The Shanghai Murders

DAY SIX

The coroner didn’t look good. In fact he looked sallow and sickened, thought Fong. As gently as he could Fong said, “You asked to see me?”

“Yes, thank you for coming over at such an early hour.”

The old man’s politeness shocked Fong more than his pallor.

“Are you okay?”

To this the coroner half sighed, half laughed. “I am in my seventy-third year, how okay could I be?” Then he laughed, spat in the sink, and swore mightily. That made Fong feel better. Crossing to the freezer, the coroner slipped on a pair of plastic gloves and pulled out a dark green plastic bag. Then, bringing the bag over to one of the dissection tables, he let it tumble out.

It was the half of the heart remaining from Ngalto Chomi.

“The African’s heart?”

“Yes, and an interesting piece of work it is.”

“The heart?”

The coroner looked at him like he was crazy, “A heart’s a heart. It’s not like a dick or tits. Yes, there’s a standard variation in internal organs but this is well within the standard.”

“So what’s interesting about it?”

“This.” The coroner pointed to the cutline the knife had made. It was jagged. More ripped than cut. Fong said as much and the coroner nodded his agreement.

“This is the work of a specialized professional. One whose purpose is to terrorize. Do you agree?”

“Yes, I do.”

“Such a person would be highly skilled, yes?”

“Yes.”

“Expensive?”

“I’d assume so.”

“Professional, highly skilled, expensive and yet he almost botched this one.” He took the heart and showed Fong an incision off the cutline of almost an inch and a half.

“The knife slipped?” asked Fong, his interest definitely on the rise.

“If it did, it happened more than once.” The coroner pulled back a second flap where the knife had veered sharply off course. “Also, this body, although carved up in the same places as Richard Fallon’s, was not done with the same accuracy. There seemed to be a hesitation here. I’m guessing, but I think our man is losing his touch.”

“Professional, highly skilled, expensive but at the end of his career. A hunter whose prowess has crested.”

“A lion with a limp,” added the coroner as his ancient hands slid the half heart back into its bag.

Watching the coroner’s slow movements toward the freezer, Fong added, “They get dangerous near the end.”

“Like me,” said the old coroner. “Like me.”

Lily had something for him. The shard in Richard Fallon was in fact a tiny piece of ivory, probably from a carving factory. Fong took a note of that and asked Lily to get in touch with Interpol to check with corresponding MOs. “I’ve been on my knees to those fuckers in Hong Kong for three days getting the shard crap, do I have to do it again?”

“You’re so good at it, Lily.”

She playfully punched him on the shoulder. It hurt more than he thought it would. Then assuming she had not paid him back enough she added, “How’s the report for his Hu-ness coming along?”

He made a face at her. She made one right back then said, “Maybe it’s easier being on my knees in front of the Hong Kong guys than you being on your knees in front of the Hu-man. At least with me it’s not a sin against nature.”

In English Fong added, “You’re something, Lily.”

To which she replied, “You bet your picker I am.”

Fong was going to correct her but thought it unwise to teach Lily any more English names for male genitalia. So he merely said, “I try not to bet my picker, unless I’m sure of the horse.”

Lily was still trying to work out the idiom as he left.

Passing by Shrug and Knock Fong couldn’t resist yelling at him. So he did. Shrug and Knock shrugged it off and smiled. “How’s that report coming along?”

In his office Fong found a message to call Li Xiao, the detective working on the martial arts angle. Fong called the number, which was in Kwongjo, Canton. When his call was forwarded to a beeper, he left a message that he had returned the call. Then he checked to make sure that his door was locked and sat down to his typewriter.

The report to his Hu-ness took a solid hour to write and was clear but vacant. It did not muddy waters but it made absolutely no effort to clean them. There was no speculation of any sort in it and certainly no flow chart leading from the Dim Sum Killer to anyone else. When the report was almost finished, his private line rang. He thought it would be Wang Jun so he picked up. “Talk.”

But it wasn’t the older detective, it was Li Xiao returning his call.

“Sir?”

“Who is. . . Li Xiao, I’m sorry. How’s Kwongjo?”

“Like the Wild West in American movies. This place is too close to Hong Kong.”

“They really eat lamb’s balls down there?”

“Lamb’s balls, bull’s balls, fuck, they’d eat rat’s balls if they were big enough to pick up with chopsticks.”

The two men laughed together. Li Xiao was one of the few men on the force, outside of Wang Jun, whom Fong admired. He felt that Li Xiao really had talent and was an incorruptible cop in a force that fought a daily battle against internal corruption. He was the best detective, bar none, who worked under Fong. He also liked the young man. He liked his tough, wide body and his pimpled face. He liked the honest ugliness of him. If there hadn’t been such an age difference he would have tried to pursue a friendship with this young man. But age is real.

“You’ve found something?”

“Maybe, sir. Kwongjo is the centre of so much of this martial arts stuff. We’ve spread the net pretty wide and have been concentrating on the weapon.”

“And?”

“I’ve got a rumour, is all.” He then told Fong what he’d found. He ended with, “If you want me to pursue this I’d have to get to Taiwan. That’s where the trail leads.”

Few things sickened a Chinese man in authority more than having to ask a favour of the Taiwanese. Fong literally felt dizzy with the prospect of having to go through those channels. “You think that’s necessary.”

“I’m sorry, sir, I know what a pain this must be, but the trail goes there. There’s nothing more on the mainland that I can find. If you want to let it go, then fine, but I can’t do more here. I’m sorry.”

“Come on back to Shanghai, I’ll authorize the airfare, but not a word about this to anyone, okay?”

“Sure. Am I going to Taiwan?”

“I don’t know. Just get back here now.” Fong spent ten more minutes polishing up the report, trying to make it thick with useless details. Finally satisfied, he pulled it from his typewriter and headed toward the door. He dropped it on Shrug and Knock’s desk. “Give this to your uncle, huh?”

Fong was around the corner before there was a smartass reply, a shrug, or a knock.

Wang Jun was waiting for him downstairs. He glanced at the sun and said, “Let’s walk.”

Fong replied, “You have a copy of the driver’s statement?”

Wang Jun patted his side pocket.

“Good. We have a guest this morning.”

“Really? Who?” Wang Jun said with a slow smile.

It was not possible that Wang Jun knew about Amanda Pitman coming with them this morning. Yet the older man’s smile was troublingly knowledgeable.

“A lady perhaps. A blond American perhaps?” suggested Wang Jun. He licked his thick lips.

“How the hell. . .”

Doing his best hard-boiled American TV detective Wang Jun snapped, “I’m a copper, ma’am, remember that.” Clearly unwilling to reveal his sources to Fong, he went on, “We could do a show for the Americans. Shanghai PD. They’d love it. I could play the lead and you could play my short lovable but stupid assistant whom I constantly pull out of problems as I hop in and out of lovely ladies’ beds. What do you think?”

“I think two things.”

“And those would be?”

“I think you have an active fantasy life and I think you should stay out of my business. All right, Wang Jun?” The latter was said with enough conviction to stop the older man’s smile.

Wang Jun had touched a sore point with Fong and he knew it. He also knew other things about his young friend from his interrogation of Geoffrey Hyland the night before-some of them quite troubling.

“So where to first, the bird and fish market?” asked Wang Jun.

“Yes, that’s where the driver first brought the Zairian consul,” replied Fong.

“We’re just going to walk the route?”

“No, I’m going to walk the route, you’re going to track me. The killer must have watched Mr. Chomi the whole time. I want you to play the killer. As I go, figure out where he must have watched from. Then we’ll see if anyone remembers seeing someone standing and watching.”

“It’s a long shot.”

“Have you got any other suggestion?”

“Hell no, it’s a great day for the Bird and Fish.”

