The Shanghai Murders

DAY TEN

The buses began their morning shriek. It was 4:00 A.M. Loa Wei Fen took a peek at the sleeping lovers as he soundlessly rose from his squatting position and made his way out of the destroyed building.The thud of the city was picking up as he moved eastward along the dusty streets toward the Old City. Shanghai was little more than a mirage to him now. But in that mirage there was an oasis of truth. A place of momentary peace in his hopeless dream. An opium whore whom he loved.

Moments after Loa Wei Fen entered the Old City, Wang Jun awoke from a fitful sleep. He got out of bed, careful not to wake the couple who slept on the other side of the drawn curtain. The water spat from the street spout as he turned it on. Its colour didn’t please him so he let it run until the colour thinned. Then, ducking his head, he allowed the water’s chill to waken his sleepy brain. Turning, he drank from the stream. “Might as well drink this shit, it’s already in our veins,” he thought. Spitting out the last of the water, he sat down on the pavement and looked at the Shanghai alley along which he had lived for the past twenty-two years. He had been twenty-nine when he first came to Shanghai. He was sixty-two now. And what did he have to show for those thirty-three years of work? A place to throw his weary body after a wearying day’s work. Little else. Oh yes, he also had a friend, Zhong Fong. A friend whom he was betraying even as he sat here. His cellular phone rang. He took it from his coat pocket and for a moment stared at its flickering lights. Then he punched it on. “Wang Jun.” The furious voice of his Hu-ness cracked the morning stillness. Wang Jun did not so much listen as endure the tirade. All he could do was hold on and allow the anger to wash over him. He noted that this kind of behaviour no longer hurt him. There was a time when his skin was less thick. A time when betraying a friend would have given him more pause.

Li Xiao was in the office by 6:30 and the pressure was already on. It was hard to answer the questions about yesterday’s failure to apprehend Zhong Fong. It was more difficult getting answers as to why the officers fired without his command. It was most difficult for him to accept that he was nothing but a pawn in this game- that he was head of this investigation in name only.

Late last night he had challenged Commissioner Hu on that point. All that the commissioner had said was “No one is beyond expendability here. China is bigger than anyone person. You will do what you are told to do or you will go away. The choice is yours.” He chose to say nothing. In China that choice means that you accept. Now, the next morning, he was dealing with the consequences of his choice.

The old man with the hoarse voice was not used to yelling. He was almost incapable of it. But he yelled at Commissioner Hu that today was to be the end of it all. That both men were to be dead by the end of the day or Commissioner Hu would be the commissioner of a ratinfested jungle outpost in the south. Commissioner Hu’s silence pleased him. It was assent and understanding. It felt very good to hang up on the commissioner. Such men were important to the system but left a foul taste in one’s mouth when one had to deal with them.

The man with the cobra on his back had hurt her. How badly she didn’t know. The opium was still alive in her bloodstream. Its neural lubricant had allowed her into another place as he ranted at her. Hurt her. But now the pain was welling up. So, as the man continued to sleep on the palate in her cubicle, she slipped out into the hallway and hobbled toward the front. She was aware of the blood slipping down her legs. She didn’t care. She got to the front and pulled the policeman’s card out of the drawer beneath the phone. She dialled the number on the card. When the phone was answered she asked for Lily. She was met by a lengthy silence and then a woman’s voice came on the time.

Lily only got in a few words before she was pushed aside by Shrug and Knock. “This is a call that the commissioner should hear about, isn’t it?” Lily sat stony still as Shrug and Knock forced answers from the opium whore. Lily wondered if this job was still worth having. She’d miss Fong.

Fong awoke from his cruel night’s sleep. His back ached from the crunch of the brick behind him. Amanda was still asleep with her head in his lap. He looked at her facial wound and breathed a sigh of relief. The wound was clean. It had crusted smoothly. He reached into her pocket and pulled out the bottle of antibiotic. He crushed a tablet in his fingers and powdered the wound again. Her colour wasn’t bad and there still seemed to be no fever. For a moment the phrase “Luck is on our side” popped into his head. But he pushed it away as soon as it arose. Luck had kept her alive through the night. No luck would keep them alive today. Only thought and action. She was five feet eleven inches tall, white, and blond. Hard to hide in a city where the average height was five foot six, where there were few whites and no blonds. Where do you hide an albino giant in a city of short dark folks?

