn knew, too. The fact that she had mentioned the absence of the local cops in her message spoke for itself. Still, they did not have to discuss this problem in front of her.

  “So I approached the airport police and got a jeep from them. Some of them rode back with me. I had a hunch.”

  “A good hunch.”

  As they were talking, Chen heard more cars and people arriving. Looking up, he was not too surprised to see Superintendent Hong, the head of the Fuzhou Police Bureau, leading a group of armed policemen.

  “I’m so sorry, Chief Inspector Chen,” Hong said in a voice full of apologies. “We missed you at the station. My assistant made a mistake about the arrival time. On our way back to the bureau, we heard about the fight and rushed over.”

  “Don’t worry, Superintendent Hong. It’s all over now.”

  The belated appearance of Hong and his men was intended to be a footnote to a finished chapter.

  Was it possible for Chen to attempt to remedy the situation here and now? The answer was no. As an outsider, he had to congratulate himself on being lucky as it was. Their mission was completed, none of them had been seriously hurt, and a handful of gangsters had been punished. He simply said, “The Flying Axes are well-informed. We hardly reached the village when they came upon us.”

  “Some village folks must have spotted Wen and informed them.”

  “So they got the news faster than the local police.” Chen found it hard not to be sarcastic.

  “Now you know how difficult things can be here, Chief Inspector Chen,” Hong said, shaking his head before he turned to Inspector Rohn. “I’m sorry about meeting you like this, Inspector Rohn. I apologize on behalf of my colleagues in Fujian.”

  “You don’t have to apologize to me, Superintendent Hong,” Inspector Rohn said. “I thank you for your cooperation on behalf of the U.S. Marshals Service.”

  More policemen appeared to clean up the battlefield. There were several wounded gangsters lying on the ground. One of them might be dead. Chen was about to interrogate another who was muttering something to a local cop, when Hong made a request.

  “Can you explain a Chinese proverb for me, Chief Inspector Chen—Mogao yice, daogao yizhang?”

  “The literal translation is this: The devil is ten inches tall, and the way, or justice, is a hundred inches tall. In other words, powerful as evil is, justice will prevail.” The original proverb actually read the other way around. The ancient Chinese sage had been more pessimistic about the power of the evil.

  “The Chinese government is determined,” Hong declared pompously, “to deal a crushing blow to all evil forces.”

  Chen nodded as he observed a policeman kicking a wounded gangster viciously and cursing, “Damn it! Shut up with your damned Mandarin.”

  The gangster uttered a blood-chilling scream that cut into their conversation like another flying ax.

  “I apologize, Inspector Rohn,” Hong said. “Those gangsters are the worst scum under the sun.”

  “I have had my fill of apologies every day I’ve spent here,” Detective Yu remarked bitterly, crossing his arms. “What a Fujian experience!”

  But Chief Inspector Chen knew better than to push the matter further. On the surface, everything could be attributed to coincidence. There was no point going on with Inspector Rohn and Wen waiting.

  “We local police can do little,” Hong said, looking Chen in the eye. “You know that, Chief Inspector Chen.”

  Could that be a hint about the higher-level politics?

  The doubts Chen had harbored at the beginning of the investigation were resurfacing. Wen’s disappearance might not have been orchestrated from above, but whether the authorities had been so eager to deliver her to the Americans, he was not sure. What was left for Chen to do was perhaps no more than a performance in an ancient shadow play, full of sound and fury, but no substance. In his eagerness to serve as a model Chinese chief inspector of police, however, he had stepped beyond the boundaries of the stage.

  If this was so, the battle in the village might truly have been beyond the scope of the local police, as Superintendent Hong intimated.

  Maybe “the order of the acts had been schemed and plotted,” at the highest level.

  He did not really want to believe this.

  Perhaps he would never know the truth. Perhaps it would be best if he could be content to be one of those brainless Chinese cops in the Hollywood movies, and to let Inspector Rohn think of him that way.

  Whatever his suspicions, he was in no position to confide in her. Or another report by Internal Security would travel to Party Secretary Li’s desk even before he got back to Shanghai.

  “Now the case has been concluded.” Superintendent Hong changed the topic with a ready smile. “You have found Wen. All is well. We should celebrate. The best Fujian cuisine, a banquet of a hundred fishes from the southern sea.”

  “No thanks, Superintendent Hong,” Chen declined. “But I need to ask a favor of you.”

  “We will do anything we can, Chief Inspector Chen.”

  “We have to return to Shanghai right now. We are pressed for time.”

  “That’s no problem. Let’s go to the airport directly. There are several flights to Shanghai every day. You can take the next one. It’s not the high season. I believe there should still be some seats available.”