Amanda knew it was stupid but she didn’t know what to wear. It was hot and bone dry out there but she was pretty sure that shorts were inappropriate. She had good walking shoes and as she put them on she was surprised at herself for being pleased that they were low-heeled. So she wouldn’t appear too much taller than him? No it couldn’t be that, just a practical shoe is all.

She finally chose a simple skirt and blouse and a linen jacket and headed down to the lobby. Over the city map, the concierge insisted that the route was easy. He traced it for her several times with his thumb and finally drew a line on her map with a pencil. Unfortunately the map didn’t have the exact street that Inspector Zhong had mentioned but the concierge assured her, “It is right here.” Of course he was pointing to a place on the map with no streets whatsoever.

“It’s not far, maybe a twenty-minute walk.”

“It looks longer than that,” Amanda said.

With a ha-you-westerners look he suggested, “Maybe a taxicab?”

That did it. She folded her map and strode out into the hot April morning.

Dust was blowing as she made her way toward the centre of the city along Yan’an. Everywhere there were things that caught her eye. Phrases popped into her head unannounced but pleasing in both their incisiveness and sound.

Because of her height she had a better view of the city around her than she did in the West. She did not tower over people but she was definitely tall. And blond. And the object of many stares and the odd comment. Surprisingly she didn’t mind, although she was pleased that she had brought her sunglasses and her linen jacket, which she buttoned across her blouse. They could look but they’d have to imagine for themselves.

After passing by the Russian-built exhibition centre with its Red Star atop a fine spire, she came across a man in green pants who was descending into an open manhole. Three other men, all of whom also wore green pants, watched. As the first man’s head disappeared beneath the pavement, Amanda wondered if he would ever return. But before she could contemplate this more thoroughly she glanced down at her watch. Twenty minutes had already gone by and she was nowhere near where she believed the bird and fish market to be.

She picked up her pace. After another fifteen minutes of walking it was pretty close to her appointed hour to meet Inspector Fong, and Cheng Dou Road was still nowhere in sight.

So, taking her courage in hand, she stepped to the side of the road and held up her hand. Several taxis sped past her. The light on the top of the cabs was on so she assumed that they were available. As they whizzed by, though, she saw people inside and realized that the light on the top didn’t mean shit in Shanghai. Finally a cab stopped and she was faced with the question of where to sit. She chose the back and climbed in. Inside she found the driver almost entirely encased in a thick fibreglasslike material that separated him from the front passenger seat as well as the back.

He barked something which she took to mean “Where to, ma’am?” She said the name that Inspector Zhong had given her. He turned around and gave her a funny look. She said the name again, slower this time. He sucked on his teeth and looked at her out of the side of his eyes. She tried a third time with a totally different intonation, in fact, what she thought of as Jerry Lewis Chinese and, to her surprise, the cabby’s face lit up. He put his hands into his armpits and flapped his arms. He looked like a pimply bird. She smiled and nodded, hoping that they weren’t heading toward the zoo.

The car sped into traffic, made the first left and then screeched to a stop. He pointed across a small construction site, in which a woman was washing clothes in a mud pool. Once again he did his bird imitation. Then he pointed at the meter. It had said 14.40 when she got in and it said 14.40 now. She gave him fifteen yuan and was about to get out of the cab when he hollered at her. She stopped in her tracks. She hadn’t given him enough tip and he was mad! But no, he was holding out some of the filthiest money she’d ever seen-her change. The little ratty pieces of paper, two two-Jiao notes and two one-Jiao notes gave her a real understanding of the phrase “dirty money.” She took the bills and smiled. He pointed, bird flapped again, and drove off. Her cab ride had taken less than twenty seconds.

She looked across the construction site. Like most of Shanghai, this area of town was awash in buildings coming down and new structures rising. To her right an apartment building had been half demolished, exposing once lived-in rooms to the elements. Former life got little respect in Shanghai. On one of the green-painted walls she could make out the silhouette where a picture had hung. On another the mildewed wallpaper peeled forward like a flap of decayed skin.

She heard a tinkling bell close behind her and turned. A man sat on an ancient bicycle with two large round iron buckets attached to the back. Inside was a putrid compost of food waste. His bell may have rung gaily but he was not pleased with the big white lady standing in his way. She stepped aside, barely avoiding an old man whose walking stick landed on her foot as he moved past her. The mass of humanity heading toward the bird and fish market was all being funnelled into one small path in an effort to avoid the water from the construction site.

As she waited her turn to cross the thin dry isthmus of bricks, she looked more closely at the construction site and marvelled at what she saw. Again huge scaffolds of bamboo lashed together with vines and then diagonally supported with further bamboo. And everywhere there were human beings carrying large loads on their shoulders, on their backs, and at their sides. Bricks, mortar, beams, wooden supports, buckets of nails, garbage, all the stuff of building pulled and toted by human beings. The worst was the mud. The ground in Shanghai seemed to be permanently saturated with water so that digging a simple hole was a monumental task. The men’s thin arms were stretched to breaking as they lifted their bamboo-handled shovels with the heavy muck.

Crossing the little brick bridge at last, she noticed that the woman was not washing her clothes in the muddy water as she had at first thought. Rather, she had taken the sump pump hose, which was causing the pool of water to form, and had put it into a red plastic tub in which she was scrubbing clothes with a large bar of orangish soap.

Halfway across the bricks she spotted Inspector Zhong. He was standing beside a gruff-looking older man. The two were smoking and looking at their respective watches.

Once across, Amanda strode over to the two men and said good morning. Fong introduced Wang Jun. Then, after consulting Ngalto Chomi’s itinerary, which his driver had given them, they set off. Wang Jun dropped back. A quizzical look crossed Amanda’s face.

“The killer tracked a man named Ngalto Chomi two days ago. He stalked him, I believe the American phrase is. Because Ngalto Chomi was an important man he had a driver and the driver knew where he dropped off Mr. Chomi and where he picked him up.” Pointing to the other side of the small pool, Fong said, “The driver dropped him off there where you got out of your cab and then he crossed, as you did, and came to where we are standing now.”

“How do you know he didn’t cross and move down that side street? ”

“Because I asked that merchant over there.”

Openly surprised she blurted out, “And he actually remembered? ”

“Mr. Chomi was a six-foot seven-inch black man. Not something we get to see every day in Shanghai. People would remember. Like they will remember you.”

“I’m not that tall.”

“No you’re not, but you’re funny coloured too.” Without waiting for a response, Fong started down the crowded street. Catching up to him Amanda demanded, “And where’s your friend?”

“He’s watching us, the way the killer watched Mr. Chomi.”

She looked back but couldn’t see Wang Jun. Fong, seeing this said, “This killer was very good. He would pick vantage points that even if Mr. Chomi knew he was being followed he would not be able to spot.”

With a big smile she pointed to one side and up a floor. There was Wang Jun. “There.”

“The killer was very good, Wang Jun is merely fair.” They moved on. It took a while for the idea of walking a dead man’s steps to sink in and even once it did, Amanda’s eyes were constantly being drawn to the extraordinary array of things around her. It never occurred to her that the bird and fish market would actually sell birds and fish. In fact on the first stretch it sold nothing but tropical fish and things to put them in, things to enhance their underwater worlds and things to feed them. In the crowd people carried little plastic bags with their newest acquisitions swimming in what seemed to Amanda like small clear water bubbles. After the fish came a section of bonsai trees and tropical plants. Her eye was drawn to a display of ancient roots that had been unearthed and polished to a high sheen. The knarls and whorls rivalled the artistry of any human hand. Behind the roots were large plastic buckets of polished stones. Fong pointed out the rocks with red markings. “We call them blood stones. The more red the more expensive they are.” Then came several stands selling polished brown Yangtze River stones whose surfaces fit perfectly in the palm and whose heft was particularly pleasing. As Amanda knelt to sift her hand through one of the larger buckets Fong talked to the woman at the stand. Then, as he grabbed a small tub from under the stand, he turned to Amanda. “Stand on that, will you?” She did, wondering exactly what this was about. But then she remembered that the black man had been six foot seven. She was herself close to six feet tall and the bucket was probably another six inches. Which put her close to the dead man’s height. She felt a shiver start in the base of her neck and work its way down.

