The Shanghai Murders

DAY ONE

The body on the Hua Shan Hospital’s morgue table looked as though it had all the right pieces-but they seemed to be in the wrong places. A divinely challenging jigsaw puzzle awaiting the Maker’s few spare moments. At least that’s what struck Inspector Zhong Fong, head of Special Investigations, Shanghai District, as he took his pack of Kents from his shirt pocket.

As he lit up, he noticed that the paper of the cigarette was soaked through with his perspiration.

At forty-four, Zhong Fong was the youngest man to head Special Investigations in Shanghai, PRC. He knew he was good at what he did, but he also knew that he was the beneficiary of history. The Cultural Revolution had removed many older police officers who in the past would have stood in his way for dozens of years.

So Mao wasn’t all bad, he thought, as he mentally reconstructed the human form in front of him. White male, probably over thirty, definitely under fifty, at one time over six feet tall and probably in excess of two hundred pounds but just now eviscerated, carved up, lopped off and very, very dead. Fong blew out a long trail of bluish smoke while the others waited for him to speak.

Finally he said, “I don’t suppose we have any idea who this thing used to be, do we?” The aged coroner only grunted and turned toward the bloodstained industrial sink. The ashen-faced young cop, who had found the body parts only a few hours earlier, felt he had better say something, so he said, “No, sir.”

“I would never have guessed,” said Fong. This evidently left the young cop confused, but Fong had bigger things on his mind than the confusion of a rookie. “Call the consulates.” The rookie took out his notebook and began to write. “Start with the Americans, they like to be first. Tell them what we have here: foreign national, Caucasian, no identification, male, thirty to fifty, cut up and ready for dim sum.”

The young cop looked up.

“Don’t write that. Say badly mutilated,” said Fong.

“Pieces are too big for dim sum,” chimed in the old coroner as he spat in the sink and turned on the tap.

As Zhong Fong finished his instructions to the rookie cop and prepared to leave the morgue, he noticed the brownish tap water dripping from the coroner’s ancient hands. In a passing thought it occurred to Fong that those hands would shortly take apart what was left of this human being in an effort to find out how, if not why, anyone would go to the trouble of hacking another human being to bits-be they dim sum-size or not.

Although it was after midnight, the traffic outside the hospital was the normal congested reek of smoke and splutter that was Shanghai. For a moment Fong wondered where he had left his car. Then he remembered that he hadn’t taken it since the call had come to his apartment on the grounds of the Shanghai Theatre Academy, just around the corner.

His wife had been an actress who periodically taught at the school, and when they married he moved into her two second-story rooms on the academy campus. The rooms looked out over a small patch of grass on which stood, or rather reclined, a Henry Moorish humanesque bronze with one breast pushed in and one pushed out. It had a doughnut ring for a head.

After a long shower Fong stood at his window, a towel around his waist. In the courtyard two half-drunk student actors were throwing stones at the statue from across the way, each trying to be the first to get one through the statue’s head. Since his wife’s death, Fong had seen many things go through that metal orifice. Perhaps the most interesting was the erect member of one of the acting teachers, which had been met by the hand of one of the student actresses in a caress that brought out a surge of envy in Fong’s heart, like a weed in spring bloom.

The phone rang behind him. He let it ring as one of the boys, tiring of the game’s difficulty, ran up to the statue and shoved his stone through the hole. Despite the fact that what he had done took no skill, he celebrated as if he had defeated the elements themselves.

Fong breathed on the windowpane. A slight mist etched and then retreated into oblivion. Like Fu Tsong- the idea arrived full blown in his consciousness. It was followed quickly by the thought that seemed to be his constant companion of late: He had shared neither his wife’s art nor her concern. Perhaps all he had ever really shared with Fu Tsong were her rooms. Just her rooms. He picked up the phone on its fifth ring and lived to regret that he hadn’t let the thing ring until it tired of ringing altogether.

Some six blocks down Nanjing Road from the Hua Shan Hospital at the Shanghai Centre, built in 1990 by American and Japanese money, Christie’s of London was celebrating its Shanghai opening with a gala display of its wares. On view were a third-rate Picasso, a tenth-rate Dali, and several quite notable Chagalls, including La Sainte-Chapelle. There were also some turn-of-the-century Chinese scroll paintings and exquisite Qianlong seal-marked vases.

In a smaller case to one side were two customs excise stamps, dated and appraised. Most of the patrons ignored them. But one young westerner with a backpack pointed at the case and said, “Old letters.” And indeed they were old letters. Old letters with old secrets. Not the least of which was that one of the two was a forgery.

Passing behind the case with the forgery and making his way toward the back of the exhibit was a small Han Chinese male in a beautifully cut, conservative business suit. His Italian shoes were freshly buffed. His delicate hands (nails polished, right pinky almost an inch long) emerged from his coat pockets. His name was Loa Wei Fen. He marveled at what he saw. So many westerners here now. So pale and with such overripe figures, so awkward in a crowd. And Shanghai was nothing if not a crowd.

He passed by the assembled mass of people around a Pissarro and stopped in front of La Sainte-Chapelle. The painting’s cityscape blue orb, with a lady in a high window and a rooster looking in both directions as the moon rose over its shoulder, arrested his eye.

It reminded him eerily of earlier in the evening. A man in an alley so full of fear that his head appeared to be looking both left and right at the same time. Both ways. So Loa Wei Fen-Mr. Lo to his business associates-had given him his wish. . . he had first cut him so that he could indeed look both ways at once. And the moon shone overhead, and there was a lady in a window, and the city that grows even as it sleeps moved slightly in its slumbers to permit the passing of another being from its midst. That was just over two hours ago.

The Christie’s exhibit was closing. It was one o’clock, late for some businesses in this town to stay open, but not for those that were serious about being part of Shanghai’s economic miracle.

Loa Wei Fen glanced one more time at the Chagall, then made his way out of the Shanghai Centre, which sits like a tortoise in its shell over the wall of water that fronts the Portman Hotel. A uniformed northerner nodded toward the revolving door as he approached.

Mr. Lo passed through the lobby, heading toward the elevator. He got off at the second floor and watched the bank of elevators to see if any other stopped at that floor. None did. He then walked to the end of the hall and, pushing open the stairway door, headed up.

His room was on the twenty-seventh floor. He took the stairs two at a time and arrived without a trace of sweat on his person. The hotel room always surprised him. So much space, so unnecessary. But being a guest at the Portman disguised his mission well.

He removed his clothing and went into the bathroom. He examined his torso in the floor-to-ceiling mirror. Sinew, not muscle, dominated as it should. The lithe movement of tendons beneath the skin as he raised his arms pleased him-like snakes inside. With a breath he released the snakes and felt the life surge within him and flare on his back. The life that for now feeds on others.

He had booked a week at the Portman. He had no idea how much more there was to do in Shanghai. He had been paid a substantial sum of money and hence assumed that there would be more work than just the dismembering of the American policeman. But that was not his concern. He had been paid for the week and for the week’s work.

He looked out the small vertical bathroom window. Shanghai sat at his feet, its neon lights blinking a welcome. While across the Huangpo River the new Pudong industrial area was lit by ghostly, high-intensity mercury vapour lights. The better for the night shifts to build by.

After a moment Mr. Lo crossed over to the toilet. He lifted the cover, stood on the rim, and squatted. Like everything else in his life Mr. Lo controlled the working of his bowels with complete certainty. As he climbed down he wondered how a westerner could sit to take a shit.

