Flower Net

by Lisa See

  “We are thinking, Hulan, the reddest of us all, is going to America?” said a woman, whose hair, streaked with gray, was pinned into a severe knot at the back of her head. “We are thinking—and remember we are so lonely for home—Liu Hulan has the best guanxi of us all. Then we think, The Chairman must have some great plan. Hey, Mr. Chen, did you think we too would go to America a few years later?” The woman picked up a toothpick, then, in the traditional Chinese style, covered her mouth with one hand and went at her teeth with the other.

  “No, Madame Yee, I think we are going to die in those fields…”

  “Madame Yee?” David asked.

  The woman in question laughed, pulling the toothpick from her mouth and wiped a morsel of food on the edge of her plate. “I didn’t think you recognized me. It’s been a long time.”

  Nixon Chen looked at David with feigned surprise. “You don’t know who we are? Everyone here was an associate at Phillips, MacKenzie & Stout.”

  David searched the faces and suddenly began to recognize old friends, but many of them were still strangers—people who must have come to the law firm after he left.

  “There are more of us in Beijing, you know,” said Nixon. “Whoever can come for lunch comes. Some Saturdays we have as many as thirty attorneys.”

  “You were in the countryside together and at the law firm?” David asked incredulously.

  “China, despite our millions, is a small world. It is an even smaller world for the privileged, right, Hulan?”

  She didn’t answer.

  “Madame Yee, Song Wenhui, Hulan, and I were at the Red Soil Farm,” Nixon continued. “The others, as I said, were either too young or somewhere else. But yes, we are all from the law firm. Chou Bingan over there only came back from Los Angeles last year. We like to meet and make connections. But”—Nixon’s face crinkled in mock disappointment—“we never see our Liu Hulan.”

  “I never imagined…” David said.

  “That those scared students Phillips, MacKenzie took a chance on would amount to anything?”

  “No, that there were so many of you.”

  “Today, in Beijing, we look back and think with great fondness on Phillips, MacKenzie. Every year since 1973 they’ve taken one or two law students as summer associates or full associates. When did you start, Hulan?”

  “I started working as a summer clerk my first year in law school.”

  “In 1980,” David said.

  “Yes, that’s right, because when I came three years later, Hulan was already working full-time as an associate,” Nixon said. “She had already been in America for eleven years. She was absolutely fluent in English. She had no accent. She was no longer Liu Hulan, model revolutionary. She was Liu Hulan, almost American! She looked at us like we were fresh off the boat—and we were! Madame Yee came the year after me. Oh, do you remember how she missed her children? It was terrible!”

  “Your children,” David said, remembering. “How are they?”

  “They’re all married and working. I’m a grandmother already. One grandson.”

  “I tell you this”—Nixon reflected—“Phillips, MacKenzie was very smart. The partners thought ahead to changing times and changing business. We came home, and some of us kept our American names and our American ways. Whenever we can, we send work back to them.”

  “And what do you all do now?” David asked.

  Madame Yee was general counsel for a beer company that sold its products worldwide. Mr. Ing worked for Armani’s Beijing branch. Two other attorneys were employed by American law firms with branches in Beijing. But none was as successful as Nixon Chen.

  “I have sixty lawyers in my office,” he announced. “You know what we charge? Three hundred and fifty dollars U.S. an hour. But enough about us. How can we help our old friend?”

  “We are looking into the murders of two boys,” Hulan said.

  “Yes, yes, yes. We know that. They come in here all the time, isn’t that so?” he asked the table. His friends nodded. “We are always thinking—no, everyone in this restaurant is thinking—these are young boys. What do they want with a lot of old farts like us? But do we care? Billy has good connections to America. Guang Henglai…” Nixon shrugged. “We all need to keep up our fee schedules. We all need to pay salaries. So we are all friendly.”

  “Did any of you actually do business with them?” When no one answered, Hulan asked, “Do you know what they were into?”

  “No,” Madame Yee responded.

  “Hulan tells me that people from the triads often come here,” David said. “Did the boys meet with them?”

  “Everyone comes here sometime. The president, Deng’s daughter, the American ambassador, your boss,” Nixon said, pointing to Hulan, “even the great Guang Mingyun. But the triads? Who knows? We are all honest people here. How do we know what goes on behind closed doors?”

  “Everything Nixon says is true,” Madame Yee added. “But I saw Billy and Henglai with Cao Hua many times.”

  The others murmured their agreement.

  “I don’t know him,” Hulan said.

  “He’s not one of us,” Madame Yee continued. “He’s our age, but two years ago he owned a stall on Silk Road. Today he has millions.”

  “How did he make his money?”

  “I know your business. You know my business,” said Nixon Chen. “This is how China has always been. But today things are different, and Cao Hua was very good at keeping secrets.”

  “You must know something,” Hulan said.

  “Is this a friend asking or the ministry?”

  “A friend.”

  “Cao Hua is doing business with the Guang family,” Madame Yee said at last. “What it is I truly don’t know, but he is traveling a lot. To the United States, to Korea, to Japan. He is very arrogant, very rich. You know the type.”

  “Is he here today?”

  “Cao Hua? He is probably away—”

  “In Switzerland, spending his money!” someone finished.

  Everyone laughed.

  “Where is his office?”

  Hulan’s old friends laughed again. “Cao Hua has no office!” Nixon Chen explained between breaths. “He is here, he is there. No one pins him to the ground.”

  “He must live somewhere,” Hulan persisted. “I can look it up or you can tell me.”

  “The Capital Mansion—same floor as Guang Henglai.”

  10

  LATER

  Cao Hua’s Apartment

  In the car, David brought up a subject that he felt sure was safe to talk about in front of Peter. “Liu Hulan, revolutionary martyr?” he asked. “Why didn’t you ever tell me you were named after her?”

  “That was just a romantic thing my parents did,” Hulan said with the same indifference she’d shown in the restaurant. “It doesn’t have much to do with who I am.”

  She seemed content to leave it at that, but Peter jumped into the conversation. “Inspector Liu is being modest,” he said. “We all know the story of the real Liu Hulan and many people try to emulate her. I, like many of us, have memorized her slogans.”

  “Who was she?”

  “She was just a girl who had the misfortune to die at a young age,” Hulan said.

  “Inspector, she was far more than that! You should tell Attorney Stark about her brave deeds.”

  When Hulan didn’t, David asked, “So? What did she do?”

  Again Peter answered. “She was born more than sixty years ago in the village of Yunchouhsi in Shansi Province. Liu Hulan’s family was very poor. They poured their blood, sweat, tears, and sorrows into the soil. Hulan worked in the fields under a sun as scorching as a bonfire. When her little sister got tired, Hulan sent her home away from the heat, then continued the work herself.” Peter paused, then said, “My parents used to tell that story to my older sister, but she was still mean to me.”

  Peter then described how Hulan spun cotton to make her own clothes and how she helped her mother with household chores when others we
nt to sleep in the hot afternoons. “Once,” he recounted, “when Hulan was picking wild herbs with other village children, the landlord’s son tried to scare them away. She stood up to that bully. She said, ‘Landlords are fed on rice, flour, fish, and meat, yet we are not allowed to gather wild herbs for food. Well,’ she told the boy, ‘we are going to!’ She was just a girl, but she was not afraid.”

  An old-fashioned bridal procession of several pushcarts and bicycles loaded with the bride’s dowry crossed in front of the car. As Peter waited for it to pass, he caught David’s eye in the rearview mirror. “When the Japanese came, Liu Hulan spied on traitors in the village. She learned that it was ‘better to die than to become a slave.’ When the Kuomintang came, that same slogan was used.”

  Once the procession was out of the way, Peter turned left into a large parking area. As he pulled up to the entrance of the Capital Mansion, he rushed to finish his story. “One day a Communist soldier came to the village to recover from his wounds. Hulan helped to hide him. She told the other children, ‘He has fought and bled for the sake of the people. Now we must take good care of him and feed him as many eggs as we can so he can go back to the front.’ One thing led to another, and the two fell in love. It was 1945 and she was thirteen years old.”

  Hulan told Peter to wait in the car, then she and David headed into the high-rise. At first, the elevator was crowded, but after the fifth floor, David and Hulan were alone. David moved to her, placed his hands on the wall on either side of her head, and leaned into her. She had nowhere to escape, but she wouldn’t have tried even if she could. Her black eyes met his.

  “So,” she said casually, “it seems Billy Watson and Guang Henglai kept secrets from their fathers.”

  “Ummm” was David’s response. He took a strand of Hulan’s hair that had fallen across her forehead and moved it delicately from her face. “I don’t want to talk about them,” he said. “Tell me more about Liu Hulan.”

  Knowing she could avoid the subject no longer, she said, “There is a saying: ‘The revolutionary marches toward the storm.’ This is what Hulan did. She went to a training class for female cadres, then she went back to her village and taught the women how to economize in their daily lives. She organized them to make shoes and collect string for the People’s Army. Although Hulan was very young, she already knew that these things were not enough. It was important to deal a fatal blow to the enemy, preserve the revolution at all costs, struggle to the bitter end.”

  Hulan’s voice fell to a whisper as David traced a finger along her cheekbone. “The Kuomintang army—growing up we called them the Kuomintang bandits—came closer and closer to the village. At last, they invaded Yunchouhsi. The soldiers demanded that all of the villagers meet in the square. Hulan wanted to hide with a woman who was giving birth, then realized that if they were caught, they’d all be killed. Hulan said, ‘If I must die, I’ll bear the brunt alone,’ and stepped out onto the square.”

  The elevator slowed to a stop and the doors opened. For a moment, David didn’t move, then he pulled away and said with a smile, “After you.” They stepped into the stuffy corridor and the elevator closed behind them. Hulan started down the hall, but David held her back. “Finish the story.”

  “I told you it doesn’t matter,” she said impatiently.

  “Humor me,” he said. “Tell me who you are.”

  She took a deep breath, then continued reciting from memory. “The Kuomintang officer told the crowd that if the person sympathetic to the Communists did not come forward, then many villagers would die. Hulan gave her mother her ring, a handkerchief, and an ointment tin, then, with her head raised, her eyes clear, and her spirit unbroken, she approached the guards. A soldier asked her, ‘Don’t you regret having to die when you’re only fifteen years old?’ She responded, ‘Why should I be afraid? I won’t yield before death. I’ll never surrender my mind. I have lived for fifteen years. If you kill me, in another fifteen years I will have been reborn and I’ll be as old as I am now.’ She strode bravely to the chaff cutter and they cut off her head. Less than a month later, the Eighth Route Army regained control of Wenshui County. Four years later the murderers were caught and punished. Mao Zedong praised Liu Hulan: ‘A great life! A glorious death!’ Posthumously she was given full membership in the Communist Party.”

  “Why would your parents name you after someone who came to such a sad end?”

  “They didn’t see it that way,” she answered. “They named me for her because she was resolute in the most difficult and dangerous situations. She was stalwart and empathetic. When I was born, my parents saw a great future for themselves and me in the New China. They hoped I’d have Liu Hulan’s zeal and her iron will. I’m afraid that, if anything, I’ve exceeded their hopes in ways that still shame me.”

  Before David could ask what she meant, she had turned away and headed down the hall. She stopped in front of Cao Hua’s apartment. The door stood ajar. Hulan called out, “Ni hao, Cao Xiansheng. Ni zai ma?” She received no response. Hulan gently pressed the muzzle of her gun against the door and it slowly swung open. Before David could react to the weapon, she raised her voice again, inquiring if Mr. Cao was at home. Again only silence. From where Hulan and David stood, they could see only a marble and glass foyer identical to the one in Guang Henglai’s apartment. An incongruous odor of skunk, wet dirt, and rust wafted out to them. She stepped through the threshold, and David asked, “Don’t we need a search warrant or something?”

  “Stay here, David,” she responded, ignoring his question. Of course he followed her. Their steps seemed inordinately loud as they crossed the foyer to the living room. Hulan saw it first and instinctively recoiled, backing into David. She turned and buried her head in his chest. For a brief moment, David mistook her action for affection, but when she looked up into his face, he saw that the color had drained from her cheeks and lips.

  “Please, David,” she quavered. “Go down and get Peter. Don’t come any farther.” She took a breath to steel herself before stepping into the room. Again, David followed right behind her.

  Unlike the excesses of Guang Henglai’s apartment, Cao Hua’s living room was furnished in Spartan style—a couch, a coffee table, a couple of pictures on the walls. These meager decorations highlighted the morbid display before Hulan and David. Blood splattered in an arc against a wall. The body—she surmised it had to be Cao—sat on the carpet beneath the red arterial spray in a pool of still-wet blood. His head was grotesquely deformed. He had been hit by something hard enough to crack his skull open like a ripe melon. But the killer hadn’t stopped at this. He had propped up Cao against the wall with his pulpy head tilted at an improbable angle. His legs were splayed out and his hands decorously laid, palms up, at his sides. Then the killer had slit Cao open from sternum to pubic bone. His intestines had been pulled out and artfully arranged on the floor in the very center of the room.

  All of this Hulan absorbed in a fraction of a second. Then her attention was drawn back to David, who was bent over, head down, hands on knees, gasping for air and mumbling to himself. “David, I told you not to come in here.”

  “What have they done?”

  “David, come on. We’ll go outside.”

  “No! I’m all right.” He slowly straightened up. As he once again took in the scene, he exhaled, and it came out as something between a sigh and a groan. Hulan watched his jaw muscles tighten and his throat constrict as he fought the impulse to vomit.

  “David,” she said, putting a hand on his arm. “Look at me.” He turned his face to hers, but his eyes remained on the monstrous spectacle. “David,” she said sharply. “Look at me!” She could see the horror in his eyes. “You have to get Peter. Tell him we need help. Go.”

  He staggered away. Hulan knew she had only minutes alone with the body. Slowly she skirted the blood and the intestines. She edged close to the wall and examined the bloody splash. It, too, was wet. She fought a wave of fear as she realized that the killer might still b
e in the apartment. She remained immobile, stretching her senses. The apartment was dead quiet. Either the killer was here—waiting, watching—or he had just left.

  Carefully but quickly, she retraced her steps, hoping to get to the hallway and begin a search of the building but guessing that it was too late. By the time she reached the door, David and Peter were there. Peter had his gun out. When he saw the intestines on the floor, the air wheezed out of him. “Aiya!” His voice was filled with wonder.

  David watched as Peter and Hulan spoke in Chinese. They seemed to be arguing about something. Peter kept gesturing at the intestines while Hulan nodded and spoke softly, smoothly. David forced himself to look at the grotesque mess again as the two Chinese talked. Finally Peter jutted out his chin in disgust and left. As soon as he was gone, David said, “Hulan, I think the intestines have been made into some kind of a design.”

  “Not a design, David. It’s a character.”

  “A character? What does it mean?”

  “Let’s not talk about it now. We don’t have much time before the others get here.”

  “No! I want to know now!” Her tranquillity infuriated him. “Don’t keep me in the dark. Tell me.”

  “The Chinese language…”

  “I don’t want a lecture!”

  “The Chinese language,” she began again, “is very complex, and the Chinese people like wordplay. For example, the word for fish—yu—sounds like the word for prosperity, so we eat it as one of the celebration dishes at Chinese New Year. In paintings, you often see a vase or a bottle because that word—ping—sounds the same as peace or safety. Similarly, Deng Xiaoping’s name means ‘little peace,’ but it sounds the same as ‘little bottle.’ When Deng was coming back to power, the people sent a message of support to the government by placing little bottles around the city.”