“Can I step down now, please?”

Fong didn’t answer her but stared down one of the alleyways. Then he put his fingers in his mouth and whistled loudly. The old lady with the stones yelled at him to stop but he ignored her and whistled again. At that point Wang Jun stepped out from behind one of the fish stands and waved. Fong quickly made his way over to Wang Jun. The woman screamed at Amanda who needed no further prompting to get off the bucket and follow Fong.

Pointing to the alley crossroad, Fong said, “He’d have to assume a position for a little while as Mr. Chomi shopped. He’d have to be able to see down both the road and the alley? Right?”

“Right, so I guess he was either where we’re standing now, or cater-corner,” replied Wang Jun pointing across the way.

“And if Chomi dawdled, as the driver said he often did, then it’s possible that our killer had to wait here or there for quite some time. The woman selling stones remembered Chomi because he, as she put it, ’was a sweet talker who felt every fucking stone, spent a ton of my time, the cutie, and only bought one stone. My best one too.’”

“So he stayed for a while at the stand,” Wang Jun said.

“I never got the stone seller to confirm that. She lost interest when she figured out we weren’t buying.”

“You’ve got a funny look on your face, Fong.”

“It’s just the way she talked about him. Stone sellers don’t like customers, especially foreign customers. Do they?”

“Not in my experience. What are you getting at?”

“I don’t know.” Fong mulled the idea around for a moment but still came to no conclusion so he went back to being a plain street cop. “You ask on this side. I’ll ask across the way.” After only a few minutes, it became clear that no one had seen anything. Some remembered the African, but that was hardly the point.

They worked their way through the extensive market, walking Ngalto Chomi’s route and finding places from which the killer must have watched him. When they found these places they talked to the nearby merchants. No one remembered anything. The third alley was where the birds were, along with their racket and smell. Tiny finches and swallows were for sale as were more exotic birds. Once again animals were carried home in clear plastic bags, this time not filled with water but rather with air supplied by punching a hole in the bag, usually with a cigarette. Near the end of the hundred or so bird sellers were the bird food sellers. Large wooden barrels filled to overflowing with live grubs created an ever shifting pattern of transient life. Sellers of gray moth pupas, each with its very own live larva inside, were doing an active business as were the seed merchants. “Do you like birds?” asked Fong. “Not much,” replied Amanda. “Mr. Chomi evidently was extremely fond of birds. The Zairian consulate let us look at his rooms. He had a fine collection of finches. Unusual. Here, birds are women’s pets. Are you hungry? It’s near noon.”

“I could eat,” replied Amanda.

“Good, because that’s what Mr. Chomi did next.” Fong set off down the lane.

Catching up to Fong again she said, “And you, do you like birds, Inspector Zhong?”

“I’m actually quite fond of pigeon.”

“Really,” she asked surprised.

“Yes, the restaurant we’re going to is famous for its pigeon.”

She swallowed slightly and then stopped as a man thrust a cheap leatherette bag up close to her face and opened the zipper. Out popped the head of a puppy which yapped and tried to lick Amanda’s hand. The man with the dog was speaking to Amanda in an animated fashion.

Fong came up beside her. “He says this dog was made for you in heaven. A beautiful lady needs a beautiful dog to augment her beauty.”

Amanda looked hard at him. “That’s what he said.” The man then snapped a volley of words at Fong. “He also told me that no dog no matter how beautiful could make up for the ugliness that I carry with me.”

“He said that?”

“Actually no. He asked if the stupid blond lady wanted to buy the dog or not. And if not could she get her big butt out of the way of other potential customers.” And looking behind her, there were indeed many other potential customers.

This whole end of the alley was lined with dog sellers. Puppies only. All purebreds. As they left the alley, Amanda asked, “Where are the Heinz 57’s, the mutts? And where are the grown-up dogs?” Fong stopped and looked at her with an are-you-kidding-me? look. Deciding that he was not being kidded, he also decided that he wouldn’t answer her question so close to lunch.

As they headed toward the old city, the two policemen compared notes. They passed by the place where the driver had waited to pick up Chomi. For a moment they considered whether the killer had a car and then quickly discarded that idea. However, clearly he would need a bicycle. “Great, we’ve narrowed it down to one of the 7.8 million bicycle riders in the city of Shanghai.”

As the men talked, Amanda looked. The entire place was being torn down and put up anew. She’d never seen anything like it. And the faces-everywhere stories etched in human material. An old lady with a filthy child approached her and held out her hand, imploring Amanda to give her some money for the child. Amanda instinctively moved away. The woman followed her. Amanda went to step out into the street to avoid her but the woman reached out and grasped her arm. Amanda was shocked. Despite the enormous crush of people everywhere in Shanghai, touching was a rarity. Even in the cramped quarters of the Bird and Fish Market, people swerved and glided past each other without touching. Unlike New York City where being jostled was part of walking on the streets, here contact was kept to a strict minimum. So when the old lady grabbed her, Amanda screamed before she could stop herself. Both men reacted as if a gun had gone off. Fong recovered first and yelled something at the woman who yelled right back and then Fong stepped between Amanda and the old woman while Wang Jun guided Amanda away.

“I’m sorry, she startled me.”

“Country folk don’t take kindly to foreigners. They’re harmless but a nuisance. You have, they don’t, so they grab you to give them something. Simple,” said Wang Jun in his slightly lisping Shanghanese.

Amanda got the gist of his explanation. New Orleans had its share of street people too.

Fong came back and apologized to Amanda, who threw it off as nothing. But as they walked, Amanda knew that it wasn’t nothing. The old lady had pierced her armour and drawn blood. She picked up her pace to keep up with the men, who had entered another street market and were consulting a map.

“Lost, guys?”

“No, Ms. Pitman, but the driver stopped right here and Mr. Chomi got out pretty much right where you’re standing,” said Fong.

“I thought you said he went to lunch next.”

“That was the next stop but he evidently walked from here to the restaurant.”

“Why’d he do that? What’s to see here?” asked Amanda.

“I don’t think that Mr. Chomi was a tourist in the usual sense of the word. He worked here, lived here. Something attracted him to the Bird and Fish Market- from his home we can assume the birds-and then something attracted him to this street market,” said Fong.

“What?”

“That’s a good question, Ms. Pitman, one worth trying to answer perhaps.” Fong looked to Wang Jun who was pointing across the street to a woman who was taking money for the right to park a bicycle on her ten yards of sidewalk. She wore no red armband so she didn’t work for the government. She was just trying to get a little money on the side. What had attracted Wang Jun’s attention was the near fight she was having with a young secretary type who wasn’t about to pay to leave her bicycle where evidently she’d left it every day for a year.

“You don’t think he left his bicycle there, do you?”

“No, our friend kept his bicycle with him. There are too many alleys and ways out of this market for him to chance leaving it and then coming back for it.”

“I agree,” said Wang Jun.

But there was a shred of an idea here, thought Fong. The killer would need his bicycle to stalk the man. Would he then kill and ride it away? Perhaps. A bike offers speed but removes some mobility. The complex laws in Shanghai about where and when you can ride a bicycle are strictly enforced. Would the murderer chance the attention of one of the thousands of cops assigned to monitor bike traffic? Or would he leave the bike after the murder and simply slip into the mass of people always around in Shanghai?

Both men knew that a bicycle in Shanghai attracted attention if it was left overnight. For the first time, it occurred to Fong that they might be able to find the killer’s bike, but not here-nearer the scene of the murder perhaps.