It would never have occurred to Mr. Lo to think about the incongruity of the two cultures he embodied; evacuating in the way of his Asian ancestors, about to don an extravagant English suit. It would never have occurred to Mr. Lo that he was in the employ of some extremely unsavory people. Mr. Lo was a pure being, an immaculate conception, an idea set into motion when he was taken as a child from his loving mother’s arms so many years ago in far off Yan’an province. As the rest of the country went through the throes of the Cultural Revolution, Mr. Lo had been put through the rigours of a different kind of change: The boy who loved was replaced by the man who killed. He never knew the people who paid for this transformation. He only knew the teachers. He had known that he was in Taipei but did not know exactly where. He knew that he was valued but didn’t know for exactly what. He knew that he had passed his physical tests and that had pleased his teachers. He knew that he had passed their cultural training and that had pleased them as well. He well remembered the first man that they brought for him to kill. He remembered the resistance of the man’s windpipe as he crushed it beneath his heel. He remembered that he hadn’t felt anything when the light went out in the man’s eyes. He remembered the clean incision that parted the man’s breastbone. He remembered the crack as the ribs separated under his fingers. He remembered cleaving the still-twitching heart in two. Then he remembered the taste of the piece of the man’s heart that had been placed in his mouth by his favourite teacher.

Mr. Lo knew that he was an investment, a dearly nurtured commodity. What he didn’t know was that he was an expendable weapon in the war to bring capitalism to this country of socialists.

The body pieces had been found in an alley off Julu Lu near the former residence of Dr. Sun Yat-sen. As with so many of the tourist sites in Shanghai, Fong had never bothered with it or its historical significance. His wife had dragged him to the YuYuan Garden in the Old City shortly after they were married, but to this day he’d never been to the Temple of the City God, which so fascinated tourists.

Fong didn’t expect the crime site to reveal anything of interest except a large red stain and perhaps some small body bits that the rookie cop had missed. The idea of finding something like a fingerprint in a Shanghai alley was a joke.

So Fong was surprised when he entered the alley to find that the crime scene unit had sectored the area with lines of string and was investigating each square meter with great care.

Showing his badge, Fong passed by the cop at the mouth of the alley. The unit had set up three strong over-head lights, which cast hard-edged shadows on the rough pavement. Although late April, it was a cool night and Fong pulled his coat tightly around himself as he moved toward the CSU head, Wang Jun.

He noted that Wang Jun wasn’t smoking, which was odd. He also noted that the older man’s usually stoic face seemed slightly amused by something.

“What?” said Fong as he came into Wang’s light.

“What, what?” snarled back Wang Jun.

Wang Jun was Fong’s senior by twenty years, maybe more, and didn’t take kindly to the flippancy that he perceived in Fong. However, a grudging respect for Fong had grown, over time, into real friendship. They had worked together on several troublesome cases in the past, and Fong’s instincts had proven invaluable in solving some that Wang Jun had thought were beyond solution.

“You look like you swallowed a snake,” said Fong.

“I like snake, cooked properly, of course,” replied Wang Jun.

He signalled Fong over to one side. When they were out of the light and away from the prying eyes of the others, Wang Jun reached into his pocket and pulled out a wallet in a crime scene plastic bag.

“This is the victim’s wallet?” blurted out Fong, openly surprised.

“So it seems,” replied Wang Jun with a cold smile.

“Hence the sector search?”

Wang Jun nodded.

Fong held up the wallet inside the plastic bag. “It wouldn’t tell us, by any chance, who the victim was, would it?”

“It would if you believed it.”

“And you don’t?” asked Fong.

Wang Jun popped a cigarette in his teeth and lit it. After a beat, he spoke. “I hate this.”

“What? Murder?”

“No. Murder I’ve grown to appreciate. It’s this,” he said, pointing to the wallet. “This I can’t stand.”

“Would you care to elaborate?”

Ignoring the comment Wang Jun charged on. “Did you see the body?“

“Yeah, I saw the pieces,“ replied Fong.

“Do you know that the guys are calling him the Dim Sum Killer?”

“No I-”

“It’s better not to make jokes with rookie cops, Fong,” rasped out the older man.

“Point taken.”

“Good, now get this,” he said, grabbing the wallet.

“The person or persons who sliced and diced this guy were pros. They carved him up like a side of beef, and my bet is they knew exactly what they were doing. It wasn’t even that late when it happened and there are people out here at all hours. So this was done fast. This was thought through. This was done by a pro, agreed?”

Fong nodded, noting that Wang Jun had already dropped the “or persons” part of his earlier statement.

Wang Jun held up the evidence bag with the wallet and asked, “Then what the fuck was this doing near the body parts, happy as a leech in a rice field?”

Fong took the bag and used a pen from his notebook to fish out the wallet. Then, laying it flat on the plastic bag, he flipped it open. With a set of tweezers he removed a New Orleans Police Department ID. Holding it up to the light he said, “My guess is that our killer’s sending a message. He wants it known that-” Fong tilted the plastic card toward the light and read the name in his singsongy English-“that Richard Fallon of the New Orleans Police Department met his end in a Julu Lu alley and that he was filleted like a fish.”

“Wants it known by whom?”

Fong didn’t answer but he did step farther out of the light. He didn’t want the older man to see his face. “I want statements from every house warden in the alley and from everyone living on the street out front.”

“That won’t do-”

“Just do it, Wang Jun.” Almost as an afterthought he barked, “Interview the street cleaners, they may be helpful.”

Fong turned and headed away, returning the wallet to the evidence bag.

“Since you’ve got my night planned, bring that to Forensics for me, will ya? It’ll save me a trip.”

Over his shoulder Fong shouted back, “Sure, but I want your completed report on my desk in the morning.”

Normally Wang Jun’s cursing response would have brought a smile to Fong’s face, but not tonight. Tonight Fong’s thoughts were very far away as he headed back through the throng to his car.

As Wang Jun watched the younger man’s retreating figure, he wondered, and not for the first time, just how Fong managed. Managed to keep sane, that is, after what had happened to his wife in the Pudong.

Before the building boom, which started in 1990, the Pudong across the Huangpo River from the Bund, had been an area of low, ancient homes and twining streets filled with sidewalk vendors and tiny shops. The area lacked sanitation and electricity. Although the police were aware of the comings and goings in the Pudong, they basically left things to the locals to work out. There was opium and even brown heroin but nothing that greatly concerned the authorities.

That was until Shanghai began to enforce the country’s single-child-per-family law in 1978.

Within weeks the quacks and mountebanks appeared in the Pudong.

In 1949, on the eve of the revolution, China had a population of under four hundred million. Large, but not large enough for Mao Tse-tung. Soon after stabilizing his victory, he set out to increase the population of his country. By guaranteeing that there would be food enough for all, and granting residency and job bonuses to families with more than five children, Mao opened the proverbial floodgates. In the fifties, sixties, and even into the seventies it wasn’t uncommon to see Chinese families with ten or even thirteen children. The great love for children inherent in the Chinese character was unleashed when the fear of having to feed more mouths was removed. The result was that by the late 1970s the Chinese population had more than tripled. Mainland China had more than 1.2 billion inhabitants and a problem that could not be ignored. Promises to feed everyone could be met in the seven years of plenty, but in the seven years of fallow starvation stalked the land. And Mao knew only too well that in the hunger of the stomach is the foment of revolt. So in the late 1970s the Chinese government reversed itself. The single-child-per-family policy was enacted and strictly enforced-and places like the Pudong had a new and thriving industry. It was not hard to find those in the area’s squalid back streets who would “diagnose” a female fetus and abort the unwanted fetus for a price.

The day that Fu Tsong, Fong’s wife, told him that she was pregnant he grabbed her by the waist and swung her high into the air, feeling that he was holding aloft not only her but also his son. And to his eternal damnation that is exactly what he said to her.

Fu Tsong was tiny even for a highborn Han Chinese, and the doctor warned her early on that she’d have to be careful. That she’d have to cut back both on her work at the school and her performing at the People’s Repertory Company.

She sighed and agreed, on one condition.

“And what may that be?” asked her doctor skeptically.

“Assure me that I am carrying a boy.”

The doctor put aside his chart and looked at her sternly. Before him was one of the most delicately beautiful women he had ever seen. A woman with a deep fire in her eyes and a strength of will that frightened him.

“Fu Tsong, you know that there is no way I can in all conscience assure you of that. It is beyond my power to know such things. All that is important is that the baby is healthy, and that is in your power.” He reached out to pat her head, and the silk of her hair astounded him.