Loa Wei Fen had heard Wu Yeh leave the cubicle. He didn’t move but he listened closely. His mind supplied him with a map of the opium den and the environs. He heard the click of the phone as she hung up. The snake rose on his back. Her padding feet were making their way back to him. The swolta seemed to move toward his hands. She who loved the black man would not see this day’s night. He who loved the opium whore would not see tomorrow’s dawn. At least not on this earth. Of both these things he was sure.

The padding feet stopped outside the cubicle.

Fong pushed Amanda’s head down as she hunched in the back seat of the taxi. As they were stepping into the cab, Fong had seen a woman with a red armband race out of a nearby building. Her ferret eyes locked on him and Amanda. She would file her report in less than a minute. “To the North Train Station and hurry,” he yelled at the cabbie. The small red car took off with a lurch and blared its way into traffic.

The call reporting Fong and Amanda was taken and transferred to Li Xiao’s cellular line. The young detective picked up the call just as he hopped out of his car and headed toward the door of the opium den. He barked into his cellular, “Get the cab number out to all the wardens and keep this line open. Send out everything that comes in to the police units on their radios and patch it through to this number as well.” He left the phone in the car and headed toward the opium den.

He paid no attention to the small man crouched against the storefront across the way.

But Loa Wei Fen, now dressed in the rags of an opium addict, paid more than a little attention to the policeman. As the patrol cars arrived from every side and surrounded the opium den, Loa Wei Fen watched. Watched and felt himself moving closer to the edge of the roof. Ready at long last for the jump.

The gore of the opium whore was enough to turn Wang Jun’s stomach. Li Xiao cursed and stomped around. There were too many policemen for the tight corridors. The whole thing was out of hand. The commissioner was yelling for him somewhere off to one side. There was shouting and screaming everywhere. No one noticed the beggar man across the street rise and cross towards Li Xiao’s police car.

And no one noticed him reach inside and take the cellular phone.

The North Train Station was filled with people-but not filled enough to hide Amanda. Fong was faced with a hard choice. He was sure that the warden who saw them get in the cab had reported what she saw. If she had good eyesight she’d be able to supply the cab number. If so, Fong knew that they should change cabs. But if they got out of the cab Amanda would attract attention again. Then he saw them, bands of police officers moving quickly through the crowd. The recently arrived peasants moved out of the way as the police pushed their way through. “The bus station on the west side,” Fong snapped at the driver. When the driver paused, Fong reached into his pocket and threw a wad of kwai onto the front seat. The cab lurched forward. It was just past noon. Daylight was not their friend.

Fong leaned out the window. There was a slight mist hovering over the Huangpo. The promise of the first summer storm hung in the air. He wondered for a moment if they’d be alive to see the rain. To drink in its liquid hope.

The call from the North Train Station came in to all units. Wang Jun got it in his car. His Hu-ness was told of the call while yelling at Li Xiao in the corridor of the opium den. Loa Wei Fen got the call as he moved along Fang Bang Road and admired the building clouds to the east. Rain was going to come. A deluge to wash him over the edge.

The bus station was as stupid an idea as the train station. Fong didn’t even allow the cabbie to slow down before he shouted a new destination. The cabbie looked around at him like he was a nut. “The theatre?” he demanded. Fong turned to Amanda who held out a handful of money. Fong took it and tossed it to the driver.

The cab swung out into traffic and phones rang all over the city.

Fong spotted the roadblock before the cabbie did and yelled at him to pull over. Before the cab stopped moving Fong had the door open. He threw money at the driver and shouted an address far in the other direction. He didn’t really believe that the cabbie would bother to go where he was instructed. Fong didn’t need that. Just a five-minute head start. Just get the police to follow the cab for five minutes and he’d have a place for Amanda and himself to hide for the rest of the afternoon. The cab pulled a dangerous V-turn and sped away. As it did a police car roared after it but Fong didn’t stay to watch the show. Racing through the crowd and onto the overpass, he and Amanda crossed over Xian and then headed down a back alley. At the end of the alley, in front of a low door, he stopped. He looked back. There was no one following. A gnarled old man answered his knock. He looked at Fong inquiringly. “I’m Fu Tsong’s husband.” The ancient’s face lit up and he opened the door. They stepped inside.

