A Case of Two Cities

5

THE NEXT ON THE list Chen had circled as a possible interviewee was An Jiayi.

He should have approached her first. For some reason, however, he had chosen not to do so.

But after the talk with Qiao, especially after the new information from Old Hunter, Chief Inspector Chen had no excuse not to. He made up his mind in his bureau cubicle.

Old Hunter’s response had come early in the morning. The old man must have moved heaven and earth in Fujian. According to his connections, Xing had a “little brother” named Ming-or a half brother, to be exact. Xing had never openly acknowledged him as such, but it was not a secret among the local people. Xing’s father had died when Xing was very young and his mother had a hard time bringing him up by herself. There were various stories about that period. In one version, she worked as a maid for a high-ranking Party cadre family, where she was said to have had sex with the master, and left to give birth to a son in secret in the countryside. When Xing grew up, he never told anyone. It was said, however, that early in his political career, Xing had been helped by that high-ranking cadre. Also, Xing was a filial son. Since his mother doted on the little son, Xing, in turn, helped Ming in whatever way possible.

Ming had kept a low profile in Fujian, but two or three years earlier, he started a real estate business of his own in Shanghai. That explained why Xing had bought the mansion for his mother in the city. Then Ming disappeared, allegedly in the company of Xing.

Chen was disturbed. The fact that there was no information whatsoever about Ming in the original file spoke for itself. For a Shanghai cop, the identity of Xing’s little brother was a mystery, but it should not be so with the Fujian police. It should have been followed up on as an important clue.

Chen immediately made inquiries through his private channels into Ming’s business in Shanghai. He was even more disturbed by what he came up with. The little brother had connections to a number of big officials in the city. While he kept a relatively low profile here as well, he had hired a PR firm through his company. And that firm was run by none other than An Jiayi.

So An’s name had appeared both as a guest at Xing’s parties and as a partner in Ming’s business.

Drawing in a deep breath, Chen turned to pour himself another cup of tea. The tea tasted stale, the water lukewarm, and the dried jasmine petals yellowish. He hadn’t needed to come to the office this morning, but Yu was inundated with the workload of the special case squad, and Chen thought he might be able to help a little. Yu was not in the bureau, though. Chen picked up the list again.

Flowers falling, water flowing, the spring gone, / it is another world.

In the early eighties, when Chen had just left Beijing Foreign Language University for the unexpected position at the Shanghai Police Bureau, he joined a reading group with several other “literature youths.” For Chen, it was a halfhearted effort to keep his literary dream alive, as it was, perhaps, for the others, several college graduates state-assigned to jobs regardless of their personal interests. They met once a month to discuss books as well as their own writings. An and her husband, Han, a newlywed couple, both attended. An was an announcer, and Han, a reporter, for the new Eastern TV Station.

The group met regularly for about a year, before Chen was overwhelmed with writing political speeches for Party Secretary Li. An’s show had begun to attract an audience, and Gong, a leading member of the group, went to Shenzheng to start his private auto parts business. As in an old saying, there’s no banquet that does not come to an end. The reading group eventually dissolved.

Afterward, Chen still saw An on TV, a budding anchorwoman. He heard about some trouble between the couple, allegedly caused by their changing social status. When first assigned to the TV station, there had not been much difference between the two. With Chairman Mao’s teaching still fresh in the national memory, everyone was supposed, in whatever position, to “serve people.” But things began to change. It did not take long for an attractive young anchorwoman to become a star while Han, an inconspicuous reporter, remained in the background. People started addressing him as “An’s husband,” like something moving in her shadow.

But Chen was not that familiar with them. Han was said to be a jealous husband, particularly with the people An was nice to. Then he applied to study in Germany, possibly to better himself and so rise to her level. It turned out to be a disastrous decision. Almost immediately driven out of school because of his linguistic problems, he started working in a Chinese restaurant in Berlin instead of coming back. In the meantime, in addition to her anchorwoman career, An started a public relations company.