As they walked Wang Jun caught Fong up on his newspaper investigation. It was simple-they were stonewalling him. His many queries had come up short. The whole thing had been handled by the editor-in-chief to whom Fong had spoken on that first morning. The editor claimed to have gotten the story straight off a cell phone report from one of his field guys and then banged out the story almost straight onto the printing press. Naturally, he refused to give up the guy’s name.

“But what about clearance? ”

“He claims it was one of those things where the Communications Ministry contact was actually in the building at the time and stood over his shoulder as he wrote it.”

“The timing’s still wrong.”

“I told him that. He claims that with the new technology they can alter an edition at the last moment, which allows them two more hours before press deadline.”

“Check that for me, will ya?” Fong was not pleased. But at that moment he wasn’t sure if he wasn’t pleased with the answers to Wang Jun’s inquiries or Wang Jun’s inquiry itself. They continued in silence for a few minutes. As they entered the heart of the food market Fong stopped and consulted the African’s itinerary. “Next thing that we know is that Mr. Chomi bought a skinned snake . . .”

Fong looked up.

Amanda was well ahead of them. She had joined a crowd and was on her tiptoes trying to get a better look at something on the ground.

The skinning of a live king cobra was shocking even if you knew it was about to happen. Amanda didn’t know.

Fong raced up, afraid that Amanda would faint.

The children in the crowd screamed in delight as the snake merchant flung the skin, still wriggling, into the air.

Amanda stood very still, very white, and took it all in.

The skinning did not make her faint. It made her understand something-understand it deeply.

Lunch at the Old Shanghai Restaurant upstairs in the Old City, around the corner from the famous YuYuan Gardens, was not all that Fong had expected. It seems that Ngalto Chomi had brought his freshly killed snake to the restaurant to have it cooked. He had done it several times before and the cooks knew him well. For a foreigner, especially a black foreigner, his memory was treated with surprising deference by the staff at the Old Shanghai. Wang Jun suggested that they should have brought a snake too, but Fong didn’t respond. Ms. Pitman’s silence had been ominous since the snake merchant had displayed his unique talent. Fong wondered how much whiter Amanda Pitman could get. He also wondered if all this was too much for her.

“Would you like me to get an officer to drive you back to your hotel?”

In her distracted state she had to ask him to repeat himself and he did. She declined his offer, but also declined all food at the restaurant. She smoked instead.

Chinese women smoked, but not in public. It would be wrong to say that both Wang Jun and Fong didn’t find it just a little bit titillating to be at a table with a tall blond white woman who was smoking cigarettes.

As the men finished eating their lunch Fong turned to Amanda. “You could help us by filling in some of your ex-husband’s background.”

Through the plume of her cigarette smoke, she said, “Shoot.”

“He was a police officer in New Orleans?”

“Not really.”

That surprised Fong. “His identity papers said that he worked for the New Orleans Police Department.”

“Where’s New Orleans?” Wang Jun asked in Shanghanese.

“Ohio, I think,” replied Fong in English.

“What’s Ohio?” said Amanda.

“Where New Orleans is,” said Fong.

“It’s in Louisiana, if that makes any difference.”

“Fine, Louisiana, but he wasn’t a police officer?”

“He technically worked for the New Orleans parish police department, but he was seconded from the federal fish and wildlife department,” said Amanda.

“And what did he do there?” queried Fong.

“He specialized in the prevention of the poaching of endangered species.” Fong quickly translated into Shanghanese and a bored Wang Jun perked up and took note.

“Ask her if he’d ever been to Africa,” said Wang Jun in Shanghanese.

“Later,” replied Fong, “after I find out if he was a cop on the take.”

“Anyone care to translate for me?” snapped Amanda.

“Wang Jun was just expressing his condolences for your loss.”

Amanda looked at Fong for a moment and then viciously spat out, “My husband was a much better liar than you, Inspector Zhong.” On Fong’s stunned look she rose from the table and, ignoring all the sidelong glances of the Chinese men, made her way to the ladies’ room.

Once she was gone, Wang Jun asked for a translation of the last few moments and got them. Then he turned to Fong and said, “We don’t need her for the rest of this. The next part is going to get pretty rough. Why do you want her here anyway? Get her a ride back to her hotel. You and I can complete this.”

But Fong wasn’t listening. He was watching the movement of people in the room. “You figure there’s a back way out in the kitchen?”

“There has to be by law.”

“Since when do restaurants listen to the law? If he did leave through the kitchen, the killer must have been waiting by the alley entrance. Someone might have noticed. Check if he left that way.”

Wang Jun had just entered the kitchen when Amanda returned. From the glint of moisture on her face, Fong could tell that she had splashed it with cold water.

“Feel better?”

“A little, thanks.”

“You don’t have to go through with this. The next two stops aren’t going to be pleasant, that I can guarantee you.”

She didn’t say anything. Then carefully Fong moved forward. “How much did the State Department tell you about your husband’s death?”

“Just that he’d been murdered and . . . and I wouldn’t be able to view the remains . . . and that, uh”-she was getting faint, he could tell from her pallor-“uh, that it wouldn’t be possible to have an open-casket funeral.” As if having said it relieved the pressure, some colour came back into her face.

Unable to resist her vulnerability, Fong chipped in, “Did you love your husband, Ms. Pitman?”

Her “no” came out so loudly that several other people around the restaurant turned to see who was speaking.

Then a chatter of explanation, mao, boo she, boo dui.

“Mao what?” said Wang Jun.

“Nothing, just a comment from Ms. Pitman.”

“Well it’s mao from the kitchen too. There’s no exit and besides, one of the waiters remembers Mr. Chomi going out the front.”

Getting up, Amanda asked, “Who’s paying?”

She didn’t offer up any cash but moved through the crowd toward the exit as the two men fished out some bills and tossed them to the waiter. Then Fong went ahead to catch up with Amanda while Wang Jun yelled for a receipt. On a monthly salary of under 600 yuan, called kwai by the locals, about $75 U.S., he was damned if he was going to pay 68 kwai for a meal that he didn’t enjoy.

The three headed along Fang Bang Road through the heart of the Old City. Amanda was stunned. Squat hovels fronted the road, seemingly jostling each other for a little light and air. Despite the sunshine it was murky here. And despite the murk and the smell and the dirt Amanda loved it. She breathed in the pungent odour and drank in the dense view. She clearly sensed the life here. Fong looked at the strange American with more than a bit of surprise. The black man had walked this way but even if he hadn’t Fong had determined that Amanda Pitman was one white tourist who wasn’t going to leave his city believing that Shanghai was nothing more than Nanjing Road and Huai Hai. Nothing more than the Bund and the YuYuan Garden. This was the real Shanghai. Not the English Concession down by the river or the French Concession farther south. This was what was laughingly called the Chinese Concession. A concession that allowed the Chinese to live on the only piece of ground in Shanghai that Europeans didn’t want. They were actually within a few blocks of the house in which Fong had been raised when Amanda turned to him and said, “It’s. . . alive, isn’t it.” For a moment he checked for sarcasm, but he knew there was none. This place. This sinkhole was like a deep stagnant pool. Never good to drink from, often bad to smell, but always teeming with life. There was no need here to figure out where the killer had watched from. There were few alleys here and when there were they didn’t go anywhere. So he must simply have followed, pushing his bicycle-pushing his bike until he got to the Fu Yu antique market.

Wang Jun and Fong stopped at the same time. How did he manage to follow Ngalto Chomi into the market? This narrow, extremely crowded place had side shoots and cul-de-sacs everywhere. More important, each side of the building was backed by an alley.

“Where did the driver wait?” demanded Fong. Wang Jun checked his notes and pointed left. With a heightened sense of urgency they moved south on Fang Bang and headed down the first alley. Halfway down Wang Jun stopped and tried to check a dirt-encrusted number sign. It was what he was looking for. “The driver waited here. Back there, around the bend”-he pointed down the alley-“is the rear exit of the place where Chomi was, and farther back is where they found him.” To Amanda’s surprise, Fong headed back up to the street.

Once there he squatted and using a stick, marked a path in the dust. “Chomi ate at the Old Shanghai Restaurant here, and walked down this way. He must have walked along Fang Bang and come to that intersection.” He pointed back to the entranceway of the Fu Yu market where they had been before they went into the alley.

“The driver said he always went through the Fu Yu market.”

“I know, but how does our killer know which way he’s going to go? There are alleys behind the houses. How does he cover that?”

“Two guys?”

“Couldn’t be. Not with this kind of thing. Wang Jun?”

“I agree. So-” Wang Jun began to walk back toward the entrance to Fu Yu-“so our guy leaves his bicycle here and races into the market to follow Chomi.”

“So what does he do with the bicycle? He figures out where Chomi is going but does he know how long he’ll stay? No. He may be going into a store or trying to change money or selling something. How would the killer know? So he sees him go into the place and races wildly around trying to find a back exit in the hope that Chomi doesn’t just turn around and come back out the way he went in. But lo and behold he comes across Chomi’s car and driver and he knows. So he crouches down and waits. Leaving his bicycle where it stood.”

“I like it. Let’s check out the house first and then follow up the bike.”

Fong conveyed all this to Amanda as they waded through the dense crowd of Fu Yu.

Wang Jun stopped in front of a vendor and pointed to the shallow alley behind him. “How do you want to play this?”

“By the book-we’re not vice. He wasn’t killed there, all I want is to see if there’s anyone who remembers Mr. Chomi.”

“Show them ID?”

“If they ask, but I don’t think they will. No doubt, we’re expected.”

“Could I be caught up?” asked Amanda.

“Of course. When you were in school did you do any drugs, Ms. Pitman?”

“This from a police officer?”

“Your president did drugs.”

“And your president swam the Yangtze.”

“He’s not our president now and no one, in China at least, believed he swam the Yangtze.”

“Yes, I did, as you put it, do some drugs.”

“Mr. Chomi did drugs too. Elaborate drugs. And he did them in a rather ancient establishment whose entrance is off this alley. We’re going in. Would you like to join us or are you going to stay outside?”

“I’ll join you.” Then as she followed them she timidly asked, “Heroin?”

“No, Ms. Pitman, this is China. Opium is the drug of choice here.”

It was all remarkably simple, Amanda thought. They entered a tiny doorway through which even Fong had to bend down and were greeted as if they had arrived a little late for a casual party. They were asked if they would like to leave their coats. All declined. Then they were asked if they would like some food with their opium. That too was declined. Some alcohol perhaps? No thanks. What about women? Wang Jun beat Fong to the punch with “That sounds like a good idea.” Fong flashed him a look. “Maybe next time, I’m trying to cut down,” said Wang Jun. They were led by another man back into the recesses of a long corridor with small rooms on either side. The smell of the burning tar was thick in the tight space. Several of the rooms were partially open. Many had no doors, the entrances strung simply with blankets or tattered curtains. As they passed the rooms, Amanda saw men in various states of recline. Some had the pipe held, others were being fed, one with two young half-clad women at his side. The whole place seemed in slow motion. Time alteration was the most immediate effect of the drug and even the tendrils of smoke that Amanda had inhaled were enough to begin the process.

When finally they reached their cubicle, Wang Jun took off his coat and breathed deeply. Then he smiled. “When I get old I’m going to buy a membership to one of these places and spend my days and nights here.”

“Better start saving-such a retirement could get expensive.”

The curtain opened and an old man with a long braid stepped into their room and lit the brazier in the corner. He was right out of a Hollywood Fu Man Chu film- floor-length black silk robe with large sleeves, small black beanie, long braid and soft green slippers. He carried a beautiful lacquered box in his long-fingernailed hands. If he was surprised by the constituents of the room, two men and a woman, he didn’t let on.

“Do you know who we are?”

“Not by name,” said the old man, “but we have been expecting you for some time. Since the large black man was murdered.”

“Did you serve the large black man?”

“Once, but Wu Yeh usually did these honours.”

“Is she here?”

“Yes, she is always here. Shall I get her for you?”

“Please.”

“Would you like. . . ?” He opened the box, revealing several balls of opium rolled and ready, and he produced a beautiful pipe from his sleeve, which he showed, rather than offered, to Fong.

“Is that Mr. Chomi’s pipe?”

“Is that the black man’s name?”

“Yes.”

“Then this is indeed Mr. Chomi’s pipe.” Fong again noticed the obvious signs of deference to Mr. Chomi’s memory. He took the pipe and marvelled at the thing’s deep yellowish-white density and the layers of incredibly delicate carvings that saturated its entire two-foot length. Then he saw Amanda’s admiring stare and passed her the pipe.

“Is this ivory?” asked Amanda.

“Without a doubt,” replied Fong and without missing a beat asked, “Have you seen much ivory in your life, Ms. Pitman?”

“The odd trinket that Richard picked up for me at airports, but nothing like this.” She allowed her fingers to trace the pipe’s length.

A slender hand parted the curtains and the tiny thing called Wu Yeh slipped into the cubicle. The old man introduced her and then retired. Amanda looked at the delicate girl/woman in front of her-exquisite tapered fingers, skin without a blemish and deep liquid pools for eyes.

Wang Jun looked at her differently. He saw a practised prostitute who knew her craft and the wiles needed to succeed in that craft. Fong saw a masterful liar. He also saw cleverly hidden age and addiction. Unlike Amanda, he was not impressed with Wu Yeh’s beauty. Beauty is relative. In Fong’s case it was relative to Fu Tsong.

“Do you know that I am a police officer?”

“I have been told.”

“I’m not with the vice squad. I’m investigating the murder of Ngalto Chomi, the black man who owned this pipe. You knew him?”

For a moment Fong thought she was going to cry. Then she said weakly, “Yes, I knew him. He came often. Near the end, almost every day.”

“Did you always serve him?”

“It was my pleasure to serve him.” Fong thought he must be losing his mind. He could have sworn that what the little whore said actually sounded honest. He looked to Wang Jun who signalled that he was at a loss too. Amanda asked to be caught up and Fong did. Then Amanda looked at the girl/woman more closely. “She loved him, Inspector Zhong. We may be in China, a long way from my stomping grounds, but I have seen that look before on others. She loved him.”

And so it proved to be.

Wu Yeh tearfully recounted her last time with her African lover.

Slowly the picture of Ngalto Chomi as a much loved man was coming into focus. Here was a man, who not only because of his colour and his height left a lasting impression on others-stone sellers, cooks, and a whore in an opium den who had been with more men in a week than most women have been with in their lives.

Mr. Chomi is proving to be an exceptional human being, Fong thought, as his eyes strayed to the ivory pipe. A human being whose heart could resist the knife.

They walked out the back door, as Ngalto Chomi had, and instantly knew where the killer must have hidden. The bend in the alley allowed a place from which the killer could have watched without being seen by the waiting driver. Wu Yeh said that she had walked him to the door and that as he lingered with her kiss, he had slid a hand inside her robe and caressed her breast. She had looked up at him and told him that the room was still his if he desired her more. But he had declined-and probably was murdered directly after he closed the door on the whore who loved him.

Wang Jun strung the area with police tape and informed the old man that the door wasn’t to be used until further notice. Then the three of them walked to the site itself. It was cleverly chosen but still partially exposed. The attacker had to be fast. Evidently he was. And then no doubt he made his escape away from the place where the driver was parked.

“Which means he left his bicycle back at the foot of Fu Yu,” said Fong.

“I agree. It’s two days ago, though,” replied Wang Jun. “We might get lucky, swamp the area with cops. I want to find that bike or whoever stole it. I want every bike on that sidewalk claimed and taken away. The one that’s left is our man’s.”

Fong drove Amanda back to her hotel in silence. When he finally stopped the car Amanda turned to him and asked,“Could the bicycle really be valuable in finding this guy?”

“Maybe. A bicycle here is not like in other places. People, you have no doubt noticed, use them all the time. And the roads are rough. No one rides a bicycle without having to get it fixed over and over again.”

“That’s what all those men with tool kits and pumps are doing on every street corner?”

“Precisely. And I have found that those men with tool kits and pumps, as you put it, have very good memories when it comes to bicycles and faces. There’s a man around the corner from the academy that we call the master. He can fix anything. And he never forgets either a bike or a face.”

“I see.”

He turned to her. Again he noticed the oddness of blue eyes in a white face. Then he said, “I was terribly out of line at the restaurant. I’m sorry for the question about your husband.”

“You know, I almost said who, when you said my husband. We were not close, hadn’t been for some time, Inspector.”

“Do you know what your husband was doing in Shanghai when he was murdered?”

“He was here on business, I thought.”

“He was a government employee, wasn’t he? What kind of business was he on?”

“He travelled all the time, Inspector. Europe, Asia, Africa-you name it and Richard had been there.”

Fong quickly said, “You lied to me about the ivory back in the opium den.”

“In a way yes. I never saw anything but trinkets, but I know a lot about ivory. Through Richard-a lot. For some time I’d known that we couldn’t be living the way we were on the meagre salary of a government official and the profit from the business I ran.”

“Is it possible that he was involved in smuggling ivory out of Africa under the protection of his government credentials?”

“It’s possible.”

Fong looked at her closely.

“More than possible,” she whispered.

“Thank you.”

She looked straight into his eyes for an instant. “Now that you know, you don’t need me anymore, do you?” He didn’t respond. “Do you?” she pressed.

“No.”

“I see. May I ask a favour?” He nodded. “Tell me what you know about my husband’s death.”

Slowly, with precision but without sentiment, he told her all he knew of the passing of Richard Fallon.

“And that’s what the U.S. consulate didn’t want me to know?” Fong chose not to answer that question. Amanda took his silence as assent. “So that’s everything.” It was a statement not a question.

A silence began to fill the space between them. She looked down at her hands in her lap. “So now you can go home,” he said.

She thought about that, about “going home.” When she raised her eyes his were there to meet hers. “I’m not sure I’m ready to go home yet, Inspector Zhong.”

Fong allowed a moment to pass then asked, “Do you like shopping, Ms. Pitman?”

“What are you-?”

“Perhaps you’d accompany me tomorrow. I know very little about ivory and I have a strange feeling that store keepers would be more open to your inquiries than to mine. All right?”

“Fine.”

“Tomorrow morning then.”

“Fine.”

“Dress up.”

“You too, Inspector.”

That night Fong sat in the back of the old theatre and watched Geoffrey Hyland stage the drunk scene in Twelfth Night. It was like watching a master etcher daubing his acid on human material. But this product wasn’t set in time and space. It was art in dynamic motion. Art that was molten and tactile. Art that was never the same moment to moment but never random. Never not art.

Hyland began with a simple question: Why is Toby Belch drinking? Answers were posed and tested. No acting was attempted until Hao Yong suggested that Toby needed to escape. Escape what? “A memory,” ventured the actor playing Toby, a frighteningly thin tall man in his early forties.

“Good,” replied Geoffrey. “Memories do haunt, don’t they?” For the slightest moment he tilted his head in Fong’s direction and then returned his attention to the actors. “Well?” Finally the actor playing Toby came up with the answer to which Geoffrey had led them. The answer was simple and in line with everything else in this play that parades itself as a comedy but by its conclusion is hardly humorous. The answer of course was that Toby Belch drinks to try to escape his terrifying love of Olivia. To escape even the memory of that unrequited love. Andrew drinks for the same reason. So does Maria, whose love for Toby will never truly be returned. And then there’s Feste-the clown who drinks to forget that he ever loved, that he ever had a reason to carry on with his life.

Then Geoffrey repeated Fu Tsong’s words, “We’re all here. Shakespeare wrote us all in the play. Which one are you?”

Time of day became the next discussion. Geoffrey postulated what he called the witching hour. That time when the Moslem crier, the muezzin, climbs the tower of the mosque and holds up a black thread and a white one. When he can see the difference between the two he calls the faithful to the first prayers of the day. It is the point at which Banquo returns to the castle with his son Fleance to meet his end. It is the moment of night’s end, in theory the victory of the light. But in Twelfth Night, the long night only leads to a longer day.

The actors began to work. A moment found, a moment lost, a line needing a better translation. Finally Geoffrey stops the group. The faces are flushed, alive. “Let’s try working this in vibrating primaries rather than in pure primaries. It’s not complicated, just hear me out for a moment. I have two kids, a boy eight and a girl six. They both love playgrounds-you know with swings and slides-they’d go nuts at the Children’s Palace on Yan’an. Well, every time we pass a playground my kids go into the pure right-handed primary of I SEE, I LOVE. And if I allow them to go into the playground the six-year-old stays in that pure primary, but the eight-year-old knows in his heart that he is too old to love something like this so much. So when he enters the park he changes from the pure right-handed primary of I SEE, I LOVE to the vibrating primary of I SEE, I LOVE, BUT I KNOW I SHOULDN’T. The six-year-old is a joy to watch in the playground in her pure primary state, but the eight-year-old is downright fascinating sitting squarely in the centre of his vibrating primary. Playing in pure primaries has a tendency to ride an actor’s age down creating that kiddy acting nonsense. To be childlike is not to be childish. To keep the work sophisticated the pure primary has to be mated with its opposite which makes the pendulum swing inside. It carves internal landscapes and hence you are compelling to watch without that hideous ’doing things.’ By the way, only when you’re in primaries is less more. When you’re in secondary less is only less. Clear?”

A few questions came back at Geoffrey, most having to do with the fear of playing emotions. In each case Geoffrey reiterated that he was not talking about playing emotions but being in emotional states. “You play your actions. You try to make your acting partner feel things that will spur them to do things. But to be compelling- to create density and interest in your work-you must play those actions and release the text’s images from a primary state-hopefully a vibrating primary.”

Geoffrey’s simple, elegant staging of the scene took shape over the next three hours. There were no breaks in Geoffrey Hyland rehearsals. Actors smoked when they were not needed, or drank tea from the omnipresent thermoses, but they never wandered off. This was not a place of idle chatter. It was an artist’s studio. They thought and contributed and went into themselves, trying to find their stops and ventages to make most eloquent music.

Only at the very end of the scene do any of the characters drink. Feste takes a sip and it pierces his heart. A cry of pain comes from him that is music itself and the scene ends with the sun rising over a stage of addicted lovers unable to sleep at night or be fully awake during the day.

Fong loved it. Unlike so much spoken theatre, it touched him deeply. Touched him the way that the Shanghanese Opera could. His grandmother had taken him when he was five to the theatre in the heart of the Old City. Shanghanese Opera is a form of classical Peking opera that varies only in interpretation, not genre, from the original. The Shanghanese version has a tendency to be shorter and more melodious. But it is still the singing, tumbling, acting, juggling, transcendent experience of the original.

The very first piece Fong saw took his heart completely. It was Journey to the West. The evening began with an oceanside leavetaking of a king and his beautiful daughter whom for political reasons he has to give in marriage to a prince of the western provinces. The scene, although formal, has cracks of tension in it where feeling is implied without being shown. Then a serving man is entrusted with the daughter’s safety and off the two go on the three-thousand-mile journey to the West. Their travels begin conventionally enough. The serving man walks as his beautiful mistress rides (indicated by the carrying of a four-tassled stick). She, naturally enough, treats him as a common serf but as the days pass and the adventures of crossing rivers, deserts and mountains, meeting dangerous enemies, dealing with cold, and sleeping in the rain accumulate, a new appreciation for the serving man begins to grow in her.

When finally he is hurt trying to help her safely cross a deep river, she insists that he ride the horse and she walk. After their four-hour stage journey, most of which is done without speech and often with just the two actors on stage, they finally reach the western court and the serving man must hand over his charge. He does and turns to walk back to the East.

The serving man is dressed plainly. He tumbles, dances, sings, fights with both sword and lance, and juggles the complicated war hammer. The princess is played with sleeves and headdress feathers, her lengthened sleeves providing an elongated image and the two long elegant feathers accentuating every head movement by tracing the pulse of the energy from base to tip. Often the feathers are pulled down and put into the mouth creating various configurations. She wears raised shoes, is dressed in red and her face is painted mask white. For many years, she was easily the most erotic thing that entered Fong’s life.

When he first met Fu Tsong, he often felt like the serving man in the Journey to the West whose job it was to deliver the princess to some great man’s bed. It was not until years after they were married that he confessed to her his fascination with traditional Chinese “sung” theatre. He thought she would find it ludicrous coming as she did from the new “spoken word” theatre. But she didn’t. In fact she openly acknowledged her great debt to her Peking opera training and said that in the hands of the great actors the opera roles were as real as anything done anywhere. That what the classic form did was find the essence of emotion and then over hundreds of years refine the emanation of that emotion in the body. In the hands of normal classical opera actors this just became a hollow shell, but with a master or mistress of the art the shell held a glowing truth.

So it was with delight that, years later, Fong wangled two tickets for a famous actress’s performance of Journey to the West at Shanghai’s newly renovated Yi Fu Stage. As the evening went on Fong found himself once more lost in the story of the serving man and the princess. Amidst the noise of the audience and the comings and goings, there was real communication. Fong felt as if the actress were reaching out-putting her cool hand directly on his chest. Kneading and pressing toward his heart. Putting his nipple in her mouth and sucking firm and slow. He felt that he saw every quiver of her hand and flash of her eye. He was lost in the embrace of a woman on a stage with white makeup and four-foot feathers on her head.

As the serving man gave her over to her new husband Fu Tsong’s hand crept into his. “Special, isn’t it?” But he couldn’t respond, only nod and hope she couldn’t sense the tears welling up in him.

After the show, Fu Tsong excused herself and went backstage to say hello to the stage manager, who was an old friend. Theatre people had “old friends” that way and although Fong understood such things he always felt awkward in a world of people who were intimate but not close. He chose to wait in the lobby and gloried in the photographs of the actress, Su Shing, who played the princess.

That night Fu Tsong took a long time in the bathroom. Fong had already bathed and was in bed, a book open on his lap. But his mind was miles away on a journey to the West. The door to the bedroom opened a hair and he heard Fu Tsong’s voice say, “Turn off the overhead light and put my red silk scarf over the bedside lamp.” Fong knew better than to argue with her about such things. Turning off the overhead’s harsh green-tinged light was a relief. When he placed her red silk scarf over the bedside table lamp the light from the weak bulb diffused enough to cast a pleasing shadowy glimmer.

The door opened. Fong gasped. There in the doorway was Fu Tsong dressed in the full costume of the princess from Journey to the West. Her face was made up porcelain white. The feathers bobbed as she moved. It was Fu Tsong but it was also the princess, both the one Fong had seen that night and the one he had seen when he was a boy. The mix both confused and intoxicated.

Fu Tsong moved to the foot of the bed and with an elegant flick of her wrists the sleeves of her gown flowed freely down. Then arching her neck back for a moment she snapped her head to one side and the feathers elongated the shock into a graceful dance of pure energy. She turned, and sliding her hands free of the sleeves, placed a feather in her mouth with a slight cry and a momentary flash of eyes and a pose.

Fong had no idea how long Fu Tsong continued her dance in the softened silk-red light. Nor did he have any idea when exactly she came into his arms. Her kiss at first tasted chemical but as Fu Tsong parted her lips and drew his tongue into her mouth he found himself making love to the princess from the East. She took him on the voyage of his life, to a place far to the west where the erotic dreams of youth meet the adult realities of sex. Where the old and the new meet, and the smell of the earth rises through the shimmer of silken clothes.

The delivery of the second half heart did the trick. All over Shanghai there were hushed conversations in corners of KTV private rooms. The whores were sent away and the men huddled together considering their options. They were traders of every conceivable nationality, race, colour, and creed. They only had one thing in common: the smuggling of ivory. But now, after the deaths of two of their kind, they shared a second thing: fear for their lives.

The phones had been ringing, faxes faxing, and e-mail e-mailing. Decisions were made. And all the decisions were the same. This place was not safe for ivory anymore. Fuck ’em, we’ll move it to Singapore or Hong Kong or Hanoi, this place was just too much bother- and too dangerous.

So in private planes, luxury cars, and first-class airplane seats, the smugglers bailed out of Shanghai and headed toward safer ports of call.

That night in the power plant in the Pudong, glasses were lifted and toasts recited. Their spy network had informed them that the rout was on. The smugglers were leaving. After the congratulations went around, the hoarse voice said, “But we are not finished yet.”

A chorus of agreement met his comment.

“Now we must proclaim to the West that we have rid the city of these smugglers, that Shanghai will no longer tolerate the killing of endangered species for the edification of a few elite. We must proclaim it loudly so that the conservationists in the West will stop their lobbying against us and allow the money we so badly need to be invested here.”

The European voice spoke up. “The stories are already planted in the major presses in the West. By week’s end our efforts-well, not our efforts but the results of our efforts-will be trumpeted from the newsstands of New York, London, Paris, and Berlin. The Sunday Times is going to do a feature on the eradication of ivory smuggling in Shanghai.”

The hoarse voice, gulping air again, burped out, “Good.”

There was a strong murmur of concurrence and then the hoarse voice resumed. “We have but two problems remaining. First, the assassin must be eliminated.”

“He has already been betrayed. Our people in Taiwan are awaiting the arrival of a Shanghai detective, and they have prepared a dossier on Loa Wei Fen that should lead the police right to him.”

There was a pause, and then another voice, unheard before, spoke up. “Is the second problem the detective in charge of the case?”

“It is,” replied the hoarse voice, careful to conceal his surprise.

“I have troubled dreams about this Inspector Zhong.” The ancient man made note of the inherent challenge in the voice and then replied, “We have already begun to look after that situation.”

“Good.” The response was conspicuously neutral.

“To the renewal of most favoured nations trading status. To Shanghai, and growth that will never end. To the New China, strong and powerful,” intoned the old man.

Glasses were raised but the owner of the hoarse voice did not drink. He sat and remembered the Shanghai of his birth, the simpler place, the happier time.

That night Geoffrey Hyland sat down for a second time with Wang Jun and went over his evidence again-evidence aimed at convicting Fong of the murder of Fu Tsong. As Geoffrey spoke he felt himself floating, drifting back to that hot summer afternoon four long years ago.

In Shanghai the hot dry days of early summer give way with a vengeance to the rainy season. On average the city is wracked by six to eight full-fledged tropical storms every year between late July and early September.

The fury of the winds that day, four years ago, had rattled the windows in the bedroom as Fong awoke from a terror-filled afternoon sleep to find Fu Tsong, now six months pregnant, gone from his side. He threw back the covers and put on his trousers.

Then the previous night came flooding back in on him.

He shook himself free of the horror and, grabbing an umbrella, headed out into the gathering storm whose darkness had changed day to night.

By the time he got to the theatre he was three leagues wet and none too thrilled that Fu Tsong hadn’t left him a message about where she was going.

After last night’s fight it was no real surprise.

She’d arrived home late, as she had done so often since her pregnancy began. But it wasn’t her lateness that angered him. It was her distance, and if Fong were more honest, her endless bringing up of Geoffrey Hyland’s name. Geoffrey had arranged for Fu Tsong to do a play with him in Vancouver. But rehearsals began only six weeks after the baby was due. Fong was amazed that Fu Tsong didn’t see this as a problem. She replied that the baby could come with her. That Geoffrey had thought of all that. “It’s a great opportunity for me. Geoffrey says my English is good enough and he wants me for the role so I’m going.”

“No you’re not,” came out a lot harder than he intended and sat between them like a solid thing, unmovable, unretractable. After a seeming eternity Fu Tsong snapped, “Does your ‘you’re’ mean me, the baby or both of us?”

“It means you and the baby.” In for a jiao, in for a kwai.

“If the baby’s a boy, right? If it’s a girl, then Fong doesn’t give a fuck where it goes, right?”

“Don’t, Fu Tsong, we’ve been over-”

“You’ve, you’ve, you’ve been over and over this but not me.” Then grabbing her belly, “Not us.”

“I don’t know how to say I’m sorry anymore, Fu Tsong.”

“You don’t know how to say it because you’re not sorry. Zhong Fong wants a son and I’m carrying a girl. One kid. Wrong kind.” She screamed the last two sentences so loudly that the windowpanes shook. Then he saw Geoffrey through their open bedroom window. He’d been sitting on the base of the stupid statue, listening.

For a moment betrayal washed over him. This had been planned.

“I’m going to have a girl. I’m going to do the play. I’m going to live with Geoffrey.”

Like three perfectly landed body blows, she blasted apart his ordered world and planted chaos in his heart.

Just once he looked at her to confirm that what he had heard was what she had said. Her eyes never wavered.

“I’m going to live with Geoffrey,” she repeated.

And then, somehow, the big white man was at their open door, now just Fong’s open door. Fong heard himself saying in Mandarin, “There is no place here for you.”

But Fu Tsong was already moving toward Geoffrey and pulling herself close to his side.

Fong didn’t remember reaching for the VCR or hurling it across the room. All he remembered was the dent in the plaster and the red and black connector cables embedded in the wall from which the unit now dangled.

He remembered the give in the white man’s chest as he charged him and the thud as they went through the open door and crashed against the darkened corridor wall. The drip from the hallway air conditioner landed on his face as he screamed at the white man to leave his wife and baby alone.

Then he heard his name called. For a moment he didn’t recognize Fu Tsong’s voice. She called him sharply a second time and he turned to her. She stood in the door and said simply, “I’ll see you tomorrow at rehearsal, Geoffrey. My husband and I have much to talk about tonight.”

And so they did. In tears and twisting tongues and rage and tenderness they tried to find each other again across the abyss. They made love, had sex, fucked, and tried to hurt each other. They closed their eyes and fantasized that they were still in love. But tomorrow loomed and the girl child in her womb was a night older as the thunderous dawn approached.

Fong’s welcome at rehearsal was chilly to say the least. Geoffrey was sporting a cast on his right wrist and Hao Yong was reading Fu Tsong’s role, book in hand.

“She’s not here, Fong,” snapped Geoffrey.

“Where is she, then?”

“She said she was going to fix everything. That she was going ’to get everything fixed’ were her exact words.”

Fong responded weakly, “Do you know where she went?”

“She’s your wife, Fong. You tell me. She left rehearsal over an hour ago.”

As if on a cue from the heavens, a crack opened high in the theatre’s south wall and a slender river of water, like a free-flowing tear, made its way to the floor.

Fong controlled his rising anxiety. His years of training as a cop came to the fore. “When exactly did she go?”

The stage manager said, “Forty-five minutes ago.”

“Was she carrying a bag?”

“Yes, a small one,” the stage manager said. “I called her a cab.”

Geoffrey stared straight ahead.

“Which company?”

The stage manager gave him a name and he turned and ran toward the exit. As he left the theatre he heard Geoffrey’s voice call out, “If anything happens to her, I’ll chase you wherever you go. Wherever you go I’ll find you and get my revenge.”

“’Wherever you go I’ll find you and get my revenge.’ You said that?” asked Wang Jun. The white man nodded and continued to talk but Wang Jun wasn’t listening. Geoffrey Hyland’s story had triggered a memory in the old cop. A memory of another room, one in the Pudong, later on the day that the theatre director was describing.

Wang Jun took a deep breath to clear his head. It was getting light outside and Wang Jun was tired, vulnerable. When he had been ordered to interview the Canadian director he had been skeptical that anything new would come of it. Now, after his second interview, he just wanted to be sure before he proceeded. Before he reported that it was time to reopen the case against his friend Zhong Fong. Yes, Hyland had seen a terrible fight and been attacked by Zhong Fong the night before Fu Tsong’s death in the Pudong. Yes, Fu Tsong had asked the director to contact Soo Jack the next afternoon, the afternoon of her death. No, Geoffrey Hyland had not been able to get in touch with Soo Jack so the stage manager had gotten Fu Tsong a cab. Yes, Fong had shown up at the theatre that afternoon, asking after Fu Tsong. Yes, Geoffrey had seen Fong the day after Fu Tsong’s death and asked after Fu Tsong but Fong had ignored the question. And finally yes, Geoffrey had had an affair with Fu Tsong.

“Do you think Fong capable of killing his wife?”

“I guess anyone is capable of such a thing.”

Then, as if it were an afterthought, Wang Jun tossed in, “You did know that Fu Tsong was pregnant, didn’t you?”

Wang Jun watched the white man’s face carefully.

“Yes, I knew, but . . .” Geofffrey himself falling-deep in the big white room. His mind did the simple arithmetic, the calculation he had never done before. Fu Tsong died in August four years ago. He had last slept with her in March of that year. The child could have been his.

Loa Wei Fen’s breath was coming in slow, ragged bursts. His heart was racing. The sheet he slept on by the side of his bed at the Portman Hotel was dripping with sweat. “I must have been poisoned,” he thought. It was the only thing that could explain what was happening to him. The clock on the bedside table said 2:07 A.M. He’d been asleep for almost twenty-two hours. He turned to the window, unwilling to accept the clock’s assessment of the time. He fully expected to see daylight as he parted the curtains, but no. The blanket of night was full upon the city.

He had made an error when he killed the black man. He didn’t know why he had made the error, but he did know that everything in his world had changed since.

Two days ago, after discovering that the source of his e-mail commands was police headquarters on the Bund, he had headed back toward the Portman. He went via the Old City, intending to pick up his bicycle from where he had left it the day of the killing. But as he approached, he sensed rather than saw the watchers. After a moment’s examination, he spotted the police officers everywhere asking people about bicycles. He veered into the Fu Yu antique market and found himself somehow drawn toward the opium den where he had seen his quarry kiss the Chinese woman.

The image of the Chinese woman materialized more lovely than his memory, when she parted the curtains, a pipe in her elegant hands. That image exploded in his heart when, after preparing the opium, she put her tongue in his mouth. That image implanted itself as the liquid dream floated into his lungs and the impossibly small woman inserted him into herself bringing the clouds and the rain.

As if the two of them were part of something else. Part of a whole thing, he thought.

On the floor of the Portman Hotel the memory hurt him. Hurt him more than the scarring on his back. More than the rigours of his training. Something was ripping open inside him. Then Wu Yeh, his opium whore, was there in his hotel room-although he knew she couldn’t be. The slender Chinese woman, pipe in hand, her robe open, awaiting him. As she approached, all Loa Wei Fen could think was that this isn’t true-what has happened to me? And the great beast carved on his back flared its hood, its eyes blood red, and sank its fangs deep into Loa Wei Fen’s heart.

Even as he toiled in the midst of his nightmare of love, Loa Wei Fen’s computer was collecting data from the ether. A name appeared and an address. A photo likeness and a long set of names, dates, and places. The message ended simply. “Kill him any way you wish, and then disappear for a very, very long time.”