The Shanghai Murders - A Mystery of Love and Ivory

by David Rotenberg

  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.

  DAY TEN

  The buses began their morning shriek. It was 4:00 A.M. Loa Wei Fen took a peek at the sleeping lovers as he soundlessly rose from his squatting position and made his way out of the destroyed building.The thud of the city was picking up as he moved eastward along the dusty streets toward the Old City. Shanghai was little more than a mirage to him now. But in that mirage there was an oasis of truth. A place of momentary peace in his hopeless dream. An opium whore whom he loved.

  Moments after Loa Wei Fen entered the Old City, Wang Jun awoke from a fitful sleep. He got out of bed, careful not to wake the couple who slept on the other side of the drawn curtain. The water spat from the street spout as he turned it on. Its colour didn’t please him so he let it run until the colour thinned. Then, ducking his head, he allowed the water’s chill to waken his sleepy brain. Turning, he drank from the stream. “Might as well drink this shit, it’s already in our veins,” he thought. Spitting out the last of the water, he sat down on the pavement and looked at the Shanghai alley along which he had lived for the past twenty-two years. He had been twenty-nine when he first came to Shanghai. He was sixty-two now. And what did he have to show for those thirty-three years of work? A place to throw his weary body after a wearying day’s work. Little else. Oh yes, he also had a friend, Zhong Fong. A friend whom he was betraying even as he sat here. His cellular phone rang. He took it from his coat pocket and for a moment stared at its flickering lights. Then he punched it on. “Wang Jun.” The furious voice of his Hu-ness cracked the morning stillness. Wang Jun did not so much listen as endure the tirade. All he could do was hold on and allow the anger to wash over him. He noted that this kind of behaviour no longer hurt him. There was a time when his skin was less thick. A time when betraying a friend would have given him more pause.