The Shanghai Murders

DAY NINE

The Portman, like every other major hotel in Shanghai, had extensive security in its lobby. Discreet but extensive. Also like most Shanghai hotels, at the Portman you could sit in the lobby if you ordered a drink or a cup of coffee. It was too early for a drink so Amanda ordered coffee. She was not surprised that the cup of bitter coffee cost more than the entire lunch she and the two policemen had eaten at the Old Shanghai Restaurant on the day of their dead man’s walk.

She sipped the rancid stuff as she watched the human traffic in the lobby. After fifteen minutes she knew that this would get her nowhere. There were too many elevators to watch and besides even if she saw the man in the picture how would she find his room number?

She finished her coffee and went over to the concierge’s desk. A young man with pimples, reasonable English, and a well-cut suit stepped forward to help her. She asked for a city map and was given a small piece of paper that was almost decipherable. She looked at it closely and put on a puzzled expression. “Is there a problem?” the young man asked her. Amanda bit her lower lip. Why do men like that?

“Well, there is, actually.”

“May I help?”

“I hope so.” She pulled out the picture of Loa Wei Fen from her purse and put it on the table. “Do you know this man?”

The young concierge nodded.

“He’s staying here?” Once again he nodded. Then, with seemingly uncontrollable excitement, Amanda bit her knuckles. “Bobby Tol is staying here? Really?”

“Who?”

“Bobby Tol, the Okinawan singer, here in this hotel?” The young concierge looked at the picture again and said, “I guess he is.” It was clear that he didn’t know who Bobby Tol was but it was also clear that he was more than a little taken with Amanda.

“Would you do something for me?” Amanda said and marked the effect of her words on the young man.

He replied weakly, “What?”

“Take some flowers up to his room for me. I don’t want to invade his privacy but I’m such a fan. Would you take care of delivering them?” He nodded eagerly. If he were a dog his tongue would have been on the pavement.

“You’re great, thanks. I’ll be right back with the flowers.” With that she touched his hand gently. He spluttered and reddened and looked ready to drop to the ground and kiss her feet.

• • •

There was a florist in the arcade on the west side of the hotel. She bought an enormous basket of flowers and winced when she saw the price. Oh well, the better to follow you by, she thought. She carried the flower basket back into the Portman lobby, smiling back at all the questioning looks.

By the time she brought the flowers to the concierge, he had regained his composure. He took the basket and asked if she wanted to send a card as well. She declined and after thanking him profusely retreated to the far end of the lobby. The concierge called over a uniformed bellhop and gave him the flowers and a room number.

It was not difficult for Amanda to follow the enormous basket of flowers to room 2714.

Li Xiao was in a fury. The object of that fury was Wang Jun. The two men sat alone in the big conference room.

“It was a mistake,” yelled Wang Jun.

“All our men just happened to take a break at the same time? Is that what you are trying to tell me? That the three men detailed to stake out Zhong Fong’s apartment just happened all to be called away. I’m supposed to believe this?”

“Talk to Commissioner Hu if you have a problem,” snapped back Wang Jun.

“You’re telling me you didn’t do this, Wang Jun?”

“I’m telling you this isn’t any normal investigation in case you haven’t figured that out yet.”

“We have new testimony from the Canadian director, whatever his name is, and so we reopened the investigation. Right?”

“Sure, if you have to believe that, believe that. But just for the record, I wouldn’t get carried away by the idea that you are in charge of this investigation. Everything here is going through his Hu-ness. He may look stupid, but he’s cleverer than you and me put together.”

“If that’s so, why did our cops miss Fong yesterday?”

“Because his Hu-ness had another surprise waiting for Fong.”

“What?!”

“Even you can’t be that young, Li Xiao. Fong’s a dead man. One way or the other, he’s a dead man.”

“I thought he was your friend, Wang Jun.”

“Funny how that works, isn’t it?”

Fong was Wang Jun’s friend. His only real friend. But things being what they were, Wang Jun would go to the wall to catch his friend and put him behind bars in a prison from which he would never emerge. The New China was growing and Wang Jun wanted to live his last days riding the shoulders of the giant rather than ground beneath its heels.

Amanda almost screamed when Fong slid up beside her on the busy street corner.

“You have the room number?”

“Don’t do that! You’ll scare the panties off a poor girl.”

“Do you?”

“2714.”

“Good, let’s go.”

“Where? To the Portman?”

“Where else?”

“Is he there?”

“Would we be going there if he was there?”

“Well, then where the hell is he?”

“Looking for me.”

“Oh,” she said and began to pick up her pace to keep up with him. It occurred to her that if Loa Wei Fen was looking for Fong, then he might in fact be following them now. It made her laugh.

“What’s funny?”

“All of this is. Yet it isn’t, is it? I used to know but now I’m not so sure.”

Fong smiled. “Welcome to China.”

“What exactly do you mean by that?”

“If you have to ask the question you wouldn’t understand the answer,” he replied.

But Fong was wrong. Amanda asked her question out of a sense of etiquette rather than out of any real need to know. The paradoxical nature of it all was not lost on her. Far from it. What she didn’t know, though, was that as Shanghai worked its awakening magic on her, it also brought her to the attention of the true centres of power in this ancient land.

They approached the Portman from the back and Fong led her through a maze of tunnels beneath the building to a freight elevator. He was about to step in when he said, “Go up to the lobby and take the elevator there. I’ll meet you at the twenty-seventh floor.” To her inquiring look he simply said, “I would look out of place in the lobby elevator. You would look out of place in here.”

They met in front of room 2714 without incident. He had her watch the bank of elevators as he deftly picked the lock. Within a minute they were inside Loa Wei Fen’s room.

“What are we looking for?” she asked.

“A trail. Something that helps us get from the assassin to the one who bought his services. The one who owns him.” As he talked he was methodically opening and searching each of the drawers of the desk.

As Fong went about his by-the-book search Amanda checked the bathroom, entirely devoid of cosmetics; the closet, two very expensive suits, finally the bed side table with the square carrying case. She opened the case and took out a computer notebook.

“What have we here?” She put the computer on the end table and fired it up.

“You know how to work things like that?”

“This is more complicated than I’m used to but they’re all basically the same.” The computer went through its virus check and came to an opening menu. Six down the menu was e-mail. Before he could point to it, she had already selected it.

It required a password.

She went back to the menu and transferred to the operating system. From there to the drivers. Each layer of the computer opened under her command. Finally e-mail access appeared. There was a single character beside the code.

“What does it mean?”

“Tao. The way.”

She backtracked and went to e-mail again. This time she supplied the English letters for the character. The screen lit up as if it were happy to see her.

“How do you know how to do that?”

“I used to write but I didn’t want Richard to see what I wrote so I got very knowledgeable about computer things like passwords and other protective devices. I used all of them.”

“You really didn’t want him to see your work.”

“I told you that already.” She returned her attention to the monitor. “What am I looking for?”

“His messages.”

“The ones he sent?”

“No, the ones sent to him.”

With the stroke of a few keys, up came the message that instructed Loa Wei Fen to kill Zhong Fong and then disappear for a very, very long time. Fong paled as he scanned the screen. Amanda looked closely at Fong, but before she could say anything he asked, “Who sent it?”

“You don’t care what it says?”

“I care. Who sent it?”

“Give me a second.” She backtracked to the operating system and worked through several screens. Finally she looked at him and said, “And the winner in Peoria is . . . E-M-29-7976.”

“That’s a code?” he asked, but his mind was far away. E-M-29-7976. Where had he seen that before? “Get his e-mail address and then let’s get out of here.”

