The Boy Who Escaped Paradise

by J. M. Lee

  “He bought this place about half a year ago. That was surprising on its own. But the stuff he got his new lady! He got her a car and a maid, too. He really fell for this girl.”

  Just then, Dash came out of the entrance, Kunlun following him. The driver quickly cinched his bowtie and pulled his seat up. Dash and Kunlun waddled up and got in the car.

  “Let’s go,” Kunlun said.

  I looked out at the gardeners wearing wide-brimmed straw hats. Suddenly, the glass door on the fourth floor terrace slid open and a girl ran out in a white polka-dot dress. The breeze moved her wavy, shoulder-length hair, revealing her pale, moon-like forehead. The hem of her dress puffed up like a sail. She was smiling and waving. I waved back without realizing what I was doing. I kept waving even as the car turned at the juniper hedge and drove toward the gates.

  Two weeks later, Kunlun handed me a black cast-iron key as I changed the parrot’s water. “This is the key to the safe. That’s where all the ledgers are. You take over the accounting, all right?”

  In the safe, I found seven ledgers; separate ones for his trips, for hospitality, for staff salaries, for additional security, for the cars, and a couple others. Kunlun settled me at a desk at the entrance to the office. I organized receipts and bills and recorded expenses and income. After a few weeks, I was able to anticipate how much money went in and out each day, taking into consideration rent from twelve tenants, electric and water bills, and staff salaries. A few weeks after that, I was able to calculate change in income and expenses by month and by year for the previous three years, and drew a graph denoting the changes. Pleased with my work, Kunlun handed over several additional ledgers. “Don’t pay attention to the items. Just see if the numbers are correct.”

  I went over each book carefully over two hours. My head, lips, and pen moved quickly in sync. Finally, I looked up. “The calculations are correct,” I announced.

  Kunlun nodded in satisfaction. “Good. So nothing’s wrong with them.”

  “I didn’t say there was nothing wrong with them.”

  Kunlun frowned. “What do you mean? You just said the calculations are correct.”

  “These numbers don’t fit with Benford’s Law.”

  Kunlun looked exasperated.

  I tried again. “Thieves always leave clues behind.” I grabbed the day’s Huanqiu Shibao, Wall Street Journal, and Chosun Ilbo. “Could you please count how many of each leading digit appears in the papers?”

  “I don’t have to count,” Kunlun said, growing annoyed. “All numbers appear at random. I suppose the probability of any one number appearing is one out of ten.”

  I just stared at him until he finally picked up the papers and tallied the numbers. He showed me what he had scrawled on a piece of paper, humoring me.

  1: 30%, 2: 18%, 4: 10%, 5: 8%, 6: 7%, 7: 6%, 8: 5%, 9: 4%.

  He frowned. “There are too many 1s and too few 9s. How can different papers from different countries have such consistent results?”

  “Because of Benford’s Law,” I explained. “An overwhelming portion of numbers begin with 1. The bigger the number, the less frequently it appears. A number that begins with 9, for example, is less than 5 percent.”

  Kunlun looked confused.

  “Benford was an engineer at General Electric. In 1938, he was looking at the census when he realized that there were more numbers starting with 1 than any other. He discovered that this was the case for almost any statistic, like stock prices, lengths of rivers, batting and earned run averages, populations, and so forth.”

  Kunlun narrowed his eyes.

  “Let’s say you decide to give a bodyguard a bonus at random,” I said, trying a different tack. “Five guards draw straws, and the probability of someone picking 1 is one out of five, so 20 percent. The more guards there are, the probability of someone picking one decreases. So if you have nine guards, the probability is 1 / 9, so 11 percent. But if you have 10 guards, the probability of drawing a number beginning with a 1, 1 or 10, becomes 2/10, so 20 percent. With 11, 12, 13, or 14 people, the probability keeps increasing. By the time you have 19 people, you have 11 in 19 odds of drawing a number with a 1 in it. But with 20 or 30 people, the probability goes back down. When you’re at 99, it’s 11/99, which is 11 percent. When you hit 100, the probability of drawing a number with a 1 in it increases until 199.” I drew a graph on the paper.

