Hidden Moon

2

“Where’s that wallet full of money?” Min dropped the normal “where have you been” when I walked in the next morning. I could tell he was angry. There was nothing on his face, and barely anything different in his voice, but he rarely went straight to the point.

“It’s safe and sound, don’t worry.” Trouble this early in the day wasn’t good. We should have gotten rid of the bank robbery case by now, but it was still hanging around my neck.

“I want it on my desk, immediately.”

“Can’t, I don’t have it on me. It’s at home.”

“In your apartment house, the one with no locks on the doors?”

“What’s the problem? No one goes into anyone else’s apartment. We have a code of honor.”

“A code of honor, in an apartment house filled with people who don’t have a pot to pee in? Why do you insist on living in that place? We could get you into somewhere nice, nicer than that, anyway.”

“It’s home, I like it.” Where I lived was my business. Min knew better than to tangle with me on that.

“Fine, that’s your affair, though it keeps triggering questions in the quarterly reviews. Somebody in the Ministry has started voicing suspicions that it isn’t normal for you to refuse multiple offers for a better place with more room. They think it must be a ruse.”

“Pardon me, but bullshit. What am I going to do with more room? Anyway, they’re good people in those apartments, no pretensions.”

“I know you are fond of the idea of the perfectibility of mankind, Inspector, but not at the expense of the Ministry’s procedures, please. How do you even hold on to such a notion? Every day we have examples right in front of our eyes telling us it isn’t true.”

“I don’t believe such a thing. I never said I did.”

“You don’t believe in the perfectibility of man?”

“Careful.”

“We’re not talking about me, Inspector, we’re talking about you. What I believe, I keep to myself.”

“So do I.”

“Ah, how I wish that were so. Do you know how much trouble I have every month, juggling the figures so it doesn’t come out that we are the office with the lowest arrest rate in the city?”

“We happen to work in a refined part of town, is all.”

“So, now you are suggesting that crime has a socioeconomic dimension, and that poorer people are more prone to crime than those who are better off?”

I laughed. “Rich people just commit different sorts of crimes. I see it every day at the markets.”

Min shook his head. “That’s not what we are discussing at the moment. We are dealing with something more philosophical than the price of shoes. We are discussing your view of mankind. Tell me, do you believe that man is already perfect? That there is no need for, shall we say, the gentle guidance of our leaders, who know, shall we say, the truth?”

Min’s mastery of the ironic was suddenly a little thin. “This conversation is going to get one of us in trouble,” I said.

“No, it won’t. I’m certainly not going to remember it five minutes from now. But you have my interest piqued. As long as we are on the subject, why are our arrest figures so low?”

“People make mistakes; they are not always crimes.”

“That isn’t for us to judge.”

“Not in a formal sense, no. But you’ll admit there is a difference.”

“I admit nothing, Inspector. You haven’t answered me. Do you believe man is already perfect?”

“What difference does it make what I think about mankind?”

“You are squirming like a fish on a hook. You have a guilty look in your eye. I’ve caught you, haven’t I? You basically think people are good, that they might commit bad acts, mistakes as you put it, but if we were to tote everything up, take the sum total of their lives, on balance mankind is more good than bad. How could I have landed the only policeman on the continent, maybe even on the planet, who believes such a fantasy?”

Neither of us said anything. I looked out at the gingko trees. Min examined his nails.

Finally, he cleared his throat. “You realize, Inspector, by extension, if you believe humans are perfect, you are saying the same about yourself. That’s what the lady with the grating voice will conclude, before she pronounces sentence on us, and trust me, it will be both of us. I’m your supervisor; if your thoughts have gone astray, they’ll say it was because I didn’t give you proper oversight.”

“I haven’t said anything, Min. You’ve been doing all the talking, and all the inferring, and all the surmising.”

“How did we get into this, anyway?”

“You said I shouldn’t trust the people in my apartment house.”

“For now, for the sake of argument, we’ll grant the perfectibility of the people in your humble dwelling, Inspector. But there are other people, many other people wandering around, from all sorts of places.”

“Chagang.”

“Yes, Chagang.”

“Maybe even worse.”

“Leave the Chinese out of this. My only point is, you don’t know who might be padding down the dark halls of your apartment house at this moment.”

“Well, I think I might. More to the point, I know who isn’t, and anyone who doesn’t belong there isn’t. Maybe the doors of your building are open for one and all. At my building, there is an old woman who guards the entrance. She has nothing better to do than stop people she doesn’t recognize, and if she says they can’t pass, they don’t.”

“What about Yang? Could he get into your building, with a Ministry