A Loyal Character Dancer

Chapter 11

Chen failed to reach Old Hunter. He had forgotten to ask where the old man had called from. He had been too preoccupied with telling the story of Dr. Zhivago in China to an attentive American audience of one. So he decided to walk home. Perhaps before he got there, his phone would start ringing again.

It rang at the corner of Sichuan Road, but it was Detective Yu.

“We’re in for it, Chief.”

“What?”

Yu told him about the food poisoning incident at the hotel and concluded, “The gang is connected to the Fujian police.”

“You may be right,” Chen said, not adding his own comment: not only with the Fujian police. “This investigation is a joint operation, but we don’t have to report to the local cops all the time. Whatever action you’re going to take, go ahead on your own. Don’t worry about their reaction. I will be responsible.”

“I see, Chief Inspector Chen.”

“From now on, call me at my home or on my cell phone. Send faxes to my home. In an emergency, contact Little Zhou. You cannot be too careful.”

“Take care of yourself, too.”

The food poisoning incident made him think of Inspector Rohn. First the motorcycle, and then the accident on the staircase.

They might have been followed. While they were talking with Zhu upstairs, something could have been done to the steps. Under normal circumstances, Chief Inspector Chen would have treated such an idea like a tall tale from Liaozhai, but they were dealing with a triad.

Anything was possible.

The triad might be proceeding on two fronts, in Shanghai and in Fujian. They were more resourceful than he had anticipated. And more calculating, too. The attempts, if that is what they were, had been made to seem like accidents, orchestrated so that there was no way to trace them to the perpetrators.

He thought about warning Inspector Rohn, but refrained. What would he tell her? The omnipresence of gangsters would not contribute to a positive image of contemporary China. Whatever the circumstances, he had to keep it in mind that he was working in the national interest. It was not desirable for her to think of the Chinese police or China in a negative way.

Looking at his watch, he decided to phone Party Secretary Li at home. Li invited him to come over to talk.

Li’s residence was located on Wuxing Road, in a high cadre residential complex behind walls. There was an armed soldier standing at the entrance gate and he made a stiff salute to Chen.

Party Secretary Li waited in the spacious living room of a three-bedroom apartment. The room was modestly furnished, but larger than Lihua’s entire home. Chen seated himself on a chair beside a pot of exquisite orchids swaying lightly in the breeze that came through the window, breathing elegance into the room.

There was a long silk scroll on the wall, bearing two lines in kai calligraphy: An old horse resting in the stable still aspires / to gallop thousands and thousands of miles. It was a couplet from Chao Cao’s “Looking out to the Sea,” a subtle reference to Li’s own situation. Prior to the mid-eighties, Chinese high-ranking cadres never retired, hanging on to their positions to the end, but with the changes Deng Xiaoping had introduced into the system, they, too, had to step down at retirement age. In a couple of years, Li would have to leave his office. Chen recognized the red seal of a well-known calligraphist imprinted under the lines. A scroll of his was worth a fortune at an international auction.

“Sorry to come to your home so late, Party Secretary Li,” Chen said.

“That’s okay. I’m alone this evening. My wife is at our son’s place.”

“Your son has moved out?”

Li had a daughter and a son, both in their mid-twenties. Early last year, the daughter got an apartment from the bureau by virtue of Li’s cadre rank. A high-ranking cadre was entitled to additional housing because he needed more space in which to work in the interests of the socialist country. People grumbled behind his back, but no one dared to raise it as an issue in the housing committee meeting. It was surprising that Li’s son, a recent college graduate, had also received his own apartment.

“He moved last month. She is with him tonight, decorating his new home.”

“Congratulations, Party Secretary Li! That’s something worth celebrating.”

“Well, his uncle made a down payment on a small apartment and let him move in,” Li said. “Economic reform has brought about a lot of change in our city.”

“I see,” Chen said. So this was the result of housing reform. The government had started to encourage people to buy their own housing to supplement their work units’ assignments, but few could afford the price-except the newly rich. “His uncle must have done well in his business.”

“He has a small bar.”

Chen was reminded of Old Hunter’s story about Li’s untouchable brother-in-law. Those upstarts were successful not because of their business acumen, but because of their guanxi.

“Tea or coffee?” Li asked with a smile.

“Coffee.”

“Well, I only have instant.”

Then Chen started by briefing Li about the food poisoning incident in Fujian.