  “The y axis is the probability of picking a number starting with 1 and the x axis is the number of straws. The probability vacillates between 58 percent and 11 percent. According to Benford’s Law, the universal probability of a number’s first digit, n, is log (n + 1) − log n. If n is 1, log 2 − log 1 = 0.301, thus 30.1 percent.”

  Kunlun grimaced. “What are you talking about? What does this have to do with the ledgers?”

  “The ledgers contain a random sample of unspecified numbers. So it has to have more numbers that start with 1 than with bigger numbers. If not, something is wrong.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “Either the calculations are wrong, or the ledgers were manipulated.”

  Kunlun began shaking his head slowly.

  “There were some minor differences in all the ledgers, but, overall, numbers starting with 1 didn’t show up as much as they should have, and numbers starting with 5 or 6 appeared too frequently.”

  Kunlun gritted his teeth, though his face remained placid. He summoned the head of security and whispered to him, which sent him rushing out of the room.

  A few days later, Huang stopped coming by. A week later, I opened the Huanqiu Shibao at the breakfast table and froze. His smiling face was emblazoned in the paper, next to a picture of a Mercedes with a crumpled hood being hauled out of the river.

  “Anything interesting today?” Kunlun asked.

  “‘Chairman of Goldman Corporation Dies in Car Accident’,” I read out. I looked at Kunlun, who nodded for me to go on. “‘Goldman Corporation chairman Huang Taimin died last night in a car crash on Renmin Avenue at 1 a.m. Eyewitnesses stated that Huang had tried to avoid a car that crossed the center divider before crashing through the guardrail into the Yellow River. His sudden death marks a big loss to the Shanghai business sector, as Goldman Corporation handles accounting and consulting for many local businesses and foreign investment firms. Huang has led several large-scale mergers and acquisitions, including a takeover of Indonesia’s Mandarin Resort Hotel on behalf of Kunlun Corporation four years ago. The funeral will be held on the morning of the 16th.’”

  Kunlun cracked a small smile. “Hmm.”

  I put the Huanqiu Shibao down and opened the Wall Street Journal.

  “We should send flowers to the funeral,” he told me. “Now that Huang’s dead, you’re in charge of reconciling all the books.”

  THE CORD THAT HAS LEFT ONE POINT ON EARTH

  In March 2002, Tiancheng Corporation moved its headquarters from Sichuan to Shanghai. Though ostensibly a construction company, its main business was investing in bars and the drug trade; a showdown with Kunlun was inevitable. Tiancheng recruited away Kunlun’s executives and did everything possible to take over his customers and accounts, but Kunlun remained strong. Around the end of November, Tiancheng changed its tactics.

  Dash and I were accompanying Kunlun in his Mercedes one day when a large dump truck sped toward us. Though the driver braked and turned the wheel, the hood of the Mercedes was crumpled and the windshield was shattered. The driver broke his left shoulder; Kunlun emerged with a scratch on his forehead, and Dash and I weren’t injured. The truck driver was unscathed. The official investigation concluded that the truck’s brakes were faulty, but Kunlun’s security team discovered that the truck driver used to work at a Sichuan construction site. Everyone was on edge. The head of security doubled the number of guards patrolling the perimeter of the mansion and made sure that Kunlun was never alone. It became increasingly difficult for Kunlun to leave the house, so I became his proxy.

  “Deliver this to Eastern Manhattan,” Kunlu
n said, handing me a thick envelope containing the girl’s monthly allowance. I got in the Lexus idling in the garage and the driver took a bumpy but safe shortcut. Fifteen minutes later, we were at Eastern Manhattan. The sprinklers misted everything, including the car. We pulled up to the entrance of the villa, and I checked to make sure that the envelope was still in my pocket.

  Bodyguards were stationed at the stairs and in the hallway of the fourth floor. They nodded at me. One pressed the doorbell, two short bursts, one long, one short, then a final very long one. I heard slippers coming up to the door. The lock turned.

  Inside, I handed over the envelope without making eye contact. A servant placed a large glass of Coca-Cola on a table beside me. Tight bubbles popped the surface and bounced onto the table. Light foam brewed quietly in my mouth and exploded, tickling my nose, and eventually turned into a fragrant burp. White frost on the glass condensed into droplets and trickled down the sides.

  “You still like Coke, I see.”