Just as they did, a woman with a red armband leaned out her window to place her laundry out to dry. She thought she saw a small Chinese man with a tall white woman enter the back door of the theatre. That’s what she thought she saw. And she knew her duty: to report what she saw, thought she saw, or wanted others to believe she saw. She completed hanging her bamboo pole strung with laundry and then headed down the five flights of stairs aiming her bent figure toward the alley’s mouth and its phone kiosk.

Amanda was amazed. They were in the wings of an old theatre. Onstage were some of the sets of the Shanghai branch of the classic Peking opera. Before them dozens of actors in classical makeup and costume were readying themselves for rehearsal. Fong was standing to one side talking to one of the actresses. After a moment, she ushered Fong and Amanda into a small room, telling Amanda (with Fong interpreting) that she was “Su Shing, a dear friend of Fu Tsong’s. Fong’s wife.” She opened a large closet and removed an elaborate costume and pots of makeup. Fong had already removed his outer clothing and was sitting in front of the makeup mirror. Su Shing gave a slight bow and left the two.

“What are we doing?”

“Hiding. It’s the only place I could think of where you wouldn’t stand out. You might have noticed that you look somewhat different from almost everyone of the fourteen million people in this city.”

“Yeah, I noticed that.”

“Good. Put on the costume. I’ll do your makeup for you.”

“You’ll put on my makeup?”

“That’s what I said, unless you know how to do the Peking opera makeup for your character.”

“How do you know how to do this?”

“My wife was an actress.” She noticed him falter for an instant. Then he added, “For a long time.” After another clearly troubled moment he spoke again. “She was a great actress. She liked me to do her makeup for her. She taught me. I learned.”

Amanda was sitting now. Fong stood facing her with one of his legs between hers. His delicate hands pushed aside her hair. “Hold this back.” She did. He reached for the pot of white makeup. “I’ve got to go over your wound. It’ll hurt. Okay?”

She nodded and took tight hold of his leg. He took a large swath of the white ointment and spread it over her cheek with a smallish trowel. When it touched the wound her nerves sent shards of pain straight down the bones of her face to her chest. She bit her lip to hold back a scream.

He saw it but kept on. With her face covered in the white paint, he reached for the costume’s headdress. Its long feathers swayed as he placed it over her blond hair and tucked in the tendrils. Tears were running down her cheeks as the pain continued. He ignored them and helped her out of her blouse, skirt, and shoes and into the elaborate costume, adjusting the many hidden straps. Finally he slipped her feet into the black and white platform shoes.

“Stand up.”

As she did, he took a step back and looked at her in the mirror. Even without her makeup completed, she was exquisite. He quickly applied the covering base makeup to his own face and then put on the costume of the serving man. When he was finished he stood beside her and looked into the mirror.

The two of them stared at the couple in front of them.

Slowly she reached up and touched one of the feathers on the headdress.

“Draw it down slowly and bend it into your mouth,” he said.

She did as he said, drawing the feather down and placing part of it between her lips. A buzz of pleasure shot through him.

“Who am I?”

“You’re you.”

“No, I mean who am I dressed as?’’

Fong was about to say ”You are dressed as you“ but stopped himself.

”A beautiful princess from the coast who was promised in marriage to a prince of the west.“

”And you?“

”The serving man entrusted with taking you across three thousand miles of China. Across snow-covered mountains, swift wide rivers, and vast deserts to bring you to your new husband.“ ”And do you?“

”I do.“

”And do we fall in love on the journey?“

After a silence in which both of them heard each other’s shallow intake of air, ”Yes.”

“Do we consummate our love?”

“In our own way, yes. In the three-year journey we only touch once. When I break my leg crossing a river. You insist that I ride the horse. You help me onto the horse’s back. Our hands touch for an instant.”

“Our consummation.”

“Yes.”

“And what happens when we finally get to the court of the west?”

“Your new husband is there. He is indifferent to you. You are only a pawn in a game of politics. But he takes you in. He completes his part of the game.”

“And what happens to you?”

“I turn around and walk three thousand miles back to the sea.”

She touched his hand. It felt dry like rice paper.

“Did your wife play this role?”

“In a way, yes.”

He began to complete her makeup. “She’s dead?” He nodded yes and continued with her makeup, being as careful as he could to avoid the wound on her cheek. She put a hand into his free hand. For a moment he didn’t respond to it. Then he returned the touch. Jolts of feeling leapt between them, their touch a full consummation.

Li Xiao was in the middle of grilling the cabbies who had driven Fong when the call came through. Li Xiao called for a map. Wang Jun said, “Fuck that, follow me.” The parade of cops spun about and headed back toward the theatre.

Withdrawing her hand from his, Amanda looked up at this strange man from this distant country. She could feel a third person in the room with them. “What was her name, your wife?”

“Fu Tsong.” He pronounced the name simply but to her ear with immense delicacy and sadness.

“How long ago did she die?”

“Years, days, minutes. Sometimes she’s not dead at all,” he said in a flat, faraway voice. Tears were in his eyes.

“Tell me.”

And he did. How they met. How he loved her. How his careless words led to her death. How he found her on an abortionist’s table. How he was never sure whether she loved him. Each phrase hit the centre of the still pond between them, sending perfect circles out in all directions.

After he stopped speaking she allowed a lengthy silence. Finally she asked, “Why did you take me here?”

“To hide you.”

“I already told you that you’re a bad liar. Why am I here? ”

“To produce a memory.”

“Of what?”

“Of you.”

“Why?”

“This is China. There is no way to escape here. I will be caught shortly and I will be sent to prison for a very long time. I need a memory for the nights when the darkness gets too great for me to bear. I’m sorry. Sorry for everything.”

“Don’t be. What’ll they do to me?”

“They’ll try to frighten you. Probably deport you. They don’t care about you. They do care about upsetting your government so nothing serious will happen to you. Just be brave and you will be home in a week.”

“You’re sure?”

“Of that? Absolutely.”

“And of other things?”

She saw his mind return to Fu Tsong. She knew that he was fading from her.

She reached for him. The clouds parted and he was with her again.

“Don’t go away like that.”

“I loved her very much and hurt her very badly.”

What was Amanda to say to that? The truth of what he said was etched clearly on his face. So clearly that makeup couldn’t hide it. In fact, as was the beauty of Peking opera makeup, his emotions were conveyed with startling clarity.

She reached for his hand again. This time when they touched, they just touched hands.

Bones and skin and sinew failed to transcend this world’s realities.

Onstage Su Shing was working with several actors and actresses. All the women were dressed and made up as the princess in Journey to the West and all the men as the serving man. The musicians played a section of the opera as Su Shing illustrated a moment in the journey in which the princess, in fear, pulls down her left feather with her left hand while shooting her right leg straight forward. Su Shing then hit a high note and contracted into an exquisite pose. As she did, the cymbals sounded and, as if on cue, the police entered from the back of the theatre. Wang Jun was in the lead with Li Xiao and Commissioner Hu right behind. At the same time several burly northern cops came from backstage. One stepped forward and called to the back of the theatre, “There’s no one left backstage on this side, we’re checking the other side.” He made no reference to the stagedoor man. Fong stood at the back of the group of actors dressed as the serving man. As half the cops moved across the stage he scanned the wings. He knew what had happened to the stage-door man. He didn’t know exactly how he knew but he knew in his bones that Loa Wei Fen was in the theatre too. That he had followed them somehow and killed the doorman to get in undetected.

Su Shing stepped forward, berating the policemen. “This is a rehearsal, not a police station. There is a performance of these apprentice actors in less than half an hour and they are going through their final preparations.”

