A Loyal Character Dancer - [Chief Inspector Chen Cao 02]

by Qiu Xiaolong

  When they finished speaking, a resigned smile appeared on his mother’s face. She began to rewarm the dishes. The small attic was filled with a strong gas smell from the coal briquette stove. It was a bit too heavy for her to carry in and out. In the days before he had gotten his own apartment, it had been his job to carry the stove onto the stair landing and bring it back in the evening. The staircase was so narrow that kids were always bumping into the stove in the dark. His mother did not want to move into his one-bedroom apartment, though he had asked her.

  His father, his broad forehead lined with worries, seemed to be looking at him with a melancholy expression from the black-framed picture on the wall.

  He dug into a small dish of tofu seasoned with sesame oil and green onions and finished a bowl of watery rice absentmindedly.

  To his dismay, his cell phone started ringing again as he was ready to leave. When he turned it on, he got a fax signal. The signal repeated. He turned the phone off in frustration.

  “I know you are doing well, Son, with your cellular phone, bureau car, secretary girl, and a general manager calling you during lunch,” his mother said, walking him downstairs to the door. “You are part of the system now, I understand that.”

  “No, I don’t think I’m part of it. But it is necessary for people to work within the system.”

  “Do something good then.” she said. “As Buddhist scripture says, ‘Something as small as a bird’s peck is preordained and has consequences’.”

  “I will keep it in mind, Mother,” he said.

  He thought he understood why his mother had kept talking about doing good things in. the Buddhist spirit. Worried about his prolonged bachelorhood, she had been burning incense to Guanyin every day, praying that retribution for any wrongdoing by the family would befall her instead.

  “Oh, Aunt Chen!” Little Zhou sprang out of the car with half of a steamed bun in his hand. “Whenever you need the use of a car, give me a call. I’m Chief Inspector Chen’s man.”

  His mother shook her head slightly as the car pulled away, noting her neighbors’ envious looks.

  Little Zhou started playing a CD of The Internationale in a rock version. Those heroic words failed to uplift his spirits. He told Little Zhou to pull up at the corner of Fuzhou and Shandong Roads. “I want to browse in a bookstore. Don’t wait for me. I’ll walk back.”

  Several bookstores were located there, both state-run and private. He felt tempted to go into the one where he had bought his father’s book on the contingency of history. He had forgotten the arguments in the book, except for the fable about how a pampered palace goat contributed to the overthrow of the Jing dynasty. He also remembered the colorful poster of the bikini-clad girl that had been offered to him, which he had not accepted. Indeed, he was an unfilial son; he had strayed so far from his father’s expectations.

  Instead, he walked over to a dumplings bar across the street. Like that private bookstore, the small bar had been converted from a residence. A simple sign declared in bold characters: YANPI DUMPLING SOUP. In the front, a middle-aged man was dropping the dumplings into a large wok. There were only three tables in the bar. Before a cloth curtain at the back, a young girl stood kneading the cream-colored dough, mixing the rice wine and minced eel meat into it.

  On the wall was a red poster explaining the origin of Yanpi, the dumpling skin made of wheat flour, egg, and fish meal. Chen ordered a bowl, which tasted delicious, though it had a singular fishy smell. It became acceptable after he added vinegar and chopped green onion to the soup. He wondered what other non-Fujian customers would think of it. As he finished, he suddenly realized something else.

  The restaurant was close to Wen Lihua’s residence, the home in which the missing woman, Wen, had grown up. It was no more than a five-minute walk.

  He approached the owner, who was busy ladling dumplings out of the wok. “Do you remember someone who came to your place in a luxurious car a few days ago?”

  “This is the only place selling genuine Yanpi in the whole city. It’s not uncommon for people to drive halfway across Shanghai for a bowl of Yanpi. Sorry, but I cannot remember a particular customer because of his car.”

  Chen then handed him a card together with a picture of the victim found in the park. “Do you remember this man?”

  The owner shook his head in bewilderment. The young girl walked over, took a look at the picture, and said she remembered seeing a customer with a long scar on his face, but she was not sure if this was the same man.

  Chen thanked her. He decided to walk back to the bureau. Sometimes he thought more clearly while walking, but not this afternoon. On the contrary, he felt more confused than ever by the time he reached the bureau.

  There was only one message in his office from the state job agency, providing him with the names and numbers of several private employment agencies. After spending an hour making one phone call after another, he concluded that the information from the private sector was practically the same. It was out of the question for a middle-aged, pregnant woman like Wen to find a job in Shanghai.

  Gu’s metaphor came buzzing back to him, as the stack of papers piled up on his desk, the phone rang incessantly and the pressure on him increased. He stood up to practice tai chi in his cubicle. The effort did not relieve his tension. It actually served as another subconscious reminder of the unsolved case in the park. Perhaps he should have practiced tai chi all these years, like the elderly former accountant, who at least enjoyed inner peace, moving in harmony with the qi of the world.

