The Cook, the Crook, and the Real Estate Tycoon

by Liu Zhenyun

  “Divorced, of course.”

  “Wrong. A couple gets divorced when they can’t get along, but you need to find the right person to marry. So, which one’s easier, finding the right person or marrying the wrong one?”

  Now she understood what he meant and laughed over his reasoning, not his humor. “So when are you going to get a divorce?”

  “If not in one day, maybe two. If not two days, then a month. Maybe six months.”

  They agreed on six months, but he vanished before the half year passed. It turned out he was a con man, and he didn’t vanish because Manli wanted him to divorce his wife and marry her. He was taken away by the police, for he’d conned just about everyone, Manli included. Three years earlier, he’d illegally raised funds in his hometown from over a dozen poor families, since it was hard to get rich people to hand over their money. The scam was exposed before he got much, so he fled to Beijing to be a fishmonger, while a warrant for his arrest was posted online. After three years had gone by, he thought he was safe, but someone from his hometown spotted him when he went to pick up a shipment of fish at the train station. The man, one of the people Yuan had conned, had come to Beijing to look for work. That night, the police arrested Yuan while he was taking an inventory of his fish. He had told Manli he came from Zhoushan, which was a lie; he was in fact from Wenzhou. Everything about him was a lie, including where he came from.

  Manli’s mind went blank when she heard the news, but instead of feeling wretched over the deception, she burst out laughing. She’d thought he had a great sense of humor, and the funniest thing about him was his fund-raising con game. As the saying goes, he tried to steal a chicken with a handful of rice and ended up losing both. Then she began to cry.

  Considering that it was a modest amount, the court sentenced Yuan to a year in prison; he got lucky for not trying to steal more than just a chicken. During the twelve months, Manli never once went to visit him in prison, considering him as good as dead; whenever her thoughts turned to Yuan, she would sigh, not because of their relationship, but because she hadn’t known the real him.

  One day late at night, Yuan showed up at the Manli Hair Salon after serving his prison sentence. His hair was gray and he looked old. She barely recognized him. He’d turned into an old man who looked more like an old pig. His long torso and stumpy legs made him look like a giant penguin as he shuffled into the salon. He even talked differently now, as he told her that he’d just gotten out and wanted to resume his fishmongering business at the market or maybe sell freshwater fish, which would be brought in from Miyun, a lot closer than Zhoushan. Penniless, he had no place to go and wondered if he could stay with her for a while. He faltered, his former witty self seemingly erased by a year in prison; now he talked matter-of-factly. When she realized who it was, Manli felt a mixture of sorrow and joy at first, but that turned to resentment after listening to him. She was upset not because she’d been conned into a relationship and had even had an abortion for his sake; she was outraged that he was actually asking to stay at her place. There was no shame in asking to stay with a friend, but he was no longer the same person. She didn’t care that he was down and out or that he might be conning her again; it was just that nothing about him reminded her of the man she’d known. In her mind, it was someone else pretending to be Yuan, the biggest con man of all.

  “Get out,” she demanded.

  He looked around and was about to pester her when she repeated herself:

  “Get out!”

  He walked out, realizing that she was no longer the Ma Manli he used to know.

  After he left, she sat down, steaming, though she wasn’t really angry. She was feeling low as she recalled what had happened between them when she heard a knock at the door. She ignored it, assuming it was Yuan coming back to her. But the knock turned into loud bangs, sounding more and more urgent, so she went up, unlatched the door, and opened it with a savage push.

  “Get lost. Did you hear me?” She shouted into the street, frightening the man outside the door.

  It was not Yuan, it was Liu Yuejin, with whom Manli had a different relationship. Liu often came to her salon, but the two of them had never slept together; he had wanted to but had no idea how to make it happen. Unlike Yuan, Liu was not witty, but then he never deceived her either, at least not where important things were involved. He was crafty, but not enough to strike it big or bring down anything. He would like to have struck it rich, but, as with his desire to sleep with Manli, he didn’t know how. In a word, he was a simple cook. On the other hand, maybe that’s just how she saw things; he might have had a different idea. He could have held the conviction that the two of them would end up in her bed sooner or later; otherwise, he wouldn’t have spent so much time at the salon. He told her everything; she never reciprocated, even though he felt they could talk about anything.

