A Loyal Character Dancer - [Chief Inspector Chen Cao 02] (12 page)

“Give me all the details. Forget about Party Secretary Li.”

“First, with respect to the victim in Bund Park, we have not identified him yet, but the initial report from Dr. Xia supports our hypothesis.” He handed a copy of the report to Old Hunter. “He was killed shortly after having had sex with someone, still in his pajamas. So possibly he was killed at home or in a hotel. If in a hotel, I don’t think it could have happened in a state-run five-star one, which would have had to report, but there are so many private places, massage parlors and the like.”

“And underground brothels, too, Chief Inspector Chen. You will not find anything about these places in the bureau’s data files.”

“Second, there is Wen Liping’s case. Yu is working on it in Fujian. A former educated youth from Shanghai, Wen may have come back to the city.” He produced a picture of Wen. “If she’s not staying with a relative, those cheap private hotels without a business license would also be her choice.”

“Good, I will check all the possible places. I’m old, but I can still do something.” Then the old man added seriously, “Don’t ever underestimate these thugs. They can haunt you like demons lurking in the dark, striking at a moment you can never anticipate. Last year, an old colleague of mine disappeared in the middle of a gang investigation. His body has never been found.”

“I’m sorry to drag you into it, Uncle Yu.”

“Don’t say that, Chief Inspector Chen. I’m glad to be useful. I have nothing to worry about, a bag of old bones. Whatever comes, it’s not a bad bargain at my age. You are young, and you still have a long way to go. You cannot be too careful with the triads.”

“Thanks. I will be very careful.”

After he parted with Old Hunter outside the Moon Breeze, Chen called Inspector Rohn. “We are going to interview Wen Liping’s elder brother, Wen Lihua, tomorrow morning.”

“So the answer is a straightforward yes?”

“According to Confucius, ‘A man is not fit to stand if incapable of keeping his word.’”

“ ‘So you start panting for breath,’” she said, laughing, “ ‘the moment people say you’re fat.’”

“Oh, you know that Chinese expression too!” It was an idiomatic one he had heard only once among old Beijingese. Inspector Rohn had an exceptional command of Chinese proverbs.

“When do we start?” she said. “I’ll wait for you in front of the hotel.”

“No, you don’t have to do that. Traffic can be terrible. Around eight, but I’ll call your room.”

“Fine, I’ll be waiting.”

As he turned off the phone, something he had just said flashed across his mind.

Traffic.

Because of the terrible traffic in the area around the Peace Hotel and strict speed limits, vehicles literally crawled. And it was there, that morning, as they stood on the corner of Nanjing and Sichuan Road, that the motorcycle had come out of nowhere, racing right at her. Sichuan Road was not a street frequented by motorcyclists. He seemed to remember having heard a sputtering sound as they stood talking there on the street corner. The motorcycle had nearly run her down. It must have started up nearby, which made the incident even more suspicious. If the rider had just started his engine, why else would he have accelerated like that?

Inspector Rohn had just arrived in Shanghai. Only three people were aware of her mission. Could the Fujian triad have struck so fast? What was he confronting in his search for Wen? For the first time, he had an ominous feeling about this investigation.

Was it because of Party Secretary Li’s emphasis on Inspector Rohn’s safety?

Or because of Old Hunter’s lecture on the black way?

He was disturbed by the memory of clutching Inspector Rohn, to keep her out of the reach of a crazy motorcyclist. If it was no accident, what further threats to Inspector Rohn’s life might there be?

* * * *

Chapter 8

tanding by a Mercedes, Chen saw Catherine Rohn stepping out of the hotel’s revolving door wearing a white dress, like an apple tree blossoming in the April sunlight of Shanghai. She looked refreshed and she broke into a smile at the sight of him.

“This is Comrade Zhou Jing, our bureau’s driver,” Chen introduced her. “He will be with us for the day.”

“Nice to meet you, Comrade Zhou,” she said in Chinese.

“Welcome, Inspector Rohn,” Zhou said, looking over his shoulder with a broad grin. “People call me Little Zhou.”

“They call me Catherine.”

“Little Zhou is the best driver in our bureau.” Chen took his seat beside her.

“This is the best car,” Zhou said. “And we are doing our best, Inspector Rohn, or Chief Inspector Chen would not be with you today.”

“Really!”

“He’s our ace inspector, the rising star in the bureau, you know.”

“I know,” she said.

“Don’t exaggerate like that, Little Zhou.” Chen said. “Keep your eyes on the road.”

“Don’t worry. I’m familiar with the area. So I’m taking a short cut.”

Chen started speaking in English to her. “Any new information on your side?”

“Ed Spencer, my boss, checked the grocery store where Feng did his shopping. Feng does not drive. Nor has he any friends in D.C. Going to a couple of Chinese stores within walking distance is about all he does there. It is an old store, with no recorded connection to the secret societies. The receipt showed that Feng had visited the store on the day he phoned the warning. He bought noodles and rented several Chinese videotapes. On the way home, he also stepped into a Chinese gift and herb store, and a Chinese barbershop. So the warning could have been put into his grocery bag in these places too.”