  What might have been was like the flower in the mirror, or the moon in the water. So vividly alive, he could almost touch it, but it was not real.

  And what was he going to do about the proposed “vacation” in Beijing? It was not a matter of making or not making a decision in his personal life, not as Party Secretary Li had supposed. In China, the personal could hardly be separated from the political. He could have tried harder to court Ling, but his awareness of her HCC status prevented him from making any further effort.

  Was it really so hard for him to be a bit more courageous, to disregard others criticizing him as a political climber?

  On a moment’s impulse, Chen picked up the phone, thinking of the number in Beijing, but he ended up calling Inspector Rohn instead.

  “I’ve been trying to reach you all afternoon, Chief Inspector Chen!”

  “Really, Inspector Rohn!”

  “You must have turned off your cell phone.”

  “Oh yes, it rang several times with a fax signal. I turned it off, and forgot about it.”

  “Because I could not reach you, I called Detective Yu.”

  “What is his news?”

  “Wen was actually seen leaving the village the night of April fifth! Instead of taking a bus, she hitchhiked and got a ride on a truck heading to the Fujian railway station. The truck turned off a few miles before it reached the station and Wen got out. The truck driver contacted the local police bureau this morning. The description matched, except that he was not sure if the woman was pregnant.”

  “That’s possible. Wen’s only in her fourth month. Did she mention to him where she was going?”

  “No. She may still be in Fujian Province, but it is more likely that she has left.”

  He seemed to hear a train whistle in her background. “Where are you, Inspector Rohn?”

  “The Shanghai Railway Station. Can you meet me here? According to Detective Yu, a train left Fujian for Shanghai at 2 a.m. on April sixth. Tickets were sold out long before that date. The ticket seller remembered one of the people approaching him for an emergency ticket was a woman. Yu suggested we make inquiry at the Shanghai Railway Bureau. That’s why I am here, but I don’t have authority to ask questions.”

  “I’m on my way,” Chen said.

  The visit turned out to be a prolonged one. The Fujian train did not arrive at the station until after late afternoon. They had to wait for hours before they could obtain the conductor’s records.
Three ticketless passengers had boarded the train at the Fujian station in the early hours of April sixth. Judging by the amount they paid, Shanghai was the destination of two of them. The third got off before Shanghai. The attendant remembered one was a woman because the other two were businessmen who chatted all the way. The woman had squatted silently near the door. The attendant had not noticed where she left the train.

  So the “lead” led nowhere. No one knew where the woman got off, nor whether she was, indeed, Wen.

  * * * *

  Chapter 21

  L

  ater, Chief Inspector Chen entered the Dynasty Karaoke Club with Meiling, his former secretary in the Shanghai Metropolitan Traffic Control Bureau. Their visit to the club was prompted by a phone conversation with Mr. Ma, the old herbal doctor..

  Ma had given him additional background information about Gu. Gu had been born into a middle-ranking Party member’s family. His father had served as a manager of a large state-run tire company for more than twenty years. The outbreak of the Cultural Revolution turned the veteran manager into a “capitalist roader,” wearing a huge placard around his neck, on which his name was crossed out in red. He was sent to a special cadre school to reform himself through hard labor, and he did not return home until after the Cultural Revolution, a shrunken shadow of the former Bolshevik, with a crippled leg, a total stranger to Gu, who had grown up on the streets, determined to take a different road. Gu went to Japan via a language program in the mid-eighties, where, instead of studying, he worked at all kinds of jobs. After three years, he came back with some capital, and in the new market economy, he soon became a successful entrepreneur, the class his father had spent his life fighting against. Gu then expanded into the karaoke business, and through a large donation to the Blue, the triad that controlled such activities in Shanghai; bought an honorary membership as security for his business. He rubbed elbows with various triad heads at the Dynasty.

  Gu had initially gotten in touch with Mr. Ma because of his K girls, who would be reported to the city authorities if they went to state-run hospitals for treatment of their venereal diseases. Mr. Ma agreed to help, provided Gu would not allow those sick girls to give any private service until they had recovered.

  “Gu is not a totally rotten egg. At least he cares about his girls. Yesterday he asked me several questions about you. I don’t know why. These people can be unpredictable and dangerous. I don’t want anything to happen to you,” Mr. Ma concluded gloomily. “Personally, I don’t believe in meeting force with force. The soft is stronger than the hard. There are not too many decent cops left today.”

  Chen believed that Gu had withheld information. If he squeezed harder, more might be extracted. Meiling’s position in the Traffic Control Office might make a difference. She agreed to accompany him without asking a single question, a truly understanding secretary. So at the shadowy back door of the Shanghai Writers’ Association, he met Meiling and walked with her to the splendidly lit club.

  He was pleased to see her wearing contacts for the evening. Without her silver-rimmed glasses, she appeared more feminine. She also wore a new dress, sharply nipped in at the waist, accentuating her fine figure. The old saying was right. ‘A clay Buddha image must be magnificently gilded, and a woman must be beautifully dressed.’ She merged into the fashionable crowd effortlessly, unlike the ordinary business-first secretary, but she carried her business cards, handing one to Gu when they were introduced.