  When he showed up at the salon that earlier night, she had immediately sensed something different about him; he seemed lost and needed someone to talk to. But she was so busy trying to get rid of her ex-husband that Liu held back, and in the end it was Liu who got her ex-husband to leave. Liu’s action made her cry. He was nowhere to be seen after that until now, when he showed up, looking even more lost than that night. She was shocked to see him sweating and panting.

  “Did you just mug someone? Or were you robbed?”

  She was joking, but he confirmed her comment.

  “You’re right. I did rob someone and then someone else mugged me.”

  After pushing her back inside, he shut the door, locked it, and turned off the light before taking her to the back room. Believing he was going to try something, she struggled while he held her still and told her everything that had happened over the past seven days, from the thief stealing his fanny pack all the way to what had just taken place at the Sijiqing Bridge. At times he was so flustered he was incoherent, which, compounded by the complexity of the matter, confused her to the point that she was only sure of his agitation.

  “I missed something. Start over,” she said.

  “There’s no time.” He was growing impatient. “There’s nothing you could do even if you didn’t miss a thing.”

  He took out the USB drive. “You know what this is?”

  “A USB drive.” She nodded. “I used to chat online when I was in a bad mood, though I’ve lost interest over the past six months.”

  “Great!” He clapped. “Hurry, let’s take a look and see what’s on it.”

  “I sold my computer to Dahao.”

  Liu had met Dahao, the owner of a carwash a block away from the Manli Hair Salon. Originally from Jiangxi, Dahao was a fleshy, overweight man with eyes that all but disappeared into rolls of flesh on his face. Knowing that Dahao was an avid mahjong player, Liu wondered why a carwash man needed a computer.

  “Not to chat online. He’s into porn sites.”

  “I don’t care what he’s into.” Liu was on edge. “Let’s take a look.”

  After she put on a jacket, they left the salon in a hurry and crossed the street to the carwash, where it was obviously too late for any customers. The building had a gaping hole for a door that was now facing deserted streets. Putting aside the porn sites, Dahao had gone out for a game of mahjong that night. Ma’s old computer was sitting on a desk in the carwash, covered with grease, including the keyboard. Dahao’s nephew, Xiaohao, was watching the place and wouldn’t let them use the computer, claiming that Dahao would beat him if they messed it up. Then he grumbled that he was hungry, which told Liu what he needed to know; he handed him ten yuan. Elated, Xiaohao ran across the street to enjoy himself with a bottle, leaving the computer to Liu and Ma.

  They inserted the drive and opened a file, but the screen was a blank. They could hear people talking, intermingled with giggling. Ma and Liu had difficulty understanding what was being said, for there were too many people talking about things alien to them. Then a video clip came on the screen, showing a room that looked to be in a hotel. The first person to a
ppear was Yan Ge, to Liu’s surprise. He was handing out gifts—jewelry and calligraphy scrolls—always to two men, one old and the other middle-aged, whose attire and expressions indicated that they were officials. The gifts were handed out separately; the two men never appeared together. In addition to jewelry and calligraphy, the gifts also included canvas bags, sometimes one and sometimes three or more. Once, when Yan bent forward to unzip a bag, the contents, visible on the screen, appeared to be money. The middle-aged man usually got one bag while the older man got three or as many as five, and the gift-giving took place more than ten times, as marked by the time stamps in the lower corner of the screen.

  Liu Yuejin and Ma Manli were flabbergasted, unable to even guess the total amount in several dozen bags. What stunned them more was what followed on the screen. The two men could be seen separately engaged in sexual acts with non-Chinese women in the same room, and it happened more than ten times, as indicated by the time stamps. Liu and Ma were speechless. Before watching it, Liu was only aware that it was a valuable computer drive; now he realized what was involved.

  They walked out of the carwash and headed back to the salon. When they reached the corner butcher shop, which was closed, they stopped and squatted on the step. The sign in front flapped in the wind, advertising “Trouble-free pork you can eat with ease of mind.”