At that time, Fong was on the rise in the police force. The heir apparent. He was putting in sixteen-hour days trying to prepare himself for the examination that would allow him to head Special Investigations. The hardest part was the English-language proficiency requirement. It was the greatest challenge of his life. He found the English sounds initially incomprehensible and he struggled nightly with basic verb tenses and noun lists. Fu Tsong was a great help throughout, and in the weeks leading up to the exams she drilled him nightly, late into the dawning hours.

One night after throwing aside his English book, she tore open his pants and, hiking up her skirt, straddled his legs while inserting him into her centre. As she rocked he grew within her and she smiled. That smile grew devilish as she threw herself forward and, pinning his arms above his head, hissed, “What if it’s a girl?”

She had said it in jest but the look of shock that crossed Fong’s face was clear for her to see-a gesture that, once expressed, could not be taken back. She released his arms and leaned back with her hands on his legs.

He saw her close her eyes and sensed her moving far away from him. Then he heard her say, “I know it’s a boy, I know it is.” She arched her back and threw back her head. Her hair fell to his feet.

In that moment Fong knew in his heart that he had lost her. She let out a low moan, a release. But this was her alone, without him.

As a policeman Fong knew that a moan is the sound a body makes when it has lost all hope of recovery. As a lover he knew that same moan comes from a woman in the throes of pleasure. What Fong could not understand was what kind of god would make a world where hopelessness and pleasure both made the same sound.

At dawn’s first light Fong walked along Julu Lu toward the alley. The city was already alive, the air beginning to get heavy with the fumes of buses and the promise of the year’s first real heat. At the mouth of the alley, the police tape had been trampled underfoot. There were still a few policemen finishing off their interviews.

The alley itself was not surprising. There were thousands of these densely populated, teeming side shoots in Shanghai. The five-spice egg seller was preparing her cooking pot as he entered off Julu Lu. He nodded to her. She ignored him and blew her nose onto the sidewalk. At least not into the eggs, thought Fong.

The alley travelled for about eighty crooked yards and was over sixteen feet wide. The buildings were all four and five stories high with basements-most with sub-basement as well. Fong estimated that upwards of three thousand people lived in the buildings that fronted the alley. Bedding was hung from most of the lower windows while in the upper windows shirts, satayed on bamboo poles, projected from the sills like strange nautical signal flags.

It was an alley, so it smelled. But what it smelled of was life, abundant, roiling life.

An angry voice to his left drew his attention. The warden of the first large building was yelling at him. “Who the fuck you, who?” She’d probably lived in Shanghai since the revolution but she’d never learned Shanghanese, typical. He flashed her his badge and continued on. She muttered loudly, “Too late, all the fun finished, flathead.” As he moved down the alley there were similar scenes with other wardens. Some workers were just rising, others were already getting on their bicycles and heading to work. Some were well dressed, others obviously worked as manual laborers. Many wore white gloves to ride their bikes. White woollen gloves had become popular bicycle attire during the winter months and although it was clearly going to be a warm day many bicyclists were still wearing them. Ah, ever fashionconscious Shanghai. The odd lucky soul had a motorcycle or a bike fixed with a pedal motor. Two of the large handdriven tricycles for the infirm were chained to a rusting water pipe. The air was thick with the smell of porridge and coal fumes from the outdoor braziers. Electrical wires formed a cross-hatch pattern in the sky over Fong’s head-random and as potentially deadly as the poison snakes that fall from trees in distant Yan’an province.

Fong noticed other things as well. Things that angered him deeply. Hundreds of windows faced the alley. Some of the windows contained plank extensions used for sleeping half in and half out of the crammed rooms. So many people! And children. This was a most unlikely place to choose for a murder. Shanghai seldom sleeps, but this place-this vibrant artery of the city-was vitally alive no matter what the hour. This murderer didn’t just take a life and then mutilate the body that encased that life-he did it consciously in a place of abundant life itself. As if affronted by the fact of the life here, he had chosen this very spot. Fong looked down to his feet. He knew what he would find. There on the cracked square paving tiles he saw the taped outline of the body, marking its likely position at time of death. Fong was standing squarely on the heart.

The morning after a murder the police station was always a riot of paper. Special Investigations handled most of the murders in Shanghai, a city of fourteen million. Most but not all. Domestic violence was handled by another unit. Shanghai had fewer than two hundred fifty murders a year. Per capita that was less than one one-hundredth of the murders in Detroit. But Special Investigations also tracked major fraud cases, multiple injury cases, and anything that influenced the growing foreign community in the city.

Murder, because of its relative rarity, was newsworthy. Murder of an American was especially newsworthy. And somehow the news about the Dim Sum Killer had already hit the stands.

Fong arrived at his office on Zhong Shan Road, in the old English Concession, in a fury. He hurled the newspaper on the table and exploded with anger at his assistant. “Who the hell let this out? What moron allowed the press access to this material?”

His assistant, a young man who claimed he had been assigned by his commune first to the police academy and then to work as Fong’s assistant, was not one to take responsibility for anything, so he did what he always did, he shrugged.

“That’s it, a shrug?”

“You want two shrugs?” For the umpteenth time it occurred to Fong that his assistant’s story of communal assignation had a hollow ring to it. Fong thought it more likely that this innocuous little rodent probably had good party connections and was there to keep an eye on him. Putting the thought aside, Fong snapped, “I want the editor of the paper on the phone, I want a meeting with the commissioner, and I want the coroner to call me. You capable of arranging that?”

The assistant shrugged again.

“That is an affirmative shrug, right?” Before the assistant could shrug again, Fong spat out, “From now on you hit the desk once for yes and twice for no.”

After the briefest pause in which Fong saw the unmistakable traces of hate in the young man’s face, the assistant hit the desk once.

“You’re progressing.” He pointed to a new file on the desk. “Is that from Wang Jun?”

The assistant was about to shrug but decided against it. He hit his desk once.

Fong picked up the file and headed toward his office.

All the lights on his desk phone were blinking as he entered. He punched through to the desk operator to ask who the calls were from. Two were from newspapers and one was from the American consulate. He told the operator to tell all three that he was in the field “avidly pursuing promising leads“ and could not be reached at this time. He then turned to Wang Jun’s report.

The older man had a terse style that pleased Fong.

PLACE:

Hianpi Alley off Julu Lu

TIME:

Arrival 10:47 P.M. April 18, departure 4:58 A.M. April 19 [then he gave the date in Chinese]

PROCEDURE:

Sectoring, blood typing, interviewing of area wardens and prefects on alley and across Julu Lu.

RESULTS:

Blood samples sent to laboratory. Photos of scene before and after removal of body enclosed.

Fong put aside the document for a moment and looked at the photos. They were taken with standard Wang Jun accuracy. Each was one of a pair-before with the body and after without. Each set was taken from precisely the same angle. There was a series of overhead shots, most likely taken while balanced on someone’s shoulders. A series of wide-angle shots of the alley came next. Nothing surprising here. The arrangement of the body parts on the pavement caught Fong’s eye. He went back to the wide-angle overhead photo. What was it here? No, it wasn’t the arrangement of the body parts as such, but rather some of the parts themselves. He rifled through the rest of the pictures looking at closeups of torso, of legs, of feet, and finally of hands.

Something about the hands. Both had been severed at the wrists then placed back where they should be. Something nagged Fong about the hands, though. He stood up and walked around the room trying to clear his head. What? What was wrong with the hands? He placed his own hands on the window and pressed them flat. Then he released the pressure and was about to walk away from the window when his eyes were drawn to his own curled fingers. Without pressure, fingers naturally curl. Of course they did. He raced back to the pictures on his desk. The fingers on both hands were not curled. They pointed. The killer had arranged the fingers to point. At what? He looked at the shots of the alley and couldn’t come up with an answer to his question.

Then he picked up the overhead full body shot. Wang Jun had drawn a grease pencil circle on the photo with a question mark at the side. Fong grabbed an old-style magnifying glass from a side desk drawer and examined the circled area. Between the legs a piece of viscera and a sealing strip came into focus. Neither were in the overhead “sans body” shot. Not a surprise really as they’d probably been discarded or put into the coroner’s package. He moved the magnifying glass to allow a further enlargement of the area. He could just make out the writing on the sealing strip. It said “Rip here for air sickness bag.” The writing was in both English and Japanese characters so he knew it had to be from a JAL flight. But that wasn’t his concern just now. Now he wanted to know what a killer would put into an air sickness bag. A waterproof bag that could be flicked open with one hand. Without putting down the picture he picked up his phone and punched the coroner’s extension.

The coroner answered with a cough and the particularly acute clearing of the throat that is the god-given right of every Han Chinese male.

“And good morning to you too.“

“Dim sum will never be the same,” croaked the coroner.

“Yeah,” Fong said, putting an end to this line of conversation.

“I hope to shit you’re not calling me for that fucking report at this ungodly hour of the morning. It took me a long time to work this one out.”

Still holding the picture in his hand, Fong allowed the older man to vent his spleen. He knew the coroner had probably worked all night at his ghastly trade.

“No, I can wait for the report.”

“Good.”

“I was just wondering if you checked for all the body parts.”

There was a lengthy pause at the other end of the line. Finally, the coroner responded, “I thought we were concerned with time of death, weapon used, that kind of shit.”

“I am, naturally, but I’d also like it noted if there are missing body parts,” pressed Fong.

In exasperation, part of which Fong knew was aimed at himself, the coroner lashed out. “You guys bring a carcass cut up into dozens of pieces and plop it onto my table and I’m supposed to miraculously put it back together and . . .” He ran out of steam more than stopped. After a moment, Fong could hear him light a cigarette and cough. “I’ll haul it out of the freezer and count.” The phone went dead.

Fong breathed a sigh of relief. It was hard for him to contradict his elders, especially when it would force the older person to acknowledge making an error.

Before he could even return to Wang Jun’s report, the light on his phone came on. Picking it up Fong barked, “Who?”

“The editor of the Shanghai Daily News, the paper that ran the story.”

“Put him through.”

At that moment Commissioner Hu entered the office. His smug look and tailored suit bespoke party affiliation. An affiliation that sat well with his contained manner, square features, thick tinted glasses, and white hair. Before he could speak, Fong punched the speaker phone on his desk.

A silky intelligentia voice, speaking an almost lisped high Shanghanese, came on the line. “This is Executive Editor Goa Ke Fee of the Shanghai Daily News. I have been informed that you would like a word with me.” Fong gave a get-this-guy’s-act look to the commissioner. The commissioner chose not to comment.

Fong punched in his response button on the phone. “Yes, Mr. Goa, this is Zhong Fong, head of Special Investigations, Shanghai District-”

“I know who you are,” the editor cut in curtly.

Anger surged in Fong. If the commissioner hadn’t been standing there he really would have let this little pisser have it. But controlling himself, he said, “It’s about your lead story this-”

“No doubt it is. So what can I help you with, Mr. Zhong, head of Special Investigations, Shanghai District?”

He looked up. Commissioner Hu was watching him closely. Fong turned back to the speaker. “Okay, enough of this shit. Who gave you permission to run this story!”

Without the least hesitancy the reply came back. “We obtained our normal clearances.”

There was a stunned silence from Fong. The paper had received clearance for the story? How could that be?

“Is there something else with which you need my assistance, Mr. Zhong?”

“No, well yes, could you send me your authorizations?”

“For the story?”

“Yes, of course for the story,” said Fong.

“That’s quite impossible. And you know that it’s quite impossible. Now if there are no more requests I do have a busy schedule-”

Fong snapped off the phone and looked up. To his surprise, the commissioner was gone.

He quickly read through the rest of Wang Jun’s report. The street warden system in Shanghai was still as tight in that section of the city as it had been during the Cultural Revolution. Very little escaped the sharp eyes of these people. The majority were not native Shanghanese and took great pleasure in exercising their power over the locals. The party always awarded such positions, along with the appropriate housing, to peasants from good revolutionary stock. But, according to the wardens’ statements to Wang Jun’s men, they had seen nothing out of the ordinary.

Fong then opened the time chart that Wang Jun had provided. There had been a domestic dispute at one end of the alley at 8:40 P.M. The quarrel had ended with the husband yelling and screaming in the alley. Another warden reported that a doctor had been summoned to a dying man’s side at 9:30, which would have made him travel the entire length of the alley from Julu Lu. The body was found by the rookie cop at 10:33. There was no possibility that New Orleans police officer Richard Fallon had been murdered and mutilated somewhere else, then carted to the alley. It is one thing to cart body pieces but quite another to haul the blood with them. Richard Fallon’s blood was clear evidence that he had been murdered in the alley off Julu Lu.

A shiver slithered down Fong’s spine. He got up from his desk and parted the window’s ancient curtains. He looked across the river. The Pudong grew even as he watched. The huge cranes of the planet’s largest construction project, four times the size of even the dreams of Canary Wharf in London, pivoted and swung like gray metallic herons on an endless quest for food.

Fong pulled himself away from the window. His office, the room in which he now spent a great portion of his life, was large by Shanghai standards and its view of the river was a rare privilege for a non-party member. The building itself sat right on Zhong Shan Road three blocks south of the famous Peace Hotel, on the road the Europeans, who had owned this part of the world for so long, called the Bund. From the turn of the century up until the revolution in 1949, there were four famous streets in the world: Broadway, Piccadilly, the Champs Elysees, and the Bund.

In this very office had sat some of the most powerful men in history. Men who had controlled the trade into and out of the Middle Kingdom. Even the infamous Silas Hordoon had at one time passed through this room.

The phone on his desk rang. It was his private line, so he knew it was Wang Jun. “Yeah, I read it,” he said when he picked up. “I think we should meet.”

“Good. Look out your window.”

Punching up the speaker phone, Fong moved to his window.

There, standing on the river promenade, looking up at him with a cellular phone in his hand, was Wang Jun.

“My new toy, you like?” Not waiting for an answer, Wang Jun continued. “I’ve got work to do but I think we need to meet. This whole thing stinks.”

“Have you found the street sweeper?” “No, but her shift hasn’t come on yet.” There was the slightest pause on the phone. “Come down here and take a walk with me. I think what we have to say is better said away from your office.” With that Wang Jun clicked off.

For a moment Wang Jun’s manner annoyed Fong, but he let it pass. He left his office and, taking the back stairway out of the building, managed to leave without his shrugging, knocking assistant noticing.

The news of her husband’s demise in far-off Shanghai left Amanda Fallon wondering what she should feel. For a moment she didn’t understand that she was faint, that the room was weaving and bobbing around her. It was only when the man from the State Department, who had come to her home in the New Orleans Garden District to tell her the news of Richard’s death, took her arm, and sat her down that she realized she was going to faint. As her living room narrowed to a single tunnel of light that then moved in on her, all she could think of was, I shouldn’t be in shock, I should be thrilled, I should be on my knees thanking fucking God that I’m free of that bastard.

For a moment the government man didn’t know what to do. They’d never told him how to handle situations like this. He recognized from the sweat on her face and her ghostly pallor that Amanda Fallon had gone into shock. But even as he picked up the telephone to call for an ambulance, only one thought filled his mind. “This is one of the saddest-looking beautiful women I have ever seen.”

Fong spotted Wang Jun near the photography kiosk on the promenade at the base of Nanjing Road. For the thousandth time Fong marvelled at the view of the European buildings that the raised promenade offered. Because the walkway was almost two stories high and a full six lanes of traffic away from the buildings, the viewer was offered a breathtaking look at the architect’s artistry. Gables and domes, spires and bell towers, and mass-lots and lots of elegant cock-proud mass. Although the buildings were completely unlike Chinese architecture, which he adored, Fong had to admit that the robber baron Europeans had created something of lasting beauty in the twenty-one buildings that dominated the Shanghai skyline. Of course it was from those very buildings that these same white men had raped and plundered the wealth of his country for almost fifty years.

