The Shanghai Murders

DAY FOUR

Fu Tsong had called it “the Mess.” She had labelled it “perfect Hilton Lobby art” and that is exactly where they had first seen it and where Fong was now looking at it again. It was just after 9:00 A.M. and he had not slept. But he knew what he needed. He needed to see the Mess.

The Mess was a white plaster statue about three feet tall and two feet wide that stood inexplicably in a place of honour in the lobby of the Shanghai Hilton, China’s only five-star hotel. On the left was a Mongol warrior, complete with shaved head and lengthy braid, who was riding a fighting pony. Fair enough. But this fighting pony was now rearing high on its hind legs because a huge hovering eagle was pulling a long snake from the ground near where the horse’s front feet would have been had it not been rearing at the time. Sort of fair enough. But then, just to round out the Mess, the Mongol warrior, braid flying maniacally, had drawn his sword and was leaning over ready to cut the snake in half. Now why exactly was he doing this? The Mongol warrior’s dilemma, as Fu Tsong put it, was that he was going to fall on his pigtailed head because his horse was rearing. Now it was logical to assume that the large eagle, not five inches from the horse’s nose, could be the thing causing the poor animal to rear and hence should be the object of said Mongol’s sword. But no, the sword was raised against the snake. If the horse was frightened of the snake, that danger was taken care of by the eagle. But not if the Mongol warrior had his way. Well. . . as Fu Tsong put it, it’s a mess. It had unity but no sense. It’s not art, it’s kitsch. It’s the Mess.

But Fong wasn’t so sure that Fu Tsong was right this time, because he saw sense here-not logic, but sense. He saw that the Mongol warrior was at his wits’ end. That he was inexplicably at the whim of fate. That he was falling through no fault of his own. That the warrior who was so used to control was going to meet his end completely and utterly as a joke of nature. A cosmic “gotcha.” The warrior’s reaction to this injustice was to lash out. At the nearest thing. In this case, the snake.

Fong understood that. It was what he felt now. It was why he came to the lobby of the Hilton to see the Mess.

Fong knew that the proverbial shit was going to come down on him today. A second dissection experiment on the streets of Shanghai would not go over well with the powers that be. It was going to be a shitty day, no two ways around that. But like all policemen everywhere, Fong had his sources of information and he was going to tap them before he was handed his head by Commissioner Hu. He was going to tap them until they hurt.

Fu Tsong had called it his “round up the usual suspects” mood. Casablanca was one of the few American movies, which Fu Tsong had insisted he see, that Fong actually liked. Fu Tsong had been surprised. He’d never told her that he liked it because the hero was short, like him. He would never have the chance to tell her that or so many other things, after what happened to her in the Pudong.

He slammed down hard on the brakes of his Volkswagen Santana and flipped off the flasher. With the hint of a smile on his face he crossed the street and entered the favourite whorehouse of one of his “usual suspects.” Fate might be throwing him from his horse but he was going to cut the fucking snake in half before he hit the ground.

The gulped air of the hoarse-voiced old man was the only sound breaking the ominous silence in the Pudong power-plant room. Finally he said, “Why didn’t we just scare the merchants? They have no honour, no pride, they’d sell their mothers if they thought there was an American dollar to be made in it.”

The silence lengthened in the dark room. At last it was broken by an elegant middle-aged Mandarin voice. “We have already discussed this. It is the smugglers who must be stopped. There are too many merchants to frighten into shutting down. But there are a limited number of people with the means to smuggle. So we agreed. Sir, you agreed. That we should send a message to the smugglers, to get them to stop.”

“Won’t these killings frighten away investment money too?”

“Only for a moment, but that moment will pass. The killer will be caught as we planned,” said the elegant voice.

Once again there was a lengthy pause before the old man spoke. “It is a new world. All this because a group likes animals. . .”

“And Shanghai must grow or die.”