As a celebrity her attendance at Xing’s parties was understandable, but her business relationship with Ming was a different story. It might be nothing unusual for a businessman to engage the service of a PR company. But why An’s? Why, with Ming’s construction project hardly in blueprint?

An might well know something about Ming, and about Xing as well.

But would she talk to Chief Inspector Chen?

The reading group long dissolved, their paths hardly crossed anymore. At a city congress conference not too long ago, he had seen her at a distance. She was so busy interviewing more important people, he did not even make an attempt to approach her. Now, out of the blue, he was going to try to get information out of her. It wasn’t hard to predict her reaction.

He pulled together a dossier on her. There was nothing surprising or suspicious about her career as an anchorwoman. In fact, she’d received a long list of awards for her excellent work. It was also commonplace for celebrities to run businesses on the side, like restaurants with large pictures of them on the wall. It did not take much for people to go to a restaurant, but it took a lot to hire a PR company. What could she do for her clients? An anchorwoman with no experience in that business.

There were stories about her from an unofficial source, but such tabloid stuff might not be unusual for celebrities, let alone an attractive woman with an audience of millions. He lit a cigarette, underlining the paragraph about her “special connection” to high-ranking Party cadres. As in the saying, It might be like catching at the wind, clutching at the shadow. But there’s another saying, Chen recalled: No waves will rise without a stir of the wind.

Those stories alone were far from enough to make her talk. He ground out his cigarette in the swan-shaped crystal ashtray.

He realized it was time for lunch. Three hours already gone this morning and he still had no idea how his Chen trail could work. He walked down to the bureau canteen, which was full of people, as always. He ate a bowl of beef noodles with plenty of red pepper and green onion without talking much to anyone. His colleagues all seemed to be aware of how sensitive his investigation was. The noodle soup tasted heavy, hot, and afterward he felt slightly drowsy. But there was no coffee in the bureau to wake him up. His cell phone rang.

“Long time no see, Chief Inspector Chen,” Gu said. “You haven’t come to my place for weeks.”

“Sorry, I’ve been so busy-you know how it is.”

Unlike other businessmen, Gu knew better than to be a nuisance. It bothered Chen that their relationship had become a handle for Dong. Not really Gu’s fault, though: an entrepreneur could not have helped boasting of his official connections and Gu might have been discreet in his way. At least Dong seemed to have learned nothing about Chen’s lucrative translation project with the New World. Gu had claimed that it was a favor by Chen, but with such a large fee for the translation, Chen knew better.

“You are always busy, but so are other celebrities. They still come to my KTV club. Liu Wei, he stars in three TV series, and he visits here every week.”

“Really,” Chen said. Liu was a rising star, notorious for his lusty performance in bedroom scenes. Then something clicked in Chen’s mind. “Do you have a lot of visitors from the TV and movie industry?”

“Yes, quite a few,” Gu said. “How about this Saturday evening? White Cloud will also be there. A nice girl.”

“She’s very nice, but I don’t think I have time this weekend.” Chen said after a short pause, “How about this afternoon? A cup of coffee or tea. Indeed, we haven’t seen each other for a while.”

“What about the Starbucks near the New World?”

“Great. See you there in half an hour.”

Chen left the canteen, and looked around before heading out through the bureau gate. Old Liang, the veteran bureau gatekeeper, saluted him with one hand, the other still grasping a plastic lunch box. The old man had worked dutifully for over forty years, long past his retirement age. The pension fixed in the eighties was not enough to support the retired gatekeeper in the nineties, so the bureau made a special allowance for him to continue to work here.

Chen got onto a bus, which turned out to be a most unpleasant experience. The conductor kept shouting, “Move in! Don’t stand close to the door.” At each new stop, a fresh wave of people broke in, elbowing and pushing him in still farther. The increasing heat mixed with the sweat smell was almost unbearable. The gap between the doing-well and the not-doing-well was visible everywhere. Nowadays, a successful entrepreneur like Gu would have a private car, and a rising Party cadre like Chen would have a company car, but the ordinary people could only take the ever-crowded bus.