His Hu-ness yelled back, “There will be no performance today. We are the representatives of the people.The people own this theatre, not you. You work for them. So work. Act and we the people’s representatives will watch.”

Amanda slipped out of her platform shoes. She was now the same height as the rest of the actresses in theirs. Su Shing screeched a command to the musicians. The music began and two of the actors moved forward. They enacted a section of the play where the serving man guides his charge across a raging river. Li Xiao and his Hu-ness were moving toward the stage.

As they got close to the group of women, Fong spotted Loa Wei Fen high in the flies over the stage. A reptile on the hunt.

Li Xiao was looking closely at the women. Amanda didn’t know it, but the wound on her face was bleeding through her makeup.

Fong caught Amanda’s eye. He canted his head slightly to the left. She looked and saw that the left side of the stage was not covered by the police, all of whom seemed intent upon examining the women. Amanda smiled slightly; as she did, she raised her arm slightly toward Fong.

Fong almost swooned. Something rose up inside him. A terror. A memory. The simple arm gesture from Amanda moved something deep inside him, as if his body organs had shifted as he stood.

Amanda repeated the gesture and said silently, without moving her lips, “Goodbye, Fong, and thank you.” Then she looked at the young detective who was near her. She slipped her platform shoes back on, making herself a full foot taller than he. She took a deep breath and then shouted in English, “Back off, pipsqueak.”

Li Xiao was so startled at the advance of this enormous woman speaking in a foreign tongue that he almost fell backward. Before he could get his balance she was advancing on him, blood pouring crimson on her white makeup.

“Yeah, you, I’m talking to you, you yellow devil, you monkey in a suit, I’m talking to you, you fucking son of a bitch, you cocksucking dog fucker.” Then she saw the man she assumed was his Hu-ness and charged at him. “I’m talking to you, you puny-dicked moron, you. . .”

It was enough. She’d caused the one thing the Chinese cannot handle. Chaos. There was screaming everywhere as her words were translated with as much delicacy as possible. When she grabbed his Hu-ness by the lapels, all hell broke loose. Cops were moving everywhere.

It was not hard for Fong to slip out. He didn’t delude himself into believing that Loa Wei Fen in the theatre’s flies would be fooled. So he ran. But as he ran he savoured the memory of Amanda Pitman calling his Hu-ness a puny-dicked moron.

Fong didn’t remember much of what happened next. It had begun to rain. Traffic was horribly snarled. He ran. Darkness fell. The storm broke in all its fury as he entered the tunnel under the Bund at Beijing Road. He had no idea how it had gotten so late so quickly. All he knew was that he could run no more.

The tunnel was empty except for the old musician and his filthy child.

“Just let me sleep here, grandfather. Betray me if you must.” The beggar child moved from his blanket rag and approached Fong with his hand out. Fong reached into his pocket and gave the boy every yuan note he had left. The boy neither smiled nor frowned but delivered the money to his father, who began to play. As the haunting music echoed in the tunnel, Fong leaned back against the coolness of the tunnel wall. He breathed through his open mouth, his eyes misting. Without a sound the beggar boy came over to him and curled up in his lap. The warmth of the boy on Fong’s body sent a sob through his being. With his hand in the beggar boy’s hair, he drifted off to sleep with one final thought: if there is a god, he is laughing now.

Fong’s dream that night began with the cobra. Its steel coils were snaking their way down the hallowed-out shaft of the construction site elevator. Fong was at the bottom, completely walled in, and despite his frantic efforts to pry open the elevator doors they refused to budge. Outside the elevator shaft Fong could see the rattan wrapping and the massive bamboo scaffolds. His screams for help were drowned out by the screech of the storm and the thunder of the cranes. Above, the mighty snake flared its hood and descended the cables of the elevator-never fast but constant. Suddenly the mercury vapor arc lights switched on, converting darkest night into frozen day. The reptile’s unblinking eyes glinted red. Without warning the mighty snake dropped itself from the cables directly onto Fong’s now almost paralyzed body.

His scream must have awakened the beggar boy, who was patting Fong’s hair and whispering that things were going to be all right.