  “Those were big bags. They could easily contain millions each, don’t you think?” Liu said. “So several dozen bags means billions, doesn’t it?”

  “What do you call taking that much money?” he continued. “It’s major corruption. A cause for execution.”

  A light went on in his head. “Now I know why so many people were eager to get this back. It’s not about money, it’s about their lives.”

  Ma Manli stared at him blankly. Her face slowly drained of color while Liu went on with his indignant outburst.

  “I make a few yuan selling swill to Lao Li’s pig farm, traveling twenty miles each time. They don’t have to lift a finger to receive all that money. They’re not humans. They’re wolves, man-eating wolves.”

  Manli, still gaping at him, stammered:

  “Don’t talk about them any more. You have to think about yourself.”

  “What about me?”

  “You found something you shouldn’t have kept, and now they know you have it. I’m afraid you’re in big trouble.”

  Enlightened by her comment, he broke out in a cold sweat.

  “You’re right. Didn’t I tell you about the thief being beaten up under the bridge?” Then he jumped to his feet. “I thought they wanted this, but no, they want more.”

  He was back on his haunches as he grabbed her hand.

  “Now I know. They want the drive to do away with all the witnesses. The thief was beaten to death and I’m next.” He slapped his hand on the ground. “It’s bad enough to lose a pack. Who’d have guessed it could be so much more complicated and so much worse?”

  “I’ve seen what’s on it,” Manli said, “so that means I’m in trouble too.” She nudged Liu. “Promise me that if they catch you, you won’t mention my name. I’ve got a daughter back home.”

  As the saying goes, once the limit is reached, things go in the opposite direction. With a major disaster looming over his head, Liu said, “Great. Now we’re in it together, for better or for worse.”

  Manli reached out and put her hands around his neck.

  “I’m going to throttle you, damn you.”

  26

  Han Shengli

  Han Shengli received a beating from Lao Lai’s people.

  Lao Lai was a Chinese from Xinjiang, though he looked like a Uighur, which was why anyone who met him for the first time asked, “Are you a Uighur?” He started out explaining that his parents, who were from Shanghai, had been sent to develop the border region fifty years earlier. By living like a Uighur and regularly eating meat, he’d grown to look more Uighur than Chinese. After repeating his background story too many times, he gave up and simply admitted that he was indeed a Uighur.

  In Beijing, people from Xinjiang tended to congregate in Weigong Village, to the north of Zizhuyuan Park in the Haidian District of Western Beijing. They sold lamb kebabs, Xinjiang hats, tambouras, a Central Asian musical instrument, and Uighur knives. The merchandise was fake; the trade itself was a front for their real profession of thievery. Lao Lai, in truth a Han Chinese, was their ringleader, a position he had fought hard to attain after several bloody battles.

  Soon after taking over, he implemented many new measures. For instance, he no longer allowed the gang to rob people. They were thieves and they stole; if they robbed they would be bandits. Thieves stole with their hands, while robbers used knives, and sooner or later they’d end up killing someone. Anyone who wanted to stick around Weigong Village had to obey the rules and not cross the boundary into killing.

  Another change had to do with observing territorial limits. In the past, the gang plied their trade wherever they went, resulting in territorial fights with other thieves. Lao Lai told his underlings to limit their activities to Weigong Village, and he would not tolerate any other gang violating their territory. The gang members paid lip service to his rules and then did whatever they pleased behind his back, rendering the rules ineffectual and him gloomy.

  Han Shengli came to Weigong Village one day to see a hometown friend, after which he took a stroll in a nearby market and did a little pilfering. His target was a well-dressed, bespectacled, middle-aged woman with her nose in the air, giving him the impression that she must be rich. He went into action, took her purse and slinked out of the market to check the contents. Not even four hundred yuan. The purse bulged, not with money, but with a thick stack of business cards, and Han knew he had misjudged her. Rich people don’t wear glasses; only the poor intellectuals do that. She was not aware that Han had snatched her purse, but his actions were spotted by members of the Xinjiang gang, who nabbed him while he was bemoaning his latest misstep.