There was no message on his e-mail and that surprised Loa Wei Fen. His employers were no doubt upset. There had been no mention of the ivory anywhere in the press although the deaths had gotten prominent coverage.

Well, they would contact him, that was a certainty. He looked down at the computer notebook on the bedside table. He affixed the modem jack and turned on the machine. With a few quick commands, he brought up the e-mail concerning the Zairian consul general. Its return address was E-M-29-7976. There was no identified server. That didn’t surprise Loa Wei Fen. The People’s Republic of China was doing its best to control e-mail correspondence and hence had probably instituted a central server system for the country. With his technological advantage it didn’t take Loa Wei Fen long to locate and break into the server’s data banks. In short order the street address from which the e-mail had been sent flashed merrily on his computer screen.

He still had three days left on his contract and he thought that perhaps it was time to learn something about his employer. Time to be prudent. No. Now, it was imperative to be prudent.

There was something satisfying about breaking in on a pimp in midcoital pump with one of his girls. Dung Tsu Hong looked every inch a fool as he attempted to cover himself with a pillow while his ladyfriend whined that she was wet and there was no shower here and besides who was this guy?

It was always satisfying to shame them in front of the girls who were so frightened of them. That or rip their fancy clothes. Fong decided that since Dung Tsu Hong was naked, except for the pillow covering his crotch, the clothes option was out. So he grabbed the pillow away from the pimp and smiled.

“I’ve got a question or two for you.”

Dung Tsu Hong sank to the floor, holding his hands over his genitals.

Fong knelt down beside him. “I want information on the two killings. I want it by the end of the week. Under stand me, Dung Tsu Hong! I could come back every day and do this, it gives me so much pleasure. Now if you don’t want to see me for a while find the answers to these questions: Who’s the knife artist? And where is he?” With that he grabbed a handful of the man’s greasy hair and pulled hard. “Those are easy questions for a smart guy like you, Dung Tsu Hong. Who’s the knife artist and where is he. Got it? Up and down means yes.”

Dung Tsu Hong’s head moved slowly up and down. The whore on the bed giggled. Fong shot her a look. This one probably thought her work was fun. This one probably approached Dung Tsu Hong, not vice versa.

In the morning light, returning to his car, Fong felt none too good. The likelihood that the pimp would be able to find anything was not great. But at least it was something. The punching bag punches back. He turned on the flasher and hit the siren. He had two more calls to make before he went to the office and had to face Commissioner Hu.

Shrug and Knock pocketed his master key and cracked open the door to Fong’s office. He surveyed the interior. The Little Turd, as he called Fong, wasn’t there. Not usual for him. Then Shrug and Knock’s eyes were drawn to Fong’s schematic on the table. After a moment’s viewing he concentrated on the line drawn from the ivory pieces through the Dim Sum Killer to the circle with the large question mark inside it.

Shrug and Knock knew that this would interest Commissioner Hu.

Fong’s next two stops didn’t require violence, only the threat of it. The first was to an illegal money changer who frequented the Fu Yu market and also did a franchise operation off Haui Hai in the clothing market near the embassy district. Breaking in on him was not difficult and refusing the casually offered bribe proved that he was in earnest enough for the man to listen to him. The threat to close him down was enough to get the man’s full attention. Times were getting tough in the illegal money-changing business. Now that foreigner exchange currency, familiarly FEC, wasn’t being issued by the government to foreigners wishing to buy Chinese goods, a healthy chunk of the money-changers’ business, the exchange of FEC for REM (Chinese currency) was gone. Now a foreigner could get REM at any bank, just like a Chinese national. The money changers, formerly proponents of open markets, now had to compete against the Bank of China. They were learning that competition could be tough.

Fong repeated his questions. Who was the knife artist and where was he? The money changer virtually kowtowed as he promised his full cooperation.

Fong’s third stop was at the North Train Station across the Su Zhou Creek.