It was very late at night. There was little traffic in the tunnel. The old string player was shovelling a small bowl of rice into his toothless maw and staring at Fong. He finished his rice, stood up and, taking the boy by the hand, headed out of the tunnel. Fong could have sworn that the old man said two words over his shoulder: the Pudong.

Then things happened in a blur. Wang Jun was at his side. The two of them were running. Sirens crowded the night, competing with the roiling thunder. They jumped into Wang Jun’s car and headed across the suspension bridge. “What are you doing, Wang Jun?”

“I’m being dangerously sentimental. I’m saving your sorry life.”

As Wang Jun’s car careened off the exit ramp from the suspension bridge, he headed away from the sirens- into the heart of the Pudong.

Li Xiao and Loa We Fen got the report of the escape from the tunnel at the same time. The difference was that Li Xiao was on the Shanghai side of the Huangpo River, Loa Wei Fen on the Pudong side. . . waiting.

Wang Jun slammed on the brakes, skidding his car to a stop not two feet from the police roadblock. With a precision that identified them as federal troops, the men at the roadblock advanced on Wang Jun’s car.

Fong looked at his old friend. Wang Jun didn’t seem to be unhappy. “Where will they put you, Wang Jun?”

“In hell with you, no doubt.”

“That’s only true if they catch us.”

Wang Jun reached inside his jacket and took out his gun. He held it out to Fong and said, “You’re younger.”

With that, both men slammed open their doors, rolled out onto the pavement and bounded to their feet before their would-be captors could react.

As he ran Fong heard the gunshots and the thud of Wang Jun’s body slamming to the pavement. He didn’t hesitate or look back. He ran deep into the mystery of the old area. Deep into the heart of this terrifying place. He didn’t stop until his legs would take him no farther.

He found himself in the midst of a large muck-filled construction site.

He leaned against a stack of bamboo, his breath ragged in his chest. Raising his head he saw two great arc lights far across the vast construction site. Their beams were focused on a solitary bamboo elevator shaft. He took a step toward it before it struck him like a sledgehammer blow to the chest. His heart leapt in fear. It was the elevator shaft from his dream.

Before he could move he heard the slosh of a foot sliding in the muck behind him. He instinctively ducked to his left. The swolta tore through his quilted jacket and sliced across his left breast just to one side of his nipple, continuing down to rip through sections of Fong’s left leg.

For a moment he looked at his attacker, who had slipped to the muck-covered ground, then he ran and slid and yelled and fought the pain until a darkness seemed to envelop him.

He had to rest. His body was soaked with blood and sweat, the pelting rain mixing the two in an unholy froth.

He leaned back against a solid surface that gave slightly against his weight. It was bamboo. He turned slowly, a tingling fear electrifying his blood.

He was at the base of the solitary elevator shaft, the construction lights full in his eyes.

Loa Wei Fen looked down. Beneath him was the end of his quest. Directly below, blinded by the bright construction-site lights, it crouched warily, its head moving left and right but never up. Never up the bamboo elevator shaft. Never to where Loa Wei Fen lurked and patiently waited, like a lion cub on a roof, ready to jump.

“Above, Loa Wei Fen, always attack from above,” the voice of his old teacher whispered in his ears. So removing his muddied shirt, he began. His hand reached for the swolta. The knife hilt rolled slightly and fitted itself to its master’s palm. Then down, down the bamboo bracing he slithered, his prey never suspecting danger from above.

After the first attack Fong’s mobility was reduced to a hobbling gait but there was still spring in his step and although the knife had severed muscle it had missed tendon, so the leg still responded to his will. When he fell his gun had filled with thick mud. Now, as he braced himself against the bamboo elevator shaft, he tried desperately to clean the gun barrel. His enemy was clearly stronger and quicker than he. Only the bad footing had saved his life on that first attack. Now he would have to survive by his wits.

“Loa Wei Fen,” he shouted into the harsh lights. “Loa Wei Fen, we know who you are. We know your school in Taipei. We have pictures of you.” He waited. There was no response. The rain picked up again.

