A Loyal Character Dancer

by Qiu Xiaolong

  As a result, standing in the doorway now, he had a stiff neck, and had to roll his head like a circus clown.

  It was then he heard heavy, hurried footsteps drawing close from the village entrance. Not one or two men. A large group of them.

  Startled, he looked out. There were a dozen men coming in his direction, each of them masked with black cloth, carrying something that shone in the sunlight-axes. At the sight of him, they broke into a charge, swinging their axes, yelling over the sound of the chickens screeching and dogs barking.

  “The Flying Axes!” he shouted to the two women who were just emerging from the house. “Get back inside. Quick!”

  He whipped out his revolver, aimed in haste, and pulled the trigger. One of the masked men spun like a broken robot, tried in vain to raise his ax, and crumpled to his knees. The others seemed to be stunned.

  “He has a gun!”

  “He’s killed the Old Third.”

  The gangsters did not run away. Instead, they broke into two groups, several taking cover behind the house across the lane, and the others dashing into the barn. As he took a step toward them, a small ax was hurled at him. It missed, but he had to retreat.

  Each of them had several axes, large and small, tucked into the front and backs of their belts in addition to those they held in their hands. They threw the small ones like darts.

  To his surprise, none of the gangsters seemed to have a gun, even though weapon smuggling was not unheard of in a coastal province like Fujian. This was not the moment for him to find fault with his luck.

  What did he have? A revolver with five bullets left. If he did not miss a single shot, he might be able to cut down five of them. Once he fired his last shot, there was nothing else he could do.

  The Flying Axes would have surrounded the house. Once they began to attack from all directions, they would overwhelm it. Nor could he hope for timely rescue by the local police. Only the local police had known of their arrival in Fujian.

  “Fujian Police, Fujian Police…”

  He heard Inspector Rohn shouting into her cellular phone.

  Another ax came flying through the air. Before he could react, it stuck trembling in the door frame, missing Catherine by only two or three inches.

  If anything happened to her-

  He felt the blood rushing to his face. He had made a huge mistake in coming here with the two women. There was no professional justification for it-he had followed a hunch, but he had been wrong to take such a risk.

  Cringing besides Catherine, Wen clutched the poetry anthology like a shield.

  Poetry makes nothing happen.

  It was a line he had read years ago. However, he had hoped that poetry could make some things happen. Here he was, ironically, because of that poetry anthology. It was absurd that he should be thinking of such things in the midst of a desperate fight.

  “Do you have any gasoline here, Wen?” Catherine said.

  “No.”

  “Why do you ask, Inspector Rohn?” he said.

  “The bottles-Molotov cocktails.”

  “The abrasive! The chemicals are flammable, aren’t they?”

  “Yes. They must be as good as gasoline!”

  “You know how to make them-Molotov cocktails?”

  “Oh yes.” She was already running to the bucket of chemicals in the house.

  Several gangsters were moving out of hiding. He raised his revolver as one of them charged, chanting loudly as if under a spell, “Flying Axes kill all the evil,” like someone out of the Boxer Uprising. Chen fired twice. One bullet slammed into the man’s chest, but the momentum carried him sprawling across a few more yards, to fall, still clutching his ax. Sheer luck. Chen remembered how poorly he had scored at the firing range. He had only three bullets left.

  Four or five axes came whirring through the air. Aware of Catherine returning with the bottles, Chen instinctively flung up the rattan chair in front of him. The axes crashed into it so heavily he took a step back, involuntarily.

  Behind him, Catherine squatted, filling bottles with chemicals, Wen stuffing the bottle tops with rags.

  “Have you a light, Catherine?” he asked.

  She searched her pockets. “The hotel matchbook-a souvenir of Suzhou.” She struck a match.

  Grabbing the bottle from her, he hurled it toward the house where the gangsters had taken shelter. There was a blast. Flames shot up with dazzling colors. She lit the second bottle for him. He tossed it toward the barn. It exploded more loudly, and the acrid smell of the burning chemicals filled his nostrils.