  “Oh, you overwhelm me,” Gu exclaimed. “I never guessed both of you would come tonight.”

  “Meiling is always so busy,” Chen explained. It was not the moment for him to worry about what Gu might think of him, first bringing an American girl, and now his Chinese former secretary, to the club. Actually, this might help to convince Gu that the chief inspector was someone he could make a friend of. “She happened to have some time tonight, so I brought her over to meet you.”

  “Director Chen is giving his personal attention to your parking lot,” Meiling said.

  “I really appreciate it, Chief Inspector Chen.”

  As they arrived at a sumptuous room on the fifth floor, a line of K girls in black slips and black slippers appeared, welcoming Chen like the imperial maids at a palace entrance. Their white shoulders flashed against the saffron walls.

  Apparently, Gu no longer minded Chen’s seeing the other side of his business. The large karaoke room was furnished more elegantly than the one Chen had visited the previous day, and there was a master bedroom adjoining it.

  “The suite is not for business, but for my friends,” Gu said. “Give me a call any time, and this suite will be reserved for you. Come with your friend or by yourself.”

  It was a hint. Chen noticed a sly smile playing over Meiling’s lips. She understood, though she sat demurely on the huge sectional sofa.

  At Gu’s nod, a slim girl came into the room. “Let’s start with an appetizer,” Gu said. “Her name is White Cloud. The best singer in our club. And a Fudan University student. She performs only for the most special guests here. Choose any song you would like to hear, Chief Inspector Chen.”

  White Cloud had a piece of dudou-like red silk, no larger than a handkerchief, wrapped around her breasts, tied with the thinnest straps at her back. Her gauzy pants were semi: transparent. With the microphone in her hand, she bowed to Chen.

  Chen chose a song entitled “Sea Rhythm.”

  White Cloud had a beautiful voice enriched by a singular nasal effect. Kicking off her slippers, she began to dance to the song, swaying voluptuously to the ebbing and flowing of the music. At the beginning of the second song, “Weeping Sand,” she extended her hands to Chen. When he hesitated, she leaned over to pull him up. “Won’t you dance with me?”

  “Oh, I’m honored—”

  She took his hand, propelling him toward the center of the room. He had taken the required dancing lessons at the bureau, but he had had little time to practice. He was amazed at how easily he could be guided around by her. She danced with a sensual, effortless grace, her bare feet gliding along the hardwood floor.

  “Your clothes are like clouds, and your face is like a flower.” He tried to pay her a compliment, but he regretted it as soon as he uttered it. His hand was on her bare back—”jade-smooth”—another quotation, but any reference to her clothes sounded like a joke.

  “Thank you for comparing me with Imperial Concubine Yang.”

  So she knew the origin of the lines. Indeed, a Fudan university student. He tried to hold her at some distance, but she pressed her body against him, melting into his arms. She made no effort to conceal her ardor. He felt her pointed breasts through the light material.

  He did not know when the microphone had come into Meiling’s hand. She was singing as captions appeared on the screen. It was a sentimental piece:

  “You like to say you are a grain of sand, / occasionally fallen into my eyes, in mischief. / You would rather have me weep by myself / than to have me love you, / and then you disappear in the wind / like the grain of sand…”

  White Cloud also quoted a couplet from Li Shangyin, the bard of star-crossed lovers, whispering in his ear, “It is difficult to meet, and to part, too. / The east wind languid, and the flowers fallen ...” She said it to evocative effect as the song was coming to a stop, her hand lingering in his.

  He chose to comment on the poem, “A brilliant juxtaposition of an image with a statement, creating a third dimension of poetic association.”

  “Isn’t that called Xing in the Book of Songs?”

  “Yes. Xing does not specify the relationship between the image and the statement, leaving more room for a reader’s imagination,” he expounded. He had no problem talking to her about poetry.

  “Thank you. You’re really special.”

  “Thank you. You’re marvelous,” he echoed in his best dancing-school manner, bowing before he moved back to the sofa.

  At Gu’s insistence, a bottle of mao tai was opened. Several cold dishes
appeared on the coffee table. The liquor was strong, suffusing Chen with a new warmth.

  Between sips, Meiling started to talk about the zoning issue with regard to the parking lot.

  She was clearly conveying that it was in the power of her office to decide the future of the parking lot. She left a form on the table for Gu to sign as the first step.

  In the middle of their talk, White Cloud came back with a large black plastic bag. Carefully, she untied the string around the neck of the bag, reached her hand in as fast as a lightning, and came out with a snake twitching in her grasp, hissing, its scarlet tongue protruding.

  A monstrous snake weighing perhaps five or six pounds.

  “The heaviest big king snake available,” Gu said proudly.

  “It’s the custom,” White Cloud explained, “for our customers to see the living snake before it’s cooked. In some restaurants, the chef will kill the snake in front of the customers.”