  I realized I knew this voice. I sneaked a quick glance at her thick, shiny hair, her animated brows, and her plump lips. Her cheeks had filled out and her curves had become even more attractive. Her full bosom made her look haughty. I recognized the golden ratio in her part and throughout her face—red lipstick, black mascara, and hair dye couldn’t mask those.

  “You haven’t changed one bit,” she said, amused.

  “Your face still has all the beautiful ratios,” I managed.

  Yong-ae’s voice turned chilly. “I’m not the same, though. I’m Cao Jialing from Hunan, now.”

  “You’re still the same,” I said. “I’m Jiang Jiajie, but that’s just a name. I’ve seen your new name before.”

  “How?”

  “Who else would have written the Kaprekar number in The Odyssey in the library by the Yellow River?”

  She frowned. She reached over and took my glass and gulped the rest of my drink. “So you’ve been searching for me all this time?”

  Her voice sounded annoyed. Was it wrong for me to look for her? I must have looked puzzled.

  “Don’t be stupid,” she snapped. “We were friends once, sure. But now our lives are headed in different directions. I’m free and wealthy now, and I’m going to do whatever it takes to maintain that.”

  “I’ll do the same, then,” I said. “I’ll be freer and wealthier, too.”

  Yong-ae narrowed her eyes. “That doesn’t suit you. You’re too good. I’m not. Don’t waste your time wandering around libraries. Don’t bother coming after me, okay?”

  I was confused. “Are you saying there was a better way to find you?”

  She laughed. “It’s no coincidence that I came to Shanghai and met Kunlun, you realize. It isn’t a coincidence that we’re face-to-face right now.”

  “Exactly!” I cried. She understood my theory so well. “You’re holding one end of the cord that is staked at Muryong Prison Camp. I was holding the other end. We were bound to meet again.”

  She snorted. “No, that’s not what I mean.” She looked at me pityingly. “Gil-mo, I came here the same way you did. I delivered a bag for Old Man Yong-gyu.”

  My eyes widened.

  “It wasn’t just us, either,” Yong-ae said, looking exasperated. “Being a drug mule is the easiest way for people like us to make something of ourselves. Do you understand? We delivered bags to the same place, following the same route. If you understood that, you wouldn’t have had to waste so much time. You could have easily found me.”

  I nodded. I didn’t ask her any details, like how she crossed the Tumen, how many men she had to know to get here safely, how she had become Kunlun’s lady. I didn’t know if she was happy or if she ever thought of me. I didn’t really want to know; I knew people had to do things to survive. I remembered how mothers sold daughters for a few yuan in Yanji, how the SPSD dragged young men back to the republic, and how men roamed around trying to find defectors to make a few quick bucks.

  Yong-ae finally cracked a smile. “Kunlun saved me,” she said in a low voice. “He insists that I’m the one who saved him, though. I guess we saved each other.”

  “But this isn’t your life,” I said, suddenly impassioned. “You’re not a bird in a fancy cage.”

  “There’s nowhere for me to go,” Yong-ae said gently. “Even if there were, I can’t leave him. Not now.”

  I cocked my head. “Why not?”

  “He needs me. And he was there for me when I was roaming the streets, drunk.”

  I looked out at the terrace. The sun was setting. The Lexus was waiting for me outside. That night, I returned to our room and found Dash watching a movie. Chow Yun-fat was in a gun battle with the bad guys, twelve against—well, 0.7, because Chow was shot in the leg and was dying. Dash was engrossed in his movie, tossing snacks in his half-open mouth.

  “I saw Yong-ae.”

  Dash didn’t pay me any attention.

  “I saw Yong-ae,” I said, a little louder.

  Dash sprang up from his bed. He pulled out all the details before grabbing his head in dismay. “Are you telling me that the girl you’re looking for is the lady at the Manhattan?” he whispered fearfully. “Gil-mo, don’t you ever tell Kunlun!”

  “Why not?” I had told Kunlun about Yong-ae before. Kunlun was rooting for me to find her.

  “He doesn’t know that Yong-ae is his girl.”

  “So?”

  “What do you mean, ‘so’?” Dash stared daggers at me. “He’ll kill you, and nobody will ever find out.”

  “I can’t lie to him.”