  It was a moment Chen could not afford to waste. In the confusion brought on by the explosions, they might stand a chance.

  He turned to Wen, “Is there a shortcut out of the village across the creek?”

  “Yes, there’s hardly any water in the creek now.”

  “There’s a door to the backyard, Catherine. Break it down, run out with Wen, and cut across the creek to the car.” He handed the gun to her. “Take the gun. There are only three bullets left. I’ll cover you.”

  “How are you going to do that?”

  “With Molotov cocktails. I’ll throw out several bottles.” He plucked the ax out of the door frame. Soon, perhaps, he would have to use it. A kung fu miracle was possible only on the screen. “I will catch up with you.”

  “No. I can’t leave you here like this. The local police must have heard about the fighting. They should arrive any minute.”

  “Listen, Catherine,” Chen said, his throat dry. “We cannot hold out for long. If they start attacking us from both front and back, it will be too late. You have to go now.”

  So saying, he started to throw the bottles, one after another, in quick succession. The path was engulfed in smoke and flames. Amidst the explosions, he heard Catherine and Wen pounding at the back door. He had no time to look over his shoulder. A gangster was rushing at him, axes flashing through the smoke. Chen hurled a bottle at him, and then the ax.

  Nobody came through the fading smoke.

  Great, he thought, clutching one of the remaining bottles, when he heard a loud gun shot at the back of the house. There was a thud.

  Spinning around, he saw Catherine pulling Wen back into the house. A masked face was rising over the backyard wall, then two hands, and then shoulders. She shot again. The Flying Ax toppled backward.

  “The bitch has a gun!” someone shouted outside.

  With Chen in front, and Catherine in back, the gangsters were temporarily stopped, but it would only be a few minutes before they resumed their attack.

  There was only one bullet left in the gun.

  That couple of minutes proved, however, to be more crucial than he had imagined.

  He heard a siren coming from a distance, then a car screeching into the village. Hurried footsteps. Blurred shouting. Frantic barking.

  He charged out, clutching the last two Molotov cocktails amidst an outburst of gunfire. A volley of bullets was directed at the gangsters sheltered by the house across the lane. Another fusillade of bullets rained onto the barn, which at once burst into new flames. The triad men scrambled out and fled.

  “Cops!”

  In a matter of a few seconds, only bodies scattered on the ground remained. Armed policemen were chasing the running men, guns held high.

  To his amazement, Chen saw Yu coming toward them, waving a pistol.

  The battle was over.

  Chapter 34

  Detective Yu!” Chen grasped Yu’s hand.

  “It’s good to see you, Chief.” Yu was too excited to say more.

  Catherine clasped Yu’s other hand, her face smudged, her blouse torn at the shoulder. “I’m so glad to see you here, Detective Yu.”

  “Me too, Inspector Rohn. I am happy to meet you.”

  “I thought you were on your way back to Shanghai,” Chen said.

  “My plane was delayed. So I checked my phone one more time before boarding. I got the message left by Inspector Rohn that no one had picked you
up at the station.”

  “When did you place that call, Inspector Rohn?”

  “While we were waiting for you to rent a car.”

  “The absence of the local police at the station did not make sense,” Yu said. “The more I thought about it, the more suspicious it appeared to me. After all those accidents, you know-”

  “Yes, I do.” Chen had to cut Yu short. It was more than suspicious, he knew. Inspector Rohn knew, too. The fact that she had mentioned the absence of the local cops in her message spoke for itself. Still, they did not have to discuss this problem in front of her.

  “So I approached the airport police and got a jeep from them. Some of them rode back with me. I had a hunch.”

  “A good hunch.”

  As they were talking, Chen heard more cars and people arriving. Looking up, he was not too surprised to see Superintendent Hong, the head of the Fuzhou Police Bureau, leading a group of armed policemen.

  “I’m so sorry, Chief Inspector Chen,” Hong said in a voice full of apologies. “We missed you at the station. My assistant made a mistake about the arrival time. On our way back to the bureau, we heard about the fight and rushed over.”

  “Don’t worry, Superintendent Hong. It’s all over now.”

  The belated appearance of Hong and his men was intended to be a footnote to a finished chapter.

  Was it possible for Chen to attempt to remedy the situation here and now? The answer was no. As an outsider, he had to congratulate himself on being lucky as it was. Their mission was completed, none of them had been seriously hurt, and a handful of gangsters had been punished. He simply said, “The Flying Axes are well-informed. We hardly reached the village when they came upon us.”

  “Some village folks must have spotted Wen and informed them.”

  “So they got the news faster than the local police.” Chen found it hard not to be sarcastic.

  “Now you know how difficult things can be here, Chief Inspector Chen,” Hong said, shaking his head before he turned to Inspector Rohn. “I’m sorry about meeting you like this, Inspector Rohn. I apologize on behalf of my colleagues in Fujian.”

  “You don’t have to apologize to me, Superintendent Hong,” Inspector Rohn said. “I thank you for your cooperation on behalf of the U.S. Marshals Service.”

  More policemen appeared to clean up the battlefield. There were several wounded gangsters lying on the ground. One of them might be dead. Chen was about to interrogate another who was muttering something to a local cop, when Hong made a request.

  “Can you explain a Chinese proverb for me, Chief Inspector Chen-Mogao yice, daogao yizhang?”

  “The literal translation is this: The devil is ten inches tall, and the way, or justice, is a hundred inches tall. In other words, powerful as evil is, justice will prevail.” The original proverb actually read the other way around. The ancient Chinese sage had been more pessimistic about the power of the evil.

  “The Chinese government is determined,” Hong declared pompously, “to deal a crushing blow to all evil forces.”

  Chen nodded as he observed a policeman kicking a wounded gangster viciously and cursing, “Damn it! Shut up with your damned Mandarin.”

  The gangster uttered a blood-chilling scream that cut into their conversation like another flying ax.

  “I apologize, Inspector Rohn,” Hong said. “Those gangsters are the worst scum under the sun.”

  “I have had my fill of apologies every day I’ve spent here,” Detective Yu remarked bitterly, crossing his arms. “What a Fujian experience!”

  But Chief Inspector Chen knew better than to push the matter further. On the surface, everything could be attributed to coincidence. There was no point going on with Inspector Rohn and Wen waiting.

  “We local police can do little,” Hong said, looking Chen in the eye. “You know that, Chief Inspector Chen.”

  Could that be a hint about the higher-level politics?

  The doubts Chen had harbored at the beginning of the investigation were resurfacing. Wen’s disappearance might not have been orchestrated from above, but whether the authorities had been so eager to deliver her to the Americans, he was not sure. What was left for Chen to do was perhaps no more than a performance in an ancient shadow play, full of sound and fury, but no substance. In his eagerness to serve as a model Chinese chief inspector of police, however, he had stepped beyond the boundaries of the stage.

  If this was so, the battle in the village might truly have been beyond the scope of the local police, as Superintendent Hong intimated.

  Maybe “the order of the acts had been schemed and plotted,” at the highest level.

  He did not really want to believe this.

  Perhaps he would never know the truth. Perhaps it would be best if he could be content to be one of those brainless Chinese cops in the Hollywood movies, and to let Inspector Rohn think of him that way.

  Whatever his suspicions, he was in no position to confide in her. Or another report by Internal Security would travel to Party Secretary Li’s desk even before he got back to Shanghai.

  “Now the case has been concluded.” Superintendent Hong changed the topic with a ready smile. “You have found Wen. All is well. We should celebrate. The best Fujian cuisine, a banquet of a hundred fishes from the southern sea.”

  “No thanks, Superintendent Hong,” Chen declined. “But I need to ask a favor of you.”

  “We will do anything we can, Chief Inspector Chen.”

  “We have to return to Shanghai right now. We are pressed for time.”

  “That’s no problem. Let’s go to the airport directly. There are several flights to Shanghai every day. You can take the next one. It’s not the high season. I believe there should still be some seats available.”

  Hong and the others drove off in their jeep, taking the lead. Yu followed with Wen in the car that had brought them from the airport. Chen rode with Catherine in the Dazhong.

  The half bag of lichee still lay on the seat. The fruit no longer looked so fresh. Several appeared black rather than red. Or if the color remained the same, his mood had changed.

  “I’m sorry,” she said.

  “For what?”

  “I should not have supported Wen’s wish to take this trip.”

  “I was not opposed to the idea, either,” he said. “I’m sorry, Inspector Rohn.”

  “For what?”

  “Everything.”

  “How could the gang have found us so quickly?”

  “That’s a good question.” That’s all he said. It was a question Superintendent Hong should have answered.

  “You called the Fujian Police Bureau from Suzhou,” she said quietly. The tai chi term was: It is enough to touch the spot. She did not have to push.

  “That was my mistake. But I did not mention Wen.” He was puzzled. Only the Suzhou police were aware that Wen was with them, but he went on, “Maybe some villager notified the gangsters as soon as we arrived. That’s Superintendent Hong’s story.”

  “Maybe.”

  “I do not know much about the local situation.” He caught himself talking to her in the same evasive way as Superintendent Hong had spoken to him. Still, what else could he say? “Maybe the gangsters were waiting for Wen. Just like ‘the old farmer waiting for the rabbit to knock itself out.’”

  “Old farmers or not, the Flying Axes were here and the local police were not.”

  “There’s another proverb, ‘A powerful dragon cannot fight local snakes.’ “

  “I have another question, Chief Inspector Chen. Why did these local snakes come with nothing but axes?”

  “Perhaps they came at a moment’s notice, so they carried whatever weapons they happened to lay their hands on.”

  “At a moment’s notice? I don’t think so. Not so many of them, and masked.”

  “You have a point,” he said. In fact, her question led to another one. Why had they bothered to wear masks? Their axes gave them away. Like the ax wounds on the body in Bund P
ark. A signed crime.

  “Now that our mission is completed, we don’t have to worry about those questions,” he said.

  “Or answers.” She sensed his reluctance to talk further.

  It sounded like a sarcastic reference to the poem read in the Suzhou garden.

  He felt her sitting so close, but so far away at the same time.

  Chen turned on the car radio. The broadcast was in the local dialect, of which he did not understand a single word.

  Presently, the Fujian airport came in view.

  As they neared the domestic flights gate, they saw a peddler in Taoist costume displaying his wares on a piece of white cloth spread on the ground. It exhibited an impressive array of herb samples, along with a number of open books, magazines, and pictures, all of them illustrating the beneficial effects of local herbs. The ingenious entrepreneur wore a white beard, an image associated with the legends of a Taoist recluse cultivating herbs in the clouds of the mountains, meditating above the vexing hubbub of the world, and enjoying longevity in harmony with nature.

  He spoke a few words to them but neither Catherine nor Chen could understand him. Seeing their puzzlement, he addressed them in Mandarin.

  “Look! Fulin cake, the well-known product of Fujian, beneficent to your body system,” the peddler declared. “It contains natural energy, and a lot of ingredients essential to health.”

  The Taoist peddler reminded Chen of the Taoist fortuneteller in the Suzhou temple. Ironically, the cryptic poem’s prediction had turned out to be true.

  As they walked through the gate, flight information was being broadcast, first in Mandarin, then in Fujian, and finally in English.

  Finally, Chen realized something.

  Something was terribly wrong.

  “Damn!” he cursed, glancing at his watch. It was too late.

  “What, Chief Inspector Chen?”

  “Nothing,” he said.

  Chapter 35

  The dinner invitation was Detective Yu’s idea. To be exact, however, it was an idea he had gotten from Chief Inspector Chen. Chen had mentioned Inspector Rohn’s interest in visiting a Chinese home, adding it would not be convenient to invite her to a bachelor’s place like his. Chen did not have to say more to his assistant.