This train station used to be a place of great silences. During the Cultural Revolution, the forced move to the countryside of thousands, perhaps millions of people began here. Their leavetakings took place in the cavernous terminus under the watchful eyes of the Red Guards, eyes that did not permit sentiment. Tears were an expression of the bourgeoisie. So silence was the only farewell.

The train station was anything but quiet now, although it was still a place of vast sorrow. Every day thousands upon thousands of peasants from the countryside were disgorged from trains into the huge echoing building. They arrived hoping to find work in the economic miracle that was Shanghai. They arrived with sullenness and loathing in their eyes. Had they not fought the revolution to be equal to these execrable Shanghanese? Yet here they were like beggars on the street looking for the right to lift and haul with hands and carrying poles. Water buffalo work.

Only the men came. They came in anger and hate and in the noonday sun; they crowded the station’s steps as they sat on their red-white-and-blue-striped satchels and glared at the passersby. At some they spat. At most women they threw stones. At the funny-looking little cop’s approach they looked the other way. They might be from the country but they recognized a policeman’s walk when they saw it.

Fong passed by the huddled bunches of smoking men and entered the station. Its height always surprised him, but his business was not in the central hall. Flashing his police identification he quickly passed through security and was led to the customs warehouse.

Inside the old warehouse, the sun etched spider webs through grit-plastered windows. Fong took a deep breath and then asked to see Shen Lai. The man who took his request returned in a moment and asked Fong to follow him.

They walked down aisles with three-tiered shelves rising to the ceiling some sixty feet above them. All the shelves were piled high with crated goods. Stacks of electronic equipment from South Korea, Singapore, and Japan. Clothing and food stuffs from America. Heavy machinery parts from India. Coffeemakers from France. Goods from almost every country that Fong could name, all waiting here for customs clearance. At one time this warehouse had been filled with goods from the USSR and Albania. From Romania and North Korea. Now they were the few countries that seemed not to be represented. As the two men passed through the last aisle, Fong did spot an area where the packages were half rotted through and the wrapping so badly put together that it was coming apart. Without looking he knew that this was the Russian section. Some things never changed.

Shen Lai was not happy to see Fong. He was a roundfaced fat man in his early fifties with large puffy cheeks and the smallest mouth in the Eastern Hemisphere. Whenever he spoke his mouth looked like that of a goldfish, and that was in fact his nom de guerre, the Goldfish. Behind his back they called him Fish Face. Fong couldn’t see how the Goldfish was much of an improvement but then again Fong was never up to date on the intricacies of etiquette in the world of Chinese organized crime.

Shen Lai was not one of the tong bosses but he was the appointed access point through which the authorities could reach the tong known as the Small Knife Society. The tongs had controlled customs houses in Shanghai since well before the British came. They took a modest percentage off each and every duty. Those percentages bankrolled almost all their other activities- drugs, women, gambling. They were the cash cow.

Unlike most Chinese men of wealth, Shen Lai smoked a local brand-Snake Charm-and he was filling the air with its pungent aroma as Fong entered the office. Fong took out one of his Kents and lit up. Shen Lai shook his head. “Bad for business, that,” he said, indicating the American cigarette. “Not patriotic.” He puffed harder on his Snake Charm. The picture of the small cigarette in the tiny mouth almost lost in the enormous cheeks made Fong smile.

“Something funny, Zhong Fong?”

“Not a thing, Shen Lai.” Fong crushed out his cigarette against a windowpane. “We’re worried about the safety of your workers here.”

“Are you really?”

“Yes, we’re going to have to close your operations for the better part of a month to make sure that health standards are being maintained. There have been complaints.”

A month’s closure would cost the tong a lot of revenue and Fong knew it and he knew that Shen Lai knew it.

“You can’t-”

But he never got the rest out of his tiny mouth as Fong snapped back, “I can and you know I can. Then I can close down the customs yards at the docks and that would really hurt, wouldn’t it?”

“You’re crazy, you’re out of your jurisdiction.”