There were the usual tourists on the promenade being led around like so many children on a string. Click-click for Japanese, scuffle and whine for Americans, and open haughtiness for Germans. Ah yes, the world’s lords had come to gawk at what had been theirs but was no more.

There were also the rural dispossessed. Recently arrived at the train station in the north end of the city and without work or a place to stay, they would wander down to the waterfront to sleep. A peasant can sleep sitting up, head in full profile on the back of his hand which in turn is balanced on a knee. They seem to sleep soundly. But try touching the filthy bag that contains his few worldly belongings and you will see that this delicately posed sleeper can awaken with a roar.

A sleeping peasant looks like a delicate mantis that has fallen into strong Chinese wine and for a moment is stunned into stillness-stunned long enough for the diner to nab him with a set of chopsticks, dunk him in the sauce, and eat him whole. A fate that, at least metaphorically, awaited many of these sleeping men.

There were the con men too. The ones who had enough English to approach white people did so. They all had some supposed family heirloom to sell or their services as guides to Shanghai’s many pleasures of the eye, the palate, or the groin. And there were the beggars, not many, not like Kwongjo, the Canton of old, but more than there used to be. The obscenity of his countrymen begging before foreigners always sent a special rush of anger through Fong.

Stretched out on a bench, between himself and Wang Jun at the kiosk, was a clubfooted man. His filthy clothes were pulled up to reveal the stumps that were his feet. A tin soup bowl was near his deformed extremities. Spittle ran from his mouth and there was the unmistakable reek of human waste about him. For a moment Fong’s anger subsided as he looked at this poor specimen of humankind.

“Are you in pain?”

The clubfooted man’s eyes fluttered open and tried to focus.

“Have you eaten today?”

Slowly the man shook his head.

“There’ll be help here in a minute, but you have to promise me that you won’t fight them. Is that a promise, do I have your promise?”

The man nodded.

“Good, I’ll be right back.” With that he made his way quickly through the thickening morning crowd and grabbed the phone from Wang Jun’s hand.

“Hey-”

But Fong had already punched in the phone number of special services.

“Is it ringing?”

“I don’t think so.”

Wang Jun took the phone, listened, and pressed SEND.

“You should think of joining the twentieth century sometime before it’s over,” he said, handing the instrument back.

Quickly Fong left orders for the clubfooted man to be picked up and brought to a shelter.

“You’re a sentimentalist, Zhong Fong, a dangerous sentimentalist. And at your age, really.”

“He’s sick, he’s hungry, our revolution meant something.”

“Did it really,” snapped Wang Jun. He began to walk.

Fong moved with him. “So?”

“Tell me about the newspapers and how they got the story, Fong.”

“They got clearance.”

“Bullshit. From whom? That kind of story has to have party approval before it sees the light of day. Surely that takes time. Or didn’t that cross your mind?”

Fong resisted the taunt. “They got authorization to run the story and that’s that.”

Wang Jun shook out a Marlboro and lit it. “I think the murderer was a pro.”

“I agree.”

“Anything on the wallet?”

“A little blood that will no doubt match the dead man’s. If there are prints on the wallet or credit cards I’ll bet they’ll match Mr. Fallon’s as well.”

“Why did he leave the wallet? A pro doesn’t make that kind of mistake.”

“I don’t think it was a mistake. I think it was a message.”

“If it was, then the sender’s pretty lucky that the papers got-” The older man stopped himself. Then he continued, “Pros don’t have luck, do they?”

“No, they don’t, Wang Jun. There is nothing about luck involved here as far as I can see. Somebody wanted to send a pretty gory message and they used you and me to send it.”

“You and me and Richard Fallon, member of the New Orleans police force. Let’s not forget that he did his part.”

Unable to resist, Fong said, “Parts.”

“Dim sum for giants.”

Suddenly it stopped being funny. “Yeah, man-eating giants. Cannibals.”

Wang Jun stared at his young friend. Fong met his gaze. “I’m not a boy, I’m not someone’s messenger boy. I want this lunatic found.”

“Who was the message being sent to is the question, isn’t it?”

“It’s a good question but let’s start with the killer. Find the street sweeper. I want her in my office as soon as you get her. Don’t let one of your men do it. I don’t want her scared. I want her charmed and treated like a lady, so I want you to get her and bring her to me.”

“You have great faith in street sweepers, Zhong Fong.” Fong had no interest in discussing his family’s long history as night soil collectors. “Just find her and bring her to me.” With that he turned his back on Wang Jun and headed toward his office. As he hopped the pedestrian barrier and crossed Zhong Shan Road, he reran his mental tape of the conversation just finished. For the life of him he couldn’t understand why that conversation couldn’t have taken place in his office.

Geoffrey Hyland handed his Canadian passport over the immigration counter at Shanghai’s Hong Qiao Airport. He always arrived in Shanghai with a sense of sadness but also a feeling of coming home. Eleven years ago, he had been invited to the Shanghai Theatre Academy to direct an obscure Canadian play called The Ecstasy of Rita Joe. The school’s acting faculty despised his non-Russian-based approaches, but to their shock and the delight of both students and audience, the play was a runaway hit. Six months later he was invited back by Shanghai’s biggest professional theatre, the People’s Repertory Company, to remount the play using the student leads from the first production to play the younger roles and the professional company’s members in the older parts. This too proved successful. It was not, however, successful for Geoffrey Hyland. This time in Shanghai he met and fell hopelessly in love with Zhong Fong’s wife, Fu Tsong.

That love endured until the day four years ago when, in his turn-of-the-century house in Toronto’s West End, he opened a letter from Shanghai. The words were blunt and seemed to burn, as if etched, on the rice paper. All it said was: Fu Tsong is dead. Many think her husband killed her. They found her body and the body of a fetus in a construction pit in the Pudong.

So stunned was he by the words that he never thought to question either the identity or the motive of the writer. Had he in fact been able to decipher the scribbled signature he would not have been able to recall the face of the author. All this was as intended by the writer.

Geoffrey became aware that the immigration officer was standing as he handed back his passport. The young man surprised Geoffrey by extending his hand and saying, “High Lan, yes? Lee Ta Jo, yes?” Geoffrey’s eyes brightened. Those productions were a lifetime ago to him, but the repertory company performed them regularly. To him “Lee Ta Joe” had been a time with Fu Tsong. Now was a time without her-a sad homecoming.

He shook the immigration officer’s hand and headed toward the airport’s lounge where he knew the driver from the Shanghai Theatre Academy would be waiting. The man looked exactly like the late American actor, Jack Soo. Geoffrey had told him that once, over lunch, and thereafter the driver insisted that Geoffrey call him Soo Jack. He also insisted that when Geoffrey needed a car, he be the driver.

As Geoffrey left the immigration counter a note was taken, a phone lifted, and an insurance policy put into motion.

Standing rigidly at attention, the rookie cop waited for Fong to finish reading his report. Fong put down the file and looked at the young man in front of him. He was twenty-two years old, square-shouldered with large usually rounded eyes and short spiky hair. There was some Mongolian in his blood lines somewhere. His name was Ling Che.

“Did you speak to anyone after you left the coroner’s office?”

“Yes, as you instructed I contacted the consulates.” The papers could have gotten their information from one of the consulates, Fong knew, but he doubted the leak would happen quickly enough to make the morning press. “You phoned them?”

“Yes, sir. Wasn’t that how I was supposed to do it?

Those who had no operators working late, I faxed. Isn’t that right?”

“Yes, it’s right, Ling Che, it’s right.”

There was a long pause, there was something here that was escaping Fong.

“May I go now, sir?”

Fong sat perfectly still for several seconds. Ling Che didn’t know what to do. Then Fong stirred. “Did you use a cellular phone to make your calls to the embassies?”

“Yes, sir.”

“Cellular phones aren’t secure! Anyone could intercept your call. You’re supposed to use the precinct phones!” Fong shouted.

The young man, completely cowed, bowed his head and mumbled, “I was at my girlfriend’s place, her parents were in the country for one night. It was the first time in three years that we-”

Fong held up his hand for him to stop. Privacy, in a city where housing was a major problem even for the well connected and the wealthy, was nonexistent on a young policeman’s salary. If you wanted to scratch your ass in Shanghai, you had better be prepared for someone to be watching while you did it. And if the watcher is Shanghanese he will probably offer advice on a better way to go about your task.

He dismissed Ling Che with a nod. He hoped to hell that the young cop wasn’t lying to him. He made a note to check.

The light on his phone came up. “Who?”

“The coroner.”

After a moment the coroner’s smoke-tired voice came on the line. “You’d better come over. I’ve got some frozen viscera here that you ought to see.”

The parcel that arrived at the Jiang Jing Hotel had been left with the concierge. It had not been brought by a courier. In fact the concierge had been away from the desk when it arrived. The parcel had a room number and a guest’s name on it. The concierge called up to the room and informed the guest that there was a parcel for him. The guest asked that a bellboy bring it up, knock on the door, and leave it outside.

The bellboy took the small parcel up to room 2430 and knocked politely on the door. Then he placed the parcel, as instructed, on the floor and returned to the lobby.

A full five minutes after the bellboy’s knock, the door to the room opened and the parcel was taken inside. Forty-five seconds after that, obscenities in various languages and the clear sound of someone throwing up his lunch on the expensive broadloom came from room 2430 of the Jiang Jing Hotel.

“It’s a part of a heart,” said Fong.

The coroner nodded at the object in his plastic-gloved hand. “Part of Richard Fallon’s heart.”

“Where’s the rest?”

“There’s a good question.” The coroner pointed toward a large table on which the pieces of Richard Fallon had been laid out. If there was an order to the pieces, it escaped Fong. The coroner explained: “The body is divided into those things male and those things female, yin and yang if you will. Those that cause heat and those that cause cold. Those that are of fire, those of air, those of water.” As he spoke he pointed to different sections of viscera and organs. Then he picked up the heart again. “Only the heart, of all the body’s parts, belongs to both yin and yang, both heat and cold, and all of fire, air, and water. That is, when it is whole.” He looked at the cleft heart that he held.

“The crime scene unit didn’t find the other part?”

“If they did, they didn’t bring it to the morgue.”

“And nothing else is missing?”

“A cleaver or a knife or whatever was used would have nicked off small bits, which were probably left in the alley, but everything else is here. This one knows how the body is put together, and he attacked it at its weakest places.” “But how did the heart get cut in half?”

After a moment the coroner sighed. “It didn’t get cut in half, if you mean by that that somehow in the process of eviscerating Richard Fallon something happened to cut his heart in two. That didn’t happen. That couldn’t happen. Once Richard Fallon was cut open his heart was cut out of him. Then the heart was cut in two. One half I hold in my hand. The other half is god knows where.” Before he could stop himself Fong found himself thinking, “It’s part of the message.” But even as he did he reached over and touched the frozen item in the coroner’s hand. He ran his finger along the cut edge. The cut was razor smooth for most of its length but near the top there was a jaggedness.

“Did his knife slip here?” asked Fong with his finger on the spot.

“No, I don’t think so,” replied the coroner with a cold smile. The coroner then put the organ down on the morgue table and removed the plastic glove from his right hand. Before Fong could ask him what he was doing, the old man reached into his mouth and with a tug pulled out a complete set of dentures. With the dentures in his right hand he picked up the heart with his left. Slowly he moved the dentures toward the jagged section of the heart. The jaggedness exactly matched the bite mark that would have been made by the ripping action of the top four front and canine teeth and the bottom six with the eye teeth at either end.

“He chewed it and spat it out. I saw it in the photo,” said Fong.

“You saw that in a crime scene snapshot?”

“In one of them but not the others.”

The coroner put down the heart and reinserted his dentures.

Fong could hear the fluorescent lights buzzing and just for a moment their greenish cast made him feel a little wobbly on his feet.

“You all right?”

Fong nodded.

“This guy’s got a hell of an MO.”

“Personal style brought to new heights.”

The coroner grunted a laugh.

“Not a word of this to anyone. If by any chance this ends up in the papers, I will have your head, old man.”

“More threats of the young? The Cultural Revolution’s over or haven’t you heard?”

“I’ve heard. I want your report on my desk by week’s end, okay?”

“Sure.” The coroner paused and was about to say something, then decided against it and began bundling his gruesome charge back into a large green plastic bag.

When the State Department official handed Amanda Fallon back her passport he flipped it open to show her the forty-day, single-entry visa to China. To him, Red China.

“The State Department picked up the forty-dollar charge for the visa.”

Amanda was going to say thank you but she couldn’t quite think what for, then said it anyway. He smiled at her and mumbled further condolences for her loss and wished her an easy flight to Shanghai.

When she left the State Department office on Canal Street she turned left and headed toward the Quarter. The intensity of New Orleans’s summer had not yet arrived but in the bright sunshine of mid-April it was hanging in the corners of the Quarter’s old buildings, waiting to fill five full months with heat and humidity, sweat and loving as only ol’N’orl’ns can. Although she was from the north, she had lived in New Orleans since she was seventeen and a student at All Fun U, known to the world as Tulane University. She had been accepted by the women’s college on campus but upon arriving had decided that the men’s side offered more opportunities for study in her area of greatest concern. Men. After going through the undergraduate male population in alphabetical order, she decided that forays into the realm of the faculty merited her attention. And despite the published university policy of a total ban on student/faculty “fraternization,” Amanda found few who could resist her casual offer of a drink down in the Quarter.

So it was with a series of ghosts at her side that she stepped into the courtyard of her favourite watering hole off Talouse. If the Creole barman recognized her, he never let on. But he wasn’t surprised when she ordered a tall rum on ice. A literature professor had introduced her to the glories of this particular drink on hot days. He had consumed several that first day as they sat French style side by side on a banquette with the table in front of them. He talked about Tennessee Williams’s work. She had smiled and listened and wondered if there was anything more here than chat and great eyes. Then he had put a hand on her knee beneath the table. She smiled at him and reached down to touch his hand. He started to withdraw it, thinking that she was offended, but as he did she closed her fingers around his wrist. Then sliding closer to him on the banquette she parted her legs and drew his hand up past her thighs. All without taking her eyes from his.

She flushed slightly as she tasted her rum on ice. She had been a wild kid but that was a long time ago. Now she was in her mid-thirties and was about to get on an airplane and head to Shanghai to pick up the corpse of her husband of eight years. A husband whom she had wished dead more often than she could recall. A husband who had “tamed” her. A husband who had in a very real way killed what was most Amanda Pitman in her and replaced it by a creature named Mrs. Richard Fallon.

She had finished her second rum on the rocks when the salesman on the other side of the bar finally decided it was time to make his move. “Can I buy you a drink?” he said in a midwestern twang.

Without missing a beat she called over her shoulder to the barman in her very deepest southern accent, “This Yankee carpetbagger thinks I’m a whore for sale. I could use your assistance.”

With a thousand apologies, the scuffling of white shoes and touching of white belt, the salesman made his way to the exit.

Once gone, the barman came over to her table with a tall cold rum on ice. “You got style, lady, this one’s on the house.”

She smiled wanly at him and took the drink, wondering vaguely if she’d ever enjoy the dalliance of hands under tables and up skirts again, the way she had done so many years ago with the literature professor.

Fong hated being summoned. “Asked to appear,” “Could I have a word,” “We need to meet”-all were fine, but “In my office now” was not his favourite. So it was with more than a little ire that he approached Police Commissioner Hu’s office.

The commissioner’s secretary wasn’t at her desk when Fong entered. Her computer, a new acquisition, had been left on and its monitor screen was flashing a series of numbers: E-M-29-7976. Fong didn’t even know how to turn on a computer, let alone what these numbers meant. With a rush of silk, the commissioner’s secretary entered from the main office. She appeared angry that Fong was looking at her screen. Fong momentarily wondered what she would do if he looked at her nonexistent tits. With a hrumph, as if she’d been able to read his thoughts, she ushered him toward the commissioner’s office. As she did, she refused to meet his eyes. Fong got the distinct feeling that she didn’t want to be infected by him.