A “provincial sister” standing next to Chen, wearing a black dress with thin shoulder straps, soon found her dress crushed out of shape, and started pushing Chen in frustration. At the next stop, though it was still quite a distance from his destination, he squeezed himself out through the walls of passengers, which caused another angry outburst of curses all around. The young girl followed him out, only to find the buttons on her shoulder straps missing. In embarrassment, she started screaming for the bus to stop, her hair disheveled, her dress rumpled. The bus crawled out of sight, leaving her standing there, holding her straps, weeping and whining, her voice seeming to dog him for two or three blocks.

The cool air from the central air-conditioning of the Starbucks was heavenly. It was one of the earliest American cafés in Shanghai, and its chain shops were rapidly spreading and attracting a large crowd of trendy customers. A new class, conveniently called the white collars, had emerged, most of them with well-paid positions in private or foreign companies. Young, educated, and well-off, they were eager to catch up with the world-through their newly acquired global brand awareness. Sitting in a corner, Gu was waiting for him.

“A cool place,” Chen said as he took his seat, wiping the sweat from his forehead with a paper napkin.

“How could the Shanghai people have managed all these years without a good café?” Gu said. “People need a place like this.”

“Good question. Old Marx is right again. Coffee belongs to the superstructure-for the mind, not for the basic needs of the body. People must have a solid economic basis before worrying about the superstructure.”

“No wonder you’re a political star, Chief Inspector Chen. You’re capable of applying Marxism to a cup of coffee.” Gu chuckled. “A lot of people come here for the feeling of being fashionable in today’s society-that’s for the mind too.”

That was probably true. Sitting in an expensive American café might convince them they were the successful elite. But Chen hadn’t come for that.

“A cop cannot afford to be fashionable.” Chen decided not to talk about Dong for the moment, with whom Gu might have things to do in the future, as he did with Chen. Instead, the inspector came to the point directly. “I need to ask you a question, Gu.”

“Go ahead.”

“Do you happen to know An Jiayi?”

“Oh yes, a celebrity.”

“Any contact with her?” Chen said. “For instance, has she visited your place?”

“No, she hasn’t. As a rule, men don’t bring their women to karaoke.”

“What does that mean?”

“They come for K girls, my Comrade Chief Inspector. It’s no business secret. Now that people have hi-fi stereo systems at home, they don’t have to come to my place to sing. Someone like An has to be especially careful. It wouldn’t be pleasant for her to be seen in KTV club in the company of another man.”

“In the company of another man?”

“Isn’t that something you want to find out-whom she associates with?”

“Well, I am curious,” Chen said, nodding, before changing the topic. “She has a PR company, hasn’t she?”

“I’ve heard of it.”

“Now that’s something that beats me. She has no business experience. Nor has she any capital-as far as I know.”

“No, that’s something you don’t know. Today’s society is like a huge market and everything is for sale. So is her anchorwoman position. She doesn’t need any other capital.”

“Enlighten me, Gu. I’m no businessman, you know.”

“You think she interviews people for nothing? No, people pay a lot for publicity. What’s more effective than a TV show?” Gu took a deliberate sip at his coffee. “She can really help.”

“But how could her show run like that?”

“Believe it or not, these celebrities charge even for sitting at your banquet table. At the grand opening of my bar on Hengshan Road, I paid Hei Ling-an actress photographed by Taiwan Playboy-a thousand yuan for sitting there beside me. Pictures of her in my bar will appear in the newspaper, and customers will come. So there’s a price for it.”

“There’s a price for everything,” Chen said mechanically. And that was the problem. People paid the communist ideology only lip service. In spite of the People’s Daily and the Party documents, the social reality was that each and every person looked out for him- or herself.

“Of course, she doesn’t charge for every show of hers. Still, everybody is looking at the money-nothing else,” Gu added with a cynical snicker. “What else is there?”