“Nonsense, I’m the head of Special Investigations. Public safety is part of my portfolio. This place is unsafe. You must have over a hundred workers here, I’m concerned for their health and well-being. I’m closing you down.”

There was a beat of silence wherein Shen Lai weighed the threat. He found Fong just enough of a fool to go through with it. Lighting another cigarette he smiled,

“Okay, you’ve made your point. What can I do for you?”

“I want the knife artist who carved up those two men.

I want him now.”

“He’s not one of ours, Zhong Fong, surely you know that.”

“I do, Shen Lai, he’s too artistic for you and yours. But I want him and I want your friends to use all of their considerable power to find him for me. Because if they don’t I’ll close down this customs house, the one on the Bund, and the new one in the Pudong. Then I’ll file so many legal documents that even with the best of lawyers it’ll take months to get them reopened. Do I make myself clear?”

Fish Face nodded. His cheeks wagged. His little mouth blew a tiny smoke ring. “Perfectly clear.”

It was two o’clock before Fong got back in his car and headed toward his Yellow River. He had been in touch with Wang Jun, who had warned him that some pretty heavy artillery awaited his arrival at the office. Fong thanked the older man and set him to work on the newspaper angle. The coroner and Lily were still waiting for word on the lung shards, but both now thought them likely to be slivers of ivory and there had been no word yet from Detective Li Xiao, who was checking into the martial arts schools. One message that he’d managed to get from Shrug and Knock was that the American consulate had called to inform him that Richard Fallon’s wife, Amanda Pitman, was arriving today in Shanghai and that he should make himself available. She was staying in the French Concession at the improbably named Shanghai International Equatorial Hotel across from Jing An Park, only a few blocks from the theatre academy. Fong called the consulate and left a message indicating his willingness to meet with Mrs. Fallon. He then gave them dozens of police phone numbers that she could call to find him. None of the numbers were his. Fong could live quite well without the intrusion into his life of a grieving widow from America.

Well, his Hu-ness was something to be seen.

Fu Tsong had laughed so hard that tears came to her eyes when she first heard the English term “high dudgeon”-which initially Fong had thought was a basement prison somehow up in the air. Now, looking at his Huness, Fong was sure that he was in fact in high dudgeon. He wondered momentarily what Geoffrey Hyland would call this emotion. Then he wondered why Geoffrey Hyland had entered his mind at a time like this. Then he decided he’d better try to follow what was being screamed at him. Within the general tirade concerning Fong’s incompetence, insubordination, lack of administrative skill, and refusal to be part of a team there was a consistent leitmotif: Just find the killer. Don’t get diverted. Just find the killer. Don’t become a conspiracy monger. Just find the killer. And finally what the fuck was he doing in the customs house this morning? Just find the killer.

Then more high dudgeonness, a demand for a complete report followed by a turn on his heel and exit with Shrug and Knock in tow. If his Hu-ness were a cartoon, and who was to say that he wasn’t, such an exit would be accompanied by a puff of dirt at his heels.

After a moment his office door opened and Wang Jun entered.

“You still my boss?”

“I think so. It’s hard to be sure with him.”

“Lots of words, little substance, huh?”

Fong didn’t respond. It occurred to him that there was in fact great substance, but exactly where the substance lay was escaping him. He had Wang Jun call in Lily, and the rest of the team.

Arriving at Shanghai International Airport is not as scary for an American as landing at Sheremetyevo in Moscow, but it’s close. It’s hard for Americans to overcome their programming and really see what is in front of them. Amanda did her best but she found the bustle and the foreign faces more daunting than she was willing to admit. When offered assistance with her carry-on bag by a young Chinese man, she instinctively refused. At the immigration counter she handed in her form, complete with a “no” answer to the “Do you have AIDS” question. The bluntness of the question galled her. At the counter she waited while the young man-“boy” was the word that popped into her head-put her passport under a light. He looked at the picture, then looked at her, and then down to the picture and at her again. It seemed to her that he was following a set procedure. The catch-a-foreign-devil procedure, no doubt. It also occurred to her that he was probably unable to differentiate Caucasian faces. Be that as it may, she smiled. He didn’t, but he handed back her passport and she proceeded to baggage claim.