Li responded, “Don’t be too suspicious. Some of our Fujian colleagues may not be too pleased with Detective Yu’s presence. It’s their domain, I can understand that. But it goes way too far to accuse them of being connected with a gang. You don’t have any evidence, Chief Inspector Chen.”

“I’m not saying all of them are tied to the triad, but one insider can do a lot of damage.”

“Take a break, Comrade. Both Yu and you are overwrought. There’s no need to imagine yourself fighting in the Bagong Mountains, with every tree and weed an enemy soldier.”

Li referred to a battle during the Jin dynasty, when a panic-stricken general’s imagination turned everything into the enemy chasing him into the mountains. But Chen suspected that it was Li who had lost sight of the enemy. This was no time to take a break. Perceiving a slight change in Li’s attitude toward the investigation, he wondered whether he had done something more than his Party boss had expected.

He shifted his focus to Inspector Rohn’s cooperation, one of Li’s main concerns.

“The Americans are pursuing the investigation in their interests,” Li commented. “It is a matter of course for her to cooperate. As long as they know we are doing our best, we don’t have to worry. That’s all we need to do.”

“That’s all we need to do,” Chen echoed.

“We’ll try to find Wen, certainly, but it may not be easy to accomplish this within the time frame-their time frame. We don’t have to go out of our way for them.”

“I’ve not worked on such a sensitive international case before. Please give me more of your specific instructions, Party Secretary Li.”

“You’ve been doing a great job. The Americans must see that we are trying our best. That’s very important.”

“Thank you,” Chen said, familiar with Li’s way of saying something positive to soften what would follow.

“As an old-timer, I would just like to make a few suggestions. Your visit to Old Ma, for example, may not have been an excellent choice. Ma is a good doctor. No question about it. I still remember your effort to help him.”

“Why not, Party Secretary Li?”

“The Mas have their reasons to complain about our system,” Li said, frowning. “Have you told Inspector Rohn the story of Dr. Zhivago in China?”

“Yes, she asked me about it.”

“You see, the Cultural Revolution was a national disaster. A lot of people suffered. Such a story is nothing new here, but may be sensational to an American.”

“But that happened even before the Cultural Revolution.”

“Well, that’s like what happens in an investigation,” Li said. “You are not doing anything now, but it’s still what you have already done.”

Chen was astonished by Li’s reproof, which was not totally irrelevant.

“Also, I’m concerned by the accident in Zhu’s place. Those old houses with dark, rotten staircases. Fortunately, nothing serious has happened, or the American might really get suspicious.”

“Well-” I really am suspicious, Chen did not say.

“That’s why I want to reemphasize that you must provide a safe and satisfactory stay for Inspector Rohn. Think of something else to do. You have served as an escort for Westerners. A cruise on the river is a must for a tourist. And a visit to the Old City.” Li said, “I’m going to invite her to a Beijing Opera. I’ll let you know as soon as I have made arrangements.”

So Party Secretary Li actually wanted him to stop the investigation, though he did not say so explicitly.

Why? Chen was perplexed. There were so many possible points for him to ponder over. As he had suspected, he’d been given this assignment more for the appearance of carrying out an investigation than to obtain a result. If he was going to do a real job, it would have to be done without the bureau’s knowledge.

He tried to clear his mind on the way home, but he was still exasperated when his apartment building came in sight.

Turning on the light in his apartment, he compared his strikingly plain room with Li’s. No exquisite orchids breathing the owner’s elegant taste. No silk scrolls sporting the calligraphy of renowned scholars. A room is like a woman, incapable of standing comparison, he reflected.

He took out the cassette tape of Yu’s interview in the village. It had been express-mailed to his home. The information provided by Wen’s neighbors was not really new. The apathy shared by them was also understandable, considering what Feng had done during the Cultural Revolution.

To some extent, the chief inspector thought he could understand the isolation Wen had inflicted upon herself. During his first few years in the police bureau, he had also alienated himself from his former friends who had started teaching in colleges or interpreting at the Foreign Ministry. A cop’s career had not been his expectation for himself, nor his friends’. Ironically, that was one of the reasons that he had thrown himself into translating and writing in those days.

Wen must have been a proud woman.