“But can a TV appearance be worth that much?”

“For some businesses, such an appearance could bring direct or indirect benefits. The image of a successful entrepreneur interviewed by a well-known anchorwoman speaks volumes, more than a whole-page advertisement in Wenhui Daily.”

“What you’ve said about her TV show may be true,” Chen said. “So she has made enough money. Then why has she started a PR company? Surely, deals like this must be made under the table.”

“How can there ever be enough money? The amount from her TV show is only a small dish. She has other clients. Much larger ones.”

“How?”

“Well, because of our bureaucratic system, it may sometimes take government officials months, or even years, to approve a company’s request for approval of plans or a deal. It won’t do to knock at an unfamiliar door- even at a back door-with a bulging red envelope. You need guanxi-the person to knock for you, and to lubricate the bureaucratic machine. That’s where her PR company comes in. She knows those officials through her work. It’s easy for her to say a word or two in her sweet voice. For a matter of bureaucratic inefficiency, a short phone call might be enough. So companies are quite willing to pay her a sum for the early approval, for it gets them a competitive advantage and opens up other opportunities.”

“That makes sense,” Chen commented, stirring his coffee. So her company’s role was to secure connections. Everything depended on her personal relationship with government officials. “Does she know anyone in charge of the real estate business?”

“That should be no surprise,” Gu responded, looking up at Chen. “Land development approval is the biggest black hole today. Before our economic reform, land belonged to the state and it was up to the government to plan any development. Now it’s totally different. Private construction companies can apply for land from the local government. Everyone has a good reason, and the officials don’t have the time to study all the applications. For the property developer, it’s a matter of life and death to get the land, and at a cheap price too. The price varies, depending on the location as well as on the purpose-”

“It sounds complicated,” Chen said, recalling similar details about the land application in the New World Project. “I’m learning a lot today. So the government officials have to grant the use of the land in one way or another, but the officials don’t have to listen to her, particularly when it’s not a simple matter of bureaucratic efficiency. Can a phone call in her sweet voice be so effective? After all, it could be a multimillion yuan deal.”

“You really don’t know?”

“Know what?”

“About her special relationships with people in the city government.” Gu came up with a mysterious smile. “To be exact, with someone in the office of land development. An old proverb has come back into current circulation, Chief Inspector Chen: People sneer at poverty, but not at prostitution. When the only criterion for value is a man’s-or a woman’s- money…”

“So you mean-”

“I’ll find out more for you. Whatever you want me to do, Chen.”

“Thanks,” Chen said, though he had not said what he wanted. Gu was a very clever man, capable of hearing the sound vibrating beyond the strings. He wondered how Gu could try to help. As in afterthought, he added, “Oh, you don’t have to mention our talk to anyone.”

Shortly after Chen left the café, he got a call from Comrade Zhao.

“Xing made a new statement to the local newspapers, saying that he is going to give a press conference soon. He said he will release the names of those officials involved if we do not stop persecuting him.”

“Let him do so. The more he blabs, the easier our work will be here.”

“Do you think he’ll tell the truth? And no matter how blatant his lies, some Americans will use what he says against China.”

“What else can we do?”

“Xing may be bluffing there, I think, trying for some sort of deal. We have to push on with our work here.”

“Well,” Chen said, failing to see the connection here. Nor was he clear about what deal Zhao meant. He didn’t want to give any details about his new approach. “I have been doing my best.”

“Now, I don’t think I have to repeat myself,” Comrade Zhao concluded. “You are an emperor’s special envoy in Shanghai.”

Late that afternoon, Chen decided to pay a visit to his mother. He hadn’t seen her since his interview with Dong.

There was not much, however, he could do for her. He had tried to talk her into staying with him, but she had invariably declined. His was a one-bedroom apartment. It would be too inconvenient, she declared, when he had visitors, especially young female visitors. As an alternative, he tried to find her a maid-a “provincial sister” in a live-in arrangement-but she would not listen to this, either.

