The Shanghai Murders

DAY SEVEN

Shanghai, PRC, An April Dawn

Dearest Sister,

In Shanghai, I wear my westernness like an overcoat. As the sun crests the horizon in Fuxing Park the long gray amoeba shadows of the old men doing tai chi glide in slow motion across the cracked pavement. A woman in stirrup stretch pants is conducting a ballroom dance class to the sounds coming from a crackly beat box. Couples are learning the steps to a rumba. To my left two men in old-fasioned undershirts are playing a game of go while six or seven other men crowd in to offer their unsolicited advice. I am left alone with pen and paper and a head full of phrases running this way and that. I saw a girl in love yesterday, mourning the death of her lover. Back in the hotel room at Narita I thought that was what I was doing, but now I know for sure that it was not. I was pushing my past out of me or it was rising out of me by itself. I saw a little boy peeing by the roadside yesterday evening and I wanted to run over to him and hug him and tell him to figure out how to love someone with that thing. But I didn’t. I just smiled. I do a lot of smiling here, sometimes when I don’t feel like smiling much. After spending the day walking with Inspector Zhong, I spent a large portion of the evening walking alone. I found an area down Wolumquoi Road, near the consulates, where the city is a little less hectic. I sat and watched and dreamed of being alive here in a city where life is all there is for most people.

Tom Waits talks in a song about hiding in a hat, hanging in a curtain. I feel like I’ve been doing that for a long time. But, here I feel my time of hiding is almost over. That I have finally got to the brim of the hat, the hem of the curtain.

There was a dry wind yesterday all the way from the Mongolian steppes, they say. A fine loess sifted into everything. The city was bone dry, parched. But this morning, at dawn, there is a mist over the mighty Huangpo River and the hint of the promise of summer rains to come.

Love ya a hunk, squeeze those kids for me will you?-

A.

At the office that morning, Fong read the fax a third time, still unable to believe the words on the page. The Taiwanese government had okayed his request for assistance! And in less than a day to boot. On top of which they offered open access to their files and help in any way they could. It didn’t make sense. Unless. . . A thought began to tickle its way toward the surface of his consciousness.

He had Shrug and Knock arrange airplane tickets for Li Xiao and confirm visas. But even as he spoke his mind was elsewhere. Tickling, tickling, the thought was coming to the air like a bubble from a still lake bottom. Unless. . . someone very powerful wanted the killer caught and ordered the Taiwanese to cooperate. Then it came to him clear. The messenger had delivered his message and was now expendable.

And from that moment, Fong stopped trying to find the killer. Now he wanted to find the man who hired the killer. Who owned him. Who put the knife in his hand just as surely as the ivory pipe had been put into his own hands in the opium den. He recalled the heft of the pipe and the last vestiges of the tickling stopped. He knew in his heart that ivory was somehow the link that closed the chain between those killed and those who ordered the killings.

He was waiting in the lobby of the International Equatorial Hotel later that morning when Amanda came down.

As he requested, Amanda had dressed up. Zhong Fong had not. Amanda lifted her arms with a so-what-do-you-think? gesture.

“Very nice, just right.”

“Thanks. You on the other hand look like a cop.”

“That bad, huh?”

“Worse.”

They started with the hotel gift shops working their way from the arcade at the Equatorial to the Jing An Hotel to the Hilton. In each shop they found helpful but totally uninformed sales people. Selling they could do. Telling you the history of the ivory pieces that were on display or even the source and type of the material was beyond their limited knowledge. One of the older saleswomen asked if they were concerned about importing a piece back to America.

“Why? Should we be concerned?”

“No, not really, it’s small. The embargo is really on large pieces.”

“How old is this piece?”

“Old enough you can be sure that it was made before the ban on elephant products came into effect.”

Leaving the store, Amanda remarked, “She was lying.”

But Fong wasn’t so sure. “There’s a lot more places to check out.”

They walked east to Hua Shan and followed the road past the popular bakery near the hospital. As they stood in the middle of the street trying to cross, the traffic momentarily stopped to allow two young orderlies wheeling a patient on a stretcher. One of the orderlies held an IV bottle aloft. “Traffic accident,” said Fong.

“I would never have guessed,” snarled Amanda as the cars whizzed pass them on both sides.

“You think the traffic is dangerous here?”

“I do think that, Inspector Zhong, yes I do.”

“It’s statistically safer than all American cities. You North Americans have this myth about Asian drivers.”

“Fine, but you have to admit that drivers here don’t seem to stop for anything. Except children. I’ve seen them stop for children.”

The small man at her side all of a sudden became beautiful as a delicate sadness crossed his features. The sadness and the beauty disappeared in a moment. Then, with a wan smile, Fong replied, “We have a great fondness for children here in Shanghai. A great fondness.”

On Hua Shan Road they finally got lucky. In an antiques store that displayed a turn of the century elephant tusk whose two-and-a-half-foot surface was entirely covered with Buddhist religious etchings, they found an elderly man who, with a bit of prodding, gave them their first real lead. “Yes, the ivory is very hard to come by now,” he said. More questions and more subtle evasions. For a moment the older man thought these two were dealers themselves. He distracted them with his collection of thin-necked perfume bottles whose designs had been painted on the inside of the glass. The woman was momentarily fascinated by the bottles but then brought the subject back to ivory. The salesman showed them an ivory ball about four inches across, with lace patterns carved into its surface. Inside the ball were thirty-four other balls of ivory, each and every one carved as delicately as the outside sphere. Finally the man, who by now the salesman had determined was a policeman, asked, “Who did the carving?”

“Fen Shen Lo and Tong Tsu.” Then he supplied their addresses.

The policeman said thank you and turned to go but the old man reached out and stopped him. “Don’t hurt these men. They are both very old now. And they are artists, see?” From beneath the counter he brought out a newish tusk, which unlike the scrimshaw etching style of the one in the window was carved into a three-dimensional rural scene of such intricacy that, totally unassisted by colour, the figures appeared lifelike. “This is the last piece I received from Fen Shen Lo. Is it not exquisite?” It was a question that required no answer.

Tong Tsu’s home was closer so they went there first. The old carver’s daughter, now herself an old woman, answered the iron door leading to the inner courtyard. She too knew a cop when she saw one. “You’re looking for my father.” It was a statement, not a question.

Fong acknowledged that they were, that they would like to talk to him.

“You people call it talk now. What happened to hound, harass, and terrify?”

“We would just like to meet with your father and talk about his art,” put in Amanda.

“Well, you’re too late for that. After they raided his workshop six months ago and took away the piece that he’d been working on for over four years, he packed up and left without even saying goodbye. Someone from his village got a message to me that he had managed to get there but he was sick. They say he’s dying and I can’t manage to get enough money to go see him. They say his hands shake so badly he can’t drink his tea without it scalding his lap. This for a man whose hands could do this.” With that she pulled on an ordinary string around her neck. Off the string hung a three-dimensional ivory cameo of a young man in a top hat and tails beside his young wife with a baby in a frilly dress seated on her lap. All in extraordinary detail. All no more than an inch high and three-quarters of an inch across.

She did not have to say that the woman was her mother, the man her father, and the baby herself. The cameo father had the woman’s eyes and nose, the mother the mouth, and the baby the shape of face.

The cameo was a frozen moment in time caught by the artist through the living material called ivory.

As they left the courtyard Amanda turned to Fong. “Would she accept money from me?”

“No, but a train ticket to her father’s village would probably meet her approval.”

They were luckier with Fen Shen Lo. He was a modest man who lived in a new apartment on the outskirts of the city. His advanced age and artistic reputation had allowed him a little more space than others. He answered the door with a smile and a greeting. He had been expecting them; the owner of the Hua Shan store had called him.

Amanda immediately sensed a gentleness in this man.

They had tea with him in his small sitting room. He apologized for not having sweets to offer them. Amanda liked the tea, the way the leaves sank to the bottom of the cups like seaweed by the shore. For the first time she understood the notion of reading tea leaves. There they were, as accurate a reckoning of the future as any other. Finally Mr. Fen turned to Amanda and said, “So you think us very cruel, do you, in the West?” Amanda went to protest but he raised a strong but gnarled hand. “Cruelty is such a complicated subject. Does the beauty you make from cruelty make the cruelty acceptable? Is it cruel to force the body into the contortions of your ballet dancing, or our Peking opera? I don’t know. I just know that there are things a carver can do in ivory that cannot be done in any other material. Let me show you.”

With that he got to his feet and went through a simple door that opened to, for Shanghai, an extremely large studio space. There, mounted on end vises, were six large tusks. Each was an incomplete work. He directed them toward the largest of the tusks.

“I have been working on this piece for almost eight years. Thirty years ago there were over three hundred registered ivory carvers in Shanghai. Now there are fewer than ten. And most of us. . . elderly.” He loosened one side of the end vise so that the tusk could be rotated. It was like looking into a living cave peopled with animals and plants and magic beings-all impossibly detailed. His work had progressed out from the fullness in the centre all the way to one end of the tusk and was now expanding toward the other side. His fingers touched it lovingly. He pointed toward a largish figure of a woman twirling, her dress floating out behind her, her sash out in front of her, her hair flying back. “Only in ivory. The material is so dense, so intrinsically solid and yet soft enough to work with hand tools. Only ivory allows this.”

The sadness at his loss was clear.

“I could tell you that all these tusks come from Chinese elephants in our southern Hunan province who died natural deaths but you would not believe me. No one believes. The papers say that ivory is smuggled into Shanghai. The papers want it stopped. Save the elephants. Perhaps they’re right.”

“Where does this elephant tusk come from, Mr. Fen?”

In a dull voice, almost not there anymore, the old man said, “From our Hunan province, in the south, it was taken from an elephant who died from natural causes.”

Fong withdrew a photo of Ngalto Chomi from his pocket and put it on a table. “You know him, don’t you, Mr. Fen?”

The old man’s eyes slid across the picture, the recognition clear on his face.

“Did he supply you with some of these tusks?”

Slowly the old man looked at the strange couple before him. It was a different age. He took a deep breath, then said, “Some? No. Not some. All. All my beauties.”

When he shook their hands at the door, all that Amanda could think of was that his hands felt like rice paper. And his eyes were so sad that tears would never leave them.

Fong saw it too, but read it a little differently. Fong saw them as the eyes of one in love. The eyes of one addicted to the thing he loved, who knew that the source of his addiction had dried up. That when his work on these tusks was finished, he would have no further reason to live.

Just as Li Xiao was about to board the plane for Taipei he was summoned to the front desk by a page. When he took the offered phone from the hand of the airline hostess he noted her nails were painted blood red. He smiled at her and said his name into the phone. He listened briefly. “Yes, I’ve kept the records. No, I’d prefer to be there when they’re examined. I’ll be back tomorrow. It can wait, Wang Jun. The woman died almost four years ago, so it can wait another day.”

He had slammed down the phone harder than he had intended. Red Nails looked at him, “Bad news?” she asked meekly.

“Yeah, bad news. Thanks,” he said, handing back the phone. Fucking bad news, he thought. He liked Zhong Fong, but there were still too many unanswered questions about his wife’s death. Too many for Li Xiao, who had been in charge of the investigation since its inception four years ago, to ignore.

Amanda and Fong walked along Chong Shu in the silence left from their meeting with the old carver. Fong was turning an idea over and over and over again in his mind. Ivory was being smuggled into Shanghai. Both of the dead men were connected to ivory smuggling. Someone was killing ivory smugglers. Why? To stop ivory smuggling. Why? It wasn’t a big business. To corner the marketplace in ivory? Is this killing off the competition? If so, why kill them that way and leave messages who they are and that this has to do with ivory as witnessed by what the street cleaner found? Two dead ivory smugglers as a message to others to stop smuggling ivory into Shanghai. But why? Who would benefit from the stoppage of the smuggling of ivory? Not the jade sellers or anything like that. This couldn’t have to do with business that way. Fong went back and turned the “idea bauble” another way. Who opposes the smuggling of ivory into Shanghai? In other words, who would be made happy by the stoppage of said smuggling? Friends of elephants. Anyone else? He racked his mind but could come up with no one else who would be made happy from stopping the smuggling. Only the friends of elephants. Fong searched for the English word for such people. And found it: conservationists. Who’s killing the great smugglers of ivory? Conservationists? No! For a moment vertigo enveloped him like a sickly cloud.

Amanda turned to look at him. “Are you all right?”

“Yes, no, I’m just a little tired.”

“You are a terrible liar. Come on, we’ll get you some tea.”

Sitting in the window of the quiet restaurant, Amanda put up her hand as Fong began to order. Then she said to the waitress, “lu tsah” (words she knew meant green tea). For a moment the waitress’s face fell into a pattern of shock, and she was about to say something harsh to Amanda when Fong interceded with a few Chinese words and the waitress with an icy smile turned on her heel and left.

Amanda looked at him. He smiled. “Right words. Wrong sounds, wrong stresses, wrong tones.”

“She looked like I insulted her.”

“You did”

“Well, I didn’t mean to. What’d I say?”

Not wishing to allow Amanda to pursue her line of inquiry, Fong posed a question of his own. “How strong are American conservationist lobbies?”

“Now, quite strong,” she replied, surprised by his question.

“Strong enough to sway the United States government?”

“Their opinion carries weight on some issues, yes.”

Fong thought for a moment. “Would the conservation lobby be pleased to hear that Shanghai was no longer in the ivory trade?”

“No doubt about that.”

Fong put both his hands flat on the table. For just a moment he smelled Amanda’s perfume. He stared right into her eyes and said, “What are the American concerns about investing in China, Shanghai in particular?” Then he counted them off on his elegant fingers. “One, the fear that the Communist government of China will at some future time nationalize their businesses. Two, what happened at Tiananmen Square, what you call civil rights. And. . .” here he held up three fingers and circled his thumb and index finger, “three, the accusations of conservationists that ivory and rhino horn are still being used in China. Are there more?”

“I’ll let you know if I think of any.”

“Do that,” he said. But he wasn’t awaiting an answer.

He was completing his own thoughts out loud.

“Premier Deng in 1987 opened the doors to the West with a remark which was taken to mean that money from the East is no more valuable than money from the West. That began it all.” He swept his arms wide to encompass the notion of all the building in Shanghai. “Surely there must have been assurances given at the highest possible levels to Western business that there would be no takeovers. I may not like Western businessmen but they have never struck me as foolish when it comes to their money. Do you agree?”

“I guess. So that leaves only Tiananmen and smuggling as obstacles to western investment, right?”

“I agree. Tiananmen and smuggling. American secretary of state Warren Christopher broached this human rights business the last time he was here but got nowhere. He was quoted as saying that he wished the meeting was as good as the lunch.”

“Who would have thought it possible: wit from a secretary of state.”

“Perhaps, but not funny. China will not be bullied on this issue. Tiananmen will continue to stand as a barrier to some western investors.”

“Some, I guess.”

“More when you add the conservationists’ concerns about ivory to the civil rights concerns. Civil rights concerns, Tiananmen if you wish, won’t go away, but ivory will. When the smugglers understand that they chance being carved into-” He stopped himself. “I’m sorry.” For the slightest moment Amanda couldn’t figure out what he was apologizing for. Then she did and turned away.

He sensed that she was able to hear the rest so he went on. “The ivory trade will continue but not here, not in Shanghai. Shanghai will be free of ivory. And the West will be pleased with us. The smuggling of ivory may be a small issue but it is a strategic one and if you put it together with Tiananmen it could be enough to close the floodgates of western investment in Shanghai. And make no mistake, every building project you see here is leveraged to the tip of its bamboo scaffolding. It all depends on a continuing and growing stream of Western money. Money that the smuggling of ivory endangers.”

“Are you saying that Richard and that African man were killed to stop the ivory trade?”

“No, they were killed so the money pipeline from the West to Shanghai will not spring a leak.” His eyes trailed across the street. On the other side of the traffic was a massive construction site, its I-beam bones protruding above the wicker fence.

Leaving Amanda at her hotel, Fong called the office. A joyous Lily picked up.

“Are you at my desk?”

“No, I’ve had all your calls forwarded down to me, hoping that I’d be the one to break the good news. Now you have to ask me, ’What’s the good news, Lily?’”

After a moment, really in no mood for this, “What’s the good news, Lily?”

“I’m free for dinner, I have new satin sheets, and I’ve practiced tai chi for a month to get my sexual tension level up to yours.”

“Lily!” he yelled into the phone.

But she cut him off. “We found the killer’s bicycle.”

The whole bike had been dusted for prints but none were found. Wearing white gloves for riding bicycles was very fashionable, so it was not surprising that the killer’s hands were covered. But he had left other tailings. Several threads from garments, a partial shoe tread on one of the pedals, specific samples of mud from tires. The length of the frame and lowered seat gave them the killer’s height. Photos of the bike were given to hundreds of policemen who headed out to the sidewalk bicycle repairmen throughout the city.

That night Fong watched Geoffrey stage the scene at the end of the third act of Twelfth Night. This production had many unique features. It began with Orsino dressed like Mozart banging away at a piano with a quartet trying to keep up with him. At a given moment, when the music is clearly not coming together, Orsino lifts his hands from the keys and slowly the others stop playing. The effect is like a deflating bagpipe. There is a moment of silence and then a furious Orsino yells at the quartet, “If music be the food of love, play on.” And they do. But once again the music degenerates quickly into notes and numbers. Orsino stops playing and the notes become noise. Then silence.

Throughout the production Orsino keeps returning to his piano and working on that same melody but to no effect. However, at the end of the third act, Viola (Hao Yong) creeps beneath the piano, curls up and falls asleep. Orsino, not seeing her, sits down to play. The moment he puts his fingers on the keys, the failed melody that we have heard several times before comes pouring out of the piano. The noise has become music again. The presence of Viola has returned music to the world of Orsino. Love knits the notes together and makes the harmonies joyous.

Fong felt his heart leap in his chest as he heard the music swell. And he felt his heart break at the truth that Geoffrey Hyland saw. Only love made the mathematics of sound into the glory of music. But in Hyland’s Twelfth Night Orsino never sees Viola asleep beneath the piano and hence never knows that Viola is the source of the love that restores music.

Fong almost leapt from his seat as a hand landed on his shoulder. When he whirled around it was Amanda Pitman.

“Sorry, I didn’t mean to startle you.”

He was going to deny that he had been startled but thought better of it. “I was someplace else for a moment there.”

“Me too,” she said looking up at the stage.

In the musty theatre Fong could smell her perfume again and he sensed her closeness. Was it possible that after four years he was beginning to feel again? That this strange westerner could see what he saw, feel what he felt, know what he thought only Fu Tsong could know.

Geoffrey was pleased with the scene. It didn’t make him cry or leap for joy but it was deeply satisfying to find a theatrical moment so fully realized. He also knew that the moment touched those watching in the house. Even the cackling house manager and costume mistress had shut up for a moment. He knew that the blond woman was in the back, one row behind Fong. He knew that she had put a hand on Fong’s shoulder. But he didn’t really care. The moment he had staged was something that he and Fu Tsong had planned for their production of Twelfth Night. The one they had never gotten to do.

The moment was broken for actors and viewers alike when the house manager decided that she just had to talk to the costumer-in a voice that could cut cheese at thirty paces. When Geoffrey first came to China he let this kind of thing pass. But not anymore. Without a moment’s hesitation he turned and pointing at the woman, yelled in fluent Mandarin, “If you have something to say, you cow of a woman, pick up your fat ass and say it outside.”

She yelled something back at him, which he assumed had to do with him being a stinking long nose who was lucky to be invited into the Middle Kingdom and if he didn’t mind his manners she’d grind up his dick and serve it to his children as dumplings. . . or something like that.

Whatever it was, he ignored it and turned back to the actors. It pleased him that she was upset, but when he looked back out into the house a few moments later it was he who was upset. Upset to see that Fong and the blond woman had left the theatre.

Nights in April in Shanghai can be chilly, especially if the dampness from the sea comes inland. And this was such a night. Amanda was wearing only summer clothing and she shivered slightly in the damp. Fong saw it and for a moment thought of offering her his coat but stopped himself. Somehow the offer of a coat was a first step in a process that he was not sure that he was interested in, or even capable of completing. So they walked side by side without contact, but closer to each other than either would openly admit.

This did not escape the eyes of Loa Wei Fen.

The very fact of their closeness awoke a pang of jealousy deep in the assassin’s heart but he controlled it. This would not be like the last time with the black man.

There was no time limit on this kill. He would do it properly. He would be patient. Resume control. And when completely sure of his quarry, strike. This way he could once more move to the edge of the roof. Perhaps even leap to the slender path with the other lion cubs.

Dearest Sister,

I spent a large part of today with the head of Special Investigations, Shanghai District. I was his “ivory date.” I’ll explain another time.

This evening I sought out his company in the back of a darkened theatre, and later still he walked me back to my hotel through the never empty, but gratefully quieter, night streets of this enormous city. The air was cold and I was wearing only a blouse and a cotton skirt. I know that he saw me shiver, and I know that he thought of offering me his coat, but I know he didn’t offer because it would appear forward. We did not touch all the way to the hotel. Nor did we talk, not a word. But as we approached the lobby I picked up my pace so that he had to hurry to keep up with me-through the door and directly to the bank of elevators, one of which, thankfully, was open. I do believe he followed me simply to have a chance to say good night. To be polite. Nothing more. But with the elevator door closing I noticed that it was now he who chose not to speak. He followed me silently to my room. Once inside I sat down on the bed and turned to him, I would guess a flush was on my cheek. He looked at me as if I were a series of lines and planes. As if he were at an art gallery and I was a piece on view. It was a unique and wonderful experience to be looked at that way. Then he drew up a chair at the end of the bed and sat on it. I don’t know the directions but if I was facing west he was facing east, our heads were side by side. I leaned toward him and could smell the earth. He didn’t kiss me. His hands touched, no, explored my face, as an artist does a piece of granite he is about to sculpt. Then his right hand slowly moved down my neck between my breasts and he lifted my skirt. I parted for him as his hand, inside my panties, encompassed me. Cool fingers, knowing fingers. With a shock I realized that I had my eyes shut. I opened them. He was looking into my face and inviting me to look back into his. Searching. So I did, first look and then touch. His hand still on me, a finger now gently inside, a thumb performing magic-I reached for him. A shift, a button loosed, a zipper pulled and he was in my hand, cool and hard to the touch.

He found a rhythm for me and I for him. Fingers stroking, coated, our eyes locked together, no speech except the symphony of touch and intent.

Asians call it the clouds and the rain.

It poured that night.

Pray for me, Your Sister, A.

Loa Wei Fen took note of Amanda’s hotel room number. Then he headed back down the stairs and, although he knew he shouldn’t, raced toward the release he knew he could find only in the arms of the opium whore, Wu Yeh.

The man with the hoarse voice read the e-mail report from Loa Wei Fen. He appreciated that Mr. Lo wanted to go slowly this time. He turned to his assistant and, handing him the printout, said, “Has Taiwan supplied the necessary information about Mr. Lo to the police?”

“They will do as you asked.”

“Good. Now let us twist the arm of the local police a little to throw off Inspector Zhong Fong-just in case Mr. Lo is not up to the task.”

There was a polite bow, and the plan was put into action-the end now in sight.