The tape rolled slowly on to the interview with Miao, the owner of the only private phone in the village, about how the village folks paid her for their calls to people overseas. When people called home from abroad, they also used her phone. Miao explained, “When someone calls from overseas, there may be a long wait before his family comes to the phone. As international calls can be very expensive, some of them make a point of calling at a scheduled time. For Feng, it was always Tuesday evening, around eight o’clock. But for the first two or three weeks, he called more frequently. Once Wen was not at home, and another time she did not want to come to pick up the phone. They did not get along so well, you know. With such a husband, I do not blame her. A fresh flower stuck in a heap of ox dung. It’s surprising that he calls every week. I don’t think he has made much money. He has been there for only a few months…”

He pushed the stop button, rewound the tape, listened to it again, stopped it, made a note, and pushed the play button again.

“Anyway, before eight o’clock on Tuesday, Wen would come to wait by the phone. The last call was an exception. It came on a Friday. I remember. Feng said that it was urgent. So I had to run to get her. I do not know anything about the contents of their talk. I thought she looked upset afterwards. That’s about all I can tell you, Detective Yu.”

As the tape came to an end, Chief Inspector Chen lit a cigarette, trying to do some thinking.

Normally, for the first couple of days, there were a number of directions to pursue in search of a missing person, but once they were covered, and no clue discovered, the search came to a dead end. Still, some details were worth exploring. For one thing, why would Wen have refused to answer an expensive international call? Even if their relationship was terrible, wouldn’t she still want to join her husband in America?

He slipped off his shoes, lay down on the sofa, picked up a copy of Wenhui Daily. There was a column discussing doctors and nurses taking “red envelopes” or petty graft from patients. Maybe that was another reason why Mr. Ma enjoyed such good business. Visits to a state-run hospitals were covered by insurance, but the amount in the “red envelopes” could be staggering. Some called it a form of corruption; others attributed it to unreasonable distribution of wealth in the society. He put aside the newspaper, intending only to rest his eyes for a few minutes. He dozed off in spite of himself.

The insistent clanging of the phone intruded into his fading dream. It was Old Hunter.

“Sorry to call you so late,” Old Hunter said.

“No, I’ve been waiting for your call,” he said. “I was with Inspector Rohn in the hotel. So please go on with your report, in detail.”

“First, about the victim’s pajamas. Some part I have told you already. No label in the pajamas, but there is a fine design woven into the material, shaped like a V connected with an elliptical circle. I spoke with Tang Kaiyuan, a fashion designer. According to Tang, the design stands for Valentino, an international brand. Very expensive. There’s no store selling it in Shanghai. So the victim must have been a rich man. Possibly from another province. Maybe from Hong Kong.”

“It may be a fake, a knockoff,” Chen commented.

“I thought about that, too. Tang said that it’s not likely. He has never seen fake Valentino pajamas here. Knockoffs come in large quantities. No one will try to make just one or two pieces. A month ago, there was a raid on a warehouse and more than three hundred thousand cheap Polo logo T-shirts were found. If they had been put on the market, the real, high-priced Polo brand shirts would have been unsaleable.”

“Tang has a good point.”

“I also had a discussion with Dr. Xia. That’s why I did not have time to call you. The good doctor’s willing to go out of his way for you. Remember the unidentified drug he found in the body of the ax-murder corpse? When we discussed the fact the victim had had sex shortly before he was killed, the doctor got an idea that the mysterious drug might be a sort of aphrodisiac, and he took out a thick reference volume there and then. Sure enough, he found a drug with similar molecular structure. At the time when the book was published, this drug was available only in Southeast Asia. It can be very expensive.”

“The victim must have been able to afford expensive luxuries, with such a brand of pajamas, and such a drug, but he doesn’t sound like one of those new capitalists to me.”

“I agree,” Old Hunter said. “I will do further research tomorrow.”

“Thanks, Uncle Yu. Not a single word about your discovery to the people in the bureau.”

“I understand, Chief Inspector Chen.”

It was almost twelve as Chen put down the phone. All in all, the day had not ended too badly, though his dream had been broken into by the phone call.

Of that dream, only one fragmented scene remained in his mind. He was walking to an ancient bridge over a Qing dynasty moat, alone, crunching over a blanket of golden leaves, somewhere in the Forbidden City. A poem by Zhang Bi, a Tang dynasty poet, came to mind.

The dream comes lingering back to the old place:

The winding verandah, the circling balustrade.

There is nothing like the moon, still shining on the petals

Fallen in the spring court, for the lonely visitor.

Chief Inspector Chen made himself another cup of black coffee, trying to cleanse his palate and his mind of the dream. This was not a night for recollecting poems. He had to think.