The traffic snarls were terrible, especially at rush hour. When the car finally came in sight of Jiujiang Road, the lane, enveloped in the graying dusk, appeared shabbier than he had remembered.

In the bureau, he had heard people talking about the possibility of a three-bedroom apartment for him, so that his mother could move in with him. The housing system was still on a dual track. While some people had started buying their own apartments, the majority remained dependent on the government quota. A Party cadre, once promoted to a given rank or position, would be granted corresponding benefits, including better housing in the overcrowded city. The prospect for him was complicated, however, with so many lower-level cops on the waiting list, bickering and complaining. A special housing quota directly from the city government, as Dong had suggested, would have helped.

Around the street corner, he saw several kids playing in the shadow cast by a Coca-Cola umbrella. The red and white umbrellas had mushroomed everywhere. According to Shanghai Morning, they were a part of the colorful Shanghai landscape, along with the billboards presenting life-size Chinese stars drinking to their hearts’ content. But he was still surprised at the sight of the umbrella there, close to the lane, where most of the inhabitants would find the drink too expensive, if not too exotic.

Aunt Qiang, a short, gray-haired woman who lived next door, stared at him as he got out of the taxi. She had a bamboo basket dripping with shepherd’s purse blossom, a rural delicacy he had first read about in a poem by Qiji. She took a step forward and said, “Oh, you. Little-”

It appeared as if nothing had changed from his childhood memories, surely not the fresh, luscious shepherd’s purse blossom, but the old neighbors might no longer consider it appropriate to address him by his small name.

He passed by a Chinese chess game in front of a dingy hot-water shop. Usually, the players and the audience would smoke, drink, and sometimes eat inside the water shop. The outside location was perhaps due to one of the players, Wong Ronghua, an ex-member of Shanghai Chess Team, attracting a large audience. Wong, a gaunt, grizzled man, grinned at Chen, revealing his teeth stained through years of bitter tea and poor cigarettes. He straddled one end of a wooden bench, and his opponent perched on the other end, keeping it precariously balanced. The chessboard was placed between them. Stripped to the waist in his black shorts, Wong appeared sallow, malnourished, with his ribs visible, looking like a washboard.

There were three or four hot-water bottles lined along the bench, squatting on the ground like the audience on the other side, who would probably remain in that position to the end. The neighborhood was not exactly a slum, but these were the people left out of the materialistic transition of the society.

His mother was upstairs watching TV in the attic room. The same fifteen-inch TV set he had bought years ago-still at the “state price” then. She had made a scarlet velvet cover for the TV, which must have kept her company a lot. Alone, she did not go out much, much less so after her recent stay in the hospital.

“With the cable, I can watch many stations,” she said with a smile, turning off the TV with her remote. She made him a cup of green tea. “The tea’s from one of your friends,” she said. “I can hardly remember his name. The big buck who came to the hospital, I remember. Specially delivered from Hangzhou. The fresh tea of this year: Before the Rain. Quite an expensive kind, for all I know.”

He thought he detected a subtle sarcastic note in her comment, but he said nothing. Instead, he kept breathing into the cup. People described him as a good son, but he was not so sure about that.

In time-honored Confucian doctrine, the worst thing possible for a man was to be without offspring to carry on the family name. That happened to be one of his mother’s favorite topics, even though she did not elaborate so directly. To his relief, she did not appear eager to bring up the topic that afternoon.

“You have something on your mind, son.”

“Well, no, not exactly.”

“I don’t know anything about your work, but I know my son.”

“I’m doing fine. But there are so many things for me at the bureau. I may not be able to come here as often as I would like. How about moving in with me for a couple of weeks? I can take better care of you.”

“Everything is so convenient here. Peddlers deliver fresh vegetables and meat to the room for a yuan. The old neighbors help a lot too,” she said. “You are busy with your work. If I stayed with you, then when you come back late, I would be worried.”

That was true. Even when he came back early, all the evening phone calls would not be pleasant for her. Not to mention some of his discussions.

“But I’m concerned about you.”

“And I am concerned about you,” she said, taking an appreciative sip. “All these gifts, and the tea too. Your friends keep sending me presents here.”

“Really!”

“Because of your position, I am afraid.”

“I understand, Mother. I have known some people through my work, but I draw a line for myself. In fact, the Party Discipline Committee has just assigned me to an important case.”

“The Party Discipline Committee? Oh, what kind of case has the committee given you?”

In recent years, the committee had become the institution responsible for fighting corruption. Hence its popularity among the people. She looked both pleased and perplexed.

“An anticorruption case.”

“Yes, the committee is like the police of the Party. Corruption is getting out of control with all the officials helping one another. It’s time that the Beijing government does something about it.”

“Yes, the Party authorities are determined.” He went on, taking a sip at the tea. “It may be a tough job, and I am afraid I cannot take good care of you.”

“Don’t worry for me. You have taken a path different from your father’s, but I think he would be pleased with your conscientious work if he could know of it in the underworld,” she said slowly. “Of late, I have often dreamed of seeing him. Perhaps the day is not too far away.”

“Dreams are dreams, Mother. You have missed him very much.”

“I don’t know what advice to give you, son, but I remember what your father used to say. There are things a man will do, and things a man will not do.”

“Yes, I always remember that.”

Another Confucian quote, but he did not know how to apply it in the present case. Such a truism could be applied to anything, depending on the perspective a person took.

“Not all people are in a position to do something,” she said.

There had been a subtle change in her attitude, he noticed. She had never really approved of his profession, but of late, she seemed to be more resigned to it, perhaps because she thought her late husband would have approved of her son serving the country as a police officer. She got up, moved to the chest, and produced a silk scroll of calligraphy.

“This is something your father left behind. Better in your apartment. I don’t even have the room to hang it properly.”

The scroll presented a poem, “River Snow,” copied in his father’s calligraphy. The verse had been written by Liu Zhongyuan, an eighth-century Tang dynasty poet:

Such a lonely world, and such a solitary man, Chen contemplated. The image of the bamboo clothing added to the chilliness of the scene. Chen was struck by the ambiguity of the last few lines-not necessarily angling for fish, nothing but the snow in the cold river. Perhaps more of a gesture.

Liu was the poet who had written the fable about the barn rats. Chen recalled Yu’s comment: It’s a fable, Chief. In real life, Liu had ended up helpless, like the old fisherman in the cold river.

But Chen understood why his mother wanted to give the scroll to him. In spite of her failing health, her mind remained clear because of her studies of the Buddhist scripture: no illusion of self, so she can see clearly.

He left his mother’s place without having sorted out his thoughts. He could not see clearly ahead.

The chess game was still going on outside the hot-water shop. None of the audience looked up at him as he passed. He was irrelevant to the battle in the world of a chessboard. Only Chang, the owner of the water shop, seemed to be nodding at him, as in the days of his childhood. His mother had hot water delivered to her attic room from time to time. But Chang could have been nodding at a master move in the chess game.

Then Chen was overtaken with an ominous question: why, all of a sudden, had she chosen to part with the scroll she had cherished for years? He struggled to push the unanswerable out of his mind.

Late that evening, a sealed package was express-delivered to Chen at home. No one had told him about such a package. He looked it over in puzzlement. The young, bean-sprout-thin courier refused to tell him the name of the sender.

“No, I can-can-not say,” the courier stammered, his face as scarlet as a cooked shrimp. “My customer is strict about it.”

“That’s fine,” Chen said, putting a rumpled ten-yuan bill into his hand. “Thank you.”

Closing the door after him, Chen opened the envelope only to have a bunch of pictures fall onto the table.

They were pictures of An in a variety of scandalizing poses with a man. Chen took in a sharp breath. One of her drying herself with a white towel, her bare ass like two shining moons, the man sitting on the edge of a bed, his hand reaching out to her breasts. Another of her throwing her naked body across the bed strewn with pear blossom petals. In still another, the two were sitting up in bed, her bare shoulders flashing out of the blanket, reading, leaning against his… The pictures were not of high quality- most of them were out of focus. Possibly taken by a hidden camera in a hotel room.

Whoever the man in the pictures was, it was not Han. Moving the lamp over, Chen took a closer look at the clandestine lover. A tall, gaunt, middle-aged man with gray-streaked hair. There was a mole noticeable above the left corner of his mouth. Chen did not recognize him.

Chen was no moralist. In the mid-nineties, an extramarital affair was no longer seen as something corrupt or scandalous. Not in An’s circumstances. In spite of a story of success with fame, family, beauty, and her own company too, he sensed her loneliness behind the glittering façade.

It was understandable that there was some other man in her life. Or men. Chen did not want to judge, though he could not help feeling slightly depressed.

He could guess who had sent those pictures. He had talked about An with Gu alone. The shrewd businessman hadn’t promised anything specific, but the man in the pictures was no ordinary man. So here came the message: a potential lead in the romance. The sender chose to remain anonymous-for good reason.

It was a quiet evening. He pushed open the window and the air seemed instantly filled with the message of the early summer. One cicada started screeching in the foliage, and then a group of them followed in chorus. Still, Chief Inspector Chen did not see the necessity of approaching An in the name of the special investigation. Not immediately.

He returned to her file on the desk. In addition to her TV show and business, she had recently published a book based on her interviews of celebrities. Judging from the reviews, the book provided some interesting anecdotes as well as a number of photos. Popular because of people’s interest in the celebrities. Chen had purchased a copy and skimmed it-there was no need for him to read it through. In those pictures, An looked elegant, professional, in sharp contrast to those in the package.

Jotting down some notes on a piece of paper, he picked up the phone.

“Hi, I want to speak An.”

“Who is it?”

“Chen Cao, your old friend.”

“Oh, it’s you, our famous detective,” An said with a surprise of recognition in her voice. “What has made you call this evening?”

“Your book, I’ve just read it,” he said, “and I’ve looked at your pictures too. So stunningly beautiful, all the geese and fish would dive out of your sight in self-consciousness.”

“Come on, Chen. You’re not calling to make fun of me like that.”

“No, I’m not. People buy the book like crazy because they like you so much. And count me in, one of your greatest fans.”

“Well, that I do not know. You must have long forgotten about me.”

“How could that be? I’ve been busy, as you know, but I kept seeing you on TV and I grabbed the book as soon as I heard about it.” He added emphatically, “I like your prose style.”

“You really do?”

“Definitely. So let me buy you dinner, An, in celebration of your literary success.”

“You’re overwhelming me tonight, Chief Inspector Chen. When?”

“How about tomorrow evening?”

“Fantastic. I know a restaurant, Golden Island. Still quite new. Not too many people go there, but it’s excellent. On the Bund.”

“ Golden Island. I’ve heard of it too. On the Bund. You’ll sign the book for me, won’t you?”

“I would love to. I’ve been thinking about interviewing you for my show.”

“It would be a great honor for me. On your show, in your scarlet cheongsam, you have always reminded me of Li Bai’s ‘Qingping Tune.’ ‘The clouds eager to make I your dancing costume, the peony, I to imitate your beauty, the spring breeze I touching the rail, the petal I glistening with dew-’ “

“Cut it out, Chen,” she said with a giggle. “You’re being hopelessly romantic.”

“See you at the restaurant.” He added, imitating her tone, “See me on TV.”

“Oh, you still remember that.”

See me on TV was a phrase she had used years earlier. It was a little flirtatious on her part, then. Still a little flirtatious on the phone, now.

The way he talked shouldn’t have alerted anyone. He was notorious for quoting poetry, and perhaps for being romantic too.

She’d better not be prepared for the evening.