When Fong entered the office, Commissioner Hu was sitting at one end of a couch, a piece of computer paper in his hands. Upon seeing Fong he quickly folded the paper but in his haste did it inside out, showing the same numbers: E-M-29-7976. A detail that did not escape Fong.

The commissioner signalled Fong to the far side of the couch. As he sat, Fong couldn’t get over the notion that they must have looked like the famous pictures of Nixon and Mao-one at either end of a couch-or was it Kissinger and Mao? For the longest time he had had trouble distinguishing among westerners. It wasn’t until he headed Special Investigations and had many more opportunities to deal with them that his eye became attuned to the nuances of Western physiognomy.

The commissioner seemed to have just removed a look of dismay and replaced it by his ever smiling, politically connected “good” face. “How are you today, Detective Zhong?”

Swell, he thought. I’ve been up since five A.M., seen a body in pieces, had a screaming match with a newspaper editor, held half of a heart in my hand and watched a set of dentures munch on it-all before lunch. But he said, “Okay.”

“Good,” said Commissioner Hu and smiled.

The commissioner had one of those smiles that turned his face inside out. As if the action of smiling was completely unnatural for him and he was practising it. And with intense practice came intense fakery. “Pretending is not acting. Acting is about selecting from what you know,” Fu Tsong said in his head. Her voice was so real, so close, so intimate that for a moment Fong lost track of what Commissioner Hu was saying.

Then he caught the drift. His Hu-ness was upset about his not returning the American consulate’s phone call. His Hu-ness was also going on about a meeting with the Americans later in the day but that he was to allow the Chinese State people to do the talking. Fine, he thought, the last thing I want to do is chat with U.S. Consulate folks.

“And I thought because your English is so good, you could also translate for us,” concluded his Hu-ness.

“Pardon me for saying this but I think that we need a professional translator in a situation like this. I speak conversationally but I cannot claim any real expertise.”

“Conversationally is good enough in this case.”

“But. . .” Fong never got to complete his sentence. The smile mask was back on and his Hu-ness was indicating that it was time for him to leave. So Fong got to his feet and headed out.

It was only as he was leaving the secretary’s office (the woman still refused to meet his eye) that he realized why he was being asked to act as translator-the powers that be wanted as few people in on this conversation as possible. But why?

On leaving the commissioner’s office Fong headed toward the basement of the building and the forensic labs. He knew that there wouldn’t be anything to report yet but he wanted to check and see if there were any preliminary responses. Besides, he liked Forensics and the people who worked there. It was the Buddhist end of police work-silent, slow, and patient.

He was waved through forensic security and headed down the long corridor toward the main lab in the back. There was the slightest pop of suction as he pulled open the frosted glass door. He thought to himself that this is probably the only well-fitted door in all of Shanghai. He checked for a manufacturer’s label. German, naturally.

Once inside, the hum of the fluorescent lights was about all there was to hear. Several of the scientists looked up and then returned to their work. They knew Zhong Fong but saw no need to distract themselves enough to say hello.

Near the south end of the lab he found Xia Hong Shia, who liked to be called by her English name, Lily. Lily was an attractive, tightly put together woman in her late twenties who seemingly spent every penny on her wardrobe. All to fetching effect. Lily’s English wasn’t great but she made a real effort and liked to practice, so Fong addressed her in English. “What’s up, Lily?”

Momentarily missing the idiom, Lily looked skyward and then smiled at him. “Not a thing fucking.” Lily was especially fond of English slang.

Pointing at the microscope in front of her, “May I?”

“Shit, okay.”

He put his eye to the lens and squinted. He was always amazed how hard it was to actually see anything through a microscope. After a little fiddling with both his eye and the focus, he managed to get an image of some sort of crystal-based solid.

“What is it, Lily?”

To explain, Lily reverted to Mandarin. “It’s standard to ask for a piece of the lung. It usually doesn’t show anything, but I found tiny shards of this in the tissue,” she said indicating the image on the slide.

“And you don’t know what it is yet?”

“Not yet, copper,” she said in her smiling English.

There was an unmistakable twinkle in her eye and she stood just a little closer to him than was absolutely necessary. He’d heard rumours that her relationship with her boyfriend had soured but as he looked at her, it occurred to him that his days with younger women were numbered if not in fact over. He didn’t know what he felt about that.

“The wallet’s in scrapings and should be out soon. Blood typing is almost done. There were a few partial prints on the credit cards,” she said in her beautiful Mandarin. Then she added in English, “They’re being worked up now.”

“Your English is getting very good, Lily.”

“I’ve got CNN. It helps. I think I love Larry King.”

“Who?”

“Just an older man with lots of attitude, like someone else I know and also care deeply for.” She literally twinkled with her own cleverness.

Enjoying the game, but thrown a little by her forwardness, Fong pointed at the microscope. “Tell me what it is when you find out.” Then he turned and headed out.

As he did, he heard Lily whistle at him and mutter, “Yubba Bubla Doo, check out that butt.”

Mr. Lo entered the Jade Buddhist Temple up Jiang Ning Road near An Yuan and paid his fifteen kwai. Tourist season hadn’t begun yet so it wasn’t crowded. The scent of fresh incense was everywhere as the monks passed out bundles of the fragrant sticks to the faithful.

He avoided the main temple in the centre of the courtyard, with its three gaudy gold-painted statues and kneeling chairs, and headed to the east side of the compound where there was a vantage place from which he could see the carvings on the main building’s roof-what he thought of as “his statues.” The figures formed a unique motif that completed the ends of the upturned pagodalike eaves. On the end of each eave was a long narrow upcurving polelike extension, perhaps five feet long. At the highest point, the farthest from the roof, a tiny robed monk rode a peacock. Behind the monk, following him in a neat line were four lion cubs, each delicately balanced on the narrow pole. All four cubs wore serene smiles. But there was also a fifth lion cub, still on the roof, clearly frightened to make the leap from the safety of the roof to the narrow curving strut. This cub was clearly unhappy. His lack of bravery had kept him from the path-the tao. Clinging to the unreal world of apparent safety, the roof, had left him out of the true world-a world of serenity, the tao.

As he had so often in the past, Loa Wei Fen willed himself into the eye of the lion cub on the roof. From the cub’s eye he looked at the joy of his brothers on the other side. Then, in his mind, he leapt-across the abyss. Geoffrey’s ride in from the airport was as uneventful as a ride with Soo Jack could be. Long ago he had learned that it was better to sit in the front seat and take your chances than to sit in the back and be sure that Jack would spend the entire trip with his head craned around talking to you.

Although he had been in Shanghai only ten months before, the changes were obvious. Huge new handpainted billboards, behind which were massive building projects, lined Qiao Road and Yan’an as they headed into town from the airport. The air was thick but not as polluted as it would get later in the year. Geoffrey was happy just to watch the city’s life.

Shanghai is the largest city in Asia. Its population of fourteen million swells to almost twenty million on any given day because of the people who come into the city to shop and to look for work. The streets, always crowded with bicyclists, taxis, and buses, now had many private cars, some quite fancy, adding to the potentially deadly mix. Jack swerved to avoid a pedestrian who had wandered into the middle of the eight-lane road. He honked.

Everyone honked. Drivers in Shanghai honked to tell you that they were coming. They honked to warn you not to move. They honked to tell you they were passing. They honked to tell you not to swerve. They honked to tell you to go faster. They honked to tell you not to turn. They honked to let the car they were driving know that it wasn’t being ignored. Despite all the honking they seldom, if ever, swore or lost their tempers. They honked instead.

Jack was a registered Chinese Driver, not a private car owner or a cabby. Chinese Drivers were a breed unto themselves. They had real status in Shanghai. They were licensed by the government and knew every road, alleyway, good restaurant, historic site, and pleasure dome within four hundred miles of Shanghai. You want to go to the countryside, you want a Chinese Driver. You want to see the night life in Shanghai, you want a Chinese Driver. You want to shake up your lunch, you want a Chinese Driver.