  Stealing outside one’s territory was a major offense, according to the protocols of their trade and Lai’s rules. The Xinjiang gang rarely respected territorial lines when stealing, but when someone crossed into their territory, they stuck to the rules and beat him bloody. They also demanded that he cough up twenty thousand, some sixty times what he’d stolen. That was unreasonable. He tried to explain that to the gang, which further incurred their wrath. But he wouldn’t stop arguing his case, so his argument-averse captors took him to a basement, where they tied him to a pipe. They would let him go only if he agreed to pay the so-called fine; if not, he could expect an unpleasant death from starvation in the basement. Frightened by rats scurrying around his feet, he wrote out an IOU for twenty thousand to be paid in ten installments, two thousand a day. To make sure he didn’t skip out on them, they needed a guarantor from the neighborhood, so he took them to see the friend from his hometown, Lao Gao.

  Gao, also from Luoshui, Henan, ran a diner specializing in a Henan specialty, stewed noodles in a spicy soup. Gao clearly had a steady income, the Xinjiang gang noticed, so they let Han go. He went first to the hospital, where his injuries received eight stiches, and, with his head still bandaged, he started working again, stealing now for the Xinjiang gang. Han had been a thief for a very long time, with little to show for it, not because he was faint-hearted, but because he made mistakes in judging targets, locations, and timing. Stealing the purse of a poor intellectual he mistook to be rich was only the latest example of his tendency to miscalculate. Misjudging a target was less serious than stealing in the wrong place and at the wrong time, for that often resulted in being caught in the act. Thievery is an art form. Timing is everything. Han liked to deal in probabilities, and timing was invariably his undoing. By the time he realized that his timing was off, a favorable situation turned unfavorable. In his case, seven attempts out ten were foiled, and he had to flee. The only gain from his flawed thievery was the ability to run fast; he got away about seventy percent of the time. Twenty percent of the
time he was caught and beaten or arrested. In a word, he succeeded in only one out of ten attempts, but even that success did not always bring in high-quality loot.

  Han worked doubly hard since being caught by the Xinjiang gang. When he was stealing for himself he could work when he felt like it; now he had to go out every day to bring in two thousand yuan and pay off that day’s debt. But his ability to judge did not improve with diligence, for he now spent thirteen or fourteen hours on the street yet failed to make more than when he was at it for seven or eight. In the past, he considered it a successful day if he managed to pick up five hundred, and it was not unusual to find no victim after roaming the streets all day. Low productivity hadn’t been a problem then, but now it came at a price; he never fulfilled his daily quota and the gang gave him a couple of kicks each time he went to pay them what he could. With Gao as his guarantor, Han was not a flight risk, so they told him they’d do a tally when his deadline was up.

  At moments like this, Han directed his anger only at Liu Yuejin, neither at the gang nor at himself, for Liu had paid back only two hundred of the thirty-three hundred he owed Han. As Liu was just a poor cook, Han had thought it pointless to demand his money back, until he learned that Liu had been carrying forty-one hundred in his bag. As Han saw it, Liu preferred having his money stolen over paying him back, which was infuriating. Under normal circumstances, he wouldn’t have minded so much, but Liu seemed unfazed by Han being beaten by the debt collectors, a character flaw that went beyond the love of money.

  To be sure, thirty-four hundred would not have been enough to pay off the Xinjiang gang, but it would have served as emergency relief on days when he came up short and would have spared him applications of their feet and fists. After getting mad at Liu, Han turned on himself. The Xinjiang gang and Liu Yuejin were both more ruthless than he, a thief who was undeserving of his reputation. He’d been wrong to treat Liu decently, and now that Liu had lost his money, it was useless to be harsh. In order for Liu to pay back his debt, Han had had to help him find his pack by taking him to see Brother Cao, and what had he gotten in return? Liu went behind his back and received a beating at Cao’s shed and then complained that Han had taken him to see the wrong people, costing him the deposit and two days of searching for the thief. Seemingly entitled to his anger from that beating, Liu pointed at his own bandaged head and said to Han: