Flower Net

by Lisa See

  “The crew is stupid. They see people getting weak. They see people getting sick. But they don’t ask questions. We gather rainwater. We…” He turned to Mabel and asked her a question.

  Mabel said, “Ration.”

  “We ration our good water. Then we are getting close to America. Now the crew has no water. Now they go to that place. They look inside and find the man. They get scared. They say, ‘Who is that man?’ They fight. Should we throw him away? What should we do? They say to us, ‘You tell us who that man is. You tell us who killed him. You tell us or we won’t give you food. You tell us, or we tell the gang when we get to America.’ Everyone is afraid, but no one says a word.”

  “But you knew who he was?”

  Zhao nodded. “He is from the special class, the son of a senior cadre. He is a Red Prince, a Gaogan Zidi.” Zhao took a breath and continued. “That first day, when we went for water, everyone was afraid. But some of the men said they would look inside. If it was just a rat, they would pull it out. We would boil the water. They climb back up to the top of the tank and open it again. They find a package wrapped in plastic. Inside is the man. He has been dead and in the water already a couple of days.”

  “But how did you know who he was?”

  “Those men, they look inside his wallet. He had papers saying he was Guang Henglai.”

  Jack Campbell let out a whoop of triumph.

  David shot him a look, then asked, “What did they do next?”

  “They put the body back.”

  “They didn’t tell the crew?”

  Zhao snorted. “No, they put Guang Henglai back. Then they come and talk to the rest of us. What can we do? We are moles on that boat. Even those men in the crew are moles. Who would take responsibility for telling the crew? What if they thought one of us killed him?”

  “What are the names of the men who found the body?”

  “It doesn’t matter…”

  “It matters to me.”

  “Those men are gone. They are on boat to China.”

  David, not knowing how much longer Zhao would talk now that he’d broken his silence, tried to remain focused. “Let’s go back to this Guang Henglai. Who is he and why were all of you afraid of him?”

  “We are not afraid of him,” Zhao said derisively. “He is the son of a dragon.”

  “His father’s important?”

  Zhao snorted again. “His father is Guang Mingyun.”

  “I’m sorry, Zhao, but we don’t know who that is.”

  “I am only a peasant. Do you understand? I am only a peasant, but even I know of Guang Mingyun. He is one of the Hundred Families. He is very powerful and very rich.”

  “Is he the leader of the Rising Phoenix?” David asked.

  Zhao laughed bitterly. “He is not triad. He is a dragon. The triad is less than a dog to Guang Mingyun.”

  Gardner cleared his throat. “But if you reported his son’s death, wouldn’t you receive a reward?”

  “I tell you something. When the crew learned that there was a body on the boat, they didn’t feed us. They didn’t give us any water. We are on the sea for many days. But the people who own the boat, they say, you can’t come to America until you say who this body is and who put him there. This boat has many people and many ears. There are no secrets. Every night people gossip about what they see and hear. They say the captain is talking to the leader in America. The news must be very bad, because they say they will beat us until someone confesses. Let me tell you something. The Chinese people are very strong. We are used to punishment. But no one likes to lose face. Two men tell what they know. Those two men lost too much face. They cannot go forward to America, because everyone on the boat knows how they screamed and begged. They cannot go home, because if they return to their home village how can they face their families? How can they pay back their trip money? Those two men were hungry and thirsty and tired. They tell what they know and then they jump overboard. The captain calls to shore. He is yelling. Everyone can hear it.”

  “Who was he talking to?”

  “The leader in America.”

  “Do you know his name?”

  “I am not there!” Zhao spat out. “I am not listening! I do not want to die!”

  “Take it easy, Mr. Zhao,” Milton Bird said. “Maybe this is enough for today…”

  “No, I want to finish! I want to leave this place! You tell me I can leave after I tell you.”

  “That’s right,” David agreed. “We promised you could leave as soon as you told us what you knew. Please finish. What did the leader say?”

  “I do not know. But the storm comes. The other boat comes and the crew leaves. We think that the crew knows you are on the way. That is all I know.” Zhao lowered his eyes back to the table.

  “What more can you tell us about Guang Henglai? Do you know who might have killed him and why?”

  Zhao, reverting to Chinese, spoke to Mabel. When he came to the end of his speech, she said, “There are many phrases in Chinese that are similar to what you have in English. One of these is—look the other way. Mr. Zhao says that he looked the other way and you should, too.”

  “You ask questions and you get in trouble,” Zhao added. “You want to know about the crew, I tell you. They ask questions. They get the answer and they are dead.”

  David started. “You told me they left the Peony on lifeboats for a rescue ship.”

  “You don’t hear me,” Zhao said. “I don’t see them die, but I think they are dead. It is true, I tell you that I see some of them wash off their little boat when they try to get away. But I tell you, those men are dead. The leader in America will kill them.”

  “They didn’t do anything wrong.” Even as the words came out of his mouth, David wondered what he meant.

  “Guang Henglai is a Red Prince,” Zhao warned. “His father is powerful. Don’t be a fool. You look the other way, too. If you don’t, you will die.”

  4

  JANUARY 23

  Beijing

  The suspect, a Mr. Su, had already confessed, been handcuffed, and taken away. The body of his victim, however, was still sprawled under a stained blanket in the communal bathroom. Blood congealed in a wide smear across the floor. The odors of human habitation—garlic, ginger, sweat—combined to create the fetid smell that was so much a part of Liu Hulan’s daily life. Murders in China rarely happened far away from humanity, and so Hulan was here today in an apartment building where dozens of multigenerational families—literally hundreds of people—lived and had become witnesses to the crime.

  Hulan sat on a stool at a small table tucked into the corner of Mr. Su’s tiny apartment. A few neighbors crowded against the wall. They listened as Hulan conducted her interviews, and they noisily passed whatever information they could out to those who had pressed into the corridor to see what was happening. Across from Hulan sat Widow Xie, the deputy head of the Neighborhood Committee in charge of this apartment complex. It was her duty to keep an eye on people’s comings and goings and to report anything untoward—from political misstatements to acts of corruption to monopolizing the communal bathrooms.

  “Mr. Su was nothing more than a country bumpkin,” Widow Xie remarked. Hulan winced at this insult. Country bumpkin had become one of the vilest and commonest epithets in China; now the government was trying to bar it from speech. But the woman seemed unaware or unconcerned about this new rule. “He came here and stayed. I asked him many times for his residency permit. I hope you will forgive me for being lax in my duties, for I didn’t report him earlier.”

  “Did Mr. Su and Mr. Shih argue frequently?”

  “Those troublemakers put rat shit in the porridge pot for everyone,” the woman answered, staring at the gun that hung from Hulan’s shoulder holster. “They are both bumpkins. They come in here. They don’t wash. They don’t change clothes. They don’t work. They stay in this room. They always disagree. They fight in their vulgar dialect. I tell you, it is ugly to the ears. Everyone—not just me—has t
o listen.”

  “Why were they arguing?”

  “One man, he says, ‘It belongs to me.’ The other says, ‘No, it is mine.’ All day, all night, we are listening.”

  “But why were they arguing? What was it they wanted?”

  Widow Xie’s eyes narrowed. “I don’t know. Do you think I know everything?”

  A police officer pushed into the room and handed Hulan several manila folders. The effect on the residents of the apartment complex was immediate. Their chatter and jostling dwindled and was replaced by the soft footfall of people trying to leave as unobtrusively as possible. Without looking their way, Hulan spoke. “Stay right where you are. I will call on each of you when I am ready.”

  The silence deepened. Liu Hulan began to sort through the folders, finally coming across the one belonging to the murderer. Inside was Mr. Su’s dangan, his personal file, which had been forwarded to Beijing three years ago. Hulan quickly perused its contents. Mr. Su had been a diligent worker at the Bamboo Village commune until 1994, when he disappeared, leaving behind a wife and a child. Family members said that they believed him to be dead; his file, however, noted that the Su family had lived better since his absence. Local officials suspected that Mr. Su had gone to Beijing to seek better wages, but officials were too overwhelmed to look for one man when thousands of peasants were flooding into the capital every day.

  Hulan looked up to see Widow Xie’s face lined with worry. “This is Mr. Su’s personal file,” Hulan said. “Before I look at yours, is there anything more you want to tell me?”

  “I didn’t report him,” the woman said in a quavering voice. “He was a bumpkin, but he paid his rent promptly.”

  “In other words, you followed a one-eye-open, one-eye-closed policy,” Hulan said.

  “I did no such thing!”

  “Well, then, is it your habit to allow people without the proper permits to stay in this building?” Hulan gestured toward the hallway. “Will I find others in this place who do not have a hukou, a residency permit?”

  The deputy head of the Neighborhood Committee stared intently at her hands folded tightly in her lap.

  “Just tell me,” Hulan pressed, “was Mr. Su a legitimate resident here in Beijing? Was this argument over a true possession or over something that belonged to neither man?”

  This time the woman’s voice came out in a hoarse whisper. “Inspector…”

  “You must speak up!”

  The woman looked defiantly at Hulan. “The Supreme Leader tells us that to be rich is glorious.”

  “Deng Xiaoping didn’t tell us to get rich by taking bribes, by harboring the criminal element, or by lying to the Ministry of Public Security.” Hulan looked past the woman’s shoulder to a uniformed man. “Take her down to the office. Have her make a full confession.”

  Hulan followed Widow Xie as she shuffled through the crowd of neighbors. At the door, Hulan raised her voice. “If some of you are here in Beijing illegally, I can assure you that I will be more forgiving to those who volunteer that information. Downstairs, you will find several police officers waiting for you to approach them if you have anything to discuss. If anyone has something to add specifically about this crime, I would like you to stay here and tell me immediately. If you have no business with either the officers downstairs or with me, go to your rooms. I will allow you just ten minutes to pass the word to the other residents and to make your decisions.”

  Hulan regarded the stony faces. She had already offered more options to these people than any of her colleagues would have dared. But she wasn’t finished.

  “I’m sure I don’t need to tell anyone the consequences if you are found to be lying,” she called out down the hallway. “You know the saying—leniency to those who confess; severity to those who hide. Already Widow Xie has been detained. Her case is compounded by her dishonesty. I would not like to see this happen to any of you.”

  A moment later, the room emptied. As she expected, no one chose to speak with her. Still, she hoped that at least some of them would come forward, because the stack of personal files on her desk was much smaller than the number of residents living in this building.

  Hulan sat still waiting for calm to settle over her, but she was angry. How could the deputy head be so stupid? Out of greed, the widow had forgotten her duty. Many times in her career, Hulan had elected to look the other way—to follow her own version of the one-eye-open, one-eye-closed policy—thinking that there was no harm in people seeking a flyspeck of freedom. But today there was little Hulan could do except watch as China’s “iron triangle” closed over not just the suspect in the murder, but also over Widow Xie and who knew how many others? It was this latter group—all innocents, really—who had had the pure misfortune to have traveled here illegally, to have found someone who was willing to twist the rules and rent them a room, and to have ended up in a place where a murder would bring the triangle’s ineluctable force down on them.

  The three sides of the iron triangle controlled a quarter of the world’s population. At one corner of the triangle was the dangan, the secret personal file, which was kept by local police stations and work units. If someone was unwise enough to make a political mistake (offering even mild criticism against the government) or make an error in behavior (getting caught having sex with an unmarried member of the opposite sex or showing a selfish attitude at work), a note would be placed in the file. This information would then follow a person throughout his lifetime, keeping him from getting a job, from being promoted, or from moving from province to province even for private matters. (Here, Hulan was letting a Western attitude invade her mind, for there were no words in Chinese for private or privacy.)

  At another corner of the triangle stood the danwei or work unit, which provided employment, housing, and medical care. The work unit decided if you could get married and issued pregnancy permits. It determined whether or not you were eligible for a one-or two-bedroom apartment and if you would live close to your factory or miles away.

  At the apex of the triangle was the hukou or residency permit. It looked like a passport of sorts, and that’s exactly what it was. It stated your name, listed your relatives, and said where you were from. Even though in the last ten years the government had loosened just slightly its stranglehold on the population by allowing its citizens to travel on vacation within China without getting permission, it was still nearly impossible to change the status of a hukou. So, if you were from Fooshan and were accepted into Beijing University, you would be allowed to go, but at the completion of your education you would have to return to Fooshan. If you were from Chengdu and fell in love with someone from Shanghai, you would have to abandon the romance. If you were a simple peasant, eking out a meager existence in the countryside, there you would remain just as your parents, grandparents, and great-grandparents had.

  Today, the iron triangle had trapped at least two people—Mr. Su and Widow Xie.

  The allotted ten minutes had passed. Hulan stood, gathered the files, and went downstairs. In the courtyard, one of the officers reported that two residents had confessed to being in Beijing illegally. A few had added what they could to the story of Shih and Su. But most of the people had come to make reports on Widow Xie’s corruption. Hulan had anticipated this last wrinkle. Making public criticisms of people who were falling out of favor was as old as the regime.

  Fatigued and depressed, she got into the backseat of a white Saab. Her driver, a compact young man who liked to be called Peter, asked, “Where to now, Inspector?”

  “Just take me back to the office,” she said, laying her head back on the soft seat cushions.

  Peter pulled away from the curb and began making his way toward Tiananmen Square and MPS headquarters. Hulan had no illusions about Peter Sun. He was an investigator third grade, and his main job was to inform on her. She did her best to circumvent this by relegating him to the position of driver rather than partner. He seemed shy and unprepossessing until he got behind the wheel.

/>   Now here he was as usual, honking the horn at bicyclists, yelling out the window—“mother of a fart” and “mating worm”—frantically cutting in front of other cars even if it earned him only a few feet, and ignoring the invective that was hurled back at him. Hulan preferred this to the alternative: Peter turning on the siren, paying no attention to anything or anyone in his way or whether he was going the wrong way down a one-way street. “We have the right to do this,” he used to say, and she would answer, “But the people will see it as an abuse of power, and I’m not in a hurry.” After several months of working together, he had grown used to her ways and she had accepted his.

  Twenty minutes later, they turned into the gray stone low-rise multibuilding compound of the Ministry of Public Security. Two smartly dressed guards carrying submachine guns waved the car inside once Peter flashed his identification. Despite the cold weather, a group of MPS agents were playing half-court basketball near the parking area. Hulan got out of the Saab, walked through an archway, into an inner courtyard, and through a set of massive double doors. Her shoes clattered along the stone floor as she avoided the main stairs and crossed the lobby to the rear of the building. She turned left and made her way up a back set of dimly lit stairs. Up here the stonework gave way to worn linoleum. Just as there was every day, a woman was on her hands and knees washing the floor. Hulan skirted the wet areas, passed several closed doors, and entered her office.

  Eleven years ago, a year after her return from the United States, Hulan had been hired by the ministry as a tea girl. With her American law degree, she had been overqualified for the job, which required that she look pretty, smile, and pour tea. Eventually she had gone to her superior and asked to be assigned to a case, then another. By the time his superior found out, she had already solved enough crimes that to demote her back to tea girl would have caused several people to lose face.

  Since that time she had received standard promotions based on seniority rather than the accelerated promotions based on political integrity or “staying in touch with the people.” As a result, for the last decade, she had been tucked away in what was perceived to be an unimportant part of the building, which was fine with her.