On one side of the tall bamboo shaft low-voltage electric lines hissed slightly as the rain caused shorts where the cables were jury-rigged together. The lines led to a major power source high up on the shaft. On the ground muck and puddles covered most of the area except for a slightly raised cement pad upon which the elevator car would eventually come to rest.

Fong took aim at one of the two large arc lights and fired. The gun kicked hard to the right and the bullet pinged harmlessly off the side of the light’s casing.

“They gave you to us, Loa Wei Fen. They’ve used you, and now they want you gone. They gave you to us, you stupid shit.”

Loa Wei Fen was slightly surprised by the gunshot but encouraged by the miss. The lights were to his advantage as they were aimed down at the quarry, not up at the hunter.

He felt the cobra markings on his back begin to fill with blood. Without conscious thought, he spread the muscles of his upper back, opening the cobra’s hood. He slid down to the sixth floor of the bamboo shaft. His quarry was directly beneath him, hollering at the wind.

“They used me too. We’re both just pawns for them,” Fong screamed into the now sheeting rain. He aimed and fired a second time. This bullet found its mark and one of the two arc lights snapped off.

Like the taking out of an eye, the blinking off of one of the lights robbed Loa Wei Fen of his depth perception in the middle of his swing to a central strut of the fifth floor. His fingers reached and found only air. For a moment he plunged, but instinct saved him as his other arm, in full extension, struck and held a cross strut. And there he hung by one arm as the wounded man below him began to yell again.

“We don’t mean anything to them! They don’t give a shit! They want us both dead, you idiot!”

Fong fired three times at the remaining light and missed each time.

Loa Wei Fen, after hanging for almost thirty seconds, pulled himself up by one hand and then continued his progress down. The shouting man was directly beneath him, looking tiny through the curtains of rain now blowing almost parallel to the ground. Loa Wei Fen put the hilt of the knife in his mouth and tasted the acid of the snake’s skin. Blood engorged the markings on his back so they stood out like brilliant red welts.

His next move downward knocked free a low-voltage auxiliary electric cable.

The slender power line popped and hissed in the puddle at Fong’s left. He leapt aside and traced the dangling wire upward. And there, two and a half floors above him, was the great cobra of his nightmares, its hood spread, its sinuous body ready to drop on him from above. Fear coursed through him so strongly that he soiled his pants and dropped his gun into the puddle beside him. It glowed blue in the electrified water.

With an expert push, Loa Wei Fen, swolta in hand, began his spinning fall toward his prey, arms outstretched, legs spread, knife ready.

Fong saw the approaching, twisting shadow, framed perfectly by the elevator platform. As the snake’s head rose, its single fang glinting in the arc light, Fong reached high up on the diagonal piece of bamboo that supported the major electrical cable, and pulled with all his might.

Below him Loa Wei Fen saw the man reaching up toward him, beckoning-like the little monk on the peacock at the end of the strut of the Jade Buddha Temple. The little monk below. He, the fearful lion cub, above. This finally was the leap to the path.

The bamboo snapped free and severed the heavy cable. The exposed end of the cable touched the scaffold. The electricity, offered a new avenue of escape, leapt up the soaking bamboo toward Loa Wei Fen. With the same speed it raced down to the arm of the small man now almost knee deep in the mud.

The electricity hit both men at the same time. For a moment both were lit by a ghostly fire. Muscles involuntarily knotted in response to the jolt. The voltage surge threw Fong to his back on the cement slab, his limbs twitching. It forced Loa Wei Fen to bite through his tongue as he plummeted earthward.

Then the electricity crossed the thick main cable high up the scaffolding. Bamboo burst into flame. Sharp lengths of the solid vine plunged like spears toward Fong.

Fong’s eyes snapped open. Lightning bolts of flaming bamboo were streaking down at him and in their midst the huge snake twisted its body, trying to turn, even as it fell directly at him. Fong never felt the bamboo spike pierce his left biceps and splinter against the concrete slab. He didn’t feel it because the cobra’s tooth, the swolta, was free falling, point downward, directly toward his heart.

The cobra completed its turn. For a moment the two men locked eyes. One on his back on the slab, the other plunging face down toward the earth, the swolta between the two.