“I’ve discussed the new development with Party Secretary Li. It is important, we believe, to find out how the gangsters discovered his whereabouts.”

“Beats me. Our special group consists only of Ed and me. Our translator, Shao, is an old CIA hand,” she said. “I don’t think there was a leak on our side.”

“The decision to let Wen go to the United States was made at a very high level of our government. Neither Party Secretary Li nor I had heard anything about Feng or Wen until the day before your arrival,” Chen countered.

“It was a blow to Feng’s confidence in our program. He called his wife without telling us first. Ed is about to relocate him.”

“I would like to make a suggestion, Inspector Rohn. Keep him where he is. Put more men around him for his protection. The gang may try to contact him again.”

“It may be dangerous for him.”

“If they had intended to take his life, they would have done so instead of warning him first. I believe they just want to prevent him from speaking out against Jia. They will make no attempt on his life unless they have no other choice.”

“You have a point, Chief Inspector Chen. I will discuss it with my boss.”

Due to Little Zhou’s short cut, they soon reached Shandong Road, where Wen Lihua, Wen Liping’s brother, lived with his family. It was a small street lined with old rundown houses from the turn of the century. The street in the Huangpu District had been part of the French concession but, in recent years, as it was surrounded with new buildings, it had become an eyesore. The street entrance was crammed with illegally parked bikes, cars, and illegally stored rusty steel and iron parts from a neighborhood factory. Little Zhou had a hard time maneuvering the car to a stop in front of a two-story house. On the discolored, cracked front door the faded number hardly showed.

The staircase was dark, steep, narrow, dust-covered, dim even during the day. The boards creaked under their feet, suggesting several steps were in bad repair. Most of the paint on the banister had long since peeled off. Catherine climbed up cautiously in her heels, and almost stumbled.

“Sorry,” Chen said, grasping her elbow.

“No, it’s not your fault, Chief Inspector Chen.”

He noticed her wiping her hands on a handkerchief as they reached the second floor. There they saw an oblong room packed with odds and ends: broken wicker chairs, discarded coal stoves, a table with a leg missing, and an antique cabinet that might have served as a cupboard. There was a dining table with several stools in a corner.

“Is this a storage area?” she asked.

“No. It was originally a living room, but now it’s a common room—for three or four families living on the same floor, each getting a portion of the space.”

There were several doors along one side of the common room. Chen knocked on the first one. It was answered by an old woman who shuffled out on bound feet.

“You’re looking for Lihua? He’s in the room at the end.”

The door at the end was opened by someone who had heard their footsteps. A man in his mid-forties, tall, lanky, bald, with thick eyebrows and a mustache, wearing a white T-shirt, khaki shorts, rubber-soled sandals, and a tiny bandage on his forehead. He was Wen Lihua.

They entered a room of fifteen or sixteen square meters. Its furnishing bespoke poverty. An old-fashioned bed sported a blue-painted iron headboard still displaying a plastic poster of Chairman Mao waving his hand on top of Tiananmen Gate; the original design on the headboard was no longer recognizable. In the middle of the room was a red-painted table, which bore a plastic pen holder and a bamboo chopsticks container—an indication of the table’s multiple uses. There were a couple of threadbare armchairs. The only thing relatively new was a silver-plated frame holding a picture of a man, a woman, and a couple of kids huddled together behind a collective smile. The picture must have been taken years earlier when Lihua had still had hair combed over his forehead in a rakish way.

“You know why we are here today, Comrade Wen Lihua?” Chen held out his card.

“Yes. It’s about my sister, but that’s all I know. My boss told me to take the day off to help you.” Lihua gestured them to be seated on the chairs around the table and brought over cups of tea. “What has she done?”

“Your sister has not done anything wrong. She has applied for a passport to join her husband in the United States,” Catherine said in Chinese, holding out her identity card.

“Feng’s in the United States?” Lihua scratched his bald head, then added, “Oh, you speak Chinese.”

“My Chinese is not good,” she said. “Chief Inspector Chen will conduct the interview. Don’t worry about me.”

“Inspector Rohn has come here to help,” Chen said. “Your sister has disappeared. We wonder whether she has contacted you.”

“Disappeared! No, she has not contacted me. This is the first time I’ve heard that Feng is there or that she plans to join him.”

“You may not have heard from her recently,” Chen said. “But anything you know about her will help us.”

Catherine took out a mini tape recorder.

“Believe it or not, I have not talked to her for several years,” Lihua sighed deep into his cup. “And she is my only sister.”

Chen offered him a cigarette. “Please go ahead.”

“Where shall I start?”

“Wherever you please.”

“Well, our parents had only the two of us, me and my sister. My mother passed away early. Father brought us up—in this very room. I’m ordinary. Nothing worth talking about. Not now, not then. But she was so different. So pretty, and gifted too. All her elementary-school teachers predicted a bright future for her in socialist China. She sang like a lark, danced like a cloud. People used to say she must have been born under a peach tree.”

“Born under a peach tree?” Catherine asked.