They were outside the room a minute later. But as Fong was about to close the door, he stopped himself and headed back into the room. There, to Amanda’s amazement, he upended the bed and threw Loa Wei Fen’s few possessions into the toilet. As he emerged there was a strange smile on his face. All he said was “Our friend likes leaving messages, so I thought he might find it interesting to receive one. You’ve got his e-mail address?”

She had never seen this side of him before. She liked it.

Outside the Portman, he turned to her and said, “Can you get me the street address that goes with that e-mail number?”

“In North America I’d say no, but here the servers are so antiquated that I’ve got a chance. Back at the Equatorial there’s a business centre. They’ve got computers, I’ll give it a shot.”

“Can you send an e-mail message to him?”

“That I know I can do. What do you want to say?”

“’Loa Wei Fen, they’re trying to kill us both. We both have a lot to lose in this stupid game.’ Sign it Zhong Fong.”

She repeated the message and he nodded. “Where’ll you meet me?”

“How long should it take?”

“Sending a message, almost nothing. Finding the address of E-M-29-7976 could take a long time. Sorry.”

“When a screen has that number flashing on it, is the screen the sender or the receiver?” asked Fong.

“Why do you ask? Have you seen the number?”

“Yes, I think I have,” he said. Then slowly he added, “I believe the address is 29 Zhongshan Road, seventh floor, suite 976.”

“Are you sure?”

As if weary from it all, “Yes, but check it for me, will you.”

“Whose address is that?”

“The commissioner of police, Shanghai District.” Fong felt dizzy.

The upended bed and the general disarray of his few possessions didn’t penetrate Loa Wei Fen’s calm. The reversal of roles, however, did. He had been in their rooms, both of their rooms, but he was not prepared for them to be in his. The flashing light on his computer notebook caught his eye. When he punched through to e-mail and read the message from Zhong Fong, he had to control his twisting anger. Then he called up the program that would tell him the address of the sender of the e-mail. When it came up on the screen he smiled.

He would go to the Long Hua Temple. He would meditate into the eyes of the lion cub on the roof. Then as the darkness fell he would revisit the Shanghai International Equatorial Hotel, the address from which the e-mail had come.

Breaking into police headquarters would have been simple for Fong to do alone, but with a tall blond woman it proved a challenge. But he had no choice, he needed her computer expertise. So they went together. And since there was no real way to hide they just barged in.

It was the end of the workday and his Hu-ness never stayed past 3:00. They had been lucky and avoided Li Xiao, Wang Jun, and Shrug and Knock so that although they received some pretty strange looks they were not challenged. That is until they got up to his Hu-ness’s secretary’s office. Then the challenge was momentarily loud. Loud because the secretary screamed. Momentary because Fong grabbed her and stuffed almost an entire box of tissues into her face, before tying her to her swivel chair.

Even as he was doing it Amanda was getting the e-mail messages off the machine.

“Is this always so easy? Aren’t there security codes and stuff?”

“There are, but the machines here aren’t new. China’s been sold a stack of old machinery. Unused. But old. Old enough that the security features are rudimentary enough for me to dismantle.” As she finished she punched up a series of e-mail messages. There had been seventeen in the last twenty-four hours. Sixteen had been from the same address. She wrote it down.

Leaving the office they almost bumped straight into Shrug and Knock. Fong wouldn’t admit, even to himself, how much joy he got in cold-cocking his former assistant.

It was dark by the time they got back to the Equatorial. Amanda had to do some pretty fancy talking to get herself and Fong into the business centre a second time that day. “There is much demand for these services,” she was informed by the silk-bloused receptionist.

“May I see your supervisor?” Amanda said, smiling pleasantly. Within minutes of meeting the male supervisor, Fong and Amanda were being led into the interior of glass-walled office spaces. As the supervisor left them alone in the glassed-in office she turned to Fong and with a smile said, “It’s hard to say no to a tall blond.”

To which Fong responded straight-faced, “I wouldn’t know anything about that.”

When Li Xiao got back to the office it didn’t take him long to identify the blond lady who had arrived with Fong. Wang Jun identified her in three words and a twohanded gesture. “Tall? Blond? Tits?” His hand gesture accompanied the last. Then he said, “She’s at the Equatorial.”

Loa Wei Fen used his most cultured voice on the phone. “Does the hotel have a computer centre?” He nodded at the reply and said “Thank you.” He hung up, took one last look at the dishevelled bed and slipped out of Amanda’s room, heading toward the computer centre in the lobby.

The eight-by-ten-foot glass enclosure in which Amanda and Fong were working was spartan but functional. Two chairs, a computer and printer setup, modem, and fax hookups. The computer once again was brand new but badly out of date. Someone had clearly pulled a fast one on the Chinese. Like the guy who sold Englishlanguage welcome signs to hundreds of Shanghai restaurants which read COME ON IN BIG BOY. That guy at least had a sense of humour.

Fong marvelled at the length of Amanda’s fingers as they raced across the keyboard. Suddenly her fingers stopped and hovered, poised over the keys.

“Problem?”

“I don’t think so . . .”

“What’s the but in your voice?”

“How’s my time?”

“Why?”

“There’s a fast but risky way and a slower but safer way. Your pick, copper.”

On the monitor the phrase SELECT FUNCTION was flashing.

“Fast. I’m not sure it’s possible to be in a riskier situation than we’re already in.”

The beautiful fingers moved from their poised position. Keys were struck and information about the source of the sixteen e-mail messages on Commissioner Hu’s computer began to emerge. Suddenly the screen began to blink.

“I’ve hit a trap.”

“A what?”

“There’s a request for a second password. If I don’t get it right the computer will report us back to the e-mail number that we’re searching.”

“Like a booby trap?”

“More like a snitch.”

“Could it be a fake?”

“Could be.”

“The first password you found was New Life, right?”

“Right.”

Fong thought for a moment and then said, “There is no second password. New Life in Shanghai is everything.”

Amanda hit the Enter key. The blinking stopped and addresses began to scroll. When they finally stopped, one was highlighted. As the address appeared, the fingers of Fong’s hand clenched so tightly on her shoulder that she winced in pain.

“What?” she almost yelled.

“That is the address?” he said, pointing at the highlighted line on the monitor.

“Yes. What is it, Fong?”

Fong’s voice cracked as he said, “It’s in the Pudong.” Completely at a loss as to what this reaction meant, Amanda replied, “That’s what it says. That industrial place across the river, right?”

In a faroff voice, his eyes clouding, he responded, “Right.” Then after a long pause he added, “I haven’t been to the Pudong in over four years.”

Before Amanda could respond the far wall of the glass room exploded. A pellet from the shotgun blast sliced through her cheek and then shattered the computer screen in front of her. A second and third blast rang out. The smell of cordite filled her nostrils. All she remembered was Fong grabbing her hand and yanking her out of the chair, glass flying everywhere. And shouting. And Fong pulling, pulling her through one shattered computer room after another. Then darkness.

Fong had actually seen the policeman’s image reflected in the computer screen, the Pudong address seemingly plastered across his forehead. He heard the first blast and saw the blood flower from Amanda’s cheek before the computer screen exploded into shards of glass and useless metal bits. Fong heard Li Xiao shouting at his men to stop firing. He also heard volley after volley of shots. One of the blasts must have shorted out the electric main line. In the darkness he and Amanda managed to slip into the shopping arcade and then run free out onto Hua Shan Road.

Loa Wei Fen had arrived at the business centre in the lobby just as the first shot was fired. He sized up the scene in a glance and realized that if Fong and the blond woman were to escape it would have to be through the shopping arcade. So he went into the food store at the far side of the complex and, munching on macadamia nuts, waited for them to appear.

When they did, he followed them. Tracking the bloodied twosome was not difficult.

Back in his hiding place Fong looked closely at Amanda’s wound. He had removed the glass shards from her hands and knees. The cuts bled but were not deep. However, the gash on her cheek had ripped the flesh clean down to the bone. She was pale but not in shock.

“Does it hurt?” he asked as his fingers gently touched the skin above the wound.

“No. Will it get infected?”

“Too early to tell.”

“I carry antibiotics, I’ve been taking them like vitamins since I arrived.”

“Don’t trust the food, huh?”

“If you get offended I’ll clock you one. I’ve heard the water in this town is pestilential.” She fished out a small vial of pills and held them out to Fong. For a moment he couldn’t open the childproof bottle but then he saw the arrows and aligned them. He ground a tablet to powder in his palm, and shook it carefully into the open wound on her face. When he finished she reached for the vial and popped a tablet in her mouth. “Damn.”

“What?”

“I can’t swallow it. I’ve got no spit.”

Without comment he gently tilted back her head. She parted her lips. His spittle tasted of old Kent cigarettes.

Fong knew that it was past midnight. In the city’s night glow he could make out Amanda’s face, her head nestled in his lap. Her body had retreated to the sanctity of sleep. He ran his fingers through her hair and marvelled at the lunacy of all this.

All this now.

How easy it had been with her. How even that first time, her head had tilted and her lips parted accepting his tongue as a part of her. How her body fit with his, every inch top to bottom. How the musk rose from her, a flower releasing its pollen, in a puff of wet scent. So unlike Fu Tsong, who was tiny. So unlike Fu Tsong whom he could lift with a simple movement of his hands. And yet Amanda Pitman fit too. More accurately he fit to her. No, he could not lift her and there was not the tightness that was Fu Tsong. But there was a clutching, holding reverence between this woman and him. An exactness of feeling and an aliveness taking place between them in the desolation of the formerly beautiful room on the third story of the now half-demolished Victorian house across from the elevated car on the sixteen-foot pedestal.

While Fong was lost in his contemplations, Loa Wei Fen crouched on the other side of the wall, and waited. Waited and wondered what he was waiting for. Why he simply didn’t kill them now. Why? Confusion reigned. Then he began to fall inside himself.

That night with Amanda’s head on his lap and Loa Wei Fen on the other side of the wall, Fong’s dream started with him standing over the great construction pit in the Pudong holding Fu Tsong in his arms-the baby still on her chest, her robe open, a smear of blood on her abdomen. He felt the lightness of death in his arms. Coals without heat. Noise which only love could resurrect as music. Orsino hammering on the piano never aware that his salvation slept beneath his feet. Then, for the first time, his dream allowed him to see himself fling the two of them far out into the pit. He saw Fu Tsong, the baby still on her body, seemingly come to life as she passed through the beam of the first of the mercury vapour lights. He lost sight of her when she left the light and entered the darkness. But then she entered a second beam. Fong shuddered. The memory so long buried was now garishly alive. In the harsh beam of the second light Fu Tsong raised her arm toward him. Her mouth opened but no sound came. Still falling, she repeated the arm gesture, her mouth continuing to move soundlessly. Then she disappeared into darkness-until the dream opened one last hidden door. This door allowed him to see the concussion of bodies on the freshly poured cement slabs. The swallowing in cold obstruction of Fu Tsong and their baby-only the sash of the bathrobe left afloat on the surface.

He heard himself crying in his sleep but he couldn’t awaken. His eyes were drawn to that sash. For a moment it was still, but then it rose up and flared its back. A king cobra as thick as a man’s arm. And he was not above it now, but beneath it. In a bamboo construction-elevator shaft. The great serpent, its hood flooded with blood, its eyes remorseless, bore down upon him from above. Its armless body finding purchases unseen by man as it descended toward Fong.

Loa Wei Fen could hear the tears on the other side of the wall. For him they were the tears of Wu Yeh, the opium whore, as she cried for her African lover. They were the tears of the woman from whom he was taken when he was six. They were the tears deep inside him that were begging to come out. The tears that would bring him to the edge of the roof from which this time he must indeed jump or fall forever.