  Hong and the others drove off in their jeep, taking the lead. Yu followed with Wen in the car that had brought them from the airport. Chen rode with Catherine in the Dazhong.

  The half bag of lichee still lay on the seat. The fruit no longer looked so fresh. Several appeared black rather than red. Or if the color remained the same, his mood had changed.

  “I’m sorry,” she said.

  “For what?”

  “I should not have supported Wen’s wish to take this trip.”

  “I was not opposed to the idea, either,” he said. “I’m sorry, Inspector Rohn.”

  “For what?”

  “Everything.”

  “How could the gang have found us so quickly?”

  “That’s a good question.” That’s all he said. It was a question Superintendent Hong should have answered.

  “You called the Fujian Police Bureau from Suzhou,” she said quietly. The tai chi term was: It is enough to touch the spot. She did not have to push.

  “That was my mistake. But I did not mention Wen.” He was puzzled. Only the Suzhou police were aware that Wen was with them, but he went on, “Maybe some villager notified the gangsters as soon as we arrived. That’s Superintendent Hong’s story.”

  “Maybe.”

  “I do not know much about the local situation.” He caught himself talking to her in the same evasive way as Superintendent Hong had spoken to him. Still, what else could he say? “Maybe the gangsters were waiting for Wen. Just like ‘the old farmer waiting for the rabbit to knock itself out.’”

  “Old farmers or not, the Flying Axes were here and the local police were not.”

  “There’s another proverb, ‘A powerful dragon cannot fight local snakes.’ “

  “I have another question, Chief Inspector Chen. Why did t
hese local snakes come with nothing but axes?”

  “Perhaps they came at a moment’s notice, so they carried whatever weapons they happened to lay their hands on.”

  “At a moment’s notice? I don’t think so. Not so many of them, and masked.”

  “You have a point,” he said. In fact, her question led to another one. Why had they bothered to wear masks? Their axes gave them away. Like the ax wounds on the body in Bund Park. A signed crime.

  “Now that our mission is completed, we don’t have to worry about those questions,” he said.

  “Or answers.” She sensed his reluctance to talk further.

  It sounded like a sarcastic reference to the poem read in the Suzhou garden.

  He felt her sitting so close, but so far away at the same time.

  Chen turned on the car radio. The broadcast was in the local dialect, of which he did not understand a single word.

  Presently, the Fujian airport came in view.

  As they neared the domestic flights gate, they saw a peddler in Taoist costume displaying his wares on a piece of white cloth spread on the ground. It exhibited an impressive array of herb samples, along with a number of open books, magazines, and pictures, all of them illustrating the beneficial effects of local herbs. The ingenious entrepreneur wore a white beard, an image associated with the legends of a Taoist recluse cultivating herbs in the clouds of the mountains, meditating above the vexing hubbub of the world, and enjoying longevity in harmony with nature.

  He spoke a few words to them but neither Catherine nor Chen could understand him. Seeing their puzzlement, he addressed them in Mandarin.

  “Look! Fulin cake, the well-known product of Fujian, beneficent to your body system,” the peddler declared. “It contains natural energy, and a lot of ingredients essential to health.”

  The Taoist peddler reminded Chen of the Taoist fortuneteller in the Suzhou temple. Ironically, the cryptic poem’s prediction had turned out to be true.

  As they walked through the gate, flight information was being broadcast, first in Mandarin, then in Fujian, and finally in English.

  Finally, Chen realized something.

  Something was terribly wrong.

  “Damn!” he cursed, glancing at his watch. It was too late.

  “What, Chief Inspector Chen?”

  “Nothing,” he said.

  * * * *

  Chapter 35

  T

  he dinner invitation was Detective Yu’s idea. To be exact, however, it was an idea he had gotten from Chief Inspector Chen. Chen had mentioned Inspector Rohn’s interest in visiting a Chinese home, adding it would not be convenient to invite her to a bachelor’s place like his. Chen did not have to say more to his assistant.

  The moment he returned, Yu broached the dinner plan to Peiqin. “Inspector Rohn is leaving tomorrow afternoon. So she is available only this evening.”

  “You have just come back.” Peiqin handed him a hot towel from a green plastic basin. “It’s such short notice. I don’t have any time to prepare. Especially for an American.”

  “But I have invited them already.”

  “You could have called me first.” Peiqin poured a cup of jasmine tea for him. “Our room is so small. An American will hardly be able to turn around.”