After a reasonable wait, her bag arrived and she headed into the arrivals lounge. There before her was her first sea of Chinese faces. She took a breath, told herself that she could do this, and stepped forward. Immediately dozens of pencilled cardboard signs were held up and waved in her direction. Although she didn’t expect to be picked up she was grateful to see a MRS. RICHARD FALLON in the hands of a young man who took the cigarette out of his mouth to say “Huh-low” and then returned it to his face. He made no movement to take her bag. She followed him out of the terminal into the brightness of Shanghai’s late April sun.

The man didn’t speak much English and didn’t have a car of his own but signalled for a taxi. After what Amanda thought sounded like a pitched battle between him and the driver, he opened the door for her, put her bag in the trunk, and then hopped in the back beside her.

As the taxi started (“took off” was Amanda’s impression), he turned to her and said, “Well-come to China.”

She thanked him but when she followed her thanks with a question as to whether they were going to her hotel or the consulate, the man just smiled and made a “sorry, no more English” shoulder movement. For a moment Amanda was going to make a scene but she stopped herself. A scene about what? She hadn’t expected to be picked up.

The cab swerved and bobbed in and out of traffic as they made their way downtown. The racket was something to hear, the smog something to smell, but it was the look of it all that most impressed Amanda. Huge hand-painted billboards lined the road on both sides. Behind them massive construction projects were under way, cranes turning like weathervanes in the afternoon wind. And bicycles, and people-so many people!

Not greatly to her surprise, the cab came to a stop outside a building with a U.S. federal seal on its outer wall and a line of Chinese people at the entrance waiting to apply for visas that would never be granted. Her escort led her to a back entrance. A marine in full parade dress uniform guarded the door. Amanda eyed the marine coolly. Military types-all spit and polish but not much real style. And forget content.

Inside the consulate, her young escort guided her to a closed door, pointed at it, and with a wave of his hand left her.

The door led to a walnut-panelled waiting room. And Amanda waited. For almost half an hour, during which time she was sure that she dozed off at least once. Finally a youngish Yale type came in with a flutter of papers and apologies. “So sorry that the consul general had to keep you waiting, how was the flight, isn’t thirteen hours the worst? Sorry we couldn’t send one of our better people out to get you but it’s a busy time, lots and lots of business here, blah, blah, blah.” She ignored him; if forced to choose she’d take the marine any day.

The consul general stood as she entered despite the fact that he was on the phone. He didn’t ask her to sit down and she finally thought “fuck it” and sank down on the leather couch. The consul general was trying to arrange a meeting with a General Electric someone or other and a Shanghai official or something like that. Amanda really couldn’t care less. What she cared about at this moment was trying to get some sleep. She felt herself begin to doze off again just as the consul general came around his desk and, extending his hand, began with, “Please accept my sincerest condolences, Mrs. Fallon.”

“Thank you. But I think I’d like to go to my hotel first if you don’t mind.”

“Not at all. I thought they’d brought you there already.”

“No, the man brought me here.”

“I’m sorry. I’ll get you taken to the hotel.” He phoned someone and turned to her.

“Perhaps I should see Richard first,” she said.

Before that moment Amanda Pitman didn’t really know what the phrase “His face fell” really meant. But that’s what the consul general’s puffy face did. It fell. He recovered in a moment and smiled. “How much did they tell you about your husband’s death, Mrs. Fallon?”

“Only that he’d been murdered. And that they haven’t found the killer yet.”

“Well, that’s correct on both points, but I would suggest that you go to your hotel and get some rest and I’ll arrange for a driver to pick you up tomorrow morning. There’s not really any hurry, is there?”

The words were out of his mouth before he could stop himself. For some reason they made Amanda smile.

They also let her know that there was something here that she hadn’t been told.