At the Shanghai Theatre Academy, Geoffrey was met by Deborah Tong, his translator of many years. She showed him to his rooms.

After unpacking his various bags (he’d given up on travelling light years ago) Geoffrey went down the stairs of the guest house and wandered across the compound to the filthy old theatre that he adored.

The invitation from the academy to direct a production of Shakespeare’s Twelfth Night with a large professional cast and a few talented students came as an unexpected gift. It was unsolicited; usually he had to press the academy for invitations. But as he was to learn later, it was a gift complete with strings.

He’d wanted to work on Twelfth Night for years-since Fu Tsong had first begun to talk about the piece. She had said, “Shakespeare has written everyone into this play. We are all there. I know who I am in the play. Who are you, Geoffrey?”

He had managed to duck the question. She was convinced that the play was about love as the ultimate expression of living. Geoffrey’s take was more of love as an addiction, a sickness. She had simply smiled at him and continued her analysis. She argued that Malvolio was indeed in love with Olivia, as was Toby, as was Aguecheek, as was Feste. He remembered saying, “That’s some woman to have so many men in love with her.” To which Fu Tsong had countered, “Oh, not just men. The boy Sebastian as well, not to mention the girl, Viola. All love Olivia deeply.” “And what is it that they love so much in this creature?” he had mocked. Totally ignoring his sarcasm she had answered, “Her chi. Her life inside.”

Ah, yes, her chi. Her life inside.

Sometimes, only through absence can a human being tell the value of what was, but is no more. So walking this campus in Shanghai, the People’s Republic of China, a country, an academy that no longer contained Fu Tsong’s chi, Geoffrey Hyland, Toronto theatre director, once more experienced the depth of his loss. How infinitely poorer this place was without its Olivia.

The American consulate’s air conditioning was cranked up so high that Fong thought his eyelids were freezing together. He sat between Commissioner Hu and one of the people from the State Department, a trade commissar whom Fong had never seen before. The only American present was the consul general. This surprised Fong.

The business part of the American consulate (known to the people who work there as the real American consulate) was near the seat of true power in Shanghai, the docks. Naturally there was a public consulate, in the pleasant back streets where Huai Hai and Fuxing cross down Wolumquoi, where people of all nations, colours and creeds can apply for immigration visas to the promised land. But nothing of international import got done there. If you wanted to really deal with America, you went down to the docks. Fong found this appropriate. The real American consulate was up the Huangpo River toward the Yangtze. The austere, newish edifice silently hummed its anthem of efficiency.

The size of American rooms didn’t seem quite right to Fong. He was used to high ceilings from his own office, but it was the width of the room that unnerved him. Form without function. American.

While translating the “hi, how are ya’s” and the “isn’t it gettin’ hot out there” stuff Fong studied the consul general, a white bear of a man, with bushy eyebrows and a big gut. Fong had known Americans who could play at being American but were in fact quite bright. Such Americans were also quite dangerous, Fong had found.

“So what’ve you folks found out about the passing of an American citizen, one Richard Fallon?” Fong translated and was told to give the American what he had worked up. Fong handed over an edited version of Wang Jun’s report, with copies of only some of the photos and then gave the consul general a list of reports yet to come in and their prospective dates of arrival. There was no mention anywhere of the heart or its missing piece.

“Ghastly business this. You think there’s a chance you’ll find the guy who did this?”

Again Fong translated and was told to respond.

“It’s too early to tell. We have a few leads to follow and a lot of basic investigation to get moving before we can even estimate chances.”

The consul general nodded as if in agreement but instead of replying to Fong’s statement, he said, “Be careful, sonny boy, you’re in way over your head on this one.”

Struggling to keep a straight face, Fong smiled. “Would you care to elaborate.”

The consul general smiled back and, while nodding, said, “No.”

Fong told his colleagues that the consul general understood that things were in their early stages and that he wished to offer the police any services that he could in the investigations. Both Chinese officials nodded sagely. Without asking permission, Fong turned to the consul general.

“Was Richard Fallon an active law enforcement officer at the time of his death?”

“Yes ”

“Was he here on any sort of government business?”

“You’re cold.”

“It’s the air conditioning.”

“No, no. This has nothing to do with that.”

“And what does it have to do with?”

The Chinese officials asked for an explanation and were given an edited precis.

“Will you allow us to use your computers to track his credit cards?”

“I will not.”

“Why?” burst out Fong.

The American just smiled, rubbed his belly, and stood.

The Chinese men stood as well and followed him to the door.

At the door, as if it were an afterthought, the consul general put a hand on Fong’s shoulder and said, “I’ve got a teensy favour to ask. Mr. Fallon’s widow is coming into town tomorrow or the next day to, well, you know, tidy things up, and I’m sure that she would like to be kept abreast of your investigations. Americans are like that, aren’t they?”

Before Fong could translate, the consul general said the exact same thing, in fluent Shanghanese, even getting the complex idiom right. When he was finished, he laughed at the shock on the faces of the Chinese men.

In rapid-fire English, Fong said, “I don’t care for this game, if you have something to say to me, say it.”

“I thought you Chinese liked games.”

“This is not the time-”

“On the contrary. This is absolutely the right time for games. ‘At times of change humanity tests the new through the use of games.’”

“Who said that?”

With a smile that had absolutely no warmth, he snapped, “Me. Just now.”

At 11:37 P.M., April 19, just over twenty-five hours since the dismembered pieces of Richard Fallon’s body were found in an alley off Julu Lu, Zhong Fong called it a day. As in all investigations at this stage, he had a ton of work ahead of him before he could even guess where to begin. But it would have to wait. Now, he needed time to sit and think so he went out of the office, which everyone else had left long ago, and headed down to Zhong Shan Road. The evening was cool, the oppressive summer heat was still at bay, and the rainy season had not yet come. But it would.

Usually at night, before heading back to his apartment at the theatre academy, he walked the Bund and admired the stateliness of the building where he worked. He’d come a long way, but not in distance. He worked in the former English Concession and lived in the former French Concession but he had grown up in the part of Shanghai that no foreigners wanted, the Old City, the Chinese section of Shanghai. A mere fiveminute walk from glittering Nanjing Road or ever-sochic Huai Hai Road and you found it, just as it had been for so many years, as it would always be, he hoped. The real Shanghai, the Chinese Shanghai.

But it was not there that he headed this evening. Tonight he needed a place to think. Stepping out of his office he turned left and headed toward the confluence of the Huangpo River and the Su Zhou Creek.

Coming to the Beijing Road pedestrian underpass, he stopped and looked behind him. It was an old habit, but on that after today’s events he decided to revive. He scanned the faces. Most were Chinese. All were haggard at this hour of the night.

Satisfied that he wasn’t being followed, Fong headed into the cool dampness of the tunnel. Unlike Western cities where these enclosures would have been filled with street people at this hour of the night, in Shanghai the tunnels were both safe and relatively empty. Only one beggar sat there. By his side was a filthy boy child of three or four. In his gnarled hands the old man held an ancient stringed instrument, an arhu. Fong approached him and put two kwai in his bowl. “Play me something, grandpa. Play me something and help me forget.”

With that Fong took a piece of newspaper from his coat pocket, spread it carefully on the ground, and sat down. He tilted his head back against the cool tiles of the tunnel and closed his eyes. The unearthly sounds of the arhu filled the tunnel and seemed to echo behind his forehead. They looped and bonged off the hard surfaces of his skull and finally pierced the softness of his brain. And there waiting, as she always waited, was Fu Tsong. Quick and lithe, and fire.

Something plunked down in his lap. Without opening his eyes he felt the tangled hair of the beggar boy. The boy sighed happily as he snuggled into Fong’s lap and in the stroke of a bow and the lilt of a melody was fast asleep. For a moment Fong thought that he was losing his mind.

Finally the blessing of sleep came to him, borne on a cool breeze, the haunt of the music, and a breath of faith.

Then the nightmare came-again.