Fong instinctively reached up to protect himself from the falling knife.

Loa Wei Fen saw the little monk signalling for him to follow. And he understood. At last he understood how to make the leap to the path. He lunged downward toward the plunging swolta and with a flick turned the blade upward toward himself.

Loa Wei Fen’s body crashed limb for limb on top of Fong. There was no cry, only a solid thud and the ripping sound the swolta makes as it slashes through bone and muscle.

Loa Wei Fen’s left hand fell off the slab into an electrified puddle. The electric current jolted through his body a second time, scorching the snake from his back. As he smelled the odour of his own seared flesh, Loa Wei Fen had a momentary clear vision of the little opium whore in the back alley with the large black man. Of the thrill on her face as the black man caressed her breast. And with this vision clearly in focus, his mind came alive with joy-his body a chimera of electrical impulses.

Fong felt the world spin. As the bamboo shaft burned away it revealed a horizon of tall buildings where once the old town had been. Where once people’s lives were their own to live. Where once he had held his wife and their unborn baby above a yawning maw in the ground. And then committed them to space and eternity-her arm gesturing to him, her mouth alive with silent words.

Loa Wei Fen moved on top of him. Their bodies were fitted together piece for piece. He could feel the man’s laboured breath on his cheek. Something was pooling, thick between them. He reached around the man and felt the point of the swolta protruding a full two inches out of the man’s back. He pushed with all his remaining strength and Loa Wei Fen rolled off him and lay on his back. As Fong struggled to his feet he saw the snake handle of the knife standing above Loa Wei Fen’s sternum, as ungodly a gift as ever offered man.

Loa Wei Fen smiled up at Fong. He moved his right shoulder and his hand lifted from the ground. It moved toward Fong and then back to himself.

Fong blanched.

It was the exact same movement that Fu Tsong had made as she fell toward the construction pit. It was the terror awaiting him at the end of each nightly horror excursion back to the Pudong.

The hand came up and made the same motion again.

Fong couldn’t move.

Loa Wei Fen’s mouth was moving, blood and bits of tongue bubbling on the lips but no words.

For a moment Fong was on the edge of the construction pit again. Fu Tsong was in the air falling, with the baby, her arm moving exactly as Loa Wei Fen’s was moving now. Fu Tsong’s mouth had moved too but there were no words. Nothing to explain what the hand movement meant.

Loa Wei Fen tried one more time. Tried to communicate to the little monk to complete the job-to set him free. The little monk didn’t seem to understand.

With the howling of the storm in his ears, Loa Wei Fen forced words into his throat.

“Thank you,” came out cleanly. Then with great effort, “You’ve set me free.”

Fong saw the blood trace the words on the lips of the dying man. He saw the arm gesture again mated perfectly with the words.

And then he wasn’t there anymore. But with Fu Tsong. In midair her arm tracing the same path. But this time her lips moved and there was both sound and meaning. As clear as a lover’s sigh she said to him, “Thank you. You’ve set me free.”

The rain slashed down on him. His tears mixed with it. His sobs came up from the earth and roared out of his mouth. His sides cracked and suddenly he was on the ground, digging in the mud. Throwing it over himself. Burying himself in the cold obstruction. Trying with all his might to avoid the laughter of the heavens that drowned his sobs.

And there he lay until a thought grew in his mind. A thought that warmed his being. Set his mind strangely at rest. Knowing what Fu Tsong had being trying to say to him as she fell allowed him, for the first time in his life, to fully accept that Fu Tsong had loved him. Loved him enough to thank him for a death that was surely his fault. With her arm movement she was not being set free. She was setting him free.

He arose from his would-be grave and stood in the pelting rain for a moment longer. Then he stepped toward the charred body of Loa Wei Fen. There was a smile on the dying man’s face. Scraping the mud from his hands, Fong reached forward and pulled the knife from Loa Wei Fen’s chest. A bubble of blood came up with the blade, “Thank you,” bubbled from his shattered mouth as Loa Wei Fen, still smiling, repeated his hand gesture.

Then the man’s eyes opened wide and he exhaled one long breath. The smile on his face became luminous.