  “You’re not lying. You’re just not telling him everything you know. It’s a secret, right? A secret between us. So it’s not really a lie. All you have to do is keep our secret.”

  “Okay.”

  Dash let out a sigh. He resumed his snacking and turned back to his movie. “I want to be just like Chow Yun-fat. That’s how I want to go when I die. So cool.”

  “Dying by gunfire is cool?” Sometimes Dash made no sense.

  “It’s cool to die as you’re fighting the bad guys,” he clarified, guzzling his Coke.

  RIDING THE SILVER BACK OF TIME

  “‘State Administration of Taxation Investigates Shanghai Real Estate Firm’,” I read to Kunlun, who was listening peacefully with his eyes closed. “‘Upon its months-long investigation of real estate group Kunlun Corporation, the Shanghai Municipal Bureau of Local Taxation has concluded that the corporation has evaded paying 60 million yuan in taxes. The Shanghai Municipal Bureau of Public Security descended on Kunlun hotel, arresting twenty-three servers who brokered prostitution and collecting evidence that Cheng Xiaogang, the head of the organization, known as Kunlun, received illegal revenue through embezzlement and manipulation of stock prices. Cheng grew up penniless before going on to build the major corporation, and has refused all media requests, shrouding his life in secrecy. In 1980, he was investigated for drug distribution, but by the end of the 1980s, he had earned 20 million yuan by manufacturing counterfeit high-end liquor. He has since expanded his business by establishing a real estate development company widely understood to be a front for illicit operations, including unlawful evictions, and has become one of the richest men in Shanghai. Six years ago, he embarked on corporate takeover of hotels and resorts in Shanghai and Hong Kong, continuing to amass wealth through prostitution, gambling, and loan shark activities. Cheng has allegedly paid a 300,000-yuan bribe to Feng Jianhou, the former head of the Shanghai Municipal Bureau of Public Security, and bought off high-level government officials and the National People’s Congress. Last October, Shanghai Party Secretary Jian Zhenxi launched a war on crime, and as a result the Bureau of Public Security detected Kunlun Corporation’s illegal acts. However, Cheng has mistakenly relied on his influence, leading to the shutdown of the corporation and Kunlun Hotel, the arrest of Feng, and the downfall of Chen’s protectors.’”

  Every time I uttered his name, Kunlun’s thick gray eyebrows trembled. The two-year battle with Tiancheng Corpo
ration over Shanghai had drained him. In his fight, he had paid for a lot, including much of his wealth. In the last several months, he had become an old man.

  Tiancheng’s attacks had persisted from all directions. They used anything they could to constrict his influence; they weren’t afraid of using violence or informants, conspiracies, and betrayals. Kunlun’s bodyguards were shot and stabbed or found themselves in car accident after car accident. Hong Chaohong, Tiancheng’s CEO, doubled the bribes that officials who had watched out for Kunlun were receiving. Officials who refused bribes were arrested under suspicion of bribery. Kunlun’s every move was under scrutiny; city health inspectors came to his hotel every day, and the safety department’s inspector basically lived at his construction sites. The tax bureau combed through the books of Kunlun Corporation and its subsidiaries. Kunlun’s people betrayed him or were arrested, and staff at his mansion dwindled. Without a caretaker, grass overtook the garden; without cooks, meals became bland. Cars stood in the garage, covered in dust. Only a few of us remained.

  Kunlun turned to feed his parrot. “The Bureau of Public Security suggested a compromise,” he said heavily. “If I leave the city, I won’t be arrested. Tiancheng is targeting my assets and territory, not my life. If I’m lucky, I’ll be able to take enough cash to live out the rest of my life.”

  “Where would you go?” Dash asked. As Kunlun’s fortunes crumbled, Dash’s girth had begun to deflate; as he began to lose weight, he grew nervous, believing that freedom and wealth were abandoning him.

  “They’re telling me I should go to Macau within the next three months,” Kunlun said. He sighed. “They want to keep me locked up on that small island.”

  The turf war had effectively ended. Kunlun went to the Bureau of Public Security to negotiate a dignified retreat. He advised us to leave him and find our own way, but he was all we knew; after all, we were his cooks, bodyguards, handymen, and drivers. Kunlun got us all Macauan passports and went to the banks to wire his remaining money to an account on the island.