  Yu’s room was on the southern end of the eastern wing, in an apartment which had been assigned to his father, Old Hunter, in the early fifties. Now, forty years later, the four rooms accommodated four families. As a result, each room functioned as a bedroom, dining’ room, living room, and bathroom. Yu’s room, which had once been a dining room, proved particularly inconvenient for entertaining guests. The room next to it, Old Hunter’s, was originally the living room, and had the only door opening into the hall. A visitor had to walk through Old Hunter’s room to reach theirs.

  Yu said, “Well, it may not matter that much. She’s studied Chinese. And you know, there may be something between Inspector Rohn and Chief Inspector Chen.”

  “Really!” Peiqin’s voice registered instant interest. “But Chen has an HCC girlfriend in Beijing, hasn’t he?”

  “I’m not so sure about it—not after Baoshen’s case. Remember Chen’s trip to the Yellow Mountains?”

  “You haven’t told me about it. Is it finished between them?”

  “It’s complicated. Politics. The conclusion of that case was not pleasant for her father. Chen’s relationship with her is strained, so I’ve heard. Not to mention the fact they live in two different cities.”

  “That’s not good. You have been away for a week, and it’s been so hard for me. I don’t see how they can remain in a relationship, separated like that.” Peiqin took the towel from him and touched his unshaved chin. “Why hasn’t Chen been transferred to Beijing?”

  “He can be stubborn. About the HCC influence, you know.”

  “I don’t know what to say about your boss, but an HCC connection, and all that goes with it, may not be good for him,” she said quietly. “Do you think Inspector Rohn has a soft spot for him? It’s time for him to settle down.”

  “Come on, Peiqin. An American? It’s like in the Hollywood movies. A week’s fling in China. No, Chief Inspector Chen can settle down with anybody but her.”

  “You never know, Guangming. So what shall we have for tonight?”

  “An ordinary Chinese meal will be great,” Yu said. “According to Chen, Inspector Rohn has a passion for everything Chinese. What about a dumpling dinner?”

  “A good idea. It’s the season for spring bamboo shoots. We will have dumplings with three fresh stuffings: fresh bamboo shoots, fresh meat, and fresh shrimp. I’ll fry some dumplings, steam some, and serve the rest in an old duck soup with black tree ears. I’ll leave work early and bring some special dishes from the restaurant. Our room may be as small as a piece of dried tofu, but we cannot lose face before an American guest.”

  Yu stretched. “I don’t have to go to the office today,” he said. “So I’ll go to the market to buy a basket of really fresh bamboo shoots.”

  “Choose the tender ones. Not thicker than two fingers. We’d better mince the meat ourselves; the ground pork you can buy is not fresh. When will they arrive?”

  “Around four thirty.”

  “Let’s start right now. It takes time to make the dumpling skin.”

  * * * *

  Chen and Catherine arrived more than an hour early. Chen was dressed in a gray suit. Catherine, wearing a red sleeveless cheongsam with high slits, looked like an actress in a Shanghai movie of the thirties. Chen held a bottle of wine, and Catherine carried a large plastic bag.

  “You have finally brought a girl here, Chief Inspector Chen,” Peiqin smiled.

  “Finally,” Catherine said, taking Chen’s arm with mock seriousness.

  Peiqin was intrigued by Catherine’s reaction, for as soon as she had made the offhand joke she had regretted it. Apparently, Catherine was not displeased.

  “This is Inspector Rohn, of the United States Marshals Service,” Chen introduced her formally. “She’s also very interested in Chinese culture. Since her arrival, she has been talking about visiting a Shanghai family.”

  “Nice to meet you, Inspector Rohn.” Peiqin wiped her flour-covered hand before taking Catherine’s.

  “Good to meet you, Peiqin. Chief Inspector Chen has spoken frequently about your excellent cooking.”

  “A poetic exaggeration,” Peiqin said.

  Yu tried to speak more formally, like a host, apologizing, “Sorry about the mess. May I introduce our son to you? He is called Qinqin.”

  The room had space only for one table. The early arrival of the guests put the hosts in an embarrassing situation. The table was still littered with dumpling skins, minced meat, and vegetables. There was no room on the surface for even a teacup. Catherine had to put her bag down on the bed.

  “The chief inspector is always busy. He has to go back to the bureau later.” Catherine took a couple of boxes out of the bag. “They are just some small th
ings I’ve chosen at the hotel. I hope you like them.”

  One was a food processor, and the other, a coffee maker.

  “How wonderful, Inspector Rohn,” Peiqin exclaimed. “It is so thoughtful of you. For his next visit, we can serve Chief Inspector Chen fresh coffee.”

  “You can also use it to make hot water for tea,” Chen said. “For this visit, we can use the food processor to mince and mix the meat and vegetable.”

  “And bamboo shoots too,” Yu said proudly, beginning to experiment with the machine.